12/31/03, 1:47pm-
Rock! The Frontalittle Squad has a webpage. These kids are amazing. Not everyone's tastes, I know, but funny, in their own special way. I dig it. You really should treat yourself to Space Cadet and Accelerator.

12/27/03, 12:36am-
Tonight was concert night. Me and KP with LBC and friends at the HOB. The show rocked. We missed the opener because of the line (frickin lines...), but saw Much The Same open for Starstruck open for LBC, which was awesome. Now if only the Offspring had set tour dates for Chicago...

12/25/03-
Homemade cinnamon rolls, a new lens, 1200+ pages of Gary Larson, a bunch of carwash tickets, filters, and a Borders gift card, among other goodies. Dave wins. Special thanks goes out to Beth, Andy, Marc and Julie, who all called to wish me well (in that order too).

Later in the day, I took KP to the new Nellies to see Catfight play. Tha band started over an our late because of communication issues, and the system in the new room blows. Everything up to the stage is fine, but those speakers...ugh. The band was good, but we cut out early to get some sleep.

12/20/03, 10:24pm-
Today was pretty damn awesome. Katie and I went out shopping for a bit, and had fun. On the way to one store, Scott called me, and we chatted happily about things for a while. I promised to call him back this time, and I will, tomorrow, when it's not 30 to midnight at his house. After shopping, Katie and I came back for a while, and decided that it would be a great time to go see RotK. On the way out I grabbed the digital camera, since Dee was nearing the revered 100,000 mile mark, and I wanted to capture it for all posterity, since I'm just a car geek like that. As we drove, the sunset got better and better, and we took a few pictures. The mileage was getting way too close for my comfort as we flew down Barrington on our way to AMC, so I took a short detour down Bode to Walnut. Balckwell school was a nice place to do some small circles in, and at 5:29pm, all 6 digits of the odometer in my car rolled over together (1, 2, 3, 4). On our way back down Schaumburg, we took another, and a few more when we were on Barrington for the second time (1, 2, 3, 4). The last few were shot at the parking lot of the Googleplex (1, 2) before we went in to see what is likely the most epic film I've seen in years.

Yeah, it was a good day.

12/19/03, 11:14am-
I've been jonesin' for a leather jacket for a while. Not a week or a motnh, but for years. It was neevr really a serious jones however, until a couple of months ago, when some circumstances conspired to make me believe that a leather jacket would not only make me look cooler, but attract women, prove Einsteins GUFT, make me a better driver, and possibly solve the world hunger problem. I searched high and low for a properly fitting jacket, something not easy on my tall, lanky frame. I thought my search had ended at Eddie Bauer, where the Journeyman jacket was available in black, and aparently in tall sizes. The medium was right in the body, but a little short in length. The large was right in length, but I could almost fit two of me inside the coat. A medium tall was the perfect solution after a few minutes with a tape measure.
Unfortunately, there are no more medium tall Journeyman jackets to be had in this entire country. I know, I had the nice ladies at the other end of several phones check for me. They're all sold out, for the rest of the season. The concept of a collosal bummer would be apropriate to apply here.
So if anyone knows of a nice, stylish, medium-heavy weight black leather jacket suitably sized for a guy that usually wears coats sized around 38 extra skinny?

12/11/03, 4:19pm-
This has been quite a day. My computer is finally cooperating on a few things I've been fighting for a while, I got a lead on a new and exciting job in CT, and I had chocolate. Really, that's about all I can ask for.
Last night was supposed to be 70's show night with Beth, but some stupid awards show deprived us of out regular Wednesday night viewing experience, and instead we went to Julies for a few hours. It was fun.

12/8/03, 12:47am-
Tonight was filled with singing and laughter. First off it was Dave and Julie making their respective to St. Walt's to hear Beth sing. I really need to get her (B) on tape at some point. Really. She's that good. Maybe I can get her dad to play something on his 12 string at the same time. That would be cool.
After the concert, J, B and myself went to Chili's for food. Much was consumed, and there was fun had by all.
After food, I picked up a picture from the oft mentioned Beth, of the two of us, taken at Kim's wedding. It's awesome. I'd post it, but it's over there, and I'm here, and the flatbed scanner is all the way downstairs, so posting will have to wait. It's super cute tho, and it may just end up in a frame on my desk. Awwwww...

12/7/03, 12:02am-
Happy birthday Katie.

12/4/03, midnight-
Bush wants to jump start moon exploration. Is this a ploy to get us to forget about the fact that the majority of the $87M spent on the Iraq reconstruction debacle is going to Haliburton, a plan to keep China from colonizing the moon first, or a pathetic attempt to make himself feel more important?

12/3/03, 1:30am-
After some investigation and an internal debate session, I don't think that iBlog will ever be what I need to make this page truly easy to maintain. I thought it would. I was very wrong. Pair added GeekLog to their list of tools (along with Blosxom and phpBB) but I don't need content management. That's like sending a thermonuclear weapon to destroy an ant hill. It's such overkill for this page it's not even worthy of a wry smile.

I need a personal blog tool. One that allows me to post entries, entries with hidden bodies, inline pictures, and that doesn't fight me when it comes to templates and configuration. It shouldn't be hard. I don't ask for much. Where is my blog tool?
AJ...Still interested in doing something cool on the side? I'd love to hear from you if you're interested...

12/3/03, 12:44am-
I'm just now finishing up replies to some of the emails I got today, and since there's almost always music on when I'm at my computer, iTunes is playing the Blank and Jones remix of the Pet Shop Boys "Home and Dry", a song I haven't heard in some time, and which immedately makes me think of my freshman year roomate. Terry, if you're reading this, email me with the link waaaaay down at the bottom of the page. The replies I send bounce, and I'd really like to get in touch...

11/29/03, 2:08am-
Just got home from an evening of fun with the old HS crew...Karen, Karen, Andy, Steve, Al, and Greg. Dinner at the Maccaroni Grill, then pool at Grable's for hours, then a couple of us sang to Karen, because it's her birthday today. Then a few of us went to Steak n Shake for food and more conversation until we could barely stay awake.
Andy had some pictures of Gavin. He's 3 and change now, and big. Damn that kid is growing fast. He's gonna end up looking just like his dad.
There's other things I should blog about, like Karen and Karen heading to Africa for a safari (!), but fatigue suddenly took over, and I'm gonna crash now. G'night.

11/28/03, 11:33am-
I think the spammers are trying to get me to take a vacation to France. I swear, in the last two weeks I've seen more ads for the Paris Hilton than ever before in my life. It's odd.

11/27/03, 4:06pm-
Ladies and gentlement, I give you the cities of Dave, AR, and Paton, IA. This has been a public service announcement.

11/27/03, 1:39am-
Happy Thanksgiving all.

Went and saw Gothica with Marc tonight. We killed some time before the movie at Gameworks. Wow, what a great way to forget where that other $20 in your wallet went.

The movie was decent, but formulaic. I didn't really mind, but there wasn't a single 'jump' moment I didn't see coming, and the end...well...I thought it was precdictable.

That wasn't the cool part tho. The cool part was the trailer for Resident Evil 2:Apocalypse. It was fricking amazing.

11/26/03, 11:39am-
2 bites on my resume in 3 days. This is fun.
Thanksgiving preperations have begun all over this great nation. Unfortunately, I have other things to go do, like infish acquiring adapters so I can properly transfer the tapes from last Saturdays concert so I can get them to Lou tonight. I really wish I'd hung the mics form the ceiling....
Aside: There are some really neat people to be met on the 'net if you know where to look.

11/24/03, 11:52pm-
Dan Knight runs The Low End Mac, a site I've been going to since he opened it. I've watched it grow and blossom into one of the better Mac info sites on the net, and I'm Dan has managed to turn it into a happily self sifficient business.

That's why I was so suprised when I saw these articles (one, two). Dan isn't the sharing type, I've exchanged emails with him a few times, and I could pinpoint him pretty easily. He's intensely shy, and not exaclty social with 'new' people. Seeing him share so openly is kind of suprising, but it also shows that people are strong, and can make the right choice even when they don't want to.

This has been your inspirational story for the day. Thanks for watching. This concludes our broadcast day.

11/24/03, 4:31-
Got another bite for some engineering consulting. Things are picking up...

11/24/03, 1:25pm-
There's a really interesting article on online dating over at NYTimes.com. The more I think about the nature of it, the more I agree with the writers viewpoint that the avatars exist in a kind of secondary reality from the one we're used to. They remove the context of time, space and presence and attempt to build relationships based on everything but what people expect. Interestingly enough, it seems to be working, at least for some people.

11/24/03, 12:22pm-
The first appreciable snow is falling on Schaumburg today, and altho light and somewhat forgettable, it is the first herald of the coming winter and the impending holiday season. There's a local radio station around here that has decided that we all need more holiday cheer rammed down our throats, and will be playing Christmas music nonstop for the next months and change. I dn't really object tot he decorations at the mall, because with Thanksgiving and the biggest shopping day of the year only a few days away, they need all the help they can get. There are a number of houses in the area that are already repleat with lights and decorations, and those irk me the most. I'm not sure where it came from, but I have this belief that no one should decorate their house for Christmas until Thanksgiving has been taken care of. Really. I lot of people get a 5 day weekend this week, and at least one of those days is more than fine for decorating. But two weeks ago? Come on!

OK, rant over.

The holiday thing is slowly begining to happen for me tho. I'm not ready to wear my santa hat around, or my elf sweatshirt, but I can see myself doing predictably consumerized holiday like things: buying cards, wishing everyone happy holidays, practicing conspicuous consumption, speedballing egg nog and tree cookies. You know, the usual holiday stuff.

11/23/02, 1:04pm-
The downside of working a gig in a bar is that all of your gear comes home reeking of cigarettes. Ugh. I wonder how much life I took off my oh so very nice Sweedish mics by exposing them to that. Or my DAT deck. Or my lungs. :-(

I'm not a rock boy, I don't headbang, and I don't mosh, but soemthing about Easy Target off the new Blink CD makes me wanna thrash like mad. I dunno, maybe it's just catchy, or I have a brain tumor or something. Chemical imbalance?

Or maybe the song just fookin rawks.

Yup. It rocks. Hard.

11/23/03, 2:14am-
According to the hot waitress at the bar where I was recording Lou's band, I have a "great ass".
So why am I still single?

11/20/03, 11:18pm-
Philosophical question of the interval:
Which do you dislike more, regrets or apologies?

It makes you think doesnt it.

I like to think.

11/18/03, 1:24pm-
Last night I told Lou that Beer by Reel Big Fish was one of those songs that stayed stuck in my head for weeks. Unfortunately, it looks like I lied. I just listened to Boys and Girls by Kill Hannah for the 9th time in a row, and I don't see any kind of silence in the near future. It's managed to burrow even further intomy brain, much like the worms that Kahn had such an affinity for, and Chekov had such a repulsion to. It's a little scary.

I've started doing a little more consulting here and there, so my resume is looking more current than usual. It's cool.

11/17/03, 6:31pm-
Dinner table conversation topics for the evening:
The economy and it's local effects
Rock drumming
The specific gravity of barbque sauce

I swear, my family isn't that wierd. Really.

11/15/03, 12:03am-
Looney Tunes: Back In Action rocks. A lot.

In other news, C|Net buys MP3.com and plans to kill it. Let's hope thos eindie labels Apple added to the ITMS are getting underground artists the exposure they can't get many other places any more. Grrrrrr.


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you. You're incomparably full of information,
and most of it is useless.

Which Biological Molecule Are You?
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11/13/03, 11:41pm-
Scott and Tamar came over today and brought Hadassah. She was the darling of the hour. It was really nice seeing my friends and their daughter. Yay.

11/11/03, 12:09pm-
Mmm...pistachios.

11/10/03, 11:24am-
Happy 34th birthday to Sesame Street. Grover, Elmo, Cookie, Bert & Ernie, Count, Big Bird, Snuffy, Telly, Biff & Sully, Captain Vegetable, Gladys, Kermit, Hoots, Prarie Dawn, and all the other (less major) characters from when I watched, we love you all.
I've been on a pizza kick recently (since yesterday) and I can't imagine it's good for me. This happens every few months. Pizza takes over all thought processes related to meals, or any other foodstuffs for that matter. I want it for breakfast, lunch, dinner,my midnight snack, my 1am snack, and any other time my body craves sustainance. The nice part is that we never have much pizza around, so at most my cravings are broken by force after 2 or 3 consuecutive pizza-filled days. With what's in the fridge, and what other people usually eat, I figure I'll be done and back on normal food by luch on Wednesday, at the latest. There's just something about pizza that puts my brain in a real tizzy. I can't recommend it, and if you do feel the need, let me remind you that the sturgeon general has said that consuming nothing but pizza for more than a day or so can be seriously hazardous to your social life. You have been warned.
My computer just got rebooted becausue my mom and my sister were both using their hair dryers at the same time. If you know the guy who wired my particular Campenelli house back in 1970 or thereabouts, I'd love if you'd strangle him for me, before tearing his heart out with a very dull spoon.

11/9/03, 11:24pm-
Just had a nice AIM chat with Andy. He'll be in for an extended Thanksgiving, since his dad is getting his hip replaced. The fearsome twosome will be on the prowl once again. Look out ladies!
I wrote the guys at Lifli a nice email about all the things I need to see in iBlog before I can consider it usable for me or worthy of recommendation to my friends. It's so close to being exactly what I need...
There's so much stuff I want to get. What I need is to make stuff I have go away. Why are my wants and needs to disparate?

11/7/03, 3:06pm-
So Molex backed out of their sample agreement. They decided that because I didn't order 10,000 of their connectors a year from a tier 1 supplier, I wasn't going to get any samples. That's fine I thought, I'll just use the AMP part numbers. AMP doesn't play nice with the big 3 distributers for quantities less than 500. Crap. What to do? I called my old sales rep at Newark. he was utterly worthless. Ever since they changed to the NewarkInOne thing, the reps can't make deals for non-partner distribution. Grr. So I called Digikey. They can get anything right? Nope. Finally I broke down and called Mouser, and a very nice lady named Gina helped me out. My connectors will be here in a week. The only downside? Now I can't hate Mouser any more, or at least not as much.

At least my SCSI card will live. Yay for that.

11/7/03, 10:50am-
I went and saw the new Matrix movie with B last night. The Neo-Vision effect was really cool, albeit a little preachy for my tastes. Below is my quasi-review which ahs gone out to a few people. It's reproduced here for the sole purpose of inducing confusion.

As a movie, it sucked. A lot. A whole lot. It was awful. Bad script, petty
dialog, mind numbing editing, campy visual effects (form time to time), and
totally overbearing imagery of the Biblical variety. If I was paid to review it
based on purely technical merits, I would have walked out halfway through.

The nice part is that I'm not. I think, over time, that my reaction will move
from confusion to comfortable compassion. I want to like the movie, and I think
I can/will/do. If you seperate the movie from all of it’s social and historical
references, and let it stand on its own, I think it was really well done, as a
story. There is still some dialog that make me hurt tho, and the consistent
obsession with one particularly wierd side of the rave subculture is a little
annoying, but those are things I can overlook.

Like I told B last night, I'm definately going to have to buy it, perhaps as
part of the Super Duper Extra Special Gold Embossed Titaniplatinum Mega
Compendium Edition or something. I'm just a media victim like that.

Than again, I loved Buckaroo Banzai.

and who wrote that?
george w. bush's dad, george bush senior.
interesting.
moby
Sometimes I wonder what the fuck our current administraation thinks it's doing. Or if it even knows.

11/3/03, 10:50am-
Random interesting tidbit: Sometime in the last 6 months, 42 attempts have been made to load davecam.shtml from this site. Formerly, that page held a continuously refreshing image grabbed from a webcam attached to my computer. Of course, that stopped about 2 and a half years ago. The strange part is that I only gave the link out to about 5 people, and the IP blocks the requests came from don't belong to any of them. One was for an ISP in India, which is pretty random. Another was from a *.dod.mil netblock, which makes me wonder who's reading my page.
There was a bunch of other data in the Analog report, but it was much less interesting, so I'll refrain from repeating the details of condtion code responses and browser demographics.
I recently won a new video card as well, and soon a 32MB Radeon will be in my G4 instead of the 16MB Rage128 it has now. Both are slower than the PCI Radeon 7000 I have running my 2 secondary LCDs, but the new card will be a big improvement, mainly for its Quartz Extreme support and quieter fan.

11/3/03, 12:33am-
I'm wide awake, and I have to drive my dad to the airport in seven and a half hours. Ugh.
I wateched The Hulk tonight. I was unimpressed. Aside from the phenomenally convincing job Jennifer Connely did looking a decade younger than she is, I found the entire experience to be unpleasent, much like a poorly fitting pair of pants, or an airline seat. It's not that it was a bad interpretation. I think they kept the 'feel' of the original quite intact. It was everything else that left me feeling a little disdainful.
In other news, I'm trying to find people who want to go to the midnight Matrix showing on Tuesday. Email or AIM me if you want in. If you don't have my email or AIM addr, you need some serious help since they're both plastered all over this poor excuse for a website.
Carson just felt the need to rub in that he went and saw Ben Folds this past weekend with Kurt and the Missus. Rat Bastard.
I'm feeling the urge to be philosophical right now, but I'm also tired and hungry.
OK, here's the plan. A little pizza, a little sleep, then the first week in November begins.
Yay.

n stuff.

11/1/03, 12:22am-
Only 54 more shopping days until Christmas!
I had a nice long AIM chat with Tsui Yi tonight. She's doing well, aside from being swamped by school and work, which I hear is not an uncommon experience for grad students.
For not really talking in a year and a half, it was suprisingly familiar and comfortable. It was really nice. Further confirmation that I really am growing as a person. Yay.
I hit up Molex for some VHDCI connectors so I can turn my mutant Apple-OEM UL2D into a real live UL2D. I also spent 2 hours cleaning solder out of every one of those goddamn holes for the afforementioned VHDCI socket. All 70 of them, 68 of which are 0.030 in diameter, and a cast iron bitch to clear. I succeded tho, and now am waiting patiently for the postman to deliver my connectors. It'll be sweet. I can finally use the two StorEdge arrays in the closet. I'm thinking house-wide backup. I'll have ~220GB of Cheetah goodness going on. Fun fun fun...

10/31/03, 2:36pm-
I've been toying with the idea of moving this page to a real blog engine. Unfortunately, Pair only offers limited use of their servers at my customer level, leaving me with ony one server side option: Blosxom. Now, Blosxon ain't bad, but it relies heavily on file system metadata, like file creation dates, for indexing it's entries (file mod/creation date is the blog entry date). This is bad because I often go back and fix links or spelling after the fact, which would majorly fuck up the order of my blog posts. So Blosxom is right out. Next up was iBlog, which I tried and deleted several times. The latest version is close to what I want, but there are some real issues with the UI to be fixed, and the template system needs a little work. I'd love to put MT or Greymatter or even slash up to handle my blog, but it aint gonna happen. I'll be toying with iBlog for the next month, trying to whip it into shape for myself. We'll see where it goes.

10/25/03, 12:15am-
After a few false starts, Panther is now happily installed on my G4. Word to the wise: if you plan to upgrade an existing installation, make sure you uninstall the GeeThree Stealth Serial driver before you do. It's totally and completely incompatible with Panther, and causes a kernel panic on startup. Very bad.

I'm going ta try and remember what else I need to install or configure here, and then I'm gonna take my tired ass to bed.

10/24/03, 10:52am-
AOL is doing bad things, but people think they're good? Last time I checked, that was extremely illegal. If I did it instead of AOHell, I'd be carted off to jail. WTF?

In other news, I have an interview on Monday. It's a little outside the field I went to college for, but might not be too bad. We'll see how things go...

I'm going to go see the Wolves play tomorrow night. That should be mucho fun with B and M and J and J.

10/23/03, 11:24pm-
I knew a girl named Nikki, I guess you could say she was a sex fiend...

That damn song has been stuck in my head for 3 days now, to the point where I had to go and download Limewire again just so I could get my hands on the unreleased alternate version Prince did for Purple Rain. After extensive listening to all 3 versions, I can honestly conclude that the Foo's cover is better than the Prince original. The Apocalypse Hoboken cover is so far made of pure Unobtanium, and I hear it's awesome, and not only because it's genuine Chicago Punk.

Last night I spent quite a number of hours at the track trying to get my G+ properly dialed. I succeded, after tearing the left rear suspension off of the car twice (one rear arm and one rear hub) and dropping a couple of set screws. Ray thought it was good, and he's superfast, so that made my day. I also found out I really need a discharge tray. I was checking the voltage of my bad' Fukuyama pack (the one with the worst numbers, which are still damn good) and the cells varied a fair amount under load. Must equalize....

I'll likely be at my local Apple store picking up Panther tomorrow night. Look for the tall geek in need of a haircut if you stop by.

Thank U 4 a funky time.....

10/20/03, 2pm-
82.6 degrees in the shade. I'm gettin my ass outside....

10/20/03, 1:34pm-
As has become the standard for Mondays, I spent a couple of hours on Monster and others of it's ilk, and as usual, came away with ony a few submissions for the last 3 days worth of job posts.
The market is thinning out, and it's worrying me. I haven't blogged much about my unemployement, instead focusing on happier things like toys and friends. It's getting harder to be optimistic about finding a job. I've been out of work for more than four and a half months. I'm young, mobile, intelligent, motivated, and capable, yet no one wants to hire me. The 3 real interviews I've had have all gone bust before any real conversations happened. The ones I wanted to happen I was rejected for out of hand.

What do I have to do to get employed as an engineer these days? Really, I want to know.

10/19/03, 9:05pm-
A trip to Best Buy to pick up the new Basement Jaxx CD turned into a 2 hour jaunt with my sister, containing such things as insane acceleration, detours, McD's and the most eclectic recipt from Tower yet. Yay.

Scott and Tamar are now dad and mom to a daughter as of last night at 11:05, as it was related to me this afternoon by the proud father. Hadassah Sternfeld entered into the world weighing in at 9 lbs, 2 oz and measuring 19.5 inches long. Scott sounded so exhausted I felt bad making him answer questions like "how are you?" (good but tired) and "how's Tamar?" (recovering quite nicely). I hope he gets some sleep tonight. Aparently they've been there since Friday. Mazel Tov! to the new parents. I'm mirroring pictures for them.

10/15/03, 4:34pm-
Got my charger a little while ago. It charged my crappy old Sanyo 1300 pack pretty quickly and it's working on my NiMH TX pack. Wahoo for a working charger. Now all I need to do is figure out how to construct a constant current discharger with only a coffee can, some duct tape, and 31" of old twine....

10/15/03, 1:12pm-
I hate being sick. I just finished the second box of Kleenex in as many days, and I'm beginning to look a lot like Rudolph.

Let me catch you up on where I left off:
Sunday night, after naps and the brunch, we (Mike, Greg, Steve, Al and myself that is) had dinner with Mike's friend Lisa at a microbrewery (they still have those?) in downtown JAX. The food was good, and the conversation quite interesting. That night was mainly punctuated by my fever chills and general feelings of being sick. The next day started lazily enough, and we drove around trying to find a place to take our A1A picture (we did) before lunch at Sonny's Open Pit Bar-B-Q, which was am amazing culinaty experience to be sure. Following the gastrointestinal goodness we moved along to the airport so we could make our respective ways back home. The flight itself wasn't bad, but the pain I experienced due to my malfunctioning right ear was somewhere between excruciatingly and swimming-in-lemon-juice-with-thousands-of-papercuts bad. Needless to say, I was grateful to get bck on the ground. Once reacquainted with terra firma the adventure continued, as our (Greg's, Steve's and my own) 4am awakenings on Friday has left our memories of the car's location a little foggy. After walking around for a while we managed to find it, and made our way back to our respective burbs. The following morning (Tuesday) greeted me with illness induced vigor, my clogged nose rousing me at 2, 4, 6 and finally 8am, when I decided that more Tylenol was in order. The rest of the day was a haze of Kleenex and orange Gatorade (Original Orange, just like Peyton manning), punctuated by me going to bed after the Cubs botched the 8th inning.

Today has been equally anticlimactic, with another box of Kleenex gone and more Tylenol consumed. Hopefully my new charger will arrive today so that I can go racing when I feel better.

Random closing thought: It'd be a really cool to drive to Santa Monica. On Old Rt 66. It starts at LSD and Jackson and ends pretty much at the water.

I miss the Pacific Ocean.

10/12/03, 4:07PM-
This sucks. I'm sitting in a hotel room, watching Dallas beat the Eagles while waiting for the Cubs/Marlins gaame with Al, Greg, Steve and Mike, and I hurt like hell. I've got this damn post nasal drip thing, brought on by allergies to something in the air, and it really sucks.

Friday was a loooong day. It started at about 4am when my alarm went off. Steve picked me up at 5 for the trip to Midway to catch our flight. After making it to JAX, we killed time and waited for Al, then went for food, drove around on our brand new (how new? the ODO has 30mi on it!) rental T&C, and picked up Mike before heading to the hotel and the rehersal dinner. The food at the dinner was great, with the best hush puppies I've ever had. Post-dinner, we went on a search for some alcohol and after some misdirection, made it to the Dickens beach house for some late night Cubs game watching the the Nation crew. We missed the bridesmaids, but there was some good conversation with the bride to be and her dad out on the deck before the extra innings.

The wedding yesterday was really nice. Emily looked great, as expected, as did her beau. The service was amazingly short, not quite half an hour by my clock. We killed some time back at the hotel before heading to the reception, which was waaaay crowded. There was much drinking and dancing, almost none of which was done by yours truly, but it was still a lot of fun. After the reception, I came back to the hotel while the rest of my cohorts went out to see a local blues band. Aparently there was some activity of interest, but I won't relate any of it here to keep the innocent innocent.

The brunch was this morning, and after taking a roundabout way to get there (I hate it when they don't post road signage...) we enjoyed a pleasent morning with a large part of the clan that was at the reception. Em and Nick did the presents thing, altho only with the ones that were physically brought to the reception. After the brunch, we came back to the hotel for a while, napped a bit, and went down the street for pizza (marginal), and ended up getting some of the most amazing onion rings ever as an appetizer. Damn they were good. After lunch, the guys went out walking/exploring/whatever, and I returned for Tylenol and my bed. Just before 4 the guys came back and now we're prepping for the Cubs game, just as soon as it's on, which Howie Mandel has just informed me will be at about 4:25. The Cowboys just won, and after This Commercial Break the baseball should start.

Caio.

10/6/03, 12:06am-

Morpheus

?? Which Of The Greek Gods Are You ??
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My charger blew up this weekend, which means no racing for me until I find a new one. I've been up to Venture a few times now, and I'm getting better at not hitting things while I drive. Next is finding the fast line and tuning the car to be able to run it. The TC2 should be here in a few days, and if it was here before Friday afternoon it would be supremely cool.

NFG's All About Girls is playing. I wish I had one.

This evening's festivities were supposed to involve the new Fearsome Foursome (me, B, M and J) but B bailed because she had other plans, and M bailed because he was too tired to drive home at the end of the night. That left J and I to figure something out, which involved bad TV, the Trading Spaces $100,000 show, and the end of the Cubs game. All in all it was funtastic, but it needed way more people.

Hmmm. My lucky bamboo needs watering. So does Charlie. Back in a sec.

Back. See? I told you it would only take a sec.

OK, time for bed.

9/30/03, 11:33pm-
October's gonna be here in a little less than half an hour, and it's making itself heard. low tonight: 33F. low tomorrow: 31F. Shit, it's gonna freeze. That ain't right...

Got a new RC car so I can go racing. (Powerman 5000's cover of Let The Good Times Roll just started. I love iTunes) The body is being painted in my traditional Bovine Racing theme, and this one too will be a Holstein Edition. Of course, I'm out of Sprint White, so I need to go back to the hobby shop (again) and get a can. Initial tests with my beat to hell Trinity Midnight and a Robinson pinion were promising, but without a body there wasn't much downforce, and with the cold temp outside (45F) the tires didn't stick worth crap to the driveway. It's fun to drive tho :-)

Bass lessons are progressing. I'm beginning to get bored with just doubling songs, so Lou and I are going to start investigating the tools I'll need to compose bass lines. Maybe. Right now I'm not much of a musician, but if mah seester gets in on it, we could rock out some.

Now palying is some ancient Madonna thing. Funky bass line, middling lyrics.

<insert random clicking and some IMs with Carson here>

Ben Folds' Gone is playing now. Carson and I are IMing about the total failure of our dating lives. Somehow I ended up at the website for greatboyfriends.com. I have no idea how. Blame it on the complex interrelating link structure that makes the Web what it is. No mom, this is not a request.

This is one of the most link-infested blog entries in a while for me. Cool.

Got a call back from HMG yesterday morning. They don't want me. That means no Utah (ysy?) but also no job (boo!). It piled on top of a bunch of other shit for the day that just made it perfect. Thankfully today it a bit better, what with the new toy and some sunshine, and bass goodness, and...yeah. All I need to make it truly Good™ is a hug, but I'm fresh out of those right now, especially from someone approximating a Signifant Other™, because, well, I don't have one.

My ESC is finally showing it's age and abuse. It was never the same after I put it in my boat and got it wet. Aparently, as close as it is to the motor in my XXX-S the glitching has increased to a previously unmatched level. Thankfully a TC2 is on it's way, due to the giving nature of one of the nice people on RC Tech.

I need some cool decals for the body I'm painting. I'm hoping Jimmy at Fukuyama Racing sent me some. Those would be cool.

OK, I'm done. Time for bed. Total blog time: one hour, eight minutes. Welcome to October...

9/19/03, 11:53am-
My new window shade from the nice folks at Levelor is awesome. it keeps the sun out of my eastern exposure bedroom window when I want, and lets it in when I want. No more half-assed miniblinds for me! Ha!

The mystery LM3886 project is on hold, pending the acquisition of a few parts I forgot to get before. Grrrr.

Becasue it's a slow news day, I thought you might want to know that i the absence of other interesting things to do, I'll probably spend an inordinate amount of time poking the penguin.

No, not like that.

iTunes is really cool. I just wish that the various vintages of Airport Base Stations here played a little nicer together so that I could get wireless-to-wireless bridging working 100% of the way I want it to.

9/15/03, 4:03pm-
Well, the PCBs for my mysterious new LM3886 project are on the way, as are it's parts. Assembly should begin on Thursday.

Anyone know how well Bondo will stick to MDF, and if it will be structural? The guys over at Woodnet don't seem to care....

Time has an excellent article on the late, great, Johnny Cash.
I am a self-described country music hater. I miss Johnny Cash.

I need a job. Anyone got one?

9/14/03, 3:38am-
Crap, why am I still awake? I gotta fix this sleep schedule thing of mine. Ugh.

Somethign very strange happened to me today. I wateched 3 Franka Potente movies in one 24 hour period. Run Lola Run is of course a perennial classic, although out of reach of most of middle America. The Bourne Identity is much more accessable, and shows us that Matt Damon can indeed play someone a little more ruthless than your average bear. Finally, All I Want was a fascinating investigation into the juxtaposition of the acting acomplishments of a real live actress against the acting attempts of someone truly as two dimensional as her character (Sorry Mandy). Elijah Wood didn't suck either.

Link-o-rama courtesy of IMDB.

9/5/03, 4:05pm-
Well, the second call with HMG went well, and John and Rick seemed like nice guys who were interested in what I had to say. The group there seems to be pretty cool, and their approach to product development is nifty. I'm hoping they'll want to talk to me again. That'd be cool.

9/4/03, 4:49pm-
Kodak has a tech pub for taking pictures? I thought all the TPs were about chemistry and Dmax and density curves?
then I surfed around their tips page a little more, and found notes on astrophotography and the definitive answer about why PKR64 costs three times more than KR64.

Of course, I pretty much knew all that information, but having it in a form ordained by the Rochester Royalty is nice.

Picked up my car yesterday afternoon. All is well. Yay.

9/3/03, 11:58am-
Got a call back from Jan at HMG, letting me know that I would be receiving a second phone interview call on Friday. <happy dance> Yay for me.
The day will be complete when the McServiceTechs at McGrath call me and tell me my car is done. Hopefully that will be soon.

9/2/03, 6:19pm-
Well, my phone interview with HMG went rather well. Jan is a nice lady who actually seemed interested in what I had to say, unlike some other HR people I've dealt with. Only time will tell if they call me back or not. It would definately be cool to work under the HMG umbrella, what with all of the nifty companies they have, especially since my position would be something akin to that of a Sr.Engineer, something I was hoping for only after several more years in industry than I have.

Just dropped Dee off at McGrath, for her 90k service, including a timing belt, water pump, and new front brakes. The damage to my wallet will be severe, but she'll thank me.

8/31/03, 4:28pm-
After several hours being a bookworm, all I want is one thing: TTL AC monolights. Is that too much to ask? I guess so...

8/31/03, 12:47pm-
The weather is beautiful. Wish you were here.
Today is Random Blogging Day^©
   Went skating with sis yesterday. Did the loop at Deer Park and came home.
   Thought about studio portraiture. Looked at light meters and Alien Bees. A DigiBee would be nice for taking studio type pictures of things and people, don't you think? I sure do.
   Cleaned stuff. In the last couple of days I've cleaned (read: thrown away things I deem crap) the den closet, the cupboards above my half of the den worktable, as well as making significant progress culling the files on my HD. I ditched almost 2GB of crap in the last week. It's amazing how much stuff I keep only because it's easier to forget about it than drag it to the trash.
   Made an appointment for my car at McGrath. Not because I can't do the work she needs, but because it's been months and I haven't gotten it done, and it needs to happen. I figure they'll do just as good a job as I will, but a lot sooner and without skinned knuckles. Welcome to my life as a wannabe.
   That new DC song is stuck in my head.

   It's been too damn long.

8/26/03, 5:23pm-
PETA will be very very angry.

8/24/03, 2:40pm-
Who needs Zoloft when you have nachos?

8/23/03, 10:55pm-
Went to Borders with the 'rents tonight, scored mags, as well as NOFX's The War On Errorism and the ever popular Full Throttle from the Blue Meanies (Brad and Jer would be so proud. Heh...we met the Blue Meanies.). Inside the CD, on the back of the liner notes, NOFX made me their new biggest fan. It says: "Somewhere in Texas
There is a village
Without it's idiot"
The links above are my addition.

With songs like "The Idiots Are Taking Over" it's easy to love them.

I love NOFX.

No, not like that.

8/22/03, 10:09pm-
"In terms of actual difficulty, it's not that hard. Aerospace is plumbing with the volume turned up." - John Carmack, on aeronautical engineering.

8/19/03, 10:04pm-
Dinner with B and Co was way fun, with mucho action from the dog and the kids. Plans for a repeat game are on for Thursday at Congo River.
Got my RC-848 hooked up and tested. Ooohh..pretty lights. Now all I need is a band to record again.

8/19/03, 2:54pm-
Unemployment has it's benefits. I've gotten more sleep in the last 2 working weeks than I did in any two working months when I had a real job. I actually feel human. It's kinda cool. I'm beginning to realize just how burned out I was after a year of killing myself for a job. My creativity is starting to come back, as is my motivation to do...well..anything.
So I got some new glasses today, finally, after my old ones broke, almost a month ago. I loved my old frames, but the metal didn't love me, and fatigued and broke in a most unlikely and irreparable way, leaving me forced to wear lenses from 3 1/2 years ago, and hating the fact that my prescription's changed so much since then. The new ones are a little trendier than my last pair, and a little wider, which has the unfortunate side effect of rendering everything in the outer 20% of the lens totally distorted. It's gonna take a week or two to re-learn to use only the middle 30% of the lens. It's an artifact of my prescription, so it's something I'll have to get used to.
Dinner tonight will be with Beth and Julie, and the fare is rumored to be fowl. It'll be fun n stuff.

yeah.

8/7/03, 1:48am-
Hot Damn these guys make good speakers.
I just got home from a pretty much all-day (2pm-1:30am) demo at Nellie's with the girls from Catfight. No, I didn't go home with the girls, they were the the ones who made the music for the demo. A pair of TRiK-Traps and a pair of BDEAPs powered by a pair of PL236en and a pair of RMX2450s (all bridged of course) were more than able to truly and completely stomp on the pair of Martin Wavefront W3s and the quad of McSubs that were there this morning. Scully's mix was rockin, the girls were rockin, and aside from some rather insideous ghost-induced feedback all went extremely well.

The bass from the BDEAPs is amazing. It's so good it's almost lickable. I say almost because I can't imagine that beer-stained Line-X would taste very good.

Tomorrow will take me to fabulous Des Moines, IA, where Al and I will cause trouble while my seeester is busy visiting colleges with mom. Much to Beth's chagrin, this will keep me from joining her and Julie for dinner and a movie, which is an event that seems cosmically doomed to ever happen, given the number of times similar things have been planned and have fallen thru.

And now that the blogging is complete, I can go to sleep so that I can get my hair cut and load out the system at Nellie's before heading west.

8/5/03, 6:59pm-
Holy shit, Dave's updating his web page!

So I went and took the analysis quiz over at politicalcompass.org, and it gave me a Economic Left/Right: -4.62 Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.36, which puts me squarely between Nelson Mandella and the Dali Lama. For those of you without the knowledge of the historical significance of those two names, that means I'm more liberal and libertarian than I am conservative and authoritarian. It's interesting to me that almost precisely opposite me, in the 1st quadrent of the graph, is GWBjr, our current president. You can guess who I didn't vote for.

I've been talking about blogging about fajitas for some time to people, and have finally decided to attempt to turn those conversations about the gloriousness of that divine food into this literary train wreck I call a news page.

There's something amazing about getting fajitas in a restaurant. When the waiter brings them out, you know it before he even gets out of the kitchen. The intoxicating smell of the sauteéd peppers and onions and the freshly cooked chicken waft throughout the establishment telling the whole of those attending, I'm eating real food! The sight of them is wonderful. That skillet of sizzling vegetables and meat, the warm tender tortillas, the mound of cool cheese, the colors are a sight to behold, a veritable rainbow of culinary goodness. Then there's the fact that it's fresh. Really fresh. Your meal is so fresh, it's still cooking when it arrives at your table. That iron skillet isn't just for looks, it's there to keep your dinner cooking as it's carried to you, nothing short of a Benihana style performance. And when it finally lands in front of you, aside from the afformentioned chromatic delight and olfactory rapture, there is the auditory stimulation of that sizzle. You know the one. It sounds like....food. Not just food, after all, that's what the cafeteria served in high school, just food. No, this is food, the kind of thing that bellies of people accustomed to food are craving to be fed. It's something that's more fundamentally good than anything else on the entreé menu, and dammit if that's not just the way it's supposed to be.

7/15/03, 12:47am-
Jetlag sucks. it's quarter to one in the morning and I'm still awake. Wide awake. Go-skating-for-a-few-miles awake. I want to be I-have-an-appointment-in-9-hours asleep, but it seems that life has other plans for me.

The postman sucks, having either misdelivered or not delivered my cellphone bill. I had a nice chat with Veronica at Verizon and got it all straightened out, but damn, I hate not getting bills. It screws up my credit rating.

I also called a very nice lady at Tiffen to see if there were any accessories available for the Domke Quest line, since it seems to have been axed as part of the bankruptcy of Tiffen. She said that they were moving the contents of one of their warehouses to a different warehouse, and that I should call back in a month or two. If that court scheduling is correct, their creditors are looking to break up and liquidate Tiffen. All I really want is some more divider material for my Iguana 20 and some of those quick release thingys. Is that too much to ask? Aparently...

I bid on a 200mm f/4 AIS Micro Nikkor on eBay, but was mercilessly (and financially) slapped down by someone with actual disposable income. Heartless bastard. All I really want in life is a good 200mm macro lens, and a good job, and a good girl, and a hot car, and a nice house, and enough money to not worry about it, and a faster computer, and a hotter engine in my car, and...

Really, all I want is a new lens.

And a job.

7/13/03, 10:46pm-
[Maui:~/Kaanapali] dpaton% mv dpaton $home
Late on Friday night, which was actually early on Saturday morning (4am HST), I spent a magical hour on the beach, basking in the glow of a bright moon setting over Lanai. I spent the last half of a roll of PKR and an entire roll of GT800 recording the moon and it's Pacific reflections for posterity.
After a brace of fitful hours feigning sleep, I made my way out to face the last Hawaiian sun I'd see on the trip. A mad packing frenzy ensued, and some creative arrangement allowed more stuff to come home than was brought, while it was also better arranged and packed. Lunch was at an Italian deli of sorts, that had phenomenally large portions. I mean these were huge. Not Cheesecake Factory big, I mean like Population of India kind of big. Mom's BLT came with a group of handlers to keep it from escaping and consuming a small island, like Manhattan.
After conquering lunch, we headed to the airport more or less, where we were confronted with a line that could have taken on the BLT, and maybe even beaten it. Sweating, waiting, sweating, waiting, and sweating, we finally made our collective way to gate 23, where we killed time until we were herded onto the 767 that would bring us back to the mainland. The eastbound movie was aparently broken, so we were treated to a second showing of X2, complete with complimentary headphones, which were somehow supposed to make up for the fact that it was the 9th time I'd seen the movie, and funny enough it worked. After the movie, I made a truly pathetic attempt to sleep for the next 6 hours. It didn't work. Upon our arrival at ORD at 5:57am CST, my now 2-day sleep deprived carcass made it's way home with the rest of the family. After a day of microsleeping, I dropped 11 rolls of film off at Walgreens so that they can begin their long journey to Fair Lawn, NJ, then ate dinner, and watched The Mask Of Zorro. Whcih brings me to now, blogging on my laptop to a file that's twice-rehomed to get around a peculiar architectural quirk of the network here at home.

7/11/03, 10:23pm HST-

Massive update alert!
I could be a sailboat guy. I really could. Chillin llike a villan on the foredeck of a 35' sloop, gliding across the waves of the sunny pacific, working on a righteous tan and watching the dolphins play in the bow wake.

I could be a sailboat guy.

This is my last night on Maui, and I dearly wish I could stay longer. The weather is amazing, as are the waves, the sand and did I mention the women? The snorkeling was cool too, what little of it I got to do. A heavy guage sinus infection and I got intimately acquainted on the planeride out here and it stuck around in a rather debiliting way pretty much the whole trip. I'm only feeling well right now because of massive amounts of Biaxin and Tylenol Cold, much to my chagrin.

There was also the sunburn incident on Saturday morning (!) while I was finishing the HHGTTG compendium (loaned to me by the ever popular Beth, who managed to find a way to get mentioned in a blog entry from Maui, much to our mutual suprise). You see, I was hell bent on finishing the book, as I only had ~ 90 pages to go, so I went down to chill on the sand around 9am, with the sun at the back of my lounge chair. When I finished an hour and a half later, I was suprised to find that although I hadn't gotten any direct sun yet, I was quite...how shall we say...cooked. The next morning it was all hands on deck to deal with my nose, which consumed 9 boxes of kleenex over the next 4 days, 5 of which happened on Tuesday. So needless to say, Sunday and Monday were a lost cause with me basically staying shirtless in the room, gulping Tylenol and vitamins with reckless abandon. Tuesday it got so bad I skipped out watching my sister learn to surf and went to the doctor instead to get checked out, diagnised with acute sinusitis, and getting a script faxed over to Longs for the afforementioned Biaxin. 3 days later I'm feeling much better, but the sickness, plus the jetlag (9 hour flight plus a rain delay on the ORD end), plus the not sleeping (man these beds blow...master BR one is great tho. Hmmm...) left me totally exhausted. I tried to go snorkeling with Dad on Wednesday morning, but about 100 yards out I was so tired and out of breath, I couldn't get enough air through the snorkel and was dangerously close to being too tired to swim back to shore, so I cut bait and went back, backpaddling the whole way and getting some saltwater in my mouth. Yuck. On the upside, whilst shopping for a good Hawaiian shirt with my seeester that afternoon, I found an amazing silk example in medium-dark blue that I couldn't pass up, and which felt amazing on my skin. I love silk...
But back to the story. Interestingly enough, while I was swimming, all of the sunburn induced blisters that were all over my chest, but that I couldn't see, absorbed a bit of salt water, making them quite noticable and rather bumpy when I got out of the beautiful Pacific ocean. What a wierd feeling. Dinner at Cheeseburgers, Mai Tais and Rock and Roll ended the night on an up note. The next morning, after sleeping in I went out for yet another walk along the beach, which I'm getting quite accustomed to. After a quick lunch we went to watch the sun set and the stars sparkle at the 10,023 ft summit of Mt. Haleakala, Maui's own active (but not since 1798) volcano. About 4 rolls of PKR burned through my camera on the sunset, and a roll of GT800 on the bright as the frigging sun moon that kept us from doing much stargazing. Speaking of PKR, I shot at least a roll of it every night on sunsets, and rolls of Velviia were shot on this afternoon's tip to Iao Needle, a smallish National Park area where there was some great rushing water waiting to be photographed, as well as some cool green-type scenery. Just the thing for Fuji's finest.

Which beings me to now, after another successful dinner at Cheeseburgers, Mai Tais and Rock and Roll, I'm now sitting with my iBook on my lap, detailing the week's adventures to y'all out there. I know it looks like I spent a lot of time complaining, but the trip has been just wonderful, and my being sick for most of it was only a minor inconvenience in the grand scheme of things.

Finally, I've come to some conclusions while whiling away the hours here on the sunny sands of our 50th state:

• I need to learn how to surf
• Beach trucks are cool
• I'm a longboard kinda guy, just like I'm a groove kinda bass player.
• Nothing, but Nothing, compares to a Pacific Sunset.
• Living near the ocean is one of life's biggest pleasures.
• I need to live near an ocean.
• 36 exposures isn't enough, and yet is way too many, for a roll of film.
• Snorkeling rocks.
• Staying in a condo instead of a hotel room was very very nice.
• Going to bed to the sound of the pounding surf is a powerful muscle relaxant.
• I could be a sailboat guy

Which OS are You?

• ditch the photos page, replace it witha more tastefully arranged and filled album script of some sort, so all I have to do is maintain a text file and a directory. It'll be lovely, really.
• Get some kind of blog style update thing happening for this here newspage. Right now it's updated with a text editor on one of my local boxen and sftp'd over, which altho simple, makes it difficult for me to blog here from any place but my desk at home, which is someplace I don't spend all that much time.
• Add a words page. I write a ton, and I share next to none of it. 3 people have had the privelege of being allowed to see the words I've written and know they were mine. I write a lot in other places, and other online communities, but like many others, I maintain a strict air of anonymity, right down to the anonymous webmail I use to administer those accounts. I'd like to share some of the things I've written, but need to figure out exactly what and how. I promise, much more thought will go into this, really. Who knows, you might even like it. Odds are you won't, but who knows.
• Last but the opposite of least, fix the audio pages. They've been languishing in dispair for the better part of 2 years now, and I really need to take some time and thoroughly seperate the proverbial wheat from the proverbial chaff.

Learn your Ninja Clan at the Ninja Burger website.

• Got some X10 stuff. I love being able to relocate a lightswitch or three to anywhere I want. Wireless is cool.
• I hate X10. They made their cheap wireless transceiver unable to respond to wireline commands. At least I think they did. My mini controller won't make it go. Grrr.
• My car is so goddamn dirty they could probably make about 10,000 margaritas with the salt on it. It's filthy.
• Work is. I still have a job, and they're keeping me busy, so I won't complain much until the paychecks start to bounce.
• My place is a mess. I cleaned 3 days ago, and it's now worse than it was before. I don't know how it happened. It just did.
• I picked up a new LCD to replace the 12" NEC that was having backlight problems. It's a 15" Mitsu, and it's nice and bright like my Apple panel, but it only has a rez of 1024x768. Things are too big...I need 1152x870....
• The SS20 is still dead. The keyboard seems to work, kinda, but I can't be sure since the VGA adapter I got doesn't work, and when the KB's plugged in, the output is directed to the framebuffer instead of the serial port.
• my gratuitous use of an unordered list in this post is now over

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