August 31, 2007

Hurricane Frederick.

At some point last week, Jen looked at me after I'd finished wrestling my hair into some sort of shape, and compared the results to Art Garfunkel. When she starts doing that, I usually start considering making an appointment to see my stylist. It's taken years of patience and painful jabs with a cattle prod to get me to drop the idea of a $6 barber and move to a $60 salon, one in a long list of notions she's had to wean me from. After several unsuccessful relationships with stylists across town (Candace, my last favorite, left her affordable digs to move up into Timonium to some sort of sports bar/hair salon hybrid, an idea lost on the sorry fools like me who are blind without their glasses and therefore unable to appreciate HD-quality basketball while getting our hair cut), she put me in touch with my new stylist, who has the kind of hair I wish I had—somewhere between Greek god and hipster nonchalance. You know, the hair you leave the salon with but can never re-create in your own laboratory.

He has shown me wonderful and amazing things I can do with my hair, even if I can't master his hair-fu, so I go back to him in the hopes that I might learn by osmosis. And, I've fallen in love with the idea (and practice of) the shampoo/scalp massage. Oh, Holy Mary, Mother of God, there are fewer finer legal ways I can think of having someone else who is not my wife touch my body for an affordable fee.

After getting my hair shorn, I met up with a friend to grab a cup of coffee and catch up, which was a great change of pace. Sitting in a coffee bar and talking with him, as well as discussing the Bathroom Senator affair with the grandmothers sitting next to us,reminded me why I work for myself in the first place, something that's been lost on me in the last two weeks or so: flexible coffee scheduling. About the time we were considering a bite to eat, I got a call from Jen, who asked me where I was with a voice that registered unease. She told me that our washer had somehow decided to quit draining itself and had then pissed two hundred gallons of water all over the floor of the basement, and that I'd better get home to help in the recovery effort she'd started.

After some initial panic, I calmed down when I saw the extent of the disaster, and silently cursed the original builders of this house. I have two separate curses, one for the builders and one for the Doctor, for all the ass-backwards stuff that's been done with this house since they broke ground. A dirt floored garage? A pox on your children. A staircase designed in a way that ruins any chance of adding a convenient entryway to the third floor? May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your armpits. A kitchen built with four (and at one point, five) doors? May the flatulence of twenty elephants descend upon your buttocks. And a basement with no sump, not even a simple gravity drain? May your bladder loosen and soak your bed every time you fall asleep.

So, with nothing left but good humor and a nasty smell, we folded up our sleeves and got to work with a mop and a shop-vac. I'd have pictures here to share the horror with you, but the local government did not allow press access to the devastation, and it's probably for the best anyway. Suffice it to say the levees around the cat litter held, barely, and the lumberyard got its feet wet. Thankfully though, the water level didn't reach either pilot light on the furnace or the boiler, and the tools remain high and dry.

We have fared better than the survivors in the south, and for that we are thankful; we have three dry floors, a heavy-duty dehumidifier, and a weekend of low humidity ahead. We also have a 2hp. shop-vac that drained the lagoon in under an hour, in case the rains come again. But that consarned washing machine is getting sent up the river as soon as we can get the scratch together for a quality replacement.

Posted on August 31, 2007 3:07 PM | link to this entry

August 30, 2007

Won't You Be My Neighbor?

I have deliberately shunned social networking sites for years now. Actually, I've shunned pretty much everything about the social networking scene ever since the first chat clients came out years ago. I don't have a ready explanation for this aversion, other than the slimy feeling I get whenever I ask someone to link to my site or for their chat name: I feel like it's high school all over again. I don't keep IM up and running a whole lot, nor do I just randomly IM people for the hell of it. I look at it sort of like making a phone call: I need to have something good to say in order to take the time out of someone's day.

I've dipped my toes in the pool a few times, through Flickr (where my linked friends number in the teens) and through IM (begrudgingly; some people conduct the entirety of their business on IM, but I find it distracting) but I've never gotten over that feeling of wheedling supplicance, as if I was the freshman asking a senior if I could come to their party. I suppose this attitude throughout life has meant I haven't been to many parties, but I have to look at the people with 900+ buddies and wonder if it's just another game of collection and posturing. How can I be expected to maintain relationships with 900 buddies on a daily basis when I'm bad at maintaining flesh-and-blood relationships with actual people I know and love? Oh, and stay married, run a business, and spend at least a half-hour of waking time away from the computer?

Last year I was invited to join a business-oriented social networking site, and I considered the offer for a while before acting. Perhaps this would be different from the other sites I've poked around on (it was better-looking, for one thing), and perhaps it might help me from a business perspective, I thought. With reservation, I signed up and created a profile, entered some employment information, and then poked around to see who else was signed up. The results were pretty slim at that point—a few people on the margins of companies I'd worked for, but nobody I'd actually consider contacting.

At that point, I decided my criteria for linking to other people would be twofold: I would have to had direct working contact with them, and I would have to be reasonably certain they'd link back to me.

Over time, I got a few invites from friends I knew, but the account lay mostly dormant for a year until recently, when I got an invite from a friend at a company I'd not listed in my history, which I accepted. After I updated my profile, suddenly I got three more invites from people I didn't remember and two that I did. I noticed that certain people had contacts in the upper two digits (and sometimes three) while others had numbers like mine.

Asking around with some connected friends, I found that several of the people asking me for links were people we couldn't remember—the names were familiar, but the faces and roles were mysterious.

Also, with reservation, I took the larger step of inviting several people I'd worked with for links, feeling sheepishly like a freshman again. Thankfully, the people I invited all linked back to me, which was affirming. I guess it's something that I need to just get over, because there are millions of people out there linking and inviting and connecting and buddying who have the faintest connection with each other, and they don't seem to have a problem with it. For me, though, I look at it like the friends I've got—it's not the numbers, it's the quality.

Posted on August 30, 2007 9:46 AM | link to this entry | Comments (3)

August 28, 2007

(Not So) Certified Technician.

After waiting patiently in our closet, the $300 Powerbook I bought a few months ago finally got some attention this week.

To recap, I bought a G4 Powerbook off Craigslist with a very wobbly display knowing I'd probably have to do some work to it, but not soon after I got it home the display completely crapped out. After doing a bunch of research, I found the parts I needed and an english PDF of the Apple Service Guide on a German website after a lengthy Google search.

I replaced the DC power board, the display inverter, and the display cable in May, but the problem still persisted, and my budget for parts was depleted. So we put it on the shelf and waited. Later, my MacBook Pro had a similar problem, and the Apple Store replaced my LCD under warranty. I knew the only thing I hadn't replaced was the culprit.

In the meantime, I got a call from a client who needed a larger drive in their Powerbook, which turned out to be an identical model. So, having dissected one laptop, I had plenty of experience opening another, and I used the fee for that job to pay for a new LCD.

After two hours' work this evening (I'm getting faster as I go) I had the new LCD in place and tested out, and after buttoning up the top case, she was ready to go.

Posted on August 28, 2007 10:00 PM | link to this entry

August 22, 2007

We're #49, And Still Trying

Apparently, our little 'ville is #49 on Money Magazine's top places to live in 2007. It must be the picturesque Friendly's downtown that tipped the scales. Or, maybe it's the drunks stumbling out of Bar at 9AM. Whatever their criteria, the fact remains: we still don't have a good restaurant within walking distance of the house. (Word has it that the one restaurant that's actually worth a damn has been chasing off other prospective restaurateurs with obscure liquor ordinance rules, something that has soured us on ever ordering crabs from them again.)

I was talking with a client who's in a semi-related field a few weeks ago, and he mentioned the recent implosion of the Baltimore advertising community. He compared this town to New York and DC, and said that we've never fostered a real advertising community here because all the shops in town are founded on a burning hatred of one another. Everyone steals clients from everyone else, the employees bounce from place to place, burn out, and eventually all the firms blow up and reform into other firms.

If that's how it actually is, then they should take a chapter from the bustling restaurant scenes downtown, in Fell's Point, and over in Canton. Having one good restaurant in town is great, until the regular patrons get sick of the menu. Having two restaurants across the street from each other is better, because A. if one is full, people can go to the other, and B. people flock to areas where multiple restaurants are concentrated. We are Americans. We want choices, because we're fickle Wal-Mart shoppers, not Soviet citizens waiting in lines for soap and toilet paper. Look at every homogenized strip mall erected in the last twenty years: there's a mexican chain, a steakhouse chain, and an italian chain. Around them are smaller fast food chains. None of them are hurting; on the contrary, there's a two-hour wait for an overcooked, underflavored slab of meat, and there's only Miller Lite on tap. But there are choices, and that makes us happy.

There is strength in numbers, in both advertising and local restaurants. When an area has enough of one thing to reach a critical mass (quality advertising shops or locally-owned restaurants) then people will start showing up. People will come from the other side of the country and the other side of town to check out the scene. And if the food is good, they'll keep coming back.

Posted on August 22, 2007 8:27 PM | link to this entry | Comments (2)

Denial.

I don't care what the weather reports say; I don't believe it's going to be 93° on Saturday.

I'm currently wearing a sweatshirt, long pants, and I'm still cold.

Posted on August 22, 2007 2:31 PM | link to this entry | Comments (1)

August 17, 2007

Damn You, Harry Potter

As if working until 2AM each night this week wasn't bad enough, I had to start The Deathly Hallows on the plane ride home from Orlando last weekend. Which means I was up until 4AM last night, unable to put the book down.

Overall impressions, from page 350 or so: It's good. Not having read any of the other books in the series besides the first (but having seen almost all the movies in the theater), I can follow most of the story arcs sucessfully. I'm enjoying the character development and the plot is beginning to pick up steam, although it dragged on a bit through the first third of the book.

Usually I'll power through a book I like in one sitting (even books this big), but I made a conscious decision to slow down and savor this one as much as possible—it's been a while since I had some good escapist fiction to read, and it's a welcome alternative to sitting in front of an LCD for 3/4 of the day.

Posted on August 17, 2007 12:04 PM | link to this entry | Comments (4)

August 16, 2007

Old-Skool.

Oh, yeah, nothing brings me back to the great Wild West days of hand-coding HTML for the internets like connecting through a VPN and using Remote Desktop (accurately replicating the joy of working with Windows NT on a slow workstation) to edit ASP files with WordPad.

Posted on August 16, 2007 1:41 PM | link to this entry | Comments (1)

August 15, 2007

I is a homeowner...

I keep getting these stupid letters in the mail. I guess they think I'm too dumb to watch the news or something. The idea that "rates are still low" is also pretty laughable considering the interest rate I'm currently at.

Update:

Aug. 16, 2007, 10:09PM
">Countrywide taps credit line for cash

By ALEX VEIGA AP Business Writer
© 2007 The Associated Press

LOS ANGELES — The credit mess forced Countrywide Financial Corp., the nation's largest mortgage lender, to borrow $11.5 billion on Thursday, shocking financial markets already reeling from the growing credit crunch and threatening to make home loans harder to get.

Countrywide said it borrowed the cash from a group of 40 banks so it could keep making home loans....

Posted on August 15, 2007 3:58 PM | link to this entry

August 13, 2007

Back from the FLA

Baltimore is a lot more comfortable than when I left last week. I had the bizarre experience of leaving 100° weather with humidity at rain-forest levels to travel south to a tropical state with less humidity and cooler temperatures.

Everything on that trip worked out better than I could have hoped, really. Despite working my ass off while I was down there, missing out on using the hotel pool entirely, we were staying only three miles away from the House of Blond Smiling Children, which made it easy for Jen to visit while I was at work. On Friday night I was able to back away from the computer for the evening, and we drove across Orlando to try Seasons 52, the first non-chain (well, it's an upscale chain, because this is Orlando, after all, and there is no escaping chains there) food we'd had in a week.

As it happened, I was working with a fellow who was an avid skydiver, and he gave me an idea for the perfect birthday gift: falling out of a plane strapped to a total stranger! After some discussion, he helped me pick the right local venue for Jen, who was genuinely suprised and thrilled to take me up on the offer. A short drive out 50 to the coast on Saturday morning led us to the Skydive Space Center, where a nice man named Terry hooked Jen up to a very simple-looking rig, gave her a pair of goggles and a five-minute briefing, and then led her into the plane. As she disappeared down the runway, waving from the open door, I hoped I would see her again in one piece, and also thanked God she understood why I wanted to keep my chicken ass on the ground.

After waiting under a deep blue Florida sky for a few minutes, we spied the plane at drop altitude, and soon saw the first parachutes blossoming, specks against the fluffy cloud layer overhead. They circled lazily for a few minutes, riding the thermals, and then began to come in for landings one after the other. I picked out Jen from a distance and started shooting pictures as she came in over my shoulder and landed facing away from me. The verdict: swinging under the risers made her queasy, but freefall was amazing and she'd do the whole thing again in a minute.

After some recovery, we sought out a restaurant in town which was recommended by two separate parties: The Dixie Crossroads, where we were told to sample the rock shrimp. It's a restaurant with a lot of local character, but the food is killer and the service is excellent. More importantly, the shrimp did not disappoint, and the comparison in taste to fresh lobster is true.

Making our way back home to the hotel, we passed several roadside attractions and sights unique to the area: Airboat rides, a petting zoo in the shape of an alligator, a dragstrip, and boiled peanut stands. Florida was good to us, something I wasn't expecting, quite honestly. The friends are great, the A/C is cold, we got to see the Space Shuttle take off, and everything is beautiful from 15,000 feet.

Posted on August 13, 2007 10:12 AM | link to this entry

August 11, 2007

Can you see her smiling from here?

In the air over the runway. Happy Birthday, baby!

Posted on August 11, 2007 5:37 PM | link to this entry

Corn fritters are awesome

These things are addictive.

Posted on August 11, 2007 3:07 PM | link to this entry

Dixie Crossroads, Titusville FL.

We have been told the rock shrimp at Dixie Crossroads is the thing to have when in Titusville.

Posted on August 11, 2007 3:00 PM | link to this entry

She did it!

She is a skydiver!

Posted on August 11, 2007 1:42 PM | link to this entry

Skydive Space Center

Titusville, FL

Posted on August 11, 2007 1:05 PM | link to this entry

August 8, 2007

Space Shuttle Launch

Wow, that went quickly. We didn't hear anything, but it sure did look cool.

Posted on August 8, 2007 6:31 PM | link to this entry | Comments (2)

August 7, 2007

Extra-Special Super Bonus Free Inside!

I almost forgot—there's a launch over at Cape Canaveral tomorrow, something I've never seen in person. I'm picking Jen up from the airport somewhere around 5, and then we're gonna haul ass out there to see if we can see anything. Southwest, please, please, please be on time.

Posted on August 7, 2007 12:54 PM | link to this entry

Dateline: Orlando.

I'm holed up in my hotel room working with the thermostat lever somewhere between 70° and 80°, staying out of the blinding soupy air outside. Jen told me that when she lived in Texas they tended to chill the air down to ridiculous levels, and that her time there was spent in either charring heat or freezing conditioned air, and I can see what she's talking about. I should have brought a sweater for staying inside.

Posted on August 7, 2007 9:57 AM | link to this entry | Comments (3)

August 5, 2007

Signpost Ahead

That's pretty dark, but it's supposed to say "Orlando/Tampa". Time to ~~throw away~~ clean the lens on my phone.

Posted on August 5, 2007 11:19 AM | link to this entry

August 3, 2007

M.I.A.

Sorry I haven't been around here much lately. Just as I was getting a little daily momentum going, life got very, very busy. I'm on the road next week, and I'll try to find interesting things to take pictures of in the Land of the Rat. And then, hopefully, things will slow down a little.