Jen and I are knee-deep in two freelance projects that will simultaneously eat all our free time and also provide much-needed capital in our bank accounts. They are both very exciting projects, and should be challenging to work on together. Meanwhile, I’m juggling three separate home improvement projects right now- grouting the tub, wiring the backyard, and finishing the deck. Sleep? Bah. For lightweights.
Sen. John McCain was on NPR yesterday talking about campaign-finance reform and sounding like the intelligent, free-thinking man he is. He brought up a very good point about advertising during elections: We, the citizens, own the airwaves, leasing time on them out to the big communication companies. Instead of mandating that equal free airtime be provided to each of the candidates, we instead let the conglomerates sell time for campaign ads to PACs, who devise attack ads designed to blur the facts and smear the opponents. Originally, this idea was built in to the reform bill, but the telecommunications lobby shot it down. Imagine a campaign cycle dominated by debate and discourse instead of mudslinging?
Note: This will be the last vaguely political thing I write here for a while. I’m going to get off the soapbox and put my high horse away. Thanks for indulging me.
I’m going to attempt to avoid all news reports regarding the elections tonight. I think I’m gonna pop a DVD in the player and tune out the whole thing until I wake up tomorrow. No thanks.
Dammit. It’s raining outside. That means no outdoor work—no dry sink, no lighting. I thought I was good in the tile grout department; I have a whole milk crate full of tile adhesive, grout, and caulk. Unfortunately the box of white unsanded grout was empty when I opened it. So no tub repairs inside.
1998 - 2002
The website of Aidan Hughes, the man responsible for all those awesome KMFDM covers, the original Rocky! bumper for MTV (It’s there on his site to watch, but it’s in Real format—have fun) and ZPC, an unplayable, oddly disturbing game released for the Mac back in ’97 or so. I’m tempted to buy some of the original art when I get the money together. I like his earlier work a lot better- the newer stuff doesn’t hold up graphically for me.
trees, catonsville, 11.3
Perhaps it was the terse, one line reply I sent back to the spam I mentioned last friday; I should have known, even as I was pressing the “send” button that it would bite me in the ass again. I’ve now gotten about 10 identical emails from ten different senders.
The deck is 9/10 done. I have to go out with a few beers and a box of deck screws and finish the planking, but it’s all down and in place. There are two small sections to be milled at this point- at the foot of the stairs and at the edge of the doorway. We also tried to hang the sink on the wall, but I wasn’t able to line the hooks up with the tongues on the back of the sink. besides, I estimated wrong and hung it about six inches too high. Another evening with a drill and all should be good, though. Pictures to come, including a beginning shot before the oil tank was removed.
Here’s a link to the initial design of the letterform project I mentioned yesterday; it’s all static HTML and in a very alpha phase right now, so keep that in mind. And there are a lot of letters missing right now.
OK, somebody gently chided me about sending stuff back to spam e-mailers. For the record, my replay was a simple phrase: “Fuck off.”
Use this for your enjoyment the next time you get one of those annoying phone calls just as you’re about to take the first bite of dinner.
With the exception of a section 3′ by 7′ wide, I bought, cut and installed all the decking in the backyard. Before I can screw it in place, I have to spec out the lighting and run the cabling; then it should be a straightforward installation of all the planks. We’re almost there!
Knocking around my brain: Land Rovers. If I can’t find a decent Scout in this area, maybe I can find a Land Rover Series II in decent shape somewhere. The purchase is way off in the distance (much as I’ve given up on another Scout this year) but it’s good to educate oneself , especially with foreign-made trucks.
I found this article on the Baltimore Business Journal about the web design industry in Baltimore; I thought it was interesting from a developer’s perspective. I was interested (but not surprised) to hear that a few of the other interactive shops in town had closed down besides GR8.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.
I got my CD-burner in the mail today via FedEx, and so far I’ve made a backup of my freelance directory; I’m in the middle of burning all the stuff off my old internal hard drive so I can use it for music storage. It’s a bus-powered FireWire 8x8x24, it’s small, and it does a pretty good job. I’m happy.
They got the asshole responsible for the sniper attacks last night; turns out he was sleeping in his car in a gas station around the corner from where Jen works. (That was where he was ticketed by the cops on October 8.) Thank god that area didn’t fit his MO, and that Jen doesn’t loiter long outside in that area.
It’s another dreary, wet day in Baltimore. It’s also freezing as hell outside- there’s some kind of front in over us right now that is bringing frigid air all the way from the steppes of Russia; I woke up this morning with two cats glued to my body, drowsy from the heat of the wool blanket.
I suppose I should be thankful though, because along with my CD-burner (classified as a business expense) I’ve also made a long-awaited upgrade to my kitchen; I threw out the 1980’s era microwave (lined with solid steel, finished in that lovely fake wood vinyl stuff they pasted on all appliances during the Reagan era) which had been, over time, cooking my reproductive organs from across the room. I threw it in the back of the Scout and heaved it into the Dumpster behind our office building, on top of a pile of old office chair boxes, never to smoke up my kitchen again. I then went and picked out a lovely new white microwave from the Sam’s Club.
My Scout is a funny collection of quirks, oddities, safety hazards, and well-designed parts all moving together in a strange harmony. Generally, the gas/oil gauge remains dark when I turn the lights on; the bulbs work, but there’s a funky connection in the 24-year-old wiring. As of a month ago, the right turn signal would light but not blink, although the relay for the hazards blinked all four turn lights. I drove it yesterday, after it sat idle in front of the house for two weeks, and coming home last night the heat blew steady and warm, all the dash lights were on, and both turn signals lit and blinked. I know it misses me, and wishes I would stop the rust that’s eating away at the door pillars, and it broke my heart to know that I can’t find anyone in the are who will take the job on. I love that truck.
I have a guy coming out on Friday morning to look at and estimate on how much it will cost to tear out and replace my front door and transom window, a job I’ve been waiting to do for the five years I’ve been in the house. I can’t tell you how much I want to do this.
I found this article written by Joe Galloway about his experience in Vietnam, after watching We Were Soldiers. Interesting to hear the story from his perspective, and it’s interesting to know that some of the reality made it into the movie.
Tonight in the backyard I got the rest of the step supports built, and I put another vertical post in under the stair platform. I wasn’t able to get the stairs started because I bought 2×10’s instead of 2×12’s, but I marked out the pattern on the 2×10 to verify, and all looks good. So tomorrow afternoon it’s back to the store for more lumber, and I’ll begin cutting each stair riser when I get home. After that section is done, I can finish the framework and then start laying the planking down. I will post photos when there’s a little more to see.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.
scout, padonia road, 10.21
After the last three days, I am beat. I got certified to scuba dive on Sunday, after spending a total of about five hours in a Pennsylvania quarry attempting to stay warm. We did a bunch of different skills, and finished off the day on Sunday with an eight-minute trip down the quarry wall at fifteen feet and back. It is another world down there, beautiful, mysterious, and exciting, and I hope I can dive somewhere with better visibility and more exotic marine life.
I also got four supports for the step built Sunday afternoon, in a last gasp of energy. The backyard is coming together slowly—I can see the end nearing slowly. A week of good honest work out there and I think I can get a lot of it completed.
The leaves are falling on my street. The trees planted on either side tend to drop about a month before the rest of the state, and every year it makes me a little sad in advance. Our little block looks much cheerier when the leaves are still green.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.
The balance of my Citibank card is, with the exception of about $500, paid off. You better believe I can deal with the interest on $500 instead of $3K+. That’s a good feeling, to have that liability gone.
So I got DJ Shadow spinning Ape Shall Never Kill Ape on iTunes right now; does anybody know when he cut this and if it was a tie-in with that *ahem* Tim Burton movie…? (It’s really funny to have Charlton Heston screaming about damned dirty apes! over a real sweet backbeat.)
I was able to put in the first step to the deck last night; there’s a 4×4′ support on either corner with carriage bolts tying in the step and the overhang boxes (pictures to come) so that everything is secure and won’t hop or sag. Next I’m going to pick up a 2×8 or so and fabricate some stair hangers to tie in that step with the main frame; then I can lay and secure the rest of the joists, run wiring to the stair lights and planter boxes, and then the difficult part—figuring the math for the stairs and building them.
Note to Amazon: I want to hear the audio clips you so generously provide on the site, but I absolutely refuse to download and install the Real player or any software written by that company.
grand theater, eastern avenue, 10.14
We had a busy and fun weekend. Saturday we went to get supplies at the Home Depot, and I started on the deck. That night we had dinner with some friends and slept like babies. I was able to get a good portion of the framework in place Sunday, and I think in another two weeks or so we should have a pretty workable deck in place.
While I was doing that, Jen was filling the house with the warm yummy smells of cinnamon and rosemary. She’s practicing with my sucktastic oven in preparation for Thanksgiving, when the two of us will be making the feast for my fambly, which has been Dugan tradition for the last six years or so. As usual, my oven refused to cook evenly or keep a constant temperature, so the cinnamon rolls were cooked longer than she would have liked, but they were still very tasty. She also made rosemary-garlic roasted potatoes with herbs from the garden, and we feasted on those while waching Amélie on DVD.
Windows Media Player sucks ass. I have an MP3 of DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist and about every 20 seconds it drops out a full second or so of the file. At first I thought it was bad mixing, but now that I’m listening to it with Quicktime, it’s complete and sounds worlds better. I so can’t stand that WMP shit.
Wired did a great article this month on Lawrence Lessig, the lawyer responsible for bringing the copyright battle to the Supreme Court on behalf of you and me.