I spend too much time thinking about success. Whether or not I'm successful, what it means
to be successful, and whether I'll make it there someday and look at the view from the pinnacle. And I'm not talking strictly about financial success. I didn't grow up with money, I realize that the happiest moments of my life had no connection to money whatsoever, and so my definition of success doesn't begin with a large bank account.
To me, success has always been about being at the top of my game; whatever it happens to be. I work as a Web professional in my day job, and so I "need" to be at the top of the heap to consider myself successful. Writing is my passion, and so I "need" to be published to be successful at that. Paperback rights or an Oscar would be nice. :-) But would achieving those things really make me successful? I'm not so sure. I know of a lot of well-paid and bestselling authors that I think aren't worth their weight in imitation white gold.
The other issue is that the game is always changing. This is especially true on the Web. A new startup or viral idea is always pulling the legs out from underneath the reigning champion, and in the writing world the fickle taste of the masses moves among romance, pre-adolescent wizards, spy thrillers, and back again. Just when you think you have the race figured out, the track changes and the other cars get more horsepower.
Thinking about this reminded me of Xeno's paradox. Imagine that you are traveling from point A to point B. To get there of course, at some point you'll reach the halfway point. Let's call this your "new Point A." After you resume on your way you'll hit the midpoint again. As you continue your journey and repeat that process over and over again, and you never reach your destination. You're constantly reaching a milestone and discovering you're halfway there.
And so it goes with success today. You think you know what it means to reach the top of your field, but by the time you get there it's a whole new ballgame. Maybe your game doesn't even exist anymore. That realization forced me to change my definition of success. Not as a cop out, but as the recognition that it can never remain stagnant. Success in any industry or creative pursuit is different than it was 10, 100, or 1000 years ago. To truly find success, you'll need to find your passion and go at it full force. If you're lucky you'll be able to do it to support yourself, and if you're
really lucky you'll find your fortune along the road. But you'll never reach the end, which is why you need to discover your passion first. Without that, you'll never muster the strength and courage to stay along the infinite journey.
Posted by Mark on Saturday, October 13th, 2007 under genera
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You may have noticed the Script Frenzy winner's logo in the right hand column of the site (unless you're using an RSS reader). What is that, you ask? Script Frenzy is a "contest" that challenged writers and wannabes to write a 20,000-word screenplay in the month of June. The basic rules are that you can formulate and outline the story beforehand, but you cannot start writing the script itself until the first of the month. After that you're left typing like a slobbering, rabid pit bull in your spare time over the next thirty days until it's done.
And type I did. I ended up at 20,362 words and 108 pages with two days to spare, which would roughly work out to a movie one hour and fifty minutes long uncut. It's entitled "Milo," and is basically "The Bourne Identity" for the tween crowd. The official tag line reads, "A young boy with no memory of who he is discovers that he has extraordinary abilities, only to find out that unlocking the secret may destroy his newly-adopted family unless he can find the courage to unravel it alone."
Profound, I know. ;-)
I'm not winning an Oscar with this one, but those of you that know me well know that I've always dreamed of being a published writer and this challenge came up just as I was toying around with finally doing it on my own anyway. I actually planned to write another screenplay I've had in the back of my head for ten or twelve years called "Closing In" but the plot line for "Milo" came to me in a flash a couple nights before June 1. I like the concept of "Closing In" better and thought that I'd learn my way through the screenplay writing process with a different idea.
I learned
a lot during the writing process, and I came out on July 1st understanding the structure of a "proper" screenplay and story in general much better than before. So after twenty eight days of typing, three books on screenplays, four nights of falling asleep at the keyboard until waking to a cramp in my neck, and way too much Web surfing I ended up with a rough draft of my first real bit of writing. I've started to revise it but this is proving to be just as daunting a task as writing it, and without that month-long timer ticking in my head it's been difficult to complete.
I thought that mentioning it here would encourage me to get back to it, and to get it in a presentable state so I can gather some critiques. After taking my lumps with this one and learning some more about the screenwriting process, it's on to the next one.
May 2007 be the start of my writing career.
Posted by Mark on Wednesday, October 3rd, 2007 under writin
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I didn't know if his wife and sons would recognize me since I look quite a bit different than I did 14 years ago, but their faces lit with recognition and we shook hands.
"Thank you so much for coming, Mark. It means a lot to me, and it would mean a lot to John."
"You're welcome, and thank you. He meant a lot to me."
"It's so good to see you all grown up."
"It's good to see you, too, though I wish we were visiting in happier circumstances."
His wife, Sarah, squeezed my hands tighter and her gaze cast down towards her husband. I looked at him also and my eyes started to well up a little bit. He was older, grayer, and twenty pounds lighter than I remembered him, but still looked as kind as he ever had.
Aaron squirmed in Jessica's arms and I grabbed his hand to get him to smile. Sarah and I talked about Aaron and how he's growing, and the moment didn't seem quite so dismal. The line pushed forward a little bit, and now Sarah was talking to my sister behind us.
"Be sure to look at the front of that album," Sarah called back. "John stored his favorite photos in there."
The small card table next to me held a photo album, his stole and robe, and a hand-carved wooden name plate from his office. I flipped the album to the front page, and an eight-year old me smiled out from four of the five pictures. Two Polaroids with my sister and parents, another with my sister, John, and Sarah, and another with just me and my sister holding our Lhaso Apso, Rags near the front porch of our old house.
"That was our first memory of Illinois," Sarah said. "That first picture is at the airport where you and your parents picked us up when we stayed with you for the weekend."
I vaguely remembered that April weekend, touring small towns around the area and scoping out the local high school. That fall, they moved from Texas and he was the minister at my hometown church for the next nine years. In that time John had a profound effect on me, because he was one of the few adults that I felt "got me." He was in his mid 50s when I was in junior high, but he loved to talk with me about books, particularly science fiction and comics. He had a large collection of #1 issue comics going back to the 40's, and every summer we drove an hour to Decatur's used book store that dedicated a room to comics and pulp magazines. We would spend the morning rifling through old dusty boxes, break for lunch, and then head back to the store to resume our treasure hunting. He also introduced me to Jules Verne and C.S. Lewis' non-Narnia novels. He first inspired me to mature my reading list beyond The Hardy Boys and The Cat from Outer Space (though that book
rocked the casba). My love of writing really grew then when my reading experiences broadened, and it also taught me to discover other writers of my own.
He also always told my parents and me that he thought I would grow up to be a minister. "Not that you have to," he'd always say, "but we'd be lucky to have you. No matter what you do, make sure it's inspiring to people."
I'm not sure I've found my avenue to fulfill that sentiment yet, but hopefully someday I will. I'm grateful that someone took the time to do that with me. Thank you, John.
Posted by Mark on Thursday, June 14th, 2007 under genera
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A dad can nest, too, right?
Jessica and I have been getting the nursery ready for the new addition to our family: painting, getting the crib set up, buying some clothes, etc. I wanted to add a little something extra for him when he comes, something personal from Dad.
When I was a kid I was a huge fan of Calvin and Hobbes (still a fan, really). It was the first comic I read every day in the paper, and I was sad to see it end ten or so years ago. To me, the strip represented all of the fun, questions, and mischief of which childhood is supposed to be stuffed full. I used to draw pictures from the strip in a sketchbook in my room, and so I thought that my son may like having some of my favorite pictures in his room.
I borrowed an LCD projector so that I could sketch in pencil on the walls (versus repainting and repainting), and then followed that with the paint. I think it's turned out pretty well! As he grows up, I hope he likes the characters as much as I always did.
You can click here to see some
pictures from the nursery, or click the thumbnail at the top of the post.
Posted by Mark on Sunday, November 19th, 2006 under genera
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Eight years ago today I bought my Honda Prelude. It looks little more worn and a little less red than when I drove it home for the first time, but I'm still in love with it. It's been a reliable car for me minus one $1000 timing belt mishap (knock on wood), and it's really only in need of some new tires. Okay, and brakes. And shocks. But it's been paid off for four years and gotten me 103,000 miles, and so I'm not complaining.
Eight years ago today I was the textbook lesson in how
not to buy a car. I had been having problem after problem with my old car. I had replaced the timing belt, tires, brakes, and exhaust system all in the last two months. It was ten years old with 170,000 miles and it was beyond worse for wear. The night before the alternator had conked out, and so I had the car towed to the local Honda dealership. Lesson in stupid car buying #1.
I was intending to get a 3-4 year old Accord, thinking that it would be reliable and affordable. Somehow the dealer got me behind the wheel of the brand new black Prelude SH in the showroom, and somewhere through the cloud of New Car Smell® I heard him tell me that he would open the double doors and let me drive the car off of the showroom floor for a test drive
by myself. I was 22, single, and three months into a full-time salary. And of course the carcass of my last car was rotting behind the building, junkyard buzzards circling. He had me.
I drove the car out of rush hour traffic and into the country, opened the sunroof and windows, and cranked the stereo. I had ascended out of Jalopy Hell and landed in New Car Heaven. I floated back into the dealership parking lot and the smile plastered across my face let my salesman know that the 94 Accords just weren't doing it for me anymore. I feigned boredom but I was as transparent as the windshield. Lesson stupid car buying #2. We started negotiating price, and soon I was signing my name on the dotted line.
Fast forward eight years, and I still love the feeling I get sitting behind the wheel. I love the handling and the styling, and it fits me like a glove. It's just a car, but after all this time it's become
my car. I'd love to hit 200,000 miles in it...
Posted by Mark on Wednesday, October 18th, 2006 under genera
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There are some days that I don't want to do anything other than go watch a movie. I want to get my ticket and a huge bucket of popcorn, shuffle my way between the seats over the sticky floor, and wait for the lights to go down. I want to see previews, and a
good movie. I don't want to rent a movie or watch a good show on TV; I just want to go to the theater and see a movie.
When I get that itch I can't concentrate on anything else. I can't read, I can't go work out, I can't do homework, and I can't mow the lawn. Today is one of those days.
Posted by Mark on Saturday, October 7th, 2006 under movies
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We bought a "pre-owned certified" Accord from Brad Barker Honda about nine months ago, and the factory warranty still applies. The previous owner lived nearby, and the salesman showed us the service records to prove that the owner had always come to the dealer to have the car serviced. We have not taken the car anywhere else other than for oil changes and tire balancing.
The inside cover on the ceiling of the car started falling down and so we took the car in to have that repaired presuming it was under warranty. However, the cover plate to an electrical access box shows signs that it has been removed, and that box sits under the area of the roof that is falling down. Brad Barker claims that this violates the warranty, and so now we have a $250 bill for a simple glue job.
This is inexcusable. We bought the car with a full warranty, and they certified the car as being in new operating condition. Since we've never accessed that plate in any way, it had to have been done before we purchased the car. I realize this is an easy thing to overlook, but technically this should have been disclosed to us (and I question the "pre-owned certified" inspection if it does not cover all items that would void a warranty).
The burden of proof is on us of course, and there is no way to prove that we didn't open the access panel and void the warranty. It kills me, though, that Brad Barker certified and guaranteed the vehicle, and now won't stand by their product. I have bought both of my vehicles from them, and chose Honda because of its quality and reputation for customer service.
I'll likely get another Honda in the future, but not from Brad Barker.
Posted by Mark on Friday, September 29th, 2006 under genera
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This just struck me as hilarious today. ;-)
Posted by Mark on Tuesday, September 26th, 2006 under genera
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O'Reilly has made "
O'Reilly Labs Code Search" available to the public.
This looks like it will be a great technical resource for programmers and Web developers, whether you are a fan of the O'Reilly books or not. This site is a search index of
all of the coding examples in the O'Reilly library. I came across the link a few hours ago and have already used it twice.
To search on an example for a specific language, just search for "cat:whateverlanguage yourquestion." For example, if you want to search on examples for using a browser session in PHP, enter:
cat:php session
If you're interested, be sure to check out the other query formats for searches based on year published, author, ISBN, and chapter number.
Posted by Mark on Saturday, September 23rd, 2006 under tech & IT
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... you're proofreading a research paper, and when you read through your scribblings to type the changes you find a mix of traditional edit marks and HTML. Okay, about 50% HTML.
My section headings have <b> scrawled next to them in red ink to indicate they should be bold, and I circled a handful of phrases and marked them with an <em> for italics (no <i> tags here, no Sir!).
Posted by Mark on Friday, September 22nd, 2006 under tech & IT
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Nothing says "fun" like
blowing up fruit with beer cans.
Posted by Mark on Wednesday, September 20th, 2006 under genera
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I've been getting a lot of crap for never posting this summer... Truth be told I've gotten a little burned out again spending too much time on all things computer. Between work, school, outside projects, and rekindling the embers formerly known as my writing, my eyes were beginning to go a little buggy and my rear end a little tender from sitting in front of the monitor all day.
But that's enough of that. I feel myself catching my third wind and it's time to get back into the swing of online things.
Tomorrow wraps up the third week of the semester at
Illinois State. I'm 20% done with my final semester! It's hard to believe; the days have often seemed long but the semesters short. I turned in my final paperwork (and check) today for graduation, and now that light at the end of the tunnel doesn't appear to be an oncoming train.
I'm still very glad that I went back to school to complete my Masters, but time management has been difficult. I would advise anyone that is interested in doing it to go for it, but I'll also throw in a few items of unrequested advice. Those who hate insessent nagging can
skip to the final paragraph:
- Know what you're getting into if you're working full time. Don't go to school full time also if you can avoid it. You'll feel like you'll never get done taking one class at a time, but with two you'll still be going to class for six hours, commuting for two hours, and reading for four hours each week. On top of that you have homework, studying, and group projects. Be prepared to spend twenty hours a week for nine months of the year, and know that it will still take you three years (I was a bonehead and took one class for a few semesters, and so it's taken me four). Set aside a few hours each week to remind your loved ones what you look like.
- Don't start your Masters right out of undergrad, or even 1-2 years afterwards. Working for 3-5 years will do you a world of good in your graduate tenure. You'll be able to draw on experiences from work whether your topic of study is the same or not, and you will also have a larger context to which you can relate your course material. I would have gotten only a fraction of the benefit from classes like software quality assurance and project management had I taken them as a cocky, naive 22 year old with no real-world work experience. Instead I started as a cocky, slightly-less naive 26 year old and it made all the difference.
- Get to know your classmates. They're potential business contacts to be sure, but that's not what I'm getting at. Just like in undergrad, I've gotten to meet people from all walks of life; from an assembly line worker making a fresh start at 40 and Vietnamese farmer, to a retired chemist and Navy Seal. Besides being great people, their experiences bring varied dynamics to the table that are hard to match in a homogeneous corporation.
- Find a reliable block to park on within walking distance of the campus so that you can avoid buying a parking pass. I've saved almost $500 over the years by successfully avoiding campus parking, and came away with only one $5 parking ticket.
Aside from the friends I've made and the new things I've learned, the infectious energy on campus has been my favorite part. Even as a commuter (and an old guy), just walking across the campus and seeing people laughing, playing catch, and enjoying the hell out of every day is inspiring. I wouldn't pick going back to college over where I am now in life, but we should be so lucky to have the energy, enthusiasm, and hope that are bottled up in the students I walk among each day.
Posted by Mark on Wednesday, September 6th, 2006 under genera
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The story you are about to read is true. None of the names have been changed to protect the rightfully freaked out.
Friday last week and Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday this week I walked to the garage just like I do every weekday morning, squeaked in between my car and Jessica's to slide inside, and turned the key. And on each of those days, without my touching the stereo at all, Prince's "Raspberry Beret" rang out from the speakers. I checked the date on my phone to make sure I hadn't fallen into my own
Groundhog Day.
With radio playlists today shorter than grocery lists I could understand if the song was something from the Billboard Top 20, but this is from 1985. The radio was also set to at least three different stations on those four days, ranging from mix to rap to "Bob FM."
This morning I went through my normal routine and found myself sitting behind the wheel. I was originally going to wait and see if my streak could go through the week before posting, but it was broken when I fired up the engine. No raspberry berets (the kind you find at a second hand store); it was the weather forecast.
Hot and muggy today. Shocker. So I hit the number "5" button on my stereo, and what did I hear?
"Let's Go Crazy."
Be afraid. Be very afraid. The Purple Apocalypse may be upon us.
Posted by Mark on Thursday, July 20th, 2006 under genera
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This is driving me
bonkers today:
0.99999999 = 1.
Correction: .9 = 1.
Posted by Mark on Tuesday, June 27th, 2006 under genera
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It's been a pretty stressful week at work: a big implementation, lots of schedule changes, good people moving on to bigger and better positions that we will miss, etc., etc. I'm also in the final stretch of my summer class -- done tomorrow! -- and yesterday walking to class I saw a
massive swarm of high school students walking off of the quad towards the cafeteria. They were dressed in gym shorts and t-shirts, running around laughing, with musical instruments in tow.
Band camp.
What a great way to spend a week, I thought to myself.
Going to stay in a college dorm with friends with nothing to worry about except the sun and an 8:00 a.m. start time. My mind wandered back to my research paper and staffing planning.
Three girls darted across the intersection diagonally. No worries; there wasn't a car in sight on a college campus in June at 5:00 p.m. on a Monday. Instantly, though, at least twenty people chimed out in unison, "Crosswalk! Crosswalk! Gotta take the crosswalk!"
"Laaaaaadies!" barked a disgruntled band director with a bursting armful of papers. "Remember, crosswalks are your friend."
Thank God I'm not in high school anymore.
Posted by Mark on Tuesday, June 27th, 2006 under genera
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It looks like I'll be celebrating Father's Day in quite a different way next year... Jessica and I are expecting in December!!!
I was at the computer lab at school and got a phone call from Jessica, and she seemed a little rattled. She definitely wasn't herself.
"Is everything okay?" I asked her.
"Yes, yes, everything's okay. Better than okay." She didn't sound upset, just bewildered. The line was silent for a few more breaths. "I got a pregnancy test today."
"Are we having a baby?!?" I asked. I logged off and started for the door.
"I think so," she said. "I really wanted to wait until you were home, but I was too excited. I had to take the test, and then I
had to call you."
"I'm coming home," I said, starting to walk faster.
"No, you need to get your stuff done," she said, trying to be supportive.
I laughed a little. "No, I mean I'm outside on my way to the car."
She started laughing, and we talked the rest of my trip home about possible due dates, more ideas for names, and how we would tell our parents. Her mom is a nurse, and put two and two together shortly afterwards based on some questions Jessica asked her, and we waited to tell my parents on Mother's Day. The disturbance in the force around noon that day was my mom screaming. ;-)
We've heard the heartbeat now at two appointments: two weeks ago it was strong and beating at 185 beats per minute. In just a few weeks we'll have our first sonogram.
We had been trying for 9-10 months, and so this was (and is) exciting news. I wanted to wait until things were progressing healthily before saying anything publicly. Life will change soon for the better (and crazier, I'm sure), and it hit home when I came home that night in April when I came home from school and found this waiting for me:
I can't wait for December and forever.
Posted by Mark on Sunday, June 18th, 2006 under genera
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I didn't believe Jessica at all when she told me this after work today: a California man was just
ordered to stop digging for gold when authorities found that he had
an unsupported sixty-foot hole in his front yard. His top-of-the-line metal detector alerted him that he had gold in his yard, and when he found gold dust three feet in the ground he hired two more men and just kept digging.
When police officers came on the scene, they found two men using ropes and buckets to hoist dirt sixty feet up and out of the hole. If anything, I admire the guy for his persistence. As a kid I started digging for treasure, lava, and China dozens of times but never got more than a few feet.
On the other hand, I hope
Rob Corddry picks this up
soon. ;-)
Posted by Mark on Thursday, June 15th, 2006 under genera
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Just start moving your mouse in the browser window, and click to change color.
Enjoy. >>
Posted by Mark on Sunday, June 11th, 2006 under genera
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Okay, this is one for the "What the @*#&?!?" file...
Jessica has been out of town this weekend and so I got together with my parents for dinner on Friday. We ended up going to see "
A Prairie Home Companion*." Even more disturbing than that, though, was the man in the row behind us.
We got up and everyone in the theaters started milling around searching for their popcorn bags and purses when the credits began rolling, and I noticed that my mom had a horried look on her face.
"What's wrong?" I asked her.
"That man behind us was zipping himself up, and he had a not-so-innocent look on his face."
"He probaby just noticed that his fly was down when the lights started coming back on."
Give him the benefit of the doubt, I figured. I always had an embarrassed look on my face when that happened. Don't paint the guy into a local Paul Reuben Incident.
Just then he kind of half-sat back down again in his seat, proceeded to lift up his shirt a little, and rebuckled his belt. Then he grabbed a wad of napkins from the seat next to him (sans refreshments) and started towards the door.
Damn.
* BTW, do not pay to see this movie unless you're a fan of the real-life show. It was a warm, respectful homage to the
actual radio program and played smartly on the themes of change and the ends of things, but that does not translate into an entertaining movie.
Woody Harrelson and
John C. Reily do steal the show, though, as two cowboys signing story songs riddled with corny, dirty jokes. Now I have a treasure trove to take back to Jessica's grandpa the next time I see him.
Posted by Mark on Sunday, June 11th, 2006 under genera
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I'm in the home stretch for finals and finally almost done for the semester. I have to finish two papers and a project for Monday, and then my exam is next Thursday. I'll leave it to higher stress levels, but I've become increasingly territorial about "my" computer in the school's lab. I sit at the same computer each Tuesday in my J2EE development class, and I prefer to use it any other time I'm working in the lab. Most of the systems have non-working Web servers which means I can't test my work, but the server on my computer has worked consistently all semester (though Firefox quit working last week, which is killing me). Finding someone in my seat is getting more and more like getting cut off during rush hour.
I came in today to do some testing for my project, and I was happy to see that only four other people had signed in so far. There are three labs open, and so the odds of me getting my preferred computer were pretty high. As I walked towards that room the lights were off but the door was open. Great! However, when I walked in the door I could see that someone was sitting there in the dark, alone,
at my computer. One out of thirty seats was occupied and it was the only one I wanted. I slinked into the chair next to the aisle two rows back and sighed...
I've logged into five computers so far and none of them have a working Web server. I wonder if I could take that kid?
Posted by Mark on Saturday, May 6th, 2006 under genera
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I watched
Walk the Line last month and really enjoyed the film. I liked Johnny Cash and was aware of his music as a kid, but I didn't realize the story behind his character or his influence on modern music. I've always thought of him as a country singer, but he actually helped bring rock and roll to the masses. He originally signed with famed Sun Records in 1956, and was part of their "Million Dollar Quartet" of hit makers that consisted of Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis. His first few songs played on the country charts, but he was promoted as a pop artist throughout the fifties and sixties, and had an early rock edge like his Sun contemporaries. He mixed country, rock, and blues influences, and his band was the first one to play for a country music audience with a drummer (shame!). Over the years he's played with Bob Dylan and U2, and of course covered Nine Inch Nails "Hurt" a few years ago.
The Man in Black brought a somber, honest edge to country and pop music that can still be noticed today. I dug out one of his greatest hits albums and have been listening to it during my commutes the last couple weeks, and it's been keeping me pretty good company. I like my job, but there's just something to be said about driving to work on a rainy weekday morning air picking to "Folsom Prison Blues."
Posted by Mark on Tuesday, May 2nd, 2006 under genera
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It was a little painful parting with this much cash, but I used my freelance money to get a new laptop:
Is this thing ever sweet! It's the best overall performing machine I've ever used, and I have only good things to say about it so far. It's great to be untethered from the office (especially considering it's
half a jungle). Doug found an amazing deal and so the final price ended up being almost exactly 50% retail. Here's a rundown on the specs:
- 1.83 GHz Dual Core processer
- 1 GB DDR2 SDRAM
- 15.4 inch UltraSharp widescreen LCD
- 2256 MB ATI MOBILITY™ RADEON
Posted by Mark on Sunday, April 23rd, 2006 under tech & IT
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Jessica and I have a deal about the office in our house. I tend to trash it throughout each semester, textbooks lying open on the desk and floor and articles piled high in every possible nook and cranny, and then I clean it up after finals are over. Spring 2006 Clean Up Day is only two weeks away, and since the size and scope of the mess typically correlate with the busyness of the semester it's especially bad right now. Jessica is always extremely patient, but recently she let me know that it bothers her (in a much nicer way than I probably would if it bothered me so much):
Jessica: "Every time I walk into the office I hear GNR's 'Welcome to the Jungle.'"
Me: Ouch. "Why, because you need a machete to get from one side to another?"
Jessica: "No, because it gets worse here every day."
Double ouch. But she was right. I did some preemptive ground clearing and got the office back into somewhat of a presentable shape.
Posted by Mark on Sunday, April 23rd, 2006 under genera
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BLOOMINGTON, IL (AP) - For some, today is nothing but harmless fun: itching powder in your brother's socks, saran wrap on the toilet seat, or the local radio station cover the story of the alligator that escaped from the zoo. But for others, it's a sullen reminder that there is just one day out of the entire year that they earn any respect from friends, family, and co-workers.
You know them. We all know at least two or three.
They are the fools.
Hearing the increasing rumbling over the past two weeks as April 1 approached, we combed the streets to find out firsthand how our beloved fools are hit by this seemingly unfair slam on their stupidity. We found Herman Brinkleschnitzer wandering around a grocery store parking lot unable to find his car and asked him a few questions. "Oh, sure it's disheartening, but you get used to it. Just last week I tried to open a can of frozen juice concentrate with a can opener and everyone just laughed at me. Last week I was the butt of their jokes, but on April first I would have been king for a day. I don't get it."
Sally Bottacellitortellini agreed. "May is National Bike Month. There is a Sleep Awareness Week, and correct posture even gets a week of its own. I am one of millions. Why give people like us only a day?" In frustration she took the last sip of her soda, pulled off the tab and flipped it defiantly into the trash, and dropped the can into the "Cans only please" recycling bin.
This concern may seem like the kind of phenomenon that are becoming increasingly familiar in our politically correct, victim-oriented society, but surprisingly this is not a new issue. A 1771 edition of the Boston Truth describes how an organized group of fools banded together to march the courthouse square and demand consistent recognition. They got lost between the pub and the courthouse, which was only a three block walk, and when they realized that they had walked all the way to nearby Medford they quietly disbanded.
Their spirit is still alive and well today. We found people walking on Constitution Trail all too eager to share that group's sentiments. "Why honor my husband on just one day?" asked Vera Westingshack. "He's a moron 365, 24 7." Her walking partner Peggy, was quick to back that up. "Just last week he was complaining about the warm weather and wanted to enjoy watching one last snowfall. He took the snow blower up on the roof and kept dumping bags of ice into the blades. The idiot shot ice all over the back yard and broke a neighbor's window before he gave up. Don't ask me how he was smart enough to get the snow blower up there in the first place." Others related stories of being ignored outside of their special day, getting picked last for kickball as children, or even marking every day in April as "1" in their calendars to make themselves feel better.
After hearing his name from multiple people as the quintessential fool, we tracked down Carl Bumblefoot and asked him his thoughts. "April Fool's Day? I don't really recognize that. I'm no fool." Confused, we told him Herman's story about trying to open the frozen organge juice can with a can opener and asked him if he could relate. "What a dummy," he laughed. "He obviously didn't defrost it first."
Our apologies, Carl.
Posted by Mark on Saturday, April 1st, 2006 under genera
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My niece Kylie is almost seven. She loves and does well in school, but for some reason earlier this month she was caught stealing things in her classroom. First she took a friend's charm bracelet, and then she took flowered Post-It Notes from her teacher's desk.
My sister made her return the bracelet
and make a new charm bracelet to give to the little girl to show that she was sorry. She also threatened her with no gymnastics this summer if she did it again. Unfortunately those things didn't work; she took the Post-It Notes the next week.
I have to give my sister some creativity points for how she handled this. The teacher called her at work to tell her, and so Kylie didn't know firsthand that my sister knew about this. On her way home form work, my sister noticed a police officer's car at the library down the street from her house, and so she went in to see if she could talk with him. She explained what happened and asked him if he could say something to Kylie. My sister cooked up a little scenario with him, and when she came home she asked Kylie to get her books together from the library so that they could return them. When they got to the library, this is what went down:
Officer: "Excuse me, are you Kylie _______?"
Kylie: (completely shocked) "Yes, how did you know my name?"
Officer: "I know everyone's name in town. Kylie, I have to ask you something. Did you steal your friend's bracelet and something that belonged to your teacher?"
Kylie: (more nervous now) "Umm... yes. Who told you?"
Officer: "Nobody told me. As a police officer, it's my job to know whenever someone does something wrong or dangerous." (fantastic answer to a seven year old's question!)
Kylie: "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to."
Officer: "I believe you didn't do it to be mean on purpose. But I want you to promise me that you won't steal anything again. People who steal things hurt their friends' feelings, and their names go in the newspaper."
Kylie: "They do???"
Officer: They do. But you can't just promise. Adults shake hands when they
really promise something, and then they can't go back on their word. I want you to make a big person's promise. Are you ready to make a big person's promise?"
Kylie: "Yes" (and she shakes his hand)
Officer: (smiling) "Great! Kylie, I'm proud of you. I know you'll keep your promise to me. You've always been a good girl."
It must have done the trick; she hasn't gotten in trouble at school once in the past two weeks. We'll see if it sticks once the shock wears off, but it definitely made an impression. If groundings and time outs don't work, you can always bring in the long arm of the law. ;-)
Posted by Mark on Sunday, March 26th, 2006 under genera
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So I've been gone for awhile. I don't have an excuse, really. School has me drowning this semester -- my last "real" semester before graduation! -- but that hasn't stopped me before. I'm a little mentally and creatively drained right now, and nothing has struck me. Not that I was changing the world before, but at least I was inspired to write
something.
I often get asked what's going through my head, and it's typically hard to explain. Usually it's everything. That's the only way I can describe it. My consciousness has always been a windstorm of free associations and I have to concentrate to keep it in check when I'm not interested in the situation I find myself. Instead of focusing on the issue at hand I'll be thinking back to Rome, which leads to the song "The Promise" by When in Rome, which leads to Napolean Dynamite since that's the song played as the closing credits kick in, which takes me back to tetherball, which becomes the ratty, weathered yellow tetherball in my grade school gym with the blue stage curtains draped closed and Jenny Roake making fun of me for walking like an ape. Now I'm self conscious about how I'll look walking out of the meeting, and... I'm back to the meeting. What was that? Strategy? Hmm... stragety. Bugs Bunny. I knew I should have taken that left turn at Albuquerque.
My Quality Management class this semester is killing me. Watching paint dry for 75 minutes would keep me better occupied and be much less painful. I'm studying for a test in that class tomorrow, and as I flip through my sparse notes the margins tell the tale. I find these doodles and phrases scrawled down the sides of the pages.
- "So... We meet again, Dr. Jones."
- A sketch of Leonardo drawing his katana (yep, the teenage mutant ninja turtle)
- "Please Hammer, don't hurt 'em!"
- The Fibonacci sequence up to 144
- "Bruno don't shiv." (commonly overheard in "The Dark Knight Returns" by Frank Miller)
- "Mark riggity rox the hizznouse" (I'm not proud of that one, but I'm inclined to share it)
- "Susan yanked her suit coat tight and scanned the hallway in both directions. Empty. Her face gave away that she was flustered, but she smiled grimly when the door clicked shut behind her. He would never hurt her or anyone else ever again."
- A sketch of the next design for this site
- "Sven! How's that fresh schnitzel?!?"
We'll see how I do on that test tomorrow.
Posted by Mark on Monday, February 27th, 2006 under genera
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My friend and former co-worker Wendy emailed me last week with the subject line "Drawing skills and creativity needed." Somehow the email made it to me... ;-)
She told me about a co-worker that she and her cubemates always give a hard time, because he constantly calls them even though he sits right over the cubicle wall. The hilarious aspect of this situation is that the cube walls in her office are just under five feet high. You can crane your neck and sit up in your seat to see the person sitting next to you.
Wendy suggested that "there had to be a Dilbert in there somewhere," and that started the gears turning:
Posted by Mark on Friday, February 3rd, 2006 under genera
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My friend David inspired this one...
He borrowed my copy of
Batman Begins on New Year's Eve and returned it to me today at work. He loved it, but did comment that he just couldn't get the flashbacks of
Christian Bale in character in
American Psycho (also a great flick!).
It got me thinking, what if Lions Gate and Warner Brothers teamed up to make a hybrid? Bruce Wayne's intelligence and skill combined with Patrick Bateman's dimentia and mental schism. What kind of character would that yield? Okay, maybe someone like Two Face or the Joker, and we're all trying to forget
that train wreck.
Maybe we could go with the subtle approach. We revisit the scene in which Batman has just stopped the Scarecrow from releasing his toxins into Gotham City's water supply. Batman has the Scarecrow cornered in the cellar of Arkham Asylum, and he happens to find an axe next to a firehouse in the stairwell.
"Dr. Crane, are you familiar with Genesis' work before Peter Gabriel's departure? Now some consider it to be superior from an artistic standpoint, but one only has to consider..."
Posted by Mark on Tuesday, January 31st, 2006 under movies
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So we've been cleaning out our "junk room" downstairs and all of our closets... Anyone who has lived with me (or walked past my desk at work) knows I save everything, and even I've raised an eyebrow at some things I had stored away under my roof. These things have survived at least two moves, but tonight I had to surrender them to the garbage:
- The Cocktail soundtrack on cassette
- A Budweiser bottle opener keyring
- A red plastic nose flute
- A seashell necklace
- A Dr. Seuss "I Love Reading" button
- All of my mail from college (I kept the letters and some of the cards, but the bills and junk mail needed to go.)
I'm keeping the Rubik's snake and orange haired Troll doll with the Chicago Bears jersey! A packrat has to draw the line somewhere.
Posted by Mark on Tuesday, January 24th, 2006 under genera
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A lot of Web developers drove to work this morning in Central Illinois. I'm sure some of them also drive an old Honda and listened to folk, punk, or rap on the way into the office.
But I'm probably the only Web developer in Central Illinois that drove to work in an old Honda and switched from David Gray, to Green Day, to Jay-Z in the CD player.
I got 99 problems but a lack of eclectic tastes ain't one. Hit me!
Posted by Mark on Tuesday, January 24th, 2006 under genera
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As the song goes, the weather outside is frightful... in its total lack of consistency. Illinois weather is always unpredictable in the spring, but this winter has been particularly interesting. We had a cold November with snow coming before Thanksgiving and a January-style heavy snowfall in early December. In the last month the temperature has bounced around like a pinball from 20 one day to 60 the next, and then anywhere in between with snow, rain, or clear gray winter skies. A boy scout would pack a shirt, sweater, windbreaker, winter coat, poncho, and umbrella. I'm sure Pat Robertson could find a reason for nature's confusion (hint: it's our fault).
I often hear people say they enjoy Midwest weather despite its frustrations, and that they would "miss the change in seasons" if they went south, east, or west. I'm not sure I buy that, 80 and sunny every day sounds mighty tempting, but if I did I'd wonder why we had to see all of the changes over the span of two or three days. ;-)
Posted by Mark on Monday, January 16th, 2006 under genera
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Overheard in the hallway today...
"I was a little nervous about taking his stuff and spending his money before we got engaged. After I got that ring on my finger, though -- phbbt! That thing over there I like? It's mine. I like that, too. Mine! He even made it easier by giving me my own card."
"He pays your credit card bill?"
Laughing, "Yep. I'll tell you what, I was unsure about this whole marriage thing a few months ago but I can't wait now."
I don't know the girl and so I don't know the guy either, but it made me think of two things: 1) a reminder of how lucky I am and how great I have it with Jessica, and 2) I wish I could warn the guy. Run, run for the hills! And don't look back!
Posted by Mark on Friday, January 6th, 2006 under genera
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I missed posting a Christmas message last weekend, and so I did not want to let today slip by without wishing everyone a Happy New Year. Hopefully 2006 will present you with moments even better than your best days in 2005.
I don't typically make resolutions because 1) they are usually broken after three weeks, and 2) I don't want to tie changes important enough to be deemed resolutions to a specific year. I have been eating healthier, gotten back into my exercise routine, and increased my reading pace over the past month and I plan to build upon those things, but I purposely started before the holidays and the new year so that I wasn't approaching them with a Resolution Mindframe. If you have made resolutions, good luck and stick with them!
Posted by Mark on Sunday, January 1st, 2006 under genera
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I just saw a Buick commercial advertising a new feature in their luxury sedan line: preheated washer fluid (149 degrees!) to help clear the ice and snow from your windshield. As someone who has sat in his car in subzero temperatures for fifteen minutes just so his car can heat up enough to keep a porthole defrosted in his windshield, this sounds like a tremendous idea!
You know, though, that some idiot is going to file suit at some point over this for millions of dollars. I can see it now. Someone comes up to a Buick with a spray bottle and squeegy, and the pissed off driver times it just right to splatter him with hot washer fluid. They should print a disclaimer on the windshield now while there's still time (see McDonald's coffee cups).
Posted by Mark on Saturday, December 24th, 2005 under genera
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We spent much of our time in Ireland travelling by bus, and that never got boring. The countryside is beautiful with rolling hills, hand-built limestone walls, tower ruins, and cliffs and beaches dotting the coasts. The western part of the country will take your breath away. It's the result of a tectonic plate jutting upwards out of the Atlantic, and so the cliffs and hills are magnificent. If I had my fill of hills and farms for the time being, I could take a nap or read my book until we hit a new region of land. After finishing my semester, that was just what the doctor ordered.
On the first evening we went hiking through a field of limestone flats in the Burren, the rocky region in the western part of Ireland. The ground is literally covered with a broken crust of limestone sheets, and this where all of the walls lining old farms and property lines sprang from. These walls are everywhere in western Ireland. They are hand built without mortar, and some have stood for thousands of years. We also saw a tomb which is estimated to be up to 6,000 years old. It's made from three large sheets of limestone that are stacked as two walls and a top roof. Some of the sheets weigh up to 20 tons. Stacking them was an engineering feat, and these structures are thought to be the origin of Celtic myths of Ireland being first settled by giants.
That first night we stopped in a tiny village outside of Doolin near the west coast, and it consisted of a hostel, two pubs, and a couple dozen houses. I had delicious Irish stew and homemade bread, and we got to know our tour guide, Jerome, and some of our fellow travellers. Dave from Australia was geeked up about the World Cup bracket drawing playing on the TV behind us, and we talked with many of the students about their semesters' travels around Europe and Russia. Our room that night was private and cost us only $26, with a community bathroom in the hallway shared by ten of us in five rooms. The rest of the group stayed downstairs in a large room filled with bunkbeds. Most of us turned in early that night after a long day of travel, and we were heading out early to see the Cliffs of Moher before sunrise.
Check out
some photos of the countryside and coastline.
Posted by Mark on Wednesday, December 21st, 2005 under genera
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... I turned 5.
I don't remember what I got for my 5th birthday, but I'll always remember this cake. It was 1980, and I had seen "
The Empire Strikes Back" earlier that year. I was of course obsessed with all things Star Wars, particularly R2 and Yoda. My mom found this mold and surprised me with this cake that afternoon (probably when I got up from a nap). It was a gagillion times greater than sliced bread.
Jessica had an even better surprise in store for me after work on Friday. We stopped by Maggie Miley's, an Irish pub here in town that we particularly like, and I saw my good friend Rich sitting at the bar. "Wild, there's Rich sitting there," I told Jessica, moving towards the bar. As I went over to him I glanced over my left shoulder and saw Anton and Mike, and so I whirled around to give Jessica the best fake evil eye that I could. The jig was up. "The gang should all be here!" she said.
Rich, Rich (there are two!), Anton, Mike, Sherry, Brian, Doug, Jeff, Jason, Jen, and especially Jessica, thank you all very much for a great evening celebrating my birthday. I'm not sure if I've ever hung out with all of you at the same time, and it was great chatting, eating and drinking, and catching up with everybody. With friends like these I'm sure that that five year old clutching onto R2-D2 would be pretty excited to know what he has in store for him.
Posted by Mark on Sunday, December 18th, 2005 under genera
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We packed a lot into four days in our trip to Ireland, and a few times I was afraid that it might become the trip that never was.
That actually started about a month ago. Jessica was summoned for jury duty and called in the week before Thanksgiving, and she "passed" the initial jury selection. The judge told the remaining candidates that they would be part of a four to six week trial, and he told Jessica flat out that "personal travel is no grounds for excuse from a jury," and that we would not receive any reimbursement for the expenses that we already paid (cancellation fees would have come to almost $400). Luckily the attorneys did not select Jessica as part of the final twelve, and so we were in the clear for our trip.
Enter Mother Nature. The trip to O'Hare Airport is usually two and a half hours, and we gave ourselves five with the snow just starting to come down and five inches in the forecast. Outside of town the roads were considerably worse than they were in our neighborhood, and I was heading up the highway at about 45 mph. Just north of Joliet we hit Chicago traffic; people were panicking and rush hour started a couple hours early. To make a long story short, it took another four hours to go the last thirty miles. We averaged a whopping 8 mph. Cars were in the ditch, cars were sitting in the middle of the interstate spinning out and causing two-mile backups, and no snow plows could get through with the heavy traffic. I literally slid all the way down the tollway ramp, and the whole time we kept watching the clock. We were both thinking the same thing but not saying it out loud: we weren't going to make it.
We got to O'Hare ninety minutes before our flight so we felt a lot better, but the signs were iced over and so we made a wild guess on where to park. We parked in the wrong spot, but a guy playing an alto saxaphone in the hallway came up and asked us where we were going. "Can you direct us to American Airlines's terminal?" I asked. "Of course, Terminal 3," he assured me. "I'll show you a shortcut to the tram. I know everything... except how to get a recording contract." We made a beeline to the tram, shook his hand, and he wished us a Merry Christmas with a tip of his Santa hat and a wide, toothless grin. Merry Christmas, friend!
We checked in, got to our gate, and boarded the plane uneventfully. Most domestic flights were cancelled, but they were redirecting international flights in a large arc around the storm and we were set to leave on time. Unfortunately, the copilot crackled in over the intercom five minutes before our takeoff to announce that his captain was stuck on the highway and was estimating he'd be forty five minutes late. An hour later he made it, but then since we'd been sitting still for two hours the plane needed some extra attention for de-icing.
By all means my good man, do whatever you need to do to de-ice the plane! ;-)
We got off the ground and were set to land in Dublin two and a half hours late. That was bad for us; we had a two hour buffer to catch our tour bus. We had made a contingency plan to take a public bus to their first stop in case we missed them, but when we left the airport we found out that the bus workers were striking. We did some frantic asking with the cab drivers outside the exit and found someone to drive us two hours to the meeting point with the tour bus. It cost more than my round trip ticket from Chicago to Dublin, but we were off. He stopped twice to let us make phone calls, paying for the calls, and dropped us off at a corner in Ballinasloe, a tiny village with one main street lined with pubs, coffee shops, and a hotel if the bus didn't show. Sure enough, a bright yellow charter bus came humming around a winding corner and the brakes squealed as it passed us on the curb.
Jessica went running after it and a short man in camouflage pants and a dark mop of hair came bounding out of the bus. "You Jessica?" he asked in a perfect Irish accent. "Yes, are you Jerome?" "You betcher ass I am. Let's get you two on the bus. We have two seats saved for you right in front."
At that moment we were home free. We had our faithful guide, we stuffed our bags into the bus's luggage compartment, and we started out into the Irish countryside. Despite our rocky start, we were on our way to the Emerald Isle's west coast.
Posted by Mark on Thursday, December 15th, 2005 under genera
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We got back from Ireland last night. We had a blast! Ireland is truly a beautiful, amazing country. I'll be posting separate entries for the rest of the week probably describing what we saw and heard, and I'll post photos once I get those situated for the Web (we got 40-50 good ones it looks like).
For now I just wanted to let folks know I'm back and had a great time.
Posted by Mark on Tuesday, December 13th, 2005 under genera
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I'm coming into the home stretch with the current semester and so today was a Mountain Dew kind of day. I looked at the bottom of the ingredients list and saw "Brominated Vegetable Oil" listed. What the heck is that?
I did some searching and I don't think I'll be doing the Dew any longer. The dyes in most citrus flavored sodas are chemically combined with Bromine to make the dye molecules heavier and match the density of the water (this prevents the liquids from separating in the bottle or can). What exactly is bromine, you ask? I found the following
here:
A heavy, volatile, corrosive, reddish-brown, nonmetallic liquid element, having a highly irritating vapor. It is used in producing gasoline antiknock mixtures, fumigants, dyes, and photographic chemicals.
The FDA did not allow its use until 1977, and it remains on the FDA's list of most toxic food additives. They reexamine its effects and use in foods every six months. Yikes! Trace amounts of toxic chemicals lingering around that I can prevent? The sugar, acid, and caffeine are already bad enough... I need to learn to appreciate black coffee after those late nights.
Posted by Mark on Wednesday, December 7th, 2005 under genera
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Oh, good.
Posted by Mark on Tuesday, December 6th, 2005 under genera
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Jessica and I are going to Ireland this month! There's a back story here, but to make it short we got last-minute deals on tickets with two other friends of ours and we're going on a shoestring. Round trip from Chicago to Dublin cost $230 USD, and we found a three-day, countryside bus tour that we'll take for $90 USD including lodging. I'll finish my semester of classes the day before we leave, and that will definitely be a most welcomed break. I've done nothing but breathe school these last few weeks, and my earliest bedtime this week has been 1:00 am. It's high time to get some rest (on the plane) and tackle a fun adventure.
The tour should give us great exposure to Ireland in a short amount of time. We'll circle the perimeter of southern Ireland, and the stops include whiskey distilleries, castles, the Cliffs of Mohr, the Blarney Stone, and many of the pubs and farms in between. When we return to Dublin we'll have the afternoon and evening to do some exploring, and then the first half of the next day before going to the airport. Ideally it would be nice to spend a little more time in Dublin but we couldn't pass up the opportunity, and given the time we have I'd rather see more of Ireland than just the city.
I'll be sure to report back with pictures. I'm guessing I won't have an opportunity to post while we're there, but if I run across an Internet cafe I'll check in. It would be cool to post an entry from overseas. ;-)
Posted by Mark on Sunday, December 4th, 2005 under genera
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Okay people, it's (past) time to make changes in our energy consumption habits and let our governments know that we recognize global warming as a problem that we need to fight. The evidence does not seem debatable to me. Average temperatures continue to rise, hurricane frequencies and intensities increase, and
new scientific evidence demonstrates that we have
put ourselves into a very unusual, dangerous position since the Industrial Revolution.
Temperatures, greenhouse gases, and sea levels are at their highest points in 650,000 years. Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, sea levels have risen at twice their historic rate. The average temperatures around the globe are gradually climbing.
What can we do as individuals? I watched the "Earth to America" special on TBS two weeks ago, and its companion Web site,
stopglobalwarming.org, lists a
host of ideas that everyone can easily do in the home. Things like keeping your car tires inflated and adjusting your thermostat by two degrees will have a cumulative impact higher than you might think. Trading in your SUV for a car that gets just 8 mpg better gas mileage can decrease the CO2 output from your vehicle by 3000 pounds per year.
The TV special itself was a variety show put on by comedians and actors to help raise awareness of the issue. They are using the Web site to form a virtual petition that can be presented to local, state, and federal governments to show them that a large percentage of the American people care about battling global warming. Their goal is one million; currently there are over 230,000 people registered. I signed up and wrote a note on my
personal profile. Regardless of political ties, many prominent people are on the list. Many democratic and liberal leaders are on the list of course, but John McCain was also the third to sign up. Some of my local and state officials have signed up, which I am happy to see.
If we all start making small changes and sacrifices as individuals perhaps we can slow down the effects of global warming, and by attaching our names to an effort such as this we can also look to Washington to make major changes that could perhaps reverse the effects for future generations.
Posted by Mark on Saturday, November 26th, 2005 under genera
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Jessica and I got our newphew Anakin Skywalker's Jedi fighter ship as a Christmas present, and so I needed to find Anakin to go with it. "It's not on his list," Jessica and her sister said. A boy can't have a ship without its captain!
This was a problem, though. We got the ship at Target and they didn't have an Anakin action figure in stock. After work yesterday I went to Wal-Mart and Toys R Us and didn't have any luck. Did I give up? Nope. I went to the other nearby Wal-Mart but still came up empty handed and checked those stores' online counterparts as well as amazon.com and starwars.com, but everyone was out of stock. Prices on eBay were $10 - $40 and so I still wanted to find it somewhere local.
I racked my brain trying to think of a store that still had a reasonable toy department. Most department stores don't carry toys anymore since Toys R Us and Wal-Mart gulped up the market (I remember running to the toy department at Sears and Bergner's to look at Star Wars and Transformers goodies). The only one I could think of was K-Mart. I drove over and zeroed in on their toy department, and sure enough I hit paydirt. I flipped through the boxes on the rows of hooks one by one, and Anakin was in the very back on the bottom right hook.
We are officially done Christmas shopping, which leaves me time to prepare my Uncle of the Year acceptance speech. ;-)
Posted by Mark on Wednesday, November 23rd, 2005 under genera
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Found today on a
guide to writing unmaintainable code:
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
- Whatever is said in Latin sounds profound.
Posted by Mark on Monday, November 21st, 2005 under genera
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I was walking out the door to go to work and bent down to pick up my laptop bag.
"Mark, what happened?"
"What?"
"Your pants... They're split all the way down the middle!"
I wasn't convinced. I marched into the bathroom and checked things out for myself. I can honestly say that I never heard or felt a rip, and I've never had this happen before (honest!), but without going into too much detail my boxer shorts were peeking out at me through the gaping hole appearing where my dress pants should have been.
The worst part was that I had only worn the pants two times. They fit fairly baggy, too. Now I know why they were on sale for $25.
Jessica ran them by a sewing shop over her lunch hour (I'm lucky for her), and they're all patched up, resewn, and rebar reinforced for the rat race. I'm mustering up the courage to try them out again tomorrow.
Posted by Mark on Wednesday, November 16th, 2005 under genera
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I upgraded to Office 2003 recently and it's literally brought my laptop to its knees. Simple tasks like opening my calendar in Outlook and opening an Excel file take 2-3 minutes sometimes, and switching between Office applications locks up my machine for almost one minute every time. Some of the features are really cool, but it's noticeably lowered my productivity.
My laptop is pretty robust: the chip is only 1.2 GHz but I have 1 GB of RAM. I checked out the system requirements for XP Pro and Office 2003, and both require 233 MHz with 128 MB of RAM. Only 300 MHz is recommended for XP. I'm way over that; I feel for anyone out there that is running this configuration on an older computer (of course, owners of those computers probably don't have Office 2003).
On the plus side, maybe this will give me an excuse to get that G-ed out, Alienware command center in a box I've always wanted. ;-)
Posted by Mark on Tuesday, November 15th, 2005 under tech & IT
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Hey, things should soon be going great! I've cracked open the following three predictions in my fortune cookies over the last two weeks:
You will soon be promoted.
You will be rich and respected.
Sell your ideas -- they have exceptional merit.
As a kid I couldn't wait to finish my meal at a Chinese restaurant and find out what bit of ancient wisdom was scrawled in machine typeset across the paper inside my fortune cookie. I even put some stock into what was printed there. Fate played a hand in what was printed, and then also in which one I happened to grab from the table, right?
Everyone probably does this to some degree, but I went that much further and kept my favorite ones in a little box in my sock drawer. They are in an envelope stuck in my nightstand with the pictures I've taken and received since starting college. These fortunes fit nicely next to my love of inspirational quotes.
Today, of course, they're a fun diversion at best (especially when you add the obligatory "... in bed" to the end of each one). One of my favorite quotes is also true when it comes to fortunes: the harder and more consistently you work, the luckier you get. I wonder sometimes if that is a selfish concept, or somewhat of an American one. To that eight year old boy scarfing down his chicken chow mein just so he could get his fortune cookie that might sound a little scary, but now it's liberating. There will always be external influences outside of our control, sometimes life changing, but we are each the navigator of our own fortunes more than any other individual. Like it or not, our lives turn out very much like we make them. If they're not turning out anything like we wanted them to, 1) we now want something different, or 2) we're not truly doing everything possible to make that dream a reality.
I may be rich one day or sell an idea with merit, but if so it will be by my own hand. The world owes me nothing, and I expect nothing from it. I can only ask something of myself, and so I intend to do everything I can to answer that request. If I printed my own cookie fortune, it would read something like this:
You will create the fortune you truly want.
Posted by Mark on Saturday, November 12th, 2005 under genera
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I met my parents at Pizza Hut Friday night and they were babysitting my niece Kylie, who is now six and in first grade. A group of about forty people started coming in at the same time for a birthday party, and the place got pretty crazy pretty fast. There were two dozen kids running around, hip hop music cranking on the jukebox, and even a magician in one corner putting on a show.
Kylie made friends with one of the little girls in the bathroom and went back to her table to introduce herself (this is common). The girl's father was sporting some major bling; from our table I could see a few rings on his fingers and gold chains around his neck. Kylie came back and whispered into Jessica's ear: "Aunt Jessica, did you see that girl's dad? I want a gold tooth for Christmas."
I'm sure grandma and grandpa will jump at the chance.
Posted by Mark on Sunday, November 6th, 2005 under genera
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I need a research topic for my Artificial Intelligence class this semester. I'm absolutely stumped on what to research.
We've covered game playing almost the entire semester so far (this is my professor's field of research). I'm a little sick of that and would like to do something else, but nothing is floating my boat right now. I'd like something related to the Web or business, or even a fun diversion to motivate me through the end of the semester.
Any ideas? Off the wall suggestions are encouraged.
Posted by Mark on Monday, October 31st, 2005 under tech & IT
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Or... I reboot, therefore I am.
No, this isn't a test. Do not adjust your set. I present the new look for garmana::blog, fresh for the
Fall 2005 CSS Reboot. Over the next six hours, almost one thousand site owners around the world are launching their new Web Standards-compliant designs.
If you're using a feed reader, please link to the site and check out the new digs.
For me, this was a long time coming. I launched the site almost a year and a half ago, and the old "design" was lackluster at best. I was new to coding CSS-based layouts and wanted to use the site as my training ground. My intent was to learn a few tricks of the trade and get something up quickly that was easier to look at.
Well, life got in the way and here we are. Many months, classes, packed weekends, and distractions later I'm finally ready with version two. The goal this time around is to not only display some of my creativity, but also to clean up my markup and show my respect for Web Standards. For non-Web type folks, that means I've taken the time and care to avoid being sloppy behind the scenes with my design and programming, and developed my Web site the way that true professionals develop them. If you are a Web professional and hesitant about Web Standards, I've also included
thoughts on the subject with the new site.
If you're new to the site, welcome! If you're one of my five loyal readers, I'm glad you're here for the next iteration.
Posted by Mark on Monday, October 31st, 2005 under genera
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Hey, things should soon be going great! I've cracked open the following three predictions in my fortune cookies over the last two weeks:
You will soon be promoted.
You will be rich and respected.
Sell your ideas -- they have exceptional merit.
As a kid I couldn't wait to finish my meal at a Chinese restaurant and find out what bit of ancient wisdom was scrawled in machine typeset across the paper inside my fortune cookie. I even put some stock into what was printed there. Fate played a hand in what was printed, and then also in which one I happened to grab from the table, right?
Everyone probably does this to some degree, but I went that much further and kept my favorite ones in a little box in my sock drawer. They are in an envelope stuck in my nightstand with the pictures I've taken and received since starting college. These fortunes fit nicely next to my love of inspirational quotes.
Today, of course, they're a fun diversion at best (especially when you add the obligatory "... in bed" to the end of each one). One of my favorite quotes is also true when it comes to fortunes: the harder and more consistently you work, the luckier you get. I wonder sometimes if that is a selfish concept, or somewhat of an American one. To that eight year old boy scarfing down his chicken chow mein just so he could get his fortune cookie that might sound a little scary, but now it's liberating. There will always be external influences outside of our control, sometimes life changing, but we are each the navigator of our own fortunes more than any other individual. Like it or not, our lives turn out very much like we make them. If they're not turning out anything like we wanted them to, 1) we now want something different, or 2) we're not truly doing everything possible to make that dream a reality.
I may be rich one day or sell an idea with merit, but if so it will be by my own hand. The world owes me nothing, and I expect nothing from it. I can only ask something of myself, and so I intend to do everything I can to answer that request. If I printed my own cookie fortune, it would read something like this:
You will create the fortune you truly want.
Posted by Mark on Sunday, October 30th, 2005 under genera
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I have the good fortune in my job to have every other Friday off, and today has turned out to be a great day. No apartments to clean, no work to dial in and check up on, and a manageable amount of homework. I'm also working on my new design for the
Fall 2005 CSS Reboot (note the link above and to the right).
It's been a productive and relaxing day. I caught a couple episodes of Seinfeld, ran, and read in between my to-do items, and I've also re-obssessed myself with
The Dandy Warhols. I dug their sound my senior year of college, and then I got turned off for awhile when it became chic in Hollywood to say that you loved them. I got reacquainted with
their first album last weekend and I downloaded the others today, and I have to say that they're all worth a listen. We shall see if the constant dose today affects my design for the better or worse...
Summertime, if I was getting paid
For getting drunk and getting laid,
I'd grab a phone just to cal you up and say
Quit your job 'cuz I got it made.
Posted by Mark on Friday, October 28th, 2005 under genera
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My own mistakes are often the things that are hardest for me to deal with. Or, unfortunately, the easiest for me to
not deal with. Large ones, small ones, silly ones; it doesn't matter. The only thing I hate more than making mistakes is admitting that I made them. I am people pleaser, and I usually equate making a mistake with letting someone down.
I came across this quote this morning and it struck a chord with me. Not that it's a magic wand that I can wave for a life-altering change in outlook, but it helps me put things a little more in perspective.
The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything.
- E.J. Phelps, 1889
Mistakes are 100% natural. Learning and growth cannot occur without them, and more importantly, neither can success. We've all heard the stories of Thomas Edison's failed light bulb attempts and famous authors covering their walls with rejection letters. Some may unnaturally get lucky on their first attempts, but most roads to success are paved with pitfalls, perseverance, and lessons learned through mistakes.
So why am I waxing on about this? Am I striving to become the next Tony Robbins. With all due respect to Mr. Robbins, no way. I feel like my life is cruising along too much on autopilot. I have a lot of things going on, but they're not really moving me forward. I wonder whether I've subconsciously chosen things that keep me busy, but safe from sticking my neck too far out. I'm not unhappy and I don't pine for a drastic change in life, but I also recognize that life could be even better if I was following a focused course.
This site is evidence of that. I've been posting less frequently in the last six months. Some of the reason for that has been my schedule, but mostly it's been from lack of substance. I could continue to post about my day or upcoming movies and the latest gadgets, but that doesn't build interest for me or my readers. Those topics have their place, but I don't want them to dominate my content. I want to share my ideas and opinions, and I want those to come through in a variety of forms: posts, examples of my writing, and even other forms of multimedia. Those who know me well know that I dream of directing a movie, and this site is the perfect vehicle for getting that off the ground. I can elicit feedback on ideas, recruit help, and post the progress and final result. I'd like to go through the content on the site twenty years from now and see a progression instead of a procession.
I'm also asking you to walk down that road with me, loyal readers (all five of you). As I shift the focus of my site I'll be taking a risk but I have a feeling we'll all be much better off for it. I'll ask for feedback, do my best to take it all in constructively, and learn from my mistakes. I'm not looking for any personal fortune or glory from anything that comes out of it. I wouldn't refuse it of course, but that's secondary. Fulfillment and personal growth are the real rewards.
Posted by Mark on Thursday, October 27th, 2005 under genera
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Between midterms, work, around-the-house activities the past couple weeks, my posts have been sparse again. A few people have asked; the climbing trip to Kentucky was great! I will post pictures and a few stories this week hopefully, probably after my last midterm Wednesday.
I came back with some good stories in my notebook from the trip, including one memorable exchange between Rich, David, and myself (me looking like a nube, of course):
Rich: "Mark, watch where you're piling the firewood. That's poison ivy right there."
Me: "Why would they put poison ivy right next to the fire circle?"
David: "You are a true frontiersman."
What can I say? I haven't slept in a tent since I was 8.
Posted by Mark on Saturday, October 22nd, 2005 under writin
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I'm not painting myself as an extreme sportsman, but I've been around my share of different extreme and outdoor sports to realize that each one carries its own subculture. Skiers are different than you and me. Skateboarders? Different. Skydivers? Crazy wack jobs hellbent on cheating death on a daily basis.
Rock climbers fall into the same family (or, out of I suppose?). They use their own lingo, treasure their own heroes, and are probably the most accepting, welcoming groups I've come across in this arena. Everyone I've come across at a climbing gym or outdoors has been friendly, wanting to swap stories, and helpful with recommendations on parks, gear, etc.
Friends David, Rich, and I are climbing down in Kentucky soon and we wanted to secure a campsite. David's conversation below seems typical for the proprieters of the climbing and camping areas down there:
"Miguel's"
"Hi. I was wondering if you took campsite reservations?"
"What?"
"Campsite reservations. Do I need one?"
"What for? Just show up and crash, Holmes. There's always plenty of room for everybody at Miguel's."
David was feeling him out, "Thanks, Dog."
"No prob. Later." He didn't break character.
"Later."
Posted by Mark on Thursday, October 13th, 2005 under genera
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I couldn't resist! For those of you using an RSS reader, open the entry and click to see my
very own movie trailer!
For those of you reading the Net at work (and I know none of you do this), you'll need pretty recent or the most recent versions of Flash and Quicktime.
Posted by Mark on Thursday, October 6th, 2005 under movies
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You know you work in IT when you overhear the following on the escalator:
"Your wedding is in like a month. Unbelievable! What are you doing for your bachelor party?"
"I'm having a
LAN party at my house."
"What? A
LAN party??? You're not getting drunk or going to a strip club or anything?"
Of course, ribbing and hem hawing has to occur in a group of men at this point. It did occur, but not in the way you'd expect.
"Dude, lighten up. I had a LAN party for my bachelor party."
"I wanted to, but my best man wouldn't let me."
"What??? Why can't you at least get drunk like normal people?"
"Oh, we had beer. Trust me. Battlefield 1942 is soooo much better wasted. Talk about dog fights!"
And the entire space filled with gregarious laughter.
Posted by Mark on Wednesday, October 5th, 2005 under tech & IT
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Coming into work this morning was like deja vu all over again. I got behind the same bus #113 and waited for it to make a couple stops around the corner from my house before I could safely pass it. I drove into the parking lot at the same time as yesterday and parked behind the same silver Bonneville. A man and a woman I don't know walked into my line of sight from the right, we walked towards the building in different rows of the parking lot, and we converged at the front door within a few steps of each other. Just like yesterday. Before we crossed the street to get to our building the same balding guy in a security vehicle drove in front of us. Again.
"Good morning, Mark," one of the managers on my floor said from behind me as I got off the elevator. Chuckling, he added, "Hey, I think this was just a replay of yesterday wasn't it?"
If I run into an annoying guy from high school that just happens to sell insurance, I'm running home kicking and screaming. But I am looking forward to the piano and ice sculpting lessons.
Posted by Mark on Tuesday, October 4th, 2005 under genera
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One of Jessica's responsibilities at her new(ish) job is conducting orientation for new consultants coming to Central Illinois for the first time. Part of that usually includes breakfast or dinner, depending on when they come into town, and IHOP is right down the street from her office.
She took a new employee to IHOP for breakfast, and midway through his meal his omelette
crunched. He had bitten into a roach.
Jessica waved their waitress over and showed her what happened. The response:
"Gosh, I'm really sorry. We keep calling Terminix but they just keep coming back."
That's not exactly the right thing to say if you want repeat customers. Needless to say, she's looking for a new breakfast spot.
Posted by Mark on Sunday, October 2nd, 2005 under genera
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I have an unfortunate, notorious habit of coming up with a marketable idea 90 days after someone else. A keychain WiFi detector?
Done. Using a digital camera for side and rear view mirrors?
Done.
This morning Jessica was driving back from Chicago and got turned around trying to find the interstate. She called and I was using
Google Maps to help her get back on track. She asked me how far it was from her current location to the next major street. I looked down at the legend and looked at the bar listing an inch as 500 ft. I furrowed my brow: she was seven or eight lengths away, how exactly would that translate into distance and time?
That's not an impossible calculation of course, but how cool would it be if you could trace along a route with your mouse and get the distance in real time? Very cool, in my humble opinion. I found Google's feedback form and sent my idea below. I'm planting my flag in that one. ;-)
Email submitted:
Good morning! I was doing my best OnStar impression using Google Maps this morning to help my wife navigate around Chicago (she was lost), and this spurred off an idea. Would it be possible to calculate distances in real time on the map by tracing over the route with your mouse? This is how I picture it:
1. Dragging the mouse on the map moves it, and so you begin by clicking on a control to "start measuring." I suppose you could right click and drag, but you would need to accomodate Mac users.
2. From there you simply trace the mouse along your route. By having the start control in #1, you could also still keep the dragging/moving functionality as well.
3. As the mouse moves along the route, you use the X,Y coordinates on the map in conjunction with the distance in the legend to find the distance. This could display and change in real time as the user moves the mouse, and highlight in a specific color over the route.
This would be very cool, and quite helpful in certain situations. Like answering the infamous question when giving a lost person directions: "Okay, now how far is it to intersection X,Y to Interstate Z?"
Thanks,
Mark
These
already exist in the physical world, and so I'm likely not the first one to think of this either. But, maybe I'm the first one to suggest it to Google. Now, if only I could find someone willing to market that Web site that
tracks the history of used cars. Oops, wait...
Posted by Mark on Sunday, October 2nd, 2005 under tech & IT
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Google is
seven years old today. Google has accomplished huge goals in that timeframe, and it got me thinking: What was I doing seven years ago, and what have I accomplished in that time?
Seven years ago I was a recent college graduate living in an empty apartment, the living/dining room furnished with a kitchen table and two chairs, my rack stereo, and a 13" TV sitting on an end table. My bedroom had a bed, dresser and drafting table from childhood. Other than that, my apartment was bare. (Though it would soon be filled somewhat by a new room mate when Rich moved in right aboutt his time.)
At this time seven years ago I was single, and too overwhelmed with starting a new job and my new life to think about that all that much. I was out of training in my corporate IT job for about a month and attempting to figure out my place there. New job, new debt, old car, and new responsibilities. We all become adults on paper on our eighteenth birthdays here, but this was the real start of my adulthood.
In the time in between then and now a lot has changed. Jessica and I both grew up
a lot, got back together, and got married. I jumped out of a perfectly good airplane (twice!). I became a homeowner. I got a position doing development work for my company's Web site, which I wanted day one walking in the door. I sat in the ruins of Ancient Rome and wrote in my notebook, soaking in the weight of the history around me. I gained 40 pounds and lost 30. I became an uncle three times over. I saw the Statue of Liberty and New York City's skyline without thinking about our country's mistakes and vulnerabilities. I learned how to replace a toilet, and frame and drywall a room. I learned my way around Chicago and found a place to get $2 bottles of beer (no simple feat). I tore down two farm houses with my dad and a cousin. I learned to ski. I grew a little more cynical about some things, and hopeful about others. I learned to laugh at myself and accept the fact that I can't do everything (though I'm still not happy about it). ;-)
What will the next seven years bring? Only time will tell, but of course I have a list of things I hope come true. I want to become a father. I want to finish my Masters. My parents will retire and I'll be nearing upon 40 (I don't want either to bother me). I want to continue growing in my career and make a difference outside of my company as well. I want to finish my novels. I want to finish a feature length film. I want to stay close to family and all of the great friends I've made along the way and find a handful of new ones, and laugh and cry and wonder and jump up and down with them and enjoy every minute we have. And most importantly, I want to look back on those last seven with a smile and a hopeful gaze at the next.
Posted by Mark on Tuesday, September 27th, 2005 under genera
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It's time for a bad Autumn geek joke:
Q: What do you get when you divide a Jack o' Lantern's circumference by its diameter?
A: Pumpkin Pi.
I'm not sure that one even qualifies for Laffy Taffy (I apologize).
Posted by Mark on Monday, September 26th, 2005 under tech & IT
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All foes treacherous in our house have
so far reared their ugly heads in the laundry room. Last night Jessica went downstairs to put towels into the dryer, and I heard a blood curdling scream from the basement.
"What's the matter?"
"Mark, hurry! There's a spider in the dryer!!!"
Jessica has a phobia of sorts for spiders. There are no horrific stories from her childhood involving an eight-legged creature, but she immediately freezes when she sees one (after the screaming...). The woman can jump out of an air plane and tell an angry mob of drunk college guys that they can't go into a concert, but she achieves full catatonia when an arachnid crosses her path.
I went downstairs and found a fairly big spider in the dryer, and it bolted immediately for the shelter of one of the blades inside the bin. I could just see it, but I couldn't hit it with a rolled up newspaper or coax it out in plain view with a hanger. It was an expert hider. After a few times painfully cracking my elbox against the mouth of the dryer trying to hit it, I knew I'd have to use something else.
I didn't want to spray chemicals into the dryer but I did want to use it again someday, and so I inhumanely did the next thing I thought of: I turned on the dryer. I figured I'd get the spider a little dizzy and then swat it.
To make a long story short, dryers quickly kill spiders. I opened the door after a few minutes and he was curled up into a ball at the base of the dryer bin. I scooped him up onto a newspaper and tossed him outside.
I felt a twinge of guilt -- I don't want to become a torturer of any animal, even if it's an unwelcomed spider -- but we did win the battle and regain the use of our dryer.
Posted by Mark on Saturday, September 17th, 2005 under genera
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pet peeve \pet · p
ev\
n - Attempting to renew your license plate sticker online to save on paperwork and postage only to find that there is a $1.75 "convenience fee" attached.
syn backwards, inhibitive, behind the times.
ant progressive, innovative, cutting edge.
I have to say, Illinois'
cyberdriveillinois site was and is a great asset for various dealings with our Secretary of State, but I was disappointed to see that they are tacking on an extra fee to online license plate renewals. I don't understand this. It's great that they offer the online option, and what a wasted opportunity to encourage people to use the system and improve upon the red tape.
A good system requires development and maintenance costs, but it also eliminates a mountain of clerical work as a result. If you encourage more and more people to do things like this online (maybe with a $1.00 discount?), then you can reap a large ROI down the road on your development costs.
Taxes, concert tickets, and even movie tickets are the same. Come on already. Six to ten Web support people costs more than the same number of paper pushers, but if you get a good rate of adoption you might be able to reduce that number of paper pushers in half. Operating efficiencies are punishments to government bodies because they don't get as big a bucket in their budget the next year, but I would think this would be appealing to a business answering to investors.
Personally, I'll be filling out my card and attaching my 37-cent stamp, saving myself $1.38 and a trip to my bedroom to get my credit card number. It's a shame, really.
Posted by Mark on Saturday, September 17th, 2005 under cultur
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My site was hacked for the first time recently. Someone used my site as a launching pad to send spam to be exact.
I received some odd emails last week auto-generated from the site with bogus "from" and "to" values in the message headers, and they all contained bergkoch8@aol.com as a bcc recipient. The message bodies themselves were just a short string of gibberish.
Hmm...
I did some searching on that AOL email address and found that it is commonly used in spamming attempts. The spammer tries to hack your site's email form by adding extraneous email header values into the fields on the form, and then waits for an email to be delivered to that bcc address. If the email is delivered, the spammer can inspect the results to get information about your code and security, and adjust the bogus code accordingly. After it's tweaked enough the spammer can use your web form to send spam to any recipient he or she wants, and the owner of the web site is none the wiser.
Except I received the emails because I forward all undeliverable messages in my domain to an admin email account. It was my fault; I had an unplugged security hole in my contact form that was easily exploitable by any Mountain Dew guzzling fourteen year old without a social life. Time to do some patchwork with something other than my finger in the dam.
If this happens to you, the easiest line of defense is to replace any and all carriage returns in your form fields with empty strings. This breaks the email header format and the message cannot be delivered.
This document provides some details on how the attack works and how to prevent it.
Not that I'm offering an invitation to prove me wrong, but this should take care of this problem at least. Of course this sucks; I hope there weren't too many people that received spam messages originated from my site. On the flip side, this is a bit like a graduation.
Someone I don't know at least found the site. ;-)
Posted by Mark on Thursday, September 8th, 2005 under tech & IT
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I came across this on the QuickBits section of
simplebits.com: a cool new service called
gVisit. The short, non-techy version: this free service shows markers on a Google Map indicating from where people are viewing your Web site.
The longer, geeky version: they map your IP to the geographical location allocated for that address and use Google Map's API to plot the points on the map. All I need to do is add a single line of Javascript to the page passing along my ID, and voila! If you're on a layover in Gnome, Alaska and pop in for a gander, I'll gnow about it. If you're on the coast of the Mediterranean, we'll sea you. The basic service is free which shows the last 20 locations of users hitting your site, and they accept PayPal donations. If you add it to your site do send them a few bucks; this is a creative use of Google's API.
In the 24 hours that I've had this on the site I've had visits from four countries on two continents, only two being close to home.
I've added a permanent link below in my footer. You can also see the visitors to the site
here.
Posted by Mark on Saturday, September 3rd, 2005 under tech & IT
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Okay, I didn't really leave this time, but my Internet connection is finally back up in my house. No more living on bread and water (aka the ISU computer lab after class). My connection had been down for a solid two weeks, and down at least 50% of the time for a few weeks before that. The re-addiction ramp up may now ensue.
It turns out that the connections in the box in my yard were corroded, and the congestion has gotten higher than capacity for the hub in my neighborhood (good for the cable company, bad for the customers). One bonus: they're coming back on the 6th to upgrade the equipment in my neighborhood and boosting the bandwith available. Higher speeds for everyone!
Unanswered emails will soon be replied to. Unread RSS feeds will soon be examined. And, I'll sprinkle in some homework too, most likely. But... it's almost the weekend.
Posted by Mark on Thursday, September 1st, 2005 under tech & IT
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Don't get me wrong, I love
Ewan McGregor, but
why is he in everything these days? If he's not careful, he'll become the next "six degrees of" candidate. ;-)
Still no dependable Internet connection at home... I've been depending on the school lab, and tonight I'm finding every diversion possible to keep me from my homework (the plan is working).
Posted by Mark on Tuesday, August 30th, 2005 under movies
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Yesterday I ran in the
Chicago Triathlon with two of my college room mates, Jason and Jamie. It is an International Distance triathlon: 1.5K (0.93 mile) swim, 100K (24.8 miles) bike, and 10K (6.2 miles) run. It started out as a dare/personal challenge from Jason a year and a half ago: we promised each other that we'd compete as a team for at least three years, and our goal was to improve our time every year. So far, we're on pace. We named ourselves One Team to Rule Them All (yes, we're all fanboys), and while we'll likely never come out on top we actually finished in the top 25% last year and improved our time this year!
For those who don't want to bore themselves with the details, you can check out the
photos from the event.
Anyway, back to the race... The scene at the triathlon is very cool to say the least. There were nearly 8,000 participants in all shapes, sizes, and body fat percentages. Some of the pros were literally Olympic gold medalists, some were office weekend warriors, and others were grandparents showing up people half their age. I was definitely in the bottom quarter percentile in terms of physical condition and stamina.
It was a hot, hot day. It was only in the mid 80s with low humidity, but the sun was bright and when I was running it felt like it was ten degrees hotter. I always run before the sun comes up or after it goes down, and so starting at 11:30 am was quite a bit different.
Jaime dove in to start the
swim at 9:52. He got a little jammed up among all of the other swimmers at the start, but then his stroke kicked in and he did a great job. He was MVP in college multiple times and for good reason. I don't like wading in Lake Michigan for too long with the grime, garbage, and seaweed, but he plowed through it for a time of 31:53.
Jason tore off on the
bike and headed north up Lake Shore Drive with legs firing like pistons. He has been racing with
xXx Racing, a semi-pro biking team based in Chicago and has been kicking butt. He recently went up another competitive class and has some wins under his belt. Lance is retiring; America needs a new champion. ;-) Jason averaged 23 MPH for a time of 1:04:27 (which includes slow times in the beginning, end, and midpoint u-turn -- he cruised at almost 26 MPH for the duration once he broke free).
Then there was me
*. College swimmer, semi-pro cyclist, ... stocky computer programmer. Last year my goal was to not walk, and this year it was to improve my time by 5%. I accomplished both: I huffed and puffed my way down the
Lake Michigan path in about 1:01, four minutes faster than last year. I got passed by my share of people, but I did some passing also and I had a strong pace through the last two miles. I never competed in sports with a medium or large crowd, and it's amazing how much of a difference that can make. I was running on fumes near the end, and then a quarter mile before the finish I ran under Lakeshore Drive through a tunnel into Grant Park, all I could see was a cheering crowd between me and the finish line. My trudge sped up to a final sprint, and I stuck it out through the finish line. Jamie, Jason, Jessica, and Jason's wife Cathy were at the finish, and that was the best part of the race.
Here's to getting ready for next year, and improving once again!
* I am
not a runner by nature. At 5'9" 215 pounds this spring, I was not ideally built to run much farther than the end of my block. Last year when Jason congratulated me at the finish line he asked me what the farthest distance was I had ever run in my life. My answer (between wheezes): "6.2 miles plus the distance from the finish line to this exact spot." Since high school I hadn't gone farther than two miles, and those occasions were few and far between. Now three or four miles is my "short run."
I want to thank Jason for that. As of yesterday I've lost 15 pounds training for yesterday's race, and I've gotten hooked on running. I'm sticking with it this year instead of waiting until April to start training again for next year, and hopefully I'll be in prime condition for the race. My goal is 185 pounds on race day.
Posted by Mark on Monday, August 29th, 2005 under genera
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I bit the bullet and got braces this morning (not because I've been biting too many bullets). I wanted to get them growing up but we could not afford it, and both of my parents have had worsening problems with their teeth as they've gotten older. I wanted to prevent that if I could, and after paying off our cards we're in a position now where we can make the payments.
I was surprised how quickly the appointment went. After polishing, washing, and drying my teeth Dr. Petersen glued on the brackets and ran the wire in about twenty minutes. It took almost as long to fill out the paperwork for the payment plan and disclaimers.
Really, the procedure seemed to be nothing but an exercise in seeing how many objects the orthodontist and his two assistants could cram into my mouth at the same time. First there were two plastic pieces that looked like athletic mouth pieces, and they wrapped those around the sides of my mouth to keep my lips and cheeks away from my teeth. Then went in three hard gauze pads because those plastic guards weren't cutting the mustard. After that it was a combination of fingers, picks, mirrors, tweezers, and hardware, and all the while I was holding a tiny tube beside my tongue attached to a vacuum.
My teeth aren't hurting yet, but I definitely feel the tension there. At one point during the wire installation one of the assistants cranked pretty hard, and my right canine tooth pulled forward
hard. Hopefully that's not a taste of future appointments when they tighten the wires, but I didn't get that impression.
Seven hours down, two years to go. I don't think this will be a bad experience, and I know I'll be better off when it's done. But I don't think I'll ever say that braces (like youth) are typically wasted on the young...
P.S. Still no Internet. Classes started this week, and thank God for the ISU computer lab.
Posted by Mark on Wednesday, August 24th, 2005 under genera
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...we are experiencing technical difficulties.
My Internet service went kaput on Friday afternoon, and it's still not restored as of Monday afternoon. I'm getting some sort of connectivity to the ISP and my account is alive and well, and so we're all pretty confused. Hopefully soon it will be back up and running.
This taught me how dependent I am on the Net. My frustration over the weekend at not being able to read email or check the weather forecast was a little frightening. I'm sure it stems from the same primeval part of the brain that makes people scream, "Hurry uuuuuuup!" at the microwave like Sam Kinnison on a caffeine high.
I also have a few freelance items I was wrapping up, and this is the least fun aspect of this experience. I had some solid work time over the weekend and lost the opportunity to check some things off my list. A Web Guy with no Web does not a positive impresion make.
Posted by Mark on Monday, August 22nd, 2005 under tech & IT
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Have you ever used a quick search in Firefox? The most popular one is probably the "dict" quick search to find the definition of a word. To do that, just type "dict x" in the address bar, where "x" is the word you want to look up. By default, Firefox has others built in for google searches (google x) and stock quotes (symbol x).
Looking in my bookmarks manager I found these listed, and I wondered if I could build my own. I thought of three that I could use that Google has built into their search engine: books, the calculator, and local movie showtimes. I'm also often looking for the WHOIS ownership information for Web site domains (I'm nosy), and so I thought I could build in a shortcut for that also.
It's worked very easily and it's quite handy. I can just type "showtimes batman begins" and it gives me Google search results with the showtimes for the movie listed at the top:
To do this in Firefox:
- Click on Bookmarks - Manage Bookmarks
- Click on Create a New Bookmark
- Give it a memorable name in the Name field in case you want to go back to it later
- In the Location field, type in the URL needed with "%s" in place of your query variable (watch for the examples below)
- In the Keyword field, type in the word that you want to designate for that particular quick search (again, check out the examples below)
For the movie showtimes I used the following values:
- Name: Bloomington/Normal showtimes
- Location: http://www.google.com/search?q=%s
- Keyword: showtimes
In case you're interested, here are the keywords and locations I used for my other quick searches. Find your own uses, and do it to it!
- math http://www.google.com/search?q=%s (i.e. math 5+2)
- book http://www.google.com/search?q=%s (i.e. book ralph s mouse)
- whois http://www.whois.sc/%s (i.e. whois garmana.com)
Posted by Mark on Tuesday, August 16th, 2005 under tech & IT
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Jessica and I are thinking about painting the hallway bathroom and I just took a closer look at some of the names of the colors on the samples we brought home. One of them is "Moose Mousse." It instantly conjures up visions involving blenders. Does anyone else think that name is just
wrong?
I'm mentioned the neighbor's dogs before on this site. They're still barking 24/7, and now there are three of them. This morning I discovered that it drives the Rotweiller crazy when I sing verses from
Five for Fighting's "100 Years." I plan to use this power only for good, of course.
I'm 99 for a moment...
Posted by Mark on Tuesday, August 16th, 2005 under genera
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Many of us are familiar with
Moore's Law: the predication that computer speed and capacity roughly double every 12-18 months while the cost is cut in half for each benchmark. I remember a few years ago when chips seemed to jump through the roof; 1.8GHz suddenly became 3GHz and so on, and desktops were coming with 1GB of RAM, and the cost was hovering around $1500 for a solid system (sans gamers).
I remember coming back from Christmas 1994 freshman year of college, and Ryan across the hall had gotten a 100MHz Pentium as a gift from his parents. He had Doom on his machine and piped it into his surround sound sytsem, and it was the most amazing thing I had ever seen. Now of course, top shelf PDAs can crank at almost double that speed on a rechargeable battery.
Cleaning out some of my image folders on my desktop, I came across this little gem:
I don't remember where I got the ad, but it's a scan from a newspaper for a Tandy 5000 MC desktop from 1989. It boasts a 20 MHz processor with a whopping 2MB of RAM (expandable to 16MB!), VGA graphics, and... get ready... cache memory! And all for the bargain price of $8499. That's a little over $13,000 in today's money.
My, how times have changed. Of course, I'm sure today's toddlers will wonder how we ever got by on 3.5GHz machines and 1GB flash drives when they're heading off to college. I mean, how did we store and watch our class lecture holographic playbacks???
Posted by Mark on Monday, August 15th, 2005 under tech & IT
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Mile 1: The world is beautiful at 5:02 am. The air cool and crisp, and sound flows everywhere like it's filling up the extra room before the sun's rays take its place. My senses are tuned to crickets, birds, and semi trucks on the highway one mile away. It's still pitch black out save the street lights, and in my first mile I only two houses with a light burning in their windows. I see no one. I'm alone with the morning and it encourages me to get going. My legs and chest feel ready.
Mile 2: After the warm up lap I'm breathing heavily but my legs are still feeling strong. The birds are still keeping me company, but boredom starts to creep in. I'm still appreciating the quiet air and solitude of the road winding through the trees, but I can only watch the rabbits for so long. The Killers start to invade my head. Keep running.
I'm coming out of my cage, and I've been doing just fine...
Mile 3: The sky is just starting to turn from black to a deep, rich blue, the clouds and trees on the east side of my neighborhood still hiding the sun. I only notice the transformation briefly, however, because the sweat stinging my eyes won't stop flowing (now maybe
it's trying to get some good time in before the sun's rays hit). I come to my corner and contemplate stopping. I tell myself that it's been a good run, and a good start to the day. No. I need to keep going. If I make a habit of stopping after three miles I'll never be able to finish the 10K in two weeks.
Mile 4: Sweet, merciful crap! The hill at the half-mile mark sapped my energy the first three times, and this time it's kicking my ass. My observations of my neighborhood waking up with the sun are reduced to snapshots between wiping my eyes with my shirt and swearing at those stupid rabbits. And why are the birds so damned loud? They're probably mocking the clod lumbering under their trees like Igor chasing a local villager for parts.
Mile 5: Things have gone numb. Not numb in the sense of sitting with my legs crossed for too long, but I'm no longer feeling the pain of miles three and four. I've liquified my leg muscles into oblivion and I feel like I could keep going forever as long as I don't stop. Then I'd be feeling it. Nietzsche would be proud.
I just can't stop, it's killing me...
Mile 6: Still numb, but definitely looking forward to the finish line. I start to picture my corner dangling just in front of me like a carrot on the end of a pole over my head, and I can't wait to slow to a walk and take a cool down stroll up and down my block. I am actually starting to get into my groove, though. I think I could go another few miles at this pace. It's a slow pace, but it's steady. I start to have delusions of marathons. I pick up my pace telling myself I'll do it for the last half mile and it feels good, but that only lasts for a hundred yards. Someone smiles and says good morning and I gasp something almost intelligible. Thank God they didn't ask me my name, I have no idea what it is right now.
The finish line: Done! My pace slows in an instant and I walk up the slight hill that is my block. My feet seem to lose ten pounds each and they kick unnaturally in front of me as I tread forward. I wring out my shirt and put my hands up behind my head to open up my lungs. I come inside, gulp down 32 ounces of water in two minutes between heaving breaths, and stretch out with a feeling of accomplishment.
I think I can do it again tomorrow.
Destiny is calling me...
Posted by Mark on Monday, August 15th, 2005 under genera
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Worebeforeaphobia: The pit-in-the-stomach feeling that the shirt and pants you're wearing are the same ones that you wore on Tuesday.
And the icing on the cake; the office numbskull comes up from behind and greets you with, "Duuuuude! Isn't that what you wore a few days ago? I
know you wore those pants yesterday."
Posted by Mark on Friday, August 12th, 2005 under cultur
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Last night Jessica and I went to see a late showing of
The Island, and when we walked in there was no one in the theater and the screen was dark. Mind you, we came in ten minutes late to avoid the body spray and cell phone commercials. I've always wanted this to happen; we were the only ones in the theater!
I'm come close to this a few times but it has never happened. On a few occasions the moment takers were ten or fifteen minutes late, but we made it through the entire show last night. We propped our feet up. We talked when we felt like talking. Anything else we refrained from with a bit of discretion. What if an usher came in? ;-)
I should say also that I liked the movie quite a bit. It was somewhat reminiscent of
Logan's Run, but better than a remake would have been in my opinion. The dialogue was a little cheesy, but actually fit well with the main characters (they are, after all, clones with only three years' of life and the education of a junior high graduate). The previews show the basic premise and so I'm not giving much away: the main characters live in a controlled, enclosed environment thinking that they are survivors of a worldwide biochemical contamination. Finding out that they are in fact clones for the super rich waiting to be "harvested" when their "sponsors" get old or sick, they escape to the outside hoping to find their sponsors and expose the company to the outside world.
Michael Bay directed The Island and so it's a fast, fluffy action adventure with car chases, gunfights, and explosions. I also couldn't help but wonder if the anti-cloning undertones were timed with the cloning and stem cell debates in the media. Even with that, the drama is pretty light. There are some satisfying plot twists along the way though, and so if you're in the mood for a good action movie and a bowl of popcorn like we were, it's a fun summer flick.
Posted by Mark on Sunday, August 7th, 2005 under movies
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I will resume the rest of the story from the "humbling month of March, 2005" sometime soon, but I had to pull a Lucas and let you in on the ending before I go back to the beginning.
Lesson x + 1: If you ever find yourself saying 'I'm glad he's on our side' after a business partner's temper tantrum, get rid of the business partner.
My original partnership of four is now three, and we also got rid of the building that caused us all of that grief in the spring. I'm not sure which one is a bigger relief. The closing and our former partner's buyout happened in mid July, but we're just now settling an argument this weekend about documentation owed to both parties and the responsibilities of utility bills.
I'll call my former partner Mr. X. Mr. X is ambitious, intelligent, and extremely motivating. Unfortunately, he's also quick tempered, insecure, and power hungry. Some of those traits appeared to be an asset early on because he dealt with unscrupulous realtors and late rent payments very well, but then he also turned his temper on us. Everything had to be his way. If someone disagreed with his opinion and simply wanted to discuss it he started screaming and called the person a four year old. He even asked one of my partners to step outside (to top it off, we were in a large cafeteria).
After the troubles in March at the apartment building the other three of us wanted to put it on the market, and that made Mr. X very upset. He quit working on the building, started skipping our weekly meetings, and was defensive about everything. Everything. We document decisions, tenant rent statuses, etc. on an online forum, and from that point forward he argued with almost every post with long, flaming diatribes. He told us that we were ruining HIS company (capitalization his), and that he would not let us sell the building at a loss. Mind you, the only way we wanted to sell it for a loss was if we could take a small hit that we thought would be less than the money we would lose in the time it took to sell it at a break-even price. The building was costing us $800 - $1000 per month, and so that break-even price was rising each month on a building in a small town with 50% occupancy and a leaky roof.
In the end, Mr. X and a new partner bought the building from us, and we bought out Mr. X from his ownership in the company. That negotiation was nothing but personal insults and bullying also, and at one point he took his offer off the table and sat silently for a week. Then he didn't show up to the closing. He finally came in the afternoon and signed the paperwork, and one of my partners had to go back to the bank to authorize the release of his buy out check. Mr. X sent his wife to pick it up.
Two weeks later the electric bill from the building was debited from our checking account, and so I asked Mr. X to reimburse us. He hadn't called the power company in time for July's billing cycle. He refused because he had paid a water bill voluntarily before the closing, and so I was being "tasteless and greedy... and needed to appreciate that I had been given more than I deserved" in the purchase. After three days of emailing back and forth we dropped the issue so that we could get our tax records from him and end somewhat on an amiable note.
It was a rocky ending to a rocky relationship, and at least it's over.
Posted by Mark on Saturday, August 6th, 2005 under genera
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I achieved (self proclaimed) Office MacGyver status this morning.
The Pepsi machine on my floor at work is notorious for getting quarters stuck in the coin slot. You have to launch them into the coin slot at 100 mph at a slight upward angle or they will get stuck every time on a little shelf just inside and below the slot, and this morning I fell victim.
My first quarter got stuck, and I don't know what I was thinking because I tried inserting the second one a little faster. It must have been my lack of caffeineted blood. Now I had two stuck. My desk key is thin enough to fit into the slot, and so I manuvered the second quarter around until it slid down into the machine. Half way there! The second quarter was a little more tricky. I couldn't get it with my key, and a keychain card wasn't reaching it either. The cola gods were against me.
I went to the supply cabinet and got a paper clip, stretched it out, and put a slight bend about half an inch from the end. I put that in the coin slot and turned it like a key, catching the quarter and scooting it backwards. That quarter dropped too, and then I was home free.
Like I've said before, the little things seem to make or break a day. Never mind the odd looks from people sitting in the break area outside; at least I didn't escalate up to rocking the machine and screaming obscenities.
Posted by Mark on Wednesday, August 3rd, 2005 under tech & IT
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I had a dentist appointment today, and one of my rituals in the waiting room is reading "Laughter, the Best Medicine" in Reader's Digest (yes, I admit it). One of the articles was Wired-esque and described the fourteen most important trends in world culture.
They described one particular trend as the "Me Media;" basically the personalization and customization of multimedia thanks to Tivo, MP3 players, blogs, news Web sites, and the like. The article mentioned
blinkx.com, a site that scans the blogosphere's podcasts, pumps them through voice recognition software, and indexes the text much like Google does with the rest of the 'Net's content. For those of you unfamiliar with podcasting sites, they are basically blogs like this one, but the entries are audio MP3 files instead of text. They range from newscasts to music to buddies telling stories about their weekends.
Blinkx is in beta, but it's a pretty nice service. You can choose to search TV and media, podcasts, or standard text Web pages. I searched on a handful of topics, including my name and "Jon Stewart crossfire." Needless to say, I found many more hits on the latter.
Posted by Mark on Monday, July 25th, 2005 under tech & IT
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To do something a little lighter for summertime, my company's Intranet site posted a list of books that a few of our executives were currently reading, and invited people to submit the titles
they are reading this summer. The page suggested that we read "something to take you far away... through the eyes of the author to a place you have never been."
I took that to mean fiction, or non-fiction in ways of history or hobbies. I submitted the names of the novels I'm reading this summer, and a book I'm reading about the decline of the US Dollar.
To make a long story short, I didn't make the list when they published it on the site. Every single title on the list is a management or self help book. Every one. There's nothing on there for personal enjoyment or passing the time when you're sitting in the park or by the pool. Why are we afraid to admit at work that we're reading the new James Patterson or Koontz books, or maybe even something steamy with Fabio on the cover (shame!). We're all human, and hopefully we're all reading
something for ourselves in our personal time.
Apparently everyone here is reading "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective One-Minute Managers that Stole Dale Carnegie's Cheese."
I'm setting a Stephen King novel at my desk with a Post-It Note on it letting anyone know that they can borrow it.
Posted by Mark on Monday, July 25th, 2005 under cultur
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For the two of you still checking this site, I'm not taking time off, dead, or giving up. A combination of things have just put me on an unplanned, almost unrealized hiatus of sorts.
With summer school over I rediscovered the outdoors, worked a deal to dump the apartment building from hell, and took a week's vacation in Wisconsin. I have been storing up some ideas and working on a redesign in the cracks in between, but I haven't had much time to sit down and write.
I'll be back in the saddle again soon, dear readers (both of you).
Posted by Mark on Monday, July 25th, 2005 under genera
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DJ: "Hey man, you're on the air. What do you want to hear?"
Mr. Smooth: "I want to request 'Knockin da Boots.' You still have that song?"
DJ (laughing): "I think I can dig that out for you. That's a blast from the past."
Mr. Smooth: "I gotta request something like that for my lady. Today's our five year anniversary and I want to dedicate something extra special."
We have just located the last real romantic. He is soooooo getting points for that one.
Posted by Mark on Friday, July 8th, 2005 under genera
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I just got this email from my good friend Rich. This didn't happen to me, but it's still postworthy here. I can only imagine him doing this at 5:30 in the morning:
Well, I fished a raccoon out of my pool this morning. It was just swimming around having a good time. He was pretty tired when I set him down. He just closed his eyes and passed out right in my yard for awhile... he must have been swimming in there for a pretty long time. Good to know somebody is getting use out of our pool.
Posted by Mark on Wednesday, July 6th, 2005 under genera
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It was beautiful this morning. It's been in the high eighties and nineties for the last couple weeks, and this morning it was in the high sixties when I got up with just a little bit of a breeze. It was the perfect morning for a run! I'm doing a 10K on the running leg of the Chicago Triathlon again at the end of August with Jason and Jamie, two room mates from college, and so I need to get on my horse.
What started out as a medium paced, four or five mile run around the neighborhood ended up as three miles with a short walk in the middle. This was not going according to plan. Yesterday I had to stop a few hundred yards into it because my left calf cramped up very painfully, and it was starting to twinge again. The burning in my out-of-shape lungs also wasn't helping my level of motivation. ;-)
I finished three miles when I came to my corner again, and so I decided to call it a day. I was careful to stretch out well afterwards and I've spent the handful of hours since reading and doing various activities around the house. I had been sitting for about forty five minutes straight and got up to get a glass of water. Yeeeeouch! My calves and my quads are tighter than a brand new Pearl snare drum. Stiffness a few hours afterwards are never a good sign for the next morning. When Jessica gets home I'll hit her up for a good walk around the neighborhood, or I'm going to be in trouble tomorrow.
Posted by Mark on Saturday, July 2nd, 2005 under genera
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Okay, I'm not completely done with school, but I am finally done with my summer class. What a relief!
My professor was a nutcase. Picture 19 students; all cooped up for 3 nights a week during their summers for six weeks. It's the last night of class. We get to class, and the professor announces that he's going to go over one of the questions from our midterm. We don't care; we just want to take the final and get the hell out of there! He goes over that question for thirty minutes, and then we take our final.
Are we done? Nope. We take a ten minute break, and come back because we have to give fifteen minute presentations on our final projects (four groups, so that means an hour). When we come back from break do we start into our presentations? Nope. The professor proceeds to review EIGHT recent research papers in the field of IT security that he likes, opening each of them and going through the abstract and mathematics with us. He's married, and so he obviously hates his wife.
We finally start our presentations ten minutes before we're supposed to be done with class. Remember; it's our last night of summer school. Each group rushes through their presentation, but they're still about ten minutes apiece, and he has questions and comments about each one. After the last presentation he explains the classes that he'll be teaching next school year, and he finally let's us go. It's 55 minutes after we're supposed to be out of class.
I came home and had two Coronas before we finished cooking dinner. Summer officially started when I cracked open the first one.
Viva summer!
Posted by Mark on Thursday, June 30th, 2005 under genera
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Jessica, her brother, and I went to
Wired Magazine's NextFest 2005 yesterday in Chicago. It was a blast! It is an innovative technology exhibit, and included everything from flying cars and robots to protype medical imaging systems and virtual reality video games.
I was impressed by a lot of the inventions and ideas. Some of the highlights for me were the Moller flying car and some GM hydrogen fuel cell concept cars, a one-person boat/submarine shaped like a dolphin, water soluable golf balls, an off-road Segway, and models of military spy probes.
Many of the exhibits showed creative ideas for gaming and recreation interfaces. There was a very cool video game "arena" that tracked your movements and literally put you into the game on two giant screens in front and behind you. The character looked exactly like the participants, down to their outfits. I saw them demonstrating two different games: a martial arts game that tracked your kicks and punches, and another sword-fighing game where the player held foam water wiggles as the stand ins for the swords. They also had a virtual air hockey table where the puck was projected onto a white cloth and you used your hands to hit it, a treadmill connected to Halo with handle bars and fire buttons at the controls for steering and gameplay, and a virtual reality Pac Man game.
We came very close to riding a Segway (I was really looking forward to this). They were giving lessons and one- to two-minute rides when we got there, and then we left to see
Batman Begins on IMAX (which was... awesome). When we came back, something had happend with one of the riders and the folks at the Navy Pier exhibition hall had asked them to stop allowing rides to the public. Bummer.
The University of Memphis had an artificial intelligence project there featuring a robot made to look and converse like
Philip K Dick. He did look much like Dick, and the artificial skin they used was very lifelike. He responds to questions and can carry on somewhat of a conversation. People asked him how many children he had and the sum of 2 plus 3, and he got these correct. I asked him if he had seen a pre screening of the upcoming movie based on his book,
A Scanner Darkly, and he just looked at me puzzled, shaking his head and raising an eyebrow a bit. That aside, the project is ongoing and I was very impressed. I'm taking an AI class in the fall, and I wonder if we will discuss this project at all.
I took my camera, but both sets of batteries bombed out on me during the day. I only have limited photos and a couple videos. I got some good shots, but not of everything I've mentioned here. This also introduces the lame beta version of my photo gallery -- more to come on that. My current layout isn't wide enough to accomodate the thumbs, and if you're using Internet Explorer you'll have to scroll dowwwwwn to see them, but bear with me. I have some changes in store for the site soon that will fix all of that.
The first video is blurry because I was at a distance, but it shows two automotive robot arms dueling it out as DJs. The "hands" of the robots were expandable cylindars that picked up records and spun them benath turntable needles in front of them. You can sample their mad beats. The second is of a very cool "moving floor" intended for VR gaming. The player can actually walk forward in a straight line and robotic panels move beneath the feet to create the illusion of walking across a floor.
For now, enjoy some
videos and photos!
Posted by Mark on Sunday, June 26th, 2005 under tech & IT
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I'm off work today, and my main goals are finishing my term paper and programming assignment for class, and painting the bathroom and reinstalling the toilet.
Why is it that all I want to do is write short stories and play Tetris on my recently-revived NES?
Retirement or independent wealth are welcome. I'll be bored with neither.
Posted by Mark on Friday, June 24th, 2005 under writin
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I saw
Batman Begins on Thursday last week, and I've been meaning to write
something about it (summer school midterm over, and so now it's time to write a bit).
I really can't say enough about the adaptation of this film. If I ever wore a hat, it would be off to
Christopher Nolan, and really all of the actors in the film. Up until now I have enjoyed the Spiderman franchise the best of the recent superhero craze in Hollywood, but Nolan and Warner Brothers nailed this one on the head. I may be biased since Batman is my favorite comic book character, but the storyline was superb. The Spiderman movies have dealt with Peter Parker's personal torments in his choices regarding responsibilities and his personal life, but this movie goes even deeper. Bruce Wayne's choice to become Batman seemed so much more than just avenging the murder of his parents. As in the comics, it became his agonizing solution to carrying on his family's true legacy of saving Gotham City one step at a time. Leaving and finding himself also became a necessity when Bruce stepped over the line with the mob.
Scarecrow and Ra's Al Ghul were also good choices for the villains in this movie. Neither should be campy or too over the top (I'm glad they didn't get carried away with special effects regarding the Scarecrow or his chemicals' effects). Ra's' deep respect for Bruce Wayne did not come out in this film like it does in the comics -- they instead portrayed him as a man feeling betrayed by a brilliant pupil -- but both of them respected the mission they were each on to save society. Bruce's education and training in the Far East were also spot on with the Batman mythos. I liked the imaginative ways the makers of the film carried that forward into Batman's costume with the sword guantlets, black color, and the bat symbolism itself. It made Bruce's progression to donning the suit that much more plausible.
I also thank Nolan and crew for the respect they showed to the Batman character. Creator Bob Kane didn't see Batman as a campy, squeaky clean superhero as we've often seen him. He is a persistent, methodical detective that uses criminals' fear to his advantage. He depends on his knowledge, strength, and technology instead of super powers. He is also a living paradox; he may not believe that he can ever remove the criminal element from Gotham City, but he also cannot stop until he does. Not wanting to ruin the sequel possibility that they put on the table at the end of this movie, I for one am looking forward to Warner Brothers letting him continue on in his quest given this new foundation.
Posted by Mark on Tuesday, June 21st, 2005 under movies
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Last week Jessica and I took her brother and a friend to a water park for the afternoon, and on the way there Will Smith's recent single "Switch" came on the radio.
Me: "I wonder if Will Smith's new CD is any good? They always push his poppy stuff, but the guy can rap. I loved his old stuff when he first came out. There's a definite place for stuff that is light hearted and just
fun."
Jessica's brother: "What do you mean Will Smith has a '
new' CD? I thought he just did that Men in Black video to help sell DVDs. Isn't he an actor???"
Posted by Mark on Sunday, June 19th, 2005 under cultur
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I forwarded on a request for new functionality on an application we're building at work, and needed to find out the number of hours it would take and whether the team could include it by our due date. The lead developer only responded with:
We will try to complete her request, Mark. (the underline is his)
I responded with:
Do. Or do not. There is no try.
I figured that's a safe enough response in the confines of the IT world not too be taken too seriously. And Yoda would be proud.
Posted by Mark on Wednesday, June 15th, 2005 under cultur
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They recently hung a plaque in the cafeteria at work that shows IT patents owned by the company I work for, and the names of the primary people responsible for the idea and implementing it. I know this could spark the debate on whether or not it's fair that a company owns the patent and the resulting income, but that's a different post entirely. I think this is pretty cool gesture (and no, my name's not up there).
It did spark some questions for me, though. With all of the cries for and activities surrounding patent reform right now, will someone patent the new review process and laws? Can the patent office patent something? In the spirit of domain name squatting during the dot com boom (and the recent
papal election), I can easily envision people filing for patents on all manners of "a fair evaluation process for determining original concepts and resulting intellectual property ownership," and crossing their fingers that the patent office picks one of their systems. Of course they would never grant a patent like this, but I would be interested to see if anyone has tried.
Even if this did happen, I'd have to wish the person luck. It can take six weeks to get a passport or a tax return from the federal government. Try collecting royalty fees.
Posted by Mark on Wednesday, June 15th, 2005 under cultur
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One of my team mates at work has exceptionally bad luck when it comes to accidents. In the eighteen months I've known him, he's had two fender benders, flipped a four wheeler, had back surgery twice, and missed work after falling on the ice outside his house. I only laugh at his latest story because he does. The results look horribly painful.
Waking up on Sunday morning, Jason looked out the window and saw his dog staring in at him, tail wagging. Obviously confused upon just waking up he had to rub his eyes and look again. Yep, his dog was on the roof watching him from outside the window.
That window's screen doesn't open and so Jason went into the bathroom and out on to the roof. That's how the dog got out; the bathroom is built in a dormer and the window sits above a ledge on the roof. Jason chased the dog around on the roof for about five minutes and couldn't catch him or get him to go back inside the window. To the dog it was simply play time. Remember, too, that Jason is running around on the roof wearing nothing but boxer shorts.
Finally Jason came close to his dog near the peak of the roof, and he dove at him grabbing on to his collar. He landed awkwardly and bounced across the peak, heading straight down the roof head first (dog still in tow). He sped up and couldn't slow himself down until he hit the overhang above the porch where the pitch levelled out. He finally stopped a foot or two from the edge. Shaken, he pulled his dog through the bathroom window and made doubly sure it was locked shut.
He has scrapes all up one arm, his legs, stomach, and chest. He didn't go to the emergency room, but he may have needed to. He was still in a lot of pain yesterday, feeling like his entire front side had a fresh rug burn.
He's lucky he didn't go off the edge of the roof. At the time, he said his only worry was that no one saw him belly flopping down his roof like a slip and slide in his underwear on a Sunday morning...
Posted by Mark on Tuesday, June 14th, 2005 under genera
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Through junior high and high school I did my best to sketch my favorite comic book covers, and something made me think of them two weeks ago. I scanned my two best and spent fifteen minutes here and there coloring this illustration of Erik Larsen's
Savage Dragon:
You can also check out the
original sketch. Coloring this took much longer than drawing it (if I can remember back to 1993). It was a lot of fun, though, and I'm going to get to work soon on my Spider Man sketch. I created the shading above with the charcoal effect in PhotoImpact (po man's PhotoShop). Originally I used a
standard gradient fill and decided to experiment at the last minute. I like the results with the charcoal; it's much bolder. I also think that the
grayscale version kicks ass.
Posted by Mark on Friday, June 10th, 2005 under genera
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Unknown to me at the time, two years ago as I was walking out of my office building past the Security area, a freak accident occurred that would change my life forever. Wackenhut was testing a new remote detection device that could read the data on our ID badges from 100 yards, and a timely power surge sent a blast of energy through the device, directing gamma rays through the wall and bathing me with radioactive material. At the same time, a strategic planning group was meeting on the other side of the wall from me. For a brief instant, the radiation field connected me and the events of the meeting as if we were one being.
Ordinarily the radiation would have dissipated from my system leaving no ill effects, but the unusual nature of the symbiotic connection left a remnant in my molecular structure that would manifest into something far greater than the sum of its parts. Over the course of the next two years, my genetic makeup mutated in such a way that I was seemingly drawn to meetings and planning sessions like a magnet. No matter the events happening in the world around me, urgent meeting invitations popped into my inbox demanding attention and confirmation of attendance. Evil issues and project risks attempted to thwart my desk time utopia, but my powers of discussing agenda items and completing action items allowed me to continue my days unabated.
My arch nemesis, All Hands Meeting, quickly gained support when he learned of my newfound powers and launched an all-out attack. Luckily I fended him off with multiple double bookings, and my power of Prioritization allowed me to send him back to the bowels of his underground lair, Castle Planningtude. Today I commandeer my workload as best I can from my humble cubicle, summoning all the strength available to me to put All Hands Meeting back in his place whenever he rears his ugly head. Until he is stopped for good, I will follow down my path seeking a meeting-free existence.
Posted by Mark on Thursday, June 9th, 2005 under cultur
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Summer school is kicking my arse. After tomorrow we're half way through the six-week course, and it's a relief. Six weeks is not a long time and I would have felt silly complaining before this, but it's much more mentally draining than I thought. Monday through Wednesday I get up at 6:00, get ready and work until 5:00, and then sit in class until 8:00. Get home at 8:30, help fix dinner, and by then it's 9:00. That gives me a little time to hang out with Jessica and then hit the books as needed, and then it's to bed to recharge and start over again.
The course is on
cryptography, and it has been very interesting so far. I'm knee deep in 3DES, Blowfish, and AES ciphers (and coding them in Java for our assignments!). Alas, I'm no
Neal Stephenson, and so my professor's scatterbrained lectures do not make for an easy time learning. I haven't had to think like this in about eight years, which is great for me in itself, but maddening when we cram what's basically a 600-page theoretical math book into six weeks.
The good news: only 10110100 XOR 10111101 classes to go! ;-)
Posted by Mark on Tuesday, June 7th, 2005 under genera
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This holiday weekend I started running coaxial and CAT5 cables through the basement so that I can wire everything together centrally in one room and then run network cables out to the bedrooms. I hung a shelf up in a little cubby hole in (what will become) my test server room/networking "closet" and will put my cable modem and router there to get it all up out of the way.
The hard part of this is running the incoming and outgoing cables through one spot in the wall. I've had to cut out sections of drywall and drill through studs, wind over ductwork, etc. Luckily the basement has drop tile ceilings. This makes running the cables much easier and neater.
I had to go to Lowe's for face plate covers and wire strippers, and as I was heading down the electrical supply aisle I glanced up at the man coming towards me pushing his cart full of cable and electrical outlets. I did a double take; it was the CEO of my company. Not that it was odd to me that he was a Lowe's, but it was very odd to recognize someone that I've heard so much about but never met personally. Also odd was that he was just a "normal guy" in a t-shirt and jeans, probably sent by his wife, too, to finally finish that project he'd been talking about since last summer.
It was kind of like going to see the Chicago Bulls play when I was in college. I got to sit in the second row on the floor (that's a story of its own), and so I was 10-15 feet away from the players sometimes. I'd think to myself,
man, Michael Jordan really looks just like Michael Jordan! It was surreal and silly at the same time.
He saw my reaction and just patiently and politely directed his attention to the light switches on the shelves beside him. I'm sure this happens to him all the time, and he's thoroughly sick of it. I would be. As I got up to him he glanced towards me out of the corner of his eye, probably curious if he did in fact know me, and we made eye contact.
"Good morning," I said, not wanting to be too overly creepy or gawky.
"Hello," he answered warmly, with a bit of a smile. Neither of us hesitated in our gait, and I continued on. I wanted to give him a little peace before he turned the corner into the next aisle where he'd likely run into someone else who knows him from afar.
Posted by Mark on Monday, May 30th, 2005 under cultur
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Tonight soon after I got home from work the sky got my attention outside the window, and so I went outside to check out the weather. Clouds were rolling in by the dozen. They were dark and bulging with rain, and golden halos ebbed out from their edges from the half-hidden sun. It looked like we were in for a thunderstorm, and it was beautiful.
All of a sudden it sounded like a hundred dogs started barking from all directions. Big dogs, little dogs, little dogs that thought they were big dogs. The wind had been blowing steadily all day and it seemed suddenly calm.
Uh oh, I thought.
Are we in for a bad storm, or even a tornado?
I yelled to Jessica and she came outside, and the dogs were getting louder and more plentiful. It sounded like every house in the neighborhood had a dog, and they were all going berzerk. My neighbor across the street came sprinting out of her house, jumped in her car, and took off in a rush without waving back. What was wrong???
I turned to come inside and turn on the radio, pretty certain that I was going to hear a tornado warning or something along those lines. Maybe 10% of the population had just vanished into thin air without me.
But no. Just as I was stepping into the doorway I saw what all the fuss was about. Two high school girls came into view down the street, each walking four or five dogs each. They were barking and playing with each other like crazy, and probably riling up the other dogs in the neighborhood as they came near; the barking echoing off the houses.
Laughing, I looked up at the sky again. The clouds were a little thinner and lighter, and the breeze came back. Time to make some tacos over reruns of Seinfeld.
Posted by Mark on Friday, May 27th, 2005 under genera
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As if I don't feel self concious enough at the gym, I had to crank up the lumens on the agoric spotlight that I'm sure floats over myself in all public places. I went to the bathroom as soon as I got there, and as I walked out I looked down and noticed that the entire front of my shorts looked sopping wet. What the hell happened?
I walked back to the bathroom and checked out the sinks. They were just below waist height, and the counter top in front of each of them was pooled with water. I must have leaned forward against the counter when I was washing my hands. Greaaaaaat.
I decided it was time for a long warm up. I picked a parabolic stepper in the back corner, as far from any other gym goers as possible.
Posted by Mark on Sunday, May 22nd, 2005 under genera
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I saw
Episode III: Revenge of the Sith yesterday. Overall I thought it was a great film, though the second half was admittedly disturbing.
All of the usual elements were there that make great Star Wars films: amazing visual landscapes and effects, the grandios story arcs, loveable hateable characters, light saber duels, and R2-D2's toddler-like beeping and chirping. I have to say, the light saber fights in this episode were outstanding. Not to build too much hype for those who haven't seen it, but they were actually how I pictured them in my mind as a kid watching episodes IV-VI. Yoda battling against the Emporer in the Senate chamber was very cool, and General Grievous's four armed-attack was dizzyingly fast.
Yoda was another strong force as he was in Episode II (No pun intended. Okay... little bit). He was my favorite character as a kid (proven by my lunchbox and thermos), and is all over again. His highlight for me was the scene in which he is coming from the destroyed Jedi temple into Palpatine's office, and Yoda is
pissed. He marches in and wastes no time; he waves his hand and the Imperial Guards crash into the wall behind them and crumple to the floor. He confronts Palpatine, who mocks Yoda for being no match to his power, and then the two scuffle. Palpatine tries to flee and Yoda jumps between him and the door, seething in only the way he can, "If as powerful as you say are you, then why to leave are you trying?" At that point I swelled with reverence and hope, thinking that the Jedi may have a chance. Of course, they don't.
I thought I was ready for the slaughering of the Jedi, but I really wasn't. That portion of the movie actually made me physically uncomfortable. It's very well done, and with that comes some truly saddening moments. I'm trying for zero spoilers here (ignore that last paragraph), and so I'll just say that some specific killings, particularly at the temple, are very uneasy to watch. By that time Vader is consumed with his new campaign. I wanted to come home and watch episodes IV-VI just to be reassured that things swing back into balance in the end.
I loved the film, and so I don't want to spend too much time with my last observation or sound like a whiny fanboy, but large chunks of the dialogue are awful. Almost every exchange between Anakin and Padme sounds forced, and cornier than a high school film project. Her love and devotion for him doesn't make a lot of sense to me. In the first two episodes she is a moral rock with the highest regard for her duty for democracy. In this episode she's reduced herself to being totally blinded by her love for him, and it doesn't seem substantiated by anything other than by physical attraction. Forget the Axe body spray, get yourself some midichlorians. Many of the characters also used some variant of "search your feelings, you know it to be true," throughout the entire movie. That's nit picky I know, but Vader's line to Luke later seems a bit trite after hearing it so many times.
All said, whether the elements were good, bad, or the other, they were all distinctly Star Wars. For that, I applaud George Lucas. This closes the gap between the old and new (new and old?) stories quite well. He has told the grandest of stories succinctly, consistently, and from what I see and read, exactly the way he wanted to.
That is great filmmaking.
Posted by Mark on Sunday, May 22nd, 2005 under movies
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One of our tenants has not paid her own rent for four months, the money is always "almost there," and she has trashed the place. We have needed to evict her already, but her boyfriend always came through two weeks or so after the due date (rent and late fees are good, if you're able to float the mortgage until then). They broke up. On Monday she told us that she would find another place and would be moving out "in a couple days." One of my partners went over yesterday to check out the place and start cleaning, and her things were untouched.
Doug: "On Tuesday you said you would be out 'in a couple days,' but it doesn't look like anything has been moved. When can we tell our new tenant that the place is available."
Tenant: "What do you mean?"
Doug: "On Tuesday you swore up and down that you'd be out in a couple days."
Tenant: "Right."
Doug: "It's been a couple days, and you haven't started moving out."
Tenant: "I know I'm behind on rent, but I'll keep my word on moving out. I'll be done by the end of the weekend."
Doug: "Okay, but I wish you would have told us that. It would have saved me a trip, and we'll need to let the new tenant know. Hopefully he'll be able to wait."
Tenant: "I did tell you on Tuesday, like you said."
Doug: "But... it's been a couple days."
Tenant: "What?!? I didn't know 'a couple' meant two."
And this is one of our better tenants.
Posted by Mark on Friday, May 20th, 2005 under genera
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I was supposed to be seeing
Episode III tonight at midnight, but it didn't work out. A co-worker pre-ordered two tickets with his wife, and unfortunately she had to go on bed rest last week due to some complications with her pregnancy. He offered me hers, and since I'm planning to see it Saturday anyway (and the whole work thing) I told him I'd see what else I had going on this week.
Stupid move. He's been out all of this week, and so I haven't had a chance to get back to him (he is unlisted). I hope everything is okay with his wife! I mean no ill wishes for them of course, but I was starting to look forward to seeing the movie.
The moral of the story:
Always "yes" to a free movie ticket, one should say.
Posted by Mark on Wednesday, May 18th, 2005 under movies
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Jessica and I were driving out to her parents' house earlier this evening to house sit for her folks (they are in Wyoming this week while her dad is going to a saddle-making workshop). About halfway there we got behind a beat-up Ford pickup that was swerving all over the road, and it was going 30 MPH in a 55.
Jessica: "Do you think he's drunk? It's only 8:00."
Me: "For sure. He's all over the place. But why is he going so slow?"
Jessica: "I think he's waving us on to pass him."
Me: "Um, no... He's definitely flipping you off."
Posted by Mark on Monday, May 16th, 2005 under genera
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One of my biggest pet peeves is bad grammar, and lately I've really been annoying the hell out of myself over the grammar mistakes that I make.
First, I use too many commas. Part of the problem, I think, is that most people don't use enough commas, and so I feel like I should be dilligent about using them correctly. This tends to backfire, though. If the general population doesn't think that a comma belongs in a specific spot, then my writing suddently looks "wrong" and herky jerky to read through ("herky jerky" is a technical writing term, starting now).
I also use semicolons and the double hyphen too often -- especially in emails. This has to be annoying to people when they read my messages. I actually learned the most about grammar from my typing teach in high school. She counted our grammatical errors against us just as she did the miskeys, and she drilled grammar rules into our heads along with the typing drills. She outlawed semicolons and double hyphens completely in her classroom. According to her, we should always simply replace them with periods and break out the phrases into independent sentences. If they didn't stand on their own as a complete sentents, then "we didn't have a complete thought."
I work on reducing these three marks to only use them where I need to, and really try to make the flow of my writing smooth and conversational. Grammar is the foundation in doing that. A big bulk of my editing is removing these overused puncuation marks (while still keeping commas where they belong!).
Another trick that my third grade teacher Mrs. Fuoss taught me was to read everything aloud, or at the very least slow down and concentrate on "hearing it" when reading it to myself. This works wonders, and is especially a great technique if you're writing something that will be read out loud by you or someone else.
I applaud you also, if you've reached this far and haven't clicked to a more interesting destination. Reading a discussion on grammar rules is probably up there with instruction manuals and the tax code. All three, though, are chock full of things that can only help you if you use them the right way.
Posted by Mark on Sunday, May 15th, 2005 under writin
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My workouts have been stale at best, and so I swallowed my pride and tried out one of Jessica's cardio workout tapes to mix it up. The poison I picked:
Billy's Boot Camp (the same Billy Blanks that brought us Tae Bo).
The workout itself was pretty good; typical of any cardio workout. The thing that struck me was the expressions on the video participants' faces. I'm sure their contracts state that they have to be smiling, enthusiastic, and otherwise appearing to be having the time of their lives. This would not be easy when you're worn out from kicking, jumping, and feeling the sweat roll down the crack of your ass on a video set.
Everone was following the rules except for one girl. She seemed to have a tortured, concerned look on her face. Concerned for herself, the people around her with maniacal grins on their faces, or the would-be viewers I cannot say, but she definitely wanted to be somewhere else.
This is totally understandable. I've been in some of these classes at the gym, and even though you're getting a good workout you start thinking about sitting in front of your TV or taking a nap. If anything she was the only empathetic one on the screen, and all of the out of shape wind suckers at home (like me) could identify with her, encouraging us to go on.
The irony of the whole thing is that you've paid money to this person to put you through this, but by the end you're hating him with every sore muscle. I couldn't go through the entire workout with a smile on my face, especially since I would probably get horribly out of step and the director would make us go through the routine a couple dozen times. A 29 year-old guy keeling over from a heart attack would not help sell videos.
Posted by Mark on Sunday, May 15th, 2005 under cultur
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Last night I went to The
2005 Bloomington Normal Film Fest at my local art theater, a festival of short films sponsored by a local group promoting educational and independent filmmaking. They've had events for K-12 students in the past, and this year for the first time they added a second night for an open independent category.
There was a huge variety of pieces, about twenty in all, and they ranged anywhere from two to fifteen minutes. Some were good, some were bad, and some were very bad. For every miscut transition and audio mistake there were two examples of cleverness and imagination. A group from
Bradley University put together a tightly-edited action flick with car chases and a shootout in the forest; it was well done. A professor from Bradley is apparently very good at HD video cinematography and special effects. He helped perfect the multicam "anime sweep" first used in
The Matrix, and he spoke at the beginning of the festival showing a little bit of a behind-the-scenes slideshow of the F/X work he did for a rap video by The Game and 50 Cent.
The most memorable piece for me was "Drag Racing" by Paul Brooks. It was a hilarious parody of a racing broadcast. Instead of cars of course, the racers were six college students in drag. There were only two rules: 1) You must be in your complete drag outfit during all forward progress, and 2) to win you must cross the finish line with the sexually confused Ken doll (i.e. a Ken doll in drag complete with pony tail wig and smeared lipstick). Everything else goes. The "ladies" kicked, wrestled, punched, and somersaulted their way to the finish line, and there was even a brutal, slow-motion clothesline for a surprise finish. All the while, two broadcasters gave a play by play. One of the announcers had a bottle of beer in the opening scene, and each time the camera broke to the broadcasting booth there were one or two more. By the end he was sloppy drunk, and beer bottles, plastic shot glasses, and lemons littered the counter. It was truly a redneck racing extravaganza to be remembered.
For those of you not close by, I hope to be posting a short film in the fall that I hope to be good enough to submit. I have a whole year; maybe I could submit two! For those of you living close by: be warned. I may be hitting you up to be an actor or a boom mic grip.
Posted by Mark on Thursday, May 12th, 2005 under movies
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We forgot some things earlier this week when we got groceries. So... when we went to Menard's for replacement parts for our toilet today we ran next door to Sam's to get the missing items.
We walked up to the register with beer, toilet paper, and eggs. Nothing else. As I put everything on the conveyer belt, I realized how that must have looked.
The cashier didn't bat an eyelash, but the college-aged guy at the door that reviews your receipt before you leave just chuckled a little. "Well, it looks like you have quite a Saturday night planned. If anyone asks me tomorrow, I won't tell."
"We'll be sure not to hit your place," I assured him.
Posted by Mark on Sunday, May 8th, 2005 under genera
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Why is it that on the morning of a dentist appointment, I dilligently floss, brush my teeth for a solid three minutes, and then rinse with mouthwash?
This is the oral hygiene equivalent of eating fast food all winter long and laying on the couch, and then running a few miles and dieting for a week before a physical. I'm sure the dentist can tell, but I've convinced myself that I can go in and proudly exlaim that I am a regular flosser. I typically floss every few weeks or so... okay, probably less. I haven't had a cavity in over twenty years, though, and so my brushing regiment is working.
It also amazed me how much closer attention I paid to shaving this morning. I wouldn't want a person staring into my mouth to think that I don't know how handle a disposable safety razor.
Update: No cavities! The hygienist did hammer me on my lack of flossing, though. The quote was, "At your age, you will start to be able to tell a big difference between appointments if you don't floss regularly." I'm 29... when did my age start to become a negative factor??? That was soon followed by this conversation:
Hygienist: Do you know how long it's been since your last x-ray and cleaning?
Me: Unfortunately, probably two years. I think I got my teeth cleaned right before my wedding.
Hygienist: Hmm, I thought it was longer than that. Let me check your folder.
Me: No, I'm pretty sure I came that summer.
Hygienist: Oh, here it is... (long pause) October of 2001.
Ouch.
Posted by Mark on Friday, May 6th, 2005 under genera
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Raffique is a good friend I have made in my Masters classes over the last two years. We have had three courses together, and I have always been impressed by his knowledge, warmness, work ethic, and ability to get along with literally anyone. Everyone that runs into him gets a friendly swat on the shoulder and a sincere conversation about how they are and how their school work is going. The guy is an encyclopedia when it comes to people. "Hey, Abi, how is that 3G paper going for your 485 class? Mike, did Villa like your presentation?"
Raffique is from the island of St. Vincent in the Carribbean (jealousy... creeping in). He studied for a year in London during university, and then he stayed for two years building phone networks. That set his sights on telecom technologies, and so he has had a telecommunications focus in his studies.
Since I alternate taking one and two classes each semester the first group of people I started with are graduating this month, and I am at the halfway point. I have made a handful of friends, Raffique being the best. Last week after class he said that he was negotiating with a company back in St. Vincent that will be rebuilding the island's phone network and installing wireless access points in many spots. That has been his goal all along: working in the wireless industry in his home country.
Good luck, Raffique! You will be missed.
Posted by Mark on Thursday, May 5th, 2005 under tech & IT
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I know it's my civic duty, but... crap. I got the packet in the mail today letting me know that I am on call during the month of June for jury duty. A co-worker of mine did this last year, and he was on again, off again for a total of around two weeks out of the month. I hope that doesn't happen. I'd rather serve it all in one consecutive shot.
The bad part of this is that it's for a district court an hour away from my house. If this were for my county's court it would be ten minutes door to door. I'm taking a summer class during June, and so I'll potentially have a two-hour commute, class, and catch up with work in the evenings. Somewhere in there it would be nice to enjoy a month of the summer.
Posted by Mark on Tuesday, May 3rd, 2005 under genera
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Jessica went with my mom today to my cousin's baby shower, and my dad and I drove there with them. We met my grandpa and my cousin's dad also, and we all drove down to a small town called Ashmore where my dad wanted to look at a tractor for sale. My dad got his grandpa's tractor a few years ago when my grandpa sold the family farm, spent time restoring it to immaculate condition, and has basically gotten hooked on working on tractors. He's on the lookout for a new antique tractor to restore. This was a 1946 International H.
The tractor was a bust -- it looked nice walking up but it was just a rust bucket with a new coat of paint -- but we had fun afterwards. Just down the street from the dealership was an old
Dog 'n Suds drive-up restaurant and so we stopped for lunch. They were popular when my dad was in high school but I've never seen one. I remember the glass mugs in our cupboards as a Kid with the logo on the sides of them. It was one of the old style drive ups where you pull up to a menu and a loudspeaker, order over the intercom system, and then they bring it to your car on a tray. My dad and my uncle Dick told stories about all of the stupid things they did in high school revolving around the Dog 'n Suds in their neighborhood. I had a great grilled burger and a fresh root beer in a big frosty mug.
That was worth the entire trip. Mmmm... frosty mug.
Posted by Mark on Saturday, April 30th, 2005 under genera
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Today on the way back from lunch we were driving behind a white Chevy pickup that had FARMER on the license plate.
Me: "What do you think that guy does for a living?"
Jessica: "He's gotta be a male stripper."
It's those little moments that make or break relationships. ;-)
Posted by Mark on Friday, April 29th, 2005 under genera
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This is another one from the "why the hell didn't I think of this???" file. I bring you
the ring thing.
This handy little ring not only looks like your 50-carat ice just fell out of its setting, it opens beer bottles! No more grabbing a bottle at a friend's place and asking if anyone has a bottle opener (as I've gotten older, less and less of us have them on our key chains). At $10, this invention should pay for itself just in campus sales alone.
Actually, if you go through the other products on the
Mango International site, some of the products are pretty cool. I just ordered a
digital desk clock that runs on water.
Posted by Mark on Friday, April 29th, 2005 under cultur
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Two things have always bugged me about the Properties button on the Print dialog box on Windows applications. I almost always need to change an option on the Basics tab; usually the number of copies or page orientation (portrait vs. landscape). That tab is aptly named. The options there are presumably the typical ones used by the most people.
When you open the Print properties box, there are two things wrong:
1. The Basics tab is furthest on the right, and
2. It is not the default tab selected. You have to click on it.
I also realize that my life must be going fine if I find time to complain about this. I'm not ranting here. I've just always wondered how this never came up in years of usability testing at Microsoft.
Posted by Mark on Thursday, April 28th, 2005 under tech & IT
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Be afraid. Be truly afraid. I don't want to spoil the surprise by providing any explanation. But always remember:
"Mother... there is no other... like mother... so treat her right."
If you check out the related links, "Styling" is also worth checking out. Wasn't he making enough on the A-Team to say no once in awhile???
Posted by Mark on Tuesday, April 26th, 2005 under genera
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We saw
The Interpreter last night with Jessica's grandparents. It was pretty good, but the highlight of the night was going to dinner afterwards with them. They are the nicest people, and Jessica's grandpa is hilarious. He was a state trooper for over 30 years, and so he has seen and heard just about everything. As a result he always has great stories, and 50 years of going to a coffee shop every morning that also happens to have a billiards table has also turned him into an 80 year-old pool shark. A lot of my time at Jessica's parents' house is spent losing at pool with my father in law and Jessica's grandpa.
At Christmas last year one of Jessica's cousins, Nick, had recently gotten engaged. His fiancee asked his grandpa if he remembered his wedding. Without missing a beat mid shot, his response was, "Oh sure, I remember my wedding just like it was yesterday. And you remember what a terrible day yesterday was."
Last night our conversation turned into a tennis match of awful jokes, both of us trying to outdo the other one.
Two cannibals were eating a clown. One turned to the other one and asked, "Does this taste funny to you?"
Did you hear about the fat lady that backed into a plane? Dis-aster.
Did you hear about the constipated mathematician? He had to work it out with a pencil.
With that last one, Jessica's grandma almost blew water through her nose and she started giggling like she had heard the dirtiest joke in the world. It was great seeing her laugh and acting like that; she's always quiet and sweet and that ornery side is probably dying to come out. We talked and swapped stories for about two hours and it turned out to be a great evening.
And Laffy Taffy has nothing on us.
Posted by Mark on Sunday, April 24th, 2005 under genera
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... it's another search string post. I have to laugh when I see some of the search strings that get people to the site. A few are truly bizarre. I obviously need to spice things up a little around here to get the truly juicy stuff. Here are a few of my favorites from April:
- batman's martial arts training
- clausterphobic bean plants
- tae kwan doe double jump front kick board break
- sippin bacardi
- wjbc monkey see monkey do song
- she handcuffed herself naked
- stereotype of a meathead
Posted by Mark on Thursday, April 21st, 2005 under tech & IT
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Saturday night I went down to the basement to iron a shirt and noticed water on the floor next to the water heater. Not good. It looked like water had been leaking and pooling behind the water heater in the corner unnoticed for quite a while. There was rust and mold about an inch up the drywall and all over the linoleum tiles under and behind the heater.
The short version is that the bottom of the tank had rusted just enough to let water seep out without ever making a dripping noise. So, Sunday afternoon and evening were reserved for wrestling with a new water heater. Luckily my dad joined in to make it a tag team match.
If you're ever building or remodeling a house, for the love of God, use standard-sized parts for everything. The connectors on the water pipes that I needed to hook into the new water heater are some unholy size never to be made after the last century. Three trips to Lowes later we had to set the water heater on patio blocks just the right thickness so that we could use five-inch sections of pipe instead of cutting or soldering new ones (
that would be worth watching). The water was all hooked up... but the gas pipe coming from the ceiling was now an inch too long. Wonderful.
We did some nudging and filing up in the rafters to make room for the gas piping so we could pull it up, but we ended up with a half inch to go. It was Sunday and the stores were closed; no hot water for showers this morning. After work I'm going to try to find the correct length of gas pipe, and get a steel flex hose, too, just in case.
The hot shower at the gym this morning felt great, but the guy in the stall next to me was hacking up something awful every thirty seconds. I never thought I would miss my bathroom.
Posted by Mark on Monday, April 18th, 2005 under genera
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I am finally working to finish the content management system for the site, and one of the steps is adding the RSS 2.0 feed.
For anyone unfamiliar with RSS, don't worry about it. ;-)
For you Blogliners out there,
do it to it.
Posted by Mark on Saturday, April 16th, 2005 under tech & IT
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Why is
this considered news?
Why did I read the aricle??
And why will people surely watch Britney and Kevin's upcoming reality show on UPN???
Posted by Mark on Wednesday, April 13th, 2005 under genera
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I'm 99.9% sure that my Internet connection has destroyed my ability to concentrate. I used to be accused of obssessing. It didn't matter what it was; whatever I was doing was
what I was doing. It could be playing video games, doing homework, building a cardboard obstacle course for my transformers, or just watching television. I would attack it with all of my focus and would become pretty much oblivious to the world around me. My mom used to get mad on the third call to dinner or dishes and scold, "You know, Mark, when you're older you'll have to do more than one thing in an evening."
Now it's completely different. I sit down to catch up on email or do some coding, and I end up looking at slashdot and all of the sites under the "blogs" category in my bookmarks. I go back to what I was doing, and then five minutes later I'm looking at price comparisons for plasma TVs (unfortunately, they are probably never in my future). I go back to coding, but all the while I have movie trailers downloading on my other tabs or I check out the news, or -- ooh, so and so just added a new post.
This constant misdirection has also found its way into the rest of my day. Today I went to the kitchen for a drink of water and noticed a bill sitting on the table. I went to the office to pay it, and I noticed that I hadn't redeemed my free iTunes yet from slugging down Mountain Dews during class (they expire tomorrow). I download iTunes, pay the bill, and then go back to the living room to lay the envelope on the table near the door so I'll remember to mail it tomorrow. The laundry basket is sitting there next to the table and so I take it to the couch to fold socks. Now I'm also in front of the TV and so I flip it on. I finish the laundry but I get hooked on a History Channel special on Stalin. When it's over it's one hour later and I haven't done anything I set out to do.
And damn it, I'm still thirsty.
Posted by Mark on Sunday, April 10th, 2005 under writin
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I went to an all-day training session yesterday that my city put on for landlords in the community. We learned about building codes, legal processes, warning signs of drug tafficking, etc. They expected 60 people to show up and we ended up being 192 strong. It was a great session; I learned quite a bit. And I was very impressed that city government officials and police officers gave up a Saturday to put on a free program like that for us.
The three highlights for me:
1. Everbody was
old. Only about a dozen of us were under 40, and most others looked retired. I would guess that 100 of them were at least in their late 60s. We were sitting at long tables in a church basement; I was tempted to yell out, "Bingo!" This totally surprised me. If we can get on our feet in this business over the next ten years, we may be in a good position when a lot of these current owners start selling out.
2. The building we bought last fall was the first location in central Illinois to offer crack cocaine. Luckily that was eleven years ago, and all of those entrepreneurs are long gone. Hey, I suppose someone had to be first. That reminds me, I need to finish my installments of "Lessons from a landlord." Shame on me.
3. During an open Q&A session, a discussion about landlord responsibilities got pretty heated (I won't go into details). A man in the front row who is at least 150 years old raised his hand and the fire code commissioner called on him. He stood up, turned to us, and pointed both fingers at the crowd exclaiming:
"You folks all need to know that we live in a communist country. You don't have any rights as property owners except to pay taxes."
"Thank you, Randy," the commissioner said, smiling courageously like she just got fired sitting in a restaurant. When I'm 150, I hope the fire code commissioner knows my name. ;-)
Posted by Mark on Sunday, April 10th, 2005 under genera
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This may be an indicator of how my day is going, but I just experienced
the highlight of my day. I got a can of Diet Coke from the vending machine, and it is coooooooooold. If it was half a degree colder in that can, the pop would be frosty. It's by far the best can of pop I've ever gotten out of a vending machine. I had to share it with all (both) of you.
And people claim that bloggers write about nothing.
Posted by Mark on Wednesday, April 6th, 2005 under genera
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Poor Jessica has been sick since last Thursday. There has been a nasty cold going around the last six weeks, and most people are down and out for eight days. She had a sore throat and lost her voice on Thursday, and has been coughing non stop since Saturday night. And I mean non stop. She's lucky to go thirty seconds without coughing. Neither one of us has gotten more than three hours' sleep over the course of the night since Saturday.
I may have to start drinking coffee. I know she has to be exhausted.
She's been to the doctor twice, and both times they told her she wasn't "that sick." She didn't feel bad outside of the cough and no voice, but she just wanted something to supress the cough so she could sleep at night and not drive people nuts at work. On the second visit they gave her some cough medicine with punch (codeine), but she could sleep with that, either.
It was time to get serious. Jessica's mom is a nurse, and she admitted that sometimes you just need to break out great grandothers' remedies. This consists of:
- A Vicks vaporizer
- An airplane shot of Jack Daniels with rock candy dissolved in it
- And some good old-fashioned Horehound cough drops
Yes, there really is such a thing. Not quite as scandalous as they sound, they are actually an Egyptian mix named after the god Horus.
Robotussin and Halls are nice when you have a small, whimpering cough, but when the going gets tough nothing beats Jack and some ancient herbs.
Posted by Mark on Wednesday, April 6th, 2005 under genera
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BLOOMINGTON (AP) -- A local man looked dangerous, overwhelming odds in the eye earlier this morning and laughed. Mark, a 29 year-old Web developer from the south end of Bloomington, single handedly fought off an army of ninja alien invaders and stopped short their dastardly plan to take over the planet. And he did it with a nickel and jumper cables.
The scene was practically out of the H.G. Wells novel, War of the Worlds. Just before sunrise this morning, an alien spacecraft eluded military and airport radar systems to land undetected beneath the Main Street bridge on Veteran's Parkway. Advanced cloaking technology also kept it hidden from drivers passing by. Soon afterwards giant, spider-like robots emerged with empty cockpits, bent on terror and carnage. They walked in both directions along Main Street crushing and blasting everything in their path with laser beams attached to their heads (apparently they were ill tempered). People flooded the Bloomington Police Department and radio stations with frantic phone calls.
Police and National Guard officers could not find any method of attack that was effective against the spider walkers. Even armor-piercing bullets and shoulder-fired mortar rockets did zero damage, and they were also impervious to electrical shock and plastic explosives. The Pentagon contacted police officials offering a missle attack, but local officers were afraid of the additional damage and panic that would ensue. Nothing short of an a-bomb appeared equipped to stop the attacks.
Luckily Mark appeared when he did. He admitted to reporters that he knew nothing of the attacks when he turned north on Veteran's Parkway from Morris Avenue for his commute to work. "I watched the first half of Boondock Saints last night, and so I had to catch the end of it getting ready this morning," he commented. "Local radio stations suck, and so I always opt for CDs on the way to work. None of the walkers had reached my neighborhood at 7:30, and so I didn't see any of the destruction until I got on to Veteran's Parkway. What a mess!"
The scene stretching out before Mark terrified him, but at the same time he knew he had to spring in to action. Most of the bridge over Main Street was destroyed, and the twisted metal of charred cars and semis were strewn all over the streets.
"When I saw all that I knew something unearthly must have happened," Mark said. "I flipped over to WJBC and listed to what was going on. Suddenly I had an idea. The walkers seemed invincible, but what about the spaceships? People were reporting that the walkers were empty. I knew they had to be centrally controlled."
Based on the pattern of destruction radiating out from the Main Street bridge, Mark soon judged that the walkers must have originated somewhere in that area. He drove down the remains of the ramp and got out to search the grounds. Within a minute he banged in to what appeared to be thin air, but he knew he had found the ship. He walked the area and got a rough idea of the size and shape.
"Walking around the ship it seemed to be egg shaped, and quite huge," explained Mark. "The hull must have been in the back. The fatter end of the ship was a good one hundred feet across and the only part big enough to hold those walkers."
Trying to think of a way in, Mark's mind suddenly went back to the episodes of MacGyver he watched as a boy. More specifically, he remembered Richard Dean Anderson's character hardwiring jumper cables into an outlet and clamping in nickels to cut through prison bars and escape. "I thought I'd have the materials," said Mark. "I dug through my ashtray and found a nickel, and off I went."
Mark drove up closer to the ship to be in range with his jumper cables and got to work. Soon sparks were flying against the invisble hull, and he reported seeing a seared metallic seam emerge against empty space. He cut in a circular path and punched a flap through to the inside.
"I could see the inside of a ship's hull through the hole, and so I climbed through," Mark said. "Inside there was only a single alien, and he attacked instantly." Mark and the alien engaged in hand-to-hand combat, and the alien used a martial art similar to kung fu. Despite the fact the alien stood at over eight feet tall, Mark made short work of him. "He was tough, but it was no different than beating on grade school kids in my college Tae Kwan Do class. As long as you mentally project yourself winning, you're already two steps ahead."
Knocking the alien out cold, Mark ran to the front of the ship and scanned the controls. Small video monitors showed each of the attacking walkers. The touch-screen commands were all labeled in an alien language, but Mark spotted a red symbol at the bottom that he guessed was a command to cancel the attack.
"When I saw that red symbol I was confident it would stop the attack," commented Mark. I that one of the walkers was in downtown Bloomington near the old courthouse. I let it take out Club 110 because everybody's 19 and wants to hear dance remixes of Kelly Clarkson singles, but I had to stop it before it took out Boo Boo's Dawghouse down the block. Sometimes I just need my hotdog fix."
Mark hit the button and all of the walkers instantly shut down. The destruction was over. Rebuilding will undoubtedly begin soon and Bloomington-Normal will move on. Mayor Judy Markowitz contacted Mark and promised him a celebratory dinner and key to the city, but Mark declined.
"I don't really consider myself a hero," Mark told her. "I'm just an ordinary guy that grew up in the country and watched a lot of TV in the wintertime when there was no nowhere to go. I just try to do what I can do when I can do it."
HAPPY APRIL 1!!!
Posted by Mark on Friday, April 1st, 2005 under genera
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Spring officially broke through winter's dreary, nagging stanglehold today. I went home for lunch, and it's 71 degrees outside!
Not that I get depressed in the winter, but the beginning of Spring weather makes me feel great. Driving home I performed my springtime ritual: I put the windows down, opened the sun roof wide open, and blasted Kalifornia by the one and only
Fatboy Slim. The Osmands are a little bit country, and I'm a little bit house.
I'm leaving home a little earlier than needed so I can cruise around some more. There are no ocenas or mountain peaks to speed beside, but it's needed just the same. How could I possibly be expected to handle work on a day like this? On the way back I'll balance things out with some
Enigma.
Update: It was fun while it lasted. In true Central Illinois spring fashion, mid afternoon gave way to high winds and a tornado watch. There were funnel clouds spotted 30 miles away, and at 5:00 it poured rain for fifteen minutes and spit marble-sized hail.
I'll take it, as long as it doesn't snow tomorrow.
Posted by Mark on Wednesday, March 30th, 2005 under genera
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... that the United States began as a land with the sole intention of
not living by another's country's imposed rules and social views?
Discuss.
Posted by Mark on Wednesday, March 30th, 2005 under genera
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I've posted on my dreams before. I have vivid dreams almost every other night, and last night was no exception.
I was walking through a neighborhood commercial area in a city at night, and it felt deserted. The street lamps were the only sources of light, and I was walking all by myself. My footsteps were the only sound echoing through the streets.
All of a sudden I came upon a man on his hands and knees, and he was grunting and running his hands over a small object on the ground. As I got closer, I could see that the object looked like a doll with its head detached. The man pulled a head out of his jacket and struggled to force it down on top of the neck. As he situated the head from side to side it looked just like a miniature Arnold Schwarzenegger, except it seemed paled and slightly decomposed. The flesh on the rest of the body looked the same way; gray and battered with decay.
As soon as mini-Arnold's head was in place the eyelids flipped open and the eyes seemed to shine with their own inner light. The face grimaced and the doll leapt up and started strangling the man. The man flipped over on to his back and started fighting off the doll, and I could finally see that it was Arnold himself! I ran forward to help, and then the doll turned his gaze on me.
"You'd better run unless you want to be next!" the doll hissed, turning his attention back to Arnold. I turned and ran as hard as I could, and after a few seconds I could hear maniacal laughter behind me, presumably from mini-Arnold. It kept getting closer and I started turning odd corners and going down alleys trying to throw him off my trail.
I woke up in bed and looked at the clock. 4:08. Shortly after I drifed off to sleep, I was dreaming that I was watching TV in my living room and heard the same laughter. Mini-Arnold was in the basement!
I jumped over the back of the couch and looked at the basement door, and Mini-Arnold was climbing through the cat door. I tried to kick him back through, but he was too tough and I couldn't budge him. I ran back to the bedroom to warn Jessica and slam the door. Before long he was beating on the door yelling at me to let him in.
I woke up again, this time seriously thinking about just getting up and not going back to sleep. I thought I was being stupid and so I just laid back down. Sure enough, I started dreaming again and this time he was in the room under the bed. He kept peeking his head out on one side and I would smack him with my pillow, and then I'd switch sides and do it again. This back and forth battle kept going until the dream finally fades from memory...
There's one thing that bothers me here. He could strangle Arnold to death and take kicks to the face with no effect, but a swat with the pillow sent him back under the bed. Goofy dream (mis)logic, I guess.
Posted by Mark on Tuesday, March 29th, 2005 under genera
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Easter with the family often means church, candy, and lots of leftovers.
Easter with my family and the in laws meant two church services, too much candy, and an entire fridge shelf of leftovers. It will be easy to pack my lunches this week.
I'm not complaining, but we have enough ham and green bean casserole for a small village. And something called ham loaf from Jessica's grandma. From what I can tell, it's ground ham cooked with crackers and vegetables just like meatloaf, only with some kind of sweet sauce instead of ketchup.
I don't know for sure, but I do know this: I'll be the one eating it.
Posted by Mark on Monday, March 28th, 2005 under genera
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Doing laundry today reminded me of one my more embarassing moments. This happened about five years ago in kickboxing class, in front of about twenty people.
We were doing "stations" that night: spending two minutes kicking or punching a heavy bag or an instructor with a specific technique, and then rotating to the next station for its assigned technique.
I was roundhouse kicking Sensei Graybeal's hand mitts when I felt something funny tickling... er...
down there. It gave me the same sensation I have when I wake up from a dream about being chased by bugs or spiders, and then freaking out for a couple seconds thinking that it's really happening.
I screamed like a girl and started squirming around, and everyone stopped to watch what was happening. I lost my balance and reeled over, and Sensei grabbed me and held me up. I could feel whatever it was creeping down the inside of my leg, and I stared kicking it down faster.
Out peeked the corner of a dryer sheet.
My face turned the color of cranberry sauce and the whole room erupted in laughter. My instructor tried to hold it in but he couldn't help himself.
"In almost thirty years of martial arts," he said patting me on the shoulder between snickers, "I can honestly say that this is the first time I've seen that happen."
Posted by Mark on Saturday, March 26th, 2005 under genera
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March started out okay at the apartment building, but it has steadily gone downhill. When we bought the place in December it had six paying tenants, and we had turned that number into ten in two months. We were actually profiting $200 a month, but the apartment gods saw fit to swing the pendulum the other way. Incident number one involved our onsite building manager.
Lesson 2: Don't hire a coke addict to manage your apartment building.
Admittedly, we knew going in that our manager had a history with drug abuse. I'll call him Jack. He has adult ADD and takes a prescription dose of what is basically legalized speed, and when he was room mates with Sean, one of my partners, he ended up taking triple and quadruple amounts of that before graduating to the real stuff. First speed, and then cocaine. He voluntarily went to rehab, and had been clean for three years.
Jack never really caught up financially after all of that, and lived with his mom in Colorado for three years doing odd construction jobs. Sean had kept in touch with him, and still regarded him as a close friend. The four of us decided that Jack would be a good candidate for an onsite building manager.
Looking back, I think he stayed clean for the first two months or so. Jack worked hard when we were there, and he kept the building clean. He was good about following up with people late on rent, and he was good with prospective tenants. He got a part time job on the side and appeared to be getting on his feet.
Around the end of February I noticed changes in his behavior. He was working lazily, and complained all the time about being tired. A couple of tenants who had gotten to be friends with him also seemed to give him the cold shoulder, but no one said why. Then I got the phone call from Sean late on the first Saturday in March:
"Mark, are you sitting down?"
"Yes, I'm out at dinner. What's up?"
"I don't know how else to say this... Jack skipped town, and he has all of our rent money for March."
Jack had emailed Sean explaining what happened. He tried some coke at a friend's apartment, and the next day he dipped into the rent money as a "loan" until his next paycheck. By the end of the week he had blown through it all and got scared.
Lesson 3: Don't let your tenants pay in cash.
Through interviewing tenants over the course of this month, we have found out that he had been stealing quite a bit. He collected late fees and $5 charges for letting people in when they locked themselves out, which he never reported. Based on the money we've made this month with the washers and dryers in the basement, he kept half of that from the very beginning. He also stole $250 from a tenant's wallet while he was sleeping, and so we credited the tenant that amount on his April rent and added it to the list when we pressed charges.
All told, Jack probably ripped us off for around $3000. And the worst part really has been the time we've had to spend down there having no one on site. After Jack left town I was there six days in a row and I've averaged going down every other day this month, including two days of vacation from work.
Last week he contacted Sean to apologize again, and Sean decided to set up a little sting. He told Jack that he would meet him and take him to our insurance agent so that he could report a loss of burglary to account for the missing money. Jack believed him, told Sean where he was staying, and Sean drove him to the police station. The detective we had been talking to was outside waiting.
One tidbit of irony in this whole situation is that Jack had been working with the detective giving him information and answering questions about the drug scene in the building. That would feed directly into Part III, which will have to come sometime in the next few days.
Posted by Mark on Saturday, March 26th, 2005 under cultur
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This is chapter one in a multipart exposé detailing the saga that is March, 2005 at my apartment building in Clinton, Illinois. This first part provides some of the background.
Lesson 1: You get what you pay for.
Three friends and I got a good deal on a converted house in my hometown of Bloomington, Illinois, and with a month or so of TLC we got it up to par. It has been fully rented for seven months now, and profits enough to allow us to steadily add small improvements. We are not keeping any profits for ourselves; we are doing our best to split them down the middle between improvements and saving for the next property.
In December we found what we thought was a great fixer-upper deal. It is a fourteen-unit apartment building in Clinton, a nearby small town. We negotiated to a rock-bottom price, and we thought it could be turned around just like our first property. We thought wrong.
We've had constant electrical, plumbing, and security problems. At one point one apartment had a room's electricity being controlled by the oven! When you turned the oven on to bake or broil, the lights and outlets in one of the bedrooms received full amperage. If the oven was off, there was barely enough juice flowing to dimly light the overhead bulbs.
We had to evict tenants from three units in our second month. We knew they hadn't paid rent to the previous owners, but the owners paid us full months' rent for all tenants at closing. When they didn't pay us the next month we posted their evictions. All three were troublemakers anyway, and getting rid of them was step one in improving the atmosphere of the building. One guy got busted shortly after for robbing gas stations, and another got busted the day we posted his eviction for selling weed to a cop at a bar. When they searched his apartment they found a duffel bag
stuffed full of weed. Mucho ganja! That same guy had also made a name for himself in the building by getting drunk every night and hitting on his fifteen year-old niece (he's in his upper 30s). Truly a class act.
The roach problem was scary, but we have that under control. Every room in the building had roaches constantly in sight, and they would drop on us from the ceiling when we moved from room to room. The Terminex worker said that it was the worst residential building he had seen after working there for fourteen years. Now we've only had one tenant tell us that they've seen a roach this month.
We've recarpeted and repainted three units, put new secure doors on all but one unit, and fixed all of the electrical and serious plumbing problems. After fixing leaky toilets and sinks our water bill went down from $600 to $350. There's still a long way to go, but we've made vast improvements. The place needs a new roof, and ideally we'd redo all of the plumbing professionally.
We're definitely retro earning the deal we got on the place.
Posted by Mark on Wednesday, March 23rd, 2005 under cultur
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I feel like I've been absent for awhile. I've read and written very little online over the last few weeks. What's on my site is fluff at best. I'm sorry for the lack of comments on others' blogs, though maybe your readers are thankful. ;) I'm reading your sites, but usually when I'm in a hurry or right when I get up in the morning and my brain is still warming up.
It's been a crazy March so far. I've mentioned the fact that I partnered with a group of friends to manage an apartment building, and it's been absolute hell lately. I'm going to post on these incidents soon, but over the next few days virtually all of my free time will be spent at that building.
I'm a sucker for movie trailers, and so here's a sneak preview: extortion, drug dealers, and a 30-man task force blowing the doors off with plastique. Yep, plastique. Yours truly was the lucky owner of a building targeted by a three-county narcotics task force raid code named "Operation Money Tree." It would have made an amazing
Cops episode.
Details coming soon to a blog near you...
Posted by Mark on Friday, March 18th, 2005 under genera
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Courtesy of Brian, faithful reader #1 or #2, found at a local hospital:
For those of you who like the occasional serving of popcorn for a snack or movie companion, look out. For the love of God, please put the bag down!
Posted by Mark on Monday, March 14th, 2005 under genera
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We finally completed the switch today and have no more landline phone service. We dropped phone, DSL, and DirecTV, and went with cable TV and broadband in addition to an increased cell phone plan. All in all, it should save us $70 per month!
I have to give it to Insight Cable: their setup software was very nicely designed and got us up and running quickly. In five minutes I ran the software to activate my home computer with their server, pulled the ethernet plug out and plugged it into the router, and repeated the activation process for the router. The connection is working flawlessly and it's
fast. I don't know if it's noticeably faster than DSL or I'm just imagining it, but either way I was impressed with the easy setup.
It is a little weird not to have a phone line in the house. Most family has asked, "But what about when you have kids? How will the babysitter call you or 911 in an emergency?" We're keeping one phone plugged in and you can call out to 911 on any phone whether or not you have an account (at least, in my town; I think this is standard everywhere). And I'm sure that by the time we're hiring babysitters, I will be hard pressed to find a teenager that doesn't have access to a cell phone.
The best part: no more telemarketers. At least, not until I've updated my cell phone number with my bank, utilities, etc., and they sell off my information...
Posted by Mark on Sunday, March 13th, 2005 under tech & IT
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At least, that's what the license plate ahead of me said today pulling out of work. Funny, if anything I thought He would be
42...
About halfway home I got behind an Eclipse with an early 20-something girl driving. That plate exclaimed SHE HOT.
She'd better be, I thought,
because her grammar sucks. I think I actually just felt my nerd quotient increase. Strange.
UPDATE: I saw GOD IS 44 again on Saturday at the hardware store. I took my time around the register before getting in line because I hoped that he or she would come up to the counter (we were the only cars in the parking lot). After a few minutes no luck, and so I paid and left. I just want to know what it means. Especially now that it's following me.
Posted by Mark on Monday, March 7th, 2005 under genera
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Okay, yesterday's post was a little too heavy, and a little too out there. I always scroll down first to the quotes that appear at the bottom of
slashdot before I read the articles, and today's struck me. It can apply to a lot of things really, and not just writing:
"There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are."
- W. Somerset Maugham
If quotes like this are a good diversion for you,
his others are good, too.
Posted by Mark on Friday, March 4th, 2005 under writin
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Just before bed last night I wasn't feeling well, but it just felt like something I had for dinner didn't agree with me. Unfortunately that wasn't it. I was up almost all night with a really bad heart burn, and my head feels like it's stuffed with cotton and filled with helium -- somehow both at the same time. I ended up staying home today and sleeping it off. I'm feeling quite a bit better now, just a little light headed. Being sick sucks.
I kept waking up having truly bizarre dreams. In one I was debugging a huge Java program, and every time I fixed one problem hundreds more would pop up, filling the screen with red circles at the beginning of each offending line. In another I was dying of thirst and kept gulping down water out of a bottle I keep in my fridge, even though it was salt water and I knew it was dehydrating me. When I got to the bottom, the bottle was full of flecks of rust; the kind you see when you drink out of an old country well. In my dream I started throwing up the water, and I woke up sitting up in bed dry heaving. I ran into the bathroom, but nothing happened.
Sorry for moving all of us over the border into the land of "too much information" there. More than anything, I wanted to log that second dream so that I wouldn't forget it (as odd as that may sound; it's the wannabe writer in me).
Some may say that these dreams point to me taking too much on, and chasing after work that doesn't really benefit me. While that's true, I've never bought into the notion that dreams actually mean anything. My cognitive psychology professor from undergrad would be proud. I see dreams as cognitive "exercise" while my brain is refueling and reconfiguring just like the rest of my body while I sleep. Random neurons fire containing fragments of information, and that small corner of your consciousness that never quite goes away when you sleep gets that whole mish mash handed to it like a tossed salad. The only thing it can do is try to make sense of it all. Before you know it, a drunk bear riding a unicycle is chasing your 3rd grade teacher in front of the house you grew up in, and you're naked in the high school cafeteria.
Or, you keep drinking salt water only to find a red sludge hiding at the bottom.
Posted by Mark on Thursday, March 3rd, 2005 under genera
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Internet Explorer
needs to support PNGs. Come on; they've been around for five years, and they are superior to GIFs in a variety of ways.
I've been trying to use a dynamic text replacement script using PHP on a site I'm working on, and it works beautifully in Firefox (thank you once again,
ALA). Unfortunately, it looks like total ass in IE. I found a
reference stating that you can wrap a filter around the image to make it render properly in IE, but it's not working for me for some reason. Part of this may be that I've been staring at this for too long, and so any help would definitely be appreciated.
Try viewing this
test page in IE, and then Firefox. The menu items on top and the large "welcome" message below the photo are both being rendered using this swapping technique. The small font is relatively clean, but the large font looks terrible, and also wraps in IE since the same font size is rendered larger in IE also. Thanks again...
Posted by Mark on Monday, February 28th, 2005 under tech & IT
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I seem to have become the target of a hetero man crush. One of the guys in my college class, we'll call him Bob, has gradually sidled up to me over the course of the semester and is making me feel a little uncomfortable. Not Wesley Snipes in
The Fan uncomfortable, but a little too much for my liking.
Bob is one of those stereotypical techy guys who is perfectly nice, but rarely talks to anyone and has a hard time looking away from his shoes when he does. In both classes I've had with him he sat by himself in the front row and never said a word. He is part of my group this semester, and so we all sit together at the same table each class period. I usually sit by him, and he's progressively warmed up to me. Suddenly on Tuesday he would not quit talking, even during the professor's lecture.
As the professor is talking about disintermediation in an evolving electronic economy, "I ordered a Dell DJ over the weekend. It should come in tomorrow."
"Cool." I try to follow and take notes (honest!).
"Hey, we both wore black coats today. Mine's a little thin for the weather, but I just got it and so I had to get some use out of it."
"Mmm-hmm."
"Is your coat warm?"
What??? This is where Bob and I crossed the line into weirdsville, especially considering we're in class.
"It looks warm. My coat's fitted, and that's the first time I've gotten something fitted other than a blazer. I needed a 44 long, but they didn't have any on the rack. The girl had to go back and get one..."
This went on through the entire lecture, and then out of the building after class. Bob apparently works at Bergner's, but didn't get his coat there becuase he didn't like their selection. He's also going home this weekend to visit his parents (he really hopes the Dell DJ gets in before he leaves). I wanted to scare him a little by telling him that I was tired because I stayed up late plucking roosters after a cock fight so I could trade the meat for mescalin from a one-eyed hobo named Squishy, but I held back. I never knew how interesting disintermediation in an evolving electronic economy could be.
I'm probably a prick, and I do feel good that he feels comfortable enough to talk to me when he won't with anyone else. I just wish it wasn't during class.
* I can confidently use this label, since it's directed at me several times per day. I'm not sure I fit the profile, but I'd definitely perceived that way by many. This is equivalent to Jerry Seinfeld safely making Rabbi jokes.
Posted by Mark on Thursday, February 24th, 2005 under tech & IT
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Only you can
save Toby. Only you.
Posted by Mark on Thursday, February 24th, 2005 under genera
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The trip to New Orleans was very good. Not very eventful from a story standpoint since all but a few of my waking hours were spent in a conference, but the conference was very helpful and I met a lot of creative, down-to-earth people.
Before dinner on our last night there, we took a walking tour of the French Quarter. Our tour guide Rory made it a lot of fun. He stopped off with us to get a hurricane (okay, two), and introduced me to some local beers at a hole in wall dedicated to keeping "real" jazz alive. The highlight there for me: the band's ninety year-old upright bass player. He could barely shuffle across the stage, but he cranked on that bass and made it walk and talk.
The most interesting part to me was the fact that New Orleans has no stone foundation supporting its buildings. Just a few generations ago, they were still supporting buildings on a wooden mesh platform anchored by trees driving down into the silt and sand. The height of local trees dictated the stability and height of the buildings. Today they use a better mixture of concrete and steel.
All of the alleyways and older streets were paved with large, flat stones and I asked when those were imported. It looked like it would have been a huge undertaking and expense. "All of these stones are actually African. A very sad affair," Rory said. What? As it turns out, New Orleans was part of a three-point trade route with the Carribbean and Africa. New Orleans exporters sent crops south to the Carribbean islands, and there they loaded the ships with sugar and spices bound for Africa. In Africa, the ships were loaded with slaves and returned to New Orleans. There was a logistics problem with this. Though packed inhumanely like animals, people were lighter than crates of foodstuffs. They had to stabilize the ships by loading huge quarried stones in the bottoms. Masons in New Orleans bought the stones when they arrived, and contracted with the city to slice them and cover the streets over the sand.
New Orleans. Built on a foundation of sand, and paved over with remnants of genocide.
Posted by Mark on Tuesday, February 22nd, 2005 under cultur
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When I left Bloomington for New Orleans on Tuesday, the airport security guard inspecting checked baggage was extremely cool. He greeted everyone and made smalltalk as we stood in line waiting to get our boarding passes, and was just generally putting everyone in a better mood as we stood in line. Not easy to do at the airport. When I checked my bag and brought it over to him to be x-rayed and then opened, he noticed that I had a padlock on one piece of the zipper.
"Do you have the key for your padlock?" he asked, pointing.
"Yes."
"Oh, well just unlock it and hand it to me. After I inspect your bag I'll lock it so that it stays safer during your connections."
"Wow, thanks!" I said, unlocking and handing over the padlock.
That was extremely nice, and in some odd way it made my day. He can be friendly and do his security job perfectly well. No natural law says that you have to be an asshole in order to thoroughly inspect the contents of someone's bag.
Fast forward fifty four hours through the fourth dimension, and eight hundred miles due south through the third to New Orleans. Different security guard, different conversation.
"Just put your bag on that yellow line and proceed to your gate."
"Can I hand you my lock?" I asked, hoping to get the same treatment as I did in Bloomington.
He just looks at me with a puzzled look on his face. I was out late on Bourbon Street the night before, but he was the one looking exhausted and hung over. "Huh?"
"Could I hand you my lock for after you've inspected the bag?"
"You could," he answered snickering. "But I don't know what in the hell I'd do with it."
"Could you lock up my bag with it when you're done?"
"How do you expect me to do that?"
I looked over my shoulder. There was no one behind me, and so I didn't understand the confusion or sense of inconvenience. "Whatever. Thanks anyway," I said, turning away.
"Prick," I heard him mutter under his breath.
My memory flashed back to the signs in the security area in Bloomington reading something like, "Do not make jokes about weapons or illegal behavior around security personnell. Such actions are a federal offense and can result in fines and/or arrest." Considering this guard's mood and the fact that my flight would be boarding soon, I kept walking.
Posted by Mark on Friday, February 18th, 2005 under cultur
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I don't know how long this link will work, but this is classic. Read the seller's replies in his own
feedback section.
Posted by Mark on Friday, February 18th, 2005 under cultur
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My boss and I discussed my annual evaluation for my job yesterday. It was a good talk, and he was frank with me about some things that I know he needed to be frank with me about. I get a lot of good results, but at a big expense. Not to our company, but to myself. I have somehow evolved from an anal-retentative teenager that kept his room and his locker spotless into a disorganized, fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of guy. I need to work on swinging the pendulum back somewhere in the middle. I know that.
Exhibit A: I am packing 30 minutes before I need to leave for the airport. And blogging about my realization of this problem and the need to fix it. The irony is not lost on me. ;-) I hope I don't forget anything, like my tickets.
I still feel a little uneasy when I travel without Jessica. I know it's irrational -- I have a better chance of dropping my winning lottery ticket because of the surprise of a lightning strike -- but I do just the same (and no, I don't think I just jinxed myself). I always love the phone call from her when she flies. And I don't like spending the week without her. I'm glad that I don't travel for a living. The consultant's life was enticing coming out of college, but I'm glad that I didn't opt for that route.
Posted by Mark on Tuesday, February 15th, 2005 under genera
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Holy cow! Today was an eventful day. Last week my boss's boss asked me to put a presentation together for
his boss, and I met with him today to go over it and flesh out lecture notes that he could use. He will be delivering it at an e-commerce conference next week in New Orleans.
After our discussion, he thanked me and invited me to go with him! I'm not presenting, but it will be a great chance to see what the other companies have to say, and meet and talk with their representatives. The presenters will be executives from about a dozen companies -- from John Deere and GM, to Colgate and Kodak. I'm not sure who keeled over to free up a spot, but I may feel a little like an indy director at the Oscars. ;-)
We made reservations to eat at
Emeril's (bam!), and some of the after-presentations activities include a tour through the French Quarter and reservations at a jazz club for dinner. I've never been to New Orleans, and so I'm really looking forward to seeing as much as I can. I'll need to create a photo section on the site...
Posted by Mark on Thursday, February 10th, 2005 under cultur
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No, not for me. Jessica is starting a new job on the 21st as a human resources rep at a medium-sized consulting agency in town. I'm so excited for her! We've known for a couple weeks now, but I didn't want to post anything because she didn't tell the last of her students until today. Granted, none of my handful of readers are likely at the University of Illinois, but just the same I thought it best to wait.
The two reasons this rocks is that she gets her life back, and I get my wife back. Jessica loves her current student advising job itself, but it would be much more loveable at 40 hours per week, or even 50 for that matter. She has been averaging a 70-hour work week during each college semester for the past year and a half
with an hour commute each way. Tonight marks the third consecutive night of all-night meetings to hold auditions and make casting decisions for the spring musical at the university. Last night's meeting went from 6:00 pm to 3:30 am. Her reward? An hour drive home after four hours' sleep and an 18-hour work day.
To be honest, I don't know how she did it for so long, but I've had the upmost respect for her pulling it out like she has. There have been some bad, upset nights and occasional tears, but enough about me. ;-) Her boss and coworkers have been very supportive, and they understand her decision all too well. Jessica had a great professional experience there, but it's time to move on towards larger responsibilities and a "normal" life.
Posted by Mark on Wednesday, February 9th, 2005 under cultur
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Today marks the day of the
Chinese New Year. 2005 is the year of the rooster. People born under the sign of the rooster are said to be hard-working, confident and unwavering. I am a rabbit myself (said to be talented, ambitious, virtuous, and reserved).
I've got to remember to stop writing Monkey on my checks. ;-)
Posted by Mark on Wednesday, February 9th, 2005 under genera
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You have to love
Ray Bradbury.
I am reading
The Illustrated Man, which is a collection of unrelated short stories that are presented in a somewhat-connected way at the beginning of the book. Ray meets the illustrated man, who is a wandering stranger covered in tatoos. That night when they share a campground, Ray notices that the man's tatoos move, and each group of illustrations tell a story of mankind's fate. Each short story depicts one particular thread.
The thing I respect the most about Ray Bradbury is his love for similes and metaphors (his imagination, I envy). His writing is jam packed with them like a bin of apples at the grocery store. You pull one out, and three or four more come tumbling out into your chest. In this case, though, it's impossible to pick out your favorite. Each one is ripe with meaning and shined with crisp detail.
And, as they stood, from a distance they heard a roar.
And the monster came out of the rain.
The monster was supported upon a thousand electric blue legs. It walked swiftly and terribly. It struck down a leg with a driving blow. Everywhere a leg struck a tree fell and burned... it felt of the ground like a great blind thing. Sometimes, for a moment, it had no legs at all. And then, in an instant, a thousand whips would fall out of its belly, white-blue whips, to sting the jungle.
"There's the electrical storm," said one of the men.*
Ray's language paints the scenes and characters' emotions vividly in each story. Sometimes in
Fahrenheit 451 I would get lost in the metaphors. The fact that the story is hauntingly more true today than when it was originally written kept snapping me back. All of Ray's interviews and essays restate his passion for writing, and his books and stories show that clearly. He is my favorite kind of writer: one who simply loves the act of writing.
* From
The Long Rain
Posted by Mark on Tuesday, February 8th, 2005 under writin
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Two summers ago I got to spend two weeks in Rome, Italy. I was unbelievably lucky to get to go, and that was one of the best experiences in my life. Jessica took a summer class there as part of her graduate degree, and I got to go as her guest. We weren't married at the time (she became my fiancee on the trip), and so convincing a Jesuit university to let me go with her was a challenge. But that's beside the point.
My favorite part of that trip was literally walking through some of the very roots of Western civilization. Much of the good, the bad, and the outright horrendous that shaped my culture happened on the pathways and in the buildings I got to see firsthand. I saw the hill where a tribe first made a settlement that would eventually grow into an empire. I saw the result of fourteen years of Michelangelo's life spent on his back atop a scaffold in the Sistine Chapel. I saw the temple ruins and the very stone that served as the foundation for Julius Caesar's funeral pyre. I walked through the ghetto that unjustly jailed Rome's Jewish community in a four-block area for fifteen generations. I saw towering obelisks that had been stripped from their Egyptian homes and dragged north for a pompous, greedy ruler. I saw the world's first Christian church, and an arena where Christians and criminals were forced to fight to the death and fend themselves from wild animals. And yes, I cracked under the July heat and ducked into a McDonald's to get some puffs of air conditioning fifty yards from the world's
oldest domed structure.
Every day I walked through and around these monuments and they radiated the history they had soaked in throught the centuries. I could feel it. We have nothing like this in America. Nothing that represents thousands of years of triumph and pain. We destroyed any remains of that in the name of Manifest Destiny.
Sometimes when Jessica was in class I would hop on the bus to downtown and walk to the
Imperial Forum to just sit for the entire morning. I would breathe it all in, use the time for quiet reflection, and write in my notebook. The literal center of ancient Rome was marked among the ruins, and so it was the perfect place to allow myself to be enveloped in it.
I learned a delicate balance sitting among those marble stones. I realized how insignificant of a stitch I am in the fabric of history, but at the same time, everything each of us does serves as the foundation for those that come after us. Over two thousand years ago a combative, ambitious family simply demanded the right to live on a hill claimed by another family. Two millenia later, I (and millions per year) travelled there simply to see that hill. No matter how insignificant we may feel, we have a responsibility to consider the effects our actions will have on the world.
Some days I ache to go back. I miss the ambling maze of stone streets cut through the sprawling hills, history and characterful outdoor cafes at every step, and the surprise of a clausterphobic street opening up into a piazza. I miss the old sprinkled everywhere throughout the new, jutting out to command notice and appreciation. I miss being on my own thousands of miles away from home, but knowing that it's there if I need it.
Being there was one of my most significant periods of personal growth. To that purpose, anywhere can serve as your Rome. Another country, a creek, or a park with a patch of solitude. This post has grown into a winding patchwork of thought, much like the streets that we walked those two weeks. If nothing else it has helped me return there for a little while, looking through the photo album in front of my keyboard and remembering the impression the trip made on me.
Posted by Mark on Monday, February 7th, 2005 under genera
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Today almost felt like Spring. It was 51 degrees and sunny when I checked the temperature at noon, which is pretty warm for central Illinois in the first week of February. The weather made we want to get outside and do some things, and so I went for a run and cleaned my car inside and out in the driveway. It's not McDonald's, but I'm lovin' it!
One question on the negative side... Do the makers of Nextel realize that they made public cell phone yappers even more annoying than before? Talking on a cell phone in a public place is not inherently bad, but far too many people end up talking at twice the volume of a normal speaking level. It's as if the unfreezing process has made it difficult to control THE VOLUME OF THEIR VOICE. The fine engineers at Nextel must not have been annoyed in the slightest, though, because they took it upon themselves to force us to listen to
both sides of the conversation now (with the accompanying chirping). At the Best Buy checkout line today I was bombarded by three people talking on their Nextels and it was driving everyone around me bananas.
You already look the part of a Saturday yuppie in your bowling shirt and leather jacket; buy a
Jabra. At the very least, I hope none of the three were talking to each other.
Posted by Mark on Sunday, February 6th, 2005 under genera
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Someone asked me today to call a hotline to show support for a class action reform bill in Illinios. This is a hotline basically allowing voters to leave messages stating that they are in support of the bill, in leiu of signing a traditional petition.
This got me thinking. How should you vote as a lawmaker? Do you focus on what you think is best for the people, or for what the majority supports? What do you do when those two sides are polar opposites?
By definition, a democracy is supposed to move at the will of the people. I'm not sure that should always be the case, though. An easy example of this is
Brown vs. The Board of Education (1954). The majority in the states involved supported segregated schools, and of course this is just ridiculous. The case had to go all the way to the US Supreme Court before a body of law took a stand for what was right instead of the will of the people (or perhaps personal prejudices, in this case).
Now of course this isn't true in all cases. If you leave lawmaking to a group of people only (or a single king), not only will your country soon be corrupt and in social ruin, but you shake the very foundations of democracy.
I guess that's the point in my ramblings here. There really isn't a system of logic or magic formula to always do the right thing on Capitol Hill. Every bill has to be weighed against its philosophical pros and cons, the will of the people, and the current civil landscape on a case-by-case basis.
Really, my biggest hope is that a bill's fate isn't determined by the will of the richest lobbyist or campaign contributor. Luckily that never happens. ;)
Posted by Mark on Wednesday, February 2nd, 2005 under genera
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My J2EE instructor has been using the word "automagically" all week and it's driving me bonkers ("bonkers" is a technical psychology term). I'm getting the impression that good Java tools do not require a programmer to write any actual code to create software; everything is done for you automagically. This is exciting!
au-to-mag-ic-al-ly (o - to - maj' - ik - le) adv. to complete a task while keeping the details hidden from the benefactor
syn.covertly, in blackbox fashion
Mark, could you use that in a sentence? Certainly.
I ordered a third Long Island iced tea, and I automagically woke up in the back of a strange car in the Wendy's parking lot with no shoes on.
Posted by Mark on Thursday, January 27th, 2005 under tech & IT
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Lately the American Family Association has been drawing attention in the media in regards to
people and organizations that
might be gay, or that promote inclusion and acceptance of
everyone (apparently then "promoting homosexuality to children").
Maybe it's just me, but wouldn't it make sense for the AFA to make the news for working on efforts to promote families and civil unity? That's exactly what people like Nile Rodgers are doing. I've only ever heard them mentioned when they're miserable about something or someone being a bit different than them, or trying to tear it down. Now that's the way to inspire people. Sign me up.
This entry has an interesting twist on the issue. I wonder how the AFA feels about Bugs Bunny. Surely they don't hate a timeless American icon? He did seem to have a little extra hitch in his giddy up whenever he put on a dress. What a shame. I guess my kids will be limited to a strong, hetero role model like Pepe Lepew.
Posted by Mark on Tuesday, January 25th, 2005 under genera
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I had a class today introducing the J2EE technical architecture, and the instructor was giving examples of development environments. One being IBM's Websphere Application Development software suite, or WSAD. It's pronounced wuh-sod' ("sod" being the accented syllable).
I couldn't concentrate at all once the instructor introduced this to the class. Every time he mentioned "WSAD" I kept hearing Batman and Superman yelling it to the cadence of the Budweiser "Wassup!" commercials.
I spent much of the class period thinking about which cartoon characters would ideally be cast for my commercial. Since we're talking the IT crowd here, I'm thinking Dilbert, Sponge Bob, Ralph Wiggum, and Cartman.
Now
that would sell software.
Posted by Mark on Monday, January 24th, 2005 under tech & IT
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My favorite story about my grandparents is the story of how they got married. My dad told this story a few times when I was growing up, but no one told it like my grandpa did when we were at his house shortly after my grandma passed away. It was one of his favorite stories, too, and he told the entire thing with that sly grin on his face that always made me think that he and I had a secret no one else knew...
It was spring of 1942, and US involvement in WWII was underway. My grandpa's best friend enlisted and needed to go to St. Louis to report for duty. He wanted to marry his girlfriend when he got there the day before he was flying out for basic training, and he asked my grandpa to go with them as a witness. My grandpa decided that it would be the perfect opportunity to ask my grandma to marry him also. Why not?
My grandma was out on the tractor that morning, and all of a sudden she saw her mother running through the field towards her, waving her arms frantically. She stopped, killed the engine, and asked what was going on.
"Rena," my great grandmother said, "get off that tractor right now. Bob's on the telephone, and you're getting married!"
I believe her first reaction was "What?!?" ;-) She ran back to the house and called my grandpa, and he proposed over the phone, explaining their plan. She accepted, and brought her youngest sister Leoma with her to serve as the witness. The two couples and my grandma's sister packed into a Ford Model A with Leoma in the rumble seat, and drove down to St. Louis.
They stayed that night in a hotel on the Mississippi River, and got up early the next day to find a minister. Because it was a weekday morning none of the Methodist churches were open. They started knocking on doors near the churches they did find to get directions to a minister's house. After a few hours of no luck, they were getting pretty discouraged. They found another church and walked into the garage of the house next door, where a man was working underneath his car.
"Sir, we're exhausted," my grandma said. "Where can we find a damn minister around here?"
He paused silently, rolled out from underneath his car, and looked up at them with a big grin on his face. "You've come to the right place. I'm a damn minister!"
He invited them in, got cleaned up and changed, and performed a double ceremony in his living room. My grandpa remembers that the bell tower of the church next door also had a clock, and it chimed noon just at the end of their vows. While the clock was still ringing, both grooms got to kiss their brides.
Neither couple had a honeymoon, but both had long, happy marriages. My grandparents, Leoma, and the other new bride went home to Champaign, Illinois, and my grandpa's friend left for the war. It was a good beginning to the basis for many more good memories.
Posted by Mark on Saturday, January 22nd, 2005 under genera
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Standing in front of the concession stand with Brian, I realized that there was no combo for us to split and save a few bucks. There's the "Medium Combo" with a single medium popcorn and drink, which is what I got. They also offer upward varying sizes of that with super-sized grossness, but the only one with two drinks is the "Couple's Combo."
Now Brian and I are good friends, but I don't want to find myself grabbing his hand in the popcorn bucket while I'm absorbed in a movie, and I've always had a "thing" about sharing cups and dishes. One of my quirks I suppose, but the marketing geniuses behind the concessions stand's silk curtains would surely find that I'm not alone here. That's why I'm proposing the "Buddy Combo." Both you and your friend can pick any two of the following: popcorn, soda, bottled water, candy, or nachos.
The Buddy Combo.
TM The choice for those wanting to save money, but not have a Lady and the Tramp moment at the movies.
Posted by Mark on Saturday, January 22nd, 2005 under movies
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I'm waiting to see how many of
these end up on cubicle shelves in my IT department.
I will report back...
Posted by Mark on Thursday, January 20th, 2005 under tech & IT
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Posted by Mark on Tuesday, January 18th, 2005 under genera
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By 9:00, it was already one of those days that make you want to park your ass on the couch, go through your stack of Netflix, and hide out until tomorrow.
Nothing particularly big went wrong, and so I guess I'm being a wuss, but all of the little things seemed to go wrong this morning. I dozed off after my alarm went off, making getting ready for work a rush job. As a result, I've dropped everything I've picked up today, and I forgot my belt, cell phone, and pager. In a corporate office I'm not sure which is less acceptable: no belt, or no pager. ;-)
My garage door was frozen on the outside, and getting it up was a trip. It took a few tries, and it was accompanied by lots of protesting, cracking noises. Then, my car locks were frozen and my deicer was in the car (i.e. I'm an idiot). Now it's permanently in my coat pocket.
Pre-caffeine I couldn't type anything at work when I first got in. My fingers just fumbled across the keys and pointing and clicking was a chore. I'm not sure what my problem is today.
I'll do my best to avoid the encore of crashing a server or being late to my first day of class tonight after work. Here's to Wednesday!
Update: Today is looking up; things have a way of balancing out. Today after lunch the woman at the snack bar register only charged me for one cookie instead of two! I'm a regular...
It's small, but I've always gotten more pleasure out of the little things.
Posted by Mark on Tuesday, January 18th, 2005 under genera
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The narrative is in Japanese, but after watching
this a few times I can finally get that Gap folding technique down pat!
Gone are the days of the embarrassing wrinkled sleeves. ;-)
Posted by Mark on Monday, January 17th, 2005 under genera
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No, not really. But have you noticed that almost every
probe launched or
proposed by
NASA lately is described as "about the size of a Volkswagen Beetle?" How did this poster boy of nostalgia turned commercial icon get to be so lucky? ;-)
Actually, the point of this post is to talk about how amazing the
Cassini-Huygens mission truly is. Over a seven year period, the two probes launched, joined at the hip tandem style, and headed for Saturn. First, though, they orbited the sun, orbited and shot pictures of Venus, and then moved towards their goal. Casual tasks when your flight plan looks like
this.
Last year they took up close pictures of the ringed planet, and even discovered two previously-unknown moons. They orbited two moons of Saturn, Phoebe and Titan, and then the Huygens probe broke free from the Cassini and guided itself to land on the surface of Titan. It landed successfully early today, and will soon start transmitting pictures and atmospheric readings from the moon's surface until its batteries run out.
How cool is this??? the child-astronaut-to-be inside me screams. This really is a feat of engineering and physics. I'm not worthy, I'm not worthy.
I am a little baffled, though, as to why we can do this, but no one can build a battery that will power my MP3 player for more than ten hours, or a printer that doesn't jam. "PC load letter? What the #%*@ does that mean???"
Posted by Mark on Friday, January 14th, 2005 under tech & IT
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This couple has a daunting task ahead of them: they are suing the CIA for backpay they say the agency owes them for work they did as former spies.
Originally defecting to the US from a Soviet city to work as spies, they claim that the CIA promised supplemental pay for life for work they did during the cold war. After the cold war "John Doe" got a job at a bank, and the pay from the CIA decreased over time until it stopped completely. He lost his job as a result of a merger at his company, and now needs the money. When he asked for payments to resume, the CIA told him that there were simply no funds due to budget cutbacks.
I don't know if I would have the nerve to sue the CIA, but according to the story the couple actually won in lower courts, and the CIA is now appealing.
The money must have all gone to
WMD searches. Money well spent.
Posted by Mark on Wednesday, January 12th, 2005 under genera
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Yet another social theory by yours truly...
99% of the time it seems that the person who wrongs someone (the original asshole) is
not the person who is forever considered to be the jerk. It's the person who calls him on it (the second-degree asshole). This is disturbing.
Consider an example I saw two weeks ago. A woman in a restaurant is talking way too loud on her cell phone, and everyone in the place is sick of her half of the conversation. A man at a table next to her politely taps on her shoulder and asks her to lower her voice or get off the phone so that the people around her can enjoy their meals and conversations. The woman looks at him like he just shot her dog, and one person near me says, "Wow, that took a lot of nerve." All of a sudden, he's the asshole. I label him a hero!
I notice this baffling human behavior all of the time, and I don't understand it at all. This is why I don't ask someone to stop talking in a movie theater or let someone know that they have 15 items in the express lane when I'm behind him just holding a gallon of milk. I don't want to be the second-degree asshole. (Important note: I do honk like crazy if someone cuts me off. In the car, I somehow become a zulu warrior with teeth-baring ferocity.)
I guess this isn't so much of a theory since I don't have a reason for the behavior, as much as it is a labelling of the behavior. I beg of you: go out, live long and prosper, just don't allow some random jackass to make another person the second-degree asshole.
Posted by Mark on Wednesday, January 12th, 2005 under genera
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I'm just as much of a sucker for the latest gadgets, techology, and shiny stuff as the next person, but when certain technologies go away or become commonplace, there are some quaint parts of life that fade out of everyday life with them. Not that we're worse off for it or anything overly sentimental like that, but in a way I miss hearing or saying a few of these things that just made using the latest toys fun:
"Guess where I'm calling your from?!?"
Admit it, all of you squealed this with glee more than once within thirty minutes of getting your first cell phone. I remember doing it to Jessica and my parents. This may have been replaced with, "Guess where I am right now?" as you were pulling into someone's driveway or standing in the hallway outside a friend's apartment. Now that cell phones are more common than the cold, no one will probably utter that again with such delight...
"Play it on 45!"
When my sister and I were listening to records, I don't know what we enjoyed more: listening to our own music, or taking my parents' copies of The Beach Boys and The Mamas and the Papas, lowering them onto the platter, and cranking up the speed to 45 (we didn't have 78 -- now
that would have made our heads explode!). There was just something about hearing Brian Wilson sound like Alvin the Chipmunk that made our Saturday morning better.
"Breaker 1-9, breaker 1-9. Come in Bandit. Over."
Did your dad have a CB radio? Any chance I had to sneak into the kitchen out of earshot of my parents, I would snap on my dad's CB and scan through the channels listening for truckers or chatting friends. CBs and HAM radios were really the cell phones, email servers, and chat rooms of their day. I still have a question... just what in the hell
does the squelch button on those things do?
"Circle what you want for Christmas in the Sears catalog."
Other than the last day of school, I think the best day of my year as a kid was the day that the Sears catalog came in the mail. I could make my Christmas list some three months in advance! I would slip to the toy section, carefully avoiding the boys clothing, dog ear everything related to Star Wars, Transformers, or He-Man that sparked my interest, and then go write everything down. Then I would prioritize, rank my selections, and circle the things that I hoped to find under the tree on Christmas morning (we had to prioritize because Santa had a budget). Today I just shoot off my Amazon wish list and my parents ask Jessica for a list discreetly over email.
"How do I get to your house?"
Remember asking people directions to their houses? Now that's been replaced with, "I think Mapquest gave me a wrong turn. Could you tell me how to get to your place from the corner of Boofoo and Fubar? I think the liquor store I'm parked in front of just got robbed."
"What time is E.T. playing tonight?"
We used to call the movie theater to ask them what time they were playing the movie we wanted to see. If it was the weekend, we'd look in the paper (that could go on this list, too. Yes, I mean the
paper paper). That was soon replaced by the touchtone menu for showtimes, followed by the number no living sould would ever pick up, no matter how many times you let it ring. Today I have my local theaters' sites bookmarked for easy reference.
What are some of the things you remember from technologies past?
Posted by Mark on Sunday, January 9th, 2005 under tech & IT
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What a great weekend. I worked late Friday, but went to bed early with the anticipation that I was going to go
skiing on Saturday. Jessica and I went up to the
quad cities with Brian and Julie, and had a great time. We got there early, skied for about seven hours, and stayed at Brian's parents' house in Iowa for a great meal and good company.
I have only been skiing a handful of times. That, coupled with the fact that I didn't ever go until after college means that I always spend the first part of the day figuring it out all over again. It's kind of like hearing a story about yourself the morning after a really late party. You sort of remember doing it, but no matter how many times someone explains it to you or you look at pictures on the digital camera, you just feel an akward disconnection to the whole thing.
Girl at ski binding counter: Your form says that you're a Type II skier. What length skis do you use?
Me, looking bewildered: I don't know. Something on the shorter side so that I can make easier turns.
Girl at ski binding counter: Have you been here before? What did you use last time?
Me, pretending to know something: I'm pretty sure it was something like 150. Would that sound right?
Girl at ski binding counter: I was originally going to give you 135s. I can step up to 160 if you like longer, but I thought you wanted to stay shorter.
Me, now knowing I'm an idiot: I do. I'll go with 135. Could I have gotten 150s here last time?
Girl at ski binding counter: Not that I know of. That's not standard. I can give you 135 if you know what you're doing.
Me, ready to get away from that infernal counter: Obviously.
After a few runs we were feeling a little bit back in the groove of things. By the end of the afternoon we were carving tight V patterns all over the hills, and even tackled a couple black runs. Snowstar isn't Colorado, but they have some fun runs and this was one of the best times I've ever had skiing. After dark we did about two hours of night skiing, and after people left we had free reign on most of our last runs. We could zip down as fast as we wanted using whatever path we wanted down the route, and the contours were wide open the whole way down. It was a rush!
After we unpeeled our snow clothes away and pushed my car out of the parking lot, we headed to Brian's parent's house. They are two of the friendliest, most hospitable people you could ever meet, and we had fun staying with them. We had homemade steak and mashed potatoes with from-scratch apple pie for breakfast, and stayed up talking after dinner. We were pretty wiped out from the trip and skiing outdoors all day, and so we hit the sack a little after 9:00 pm.
If Brian's parents are willing, this may have to become an annual tradition.
Posted by Mark on Sunday, January 9th, 2005 under genera
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What a great weekend. I worked late Friday, but went to bed early with the anticipation that I was going to go
skiing on Saturday. Jessica and I went up to the
quad cities with Brian and Julie, and had a great time. We got there early, skied for about seven hours, and stayed at Brian's parents' house in Iowa for a great meal and good company.
I have only been skiing a handful of times. That, coupled with the fact that I didn't ever go until after college means that I always spend the first part of the day figuring it out all over again. It's kind of like hearing a story about yourself the morning after a really late party. You sort of remember doing it, but no matter how many times someone explains it to you or you look at pictures on the digital camera, you just feel an akward disconnection to the whole thing.
Girl at ski binding counter: Your form says that you're a Type II skier. What length skis do you use?
Me, looking bewildered: I don't know. Something on the shorter side so that I can make easier turns.
Girl at ski binding counter: Have you been here before? What did you use last time?
Me, pretending to know something: I'm pretty sure it was something like 150. Would that sound right?
Girl at ski binding counter: I was originally going to give you 135s. I can step up to 160 if you like longer, but I thought you wanted to stay shorter.
Me, now knowing I'm an idiot: I do. I'll go with 135. Could I have gotten 150s here last time?
Girl at ski binding counter: Not that I know of. That's not standard. I can give you 135 if you know what you're doing.
Me, ready to get away from that infernal counter: Obviously.
After a few runs we were feeling a little bit back in the groove of things. By the end of the afternoon we were carving tight V patterns all over the hills, and even tackled a couple black runs. Snowstar isn't Colorado, but they have some fun runs and this was one of the best times I've ever had skiing. After dark we did about two hours of night skiing, and after people left we had free reign on most of our last runs. We could zip down as fast as we wanted using whatever path we wanted down the route, and the contours were wide open the whole way down. It was a rush!
After we unpeeled our snow clothes away and pushed my car out of the parking lot, we headed to Brian's parent's house. They are two of the friendliest, most hospitable people you could ever meet, and we had fun staying with them. We had homemade steak and mashed potatoes with from-scratch apple pie for breakfast, and stayed up talking after dinner. We were pretty wiped out from the trip and skiing outdoors all day, and so we hit the sack a little after 9:00 pm.
If Brian's parents are willing, this may have to become an annual tradition.
Posted by Mark on Thursday, January 6th, 2005 under cultur
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My hit counts spiked up in December (9400 hits!), partly because of my class project and my mother-in-law putting my homepage in her Christmas letter. Putting those aside, though, I still had quite a few more visitors.
First, thank you anyone who has linked to my site or showed it to a friend (or an enemy; I realize that not all entries can be gems)! Second, I was curious to delve into the referrer links and search strings to see how some of my visitors were happening upon the site. Some of the search strings made me laugh or scratch my head, and I had to include them below. Nothing too grotesque yet -- I have to work on that -- but "Jessica Simpson's 24th birthday cake?" Sure enough, I come up 27th in Google using that search string. I wonder what twelve year old girl was disappointed when she clicked and landed here? ;-)
- garmana (no surprise considering the URL, but who searches for that?)
- christmas legend powerpoint
- clientcopia
- horrified observers of pedestrian
- jessica simpson's 24th birthday cake
- office space sound board
- philosopher audience
- similies
- snow gauge inventor (there's a snow gauge???)
Posted by Mark on Wednesday, January 5th, 2005 under genera
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I've spent the last couple years reading books that it seems like everyone read but me in junior high and high school. I had English classes all six years, including three semesters specifically of Literature courses, but for whatever reason I never read these books. Many of my friends did at my same school when I talk to them; I don't know how I missed out:
I'm about half way through the above list. I try to read one of them every 4th or 5th book, and so far I have loved all of them. I think the greatest compliment I can give to these stories and authors is that (so far) they are all timeless. It's scary to me how deadly accurate Orwell and Bradbury can be when I see the state of things today. It makes me wonder: Have things really changed very much? I realize that these books aren't
that old, but when I read Shakespeare or Homer I get the same question ringing in my head.
People have been people through the ages it seems, and unfortunately all of our ruling classes throughout civilization seem to rebuild new versions of the same mistakes and nightmares as the rulers before them.
Posted by Mark on Wednesday, January 5th, 2005 under writin
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We evicted our first tenants today. Not fun, but totally necessary. This building has 3-4 units that definitely need changeover to improve the quality of the building, and this is one of them. We knew based on stories from the seller that this couple had not paid rent in at least three months, consistently caused damage to their unit and common areas in the building, and was visited by the police weekly for domestic problems and drugs. The model tenants.
Our lease states that they can be evicted on the 5th day of the month if rent is not paid. Ordinarily this is just a motivator since a letter on the 5th usually results in at least a partial payment within a few days, or them working out a payment plan with us. We want to keep renters whenever possible; our goal is definitely not to evict someone and we never have before. Our building manager visited all of the tenants on the 1st and asked for the rent, and these tenants said that they had no money (and neither person works; they live on unemployment and social security). Later that day, our manager overheard them in the stairway joking that they would not be paying the rent this month, but that we wouldn't evict someone in our first month owning the building.
Sunday night, the woman below their apartment came pounding on the manager's door. Her bathroom ceiling was "raining water," and one of her walls had caved in. We knocked on the door of the apartment above, and no answer. The apartmnent above that is empty and had had a damaged toilet, and so we checked there quickly. It was dry as a bone. We ran down one flight again and knocked, and no answer. We keyed into the apartment, and there were the tenants, sprawled on the floor in the hallway high as kites. They were laying in a pool of water not three feet from the bathroom door with the toilet bowl spewing water, totally oblivious and giggling up a storm.
We shut off the water immediately, and started removing the ceiling tiles of the apartmnent below and sucking up the water with a shop vac. The apartment below hers also had some damage, but not much. We cleaned up as much as possible, and have fans running in both of the hard-hit bathrooms to dry out the walls and floors to prevent them from molding. I hope that works.
They argued yesterday that they should
not be financially responsible for repairs. We disagreed given the negligent nature of the damage, and also said that we would repair the other damaged apartments first since they had already paid rent. We asked them again if they could provide partial rent, and they said not in the month of January. Today, they were moving their stuff out.
I'm not a confrontational person at all -- I amost shrink from it to a detrimental degree -- and so this was a very difficult thing to do. I can tell already that this experience will give me more managerial lessons than financial or building repairs.
Posted by Mark on Tuesday, January 4th, 2005 under genera
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This would be my dream come true. So maybe by the time my kids graduate from college these tickets will be down in the few thousand dollar range???
Posted by Mark on Monday, January 3rd, 2005 under genera
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Today is my first day back in the office since December 22, and so of course the whole work experience is still a little surreal. What was the phone extension for voicemail again? What is my login password???
The number one conversation starter this morning has been, "So, after all of that time off, you must be really refreshed and ready to get to work!" or something to that affect. I've heard this phrase at least half a dozen times already (it's 9:20!), and so I have to comment.
My response is a smile and some generic affirmation, but inside my head is screaming, "It was so nice being home all week! Why would I want to be here when I could be right back on the couch in my sweats watching movies and eating barbecue chips???"
If this is a common perception, let me be the first to stand up and declare this theory complete crap; nothing but a myth. I've always seen my interests and focus flow along with an explicit momentum. When I'm working, it can be slow to start but once I get going it's hard for me to do or think about anything else (much to Jessica's dismay). On the flip side, when I change gears to something fun and liesurely,
that momentum builds and the last thing I want to do is go back to work. And anyway, how many people would go to the office if they didn't need to put food on the table?
I don't think that people can really believe this Theory of Being Back and Fully Refreshed. I'm convinced it's been created by the
Lumbergian horde and passed on using the Republican technique of repitition until the masses have believed it to be true.
Okay, back to work.
Posted by Mark on Monday, January 3rd, 2005 under cultur
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Day 1
Hello world! Welcome to my site, and my first post. Well, the first post anywhere. I've decided to track my progress and thoughts here on my latest effort. I've finally separated the light from the darkness, and it is good. It's taken what seems like forever to figure that out, it's really been a thorn in my side (note to self: create thorns so that makes sense). I have a multitude of thoughts going on in my head right now, but I really need to get back to work. Please watch the site for posts throughout the week. I really think this is going to be something.
Day 7
Whew! I apologize for the lack of posts here. It's been quite a week. I finally finished forming dry land to separate the formless waters under the sky, and filled the world with plants and animals. I'm particularly fond of humankind, seeing as how you are created in my image and all. I put you in a beautiful garden and asked you to name the plants and animals to keep you busy. That shoud keep you out of trouble. I did go against Gabriel's advice, though, and gave you free will. But why would you do anything to harm yourselves or the world I've given you?
Seeing as how I've created you now, I'm turning on the comments for the site beginning with this post. I may need to intervene on Earth from time to time if things go wrong, but I'm not expecting to do much of that. Be kind to one another, be fruitful and multiply, and remember; please stay away from the fruit tree in the middle of the garden.
It's time to hit the sack.
Comments
Michael - Day 7 at 1:20 am
Way to go! The heavenly host and I have been watching your progress this week, and we all agree that it is good.
Gabriel - Day 7 at 1:23 am
Hey, seeing that you've created the world and all, maybe you'll soon get some trackbacks! ;-)
Posted by Mark on Sunday, January 2nd, 2005 under genera
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Very sweet. Check out the recent trailer for the upcoming production of Frank Miller's
Sin City.
Director
Robert Rodriguez of
indie dreams come true should give this the gritty, straight from the sewer feel that this movie deserves. The styling in the trailer looks phenomenal (my inner child is screaming, "It looks just like the comic! Elijah Wood's sunglasses; the rain at the end of the trailer!!!"), but hopefully it won't be overdone or take away from the movie. Frank Miller is codirecting, and so hopefully he's helped see to that.
Frank Miller almost singlehandedly revitalized the comic book industry in the 1980s, giving comics the darker realism that they mainly have today. The men were still in tights, but he replaced the bright flamboyance and corny dialogue with deep, emotional storylines that could have coexisted with current events (i.e. the cold-war era's
The Dark Knight Returns, and Sin City). Bulletproof, infallable characters got chinks in their psychological armor, and the stories were all that much better for it. This movie being made is a tribute to Frank Miller's work, and I hope they do it justice.
Posted by Mark on Thursday, December 30th, 2004 under movies
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I've had this week off work and had a break from the computer with no work or school, and so I also decided to a hiatus for a while during and after Christmas weekend from most things electronic. No Internet, and no TV except news at breakfast (I did see a
couple of
movies, though). Other than working at the new apartment, I've spent much of the week doing the things that I've neglected over the last couple months: cleaning my office, getting a battery and tires for the car, organizing closets, etc. Fun city.
My mass media Walden has now gone on long enough -- withdrawals were starting to set in. ;-) I'm recommencing surfing, and will soon answer unopened emails.
Posted by Mark on Thursday, December 30th, 2004 under genera
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Since I probably won't have time to think about posting tomorrow, may you and your loved ones have a very Merry Christmas!
We all have our own ideas about and traditions at Christmas time. Whatever yours are, I hope you are able to find time relaxing, spending time with family or friends, and reflecting on your meaning of the holiday.
Jessica and I will be spending tonight with my parents; having lunch and dinner together, hanging out in between, going to church, and then opening presents afterwards. Tomorrow we'll be at Jessica's parents early so that we can all watch my niece and nephew open presents, and then have lunch with her immediate family and grandparents. I always look forward to both visits. I love having everyone together in once place, and everyone being in a hopeful, joyous mood. No matter where you come from,
that is what the season is all about.
Posted by Mark on Friday, December 24th, 2004 under genera
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Could it be...? A Batman movie that shows him the way he was intended; a brooding, ingenious detective? When I found out that director
Christopher Nolan (
Memento) and screenwriter
David Goyer (the
Blade trilogy) were teaming up on this earlier this year, I was excited. My hope was that they would tackle the Batman mythos with a serious, darker edge showing his true motivations and the qualities that make him a great character: unmatched intelligence, a haunted determination, and a student of countless philosophies, martial arts, and cultures. Despite his strength, acrobatic, and fighting skills, Batman's sharpest weapons are his intellect and ability to unravel the most tightly-knotted puzzle. Writers like Frank Miller and Denny O'Neil tied all of these together and gave them a dark twist in my favorite Batman stories.
The latest trailer is
here.
The story looks like it focuses strongly on Bruce's training and education in Asia, and his apprenticeships with Ra's Al Ghul and Henri Ducard.
Ken Watanabe plays Ra's, which is a great choice. He should convey the intensity and cunning that I always imagined in that character. When Bruce comes back to Gotham City to begin his existence as Batman, he is an entirely different person. A lot of the drama appears to focus on his inner conflict and knowledge of himself. It should make for an interesting story if they even scratch the surface faithfully of his character.
This may be enough to make me forget the campy, bubblegum garbage that the studios cranked out after Tim Burton's solid take.
Posted by Mark on Tuesday, December 21st, 2004 under movies
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Forging forward in their battle to be "fair and balanced" amidst constant criticism for being "the far right news channel," Fox News ups the ante and
hires Democatic Senator Zell Miller as a regular on their programming. He joins Alan Colmes in tipping the scale back precisely to the middle. *cough* RNC 2004 *cough*
I'm sure it's just a matter of time before he challenges O'Reilly to a duel.
Posted by Mark on Monday, December 20th, 2004 under cultur
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Happy Birthday to me! It's (the almost big) 2-9. Quite a bit has happened on the personal front this week, and they warrant some recording:
Monday: I finished my class! The final went okay, and I finished my project about twenty minutes before exam time. It's turned out that I'm right on an A/B split, and I got the only perfect score on the class project (!!!), and so my professor offered me the option to add a couple features to my project to bump my overall grade to an A. I'm working on that today and tomorrow.
Tuesday: My friend Brian found out that he's having a boy in April! Mark is a fine name.
Wednesday: I got some interesting news about a co-worker's position possibly opening up in 3-6 months (directly from her). I'm in the running with one other person according to conversations she had with our managers, and so I have some thinking to do.
Thursday: Nothing to see here. Move along.
Friday: I bought an apartment building! Three partners and I have owned a converted home since August with four units, and the same sellers had a 14-unit apartment building in a nearby town that we got for an excellent price. It's in horrible condition, but the needed improvements are purely cosmetic (new carpet, paint, cleaning, etc.). We closed in the morning, and spent the rest of the day cleaning the apartment for Casey, who we've hired as our building manager. This is going to be the source of some future posts for sure; mucho drama in just the first day. Part of that drama included $2200 in damages paid to us at closing because an evicted tenant recently left his dog alone in his apartment for two weeks. The carpet was shredded and soaked with you-know-what, baseboard heaters were torn off the wall, and the fridge was ruined (not sure how???).
This definitely increases our slum lord points. ;-)
Saturday: I turn 29! Jessica and I went to lunch with my parents, and they came over for cake. I got two shirts,
Something Wicked this Way Comes,
American Idiot, and
The Best of Chris Farley from Jessica, and we watched the DVD all the way through with my parents. My name is Matt Foley, and I am a motivational speaker... ;-) My parents gave me a tool drawer set, which is awesome, and a few tools to get me started. Everybody did way too much; all I really wanted to do was hang out with everyone and enjoy some time relaxing with my family (which we did, too).
Tonight Jessica and I are having dinner just the two of us, and I'm really looking forward to that. With a busy couple weeks over with, it's time to enjoy some private time together.
Posted by Mark on Saturday, December 18th, 2004 under genera
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Illinois's bid for national news this week was our governor's plea to legally ban mature-rated video games from minors, along with a max sentence of 1 year and $5K. A slightly paraphrased quote: "We can't stop an adult from making their own decision... but my eight year-old niece shouldn't be able to cut off somebody's head with a chainsaw."
While that statement is true out of context... it's a game! We need a little perspective here. I've spent thousands of hours over the past 15+ years killing monsters, smashing turtles, and boxing in a virtual ring. I'm not a salivating, feces-eating psycho.
Parents, we don't expect you to monitor your kids. We'll stop them from buying video games which may or may not affect their behaviors. You're covered.
Posted by Mark on Thursday, December 16th, 2004 under genera
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I stumbled across this a few links away from
Derek's post on the Swedish holiday Lucia. Meet
The Espresso Story.
The goal: establish a plot or express an event in twenty five words or less (the literary equivalent of shotgunning an espresso). Not exactly a story, to crass to be a haiku, but maybe a thought-provoking quote or funny thought starter will leak its way in here.
The challenge: leave some of your own! The more twisted, da mo betta. I'll start.
Maury had no idea that they would splatter
that much. He grinned and dropped another handful.
Posted by Mark on Tuesday, December 14th, 2004 under writin
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My neighbor's dogs drive me nuts. When he moved in three years ago, two Rottweiler puppies moved in with him. They were cute and playful, but that stage didn't last too long. To my neighbor's credit, he put in a privacy fence soon after he moved in, and the dogs are primarily confined to that area of his yard unless he's with them (our neighbor behind was especially grateful for this, having two daughters under the age of five).
This spring and summer those dogs have developed the annoying habit of barking their heads off. I think they're driving my neighbor nuts, because he usually just sends them out into the yard for the neighborhood to enjoy. A year ago they were either inside or quiet as church mice. They're probably just a little attention starved, but the neighbors shouldn't have to suffer.
<legalese>Heretofor, the term OUTSIDE equates to TWO LARGE DOGS INSANELY BARKING AT NOTHING IN PARTICULAR, AT UNACCEPTABLE DECIMAL LEVELS.</legalese>
The dogs have spent more time OUTSIDE throughout the summer, and it is diving Jessica and me nuts. We couldn't really hang out on the deck much this summer because they were OUTSIDE, and that also means that them being OUTSIDE encouraged us to close the windows and turn on the AC. We can be in the house watching a movie, and we can still hear those damn things OUTSIDE.
This situation also becomes a little sticky because I work somewhat with this neighbor. My department is nearly six thousand people in a single complex, but it still somehow turns into the professional/social incestual pool equivalent of
Bevery Hills, 90210. If you piss somebody off, you eventually catch the brunt of it down the road (like at an annual raise review). I know that I should suck it up and approach him about it tactfululy, but when it happens I'm afraid I'd lose my temper a little bit and come across as rude.
Until then, I wish he'd bring them back inside instead of just kicking them OUTSIDE.
Posted by Mark on Monday, December 13th, 2004 under genera
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I just watched the
teaser trailer for
War of the Worlds, another project by
Tom Cruise and
Steven Spielberg.
The trailer hardly shows any plot or movie imagery, but it did succeed in making me hope that they do a great job with this movie. I read the book twice as a kid, and I even made a video book report in eigth grade playing Orson Welles as a TV reporter narrating the story. That will be on my first DVD. ;-)
I'm a complete sucker for this stuff, as long as it's treated with respect and not dumbed down too much. It will be marketed as a summer blockbuster, so I'm cautiously optimistic. At least they're trusting Steven with this movie instead of someone like
McG or
John Woo (no doves amid the near apocolypse, please).
Posted by Mark on Friday, December 10th, 2004 under movies
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I'm slightly dreading staring at anything resembling a monitor right now. Work, school, and outside project work have all been busy in November and December, and I feel like I'm handcuffed to a mouse and keyboard too many hours per day. My eyes are pretty buggy this week, and travelling this weekend (family Christmas with the in laws) will give them a welcomed rest.
My efforts are going well, there are just a lot of them packed in together. As of yesterday work should not be busy for the remainder of the year -- knock on wood -- and school will be over Monday. The project I'm finishing up has been fun, but it's been hard to give it the necessary attention with the other things going on. It may even be done by end of next week, also.
When I'm done with all of these things I will probably take a week or two off from writing here. I need to enjoy some time away from the computer, away from the television, and most other things digital. I'll have the week off work between Christmas and New Year's, and so I plan on getting back into my workout routine, doing some home improvements, and writing (in a notebook!).
Posted by Mark on Friday, December 10th, 2004 under tech & IT
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Besides the fact that my wireless connection is hosed right now, there is
another reason why I won't be surfing or coding in front of the TV.
Also, another funny conversation heard over the cube wall (names changed to protect the innocent, and in the spirit of Aaron's
post earlier today:
Dude #1: "We're getting pizza. Are you in?"
Dude #2: "Sure."
Dude #1: "What do you like on your pizza?"
Dude #2: "Oh, anything. I'm not picky."
Dude #1: "Are there any toppings that you definitely don't like?"
Dude #2: "Well... I can't eat pork, chicken, or beef. But anything else is fine."
Dude #1: "So what you're saying is, we should order at least one cheese pizza?"
Dude #2: "That will work, thanks. That's what I always get at home."
There is a life lesson here. Don't waste others' time when you have a definite opinion. Just be honest, already! ;-) This is right up there with answering a dinner destination question with, "Wherever you would like to go."
Posted by Mark on Wednesday, December 8th, 2004 under tech & IT
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I can't take credit for this one, but I had to pass it on. This is from the King of CSS Himself,
Eric Meyer.
Most people have probably given a PowerPoint presentation at some point that was going to be shown to a group from a computer with Internet access. If you are like me, a well-crafted Web page is a lot more aesthetically pleasing and nimble than a PowerPoint file, and I cringe when I see the .ppt extension on Google search results when I'm searching for reference material.
Why not mimic the functionality of PowerPoint using HTML and CSS? You could, but it would end up being a lot more work than just building it with PowerPoint; your lost time could be more than the added satisfaction of a sharper-looking presentation (especially since everyone's used to PowerPoint).
Eric Meyer solved the problem by adding JavaScript into the mix with his "beta" of a
CSS-driven slideshow. Each slide is just a <div> wrapping up the content: a header tag for the title, and an unordered list for the slide text. The controls are there, too. There are links in the bottom right corner to navigate through the presentation, or you can just traverse forward by clicking anywhere in the browser. The slide numbers are also auto-generated for free!
I made this
working example in about ten minutes using Eric's framework, content and all. Minus the background image, the presentation content is a single HTML document sized only at 2K. All I did to customize it was swap out a different background image in the CSS file, and I changed the content font-size attribute to be a bit bigger since I'll be presenting it in a large classroom. Other than that, it was good to go right out of the box.
Posted by Mark on Tuesday, December 7th, 2004 under tech & IT
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Once again I've gotten myself into a bad situation time management-wise. I had an utterly horrible Friday surprise at work, and it blew away my weekend, which was already going to be packed.
<whining>
A director at work decided that 11:00 Friday was a good time to change the status of a week-long problem from "slightly annoying" to "code red defcon five cataclysmic and dire." That led to me working until 9:00 pm Friday, and then putting in fifteen hours yesterday and today fixing the issue. On top of that, I had two project implementations going in last night, which required me to be up in the middle of the night confirming that everything installed successfully. As a special bonus the building lost power, delaying our testing by about five hours. My reward: three hours sleep.
</whining>
I needed to allow for something like this to happen. My final project is due in class on Wednesday, and I am in full swing coding a new site for a freelance client. He originally wanted the site ready end of November, but then he travelled last minute for two weeks in November. He was all for delaying the implementation, but he's still in an unofficial rush. Without my day job, I was already going to be creating four new ends for my candle and burning it somehow at six ends.
On the plus side, those two projects are going pretty well. This particular client has been great to work with, and I would like to see this job develop into an ongoing partnership. I may also dress up my class project during break and start an examples/tutorials section on this blog. I could have a few cool examples if compile assignments from my classes over the last couple years, and hopefully they would be helpful to someone.
All the same, here's looking forward to Christmas.
Posted by Mark on Sunday, December 5th, 2004 under genera
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Happy early birthday to me! Jessica surprised me with this early. She ordered the print online and put it in a frame that we already had in our living room (that older picture is now retired underneath). It is Rembrandt's piece, "The Philosopher."
I came across this a few months ago when I was googling for something entirely different. I think I was searching for something to help with my networking homework; I have no idea how I stumbled onto it. Something about it connected with me. The philosopher's solemn gaze, the big book heaped on the desk, and the study that seems to be crammed down below a forgotten staircase all give me a sense of a comfortable, peaceful solitude.
You can't really tell in the picture that I took, but there is also a devilish looking man in the bottom right corner hunched over in the darkness. The two contrasting figures and the spiral staircase really add to the ying-yang theme of the scene for me. The philosopher on the left typically associated with knowledge, logic, and truth sitting next to a window bathed in light, and his darker half hidden away almost in secrecy.
I didn't notice him the first time I saw the painting online -- many versions you will find are small and/or very fuzzy -- but when I saw him there the painting appealed to me even more. We all have these two sides, whether we like to admit or not. The worst of us have a soft side for something, and the best of us have at least one quality that we'd rather no one ever see. To me, understanding yourself in that entirety is what the philosopher is brooding about.
Posted by Mark on Sunday, December 5th, 2004 under genera
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Overheard at Gold's Gym:
Meathead: "Sweet! Those health shakes I like are 50% off. That means they're only like two dollars."
Meathead's Girlfriend: "Oh, wow! How much are they regularly?"
It gets better. Wait for it...
Meathead: "How am I supposed to know? We're here all of the time, but it's not like I work here."
A lot of things are stereotypes for a reason.
Posted by Mark on Friday, December 3rd, 2004 under genera
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What do you get when you combine an original art idea, a group of creative minds, and Flash? The
Zoom Quilt.
Posted by Mark on Wednesday, December 1st, 2004 under genera
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Growing up in a town of 600, vicariously living in a large city with three million people through my wife (then girlfriend), and now living in a city with 100,000 people, I've developed a theory on the weirdness associated with a town or city. I'm calling it Weirdness Density
TM.
The theory goes a little something like this: each town has basically the same amount of weirdness in it regardless of size, and so the per capita weirdness is much higher in small towns.
Take my hometown, for instance. In many ways it's the definition of wholesome, smalltown America. A majority of the community farms or works at the town elevator, most people don't lock their doors or cars at night, privately owned stores line Main Street, and each resident greets everyone else by name when he or she runs into someone. If you're a stranger, you'll get a wave or a good morning.
However, hidden under that innocent facade lurks that of Weirdness Density. Maybe it's because I know a much bigger percentage of the people, or maybe it's because I know them
better, but it seems like we've had more than our fair share of strange behavior.
An old woman was rumored to lure grade school students into her house and do God-knows-what to them. That was definitely an urban legend, but every day she would pace around the playground fence while we were at recess and yell out students' names. Weird.
The only bar in town was formerly a funeral home. The funeral director-turned-mayor converted it two years ago and appropriately named it "The Last Stop." Actually kind of cool, but weird.
Two town police officers were fired while I was growing up there. The first for shooting a friend's cat when he was house sitting for him because the cat was driving him nuts, and the second for dealing drugs to high school kids. Laughably weird.
My neighbor had her house and farm bought out from under her by her younger son. The older son was so upset, he broke in when his brother was on vacation and buried all of the kitchen cabinets and furniture in the field behind the house. Creative, but pretty weird.
Before I started kindergarten we had a serial killer in our town. He picked up hitchhikers, chopped them up, and buried them in barrels in his basement. Scary weird.
One woman was estranged from her husband, and understandably upset. What no one else understood was why she handcuffed herself to the rearview mirror of his truck when he was in the town's only restaurant ("The Shed," now closed due to fights) and refused to stop screaming until he came out to talk to her. Of course, she was stark naked. Dishearteningly weird.
The list goes on, but if it gets much longer I'm likely to bore you away. The water in my hometown always was a little yellow from unhealthy amounts of iron and sulfur; it's possible that we're meeting the same fate as Rome and slowly driving ourselves insane. Granted, we haven't had our mayor fiddling in the streets watching it burn, but we're doing our best.
Come to think of it, I'm a little thirsty.
Posted by Mark on Tuesday, November 30th, 2004 under genera
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My dad, Jessica, and I undertook a real comic book rescue this afternoon. We had Thanksgiving dinner with my side of the family today at my parents' house, and my comic books came up in conversation. They have been in my parents' crawl space since they moved into their house in 1998, and I thought it was time that I take them home.
When I went down to the crawl space and lifted one of the lids on a long box it kind of stuck, and when I pulled harder the top layer of cardboard peeled away like a misopened cereal box. What the hell? I pulled the inner layer off, too, and found it pockmarked with mold. Crap! Comic book cancer.
I started pulling the comics out, and they seemed fine. Each is bagged and boarded (thank you, junior high anal retentiveness), and the mold sticking to the tops and bottoms didn't break through any of the bags that I examined. The boxes felt like centuries-old parchment, and so there was no transporting them. My dad found miscellaneous empty boxes of all sizes and shapes, and he, Jessica, and I boxed them up and took them to my car.
I looked at them last year at Christmas and there were no problems. I'm not sure what changed in that short time. My parents' basement feels dry, and none of the other boxes were moldy or even yellowed. Thankfully I got to these in time. Of course, now I have 1200 comics encrusted in mold boxed up in my living room. Out of the frying pan, and into the fire.
I'll spend tomorrow shopping for deals in bags, boards, and long boxes, and transplant the books as quickly as possible. I could clean off the bags, but I would probably guarantee myself the same results in a few years if just one spore was left clinging to the plastic. I'm also going to get some plastic tubs to hold the boxes, and seal things up tightly. That should keep the cancer away.
I've needed to switch out the bags and boards anyway, most are about fifteen years old, and so this could be a blessing in disguise forcing me to do that. Another good thing: my Nintendo (the original 8-bit NES system) was next to the comics, and so I brought that home with me, too. A bit of nostalgia is nice to have under the roof. I hooked it up and tested it, and everything is working fine. I played a couple games of Tetris, and I beat the Ninja Blacksox with the American Dreams by the ten-run rule in the third inning in Baseball Stars. Mike Tyson is next, but it will probably take a few tries before muscle memory kicks back in. ;-)
Posted by Mark on Saturday, November 27th, 2004 under genera
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Following the lead of the retail moguls, the holiday season is kicking in early today with our first snow of the year. I didn't really think it would be anything sizeable when I heard the forecast, but it's actually accumulating on the yard and the deck railings (the wind-protected corner of the deck railing is always my snow gauge).
It's supposed to be a long, wet winter. I don't think I'm ready for it to start yet.
Posted by Mark on Wednesday, November 24th, 2004 under genera
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Beware trendy new industry jargon! Or as I've always said, actively scrutinize ephemeral commercial neologisms.
Years ago corporate folks were supposed to be "highly effective." Then, we were supposed to synergize and be proactive. Now I'd have to say that above all, we need to embrace diversity. And remember, we need to deftly keep in step to this pop culture tap dance all while keeping our cool when someone moves our cheese.
The only other thing on the same level of semantic goofiness today is acronyms, but that's definitely a subject of IOP (it's own post). How are you supposed to keep up? Or better yet, stay ahead of the curve and come up with your very own ephemeral commercial neologisms?
Don't panic.
Dack.com brings us the
Web Economy Bullshit Generator! Yes, now you too can come up with your own phrases for presentations, strategic planning sessions, or just sitting around the dinner table. A few choice examples:
- architect 24/7 functionalities
- seize granular solutions
- revolutionize back-end initiatives
Good stuff. And let's face it. We all need to revolutionize back-end solutions.
And how much would you be willing to pay for the Web Economy Bullshit Generator? Sixty dollars? One hundred dollars??
Five hundred dollars??? Prepare to be amazed: it's absolutely free! That's right, this new tool for success will cost you literally nothing. The folk(s?) at dack.com are giving this away to the world for free.
Now
that's a great way to generate synergistic paradigms.
Posted by Mark on Monday, November 22nd, 2004 under cultur
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All of a sudden it seems like Christmas is everywhere. I know that Thanksgiving comes later in November for the second year in a row, putting a cramp in retailers' styles, but come on. The decorations started going up in the malls near me a month ago, and the department stores had trees, ornaments, and other miscellaneous home decorations for sale. Today driving into Indianapolis, a scan through the radio stations turned up three Christmas songs.
It just seems entirely too early. Wasn't it just Halloween? Autumn is flying by, and so it seems like Christmas can't possibly be right around the corner. I wish we could at least get some relief from the Christmas Commercialism until after Thanksgiving.
The marketing is like the change of seasons here in central Illinois. School starts, you blink, and it's Halloween. Blink again, and it's Thanksgiving AND Christmas. Christmas gets a few blinks of its own, but then you're on to New Year's resolutions and their gung-ho diets and exercise regiments (at least for a few weeks).
After that at least we'll have a couple weeks off until the three-stone diamond ring commericials kick in for Valentine's Day (I love this man, I love this man).
Okay, I'm stopping before I sound
too cynical. ;-) I love the holidays; I just wish they were less about amazon.com wish lists and more about slowing down to spend time with family and friends.
Posted by Mark on Saturday, November 20th, 2004 under genera
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Finally... someone is trying to protect us from the onslaught of stale, tasteless "entertainment" vehicles that major record labels and movie studios have seemed to cram down our throats recently.
Horrified Observers of Pedestrian Entertainment, or
H.O.P.E., opened their doors after Ashlee Simpson's lip synching incident on Saturday Night Live. Their offer: mail them
Ashlee's CD, they will send you "one of a higher entertainment quality" like something by Elvis Costello, The Ramones, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, Aretha Franklin, or Ray Charles (among others). Next, H.O.P.E. is setting its sights on the unfortunate
Taxi and
Paris Hilton.
The site is a little tongue in cheek of course, but it's humorous and drives a question home that I've been thinking about for a long time. What happened to entertainment? It's either deteriorating before our eyes so that execs can make a buck, or it's always been this way and I was too young before to realize it.
Posted by Mark on Thursday, November 18th, 2004 under genera
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I came across
this blog entry on bad metaphors and similies submitted by students.
Some of these are hilarious, but more importantly they remind me of how I used to try to write in grade school English class. In my mind, the more clever or outrageous the comparison, the better. I vividly remember writing in third grade, "Walking through the dark basement, he was as jumpy as a cat handcuffed to a rollercoaster." I think I got a comment in red pen that read something like, "Was this really necessary?" Budding creativity is seldom understood...
If I had been writing those things fifteen years later, I'm sure some of them would have been vented out somewhere in cyberspace.
Posted by Mark on Wednesday, November 17th, 2004 under writin
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I'm witnessing something as I write this that I think is great. A group of consultants from India working in my office just came back in, and they are decorating a friend's cubicle for his birthday. I'm sure this isn't the first time that this has happened, but it is the first time I've seen it firsthand.
I feel bad that a large percentage of our consultants here on Visa from other countries often don't appear to feel comfortable participating in a lot of "typical" traditions and social activities at work. I'm sure some don't want to, but I know that others don't feel invited to. The fact that this group feels like they can do this is pretty cool.
Now I don't think that we should ALL follow the same mainstream traditions. I don't want to see everyone walking around in Docs, khakis, and polo shirts. The variety of traditions and habits is a great thing in our office, but it's good to see that some people are comfortable enough to walk on both sides of the line.
Posted by Mark on Tuesday, November 16th, 2004 under cultur
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I don't want to trivialize the situation that I found another person in tonight, because it would truly be horrible and I have been thinking a lot about her and family, but I can really only write about my own emotions at the moment...
Tonight after my exam one of my classmates was standing outside of our building with a blank, dazed expression on her face. I had talked to her before class and she felt very unprepared for our test, and so I said something flippant like, "Well, at least it's over, right?"
She just stared at me with the same blank look and said, "I think my dad just died."
"What?" I stammered. I didn't think I heard her right.
"I think my dad just died," she repeated. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and stared at it for a few moments. "My mom called three times during class and left a message. She was so upset that she could barely talk, and the only thing I could understand was 'you and your brother need to fly home tonight.' There's nothing else that could happen that would make her react this way."
My heart went out to her, but I also had no idea what I should say or do. Do I tell her that everything will be okay? Do I leave her alone? Do I ask her what I can do for her? Having talked to each other only in the context of class, we barely know each other's last names. I knew that I would not want to be alone in this situation, and so I asked her where her brother and her parents were. Her brother works near ISU, and he was driving over to pick her up. Their parents live in Atlanta, GA, and so she and her brother were going to drive to O'Hare Airport and try to sort out what was happening on the drive up and then catch the next flight down. No one in her family was answering his or her phone, and that was really upsetting her more than anything.
Not knowing.
I kept asking her questions about her brother and whether she wanted me to contact her professors at all, and just generally kept her talking. I didn't want to pry or make her talk about something upsetting, but I thought it might be better to keep her talking. Her brother came in a few minutes, she said thank you, and they drove away.
I felt the worst after she left because I didn't know if I made her feel better, worse, or anywhere in between. She may not have been feeling anything really; I've had a similar reaction in those kinds of situations before with my own family members. At the very least I hope that she realized that I am concerned about her, and that I didn't make her feel any worse.
Posted by Mark on Monday, November 15th, 2004 under genera
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Jessica has an
ACUI conference at
University of Wisconsin-Madison this weekend, and so I came up with her. It gives me the perfect constraint of having to study for my networking exam on Monday, and we haven't gotten to spend a lot of time together in the last few weeks so I just wanted the time with her in the car on the drives up and back.
UW's campus is beautiful. It reminds me a lot of
University of Illinois-Urbana/Champaign. The size of the campuses are similar (huge), and the turn-of-the-century and post-WWII buildings are impressive. It sits a few blocks away from the state capitol plaza along Lake Monona, and so it has some spectacular views (the lake during the day, and the capitol building at night). State Street cuts through the middle of campus creating somewhat of a small feudel village; some sections are reserved for pedestrian traffic only, and restaurants and shops line the outdoor "mall." The next block between that and the lake is stacked with residence halls and Greek houses.
More than anything, being here reminds me how much I enjoyed campus life. I'm taking classes at night, sure, but that's not what I mean. I love the self-contained feel, knowing the kinds of learning going on all around me, and all of the different types of people packed together in one place. Given the right campus, you can find the social, economic, and cultural diversity unmatched in almost any other same-sized setting.
I miss the cyclical nature of college, too: time-boxed semesters with easily-identifiable beginnings, endings, and goals, and the fresh starts each August and January. Having been in the same job now for nearly four years, those qualities would be refreshing. Not that I don't enjoy working towards my own and longer-termed goals, but my human-nature need for variety makes me a little envious of the students I see milling through the streets and halls. I hope they are enjoying their time in school as much as I did.
Posted by Mark on Saturday, November 13th, 2004 under genera
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Here's an interesting look under the hood at Google and how they're using Gmail to create their search index. Yesterday Brian told me that my blog site comes up second when you do a
google search on the word "
garmana." However, the root/homepage of garmana.com doesn't come back at all. What??? I thought. How can that be? How did Google find me to index me?
As of right now, the
cached version of the page you're reading right now (on google.com) is dated November 2. The first link to this page that I know of anywhere on the Net is the one Aaron
posted on
salt-the-earth.net, and that was on November 3. I've never personally linked to it anywhere, and Brian and Aaron were the only people reading it at that point (as far as I know).
Hmm, strange you say. Yes, quite. Thinking it over, I went through my sent items in my Gmail account. Sure enough, I had sent Brian an email on November 1 with a link to this blog (to his Gmail account). Google must have parsed the message and added its links to their index processing!
I don't personally have a problem with this. Hey, it could be one more way to move yourself up in their rankings. Given the public scrutiny over Google mining Gmail message content to display advertisements, I'm surprised that I haven't seen this topic pop up in an article as well. It's another creative way to build their search index, but some people may see this as another way of being "watched."
Posted by Mark on Friday, November 12th, 2004 under tech & IT
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I just came back from a late showing of
Pixar's
The Incredibles.
It was outstanding! Worth every drop of caffeine I'll need to swallow down tomorrow. I don't have many criticisms or "points of improvement" for Pixar's collection of other productions, but this one is grander in almost every aspect. The plot was solid, the characters had more depth than any character since
Toy Story, and the technical aspects of the animation were superb. The rendering of hair, fluid human animation, and water were impressive. You can tell that they have learned from each movie and built on their rendering expertise.
This movie is a big accomplishment for writer/director
Brad Bird. He was a victim of bad timing with
The Iron Giant. The humanness of that movie transcended the animation genre, and it went unjustifiably unnoticed. My hat is off to him again. The Incredibles is every bit as enjoyable, and the characters as identifiable.
I can't give away too much of the plot or my favorite scenes, because I'd like everyone who wants to see it to enjoy it. One nice surprise that I didn't realize beforehand is that
Jason Lee has a major part. I'm glad to see him in a project like this; I've always enjoyed what he brings to the screen (even if he is only a voiceover).
If you're on the fence on this movie or haven't seen anything by Pixar, be sure to give this one a chance.
Posted by Mark on Thursday, November 11th, 2004 under genera
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Tonight driving to my in-laws' house, I saw one of the nighttime sky's rarest events in the midwest; northern lights! Officially known as Aurora Borealis, they were pretty stunning. I need to be in the habit of carrying my digital camera with me. They would have been beautiful to capture.
Growing up on a farm far from any city lights, I miss seeing things so distinctly in the nighttime sky. Aside from the northern lights, you could see every bit of the Milky Way, the rotating constellations, and every once in awhile even catch a satellite in your peripheral vision. I love that humbling feeling, knowing that even when the world seems so massive and unknowable, there is infinitely more beginning just 63 miles up.
Tonight the sky due north was full of distinct green streaks brushed vertically upwards from the horizon, and the entire northwestern sky was a blurred, hazy red cloud. Definitely not the lights from nearby Peoria. ;-) It was only a fifteen minute drive, but by the time I got to my inlaws' house the lights were already all faded save a few faint green streaks far above the horizon. Within a few minutes they were completely gone.
Since I don't have pictures I wanted to include a good resource. This is a professor's
page that is part of the
Alaska Climate Research Center. It has links to a lot of good pictures and information. It may be a good idea to look to the north for the next couple weeks...
Posted by Mark on Sunday, November 7th, 2004 under genera
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"Nothing" isn't just for Seinfeldian plots anymore.
Today was supposed to be a very productive day for me. I was going to finish two homework assignments (both due tomorrow), work on designs for a freelance project, hand wash and wax my car, and do some cleaning to surprise Jessica while she's at work. It's 4:30, and I haven't done a single one of those things. Instead I've surfed the Net, researched scanners (I need a new one that will do negatives and slides), and watched Johnny English and Underworld on the tele. Procrastination at its highest.
Can anyone relate to this? I hope I'm not alone. I don't think I am, but it always seems like everyone else is more efficient than me. Some days focus comes easy, but today is definitely not one of them. I think I've been too busy for a little too long. I really don't feel like doing anything. My hope is that a little venting here will inspire me to get myself in gear. I have my texbook in front of me, I just need to ignore Firefox long enough to use it. :-)
Posted by Mark on Sunday, November 7th, 2004 under genera
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The
trailer for
Primer was posted recently on
apple.com's trailer site, and I am definitely intrigued. I think I've seen it before; possibly on
/. a month ago?
Shot for $7000, it won the Grand Jury prize at Sundance in 2004, as well the Alfred P. Sloan award for a science fiction entry. From what I have read it is especially impressive for a first-time, self-taught filmmaker. Shane Carruth, a former mathemetician and Air Force engineer, studied filmmaking at night for three years, spent a year on the script, and shot in five weeks with a crew of four in addition to himself). He wrote, directed, scored, and stars in the film.
If Jessica still lived in Chicago I would check it out this month, but it won't be coming downstate. I have tried to find something about video distribution but I didn't have any luck. Hopefully it will be at the video store in the spring.
Posted by Mark on Friday, November 5th, 2004 under movies
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Cimitero dei Cappuccini, or "Cemetery of the Capuchins" in English, somehow came up in conversation a few times this week, and so I thought it was worth recording. Using it as an early entry could scare some readers away, but no worries. I'm not a morbid, brooding recluse with Giger wallpaper covering my bedroom. It's worth mentioning because it is one of the most utterly bizarre things I have ever seen.
It is actually a church located in Rome, commissioned by Pope Urban XIII in 1626. The pope's brother was a member of the Cappuccini order, and decided that it would be a good idea to exhume the bodies of the monks that had served the order and bring them into the chapel. The crypt now contains the remains of 4,000 monks buried between 1500-1870. When I say "contains" I do not mean that they ordered a last-minute change to the blueprints to add an extensive system of catacombs. Instead, they disassembled the skeletons and lavishly decorated the walls and ceilings with the monks' bones. Seriously. If you reread the last sentence it will remain the same...
There are arches made of bones spanning full walls, candelabras, and a miniature Grim Reaper complete with scicle on one ceiling. When I was actually there I had much less of an uneasy reaction than I thought I would. It was so outrageously overdone that I was amost instantly desensitized. I would hesitate to say it was comical - considering the context I would feel disrespectful at best - but I wondered about what they could have been thinking. One job I do not want to ever have: human bone interior decorator.
For those of you utterly horrified right now, it's okay to
turn back now. For those of you who are unshockable (or simply have to click to see for yourself), you can see pictures of the site
here.
In parting, here is a phrase found in the church:
"What you are now, we once were; what we are now, you will be."
Posted by Mark on Friday, November 5th, 2004 under genera
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Aaron posted a
trailer today to the upcoming Episode III. I had heard a rumor that it was going to be unveiled in
The Incredibles this weekend, but it's proliferating across the net.
Posted by Mark on Thursday, November 4th, 2004 under movies
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In the spirit of lightening things up post-election, here are some great quotes I got from a friend this morning. The topic: beer. Granted, the first one could be a bit of a stretch (I don't think beer is ever stirred, and should definitely never be shaken), but who can snub The Chairman?
"I feel sorry for people who don't drink. When they wake up in the morning, that's as good as they're going to feel all day. "
- Frank Sinatra
"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.."
- Benjamin Franklin
"Without question, the greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer. Oh, I grant you that the wheel was also a fine invention, but the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza."
- Dave Barry
"Well ya see, Norm, it's like this... A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo. And when the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole group keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members. In much the same way, the human brain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells. Excessive intake of alcohol, as we know, kills brain cells. But naturally, it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster and more efficient machine. That's why you always feel smarter after a few beers."
- Cliff Claven,
Cheers
Posted by Mark on Thursday, November 4th, 2004 under genera
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It looks like Ohio will get the brunt of scrutiny this time around. On the morning after, Bush is leading in electoral votes 254 - 252, and Ohio is the only state that has not reported a winner. With 20 electoral votes, it will essentially decide the winner. If this was Colorado, neither candidate would likely get the 270 needed since the electoral votes would be split down the middle (Bush won 53% - 46%).
The margin is not as narrow as the 500 or so in Florida in 2000. Bush has a reported 2,794,346, or 51% of the popular vote in Ohio, and Kerry has 2,658,125, or 49%. The decision hangs on the accuracy of that 136,000 vote difference. That sounds like a large enough number to declare a winner with confidence, but that's only about 2.5% of total voters. Most polls that we depend on for being reasonably accurate have a larger margin of error.
Most conservative leaning news sites are declaring Bush the winner, and most liberal leaning sites are declaring Ohio as unclear or too close to call. That is reminiscent of 2000, no matter what the numbers. Let the media blitz begin!
* Again, I used
cnn.com as my source.
Posted by Mark on Wednesday, November 3rd, 2004 under genera
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As of 8:00 pm (central) with 27% of the polling places reporting their final counts, the results for the presidential and senatorial races are going as expected in Illinois
*. John Kerry has 71% of the vote with George Bush at 28%, and Barack Obama has 82% with Alan Keyes at 16%. No surprises there. It looks like the recent polls were spot on.
Bush is ahead 55% to 44% in the popular vote nationwide, with the associated electoral count being 102-77, but I'm sure that will change as more polling places report numbers (and the west coast reports come in - there would be at least one more hour to vote there).
One thing that concerned me today was Ralph Nader was not on my ballot. David Cobb, the Green Party candidate, was, but no Nader. I knew that he was not on every state's ballot in this election, but I didn't realize that Illinois was one of them (that's my own fault). CNN is reporting that Michael Badnarik, the Libertarian candidate, has approximately 1% of the votes in Illinois as well, with Nader not even on the board. Unless other precincts had different choices than mine, Badnarik must have been a write in; odd that Nader does not have a similar number as a write in also if that's the case.
My concern with that is that not all of the nationally-recognized candidates were evenly represented as choices on the ballots. Especially in this election it seems, some people feel very strongly about casting their votes for candidates not in the two major parties. Or they want to show their lack of support and trust in the two major party candidates. I'm sure that has always been the case and I was too young to pay attention, but that idea appears to be stronger than ever this year. I'm curious to see if a momentum continues and the public begins to send a stronger message to Washington. We need independent thinkers and politicians in the capitol, and the non-elite need a voice.
Despite the inconsistencies in the ballots, my hope is that everyone who supports one of the two-party candidates wrote them in if required. Especially when we Illinoisans know that 71% will likely go to Kerry, it would be easier to just fill in his bubble versus writing in an unlisted candidate. The most important message those voters can send is putting a tally greater than a few percent on the board at the end of the day.
* Poll results taken from
cnn.com
Posted by Mark on Tuesday, November 2nd, 2004 under genera
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It's true - I'm safe for another four years. Mr. Combs, I present to you the proof that I performed my civic duty:
Once the polls close, let the mayhem begin. I can hardly wait to see who the Supreme Court appoints as our president next month.
Posted by Mark on Tuesday, November 2nd, 2004 under genera
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All hail
Creative Commons and
Wired!
The Wired CD is the first of its kind: an internationally distributed CD with songs by major studio artists with a new twist on the associated licensing. It uses one of Creative Commons's licenses instead of a traditional copyright. In other words, this CD has "some rights reserved." It does allow for non-commercial sharing and sampling, which gives people the right to distribute copies of songs or the entire album to friends, Romans, and countrymen. You can also make samples and incorporate them into your own songs to your heart's content. Thirteen of the sixteen artists also go the whole nine yards, allowing you to commercially use the samples as long as they are "highly transformative" and not used in an advertisement. Artists like the Beastie Boys, Paul Westerberg, Danger Mouse, and Chuck D.
For those of you not familiar with Creative Commons, it is a nonprofit organization founded in 2002 by Lawrence Lessig, a professor at Stanford Law School. The philosophy behind the organization is not to rip off artists or labels in a barrage of free P2P; it's to give flexibility to the artists and their fans. That idea grows from roots in a lot of areas. First and foremost, it's a great step forward for people who love music; fans and the artists alike. It opens the door to innovation through new creative works coming out of the originals (which are sometimes sampled themselves). And yes, it embraces the truth that P2P is here to stay, encouraging to increase that awareness and get a new business model put in place that is in harmony with the digital media movement. That's the real point to Creative Commons. To put a model in place that can change with the times, staying relevant for consumers and staying fair to the people producing all facets of the works.
One of the beauties is that there are multiple licenses available to suit different needs. This new concept is being used by artists other than just musicians as well. Publishers, graphic designers, photographers, and even bloggers are citing the licenses available to express the balance that they want for sharing and protecting their intellectual property. If you look at the bottom of my site I invoke the "Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs" license provided by Creative Commons. This means that others can non-commercially distribute the text, images, and ideas in this site as long as they acknowledge the source, and as long as the material is not altered from its original form. I chose that option primarily because the bulk of my work results in writings, some of which may grow into full-bodied works that I want to pursue commercially. I couldn't do that if others had taken sections and used them in their own works, but I don't want that to prevent people who happen to see something in what I am writing from passing that on.
Using the link above to The Wired CD, you can get more information about this disc, and even download high-quality versions of the songs after November 9, 2004 according to the write up. In the meantime, I'm going to exercise my never-before-granted right, and share the first track with you: "
Now Get Busy" by one of the original sample masters: the
Beastie Boys (2.3 MB). They're intergalactic when they eat French toast!
Hey, I can even burn you a copy of the disc if you'd like... Shoot me an
email. I've got a platter of blank CDs waiting.
Posted by Mark on Monday, November 1st, 2004 under cultur
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I've finally finished my first run at the code for the site. I'm still tweaking my admin console, but the user-facing pieces are in place. All of the category and permanent links are working, and I just finished the commenting functionality.
I'll give it a couple days for testing (by me only, I'm sure) before I do any advertising so that I can work out any obvious kinks. After I finish my admin console, I'm going to add user registration and login functionality.
One sidenote: the more I use PHP, the more I love it. Like most who got into the Web
before the dotcom bubble, my first introduction to dynamic Web development was in Perl. I've missed its efficiency and elegance working with .asp and .jsp these last few years. It will be good to dust off that way of thinking and gloss it to a shine again.
Posted by Mark on Sunday, October 31st, 2004 under genera
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And some people say that Ayn Rand's books aren't good for anything. You have my guarantee - no self-help book or bubblegum trade paperback would keep that popcorn bowl from rolling off of my binder. No, Sir.
Posted by Mark on Friday, October 29th, 2004 under genera
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For the IT and design professionals out there... Have you ever had a client or business associate that had such a horridly low grasp of technology or design that you wanted to run screaming into the hills?
Clientopia feels your pain, and wants to help you vent your frustrations. This is a funny collection of real-life stories of clients not knowing what they want, knowing but not having the brains to communicate it, and a lot more in between.
A particular favorite (
entry 1040):
Client: "That line looks too thick"
Designer: "It�s one pixel wide"
Client: "Would it be possible to make it half a pixel wide?"
Even if you're not in IT or design, I know you've been there.
Posted by Mark on Monday, October 25th, 2004 under cultur
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Since I was in high school my wife's family has had an annual tradition of everyone getting together before Halloween and carving jack o' lanterns. Each year we break out the patterns, brandish our miniature blades, and see what we can create.
This year the festivities coincided with my niece Jenna's first birthday, and so we all went to my sister in law's house to celebrate. It was a great day; a house full of kids loving everything, jumping contests on the trampoline, and a Care Bear cake. It's a lot of fun to have family close. During the course of the day we all tried our handiwork on some innocent pumpkins. We left before it got dark, but I took a picture of mine when I got home. I'll have to update the site if some of my inlaws email their pictures.
Happy Halloween to all!
Posted by Mark on Sunday, October 24th, 2004 under genera
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Silence is seldom as loud as when you're stuck in an elevator with someone you can't stand (or that can't stand you).
I won't go into details to protect the innocent -- namely me -- but there happens to be someone at work that I just can't work with. I'll call him "said individual." I normally get along with everyone, and I can maintain a civil working relationship with just about everyone else. I worked with said individual three or four years ago, and I've rarely seen him since then. For whatever reason we've been running into each other a lot in the hallway lately. If there is anyone else in our vicinity we politely pretend to be preoccupied with whatever we're carrying or find an excuse to start a conversation with someone else as we approach salutation distance. If it is just the two of us I get a half-hearted grunt somewhere between "nnngh" and "hello."
Twice this week Fate decided to crank up the heat a little bit and put us on the elevator together. This social phenomenon always mystifies me. I follow the rules, too, and I have no idea why. I was the last one to get on the crowded elevator, and noticing him out of the corner of my eye, I turned into an empty spot at an angle where I couldn't possibly make eye contact. At that point my job was to remain nonchalant without being relaxed enough to turn my head or body towards him. This involves looking at my watch as if I'm heading somewhere important, or watching the floor numbers tick by with a total look Zen calm. It's like trying to act sober when you've polished off a twelve pack; you end up looking much sillier than you would have in the first place. There's nothing quite so akward as trying to act normal when you can feel said individual's gaze boring into the back of your skull.
God forbid the elevator doors open when I'm alone and he's the only one stepping across the threshold. Fate's obviously holding that for next week.
Posted by Mark on Sunday, October 24th, 2004 under cultur
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Heard over the cube wall this week...
Person 1: Who are you voting for?
Person 2: I'm voting against Bush. I would have voted
for Dean.
Person 1: Ugh! Why?
Person 2: He has enthusiasm. At least that's something.
Person 1: Isn't that exactly why you're voting against Bush?
There was nothing to overhear after that. Point taken, I think.
Posted by Mark on Sunday, October 24th, 2004 under cultur
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I am impressed with carbon nanotubes, and I am definitely impressed with aerogel, but
graphene gets the prize in my book for fascinating uses from a harmony between physics and chemistry. Graphene is a fabricated sheet of one-molecule thick material made from fullerene molecules, making it the thinnest man-made substance one earth.
The article describes it as a kind of unwrapped nanotube - the same material arranged in a different way to pursue even more practical uses. It brings conductivity up while shortening the distance the electrons need to travel, pointing towards faster, tinier computer chips. Imagine the speed of a transistor that transmits faster, and is only one molecule long? That's the equivalent of shortening a transcontinental highway to a few car lengths and handing someone the keys of a Ferrari with a rocket engine strapped to the roof (just don't scratch it, pleeease).
And I can remember my jaw dropping at Doom on a 100-Mhz Pentium.
Posted by Mark on Friday, October 22nd, 2004 under tech & IT
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No, I'm not paranoid schizophrenic. My answering machine at home is repeatedly filled with messages from none other than James Earl Jones! Unfortunately he's not inviting me to a movie premier; he's trying to lure me to Verizon's Web site to increase the services I use with them.
Are many others getting these phone calls? I've asked several friends who have Verizon for their home phone and DSL, and I haven't found anyone else who has gotten these calls. It's a little annoying. I'm already a customer, and I haven't changed my services in the four and a half years I have lived in this location. I already get enough calls from companies I don't patronize trying to sell me things; I don't need the one I already do business with to follow suit.
Sorry... kind of a pointless rant.
Posted by Mark on Friday, October 15th, 2004 under cultur
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Move to my house. It's that simple! Jessica and I went to get groceries today, had to stop at Lowe's to get a repair kit for our leaky toilet, and when we put everything into Quicken our balance came out to a cool $17. Between the two of us, we have $18 cash in our wallets.
Jessica's 50-mile commute will have to be paid for on our credit card when her tank hits empty on Tuesday night. It's going to be ham sandwiches and leftovers for lunch this week, and tonight won't even be a Blockbuster night. Actually, we have a "movie for two" gift certificate at the local theater chain, and so I think we're going to go check out "
The Forgotten." That also includes popcorn and drinks for two, and so that equals dinner. Good thing!
Working for the state, Jessica gets paid once on the 15th of each month. That really stinks for budgeting because all of our bills come at the first of the month, and mortgage is due on the 11th. My first paycheck each month is dedicated to the mortgage, and so the second week of each month is always a stretch. I need to talk to my bank about changing our mortgage due date to the end of the month...
Posted by Mark on Saturday, October 9th, 2004 under genera
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Busyness (sp?) equals apathy and writer's block. I promise to do better!
Posted by Mark on Friday, October 8th, 2004 under writin
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Umm... @#%! Mr. Bush, what now?
Posted by Mark on Sunday, September 12th, 2004 under genera
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A seasoned designer undoubtedly has this trick in his or her Swiss Army knife, but being a hack, I've been banging my head against the wall for the last few hours on this little dilemna. My hope is that this helps save a headache for someone else down the road...
I'm using the float:right style tag for an image within a <div>, and the text within the div is not vertically long enough to go the entire height of the image. The result: that div stops short wherever the text ends, and then the next div starts on the immediate next line instead of below the image's horizontal line. The result is something like this:
That's especially bad if div 2 is something like a copyright statement or the next section of an aricle that absolutely needs to go below the image.
The solution: clear:both.
Add a div with no content at the end of your text (just before div 1's closing tag) with this style indicated, and this will force the browser to enclose the text and image within the div and start the next element below those contents.
The code and resulting change look like this:
<div>
floating image
content content content
<div style="clear:both;"></div>
</div>
Now you're set!
Posted by Mark on Saturday, September 11th, 2004 under genera
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Today I came across a story about the process for making a new independent film, "
Able Edwards." Its creator,
Graham Robertson, did the production in just fifteen days of shooting on a Canon XL1 miniDV camera, and the total budget came in at just under $30,000 USD.
I know what you are saying; Kevin Smith did that with his debut, too. What is most impressive about this film is that it is not a situation plot driven primarily in one location. It is a sci-fi epic, self described as crossing that genre with "
Citizen Kane." Graham and his crew shot the entire film in a warehouse against the backdrop of a green screen, and used scanned images of architecture texts from the local library to create the futuristic sets. He combined multiple images, worked his doctoring magic in Photoshop, and converted all imagery to black and white to make the meshing of the elements more seamless. He documents the process and more information about the production on the movie's
site (which includes a trailer).
From what I can see in the trailer it looks a little akward, the special effects obvious, but it looks like Graham has pulled off something extraordinary given his budget and tools. Think of the special effects and camera shots in movies 30-60 years ago, and television even now. If a guy can do this using a single room and a Mac in 2004, then I can hardly wait to see the leveling of the production playing field and the imaginations of the world's creative talent on screen twenty or thirty years from now.
Damn, I need to get off my butt and shoot my first short.
Posted by Mark on Monday, September 6th, 2004 under movies
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Does anyone else out there suffer from a lack of focus? That seems to be my main hurdle right now, personally and professionally. I am interested in almost everything, which turns out to be my gift and my curse (props to Jay-Z and Peter Parker). I start on many things, but finish few. I feel like the creative equivalent of the Chicago Cubs - I start out strong but by the end everyone wonders what the hell happened.
I don't remember being this way when I was a kid. I would start a project and spend hours on it, concentrating each night until I got it done. I made cardboard spaceships for my Transformers, drew hundreds of dinosaurs on rolls of newsprint, and wrote short stories by the binder.
Of course, I also had zero responsibility and no significant distractions. Today my free time after work is split among working out, cleaning, fixing meals, etc. Jessica and I also had odd work schedules sometimes, and so our time together can get pretty erratic.
I'm also still searching for that "one thing" that I love to do. I would love nothing more than to strive for perfection in some arena, but I have no idea what that is. Writing is my strongest suit, but I love the visual aspects of design and film and would like to delve into those deeper. Without a clear vision, though, it's hard to get started. My ideas are all dressed up with no place to go. To quote Filter's "Best Things" - I've got a green light yeah, but I'm going nowhere."
Posted by Mark on Saturday, August 28th, 2004 under genera
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I just finished my first week of my new class, and I think it's going to be great. I'm taking "Advanced Data Communications" which is basically a sub-sub-basement-level view of networking at the hardware level.
With the exception of one, my graduate courses have been a breeze so far, but this one is going to take some upfront cramming on my part. It has two prereqs - Intro to Computing, and Intro to Networks. Intro to Computing was out of the question - I didn't want to pay $500 and listen to lectures like "this is a CPU, which is connected to the motherboard, which is connected to the thigh bone..." And I didn't want to take the networking class because it's a 300-level course, and you're only allowed two of those. There are some great design-oriented classes at the 300 levels and I want to reserve that space for that sort of thing. So... since I have some high-level exposure to networking at work and I've setup a mini network at home, I talked my advisor into letting me in.
Um, uh oh.
On the first night of class the professor announced that he was disappointed last semester because they could not get to the "good stuff" at the end of the book, and so he was going to cover the first five chapters in the first week. What??? Since the 300-level networking class is a prerequisite, he thought we would all be comfortable. Two other students are in my same boat. I didn't get the book in the mail until today, and so I couldn't read before class #2. I borrowed David's CCNA study guide and used that. Tonight he assigned the even questions at the end of the first five chapters, and we are having an "extended quiz" over the material on Monday. Sweet. My 10K is on Sunday, which shoots a lot of the weekend. I have about two days to work, read 140 pages, and know new-to-me material well enough to rock the homework and quiz.
I love a good challenge, and he's thrown his gloves in the ring.
Posted by Mark on Wednesday, August 25th, 2004 under genera
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After my rant earlier today, I wanted to write something light (like the blogging equivalent of watching a
Disney movie after
Silence of the Lambs).
Instead, I came across
this and couldn't resist.
Posted by Mark on Sunday, August 22nd, 2004 under cultur
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I've often heard that God works in mysterious ways, but apparently a
group from Kansas has figured out that He hates homosexuals above all other categories of sinners, and they were kind enough to
enlighten the people in my hometown.
I was curious, and so I drove by two of the churches this morning where they were protesting. Nothing too outlandish - just a group of picketers holding signs and pacing on the sidewalk. I saw the expected "God hates fags!" and "Your preaches tells you lies!" signs. There were a couple of things that really disturbed me:
1) I saw two children under 10 carrying signs
2) Some signs had nothing to do with homosexuality, like "Thank God for 9/11!"
What is that all about? Apparently Bin Laden plotted to destroy the Twin Towers and the Pentagon because US society embraces homosexuality - it had nothing to do with our stance on foreign affairs and Israel in particular.
The discussion of whether homosexuality is a sin is an entirely different matter than my beef with this hate group. Their logic is insulting and makes zero sense. Why is this sin any different than the others church-goers commit on a daily basis? We should continue to love the liars, the thieves, and the adulterers, but throw the homosexuals into the pit. Those "other" sinners commit injustices towards others - homosexuals have the audacity to commit them in private with with another consenting person. Oh, now I get it!
On top of all that, they're perpetuating their stupidity and hate by brainwashing their children and having them participate in these protests. One of my hopes has been that social prejudices would diminish with each generation discovering the stupidity in all of it as they come into their own, but this group is doing their best to negate that. That reminds me of the Klan idiots who used to pop up on Springer every few months when I was in college...
Above all, it kills me that they came all the way from Topeka. Who has this much time for something so trivial? I barely have time to do the laundry.
Posted by Mark on Sunday, August 22nd, 2004 under genera
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Yes, it's true boys and girls. After literally
zero anticipation from the outside world, garmana::blog is up and running! The bags are packed, the keys are in the ignition... but everything is hardcoded on a single HTML page with no backend database, CSS links, etc. Today was finish-the-design day, and now throughout the next week I hope to complete the work under the hood and get the real deal humming.
Stay tuned - the best is yet to come!
Oh, and heaven help you if you try to click on a link before entry #2 is added...
Posted by Mark on Friday, July 30th, 2004 under genera
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