It was awfully sad to leave TSG at the airport. And it's always so much funt at her (adopted) Aunt's. It's back to work down here -- but the countdown is on.

It's 80 days until we get married.

Well folks, I'm back in California and the basil is doing well. The tomatoes had all gone to bud, so I spent a few minutes gently picking them off and kindly informing the plants that now is not the time for succulent, mouth-watering tomatoes. Now is the time to grow big and strong, so that when August comes there will be many, many juicy tomatoes.

I let the little Jalepeno pepper plant bloom, though, and now little peppers are forming at the base of the buds. They are only about half an inch long right now, but they should grow to five or six times that.

So TSG had to go to work today at 4ish... I wandered down the street to this coffee house to do some web design/coding...

But it turned out that, this particular afternoon, it WASN'T a WiFi hotspot (as it advertised). So, a few hours of intesive networking (and cursing Apple Airport Extreme) it is now again a wireless hotspot.

Your Comuter Genius strikes again!

Right now I'm sitting just beyond security in PDX, working frenetically on a website that I'm going to have to show results on very soon.

Today was a full day at the office, then a brief headlong dash for the airporter, followed by car pursuit of said airporter (a successful chase, with NailinCoffin at the wheel). But we landed here, safe and sound, despite what the pilot called "severe" turbulence.

TSG and I have been apart from each other for fifteen entire, heart-wrenching days, and in minutes, minutes, ladies and gentlemen, those just outside this terminal will witness a homecoming scene.

Yesterday I got a call from work just as I was about to head to work (8:30am) and that triggered a more or less relaxed, and more or less un-productive day of rest, recuperation, and sometimes work at home. However, it was necessary for sanity, and for the continued and improved performance of TheGenius.

At work I now have the GeniusCave (tm), which happens to be the ONLY office that has a door which closes. It became my de facto office when I (cunningly?) appropriated an entire wall for my rack of shiny new servers. The current running joke about the GeniusCave has something to do with the fact that I never have the florescent overhead lights on, just my one incandescent bulb, and my window shades up, so that my two little house plants can live.

Yesterday I also planted my Basil plants, one some kind of blue basil; the other a Genovese. Also, my last cherry tomato plant went into the last pot, and I fertilized some of the other guys, and rearranged the watering system to boot.

The basil plants weren't going to fit in the pots -- especially because they grow to five feet, and then are supposed to be trimmed back to three -- so I planted them in the ground. I gave them lots of organic potting soil, so we'll just have to wait and see what happens.

For now, I'm with (almost) my love in sunny (almost) Portland. Cheers.

Well,

Yesteday we shirked our responsibilities, grabbed a flat of beer and headed to the beach.

Getting the beer was practically the ONLY thing we did right.

To be continued...

So we took care of the irrigation in the front yard on saturday...

But I've still got to crawl under the car and fix the oil leak, and I've got to pot the plants in the back yard and fertilize everything.

We dashed out to the coffee shop in San Rafael, saw TSG's Auntie C. NailinCoffin, RR, and I got embroiled in a debate about Relativity and high-level physics.

Afterwards, we headed up to Boyd Park in San Rafael and played some frisbee golf (that we just made up, not on a course). Some of the shots were nearly-vertical. We worked our way deep into the park, till we came out into public lands behind the park. We hiked up the hill a little ways and admired the view (I need a camera!).

It was a beautiful day.

I have MonitorBrain. And that's one stage worse than ComputerEyes.

You know it's friday when...

...you see the first beers of the weekend in the fridge, waiting... for five o'clock.

My weekend (recreation) to-do list:

+ Fix irrigation in front yard.

+ Plant my two new basil plants and the new tomato plant and fertilize

+ Crawl under the car and find/fix the oil leak

+ ??? There WAS something else ???

Weekend work:

+ My current web design project

Wow, I forgot to eat lunch.

- Hectic.

- Narrowly avoided the CHP motorcycle cop on the way to work this morning.

- Adjusted the tire pressure in the car; alignment feels alright now.

Last night we partied in the city with The Random Englishman and PilgrimoftheAbsolute. We hit up a crazy crepe place for dinner and then ended up in a smoky bar for drinks, afterwards. 'Twas an excellant time, and I had gotten in a little Genius Nap (tm) after I got home from work, so I was feeling better.

I still feel almost continually sleep-deprived though, and I also feel like I am still coming out of a severe coffee addiction... But I don't think that that makes sense or is what is really happening, but maybe... I feel like I'm underwater all the time, and lights are too bright.

Sleep and water, that's what I need. My two cure-alls. I hear they even cure cancer.

Know any of these guys? 'Cause we're trying to get some of 'em to play at our wedding reception.

What am I? Where am I doing? What??! Where's my TO-DO list??!

Fairfax Lumber had a whole slough of new tomato plants and basil plants as well. I couldn't decide between several of the basil plants, so I bought two of them. They all smelt SO good. The new tomato plant is a red pear cherry tomato plant. AND I bought some organic fertilizer, so I'm pretty sure that my ENTIRE operation could be CERTIFIED ORGANIC.

So TSG gets off her evening shift at about 11:00 pm... And being the loving fiancee that she is, she calls when she gets home (sometimes even before she gets home).

And, because I go to bed these days as close to 8 pm as possible, she usually wakes me between midnight and one am. Then we chat for a bit, and we both go to sleep.

However, we started talking about stressful-planning and work-type things,and I found myself lying awake an hour and a half after crawling back into bed, breathing exercises and all.

SO, I've got these web design plans for a current site I'm supposed to do floating around in my brain, and a snazzy illuminated keyboard, so I'm all set to work.

It just means that tomorro's GONNA BE ROUGH at work. Maybe I'll work from home.

+ we found an AWESOME band for our wedding reception

- they want $1500!

= perhaps we should find a non-name-brand artist who HASN'T released FOUR cds

Oakland airport has a "Park and call" area. Now what a good idea! You can stay for 30 minutes, and you can call and then when your person pops out of the terminal, you pop down and pick 'em up.

The Genius thought of this long ago.

I've become as strange mix of computer-hippy and eco-geek.

So I love computers and computing power and processors and stuff but balk at the energy consumption of a 400-watt PSU. Or even a 250-watt one...

Solar-powered, zero-enviromental impact computing, that's what I want.

And those little wireless toys with the ridiculous Li-ion batteries. They should be solar too, like those little calculators that we all had at some point or other.

Having not drunk coffee or black tea since the massive doses we ingested during OUR LAST FINALS WEEK EVER in college, even one cup of Chai latte (that I made myself, thank you very much, from Tazo bought at Costco) gives me the jitters.

Well, not really the jitters, but kind of a little hyper-nervous-shakiness. The pre-jitters. Or something.

Back to work.

To Portland, round trip:


Airplane: $158 / 2 hrs

Greyhound: $116 / 18 hrs

Amtrak: $168 / 17 hrs

Car: ~$200 / 10 hrs


I really want to go see TSG in Portland this weekend. But I might have to go next weekend instead.

So I drove the ol' Silver Bullet up to work today, got here, and checked the fluids.

(You have to wait until the thing gets hot to check ATF and PS, so...)

Everything was looking good, except that the oil was low (not good, because the leaking fluid SMELLS like oil when it burns), and that the coolant, which LOOKED like it was fine was actually bone dry. The level that I thought I was checking was actually coolant-colored sludge on the side of the tank. So I absolutely have to get more today. AND the transmission fluid was WAY OVER the full line.

Of course, that was when I realized that (a) the car was on a slanting hill, and (b) I definitely wasn't awake.

So now I've got a cup of Chai and am sitting in front of the computer...

Ready to do mind-numbing web server administration...

I'm thinking about joining here...

BUT, I've gotta save money for the big day. So maybe not right now...

I went to bed at 8:56 pm last night, tried to get up at 6:00 am, succeeded at 7:15 am, and was at work by 8:24 am.

I feel MUCH better.

Sunday night, even though I had to get up for work I stayed up till almost two shuffling stuff in my room. Having not been in one place very long since Africa, my "worldlies" have been scattered and augmented strangely... So now it's a matter of sorting them all out, and throwing them all out.

I've started piles in various parts of my room: car stuff here, computers over there, music equiptment here, and so on.

- Being back in Marin, close to http://kernel.org/

- WedDAV

Things I am excited about right now:

- My Tomatoes

- Biodiesel

- Flush-free toilets

- openSUSE 10.1

Back to the grind...

Silver's still smoking something, when she gets warmed up. Fluid levels continue to be fine, but I found a little hose (belongs to the EGR system, maybe?) that was off, so I reconnected it. I've GOTTA put her up on blocks and check out the underbelly.

My dad heard this on the radio years ago, and he wrote down the questions on a scrap of paper, which he gave to me.

Being the packrat that I am used to be, I kept it. Now I am sharing it with you, because I think it's interesting.

Good luck.

It's easy.

The Random Englishman is posting again...

Hope he doesn't mind if I give you a link to his latest alleycat post...

And how many TAC library books do YOU still have?

Cardboard.

I'm on a semi-permanent search for the inventions that have changed the way mankind lives because I have a hypothesis that, well, there aren't any.

But. I was just in the garage breaking down our inordinately large stock of boxes. Big boxes, little boxes, boxes of great strength and large crunch-test numbers, wine boxes, and so on.

And I realized that cardboard is maybe one of the least appreciated inventions. It is one of the most ubiquitous (how that word is overused in computing circles!) and adaptable substances ever.

Everything comes in cardboard, or its wealker brother, paperboard. Our shoes: cardboard. Our backpacks: cardboard. Our luggage: cardboard. I once even built myself a cardboard house for shelter from a storm, but that's a different story.

And then, this morning, I got to thinking about cardboard. It's kindof like our society. You know, tacky. You wouldn't use cardboard if you wanted to look nice. It's ultimately weak. Yeah, it might get your record collection from here to Omaha via UPS, but you're not going to WANT to build a house of it (trust me, I KNOW). It's not a "survival tool" that any sane person would consider using in an emergency. I don't have any in my car. It wouldn't go in my patented Bachelor Survival Kit (tm), whereas something like Duct tape would (and is).

Yup. It's a great image of our society. Cardboard. Tacky, weak. Non-surviving. Ubiquitous. That's my cranky Sunday morning thought.

I can't understand this website 'cause it's in Japanese, but they sure as hell stole my picture of my camera!!!

I a . l . m . o . s . t feel like a blogger again...

I have moved my personal Maximum Sleep In Time (tm) to 8:00am from 10:00am.

This means that I get out of bed if I wake up at or near (or after) 8am, as a general rule.

I think I might put a drop-shadow on the border of my blog-thingy... Just to stay one ahead of the competition... Also, I need to write a new shopping cart app, so if anyone needs one, let me know.

I wonder how long it will be until all the homeless dudes have websites with Paypal "Donate" buttons on them...

Or maybe they'll take those rfid credit cards that are getting popular... Just wave your keys at them as you pass by...

'Twas a hectic week.

So now it's a lazy Saturday decompression day.

I've got a few irrigation thingies to fix in the front yard, and I've gotta put the car up on blocks and see what this oil leak is all about.

We just finished putting Da'moose's computer together and moving it upstairs.

The downstairs room still looks like a train wreck. It looks like maybe six people moved in, instead of NailinCoffin and I moving back from SoCal, which is what really happened.

- Yesterday we planted three tomato plants, a butter-nut squash plant, a bell pepper plant, a chile plant, a cucumber plant, and some oregano.

- Today TSG left for Oregon.

- Today I started full-time employment.

- Yesterday was the feast day of St. Isidore the Farmer, and of his wife, St. Maria. We had an engagement blessing at St. Rita's, where it was also St. Rita's feast day.

Well, TSG left about an hour and a half ago... I'm already on my second beer...

Ginger beer, that is.

I'm back at work in 'The Office,' where I'll be doing database work and so forth for about two-thirds of the Summer, at least. Meanwhile, TSG is purusing a job on an essential oils farm in Oregon, painfully far away... Sigh...

And now the job search begins in earnest...

Not really, because TSG and I both have jobs lined up, but not long-term jobs. And we also have to find a place to live after we get married...

I did some work on the irrigation systems here at home yesterday, and I think we might go and get some plants and do some gardening together in an hour or so.

And we never have to go back to Southern California (if we don't want to).

Yesterday we "borrowed" the three C boys and went on a hike with them. Their ages are 9, 6, and 4, and we hiked more than two miles. We spotted a pair of deer, one buck one doe, squirrels, cows far off in the distance, and all sorts of bugs, bees, and insects. We also saw a red-tailed hawk a close range, and a few other small hawks, as well as buzzards and turkey vultures. After we reached The Painter's Shack, we collected a few good sword sticks and waged war on the brambles and thistles and each other on the way down.

Went to visit some friends last night... They live on the university campus of CSU Channel Islands, which, incidentally, is quite nice...

The cactus-covered hills and red, chiseled and pock-marked rock give the land a true feeling of southern California.

I'm moving out of southern California for the last time a week from tomorrow.

Right now it is time for my last two classes of my college career, and, true to form, I am sitting in the coffee shop in Santa Paula, crusin' blogs.

I feel that this is a more fitting end to my college career than actually attending those classes. This way, my college career ended this morning on a bright note with Mr. Collins and Einstein.

Not with a bang, but with a whimper.

TSG, on the other hand, has had her last two consecutive classes at La Cabaña. I'm about to go join them over there, because it's "more of a party than a class," as her prof just remarked.

We are skipping out on our college graduation.

When we mention this to people (our friends) we generally get one of two reactions:

(1) Right on!

or

(2) No! You can't do that!

I think most of our parents didn't go to theirs', and we certainly don't feel any obligation to the school, or even really to our current class (excepting certain members, whom we love).

And we feel that getting our diplomas from Mimi (on next Thursday!) is even more symbolic than getting them from the dean.

My last TAC Seminar EVER is in 45 minutes... The Phaedrus...

And now I'm back at my favorite (and the only) WiFi-enabled coffee shop in Santa Paula, contemplating my soon-to-be-executed "last move out of southern California," which is scheduled ten days hence.

Wow, it was a whirlwind weekend in San Fran. I think we counted 16 people over for dinner on Saturday night, and the connections and relations and so on between all of them was staggeringly complex.

I was introducing my Kenyan former roommate's mother to my fiancee's father's brother-in-law. Seriously. And that was only the beginning of the mayhem.

It was great crowd and a great time.

Been up north, just about to head down south. Two weeks less two days and we're college grads!@

Tomorrow we head north (again) for (another) party in San Francisco.

Last weekend we left here at 4am, arrived in Santa Clara - at the INCREDIBLY beautiful Santa Clara mission - attended the wedding, the reception, and so on, and then headed back down here, arriving at 10pm.

This weekend will be a little more sane, though we are taking an almost full load of stuff (after trying to throw out or give away most of it)...

We had the faculty/staff vs. senior class softball game yesterday, and us, the senior class, won for the first time in nine years, thanks mostly to the leadership of one TONK.

We played seven innings in the on-and-off-rain, and then had hamburgers and then burned our thesis drafts in a fifty-gallon metal drum...

I did not know...

...that they were different words.

I keep having lots of Bloggable Thoughts (tm), but usually I'm nowhere near a computer. One of these is:

I've always thought that if you need to know something, all you have to do is go to daily mass, and you'll know.

Yesterday was like a record day in terms of people asking me to do thing for them. Something like 18 people asked me for seperate things, all day long. And it continues today! Several of the things I actually receieved compensation for, so that was good, but I said "OK" to too many things! Like my mother says, "No" is a complete sentence.

TSG and I went for a long, romantic walk this morning... We were going to go for a short, romantic jog, but we stopped to smell the flowers.

There were orange ones, and yellow ones (on three different bushes and plants), pink and white ones, purple and white ones, and some pale blue ones.

On the way down the final hill, we gathered bouquets of sage, lavender, and some other sweet-smelling herbs to hang and dry in our room.

We saw a squirel, a bunny, a mole (dead), lots of quail, other birds... A ripe avocado that TSG stepped on... And we made baby footprints (with our hands) in the mud along the side of the trail...

We've already been back here TOO LONG. Aaugh.

My very sunburned back turned into a very itchy and red back for a night or two, but it's better now. And I have a leg up on my California friends for the Suntan '06 season.

We are back from Florida, and back to work, although we don't have classes (UGH!) till tomorrow. It's okay though, by the time we realize that we are back it will be the weekend.

I got my tax return (federal) on 4/14, the day BEFORE tax day!

Florida here is not too hot or humid, - it's just enough to make you want to go swimming all the time. However, it being only April 17th, I can imagine that the summers here must get terrible.

And I feel that the in-laws have fully accepted me into their family. I won't say how I know this just yet, but...

Now that all the split ends are off my hair, it curls better!

We went to a coffee shop here in Pensacola... It's called Bad Ass Coffee Company, but it's not a funkycoolhipindependent coffee place, but a franchise... Ah, well, it had good coffee, okay sandwiches, and a terrible big-screen tv showing an awful gameshow.

But the company (we brought) was AWESOME.

I GOT A HAIRCUT TODAY!

Actually, I got MOST of them cut...

Spellcheck in Thunderbird just corrected my spelling of "Y'all."

We.Are.In.Florida.

I really don't feel like a student.

Of course, that's not really a NEW feeling...

I've been working, remotely, on computers all day. I read Edward Abbey until late in the night, and slept in this morning. We went visiting friends in town, bringing them coffee, and we rushed back for my class, which was canceled. I think we're still kind of getting caught up from sleep-dep on the weekend, and we're getting ready for our Florida adventure tomorrow.

I'm trying to find some time to get both me and TSG up here for a few days...

I'm thinking right after school, when she and I drive up to my folks house, and then when she continues on to Oregon that I will go with her, and we could spend a day or two at Mt. Tabor on the way up.

I've also got lots of relatives and friends that I haven't spent time with at all recently...

We hung out in Tehachapi all weekend with a big group of friends and their family. Every night we stayed up late chatting and socializing, and all day we played with the kids, mostly a 4yo and a 2yo and their 10-month-old baby sister, who goes by either "Baby Sister" or "Princess."

Good times.

And we are ready to get away from all the rain for a few days. We're preparing to make the most of the sun in Florida, although the last time we went their they had a hurricane, just for us. So we'll see...

Off to visit the B's for the weekend!

The snow has stayed on Topa Topa for four or five days! Despite all this newfound California sun!

I ordered two books and a cd from Amazon on Feb 18th.

I have received ONE of those books.

How can this company stay in business?

I like it as a marketplace for the used book vendors... THEY deliver their books and such ASAP, 'cause their reputation depends on it.

Amazon is good for finding rare things, but they stink as far as getting them to you.

I have quietly been assembling a smörgåsbord of climbing gear.

I sold a hard drive on ebay a while back, and I let the paypal payment just fester in my account while I searched and searched for good deals on climbing gear.

In fact, I searched so much that it would have been better financially to WORK all that time and simply buy, flat-out, mindlessly, top-of-the-line gear. Oh well. Now I have items with character.

I have an olive print chalk bag, some 7-year-old ex-rental climbing shoes, and a Singing Rock harness.

And I oh-so-want a Black Diamond ATC Belay Device. An a D Carabiner, also for belaying.

AND we've already had almost TWO sunny days in a row! We may actually get to go climbing this month!

I went to work right after class, so I didn't even realize TODAY IS FRIDAY! Woo-hoo!

I've gotta start working out more than once every 2.5 weeks, 'cause then when I do work out, I'm sore for 5 days...

Anyways, TSG and I finally got all her parents' stuff moved out of the storage unit and in the moving truck so that it can all be shipped to their new (Florida) address. Sweet.

Tomorrow, after class, we are going up into the mountains to visit some friends. We are taking the little truck because, unfortunately, the Silver Bullet has a problematic steering rack. I am researching and ordering a new one and hopefully I can install it by Eastertide, so my brother can drive home in it.

Four more days of class and we'll be in Florida for almost a week.

Fourteen more days of class and we'll be college grads, and we won't ever have to come back to this infernal place. I can't wait.

I had a whirlwind trip up to San Francisco... put in 16+ hours of work, turned around and headed down.

TSG's defense was yesterday, Stevo's today. They both passed, which is all we care about right now.

Only 16 days of class left.

We'll be in Florida for a week, starting next Wednesday, getting an early start on our summer tans.

I'm up in Marin County working on a few server installs...

Including some nice 64-bit machines...

Anyone need a new used laptop?

It's actually pretty fast and peppy and that sort of thing... And it's a tough one.

19 days of class left, after today...

TSG and I discovered a 5:30 pm mass in the area that WE DON'T HAVE TO WEAR A DRESS TO. So we have been going there the last few days, instead of to campus. The mass is said in English, which is nice, and by a nice old Irish (we think) priest who dispenses with the whole affair in about 29 minutes. And then they all say evening prayer, or like last night, stations of the cross in Spanish.

It's raining like the dickens here!

We read Eliot's The Wasteland last night for seminar...

22 days of class left after today...

Someone at the coffee house that I'm at is playing Halflife on his laptop...

I saw my first HUMMINGBIRD of Spring today. I know other people have seen them around in the last week or so, but this was the first time I saw one.

I had my thesis "defense" yesterday, and it went well.

Now I just have to show up for enough classes to pass... and I'm done.

Thesis defenses start(ed) today.

Mine is the day after tomorrow.

I need to write a preceses of about 250 words, sort of a caveat emptor for those tutors elected to read and attack -- the opposite of defend -- my thesis.

I'm thinking that it'll be something like a description of how my thesis really only pertains to natural theology, the realm of philosophy as it deals with God, not the realm of Faith. Because I can envision it being attacked on those grounds...

Incidentally, here is my thesis, for what it's worth. I don't think I'm terribly impressed or satisfied by what it turned out to be, but I think that it will do.

I was going to write a big long tirade about how Chase bank (affiliated with Amazon for their VISA card) charged me a horrendous late fee when it was Amazon's fault for not reversing the charges on a non-shipped order fast enough, but when I called up the bank, the first thing they did was waive the fee, before I even had a chance to complain... The conversation went something like this:

I was a little bit stunned. I was ready to cancel the whole card, and ready to be fuming angry at them, and then...

It's a good customer service trick they got going there...

And probably good financially, too. Many people probably just pay the thing, and the ones who don't get endeared to the whole system so that they can have their money sucked out of them later, like a thin-skinned tourist in Kisumu...

Up at Crashbox's working on some website stuff...

...uh-huh...

TSG and I get a lot of comments about looking like brother and sister...

-from my TSG

We graduate two months from today!!!

Man, it's a relief to have that blessed thesis done.

TSG's mother found this a while ago. We were going to conduct our own road tests, when we were going cross country last summer, but we never bothered.

Whew! Theses are DONE as of 11:45 pm last night. The party went till almost 3 am, I'm told. TSG and I left at 1:20 am, and the Dean was still there when WE left.

(I didn't dump any ice water on him this year, though I thought about it.)

So now, life gets better and better.

Automotive report: I put a new battery in TSG's truck today; one of the cells tested as dead and I was only getting 11 or so volts, and each time I tried to crank the engine, it scuddered. So now it's much better, and it has a new, much tinier battery.

Now I've got a lot of computer work to do, and some websites to design, and some money to earn, CAUSE WE'RE GETTING MARRIED!!!

Theses are due for good in 12 hours.

Seen on the license plate of an older Caddie in Santa Paula today:

WYRUFAT

The thesis is due this coming up Sunday, and of course there has been lots of excitement surrounding that...and other things.

I had a dream that I was a journalist attached to a Marine squad in 1989, I think maybe in Iraq, and after a firefight which wiped out everyone who was with us except me and one other fellow, I had to talk him out of suicide.

We made it safely down the coast and back to school last night. We were in bed by two am.

Back to the grind again, but not for too much longer. We're almost done.

So I emailed my advisor - a still admittedly rough - draft last night at 1:29 am.

I've got some reworking, some references to look up, and then whatever changes the advisor recommends, but I'm done for now, until I discuss it with him...

This is exciting...

We spent all day at the Fairfax outpost of Marin Coffee Roasters, working on our theses. TSG just emailed her "next-to-last" draft to her advisor, I am a few hours of proof-reading/editing behind her... So I'm still going to work hard here and try to finish before (the rest of) the dinner guests arrive. It seems that most of Marin County now knows I'm here, so I've gotta rush and finish the thesis before the party party party starts...

This post snuck in when I should be doing my thesis...

Know what I've started doing? I've started cleaning not only the outside of my car's windows with the squeegee at the gas station, but also the INSIDE as well. Yeah...

We already have the national Do Not Call List. How about a national "Do Not Email" List?

Today, we finish our theses.

It's another belabored thesis day in Fairfax, which means that we don't really get out of the house... But we've been more productive today than yesterday, which was kind of a slump, after two really good days...

We are on strict socialization prohibition until our papers are done...

So remember that thing I was selling on Amazon? Well, I sold it to a guy in Nigeria! Now I have to go figure out how to ship it to him...

I wonder if writing and typing use different parts of the brain... I'll bet they do...

...should visit this guy more often!...

Made it to the '30 from the '3060 in six flat. Gunna settle in and finish up the theses while we're here. And we're gunna be here for 11 days. Which is sweet. Cause I was about to crack down there at school.

Why selling things on Amazon is better than selling them on eBay:

-No fees until you sell the blessed thing
-Shipping credit!
-No Paypal taking a chunk out of your money, they put it right into your checking account

See what I'm selling on Amazon...

Put new strings on TSG's guitar and played and played...

I now have a puncture wound on my left thumb, a huge blister on my right thumb, and hamburger hands in general...

The hills around school are covered in snow, and it has been cold, cold for the last few days...

I am so glad to have finished that week of school.

Now I've got a few things to do, a thesis draft to crunch out, and a road trip to go on.

46 days of class left in my undergraduate college career.

15 of which I can skip and still graduate.

It's not that I'd do that, it's just a comforting thought.

I am now making 4.5% on my online money market account.

The bank that I chose to open a savings money market account (after long hours of painstaking research) I have barely had contact with. I think I may have mailed or faxed them an initial authorization page or something, and maybe talked to them on the phone once... But other than that, all of my interaction with them has been through the internet, either their website or email, for the last two years.

That's pretty remarkable.

(There is a "Refer-a-Friend-and-get-$20-each" link...)

When you get off the beaten track of the internet, it's amazing how many poorly designed sites there are... The market is still there for professional and semi-professional website design, although the monetary cost of design has fallen. With tons of people now designing their own websites, there are now tons of crappy websites in existence.

Two more school days in this week.

President's Day on Monday.

Don Rags the week after.

Time to crunch out the last few revisions of the ol' thesis.

HAPPY SAINT VALENTINE'S DAY!

TSG found an article about this guy in one of the trashy magazines that lie about the house she house-sits.

I happen to be reading A Walk Across America, which chronicles a slightly different trek.

For one thing, Peter ran 11 miles every day BEFORE setting out, and The Fat Man couldn't even walk to the eatery. Peter Jenkins AND Cooper together weighed about HALF of what he weighed.

I feel like I'm getting sick again. Too little sleep for too many days. And the weather is hot, though it's supposed to cool off for the next couple days and then rain on the weekend, which will ruin weekend climbing plans.

Ah well...

TSG and I are planning on extending the President's Day holiday and merging it with TAC's Don Rags next week in order to get enough time for a San Fran-Thesis-Getaway. We'll see what happens.

I want to learn it and Japanese.

Does my blog reflect that it's the weekend? Can you tell??!

...found this in my notebook this afternoon...

You can smell the ocean from campus. The air has drifted in from the coast, and it calls us, lingering here, drawing us to the ocean...

According to our beloved CoffeeBoy, a twelve-ounce cup of drip coffee has twice as much caffeine as a double-shot of espresso.

Well, The Random Englishman came down last weekend and we drank enormous amounts of coffee and exhibited the most ADD behavior I have ever heard of.

Somewhere between heading down to the classroom to pound out some drum n' bass and watching Peter D sweat and labor over removing a rock wall, we ended up in Santa Paula loading chairs into the back of a little green pickup for Joe T.

There were about 18 other things in there, too. Hey, wanna go ride bikes?

We are all gathered at the Santa Paula Coffee Shop working on laptops and theses (<-- the plural of thesis)...

This is the first post from the new server... It's taken me a long time to get it over here, and, most likely, things will be a little strange as I convert Intel/MS specific php to Redhat... But bear with me. And update your links: some of you have me as yourcomputergenius.com/ec or computergenius.net/ec, but the correct url is http://equivocalcatharsis.com.

This is the first post from the new server... It's taken me a long time to get it over here, and, most likely, things will be a little strange as I convert Intel/MS specific php to Redhat... But bear with me. And update your links: some of you have me as yourcomputergenius.com/ec or computergenius.net/ec, but the correct url is http://equivocalcatharsis.com.

This is the first post from the new server... It's taken me a long time to get it over here, and, most likely, things will be a little strange as I convert Intel/MS specific php to Redhat... But bear with me. And update your links: some of you have me as yourcomputergenius.com/ec or computergenius.net/ec, but the correct url is

http://equivocalcatharsis.com.

This is the first post from the new server... It's taken me a long time to get it over here, and, most likely, things will be a little strange as I convert Intel/MS specific php to Redhat... But bear with me. And update your links: some of you have me as yourcomputergenius.com/ec or computergenius.net/ec, but the correct url is

http://equivocalcatharsis.com.

This is the first post from the new server... It's taken me a long time to get it over here, and, most likely, things will be a little strange as I convert Intel/MS specific php to Redhat... But bear with me. And update your links: some of you have me as yourcomputergenius.com/ec or computergenius.net/ec, but the correct url is

http://equivocalcatharsis.com.

This is the first post from the new server... It's taken me a long time to get it over here, and, most likely, things will be a little strange as I convert Intel/MS specific php to Redhat... But bear with me. And update your links: some of you have me as yourcomputergenius.com/ec or computergenius.net/ec, but the correct url is http://equivocalcatharsis.com.

This is the first post from the new server... It's taken me a long time to get it over here, and, most likely, things will be a little strange as I convert Intel/MS specific php to Redhat... But bear with me. And update your links: some of you have me as yourcomputergenius.com/ec or computergenius.net/ec, but the correct url is http://equivocalcatharsis.com.

This is the first post from the new server... It's taken me a long time to get it over here, and, most likely, things will be a little strange as I convert Intel/MS specific php to Redhat... But bear with me. And update your links: some of you have me as yourcomputergenius.com/ec or computergenius.net/ec, but the correct url is

http://equivocalcatharsis.com.

This is the first post from the new server... It's taken me a long time to get it over here, and, most likely, things will be a little strange as I convert Intel/MS specific php to Redhat... But bear with me. And update your links: some of you have me as yourcomputergenius.com/ec or computergenius.net/ec, but the correct url is

http://equivocalcatharsis.com.

This is the first post from the new server... It's taken me a long time to get it over here, and, most likely, things will be a little strange as I convert Intel/MS specific php to Redhat... But bear with me. And update your links: some of you have me as yourcomputergenius.com/ec or computergenius.net/ec, but the correct url is

http://equivocalcatharsis.com.

This is the first post from the new server... It's taken me a long time to get it over here, and, most likely, things will be a little strange as I convert Intel/MS specific php to Redhat... But bear with me. And update your links: some of you have me as yourcomputergenius.com/ec or computergenius.net/ec, but the correct url is http://equivocalcatharsis.com.

This is the first post from the new server... It's taken me a long time to get it over here, and, most likely, things will be a little strange as I convert Intel/MS specific php to Redhat... But bear with me. And update your links: some of you have me as yourcomputergenius.com/ec or computergenius.net/ec, but the correct url is http://equivocalcatharsis.com.

This is the first post from the new server... It's taken me a long time to get it over here, and, most likely, things will be a little strange as I convert Intel/MS specific php to Redhat... But bear with me. And update your links: some of you have me as yourcomputergenius.com/ec or computergenius.net/ec, but the correct url is

http://equivocalcatharsis.com.

This is the first post from the new server... It's taken me a long time to get it over here, and, most likely, things will be a little strange as I convert Intel/MS specific php to Redhat... But bear with me. And update your links: some of you have me as yourcomputergenius.com/ec or computergenius.net/ec, but the correct url is

http://equivocalcatharsis.com.

This is the first post from the new server... It's taken me a long time to get it over here, and, most likely, things will be a little strange as I convert Intel/MS specific php to Redhat... But bear with me. And update your links: some of you have me as yourcomputergenius.com/ec or computergenius.net/ec, but the correct url is

http://equivocalcatharsis.com.

I wrote a bunch of posts over the weekend, but didn't write them due to lack of a consistent internet connection.

But here's one irate remark:

When did the American public approve of "1-year agreements" and "early termination fees"?

Are we just used to getting trampled on by large, extortive companies? Are we completely reliant on buying things on credit? Have we lost faith that Americans determine what values are represented by companies in our country?

Time is over-ripe for a change of public values.

SCHOOL IRRITATION LEVEL: HIGH

The Random Englishman's in town!

TSG and I woke up at five to four this morning to take her dad to the airport. Now it's two-thirty and I'm sipping Chai tea, solving computer problems that are hundreds of miles away.

As soon as I'm done with that, I'm going switch modes and hats and go to work on my thesis again.

Because we just read Husserl, I am writing a "Train of thought in this Thesis" as a glorified outline of my thesis and its thoughts, arguments, and conclusions. This I will then give to my wonderful thesis advisor: target time 7pm tonight. Go go!

A PDA is a palm pilot.


If YOU think it is a problem that my girlfriend and I are holding hands, YOU HAVE A PROBLEM.


Deal with it.

At The Underground with TSG's dad... Working on our theses...

Cingular must have put in a new tower. Because I get five bars (full signal) all over campus now. Even down at the gate.

From last night:

Why is it that I am only really creative during some weird change of state? Like drinking a ton of coffee, or listening to music loudly (sensory overload), or staying up late?

I dunno... but that's when the muse strikes...

Well, we are plunging into another week at That Academic College.

I am up late - for a change - and working on my thesis (also a change, kinda...).

The winds are blowing somethin' fierce, tree limbs down, various plants of all size being carried to and fro through the air - that sort of thing.

I'm behind on the computer work, work that I/we were supposed to get done by the beginning of this year... Having encountered various setbacks...

TSG and I must be getting in better shape, because we hiked straight up the hill, and then later went running, jogging up another one, and we weren't even winded.

I really need to exercise, maybe because it helps get stress out, the stress that always builds up here...

Anyways, back to the thesis. More later.

Have you seen the Thames? I wouldn't swim in that thing!

When is the media going to STOP acceding to the terrorists wishes? When will they STOP publishing every snide comment to come out of that terrorist fellow?

You know what I want to see? On the fourteenth page of the paper? An obituary.

I received one of these from TSG's wonderful Grandmother for Christmas... So now I have joined that coffee-drinking elite: those who brew their own in a French press. I used it for the first time tonight, however with mate and not coffee... It is necessary that I obtain a small, hand-operater coffee grinder should I wish to use said apparatus for making coffee...

The noisy neighbors who keep me awake to all hours with their giggling, screaming, thudding, and shouting had the gall to come by and ask me to turn down my music. When it was barely even audible in MY room.

Sigh.

I turned it down...

We drove up to Tehachapi to drop off a now (lucky!) ex-student at her folks...

Then we drove her much-dejected boyfriend back to prison hell school here...

The dorm room's depressing, much as I've tried to spruce it up. Maybe I should get some plants in here and put more things on the walls.

I don't like this school, being here, very much.

There are just 71 class days left. And I can skip 21 of them.

You can always tell the quality of the student by whether he lists "classes missed" or "skips to go" on the back of his or her door.

I'm not really going to skip 21 of them, but it is a reassuring thought that I could. And still get my diploma. Which is all I want from here.

I have one class that it is simply amazing to go to, on account of the prof being incredible and the material being quite good, most of the time, and I have two other classes for which I also have amazing tutors (but the curriculum sucks).

This is what I am paying 23,000 hard-earned (some of that earning still in the future, #$@^^$!) dollars, I am going into debt for. I don't believe in going into debt. In fact I don't believe in a lot about the school, but for some reason, somehow, I am still here...

Took a nap on TSG's lap while she wrote more of her thesis here at the underground...

A bizarre, spiritual, drank too much mate, half-prayer half-nap.

Onwards and upwards.

Whew, this week really did me in. I'm tired.

Thanks (in part) to TSG's wonderful parents and their wonderful Christmas presents, Colby is my new favorite cheese.

I've been eating a lot of cheese before bed, so I've been have wild and more lucid dreaming...

I have these creative thoughts during the day, but they are stifled by other things, like class... sigh...

We are "working on our thesises" now, and going out for an Australian's birthday party at 9:00pm, if we can stay awake that long.

I've been working on my thesis! So has TSG! On hers, that is!

Should I respect people who "do what they think is right"?

To a certain extent yes, following one's convictions is respectable.

But if those convictions greatly differ from what is objectively true, then it is not commendable to follow them. It is, rather, one's duty to ensure that one's convictions conform as nearly as possible to what is really true.

Everything on the internet has a quiet, unassuming existence... An existence which could silently pass away, without any outcry.

If it were a book, at least there would be ripping and tearing of pages, or burning, or burying, or impact, or a splash. But with the intenet, nothing, silence. A computer turns off, and out winks all of the electronic information superhighway. Pathetic.

National Do Not Call Registry.

Favorite quotation from changing the clutch on Thursday:

"Hey, when I wipe my face on the car, I get the car dirty!"

Favorite quotation from the post-Mass analysis today:

The music was "musically very good, liturgical appropriateness not so much."

Still working at the office...

Did I mention that I went ice-skating (for my first time ever - but I'm a roller blader) while we where in Minnesota? And I LOVED it...

Got the Jetta's clutch all done, tip to toe, foreplay to afterglow, in just under twelve hours.

We both were completely black at the end of it; in fact all three of us were (Myself, CrashBox, & the car).

I took a few pictures, will post later.

The only reason I'm still up is because of those energy drinks and the fact that I can sleep in (a little) tomorrow. Before I head to San Francisco for the part of the weekend that I don't spend driving. 'Night.

Working on a friend's Jetta's clutch all day today. Briefly went up to ol' Silver and CrashBox knocked off the last of the two front brake discs with a mallet while I was doing tech support on da phone... So that's good. Worked out and ran yesterday, for the first time in a long time, my neck, of all places, is sore from the crunches, but mostly I feel pretty good. It looks like I will prob have to go home to San Fran this weekend to do emergency tech support server repair to fix the collateral damage from the Quickbooks 2006 install. More later.

Still alive. We are surviving the Minnesota winter (mild right now) and the whirlwind of relatives, family, friends, and meals. More later!

What if all the spam, badware, and phishing websites had to register ".con" addresses?

I'm working on the computer late at night, deep in the depths of the registry on Windows 2003 Server... My music files are interspered with music videos, so on the screen comes a live video recording of The Kingston Trio playing Tom Dooley; I see them standing there on the stage, and I think "Gee, I always thought that there were more of them."

Busy, busy again.

Spent a number of hours today working on the ol' Silver Bullet, replacing the front brake discs. I only got one done, and there was a while where despite all the grunting and pulling and pounding with a rubber mallet I really didn't think that the disc would ever come off. I kept double-checking to make sure there weren't any extra bolts I missed. I took off the wheel hub cover by mistake - when I was getting desperate - and looked inside.

My pneumatic floor jack leaked a significant amount of fluid after I used it to raise the car, so I quickly put jackstands under it and pondered the worrying puddle. But so far the jack still works, so I dunno...

Doing computer work from Ojai. TSG is house-sitting again and Crashbox said I could stay at his place while he's gone... TSG and I leave for Minnesota the day after tomorrow...

PAX...

I had a dream last night that there were little people - combination stick people - who could and would live ON you, around your waist, and whisper advice up to you from underneath your shirt.

So basically, the goal is to get every single person's net impact on the Earth to be zero each day. Or helpful to it. Then it will sustain human life forever. Or something. I think the goal is just to be good stewards of our home because God gave it to us.

In something between a standard fiasco and and DEVCON 3 national disaster, I just made a spinach salad in the kitchen. I haven't been in a kitchen, really, since the summer. And it shows.

Eddyways, I'm sure it will end up being fine.

Merry Christmas!

I'm going to grab (at least) two of the brothers and go biking or hiking (or maybe frisbee) with this guy in the city tomorrow. In the AM.

I came home Sunday night. Monday I worked, came home went to bed at 8pm. Tuesday I worked, saw G&G&UD afterwork. Wednesday I worked, and went out to dinner (at Insalata's) with two of my brothers and FK. Thursday I worked, and went over to C&D's for tead and such after work. Friday I worked, and went out to lunch with BP and his fam and one brother, and then worked some more.

I'm going to see another friend tomorrow, and then one two on Sunday on my way down. Well, one on my way down, and One who is my Destination.

I think I've worked more than forty hours this week and seen a different social party every day. Wow. And even daily mass. In fact, maybe that's what made it possible.

You know where I WISH I went to school?

here

here

here

It's such a cool town, too. I bought a Spanish classical guitar when I was there last...

Sending text messages all day - despite the requisite barbarism of the disgraced language which they contain - still makes you feel like the two intellects involved have been touching...

I moved the espresso machine across the counter, and it left a trail of little half-espresso beans behind it, like deer droppings...

I talked to a friend of mine who is pursuing a graduate degree in computer science at this university. I think he may be the first graduate of this university to be in a graduate program in computers.

Last night I had a dream about school and I hated it. TSG and I got pda'd for touching hands. On a couch in a new coffee shop.

Then I had a dream about a fast food chili place where subsequent customers dipped their faces in the same trough of chili to feed. It was gross, but Steve-O was there.

Climb up mountain.
Snowboard down.
Paradise.

I'd like to do that.

Seven Summits?
This is Fr. A's brother...

Why hasn't there been a large public outcry to eliminate porn on the internet?

Back at work again, this time after 8am mass (more sanity-conducive). The dark circles under the eyes are creeping back, and not seeing very much of my family yet over this Christmas "break" is nagging at my conscience. But what can I do, I'm a driven man. Driving toward my goals -- which are in sight and accomplished but for the hard work. Which I happily plunge in to. So, back to work...

My room is a messy splurge of computer parts, some humming and electrified, some dead and dormant, dirty clothes, cd's, and other piles of stuff. Tea looms dangerously close to the edge of a rickety collapsible table, hovering a meter above a humming hard drive. My brain is in shambles too, surviving the aftermath of finals week, a long long semester, and a few lifetimes' worth of sleep dep. I read Slaughterhouse Five in it's entirety today, in the last few hours, when I was supposed to be going to work. Now I'm late even for my planned late-time at work, but it's alright. It's vacation, supposedly. Maybe I can still get close to an eight hour day in.

Perhaps the New York City subway stike will serve as a wake up call to Americans that will go something like this.

"Unions? We still have those? Why? Let's shut 'em down!"

Insurance has replaced communal good-will.

Instead of the community coming together to provide for a member who has been struck ill or been injured, people now rely on impersonal assistance, assistance that they have paid for by paying into an insurance policy.

And this whole system is setup to circumvent natural human generosity and charity so that someone may profit exorbitantly off of it.

What if someone ran an insurance company that paid everyone back the part of their premiums that hadn't been used at the end of the year (or two)? Or just created a communal pool of money that only needed to be paid into (equally, by everyone) when it dipped below a certain value?

Greed has replaced good common sense, and a whole host of other virtues in our society today.

Ahh! It's late! But I'm working from home, so maybe I'll go in late tomorrow. YEAH, that sounds like a good plan...

I want to fisk this article, but maybe I'll do it tomorrow.

- Of course, that doesn't mean that the theory doesn't refute whatever criticisms the intelligent design crowd brought against it.

- It's just that science and religion, by definition, do not play on the same field. Science plays with material causes and empirical truths and theories; religion deals primarily with metaphysics and beyond.

Of course, religion has a trickle-down effect for those who are able to understand less and would rather believe more. That is, you can believe more than you have to within religion. People do this all the time: they believe - or 'take on faith' - what they could understand with their own reason. This is fine, but it does not actually limit religion in any way.

Aristotleanist refutation:

In the realm of western "science," all one studies is material cause. The existence of God and His role in creation is a completely seperate metaphysical question that this "science," as it defines itself, has no role in determining higher causes.

Science, then, by definition, can't conclude that God (a) does not exist, or (b) that He does not choose to work through natural selection and some form of evolution.

You gotta read this article.

So when is our society going to, en masse, rebel against advertisements?

Lots of thoughts, little time to blog. Working full-time in the office this week. Went to bed at 8pm last night. More later!

Merry Christmas!

Tomorrow is the shortest day of the year! YES! Then the days start get longer. YES!

You know what I want to do? Build a Stealth Car. You know, with all the funky angles, make it out of wood, the radar-absorbent paint: the works.

And then cruise calmly past the CHP, smiling slyly, as they frantically TRY to clock you with their lastest TWIN LASER radar gadjets.

Wow, I need to go to bed!

Text-messaging TSG like a fiend...

She hopped over to Bakersfield (ugh! Bakersfield!) to see an old friend with a new bebe...

Made it up the coast in (almost) record time, stopping in SLO to see the brother and sister-in-law in their new (soon to be old) digs.

Heavy rain along the route prompted huge electric signs to display dire warnings about the slippery-ness of the roadway. A half-dozen scattered accidents confirmed not only this, but also the sheer inability of Californians to drive in rain.

We listened to The Decemberists, The Rolling Stones, watched A Hard Day's Night, and then listened to Billy Bragg & Wilco's Mermaid Avenue Vol. II while shooting through San Jose.

I guess I have that itchy unrest that I sometimes get before I travel. Except now I just want to get it over with and get back, which I don't believe I've ever felt before on a trip and certainly is no way to treat possible adventures.

I take that back about never feeling it before. Childhood excursions with the fam, anyone? As Bill Bryson says, "I fondly remember..."

Eddyways, perhaps I'm still up because I slept in today.

Last night we jammed in Ojai, at Crashbox's pad, where we played every friday night last TWO semesters ago...

Had some good sounding tunes, but I want to start making a set list, and/or writing down what we play so that we can introduce new things and work on specifics.

Time to turn out the bug light and go to bed.

This dude's back in town. And I agree with him on another point. I think we all should look twice at whatever we buy. Most of that crap you (a) don't need or (b) can make yourself. (and so speaks a hypocrite, but still)

I'm packing to go North for a week: San Fran area. The predominant item I am packing? Pants with the seam ripped, the middle seam. From hacky-sacking.

Perhaps I need to stop eating so many fatty foods. And get more exercise.

Also, d'y'all 'member when Seldom went to da trailer park? Check out the blog mini-series here, The Trailer Park Years.

If it wasn't past my bedtime, I'd write a song about it.

Oh, and when a teenager-to-twenty-something says "party," they mean DRINK.

I'm itching to get on in my life... so I'm working on my thesis.

I'm switching from the Summa Theologica to the Summa Contra Gentiles in my primary working-from sources because I like the layout better (no crazy objectors), and because sometimes I feel like a Gentile...

I think Steve-O and I should start a frat next year/semester...

And I'm going to start posting ficticious signs about student government meetings...

I finished this semester of school at 10:30am, half an hour ago.

I know these things are silly but... Anything but studying, right? right? Aaaaah!!!

Your results:
You are Green Lantern

Green Lantern 95% The Flash 85% Superman 80% Spider-Man 80% Iron Man 80% Wonder Woman 70% Supergirl 70% Hulk 65% Robin 55% Catwoman 35% Batman 30%

Hot-headed. You have strong will power and a good imagination.

Click here to take the "Which Superhero are you?" quiz...

Besides, its The Prophet's fault.

I finally got the computer that drives the, hrumph, analogue electromagnetic music server, so that's all back up for the last day-and-a-half of finals week. I guess it will be flatlining over most of Christmas break, but then hopefully we will get some more people involved and give them room for their own, um, creative, output.

And there are still about $75 worth of books from Angelus Press that I desire to add to my library...

Well 2 3 finals down and 2 1 to go...

I feel the weight lifting...

I feel like I did before the plunge into finals week, and it's amazing how good it was and how good it will be at noon tomorrow. I just wish this was my LAST semester of college ever, instead of it being the penultimate one.

Do you know what I want for Christmas? Now ya do...

It's finals week folks...

Again the corpus of various blogging posts have drifted by me, calling out "post me, post me," and I have turned nary an idle brain wave more toward them... And thus they remain unposted.

This finals week was scheduled to be a record easy one for me: no math exam, and theology already out of the way, so just a cake - oral - seminar final and a lab test and a philosophy test. However, I forgot to factor in the whole teaching-people business. Which is why I am still up at quarter to four am. Sigh...

I'm still alive! I had a bunch of things that I wrote (and meant to post) over the last week, but I never got around to it. Since I've been fighting this cold/virus/evil thingie I've been on more of a subsistence existence. However, now I feel like I've shaken off the worst part of it.

We have a day off today because it is the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, and the Pope has also granted a plenary indulgence attached to some activities today.

More later.

We made it safely back to SoCal from our Thanksgiving! trip. Unfortunately, I got sicker and now have a sinus-dealie head cold thing, and I'm coughing too. Eddyways...

It's cold, bone cold, with that piercing chill that only comes from desert mountain air.

Only eight days of school left till finals.

Our trip down here on the 101 yesterday was marked by an unusually high number of wrecked vehicles - some resting on their roofs (rooves?) - strewn on the side of the road. Periodically there was traffic, mostly seemingly due to these violent accidents, but overall the trip was not bad...

I can't wait to be done with this semester, and school in general. I feel like my life is being held in stasis much of the time here, but I sure do like being with TSG, just about anywhere.

I drove a friend down to the wrecking yard today, so that he could pay the tow truck and storage place and get his totalled car to the junkyard for permanent disposal. I tried to take a few pictures of the car, but they didn't come out too well...

My friend had hit a gravel patch, skidded out, and went off a cliff. Sixty feet and several rolls later he and his four occupants came to a rest - all of them amazingly unscathed. They clambered out and up the cliff.

I passed by a few minutes later, and saw two CHP cars with lights on... two of my friends standing there, their car conspiciously absent.

More later...

TSG and I are on our way up to my folks home, outside San Francisco.

This last strech of school stretched me pretty thin; I needed this break about three weeks ago.

Only nine class days left when we get back, and then it's finals and the end of the semester.

I feel slightly sick, and I slept for the first hour of the road trip, but it will be a good weekend. A small, family thanksgiving dinner is planned for tonight, and then maybe some good talk, a small glass of scotch, and an early bedtime. Maybe it will be cold enough to have a fire inside.

Then perhaps a day or two of sleeping in, a few hours of work on a laptop or two, and some thesis work.

We've been reading Bill Bryson (The Lost Continent) on the way up, out loud.

Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

...snippet from my thesis notes...

Fire! In our backyard!

We saw the Johnny Cash movie last night, I Walk the Line, and I recommend it to everybody, even my Mother.

My Thesis proposal was approved, accepted, and acknowledged.

Thesis Proposal

Introduction

I had a dream.

Set in San Francisco, the Random Englishman and I toured a combination of a fairgrounds, an old museum, and a work-working craft shop.

Later on, That Special Girl and I stopped to pickup this other girl, some kind of troubled, twice-removed, long-lost cousin.

She was the kind of girl who was perpetually miserable because she was always trying to make herself happy by doing things that obviously made her still more miserable. We asked her if we could do anything to help her, and tears welled up in her eyes.

She clutched her cigarette. She stubbed it out, brought a crumpled pack from her purse or pocket; drew another smoke out; held it up to her streaked face, lit it.

She sobbed, just once, composed herself.

"Just achieve your dreams," she said, her voice cracking, "and that will give me hope."

The college dean thinks my thesis proposal has a thesis in it. Now, I must get my advisor to (a) be my advisor, and (b) agree.

Anyone else up for a class action lawsuit against Cingular for the way they've used and abused their AT&T customers?

Peruvian/Bolivian Adventures of one of our own...

Marx would be spectacular if he wasn't anti-religion.

What a week, man!

Veinte-tres mas o menos... Cinco mas o menos...

1. Go into your archives.
2. Find your 23rd post.
3. Post the fifth sentence (or closest to it).
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.
5. Tag five other people to do the same thing.

tagged by Pilgrim

Don't get me started on this.

Well, I started getting started, but then I erased all of it, because it's so obvious.

You can't really reduce gun violence by legislation. That's a myth. Look at the numbers of violent crimes committed with LEGAL handguns, you DOLTS! This bill is NOT going to reduce illegal possesion of firearms, it is going to increase it. Neither will it decrease violent crime. End of story.

Make owning guns MORE legal, and you might begin to reduce gun-associated crime. Stop companies from flooding the ILLEGAL market with cheap junk guns and you might have made a start. Prevent children in ghettos from having guns. But don't take away guns from those who legally own them, and from those who are responsible citizens. Nanny-state politics. England here we come. Bah!!

These election results do not make me happy. Friggin' Californians. Acting contrary to reason yet again.

Fingers hurt when typing right now, after a night of 'binge' guitar playing. Haven't played in a while, but CrashBox and I tore up the fretboards while TSG and the girl she is babysitting had a "girls' night."

Mate, TJ's salami and Dubliner cheese, out to dinner pizza and Harp, more song and a teeny little nip of Jack Daniels to soothe the aching throat before bed, and it's back to work tomorrow morning and ... thesis.

Ahh, life ... is good.

Over at CrashBox's singing and playing some tunes. Just took a break and went out for pizza et beer at Gorgio's in Ojai. Having some good times; meant to do it last night, but got too tired from too many nights of too little sleep for too long. More later.

The clock in the bathroom read 3:4 a few minutes ago. I think the coffee this morning did something to my brain because I felt funny all day. However, things are good.

TSG is house-sitting (and taking care of a daughter-left-behind-while-the-parents-are-on-vacation), so we are over there eating and taking care of homework and such.

All day saturday was spent down at the tack house, working on a minivan with ReductioAdAbsurbam. The owner of the car? His girlfriend, or more unfortunately, his girlfriend's father. He had backed the car into a guard rail pole, yada yada. There, now the whole internet knows. Eddyways, as I was saying, we spent all day saturday working on the dent: pounding, pushing, pulling, prodding... We used a slide hammer to get most of it out, and blocks of wood and a heavy hammer. I still would like to obtain a dead-blow hammer - the kind filled with lead shot. After we got the dent sufficiently out, we sanded the heck out of it by hand, and with a motorized sander and then a belt sander. Next we used a ball pein hammer and put the dent back in to the point where we could bondo it. After three layers of bondo and much sanding, spraying, and so forth, we finally had a finished product, after about ten or twelve hours of work. Whew.

Meanwhile, in the classic November football "Turkey Bowl", our friends were throwing touchdown passes and breaking the noses of their other friends. Good times.

How is it November already??!

Whew. Just finished a massive tech support fest, sometimes with seven vpn windows open and three people on various phones.

But I got everything done, and I have class in five, so that's where I'm headed.

To find out the results of my Molly G final, where I took too much time and confused myself on two questions, but pretty much had everything else right... Oh, the shame. She'll have some words to say about that, I reckon.

Huck Finn seminar tonight at the F's house. With Knob Creek.

Thesis proposal still continues to tread water, barely. Gotta haul that thing to land and give it CPR.

TSG has jury duty this morning, so we got up and got bagels and headed to the VC Hall of Justice.

I'm sitting outside in a little park-like thing on a bench made of recycled plastic. The wireless connections here are security-enabled and I don't really think that I should crack into them, so I'm on the internet via my motorola v220 and a data-cable. The service is purportedly slower than the GC83 card I was using (which is on the EDGE network), but I find the reception/signal to be far more consistent with this device...

Anyways, we have big plans today: visiting the Cingular store, picking up a bicycle tire patch kit, and maybe some new running shoes. While I'm waiting for the morning's various civic duties to terminate, I will be working on some computer work and then some thesis work.

Maybe I'll even post some pictures from Florida later - my new old phone (I was given it second-hand) has a little camera in it...

School, work, thesis, etc...

On the bright side, we have a day off tomorrow, on which to play catch up...

I can already see the antitrust clouds forming on the horizon...

Back safe and sound in California, after flying 4000 miles away from the path of the Dread Hurricane Sir Wilma. Why 4000 miles do you ask? Because, courtesy of Continental Airways, we circumscribed the continent by having a stop-over in the oh-so-not-logical city of Newark, New Jersey. We were going from Ft. Myers, FL to LAX. Anyways... Here we are back, ready to plummet right into another week of school.

Things are great, but tons and tons of work - both thesis, school, and computer - loom on the horizon.

So I'm in Florida with TSG, and we happen to be in the only county in Florida that has manadatory evacuations because of Hurricane Wilma. The campus of Ave Maria University, upon which we are staying, feels deserted. Everyone has fled, either because of the hurricane or because of fall break being this weekend. We are hanging on until the bitter end, or at least until our flight leaves from Ft. Myers tomorrow morning.

Among other things, I'm flying to Florida today. I can' promise to keep you posted
(as I would have in the past), but I'll "see what I can do," to use that ambiguous and pernacious phrase...

This evening...

- Went on another Extreme Rosary Walk
- Lit my running shoe on fire while at the
- Social Hour by the fire on the patio

Monday, holiday, working, computer work, from my 'southern office'...

I just disabled the internet connectivity on a computer I was remote-desktop'd into so that I could run a program that required to be run without internet access... While I connected through an encrypted tunnel... I feel like a brain surgeon...

...Thesis...

Looks like this has become a weekend-only, no-content blog!

Things are going well at school, but busy...

More later...

So yesterday I had narrowed down my possible thesis topics to five choices; today I can only remember three of those five, so I guess I have narrowed them down even more.

The topic areas that I have are, in no particular order,

1) Calculus and the Mind of God
2) Essence, Existence, Name & Definition
3) Stewardship of the Land

I would really just like to do them all (a 20-page scholastic paper is really not that much work or that hard to do), but they want me to get an advisor, and follow deadlines, and string it out and stress about it...or something...

This should be fun, though...

School...Thesis...TSG...

Well, it's Thesis Proposal Weekend here at T.A.C. Woodsmoke tastes good in the air; the echos of the dancin' music float to my ears, and I sit on the patio of my dorm, listening to Townes Van Zandt.

Went over to this guy's house last night, socialized... Goot times...

Party this weekend southwards, but - and this is a BIG BUT - thesis proposals are due on Monday. And I don't even have an advisor, or a topic area, or a thesis proposal, so... it looks like partying is out.

Wow, folks. Things are hectic, but great. Thesis proposals are due a week from tomorrow. I don't get on the internet much, and when I do it is business, business, business. Right now I'm at the Underground coffee shop in Ventura...

Don't forget that it is 9/11 today.

Wow. A little inundated by the second week of school, but we all survived it.

E and I and Peter D- went out to sushi in celebration of making all of our classes. Peter had never been to sushi before, so we treated him to a Sunset Dragon and the Alaskan Rolls, and spicy tuna, and river eel, and a buncha other raw (and some cooked) goodness at Sushi Marina in Ventura.

I'm scrambling for a thesis topic. Still reading Adam Smith for seminar; I want to write up all his starting principle and then discuss if, how, and why I agree or disagree with them. I think a thesis topic that involves him and Thomas and possibly "The Philosopher" could come out of it: something about stewardship of the land...

Working outside of my new dorm, on the patio, where I get a reliable and consistent internet signal. In the time I've been out here, I've killed four yellow jackets, three by the Two-Cups Method (tm) and one by sealing a coke can with a piece of duct tape and then stomping it. I fed three of the dead ones to the ants. I think this campus has a wasp infestation.

Tuesday morning... I don't have class till the afternoon, so I may go back to my room and take a nap.

We've been getting up at 6:30am and going to 7am mass every morning, which works out swimmingly - as long as we actually get to bed by 10pm, which doesn't always happen...

This weekend I was down in San Diego for a wedding... It was almost a 24-hour trip; we left campus at 4:30am Saturday morning, and returned to campus
at 3am Sunday morning.

We are reading Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations for three seminars, and surprisingly, I find myself disagreeing with many if not most of his starting assumptions. Perhaps because I have been studying this guy's work lately.

Driving down to San Diego for the wedding celebration of two friends...

I survived the first week of school; there is hope.

Now I just need to find a thesis topic and start churning it out.

Things are as hectic as ever.

This is Day 3 (or 4) of school, and feels... very strange.

I have decided to stop asking myself "what the heck am I doing here" and to focus instead on the job at hand.

I expect blogging shall be light while I get accustomed to a new schedule...

Been going to 7am mass, starting the day off right, and in bed in between 10-11pm.

Right now I'm finishing up War & Peace for tonight's seminar.

She made it down to my house just fine today. Tomorrow: school.

About this time I ask, "What about that intellectual pilot light (tm) that I was going to keep going over the summer?

And why does the summer seem like it lasted 6 months?

And why do I still have a year of college left, at my age? And WHY am I going back to finish it? And...AAAAAGGGHHHH.

This is why I stopped asking why a while ago, at least about these things...

I'll be at school, in class, tomorrow. In thiry-one hours.

Beautiful day, sitting outside, completely wirelessly, with my Pete's coffee that I just made in kitchen... Neighbor's using all sorts of power tools to put a new roof on his house, by himself, a pointy, slanted one this time, because he had no end of problems with his flat one...

Doing some remote computer work, finally got The Office nearly up to 100% software license compliancy... Trying to figure out what I'm taking down to school, and how I'm going to deal with work while I'm there, and how I'm going to deal with being there at all...

Lil' brother headed off to school today. I'm gonna head down day after tomorrow. It's one of those transitional periods, where I just want to get on with it, move, you know, quit anticipating and start acting.

I like doing random, spontaneous, but kind-hearted things. Like paying the bridge toll for the car behind you.

Ah, yes. The Office, where I currently bill myself as The Illustrius Tech Department, aka The Computer Genius, has a new espresso machine. Which I just operated successfully, all by myself (unlike yesterday, when I had to have two people come to my aid). Ahh. Now if only I hadn't started working at 3:00 pm, I could be going home soon. Unfortunately, my 7 hour day ends at 10pm. Sigh...

So the power went off, randomly, in the middle of this late summer evening. Maybe it had to do with the beautiful sun set - the power stations just shut down to watch.

Anyways, I'm a firm believer that the American families ought to either pull the plug or have the plug pulled, and either be forced or force themselves to sit around and interact. We have had a few comical discussions in the moments that the power has been off, and it is amazing how much more quiet it is without electricity. There must be a constant hum or something when it is on, because it is dead silent when it is off.

Of course, I still have internet access, having a cell phone network card, and a laptop with battery power. And my APC UPS is charging my cell phone.

Well, goodnight folks.

So now it's the time of day that I get home from work, all fired up with grand plans of Acomplishing Something Tonight (tm), and so I wolf down my dinner, barely pausing to chew, and then...I...suddenly...get...tired... and...slow...waaaaaaaaaaaay...down.

Done with php coding, for now, anyways. The project I've been dragging out for so long (it seems like) is complete.

So now I'm cruisin' blogs, something I haven't done in a long time, prob due to lack of down-time and a slow(ish) internet connection (cingular).

But I'm about to go take care of the rest of my chores. Really.

And read the remaining 1130 pages of War and Peace.

It wasn't until yesterday that I noticed that a certain picture of this young lady and myself has been "gracing" the top of this photo blog for over a month. A not-so-flattering picture, I might add, at least of me.

So I canceled my East coast/New Orleans trip. Darn.

Listening to powerful Russian chant loud while coding php and drinking STRONG Guatemalan coffee, this is my saturday. As soon as I finish this project, I'm going to go work on the car. Hopefully it will not be dark then, yet, but if so, I will bring my powerful halogen work lamp out of hibernation.

As Woody Guthrie said through Billy Bragg and Wilco, if we could just find a way to stop making war profitable...

If we could find a way to prevent people from making money on war...

Aargh.

I had to abandon my East coast-via-Gallup-Dallas-New-Orleans-and-Memphis travel plans.

Too much work and other obligations are going to keep me here at home.

Sigh.

I still think that this is the summer-of-most-miles-logged-by-me, though.

I'll just have to make my (oft-postponed) East coast tour all the more extensive and long when I actually do it.

So, anyways, I'm back in the San Francisco bay area (as of late Tuesday night) and I'm back to work and such here.

And I've got a lot of adventure stories to tell, and I'll do that when I get the down-time. Or maybe, since that down-time never seems to happen, I'll just "make some time" one of these days.

My last year of school starts two weeks from today, folks. Wish me luck; fingers-crossed, I'm going to graduate - after the better part of a decade.

On the plane in Philly.

I just spent a while (and nearly missed my plane because of it) talking to a few military chaps in the bar at Gate E3.

They have some crazy stories from Iraq, and they showed me their IPD (I think), battle armor, which can stop rounds fired from an AK47, the 7.62 round. That is pretty amazing. One of the guys had been shot by an AK, but his ceramic plate had stopped it. He also said he has video footage of an IED going off, one that lifted a 60+ ton Abrams tank feet into the air, and flipped it over, killing all inside. And many other crazy stories.

I tried to pay for their beer, but they snuck back and paid off the waitress, paying for part of my meal instead! Punks... So eddyways... The waitress was cute, though.

So I guess that Atlanta, Georgia is experiencing a 'weather event' and that causes major pains for Delta passengers because Atlanta, Georgia is a major hub for that airline.

I'm hungry, slightly-hungover (i.e. 'feeling the effects' of last night's post-wedding-partying), about to be slightly annoyed by being more than slightly overcharged for beer at this airport bar, and looking forward to the "hot dog" they are about to serve me. The waitress is cute, though.

The military people who were using the bathroom were kinda funny. Both of them, after finishing up their toiletries, washing their hair, brushing their teeth, etc, and their other "personal moments" pulled out an extra-long piece of towel and cleaned the sink and the area around it. I was impressed; old Mother ARMY still teaches well.

Oh, and the bathrooms had "Auto-Soap" devices.

I'm again at the Philly airport, but doing more writing that work right now. The airport is fully of ARMY folk; I was brushing my teeth in the bathroom here at Gate E3 and there were a couple of them in there, getting cleaned up, just back from Iraq. Everyone was welcoming them back, I offered to buy them a beer, and they went over to the bar. Most of them are pretty happy about being back.

One dude came out of the gate off the plan and ran right into the arms of his waiting woman. Everyone in the terminal clapped, and I felt the whole thing tugging at my heart. It's good to see these men and women back from the fight.

Like that one dude always says, our freedom ain't free. Someone's gotta work for it, and it's good to know that these folks are doing just that (despite the questions about the morality of various conflicts)...

My office right now is a farmhouse kitchen, looking out over the red barn in the back. The sign that said 83 degrees a day ago said 94 at lunch today. Swimming at Salmon Berry Lake is a distinct possibility this afternoon. I gave the sheep some more water because it's so hot out. A blue jay is hopping around goofily (I'm on a making words up kick) hunting bugs, while a slightly gusty breeze blows dandelion seeds around. A butterfly, pale, solid green, flickers by, and I think I just saw a hummingbird out of the corner of my eye. Life is great.

The Eagles say this is a "crazy, crazy, crazy, life"...

...and Jeff (still) says he hates the Eagles.

Working from a coffee shop in Scappoose, Oregon. Finishing up a correction of a network backup program for a company in California, and also working on a shopping cart customization of an OsCommerce app for a company in Canada.

It's hot outside; I'm on my third coffee drink. This one's a sweet, iced something-or-other. It's this month's special, I dunno.

More later. (which is my blog's new catchphrase. sorry).

Oh, in other news, I did successfully get a ticket to PA this weekend, so I will be flying in to Philly friday night, and splitting rental car costs with a friend and heading up to Scranton, PA for the wedding. Anyone know where the party's at Friday night? I probably won't get up there 'til midnight. Also, if anyone needs a ride from Philly on friday, or to Philly Sunday afternoon, let me know,

Here's my nugget of wisdom for the day:

You can't save money you weren't going to spend anyway by doing anything with something that's advertised (other than a savings account or a mutual fund).

This after hours-days-weeks of searching for a east-bound flight to PA.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Drove through Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, and am here in Minnesota.

Multitudinous reports of my adventures to follow.

A lady just walked by and said "I like your office"!

I'm sitting in the grass, in the shade, outside the San Rafael Public Library, getting my white pants irrevocably grass-stained before work while my car is a being aligned and receiving two new tires a few blocks down the road. I'm doing some computer work.