Apparently, the Great Email God is mad at me, or my Dad sent another one of his 400-MB picture-laden files, because my server has shut itself down like a bank on a holiday. So if I’m not getting back in touch with you today, it’s not because I don’t love you.
Finally, after one abortive attempt, I got a copy of Retrospect for the Mac (a backup/archival utility) and loaded it on the server at home. Tonight I’m going to back up the entire work volume and then set up a script to do the same every week. I can’t tell you how many copies of file upon file I have, in a frantic attempt to never throw anything away (this includes freelance work from eight years ago, written on software I probably can’t run anymore), or how many times I’ve backed up the same file only to have lost all copies of it in some brainless mixup. Onward, men, to the twenty-first century!
Currently on heavy rotation: The Postal Service. 45 minutes of pure electro-pop bliss. I love this album more each time I listen. (Nothing Better is about as close to bittersweet breakup perfection in a song as I have ever heard.)
Random Links. Atlanta Time Machine. (via kottke) | Wonder what her husband thinks?
For cold A/C that doesn’t overheat the engine. For working electrical components that don’t flake out randomly. For a tape deck that works. For two cupholders that don’t block the radio. For four working speakers. For comfortable bucket seats that don’t lean. For a hatchback. For a trailer hitch, and the wiring to support it. For a full-sized spare. For a center console. For a factory roof rack. For peace of mind.
At the risk of totally maxing out my bandwidth this month, I’m going to post a bunch of wedding pictures for everyone to look at. This is the first batch—I’m on the eighth envelope out of twenty-six, so there will be more to come.
Accessories. Now that I have a new vehicle with a working tape deck, I need to pick up a few things for the iPod: An auto adapter ($19.95), so that I don’t run the batteries down (and there’s two power jacks in the Jeep!) as well as a new protector ($20) and dock ($30) so that the iPod stays off the floor. Will I be buying any of this anytime soon? Not likely, but that’s why it’s called a wish list. (While I’m at it, let’s just add this to the list.)
You, my loyal readers, have suffered through four years of complaints about my cars—between the soggy love affair with the Scout and the love/hate relationship with the Taurus, you’ve glazed over during my tirades, love letters, repair bills and sob stories. Age and rust have caught up with the Scout, rendering her muffler-less last August during our move to the country. She sits in the driveway, waiting for the Big Bag Of Money to drop from the sky. Meanwhile I’ve sweated through two years of increasing unreliability from the Ford as the transmission slowly ground itself into a spinning nubbin, praying to the Sky Bully (new favorite phrase) to get me home without breaking down on the shoulder of I-83 or somewhere along North Avenue. Yesterday afternoon, I was treated to three unscheduled stops on the side of 695 after being forced to slow in traffic quickly; each time the transmission decided it had had enough and forgot where second gear was. Meanwhile, the heater must be run at full blast to keep the engine from starting a car-b-que.
So it is with great pleasure that I announce a new vessel in the Lockardugan Home Fleet: a 1998 Jeep Cherokee. It has about eight of the ten things I was looking for in a replacement vehicle:
| Wants | Gots |
| Cargo space (preferably a pickup) | Not a pickup, but more room than the Taurus |
| 4-wheel drive | check |
| 4 doors | 2 doors |
| V6 engine | check |
| good gas mileage | (shudder) 16 mpg |
| Toyota | (shudder) Jeep |
| dual airbags | check |
| stick | automatic (drat!) |
| working A/C | check! |
| Inexpensive | check |
It is also with great pleasure that I announce we have met our first neighbors aged under 70, who sold us the truck. M and S have two young boys, live in one of the houses I’ve lusted after from afar, and strike us as genuinely nice people. We’re looking forward to getting to know them over for dinner this summer.
At the risk of spitting in the eyeball of Providence, it kind of came together perfectly. S put signs in the windows and parked the Jeep on the street last Friday morning; I saw it while limping the Tortoise home that evening, and Monday night we were test-driving. Superstitious fool that I am, I hope the Jeep serves us as well as the Ford (say what I will, that car paid for itself, every penny) and that our new neighbors don’t run screaming into the hills when they get to know us.
Encapsulated Reviews. To the 5 Boroughs: Same as it ever was, like a new version of Hello Nasty. Velvet Revolver: Slash Temple Pilots. Modernized 80’s metal. Shuggie Otis: trippy 70’s funk. A soundtrack to your own personal selfsploitation movie. Big Star: The original. A blueprint for most garage bands that followed. The Killers: Retro-disco rock, not unlike your Franz Ferdinand.
You may be wondering if this is one of those boring posts where I complain about being tired. The answer would be no, my snarky friend; this is where I complain about being really fucking tired. Three weeks of getting up at 7:15 to freelance for two hours, getting in to work and crunching through the world’s most over-complicated game, and returning to the house to pit my scrawny back against a long list of physical labor (why, oh why did I think I could get both the dining room and living room painted in one day? Stupid Dugan) until the beginning of Late Night has got your humble host fighting to keep his eyes open. There are many reasons I’m pushing this hard, one of which is the promise of a Big Fat Check waiting on our return from Italy to help pay for the trip (Memo to self: upon return, transfer balance on credit card with ridiculously high interest rate to competing card with 6-month intro rate.)
We got the seating list made up last night, which was one of those tasks we were avoiding like VD; I think we were able to wrestle all 58 people onto 6 tables without leaving anybody stranded. For a while it looked like there was one table that was going to be a large dead space (I took the opportunity to draw a skull and crossbones above it on Jen’s diagram) but we broke it up to where each table should be evened out and everyone should have a good time.
The next iteration of the music list is live, although iTunes on my Pismo was hiccuping to the point where I had to trash the prefs file and rebuild the whole thing. All is better now. Thanks for all your suggestions! Also, thanks to Rob for the first music struck off the list on the right. The Shins are excellent, and it’s great to have some Smithereens again.
Random Fun Links. This is brilliant: Daily Reason to Dispatch Bush. | A size-based aggregator for Google news.
rhodedendron, front yard (pray that they will still be in bloom on the 22nd), 5.13.04
I got out of the Tortoise yesterday and was not more than a step from the driver’s door when I heard the Judge calling to me from across his yard. He came over to fill me in on the excitement; apparently between his call to 911 and our neighbor’s, the suspect was caught, taken to the lockup, and later confessed to B&E. Hopefully his buddies in the getaway car (who were not apprehended) will get the word out that Frederick Road is not an easy mark.
He also mentioned that a local antiwar group is planning a commemoration of the Catonsville 9 protest of 1969 next Monday. Being a purple-hearted ex-Marine, and firmly in favor of the ongoing conflict, he’s going to meet up with a bunch of his friends and go observe the proceedings. Tactfully, I did not mention my disapproval of the war.
Following Up. It seems that manufacturer’s claims about the some info for pruning extra fonts if you’re running OSX; Jen and I have a collection of about 1 gig of fonts, and keeping them organized is more than a little work. For anybody following along, here’s the final shot in the series of house update photos for the blue room. And finally, I added a randomizer script for the home page of this site about a month ago; if you refresh your browser you’ll get a series of four different shots (with more to be added later.)
You may have read over on my dear fiancee’s blog about her mother reminding Jen that it’s not too late to back out of this little wedding thing we’re planning. While I’m thankful that she’s so concerned for her daughter’s well-being, I’m still trying to recall the reasons we decided against eloping. Jesus Fucking Christ. Maybe we can get on the plane to Italy tonight…?
Last night I copied some code from somebody else’s site and added the Google search down there on the left, so if you’re so inclined, you can plug in funny words and see if they show up on bill dugan dot com. (Much handier than leafing through months of log entries to look for that one link…)
Random Fun Links. For all those folks who are too scared to actually live in the city. (via the morning news) Fix your Pismo. (via slashdot)
Opening this website may send you back thirty years or so, to the age when public television was the place you could plop your kid in front of for an hour and expect him or her to learn Spanish with no fear of commercial shills. The opening sound totally brought me back in time, and I expect it’ll do the same for most of you—make sure you have speakers/headphones on. (via boing boing)
Another awesome link, and one that I will abuse when I have discretionary income again: American Science and Surplus. I need a surplus radiation detector. I need a collection of Pyrex beakers. I need a 90 VDC 15-amp motor.
A brilliant waste of time: Annotated Beastie Boys. Puzzling over the opening drum riff on the second cut of Paul’s Boutique? Wonder where the “Graffiti Guys” sample came from on Professor Booty? Chances are, this site can tell you. (The mashed potatoes sample still has no known attribution.) (via metafilter)
Ever since I started dating Jen, I learned a lot of things that I hadn’t figured out in three previous relationships and several catastrophic dating experiences; when I met her, I was a 22-year-old with 17-year-old tendencies trapped in a 29-year-old body. Among the many vices and character flaws I sported like a superhero utility belt was the infuriating ability to coast through life with little regard for other people’s feelings. My loving family could sit you down and relate a lifetime’s worth of stories to this effect, and I won’t even mention the volumes of examples Jen could tell you about. Instead, I’ll point to a current issue, and attempt to apologize for my ignorance. You see, when it comes to uncomfortable issues, I have a reflexive habit of sidestepping the whole thing and burying my head in the sand. As you can guess, this is one of the more infuriating character flaws I have, and it’s probably the first one that my fiancée would cite as she stood over my unconscious body with the frying pan.
So I should clarify my post from yesterday: I suggested we put the moratorium on further invitees to our wedding, and she suggested I shut the f**k up and pay attention to what she’s been telling me for three months: we’re over our limit, and only a miracle (or the Almighty) will help us sneak in under or at the budget. My loving fiancée has been wrestling the budget since the beginning, and while I look at it, nod, and blink, she can (and has) recalled the exact figure for the postage on the save-the-date cards like Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man.
In an effort to make right what has been screwed up, I offer my apology in this public forum: Forgive me for making myself ignorant of this issue, and making light of it here in public.
In other news, here’s a great link on the 10 Things They Never Taught In Design School. (via kottke) In heavy rotation on the iPod: Lapdance by N.E.R.D. This track makes me want to buy a drum kit and rock out in the garage.
Saturday we made about a zillion wedding-related calls, and got no callbacks (except for one email from the photographer, who we probably won’t be able to afford anyway), so we ran out to pick up paper for the invitations (which look damn good, thanks to my fiancée ) and then back to clean the house for the Big Watosh, who came up to get fitted for his tuxedo. We had a great time with him— you know you’ve got Captain Lockard, USN (Retired) in a good mood when he’s joking about trying on a pair of pink pumps at the shoe store. After a meal at the local Irish pub, we began the process of building the invitations, which involved doing battle with X-Actos —not a simple task when you consider our track record—and double-sided sticky tape.
Today Jen finished up the invites and contemplated what to do with the other 9,960 still in the box, and then wrestled with the budget. I got the office sanded and put a coat of Kilz on the walls to seal it all, then moved into the blue room to finish installing the kickplates. Finally, I started stripping the wallpaper from inside the closet in the pink room, which is about 1/2 done. I’ll update pictures tomorrow.
I guess I should also mention that I submitted a link to BoingBoing, one of my favorite aggregator sites, last Wednesday. For my birthday, they posted it: a page I put together a couple of years ago featuring some pictures Pat and I took in Oklahoma back in 1992 during a road trip westward. The link was inspired by a previous post featuring some other wacky homemade signs on a different site.
That had to be the most X-Files moment of my life; Pat was driving and I had him pull over on the shoulder so that I could shoot some film. I got about half a roll before he told me the fuzz was heading towards us, and in a rare moment of sanity we beat it on out of there. I had always wondered what that story was all about, until I found the Roadside America link which explained a little more in detail. Spooky stuff, my friends.