August 30, 2002

Does this scare anybody else? I for one enjoy my First Amendment freedoms, and I do not want the government taking any of them away in any form. The fact that the War Powers Act is getting a wide reading in current news and the idea of habeas corpus tossed aside like a nuisance bothers me enough. I don't want Big Brother knocking my door down or blocking my IP just because I wrote online that Bush is an idiot.

The company organized a trip out to get our passport photos taken this afternoon. I haven't decided if I look like an idiot or not yet.

Jen and I are heading north to see the folks again, so I'll be away until next Tuesday. Everybody have a good Labor Day..

 

  — link

August 29, 2002

After a long spell of quiet, I'm hearing from a lot of old friends. It makes me feel good inside to hear voices I've not been near for a long time. Matt is flying in for a visit in the middle of September, after being away from Baltimore for 3 years. Sophie emailed me to tell me she found the log. I miss the two of them, and secretly burn with jealousy when I think of them in S-F. I heard from Rich on my machine last night, the guy I can always count on for an off-the-wall message (sample: "Hello Bill....this is Rich's computer....I don't feel so good...") and an hour of easy, hilarious conversation. Even my dad is in on the action; he emailed me about buying a Nikon Coolpix 995 on eBay and should have it in time for our visit Labor Day. I'm glad he went with my advice- it's easily the best camera I've seen out there for the price.

There is a lot of speculation and hot air at work right now, but one thing is for certain: I am going to get my passport photo taken, hopefully so that it will enable me to take company-funded trips to exotic locales. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

And this is Sexy? Dept.: I keep getting spam about some videotape with the headline Girls Just Wanna Have Sex! OK, Fine. I'm all about that. But what is disturbing is the headline directly inside, where it says, SHE CAN PEE ALL DAY! | link

August 28, 2002

In doing some work-related HTML cleanup, I took a long look at the CSS I've been hacking together for the past few years, and realizing it's ass-backwards and ugly. I did some brush-up reading on it and have decided to implement new CSS in the next logpage (September) as it's getting close to the end of this one and there's a lot of text here. Maybe if I'm feeling bored one day soon I'll go back and revise it.

I found this little blurb about a new app for the Palm to use it as a universal remote for your TV, DVD, etc. Interesting, and I'm tempted to download it, but I already have enough reasons to ditch the Palm once I buy an iPod. | link

August 27, 2002

Not much to post today. I'm pretty tired and feeling blue.

One happy note: I made it through the dental appointment with a cleaning, a light scolding about flossing, and no major problems. Not bad after a two-year hiatus from the chair. Thank you, ancestors, for your good teeth. | link

August 26, 2002

frederick, md, 8.24

Well, the plan to see the Wings of Freedom airshow in Frederick on saturday were dashed when it became clear that I had gotten the wrong dates from two different websites (the airshow I initially found the 8.24 dates for was in Lancaster, PA.) But we did find a lone B-25 sitting on the tarmac under canvas, and took pictures of it. The rest of the day was spent antiquing and looking for clothes at the outlet center.

I am attempting to make a barrel in 3D today. It is much, much harder than I thought it would be.

Looking through the Blue Book value guide for a trade-in price on my car, I find that the Tortoise is worth about $1,580 as a trade-in. Selling it on my own, it tells me I could expect as much as $2,810. Of course there are the things I need to fix on it, like gluing the rear bumper back on, and washing it once this year....

So I'm pricing out PC's for the house, and I'm looking through the Dell offerings, trying to get a system with some stones for under $900, without all the crap Dell wants to add with their order- stuff like XP, all the extended warranty stuff (why do I need a 4-year limited warranty with on-site technical support? Do you expect the computer to crap out on me?) and junky inkjet printers. About three years ago, Greycube bought me a blazing-fast 466mhz Celeron clone, and it still runs reliably... but there's no chance it will run 3D Studio Max, which is a priority these days. Funny to think I'm also considering a new car right now too. I think after the research I did today, I'll stick with the computer and increase my job security, and return to thoughts of a new car next year.

1. Pay off Visa bill.
2. Pick up OSX, a larger hard drive, and the FireWire enclosure. Back up the Powerbook
3. Buy an iPod and celebrate the return to normal paychecks also an iRock for the car and the house
4. Futon for basement; possibly a larger TV
5. Computer for 3D Studio learning-Keep looking at Dell.com

— link

August 23, 2002

montgomery park, 8.23

Todd and I took a trip down to the Montgomery Park office complex yesterday afternoon to check out the building. It is a huge (1.3M square feet) ex-warehouse on a B&O spur, built in 1923 for Montgomery Ward. As you travel north from Washington DC and rise over the hill to Baltimore, it sits off to the left, alone in a blighted landscape of industrial parks and run-down neighborhoods. It's been empty for years, but sometime last year they started lighting it up at night, and everybody soon realized where it was and just how big it was.

The sheer size of the place overwhelms you- each floor is a cavernous forest of high ceilings and thick, fat pillars lined up in rows. Some of the floors are totally renovated, and others are barely cleared. There is a courtyard with a building in the center, sporting a living roof, and the whole building catches runoff to be recycled into the wastewater system.

We were both very impressed with the space, and sort of overwhelmed with it all. There's too much size to be comprehended there. But we were glad that the developers decided to retain a lot of the original details- the windows, the pillars, the cielings-instead of plastering over them. | link

August 22, 2002

Browsing through some friends' sites today, I found a travelogue on my old work buddy Jason's site. He took an Aprilia across the country with a digital camera and documented his travels, then posted it all when he got back home. Yeah, his spelling is bad, but the writing is fun and the pictures are gorgeous. It makes me wish I had the time/money combination to do the same thing.

I also found out via Mike that MICA finally updated their site, after a long, confusing, 404-laden six years.

I was able, after waiting three days for them to dry out properly, to raise the first three crossbeams for the trellis last night. Last saturday I got the two 4x4 side posts permanently anchored to the wall, levelled, notched, and hung the beam between them. Now I'm slowly getting the crossbeams up; this afternoon when the sun is at about a 60 degree angle I'll be able to see just how much of a sunbreak it creates. I have to return to Home Depot this evening to buy four more 2x6's, and hopefully they will already be dry. | link

August 21, 2002

There is a good chance that I am doing something wrong, but I wasn't able to get Appletalk over IP working this morning. And I even have the same router this guy does. There must be something I'm missing.

Preserving History Dept.: My mother, in her incredible foresight, collected everything I ever brought home from school. Even stuff I don't remember. My report cards from K-4, soldiers from the same army, tucked neatly in their manila envelopes, represent the longest continuous attendance of any one school in my life. There is a series of typed sheets from 1977, when a brilliant 1st grade teacher transcribed our thoughts and recorded them for our parents to keep. Then there is a pile of construction paper covered in crayon, or my favorite, a tabloid sized sheet with lines at the bottom and acres of drawing space above.

firetruck, undated

There is a refreshing looseness to all the drawings, and also a distinct need to tell a story as the years go by. Somewhere in the third or fourth grade a stylized character appeared, and it's funny to see how I tried to reconcile the different sizes, expressions, and even angles to make it work. The writing is secondary, existing only so that I could draw pictures of the Blob, car chases a la Dukes of Hazzard, or planes from World War 2.

I have results from the PSAT's, SAT's, a pile of California Aptitude Battery Tests taken through my travels in the New Jersey school system, and even an ASVAB sheet (looks like I would either have been officer material or a clerk/typist) which led to an embarassing amount of calls from bored Armed Forces recruiters who were mortified when I told them I wanted to go to art school.

I also found an entire binder of fiction writing, done from about the 9th grade to the end of High School, scratched out in my illegible script on three-ring looseleaf. Reading that made my head hurt, but it also remains as a record of what i was thinking about and what I wanted to be. | link

August 20, 2002

How to Make Friends And Influence People Dept.: The company publishing the project I was working on decided to place an ad in the trade magazines this month. Ordinarily I would be thrilled about this, but I took a look at the ad yesterday. It took my breath away, in its stunning poor taste, lousy execution, and flawed concept. I will post a scan of it later today so that you may gaze upon it for yourself.

We're never going to sell a copy of this fucking game. | link

August 19, 2002

hidden driveway, laurel md., 8.18

I read a bunch of stuff on Fray.com today, and really enjoyed some of the stories. I'm thinking about a few story ideas and possibly submitting something with some illustrations. Also, this weekend, A List Apart posted a great article on writing for the Web, which has some points that I need to take to heart. (for those of you who are asleep, my apologies.)

Jen's sister broke into her apartment last week. Jen called me from her house, livid and raging, unable to make sense of her feelings. She told me the story and I got more and more upset, because I knew that not only was she mad with her sister, but that she felt completely unsafe in her apartment. Her sister left that day with a halfhearted apology, and called back from her car later, completely unable to grasp why Jen was so upset with her. I got off the phone with Jen so that she could talk with her. At the time, I was driving (badly, all over the road) and I felt my pulse strong in my arms and body. My face was flushed in the rear-view mirror.

Coming down off the anger, I felt completely powerless to help, total anger at her selfish, stupid sister, and frustrated with the whole situation. We have been struggling mightily this year to make the 'She' and 'Me' into 'Us', and this incident illustrates the problems with our current housing situation.

John brought the server in to the rack at his office, so my connection suddenly got a lot faster. It's wonderful again. Appletalk over IP is a beautiful thing. This past month has been a blur of freelance work, some outdoor work, and wierdness at the office. Definitely an interesting August.

I got an email from Jen, and she wanted to add this to my comments above: "...I had no trouble making sense of my feelings. I knew what I felt, I just felt guilty for responding the way I did at the time. The fact that we are sisters really greyed the lines for me." | link

August 16, 2002

Getting a bunch of stuff done this morning, and feeling like I'm on top of things, for once. Jen paid off her car today, so there will be celebrations! I was also very proud of her for speaking up for herself in her salary negotiations yesterday, even if it did take her bosses by surprise. She took a big step (and showed a lot of stones) for herself. Let's cross our fingers for her.
Update: Not as good as we had hoped, but not disasterous. Stay tuned.

I got a nice email back from the Scout lady yesterday, and zipped up a set of pictures for her to post in her ad. I declined to put a price on her rig, but told her what I paid for Chewbacca and how complete he was at that time. Hopefully she can use that for her estimation. I also talked to another guy with a crazy-lifted '72 that he did a 'frame-off resto' on. He has a blue-on-white paint job, a new wiring job, fiberglas inner fenders, new floorboards and he painted the frame aqua. I have seen the pictures, and yes, he did.

Props to Errol for bringing in the Spider-Man DVD today; no, it's not the movie, but a compendium of the 80's cartoon, I guess, and the real gem: the Origin of Spider-Man episode from the 1967 cartoon TV show. You know it- the theme song goes like this:

Spider-Man
Spider-Man
Does anything a spider can
Can he swing?
Listen bud
He's got radioactive blood
Look out
Look out for Spider Man.

I have had the theme running through my head all day. It makes me smile. | link

August 15, 2002

$104 later, both the Scout and the Tortoise have a clean emissions bill of health. And I have found that the city of Baltimore has placed its vehicle emissions testing stations in strategically impossible areas to find.

Good News Dept. John paid me last night, so I have some money right now. We're getting half-paychecks and supposedly when the next set of checks come in, we'll get a full one. Right. I'm now 5.5 paychecks behind. But there is a bunch of freelance coming in right now- Katie needs some print work, John is hot to get a bunch of stuff from me, and there's some illustration work coming in as well.

I found cockeyed.com again, after having read the How Much Is Inside? section about 2 years ago. This guy is a nut, but he's funny as hell. Nate sends over this interesting link to Kick to the Groin Comics, a delightfully twisted series of humorous stories not unlike mnftiu.cc. | link

August 14, 2002

Well, I've seen much, much worse, but this is not the truck I want. The body mounts are bad, the second paint job is sloppy, all four quarters need replacement, and the rockers are totally shot. I didn't get to talk directly to Erick about it, but I took a bunch of pictures and I'm going to send them to the lady today. We're going to sit this one out.

Nate turned me on to a really good album, one that gives me a glimmer of hope for modern music: And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, Source Codes and Tags. Rock and roll. I can't remember the last time I heard some contemporary music that I actually gave a crap about.

Speaking of music, the Trouser Press is online, with a pile of reviews of bands that I actually give a shit about. Some I don't agree with, and some I laugh at, and some make me remember days gone by, when I liked 70% of the music I heard out there. | link

August 13, 2002

Mike is making me jealous- his fancy Nikon takes much, much better macro pictures than my Kodak- one of the reasons I was interested in a digital camera in the first place.

I helped my neighbor Matt troubleshoot his network connections last night. The network people wired the wallplate connectors correct to the T568b standard, but then flipped all the wires at the box. Good to see I wasn't the only one to make this mistake (although I didn't do it on all of my wires.)

Damn the torpedoes, Full Speed Ahead Dept.: Even though this Thursday will make five paychecks promised but not delivered, I found a Scout in Annapolis this morning that sounds like it's in good shape. I put an email in to the seller and I'm going to follow up with a phonecall in an hour or so. What the hell am I doing?
Update: She wants $2700 for it. With engine issues. Erick says the body is rough, and would need to have all fenders and quarters pulled. Hmmph.

Well, the teaching gig I was looking into did not work out. There just wasn't enough time to absorb the curriculum before start of classes, and the schedule could have been tricky as well. I'm dissapointed but hopeful that something will come of it in the future.

Stumbling around today, I found this link back to the Cluetrain Manifesto, something I had looked at a while back but forgot about, from Doc Searls' site. Which leads me to Corante, an interesting newsfeed for tech info. | link

August 12, 2002

backyard flower combination, 8.10

This is a link to an extremely moving piece on a photojournalist at the site of the WTC attacks last fall; it is a record of the last photos he took on his journey downtown to the base of the towers. His 35-mm cameras were smashed in the collapse of the second tower, but the compact flash card in his digital was intact.

I downloaded PGP for the Mac on Friday, and I'm looking through the documentation this morning to see how and what it does. Helpfully, the publishers enclosed two PDF files: Intro to Crypto and the User's Guide. Inside the Intro to Crypto manual, Phil Zimmerman wrote something in 2000 that was spookily forward-thinking, given the events of the past year:

"Once a communications infrastructure optimized for surveillance becomes entrenched, a shift in political conditions may lead to abuse of this new-found power. Political conditions may shift with the election of a new government, or perhaps more abruptly from the bombing of a federal building."

I also found a newer, better disk catalog application, in the hopes that I can get a handle on exactly what is in my collection of assorted Mac and PC backups, archives and application discs. (numbering about 100 or so right now.) | link

August 9, 2002

I was looking through some old drives last night in preparation to donate a couple of old Macs, and I found a bunch of Cidera-era pictures on a storage drive. With those I also found a real interesting picture of the backyard before I started on the work, and a nice shot of the lake back in 2000. Along with these I have a bunch of staff and event photos from that time, about 8 months before the company imploded.

Lesson 362 on how not to run a website: Long and Foster has listings for houses in Baltimore; you plug in your information and do a search. They return a page with a small picture, a basic description, and no other information. No address, no lot information, no size info. I sent an email to the listed agent and got a bounceback to another agent, referring me to a phone number. Sorry, you lose. Make me jump through hoops, and withhold basic purchasing information from me? No thanks.

On another front, the house across from me that was rehabbed last year and is still on the market is listed for $214K. | link

August 8, 2002

dock, 7.30

We have a busy busy weekend planned. Jen is having her birthday on Saturday (no, I'm not telling you how old she is) and I'm taking her out on Friday night; on Saturday her family comes into town and we go out again for dinner. Tonight we're getting together with some folks from work for a postponed dinner. What a social schedule!

Never really having used Excel before, I approached it with a lot of caution and loathing. I plugged in the information I wanted to capture (freelance billing data) and looked through the helpfiles for a few minutes. When i figured out how to add one column and total it out, I found myself clapping like a 5-year old.

ALGX is sucking totally these last weeks; their nameservers keep dropping in and out, so none of the entries in my logfiles have resolved names. Grrr! Who are you? Where are you coming from? Where are you in the world? | link

August 7, 2002

Totally down on work yesterday, right at the very end. Thanks, Russell. I stayed at my studio class for an hour and a half, and then left, completely unable to focus. I came home and did a bunch of research into illustration listings online and some new materials.

The news is better today; apparently we have a big-ass contract coming in to sign, which means an end to the monetary woes and hopefully a return to timely paychecks (as well as catching up on those that are owed.) All praise the money gods. Until then, I am still leveraging savings to keep the wolves at bay.

So when all this comes down, I have to make the move to OSX on the Powerbook here. Roughly $300 will get me an expansion-bay CD-burner and a copy of OSX, which I need to back this thing up and then burn to the drive. OR, I could just buy a 40GB drive and an internal expansion bay case; there's also a bus-powered FireWire enclosure from OWC for cheaper, and it looks sexier too. Overall, it should be about $300 to do what I need. | link

August 6, 2002

Here's a list of the cameras I mentioned yesterday. Some of them are actually 120 cameras, and the Brownie Holiday is a 127. (I don't care, I want to play with the 620 film.) The Duaflex is actually kind of complicated to load, but offers the best lens/viewfinder combination, and the Agfa comes in a close second.

1. Kodak Bull's Eye Six-20
2. Kodak Brownie Hawkeye
3. Kodak Duaflex II
4. Kodak Brownie Holiday
5. Agfa Ansco Pioneer
6. Vagabond "120"
7. Revere Eight Model 88
8. Paillard (Bolex) C8

For the past two days I've been getting a refresher course on 3DMax, which is good, because there's a ton of things I don't know yet. It's actually making a lot more sense now. I just have to start using it religiously like Photoshop, and I'll get better.

The heatwave finally broke today. It's a breezy, sunny 80 degrees outside, with little humidity. I opened the windows for the boys this morning and they crowded the screen like kids in front of a Christmas display window.

This is a blast from the past. Wow. This was my favorite show of all time. My first Mac was called G-Force. This was also a fave. | link

August 5, 2002

thanks to John for the mangled english

It is so unbearably hot here in Baltimore, I want to kill myself. Tonight the heatwave will break, but I'm wondering why we ever left NY state and that beautiful, warm, clear lake. In the backyard, I got the support columns bought (decided not to deal with my other neighbor) and the anchors drilled, as well as the notches in the concrete caps cut, so all we have to do is cut some notches in the bottoms of the columns and install. Then we level each of them out and put the top plate on.

I had a very interesting chat this weekend about a possible part-time teaching position; even if it doesn't happen, it was still a great meeting and could lead to exciting possibilities down the road. Plus, there's a bunch of freelance work coming down the road in the next couple of weeks, and that should keep the money flowing into my bank accound and not out.

Todd said he saw Esther on the way to work this morning, so I know she isn't a mirage.

I started doing a little research into some of the cameras I bought on my vacation; some of the super-8's are pretty rare, and some of the Kodak Brownies I bought are common but beautiful examples of industrial design. I also have a really nice Agfa and a few lesser-known brands which all seem to take 620 or 120 variant film. Now to find a few 620 spools and order some film! I'm dying to try some of these cameras...! Luckily there's a company in town that develops 120 film... | link

August 2, 2002

Whew. Well, this morning I was able to get the support installed on the north wall for the sunbreak, and the side support for the stair platform. This is going to be difficult, because it gets so damn hot by noontime, it's impossible to work out there. Hopefully I'll get the OK from my other neighbor to drill into their wall so I don't have to engineer posts and support columns, and I can put up the sunbreak in another morning or two. That will make the deck go a lot smoother.

Meanwhile, the irrigation system is working perfectly; my only complaint is that I can't adjust the valve for anything lower than 15 minutes' time—at the tenth minute or so there's a stream of runoff out the back alley down to the drain, and I hate to waste that water. But at least the drainage is working correctly in all the planters!

BTW, the tires in that picture are now gone, along with the Peavey 40-watt bass amp my dad bought me when I was 15. Both went before 11am at the Route 90 sale, and I made $100! (Sad tip of the hat to that amp. Rock on, old friend...) | link

August 1, 2002 - Ploesti raid 1943

dock, 7.29

Whew! what a beautiful vacation that was.

Where do I start? I don't think there was one thing that was bad, other than unseasonably hot weather up there. Jen and I were treated to two absolutely glorious days in the water, evenings on the porch, browsing antiques on the Route 90 sale, and ice cream at a roadside stop. We both wanted to stay until the end of summer. | link

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