1,2,3 Go!

Tara Larosa on The Rear Naked Choke

2008-09-14T00:47:00.001-07:00

Tara Larosa on The Rear Naked Choke

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Snatch

2008-04-26T10:53:00.001-07:00

Been following CrossFit.com, albeit a few days behind in the rotation. Instead of back squatting the other day though, I did an hour of oly lifting with the Atlas Lifting team at Fourth Power Fitness.

Can you say "Snatch"?

Good. I knew that you could.

Go say it to your mom.

Did your momma slap you?

Anyhoo my legs are still buzzing from an hour of nothing but oly lifting. And you know how that makes me feel? Super!

2008-03-23T09:22:00.000-07:00

On weekends it can sometimes be a bit hard to make it to the gym -- so I did some searching and came up with an extensive list of bodyweight only workouts from Eva T. That list, combined with my kettle bells and ring set mean I really have no excuses if I can't make it to class. Helen leaps to mind, using the rings for pull ups.

There's always something you can do, even if all you have is you. Push ups, situps, pull ups, burpees, walk, jog, run, sprint, squats, one leg pistols if you're capable. The list goes on and on.

**************

On a side note, I told a friend about the shopping on the periphery of the supermarket approach to grocery shopping and she's going to give it a try today.

2008-03-18T11:44:00.000-07:00

Still waiting on my CSCS exam results because they needed my CPR/AED certification. Faxed it today so I should have my results within a week.

So now we hurry up and wait.

2008-03-09T20:51:00.000-07:00

Down to 189 and 12% bodyfat doing CrossFit and a strict Zone diet

Back on Feb 16th, 2008 got my CrossFit Level 1 Trainer certification.

Taking the CSCS exam Wednesday this week and CPR next week.

Then the hard part -- actually getting started as a trainer. Looking forward to the challenge!

1,2,3 Go!

2007-12-11T22:50:00.000-08:00

Down to 202 lbs. Just deadlifted a PR of 150KG (330 lbs).

Nowhere close to doing the workouts of the day as prescribed by Crossfit -- but making great progress. Sitting pulse is now 58-60. Was 66-68 when I started.

From Kettlebells to Crossfit

2007-11-29T16:59:00.000-08:00

Three weeks ago I started Crossfit training at Fourth Power Fitness in Carmichael, CA. Actually - they do SST (Sports Specific Training) & Crossfit there, so I guess I'm doing both SST & Crossfit.

The kettlebell workouts are great and all, but you can only get so far with them plus I needed some human interaction. There's only so much time you can spend in an apartment before it starts to feel like a cell. Maybe Dostoevsky's Underground Man digs it, but not me.

Anyhoo -- The workouts there just blow the doors off of anything I've ever done. Sure, there were similar sessions in Warrant Officer Candidate School at Fort Rucker, but even those workouts were more limited in scope.

As for the results, since I started I dropped four pounds and cut my body fat by five percent while on a Zone-ish, South Beach-ish diet where the food intake is basically 40% protein, 40% fat and 20% carbs with a concentration on low glycemic index carbs.

I'm watching my portion sizes but not going hungry -- just being sensible.

Weight update & some MMA talk

2007-10-11T09:03:00.000-07:00

Current Weight: 213

I dropped eight pounds in the past 10 days. I also cut my body fat percentage by 4%. It would seem sticking to the RKC Challenge and doing phase 1 of the South Beach diet is helping. One more week to go on phase 1 from here and then on to phase 2 and more food choices until I hit my goal of 175 as walk around weight.

By walk around weight, I mean a weight that's pretty easy to maintain with decent training. If I were an MMA guy like Rory Markham, who is a king of cutting weight, I would be able to cut 20 lbs in a day and weigh in at 155 lbs and fight as a lightweight in the IFL. That means I'd be able to take on Chris Horodecki, Savant Young or Erik Ownings.

Correction, that means I'd be able to step into the ring and get my ass beat at 155, which is not really 155 btw. Those guys start sucking down sports drinks and pedialyte like its going out of style right after the weigh in. It's not the healthiest of things to do and definitely not for normal people who aren't in the condition these guys are. The question I always have is, how weak does it leave you?

I know right now that my heaviest kettlebell, the 70 pounder is way heavier now that I've restricted my calories. I'm not quite as strong as I was. In contrast to me, who is trying to burn fat, these guys are generally just losing body fluids, which can be replenished quickly. How weak it leaves you, I'm not sure. None of the guys we interviewed on the R.O.N. Show have talked about making them weaker. Maybe it doesn't or maybe we just forgot to ask the question.

If the MMA stuff interests you at all, you can check out The Ron Show or go right to the podcast page on talkshoe.

Or just listen to the show. There's more to life than just talking about losing weight after all...

Get stronger and lose weight with kettlebells

2007-10-01T18:05:00.000-07:00

Progress is being made. I've gone from 229 to 221 in a little less than a month. At the beginning of that same period I bought two 50lb kettlebells and a copy of Pavel's "Enter the Kettlebell". . Sure, the book said I should probably get 34 pounders, but my ego got in the way. Shocking.

At first I could hardly do anything with the 50 pounders. Presses were impossible, Turkish Get Ups were really impossible and swings were doable but smoked me fast, especially one handed. I kept at it though and went through the RKC Minimum program exercises 5 days a week and ordered a 35 pounder to use for the Turkish Get Ups.

The work's paid off. I've dropped 8 lbs and just got a 70 lb kettlebell because the 50's were getting a bit too comfortable for larger volumes of swings and presses. Next stop is the 88 lb one and I think that should be it for my lifetime kettlebell purchases. I'll let you know when I get there.

With a bit more progress I think I'll be ready to either BJJ train again or start in with the Crossfit WOD at Fourth Power Fitness in Sacramento . I was going to join earlier -- but I was just waaaay to out of shape. I would have gotten hurt in BJJ and probably put myself in traction with an SST / Crossfit workout. Soon though. Almost ready for the next level.

Diet wise I'm trying to keep around 1800 - 2200 calories a day with a gradual adoption of the Zone Diet as I learn more about it.

Anyone out there training with kettlebells? Doing Crossfit? Doing the Zone Diet? Buelher?

Sleep Walking? How about sleep eating?

2007-09-28T12:32:00.000-07:00

Any one out there sleep walk? How about eating in your sleep?

Late night eating has always been a thing with me. I've done it as long as I can remember. As a kid, I loved to polish off a bowl of cereal in the middle of the night. Usually it was a bowl of Rice Krispies with about 3 teaspoons of sugar on it. I'd let the cereal get all soggy and pound it down and go back to bed. Most of the time I was vaguely aware of my surroundings - but still almost asleep. And I HATED being interrupted while I was chowing down. Every now and then my father would get up at the same time or maybe I woke him up and he'd come downstairs into the kitchen and there I'd be eating my bowl of cereal and I'd have the most visceral angry reaction to it. Boiling over anger. All I wanted was to be left alone with my bowel of cereal in the middle of the night and here comes this intruder. I don't recall acting on it or saying anything during those times but it might be fair to say a "Go Away" or "Leave Me Alone" might have come out of my mouth.

I know, it's completely weird. Some sort of sleep walking snack fest.

Diet-wise, back then, it was no big deal. My metabolism was in high gear and I was super active with sports and just being a kid. We still played outside for the day back then. Remember that?

Anyhow, this late night eating / sleep walking chow fest is still around. It's not something that I do all the time, but is something that occurs when I am trying to restrict calories or am feeling a bit stressed out. I've woken up in the morning to find the strangest evidence of the late night raid that happened. It might be a cracked egg in a pot with a piece of cheese. It might be a cereal box with the bag ripped open and flakes all over the counter and Splenda scattered all over the place.

On the diet side, the progress I made during the day gets shot to hell when this happens.

On the life side I keep wondering if I'm ever going to try to start the oven or stove top and really cause some havoc.

On the psychological side of things it's disturbing because CK has caught me now and then during one of these raids and she says it's not me. Of course it's me, I'm right there, but it's not the me she knows. This guy is angry and even scares her a bit. It's the same deal as when I was a kid. Same anger, same inability to stop it while it's happening. I'll tell you what, it scares me too. I've managed to do this sleep-eating thing under sedation. The pull / trigger for the behavior is that powerful.

The thing is, I lost a ton of weight during WOCS and never took a sleep walking stroll to the vending machines. And that was a very stressful environment with a ton of activity and a calorie restricted diet. I also never did it during college.

It doesn't take Freud to figure out that this is stress related though. Here I am in the middle of a big life change and who knows how it's going to work out. Numerous life stressor calculators show I'm at serious risk to illness due to stress here with everything that's gone on / is going on. That of course, brings my ulcerative colitis into play. Is it due to stress? The short answer from my gastroenterologist, is "No.". Is it exacerbated by it? Sure.

So what's the plan? Well, I'm not so sure at this point. Some of the stressors will take care of themselves over time. We'll have jobs. I'll be taking classes towards my B.S. in Geomatics and things won't be so up in the air. In the meantime I'm going to concentrate on having fun and using this time off to my best advantage with a mix of activities, watch what I eat and remind myself to chill out.

Gusmao comes on RON Show - Wins IFL Championship for Pitbulls

2007-09-21T09:13:00.000-07:00

The New York Pitbulls completed an unbeaten season, topping the two-time defending champion Quad Cities Silverbacks, 3-2, to claim their first International Fight League World Championship, before 3,470 at Hard Rock Live at the Seminole Hard Rock in Hollywood, Fla.

AND THE RON SHOW WAS THERE THE WHOLE WAY FOR YOU!

Andre Gusmao (Rio de Janeiro) knocked out Mike Ciesnolevicz (Williamstown, Pa.) in the first round of the fifth and deciding match of the IFL World Championship in Hollywood Florida to give the title to the Renzo Gracie coached New York Pitbulls. Gusmao, btw was a recent guest on The RON SHOW.

Gusmao came in as the alternate light heavyweight in a team shuffle that started with Bryan Vetell injuring his hand and Jamal Patterson stepping aside and taking one for the team. The move paid off as Gusmao took out Mike C for the second time.

And nicely, there's going to be no long wait to see this great action for FREE:

The IFL World Championship can be seen on Fox Sports Net (Sunday, 5 p.m. in most markets, check local listings) and on MyNetworkTV (Monday, 8 p.m. ET/PT; 7 p.m. CT/MT).

Anyhoo - here's how the fights worked out:

No. 2 Pitbulls def. No. 4 Silverbacks, 3-2

170 lb.: Delson Heleno, Pitbulls, def. Jake Ellenberger, Silverbacks, via submission (armbar) 3:45, 2nd
155 lb.: Deividas Taurosevicius, Pitbulls, def. Bart Palaszewski, Silverbacks, via submission (armbar), 1:30, 2nd
265 lb.: Ben Rothwell, Silverbacks, def. Ricco Rodriguez, Pitbulls, via decision (unanimous), after three rounds
185 lb.: Ryan McGivern, Silverbacks, def. Fabio Leopoldo, Pitbulls, via TKO, 1:35, 2nd
205 lb: Andre Gusmao, Pitbulls, def. Mike Ciesnolevicz, Silverbacks, via knockout, 0:53, 1st

Preliminary Bouts

205 lbs: Jamal Patterson (Hoboken, N.J.) def. Chris Baten (Tampa, Fla.) via submission (choke), 0:56, 1st
265 lb.: Rolles Gracie (New York) vs. Sam Holloway via submission (rear naked choke), 1:49, 1st
170 lb.: Travis Cox (Naples, Fla.) no contest vs. Brad Blackburn (Olympia, Wash.) (unintentional knee to head of downed opponent), 2:32, 1st
155 lb.: Ryan Schultz (North Platte, Neb.) def. Aaron Riley (Port St. Lucie, Fla.) via decision (unanimous), after 3 round

Icky sweat

2007-09-12T14:14:00.000-07:00

A lot of people don't like to work out. They find sweating icky. They get wiped out. They want to lie down and take a nap afterwards. Worse, they feel like collapsing. They don't get the endorphin rush. They don't get a sense of well being afterward. They feel they are different from everyone else and they aren't getting what they should out of working out.

Well, when you're out of shape working out is going to be unpleasant and it's not going to take too much to get there. Simply put, you're fighting inertia -- your body is not used to the activity and your brain is not used to dealing with the discomfort. So, in the beginning you are going to suffer if you push yourself at all, but if you keep a consistent effort you'll never suffer so much as at the beginning. Keep at it and the rewards will come, and quickly in the beginning. You're not different. You will feel better. Now, if you smoke yourself, you won't, but a consistent moderate effort will generate that sense of well being afterward. Combine the workout with a decent diet that controls your insulin levels like The Zone Diet and you'll find yourself feeling much more even keeled than you have. And as you progress you will learn to listen to your body and know the difference between a hard effort and one that will crush you for the next few days. At the outset, it's going to be sooo easy to crush yourself, which in turn will probably turn you off to working out. As for the sweat - it's not icky! It means you're working! Good for you!

My problem has always been trying to reign in my workouts. I tend to go all gung ho and burn myself out. Not so much physically, but mentally I tend to quit after a few months because I was giving it so much focus and my mind goes "Ugh, that again?".

So, for me the trick is trying to make workouts it just part of the everyday routine rather than training for an MMA match. In other words, dial down the effort, dial up the consistency.

So here's what I'm trying to do:

Weekly:
Bike an hour
Swim an hour
Run an hour

Five days a week:
Kettlebell swings, presses, get ups, clean and jerks for about 30 minutes with varying intensity. Stopping when I feel I'm done. Only one really hard day.

Future workouts:
Crossfit training

VJ is back.

2007-09-11T14:32:00.000-07:00

Vanishing James was originally supposed to be a blog about what a pain in the ass it is for me to lose weight and share my successes, failures and joys and frustrations.

It didn't really work out that way. Well, I'm trying to reclaim that focus in the hopes of focusing myself on losing weight / getting in shape more and entertaining you all.

On the surface, weight loss is such an easy thing. The basic equation to solve the problem boils down to: Eat Less. Exercise More.

But there's a lot more to it than that though, eh? Well, starting tomorrow VJ is back with a focus on the weight loss struggle(s).

VJ is Dead, Long Live VJ

2006-08-21T20:21:00.000-07:00

Bye Bye Vanishing James, Mister JimmyJam has a new blog.

http://itsthekitch.wordpress.com

See you there.

Random Thoughts + an announcement...

2006-08-20T21:23:00.000-07:00

Thought 1 - This Jon Benet Confessor is a wack job. Dollars to donuts this is not the guy.

Thought 2 - How much worse can it get for Floyd Landis and his family? What a tragedy. Hopefully it's true that the main causes were not the doping scandal.

Thought 3 - I have been with Riz, or he has been with me for both the worst loss ever in Yankee history, the longest 9 inning game in Yankee and MLB history, not to mention a Jet playoff collapse. What's that mean? Absolutely nothing.

Announcement -- My friend and family and the very scant few of you out there that read this fairly neglected blog might know that we have been pursuing adoption. We announced it and started the process and you'll have noticed that the adoption conversation has fairly dried up until right now. Our thanks to all of you for not pressing the issue at all. As you might figure, we freaked out about it for a bit, and then CK was going to get a new job. The freakout combined with the timing of her new job put the kabosh on adoption for a bit. By the time we had our minds wrapped around and committed to it, life threw us a curveball. A nice fat one though that we can drive into the gap. It just makes sense to let CK get time in her position at work so when she goes back to work if she takes some time off that she can go back into the same position. So we have pushed things back about a year and are working with Spence Chapin to make that happen.

So, we will be adopting, just not as fast as we thought. Adella Jennifer Kitcher will be with us soon. :-)

Cheating Bastard or Victim?

2006-08-08T19:22:00.000-07:00

Given the witch hunt that's pursued Lance Armtstrong in regards to cheating during the Tour De Lance, specifically the charges levied at him by L'Equipe, a French rag and Dick Pound, head of the WADA; I was not going to be surprised if allegations were made about Landis -- who rode with Lance, and is an American.

Another American winning the tour, worse, one with ties to ESPY winner and Tour De Lance record holder Lance Armstrong is an anathema to the French. Well, not all French, but definitely Dick Pound and his crew.

Is it possible Landis cheated? Yeah. Thing is, it's retarded cheating if it was, because a one time steroid use is going to be enough to wreck a test, but not increase performance. That's according to Dr. Gary Wadler in an AP article published on ESPN right here. All Landis' other samples were clean except for that one day. Further - he knows they test for EPO, one of the substances found in his urine sample.

So, Floyd, if you did cheat, you are as dumb as you are tough, because if you did, they did not do a thing for you and you still won the tour and pissed it away at the same time.

Is it possible someone at the WADA is gunning for Floyd in Lance's wake? Sure. Just Google the backstory on all of that. They were after Lance forever. However, barring someone coming forward and admitting tampering, the burden of proof is all on Floyd, and unless he had some other samples taken and notarized on that day, he's got an uphill battle ahead of him.

Bob Roll from OLNTV.com had some good questions though -- and they need to be answered by doctors from the cycling equivalent of Sweden. Here they are:

Can one sample be nearly three times different in 24 hours than a previous sample?
Can the body absorb, metabolize and convert any substance into a controllable sample that has been recorded to be a ratio of 11 to 1 of testosterone vs. epitestosterone -- almost three times the allowable ratio in one single day?
Can any doctor explain the findings in a way regular people can understand?

You can read the rest of Roll's comments in this article on OLNtv.com. Here's my question, why only two samples - an A sample and a B sample? How about four samples? Two could be taken before the race by one anti doping agency two after the race taken by and and two after the race and those samples mixed up and sent off to different labs for testing. For so serious a charge, one would think they could afford the extra control measures. Of course my suggestion lacks some detail, but I think the general gist of it has merit.

Sigh. The French hate us winning their tour. Often athlete's cheat.It's hard to say I have anything but doubts and reservations all around.

Tour de France - Floyd Landis: A$$ Kicker

2006-07-20T20:09:00.000-07:00

Kudos to Landis for putting forth what every cycling expert has already called the greatest single day effort in Tour history.

I know I'd written him off after he bonked and lost 11 minutes to his main rivals along with the Yellow Jersey as well. To me, it seemed to say that he had not been riding conservatively so much as he had said and had finally hit a wall and put himself out of contention.

That's what everyone else thought. Except for Floyd. He destroyed the peloton and his main rivals today in an amazing display of guts, determination and focus. When the stage ended he looked in good shape and was waaay fired up for a bit after. The stage win put hims in position to reclaim the Yellow Jersey in the upcoming 56K time trial of Stage 19 -- a race event he excels at. Barring a crash or a super-human performance from Sastre, Landis should take the lead and win the Tour.

They (his competion) thought he was out of it and ignored his early, unconventional break-away early in the mountains of Stage 17. No one attacks in the lower portion of Col des Saisies, about 65 kilometers into the 200.5-kilometer stage. Away he went and they let him go.

Everyone wanted Landis to put the hammer down so to speak, a la Lance, and then just when it seemed he had no hammer at all, he pulled it out.

Way to go.

Tornado Hits North Of Elmsford.

2006-07-14T17:08:00.000-07:00

An F1 sometimes F2 tornado hit towns just a bit north of our home in Elmsford on Wednesday afternoon this week.

We'd been in a vacation bubble and had no idea it had happened until our car service guy brought it up while he took us back on Thursday.

To say the least, we were shocked and surprised it had happened. Apparently, at around 3 PM or so, the tornado developed on the Rockland County side of the Hudson River and raced across just north of the Tappan Zee Bridge and touched down in Sleepy Hollow. It then cut a swath across the county all the way into Fairfield County in Connecticut.

You can read about it here on MSNBC.
Westchester Journal News coverage can be found here

Backtracking the timeline of things, we discovered that the tornado hit just as we were on the "Twister" ride at Universal Studios. Freaky. As part of the experience, they show clips from the movie, including the bit where Helen Hunt's character speaks about how a tornado can miss this house and that one but come right after yours. She's right.

I got to see the randomness and wildness of the destruction when I drove up to work out at the NYSC in Hawthorne. The tornado touched down just east of the Eastview exit on the Sawmill Parkway, shreded all the trees it touched, cut across the parkway and through the exit, demolished part of a gas station, crossed 9A and somehow cut in between an Applebees and the NYSC I go to and took out the north wall of a California Closets building. Totally random. Totally destructive. The trees look like the trees portrayed during the Ardennes scenes in Band of Brothers. Exploded. Each one sheared off and spintered at about 15 ft.

I took some pictures with my film camera and if I can find a lab to print them at I'll scan them and post some here.

Happy Birthday, Jenn

2006-06-29T14:43:00.000-07:00

Happy 29th Birthday, Jenn.

Mom & Dad, Mary-Alice & Michael and a few other family friends are gathering in your memory today -- perhaps you know about it? There's a service with Father Rock, lunch at the Culinary Institute of America and then company over at the parentals. I know there will be fresh flowers on your grave from them and some other people that knew and loved you. As luck would have it, it's the first sunny day in these parts in something close to two weeks. I'll give you some credit for that. Thanks!

As for me -- I'm at work doing work things. I'm thinking about you of course, but that's not too different from any other day. I'm sad Jenn. We all are. God, we are so sad and miss you so much. Finally though, I seem to have worked past being devastated. The depression, the deeper depression and just when you thought you'd hit bottom and the bottom falls out depression have abated. Am I healed? No, I don't think so. Healing though. Getting better. Do I still have regrets about things between us? Yeah. I do. The difference is that I've learned to accept that. I try not to dwell on your untapped, unrealized potential or on how much pain you were in and how lonely you were or how frustrated you were. I know all those things were true and it hurts to know that but I cannot be consumed by it. I know you don't want me that way and I sure don't like being a wreck.

Anyway, I was laughing to myself back on the 26th of June, the day I spent most of my life thinking really was your birthday. I'm not sure why I thought that, but I did. Remember how I used to show up with a gift for you, on the 29th no less, with a belated birthday card attached? Or I'd be calling you and wishing you a happy birthday and you'd be wondering why? Speaking of which, I remember trying to enterain you and your gaggle of 1st/2nd grade friends in our back yard. Mom made me put on a clown wig leftover from your Halloween costume and I tried to be a clown with just the wig and perhaps some lipstick of Mom's I used as face paint.

You look really happy in the pictures from that day.

My one gift to you, if it is in my power to give at all -- is that you be happy just like you were then. No baggage, no crap. Just the happiness that goes with being 8 or so. Let the rest fall away.

Happy Birthday.

Love,

Jimbo

Not so big a confession

2006-06-26T19:42:00.000-07:00

I love comics. LOVE them. What a great, compelling medium filled with great story lines, great art and great characters.

Of course -- it doesn't hurt that the female hero's are drawn like an Amazonian CK alight in something from the Madame Xavier's Midnight Lightning Collection. Gotta love Ms. Marvel -- pictured over to the right there. She's ex Air Force, CIA, and S.H.E.I.L.D Agent -- a New Avenger -- an ass kicker and a hottie. Yeah yeah - typical male attitude. Thing is, last I looked -- the male heroes' aren't exactly hiding much either. Lets go to the tape of CK reading the latest installement of Civil War and pause a moment while we let her reiterate what she said when she saw the second to last panel of the book -- which features Spider Man.

"Holy Crap! That's Hot!"

And there you have it.

I've been away for a while -- decades I think, but now I'm back and the love affair has started all over again...thanks mostly to working two blocks down from one of the best, if not the best, comic store in all the land - Mid-Town Comics. It took a year for the store to work its voodoo on me, but now I've got an account there and find myself looking forward to Wednesdays more than ever.

Right now, these are my top reads:

Civil War - The art is fantastic. Just compare Spider Man in it to the art in one of his titles, like Sensational Spider Man and you will see what I mean.
Annihilation - It's fun to watch the Super Skrull get betrayed and the Silver Surfer reborn and once again, very very vengeful and PO'd.
New Avengers - This is the best regular series book out there right now IMHO
Daredevil
Lucifer
The occasional dose of Ms. Marvel or her DC equivalent, (kinda-sorta) Power Girl. Ms Marvel started out well enough, but this last one with her fighting a wizard and hanging out with Dr. Strange annoyed me. Fight the space creature and the world threat, not the magical ones. Ms. Marvel does not come from that base. Stay on your base!

What was old is now new again (hockey, comics, guitar) What next?

06.06.06

2006-06-06T19:44:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the apocalypse, the end of days, Armageddon...or maybe just Tuesday.

Random Omens from today: (All For YOU blog readers! All for you!!)

Grand Central Omens:

A woman arrested outside the Duane Reade in Grand Central. I could not see her face.
A man gave up his seat on the train.

Times Square Omens:

There were naked men playing guitar in Times Square
Some guy wanted cash donations for literacy for chickens.

"30 Rock" Omens.

I saw the "Queer Eye" Guys dishing with fans in the Today show crowd whilst Roker did an interview with....someone.

Whatever. It's Tuesday. All this friggen extra security all over the city. For what? A friggen movie. It's a stretch to equate 6606 with 666 in the first place. Nimrods.

Pwned.

2006-05-31T19:45:00.000-07:00

As in Matt Hughes pwned Royce Gracie.

Granted, MMA fights can end suddenly no matter what and that events in the octagon (and just about any sporting event) can and do turn on a dime. For example, it wouldn't be crazy to to see Hughes finish off Georges St. Pierre in a hurry or vice versa, but I think the chances of it happening are slimmer than I thought the chances were for a drawn out bloodfest between Hughes and Rocye.

I thought Hughes would win, and he did. It's a different UFC now. It does not diminish Royce Gracie at all. It's been a long time since his last UFC fight and he's older and isn't used to time limit fights. The fighters are much more well rounded and if not submission specialists, are pretty decent at defending against submissions. And lets not forget Hughes is one bad motor scooter. Pound for pound, I think he's the best the UFC has to offer right now.

Still Royce got pwned. And he wants to come back and try again? He better switch some shit up.

For an alternate reality ending, you can check out this version of the fight on Utube.

As for a fight I would like to see, I wish Wanderlei Silva could lose about 12 lbs and Huges put on about 10. That would be a fight I'd like to see.

On the Set of Saturday Night Live

2006-05-22T19:31:00.000-07:00

For a few hours today I was in Studio 8H - the set of SNL for the past 30 years or so. Not in the audience seats, but on the floor and a bit left of center with the Grand Central backdrop with it's New Haven line off peak train leaving from Track 30. A co-worker joked that no matter how many times I came out of Grand Central, that he bet I never came out of that one. That was funny, but about an hour or so later I was on that same stage, right next to Track 30 eating some ice cream and wondering where this NBCUniversal ride might take me and the rest of my tiny IT department.

We were there for a town hall style meeting to discuss and learn about the digital media plans at NBCUniversal. Of course, they are aggressive and right off the bat you can see the executives leadership qualities and their embrace of ideas. It was great to hear them answer an audience question but follow up with "So it seems like you must have some ideas about that - lets hear them."

The thing is, ever since I left Texaco and the Strategic Management Group there - I've missed that type of thinking. It feels good to be back.

Martha Martha Martha

2006-05-18T21:17:00.000-07:00

I managed to get out of work at 5:20PM yesterday -- and that's a major feat these days for those of you unfamiliar with the fun factory that is my work life. I stopped by Midtown Comics to indulge myself with copies of Moon Knight and Ms. Marvel and the latest Nova installation in the Anhilliation series and then headed off down 42nd St. toward Grand Central. Home sweet home bound and before 7pm.

Just as I get in front of the Grace building, I think I spy my Aunt Maureen cutting in front of me. It's not Aunt Cool, though -- it's freaking Martha Stewart right there in front of me and we make brief eye contact and I give here the universal "What's up" head nod and she smiles back in that made for TV smile of hers and raises her eybrows a bit.

In that brief moment I thought,

Holy Crap that's Martha Stewart! Should I go over to her? Nah what the hell would that be about? What do you say to her? There's nothing in common there, really. Why hassle her? Maybe I could ask her about jail?
Or just tell her she kicks ass, yeah tell her that.
Or ask her for a bag of money -- she'd hardly miss it. Just a garbage bag filled with hundreds...
Fuck! You should have some script or some shit to pitch to her. She's right there! Arrgh!

Give her the what's up nod. Ok. Yeah. Ok, we're cool. This is retarded.

And that was my moment with Martha. Yay.

That gets me thinking about all the other celebrities I've passed in the streets of NYC in the past year or so...

Martha Stewart
Spike Lee
Jackie Mason
David Brenner
Kris Angel
Chris Mullen
Jalen Rose
Giselle
Joe Torre (2x in NYC and once at an ATM in Larchmont)
The Donald
Christina Aguilera

All of a sudden I'm Ken Griffey Jr.

2006-05-16T20:47:00.000-07:00

Ok, not really.

I exaggerate to make a point. Mr. Griffey Jr., it seems to me - the casual baseball fan - that you are injured as much as Samuel L. Jackson in that piece of dreck, Unbreakable. You seem brittle and made of glass. Perhaps it's fairer to say that you are a fine but tempermental Italian racing car that is always in the shop for some odd reason. Nonethless - injured all the time. Seemingly.

These days, anything I try to do sport's wise and I get injured a la Griffey. I know that's part of the deal with sports, but I went through all my teens and college years with just minimal stuff like

a concussion
a broken wrist
a torn knee ligament (medial something or other)
a sprained neck
a dislocated shoulder
shin splints
another knee injury
cuts
contusions
abrasions
a broken nose
broken toes
plantar fasciitis
multiple sprained ankles

See? Hardly anything. :-P Of course, once I try BJJ, I get a dual torn biceps, a wickedly sprained foot (my toes actually touched the back of my heel on that one. Oy.) and a sprained neck. Time passes and I decide I need to do something to motivate me to stay in shape. So, I start playing hockey again. What do I do? I injure my right knee. I have no idea what part of the game it even was that did it, but it started to tighten up in the car, ached like hell over night and has been giving me some problems ever since. If it does not get better by next week it's MRI time. It does not hurt so much to walk as it does to move it sideways a bit or kneel on it. That really hurts.

Me and Griffey Jr. Bound together by pain. Separated by talent and money.

NBCUniversal

2006-05-16T20:29:00.000-07:00

A year and a half ago or so I signed on with a small dot com called Healthology. Two acquisitions later and I'm an NBCUniversal employee. Wow. Life takes some odd turns.

Here's to an excellent future with the world's "employer of choice". I can only hope they don't over look little 'ol Healthology and that we get the resources, training, and management we need to get better or barring that -- that things open up elsewhere in the company. Right now it's too early to tell anything except that we are part of NBCUniversal. Witness that so far, in the form of "Welcome! We are not dismantling you!" gifts, I have received a tote bag, a $15 iPod gift card and DVD's of King Kong and the Constant Gardner. Zoom!

Plus, that trip to Universal Studios in July just got a bit cheaper. Nice!!

The Bachelor Life

2006-05-07T07:15:00.000-07:00

Clarisa left on Tuesday night for Cottonwood, CA. She's out there visiting her aunt Melba and uncle Ted. Melba's sick (sick sick, not cold sick) and Ted's old as Methuselah, so she went out there to see them for a bit because she knows there's not a lot of time left. I'd have gone, but I don't have the vacation days she does and I want to take off when my brother in law, Matt comes out here and take another week in the late fall or something. So she's out there doing the family thing.

As for me, here I am, biding my time. Tick tock tick tock. Basically, life without CK has led me to work out after work and work later (and believe me, I already work late. When your express train pulls into White Plains and 8 people get off with you, it's late). As for the weekend - thus far I worked out and did a little shopping at Barnes and Noble and DSW. It was an amazing discovery. When you need to kill time, shopping like a chick works.

First I went to DSW to get some shoes and maybe pick up a shirt. While CK carries with her some of the same zeal and zest for shoes as Imelda Marcos and Carrie WhatsHerName from Sex and the City, I've got none of that. One pair of sneakers. One pair of black dress shoes. One pair brown less dressy shoes. Basically, that's the usual inventory. Probably not too uncommon. Still though, I've been getting sick of wearing the same old crap every other day. So what did I do, I picked up another pair of Diesel's that are pretty much the same style as the one's I have now but a different color and pattern.

While I was wandering the aisles in my socks trying on shoes, a couple was trailing me a bit and I could overhear them arguing. She'd brought him there to buy some shoes and the guy did NOT want to be there.

"This ain't no good shoe. Never heard of a Rockport shoe. What the hell is a Rockport Shoe?" he said.

"Rockport is the brand. A big brand." she said, exasperated.

Time passes...we are in the next aisle. I'm trying on the Diesel's I wind up buying and they are going around me, stepping over my shoes. I think, "don't trip"and "I hope my shoes don't smell" . They are still arguing. He is interested in nothing. There is no indication of a foul odor response.

"Are you telling me you want to leave? Is that what you are trying to say?" she said.

"Nah" he said, eyes downward.

I think, "Yes he is. You know that."

And so it went, aisle by aisle with the frustration and friction mounting. I felt for the guy. I'm not sure if they ever bought anything. I left them arguing about if Steve Madden was a good brand and whether or not John Madden had anything to do with it.

Anyways, I got my shoes and picked up a shirt as a reward for having dropped below the 200lb mark. The scale reads 199.5 lbs and 17.25% body fat. Finally! Just 17 lbs to go and it's new wardrobe time.

I picked up a few tech books at B&N even though my better judgment was screaming at me "No! What the hell are you doing?" After killing two hours skimming through a stack of books in the cafe and downing a some tasty lemonade chai tea concoction, I wound up with these books:

PHP and MySQL by Larry Ulman
Foundations of Ajax by Ryan Asleson
MySQL Tutorial by Luke Welling

The reason being is that I've installed two applications (Flyspray and QATraq) at work that run on WAMPP (Windows, Apache, MySQL, PhP) platforms and I figure it would be a good idea to know how to support them. Plus, open source stuff is free and available and given the good work of the people over at ApacheFriends and their XAMPP project it's pretty easy to install all that stuff versus the nightmare of configuring each one by itself. I'm into geekery, but hey, I like the easy road as well.

Truth be told, I am making one last ditch effort at work on a few different fronts to make things better and to enhance my reputation and my experience. As bad as it is there, I do not see how I can move on and upwards without doing a few key things first:

Empower the employees. We waste tons of time in IT implementing text changes to web pages. This takes hours and could be done by anyone, provided a content management system of some sort or an automated process. On the CMS side, I think we might be able to adapt Macromedia Contribute with DWT's or WordPress. On the automated process side, I think we could just create a Word document that represents the launched program and tie it to an XML schema, mark up the Word Document with XML tags and then just parse it when we need to do the update.
Get the whole company using Flyspray for work requests and bug reporting.
Implement and use QaTraq. It's an application to support a full testing team, so adapting it for Healthology is going to be difficult but at least I'd have something to point to that shows I can organize and execute tests.
Get better at database development and learn php.

I figure it's worth a shot. If I can't make it work despite my best efforts and I am really stymied by the organization I can chalk up some good experience and move on without reservation.

If you are interested - here are the books on Amazon.com:

Hockey Catchup. Hockey Frustration.

2006-05-03T21:34:00.000-07:00

Lets go over some numbers.

4-2 -- WTF happened to the Red Wings? How does this happen? Frustration. Despair.
18-1 -- that is the total my adopted men's league hockey team has been outscored in two (count 'em) games. Futility. Hopelessness.
3 -- my total shots on goal.
2 -- my total shots completely wiffed like I was trying to hit a bee on meth.
2 -- my total questionable, but gratifying, checks in a no checking league. The first one happened in the first 3 minutes of my first game in 12 years. There was a shot on goal and a rebound and a bunch of hacking at my goalie's hand going on. That earns you a trip to the boards. The second was probably an unconscious effort to mar the game late in the third period with the score 9-1. Pleasure. Kasparitis. Tikkannen. Claude Lemeiux.
2 -- my total number of brawls due to said checks avoided. Touchy.
155 -- the estimated number of pounds of Swiss cheese it would take to replace my boss in goal with no ill effects on the outcome of a game. [Grin]

It's not a ton of fun to haul equipment down to NYC on the train and lug it across town and then take it on the subway and drive out past Amityville to play and just get creamed. Still though, it is fun to just play and occasionally lambaste someone. On the brightside there are just 6 games or so left in this league and then I can look forward to joining a league here in town. My boss, Mike will probably make the switch too. It's quicker for him to get up here than to drive all the way out there. Plus, his wife is backing that play. That makes it pretty golden. So, I'm willing to suffer for now.

Skating. Hockey Gear.

2006-04-08T12:33:00.000-07:00

I just got back from an open skate at the Westchester Skating Academy. Basically I just tooled around and dodged people and broke in a new pair of skates. Well, dodged almost everyone. I managed to bump into a lady skating with/holding up her kid. She cut in front of me unexpectedly and I just clipped her shoulder. For a second she hung on and looked like she was going to make it but then her kid did a freakout move and out came both her legs and down she went, right on her butt. Thankfully, she was in once piece and not hurt and the kid was alright. On top of that she was not pissed. No harm no foul. No guilt.

When I was done for the session a Chinese guy sidled up to me and quizzed me on my skates. His kid had been taking lessons and he wanted to learn and was none too thrilled about the big blue molded cloddhopper figure skate rentals he had. They killed his feet. I told him I could sympathize - my skates had killed my feet for a long time. His English was decent, but in the back of my head I thought how great it would be if I could just talk to this guy in Chinese. It would be great to be able to do that. In 18 months or so, I might even have a real need to know a little Chinese.

The thing is, I feel a lot different - a lot better than I have in a long time after a skate. Specifically, my feet aren't killing me and my feet aren't killing me because I've got the new skates - a pair of Reebok 4K's. Not a top of the line skate, but an improvement over my old Bauers and most importantly, they are skates that fit. My old Bauer 1000's were just too narrow, even from the first and as I've gotten older my feet have gotten bigger and bit wider -- a recipe for foot problems and pain and a good excuse to not skate or play hockey. Anyways, these new skates are sooo much more comfortable even from this first break in session than any other skate I've ever had. Plus they are a lot lighter too.

My shoulder pads, elbow pads, pants, helmet, skates -- it's all a lot better than the stinky pile of pads my parents threw out. Hell, all the hockey equipment that's out these days is light years better than the gear that was available when I was playing in the 80's and early 90's. Generally it's all lighter and it all fits better. And the sticks -- sheesh, they are lighter than friggen pool cues. It makes my old Koho Silver Fibres look like warhammers compared to rapiers. Glad to see things have progressed!

Anyway, the plan is not to just sit home and admire the new gear, but to actually start playing again. On Monday I'm supposed to bail out of work early to go play in a pick up game out on Long Island. While I don't think I am going to be super winded, I do think it's going to be pretty awkward trying to stickhandle and shoot. I'll be lucky if I don't look like a complete n00b out there when it comes to any sort of stick work. But maybe not. Sometimes you can surprise yourself. And if there is one thing I can put down, even for over decade, and pick back up and look like I know what the hell I'm doing -- it's hockey. I figure I'll see how it goes and work my way into a league, maybe look into coaching at the youth level.

The Catchup

2006-04-01T18:11:00.000-08:00

It's a great day because I just finished my first novel, "Inscrutable Logic". It's a novel about a OCD control freak wife, her cuckolded husband and the comi-tradgedy that unfolds when he snaps and kills her. It's been something I've kept under wraps for a while now.

And as luck would have it, I've been accepted to NYU Film School, The French Culinary Institute, SVA's MFA in Photography Program and, after three years of waiting, the US Marsall Service.

Man, do I have some decisions to make now.

Picture Time

2006-03-23T18:10:00.000-08:00

I've started to shoot people on the street. Um, out of context that probably sounds really really bad. I mean I'm into street photography. Right now I do not have the guts to sidle right up to people and I don't have a long lens so a lot of the shots are like this one - from behind. Once I get my new digital with a 100-400mm telephoto zoom lens I'm planning on taking a stronger approach. Feel free to comment.

The picture of this building on the Phillips Manor grounds in Sleepy Hollow has been sitting in a CF card since the summer of 2005. The original had a decent amount of parallax I tweaked out in Photoshop. I boosted the saturation a bit as well and tweaked the shadow/highlights. The lower right portion of the horizon could have benefited from a circular polarizer. Feel free to comment.

I've entered a gallery exhibition that kicks off April 1st and I'm trying to figure out if I want to use any of my digital work, some of my black and white prints or what. The exhibition is no big deal, it's open to any member of the Westchester Photographic Society. All I needed to do was add my name to a list. Even so, its fun just going through the process of evaluating my limited body of work and then matting and framing it for people to see. It's a small step but a very important first one.

Those Darn Cats

2006-03-20T20:50:00.000-08:00

Ours is a house divided. A little after we got Macbeth, we took him to the vet for a checkup and, as wallowing in the filth of a shelter would have it, he's / has got / had ringworm. The vet instructed us to separate the kitties and go Mommie Dearest nuts with the cleanliness lest the ringworm spores settle all over the place. Plus, we also get to grab up Macbeth once a day and shoot some foul medicine into his mouth and rub his ears and neck with a topical treatment. He puts up with it pretty well instead of going into Cuisinart mode.

So, MacBeth is in the bedroom with us (smaller area, easier to clean) and Little Guy (aka Faust) has the run of the rest of the place.

Well, we are four weeks into it just about with one more week to go before we go back to the vet for an all clear.It won't be a moment too soon either. Our little cherub goes king-ass-wahoo-fucking-bunga-bunga-nuts at exactly 6AM every morning. My head's been used as a cat version of a 1m springboard, feet have been pounced, toys have been dropped on our face. Throwing them off the bed does no good either, because, this cat fetches. Let me repeat - this cat fetches. You toss it, he runs off, tackles it and hauls it back to you for another try. Remarkable. Still a pain in the ass at 6am though.

As luck would have it I was reading dooce and she pointed out how she and her husband blacked out their kid's room to make her go back to sleep after waking up at 6am. I think we need to try that.

Shocked, and then Amazed

2006-03-18T06:32:00.000-08:00

Ok, so I'm perusing ifilm.com and come across, rather easily mind you, a purient video of Sienna Miller. Ostensibly, it's a clip from a videography of the 2003 Pirelli Calendar shoot, another piece of vile purient rubbish. Judge for yourself.

Given what I've heard, Sienna in the natural state is not rare, and one can only imagine the horrible and absolute drudgery that comes with a Pirelli calendar shoot. If that's torture, chain me to the wall. Of course, it's just not any shutter bug that does the Pirelli shoots - it's the likes of Annie Leibowitz, Richard Avedon and Herb Ritts. All true talents that I admire. Just look at the shot from Avedon on the right. Now that's January.

Alright, back to this ifilm.com clip... or rather list of film clips.

Once I got past past the distraction and of Sienna Miller, I skipped down to the "Amazing Juggling Finale" performed by Chris Bliss. Totally amazing. Choreographed, melodic juggling. Crazy ass juggling. So crazy it gets a standing ovation from a packed house. What retard street clown have you seen that happen to? Well, ok - in the street people are probably already standing but that's besides the point. They're already standing and clapping. It's never a standing ovation type clap, at least none of the performances I've ever caught in Washington Square Park. It's been more like "Yay, you have a sword, a matchbook and a bowling ball. On fire." Sure, it takes a ton of skill. But, let's face it skill is just a part of the equation. Choreography takes planning. It takes thinking. It takes inspiration. It's transcendent.

Ok - maybe it's just juggling. Maybe I'm getting entirely to worked up about it.

Nah.

The only way to make Chris Miller's perfomance better would be to clone like 50 of him and turn his act into a large scale Riverdance juggling extravaganza. There'd be fucking ballz flying everywhere. In perfect timing. It would be GREAT.

Alas, it seems Mr. Miller has moved on from juggling to just standup comedy.

Microsoft iPod

2006-03-12T07:11:00.000-08:00

Those two words just don't go together....

I found this link over at zeldman.com, and am happy to post it here in order to boost views by 3 to 4 people. Per month. :-P

It's a parody. And it's reality. Mostly. It's the iPod, Microsoft style.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeXAcwriid0&search=microsoft%20ipod

Web 2.0 this Web 2.0 that.

2006-03-09T04:37:00.000-08:00

D2stuff.com just posted an article pimping the new Windows Live Search beta.

My kneejerk anti-evil empire reaction is "So what?".

Then I actually went and clicked the link to check it out. What the hell. I could be leaving for work and get in early, but that just means I'll be there longer since I'll have to stay late no matter what. Screw that shit.

Back to the point - this search thing. According to D2Stuff, it's got a Web 2.0 look. I still have no idea what that means. A quick search on "What the hell is Web 2.0" on Google turned up this result from O'Reilly Digital Media. A quick scan of the article gleans the following:

There are a lot of blogs
There are more and more blogs
Content delivery is getting better (via AJAX for example)
Hardware is getting better (man what a tiny iPod.)
These things mix up some how and become Web 2.0

Nothing there about a certain look, though. If there is a certain look for Web 2.0, whatever the hell it is - say the way there is a certain look for graphic design sites because everyone borrows and steals from the best and from each other combined with a shared Jungian archetype of taste - it will be because of pretty much those same reasons.

What I do see though is Web 2.0 function. It's the function, wrapped up in a pretty package that makes up the "look" I think D2Stuff means. For example, the Yahoo mail beta -- you can drag and drop mail and there are lots of little widgets. It's web based, but behaves like an application. Google Maps, you can click and drag the map from sea to shining sea. On the MSN search, you scroll through a pane of results by clicking a scroll control rather than paging through a set of results. Or, you can move a little slider to control the verbosity of your results. Whatever. Yippee. I guess it's really just simulated analog.

Anyhoo, it's getting close to that time where my day gets considerably worse, so I need to go make that happen.

Another takeover

2006-03-07T21:18:00.000-08:00

I work for ~~Texaco~~ , ~~Westcon~~, ~~Healthology~~, ~~iVillage~~, NBCUniversal.

Yep. We just got bought. In a month or so I'll work for NBCUniversal. Maybe we live through it, maybe not.

That silence is my 2nd career on hold.

2006-03-04T14:13:00.000-08:00

I took one class at SVA in Photography and decided that I'd rather join the Westchester Photographic Society than pay the 500 bucks per class in tuition and fees each semester. The WPS costs just 40 bucks a year, has a ton of members, is very active with gallery displays, competitions, shoots and tutorials. Plus they have a dark room - or so their website says.

I've wanted to join since late December 2005, but I've only been able to come to one meeting since then because I've been trapped at work every Friday, QA'ing video launches. Why the videos need to be launched on a Friday is beyond me. Or even if it's going to be on a Friday, that stuff should be done early enough so that when I look at it I'm finishing by 6PM instead of starting.

It's very very frustrating that I cannot get home in time to make a meeting that starts at 8:30PM. On a FRIDAY.

The one meeting I did make it to was definitely worthwhile. First off I got to join the club and sit through one of their competitions. For the most part, the images being judged were very very good and from my pov, of professional caliber. Some of the Photoshoped stuff was a bit too much "look at my swirl filter" for my taste, but aside from that there were some powerful compositions nonetheless.

I also found out that they've pretty much junked the darkroom. No one uses it anymore. Not one of their members. The funny thing is, they all seem to be a lot older than me and I'd thought there'd be those who want to "preserve the old ways". Nope. Not a one. I asked whether or not they would be willing to open the darkroom for me and they said that it could be done, but that I would be on my own for anything that might be missing and would have to supply my own chemicals. I have not been back for another meeting so I have no idea what might be missing that I might need. A grain enlarger? A negative carrier? A timer? I have no clue.

So, this idea has turned out to be a disaster. I can't make the meetings, I am not shooting anything and I am not developing or printing anything - and I have lots. About 4 rolls of negatives without a print made and another 5 rolls of film undeveloped. Man that just pisses me off.

Granted, I could buy a darkroom bag and some chemicals, but devleoping does not mean squat if you cannot print. And, it's not like there is room for a darkroom at all here. No basement, no space under the stairs.

Of course, I can get what I have custom printed or just sign up for another SVA class or NYU class and get it done there - but that does not fix my problem of not having a place to work permanently.

Hello digital world. It's the only way for me to go right now. I can half ass it and just get the Canon Digital Rebel SLR or I can spend the cash and get the Canon EOS SLR - about the best pro-sumer gear you can buy. Throw in a copy of Photoshop, get a bigger monitor and a printer and I am good to go. Well, almost. Theres lighting. And lenses. And flashes. And reflectors. And even if I have all of that I still need to find compelling subject matter.

Then there's the part of me that says, "Hey man. While you are at it - get one of those new Macs and a copy of Premier and Final Cut and a digital full motion camera and get busy with that idea of being a film editor. Just do it. Stop thinking and just do. Take your vacation and spend it at one of those NYU Summer Intensive classes."

So far I have not answered that voice. I remain silent and for reasons unknown, scared as hell to pull the trigger. Photography itself is great and is something I want to do, but even still represents a bit of compromise. A failure to commit. The rationalizing (or is it the objective?) part of me tells me that breaking into digital photography is a good first step. A stepping stone. Or is it just a way of putting off what I really want?

D2stuff.com relaunch.

2006-03-04T12:28:00.000-08:00

Dennis of D2stuff.com fame has updated his site. The new design and approach represents a a focus shift from product (tools for the horror show that is FrontPage and the legions who use it but have no idea about the tools because they are most often neophytes) to content.

Go check it out. Send him an email. Tell him to write more. And if you happen to use FrontPage buy his products while you still have the chance. They do stuff. Stuff you probably had no idea you wanted the program to be able to do. Then you'll be all impressed and more productive and you'll have helped the economy and by extension, helped defeat terrorism. Or buy it anyway and then go here if that last sentense smacks of sarcasm to you.

It's also noteworthy to point out that site is valid XHTML and valid CSS and that it was built, of course, with Frontpage, the most maligned product in the web wyswig universe. See folks, it's not the product so much as it is the author. It can be done!

"Experienced programmer and business analyst builds valid site using Frontpage!" That's a sentence that most people think should be headline on the April 1 edition of Slashdot or some such. Yet here it is just March and it's been done. Stop the presses.

Sure, FP will let you churn out some hideous themes based site and sure there's the pure evil of their navigation bars and such and other "built in Features". But lets face it, that's for newbies. If you are an advanced user and you open the program and can't figure out any other course of action than that you should just close the application fire up monster.com for new career ideas.

Finally, I would like to point out the validity of D2Stuff.com to my troops at work. Boys, Mr. Derobertis is not a designer. He is not a card carrying member of WaSP, or the Meyer or Zeldman cults or a contributor to CSSZenGarden. He is, like you, an experienced programmer that works on the front end. Witness the valid code. Done with Frontpage no less.

I'm not trying to insult Dennis here - far from it. He lives and breathes Microsoft technologies and, as demonstrated, will "eat his own dogfood" and his passion and committment to what he believes in is laudable. My point is that it is not so hard to do if you just pay attention and invest some time in learning how to strucuture your markup. Lets face it - some people use "professional" level programs and can still turn out a hacked up pig of a site. And the funny thing is that same person, whose site might wind up on the front page of web pages that suck, will still deride Frontpage. It boggles my mind.

Folks - they are just tools. Bob Villa can perform with a Black & Decker Hammer or a Stanley Hammer. Feel me?

It's a brave new web standards plus CSS world out there. Put your jacket on and go visit:

www.alistapart.com - for people who make websites. Read and learn. Implement.
www.zeldman.com - patriarch of the web standards movement
www.webstandards.org/ - deals with, uh - web standards.
www.csszengarden.com - view the source. Wow. It's always the same. How can that be?
www.quirksmode.com - because browsers suck and the rest of us need guys like this.
www.w3schools.com/- the educational branch of the mothership. Learn for free.

New Shoes.

2006-03-02T22:15:00.000-08:00

I hate shopping for clothes. Perhaps its a leftover from my childhood and all those times I got dragged to Flah's or the Dress Barn or anyplace where I would have to wait while my mom tried things on or - lord help me - I had to try things on myself and then get tugged on and spun around. Oh the trauma of plaid pants and a three way mirror. And all those freaking pins in the dressing room just scattered about waiting to go through your foot. Good times!

That being the case - my wardrobe is pretty limited. Not like two shirts limited but limited enough that after two weeks you will pretty much know my wardrobe. I am not a fashionista.

Not too long ago I broke down and bought some Sketchers and Diesel shoes. The kinda a shoe / kinda a sneaker types. Of course, I am all impressed with myself because I have made this monumental decision to get new shoes after, oh a few years.

I wear them to work.

Later on when I'm home on that first day of the new shoes I tell my wife

"No one noticed my new shoes."
"What are you - a girl?" she asked.
"Hahahha."

Gotta love her.

Coarse Political Commentary

2006-03-01T20:27:00.000-08:00

How much of more of this does even the staunchest Bushie need to finally figure out that this administration is full of shit - a bunch of conniving, prevaricating, bubble dwelling, reality denying putzes.

To wit the pre-Katrina knowledge and inaction (on top of the 9-11 knowledge and inaction etc etc)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11627394/?GT1=7850

But he believes! A very strong believer! Plus, he did not get a BJ in the White House. And that seems to trump everything in Idiot America.

Folks, unless you have 5 million in a hedge fund -- this is not your guy. He is not for you.

Believe it.

McCain is your guy (and look how the Bush machine did their best to slander him - they should be ashamed). Barak Obama is my guy, but I certainly respect McCain and even agree with him on many points and issues. These two US Senators represent two different points of view, but I'd back either one of them because to me they have integrity and intelligence to go along with their convictions that Bush just does not have.

Pain in my Ass Blogger

2006-02-28T21:04:00.000-08:00

Ok, this is a royal pain.

I write a post. I go to do spell check. Freaking XP blocks the pop-up Blogger uses. I allow the pop-up and presto, my post disappears and there is nothing but a Zen like koan left. If there are no words, is there a spellcheck?

Bah. Damn you Google.

I've been thinking of moving to TypePad for a bit now in an expansion move. This sort of crapola along with the joyous server errors that occur regularly (and it's not like I post a ton, so if it's bugging me, it's got to be bugging a lot more people. Of course, Typepad is not without their own problems from what I hear. (comment - nice to see another company is as puzzled as we are by performance issues) But at least when you pay, you feel you have more of right to bitch and demand good service.

This here blogger dealio be free, and that, ladies and gentlemen, is cheaper than wholesale...

Ok, that said, I really don't feel like re-writing my entire post. So here it is in short form:

We miss Jules
We got a new cat.
We miss Jules still
New cat is not a replacement
A door closes a door opens
Faust is pissed.
The new cat is named Macbeth. He's 8 months old.
Adoption paperwork is going in later this week. Chinese?
I point out that I laughed at this earlier today.
Introducing Macbeth:

For Juliet: 1992 - 2006

2006-02-25T18:40:00.000-08:00

We couldn't wait till Wednesday. She was having too tough a time of it.

Clarisa and my cousin Jodi (who was up for a fun weekend) just took Jules to the emergency vet clinic. I'd go but I'm already a wreck. I don't think I could handle it. Clarisa, God bless her is going to be strong enough for the both of us this time.

No more pain. I love you and miss you Jules.

The Catch Up

2006-02-24T21:35:00.000-08:00

To continue from my last post - my computer problems continue. I've got a new SATA HD, a GE Force 6800 and 2GB of (supposedly) compatible RAM but the same dang shit keeps happening. So, it looks like I will have to RMA the motherboard and hope a replacement fixes this weirdness.

But, that's just become the least of my problems. My best and favorite pet - Juliet, has cancer and we've decided not to prolong her death. She'll be leaving us Wednesday this week. It's a hard decision, but an easy one considering the pain she'd go through otherwise. It's her time and I don't want her to suffer.

We adopted her a long time ago -- Jules has been with us since a month or two after Clarisa got back from Korea and the Army. She was 2 - 4 years old then and we've been married over 12 years now and that puts her around 75-85 years old in human terms. A good run.

I can still remember how Clarisa waited patiently on my parents back steps and coaxed a very beautiful but skittish cat to actually come up to her and eat grilled chicken from her hand. This kept up for a few weeks until she really trusted us. My mom as a rule has not been to keen on cats on her life, but for Jules she made an exception and she let us adopt Juliet. That first night we invited her up into our bed and Jules just jumped up, curled into a ball at the foot of the bed and purred like a motorboat most of the night. She sure seemed grateful and we were just happy she'd claimed us.

Like I said, she's been with us ever since and has been an absolutely great companion. She's been in each apartment and in ritualistic fashion has decided to bolt in protest each time we moved. When we left Poughkeepsie, she took off in a rainstorm and ran across three yards and hid out under a truck. An hour later I had her in the car. Soaking wet and pissed off, but safe. When we went to move from Peekskill, both her and Little Guy made a a great escape out a kitchen window only to wind up in the cottage's basement. Again, it took about an hour and some chicken to coax her out, but I got her - and that was after Clarisa and Jennifer had combed the area for them for hours and had to leave. So there I was, in my work clothes, halfway into a crawl-space in and waving chicken at a pair of glowing eyes.

I cannot believe I have to do this again so soon after Sasha.

Again I find myself talking to someone I love with the knowledge that there is nothing I can do to save them except let them go. And again I'll be telling someone I'm sorry.

It's the right thing to do, but that doesn't stop the hurt or the frustration.

Fuck fuck fuck.

The Sound and The Fury

2006-02-10T21:30:00.000-08:00

A little while ago I posted about my forthcoming PC upgrade(s). To say the least, it has not gone swimmingly.

For starters it looks like the screen defects from my expensive video card were not because of my old mother board, but just because the the card is hosed. Damn you to heck ATI and your crappy 800XL 256 MB AGP card and your worthless support.

On top of that I cannot boot to windows. The PC posts, the monitor goes into power saving mode for a second and then it goes to the "Windows shut down abnormally" screen and no matter what option is picked, it never boots and just goes back to the "Windows shut down abnormally" screen. I change the boot priority and cannot even get the thing to boot to CD. I've checked the wiring, the jumpers and all that shit and the BIOS seems to recognize everything, but Windows is fried and will not cooperate. Surprise surprise. At least I got my 25GB + of music off of the old HD it before it crapped out totally. Oh well. At least I got my 25GB + of music off of the old HD it before it crapped out totally. Oh well.

So, I just ordered a new hard drive. Who wants to bet a new video card is next? Hello complete re-build.

Overheard Passing By on 7th Avenue

2006-02-10T21:17:00.000-08:00

Grizzled Black Man #1"It was like all hard and lumpy and that shit just blew the fuck up! Yes it did"

Grizzled Black Man #2 "Yeah - it's like that. It's what it does."

Groundhogs Day

2006-02-02T19:13:00.000-08:00

It's Groundhogs Day.

Rejoice! Phil did NOT see his shadow and so we will have an early spring. Or something.

A member of the Fordham crew reminded me it's also the 15 year anniversary of our wild ass Groundhog's Day Party at Walsh Hall during our senior year. Holy crap that was a crazy night, a night which found me immortalized in film and eventually in the 1991 year book committing a Drunken Act. The photo editor, Tony, was a friend of mine at the time and I guess he thought it would be great fun to put THAT photo in the yearbook. Thanks Tony! Well, I can't get too upset -- he did talk the cops out of picking me up for trying to lob some NYC property (in the form of one metal street trash) can at a car of tough assholes that had thrown a brick at the car we were in for no reason.

It went something like this:

[brick gets thrown]
[crashing noise and the car stops on Jerome Avenue]
["MotherFuckers! Did they just do that!!?? Oh, those fucking sonsofbitches"]
[Drunken Kitch gets out of car, picks up trash can on corner and heads off toward the car full of tough assholes]
[Kitch's friends pull up and start pacing him in the car. The window comes down and they strongly encourage him to calm down. To breeze it, buzz it, ez does it play cooly cool boy because, and mainly, an NYPD patrol car was right behind them.]
[Gingerly lower trash can and put it down and pretend like nothing is going on. Facial expression tries to read "Oh? I had THAT? Oh, wow. No idea. Must have got stuck in my shoe."]
[Tony talks to cop and somehow convinces them that they would take me home]
[Of course we go to a bar full of nurses.]

Speaking of Groundhog's Day, I looove the movie. Great movie. Fantastic.

When I think about it, history is repeating itself for me as well. A year ago this month I was on the Abs Diet for a week or two and working out. Now I'm at it again. I managed to sloth my way all the way back to 218 not too long ago, dropped down to 213 and stayed there until I started AbsDiet v2. The disgusting thing was the 25% FAT reading from the scale. Argh.

Twelve days into AbsDiet v2 and I'm 210 and 20.2 % FatAss. All I can say is man - that's fat. It needs to come off before it can do any more damage than it has. This time around I'm going to NYCS for the workouts and the membership is a good deal - I can go to anyone of them anywhere. The new one here in White Plains is ginormous. Vast. Huge. Spacious. Really. Really. Nice. The ones in NYC around work are tiny and shitty in comparison. If it were not for the White Plains club, I'd feel ripped off.

We can rebuild it. We can make it stronger...

2006-02-01T19:15:00.000-08:00

A while back my PC decided to stop being a PC and become a POS. Like so many things and people, it was electrocuted in it's sleep.

Or so I thought.

I just had a buddy from work check out the hard-drive and miracles of miracles it's intact. It turns out it was my new CPU that crapped out. Everything else is 5x5.

So rather than go ahead and blow like, 5K on a sweet-ass gaming rig, I'm content to rebuild the system around my necromanced hard-drive, existing 2.4 P4 and the ATI 800XL 256MB video card that never ever worked in my old rig with the exception of one tantalizing hour of Battlefield II. So, after an hour or so on tigerdirect.com and for about 10x less dineiro than my dream rig, I've got a pretty new system. It's not GeForce7000 dual SLI new, but whaddya gonna do.

Here's what I got -

1
ULT31368
Ultra Blue Dual 12" Cold Cathode Light Kit (trickin out the rig...)

1 ULT31048
Ultra 3.5" Hard Drive Cooler w/2 60mm LED Fans BlK

1 A455-1028E
Asus P4P800E Deluxe Socket 478 Motherboard (8x faster FSB...nice)

1 C250-1144
Cables Unlimited Blue UV System Slot Turbo Fan (to cool down the ATI pig)

1 C13-2920
Corsair Value Select 1024MB PC3200 DDR 400MHz (brings the total to 1.5GB)

1T925-2070
Thermaltake Armor Alum Silver Full Tower w/ Window (this is a gorgeous case and I will name it something retarded for sure. Suggestions welcome)

1T925-2084
Thermaltake Silent PurePower 680W ATX PSU + EPS (you better not die on me like that weak ass Antec CPU)

And that is going to go with my 2.4 Ghz p4 and the aforementioned 256MB ATI 800XL AGP card. Is it a monster? No. It is Division I, but like Atlantic 10 Division I, not the ACC. The case is kick ass though and has plenty of room for more storage, the mobo is easily upgradeable to a 3.2 Ghz P4 and I can always throw a little more RAM at it. I'm pretty set.

Poor Clarisa... she is about to become a gaming widow for a few weekends until the buzz wears off.

Because In New York No One Can Hear You Scream

2006-02-01T19:08:00.000-08:00

Funny, funny stuff. Go see Abe and Preston now:

alienlovespredator.com

The Catch Up - Adoption Focus

2006-01-31T19:25:00.000-08:00

Hey there.

Well, we are on our way to parenthood. Hopefully. Maybe. That is to say we took the first step and went to an international adoption orientation meeting at Spence Chapin. Clarisa drove down after work and I managed to get out of work and schlepp it over to 6 E. 94th Street just in time for the start of the session. We were one of the youngest couples in the group, which figures. It seems that for a lot of people, adoption is the last resort and not the first, like it is with us. In fact, we decided a while ago that we just did not want to go the route of IVF and hormone therapy or what have you. If it happened for us, great. If not, keep knocking boots and hope for the best. Of course, we haven't had any luck and as times gone on adoption just kind of entered into our conversation as something we want to do. Like sfumato said, it's probably going to be the best thing we can do with our lives and that is pretty exciting.

The people at Spence were well spoken and gave a thorough overview of the program - outlining the basics of the process involved with of each country they work with to include time, costs and requirements. Each country has it's own peculiarities and pro's and con's that may or may not make the program that country offers a good fit. From what we learned at the meeting, it looks like our two best options so far are Guatemala or China. Neither are perfect, and no program really is. The requirements vary, the stability of the programs vary, the wait times vary, the fees vary, the age of the child varies, the quality of their environment varies from orphanage to foster home and of course the experiences there vary greatly as well. The available medical history varies as well. A lot of damn variables and one big leap of faith.

Two families were there at the beginning of the meeting to talk about the process, what they went through and answer questions from the group. Coincidentally, one family had adopted a girl from China and the other had adopted a girl from Guatemala. Of course, the stars were the kids - both of whom were just adorable and remarkably patient over the hour they were there.

So, Guatemala or China. China or Guatemala...

Guatemala - the kids are in foster homes, not orphanages and they get monthly medical care. There also is a medical history of the birth mother. The process is pretty smooth, albeit a bit random at times.

China - the kids might have been in a foster home, but probably not. There is no information on the birth mother. Medical care is good and the process is pretty structured and you go through the process with a group of other adoptive parents from Spence-Chapin. Evidentally, there's a hotel over there that is just chalk full of adoptive parents there to take home a baby and lot's of support.

I have no idea how we are going to weigh all of that and come up with a decision. I'm sure at some point it will just occur to us what is right for us and there we'll be.

P00F!

One more thing...

2006-01-15T22:13:00.000-08:00

Thor's BJJ comment got me pumped up a little about BJJ, MMA and all things grappling. That said I started perusing and I found this - a clip of Royce Gracie UFC highlights - just look at how he dismembers and submits everyone. Wearing a gi no less - which should be a big handicap. Take special note of any dickhead that thinks he's a kung fu master and tries to throw a kick. It does not end well.

http://webzoom.freewebs.com/jiujitsu/Royce%20Gracie%20Highlights.mpg

The Catch Up

2006-01-15T21:11:00.000-08:00

Hey all. Got some stuff to talk about so here we go:

We've decided to adopt. Right now we have no idea about anything except that we've made the decision. We'll be better informed after we go to an orientation meeting at Spence-Chapin later this month. More than likely our future son or daughter will be from eastern Europe (Russia, Ukraine, Bulgaria et al). Basically we want a healthy kid - maybe even siblings. We figure siblings might be the best way to go. Something like a one year old and a three year old maybe?Like I said - we have no details except for the fact that we've decided to move ahead with this. It's way to early to say anything other than that and that we are jazzed and eager to get the process going.

That said we're probably going to look to switch jobs and re-locate to a more kid friendly environment. Where that might be is up in the air as well, but I'm pretty positive it won't anywhere like, oh, Bedford Hills or Scarsdale or Chappaqua. The idea is to move and take the cash from this place and get a bigger one somewhere outside of the raised ranch for $650,000 range. We'll see.

Other than that things are going pretty well. New Years was spent with some friends in Hyde Park - other than a death defying drive through a blizzard on the trip up AND to pick up some pizzas later that night it was pretty calm. We hung out, played guitar a bit and noodled around with our "nephew" Zack. With the guitar, I'm still at the point where I just know a handful of material but I do know lot of variations on the 12 bar blues and that's always a blast.

Let's see, what else is up - a quick recap:

Last weekend, my parents came down for dinner to celebrate my birthday. I cooked up some chicken marsala a la Tyler Florence. I've decided to take Black and White Photography II at the School of Visual Arts. Work continues to not be very satisfying and eating into way too much of my time. In the meantime I'm thinking about what I would really like to do and where I would really like to be. I also bought a PSP. The commute goes MUCH faster now that I have Burnout Legends and Virtua Tennis to occupy my time. I also bought Bob Dylan's autobiography, Chronicles. So far it's an enjoyable read and interesting to hear Bob talk about himself and his influences. One things for sure, I had no idea he was so well read. I'm not surprised, but I had no idea that Bob Dylan would ever tell me he thought Balzac was hilarious.

A short post

2006-01-12T14:45:00.000-08:00

I was told that sometimes my posts get a bit long.

Damn Flannel Sheets

2005-12-30T08:02:00.000-08:00

Ah, the joy of being back home and in bed. On vacation. Still. Joy!

Oh flannel sheets you sucked me in with your warm fuzzy goodness and kept me from taking a great photograph. The morning sunlight streamed through our bedroom patio doors and illuminated a wicker laundry basket and an armoir. It sounds simple enough, but the lighting was just right on the wood and on the wicker and the shadows were varied and there were these nice highlights coming off the wicker...and it was a great b&w photo opportunity not ten feet away.

But the damn sheets. They felt soooo good. And the light, well she moved incredibly fast and like a stealthy center slipped away...

If I'm lucky, the light will be the same tomorrow morning and I'll have another chance at it.

Nebraska - Land Ho!

2005-12-26T16:54:00.000-08:00

A quick update:

The homes around here in Columbus, NE remind me a lot of the small towns in PA -- towns like Jessup, Throop and German. Little towns. Old towns. Little old little towns with small houses.

And mini-power lines looking clothes lines.

So, it's a lot like PA here in NE, except for the fact that you just need to drive a few minutes and you are outside of town in into, quite literally, the great wide open. And it's customary to wave at the people you pass on the local roads.

The past few days have gone well with no repeats of the meth-lab visit mentioned last post. Lots of food, lots of visiting and lots of picture taking.

I went out earlier today and shot two rolls of film -- mostly panoramas of the fields right off 81 on the way to York, NE I think. Eventually I worked my way back into Columbus and took some shots along the Platte. The people were very friendly. More than a few stopped to chat with me or comment or just say hi. It's true, people are friendlier out here.

Merry Christmas - Nebraska Style

2005-12-23T21:06:00.000-08:00

Holy Crap I'm in Nebraska. It's wider and flatter than I ever thought it would be. The land just goes and goes and goes. My wide angle lens doesn't even come close to covering the horizon.

It's my first Christmas away from my family, so it's pretty odd. The thing is though, I've been soooo friggen busy from Thanksgiving till now that I've hardly had a moment to contemplate it. Yet here I am. In Nebraska. On Christmas. Who'd of thunk it.

I am not freezing -- so that's a plus and an unexpected surprise. It's been really mild.

So far it's been a great time just visiting with everyone and getting to know Clarisa's side of the family a bit better. Today we drove out to an antique store in a town called Humphrey (population not a lot) and caught a bite to eat at a local watering hole. On the way back Clarisa and her aunt, Betty, decided they wanted to stop and check out an abandoned church on the side of the road. As soon as they got out of our rental, a guy came out of a garage type building next to the church and walked over to them. At the same point in time I see a Mexican looking guy come out of the side of the church with big white plastic buckets and the white guy waves the Mexican guy back in. Basically he wanted the curious ladies gone and would not answer any questions they had, at least not honestly. While this was going on, I was in the car getting ready to jump into the front seat and use a Ford Escape in a very literal method because it seemed that we had stumbled onto a place that had a bad vibe going on. Meth Lab? Chop shop? Hard to say - but the ladies are not allowed to be getting all curious for the rest our stay out here.

Welcome to your shootout is not really what I'm going for on this trip. LOL.

Anyhoo, tomorrow will be all about going out to shoot some film in the morning. I'm armed with a plethora of filters and lots of film so there should be more than a few pictures worth printing by the time I'm through here.

Well Merry Christmas, everyone. Peace on Earth, Good Will Toward Men.

Flu Shot

2005-12-14T19:32:00.000-08:00

For the first time since I got a barrage of shots from the US military I actually got a flu shot, but only because it was free and scheduled about 150 feet from my desk, not because in the past few years I've had a penchant for getting sick around the holidays. Certainly not because I missed Christmas two years in a row because I was hacking up a lung. Nah. Free and easy.

Of course I tried about a month ago to get a flu shot. A Doctor at our company thought he had the inside scoop on a free shot clinic. It turns out the info was given to him and ALL of NYC via Channel 4 News. To say the least, the line was looooong and slow and I gave up after waiting 2+ hours with 700 people still in the queue ahead of me. There were a lot of reporters there and a lot of photographers too

About the shot though -- it got me thinking to how horrible a shot used to be when I was a kid. It fucking HURT. I would cry before, during and after the bad man in the white coat worked his cruel medicine on me. My mother would bribe me with McDonalds afterwards, or sometimes tell me I would not be getting a shot and then distract me at the Doctor's office while someone snuck up on me and jabbed me. Oh the betrayal.

These days it doesn't hurt at all to get a shot or give blood. It's really quite painless. But then I got to thinking -- maybe it still hurts just as much as it did, but all the bullshit and pain life has dished out has made the prick of a shot pale in comparison.

You get older. You get tougher. Like my drill sergeants were fond of saying, "Pain is just weakness leaving the body!"

Hoohrah.

Mister Smarty Pants

2005-12-13T15:29:00.000-08:00

I don't give myself enough credit. Usually. This time around I'm all about the self-congratulatory arm-breaking pat on the back.

But first, naturally, a little back story.

Six years ago or so I left the horrid world of retail for the world of IT. Well, not exactly. I just left that world not knowing where the hell I would wind up. I just knew that my life would be infinitely better not selling you the extra insurance or telling you where to find the Beano or writing a rain check for the toilet paper that was on sale and plundered in three days. And, I was pretty sure I did not ever ever ever want to drive you home after you pulled into my lot five minutes after I'd closed the office down. In the rain. On a holiday weekend.

Do I convey my derision or shall I go on? I HATED all that.

Moving along then...

I quit Enterprise Rent A Car and went to temp for a coven of witches that ran a personnel agency. The three Macbeth girls pimped me out here and there and eventually I wound up at Texaco's Corporate Planning and Economics Department on a maternity replacement gig for a departmental admin. The duties were light - type, file, book travel arrangements, stock the copier etc etc. It paid just as much as Enterprise and no one yelled at me and the phone stayed blissfully quiet.

In the meantime I decided that there might be something to the whole tech boom deal and started taking some Microsoft Networking courses at the Westchester Business Institute so I could get in on the action. What a rip off that place was. Soooo freaking expensive and the teachers were morons. Lets put it this way -- the head of the networking program had not ever taken one MS networking test or ever worked in networking at all. She had though, worked with some people that might have at one time or another clicked on Administrative Tools. Ultimately the courses were pretty useless, but they did do one thing.

They got me noticed at Texaco.

One day a guy named Ed Feinberg wandered by my desk and commented that he'd heard I liked computers and was taking some classes. He asked me if I would like to build the department's site for the Texaco global intranet. Recognizing opportunity I said yes, even though I had just about no idea how to go about it. Ed threw a copy of Publisher '98 at me and told me to have at it. Eventually I moved onto Frontpage (I know I know, the shame) and even got a Microsoft Certified Professional certification for it. (So very impressive, I know)

There I was though, now the official web guy for Texaco's CP&E. I bought some books and took some notes and met with the one of the Directors, Drew Overpeck. Drew brings up MSNBC and a few other large traffic sites and says that's what he wants. Drew could certainly dream big. I nodded and smiled like a foreigner and left his office terrified. How over my head was I?

Well, as luck would have it, hardly anyone at Texaco new anything about web design. Those who claimed they did had actually just outsourced it. The sites that were built in house were hardly professional so it seemed I could really do no wrong. They wanted me to learn.

Did I mention that this was better than washing cars in the summer in a suit?

Eventually, they brought in another guy that wound up being a super close friend, mentor and confidant, Mister Dennis Derobertis. He was brought in to help out with the CSS, whatever the hell that was. They meant ASP, but they told me CSS. Together we wound up building and managing the flagship site for Texaco's intranet.

Two and a half years or so of Shangri La at Texaco came screeching to a halt when Texaco got bought by Chevron and we were cut loose. Man did it suck leaving that place. Nine months of unemployment later, I landed a gig at Westcon, courtesy of one Ambrose Buldo, Director of E-Commerce. There I learned all about JD Edwards, E-Commerce, Biz-Talk, XML, EDI, Citrix and a host of other crap. I had a lot of leeway in my job. The people at Westcon were great and I really loved it there but I was being really underpaid. So I left the 'Con and my five minute commute for Healthology and a wheel-barrel full of money to become their QA guy, though I really did not have any QA experience.

Let me say this, QA is goddamn tough. Especially when you have no clue, and the department has no clue. So I do what I can with that and try to make up for it with my systems knowledge and sneak in some SQL Server Database stuff.

Ok, so that's the backstory.

Given the preceding, one might think I think I am quite tech savvy, that I am just the bees knees when it comes to IT. The truth is I have really struggled to define myself in that arena. I tend to look at myself as a generalist - someone with a wide range of skills but no real specialty. A utility player, or as I sometimes referred to myself, "Human Middleware". I've been working to change that but the only thing that seems to stick is database performance tuning. Along the way I've become a bit of Jr. DBA, gathering lots of knowledge but without a place to apply it.

Well, my current boss has let me run with it and I just came up with two fixes, one at the application and one at the database level that have had a huge positive impact on our application performance. We freed up at least a days worth of database processing time with fixes. The apps fly now and there is room to grow.

My solution. Me. The English Lit major, ex-helicopter pilot, ex-retail guy, ex-insurance guy, ex-real estate guy, ex-art room guy and the Brett Weston, Ansel Adams wannabe. Doing DBA shit.

Color me, for the first time in my life maybe, impressed. With me. I got a lot going on.

2005-12-08T20:25:00.000-08:00

Imagine there's no countries,
It isnt hard to do,
Nothing to kill or die for,
No religion too,
Imagine all the peopleliving life in peace...

You made the mistake of making eye contact.

2005-12-07T18:30:00.000-08:00

For the most part I'm always on the train to and from the city at peak hours and for the most part the trains are packed with commuters that spend their time with the MTA sticking to themselves. People sleep, read, fiddle with gadgets, listen to tunes. But its all very quiet. Loud cell phone talkers are often shooshed or told to shut up. Hey man, there are rules to this commute thing. Set a moving pick if you can while getting on the train to assure a seat. If you are not ballsy enough to ask someone to move over, you will wind up standing. Do not be loud and do not make eye contact with a drunk.

Earlier this week I was on a later train than usual. Still peak, but late so the cars weren't so crowded and getting a seat was a snap. Lo and behold a stench of stale beer and cigarettes makes me look up to see a wasted blue collar guy coming down the aisle. He sits right across from me and dammit I made eye contact. Just the briefest of of acknowledgements but contact nonetheless. I became this guys buddy for the ride all the way to White Plains. Any comments or complaints that my new friend had were floated right my way with the finest mix of aromas. Ah. Halitosis. Stale beer. Nicotine. Gotta love it. It's like college!

So there we are, me staring straight ahead and this guy is looking for an opening - a little conversational trinket. Shortly his trinket arrives in the form of a large sweaty balding older and nervous guy that's just passed 5 open seats and stops in front of my drunken commuting associate and gives him one of these:

"Excuse Me.' he said when he really meant, "Move your ass for me now. This seat has spoken to me like the dog spoke to The Son of Sam and I must sit here."

Other people might have moved over. The guy had fulfilled a commuting rule and had the ballz to ask for the seat. Thing is though, my drunken canvas coat with leather collar friend was not a commuter and did not realize the rules. Instead he sat there and stared at the swarthy accoster in a manner that conveyed bafflement. Though drunk, his common sense and inscrutable trailer park logic was still in full effect. The Blue Collar drunk guy said,

"You have to be fucking kidding me. There are like a ton of empty seats everywhere and you want to sit HERE?"

And with that observation the swarthy man muttered in a small voice, "I guess that's true." and moved on.

Then the blue collar guy had me. Just as the swarthy man cleared the space between us he looks at me and says "Can you believe that shit? That dumbass wanted to sit here. HERE! With all these empty seats."

"Yup" I said.

"Really, that guy wanted to sit here. Right here in this seat. Wanted me to get up. Wanted me to get up and fucking move so he could sit here." He gestures to the vacant seats and continues "Look at all the seats....Etc etc....

"Yup."

After a few rounds of that sort of conversation my erstwhile traveling companion got caught up in a phone call and was polite enough to take his conversation to the train car's vestibule and well out of earshot. Maybe it was politeness, maybe it was to make a drug deal or place bet. Who the hell knows, I was just glad to not have to hear it (or smell it).

In the meantime, the train stops at 125th and a woman and a young girl get on the train and sit right behind me. She starts reading to the kid about tigers and lions and stating lots of lion and tiger facts. Then she moves onto some whacked out geography lesson and quizzing the kid about what the capitol of Sri Lanka is and asking the kid if the kid was Sri Lankan. Rinse and repeat for Nepal, Tibet, Thailand and a host of other countries. I'm perplexed because the kid has no idea what the hell a tiger or a lion is but is supposed to know that Katmandu is the capital of Nepal.

Re-enter the drunk guy who has since returned to his seat and is downing a third Bud Tallboy. He's been listening too. He looks back at the woman in the seat behind me and says:

"I don't mean to interrupt, but not for nothing, but since you are being so loud I couldn't help but hear you. How about this though...how how about what the capitol of this state (finger pokes seat). This state (poke poke) right here. What about this country. How about learning about this country FIRST before that crap."

Of course awkward silence follows and of course he looks to me for support. "Am I right?"

I wanted to turn around myself and say that the guy was right and she was being loud and shut up and teach the kid about America first and if you aren't with us you are with the terrorists and dammit the kid doesn't know what a lion is yet.

However, diplomatic me could only come up with, "Geography sure is useful." and stare out the window some more. The guy just continued to needle the lady with questions like "What's the largest lake in New York? What's the capitol of this state?" while she sat in silence. This just egged him on though. "What you don't know? Really?" and he would come back to me and tell me she didn't know. Then he would ask me how fucked up it was that she did not know.

And so it went till we hit White Plains and I got off and left the conflict / quiz show.

Decisions Decisions

2005-11-30T20:24:00.000-08:00

What a pain in the ass it is to work on a print all class only to have a piece of lint show up on the final one right as class ends. Grrr.

The class will end soon and I need to pick another class or decide how to otherwise proceed with photography as a hobby / possible part time business. The thing is, as usual, I am betwixt and between what to choose. More black and white? Go for color? Go for digital? Take a portrait class? Everything interests me.

Hell, for the past few days I've flipped through the SVA Continuing Ed. course catalogue and found that the classes in advertising, in film editing and yes, even voice over announcing appeal to me as well. I can make a case for any of them. It frustrates me. I always feel that the one true calling is out there and that I'm missing it while I spin my wheels with whatever my current interest is. Right now it's photography and because I'm not Ansel Adams, Annie Leibowitz or Helmut Newton yet, my mind races.

The sensible thing to do would be to just sign up for the next class in B&W, see how it goes and in the meantime go out and actually get a good 35mm SLR, a digital SLR, a new PC with Photoshop and some other basic equipment like lenses and filters and such and just shoot my ass off , keep learning and give myself some credit.

As coincidence would have it, my cousin Dina, a long time photo-retouch artist, has started a side business of her own doing candid baby, toddler and kid photography. I'm not sure what kind of portent that is, but she's really talented and I'm sure she'll do well with it. Right now the name of her website escapes me -- I'll post it later. Another buddy, Joel Kraft is the proud owner and principal photographer of Catskill Stills (www.catskillstills.com). The good thing is at least I have some people doing it that I can talk shop with.

If I'm not a voice over announcer. :-)

A Thanksgiving Catch Up

2005-11-27T11:39:00.000-08:00

Man, what a week.

I caught a cold, got blamed for 20K in ad revenue being lost, prepared for and cooked Thanksgiving Dinner for the Kitcher side of The Family, saw the new Harry Potter flick in IMAX, shot three rolls of color film for a black and white photography class (and even got stopped by the police while doing it) and again found the deep and primal satisfaction of triangle choking someone. Lastly I shit fire all last night.

As far as work goes, generally things tend to shake out like this -- something goes wrong that I have no idea about and is someone else's fault or mistake and then get blamed for it. For a while I think I am about to get canned for it and then the powers that be seem to realize that there are larger issues at play and the issue, while not forgotten, gets dropped. Until the next thing happens. My hope is that I can get some enterprise level monitoring tools going that will help alleviate this type of crapola from hitting multiple fans and be a nice feather in my technical cap. Of course, this is something I want to do, but is at odds with the part of me that wants out of technology and into something more creative like...well like photography.

Speaking of which, my B&W class has me shooting color film for an assignment. The assignment is to take shots "looking down". We then bring in the shots and the Prof. and the rest of the class cull through the roll or two to arrive at 3 to 5 keepers. The idea is to get exposed to editing your work and to experience the freedom of operating within a constraint. I shot one roll earlier in the week and two rolls yesterday. I thought of driving around but settled on a walk down the rail trail right near my condo. On the way to the trail I stopped where Rt. 119 crosses the Saw Mill River to take a couple of shots looking down from the bridge. About two minutes into me setting up I hear the whoop whoop whoop of a cop car right behind me but don't pay any attention, figuring it must be them pulling someone over. Then I hear "Hi there." over the loudspeaker and this gets my attention. There is indeed a cop right there behind me and she kindly and curiously asks me -- "Uh whatcha doing there?" I explain its for an assignment at school and she asked what school and I just gave her my license. Of course, these days the police get a little antsy when they see some guy taking pictures of a water way, bridge, and transcontinental AT&T cable all at once. In a way I was glad she stopped me and asked all the right questions. Nice to know people are out there paying attention.

Of course, I had to be spotted when all this went down. It turns out Clarisa and my cousin Jody drove by as I was being questioned / detained. We joked later about just how great it would have been if they would have stopped and said something like, "Oh man are we glad you stopped this guy-- he's been creeping us out for the past few weeks. He's been at every bridge."

Overall though, the class is going very well. Of course, I tend to think my shots are kind of inferior but that's just me being insecure and competitive. Honestly, my shots are not the best in the class, but then again, the guy I am comparing myself to seems to have a lot more time on his hands and more experience and better access to things to shoot. Me, I'm older, I'm working, and I'm inexperienced. The only way I'll ever get better is to keep shooting and keep learning, especially from the people that are more experienced. The course catalogue for next semester arrived - I think I'll take another class, if not two.

As for Thanksgiving - it really went off without a hitch. Well, there was the part where the roasted garlic paste I made for the roasted garlic mashed potatoes turned into a bit of a garlic cement but that was no big deal deal - I just made plain 'ol perfect mashed potatoes instead. The turkey was brined over night for 8 hours in a nice mix of salt and brown sugar and cinnamon sticks and then stuffed with some lemon halves, rosemary, thyme and cinnamon sticks. No basting. No stuffing inside the bird. Instead I fired that bird of at 500 degrees for 30 minutes to brown it and then took it out, covered the breast with a triangle of tinfoil, stuck a meat thermometer in it and then put it back in at 350 degrees until the breast temperature hit 161. Man, it all worked just like Alton Brown said it would.

Later on that night I chatted with my cousin Will for a bit about BJJ. He's a big pro wrestling fan but I really thought he should see what BJJ is about. So we went into the bedroom and I showed him a few basics of keeping someone in guard and how to triangle them. Of course the lesson turned into a little bit of a match and family started rolling in to see what was going on. My dad laughed his ass off and my aunts joked that sort of activity between family members was illegal. And lets face it, wrapping your legs around another guy takes a ton of confidence. BJJ is not something for those who shy away from close physical contact. Its fun as hell though and it was fun to triangle young Will and show him a kimura and americana and a guillotine. Fun fun fun.

Not everything is fun though.

In a little while I'll get ready to go to Madeline Rizzo's wake. I'll shower, shave, press my shirt and put my suit and tie on and drive down to New Jersey to pay my respects and show my support for the Rizzo's. It's what we do. It's what we must do.

2005-11-22T18:15:00.000-08:00

This past weekend I was down in Brooklyn for my 2nd cousin's baptism. It was at St. Anselms (at 82nd and 4th I think) - the same church I have been to for at least one funeral. Since I am not a very lapsed Catholic and a semi quasi Buddhist secularist, I generally do not go to church unless I have to. As of late, its been for funerals and for memorial masses. So, to say the least it's a lot more fun to go to a Baptism.

When and where I grew up it was a singular affair - just one family and the priest. Like for my sister's baptism, I remember the majority of the family hanging out back at the house at Van Siclen Drive and partying while the immediate family and god-parents went to the church. These days it seems that the baptisms are always held en masse. At some point the church must have decided on a Wal Mart type discount for volume head-dip pricing plan. It's efficient, but man, it sure ain't personal at all. I am not a fan.

So there I am at St. Anselms with my family gathered in one pew, waiting for things to get started and quietly talking over the sounds of crying babies and screaming kids when all of a sudden, the priest in charge, or POC, starts yelling:

I am starting to lose my patience with you! You are in a house of GOD! You are NOT in your living room!

Well, I thought, that's an interesting way to start things off. The guy went on a bit more and basically came off as a dick. He went on to insult Mets fans - nothing I disagree with generally, but a baptism hardly seems like the ideal venue. I don't even recall the context because I was too busy thinking, "This guy is a diiiiiiick." He barked some orders about how everything was going to go down and how we better listen or else.

Man, what drama. I guess I am spoiled though. One of our Fordham crew, Russ Murray is now Father Russel Murray, OFM; aka Father Russ and soon to be Dr. Father Russ as his PhD is about complete. Russ can give a mass. Now he's not a parish guy so he's not dealing with people all the time and getting more and more irritated as, evidently, this St. Anselms guy had. Even if he was, I don't see him ever behaving like that. I certainly hope not! Anyhow, the bottom line is that Russ is a pleasure to listen to and the type of guy that people just warm to. He really truly and undoubtedly in love with God and it shows. This other guy -- he seemed more like a pissed off teacher or principal.

The priest not withstanding, Christopher Blaze got baptized and we all went back to my aunt Eileen's for a post baptismal bash. We had Christopher's father there and his family, the Kitcher clan and a host of Carberry's that always seem familiar but that I've never really gotten to know. And of course, there was Gregory. Ah Gregory who brought a bathtub's worth of vodka jello shots. Gregory who fired up the twenty somethings and turned on the music and generally got things grooving. If you have a party and you need to get it going right, Greg is always going to be your man.

I was a bit sick with a sinus cold so I shied away from drinking too much and chose to hang out with my cousin Kerry and get to know one of my other little second cousins - Dennis. I even managed to get a couple nice B&W shots of them outside the apartment. The negatives are developed and I should be printing them next week. My relationship with Kerry is one where we go a long time without seeing each other or hearing from each other but we always seem to be able to pick it up again like we never missed a beat. I dig that. I had that with my sister. Hopefully she comes over for Thanksgiving with Jose and her kids - Dylan, Devon and Dennis. Sure the cats will be traumatized but what the hell.

Work continues to be a bit of a drag. The general thing of it is this - things go wrong and I get blamed because my title says I am the QA guy. Somehow I guess that means everyone else can abdicate responsibility for their work. It's not a lot of fun especially when I'm doing as much as I can with what I've got, which is not a lot. Tomrrow I will be speaking with some upper managent types about recent errors and I imagine I will have to defend myself and recommend some changes.

We shall see.

Spider-Man

2005-11-19T06:45:00.000-08:00

When I was a kid, back when Santa Claus was still around and the World was unknown, back when Pop-Pop used to set me up in my little kids chair with a back that folded down into a tray. Back when I used to sit there and on a Saturday morning and eat PB&J and guzzle Pepsi while Abbott and Costello movies played on the T.V. Back then. Back then I used to look for Spider-Man swinging through the streets of Manhattan. I never saw him.

In a small way, I'm still disappointed about that.

For Sfumato

2005-11-15T20:02:00.000-08:00

Last Monday I got out of my photography class at SVA late and made it to a train. I finally checked my calls and messages and saw that Sfumato had called but not left a message.

I was happy to see he tried to call me. Maybe he wanted to get together? Maybe chat about the Ultimate Fighter II matches? Go for a run? A hike? With those happy thoughts in mind I called him back.

When he answered he asked if I had talked to anyone and I told him no. Then he told me the reason he called - to tell me he was having the type of day I had just over a year ago. That was all he had to say for me to know that this was not the conversation I wanted to have and that my good friend was inconsolable. My first thought was that something had happened to one, some or all of the triplets or Debbie or her and the triplets. The news was not about them though.

Joe's parents were in a car accident in Virginia on Monday of last week. They were on their way to Florida for a vacation. Joe's father was severely injured but is recovering and has and will, from what I understand, undergo reconstructive surgery.

Joe's mom died in the crash.

I don't know the details of it. That's up to Joe to tell me if he wants to, and even then I won't post it here. What's important is that Joe lost his mother suddenly and tragically and that his father is alive and that they all have family and friends praying and pulling for them.

I just looked back at his blog and re-read his posts when Jenn died. I hate the fact that he had to write it at all but am heartened by his compassion, his support and it stirring him to live a better life. It's a lesson I'm still learning and here it is again. In recent times I've been a wreck even without having to deal with the loss of my sister, Jenn. It's been hard for me. Really hard. I don't wish it on anyone, least of all my friend. More than anything while I know we've both experienced sudden and tragic loss, I know that what he's going through is entirely unique and that there is little for me to do or say to make things better. But what the hell...

Joe,

I told you this before, and you told it to me - It will get better in time. I promise.

You've got the triplets and your family and Deb. You know this. I'm sure it's amazingly apparent to you how much you have them at this point. I'm sure there are wonderful pictures of your parents with the triplets. That means something. Right now it might not seem like a lot and at times like these not a lot does.

The Fordham crew is here for you, too.

You hit the longest non-wind aided wiffle ball home run in the history of Van Siclen Drive wiffle ball. Hell, probably the longest home run ever in wiffle ball history. [Folks, that shot went from one end of my yard, threaded the branches of no less than three maple trees, flew over my parent's driveway, over the first part of my neighbor yard and landed one quarter of the way onto their roof.] It was a moon shot and you did it lefty and whilst doing a impersonation of Darryl Strawberry. A bazillion years later and lbs for the both of us you wrote about it. I love that. You can write, brother. Keep it up.

More than anything I just love you and Deb and the kids and the rest of the Rizzo clan. My heart goes out to you. I'm so sorry.

A long day

2005-11-06T15:57:00.000-08:00

All too often "a long day" is a shitty crappy hard one where you just want to collapse at the end of it or punch someone. Or cry. Or cry and punch some and then collapse. Whatever.

Today though, has been a long day but not in the bad sense. Its been a day where I could do anything I wanted to do and had plenty of time. Absolutely nothing has been rushed and if anything, time slowed down for me today. There was time to linger, time to observe, time to enjoy and time to relax. Hell, I even managed to eat right, save for a tiny Halloween sized pack of M&M Minis.

The day started off on a good note with Diego Sanchez beating Nick Diaz in a great UFC fight that featured sweet BJJ technique and a goodly amount of ground and pound. While it did not match up to Griffith vs Bonnar it was damn close. It makes me want to head back over to the Santos school but then I really don't need another injury.

As for my day...

I managed to sleep in a bit and woke up around 9:30 A.M., made some coffee, poured a bowl of Kashi Go Lean and watched some T.V. for a bit while I thought about where I would like to go today to shoot some film. Disinterested in the various talking heads I flipped on my PS2 and screwed around a bit with Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects. It's a good game. I left off with a little teleporting hottie called Femme Fatale (The Wink?) that just kept kicking Wolverine's ass. My skillz have left me it would seem.

I took a ride over to Tarrytown to the waterfront to shoot the Tappan Zee Bridge and the surrounding marina and park area. It was foggy out and the bridge was just a black silhouette in the mist. My first low key black and white photography! Then, a nice treat happened and the mist burned off a bit. Same place, completely different look so I loaded more film and kept shooting until I felt I had exhausted the area. I drove around a bit, took some more pics near the Fordham Tarrytown campus and headed back home. It was only 2PM.

The whole day has been like this - just slow and relaxed and nothing seems to take a lot of time. Right now the clock says 7:26 P.M. - just about the time I usually get home from work. Usually I get there about the time I woke up today. I imagine myself down there in the City today instead of kicking it around here today. Holy Fuck that IS a long day. Yet there never seems to be enough time - not down there.

Here though, there is plenty of time.

Ultimate Fighter II

2005-11-05T18:56:00.000-08:00

Kenny Florian dominated Kit Cope and submitted the muay thai kickboxing champion with a an arm-bar after a flurry of punches from the mount -- but Cope's tapout came just fractions of a second after the horn signaled the end of the first round. Cope was game and came out for the second round, but his right arm was clearly hurt. Florian easily took him down at the start of the second round and then submitted Cope a second time with a rear naked choke.

Looking at the two combatants you would think that Cope would dominate just on the strength of his tattoos and chiseled frame. Florian looks like your basic everyman. Bottom line is that on the ground, BJJ will kick your ass if you are not versed in at least defending yourself in the ground game. I'm not sure of Cope's background, but the show touted him as a muay thai champion and I have no doubt that if take downs did not come into play he'd beat Florian around the ring. He could not stop Florian on the ground and got beat.

In the second fight, Stevenson and Cummo had a slug-fest on the ground. Stevenson dominated most of the fight and was able to take Cummo down in each round. The underdog from New Hyde Park, Luke Cummo had his moments though, especially when he managed to hurt Stevenson a few times when Stevenson shot in for a single leg and was game on the ground but could never really gain an upper hand and lost a three round decision.

As I write the third fight of Ultimate Fight Night II is still being pimped. It's Brad Imes vs Rashad Evans. To me, Imes (6'7" and 250+) is a lesser version of Bob Sapp with a bit of knowledge about ground fighting. I really want to see that guy get his ass kicked. I think he really benefited from a trend earlier in the season where the best guy from one team called out the best guy from the other team. The result was a loss of talent. Imes has been boring to watch and Evans favors a greco roman clinch style so I'm not really sure what type of fight to expect. We'll see. Evans has the skill and experience and Imes is a big ass wall o' country beef. If I had to guess, Imes is going to try and wear Evans down. Likewise, Evans just needs to be patient and work over Imes and coax him into a mistake.

The fight introductions are on now and you can just see how freaking BIG Imes is. What a retarded ring name though -- The Hillbilly Heart Throb? Come on!!

Lets go for a play by play.

Ok - Brad seems to have a good jab working, but holy shit he looks stupid throwing any sort of kick.

Rashad is kicking Ime's ass now with 1:10 left in the first but Imes is back up on his feet around 30 seconds. Evan's could not keep the big man down but he clearly demonstrated his ability to tag Imes with a big ass left hand and a right. Imes, to his credit went to a butterfly guard and managed to stop Rashad's momentum.

The second round has just started. A few jabs by both combatants and a half ass kick or two by Imes. But here come Big Country with a flurry of punches but Evans manages to weather it. With two minutes Imes comes at Evans again but Evans counters. He looks tired as hell though.

With 25 seconds left in round two just sent Imes mouthpiece flying but could not finish him before the horn sounded.

Correction, it was not a mouthpiece, but a big slob of snot and blood that went flying. Argh.

Oh shit - Evans just knocked Imes right on his ass and now finds himself mounted but he gets out of it and to his feet. What a big strong son of bitch Imes is. Evans looks really tired now with 2:25 left in the third and is under the slab of Iowa beef.

The fight is over. I'm not sure who won but man it was a much better fight than I thought it would be. Both guys gave it their all and I was impressed by Imes. He's clumsy and not polished but is certainly a good athlete and knows how to use the tools he does have. So I guess that's a partial retraction?

29-28 scores from all three judges, 2-1 and Evans wins it. Boos from the crowd. That's pretty cheezy. How can you boo after a fight like that? It was close -- not a Roy Jones Olympic style rip-off and Evans' won it from what I saw. Jerks.

Next up is Diego Sanchez vs Nick Diaz but I'll have to catch it later. The missus is calling and George Carlin has a new special on right now.

Learning The Hard Way

2005-10-29T19:09:00.000-07:00

When I first started mountain biking I always took off without a spare or a pump. I got a flat soon enough but it was right near my house so I did not change my ways. I figured it was freak thing. Just look at those beefy tires on a mountain bike - so much more imposing than a skinny road bike tire. I had ridden road bikes for years without getting a flat - what were the chances of that happening again? In my case it was 1:1 each time I went riding after that. It seemed if I rode over a pebble I would get a flat. Beefy tires indeed. Under that tough knobby exterior was a thin penetrable skin that couldn't stand up to much of anything. Still though, it was only after getting a flat about 9 miles away from home with no wallet and no phone and doing the push the bike thing all the way back home - in the winter - that I figured that maybe, just maybe, I should invest in some equipment. So one weekend I went to the local bike shop and dropped some coin on a Camelback, clips, bike shoes, shorts, shirt and some spares and a compact pump and a most importantly a pair of Tuff-Ez to line my tires and prevent blowouts. Sure enough after I bought the gear riding became a lot more fun. I guess if you are prepared, you can relax and concentrate on the task at hand. So that's what I did.

Nowadays I bike less and the latest interest is photography. If you keep up with this blog (bless all two or three of you) you know I'm in a black and white class at SVA in Manhattan. It's an entry level class with weekly assignments and lab work where we develop and enlarge our own negatives - the basics. So far so good except that I fogged my initial two rolls of film. For some reason after the developer and stopper I decided the best way to add the fixer would be to open the main part of the tank instead of the light safe top. As soon as I had done it I figured out that this was not a Good Thing and slapped the lid back on and hoped that I had not wrecked the film.

It's exactly this type of loss of train of thought and brain fart maneuver that convinced me to withdraw from flight school. Lapses in concentration don't bode well in a flying machine that basically beats the air into submission more than flies.

Ok - back to the negatives.

At first glance the negatives looked good, but the roll from the top of the tank will not produce a negative worth printing. The bottom roll in the tank got fogged as well, but not as badly and I can print off of that one. So far I have one print of the power lines that traverse the rail trail that runs by my house. It's not Ansel Adams but then again why would I really expect it to be? What can be said for it is that it's a good print off of a negative with some issues and that it's my first print. I'll frame it just for that reason.

Like I said before I'm not sure what I want from all this. I'm trying to keep my expectations low and the goal is to learn and progress but not obsess as I am wont to do - I'd burn out my interest in no time otherwise. The thing with photography is that it's a gadget maven's delight - there's so much shit you can buy. And lets face it, gadgets can sure as hell keep you interested. Still, I have yet to go hog wild with the gear. I've got my Dad's camera, a venerable Pentax ME Super SE 35mm SLR and the 50mm and the 80mm telephoto lens he had. My contribution is some film, a wide angle lens and a light meter along with some developing and enlarging stuff.

I haven't burnt through too much film yet - there's been either no time to shoot or when there has been it's monsoon conditions outside.

This morning seemed full of promise - a nice fall morning with pale golden light and scattered clouds. I figured I'd head over to Lyndhurst and reshoot some of the shots I had fogged but by the time I got over there it was gray skies again. Argh. Then on top of that the batteries in the Pentax died. Then on top of that the batteries in my Poweshot A20 crapped out. Double Argh.

Well, it should not come as a surprise that this stuff uses electricity. I should have checked. I should have had some spares or another back up camera but I thought that everything would be fine. No such luck. Just like with the mountain biking I had to learn the hard way. On Monday during lunch I'll trek over to B&H and get a bunch of batteries. I'll get lens cases and some more film and a flash attachment. I'll probably pick up a camera gear backpack too. Sure I don't need it, but it will make my life easier and allow me to concentrate on the task at hand instead of wondering if I have the right equipment or if something is going to crap out on me. Like I said, preparation lets you enjoy things more. It's a lesson worth learning and one I seem to like to re-learn.

The saving grace of the sojourn out to Lyndhurst today was that Clarisa came along to be my assistant and model. Hey - I get to sleep with my assistant! So even though the equipment failed we still had each other and enjoyed the grounds. It felt like a date and after 11 years of marriage I think it's damn cool we can feel that way.

Before the battery died on the digital:

Trailer Park Logic

2005-10-28T19:54:00.000-07:00

In his article, "Greetings From Idiot America" in this month's Esquire magazine, Charles P. Pierce writes, CREATIONISM. INTELLIGENT DESIGN. FAITH-BASED THIS. TRUST-YOUR-GUT THAT. THERE'S NEVER BEEN A BETTER TIME TO ESPOUSE, PROFIT FROM, AND BELIEVE IN UTTER, UNADULTERATED CRAP. AND THE CRAP IS RISING SO HIGH, IT'S GETTING DANGEROUS.

He goes onto state that Idiot America (one would think that the title of his article owes a little to Green Day for what that's worth) is essentially a war on expertise and the "...breakdown of a consensus that the pursuit of knowledge is good." and that "In the place of expertise, we have elevated the Gut. And the Gut is a moron."

It's a comprehensive, humorous and well thought out lambastication of, well, Idiot America.
Of course, Pierce is preaching to the choir with me, but it's a fun read nonetheless and isn't there always some pleasure in seeing your own incomplete thoughts coaleseced on the page? Sure there is.

The thing is, while I was reading his piece, I kept on thinking that I'd heard or thought these thoughts before. Not his exact thoughts, but his overall sentiment and this third premise of Idiot America - 3) Fact is that which enough people believe. Truth is determined by how fervently they believe it.

I knew I heard or thought of that before. Then it came to me.

Trailer Park Logic!

Well before Green Day or Pierce used the term Idiot America, I'd witnessed more than my share of what I call Trailer Park Logic. You cannot defeat it. That woman in the stained blue ribbed tank top with the jelly roll spilling over the exhausted elastic stretchband of her lycra leopard skin capris might as well be Daniel Webster. Present facts to her. Offer arguments. Bring a flip chart and Power Point presentations. It's moot. It doesn't matter if the topic is the death penalty or Elvis vs Johnny Cash. Whatever the point of view is - you cannot change it. And forget nuance. You are defeated and she will subjugate you to her superior will.

Fact is that which enough people believe. Truth is determined by how fervently they believe it (Pierce, Esquire, 10/05).

It seems the logic has left the trailer park and made it to the White House.

Like Mr. Pierce I am perplexed and concerned and disconcerted. How is it that we seem to have moved from a rational secular culture to one where intelligent design is being put side by side with science?

I don't have an answer - but as a person who is a fan of Thoreau, Emerson and Mills I hope we shift back.

Welcome Babies

2005-10-21T20:16:00.000-07:00

I've been terribly remiss.

Back on September 7th my cousin Christine ushered into the world the newest member of our family - Christopher Blaze Carberry.

What a name. Christopher Blaze. I love it. I certainly love my cousin and I certainly love the little guy and even love the fact that the first time I held him he pooped for all he was worth. For the life of me I can't figure out why I have not thought to mention his arrival here. So - a belated welcome to Christopher and a public Congrats to you, Christine. It was great to see you in September and I got some good pictures of Clarisa holding Christopher. Sure I had my SVA photography class in the back of my mind, but more than that I was thinking that someday he'll be 37 years old and looking back and see this black and white photo of himself before he even knew who he was. Moreover - how great was it for so many of us to get together in Brooklyn on a non-holiday and just indulge in the simple pleasure of an extended walk around the block with a stop for ice-cream. That was really great. On top of that I got to see my cousin Kerry and two of her little ones - Devon and Dylan and even my cousin Will made a rare appearance. And yes, Will, the picture I took of you on your long board came out and you'll get a copy to post on your blog. I just need to do that whole printing thing first. Then the scanning thing. Seeing as how I have no scanner and even no computer - this might take longer than otherwise expected. If you would like the process speeded up - please feel free to meditate on the speedy arrival of the insurance check from Travelers. All of you.

Speaking of babies - Sfumato had his triplets, Dominic, Xavier and Luisa. Just like that he went from zero to three after nine years of marriage. Three over nine. One is a prime, one a square root of the other and there are three periods in hockey and 9 innings in baseball. Does that mean anything? Well, he loves baseball and he loves hockey. Plus Babe Ruth was number 3 and Gordie Howe was number 9. Nine times three gives us a 27 for Kovalev and 2+7 brings us back to 9. Nine plus three yields us a Broadway Joe as well. Fortuitous indeed. And CLUTCH.

Poof! You are a Dad! Congrats!

A Mini Catch-Up

2005-10-21T17:15:00.000-07:00

There's been no posts lately for two reasons.

My PC died a horrible death. From the looks of things it was electrocuted - zapped right through my surge protector one night a few weeks ago during the 8 Days Of Rain. Maybe the hard drive is fried maybe not. Hopefully I can recover some of the data I didn't have backed up, but I've been too busy lately - which brings me to number two.
Work has been a royal pain in the ass. Since there is no glory in being Dooced if you are not Doooce herself, I'll just say I've been there a bit more than I would like to be and leave it at that.

Disconcerting

2005-10-07T21:29:00.000-07:00

Scientists decide to set up scenario for real life re-enactment of Stephen King's The Stand

Lovely!

(For those of you who did not click on the link, it points to an article about scientists recontstructing the Spanish Flu virus Actually I think it's pretty cool that they can reconstruct it and hopefully learn enough about it to stop it from recurring. Not releasing it would be a Good Thing as well. Hence The Stand reference. All caught up? Good. You may proceed.)

Meanwhile, the great grandson of the Spanish Flu that killed my biological great grandmother, Mary Petrulyak, along with 49,999,999 other people is romping around enough to draw worldwide attention.

And given the reaction to Katrina - what do you think the results were for the study on how prepared we are to deal with a pandemic were?

That's right. You got it.

(For those of you not clicking the link - "That's right. You got it." means that I am assuming that you will assume that the study shows, as I have assumed, that we are shit out of luck so far in this regards.)

So what's the point? Will I start to wear a surgical mask like Whacko Jacko or some SARS dodging Japanese commuter? Should we all freak out?

Hell no.

It's just disconcerting to read about. And lets face it, there is the much more immediate reality of vague bomb threats to NYC's transit system to not worry about. Avian flu schmavian flu. Bombs? Feh. We have stuff to do!

But then I just read Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, so I perhaps that's responsible for my apocalyptic yet satirical and post-modernist mood. Yeah, yeah, I was a Fordham Lit major and never read it till now - what do you want from my life? Every class I signed up for all I ever got was Edith Wharton & Guest. House of Mirth every damn time. Not my fault.

Speaking of Edith Wharton - if you live in CT or southeast NY - her mansion, The Mount is a nice place to go visit in Lenox, MA - which is about 3 hours outside of NYC and 2 hrs away from Boston. And - if you are going to go to Lenox, you might as well stop in or stay in Stockbridge and check out the Norman Rockwell Museum and or Naumkeag. It's a great weekend get away, especially in Autumn. See? Some good came out of reading Wharton.

The next book on my "to read" list is Kevin Canty's Into the Great Wide Open. Nothing disconcerting about that but not everything can be. Dos Passos will just have to wait. Yeah - didn't read him either. Shameful.

Some BJJ Talk

2005-10-04T18:22:00.000-07:00

There's been no mention of BJJ here for a while because I've stopped training while my biceps and shoulder and ankle and neck heal up. I was just getting too beat up to keep it up. I figure my weight and my lack of flexibility had a lot to do with it, so I'm on a diet and doing yoga to lighten up and limber up physically and mentally. I just trying to prepare myself to go back to it where I can work out and not walk out feeling like I just pitched a complete game with each arm. I do miss it though. I miss it especially when I manage to catch Spike TV's Ultimate Knockouts like I did last night. What great marketing by the UFC. Play an hour long show where someone gets their ass handed to them every 5 minutes and use it as a lead in to a live event. Beautiful.

More beautiful than the UFC's marketing was watching Matt Hughes in the knockout reel. Hughes gets arm barred or triangled and then stands up to escape it and carries his opponent, Newton, across the mat to the cage and posts him against it. Newton grabs the cage for a second and then is made to let go. Hughes pauses. Then he steps back and SLAMS Newton to the canvas. Lights out. Hughes wins. The guy is a monster competitor and very very savvy in the octagon.

The other great highlight was Forrest Griffin's rear naked choke victory followed by spooning his opponent. I had to laugh my ass off when he through a leg over the guy like it was a cool Saturday November morning in bed. To Forrest's credit, he joked about it later. You need to be able to laugh at yourself.

Ah - I just remembered one other knock out. I think it was Gary Goodrich in a UFC fight from long ago (he was in a gi) where, just 45 seconds into the fight he basically got this guy in a crucifix and then started lambasting the living shit out him with elbow strikes. It was ugly though too because the ref jumped in a little late.

As for the Ultimate Fighter II - I've caught it here and there. With the exception of the last show, the fights have been dull and the team strategy stupid. Why would you want to fight the other teams best guy? There is really nothing to gain from it in the context of the show. You risk elimination and you risk injury. Even Dana White had to jump in and tell them they were being stupid but they did not listen. It is a contest after all - with the idea being to win your weight class and a contract in the UFC. And, let not forget Dana wants some good fights at the end, not some lopsided contest or two guys that really don't deserve the UFC because the best guys have already eliminated themselves.

One last thing - I have not seen Andrei Arlovski fight yet - but did I see what I think I saw in the promos? He's got fangs a la Dee Snider and the creepy goth vampire folks? Luvit.

Kitchen's Done!

2005-10-01T15:46:00.000-07:00

Well, all our rennovations are through and we can finally bid adieu, for now, to our Polish contractors. Here's our kitchen in chronological order:

When we first moved in:

The leak discovered and the kitchen torn to hell to locate it / fix it and clean up the yucky mold:

The new kitchen:

Man, what a relief. We've been dealing with this crap since May but in the end it's worth it because we found and stopped that leak and rennovated our place and we like it better than when we started.

Miracle

2005-09-29T20:12:00.000-07:00

I just watched Miracle again. I figure it's the 8th time or so I've seen the film and it never disappoints, although nothing can compare to the day I watched Team USA pull off the greatest upset in sports history. I was amazed and inspired.

A few years later I met Mike Eruzione for a brief moment at a speech and autograph appearance at the South Hills Mall in Poughkeepsie, NY. I brought him my skates to sign - a pair of cloddy molded plastic Microns. Mike signed his name on the tongue of the right one for me and then offered me a bit of advice. Basically he told me my skates sucked and that I should invest in a pair of leather skates. By the beginning of next season I had a new pair of Bauer 100's and a break out year in my high school hockey career.

As for now, my interest in hockey is returning with the the new NHL season that starts in about a week. The Red Wings look good and I'm happy to see Steve Yzerman is back at the Joe for one more season. Here's to them kicking the crap out of Colorado and NJ. Why NJ? For the bragging rights. Sfumato and a host of other friends of mine are Devil's fans and it's always good to chirp about your team over a beer. Or in your blog.

NY Times Select, A Cheap Offer & Bob Dylan

2005-09-27T20:14:00.000-07:00

Recently, the NY Times took everything that was worth reading and buried it behind the shiny tall walls of premium content they call Times Select. I used to read Rich, Friedman, Krugman, Dowd, Brooks et al every day and especially on Sundays. I'm not spending 50 bucks to do it though. Thanks NYT for forcing me to expand my horizons. Hello Slate, Salon and Google News.

An old boss of mine called me recently and asked if I would come back and take over my old position. The upside would be a ton more responsibility with exactly the same pay as when I left. In some cases, that might be a gracious offer, but consider that I left because I was grossly underpaid and now make tons more. Consider that I am not unhappy where I am. Consider I am not on the pipe and out of my fucking mind.

Earlier tonight I flipped by PBS and flipped back to it because Bob Dylan was on. It turned out to be Martin Scorsese's bio on him, entitled "No Direction Home e". I just caught the last 20 minutes of it and while there were some great performances in there, the film, at least here at the end, seemed to focus on Dylan and the media. We see him there, smoking and searching for words, joking and playing with the writers - not wanting to be pinned down at all. I'm not the biggest Dylan fan, but it seems to me that this guy has refused to be what we want him to be. While we're free to interpret his lyrics and his messages and ask deep probing questions, he just slips away. He and his art stand alone. He's not going to explain or justify or interpret for you. He's just there. You wanna play the deconstruction game? Go ahead. Bob abides and doesn't give a crap. Or at least he'll never let on.

Anyhoo - I'd like to see the rest of the documentary. It seems like Scorsese really nailed this one. Check it out.

The Catch Up

2005-09-25T09:44:00.000-07:00

Ok, so it's been like a month or so. What gives? What's the deal? Why no post? What super duper melodrama is playing out that has kept VJ so occupied he's pulled a Sfumato like month of neglect?

Basically it boils down to self censorship combined with procrastination and its effects alongside a dollop of mild cyclical depression thrown in. Mix and serve. Make sure the depression is cold when you go to mix it in though - just like butter in a cookie mix.

I don't know how many times I sat down here in my office to write something about the debacle and tragedy that was and is Katrina and found my words entirely inadequate or just a recapitulation of sentiments I found better expressed elsewhere. Unable or unwilling to write about it I found it trivial to discuss anything else in the face of such tragedy. On top of it, I watched entirely too much coverage of it which just exhausted me emotionally. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in that.

I can say this though - when I am done with something I just tend to put it away or abandon it or put it down for so long that it's almost embarrassing to pick it back up. I told Sfumato that my lack of a post was starting to feel like a class I'd been skipping all semester.

He told me that was silly. Just post something he said. Pick right back up. Other people wrote or asked about the lack of a post. I have no idea about the number of people that read this but a few seemed to notice the drop off and were concerned. Thanks for that. It's really appreciated.

In my last post I mentioned how I noticed a lack of response to the hurricane. Who knew how far that lack of response would go? Of course though, the blogging world caught up with the story and so did the large commercial Internet presences like Amazon.com. At first Amazon ran just a small red cross add in the upper right corner of their homepage. I think by Friday that small ad had finally turned into the same large centered Red Cross donation page that had been put up right away for the tsunami disaster.

A few weeks ago the NY Times ran an editorial piece about a med-evac company by the name of Acadian that seemed to actually be able to respond to Katrina and deal with it effectively while FEMA just screwed things up for them and everyone else. Evidently, teams of Acadian doctors were withheld because they were not "Federalized" and helicopters sat on the ground empty while bureaucrats fought over whether or not the right forms were being filled out.. WTF? The story made me think of my old boss , the Director of the Strategic Management Group, Drew Overpeck. Drew was all about nimble thinking and adapting to the situation. Plan? Sure you need to plan but you also need to plan on the fly because things rarely work out the way you want them to.

On a more personal level - we just got back Sasha's ashes the other day. Sad sad sad. I get thinking about Sasha and that gets me thinking about death and that gets me thinking about my sister. It'll be one year since she died on October 13th. I find myself thinking about her last weeks out there in Oklahoma with a person that was ill equipped to deal with her problems. I wonder if she had a good day at all - some measure of happiness or whether it was all frustration.

I miss her.

For the past few years Clarisa and I have been surrounded by death. I'll tell you what, it certainly helps to put things in perspective and appreciate those quiet times when everything is going generally well. It also makes you more aware of your life. Take work for example - in general they expect you to stay late and "get it done" because that is what must be done. They expect you to work like you are immortal.

Guess what.

So my advice, folks, is don't wait. Do. Not. Wait. Work for sure, but don't forget to live.

As for me? I've signed up for and have started taking a black and white photography class at SVA. I'm not sure where it will lead but I'm along for the ride. We're supposed to be shooting "motion" and practicing panning and blurring and freezing. Right now it's cool and overcast and I have some 400 speed Tri-X film loaded up and I think I'll go shoot.

What's the deal?

2005-08-30T19:12:00.000-07:00

Perhaps this is premature, but where's the American Red Cross donation link on Amazon.com? Or the blog donations? Granted, Katrina is not the tsunami that devastated the Pacific Rim, but it's the worst natural disaster to hit the US and it's getting worse as the flood waters rise. More death and disease is sure to follow. It's just a complete horrible mess down there. I can't begin to imagine what all those people are going through and are going to go through.

Can we help ourselves too?

Donate to the American Red Cross

A strange find.

2005-08-29T20:13:00.000-07:00

I just looked under my keyboard and found a business card from Cantor Fitzgerald, One World Trade Center, NY,NY. I have no idea how it got there.

The card says he was / is a specialist in Greenhouse Gases. That means I probably met him briefly at some conference at Texaco - probably one on sustainable development. I don't remember him but am really glad to see that he's not listed as one of the victims of 9/11. I was contracting at Texaco when it happened - so he either he was out that day for some reason or had left the company. If he was out, what a lucky guy. Cantor got hit so hard by the attacks.

It's just strange to me that I have this little piece of something that's gone and I'm surprised at how many memories it triggers.

A Sasha Story.

2005-08-26T19:43:00.000-07:00

It's been odd around here. No pooch at my feet as I put on my socks and shoes. No black furry blur running to the door in anticipation of the great morning walk, sniff and pee ritual. I figure I walked Sasha close to 80,000 times or so. That's a lot of walking and sniffing. A lot of memories are wrapped up in those walks. A lot of stories are wrapped up too. Here is one of them...

Back in the day - in this case "the day" is an early summer morning about 6 years ago - we lived in Peekskill. Not in the artistic district, but in a bizarre duplex in the historic Depew building at the end of Rt. 6. We had French doors, wood floors, two marble fireplaces and a kitchen and a bathroom that were downstairs and below ground. It was spacious and distinctive but a really odd set up living wise. A big problem was the stairs down to the kitchen and bathroom. It wasn't just a few easy steps, but more like the steps Father Karrass gets tossed down in The Exorcist. They were steep and there were a lot of them. I hated those steps, especially if I ever sprained my ankle or got a heel spur or tore my knee. As for the neighborhood, we had the occasional drug dealer and prostitutes and other suspicious looking folk.

What does that have to do with the story - not too much - I just wanted to paint a picture for you.

Back in the day I also had a raging case of insomnia. Even if I managed to sleep I was sleep walking and even worse - sleep eating. We'd wake up to discover boxes of cookies devoured and all sorts of bizarre concoctions I'd made when, apparently, no snacks were handy. It not unusual to come downstairs to discover some milk in a pot with an egg and a slice of cheese in it. WTF was I trying to make? Thank god I seemed unable to get the stove working or we would have been in real trouble.

I eventually went to my doctor about it in hopes of getting a sleeping pill or other suggestions. He told me I was stressed out (no shit) and sent me on my way empty handed.

So it was early on a summer morning in the hood back in the day and I was in a stupor from a raging Ed Norton Fight Club style of insomnia. Sasha, bless her hyper heart, was up with me so I looked at her and thought we might as well go for a walk. Usually I kept her on a lead because there were cars and kids and the aforementioned suspicious people around, but it was 3AM and no one was around so I took her out off lead.

Right across the parking lot from our building was a hill. The first twenty yards or so were fairly steep and grass covered then came some woods and then a street above us and then above that the house and building of the hit 80's show, "The Facts of Life". The walks were generally relegated to the grassy part of the hill, known to us as "potty hill". Sasha knew where to go and what to do - though when we first got her she had bolted through those same woods and was finally captured by some Lutheran nuns from the convent above us and their Ecuadorian landscapers. But she had sinced claimed us long before and there was no fear of her bolting on this night. So I thought.

We get about half way across the parking lot toward the hill and Sasha bolts across the pavement and right up the grassy hill to the edge of the woods. I had no idea what she was going after or doing. It was surreal, I just watched her as she raced along the edge of the woods, traveling left to right and wearing her home jersey until she just stopped dead in her tracks and did the big "play with me move".

A big-ass white striped tail shot up in front of her. Her new friend was a gigantic skunk.

Oh Fuck. I thought.

"Sasha! Get your ass away from there! Cmon cmon cmon back over here! Get the fuck over here!!" I yelled and miraculously she came back to me over. I hadn't seen him spray her and I still held some hope for the few moments it took her to run back over.

I bent toward and sniffed. eeeeew. Skunky badness. Not a direct hit, but nothing I wanted to live with.

So, we went back into the house and down the steep Exorcist stairs without waking Clarisa. Why bother her?

I toss the pooch in the tub and turn the shower on and just jump right on in with her and start scrubbing away. Anything that was flowery scented got used. It wasn't working though. I locked Sasha in the bathroom and went into the kitchen in search of tomato juice. I'd heard that worked, and was willing to give it a shot. Alas, no V-8, no tomato juice and no tomatoes. Ah, but in the pantry was a cornucopia of spaghetti sauce. We had a few chunky Hearty Italian bottles, Garden N Herbs and an A La Vodka Sauce. This would have to do. I figured it was worth the shot.

I go back into the bathroom with the 3 bottles of chunky sauce and Sasha is still in the tub, blissfully enjoying the water. She'd shook herself though and fur was stuck everywhere. Stinky skunky fur. I climb into the tub and start working the chunky Hearty Italian sauce into her coat and this starts to annoy her. I keep scrubbing and working in spaghetti sauce and she keeps shaking and the fur and the sauce is flying everywhere. First the chunky garden style and then the garden and herbs and the a la vodka.

By the time I was done, the bathroom looked like someone had been blown to bits in there. There was chunky read sauce and clumps of hair everywhere. No matter though, because the pooch was deskunked (mostly) and I'd done what had to be done. I was beat - cleaning up could wait.

Around 5AM I climbed back into bed without telling Clarisa and somehow got to sleep. I figured I'd tell her later and clean up when I got up.

She got up at 8AM. Man was she surprised.

Drunken Blogging

2005-08-23T20:05:00.000-07:00

Let me state that I have had three very potent Margeritas at this point. Ok. With that said...

My pooch died in my arms around 5:50 tonight. Clarisa and I held Sasha as she died. All I could say as the drugs took hold (so fast) was "I'm sorry" and "I love you" as I cried. First she just laid down and seconds later collapsed onto her side and she was gone. Just like that.

After she collapsed the vet, crying as well , got up and left us alone and I whispered into her ear a Buddhist mantra - "Om Mani Padme Hung" as many times as I could. For about twenty minutes I held her and talked to her after she'd passed. My pooch. My nervous, neurotic, but oh so loving pooch. Sasha, you will be missed, darling. If there is any sort of universal justice or karma you should be in good hands at this point.

Her last day was a good one. I took it off and spent the day with her from start to finish. Car rides, walks, dog parks, runs, more walks and turkey sandwiches and chips. We spent time frolicking in bed and on the couch. More than once, I tried explaining to her again and again what was wrong and what was going to happen and why. Of course, she had no idea, though she was freaked out in the vet's office once they put the catheter in her right leg. She wanted out of the Vet's office at that point.

In my heart I hope that Jenn finds her. In my heart I hope that all of a sudden Sasha just comes loping up on Jenn and gives her a bunch of kisses and that they are together until either one of us or both shuffle off this mortal coil.

I know I did the right thing, so why do I feel so guilty? We loved her as much as we could.

Again, I'm a bit speechless. I'll let Victor Hugo speak for me then...

Certain thoughts are prayers.
There are moment when, whatever be the attitude of the body,
the soul is on its knees.
Victor Hugo

Suffice it to say I am on my knees. Again. Here on the same day Jenn left for Oklahoma, never to return.

For Sasha

2005-08-22T17:37:00.000-07:00

I knew something was wrong because while I was walking home from the bus stop on 119, Clarisa pulled up and was bawling her eyes out. I figured it might have to do with Sasha, our dog, and it did.

I'm a wreck.

She's sick enough that we will put her to sleep tomorrow.

We'd dropped her off at the vet to board her this past weekend and get her checked out - she had a little growth on her eye that had just sprung up. They ran some blood tests and discovered that her kidneys and liver are failing. She also has lymes, despite using Advantix. Ultrasound results show cancer all over the place - her neck for one. So, rather than let her suffer from it, we're letting her go while she's happy.

Sasha's been great. We've had her over 10 years of her 12+ years here and she's been a joy. Sometimes a royal pain in the ass, but a joy overall. She's not a ball fetcher or a trick doer. Though, if you were playing with a ball with someone else, after a bit she'd grab it and go hide it. How DARE a ball get better treatment than her!

When we got her she was insanely submissive - so much so that she would crawl on the floor to you when called and then roll over and whiz straight into the air. With patience and kindness that stopped and she's graduated to just being a nervous dog. A happy, nervous dog that wants to sit on your head and loom the way Snoopy does when he pretends to be a vulture. Nervous, but happy and a fan of humping our big gray cat, Little Guy.

She's been my buddy for a long time and I'm just so sad that tomorrow she's going to be gone. I'm so sad. I really don't know what else to say. Things turn on a dime.

Tonight she's getting boneless pork spare ribs and tomorrow we're going to go the park until it's time.

And to top it all off - today I saw a lady with a small child on the street asking for help. The same lady I saw back on October 12th and had passed by. The same lady I had passed by the day before my sister died.

Today, I passed her again in a rush to get home when it hit me who it was. So I went back around the corner of 39th and 6th and gave her two dollars. I wondered, what, if any, portent was there. Coincidence - probably, but I'm enough of a mystic to think there's much more than we can see here.

I really don't want tomorrow to come...my heart is breaking.

Musings

2005-08-21T16:53:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week VH1 was showing a censored version of Showgirls. WTF? How can that sort of thing even be allowed? I mean, really, if you censor Showgirls, what do you have? An impoverished, diluted husk of a film void of any of the licentious and lascivious behavior that in fact made it such a guilty pleasure to watch. In short, you get jack-shit.

Censorship is bad people. Fight it. More boobs, less bombs on the boob tube.

Ok? Ok.

Moving on...

For a little bit I was reading A Soldier of the Great War by Mark Helprin. I say for a little bit because I left it (and my monthly train pass which was playing the part of a bookmark) on the train or on the roof of my car. Considering the trainpass runs me $185 it's a relatively expensive misplacement. I hope whoever found it enjoys the literary stylings of Mark Helprin and free travel on the MTA's Harlem Line for the rest of August.

As for why I lost it - I guess my mind was a bit preoccupied on the way home that day and the reason for that is big enough for it's own post in the near future. Suffice it to say I had bought a turkey sandwich for a homeless guy who looked a bit like Jesus and whose pet ferrets had starved to death / cooked to death in the 110 degree real-feel heat on the street that day. His name was Tim. I'll write about him again.

As for the book...it's reminiscent of Hemingway but Helprin's prose is a bit more mellifluous and Helprin's central character, Allesandro, so far, seems to be a brighter and more evocative character than Hemingway's Lt. Henry.

Instead of getting another copy for now, I wandered back down to the breakroom and picked up another book someone had dropped off. Running with Scissors is a true tale of a kid's fucked up life after his crazy ass mother dumps him off at her eccentric (and that's really a kind euphemism for "crazy fucker") pyschiatrist's house and his relationship with his mother and his new found family. Despite all that, there's enough familiar ground in there for me to be sympathetic, but enough whacked out crazy shit that makes me ever so thankful that I was not him. The day I start examining turds the way a gypsy looks at tea leaves is the day that I really really really better get some medication. If you are confused - read the book. It's a hoot - it's a good story and ultimately about how resilient we can be.

In another post I'll cover The Family 2005 reunion in Virginia Beach. I got to meet family I never met and see others that I had not seen for 30 years or so. A good time was had by all.

It's Friday and its slooow at work.

2005-08-12T09:55:00.000-07:00

It's been a while between posts blah blah. There is no procrastination. Just the absence of doing stuff.

Really though, I can't tell you how many times I sat down to post something here and immediately felt like I was getting bonked in the head with a big heavy thing. Of course, trying to post at 12:20AM is not probably the ideal time to put any thoughts down.

The protracted battle to fix the house continues. The contractors have been here all week and working late. It's kind of odd trying to sit and watch a DVD with shirtless sweaty Polish men working all around you. But that's life these days. If you want to watch a DVD, you have to do amidst the symphomic clamor of drills, hammers and saws interspersed conversations in Polish that I'm sure go something like:

"Peter, this wall isn't level."

"No surprise there Michael. This place was
built by retards. The ceiling isn't level either."

"It looks like an interesting part of their movie. I will now turn this drill on."

With luck, the guys will finish up today and we'll be ready for the counter-top guy to install our Maui colored Corian countertop in a few weeks. Then a week after that, the tile guy is going to come back and finish up the backsplash.

At that point, I think we will take three deep breaths, gaze at the rennovations and enjoy them for about 10 seconds and then call Century 21. Atlanta seems to have an abundance of tech jobs and the housing costs are still -- relative to Westchester Cty, NY -- cheap. Who knows really where we will wind up, but I can't imagine staying there too much longer. Of course, if I could work from home two days a week, we could buy one of those McMansions in the Poconos that you see advertised all the time in the Daily News and still put money in the bank. The future is wide open.

Most of last weekend was spent in total frustration as I tried and tried and tried again to successfully install a brand new, kick-ass ATI X800 XL AGP card. After installing a new Antec TruePower 430 psu for the X800 to feed off of, I tried to install the new vid card. Tried. And Tried. And Tried.

To say the least the litany of removing the old ATI software, installing the card, installing the Catalyst Software and Drivers was repeated again and again. All I ever got was screen defects and XP freezes and my monitor going into power-save mode interspersed with the occasional blue screen of death. I tried to upgrade my BIOS, but for whatever reason, the damn thing just won't upgrade. The most frustrating part of all this, is that the damn card actually started to work all of a sudden and continued to work for about 2 hours. Half Life 2 and Battlefield 2 never looked so good or played so well. I was amazed at all the new details, espcially in BF2 where the rotor wash from a helo will bend and shake tree limbs and leaves. Even more amazing was the way the jets and helo's handled in singleplayer mode - smooth and fast. What a difference a new video card can make. I was sooo happy. I thought about all the nice new kill records I would post and how my BF2 stats would climb.

Then the card crashed again and never came back. Tell you what - I really wanted to do a John Lydon on my PC. I wanted to hack it to pieces and whiz on it and give it the finger. But, I managed to retain my self control and put my old 128MB ATI Radeon back in it works fine. But, BF2 won't load now. So now I need to reinstall that. Grrr.

Basically, I know the problem lies with my older mobo and its frozen BIOS. I just need a new motherboard and chipset and to reinstall XP. But then I need to get a mobo that fits my Gateway case, which is going to be problematic. So, I already have a new vid card, a new power supply and a 1GB worth of PC3200 RAM. Throw in a new case and a new 478 pin motherboard with a 3.6 processor and I'm on my way to building a new PC. I could add new drives as I go and eventually pop in a RAID controller and upgrade the RAM. Decisions Decisions.

On a different note....

The guitar playing is coming along pretty well but the licks and rythyms of Robert Johnson continue to elude me. So, for the most part I stick with a master the blues book and CD and another book and CD combo that covers scales over chords. That stuff I am starting to get. Like, I can see how the major scale breaks down into the blues, minor scales and pentatonic. I'm even getting fairly comfortable playing, say a primary form of a scale up the neck, and coming back down with the secondary form. Things are starting to click there. Plus the PODXT is just a blast to work with. I'm always one nob turn away from the clean bluesy tones of a Black Lux to crazy metal tones. Freedom baby.

In a few hours I'm flying with my cousin, Jody, to Newport News for a family reunion with our Virgina Beach folks, the Gradels and Autens. The only downer is that Clarisa is not going. She's staying here and is with her cousins and uncle who arrived here today. The original plan was for all of us to go see Wicked and tour around the city. Then this reunion came up and with it a scheduling conflict. We talked about it and I decided to go to VA. It should be a blast though. The last time I saw these people, I was 5. That's an awful lot of catching up.

Hiking, Boozing and Breakfast Machines

2005-07-28T19:18:00.000-07:00

I can't concentrate worth a crap right now.

I will say that last weekend was excellent.. I hiked, golfed, drank margeritas played and played guitar with a friend. Not bad at all.

The hiking at Ramapo Reservation was a blast. I went with Sfumato and his friend, Debra. Great conversation and good exercise. My ankles weren't ready for it. Hoofing it in NYC is not the same as climbing up to Hawk Rock - where we did in fact see a hawk and Sfumato treated himself to some hot stone therapy on cliff-rocks. Along the way we spotted lots of tiny little frogs and though we did not see one - Sfumato was convinced that there was a pheasant about.

Aside from an invite for the next hike, I took away one thing -- comfort in the fact that I'm not the only one who hasn't figured it out. Actually two thing -- the second being that we might actually have an Adventure Race team in the making. Spiff!

Later in the day I got a call from Dave - a long standing friend back from the Enterprise Rent A Car Days. We did an impromptu barbecue at his place and drank a couple of Margeritas and shot the shit outside in his back yard. Later on we played guitar for a bit - always a pleasure with Dave because he's really good and a good teacher. Go figure - he just got his Masters in Education from Fordham and he's a good teacher. Very auspicious. Then in the middle of playing, I get a call from Clarisa and she's all upset and freaked out and wants me to come home. The reason? A chandelier crashed down on our dining room table, just moments after she stood up. At first I thought it might have torn out of the ceiling, since we just had it moved and that the guys put it in wrong. Nope. The actual metal hook holding the lamp just snapped. Totally crazy.

It's fixed now. Clarisa put things back together on Sunday when I was golfing with my Pops. We went to Vassar and played 9 holes with a nice couple, Murray and Eileen. As it turns out, Murray's a Chinese Studies Historian at Baruch. Hey, how often do you meet a Chinese Studies Prof and how often do you actually have something thoughtful to say about Chinese history? I mean what are the odds?

In this case, 1 to 1.

Oh yeah, I finally got to talk about Cheng Ho and the Chinese Navy and the water clock they built and all that fun stuff I read in Boorstin's "The Discoverers". [DuffMan Voice] Oh yea! Putting knowledge to use. Fucking Cheng Ho the eunuch. [end DuffMan] On top of that - Murray was writing a book on electrical engineering with a focus on semi-conducters. As luck would have it, while my Pops knows nothing of sailing Chinese eunuchs, he just happens to have a PhD in Metallurgy and 30 years in semi-conducter fabrication with IBM. So he had something to talk about. Ah - so what does Arleen do though? She works in IT. Systems analyst. What a great networking opportunity. And they were pretty good golfers too!

I'm going to have to look Murray up. How many Chinese Studies Professors can Baruch have?

Finally - I'd like to leave you with this little bit of Family Guy. It gets funnier each time I watch it.

Soldiers. Cops. Bombs. Blues

2005-07-26T19:07:00.000-07:00

A day after the first bombings in London - the powers that be posted a platoon of National Guard soldiers at the White Plains train station. The boys are armed and loaded and do a pretty good job of stopping in front of people with bags or backpacks and giving them a bit of a stare down.

After the failed subsequent bombing attempts in London, they added MTA police to the trains and maybe you've heard that they are stopping people and searching them. One of the guys at my job got stopped this morning in Secaucus. I told him it was because of his beady little eyes. Plus he's Spanish, which these days is close enough to match an Arab profile. And yes, I'm all for profiling in this case. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and is carrying Semtex like a duck, chances are it's a duck. Stopping every 25th person, even if it's Al Gore or Tammy Faye is silly. It's being PC to the point of stupidity.

Anyhoo, moving along...

This morning cops were taping off Madison and 42nd. Lots of police and lots of shooing people away. I can only assume it was a bomb threat. Nothing about it showed up in the news, and no news is good news when it comes to terrorism. Speaking of which - Bloomberg is apologizing all over the place for the NYPD storming a tour bus and detaining five Sikhs. You've probably read about it / heard about it or watched on the news. From what I've read, a Gray line worker called it in saying these tourists were suspicious. While it's better to err on the side of caution, is there some way to do a PSA which informs people that turban does not equal terrorist? Casting aside the sartorial splendor of the five detained and scared shitless men, here is a Sikh:

Here is a Shiite:

Note the subtle differences.

Moving on again...

Dammit, despite the recent attacks in London and spate of scares here in the U.S.A. I refuse to let the terrorists win. That's right - today I went and bought something! On the way to pick up some tickets for Wicked in two weeks (we got hooked up with Orch. seats and a backstage meet and greet through a friend!! Nicey Nice), I stopped in at Sam Ash's sheet music place on 48th and picked up a general Blues tab book and a Robert Johnson tab book.

Robert Johnson's blues - that's about as American as you can get.

The Gear Is Here....

2005-07-21T18:48:00.000-07:00

Alrighty!

My Marshall MG15CD and my PODxt showed up today.

[Stimpy Voice]

Joy!

All I can say it is soooo nice to have an actual amplifier, even a little one, instead of playing through tiny PC speakers or headphones. I was a little down on my Samick, but the the lil' MG15CD is a major upgrade for it and it sounds much better. Fuller, richer, cleaner and all those other words a stereo salesman might use to describe a speaker's tone.

As for the POD - I didn't get a chance to use it. I forgot to order a second guitar cord and the headphones I have are for the PC only and I don't have an adaptor.

Total Bummer.

I will say this though - it's way way bigger than I thought it was going to be. I thought it would be hand sized, but this thing is the size of Paul Bunyan's kidney. It's all good though, 'cos I wouldn't want to have to be squinting at a tiny display and twisting tiny dials. For the plethora of nobs on the POD, bigger is better.

For whatever reason, Musician's Friend also threw in a 6-Pack Pedal Board case. I don't need it yet, but free shit is free shit. Free is cheaper than wholesale. For now I put the POD in there until I get the free POD case via rebate.

Thor is right. More gear is good!

And it's also good to cut loose a bit and just play. See what comes. More and more often, I'm surprising myself.

Mind Freak on My Mind. On My TV. In the Park.

2005-07-20T19:36:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting here fiddling around with a deck of cards I found at work - a little Bridge sized deck that says Puerto Rico across the top and has the picture of a halter top wearing hottie playing a bongo that's decorated like the Puerto Rican Flag. Next to her is a frog waving two rattles that are also decorated like the Puerto Rican Flag. The frog, in a pique of festivity and Puerto Rican pride is wearing a bow tie and a cape.

Total tourist trap stuff. I love it.

Like I said, I'm hear fiddling with these cards and working through a couple of simple tricks and I just remembered that MindFreak is on AE now.

Aside from the barrage of publicity around here in the City and on TV - I wanted to check it out because I'm interested in magic right now, and because two days ago I actually saw Criss Angel perform one of his illusions / escapes in Bryant Park. The illusion was set up on the south side of the fountain in the park. Basically, there was this large box/tank deal with Plexiglas sides and inside of that was a sealed container with a transparent front and Angel was inside it already. The deal was he had 33 hours to escape before oxygen ran out. More like 33 hours of publicity!

When I went by again later that day the tank was a lot more cloudy and bubbles were coming up all over the place in it. Angel was still in it and I could see him responding to the crowd. The next morning I came by a bit late for work and no surprise - the guy was out of the tank and not a drop spilled. Pretty cool and pretty David Blaine-ish I thought.

As for the show tonight, I caught the second half with him doing some powerful card tricks and street magic and a boatload of astonishing levitations. Not one or two little tiny lifts after a huge build up a la Blaine. No odd camera angles a la Blaine. This was up close with people all around and the camera close up and from all angles. Don't get me wrong, Blaine is great but after seeing his specials and then this show, Angel's levitation is better, hands down.

I'm amazed.

On the show tonight, the guy levitated up an escalator, six feet into the air in the middle of a park and then floated a few passersby supposedly plucked from the street. Regardless of whether or not there were plants in the crowd, the illusion was just crazy.

I'm also smiling because I can't help but have the thought -- "Did that guy and those other people actually float? Levitate?" Kudos to Angel for tapping my sense of wonder.

And then I think "I had no idea the guy from RATT knew magic!"

A Secret Revealed. Notes Played. Tricks Turned.

2005-07-19T18:19:00.000-07:00

Oh I am so pissed.

Really totally completely and utterly Pissed The Fuck Off. Angry Strapped Muppet Pissed.

I guess it's just my knee jerk reaction to being cheated on. It's just my knee jerk reaction to being cheated on 4 times over the past three weekends.

Like most despicable lies and secrets, this one wormed it's way to the surface in an innocent conversation. Like most subterfuges and ugly canards, it kind of just popped out. In this case it came up naturally in the course of the conversation with a common friend and relation. Poof! There it was. His wife gave him up without even knowing it. Amazingly - she did not seem upset!

Sfumato has been hiking without me!!! GAAAAH! With his brother-in-law!! OMG!!!

Fucking Sfumato and his big secret hiking in Ramapo. Fuck him and his so called Tiki Run which he hikes / walks and stumbles through whilst being swarmed by bloodthirsty mosquitoes bent on giving him malaria and West Nile. Maybe he could go faster if he wasn't stopping to set up a lab to measure the chemical composition of the food he got at the deli in feeble attempts to determine if it's right for his blood type.

All of the time I'm like -- Hey Sfumato, lets go for a ride. Hey Sfumato, lets get together and run. Hey Sfumato, lets go for a bike ride. Hey Sfumato, let me put you in a triangle choke and beat your ass down for a while. Invariably - the guy is booked more than Tony Robbins. Or. Or,if not booked he is:

not into running
not into mountain biking
not into getting triangle choked.
kick boxing and dreaming of Bob Sapp.

The fucking nerve.

[Dan Akroyd and Steve Martin enter from screen left. They are wearing leisure suits. Georg speaks] "That James, he is such a wild and crazy guy! Such a jokester. He jokes! Funny Funny man. He kids. He is a kidder. Everyone knows that Sfumato is the hippest cat to cruise after Tiki Barber in tight slacks since Claude Lemiuex!"
[They exit. They look disappointed that their writer could not come up with anything better]

:-) Nah - I'm not mad at Sfumato. Not even miffed. I am amused though! Now, if for a brief moment, you or he bought the rant and at first thought I was talking about cheating with a capital C, or thought I was pissed at him --- well, you could describe that as having been "Rizzed".

If you bought it, I'm like 1 - 0 against the Internet.

If Sfumato bought it at all I will have improved my record to like 6 for 375 lifetime against him.

Ok. Now to tie in the rest of the title of this meandering stream of a post....

I'm playing guitar again. Like AGAIN. At one point, ages ago when I was 15 I had a nice left-handed Ibanez Artist ( a double cut with a sunburst finish) and played till I was about 18 or 19 and then dropped it until I was like 26 and dropped it again when I was like, still 26. Then hard times hit and I pawned it and that was it for guitar. A couple of years back, lets call it three + I got an acoustic guitar from Samash.com. Nothing fancy, just a Japanese Fender dreadnought. Strum strum strum. Clarisa, bless her and her supportive nature, goes out and gets me a tuner and a stand. I actually I play for a while. Just long enough to get to sound like actual notes are being played and I lose interest.

Ah, no one saw that coming, right?

So last year I pick up a Samick Les Paul knock-off which goes by the moniker of "Avion". Let's face it, no one knows what that is. Not one to lie, when asked what type of axe I have a bravely say I have a Les Paul knock-off and try to explain that I am beginner. Still. After 20 years. Anyhoo, since I got the Samick I've definitely played more and longer, though inconsistently. I've even jammed out with some talented friends here and there. Each one waaaay better than me. Each one infinitely patient though and very supportive and each with a bit to offer in the way of teaching. A definite highlight was over this winter. I played with my friend Barry and covered the acoustic version of "Times Like These" by the Foo Fighters. It was the first time, ever that I actually played and sang. It even sounded pretty good.

So, I've been playing again. A little theory, a little scale work and a little cover action. Enough practice to get me craving some gear. In the honor of this latest phase I finally went out and bought an amp (I'd been playing it through my PC with a Line 6 GuitarPort which recently went tits up) - a little Marshall MG15CD 15 Watt Combo and a Line 6 PODxt Amp Modeler with Effects. Of course, the price of these two items is more than I paid for my Les Paul knockoff. The amazing thing is I had no problem dropping the cash. Spending 15K on renovations and praying for insurance checks kind of nipped that problem for me I guess!

Perhaps one day I will become enough of a player to get a Gibson Custom or Gibson Standard or an American Strat or some mixture thereof. Until then I'm going to beat on the two guitars that I have and figure out Ten Years Gone by Led Zeppelin, a few Neil Young tunes and some blues stuff. If I could play like anyone it would be like Johnny Shines or Robert Johnson. They are A-mazing.

Another emerging hobby is magic. All I've got so far is a a couple of card tricks, a rope trick and a rather poorly executed vanishing coin sleight. Naturally, I have a book (Mark Wilson's Complete Course in Magic) and when my fingers begin to ache from guitar I can turn to the cards and fumble through some knuckle busting tricks. The funny thing is, as much I enjoy doing it, I always feel like a bit of a charlatan. But I guess that would be right on the money though, no?

Finally, out of my myriad interests there's this blog and you, Internet. Thanks for listening.

Idling while Lance Races.

2005-07-16T22:19:00.000-07:00

Pink Floyd is playing in my head.

"Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day...fritter and waste the hours in an offhand waaaaay"

Ever feel like you are just idling? Biding time? If this were a movie, I'd be hoping for a blurry fade out or montage or some other device that would fast forward time and move stuff along.

But then, what is life if not to be lived? And appreciated? Even these quiet moments. Even these pensive moments - these little lulls that seem pretty great when the shit is hitting the fan. Enjoy the silence.

So let's see - what's going on...

Vacation was good. Clarisa's brother flew in to spend the week with us and help out with our place. While the contractors really took care of the bigger repairs, it was great to have him around to swiftly handle a few honey-do's that have been on my list. Plus he's just a great guy and I like having him around. Aside from house renovations we managed to see a Yankee game (the one last Friday where Wang pitched in the rain and gotten taken deep by phenom Grady Sizemore on the very first pitch of the game), take a trip to Brooklyn to see Auntie Joan and take a trip up to Poughkeepsie and Hyde Park to hang out with friends and family. All in all a good vacation.

Still, next time I go on vacation I really want an R&R vacation somewhere fun. Friends and family are welcome to come along - I just want to be out of NY when it happens. Some hotel off of Horseshoe Bay in Bermuda might be nice.

Work is on the upswing. I have a new immediate boss whom I have a good relationship with. He gets what I want to do and wants to help me do it. In turn, I really want to help turn the department around and get a few good quantifiable projects done. For one thing, I want to run a few usability studies. I also want to get my hands on some of the Mercury testing tools. Ultimately, I would like to get a usability department started at iVillage - with me heading it up of course. We'll see where it goes. I have some people that have my back on it. It's just that it's tough to overcome organizational inertia. If we manage to complete and act on a study and we get great results like increased traffic and longer video views, more article views etc -- it will be a lot easier to argue for an increased role for usability. Like anything - the first break is the hardest to get. I hope to impress if I get the chance.

Naturally, me being me, I spent some time this weekend researching Usability Engineering / HCI (Human Computer Interaction) MS programs. It turns out that all of the heavy hitter major tech universities have it - Stamford, MIT, RPI etc. but they are far away and there is this whole thing about me living and working here in the NYC metro area that kind of gets in the way of that. Plus, lets face it, getting into Stamford, MIT or RPI is not exactly a guarantee, even if I lived around the corner. Still, no local schools have it. Not NYU, Columbia, Fordham, Pratt, Pace, Parsons, Cooper Union - nada. The closest programs are ones at NJIT and at RPI.

One interesting thing I did find was a ton of QA jobs in Atlanta. Lots of usability jobs too. Housing is very affordable down there. And... Georgia Tech offers an M.S. in HCI and is ass cheap if you are a resident. Long term, that might be a plan - get a job and place in Hotlanta, go to Georgia Tech for my MS in HCI and work in a burgeoning field that I'm interested in and even matches up decently with my personality and interest inventory tests. I'd love to sell our place and be able to take that money and actually purchase a house house and down there, you still can.

One last thing - it's 2am here and that means Lance Armstrong is probably up and eating breakfast and getting ready for his Sunday Ride in the Pyrenees.

Sunday's stage from Lézat-sur-Lèze to Saint-Lary Soulan, is 205 kilometers (127.4 miles) and will cover six mountaintops. Portet d'Aspet, the first climb, is considered a second-category climb in terms of length, steepness and difficulty. The peaks that follow, Menté, Portillon, Peyresourde and Val Louron-Azet, are all ranked first category. The stage ends with a climb to Pla d'Adet, which is above the town of Saint-Lary Soulan. Pla d'Adet is the backbreaker, especially after the first five. It is a climb of 10.7 kilometers (6.6 miles) at a grade of 7.6 percent. It is beyond a category rating.

"Tomorrow's no cakewalk," Armstrong said. "It's the queen stage, the hardest day in the Tour."

I'm thinking, it may be the queen stage, but Lance is King of the mountains and is going to make the Peloton his bitch for the day. Bring the pain Lance. We're rooting for you!

Tears - Rain - A flood

2005-07-09T07:44:00.000-07:00

I forgot to mention one other thing about Jenn. The medical examiner found a pulmonary embolism as well. It was not infarcted, which I guess means that it had not caused an artery in her lung to burst. Still - her girlfriend who found her said that there was blood in her lungs. As with a lot of things about Jenn and her death, it's unclear.

Still though, I can't imagine something like a pulmonary embolism not hurting tremendously. Add the pain of a degenerative back condition where your disks are crumbling to that and the confusion that a drug like Amantadine brings on and it starts to make sense why she might have reached for the painkillers.

Last Weds. we headed up to Poughkeepsie for the ceremony for Jenn. My step-sister, parents and a few friends of the family were there and I started to weep as I got out of the car and walked toward her headstone. Seeing her name there on the black granitewas a bit surreal and for a second I was taken back to October 18th, 2004 when we buried her. I'd been there before, but not with family and not with family gathering around the same way they had those months ago.

Father Rock, a Fransiscan priest who's a good friend to the family came to say some kind words about Jenn and to lead us through a few prayers. As he went along, it started to rain and he said it was a blessing. Maybe it was. The strange opening in the clouds right above us sure seemed to indicate it. Above us and a bit to the east was a bright blue eye with light streaming out of it that disappeared when Father Rock finished up.

After the ceremony we went to St. Andrew's Cafe at the CIA and had a bite to eat at the place Jenn loved most. It drizzled a bit, but nothing too bad.

Down in Westchester it was a different story...

It rained a bit up in Dutchess, but it POURED around Westchester. I think five inches of rain fell in just a few hours. The SawMill River flooded and roads got shut down everywhere. Anywhere there was a road with River in the name, there was a flood. That means the Sawmill River Parkway, The Hutchinson River Parkway and the Bronx River Parkway. To get home we had to drive through a section of the Saw Mill Parkway where the water was as high as the doors of our Santa Fe. We saw some other trucks blasting through -- so we did too. But just for one moment there I thought we lost traction and were actually floating. Drifting down into a swollen SawMill River would have turned a bittersweet / downer of a day into a Mongolian Clusterfuck of a day. As Clarisa might tell you a Mongolian clusterfuck is just like a regular clusterfuck except that it's a clusterfuck without hope.Yet here we are. Mongolian clusterfuck avoided. Score one for us.

Sadness, Anger. Regrets.

2005-06-28T18:12:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow, June 29th would have been my sister Jenn's 28th birthday.

Not a day goes by that I don't miss her or think of her in some way. Sometimes I'm sad, sometimes I'm angry and sometimes filled with regret.

I'm sad because she's gone and because I'll never see her again and sad because there was a ton of potential in her that will never be realized. She was on her way when she started classes at the CIA - that was a real turning point for her. She was taking responsibility for herself, working hard and enjoying learning. When she had to quit because of her back - - looking back I can see that was the start of a series of troubles and mistakes and poor choices and just rotten fucking luck that somehow, in total, inexorably, killed her. She took a night shift job at IBM and tried to do a full load of regular college classes and could not keep up. She moved out into an aparment she could not afford, moved back and got involved in relationships she didn't really need, but needed to have. Then she moved to Oklahoma for a fresh start and to get a job as an assistant pastry instructor at a community college. She didn't get the job.

I'm angry. I'm angry at her even still. I'm angry for the lies she told and the truths she withheld. I'm angry at myself for not being a better brother. I held back from her and pushed her away when she probably needed me the most. I substituted distance and anger for compassion and love. Friends tell me that if they were in my shoes they would not have had me play it any other way. In retrospect, I'm not sure how right I was and am reminded of some advice I got from a psychologist years ago. He told me just to love her and accept her lies. He told me no matter what she said or did to just be strong and accept it and love her. No anger - no screaming. Just compassion. The irony of it is that last summer I was reading a lot of Buddhist literature and had started to meditate. I guess I was just reading it rather than living it. I was that pissed off at her.

I regret not having reached out to her. I regret not having called her after she moved out to Oklahoma. I regret that the first time she overdosed two weeks before she died that I did not call her to speak to her. I regret that when I finally came to my senses and called her after she had gotten kicked out of the rehab clinic she had checked herself into because insurance would not cover her that all I got was her cell phone voice mail. I was too late.

She died the next day from an overdose of Oxycontin.

The medical examiner in Oklahoma City also found Amatadine in her system - which is one of the large cocktail of drugs she was supposed to be taking as part of an outpatient addiction treatment program. Generally, its given to people with Parkinson's to stop their tremors, but some side effects include confusion and euphoria and in rare cases can make people suicidal. I've read where some doctors refer to it as the poor man's methadone.

So how did she get it (the Oxycontin)? Probably from another patient at the rehab clinic. Her girlfriend found a prescription in her car that was made out to a guy from the clinic she'd been hanging out with and driving around. Maybe she took it from him to stop him. Maybe he gave her some. Maybe she stole it. Who knows. Maybe she thought it was a lower dose than it was.

The night she died she spoke to her best friend and he tells us she was in good spirits, everything considered and seemed to feel better when they hung up. Her girlfriend says she was having a hard time of it though and had gone to bed early that night. She checked on her and decided to head out and get some stuff to make cookies for her so she could have some in the morning. Just a little token - just some comfort food. As she left she said Jenn had been coughing a bit. When she came back forty minutes later she was dead. She worked on her and the paramedics came but from what we can tell they took too long to get Jenn to the ER and that only a little bit of narcotan was given. We're not sure why. Of course, they couldn't and didn't bring her back.

Now I have pictures and clothes and some books of hers. I have some CD's back that had disappeared over the years. I really don't want any of them. I'd much rather she still be wearing her favorite hat or flannel robe or what have you. I'd really rather not have anything of hers if she could still own it.

Tomorrow I will be at her grave and see her headstone for the first time. It's polished black with a rough hewn matte top. I'm sure I'll cry even more then.

I'm glad the last word's she ever said to me were "I love you guys."

We love you too, Jenn. Until we meet again.

One last thing...

When you have really bad chronic back pain and need pain medication and are prone to addiction - it's a high-wire act. Constant pain or constant stupor. And they give it out like candy. The movies make light of it too. I can't tell you how many I've seen where vicodin or oxy or some other opiate is offered freely and in a comedic way, like it's something that can't hurt you and is FUN! That really eats at me. It's not a casual thing. It's worse than heroin and just because it comes in a little pill from a pharmaceutical company instead of a needle does not make it better. Get the help you need or help your friend or family member get the help they need. They need your love and support.

Moves. Monitoring. Blasting.

2005-06-23T14:19:00.000-07:00

Well, we have our kitchen designed and our counter top and cabinets ordered. The contractor is coming on Monday morning at 8AM and we'll be on our way to a renovated house. The insurance adjuster also gets back on Monday. Here's to hoping our submitted expenses meet with no resistance.

Changes are afoot at work. My boss quit. Not sure what that means for me except that I might get a better position. The guy moving up to take his place realizes my untapped potential and seems to be for getting my ENFP ARI self cranking and happy. To that guy I say "Good luck with that!"

The company is also finally moving to its new iVillage digs on 7th and 38th - the movers are coming tomorrow to take our crap out of here and put if over there. All I have is a few books and folders. Not a lot at all. I'm not a big cube decorator. Not into it. Just not my thing. Even if I wanted to, I don't no how I could here in the worlds smallest cube, which is filled with three monitors, two PCs, a Mac and 2 notebooks. I'm lucky if I have room to touch myself. Word has it that the new space will give me, like, more space, man. Fine by me. I'll also finally be getting my hands on some Mercury monitoring and testing tools. If nothing else, it will be good to learn for the resume. People know Mercury is enterprise level, expensive shit. The logic goes if someone let me use it / administrate it, I must know my shit. Shit shit shit.

In other news...Battlefield 2 showed up in the mail yesterday and I got to play it for about an hour. Man o man. It's friggen great. Of course, the college kids who got it at 6AM had been playing it for over 15 hours and were already experts by the time I got it installed, but what can you do. It looks and plays great so far. There is definitely an added layer of complexity to it that was not there before - what with the Commander mode, which takes you out of the game and puts you in command, duh, of your troops, lets you direct artillery. Do satellite sweeps to spot the enemy and so forth. So now when I think about drawing, I am going to want to be blasting away, or checking out $4K gaming rigs.

2005-06-19T19:35:00.000-07:00

When we were in Halifiax a while back we visited the graves of the Titanic disaster victims. This headstone of this unknown child is separate from all the others. I took it with a Canon Powershot A-20 and retouched it in Photoshop CS by converting it to B&W and then colorizing and tinting it. The original shot is in the upper left.
Photo By VanishingJames

"Well At Least You're Focused..."

2005-06-18T12:17:00.000-07:00

Ah, there's nothing like the biting sarcasm of a close friend and confident...

Early last week I took some personality tests - first the Strong Interest Inventory Report and then the Myers-Briggs deal. The former measures your interests, confidence and personal approach to things and comes up with occupational themes to focus on while the latter informs you about your personality, how it operates and how to play to your strengths and shore up your weaknesses. All in all good tests and worth it.

I think the results I got back from the Strong Interest Inventory are pretty spot on, but even so its no crystal ball and presents a wide range of career possibilities for the occupational theme it came up with for me - ARI (artistic, realistic, inquiring). Tech showed up, but a little low. Go figure - I thought it would be in the toilet next to accounting and statistics.

So, I reviewed the test results, sent it over to Clarisa and I approached her about it the next day. I told her, "I figure I can do something in Graphic Design, Photography, Stained Glass, Pottery, Architectural Drafting, Editing, Medical Illustration, Package Design or Plumbing Engineering." And then I proceeded to detail what I thought were the pro's cons of each and how I might go about learning more about each field.

She of course replied, "Well At Least You're Focused..."

At first I didn't pick up on the sarcasm -- the reason being that I thought that actually was a narrow band of choices. After all, I had an official looking report that listed them out of millions of possibilities. I stood there looking at her and after a few seconds the sarcasm soaked in.

"You're being sarcastic...?"

"Duh."

"Holy fuck." I thought. Evidently - more focusing needed (& needs) to be done!

The next day I take the Myers-Briggs tests and get the results back quickly. Evidently I am a an ENFP:

ENFPs are typically enthusiastic innovators, always seeing new possibilities and new ways of doing things. They have a lot of imagination and initiative for starting projects. ENFPsÂ energy comes from what is new and different, and they are spontaneous and enjoy action. They can become so interested in their current projects that they drop other things that are less exciting. Because they see so many possibilities, ENFPs sometimes have difficulty picking those with the greatest potential. They dislike routine and find it hard to apply themselves to the sometimes necessary details involved in finishing projects, easily becoming bored. They are concerned about people and understand othersÂ needs and aspirations. ENFPs readily communicate their enthusiasm, and this can be infectious. They often inspire others as well. ENFPs are likely to be most satisfied in a work environment that is welcoming to people, innovative, and full of exciting new possibilities. Others can count on them to find new ways of helping people solve problems and overcome barriers.

And, if Typlogic is to be believed, I share my ENFPness with the likes of:

Mark Twain
Will Rogers
Both Mickey and Andy Rooney
Paul Harvey
Elizabeth Montgomery
Dom Delouise
Robin Williams
Sandra Bullock
I. King Jordan
Regis Philbin
Andy Kaufman

What that means I'm not sure. Dig it though - friggen King Jordan, Mark Twain and both Rooneys. Who knew?

So what's and ENFP ARI type guy supposed to do? I could proceed with the NYU Applied Database Tech Certificate and probably get it. It's something I know I can do, but not what I would love to do and I think that the creative side of me deserves a shot. I've squelched it for sooo long. I'm thinking that somwhere in the realm of the visual arts - photography, graphic design, fine arts I'll find my niche.

Right now I'm content to explore and just starting doing stuff - taking pictures, drawing, mucking about with Photoshop and the like. We'll see what comes of it.

A Friday on the Lake

2005-06-17T16:59:00.000-07:00

Tonight is a quiet stay at home Friday. Left work a tad early, went for a run and did some push ups and sit ups. My running is getting better - I ran about a quarter mile longer than I did last time and in about the same time. For the rest of the evening I think I'll just chill out and experiment with Photoshop, play a little Desert Combat and call it good.

Last Friday was quiet and relaxing but didn't start out that way - because it's always a pain in the ass to get out of NYC on a summer Friday and get anywhere. Me, I had to get to Lake Hopatcong in NJ to meet up with some Fordham buddies and go out on the lake. So, I flew out of work around 2PM, caught a train to White Plains, hopped in my car and...It won't start.

Dead battery. See what happens when you don't drive anymore!?

Luckily, I spot a cop in the parking lot near the White Plains Convention Center. It's really just a big gym, but lets pretend it's a convention center. Stick with me folks. Ok, so I spot this cop car and its at the red light waiting to pull out of the lot. The car is not close, but its not far. The light turns green and the cop stops to pull out when, miracle of miracles, a car coming in flags it down. So I turn into WhiteManRunning in the 90 degree humid air and make my way toward the cop, hoping the light doesn't turn or that the cop just decides to screw the no right on red rule.

I make it to the cop car. It's a female Westchester County Cop. I ask. She differs. I ask again and tell her what I'm trying to do and who I am trying to see and that every second counts when it comes to making it across the Tappan Zee on a Friday afternoon. She relents and tells me not to hurt myself and lets me use her battery to jump my car. I cast many blessings and good feelings her way and I'm off. I tell myself that maybe she helped because I was cute. It's a longshot, but what the hey.

I get home, rip off my clothes, walk the dog fast (pee dammit pee!!!) and hop back in my car and go off to battle the traffic on the Tappan Zee. I figured at 3:40 it can't be too bad. The normal 25 minute trip to Joe's place takes 40 minutes. Not horrible. Then Joe is dicking around and we wind up pissing away about 25 minutes. It's an enjoyable 25 minutes but every second counts because now traffic on route 80 west is mounting. Eventually, we blast off and make our way to Lake Hopatcong. Joe is a bit of a closet metal /hard rock freak and he's got System Of A Down's Mezmerize playing and we're just rocking out to it and talking about boozing and sex. (I wind up buying the album the next day on iTunes. Clarisa calls it my "Kill your parents" music. That makes me laugh. :-))

Eventually we make it and Paul and Jerry are there waiting for us. Seconds later we are on the boat and the world changes suddenly. Four lifelong friends are back together - just briefly we know - and it seemed like all our troubles got left in the wake of Paul's boat. We zoomed around. I got to drive a bit and we wound up dropping anchor and just jumping in the lake and floating around.

Nice rays, cool beer, floating around in a lake with life long pals -- priceless stuff. I'd show you all pictures of it but me, being the forgetful dumbass that I can be, remembered to bring my digital camera but forgot to load a CF card. So, all I have is mental snapshots. Let's hope they last! Even better - we need to get out on that boat again soon.

Golden Monkey. Drink it. Spank it. Drink it.

2005-06-08T20:50:00.000-07:00

Last summer in mid July a few cool things happened:

My brother in law came out to see us
We saw a Yankee game in which El Duque made a successful return to Yankee Stadium
We discovered Golden Monkey (by Victory)

We were up in Rhinebeck doing a little site seeing and shopping with Clarisa. Bored, hot and tired and hungry and most of all, thirsty, we stopped into Schemmy's to sit down and refresh ourselves.

The waitress tells us they have a new beer in and asks us if we would like to try it. She gives a sample and we love it. It's a Belgian style beer with "abundant fruity flavors" and supposedly packs a kick. We order a pint for each of us. About 10 minutes later and 3/4 of the way through our beers I look over at Matt and feel compelled to make a declaration...

"I don't know how this is possible, but I'm buzzed going on drunk." I said.
"Me too!" Matt said.

We were amazed.

So we finished them and ordered another round and in effect wound up downing a six pack worth of regular beer in less than an hour. Why? Because our magical golden monkey of the fruity flavors and glowing goodness packs 9.5% alcohol by volume.

Oh yes. Golden Monkey is an effective beer.

After that day, I never saw Golden Monkey again. None of the stores down here carry it, or at least they did not the last time I looked. Not that I shop for beer at all really, but when the mood struck now and again I never could find it.

Until now.

A little beverage center that we just happened to stop in on the way to see some friends of ours had it. Not being one to pass up an opportunity, I bought a case of it. As luck would have it, my brother in law is coming out in early July for vacation and to help with the house and once again we will be able to lift a few. AFTER the repairs. Lord knows how fucked up things might get otherwise...

The added bonus of this beer is that you get to say, think and write things like...

I'm happy to share my Monkey. I'll show you where my Monkey is and then let you go get some Monkey 'cos I'm a Monkey lova. I bet you like my Golden Monkey when its cold. Someone help me find my Monkey! I bet you want my Monkey! [inspired by Joe Cartoon's "Look at my Monkey" -- go watch it!]

James catches a break

2005-06-08T20:38:00.000-07:00

Good news! We had the insurance adjuster out here yesterday and it looks like all the damage is going to be covered. We already have the floor, so now we just need to head out to Home Depot and plan out a kitchen and bathroom and arrange to have them installed along with new wallboard.

In the meantime, the cats are fascinated with the new "corridor" between the master bath and the kitchen. They just think it's the shit and keep parading in and out of there like its the grand opening of the Chunnel.

Of course its not as horrible now as it was. We tore out all that filth and cleaned it up. It looks like crap, but its clean and neat and not going to stay forever and THANKFULLY we are not going to go broke repairing it all. Yay! So, to sum up, we are not letting our animals parade through the filth.

Anymore. ;-)

On a side note - I took Sasha running with me for the first time in ages and I have to say she was just great. In the past, she was a loon. All things living and dead needed to be checked out and she was just too much to actually run with. This time though -- she did her business at the beginning and then was content to just pad along side me down the rail trail right near our place. We've found our niche! I can't wait to take her tomorrow again.

2005-06-08T20:35:00.000-07:00

See the little black eye looking thing to the left of center, just under the rusted metal? It's a little hole. A little tiny hole the size of a nail. A nail some SOB put into the pipe who knows how long ago. A nail that has caused a hole that caused the leak that caused all of this aggravation and accidental Buddhist mind training. Shit happens. Indeed.
Photo By VanishingJames

2005-06-08T20:29:00.000-07:00

This is just a small sampling of the absolute Yuck that the leak in our wall caused. Fairly disgusting, right?
Photo By VanishingJames

Summer in the City

2005-06-06T20:43:00.000-07:00

It was hot today in the city, and with the return of the heat is the return of the NYC's finest, and lets face facts in some cases, not so fine, cleavage.

Nonetheless the cleavage season is back and going to lunch is an adventure for single and married man alike.

As an added bonus, sometimes, like today -- the sky gets dark real fast and there is a flash storm.

And then mes froid chats, it's simply boobies galore. It's a wet T-Shirt contest with no cover.

Ahh. The guilty pleasures of the commute..