Snabulus Web Log

VanBC Day 3: The Play is the Thing

2011-11-07T20:55:00.000-08:00

(Actually, tourist day was Day 4. Sorry for the confusion.)

I am not sure there is a name for the phenomenon, but most working people who are bustling all day, then attending various activities at night for months on end wind up experiencing a singular sensation once the wheels of life pause for a bit. The sensation is fatigue and the response is sleep. For us, this was the day.

We had our fruit and pastry breakfast in our room (saved money!) and prepared for more fun on Granville Island! After some low speed web surfing and light reading (including rule books for OSRIC role playing games), we headed off to the island once again.

There are two services that compete to provide ferry service between Granville Island and various points crossing False Creek. (False Creek is an inlet off of English Bay that separates downtown Vancouver from the rest of the city.) On this trip we wound up using False Creek Ferries for all of our travels. Their competitor is Aquabus and their boats are brightly colored (the last picture of Day 2 morning shows this). The interesting part of this story is that the two companies formed within a decade of one another and the founder of Aquabus is the son of the former partner of False Creek Ferries. I sense some drama here, though Wikipedia lacks some of the juicy details, it gives a few hints.

(For those sea-faring readers, some of the craft we boarded were probably designed and commissioned by the Benford Design Group. The "spec" PDF for the ferries we took can be found here. It is quite interesting.)

Here is a False Creek ferry:

Another picture looking westward just because:

We bought lunch from food stands at the Granville market and settled down outside under a covered area to eat. The food was unremarkable but edible. The doves, pigeons, and seagulls were plentiful and rather aggressive. It took a fair amount of shooing to keep them at bay. Some dumb lady thought it would be amusing to throw a hand full of seed into the middle of the tables and, of course, the birds went crazy flying and crashing to get at the food and making everyone cover their food. I guess she didn't give a damn about public health and what diseases birds transmit...well, her smirk told me that.

Away from the human consumption of food, the conflagration of birds was more interesting and, for one little girl, completely welcome.

We wandered around looking at shops and museums while we waited for the doors to open at The Arts Club for a local play we bought tickets for.

The native art from the Haida, Salish, and other people was on display in many places...

After our walking tour of the island, we arrived at the Granville Stage of The Arts Club theater company and gained admittance to the production of the day:

Here is the blurb from the website describing the play, Circle Mirror Transformation - A Comedy of Secrets:

When Marty gathers four locals for the first ever drama class in a small Vermont town, she has no idea how an injection of hula-hooping and wacky acting games will come to change their lives—including, most unexpectedly, her own..

It took me about 10 minutes to warm up to the plot and characters but was glad I did. It was an interesting look at how people behave towards each other in a public setting and how relationships can form and dissolve between people. I think the acting crew achieved the 3 E's (entertain, educate, and elevate) fairly well.

After the play, we adjourned to the adjoining food establishment and decided to try a signature Canadian dish known as poutine:

As you can see, it was french fries covered in brown gravy and accompanied by cheese curds. It was good, but not great. I suspect that I permanently gained the weight of whatever I ate from that dish...sigh.

We walked around a bit more, then returned to the Sand Bar for dinner. You may recall we had lunch there earlier in the trip, but I digress.

I ordered Hamachi Nigiri (yellow fin tuna on a bed of rice) and something called a Canadian Roll:

Sadly, I can't remember precisely what was in the Canadian Roll other than salmon, a couple other seafood items, and some green onion and other vegetable items. Maybe you can figure it out from the close up...I don't know. It was tasty. I do remember that. I also ordered a wok fried squid dish which was enjoyable as well:

Ladybug ordered a roast chicken dish. She enjoyed it, though the chicken was a bit on the dry side. They also could have thrown in a few more vegetables but I guess you can't win them all.

We shared a very tasty lemon tart for dessert.

As we departed the island, we bid adieu to the theater building.

We also passed by a visually appealing set of house boats.

We spent the rest of the evening unwinding and preparing for our tourist adventure!

Almost there

2011-11-01T23:10:00.000-07:00

While you wait for me to get through my information bottleneck, check out Moody Minstrel's excellent trip to Okinawa.

VanBC Day 2 Afternoon/Evening: Granville and a Chinese Dinner?

2011-10-22T21:59:00.000-07:00

The centerpiece of Granville Island is the Public Market. It is a large building housing dozens of vendors who sell fresh produce, poultry, soaps, jams, jewelry, native art, many cooked food vendors, and much more. For those in Portland, it is like Saturday Market and a Farmer's Market rolled into one indoor experience. It is reason enough to become a Canadian (assuming you have the income level to subsist in this spendy town) all by itself.

On this day, it was still quite drizzly so just being under the roof was a great service. We wandered through slowly and enjoyed the wonders without buying anything at this time. We left the public market for lunch at the nearby The Sandbar. With views of False Creek and cloth napkins, this restaurant seemed upscale, but one thing we found out is that price is uniformly pretty high in BC and only partially due to the 10+% HST tax. You might as well eat at nicer places because the greasy spoons (or General Tso's bone emporium) aren't much different in price. I had a salmon burger and Ladybug went for a small sirloin steak.

From there, we went back to the market and bought some apples from the Okanagan (assuming the BC side rather than Washington), some organic grapes, and some local pastries for breakfast to save calories and money and allow us to move more lazily in the morning without worrying about sustenance. We then took our boat back to the train and headed back to the hotel.

Medical Aside: Permanent conditions and pain management

I have a ruptured post-tibial tendon in my left calf/foot that was misdiagnosed and became apparent over the course of years. At this point in time there is nothing to be done surgically that wouldn't carry consequences as serious as the condition. So I have a severe pronation in my gait (arch collapsed inward) that tends to pull other bones (right sacroiliac, I am talking to you) out of position.

We made a decision to use public transit instead of driving everywhere. While there are many pluses to this decision, it does involve a lot of walking. I do have a custom-built ankle brace with does improves things quite a bit, but walking miles each day does bring out the pain in my foot and back.

Advil does take the edge off, but I found myself with severe arch pain after day 2. I was able to use a gel sheet from my backup brace placed just below the worst pain spot to really make a difference for the rest of the week. Nonetheless, when I returned to the hotel at the end of day 2, my foot was really hurting. Sometimes it pays to use the MacGyver approach. The full effect of this didn't happen until after dinner however.

After relaxing for a while, we decided to seek out dinner. After our experiences on Day 1, we decided to refrain from local Asian cuisine using based on our shaky experience eating bones and nudged around at the market. Though it was obvious that we were intruding in some areas where we were clearly not welcomed, it would be premature to make a blanket decision about the whole area. Even so, we opted to go farther afield in order to find alternate cuisine for dinner.

There was an Italian place called Cucina Toscana about 5 blocks away. That sounded good. We started walking. Well, the blocks were rather long and 5 blocks ended up being about 1/2 mile (0.9 km). With each passing block, Chinese characters graced of every business along the way (sometimes with English subtitles). Three, four, and five blocks and and this was still the case. When we reached our Italian restaurant, it was in a 100% Asian business center and the Italian restaurant was announced in large Chinese characters with English subtitles. So much for escaping Chinaburb geographically.

Entering the restaurant was a different matter. The young man who greeted us was definitely Asian, but the table layout was Italian. The fabric curtain partially hiding the kitchen was very Chinese as was the layout of the kitchen I saw behind. I was worried as anyone with useless stereotypes in his head would be. I needn't have worried.

Our host was quiet and very pleasant; he brought us the obligatory Italian bread plate and told us about the menu. I ordered the house white wine to start and Ladybug ordered an interesting and very different beverage. It was hot water with honey and lemon and she found it to be very pleasant. Sometimes it is nice to enjoy a pleasant beverage without alcohol or caffeine.

Ladybug ordered fettucine with chicken and I went for a seafood penne dish. They were both quite tasty and coupled well with our beverages. Any residual collective blame for the crummy lunch incident was expunged with this fine meal. Since we were the only customers for the entire experience, we tipped somewhere around 30% to make up for the lack of business a little bit. [We ate at the Old Spaghetti Factory for lunch today around home and it was comparatively nowhere near as good. Good cuisine transcends national origin.]

We walked back to the hotel in the waning light. The pain in my arch was growing quite acute on the way back. I was happy to return to the hotel. We spoke about what to do on day 3 and decided to hit a couple of big tourist traps.

VanBC Day 2 Morning: Pannekoeken and Granville

2011-10-18T22:42:00.000-07:00

One of the fortunate things about our location in Vancouver was our proximity to the Canada Line of the BC Transit SkyTrain. Well, they call it a sky train, and it is an elevated line for some of its length, then it becomes a subway for the rest of the way into downtown.

Ladybug recalled a nice Dutch pancake experience from an earlier trip, so after some research, we found a place called De Dutch that appeared to be in the location she remembered. She remembered the name, "Original Dutch Pannekoek House" but I could not find that. I did not find out until after we got home that De Dutch was a renaming of the old place. The link goes to a quite interesting history for those so inclined.

We managed to board the train during the Monday morning commute. We were in for a bit more culture shock. Riders of Portland, Oregon's MAX train line seem to run the gamut of types, colors, styles, and personalities. In Vancouver, boarding the train seemed more a trip to the land of Kafka. Though the terminal and train cars were nice, airy, and light, the passengers were overwhelmingly decked in the gloomy colors of streets and rain. Black, gray, and tan were the order for the day. Urbane telecommuters wore designer shades of it and students and the working class had mass market or counterculture versions of the same colors. Ladybug and I looked like the little girl in Schindler's List on Monday morning with our bright colored clothes and jackets. Also, while Portland trains have some level of noise and conversation, this line was nearly silent save for the grind of the tracks and the automated announcer. Most riders had their noses buried into their phone where, I presume, they carried out a 4 inch version of their lives.

A colorful art display beneath an overpass

We detrained at (formerly) Olympic village and found De Dutch easily enough. The woman who served us was quite talkative and friendly and hosted our meal admirably. Here is an excerpt from their menu:

I ordered the meal of the left while Ladybug tried the dish on the lower right. We started a recurring theme for the week wherein I ordered green tea and she would order a breakfast tea with milk. Luckily for Ladybug, tea with milk is a given in a place called British Columbia. In Oregon, they often believe that a mix of chemicals called creamer will suffice. It never does. Our breakfast went a long way to wipe away the horrors of Sunday's boney, gristly lunch.

From there, we hopped on the train past downtown and on to the waterfront. We wandered around for a bit, then trundled up through Gas Town to be regaled by the more touristy aspects of Vancouver. Since it was off-season, it was a much quieter place with several businesses closed for the season.

The Gas Town Steam Clock (and my finger)

We did our duty as consumers by stopping by a store filled with maple leaf t-shirts, hats, moose themed items, etc. and got a few things to give to moms, dads, etc. Then it was back on the train, then off, then on a little boat to take us to Granville Island.

VanBC Day 1: Don't Mess with the Yaohan

2011-10-11T23:19:00.000-07:00

It seemed like a good idea for Ladybug and I to get away for our first trip alone since our honeymoon 10 years ago. Destination: Vancouver, BC, Canada. I was able to get a good hotel discount and the plane tickets were fairly reasonable. We were so busy prior to leaving for Vancouver BC that packing and leaving came up on us by surprise. We must be old pros because we didn't forget anything of consequence.

The first serious rain of autumn had just started in Portland when we took off to the airport. With my new ankle brace, I have to actually sit on the floor to take off my shoes in airport security (all the chairs are on the other side of the scanners). The brace is designed for the shoe and the rounded heel is not a good fit for walking, so I face the decision of exacerbating a permanent injury (removing it) or risk injuring something else by walking anyway. All of this because some dork tried something, failed, and the DHS Permanent Overreaction Squad makes the rest of us suffer (read Bruce Schneier to find out why it doesn't work). I decided to hobble through in my socks.

It was a nice, short flight into Vancouver and it was dryer there, though still damp. Canadian customs asked us a few questions and we were off and running. We had to wait about 45 minutes for our shuttle to the hotel (which was about 3 miles away), so maybe not running.

Our room wasn't ready yet, so we checked the bags in at the desk and wandered off in search of lunch. What we didn't know was that we were walking into a major culture shock. I am not talking about back bacon, Molsons, and hockey jerseys. I am talking about walking into China. After leaving the hotel, we were definitely in the minority with our round eyes and pasty skin, as in 5%. Vancouver has a Chinatown so Richmond must be Chinaburb. This was not a polyglot Asian area either; it was pretty much Chinese as far as I could tell. We walked through a food market and were bumped and jostled by people who were walking through us rather than around us. It was weird and interesting for about 2 minutes, then it was annoying. A person can wait a long time when trying to be courteous and move aside for others. Yep. Culture shock.

After failing to find an eatery that fit our mood, we moved farther afield. Yaohan market is like a shopping mall in any other part of Canada except that only about 1/2 the signs had English translations. We visited the food court and found a couple of places that had some pretty good looking food...I guess what you would call "American" Chinese food. We didn't go to Canada looking for a food adventure.

Well, we got one anyway. We both ordered combo plates. Ladybug's had a chicken entree with pineapple, beef with broccoli, and fried rice. I opted for a breaded chicken entree (similar to General Tso's or Orange Chicken), a vegetable mix, and the chow mein noodles. Ladybug's didn't turn out too bad. The meat wasn't super high quality (kind of fatty), but not bad.

I bit into my first nugget of chicken and it was half bone, half cartilage under the breading. Well, that could have gone better but I tossed it aside because these things happen, right? The vegetables were okay, but slimy and mostly tasteless. Sadly, they were the highlight of my meal (other than stealing a bit of Ladybug's meal). The noodles were cooked in oil that tasted old enough for the biodiesel reclamation barrel. No problem, I thought, I will just have more of the chicken. Except there wasn't any. There were about 10 breaded nuggets and they were all bone and cartilage. Every one. I choked down enough noodles to keep me going until dinner, threw away half my "meal", and moved on.

We kept walking through the mall, but the experience left me in a sour mood. There was a food market with a large display of dried shrimp. To me, it stunk like it had been there too long. There were various phone stores, purse shops, etc. with nothing we were interested in, so we gave up and headed back to the hotel. It took another hour for our room to be ready so we just hung out in the lobby and waited, talked about what to do for the week, and muttered about how crazy lunch was.

After we got into the room and settled in, we had dinner at the hotel (which was a Radisson) and had our first good meal in BC. We made some travel notes and decided to plan only one day ahead for this trip. All in all, it was a quiet night and off to more fun stuff on Monday.

Teaser

2011-10-03T19:52:00.000-07:00

I have a tale of my worst restaurant meal in years...but it will have to wait until I have better internet access.

Sunrise, Sunset

2011-09-27T22:38:00.000-07:00

This last week was a great week for sky colors. Autumn is laying in the clouds despite the best attempts of a late summer to hold on. It has made for some beautiful mornings and evenings. Even my crummy phone camera couldn't screw these up.

This was the sunset after (possibly) our last 80+ degree F day of the year. We had a 24 mile bicycle ride with a couple of decent climbs earlier and were relaxing at the Rock Creek Tavern as the day faded away:

A few days earlier in the week, we were treated to a sunrise that lit up the sky:

And the next morning was nearly as bright, but added more textural variety to keep up with the day before:

With such beauty, it is tough to complain...though I usually find a way. :D

35 miles on the West Side

2011-09-12T22:59:00.000-07:00

The forecast for Sunday in Portland was 95F (35C), so I decided to get the bike ride in early. I woke up at 5:30AM and took the family out to the local Elmer's pancake joint for breakfast at 6am. I enjoyed my Saturday market skillet with egg whites and green tea. We unloaded the bike and my family drove home.

It was a chilly start with temperatures in the mid 50sF (12-14C)...you have to love a temperate climate. I ended up stopping at a gas station in the first half mile...the back tire felt kind of squishy so I filled it, then onward.

Thanks to a number of lightning-caused fires in the Cascade mountains, the morning sky was tinged red and the smell of distant smoke was with me:

I had a nice quiet ride through the Tualatin Hills Nature Park encountering a couple of wild rabbits in the open areas. I proceeded southward through a few power line parks making my way towards the flanks of Sexton mountain and Cooper mountain. With names like that, it is no doubt that some climbing would occur. Here is a look back from part way up the hill:

My trip calculator indicated 580 feet of climbing and I believe it. There were a few ridges and gullies as I weaved between the two peaks. Finally, I headed north towards and worked my way to Greenway Park and the Fanno Creek Park and watershed. Just as the heat of the open road was just gathering into a palpable presense, I found Fanno Creek and a foliated reprieve:

After a couple of miles riding the thin, green line between Beaverton neighborhoods and the industry near highway 217, I finally reached the end of the park trail and wound my way towards downtown Beaverton. I worked my way back to the Tualatin Hills Nature Park. Along the way, I rode through some old(er) growth firs and pines. This particular area has an affinity for pines not generally found in Western Oregon so it is a bit of a novelty:

Continuing on through the wetlands area, I heard a thrashing in a thicket while riding along a boardwalk over what would be swamp for 9 months of the year. I stopped and rolled slowly to find a doe who wasn't expecting me. Pausing a bit longer, I noticed two fawns following close behind. My grainy phone camera took the following picture:

The morning was warming up and I found myself working through my 2 liters of water a bit quicker. I emerged from the nature park and worked my way through a few miles of power line parks. Here is a view north towards my next destination from a temporary apex:

After weaving my way through a busy business district with few trees and burgeoning heat, I turned westward making my way through suburbia and into the inner farm belt. I approached a country road near a highway that makes a nice, free vantage point for a couple local airshows at the Hillsboro airport as I found out by accident on a night ride last year. On this occasion, a wheat field was planted in clover and left to recover near this point:

The freeway I mentioned gets busier each year, so the forlorn dead end I frequent before turning around has piles of gravel, pipes and restricted areas all working towards expanding the highway:

Continuing back eastward, I meet up with another power line park which skirts soccer fields before diving through an easement at the local golf club:

This picture was take at the apex of the last power line park looking down the hill I climbed:

I worked my way home through surface streets for the last few miles. The lack of vegetation along with the ascension of the sun made the last half hour a warm, sweaty finish with more grabs of the water bottle. 35 miles later, I pulled into my driveway ready for it to be over and to cravenly hide in front of the air conditioner sipping ice water...it was a nice feeling.

With a custom ankle brace and an inoperable knee problem, I feel fortunate to have been able to lose the weight necessary to ride a bicycle for 3.5 hours with minimal pain. I am a far cry from my rotund, lethargic, and, frankly, unhappy self of two years ago. I feel very lucky to have found the right needle in the right haystack to help myself...I hope the same for all who suffer and keep looking for a way to feel better.

Small Change

2011-09-10T09:15:00.000-07:00

Given that nobody has posted here in quite some time, I decided to go solo and set the blog to post only my own stuff. Ladybug, Moody, and Info Geek posts from the past will remain on the site. I am always happy to link to other blogs or posts from said people that are of interest. In fact, I already am.

The upcoming anniversary

2011-09-09T23:12:00.000-07:00

There is an anniversary coming up for a criminal event. The horrific nature of the event itself and the subsequent perversion of civil reality along with the consequent destruction of innocent lives, property and the permanent establishment of state power as an end unto itself renders me unable to reverently mourn, in public, those innocent lives lost or properly acknowledge the sacrifices of individuals whose acts are obscured by the innumerable crimes and enduring lies of the vultures who have profited politically and financially from the event on every side.

While I am not a believer, I can see a kind of wisdom in Matthew 6:6...

But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

Regardless of whether a "reward" is forthcoming, I will have to sort my grief out on my own I guess.

Spam is not just a job...

2011-09-06T22:37:00.000-07:00

I figured that my regular commenters would prefer to forego the Captcha-style identity verification so that they may comment easily on the blog. While it is a noble quest, I now find myself saddled 2 to 5 times per day with comment moderation requests for various spammy adverts or possibly even malware.

I don't mind marking them all as spam. The price for a free place to blog and a convenient commenting zone is a bit of horse pucky. I suspect that it will continue since all replies are anonymous and target the more politically juicy posts from the last 5 years.

...it is an adventure. However, if I start requiring a valid log on, you will know why.

The Simple Pleasure of Dry Heat

2011-09-04T22:22:00.000-07:00

After a cool and humid summer with a few warm, humid days and a couple hot humid days, we arrive at September when the high pressure finally camps to the east of Portland and the humidity drops like a rock. Today it reached 90F (32C) but the humidity was likely in the teens. It was dry enough to need chapstick and protection against nose bleeds. My kind of day.

It is unfortunate that a few lightning caused fires in the mountains (hey, blame that on humidity) wafted a white plume of smoke over the city for a while, but the wind shifted today and most of it went somewhere else. Hopefully the good folk who fight the fires can get them under control.

I have a group of two or three friends that try to get a bike day in every weekend during the summer. Today we chose the Banks-Vernonia Linear trail for a shadier ride given the forecast heat. The state parks website said it was a 21 mile trail, but I seem to remember passing a 21.5 mile marker on the way, so I will say 22 in both directions for a total of 44 miles (71km). We are recreational riders, so we generally seem to stick to about 10 mph (~15 kph).

The morning was cool and when we started, it was in the low to mid-70s. One of the nice things about a dry September heat wave is that the nights are still quite cool. The ride climbed from about 250 to 950 feet in elevation with changes up and down in between. The shade of the coast range forest augmented the cooling as well. Even though we rode in the heat of the day, there was only about 5 miles of riding under the hot sun with the rest either in shade, at some altitude, or both. If only we could bottle this stuff and send it to the rest of the humid world.

Due to the cool and wet beginning, this summer marked a fairly late harvest of blackberries. For those outside the Pacific NW, the Himalayan blackberry is an invasive species that grows does very well here and produces tons of free food for us. It is a longstanding memory for me to breathe in the sweet scent of ripe berries this time of year. We made a stop along the trail to pick a couple handfuls to enjoy along the way. The scents reinforce this good feeling. If there must be an invasive species, let it smell beautiful and provide good food (I am looking at you, useless English Ivy).

After the ride, the consensus was for burgers and beer at the Rock Creek Tavern. They did not disappoint as we sat at an outdoor table in the shade and enjoyed our meal.

After about 102 miles (164km) in 8 days, I believe I will spend this Labor Day in a more relaxed state. That total included a nice ride along the Springwater bike trail and the Cazadero unfinished extension that was quite nice as well.

2011-08-30T22:13:00.000-07:00

When all else fails, Tom Sawyer by Rush.

2011-08-29T22:21:00.001-07:00

Test 2: I am going to test this post as an equivalent to a Twitter or Facebook post.

The Viking is Biking

2011-08-28T22:01:00.000-07:00

Hi there. I rode about 39 miles today on my bicycle. I got these fancy kevlar street tires to replace my knobbies and, thanks to a cool and wet summer, my first long ride included a spill that still hurts my wrist. Today was perfect with temps in the low 80s and a nice light breeze. My street tires once again had problems for about 5 miles of thick gravel, but what the heck...no falls.

It was nice to ride with El Tigre and Seymour Deth and I hope for a good ride next weekend before school starts.

I am happy to be blogging and communicating with some good folks again. Technology is an unknowable cross between "1984", Kafka, some ebullient Apple commercial, and an amazing banana split. Who knows which one it really is.

I am back

2011-08-27T15:12:00.000-07:00

I tried Wordpress for a while and didn't get into it. Now Snabby is back. Then again, I've been a flake about posting, so who knows?

Halloween Questions

2010-10-17T21:59:00.000-07:00

Arkonbey had a fun questionnaire and I thought I would get in on it.

1.What is the worst treat to get when trick-or-treating?

I got a toothbrush once...likely from a dentist. It wasn't terrible, but not what I was looking for.

2.What character from any horror film would you most like to play?

Gomez Addams

3.Would you rather be a zombie, alien, or psycho? (why)

Alien: Specifically a non-humanoid one.

4.How many Halloween, Friday the 13th, or Nightmare on Elm Street movies combined do you have on dvd?

None...not my kind of thing. Saw Halloween I and Friday the 13th on TV though.

5.What is the scariest movie you have ever seen?

Schindler's List

6. Lamest costume you have worn on Halloween?

Admittedly, most of them.

7. Favorite Halloween treat?

Nestle Crunch bars (the little ones)

8. Friendly-faced jack o’lantern or scary one?

Weird or artistic.

9.Have you ever had nightmares about a scary movie character chasing you?

No. But I was attacked by the panther in my black light poster (similar to the one below) in a dream and it did quite a lot of damage to my flesh before I woke up.

10.Best thing about Halloween?

Seeing kids enjoy their alter egos.

11.Strangest Halloween custom you’ve heard of?

Harvest festivals where people are "scared of the worshipping the devil."

12.Person in your family who most likes Halloween (not counting yourself)?

My daughter

13.Are you superstitious? If so, name at least one superstition of yours.

Sometimes, but I try to beat down the impulse when it arises.

OCF - Endings & Beginnings

2010-07-21T19:39:00.000-07:00

Flying Away...

This year was a good Fair, but one in which things added up to not coming back next year. First of all, the last several years had an optional higher price for supporting the Fair's sustainability initiatives, like Peach Power/Alternative Energy, Durables/Zero Waste and others. This year it was not an option. ALL tickets were Green tickets. Hmmm. Then, last year and AGAIN this year we were not allowed to park until the "Main Gate" opened by a person I shall call Stone Woman. Usually we could drive through the side entrance and have the privilege of waiting at the outside gate until 10am, then at the Dragon Gate until 11am, when "day trippers" are allowed in. Yea, the people who paid more than $20+ a day (basically to fund a huge private party)....Funny when the "Main Gate" opened sometime after 9:30am (when told it was to open at 9am by Stone Woman) the PUBLIC parking was already 1/3 to 1/2 filled. Hmmmmmmm... It put me in a right foul mood.

While waiting at the Dragon Gate, I connected with a old time Fair worker named Willow who started in 1976. She got tired of it all and moved to Arizona around 1998. This year was her first time back. She was camping nearby and walked in. They would not let HER in, (with her "day tripper" ticket in hand) until 9:30 or so when the Main Gate opened. She said it was "Bullshit".

Dragon Gate!

There were other signs... On the way there, the osprey nest that was next to the highway at the edge of the reservoir was empty. No birds or babies in sight. I called an old acquaintance who'd managed to get onto the Music Crew...no answer all weekend; (he'd hinted last year it might be his last, the partying and long hours-among other things- were frustrating). Then there was the cost of two hotel rooms instead of the usual one (3 teenagers!) and the realization we no longer wanted to spend money on the same old vendors. The ones we really like we can buy from anytime because they also have a web presence. Finally, the whole reason I wanted to come early on Friday was for the special limited edition sarongs they sell (well, since 2006). Nope, they didn't exist for 2010! Evidently the people who had been primarily responsible for them started working for an NGO in Haiti..so the batik contact in Bali was lost.

Mehendi Hand!

So what was good? We introduced Beaniac's boyfriend to the Fair. We had her other friend down from Alaska for his second Fair. The kids got alot of swimming in at the pool too! We enjoyed some great meals at the Glenwood Restaurant again. I got a beautiful Mehendi done and spent some very fruitful time in the Labyrinth. I was able to clarify alot of things about what I want I want to focus on in the coming year. I was also able to hear Grandmother Agnes Baker Pilgrim speak about her fears, hopes and her work for the future. Her talk was very inspiring actually and confirmed a path I'd been moving towards for some time (living a more simple self-reliant life style and gaining the skills to do so).

The Last Day ..at the Labyrinth!

Last but not least, Snabby and I decided we no longer wanted to be tied down to the second weekend in July as we have for the last 12 years. It was a slightly bittersweet decision for me, but when something starts becoming a chore instead of a rousing fun inspirational fest, it's time to move on. See the 2010 poster image at the top? Another sign, flying away for another adventure!

Zero Intelligence

2010-05-26T01:47:00.000-07:00

Zero Tolerance Syndrome seems to be one of the epidemics of the 2000s. In a way, it's kind of like AIDS: a viral infection compromises the immune system to the point of rendering it moot, so that any small bug that would normally pass unnoticed suddenly becomes a chronic issue. In this case, however, the "infection" is some kind of perceived evil, real or imagined, that somebody in power thinks merits a witch hunt. The "immune system" is common sense.

The problem is that the whole notion of "zero tolerance" has become something of a status symbol. Authority figures want to show how righteous they are (read "make people believe their family jewels are a bit larger than BBs") by vowing to get tough on anything that even vaguely smacks of [insert public enemy du jour here]. And since righteousness (ahem *manliness* cough) tends to be strangely competitive, you often wind up with a whole bunch of leaders trying to outdo each other in terms of just how zero their tolerance really is.

We Americans are fond of pointing at our Great Parent, Mother England, and laughing (sympathetically, of course) at the Monty Python-esque Nanny State it has become. We shake our heads at tales of 17-year-olds not being allowed to buy bicycle repair kits (lest they sniff the glue), people being fined for dropping bits of their sandwich, old ladies being told they can't tend flowerbeds without safety equipment, garbage collectors not allowed to clean up garbage in a shallow creek because they're not licensed to wear boots, or people catching repeat thief/vandals and calling the police only to wind up arrested themselves. But while we're so eager to guffaw at the speck in the eye of the Jolly Old Isles, we don't seem to be noticing the log popping up in our own.

After all, the good old US of A, while being the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave®, is also the country where:

A child can be suspended for giving a classmate a cough drop. (Zero Tolerance of drugs)
A teenager can be suspended for using mouthwash. (Zero Tolerance of drugs)
A Cub Scout can be suspended for bringing a camp utensil to cut a cake. (Zero Tolerance of weapons)
A teenager can be suspended for having his father's hunting rifle inside his car. (Zero Tolerance of weapons)
Or even for just having a box of shotgun shells in her car. (Zero Tolerance of weapons)
Heck, even an Eagle Scout can get axed for having a Swiss army knife in his car. (Yes, more Zero Tolerance of weapons)
Even making a "gun" with your fingers can get you kicked out. (Still more Zero Tolerance of weapons)
Forget drugs and weapons; the US flag can get you booted off campus. (Zero Tolerance of racial intolerance[?])
Even teachers aren't immune; venting your frustration on Facebook after being subject to religious harassment by evangelist students can get you axed. (Zero Tolerance of religious intolerance[?])
Being cranky on Facebook isn't a good idea if you're a principal, either. (Zero Tolerance of Sarcasm)
Also, if you're a principal, you can get suspended for insisting a parent respect school policy. (Zero Tolerance of...what?)
Meanwhile, outside of the education arena, an old woman can get arrested and jailed for slapping her mouthy, spoiled-brat teen granddaughter. (Zero Tolerance of domestic violence)

This list could easily go on and on, but I think you get the picture. Naturally, all of these absurdities are rationalized by authority figures and experts citing the need for "drastic measures" to face a "growing problem". They boast about how they are getting "tough" on something or another by making examples (read "scapegoats") of people whose "crimes" probably wouldn't have merited a second glance a couple of decades ago. Meanwhile, the comment threads on the news articles are often punctuated with die-hards remarking that "all places have there rules" and that "Zeяo toleяanse mens zeяo toleяanse - theяs no gяay aяea". (Hmm...I wonder if they'd be half as smug if their own son were suspended because they'd gone off and left something in their car.)

However, I still have to wonder whether, far from being any kind of noble crusade, this Zero Tolerance stuff is just a way for authority figures to boast about fighting a problem while at the same time ducking it. They say they're allowing no gray areas because they don't want any complaints or accusations of discrimination, and yet at the same time they seem to be trying to turn life itself into a series of mindless "if - then" statements without any thought about the consequences. They're only too pleased to see innocent members of the community if not honor students have their whole record ruined just so the guy on top can pass judgment without having to use his head...let alone take any kind of criticism. Zero Tolerance certainly makes things a lot simpler.

Then again, "simple" can be synonymous with "brainless".

Lingua Fracture

2010-05-09T04:00:00.000-07:00

Today I logged into Facebook and opened my news feed to see this status post from one of my FB friends (who is an old schoolmate):

WELCOME TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Press 1 for English. Press 2 to disconnect until you learn to speak English. And remember only two defining forces have ever offered to die for you, JESUS CHRIST. And the AMERICAN SOLIDER. One died for your soul, the other for your freedom. If you agree... copy and paste in your status on Saturday...

It seems like status posts like this have been appearing a lot lately, no doubt in response to the recent controversy in Arizona. (I already addressed that issue quite enough on my own blog...and it ended with our favorite thread-jacker severing all contact with me and slandering me viciously by name online. That will be all, thank you.) Even without the militant Christian message, and even without all the "like" names attached to that post, there is something very disturbing about this. The first part says basically, "Speak English or get out of the US." This is a theme that has been spreading like wildfire of late, perhaps even the crusade du jour. The obvious target here is illegal Spanish-speaking immigrants, but this goes a lot deeper than that by its very nature.

The United States of America is actually one of few countries in the world that does NOT have a designated official language. It is also one of very, very few countries in the world that doesn't have a second language, official or otherwise. Go just about anywhere in the world, and you'll find that schools teach a particular foreign language as a compulsory subject. In most countries that second language is English, though in some places it's French, Russian, or even Japanese. The local governments most likely offer services in that language, too. In the case of Japan, where I live, the second language is English. (I speak Japanese fluently, but I do appreciate those English-language services!) The fact that English is the second language in most countries of the world, including Russia and China, really makes things easier, not only for foreign tourists but also international business. Go to many parts of the world and you'll find English-speaking ex-pats living and working there, sometimes with little if any command of the local native tongue. So why is it that the US shouldn't return the favor to some degree by offering services in at least one non-English language?

On that note, I remember how amused if not outraged people were when both France and the province of Quebec in Canada became "franco-nazis" and made it a crime to post public notices in languages other than French. Why, then, are so many Americans now starting to become "anglo-nazis" in a similar vein?

I'm sure there are a lot of people ready and eager to come at me with wordy lectures about illegal immigrants living on welfare and eating up tax dollars, etc., but that's not really the point here, is it? The point is this: Where on the Statue of Liberty does it follow "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free," with, "as long as you speak English"?

New Post

2010-04-29T01:48:00.000-07:00

(Just because...)

Facebook is destroying civilization.

St. Patrick's Day!

2010-03-19T06:42:00.000-07:00

Well I finally have some pictures of the St. Patrick's Day Feast I've put on for several years now...so here they are! I had more people that usually over...we invited Beaniac's boyfriend and his parents. His father was unable to join us as he works out of town, but his mother came and enjoyed it very much! We also had Snabby's Dad and brother too. My Dad couldn't join us as he had a previous engagement...but my Mom said she wouldn't miss it! I think everybody had a good time...and the boyfriend even had seconds!

The Kid's Table!

Please note that the jug is McMenamin's Apple Cider. It's non-alcoholic! Plus I've got the nice little white teapot mom brought me and a small pitcher of milk. Now I just need to get a matching ceramic one! Also the St. Patrick's Day themed screen saver is courtesy of Snabby. He cobbled together some vintage postcard pics in a nice background for me...have been using that for several years as well. The little leprechauns I have around are from Annalee, although I usually buy from another lady Sue Coffee as I like the older vintage ones mostly.

If you'd like the recipes for the meal, I've posted them on this blog in years past - here are the links: Corned Beef & Cabbage and the dessert. I can't wait for next year...think I'll get some shortbread cookies at Kathleen's of Dublin!

Astoria Rest Stop

2010-02-05T18:25:00.000-08:00

Drina's!

Last weekend Snabby and I took a little break and went to Astoria for some much needed R&R. Although overall the weather was overcast and drizzly, we mostly just wanted to cozy up and not do much, so that worked out perfectly. We had a great time and discovered some new restaurants in the process! We stayed at our favorite place, Hotel Elliott because we love the beds (of course!) and we can just park the car and walk to everything downtown. Our first little excursion was out to Drina Daisey, a new Bosnian restaurant. We had an EXCELLENT wine which even I drank more than one glass of...a huge free hor d'oevres plate with sausage, smoked beef, grilled peppers and a spread made of roasted peppers and eggplant, a HUGE pre-salad with a wonderful light oil & lemon dressing...HUGE entrees (beefstuffed cabbage for me and beef stew for Snabby). I finished up with homemade Baklava. Yum!

Godfather's Books

We also visited our favorite bookstore, a real hippie place with funky used books and VERY lively strange patrons. Evidently they like sitting and talking for hours, don't need to work (several obviously homeless people hung out there), and since they are often over the age of 50 - don't meet the "young, hip & goodlooking" criteria for the more expensive bars.

We did decide to take a little road trip and check out Fort Stevens for lunch on Sunday. We took the leftovers from Drina's for our repast (there was ALOT of food!) and headed out, hoping to sit on the beach near the Peter Iredale...well we missed that turn off and ended up out on the spit. We did not go down actually on the beach as the tide was so high there was barely any walking space. No worries though we just decided to eat on the grass at top of the hill overlooking the ocean. We listened to the waves and watched the birds...

Fort Stevens Pacific Ocean

The sun broke through for a little bit and we even got a little warmth from the cold wind that was blowing. There were a few people here and there...but mostly we were quite alone and thoroughly enjoying ourselves in nature! I forgot to say both of our entrees included lots of beautifully cut fresh fruit and pickled vegetables. I so enjoyed eating all the fruit after finishing up my beefy cabbage! Here's a picture of Snabby looking north, (well he's looking south..but you know what I mean!).

Pacific Ocean Feb 2010

Here's another picture of me taken facing east. We are still on top of the hill at the beach. You can see the Young's Bay in the background and the low mountains that are south of Astoria. On the way back down the hill we saw where deer had passed over the trail.... Also we were able to get in for "free" as one of Snabby's Christmas gifts was a 2 year Oregon State Park pass!

Ladybug Feb 2010 Fort Stevens

We did some more shopping (more about that and some other interesting local lore coming soon on Hypatia's website)... and made another fun discovery of the Fort George Brewery. It was as comfortable as a McMenamin's and had very good food for reasonable prices. (The same cannot be said of some of the other more tourist trafficked haunts like The Supper Club [used to be The Schooner] or the Silver Salmon). It also has a breakfast/daytime cafe in the other part of the building. We are really glad we discovered this place too. It used to be a car repair factory as late as 1998 or so....

Finally I will leave you with a picture of our wonderful bed at the Hotel Elliott..and the elegant red glass lamps...

Wonderful Beds!

Where Did the Decade Go?

2009-12-30T22:19:00.000-08:00

I didn't want to see the double-ought decade end without any kind of blog entry. I'd rather thought the cool, rainy season would herald a resurgence in posts, but it did not. Medical issues in the family took over in the latter part of November and continue to be a priority.

The transition from corporate controlled Republican to corporate controlled Democrat has been interesting and extremely educational for me. To watch the left grow silent while Obama pulled the covers off of his neocon policies was interesting. Watching the right whine about a market driven health care bill after Bush's socialist Medicare prescription plan was also interesting. Dick Cheney routinely gives "aid and comfort to our enemies" through his constant criticism as well. Ironic.

For those who were paying attention, watching how the parts of corporate interests, media, and government come together to play on political divisions to distract people from a larger agenda has been most educational of all. I've now heard both left and right scream "Fascist!" at various things and, it turns out, they are both right. They are just pointing at the wrong culprits when they point at each other.

At the beginning of this decade, we had an expectation that our transactions and our phone calls and our movements were our "own business." Now, we realize that this is not the case. Sprint gives out our locations without a warrant. All Internet providers log our transactions. Our email is not secure and is catalogued. Our phone communications are monitored, logged, and retained. Our faces are taped, our words recorded, and it is collated and databased for an indefinite period. Our "own business" no longer belongs to us. It is bought, sold, traded, and other people often have better access to what we do than we do ourselves. This transition was bipartisan.

This is the end of a decade where the American Dream finally woke up and realized that sleepy time is over. The Dow is roughly where it was a decade ago. I personally have the same salary I did in 2000 and many people I know took a permanent pay cut last year to feed the bonuses of our current overlords. Our medical bills have meant a pay cut retroactive for years. One out of six people is out of a job (and likely many more who "don't count" in the figures). The oil fields are peaking and the decline will continue unless there is a revolution in cheap oil extraction or another source (that doesn't require cheap oil to extract). We are living the end game of our own irrational exuberance of a limitless future and it has only just begun.

To enjoy this new decade and the challenges it poses, I humbly suggest the following:

1. Be thankful for those near you and reward them with your business, your sense of community, and your time.

2. Limit your desires for the next big thing. Most of us have plenty and many have not utilized things we have bought. Find your riches in what you have and who you are with. Find value in that which you had previously cast aside.

3. Find ways to tread more lightly on this wondrous planet. It is indeed a beautiful place and we've all lived to see natural places disappear in our lifetimes. We waste an awful lot of material and energy. Streamlining our approach may not fix everything, but it will help. Recycle, buy local, waste less. Pretty easy stuff. It won't kill you and it will come in handy if things get tougher.

4. Realize that the ideologue next door has much in common with you. Over and over I find that people of every stripe have roughly the same number of standard group types. Some are invaluable, some are powermongers, some are thrifty, some are useless, and so forth. Politics is now a form of entertainment and manipulation, so please don't let yourself get too caught up in it. I did to my regret (luckily, I have 9/11 as an excuse). Listening and thinking is a more powerful currency than righteous rage or self-assured deafness.

So, with that load of bricks I lay upon you, have a Happy New Year! May you find your way to happy things and find comfort and security in your family and friends. I wish you well!

The Day After Halloween

2009-11-01T10:14:00.000-08:00

For all of you who may be lamenting the fact Halloween is over, I hope this little song by the Sippy Cups brings a smile to your face.

New Post at Hypatia Speaks...

2009-10-11T17:32:00.000-07:00

Hey all, we've got alot going on this fall - so visit Hypatia Speaks for the latest interesting tidbits!

Time...Is an Illusion...

2009-09-08T03:25:00.000-07:00

Today is Sunday...even though it is Tuesday.

Last Saturday was Day One of Ye Olde Academy's annual Foundation Festival, so it wound up turning into Monday. But it wasn't really Monday. There were no classes. We were at the school, we were at work, but we were at play. We were playing all day. We were working by playing, and we played late, so we worked late. That meant it couldn't be Saturday, therefore it was Monday...a strangely un-Monday-like Monday, but Monday nonetheless.

The next day was Day Two of the Festival and therefore a work day. The calendar insisted it was Sunday, but it couldn't be. Sundays aren't for working. Moreover, it was the day after Monday. It was a working day coming after Monday. Therefore, Day Two had to be Tuesday. Tuesdays are work days, and we were working even while we were playing, and it was the day after Monday, so it was Tuesday. The calendar didn't agree, but it was so.

The day after that naturally had to complicate things. Being the day after Tuesday, normally it would be Wednesday, but the Festival was done. The calendar frothily argued that it was Monday, but that couldn't be; Monday had already happened. That left us with a temporal vacuum. But then it was remembered that Saturday had been lost in the shuffle and was still drifting around in calenderic hyperspace. It was called upon to fill the void. Saturdays are usually half work days. However, the Powers That Be (ah-AH) had decided there would be no classes. It was the power down and clean up time after the Festival, so there were no classes. But still there had to be a half day of work, and that meant four hours. Four hours that had no schedule, so they could appear anywhere. I spent my four hours there...four hours appearing where I wanted them to be...and there was almost no one there. Most of the faculty had taken the day off. That made it feel like Sunday...Sunday that was Saturday where Monday was supposed to be.

The calendar displacement had one day left to go. Once again, the calendar jumped up on its soapbox and started screaming rabidly that it was Tuesday. But Tuesday, like Monday before it, had also already happened, so we had yet another void to fill. This time the only candidate was Sunday. Sunday, the day of rest. Sunday, the day of staying home. And so I remained at home on Sunday while everyone else languished through Tuesday. Two separate days, and yet together. Time travel made possible by Ye Olde Academy's Foundation Festival. I wonder if the Powers That Be (ah-AH) are aware of just how much power they have.

Tomorrow things return to normal. Everyone comes together in the great NEXUS that is Wednesday. The day of Odin. The day of woe. The day my 7th grade students have so much trouble spelling right. The line must be drawn...here.

Now let's all sing along with The Cure's "Friday (I'm In Love)":

Monday, you can fall apart,
Tuesday, Wednesday, break my heart,
Thursday doesn't even start.
It's Friday! I'm in love!

The trouble is...what if Friday winds up turning into Monday?

Skeeters, Olallie, and the Big Limp

2009-08-17T20:39:00.000-07:00

At the time, it seemed like a smart idea. I was losing weight. I was able to ride on my "acoustic" (read non-electric) bike for pretty much everything and I felt ready to take the next step. It turned out to be a step backwards, but it was still worthwhile.

I've been Jonesing for a decent backtrip trip ever since I wrenched my knee 3 years ago on the Pacific Crest Trail. I decided a trip to Olallie Lake in the northern Oregon Cascades was a good choice. The slopes were mostly gentle and there were many possible camping spots owing to the plentiful lakes in the area.

It was the maiden voyage (for me, anyway) of a 1992 Honda Accord that was a birthday present for the MiniSnab (and she still didn't know about it). Even though the lake is not far as the crow flies from the Willamette Valley, I'd forgotten how far it was as the car flies (about 150 miles from our house). In addition, the last dozen or so miles were on gravel roads.

I pulled up to the trailhead, had some lunch and donned the backpack for this trip. Mosquitoes are a problem in July, but they didn't seem too terrible, so I didn't think much about it. I packed extremely light, but I recently purchased a new CPAP machine that runs on Li-ion batteries and 2 batteries etc. weighed about 8 pounds, so the backpack was a bit hefty. Since this was a solo outing, there would be no splitting of cook gear, tentage, etc. to save weight.

My first mile and a half (or so) held most of the climbing, about 700 feet. The trails were not well kept (when compared to the Pacific Crest trail). Much of the way resembled a dry creek bed. I suspect anyone with a mountain bike would be better off carrying it up a trail like this. The terrible truth is that, even with biking, I am out of shape. When I reached the top, I enjoyed a limited view of the mountain, then decided to find a lake to camp at.

Apparently, the trailmakers had never heard of a switchback because I basically walked straight down a hillside to the first lake. Young me wouldn't have cared, but old and banged up me had to pick my way slowly down the hill. Even so, I ended up turning my ankle and wincing in pain.

Fine, I thought. I will get down to the lake and take stock of the situation. I picked my way VERY slowly the rest of the way, noting a rather exponential increase in mosquitoes as I went. I finally found a stopping place by the lake and dropped my pack. I looked down and saw dozens of mosquitoes on each leg. I wiped one calf and left a black and red smear down my leg.

In a panic, I started throwing everything out of my pack and found the bottle of 100% DEET. That should help. I aimed straight at my calf and sprayed...right into my open mouth. Shit. I turned the nozzle 180 degrees and started spraying the rest of myself, spitting and trying not to swallow. My saliva turned gummy, but I had to staunch the attack. Finally, I coated myself in enough poison to be able to rinse my mouth out a dozen times or so with water.

I continued on to a possible camping spot. The DEET was effective. The skeeters were flying around me, but not biting. I sat there looking over the lake as my foot stiffened up. I realized it was not going to be better by tomorrow, so I made the decision to bag the trip. (mmhmm)

The way back avoided the mountain and was all downhill, but it was more stairsteps of dry creekbed, each of which had me muttering ouches and expletives. When Olallie Lake hove back in view, there was great relief. A quarter mile limp up the service road took me back to the car. I sat in the car, safe from mosquitoes and plotted my next move.

I made my way down the gravel road, then down to the Forest Service road between Estacada and Detroit. Even though Detroit led away from home, I decided to see if there was somewhere to stay and so there was.

My big packpack trip ended at a hotel in Detroit Lake. I went over and had a burger and enough wine to mask my foot pain and headed back to my room. The hotel had a nightly campfire, so I hung out and enjoyed the company of a number of people I didn't know. My CPAP performed admirably in the hotel room that evening. In the morning, I checked my legs. I started counting bites on my left calf and stopped at 42 exrapolating an easy triple digit figure overall. So far, no West Nile or malaria. Whew!

The drive home was relatively uneventful.

So here are the few pics I took...

The view from part way up the hill.

Olallie Lake and Mount Jefferson

The hotel I stayed at.

2009 Country Fair

2009-08-16T09:55:00.000-07:00

It was another trip to the Oregon Country Fair this year. This was the 40th anniversary and they celebrated by designing the worst button in their history. I don't have a picture, but they combined their symbol, a peach, with the Forrest Gump/Wal*Mart smily face logo which pretty much negated the kind of "street cred" they were looking for. Nonetheless...

The unique theme for ME this year was connecting with people. I connected with a person from the past and reminisced about old Boy Scout camp staff experiences from 20 years ago. In addition, I made my first ever in-person internet meetup with Ze Bulette (or Catpsi to some) on this trip. I was dropped off about 3 blocks from his home and caught him tending to his canine friends in the front yard. He let me thumb through his Labyrinth Lord rule book and a few other items including a nifty concept of his own, and he dropped me at the bus to catch up with my cohorts at the fair.

The Minisnab also invited a friend on this trip. I will call him Jundoug and he was a real hoot to have along. He also got a big kick out of the fair and we invited him back next year. Here are a few highlights:

While Jundoug and Minisnab toured the University of Oregon, I scaled Skinner Butte (using a really stupid route) and took this shot across downtown Eugene. Spencer Butte is in the background.

For those with gnomophobia, I apologize for this picture.

Ladybug had some beautiful henna work done at the fair. The colorful glitter added to the effect.

Ladybug, Jundoug, and I pose while Minisnab snaps a picture.

My themed parades marched continually through the fair...these look like yellowjackets.

Certainly Green was a theme...

Minisnab shows off her "blue steel" look while Jundoug dons his new horns.

A rhythm wall greeted us on the way out.

Jundoug, MiniSnab, and Ladybug pose near the entrance to The Labyrinth.

Blog? What Blog?

2009-08-16T09:45:00.000-07:00

Hi there...I guess I've been away for awhile. I've spent time camping, biking, immersing myself in the Facebook phenomenon, working, and hanging out but not blogging much. I've also been wondering what to blog about without too much new to cover, so I will hit the highlights of the summer over the next few posts.

Garden Musings....

2009-07-31T05:49:00.000-07:00

Time to take stock of where we were, and what craziness is happening in the garden now:

So this was the garden some time in May?...In the farthest row you can see a couple pumpkins getting a good start, along w/a volunteer Hosta (the one w/the white & green bi-colored leaves). The next row has broccoli, a small yellow & green Hosta, and a "mystery" plant (the tallest one in the row). Then comes the spinach row, a so-far negligible cucumber row, and in the last row (off-screen) are onions.

Here's another pic from the front end:

You can see the Bleeding Heart's (Coeur de Marie in French), that are next to the garden, and a better view of the Hosta (which I had planted years ago and completely forgotten about). I think my decisions to fertilize the garden this time around, instead of just "letting nature" do it's work helped alot-especially with the "volunteer" plants! We also did amend the soil with some regular garden soil and some compost (which had probably been working for about 3 years...).

So this is what it looks like now!-

The spinach has actually already been harvested: we tried for a 2nd growth, like with lettuce, but it didn't really work out. The broccoli is finally starting to bloom, the cucumbers took off and our "mystery plant" is getting taller and weirder! What could it be??!!

(Our Liliac trees are in the background: I put down some weed barrier, and lots of barkdust to keep down the grasses/weeds that seem to pop up everywhere here!).

So what is that "mystery plant" you ask?

It is a Double-Bloom Hollyhock! You can also see down on the right some bright yellow Primrose (another volunteer), and the crazy pumpkin vines in the back blooming and twining around the Liliacs. For several years after we had a serious garden, we kind of gave up and I tried to make a flower garden...I planted some Foxglove, the Hostas, some mint, Chinese Lanterns, Daisies, and evidently some Primrose & Hollyhocks! This year we decided to try again, and Snabby rototilled the garden area quite well, so I'm surprised about all the plants that survived that!

Now I've got some crazy pumpkin vine pics:

The vine just keeps going, and going.....

This pic shows how it's reached the house, and then turned to go into the Daylilies. It's also a nice picture of the Pumpkin Blossoms, which close and wither very quickly over the course of just a day or so. So far we have just a couple pumpkins started, but I'm already exited for Halloween!

Finally, here is a pic of some of our bounty - a huge Cucumber (I try keeping up on harvesting them, but they get way from me, hiding under the leaves!), a growing Pumpkin and a Black Krim tomato.

Soon to a Geologist

2009-07-21T22:19:00.000-07:00

Okay, not so soon in blogging terms, but soon.

Non-gasoline post coming very soon!

2009-07-11T22:49:00.000-07:00

We just a great time at the Oregon Country Fair and I met Ze Bulette! Until then, my last 2 tanks averaged 30 mpg, so maybe that 22 mpg was a result of the sometimes bad traffic jams we have to sit through around here. We'll see how it goes.

Second Tank Blues

2009-06-30T12:16:00.000-07:00

With no freeway driving, the 2nd tank of gas on the RED Versa got a dismal 22 mpg. So, nothing changed there. Our '97 Saturn station wagon consistently beats that with a large oil burning/leaking problem and a clutch computer bug that shifts hard at weird times. Needless to say, I am not impressed. Good thing I gots my bikes and I workses at home.

Pipelines With Attitude

2009-06-27T08:00:00.000-07:00

What a difference one "G" makes:

First, from the BBC:

Gazprom seals $2.5bn Nigeria deal

Russia's energy giant Gazprom has signed a $2.5bn (£1.53bn) deal with Nigeria's state operated NNPC, to invest in a new joint venture.

The new firm, to be called Nigaz, is set to build refineries, pipelines and gas power stations in Nigeria.

Okay, compare this new company with the 90s rap group NWA Wikipedia entry:

N.W.A (the initialism for: "Niggaz With Attitude")[1] was a Compton, California-based hip hop group widely considered one of the seminal acts of the gangsta rap sub-genre.

Suffice it to say that this will not go down as one of the better-chosen company names ever. However, in the gloomy world of petroleum energy this is about as much levity as one could hope to expect, so I will take it.

I found the first link via Talking Points Memo.

First Tank

2009-06-23T18:31:00.000-07:00

Our first tank with the new transmission garnered 30 mpg. Compare that to 23mpg with our first ever tank (after buying the car). However, the new tank included a lot more freeway driving. Nonetheless, our best tank ever was 30 mpg with the original and that was on a highway-only road trip to California.

I am encouraged.

End of Transmission, Start of Transmission 2

2009-06-21T21:36:00.000-07:00

Our RED Nissan Versa has never gotten very good mileage; about 70% of the advertised EPA. I chalked it up to a lot of things, but in reality it sucked. In the last few months a strange clacking became more and more evident by degrees. When Ladybug took it in for service, she pointed out the sound. It turned out to be a problem with the CVT drive. CVT is a new type of transmission (continuously variable transmission) that uses belts instead of gears to allow the vehicle accelerate smoothly. It is supposed to be more fuel efficient. Heh.

Well, a problem with part of the transmission is a problem with the whole assembly, so they ordered us an entire new transmission on warranty. It took a week to arrive and it was a two day repair job (we got an Altima loaner car in the mean time; I asked Ladybug to bring home a Z car but no luck).

The new transmission is quieter and seems a bit more powerful at high RPMs than the old one. I am hopeful that our mileage will climb up a bit closer to the EPA value. I will let you know. Sadly we now know that any CVT problems when we exit warranty will result in big $$. Remember that when checking out new cars (assuming anyone will have the wealth to do so over the next decade or two).

Interestingly, since I started working at home, I don't drive nearly as much. I can also bike wherever I want instead of a course to work. I am soooo green. I am proud to be a drop in the bucket.

In every energy endeavor, the greenest thing you can do is to NOT do. Sadly, this is often not possible so it will be the reality of energy that drives us more than our own behavior, individual or civic. Sad, but true.

==============================

On another note, I joined the Facebook revolution after figuring out how to deal with the fact that you are essentially sharing every word you utter with everyone you've ever known or will ever know as well as potential employers, vengeful prosecutors, angry city council members, and every one else good, bad, or indifferent. I have the privacy ratcheted down as tight as is practical. My language is very positive and couched in the most generic, positive way. No politics and no religion.

Nonetheless, I am able to inject my personality enough to make it worthwhile. I am in touch with dozens of people I haven't spoken to in years and even decades and I feel enriched for the memories that has uncovered. On the other hand, it is a time eater and dozens of superficial relationships can't hold a candle to a few deep ones, so there are tradeoffs to consider.

I meant to do a bunch of stuff on our garden as well, but that didn't happen either. We have rows of pumpkins, broccoli, spinach (mostly harvested and eaten already), cucumbers, and onions. We also have a single red bell pepper plant that we hope survives until our wet, cool spell ends and two tomato plants in pots (Brandywine and Black Krimson heirloom varieties) which are coming along well. This is in addition to Ladybug's herb garden (♪ ♫ parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme ♪ ♫) which I will let her elaborate on as she is becoming quite the herbalist.

We also found some wonderful food at our local farmer's market so we've tried to divert most of our grocery money to our local growers and make the effort to eat whole foods instead of processed ~~crap~~ food. With any luck, the health benefits will trickle down to us. The prices are comparable and, at least with asparagus, the produce lasts much longer in the crisper than the store.

Durasmoulder

2009-06-08T19:26:00.000-07:00

Sometimes we like to have a little fire in our beat up terracotta outdoor fireplace. Last night we got started a bit late (10pm) and, being in a hurry, I bought DuraFlame's new lower "carbon footprint" log.

Ladybug lit it up and it started going...really slow. She was able to coax a flame not much bigger than a candle and it was down to smoke within an hour...but not burnt.

We went to bed and got up the next morning. It was still 90% unburnt and still smouldering in the pit. At noon, after 14 hours of smouldering, I went out and threw a dry stick in there and started blowing to get it ignited. They were burning faster together, but after another hour the original log sat smoking more than ever. My neighbor came over to make sure our house wasn't burning down. I came out a while later on break from work, found more dry fuel and got my lung bellows really moving until there was a tornado of flame whipping up in the chmney.

That was enough to incinerate the rest of the log. I swear it was made out of candle wax. I've never seen a log last 17 hours without needing a relight.

Needless to say, the next time I need a chemical campfire log, I will be sticking with the demonic envirobasher version of the Duraflame. I can't image there being more carbon coming out of a hotburning log that is gone in 2-3 hours. The whole idea of buying green is an over-the-top marketing ploy anyway. If you want to be earth friendly, don't burn a log. Put on a coat or go to bed. We opted to enjoy ourselves for a rare treat instead. No problem.

Pollen Attacks!

2009-06-05T21:53:00.000-07:00

(Some of you might have seen a brief post about the Prez and the lofty perch we no longer stand upon, but I decided that it probably wasn't worth the effort, so I deleted it. I was right, but who cares? Stuff like that leads to talking points that are pointless and mental mass debation. So I write about this...)

Those in Oregon and southwest Washington were treated to (or victims of) a rare show yesterday. The second severe thunderstorm warning issued in the 25 years I've paid attention happened then. 1" (2.5cm) hail, heavy rain, high winds, a tornado warning, and definitely some funnel clouds were the order of the day for a city that gets about 1% of the thunder of an average Florida town. The local weather geeks have more info.

The biggest event we had at Rancho Snabuloso occurred at the beginning of the storm. I knew it was coming, saw the marching hordes of cumulonimbus on the radar, and the NWS warnings as things moved in. However, the menu called for barbecued chicken and I started early to avoid the storm. The sky turned gray and dark as I cooked and I hoped I would have time to finish. We erected a cheap plastic tarp shelter for the summer, so I weighed that down while I waited with some hope that the darn thing would endure.

My wildest moments came before the first drops of rain or the first clap of thunder. Wind ahead of the squall line began whipping up just as I was finishing the chicken. Our line of Douglas Firs and Pines in the back yard whipped into a frenzy and the air turned foggy and yellow with pollen and debris blown from the trees. Not knowing if this was a few temporary gusts, I hurriedly finished plucking the cooked chicken from the grill and ran it into the house. I am sure that pollen seasoning was prevalent on the plate.

I ran back out and surveyed the remaining chicken. The wind was getting crazier, so I removed it, put it on another plate, killed the propane, and brought it in the house. The wind whipped the entire time and the foggy/dusty yellow air continued swirling. I am still surprised we lost no branches and our cheap shelter survived unharmed.

I went in thinking that all hell was about to break loose, but the winds died down a couple minutes later. The rain began to fall and apparently most of the storm was spent by then with only moderate rain and a few close thunder rattlings. The temperature dropped from 85F (29C) to 61F (16F) within about 90 minutes (90 min). On TV, we watched a comma-shaped supercell with funnel clouds sighted pass by the Portland Airport and an informed weatherman gave good information while everyone sounded like gibbering idiots.

Ladybug and I saw some small trees snapped in half today while we were driving around the neighborhood. All in all, it was an interesting end to an early and somewhat humid heat wave.

Everthing You Never Wanted to Know and MORE!

2009-06-03T10:59:00.000-07:00

Romance in France

A fun meme I got tagged with.....

Q. Is there anyone of your friends that you would ever consider having sex with?

A. I can honestly say NO!

Q. Sex in the morning, afternoon or night?

A: All of the above.

Q. What side of the bed do you sleep on?

A. The side which doesn't have all the books I'm currently reading..

Q. Have you ever taken your clothes off for money?

A. No...I'd probably have to pay the spectators now!

Q. Have you ever had sex in the shower or the bath?

A. Sure!

Q. Do you watch/read pornography?

A. Read HELL YES!...like some old quote goes "sex-fun to do; ridiculous to watch"

Q. Do you want someone aggressive or passive in bed?

A. Both, it's all good.

Q. Do you love someone on your blogroll?

A. Nope

Q. Would you choose love or money?

A. Love is the best, a little money not bad

Q. Your top three favorite kinks in bed?

A. It's all in the mind baby, all in the mind....

Q. Has anyone ever gone beyond your personal line of respect sexually?

A. Hmmm, not sure what you mean-never did anything scary kinky....but regretting I was with a couple of douchbags who were total jerks, yea. But ya live and learn!

Q. Where is the most romantic place you have had sex?

A. The beach, a nice B&B, a fancy hotel....

Q. Where is the weirdest place you have had sex?

A. In cars...I guess

Q. Have you ever been caught having sex?

A. Unfortunately yes, once, in the woods.

Q. Ever been to a bar just to get sex?

A. No, 'cuz I almost never went to bars...and didn't (still don't) understand "bar culture".

Q. Ever been picked up in a bar?

A. See above

Q. Have you ever kissed or had sex with someone of the same sex?

A. No.

Q. Had sex in a movie theater?

A. Does kissing & groping count?

Q. Had sex in a bathroom?

A. Yep

Q. Have you ever had sex at work?

A. Eww, no.

Q. Bought something from an adult store?

A. Oh yea

Q. Do you own any sex toys?

A. Yes, but hardly use 'em...

Q. Does anyone have naughty pics of you or are you on film?

A. Nope-Thank GOD!

Q. Have you ever had sex with someone and called them the wrong name?

A. Of course!...the funniest one is when I called him the name of the cat, then the dog..my kid...finally got to his...we ended up laughing so hard. Another guy freaked out though..it "meant" something evidently - yea, like my brain wiring is a little off!

Q. Do you think oral sex constitutes a form of intercourse?

A. Sure...sex is sex.

Q. What's your favorite sexual position?

A. All of 'em

Q. What's your favorite sex act?

A. Anything that gets me & mine where we want to go!

Q. Have you ever had sex with more than one person at a time?

A. Nope, but have thought about it...totally impractical in real life,(prolly wouldn't even want to honestly) but fun for fantasy!

I tag anyone who feels compelled to answer personal sex questions in the blogosphere!

Pretty Flowers

2009-05-22T11:18:00.001-07:00

Hey everyone, Memorial Day is coming up...when my family "goes to the graves". Although it started out as a military thing, most folks around here have turned it into a Day of Remembrance for ALL thehir dead. For us, it's pretty informal, we just put flowers on the graves of friends & family, or on their tomb if it's in a mausoleum. We never spend money on the flowers, but collect them from our yards, and pick up containers at the cemeteries a couple days before - if you wait too long, they are usually out!

Here are some late spring pictures from our gardens:

Lupine

I chose a pink lupine last year, just because I was so tired of the regular purple. I really like it, and it has gone great guns since I replanted it in a much larger container. I saw a huge bumblebee humping the blossoms things morning, it was quite a sight!

Potted Garden

You can see our California poppies, a large Bleeding Heart plant, some Heirloom tomato plants (one Black Krim, and one Brandywine), and a "miscellenous" pot with Rosemary, Italian Parsley and some summer flowering bulbs (which I can't remember the name of right now).

Pink Rhodie

This Rhododendron from our front yard is show stopper, the blossoms are huge! I severely pruned this bush last fall, but we still have plenty to use for this years' bouquets.

Pale Purple Rhodie

Another one from the front yard (we have 3 total), which has lots of flowers this year. I've always liked Rhodies since they grow so well here, take very little care, and come in so many colors.

Adjustments

2009-05-20T18:17:00.000-07:00

I am pleased to announce that Isis is back on line with Floating Down Denial which has a great post on food sustainability and security and the Japanese concept of Satoyama.

Thepsilam has a new home for his blog (Thep's World) on a snazzy new blogging tool called squarespace.

Check 'em out!

Second Verse, Same as the First

2009-05-12T20:10:00.000-07:00

This is a cold war era video I found over at The Oregonian embedded in an article by Peter Ames Carlin entitled, "With nuclear annihilation imminent, Portland keeps its cool"

It is 27 minutes, but well worth at least spending 10 or 15 minutes if you can't see the whole thing. The video hit me on a number of levels.

It is a piece of propaganda first and foremost. With our more sophisticated abilities to criticize media, it is plain that this video is meant to invoke fear that leads to compliance. Our current terrorism hysteria is not much different from this video. Take a small but spectacular threat and pump it for everything it is worth.

However, it could also be considered an example of how a community could react to an extreme situation. Those do happen. CBS and the US gov't chose nuclear annihilation, but imagine if such a plan could have been carried out for the big hurricanes of the last 5 years. What if actual coordination had occurred and people cooperated instead of complaining for once in their lives? How many lives would have been saved? How could a pre-existing plan have helped to cope with the financial aftermath of those who lost so much? Emergency Preparedness is not just a Boy Scout merit badge.

In Portland, the same plan could be put together to respond to natural catastrophes. Instead of selling out for corporate contracts and cutting our public resources to the bone, we could actually plan for difficult times. With dwindling natural resources and growing population, it would be a smart idea.

Instead, we prefer a circular firing squad of blame and allowing the most belligerent to wield the microphone. GM is facing bankruptcy and America debates whether to help. I will bet that one of Toyota's worst years ever isn't turned into a cable news circus. In fact, I would bet the government quietly makes sure Toyota does just fine.

It might be an idea for our own country.

(On the other hand, Japan had their own financial meltdown and didn't recover very quickly due to their own foot dragging, so there you go. We appear to be acting similarly to placate the bankers, so prepare for a slow recovery.)

Twitter, Blogspot style

2009-05-11T22:49:00.000-07:00

Oh, my elbow itches. Let's tell everyone. I'm THAT important.

Short Star Trek Review and Fan Guide

2009-05-07T20:11:00.001-07:00

Excellent film. One of the best movies I've seen in a long time. See it.

Should you see the film?
* Trekkie = Yes
* Non-trekkie = Yes

Consider the franchise rebooted.

A Walk in the Park

2009-05-03T10:57:00.000-07:00

Ladybug and I took a walk in Portland's Washington Park and Hoyt Arboretum last weekend. It was a wonderful time of year for flowers. The cherries were late in the blooming cycle but the late bloomers were as beautiful as the early ones. I took the revived camera with me. Click the pictures for a closer look.

This overlook shows a view of Portland to the northeast (away from downtown).

A delightful bunch of mushrooms grows around this plant.

Some nice, thick cherry blossoms.

This is a variety of currant growing near the Hoyt Arboretum visitor's center.

This was labelled as Silver Manzanita.

A trillium in the early white stage.

A slightly blurry picture of several trillium (trillia?) that shows the progression from white to deep pink over time.

I am, once again, a Rebel

2009-04-29T13:13:00.000-07:00

After double-checking something someone told me, it does not appear that Clear.com internet services is owned by ClearChannel. That makes me a bada*s, internet swashbuckler thumbing my nose at the big boys once again.

(Trying to ignore the little guy's massive ad campaign in the process)

Ha!

In the age of teh Internet tubes, I should know better than to blog verbal hearsay. Bad, bad Snabby.

April Blooms

2009-04-26T21:18:00.000-07:00

I resurrected my best digital camera on the hope that it was battery problem rather than a camera problem and got lucky. So now I have a decent camera for the first time in almost 2 years.

Here are the results of the first couple forays into our yard and in Washington Park above Portland, Oregon.

These pictures are from our own yard:

These are the leaves of our water-catching lupine. No flowers yet on this one.

Several years ago, I planted a wild bleeding heart that I bought at some native plant sale for a non-profit organization. It has slowly spread and is doing quite well.

This is an ornamental flower (I believe it is in the mint family) that Ladybug is growing in a hanging planter.

Washington Park stuff is still to come...

Viva La Compagnie

2009-04-23T09:15:00.000-07:00

I added a link to a new blog over on the right called Techxpose (or Tech Xpose or something of the sort). The proprietor and I had a nice Meebo-chat on virtual machines based on my earlier post about virus-proofing. It is new, so go visit and find out the latest tech buzz!

My 2009 Stumptown Comics

2009-04-22T21:56:00.000-07:00

The 2009 Portland Stumptown Comics Festival took place last weekend. I like it because it is quirky and 100% Portland. I grabbed my two grand nephews, gave them some money, and turned them loose. I only purchased two comics this year:

Historyonics

I still Live - Biography of a spiritualist

Ladybug is an avid historical reader, so I thought these might pique her interest and so they did. I purchased a couple comical comic prints for the MiniSnab as well.

The kids bought their own items. One went for a couple indy artists and bought $7 worth of Super Mario yellow star candies. The other focused more on mainstream comics purchased at the Cosmic Monkey table.

The weather was beautiful and the guys had a great time. Hopefully the economics next year allow for more conspicuous consumption of homegrown art.

On the Bleeding Edge: WiMax

2009-04-17T21:14:00.000-07:00

Given that we had NetFlix and a Digital TV ready setup, Comcast TV and internet service was getting a bit redundant. It was time to cut costs.

We made the decision to try the new kid in town: Clearwire. Instead of cable, phone, or fiber optic lines, we had the opportunity to be one of two cities in America to sample something called WiMAX, or 4G, wireless internet. Being wacky carefree, schizophrenic Luddites cum Technojunkies, you can guess what phase our vampiric technical mood swing wrought.

In a nod to one of the last local dial-up providers, we chose PCEZ.com to be our Clear.com dealers. For those in our geographic area, I recommend giving these good folks a nod. They provide a good service to many who can't afford broadband and deserve a financial "bump" for their cheerful service. They got all of our information entered and a few days later we received a WiMAX modem.

An aside: Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

Translated into English, "The more things change, the more they stay the same." WiMAX may seem like a big new idea, but the seeds were sown a long time ago and I was a part of it.

Back in 1998, there was already a microwave internet service in town called WantWeb. They no longer exist, but an extremely talented person I know wrote about them in Computer Bits magazine right here. For the time, their 750k download speed was phenomenal. Unfortunately, the FCC wouldn't allow microwave uploads, so 14.4k through the phone was as fast as you could upload. That pretty much killed them I think.

Hooking it up was quite easy, but there was one problem. By coincidence, the network I hooked into used the same numbering scheme as my own network (192.168.15.x). With a little router fiddling, I fixed it and we were freed from being next to the nearest cable/telephone jack in the house. I could set up communications anywhere I wanted to (so I did).

The speed was excellent right at first. I attributed that to being one of the first people to sign up. Our plan calls for 6M download and 512k upload speeds. Not as fast as our cable company, but I figured it should be fast enough. We hooked up our Vonage phone and our computers for home and work and off we went.

The speed is mostly consistent, but we do get weird slowdowns when watching Hulu or YouTube that we didn't get when we first signed up. Sometimes the person talking to me on the phone will break up even if they are on a landline. We generally can have only one computer watching video at a time which is unfortunate since we were able to do that with Comcast, but it may be more of a sign that we need to get a life than blaming it on Clear. I think signal variations and the same things that affect TV and radio likely affect this connection.

Our monthly price is $55 that breaks into $30 for the service, $10 because I wouldn't sign a 2 year contract, $5 for the Clear modem rental, and $10 for a static IP address for my business work. Not awesome, but not bad. If you get their USB stick, you can take your laptop all over the city and not worry about Internet access. We went with the home plan. Now that the office has moved home, my employer is defraying the cost.

If you get static IP, know these things: If you use a router, you will need the help of Clear tech support to put your router in their DMZ on the WiMAX modem. This allows your port forwarding to work. You will need your router's MAC address handy as well. You should also know that they block port 80, so you can't run a standard web server on a standard port. They don't advertise this anywhere. Their reasoning is idiotic and I think the tech basically made it up. If they were worried about bandwidth violators, they chose the wrong port.

Overall, I think it is a decent deal for those who want freedom of movement, don't mind a small speed hit (though still faster than many DSL plans), and don't want to host a web page. There was an anti-big company factor involved in it for me to. I loves me those independent companies. However, it was all ruined when I found out that Clearwire is owned by ClearChannel. You know, the nice folks that own a bunch of radio stations, censor playlists, and organized the Dixie Chicks CD burnings when they mentioned the obvious about Bush before it became common knowledge...yeah, them. Out of the frying pan and into the fire I guess. We will probably keep it for now and dump them if the sunspots flare up and mess up our signal (the next couple of years will likely show a cyclical increase).

When Disappointment Isn't

2009-04-02T22:14:00.000-07:00

Spring vacation was a little different this year. It had to be. Times are tougher for everyone. While I am fortunate to still be employed for now, some good and very capable friends are not. There would be no trips to California or beyond this spring. In fact, due to some interesting circumstances, Ladybug and MiniSnab vacationed for the first part of the week, while I did for the last part thanks to the generosity of Papa-in-law-Snab.

Our travels this year brought us to the southwestern corner of Washington State, about 2 hours driving time from Portland, OR. Ladybug and MiniSnab spent a few rain-soaked days in Long Beach, WA seeing the sites and visiting museums sans camera. I brought mine and enjoyed a dry day and a couple drizzly wet days.

We drove to Leadbetter Point State Park at the northern tip of the Long Beach peninsula. The actual tip is a protected area for the snowy plover, so we hiked down to the Willapa Bay side of the park and looked west over the bay where we found this barnacle-encrusted log.

You Make the Call. Low tide or high tide?

On Friday, we went into over the bridge into Astoria, Oregon for a bit of window shopping, then back to the northern shore of the Columbia river and its confluence with the Pacific at Cape Disappointment. This rocky headland is home to a profusion of cormorants.

If you zoom into this picture, you can see the aftermath of a large wave crashing into the cape. A temporary waterfall.

This is the Cape Disappointment lighthouse in the foreground. Emerging into a background is a large cargo ship emerging from the treacherous Columbia Bar and out into the Pacific.

A cormorant flies through the ocean spray from the surf.

I am a big boy, but not even close to this Sitka Spruce.

This was as close as we came to a sunset. It was still beautiful even in its grayness.

And If Respect ISN'T Earned...

2009-03-24T02:07:00.000-07:00

I've decided to try to bust up this blog post drought by seeding a passing cloud of angst. In other words, I'm going to try concocting my own "meme". It's a pretty pointed one, too.

We're all told we're supposed to respect our elders. In fact, in some cultures (and religions) it's not even subject to question; if you don't face your seniors, bow down before them. and take their every utterance to heart you risk facing ostracism if not worse. This is particularly true if the elder in question holds a special place in society by virtue of his or her position and/or reputation. Failure to show proper deference marks you as a certified fink.

But what do you do when you are confronted with a "respected elder" who proves to be not all s/he's cracked up to be? That brings us to this "meme". List seven quotes spoken by "respected elders" that show them to be rather less than worthy of respect. It is not necessary to identify who said it.

1. "I'm a great man. I am famous in these parts because I am great. Even if I do something that would get someone else in trouble, no one would blame me. No one would even complain because they all know that I'm a great man, and they know they're lucky to have someone like me in their midst." (Sadly enough, he wasn't joking.)

2. "I realized long ago that I'm no ordinary human being. I am specially blessed. Because of that, there's no chance of anything bad ever happening to me. There's not even any chance of my making a mistake. But because I'm so blessed, I have an obligation to help other people. I do this by correcting their way of living. No one lives right. They're all doing it wrong, so I have to do my best to get them to follow my perfect example." (No, he wasn't joking, either.)

3. "I am the best trained and most experienced member of this department, so naturally I'm the one who deserves the most respect, but no one respects me. That just goes to show that there are many problems in this department. If you have any questions or need any advice, I would recommend you come talk to me. Don't listen to any of the others." (I don't think he was joking, but when he says things like this it's kind of hard to tell.)

4. Respected Elder: (sigh of annoyance) "Look, I'm gonna ask you to tune up with the strobe tuner before rehearsals from now on!" Me: "I have been tuning up with the strobe tuner before rehearsals! Look!" (Plays tuning Bb, strobe tuner stops dead on zero.) Respected Elder: (sigh, pause) "Well...look, you should know better than to trust a damned machine! From now on, don't use the tuner!" (Look, I've gotta patronize you about something!)

5. (In response to a call to brush up on CPR because of a student with a diagnosed heart condition:) "We have no business trying to administer CPR! Even if it means the student dies, it can't be helped! We are neither doctors nor paramedics, so we have no business pretending otherwise! We're not qualified!" (The same individual in response to a call not to intervene excessively in the issues of a student with a diagnosed psychological condition:) "It doesn't matter if we are trained in psychological counseling or not! If we are on the scene, it is our responsibility to deal with the situation! We have no business not intervening to help a student, qualified or not!" (I have no business making up my mind!)

6. "Well, I can't really say whether we've had much success. Looking back, we probably haven't really had much, but the point is that it's our system! We've always used it, and we've never had any problems with it! If it's not broke, don't fix it!" (At least we're comfortable in our mediocrity!)

7. "I'm the commander — see, I don't need to explain — I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being president." (But the real point is, "Can you explain why you say things?)

Do I really have to stop at seven? Whatever, good enough. I think I'll tag Snabulus, Ladybug, Dave, Dean Wormer, Arkonbey, Swinebread, and Catpsi.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

2009-03-11T03:11:00.000-07:00

Ok, here we are again - Spring has sprung and it's time for "Wearin' of the Green" and some good food too! Here are some links to the traditional fare I make for family: Corned Beef & Cabbage and Lucky Lime Dessert (leave out the pineapple for my version).

I also have several cute Leprechauns made by Annalee that I use to decorate our home for holiday. I can safely say that St. Patrick's Day is one of my favorite holiday, besides Halloween. I often wish I could be in Chicago or New York one year to see the big Parades they have...but one which is inclusive (and smaller, so maybe more enjoyable!) is the St. Pat's for ALL Parade & Festival in Queens, NY. Besides, on St. Patrick's Day, I want to party, not listen to alot of preaching!

The Rise of the Database and more...

2009-03-03T20:57:00.000-08:00

Hi kids. I've been a busy camper lately and the writing muse just hasn't been a-knockin' lately. I WARNED YOU THAT THIS WOULD HAPPEN. Oops, I was channeling there. There are a number of things going on.

Changes, changes, changes. Ladybug is out job hunting. I am closing my office space and moving my work home to save my employer money. I dumped cable television and Internet for WiMax connectivity. My daughter's iPhone is DOA 3 months into a 2 year contract. The new year heralded some painful back problems. We are refinancing El Rancho Snabuloso to increase our odds of staying in our home if things really turn crappy.

Before discussing all that, I wanted to share an article by security expert Bruce Schneier. As you know, I am a fan of living a life free of outside surveillance. I don't need people meddling in my life. Nonetheless, it is important to know when a seismic cultural shift occurs so you can fight for what is still possible in the new situation. From birth records to death certificate, we have always been accessible, but in the age of data sharing, connections are being made that most people aren't even aware of. Schneier summarizes the new playing field rather well. I share it because I don't think most of my readers are aware of how the smallest threads of data can connect our disparate points of data out there or how that process even occurs.

Welcome to the future, where everything about you is saved. A future where your actions are recorded, your movements are tracked, and your conversations are no longer ephemeral. A future brought to you not by some 1984-like dystopia, but by the natural tendencies of computers to produce data.

Data is the pollution of the information age. It's a natural byproduct of every computer-mediated interaction. It stays around forever, unless it's disposed of. It is valuable when reused, but it must be done carefully. Otherwise, its after effects are toxic.

And just as 100 years ago people ignored pollution in our rush to build the Industrial Age, today we're ignoring data in our rush to build the Information Age.

Pollution is an interesting analogy. I am sure there are flaws in it, but it is an effective means of pulling the reader out of their normal thought process.

Rather than doing a bunch of quoting, I would admonish you to read the whole article (the comments are interesting too). I share one more interesting point...

We're not going to stop the march of technology, just as we cannot un-invent the automobile or the coal furnace. We spent the industrial age relying on fossil fuels that polluted our air and transformed our climate. Now we are working to address the consequences. (While still using said fossil fuels, of course.) This time around, maybe we can be a little more proactive.

I have a Norwegian friend who is a database consultant. On a recent data mining project in the US, he was shocked at the low level of privacy laws employed here. He says that the work he was doing would not be permitted in most European countries. Much of the identify theft that is rather easy to commit in the United States simply isn't possible in Europe. We need to adopt their privacy safeguards.

The 4th amendment of the US Bill of Rights is resilient enough to protect us from both public AND PRIVATE sector intrusions of our privacy; we just need to recognize this fact and enforce it through the various legal means at our disposal. Sadly, this amendment is usually the first one attacked when people are gripped by fear.

Enough of that.

======

For those of you with young girls in your sphere of family or friends, I submit the following prayer for them...

I am not a religious person, but if you watched the video, you will see that this hardly matters.

Finally, I am cleaning up the blog entries on the right. The major new addition is going to be the previous owner of the Eugene Torrents site and current owner of a new blog who comments under the name Catpsi. Lovers of Chaosium and Cthulhu will want to link immediately to this site. Commenter Dave should get a kick out of the Exopolitics site that Catpsi links too I think.

Some others, like Freida Bee and Isis: Floating Down Denial have either become private or have finished their time on the Internet Tubes, so I will be trimming our those links. Isis foresaw most of the current turmoil and gave several good hints for getting through it. If you stay towards the real (food water shelter) and move away from the ephemeral (unlimited petroleum and theoretical monetary policy), you will be doing yourself a favor.

PS: For the person who sent me the Meebo message about posting something new to bury the Sexy Men post, I did not do this post for you. A little equal time for all the babe-a-licious chick action is overdue and very called for in the current society.

Damn Sexy Men List

2009-02-25T13:02:00.000-08:00

Alright folks, we've had alot of T & A lately, (see Dean's Future Hotties Post at Atomic Romance here). But what about us hetero ladies and gay guys? What hot celebrity crushes tickle our fancies? Well I have compiled my own completely arbitrary list here...but note I've put them in in "theme" catagories..so the actual 1-9 numbering will be different.

Doctors..(er uh, "medical personnel")- starting with my very first crush...

8. Randolph Mantooth: Emergency! - I know this guy made my little 6 year old heart pitter-patter for this "hero" who went around saving people. Perhaps he was the actor who set the precedent for my Hero/DR fixations in the years ahead. Guess what? At the age of 63 this guy is still HOT! (see pic)..and throughout the years he's done alot of fundraising for Firefighters too. You can even watch old episodes on Hulu!

7. Alexander/Siddig el Fadil: Dr. Julian Bashir Deep Space Nine - What can I say, the smarter the better! Maybe it was the English accent or just his plain "Tall, Dark and Handsome" good looks which are so dreamy...in any case he was the only one on Deep Space Nine that was remotely.. "interesting" to me.

3. Hugh Jackman: The Fountain - All around hot, obsessed with his "endless love", historical drama and time travel! What more could you want!...well there's Wolverine, but who wants claws in..um...certain areas? And of course his definite Tall, Dark and Handsome qualifications go without saying...

4. Sean Maher: Dr Simon Tam Firely & Serenity - Again I have to go with the brilliant hero guy...(did you notice it's kind of a thing with me? I've never been attracted to so-called "bad boys"). He saves lives, isn't a jerk to his sister, and has very dry sense of humor... which does tickle..the funny bone (as it were... :P ). I hope we'll be seeing more work from Mr. Maher in the years ahead...on another Joss Whedon show maybe? (Please?)

Young 'uns - For the Raddle Crabber* in all of us...

6. Zachary Levi: Chuck - A nice, extremely geeky almost-graduate of Stanford who is busy saving the world while working at "Buy More"...Again, Tall (very!), Dark and Handsome...and very smart. I think you get the picture...I'm helpless in the face of uber-intelligent cute characters with a big slice of heroic goodness!

9. James Franco: MILK, Tristan & Isolde - Ok, I have to admit he caught the Beaniac's eye first, (they saw Tristan & Isolde in French class... of course)..and evidently there's some kind of Celebrity Incest Law (where one may NOT take a liking to the hot young dudes of one's offspring...) so I can only list him here purely for artistic.. er...aesthetic reasons. Oh hell, he's hot so go see MILK. You'll be glad you did...

2. Jason O'Mara: Sam Tyler Life on Mars - Oh my gawd, the Irish accent (not on the show...in real life!), his cute twinkling blue eyes..can you tell he's my new hotness? This show is an American version of an original BBC production. It's really interesting,(a little bit of Sci-Fi & Cop show drama rolled into one).... and the music is SO cool, really authentic to the times...you can watch back episodes on ABC even!

WRITERS - saved the BEST for last!

5. Alan Moore: Promethea, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - This guy is a geeky girl's God...his work is legendary, and often incorporates uniquely feminine perspectives, which is rare in the comic world. I love that most of his graphic novels are sexy, adult and so historically dense (having a copy of the Dictionary of Imaginary Places handy is a must!). Plus the fact he's a Pagan, wears alot of kooky mystical jewelry, and isn't afraid to take on big bullies like DC Comics & Hollywood makes him a hero in my book!

1. Neil Gaiman!!!!: The Sandman, The Graveyard Book - Like Alan Moore, this amazing writer is very prolific...imaginative and damn sexy, and I'm not just taking about his mind! Did I mention he's Tall, Dark and Handsome? The mythologically rich Sandman series will really awaken you to his wonderful world; a little creepy, sometimes dangerous, but where a willingness to do good, be brave and resourceful in the face of life (and beyond!) is often the best we can hope for in this crazy world. I'd recommend some familiarity with classical knowledge, (by this I mean traditional Western European history & Greek/Roman mythology) to fully appreciate his work (doesn't hurt for Moore's stuff either), but you can enjoy it with all the "riga-ma-role" too. Like Moore, he's a geek girl's GOD, plus he has his own blog where you can read all about his real life thoughts and adventures too!

*my own special word for "cradle robber" - invented involuntarily due to my own bassackwards brain!

The Pandabonium Photo Tag

2009-02-17T18:29:00.000-08:00

Pandabonium tagged me for a Photo Tag...here are the rules:

"go into your photo archive, pick the 4th folder in the archive, select the 4th picture in the folder, and write about it. A person then needs to tag 4 other people to do the same".

Here is my picture!

This is a picture that Ladybug took on her trip to San Francisco. The crew is decorating a Christmas tree in Union square. It is a great picture with Saks Fifth Avenue (I assume) in the background. Although I was not present, I did experience vicariously the joy that she felt visiting a dear old friend, having free rein in a great city, and taking a break by herself she probably hadn't had since becoming a mother. That works for me.

I tag Tonya Harding, Bob Packwood, a head of cabbage, and the concept of schadenfreude.

Get Iconic

2009-02-05T22:10:00.000-08:00

Most of you have seen that image of Barack Obama with the moniker HOPE or CHANGE under it. Now there is a website where you can make your own. I submit three variations of my own.

Nostradamus Works at Blogger

2009-01-30T14:44:00.000-08:00

I guess Blogger knows what kind of week I had. Best. Word. Verification. Yet.

Virtual Surfing with New SaniWeb®

2009-01-29T18:53:00.000-08:00

I am writing this blog from inside a virtual machine (also known as a PC emulator or fake computer). I (re)installed Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 on my newly recovered Windows XP PC that was previously riddled with viruses.

This virtual machine has Windows 2000 (which I installed manually) on it. After spending a couple hours installing service packs, I copied the virtual disk drive (also emulated and not accessible by my main OS) onto my backup drive. When I need a new install, I just copy the backup file onto my main drive and I am good to go with a fresh new Windows 2000 install.

I put the latest Firefox and Thunderbird on the machine and it will be my new Internet safety zone. If it gets a virus, I just delete the virtual machine and copy the blank one. My Thunderbird profile is running in a folder which is shared between my real PC and the virtual one. If I get a web virus, it attacks the virtual machine. If I open a bad email attachment, it also attacks the virtual machine. If that happens, just delete, copy a new one, and start over. I likey.

I am keeping a copy of Firefox on the main machine so I can watch Hulu and Netflix only. It will be running with an extension called No Script which gives me power over which sites and which scripts are allowed to run. The home pages for both Internet Explorer and Firefox on the real PC will have home pages that warn in large letters not to surf and they will have links to the Virtual Machine (this is for family and guests who need to borrow my computer). Internet Explorer will be locked down and scripts will be disabled (unless I need to change them for Windows Updates). If I can prevent downloads from these real PC browsers, I will do that too.

Since I already paid them money, PrevX is my antiviral tool (and I will probably put Avira or AVG on the virtual PC).

I chose Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 because I already have an OS/2 virtual machine (ah, the memories!) and it is free. Ironically, Microsoft even wrote some software to make OS/2 interact with the real PC (shared clipboards and mouse tricks)...and to think they were bitter competitors just a decade or so ago. Even without DirectX installed yet it runs YouTube quite well. I know there are more options, but this works for me.

So, SaniWeb® isn't quite as easy as using a paper towel to clean up messes and it wasn't achieved easily, but I think it will keep my stuff protected and serve me well. Okay, my metaphors are getting mixed...time to sign off. :D

Bad News for Antivirus Programs

2009-01-28T21:24:00.000-08:00

More viruses popped up today; I got a spam warning from Comcast and saw that IMAPI.EXE (a program that can control your mail client...any mail client) was running right after I logged in, so my conclusion is that NOTHING WORKS PERFECTLY or indeed well enough. More viruses.

As a result, I am writing this from a wiped and restored system. I could have kept trying other virus programs, but I think the point was driven home that the virus writers are ahead of the virus killers. All the programs I used were well-regarded internationally recognized programs. They can't handle it. If your system is working and virus-free, be happy and be careful.

I will be looking at several options to increase the security, but I no longer have faith that the virus makers have a handle on the situation.

Anyhoo, there is more to life than freaking viruses, so I will leave it at that.

And the Anti-Virus Winner Is...

2009-01-27T21:02:00.000-08:00

Only the PrevX Edge scanner found all of the viruses that I knew were on the system. Also, the download was less than 1 MB, it used the least total CPU by far. It also scanned and found all the baddies (that I am aware of) in under 10 minutes. The unfortunate part is that PrevX doesn't give you the geeky details. It just quarantines the viruses and deletes the root kits. Unfortunately, while detection is free, there is no free ride to remove viruses. I forked over the $30 (on an uncompromised PC) to clean up the files nobody else could find.

AVG Free is second best. It found all the new ones, but didn't find the root kit. It also cleaned out a bunch of stuff before I decided to do some tests. Full scan is about 2 hours. It used the most CPU and lots of memory. $FREE$ is a good price though.

Zone Alarm didn't find anything. - It took a long time to scan (you could see the individual filenames and the counter going up one at a time). I gave up and stopped it before it did the whole system and just spot scanned the folders that I knew had viruses. It had already checked most of them, but I wanted to give it a second chance. No luck.

Trend Micro didn't find anything. - It was the biggest download (almost 100MB). It took nearly four hours to scan. It looked irritating and disrupted the foreground window often. I uninstalled it as soon as the scan was over. Odd, because it came highly recommended.

-----------------

The next couple of days will tell whether sub-viruses keep spawning off like they did yesterday and this morning. Even if they do, I am leery of whether or not this system is really clean. As a result, I must still decide whether to reinstall Windows or move on to Ubuntu Linux. It was educational, but not confidence inspiring. If I had the cash, I would punt and get a Mac Mini...but I don't.

Nostradamus Works at Yahoo! Sports

2009-01-26T06:44:00.000-08:00

I was over at Yahoo! Sports checking out the Indy Car page and noticed a strange thing. This April 2009, the Honda Grand Prix will be run in St. Petersburg, Florida. In fact, here are the results:

1 Scott Dixon (9)
2 Marco Andretti (26)
3 Dan Wheldon (10)
4 Helio Castroneves (3)
5 Ed Carpenter (20)
6 Danica Patrick (7)

Race Date: Sunday April 5, 2009
Laps: 200
Time of Race: 01:44:03
Avg Speed: 171.248 mph
Margin of Victory: 0.5828 sec
Cautions: 3 flags totalling 24 laps
Lead Changes: 12 out of 5 drivers

Yep, they already know who won. They also list which cars had accidents and mechanical problems and which lap they finished at...and the race hasn't even happened yet.

I went and checked the results from 2008 and it does not match the list above, so it isn't just a holdover that didn't get cleaned up.

Kind of weird....

Anyone want to make some bets?

Virus Mayhem

2009-01-25T21:18:00.000-08:00

You might notice that I deleted the post with the broken English sign. I believe the web site I got it from wreaked havoc on 2 of my PCs this afternoon, rapidly filling them with viruses. While I can't be 100% sure the infection came from there, a warning came up almost immediately upon hitting the page and a new web page loaded and dropped files on my PC.

While it may not be their fault, I don't think it is a good idea to visit Engrish Funny.com (I separated the words to make it harder to create a link from). If it was from their page, it was probably one of their advertisers (or a hacker I suppose). I had four other tabs open, so it could have come in from an ad on one of those pages. I hate to disappoint, but none of them were porn.

I should also point out that I've been visiting this site for months without any problem.

Several things frustrated me about this:

1. While Microsoft gets a lot of heat about every security transgression, the browser people (mostly Firefox & IE) along with AND ESPECIALLY Adobe Flash don't seem to face the same scrutiny. This happens in spite of the fact that malicious web pages are the usual mode of virus transmission now.

2. These viruses are nasty and well-written. They mutate, self-replicate, self-encrypt, and block your browser from using Windows update and, in some cases, reaching security web sites.

3. AVG Free could identify some of the virus files, but couldn't remove them. PrevX found the virus files, but wouldn't remove them without buying a license. Yeah, I am going to give out my credit card # on an infected PC, riiiight. Haven't these people heard of bootable live CDs?

4. Thanks to Ubuntu Linux, I was able to boot in and manually remove the files myself, but how is a novice going to know that? Sadly, our eMachine seems to freeze up when booting Linux, so I am still trying to figure out what to do there.

If the malicious web page situation can't be solved, I can definitely see us moving out of Windows altogether. I love the development tools, but I can't have my life disrupted by visiting innocuous web pages again. I don't understand why Wired.com doesn't send out a muck raker to expose this security malaise.

The other option is to take the Commander Adama approach and remove the Internet part of our connectivity. It may be the only way to keep the Cylons out. :D

O

2009-01-20T08:41:00.000-08:00

Yes We Can is now over. Now it is time for Yes We Will. Because in the end, it only matters if Yes We Did. My hope is that President Obama's actions can match up to his words. I wish him well in that endeavor.

I/O Shield Gloves Activated

2009-01-19T08:13:00.000-08:00

Update: This site checks out as clean (free of viruses or malicious web content) on a couple of different tools I used to scan it. Therefore, I am putting the post back on line.

This looks like it would fit my Blogger template:

see funny english mistakes

Like the Nazis, Except for Good

2009-01-17T09:18:00.000-08:00

Rick Warren compares his "radical movement" to some rather unsavory historical figures:

via Buzzflash

Of course, I am sure we are taking these righteous words out of context. It would have to be a VERY large context.

Godwin's Law states, "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one."

I don't think Godwin was referring to a situation where the leader was essentially saying, "Hey, the Nazis were bad, but they were successful. Let's be Nazis for the good." It throws the probability curve right off the chart.

Great formula. What could possibly go wrong?

(Not to rain on Prez elect Obama's parade, but there were thousands of conservative clergypeople to choose from besides this one. Ah well, I welcome the transition. Eight years was enough of that certain someone and his sidekick.)

Stitchin Time!

2009-01-10T13:09:00.000-08:00

Angel/Devil Pillow

Well here is a project I did for Christmas for our daughter, because she is a Teen Angel/Devil! Title bar link goes to Sublime Stitching, the place where I got stitching designs and the pillow cover. The specific patterns I used were Lisa Petrucci Artist Series #4 and Tatto Alphabet. I got the pillow form at Michael's (14x14) for a reasonable price with my 40% off coupon as well as a few other supplies.

I found these designs were very easy to stitch up and I had most of the colors I wanted to use on hand. I used DMC Cotton floss, of which I have bags and bags given to me by my mom's old lady friends! There were a couple small problems, so I have these recommendations:

1. It's important that the image not move at all while you are ironing it on, so either pin it or hold onto it. I don't recommend moving the iron around at all in fact, just put it on the highest setting for the fabric you are using and set it down on the image & fabric.... helps to use the steam function too...
(I've had several problems with this)
DON'T try to re-iron it,(you will end up w/a blurry image!); instead use a wash-away marker to draw any lines you missed - use the iron-on pattern as a guide.

2. The image can bleed through,(the lines are thick), so use cardboard or some remnants behind the fabric you are ironing on...our daughter has a whole other reversed image on the backside of her pillow!

3. I recommend using a hoop, tried to do it freehand, but just too hard. Helps me keep the tension right. Also easier to see when I messed up and needed to take stitches out.

4. I used shorter lengths, not much more than 15 inches at most, sometimes 12. Keeps the thread from getting too worn and tangled. Also I like the metallic thread Jenny sells (it does tend to "shred" a little, but I just work a little slower with it..). I tried DMC's Metallic floss..and almost went crazy!...it was like trying to sew with copper wire... (their regular floss is great though..).

Here's a close up of the dog...

Cute Poodle!

The Poodle's French knots took me forever to do, but really added to the overall look of the piece. Except for the dog, I used mostly stem stitch, backstitch, satin stitch for the eyes and just a couple straight stitches. I think the kitty turned out well too..and I LOVE the Devil gals! I have some other patterns, like Bon Voyage, Gnomes & Fairies and Forest Friends so I will have plenty of opportunity for more projects in the future...

UPDATE: More and BETTER Pictures....

Devil Girl with her Orange Flame!

Close up of the Angel, with a Golden Halo

and finally...

The Kitty!... with better view of the cute Devil Girlhead w/flames....

Tooth, ow! Sand, Nine.

2009-01-05T06:49:00.000-08:00

Wow, doesn't everything seem different this year? It doesn't? Oh. Well, I am sorry.

Nonetheless, the arbitrary flipping of the year which has nothing to do with the birth of Anyone Whose Name Must Be Capitalized, any season, or much of anything else is nonetheless symbolic for many and it is a time to launch changes in lifestyle or some such gibberish.

I have some of my own gibberish that I am changing in my life. Some of it I will talk about publicly, some I won't. I might even add a gibber to two to this very post! Exciting, isn't it.

But first, let's talk about something nobody here cares about: sports.

In college football, where the Pac-10 couldn't buy their way into the polls this year, the teams were undefeated in bowl games, generally against teams of higher rank. Oregon State lost 50% of their offensive output (the brothers named Rodgers) to injury, so they just crushed the other team with defense and won anyway. The only undefeated team, Utah, will probably not be declared the national champion. I guess what I am saying is that the BCS hasn't really changed anything in college football.

I always like it when a corporation thinks they can basically throw a person away, but the person doesn't fade away all nicely for them. Darius Miles was a Portland Trailblazer who was injured two seasons ago. He was a good player, but like several of his teammates, he had off-the-court problems that bolstered the JailBlazer reputation. A new set of imagemakers joined the Blazer front office and focused on Character and Integrity. Part of this process included deciding that Miles, who had spent two years rehabilitating his body to return to the game, had a career-ending injury. They got the proper papers signed by the doctors and they cut Miles loose, along with some $18 million dollars in salary cap space they could use to get other players (Miles would get that money either way, but now the team could free up the ability to use that salary for other things).

The problem was this. Darius Miles didn't break his spine or something, he hurt his knee. It was a bad injury but, after enduring two years of surgery and rehab, he believed he could play. Last fall, Miles trained with the Boston Celtics, but did not make the team. Nonetheless, the Celtics said they were impressed with Miles. Since then, he has signed on with the Memphis Grizzlies. If he plays in 10 games, the Blazers eat that $18 million. Miles played his first game on January 4th. If he plays nine more, the Blazers will earn the consequences of throwing a person away. I hope they do (even though I am a fan of the team) because what they did was wrong.

Okay, enough with the sports.

I suppose I should mention some of my thoughts for the so-called year. First, I want to get going with backpacking again this year. There are some physical question marks, but I think we can deal with them. One of my goals is to continue our Pacific Coast Trail hike where Ladybug and I left off a couple years ago when I hurt my knee. I am thinking of heading north starting from Waldo Lake.

Getting away from the computer is another idea I had. Our whole family sometimes looks like we are hooked to The Matrix. It doesn't feel like a healthy thing to be doing. Sadly, it will mean fewer blog entries. On the good side, the entries that do appear should be of a higher quality.

For my dietary needs, I am working on finding a way to substitute vegetables into most situations where I normally eat something carb-rich, such as the morning taters, lunch items, and the ratios of things on the dinner plate. Things like beets and squash are tasty, filling, and there aren't a lot of reasons not to enjoy them instead of filling up on bread, potatoes, and rice.

Most people are excited about booting old Dubya out of office and welcoming Barack Obama. I think the Republicans are much better represented in Obama's cabinet than progressives are and I can only hope Obama isn't as stupid about dealing with Muslims as his foreign policy team appears to be (H. Clinton openly spoke of "obliterating Iran," nice work). He appears to be continuing the Bush policy of "look the other way" as it pertains to the idiots who took a pretty good shot at destroying capitalism. There is no accountability any more.

So. while I will give the guy a chance, every piece of evidence points to the distinct possibility that he will piss on the very people who put him over the top and that is just freaking sad. I can only hope I am wrong. Needless to say, my goals and hopes for 2009 are not dependent on a new President Obama becoming the next JFK. (Yes, I know the alternative to him was worse, but can't I have standards?)

With that said, I think the passing of Dubya, like a painful kidney stone, is worth celebrating, so the inauguration will be time for joy at Rancho Snabulus.

I will leave you with a picture from my lunch time walk (cheap cell phone quality). The remnants of last night's snow made for a nice forest scene. Enjoy.

My Salute to 2008

2008-12-28T12:29:00.001-08:00

Little did I know that the snowman built in my yard on Christmas Eve (by a member of the Snabulus family) would melt into an interesting gesture, but I think it sums up 2008 rather well. What started as something resembling human ended up, as President Bush put it, gesturing back at us with less than all five fingers (which he may have learned from the Dean!). In the end, it was just sticks in the grass.

Nonetheless, I would like to hear from you. What are three (or more) good and three (or more) not-so-good things you would like to attribute to the year that passed. They can be personal, cultural, political, or anything you want. You can make your own categories if you want to. Have fun with it.

The winner receives a 2008 VW Jetta. There will be no winner. However, I am 5 billion dollars in debt, so please bail me out.

I will start...

3 Good Things:

My knee is finally doing better.

I still have a job and my family is healthy.

Our house is painted and looks pretty decent.

3 Bad Things:

My other knee is killing me. (Just kidding). The economy. Thanks to taxation rules prohibiting distributions to non-market based retirement funds, most people have highly devalued retirement and education investments.

The untimely death of Josh Westhaver. Sudden tragedy is a terrible thing. I know most readers here have known this pain; some many times over. My heart goes out to you. Geez. I can't even get through a blog post without tearing up.

The continuing destruction around the world caused by humans against other humans. Inhuman.

Merry (White) Christmas

2008-12-25T22:41:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas Snabulus readers. I thought I would share a public information statement from the National Weather Service.

... Christmas 2008 is by far the snowiest in Portland history...
... December 2008 is the snowiest December on record near Portland
Airport...

Residents of the Portland Metro area have had an abundance of snow over nearly the past two weeks now... with falling snow reported at Portland Airport today for the 11th consecutive calendar day.

Historically... the 18.9 inches of snow that have fallen so far this month at the National Weather Service office in northeast Portland ranks this as the snowiest December since records began at the nearby Airport in 1940. Additionally... this month now ranks as the second snowiest month on record... only beaten by the remarkable 41.0 inches that fell in January 1950.

Note that while December 2008 GOES down in the record books as of the snowiest in history since 1940... there were many months prior to 1940 where the official downtown Portland climate site recorded snowfall in excess of 30 inches. This well exceeds the amount of snow reported from anywhere in downtown Portland for December 2008.

=======================================

... Portland Airport and nearby National Weather Service office...

Snow data period of record: Portland airport: 1940-1996...
NWS office: 1996-present)

snowiest decembers
--------------------
****** 1. 2008 December 18.9 inches ******
2. 1968 December 15.7 inches
3. 1964 December 11.0 inches
4. 1972 December 6.1 inches

snowiest months (any month)
-----------------------------
1. 1950 January 41.0 inches
****** 2. 2008 December 18.9 inches ******
3. 1969 January 18.3 inches
4. 1968 December 15.7 inches
5. 1951 March 12.9 inches
6. 1980 January 12.4 inches
7. 1964 December 11.0 inches

=======================================

Notice how December of 68 was followed by an even snowier January of 69. My mom wrote of a winter when I was a baby when the snow reached the 3 foot porch at the old house. I believe it. Image a combined 34 inches of snow in a city with no salting equipment and very limited plowing capabilities. I am happy with the current pile melting.

Of the 11 days of snow, today was the first day I saw sun on the snow. It made me realize that, as pretty as the storm was, the sight of sun on the snow is 10 times prettier. Good old dingy, gray Oregon. Sadly, it is going to warm up and stay gray and rainy, so there will be no brilliant days with white land and blue sky. Maybe next storm...sigh.

Have fun all.

More Snow Pics

2008-12-22T21:37:00.001-08:00

This is officially the biggest snow storm of my life (which isn't saying much to some of you other Northerners). Here are a few more photos of the experience.

Where is Birdo? There is an Oregon Junco hiding out here in the dregs of our cherry tomatoes. See if you can find it.

This is a shot of our Red Versa. If you look close, you can see the stratigraphy of this storm. There is about 6" of snow under 3/8" of ice under another 4" of snow (the actual depths were more but the wind kept the cars a bit cleaner).

After the freezing rain, I saw the birds trying to get food under the ice in vain, so I went to the store and got some sunflower seeds for them. I think they approved.

Another junco.

Not sure what this bird is, but it found the food!

These are two 5 gallon buckets I left outside. As you can see, the snow has almost buried them. I find the cones above them somewhat attractive for reasons I cannot fathom.

Random Intolerance Cartoon

2008-12-22T21:24:00.001-08:00

I saw a pretty good cartoon over at Alternet for the article entitled, How to Get on an Atheist's Good Side by Greta Christina

Replace gays for atheists and you have the whole Obama / Rick Warren thing in a nutshell. Obama got a good trade out of it though. He was able to speak to a few thousand in return for Warren being able to speak to the whole world at an inauguration. There were better conservative voices than a Megachurch pastor. How about a Mormon or Jehovah's Witness? Or no prayer at all since it is all posturing anyway...Ah well.

Super Mega Winter Blast Burst Freeze 2008!!!!! Part Deux

2008-12-20T18:07:00.000-08:00

Well, the snow keeps on falling. We are over 6" (15cm) with that much more expected tonight. That would set a record for my lifetime (although I heard we had a few feet [1m] the year before I was born).

Here are a few shots from earlier today.

UPDATE: The precipitation picked up this evening and we could hit the one foot mark. That would be a first for me at my own residence. The black pot is about 18" in diameter.

And here are the originals...

If You Can Read This, You're Old

2008-12-19T21:30:00.000-08:00

The MiniSnab just informed me that MySpace rocks and blogs are what old people do. Oops, pardon me while I go take some Geritol...dang it all I can't find my walker. Old. Geez, I must be ALMOST 30 or something. It was an interesting little snippet of conversation between her Aunt, Ladybug, and myself. While I left behind the 30 marker a long time ago, it was all very amusing.

(Don't assume I was kidding about the Geritol and the walker...okay, assume.)

In other news...

Portland, Oregon has been channeling the spirit of Philly or Boston this week. Snow, cold, and wind have been the major themes along with generally yucky roads (although the last 2 afternoons weren't bad). The real fun is supposed to start tomorrow night when (supposedly) 6 to 10 inches (15 to 25cm) of snow are supposed to fall in Portland. This is going to be followed (we are told) with a half inch (1.25 cm) of freezing rain on top. It is a good thing we are heading into the holidays because the MiniSnab has already missed a week of school (Arkonbey is probably saying WTF?) due to the weather. I have a feeling that will need to be made up later in order to meet state requirements. I have a totalled Saturn station wagon with ABS, traction control, and brand new chains, so we can head out for groceries if needed (or walk to 7/11 and live off of junk food). This is the one time of year having a trashed but running vehicle pays dividends.

In yet other news...

Well, I was going to write about current events, but I changed my mind. Most of it is contrived crap. So fudge'em.

I have a fair amount of vacation to use up, so I have only one work day before the end of the year. All this time off is really welcome because I realize how much I've sacrificed for this small company over the last 7 years. This is my due and I am taking it. Thanks to the holidays and the overall financial scene, I am going to focus hard on the home front instead of going on any long trips.

I just finished Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. It was an interesting book with a very sobering message, but Cat's Cradle was written better and engaged me more. Vonnegut was a POW who was one of the few to survive the firebombing of Dresden. The number who died in that event was around 130,000. After reading this and contemplating what I read about Moody and Pandabonium's trips to Hiroshima. After all that apocalyptic destruction that makes 9/11 look like a gnat on an elephant's ass, one must hope that it is never repaid in kind and that we learn to quit talking like it is our divine and sole right to wield such demonic power. And yet if it is going to happen, you and I will be powerless to stop it. So it goes.

The next book is Good Omens by Terry Pratchet and Neil Gaiman. It should be more a bit more fun.

My Splotchy Contribution

2008-12-17T03:07:00.000-08:00

I had to approach the matter delicately. Mere lack of humanity would be no excuse as far as Lilith was concerned; she was so particular about such things. When she moved she always did so with purpose. Every step, every breath, every twitch in the nether regions, every time her arm flexed in that characteristic way it always did whenever she scratched her left eyebrow (which always annoyed the spit out of me), it was all part of her routine. As far as I knew she was still as much in the flesh as when she was born, but there were often times when she seemed more mechanical than I. Her wires were of a different sort from mine; they were woven from ego rather than alloy.

I remember clearly how I struggled to find the words. Unfortunately, when the implants had gone in, my imagination had gone out. Improvisational eloquence used to be second nature to me, but like a thesaurus that had accidentally gone through the wash, I was left only with so many incoherent smudges in my mind. I stammered and quickly shoved the stammer into yet another box of meaningless small talk. But she was too sharp for that.

"Huh!" she said. Strange. It wasn't a "Huh?" of curiosity; rather, it was a "Huh!" of idiotic amusement.

"Huh huh!"

I asked her what was wrong, and I got only more "huh"s.

No, that was wrong. I remembered that day clearly. She hadn't said or done any of that. The memory was all wrong. My recollection of that day had somehow become corrupted. Had they found me out? Were they using some nameless telepathic conduit into my soul to twist my memories into a blasphemous abomination?

"Huh huh!"

No, wait. It was even more wrong, for I knew I was no longer thinking of that day. So the "huh"s weren't coming from my memory at all, then. They were in the Here and Now! I immediately suspected the dog, but when I glanced over at him he was (unfortunately) sleeping peacefully. Where, then? Where was it coming from?

"Huh huh huh!"

Then it came. That sudden, sharp impact. It sent a jolt through my senses far greater than any psychic flatulence Yog Sothoth had ever lobbed at me. It was total; it permeated me, became my reality, shifted my reality...

And then I woke up. And I saw HIM. There he was, that sorry, bloated, empty-headed, buzz-cut argument against evolution. He was standing there in front me, retracting the hand he had just used to pop me on the head. In his other hand he held...NO!!!

My precious, newly-bought book!!! My beloved tome from the alien gods!!!! It was in the flabby paw of that vile creature!!!!!

"Huh huh huh!" he farted from his mouth. "What's this, you little fag?" He looked at the book with a look that spoke of pure vacuum. "'The Best of H.P. Lovecraft'? Who the f*** is that?"

"Give that back, Bob!" I cried, dismayed at the wimpy sound of my own voice.

Splotchy Story Virus

2008-12-16T22:35:00.000-08:00

From Splotchy:

Here are the rules:
Here's what I would like to do. I want to create a story that branches out in a variety of different, unexpected ways. I don't know how realistic it is, but that's what I'm aiming for. Hopefully, at least one thread of the story can make a decent number of hops before it dies out.

If you are one of the carriers of this story virus (i.e. you have been tagged and choose to contribute to it), you will have one responsibility, in addition to contributing your own piece of the story: you will have to tag at least one person that continues your story thread. So, say you tag five people. If four people decide to not participate, it's okay, as long as the fifth one does. And if all five participate, well that's five interesting threads the story spins off into.

Not a requirement, but something your readers would appreciate: to help people trace your own particular thread of the narrative, it will be helpful if you include links to the chapters preceding yours.

The bus was more crowded than usual. It was bitterly cold outside, and I hadn't prepared for it. I noticed that a fair number of the riders were dressed curiously. As I glanced around, I stretched my feet and kicked up against a large, heavy cardboard box laying under the seat in front of me. (Splotchy)

Rivulets of sweat began cascading down my face and I hurriedly wiped one from my brow before its salty bitterness could burn my precious, precious electric eye. No, the fright couldn't simply be attributed to my allergy to cardboard that always resulted in patches of bloody pustules and mottled skin akin to a poorly applied KISS® -- see, Gene? Put your lawyers away -- makeup job nor the fact that a fair number of the riders were curiously dressed like a toupee-less, yet masterfully make-upped Chaim Witz nor the fact that motionless tentacles were protruding from a number of randomly punched holes in the cardboard box that bore the hideous label Contents, frozen spawn of Old One, 72 oz. nor the realization that I had forgotten my glasses and couldn't see not whom, but what, was slowly shambling down the aisle towards me, its apparently glistening appendages slopping on the possibly filthy floor of this potential deathtrap of a bus recklessly driven by an attractively miniskirted, yet maniacal, maniac, her lapel bearing a button barely visible underneath a swath of jet-black hair and emblazoned with I worship Dagon, ask me how!, which I never did by the way.

No, the fright couldn't simply be attributed to any of those mundane things. My wind wandered, dreaming up all sorts of misadventure where I stared death in the face and he stared back and then we had a series of staring contests of which I think I won nearly 40% of them, an excellent number against an entity bearing a head-lopping scythe, don't you think?

I stared out the window, and the undulating, slowly shifting, tree-saturated landscape stared back. I won that contest but quickly remembered the old saw about looking into the abyss and having it stick its tongue out. I pulled my electric eye back into the bus and stared ahead instead.

Next, a cavalcade of nervous fumbling and rummaging through my pockets to make sure I had an extra nine volt battery. I did -- the apparently glistening appendages slopping ever closer amidst a cacophony of bizarre, intermittent noise -- so I knew I wouldn't have to worry about my electric eye running out of juice until I got back.

Which, of course, turned out to be the case, for how else could you be reading this erratic, poorly-written account of horror, unless you stumbled upon the abandoned wreckage of the bus and were rifling through my strangely mutilated corpse severely underdressed for the freezing weather and found this sheet of crumpled and charred paper riddled with poor penmanship along with my wallet that contained a drivers license, library card, work ID, three singles and a bus ticket!

But you didn't because I'm not dead, for I just handed the bus ticket to the shambling beast which indeed was slimy for it -- and it, despite its general human visage, was the most accurate description I could muster -- was close enough that I didn't need my glasses.

"Last stoop fer yew vis'turs."

Ahead in the distance, beyond the cardboard box's melting water -- at least, I assumed it was water, and you know what they say when you assume: Nyarlathotep tears you a new one, chump -- pooling at my feet, the creepy troupe of riders and the inhuman coughing of it, bathed by the light of the red moon, I saw the low, yet eerily distinct skyline of Arkham. (Randal)

Arkum hums with a high electric whine, a noise that is like tinnitus to the nth. The man with the monocle who was so strangely dressed coughed on me as the bus lurched to a stop. I hope it wasn't the virus. Now I hunch my shoulders against the freezing wind that hugs the frozen ground. I have two cloptomiters to go before I'm home and it's dark but for the purple neon gloom, looking like a distant nuclear disaster but is merely low light bouncing off the distant metropolis along with the nearly unbearable high whine. And then the wind blows it back upon itself and for a few moments of relief I almost hear silence. I can barely see the ground beneath my feet.

What was I thinking when I dressed for the day? My feet are freezing. Thank the dog for the electric eye. I can see the faintly pink glow of my signature footprint along this well trod strip of stone. But it seems eerily empty for now. Odd. This time of night is usually humming with voices coming out of the dark. All I hear is the high city hum and the wind. Several layers of skirts fly up from a gust of wind and I almost topple backward. These tall rubber boots on their platforms are wonderful in a crowd, extend the stride, and strengthen the buttocks, lifting its heft of weight into the air like a pillow. But skirts?

I hear the dog once and know I will turn left half way up the lane to my bunker. His voice always rings out once when I reach this spot and even without the eye I turn left, arm raised, palm flattened upward to make contact with the wire of the compound. I trail my gloved fingers along the fence until I feel the gate. Here I must remove my glove and place my naked palm against the freezing surface of the palm ID pad. And it slides open almost silently. I enter and hear it slide shut behind me. It locks with a hollow sound that makes me shudder with pleasure. Now small photocell lights flank the path like little pale full moons.

I have a single bunker. I am gifted in certain arts. I can talk to the mad and read their minds. I can smell danger. And I am old. No small accomplishment in these times. So the dog, as he calls himself, and I live together in a cube of concrete with a pyramid roof alone, in silence, but for the sound of my own voice softly talking to myself and his rare great bark or low growl.

He doesn't rise when I come in. But I hear him panting softly in his dark corner. The room is only warmed with his body heat. All the fuel was burned long ago. But food will be brought for both of us. He could so warm me better if we slept together but he will not. So I wear all my clothes trying to keep from shivering. I would never ask to sleep in his bed but have invited him into mine. Often. No luck.

And now before my fingers stiffen in the cold I must answer the questions sent to me by the mad. Only the mad understand the mad, but not all the mad have my gift to hear their inner voices. We are all somewhat gifted. Some of us have visions, hear voices, but I can only listen to the inner voice, the one that never says aloud what it most fears.(Utah Savage)

The irony of hating that Will Smith movie where he was the only pure human he knew of makes me laugh until I cry only once a day usually, but this makes the second time today.

I'd like to be able to distract myself from this existence as I sometimes can with some maudlin or quirky tale that was uploaded to this confounded eye, but for the time being I just place it on its charger, wondering yet again what renewable substance has been able to sustain the charger's life these 25 years. If I knew that, would I be freezing here like this?

I wish someone, anyone, could or would answer that question. I wish Lilith were here to ponder it with me.

Yes, there are the halflings, but they really are not very good company. The electronic portions of them seem to override most of their humanness. But, compared to those the blogoscopic entities have fully infiltrated, they are a veritable schmorgesborg of spontaneity. I am not sure if I should admit that my insane mother was right and that my "specialness" would "save" me in the end, but those like me are few and far between these days.

What was once a blessing, my telepathic tendencies, has become such a curse that I would no doubt kill myself were it not for Lilith. My only hope is to find her. (Freida Bee)

My human part slept while my body electric recharged its high capacity 9 volt battery and spare. Visions and algorithms of chaos and order merged into organic patterns that ultimately morphed into circuit boards with dendritic hierarchies of contacts and junctions. The damn things recurred every night in increasingly complex ways. Start with a fern and a laptop and merge them at ever deeper levels to the nth degree, then throw in the spikes of fear and uncertainty that only occur in dreams and that is close to what I experienced.

My circuits were designed explicitly to increase my ability to absorb the impossible, but they can only do so much. When a person is strolling along on that perfect day only to become a witness to Fishmen devouring the sanity of best friends and professors; well, it is just too much for even electronics to bear. A cleft formed between my organic and electronic parts.

I rambled through Arkham analyzing the meaningless life forms carrying on what they believed were normal lives. What dupes! My electric eye could see the sub-nanometer band, viewing parasites feeding on the souls of so many, sapping them of confidence and ambition. I tried to feel some compassion, but the firewall stopped me and I felt nothing.

When I finally found Lilith, she was horrified at the abomination I had become. I was crestfallen and it seemed as though I choked on a thousand copper wires trying to maintain a semblance of humanity. Humanity was losing and I couldn't stop it. I knew then that she would become bait in my quest to vanquish the Old Ones. (Don Snabulus)

Okay, I tag:

Moody Minstrel (on this page if he desires)
Hypatia
Thepsilam
Overdroid
Somebody famous!!!!

Super Mega Winter Blast Burst Freeze 2008!!!!!

2008-12-14T18:43:00.000-08:00

Storm Team 12 and Task Force Blizzard Freezecakes (ok, I made that up) predicted it and it finally happened. It got cold and snowed.

I woke up early this morning and it was above freezing and green. I scoffed at this stupid weather forecast. Fifteen minutes later it started snowing and it kept going all day today.

During the heat of the day, the temperature had dropped about 8 degrees F. As evening closes in, it is getting even colder.

The MiniSnab (with my help) put up the Holiday Lights (ordinarily I would say Christmas Lights, but there IS A WAR on regarding blah blah blah). She did a decent job until she started getting cold, then it got a bit sloppy. If the 50 to 60 mph gusts tonight don't shatter the bulbs, we will fix it tomorrow.

The cat wanted to go outside, we obliged, and when we noticed him at the door a couple hours later, he had snow on his fur and he appeared to be rather ticked off. We let him in, dried his fur, and let him roost in his indoor resting spot. These are the feline perils when humans lets kitties make their own decisions.

The outdoor faucets are sheathed in styrofoam, the crawlway vents are closed, and we have enough food to avoid driving for a few days. Temperatures could get down as low as 10F (-12C). It should be fun watching the weather and the local news hysterics on TV (though we generally ignore the local news).

A Very Sad Day

2008-12-11T23:26:00.000-08:00

Our friend Josh died today. Swinebread has the details here. He was a good guy and he will be missed. This picture of him in costume was from a 2005 party at our house.

Practagedy

2008-12-09T21:26:00.000-08:00

The MiniSnab volunteered to be a disaster victim for a drill at a local hospital. It was a massive earthquake and she was "injured" in the event. They let her wear her "wound" home. Here are the pics:

Maybe I should have called this "Ich bin ein Berliner":

It sounds like she had fun and it was time that our Homeland Security money went to something that teenagers found fun.

640...1240...CONELRAD

The Pr0n P0l1ce

2008-12-08T19:29:00.000-08:00

or The Porn Police in non-Hackese...

Remember how superior we felt when we heard that China routinely filters and censors Internet content to "ensure harmony" within their country?

That can't happen in "civilized" democracies can it? Australia, UK?

Well, yes.

Australian Gov't Mandatory ISP Filtering/Censorship Plan

The Australian Federal Labor Government, which was elected on 24 November 2007, has a 'plan' to force all Australian ISPs to implement server-based filtering systems to block access to 'child pornography', 'X-rated material', 'violence', 'prohibited' material, 'inappropriate' material and 'unwanted' material on a secret blacklist compiled by a government agency. Prior to the election, Labor said the objective of their 'plan' was "to ensure that children are protected from harmful and inappropriate online material".

UK ISPs switch on mass Wikipedia censorship

According to discussions on the Wikipedia administrators noticeboard, this is because a transparent proxy has been enabled for customers of Virgin Media, Be/O2/Telefonica, EasyNet/UK Online, PlusNet, Demon and Opal. This has two effects: users cannot see content filtered by the proxies, and all user traffic passing through the proxies is given a single IP address per proxy. As Wikipedia's anti-vandalism system blocks users by IP address, one single case of vandalism by a single UK user prevents all users on that user's ISP from editing. The effect is to block all editing from anonymous UK users on that list of ISPs. Registered users can continue to edit.

The content being filtered is apparently that deemed to meet the Internet Watch Foundation's critera for child pornography – in one case, this involves a 1970s LP cover art which, although controversial, is still widely available.

Even here in the good old US of A, they are trying to softshoe the same approach...

Bush FCC chairman considering 'porn-free Internet'

The proposal to allow a no-smut, free wireless Internet service is part of a proposal to auction off a chunk of airwaves. The winning bidder would be required to set aside a quarter of the airwaves for a free Internet service. The winner could establish a paid service that would have a fast wireless Internet connection. The free service could be slower and would be required to filter out pornography and other material not suitable for children.

I don't need to tell anyone here what the problem is. Smut may start out as hard-core porn, illegal images of children, and so forth. However, as you've already noticed above, it can quickly become an excuse for much more. It is also a foot in the door to move beyond so-called "no brainer" crime legislation and into the kind of political censorship that is rampant in places like China.

We tried using parental controls for the MiniSnab, but soon found problems going to medical sites that discussed women's issues. In fact, I found out that if you turn on Safe Search at Google.com and look for "clitoris," you will not get any matches. However, if you search for "penis," no problem...there are thousands of hits. How does that tickle your fancy?

Blame it on the liberals. Blame it on the conservatives. When it comes to governmental power, they are guilty and guilty.

There is a lot of crap on the Internet. The ONE and ONLY thing about the Internet that makes it a revolutionary medium is the freedom of expression and free flow of ideas, sometimes controversial ones. Without that, it is no more than a fancy television. If you can't navigate or speak without a goddamn cop or lawyer breathing down your neck, then you would be an idiot to keep using the medium. This is what the neanderthal Labor Party of Australia and conservative Kevin Martin at the FCC (seriously dude, the Nazi eyeglasses need to go) don't realize.

On the other hand, if we all went encrypted then none of their stupid filters or e-mail reading software would work. HTTPS and PGP are our friends. Cut out the spy-in-the-middle. If Microsoft sold our info down the river, the hackers would find out and we could all switch to an open source platform. Just a thought.

Some Stuff Just Didn't Happen

2008-12-02T22:45:00.000-08:00

This is pretty funny and a reminder that not all threats are created equal:

Over the river and through the woods...

2008-11-30T09:46:00.000-08:00

...to Grandmother's house we go. This is our third Thanksgiving gathering dinner, but no turkey today. Just us turkeys. :D

It is also my last day off before returning to work. I am reasonably happy with my home improvement tasks (there is always more to get done) and I might even be ready to take up the keyboard again at work without going nuts. I am not going to think about what might have been piled onto my ToDo list while I was gone.

How Fortuitous

2008-11-28T22:20:00.001-08:00

Our Panasonic TV died this evening after about 15 years of service. If it was going to happen, let it be on the biggest sale weekend of the year. The newspapers are filled with Wide Screen TV loss leader sales. Those are likely sold out, but there are still plenty of deals left. So tomorrow we go looking for the small models of the new HDTV technology. Wish us luck.

Thankful

2008-11-27T09:32:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving to you. I am thankful for all who read and/or comment here.

I thought about putting up a YouTube video I saw recently in which Sarah Palin is doing an interview oblivious to the turkeys being rendered in the background. However, I am sure you can find it if you are curious.

Instead I will refer you to our post about Alice's restaurant from last year. That is a much funner tradition than delving into the realities of turkey production and political ineptitude.

UPDATE: If you want to listen to studio version of Alice's Restaurant, Tennessee Guerilla Women blog has a link to the MP3.

Mending Fences and Shelves

2008-11-26T22:20:00.000-08:00

It is a complicated story, but I am enjoying my second week of vacation in 2 months and I freaking deserve it. Today was sunny, cool, and breezy, so I did a bit of outdoor work. We have a cedar fence that was ancient when we bought the house, but it is definitely getting more rickety now. The gate in particular was falling apart, so I went after it with a bunch of wood screws, a drill (with a screwdriver bit), a Sawz-All, a shovel, and some Love. After several adjustments, we have a gate that is stronger, though it definitely has a more patched look to it.

For those that remember Fort Bean, I installed a door but I never installed the strike plate, so the door would fly open whenever the temperature reached 70 degrees F or so. Today, I finally fixed that. There is actually a lock on the door knob, but the plexiglass in front is so thin that a lock is a bit of a joke.

Ladybug has been limping along for quite some time with a set of broken drawers in the kitchen. Well, they are shelves that are supposed to roll out but the rails would twist and drop the shelf. At least that is what I thought. Also, the bottom shelf was improperly glued and would stick against the bottom lip causing another headache.

In preparation to buy a new set of rails, I started to measure the various widths and diameters of things when I noticed some improper installation (previous owner, not me, I am perfect, mostly) I had missed before. It wasn't the twisting that caused the problem, but the rails were not secured in back. The weight of the drawer pushed the back of the rails out dumping them out. I rummaged my parts drawer and used a few wood screws and the problem was solved.

The bottom drawer bottom was separated from the sides, so I used some Pergo glue from an earlier floor installation to reseat the wood into the grooves provided. For the uninitiated, Pergo is a laminate wood floor material where they take a plywood-like surface and put a photographic image of wood grain on it. The Pergo glue looks, smells, and bonds like Elmer's wood glue. It worked great on the kitchen drawer. Our entire house has Pergo floors (in a medium oak style), so don't go telling me about how we are poisoning ourselves with McWood or creepy composite resins or I shall become very cross. In any case, Ladybug is pleased to have easy access to her evil kitchen tools again.

To satisfy my geek side, I attempted to resurrect an old laptop PC which has a tendency to give a Blue Screen of Death every 1 to 10 minutes. I originally suspected the hard drive and bought a new one, but it didn't help. So I removed everything except the original memory and the CD drive. After some trial and error, I discovered 2 culprits: the battery and the "newer" memory module. The battery was causing the catastrophic failures and the bad memory module would make things act weird in between.

So they are gone. The laptop is wholly dependent on wall power and has only 256 MB of RAM, but it has a 120GB hard drive and I was able to install Ubuntu Linux 8.10 on there. Ubuntu runs well, 8.10 is MUCH better with the Wi-Fi awareness, and it seems to handle all the new cool stuff without getting too crazy on the memory. THe PC is an old PIII Pentium 500 MHz, so it isn't too swift to begin with. I am going to use it for my alternative programming experiments...mainly learning languages I've been curious about but not able to explore for this reason or that. Yay! Another PC saved through rubber bands and chewing gum.

But I Keep Talking About It

2008-11-26T18:26:00.000-08:00

Okay, I know I know. I am not an economist but I keep blabbing about it. I am just speaking my piece (peace?) because:

a. I actually have time to do it
b. Because the whole thing pisses me off at a deep level

So, enough about the Money Heist 2008.

Chicken Feed Follow Up

2008-11-26T17:16:00.000-08:00

In the previous topics, Dave mentioned the following in the comments:

The Federal reserve is loaning seven trillion dollars to the US Government.

The US Government then turns around and buys stock in failing banks, and now motor companies.

When the government owns stock in business it has a vote in how that business is run. They can set terms for executive salaries and bonuses for instance.

And that is how America turns into a socialist nation.

Actually Dave, I agree with you (please don't faint). Although it is not socialism in the strict sense, it is definitely socialistic for the government to become a major stakeholder in the American economy.

I also agree that it was planned in advance to the extent that the credit bubble perpetrated by the banks and hedge fund operators had the same predictable outcome as any historical form of speculation.

However, it wasn't the MoveOn or Code Pink or International ANSWER types that perpetrated this. It was perpetrated by free market capitalists who saw an opportunity to get filthy rich, manipulated the government into going along with it and then stuck the rest of us with the bill when they knew it was over.

The only recourse left to avoid another depression was...wait for it...government spending to "save capitalism." We are so far from the producing-goods-and-services type capitalism that everyone expects that it isn't funny. Not funny at all.

Almost every reader here knows about the Savings & Loan scams, so this isn't anything new. The main difference here is an exponential increase in the amount of money involved and the fact that it seems as if nobody will be going to jail or get censured in Congress this time around.

It is a bit ironic that the people who brought quasi-socialism to America were the ones who railed most strongly against it, against regulation, and convincing so many to hate any kind government spending or involvement. For nearly 30 years, we've paved the way for mega-mergers, loosening of bank regulations, by thinking we were aiding a free market. It wasn't as free as the liars led us to believe.

Now there is no choice: the money is overflowing from the pockets of the perps as their prearranged deal with the government unfolds and makes us all poorer. We are shocked into compliance just as we were on September 11, 2001. Their assets are safe and ours are at risk and we must just lump it with no expectation of justice or true reform.

Dave is also correct when he says that government will get a bigger say in business. It will be interesting to see what choices government agencies responsible for investing make. There are a number of scenarios and, as with 9/11, the rapid changing of events along with the discretion granted by the concept of emergency means that we are prone to large instances of misconduct just as we've experienced in the post 9/11 wars (torture, extraordinary rendition, etc.). After the corporate infusion of money into the government by lobbyists decreased the interests of individuals in favor of corporations, so the infusion of money into business by the government will probably do the same. Business and government are creating a marriage made in Hell and the majority of people are the abused children of that marriage.

This is truly a learning moment. However, learning depends on seeing outside the left-right, Christian-secular, industry-intellectual box. People are kind of getting it at times, but not in large enough number or as angrily as they should. I suspect we will all muddle through blaming it on the boogie men dreamed up on our favorite political websites.

As an afternote, I found a breakdown at Talking Points Memo of how much money is going towards which programs in order to stave off financial collapse. Calling it all one thing is a bit of a misnomer since there are a number of programs going on to deal with it all.

Not an Economist

2008-11-24T22:48:00.001-08:00

I don't know much about no economy...

I am just finding the whole thing as interesting and disconcerting as you do.

$700B is Chicken Feed

2008-11-24T21:36:00.000-08:00

Try $7.76 trillion. This is according to Bloomberg and most of it will be controlled by Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve and inheritor of Alan Greenspan's ultimate betrayal of Ayn Rand*.

The article outlines what is going on beyond the publicized bailout. Here are a few excerpts:

The U.S. government is prepared to provide more than $7.76 trillion on behalf of American taxpayers after guaranteeing $306 billion of Citigroup Inc. debt yesterday. The pledges, amounting to half the value of everything produced in the nation last year, are intended to rescue the financial system after the credit markets seized up 15 months ago.

Remember the saturation coverage 15 months ago about this? Me neither. I guess it was a matter private between our government and the banks.

Congressman Darrell Issa, a California Republican on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said risk is lurking in the programs that Poole thinks are safe.

“The thing that people don’t understand is it’s not how likely that the exposure becomes a reality, but what if it does?” Issa said. “There’s no transparency to it so who’s to say they’re right?”

The money that’s been pledged is equivalent to $24,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. It’s nine times what the U.S. has spent so far on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Congressional Budget Office figures. It could pay off more than half the country’s mortgages.

$24,000 for each member of your family including you and there is no transparency. We fought in a revolution for much, much less and now we wait and see. That'll screw us for a generation or more.

“Some have asked us to reveal the names of the banks that are borrowing, how much they are borrowing, what collateral they are posting,” Bernanke said Nov. 18 to the House Financial Services Committee. “We think that’s counterproductive.”

$24,000 of your money and you don't get to know where it is going. At least they aren't using the Al Qaeda excuse (yet).

Bernanke’s Fed is responsible for $4.74 trillion of pledges, or 61 percent of the total commitment of $7.76 trillion, based on data compiled by Bloomberg concerning U.S. bailout steps started a year ago.

You better get used to being poor if this crap doesn't work.

* I know many like to crack jokes about Ayn Rand and her misguided Objectivist philosophy, but we won't be if turning our currency into a speculative enterprise only bought us a few more decades and a much larger fall. I am obviously hoping it won't, but this bailout is orders of magnitude larger than the 90s S & L bailout and nobody is sounding cheerful about it.

A Few Presidential Notes

2008-11-22T22:02:00.000-08:00

Wow! I get a few days off. I took 5 business days which, thanks to the short Thanksgiving week, adds up to 11 days off in a row. There is a fairly major customer install right in the middle, so it is not without risk of interruption.

As such, I have a bit of time to

a. think
b. write

These are good things! I've heard this, so it must be true.

In the big picture, there is plenty to write about. A new President of the USA is forthcoming, the economy decided to flush itself down the toilet, and we are now presented with an opportunity to learn a great deal about how things work at the levers of power.

And what an interesting education it has been. We've seen free market conservatives lobby for corporate socialism on the grounds that companies are "too large to fail." We've seen pro-labor liberals lecture the auto industry, one of our last large industrial employers, on how they need a plan for profitability or they won't see a red cent of the big giveaway. We've seen an electorate placated into giving thousands of dollars per person for all of these programs with no discrete plan, no transparency, no trust in the recipients, and no expected outcome that the measures will work; all while the stock market dives like an osprey into the water because of those same reasons. What is one to make of this? Quite a lot really, and not much of it is good.

A fire was kindled on November 4th when Barack Obama was elected the 44th President of the United States. Unlike many who read my posts here, I am highly suspicious of the candidate who threw so many good people under the bus to be elected. However, I was near tears of happiness watching the American people reject the failed leadership that has damaged our Republic with unnecessary war, unnecessary division, and unnecessary damage to our Constitution. It was indeed a historic night and, as Moody Minstrel said earlier on this blog, the weight reverberated beyond race and to a point beyond. It was difficult to deny the shear human force that propelled Obama past voter purges, racial hatred, and the media cult of contrarian xenophobic "conservatism" (see American Conservative magazine for REAL conservatism).

We have a new president that says all of the right things, but can he DO the right things? At first glance, it doesn't look good. His cabinet choices thus far could have been chosen by Bill Clinton for their adherence to principles of corporatism and globalization. Unfortunately, it was just those principles in conjunction with W-style Reaganomics that have led us to this precipice. On the other hand, the people themselves are capable and could be led by the right person to do smart things to preserve the American middle class and stabilize the economy to some degree.

Even if they succeed, there are two challenges that remain in the wilderness of serious consideration. We are at a long-term degradation of cheap energy and a long-term boundary on our own ecological sustainability.

Some are looking at the gas pump prices and thinking we are somehow "in the clear" but think about this...the Dow Jones is more than 40% lower than it was 8 years ago and these supposedly "lower" gas prices are up 30% (approximate values of course). It won't take much of a recovery for the prices to recover as well. Things run out. The Gold Rush didn't last forever because the recoverable gold didn't last forever. And yet we still mine gold even without that rush. The same is true with oil. We will get all the easy stuff, but we won't run out. It will just get harder to extract. Unlike gold, however, we need oil for every phase of modern society from fuel to plastics to fertilizer to vitamins. The hairspray cable jockeys or the emotion-poking radio squawkers say little to nothing about this. They are such idiots that maybe it is for the best. Nonetheless, enjoy your cheap Ecuador bananas and Australian wine now because the price will be going up.

Since the Great Depression, the population of the United States has multiplied roughly 2.5 times. A great deal of arable land has been paved over, built on, and even preserved as wildlife refuges since that time. While technological innovation has allowed us to grow more food with less land, much of that growth was derived from cheap fuel, cheap fertilizer, etc. If our current recession deepens into a new depression and the domestic oil gushers of the 30s are gone, how are we going to feed our 300 million people? Just about every aspect of the marine food supply is stretched to the maximum. We have crops that terminate their seeds and can't grow another year. How will our increasingly urban population eat?

The consensus among climatologists is that our planet is warming and that the climate changes will cause disruptive changes to cultures and economies. The problem is that nobody knows exactly what changes will happen or how severe they will be. Also, it should escape nobody's notice that the time frame for change exceeds not only our attention spans but that of entire nations and that there is no consensus on what constitutes a proper change or the impact of such a program.

President-elect Obama has given only the slightest public attention to these challenges. As with previous administrations, the strategy (if there is one) to cheap energy and sustainable ecology (if there...you know) will take place behind closed doors while rhetorical pabulum keeps We the People occupied with other matters and out of "their" business.

These are difficult challenges and the easy answer of making a bigger, more intrusive government to handle it could lead us more quickly to a bad end. Bigger, more intrusive corporations could do the same. However, a resilient and well-tempered approach that encourages small and large scale innovation along with positive leadership helping us into accepting a more efficient lifestyle would make a huge difference.

Reality can be a harsh, but patient teacher. It can give us plenty of rope, but eventually it runs out and it pull us forward on its own terms. The trick is to move along with that rope before it pulls you. I hope Obama can learn that skill before austerity and efficiency are imposed on us quickly by cold, hard reality.

For some folks I know, it is already too late for the soft fall.

Answering the Challenge (My Own Way)

2008-11-16T19:00:00.000-08:00

1. Five names you go by:

a. Kevin
b. Kebin-sensei
c. The Moody Minstrel
d. Moody
e. ano gaijin

2. Three things you are wearing right now:

a. Black jacket by "Comme Ça Ism" (a gift from the wife...but I've heard that when I wear it at the school it makes me look like a "fushinsha" [lit. a "suspicious person"]).
b. Bright blue Dunhill necktie (bought for a steal at a famous duty-free shop in Sydney).
c. Glasses. (Gucci, believe it or not!)

3. Two things you want very badly at the moment:

a. A real weekend...or even one full day off.
b. A studio with a grand piano, recording gear, and a splendid view of the ocean.

4. Three people who will probably fill this out:

Doubtful, but I'd like to see Seymour, Kami, and Olivia do this.

5. Two things you did last night:

a. Got carried away writing on the Impasse blogventure.
b. Tried and failed to go to bed early for a change and get some sleep.

6. Two things you ate today:

a. Quaker Instant Oatmeal, Raisins & Spice.
b. Calorie Mate nutrition bars

7. Two people you last talked to on the phone:

a. Mr. Ogawa.
b. Mr. Yamazaki (director of the Kashima Seaside Jazz Festival last Saturday).

8. Two things you are going to do tomorrow:

a. Teach four classes and endure at least two meetings.
b. Try not to lose either my lunch or my mind.

9. Two longest single-day car (not bus, etc.) rides:

a. Milwaukie, OR to Boise, ID (10 hours/distance uncertain)
b. Milwaukie, OR to Nyssa, CA (8 hrs/distance uncertain)

10. Two of your favorite beverages:

a. Coke & Myers Rum
b. Tully's French Roast

Now let me add my own extra meme for all of you (with a tip of the powdered wig to Kami):

If you saw me in the back of a police car, what would you think I was there for?

The Arkonbey Challenge

2008-11-13T22:45:00.000-08:00

Arkonbey challenged me to divulge a little about myself. I tag Moody Minstrel, DewKid, and Hypatia...

Here goes:

1. Five names you go by:

a. Don
b. Donald
c. Zeke
d. Snabby
e. Captain Zarquon

2. Three things you are wearing right now:

a. loud green shirt from the Oktoberfest festival in Mt. Angel, OR
b. LL Bean olive drab short pants (endless summer)
c. A smile

3. Two things you want very badly at the moment:

a. financial independence
b. an IT and QA presence at work

4. Three people who will probably fill this out:

Not saying

5. Two things you did last night:

a. Watched Firefly episodes with Ladybug
b. Removed viruses from a PC

6. Two things you ate today:

a. A wonderful quinoa and squash dressing
b. taters, egg whites, and sausage

7. Two people you last talked to on the phone:

a. Ladybug
b. My Dad.

8. Two things you are going to do tomorrow:

a. Cook breakfast
b. Take MiniSnab to a babysitting gig

9. Two longest car rides:

a. Milwaukie, OR to Elko, NV (12 hours/700 miles)
b. Hillsboro, OR to Clear Lake, CA (10 hrs/about 550 miles)

10. Two of your favorite beverages:

a. Water
b. La Yunta Torrontes wine from Argentina

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner

2008-11-11T20:23:00.001-08:00

by Randall Jarrell

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from the dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

Post-Election Reflection

2008-11-09T19:13:00.000-08:00

I remember well that day when I was 11 years old.

My best friend's house was up for sale.

People were always coming and going whenever I was there.

I'd already gotten used to it, but then that one family came.

I remember they were cheerful.

They were friendly, warm, polite.

I would've liked to meet them.

But, with narrowed eyes and sour voice, my friend quickly ordered us to his backyard.

His manner said it all long before he asked that question:

"What are they doing here?"

Then, as we played, I heard a happy, "Hello!"

I turned to see a girl, maybe a year or two younger than me, standing in the door.

I remember she had bright eyes and a sunny smile.

They looked so pretty on her colored face.

"Hello!" I said in cheerful reply.

"Um, come on," said my friend impatiently. Grabbing my arm, he dragged me away.

I asked him what his problem was, and I got an annoyed sigh.

"Don't look at her," he said in my ear. "Just ignore her."

I asked him why, and he used THAT WORD.

Yes, I'd heard plenty of jokes using that word. I admit I repeated many.

But I'd always thought it meant a type of person, like "redneck" or "greaser".

That family and that girl certainly didn't fit the image I'd always carried in my mind!

Apparently I'd been mistaken.

In my friend's eyes, the color alone brought the damning title.

And the world suddenly seemed like a smaller place.

I remember, though not so well, that day when I was 14 years old.

A school dance had just ended, and we were going home.

Behind me on the bus, a boy was loudly guffawing as he told his friend what had happened.

A girl had asked him to dance.

I didn't really know the girl, but I'd met her before, and I knew about her.

A year below me, she was mostly quiet, but was smart and friendly.

She seemed to get along with her classmates well enough.

She had a nice smile, but her eyes always looked so sad.

I often saw her walking alone and wondered if she was lonely, but always from afar.

I'd never heard anyone speak ill of her till then.

Had it been one of the other 99.2% of the girls at our school, the ones who were white, yellow, or red, the boy would probably have said yes.

But she and one other were of the 00.8% that were black.

And the boy used THAT WORD.

Self-righteously, I said to myself that I wished she had asked me.

I would have danced with her quite happily.

But then I felt the pangs of self-doubt and cowardice wrenching my gut.

I knew that dancing with her would probably make me a target.

I'd be laughed at, possibly even attacked, for "loving" someone who was THAT WORD.

My spirit failed me, and I looked the other way.

A year later, the other colored girl from my junior high days was in one of my high school classes.

The teacher happened to be my own father.

The girl and I had gotten along well when we'd shared a class at the junior high.

But now she looked at me with fire in her eyes and a jutting lip.

Then she demanded, "Is your father prejudiced?"

I told her that, in all honesty, I didn't know, but insisted that I was not.

She then demanded to know if my father used THAT WORD.

I said I'd never heard him say it, but she wouldn't be soothed.

She hated me clear till she moved away and left the school.

Fast forward several years, and I was wandering the benighted streets of Portland.

Certain friends thought themselves wise in their ways.

We wound up chatting with a most interesting group.

They said some of the wittiest and cleverest things.

I thought I would like to get better acquainted.

At least until they robbed me.

That was far less serious than what happened the next time.

A similar-looking group suddenly converged on us on a darkened street.

They were clearly much less friendly.

The threats and oaths poured from their mouths as we bolted away through a construction site.

Escaping to the light, we were told to be careful.

A group of THAT WORD were looking for "whiteys" to "roll".

We stopped going to Portland at night.

We started using THAT WORD much more often.

In my university days I worked for a while at a pizza restaurant.

One of my coworkers made me nervous and edgy.

There was no real reason for me to feel that way.

Indeed, he was probably the most dependable person there.

He was always the coolest to me.

I did my best to be just as cool to him in return.

But I always tensed up when he came in and said hi.

The memory of those Portland nights always came screaming into the back of my mind.

I never referred to him as THAT WORD. I would never dream of it.

But I'm shamed to admit my heart probably did.

At the same time I noticed something very odd.

I knew a singer called "Roo", had a housemate named "Veggie".

Though their color was that of my coworker, neither of them made me nervous at all.

I counted them both among my friends.

It was clear that my fear was selective, and I wasn't sure why.

Perhaps it was because they were in my cozy worlds of "music" and "home".

There was no reason to think they were different.

It was natural to forget the Portland memories.

THAT WORD simply didn't enter the picture.

Now I've spent almost twenty years in Japan.

I've met folks from Kenya, Egypt, and Iran,

Plus India, Bangladesh, Tanzania,

Pakistan, Singapore, and Latvia,

Chile, Peru, Lebanon, and Malaysia,

Austria, Germany, Italy, Russia,

The Philippines, Sri Lanka, France, and Thailand,

Australia, Holland, China, and New Zealand,

And many others I've naught room to name,

But one thing I have noticed is that they're the same.

If a man twice my size from Niger isn't scary,

Then why should someone from back home make me wary?

MLK said it best: character, not the skin,

Is what we should judge, if the dream can begin.

THAT WORD is a mask, an excuse to divide,

But it really has little of substance inside.

But can we all change? I say, "YES WE CAN!"

We proved it when my land elected this man.

Character, not skin, decided the game.

Let history judge him on merit, not name.

We have taken a bold step, and yet I still know

That, as a culture, we've still far to go:

Blue-leaning states voting Rep, not Dem,

Because they can't stand voting for "one of THEM",

Business refused to those bearing his name,

Or school officials doing largely the same,

Stereotypes oozing out of blogs and op-ed pages,

Evil words spoken in mikes or on stages.

Some people, it seems, can't let go of THAT WORD.

They don't want to see their reality blurred.

But if we all simply learn to ignore

These divisions, they won't trouble us anymore.

Then a little girl's "Hi" won't set off an alarm.

A request for a dance won't be a cause of harm.

A violent gang will be judged only by

What it does, not by color of face, hair, or eye.

Don't call me a "whitey", and I won't use THAT WORD.

Neither is needed; let's not let them be heard.

No matter who you voted for, let's look at the age.

Indeed, change has come, and we've helped set the stage.

But where it will go, none can say as of yet.

I hope we learn what we should and should not forget.

Oregon is a Yellow State

2008-10-30T22:01:00.001-07:00

Since this is election season, there is talk of red states, blue states, the same for counties, etc. After spending a week away from the campaign commercials and other assorted garbage, I've come to the conclusion the Oregon is a yellow state this year.

The major trees in western Oregon are either evergreen or the leaves turn yellow in autumn. I spent a few days at Champoeg State Park this week getting away from the crap at work, getting some alone time, and riding my bike around aimlessly looking for wildlife and nature. You will see that Oregon is a yellow state in autumn.

I had a cat to keep me company and you can watch him in the YouTube video below. He is on his way to the rescue people who give cats good homes. This one will have no problem. He is a real sweetie pie.

To the pictures!

Sunset over a grove of Douglas Firs.

A little later looking out over the Willamette River

It is amazing how still the waters get when there aren't boats tearing up and down the river at all hours. It is nice and quiet too.

SAME!

A collection of leaves gather in the water by a boat dock. Notice that not all of them are yellow.

I brought my "acoustic" bike on this trip (as opposed to my electric bike which stayed home charging).

I don't generally make a practice of taking pictures inside a public restroom (certain US Senators can thank me for that). However, this bunch of ladybugs were quite interesting.

Gee, I wonder why these are called Big Leafed Maples? Not sure. Acer macrophyllum echoes the common name. On the other hand, the Lodgepole Pine is called Pinus contorta, so there you are.

The last easily visible sunrise of the trip. It was dry the whole time, but the fog and clouds became more persistent with each passing day.

I would never order an espresso at a Buttville store. Luckily, the real name is Butteville so drink up!

Happy Halloween from the pumpkin farm!

There was a big hatch of box elder bugs and they seemed to collect in the screen of my windows.

My home away from home.

Here is the kitty. He loved to talk to me and spent a lot of time hanging out with me. On the colder nights, he especially liked nuzzling up to the camp fire.

Big leaf maple on the left, apples on the right.

For all of you who live in or near an Oak Grove, but can't see any oaks because they've been replaced with suburbia...here is a REAL oak grove.

So I was letting my mind drift as I rode my bike up the lane through this golden field of grass when a great flapping and clattering occurs on this fence post in front of me. I was only about 15 ft away from the Great Blue Heron when it bolted and glided over to the place you see above. If I had been paying attention, I might have gotten a good close up. On the other hand, my brain definitely benefited from the relaxation.

The original townsite of Champoeg is marked off by intersection. I had a nice stroll along DeGrasse which ended in the middle of a field.

When the American settlers finally outnumbered the native Americans and French-Canadian metis in Champoeg, they allowed democracy to fluorish and create a government in Oregon in a close vote. Well, the Native Americans really didn't get to vote, so...well, you can guess how it went.

Above and below are more shots of the cabin.

An oak gall sits like an easter egg on the ground.

The vine maple is a refreshing break from all the yellow leaf deciduous trees in the forest. It can show several colors on a single leaf. Also, depending on their environment their foliage can seem as if there are different species of tree in different areas. The don't get very tall, but they are one of my favorite trees.

Shifting Gears

2008-10-23T19:56:00.000-07:00

One more day until vacation. From monster stress to several days of alone time. This is the kind of transition I can get my mind around. Since I chose ole Jack in the previous post in one of his more psychotic roles, I thought Easy Rider was a bit better direction to go. Believe it or not, I saw a stars-and-stripes kid's helmet just like Peter Fonda's about a month ago when I was helping my Dad clean out his storage area. He still has the darn thing. Hopefully I will come back with some nice fall foliage shots and get them on line before the first snows.

In the mean time, we can look forward to some of the most inane advertising in the next 2 weeks as the election I think of as Cognitive Dissonance 2008 nears. Well, you can...I am going to try to avoid the whole thing.

The Worst is Over (except for this Hubris)

2008-10-20T21:55:00.000-07:00

All work and no play makes Don a dull boy. All work and no play makes Don a dull boy. All work and no play makes Don a dull boy. All work and no play makes Don a dull boy. All work and no play makes Don a dull boy. All work and no play makes Don a dull boy. All work and no play makes Don a dull boy. All work and no play makes Don a dull boy. All work and no play makes Don a dull boy. All work and no play makes Don a dull boy. All work and no play makes Don a dull boy. All work and no play makes Don a dull boy. All work and no play makes Don a dull boy. All work and no play makes Don a dull boy. All work and no play makes Don a dull boy. All work and no play makes Don a dull boy. All work and no play makes Don a dull boy. All work and no play makes Don a dull boy. All work and no play makes Don a dull boy. All work and no play makes Don a dull boy. All quirks and no planes make dogs a doll toy. All jerks and flow-bees makes frogs a Mull joy. All quarks and no leptons makes Hawkings a bit coy. All corks and no bottles makes wine a non-existent ploy. All smirks and no plan makes George a dumb boy. Fall cirques and no jokulhaups make Iceland a cool place. Call Dirk and no more cakes annulled today. Luckily, I gots vacation next week.

(This was prompted by the fact that I've worked about 40 hours since Friday and I normally work M-F)

Halloween in the Time of Cholera

2008-10-18T14:19:00.000-07:00

Although you'd never guess it by the Christmas decorations in the stores, Halloween is just under two weeks away. I've been saving some items to share during the Halloween season and here's the first: a set of photos from a fellow named Steve Martin, (no, not that Mr. Martin).

These photos were taken during the early 1900s and are of people in costume. All the photos are very good and very much in the spirit of Halloween. Make sure to check out the rest of the photos while you're there.

Snabulus Debate Coverage

2008-10-15T22:08:00.001-07:00

This was the defining moment of the 2008 debates:

Tip of the hat to Talking Points Memo for the vid link...