existential fashion disaster

I found a plugin that’s supposed to crosspost from my wordpress blog to myspace. That would cut down on a lot of copying and pasting for each blog entry. There may be formatting issues. We shall see. This entry is mostly a test to see how well it works.
[Update: didn't work at all]

First, I should mention that I entered this shot of Penny into a photo contest with the extremely vague theme of “Black & White.” Sarah found the contest, she entered too - You should vote for us.

Sarah is working today. She went from no jobs to one retail job at Jo-Ann fabrics, one photojournalism gig at a local paper and one Promotions gig (web design, print newsletter design, photo slideshows, etc.) for a non-profit in Florida. It’s weird to be home while she’s not; that hasn’t happened in a while.

While she was in Florida, gathering photos for this job and meeting the people she’d be working for, I replaced the G4 with a G5. I grabbed a last-generation G5 (just before the intel switch) on eBay. It’s crazy fast, compared to the G4, and stable, so far. I got everyone’s accounts migrated onto it without too much trouble. The handles got a little bent in shipping, but that’s ok. The G4 has been a trusty computer for many years now, mostly as a backup, occasionally as Mark or Drew & Candace’s main machine in Woonsocket, but I think my constant hardware tweaking was finally too much for it. It was crashing at random. I mostly suspected the not-really-for-a-mac video card, but I didn’t want to go back to the one that was slowing the whole machine down. It’s downstairs and hooked up to that behemoth of a CRT monitor that Zombie is hooked up to. When I have time, I’ll mess with it and see if I can make it stable. Unfortunately, it never crashed on my watch, so I don’t know if I can duplicate the problem.

I’d like to be downstairs, now, playing with the other computers and catching up on my TV shows, but Frank’s friend Karol is sleeping on the couch down there. I’m trying to think of a way to make noise and wake him up but not give away the fact that I’m doing it just to wake him up.

Looking back, I could’ve used my time to do some cleaning around the house or do my paperwork for adventure ed or sort pictures from camp for the poster/collage or decide on pictures for a calendar. Let me recap some of the things that the boredom has made me accomplish instead of all those useful things:

I made all of my eMail go through Google Apps accounts, and then, instead of using POP to retrieve everything to my main gmail account, I’m having it forward there. Then, I made new labels for all of the mail. Then I went through my old labels (per account) and made filters for everything; All of my junkmail and advertisements go where they should and all my shopping related mail goes where it should and all my financial related mail goes where it should, etc. It is, essentially, the way I used to organize and filter my mail when I used Thunderbird to check all the POP accounts. I set up most of those filters as messages came in, though; For these, I went through my thousands of eMails and looked for any with no new labels on them, and, when appropriate, made a filter. Gmail is nice enough to find all the other existing eMails that match that filter and label them at the same time.

I also got rid of a superfluos account on the mac. My music was on a separate account (named itunes). I think I set up the account because I wanted to do simple ipod syncing and there was weird music in the itunes library of my actual account, not necessarily stuff I wanted on my ipod, stuff that past roommates had left on there. So I went through all of that music and threw away most of it, then exported the library from the itunes account, imported it into my account and deleted the itunes account. I also Restored my ipod. Maybe it’ll make that occasional error on start go away, maybe it won’t… but at least it’s a mac formatted ipod, now, so I can update its software, if there’s ever another update, from the computer I’m always hooking it up to.

Today, I started going through all my pictures on Flickr and assigning some of them to groups that I joined a long time ago and forgot about. This was a pretty futile excercise, though… it’s not streamlining the computer or making my eMail any easier to sort through, so I’ll probably just stop doing it, right now. I think it was just an attempt to kill the boredom while working at the front desk of the Y.

Been trying to keep myself occupied while Sarah is off at her photo/web design/newsletter gig. I’ve done a lot of Mac shopping… not for the eventual replacement laptop(s) for our old limping ones, but to replace the G4 that’s been my trusty backup since sometime in 2001. It’s always been quirky, being a mac, but now it’s just plain unstable and Sarah and her mom and I all use it a fair amount. Sarah will probably end up doing most of her work it, since her laptop can’t really handle much. It’s crashing about once or twice daily. I don’t know what’s causing it, and it’s never actually crashed while I was using it, but I shouldn’t expect wonders from a machine with so many weird hardware upgrades. I’m not in a place where I can invest in a new Intel mac to replace it, so I’ve been browsing craigslist and ebay for decent G5s. It’ll be sad to retire the G4. Maybe it can be made stable and live on in some semi-retired state. It is kinda loud, though, might not be worth it. Maybe I can find a home for it.

In other news, Thursday, the Mazda is getting an oil change and the master window switch replaced, again. The first time it was because the Auto button wasn’t working. Then the replacement made the right rear window non-operational. It’s been a long process, and a learning experience, since I’m now on my extended warranty and have to pay money for repairs. I also have to pay a whole bunch of money to have my windshield replaced. I woke up, Sunday morning, to find a starburst and cracks branching off in multiple directions right at the top center of the glass. Illinois doesn’t have that nice separate glass policy that Massachusetts did… so I have to pay my full comprehensive deductible. I’d say that maybe I could get some cook pictures of the work in progress, but we’ve lined up sealcoating for the driveway for the same day, and that smell gives me an almost instant headache that lasts for a whole day.

Tomorrow, I think I get rained on during our first day trip of the season.

I need new strings. A string on my bass broke last night during practice… I hadn’t bought strings in so long, I must’ve thrown out the last batch of old ones I took off, so I had no spares. I had to leave practice early. After I left, I suppose there must’ve been some sort of discussion, because, when I got home, I got a call, thanking me for my efforts and asking when I could come pick up my amp later this week and a few lame apologies and excuses. This isn’t a disaster, though. It was good to be playing again, but it was definitely not the right group of guys. I have a very good sense of musical variety and space and melody and they could put together interesting song pieces, but didn’t really understand the musicality I was trying to bring to it. The phrase that will echo through my head is, “it sounds kinda gay when you do that, could you not do that?” I don’t think I’ve ever been told that one of my bass lines is wrong for a song. I want to believe it was just a matter of taste or style… but the songwriter dude will always be that “young, pushy and impatient guy with no sense of musical space” in my mind.

Even though I was half-relieved to be out of this musical situation, I still want to play, so I was a little upset. If nothing else, I have to go through the effort of finding musicians, again, and that’s a lot more effort than I originally imagined it to be. A little sadness and/or stress brought out all my usual urges. My first urge was the “nasty letter” … to go post on craigslist about not wanting to play with “impatient, pushy kids” and having unencumbered “freedom to use space, variety and melody” in my basslines… but I quickly squashed that idea. It was replaced with my go-to urge in times of stress and light depression: spending money. It started innocently enough, looking into the exhaust fan for the mac. But I was doing it on my zombie PC downstairs, which needed software updates… then I started looking into what kind of hardware was in there and whether I could max it out. It’s not like it was running slow at all and I barely ever even use that machine. I had an amazon cart full of hardware, when I came to my senses and realized I was stress-spending (like stress-eating, but more expensive).  I can spend money today on much more necessary things, like a haircut and an eye exam and new sunglasses…. and maybe new strings.

I guess this means I don’t need to pick up my 18″ cabinet when I go back east. I should probably retrieve it from whoever has it and get it to Mom’s, so I can have it shipped out here, when and if it does become necessary. We still haven’t firmed up any definite days for the week I’m out there, but the requests for hang-out time are coming in quickly, so if you haven’t commented or eMailed me, do it soon. T-Minus 6 or 7 Days … or something like that.

60 inches is big!

updates on recent trips and stuff, soon, I promise!

My iPod is getting old. It’s kind of sad. I guess it has outlasted any other portable audio device I’ve ever owned. I’ll always have fond memories of my Fisher portable CD player, with the 40 seconds of memory, so that I could take a CD out, if I was in the last 40 seconds of the track, and put the new CD in, with no gap in the music. And I’ll never forget my cute Philips portable MP3 mini CD player. It looked just like a miniature discman. Those 80mm discs were a little hard to find, and the name and size caused a lot of confusion with minidiscs, but it got me through many bus trips. I definitely had a few other trashy portable CD players and portable CD players that could read MP3s, but those two were my favorites. Had I known how much effort (making MP3 CDs) and time and money (buying CDs) I could have saved myself, I probably would’ve gotten the iPod a lot sooner. But it was two and a half years ago, and now it’s throwing up this weird “connect to your computer. use itunes to restore” error message every now and then. Resetting/restarting it seems to make it go away, I don’t actually have to connect it to a computer or restore it, that would be annoying. It might mean that the hard drive is dying. I dunno, maybe I should try a restore one of these days. It’s an essential part of my life, now that I’m on the trains and buses every day.

It got me thinking about my phone situation, again. It’s also not performing at it’s best, and occasionally turning off or restarting itself, randomly, and my contract is up sometime in the next six months. I still think switching from Verizon to AT&T, for the iPhone, is a big hassle… and I don’t know if the iPhone would fill my expectations as either a GPS device or as an iPod replacement. Sure, the idea of having all of those gadgets in one is appealing, but I really like the click-wheel, I think I’d miss it. I really like my phone’s real QWERTY keyboard, with real keys. And I even like my big honkin’ laptop GPS system, though, that is the system that most needs replacing with something smaller and easier to use. Still no word on carriers for the Nuvifone. I doubt that it’ll be the right replacement for the iPod, though, so unless it’s available on Verizon, it’s not gonna happen for me. The only way the switch to AT&T is going to happen is if the iPhone proves itself to be the all-encompassing device that I need it to be.

They’re like duck boats for your feet… that’s what they make me think of anyway. I picked up a pair of the “off-road” variety at the REI, that we spent hours trying to find, yesterday. They’re comfortable. The strap button is irritating me a little, but nothing out of the ordinary for a new-shoe kinda thing. We went there to look at camera bags, since mine is dying and so is Sarah’s. They’re supposed to have some Crumpler bags, but they didn’t have anything except a couple gadget pouches. By the way, when did REI start putting its “co-op” status in the limelight? I have this member card, which I thought was just another store rewards program… but it turns out that I’m a member of the REI Co-op. I even had a “dividend” that I got to put towards my purchase.

Getting utterly lost on the way there, due to our complete reliance on the unerring accuracy of printed out Google directions, made me realize that I really do benefit from the GPS. It’s time to get a unit in the car that’s mountable, unlike the cheesy little laptop. I added one with a good traffic system and a big screen to my Amazon wishlist. I’m unimpressed with MSN’s traffic system, on the laptop, but I’ve heard there are a couple new traffic monitoring systems coming out soon. We did chance upon a Cosi, though, so it wasn’t a total waste.

It’s nice to have my car back. I had to pay my deductible, but the Progressive dude seemed pretty sure that once he heard back from State Farm, that I’d get reimbursed pretty quickly. I got a nifty little keychain. It’s one of those classic, flat, rubbery ones. It’s a nice addition to my growing keychain collection. The place also did some serious cleaning of the interior. I was amazed.

I’m strongly considering using public transportation for camp this summer. I don’t need to carry a whole lot of equipment to camp everyday, and I’ve got my iPod and Nintendo DS for train/bus entertainment. I did some searching through transitchicago.com for routes from a couple of the Metra stations. The system is pretty darn cool, goes through Google maps and gives you alternate routes with approximate arrival times. Maybe I’ll try out a route or two next week, during camp training.

A few interesting prospects, but nothing solid, yet, on the band front. I’m leaning towards the folk stuff, especially after a conversation with Mark about his band’s general distaste for Chicagoland. Someone told them that the groups they played with were the “end all, be all” of the Chicago suburban scene… maybe among their own little incestuous high school friends and families and bandmates. Though, after looking through the ads in craigslist for the past few weeks, I fear that there may not be a whole lot of great original music out here in the ‘burbs. I told Mark that I’d do my best to whip the scene into shape, so that it’s worth his band’s trouble to come back out here. I’m not sure if that’s realistic, but I’ll do my best to find the good scene… since the Suburban Youth Culture doesn’t suit Mark’s needs.

Got a couple new power adapters for my laptops, including a auto adapter for the little Dell that’s coming with us to Seattle. I haven’t tried it out yet, but it’ll kill the need for that DC to AC converter that always makes the airport security flip their wigs. I also got the latest version of my GPS software… it’s the new Microsoft version with the “Connected Services” that tell me traffic and gas price information through a little FM receiver. Unfortunately, I haven’t had those services connect for more than 5 or 10 minutes at a time and only when I’m as close to downtown as the high schools I work at… as soon I get a few miles out, it loses its connection or something. I’m holding out until we try it in the Seattle area to give it the scathingly bad review that it, so far, deserves. The GPS part, however, works really well, as good or better than previous versions. It still doesn’t speak the street names, but it does automatically reroute when you go off route, instead of just saying “Off Route” over and over again until you tell it what to do.

I don’t usually get into politics, but we had a discussion at work this morning about the general opinion on Bush. It’s probably true that some people would be happy if he suddenly died, and other people would be happy if he enacted his secret plan to start a war with Iran and postpone the next presidential election indefinitely. I’d be happy if I never had to see his beady little eyes on TV again. I am also kind of afraid of Hillary’s crazy eyes, but they don’t bother me as much, I guess.

Sarah’s throwing me a birthday party. I don’t remember the last party I had… but this is mostly an excuse to get some friends over and play some games and eat some food. The food is shaping up to be pretty yummy, I think. I’m excited. If you’re feeling really bad about not coming, there’s always Apple gift cards (for the day when the old Dell does finally die) or stuff from my Amazon wishlist. I will be thirty years old. I don’t feel it, I guess, but I don’t know how old I feel. I do know that I’d really like to find some people to perform music with. Steve from snakes & ladders sent a video documentary-type-thing on the band that he put together that drove that home.

I thought that the Dell had ended it’s extended lease on life, again, but it turned out to be bad drivers for my network card. It took way too long to narrow the problem from random freezing to maybe the Firefox beta to maybe just Firefox to anything internet to the new drivers from windows update. It’s been running normally again since I updated a few power management settings that were suggested on some forum. Acceptable solution, I guess. Before all that narrowing down was done, I opened it up again to make sure it wasn’t simply overheating. There wasn’t a whole lot of dust to blow out, though. Opening up laptops and fiddling with them isn’t as much fun as full sized PCs. Yet another reason my next laptop will be a Macbook Pro. Still don’t know when I’ll make that upgrade, but I thought about it a lot more, while trying to figure this thing out.

In other computer-related news, two of the hard drives I sent in for recovery have come back to be by way of a new external drive. Most of the data is intact and there are some original versions of photos from a couple events (shooting the house in Bedford, trip to Philly with Drew to see Olivia) from 2003 and 2002. The oldest drive was not recoverable, at least not by the company I went with, and should have all the photography from my first year or two with my Olympus and a bunch of other old band-related and website-related stuff that I’d like to recover. I’ll probably call around and see if anyone’s up for the task.

Adventure Ed starts up this month. We have a some new blood with us this season, so that should make things interesting. We’re also trying to shift the focus to skills training, which sort of sounds like what my last program was all about. There, we had a big long talk with the kids coming in to the program… explaining what we were going to work on. Here, we’re going to do it in a more subtle way, I guess, but there will be some frontloading of teamwork concepts, which I’m cool with it… just don’t know how it fits with the timeframe. We’ll see how it actually goes.

It’s been snowing a lot. I’m a fan of winter, I really am, but we’ve had enough of this stuff, now, I think. We still have rolls of film to finish, but there hasn’t been a great day to do it… either too cold or too gray. It was kinda fun to go through the House on the Rock stuff and get it uploaded. I think Sarah and I are both itching for a vacation. Maybe we should do another short road-trip. Montreal was suggested, but that’s a bit long for road-trip. I’m all for it, though. Sure it’s not the right season to go North, and sure the state of affairs with needing a passport/not needing a passport to go to Canada is still up in the air… but what’s the worst that could happen, we get stuck in Canada forever? Or take a road-trip and be denied at the border because our birth certificates aren’t notarized? It’s still sounds like a vacation.