1. The sooner you’re comfortable dressing up the better.
2. If your friends aren’t surprised by one of your interests then you’re too predictable.
3. If you’re not already, become friends with a painter.
4. Know enough about wine that you’re comfortable speak to a sommelier.
5. If you can’t drive a stick shift you’ll regret it at the most inopportune time.
There are 55 more Unsolicited Thoughts for the Young Men of New York, and they’re universally good advice.
Well, that’s it. All of the old hand-coded log is now here in WordPress. After I-don’t-know-how-many-years, I finished migrating it the other night, so everything from 2001 is included here.
Meanwhile, poking around my other site, I came across a bunch of stuff I’d forgotten about. From 2002-2005 (pre-Flickr) I used to use a small script to generate galleries of photos and then post them to my website, but there’s never been any real good list of links to the whole cache. Here’s a master list, in date-correct order:
6/7/02 – Backyard pictures from my old house in Canton
6/11/02 – More backyard progress shots
6/22/02 – Assorted pictures, Jen’s apartment kitchen
7/6/02 – Fourth of July weekend and some more backyard pictures
7/15/02 – Model T Club meetup in Ellicot City
7/30/02 – July vacation in Aurora
9/1/02 – Labor Day in Aurora
9/14/02 – Matt comes in from San Francisco, and our group of friends meets at Rob & Karean’s house in Canton
3/18/03 – Snowfall in Canton
3/17/03 – St. Patrick’s Day weekend
3/29/03 – Checking out a old building on River Road in Ellicott City
bimini_photos – Bimini pictures
divelog – Bimini trip writeup with pictures
5/27/2003 – Engagement trip to Savannah, GA
5/10/03 wedding – Tim & Betty’s wedding in DC
5/24/03 – Engagement trip to Aurora
6/7/03 – Lockard reunion in Orlando
7/4/03 – Fourth of July 2003, up in Aurora
7/25/03 Stas & Vicki’s wedding in NY
9/8/03 – New Catonsville house pictures
12/21/03 – Christmas dinner on Tyndale Ave.
4/4/20 – Spring flowers
Wedding – Wedding pictures
Rome – Honeymoon trip to Rome with writeup
4/10/9 – Matt & Sophie’s wedding in San Francisco
4/11/26 – B&O Railroad Museum
Baby – Finn’s progression in Jen’s belly
House – Shots from the first day we looked at the house
House_photos – A few pictures from the house inspection
House_progress – Semi-updated gallery of house renovation pictures
Oklahoma – Pictures of the crazy roadside signs in Oklahoma, 1992
Panoramics – Test panoramics (needs a Java applet, which I don’t have a link for)
At some point, I’d like to upload all of these to Flickr, but I don’t know of a way to backdate them so that they list in sequence. I’ll have to look into that some more.
Our weekend was full and fun. Saturday we started out with a soccer game under bright blue skies. Finn claimed she was nervous on the ride over, but as she got onto the field and comfortable, she guarded the goal well.
On one play toward the second half of the game, she collected the ball in front of her own goal and drove it all the way down the field to the other side–and past the opposing team’s goal. She’s come so far in a couple of weeks!
In the afternoon she hung out with me while I got a bunch of boring house chores done:
- Hauled brush to the dump
- Brought in the AC units
- Closed the storm windows
- Cleaned off the front porch
- Cleaned up and closed up the attic
- Closed up the cracks in our foundation with hydraulic cement
Then we walked over to the neighbors’ and grilled on their deck. As the sun set we built a fire in the firepit, enjoyed adult conversation, and let the kids play until long after bedtime.
I’m wrapping up a lot of small projects here today:
- I’ve got a sick iMac on my desk waiting for a fresh install of Snow Leopard. The hard drive died on it last week so I had R&K drop it off to let me do a little surgery. I put a new 1TB drive in it and got it back up and running. Now I have to find out what OS it tops out at and attempt a rebuild from their backup.
- I’ve had another sick MacBook Pro come in and out of the office, the victim of an overstuffed email database and general malaise.
- I’ve got a web project for Finn’s old pre-K school that’s going pretty well. It’s a church site I built in WordPress with some nice calendar functionality and some other custom features, and I’m waiting for them to start adding content so that I can style it and fill out the pages.
- I’ve got another client who’s going through a move and needed two MailChimp templates for a pair of email blasts, as well as an updated address to all the pages on their site.
- We’ve got a friend who’s been looking to get a personal WordPress site off the ground for a while, and has a renewed focus on making that happen.
I was able to wrap up a lot of small things this afternoon, which feels good and should open my weeknights back up. Last week I was bouncing from one thing to the next but not making a lot of headway, so an afternoon’s full attention made all the difference. I like having paying work, and I’d like to solicit some more, just as long as it’s not overwhelming–as it has in the past.
I keep meaning to post a link to Open Culture, but I get sidetracked by watching/reading/exploring hours of links of video footage–lectures, documentaries, photo archives, and other great stuff. This site should have a Roku channel of its own.
- More creating. Less documenting, less consuming.
- Spend less time filling time, and more time enjoying it.
- Commit 100% to each effort.
- Spend more time on the plan, less time on the scramble.
- Organize. Then find a way to organize the organization.
Hmmm. In light of Hurricane Sandy, I’ve been doing some more research on preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse. I’ve been working on this project slowly over the course of several months, but it’s taken a back burner while other things have come up. The other day, I found this list of emergency tools and gadgets for when the water starts rising. Some of these are pricey, but there are some good suggestions there.
Here’s a partial list of the stuff I’ve got already, and the stuff we still need (noted in bold).
- Waterproof container for supplies – I’m using a standard Rubbermaid tote bin
- Collapsible water jug (3 gallons)
- Camp shower–solar
- 8 gallon hard water container
- Purification tablets – Bleach will also do in a pinch
- Propane stove (4-burner, Coleman) – I found through camping experience this bungees neatly to the top of a standard Rubbermaid tote bin
- Propane campstove (1-burner) – mine is AWOL, but they are relatively inexpensive.
- Propane camp cylinders – I need about 4 of these
- Freeze-dried meals – I have 4 Mountain Home meals right now, but $40 for 10 is a much better deal compared to individual pricing at Wal-Mart.
- Matches and magnesium fire starter
- Headlamp – I have 1 right now, but I’d like to get three for all of us
- Dust Masks – great idea.
- Flashlights – currently these are in all of our cars and there are two in the house.
- First aid kit – ours is hopelessly out of date
- Backup documents – I started doing all of this, but there’s a lot of stuff to compile here
- Radio – the one listed in the article is beautiful and versatile. I think that’s the one we’ll go with.
- Wet Wipes
- Hand/Body Warmers
- Multitool – I’m asking for a Skeletool for Christmas, so I’ll drop my old Leatherman in the bin
- Solar charger – I like the one recommended in the article
- 2-way radios – Point taken. When the cellphones go down, these are the thing to have.
I know there’s more stuff in there that I’m forgetting, but it’ll have to wait until I’m in the basement and looking in the bin to complete the list.
Compare and Contrast:
Let’s see.
- Our hand-me-down IKEA shelf is assembled and in the den (temporarily).
- The coal cellar has been de-insulated and shot with Tigerfoam, as well as the southeast corner of the basement.
- The 4,000 ton color printer is broken down and loaded in the Scout, ready to be driven to work.
- The server is high and dry in the front corner of the basement.
- Finn made it to dance class during the middle of the ice storm.
- There’s 5 gallons of Pumpkin Ale fermenting in the basement.
- My DJ Lance costume is assembled and ready for tomorrow.
As I wander through the house a mere month before the wedding, I make a mental list of stuff that I’d like to do or have done. Besides the obviously huge projects (central air, adding that wing off the back for the wine cellar, putting the second floor studio on the garage, fencing the yard, bulldozing the neighbors’ yard for our hedge maze), there’s a pile of smaller things I’d like to do when we get back from Italy:
- Keyed locksets for the doors. (We have more keys for this house than the Home Depot.)
- A bird feeder. (All of the feeders I’ve seen so far are crap—thin plastic, cheap-ass poles, or pitifully ugly. I want to feed the birds, not run a squirrel soup kitchen.)
- A ladder. (Our gutters are full of more gunk than a restauraunt sink drain, and we have a house’s worth of windows crying for paint. Nevermind the rest of the house.)
- A dishwasher. (Cheap by itself, but the reconfiguring of our door-tastic kitchen is going to take a lot of work.)
- Shelving for the basement. (Getting all the crap off the front porch into the basement is simply moving one mess to another location; organization is in order here.)
- A new dryer. (The Brady Bunch-era unit we use now is both useless and small, and we need some serious commercial drying muscle—as well as better energy efficiency.)
- A gas range. (Oh, my HELL, to borrow a phrase from the P.S.D.F., does our electric oven suck donkeys. I’m sure we bring down the power grid in Catonsville every time we turn on the damned thing, and it cooks as well as a heroin addict.)
Spurred on by a comment from Lis, I posted a bunch of pictures of our garden I took this weekend. For the tech-heads, I’m using a Canon G3 with a 58mm close-up lens (thanks Dad) in natural sunlight. The one on the home page is the only one I lit additionally—just a mini-maglight from underneath to brighten the center.
I also got off my ass and started up the picture-a-week thing I’ve been threatening for years; I’m going to try to post a new illustration on varying topics, and I’m going to involve you, my four loyal readers. Each Monday, I’ll take suggestions from you for an interesting editorial story, article, or biography, and choose one for an illustration, and then post it (gulp) by Friday. So, send me an interesting article you’ve seen online (please keep it under 2-3 pages) that could make for an interesting illustration, and I’ll draw you a drawering.
So it’s about 55 degrees outside and raining. With the exception of last Friday (or, Let’s Throw Our Back Out Day) and a little on Saturday, the weather has been for crap lately. As a result, I’ve not been writing very well, or taking pretty pictures, or being creative in any fashion. So right now I have to take time out, slap myself around a little, and think about all the positives that are currently happening:
- The office and blue room, which are awaiting the attentions of Ben, the friendly helpful electrician, tomorrow night;
- Moving two people’s worth of living upstairs, and beginning to use the other half of our house;
- The waves of daffodils, tulips, and other bulbs blooming in the side garden;
- The Patron Saint of Dysfunctional Weddings, whose birthday is today, and who is fashioning the headpiece for Jen (shout-outs to you);
- Jen’s sudden promotion from a two-week freelance gig to part time work two miles from our house;
- Five weeks to the wedding and no dead bodies;
- The Federal Government, whose loan came due just in time to pay for half our honeymoon to Italy.
The weather is clearing up this weekend, by all accounts, and hopefully so will my creative block.
I hafta admit, I wish I had installed the comments system here a year ago. It’s been really interesting to write about different subjects and see what you’ve responded to over the last month, so I’m doing a little unscientific list:
- Online Personality Tests – 2 entries out of 3 got comments. (My Theory: everybody got tired of them, or you already got them in your inbox the previous morning)
- Working on the house – 3/4 (You feel sorry for us, and are secretly happy your houses aren’t broke-down like this one is)
- Wedding Information – 2/3 (You’re thinking, enough already…am I invited or not, you cheap prick?)
- Weekend Updates – 2/3 (Because it’s just so much more interesting than the rest of this crap.)
- Computers – 1/4 (This is you: Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz)
- Trucks – 2/2 (Everybody loves trucks.)
- Booze – 1/1 (Almost as much as they like booze.)
- NASCAR – 0/1 (But nobody likes NASCAR.)
- Democrats 2/2 (OK, damn, this got some feathers rustled. Good to see you’re still awake out there.)
- Frigging AOL – 1/1 (And who doesn’t have a frigging AOL story?)
- TPS Reports – 1/1 (Or forgotten to put a cover on theirs?)
- Maryland Ham – 1/1 (Wow. I mean, this one got some people talking. Or maybe it was the beets.)
- Work changes – 0/3 (You don’t care where we’re employed, as long as we pick up the next round of drinks. Ungrateful bastards.)
So there you have it; that’s what people are talking about.
Pictures. Here’s some shots of the office in progress.
Daily Boardscan. Jen and I have a blue paperweight sitting in the foyer of the house taking up space: a rev C (slot-loading) iMac I bought a few months back in working condition. During the install of OS 10.3, I accidentally kicked the power cord out of the wall and (predictably) it went dark. Upon reboot, the machine made the needed clicks, whirs, and beeps, and showed nothing on the screen. Apparently I had blown the video board in my clumsiness, rendering the machine useless (this unfortunately is not the DVD model with the VGA out port on the back) for anything but anchoring a boat. What I’d like to do is swap it for the rev B grape iMac server, as it’s faster and quieter, but money and time have put those plans on hold. Anyway, after searching in vain for information online about this malady, I found this page with other folks having the same problems.
Music for working by: Chemical Brothers, One Too Many Mornings. Beautiful, driving, relaxed beats.
So, to recap, here’s the weekend:
- Jen has several irons in the fire for a new job; our friends came together and found some promising leads, and the Washington Post has a ton of current listings.
- The invitations came out very, very well. Save the Date cards went out Saturday. (free offset printing is awesome.)
- Jen and I have introduced her sister Annie to the joy of sushi and Sapporo. May the road to alcoholism and raw fish be a happy one.
- The spring dinner was much, much better than last year. (They ran out of carryout. Sorry folks.)
- Jen’s folks were very cool this weekend. On our wedding day, she will be wearing a beautiful set of cameo earrings brought over on the boat by her great-grandmother. (Picture to come.)
- You already read my gloating about the doors.
- No, we weren’t on the ferry that capsized. (Mom, we got your message, but couldn’t call you last night. We’ll be in touch.) Trivia: I’ve never been on a water taxi in twelve years as a Baltimoron.
- Lest you thought we were expecting our guests would camp on the lawn, we have narrowed the hunt for hotels down to two. How much is too much for a hotel room these days? (Courtyard Marriott wants $90/night for a brand-new King bedroom with breakfast.)
- Rob and Karean came by to show off their new Powerbook and I showed them how to use their iPods; they took us out to dinner at the Trolley Stop. Behind the bar there is a picture of the 2000 Memorial Day Parade in Catonsville, featuring the front of our house.
- BG&E now believes us when we claim that the doctor no longer practices medicine in our house. (The guy looked at me like I was a child molester, though, when I showed him the old exam room.)