I'm just sayin'

Know what i've never seen where i work? Black people.

hog heaven

Man, highway 4 between san andreas and arnold is just *saturated* with cops. Every day!
if you're headed this way, you better drive right.

denied.

The selection was made for the most recent position i applied for. I was not chosen. >sigh<

and on we go...

My new pal Perry

My neighborhood has an oddity. Besides me.

Every once in a while, I'll be conscious and outside early in the day. It happens less and less lately, especially when my wife's out of work, as we adopt the habit of staying up later and later. Occasionally, I'll catch a glimpse of an unknown fellow walking by. What's unusual is the gear strapped to his back.

He's got a metal-frame backpack, but with no pouch. Instead, it's got a heavy duty post, bearing about ninety pounds. Every time I see this guy trudge past in a solid, businesslike manner, I'm mildly fascinated (if it's possible to be mildly fascinated). I've made a mental note to catch up to him and ask him, essentially: "what's the deal with the backpack?"

Well, today was the day. I was noodling about in the driveway, and on he comes. I jogged up the driveway and matched his pace, and waited for him to remove his earplugs. I hoped I wouldn't startle him into using the short axehandle he carried, nor the not-so-short hunting knife that hung from his pack.

I struck up a conversation with him. Since I'm trying to post before I head to work, I'll simply blurt out the details I remember:

His name is Perry. He's recently hiked Half Dome. He walks about 28 miles a week, taking about 90 minutes or more per day. He has a job, but his morning walks don't eat into his daily schedule unduly. He used to weigh 300 pounds. I don't know what he his now, but I'd guess he's close to my 208, with a much higher muscle-to-flab ratio than me.

His exercise routine is flexible, mainly the weighted walking, but include a few days at the gym doing whatever strikes him. His exercise routine has enriched much more of his life than hiking outdoors, including family life and confidence for public speaking.

He invited me to stumble around next to him on another morning, if I have more questions. I do.

Gotta go to work.

a universal truth

If i'm doing 50 on a state highway in good weather, and i'm *still* diggin' you outta my grill, you're an asshole. Pull over & take a hard look at yourself in the rearview, 'cuz you're a dick and you need to get off my planet.

the ride home

I just want to do the fucking speed limit -is that so much to ask?

Hard to reach

For anyone out there who's been trying to get a hold of me, I apologize. My job keeps me away from home a lot (just about 12 hours from the time I walk out the door, to the time I walk back in it), and in the meantime, cell phone coverage is spotty at best, and usually non-existent.

But, it keeps me busy, my mood is up, my interview for a more ideal gig went well enough on Tuesday, and I've got today off to catch up with some stuff around the homestead.

Life is good.

working life 1

Life is good. The new gig is enjoyable, but the commute & pay are not. The scenery is *gorgeous.*

On to bigger & better, though. I have an interview today for a closer, better-paying gig. I really want it.

Web browsing - not just for Celerons anymore

Whew. When I bought this moderately cheap laptop, I skimped a bit on the processor and memory.

The conventional wisdom was that if your computing needs were light (e-mail, web browsing, word processing, etc.), you could be quite happy with a lightweight machine. If your needs were heavier (3-D gaming, movie editing, sound editing, etc.), you'd need a phat Pentium with buckets of memory to be happy.

Eventually, the day came when my laptop would bog down under the simplest of tasks, like e-mail and two web browser windows. First, I figured the hard drive suffered from the clutter of having too many programs installed/uninstalled on a Windows OS. Then, I assumed it was the grinding mechanical failure of the hard drive itself, which I replaced.

With my new, uncluttered hard drive, I'd open two Firefox windows, and time would stretch inside-out. Paging down would occur in jumpy fits and starts; switching windows became an exercise in patience, not an eye-blink. I realized that almost any window I'd open in Firefox would pour sand into my computer's gears, and wouldn't relent until I closed it. Not Firefox! I can't go back to IE, I just can't!!

I furthered narrowed down the problem to Flash doo-hickeys in web pages. Rarely are Flash components simple anymore - they aim for fast downloads, moving the bottleneck from bandwidth to processor, and dragging my machine to a crawl.

It was good news, though. Finally, a manageable point in the process! I slipped over to Firefox's website, and downloaded an extension that disables Flash components. Nice! Now, an icon sits where a cycle-gobbling Flash app would normally sprawl its fat ass, and if you want to enact it, just click on it!

Huzzah! Now I can load several pages of text and images, just as God intended it, without slowing my laptop to a time-lapse photography version of a normal PC operation. I am functional again!

Don't spank it in the county jail

Giving you more of what you read blogs for, I'd like to point out some trivial but humorous news:

Man sentenced for spanking the monkey in county jail.

My nomination for quote of the week: "During jury selection, McHugh looked at 17 prospective jurors and asked how many among them had never masturbated. No hands were raised."

What a great news day...

Papa's got a brand-new bag

I have a job, starting tomorrow. The money's not the best I can do, and the commute is a drawback, but it's a gig.

I look forward to having a regular schedule, putting some money into the kitty and dusting some chaff into the unemployment coffers, as well as the other positives regular work involves.

I remain on the market for superior gigs. I am proud to say that I have been honest with the current employer about the job's drawbacks and my abiding availability. This honesty thing just might work out. Now, to figure out the best way to tell them I already have an interview for another gig next week.

Awkward...

I support Bear Grylls - link to other blog

See my new post on the brewing Bear Grylls/Man Vs. Wild brouhaha. It pricked open a pustule of thought that I have been nurturing for a while now. I'm happy with what I've written about it.

Ozzfest report - the People

Amy took my humble ass to Ozzfest, and we had a great time at what was largely a Speed Metal Carnival. So many strange things...

Amy made fast friends with Daniel and his brother Tim. We were lucky to meet Daniel and Tim, as they were clearly on loan from an opium den in Sacramento. Daniel was an outgoing, thin fellow who had his hair moussed into stumpy horns and he had a wary look about him, as if the guys with white coats would catch up to them any minute and return them to the Psych Ward. Tim (whom I have renamed "Mungo" due to his gargantuan size and past-head-trauma demeanor) was much more Zen about it, as if the white lab coat guys were an eventual certainty and there was no point in troubling his mind over it.

We briefly met a former Marine who early in the day had already drunk enough to put him in the condition (familiar to me) where the mind still operates, but only on about half of the available cylinders fire. Five seconds of observation confirmed that the speech and major motor functions were online, but memory and higher reasoning had cardboard signs hung upon them indicating "Closed for repairs."

This meeting wasn't significant in itself, but there'll more about Full Metal Basket Case in a bit...

We made our way to the lawn seating, and about halfway into the show, three Pakistani-looking folks showed up, doing the same shifting and grooving as everybody else. Before long though, they stood out. Two of the three were a couple, a young man and woman. The first thing they did to set themselves apart was that the woman mischievously poured an ounce of beer into her date's butt-crack. Cute, and naughty, we all observed. He jumped and wriggled and boogied away from the frigid, wet wedgy just like you'd expect, and I thought he was mature enough to have taken this good-natured prank in stride. I was mistaken.

Minutes later, I see him grab not one but two beers (I'm told one of them wasn't even his), and dump them over his girl's head, in a very third-grade, overkill effort to get his girl back. Apparently, the chill beer on his vertical smile had taken its toll on his ego, and he branded himself a small-minded child in an attempt to salvage it. The excess beer (do you know how much those things cost?!) ran off onto the prone tweeker in front of us, soaking into the guy's shirt, hat and blanket. Fudge-Paki apologized to Tweekie, but not to his own girlfriend... He then spent the next hour dancing and thrashing and budging closer and closer to us, until Amy was grudgingly forced to put a foot into each of my jeans pockets and watch the concert from full-mount. We eventually moved. What a douchebag!

On the way back from the bathroom, I passed by Full Metal Basket Case, embroiled in a very intense, accusatory conversation with an angry little Metal Minx. I'm not sure what she was pissed about, and I don't think he had a clue either, but the snippet of conversation I heard was thus: "You know when you were talking to my boyfriend?! Well, that wasn't my boyfriend!!" And then she grabbed him, palm-up, by the lower jaw, and shoved his face back as hard as her poor impulse-control would allow. FMBC reset his cranium, and as soon as his glassy eyes reset upon the vengeful vixen, his right hand shot out in a looping-but-terse trajectory and clapped that bitch square on the jaw with the sound of a fastball hitting a catcher's mitt. Security and some do-gooders closed in to cool things out, and I continued on to my lawn seat, reminding myself that you don't go around assaulting a half-in-the-bag Marine and expect some twisted form of chivalry to save you from getting your eyes crossed.

Not that I needed reminding, but hey, we all can use a refresher now and then.

That's it for most of the people-watching. Oh, did I mention some strange boobs were bared in the name of Girls-Gone-Wild-type sisterhood (the best kind of sisterhood)? That 12 hours after the show, I could still taste the cigarettes and pot? That Amy is a fucking trooper for getting me home to watch my kid, even though she was near death at 2am? No? Well, they were, I could, and she is.

Ozzfest '07. What a show.

Camping quickie wrap-up

Camping up Highway 4 was a lot of fun. Among many things, I:

• Hiked the Emigrant Trail back to Lake Alpine
• Hiked the Gann's Meadow trail back to nowhere in particular, camped for the night
  
• Hiked a trail near Sourgrass and skinny-dipped in the North Fork of the Stanislaus River
• Crapped in a hole (out of necessity, it wasn't on my "To Do" list)
• Met a guy who introduced me to his brand of beer (Thanks, Dave!)
  

I took lots of pictures, but haven't sorted or cropped any of them yet. However, I have put the bite on my Dad for the use of his fancy camera for the next trip...!

Grizzly Adams ... out!

I'm going camping!

After months of waiting to scratch my itch - after months of dreaming of pine needles and rocks and masturbating to Man Vs. Wild, the time is right and I'm going to spend a night camping.

True, the entire family (and then some) spent several days at Lake Camanche recently. It was good fun, but didn't quite satisfy my need. Hopefully an overnighter alone on a non-weekend night will do the trick.

I haven't got much of a plan, but I intend to spend Thursday night at Board's Crossing (because it's free and far enough away), and check out some hiking trails above it during daylight hours. Beyond that, who knows?

My back hurts

It's been a long week, fully permeated with moving heavy shit around. It seems like everyone I know has something that no longer belongs where it is. My father-in-law had over 100 bales of hay that needed loading and unloading. I had a quickie job interview that saved me from the loading, but the unloading waited for me and the others tricked into indentured servitude.

Not only did my father-in-law have a hundred bales, the next day, his friend had another hundred the next day! Let me tell you, if slaving for another makes you feel like a whore, just try being passed around to someone's pals!

Then, my wife's (and my) friend decided to move! Luckily, she only owns enough material goods to bulge the seams of a one-room apartment, so our one trip from origin to destination was a big chunk of the overall job. Unluckily, when we arrived at the destination, there was loads of painting, moving and other finish work to be done to prepare the new place for human habitation! Lovely!

Add that to the dozens of bales of hay that needed moving down the hill and over yonder here at home, and you've got a spine that makes your chiropractor wince and question your lifestyle.

On the other hand:

Even as jealously as I guard my time (think "Gollum" from Lord of the Rings), I don't regret it a bit. My father-in-law, his buddy and my wife's and my friend have never failed to be there when we needed them. It was gratifying to help out when the call came. Plus, it's not like I had to take off work or something.

I better get going - I hear my Dad may be moving soon...

Clerical job, feeling a bit down

I am applying for a Clerk gig today. One of these things has got to hit soon. I can't go on not working, not contributing to the household. Web design and other fantasies are just the shits, opportunities appear teasingly from the haze, and then evaporate.

It's frustrating - people tell me occasionally how bright they think I am. I'll admit, now & then, I agree. I'm grateful for the encouragement, but I have a lot of trouble achieving results to prove that praise valid. A full-time job, getting paid what I'm worth and achieving the occasional success would go a long way.

Right now, it's pretty meager, and I've got to start putting something in the tank. This is getting ridiculous.

How's my kid?

I haven't spoken to my daughter since she left. Father's Day and my birthday have passed without her attempting to contact me (aside from a text message from her mother's cell phone asking for something her mother wanted, allegedly from my daughter). I am not hurt by the lack of contact, but I am disappointed.

I know her head is in a place right now where she doesn't give a fig what's going on with me, and I accept that. I was pretty up in my own head at her age, although I think she's taken emotional unavailability to a drastic new level. Where the teenage me had built an emotional moat and wished someone would cross it, she's built an island fortress, complete with surface-to-air missiles and chemical warheads and declared war on all who would trespass, but hey, you say potato, I say po-tah-to.

All I'm saying is that I think I can grasp the idea that hurt causes people to flinch away, and enough hurt over time can cause a flinch that looks more like an Iron Man Triathelete Competition. I haven't called her for a few reasons: one, because my inner child is bruised by her withdrawal. Also, because I really don't think she wants to hear from me, and the socially awkward exchanges are too much, including the ham-handed and obligatory "I love you and miss you's" that are passed so woodenly that you'd think Pinocchio's zombie corpse was on the line. I figure, why put her through that? Hell, why put me through that?

On the other hand: "Wow, nice example, Dad." If I can't stick it out once in a while and make a mildly difficult effort, what good am I? It's like that old saying: "When the going gets tough, the tough get inaccessible and apathetic." I can do a little better than that, I guess.

Still, an e-mail or a phone call would have been nice. My inner child is never too far from my outer asshole, and the two are in constant communication. Throw the kid a bone.

Ignore the pearls, swine, and root your way along

I made a phone call to a potential web client earlier this week, following up on a sales presentation days earlier where I presented two totally decent designs and two very low prices, $350 & $500. It was the first time in a while I was non-plused.

I was mildly stunned because I was expecting some questions from a client who wasn't very web- or tech-savvy. I was expecting some haggling. What I got was: "We're not interested because it looks a little pricey, and we don't think it will do us much good." It still amazes me; since I have either already explained these things to this negative person and can't go any further without being myself (read: "rude"), I'll vent here.

First, "pricey?" Half-a-grand or less for some top notch designs, plenty of pages to support a Ma-n-Pa business and some fancy back-end widgets to pave the way for easy client contact is such a gift of services it should be considered theft! This client should have greedily written a check and snickered all the way back to his/her dank little office, congratulating herself at his/her business acumen at having some money-hungry web noodge over a barrel!
I only quoted such a low cost (about half what the service was worth) because I have the unfortunate compound of excess time and a dearth of money. This cost and these services were definitely stacked in his/her favor, but s/he didn't see it. Should s/he ever stumble over a bargain like this again, I hope that she grabs it by the balls and runs like Hell.

Second, the value: the designs were templates from very gifted sources, had colors that matched his/her business's design scheme, and offered plenty of room for this business to market its regionally-based services and products. They looked great, and would represent her professionally and positively. One included Flash animation, Webforms for the easiest of contact, and an e-mail list builder, allowing the client to easily reach out to interested parties for pennies. There is virtually no web presence in this region for the clients' competition. As it is now, clients Web-searching for this profession will go to Lodi or Stockton for this need, or go with word-of-mouth recommendations of better-known local businesses, having no idea an alternative exists! Bah!

All of this rushed through my head in the space of 0.75 seconds, and it was all I could do to stammer out: "er, ooookay, thanks a bunch...!" and keep my car on the road. Having expurgated this mental soot onto digital paper, something occurs to me. If I can drain the venom off this message, I can send the remainder to the client in a final effort to change his/her mind. Couldn't hurt...

Bulking up

I continue to pack on the weight. I made 211.5 today. I have started running and walking recently, but God knows I had better start turning down junk food and embracing exercise more fervently. I'm not going back to 235. I'm just not. Hell, I don't wanna see 212 again.