Vanity Page to the Nth Degree

12:57 pm - In the News

A bit of doggerel by my hand...

Tiger, Tiger, not so bright
Driving through the forest night.
What immoral hand or eye
Would make up for this kind of lie?

In what distant land or sky
Did a woman catch your eye?
On what club did you aspire
To lay her hand and stoke your fire?

And what shoulder, and what art
Could twist the beatings of your heart?
When your heart begant to race
You did not flee from that foul place

Then Elin's hammer, ball and chain?
In what fever was her brain?
You the anvil, her dread grasp
That dreadful deadly terrors clasp

In Escalade to flee your fears
And water heaven with her tears
The hydrant you just couldn't see
To ram your Caddy, then a tree

Tiger, Tiger, not so bright
Driving through the forest night.
What immoral hand or eye
Would make up for this kind of lie?

10:21 am - Long Weekend

Just briefly, since last Wednesday:

• Thanksgiving day passed relatively uneventfully. I thought I had gotten away without being in any real fights until I found out on Friday that I had unintentionally offended my sister-in-law when she misinterpreted something I was complaining about after my dad told me that he had someone he wanted me to meet in Wichita Falls that I had a real chance with. (Of course implying that I don't have a chance with anyoe that I find for myself.)


• Other than that, Thanksgiving was really good.


• The Mensa RG was this weekend. I enjoyed the rye whiskey, firey foods, and wine tastings immensely and purchased 3 new games. There were many friends there that I don't see often enough. That was a good way to spend the days.


• l1 gave me a belated birthday present of nearly 60 bottles of hand-crafted home brew, and he is an excellent beer maker. So now I have to find people to share with me.


• I finally got texasgirl recorded for our joint project


• I had a good time at the Cookie Monster birthday party


• I finished the flooring project finally! I still have to finish the bathroom up, and I suppose that I should probably do a tiny bit of touchup on the moulding, but I finally got all of the quarter-round installed after about 5 or 6 false starts yesterday.

Current Mood: good

11:26 am - Good Things

The past couple of days have had some good things happen. Here are the quick happy notes.

• My youngest sister has gotten space for her new office locale opening at the beginning of January. The rent is so much less that she'll be able to keep all of her staff, which was a worry. She'll even be adding a therapy gym so she can expand her business.


• The raw materials for my home improvement projects have come down in price by as much as 60% since the summer, so I was able to buy everything I needed for the ceiling and for the final step on the flooring. I will have the ceiling repair finished tonight and might be able to finish the flooring work before the end of the weekend.


• I had a great time on Friday. I got to speak with kacih briefly, got to spend good time with lamerrill and many of our mutual friends and generally had a good day.


• Saturday was also fun with the wine tasting and with me doing a lot of the prep work for the projects that I'm close to finishing up.


• When I met with the IBC crew, the jazz band sounded good. We're excited about playing the gig, and I'm pretty sure that we're going to sound good. We'll also be able to play for 1100+, all proceeds going to African mission work, so I'm glad to be helping out.


• Last night was so productive that I had to find extra things to work on.


• I've lost enough weight again that WW is dropping my points again. I'm back to only 6 or 7 lbs from an ideal body, and less than 10 until I'm at my lightest weight since I was 20.

Current Mood: good

10:55 am - Crisis to Crisis

Life's been ok for me. I'm very, very thankful. Very, very grateful. God has blessed me, even though my house is irritating me at the moment. I still have a house, a job, a car, etc. Money's tight, but I'm paying for everything and finding a little spare cash for spending time among people.

That said, my friends are having a rough go of it. azurelion's father passed away earlier this week, and I'm not sure what to do to help. I don't think I can. I'm just trying to be around.

I have a friend who is about to become homeless because she can't find a job and has been looking since 2007. I had no idea that her problems were so dire, and now I'm trying to help her out. She's got financial sector experience, but I don't know exactly what she's looking for. I can find out if anyone here thinks they can help her out... I'll be doing so anyway.

There are dozens of smaller things around me too... but that's other peoples' dirty laundry. I don't like telling those stories because they aren't public. Suffice it to say that there is some serious stuff going on and I don't know what to do to help, but I really want to.

I just want my friends to be happy. I remember being told at one point, as a criticism, that I don't ever let anyone thank me or deal with my own stuff enough because I'm running from one crisis to another. I recoiled at that point. But now I embrace it. I take care of myself well enough - all of you help me in so many ways. It's good just knowing that people out there are going to reach out when I need help. Right now I've got so many friends in bad places - the economy sucks, and that seems to be causing relationship problems and material problems for all kinds of people.

Reading Paul Krugman makes me worried that the economy may double-dip or worse, creating an American version of Japan's Lost Generation. Reading a lot of religious literature and listening to The Bible from 30,000 Feet makes me feel like the crisis situation isn't necessarily bad, even when it seems to be. People sometimes need adversity to find their way to God, and it is helping me to focus more on religion, trying to help those around me and be a better man myself.

That said, it really sucks that I can't help more people. I guess I'm going to be baking a lot of brownies to try and show support.

Complaining done for now...

Current Mood: bitchy

04:06 pm - Weekend Stuff

This was an eventful few days...

Friday: after work I went over to maestrokevin's for a little dinner party, and thought that would be my whole night. But I got a call from bear saying that he hadn't moved yet, so we should go out one last time before he did. Away we went, and shut down the Uptown Bar & Grill. Then, as I'm driving home, kruckegirl texts me saying that the 30th birthday party she was at was winding down, but if I'm still up I should join them. So I did. I got home at 4.

Saturday: I woke up a hair later than planned, but I wasn't any worse for wear. I got to get most of my errands run. I sold my old treadmill. I changed my oil. I went to the grocery store. Then I went to a photo shoot, which was also a covert photo shoot for the photographer, who was surreptitiously taking pictures of a guy proposing to his girlfriend (now, assumably, his fiance). Following the photo shoot I met up with lamerrill and we went to see The Swell Season... excellent performers. I had a great time. And we finished off the night at Lee Harvey's. Good time again.

Sunday: after the church stuff ended I went to the Arts District to play a festival with DTM. We were supposed to play 2-3:30. They hadn't actually started with bands yet when we got there, which were supposed to be going from 9am forward. We had to wait for 2 Tejano bands who were playing at 1 and 2, and they were cutting sets from 90 min to 35 with a 15 min turnaround time. Both of the first 2 bands ran long for their shortened schedule, so we got on at 3. The sound guy was horrible. The weather was at least nice. So it was a frustrating event, but the only bad thing from the weekend. Once that was done, I watched some of the Cowboys game, but had to run to dancingbill's for The Prisoner party. Again I met up with kruckegirl and also helenwheels. Good show. Good company. Fun times...

And today I found out that kacih is leaving Sudan on Friday. I can't wait to see her again. So, pretty much, it was a good weekend...

Current Mood: conjested

02:52 pm - Fare Thee Well

I didn't get to see blairyann off last night. I was otherwise occupied with kruckegirl and then redjohn until it was late enough for them to have given up. I had tried to get on their calendar before last night and had failed.

They are gone to Jacksonville, though should return for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Quite a turn of events, very suddenly. But I am very happy for them.

I just wish I would have had 1 more night to make everything work out so I could see them off.

Oh well... fare well my friends. I will see you soon.

Current Mood: blah

11:31 am - Happy Birthday to Me

I just noticed that I haven't said "thank you" to those of you who came out to celebrate #35 with me yet, or told the rest of you about the last few days. Let me do so real fast.

Friday was a lot of fun. The gig for the little kids that morning was a blast. At one point I had 16 3-5 year olds all playing some kind of drum and singing. I got to show them how sound is vibration and then get them to try the brass instruments. They had fun, and so did I.

Then that afternoon I (as mentioned) finished off the flooring project while I was on the phone.

That night I got to see something like 35 people at different times at the Twisted Root for dinner and the MAT for karaoke. Good times all night long, and it really wouldn't have been nearly the same party without the people. Double thank-you to katjabee who was my driver as well.

Then Saturday I got to have breakfast with kingwamba, who missed the party due to some DD duty and wanted to make up for that. SMU Homecoming followed, where the Greene tent again showed what "Homecoming Hospitality" really means. blairyann and liberalryan all were also there, so I got to see them, and after the game we got to go out for fajitas.

Sunday I got to have breakfast with my family, had a good rehearsal, got to have dinner with supergreeter, got to watch the Cowboys game with bear, who also was celebrating his new job as well as a Cowboys victory.

That was the birthday celebration... 3 days of fun. Actually for it to be better would have required something extraordinary happening. I didn't win the lottery (as Z pointed out). I didn't have kacih pop out of a cake, as itsjames2u pointed out. I had made the claim that it couldn't have been any better and the two of them decided to be my little ray of cloud-shine, but I had a blast anyway.

I got sick somewhere along the way though. I now have some pretty yucky chest congestion. I tried to run on Monday and had to stop after about 10 min because I couldn't breathe. I went to sing karaoke last night after I saw the Oscar Castro-Neves show with newk (which was a great show, by the way) and discovered that I wasn't able to breathe well enough to consistently sing lines. So I went home. I'm such a weenie... I will do weight lifting instead while my congestion clears out, but I am annoyed when I get sick.

Oh well, good times. I've been falling uphill the last few days, and hope it continues.

Current Mood: good

01:58 pm - Sweet Potato Pancakes

I saw a picture of this and started playing... here's what I came up with.

Ingredients:
1 large sweet potato
1 egg white
1 tsp soy sauce
1 tsp lime juice
1/2 tsp ginger

Instructions
1. Peel sweet potato and then coarsely shred it
2. In large mixing bowl combine all ingredients and mix well.
3. In a 12 inch skillet heat 1 tablespoon oil over medium high.
4. Spoon out potato mixture 1 spoonful at a time and fry 3 minutes on each side

03:04 pm - Wow, that took a long time

I just finished the patching and staining for my flooring project.

Yes, the same one from the 4th of July.

I still need to do the bathroom walls. Hopefully between gigs and birthday stuff I can get the paint and wall texture to do that right away. I'm tired of having this project hanging over my head.

But the biggest part is finally "done".

Wow, that took a long time. But at least I've gotten something accomplished today. :)

Current Mood: relieved

02:40 pm - Praying the Right Way

I've been religious all my life. Even when I tried on agnosticism as a teenager, I couldn't really get to Atheism. I just was never arrogant enough to try and say that God didn't exist, even if He doesn't care about us. The furthest I ever got was to say that He essentially might be another type of roughly mortal entity and we're gnats inhabiting a science experiment. I don't really believe that anymore, but the physics of the Big Bang and near death experiments never let me go any further away than that.

I believe in the power of prayer. But I also believe that God normally lets things work themselves out. If He didn't there would be no such thing as free will. I am a software engineer, and here's how I think of God and His plans for us. When I create a distributed computing system I set everything up and all of the parts do their jobs. I may go look at the systems sometimes to make sure that they're still doing what they need to, but normally I don't really look at a computer until it fails. It's why I believe that bad things happen to good people. God lets bad stuff happen until there's a real problem.

Feel free to disagree, but that's how I believe. God cares about making sure we don't fail, but is really concerned a lot more about the whole system than the individual parts. So when we aren't happy, that isn't all that important unless it's causing us to start to really fail. Even then it is only important if our failures are leading to some bigger kinks in the overall scheme.

I've been reading Kierkegaard for about a month now and just got to his treatise on prayer. It makes a lot of sense to me. He seems to think that we create a lot of our own misery because we spend so much time telling God about our problems we never stop to listen. Prayer needs to end in true silence. Until you are still and silent you can't hear anything.

And God isn't always going to tell you anything directly. You might just have to listen to the messages being put out by the rest of the system. If you pay attention though, you start to get your signals in order and figure out what you should do.

At least that's what I'm hoping. There are a lot of things that seem to be pointing to some changes in my life. I am not sure that they'll actually pan out, but I'm trying to listen. I'm trying to facilitate those changes, but really trying to not impose my own desires on the changes until I'm sure that they're what I should do.

What those changes are... well, that's still up in the air. Feel free to ask, but I'm not sure right now that I'm really ready to publish everything. I know that there's a lot of my desire built into some of these things too and I'm trying to start to actively listen.

Current Mood: thoughtful

11:55 am - New Member of the Cast of Thousands

It looks like I've got another buddy hanging out with me. On Monday night I went with fragile_k to see katjabee and redjohn do their long-form improv at Ad-Libs. Then last night I went to karaoke and had a whole bunch of buddies show up, including (again) redjohn. He's planning on showing up at the birthday party on Friday too.

So fun times. It's always good to have a new buddy, and this is a good one to keep around.

01:18 pm - My New Joke

Q: Which of these does not belong: HIV, herpes, gonorrhea, a condo in Detroit
A: Gonorrhea - it's the only one you can actually get rid of.

Current Mood: amused

09:31 pm - El Chile Salsa

This is my clone of the El Chile salsa in Austin. It took a bit to figure out, but this tastes the same to me. It's not super spicy, but it is good.

Ingredients:
5 large tomatoes
5 cloves garlic
4 large mature jalapenos
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1/2 tbsp salt

Directions:
Preheat oven to 325F *
Quarter tomatoes
Halve jalapenos
Put aluminum foil on a cookie sheet and brush with some kind of oil
Roast vegetables for 3 hours.
Take all ingredients and put in food processor or blender, and blend until liquid.

*Note, I believe that the original is fire-roasted, which darkens the color. This tastes the same to me though.

09:28 am - Apple Isn't The Devil... For Once

I have a 120 Gb iPod classic. I keep around 65-80Gb of music on it at any given time between all of the music I am studying/memorizing/practicing, the music that I want to keep for reference material when I'm writing up a review, and the music that I just enjoy listening to. (If you're keeping score, that amounts to around 20-30% of the overall collection. Music is my extravagence.)

The iPod died a sudden death on Monday this week. It just started responding slowly and then wouldn't sync. I tried resetting it and it froze iTunes. So I tried resetting it with another computer, and iTunes didn't lock, but it told me that it couldn't write to the iPod. Then I tried resetting it with a Mac and it reformatted the drive, but told me there was a problem during the reset. I took it back to the original PC and it reformatted and resynced but wouldn't transfer more than 20% of the music that I normally keep there.

I then switched it into disk-drive mode and tried a manual reformat. My PC would hang at 4% reformatted until I unplugged the iPod. So I tried everything that Apple recommended plus a couple of hacks and was stuck. I had to take it in.

Every time I've ever been to an Apple store it costs me a lot of money. The cheapest I've ever gotten away for was $80 last year when they charged me that for a battery that failed with my old iPod because the iPod was 3 weeks out of warranty and "iPod batteries don't fail". Plus apparently you can't replace an iPod battery regardless because they're integrated.

The other times I've been in, I'm told that Apple warranties don't cover anything you do to the device yourself, and they have gone out of their way to figure out how I caused the hardware failure. Then they'll "negotiate" an upgrade with me. Basically they've forced me to pay for an upgrade I don't want rather than actually support their warranty.

But yesterday I gave up and decided I had to get my iPod fixed. I figured if I walked out with less than $100 spent that I would consider it a "win". I had looked for alternatives and, as of yet, there aren't any really good alternatives for the big storage capacity mp3 players. The only ones that exist still cost more than the iPod, so I would just hope that Apple wouldn't screw me too badly.

The guy at the Genius bar was new. He said he'd only been there for about a month. So maybe that's what caused the good service. But he asked me if I had reset it and I told him what I did. He said "OK. Well you still have 9 days left on your warranty, so let me give you a new one. Oh, and that will give you an extra 90 days on the warranty just in case something happens with this one."

I'm not sure what would have happened if I would have had it break in 2 weeks, but for once Apple just replaced the iPod, charged me nothing, and sent me on my way. I have to say that I was very happy. I'm listening to the new iPod very happily as I type, and that makes me smile.

Current Mood: pleased

09:46 am - Mavs Night

So bear and I went to the Mavs opener last night, after dropping by Ten for dinner. I've learned that I know way too little about the NBA to keep up with him, and normally I'm ok with that, but he seems to want me to know more so I can keep up my end of the conversation. I guess I'll start following a hair closer just to keep up.

The game itself was fun. The seats we had were way cheap seats, but toward the middle of the AAC. Just like hockey games, that wasn't bad. I've sat far closer but toward an end more than once and really wasn't impressed. With my best friend there and a decent angle, I had a really good time.

Hopefully we can make this happen a few more times this season. $12 for a game ticket is doable for sure, and even though the NBA is my least favorite of the "big four" sports, I still enjoy going to a game.

Now we just have to start not losing to mediocre teams. Go Mavs!

Current Mood: good

11:24 am - Armadillo Eggs

I figured these out yesterday after seeing an article online on how to make them. They are really, really good. So I wanted to pass them along.

Armadillo Eggs

Ingredients:
8 jalapenos
4 sticks of Pepper Jack string cheese
1/4 cup shredded cheddar cheese
16 pieces bacon
16 toothpicks

Instructions
1. cut top off of jalapenos and seed them
2. put a pinch of cheddar cheese in bottom of each pepper
3. cut each stick of string cheese in half and stuff half of each string into a pepper
4. wrap 1 piece of bacon length-wise around the pepper
5. wrap 1 piece of bacon around middle of pepper and wrap it covering as much of the pepper as possible with bacon
6. use 2 toothpicks going parallel to hold the bacon in place.
7. pan fry each pepper for 3-5 min per side, until the bacon is crispy
8. serve hot

Note, it's fine to use cheddar string cheese and shredded pepper jack cheese instead.

11:13 am - Weeks pass too fast

I can't believe that it's been 6 days since I wrote anything.

So here's what's been up. I spent a couple of nights last week doing computer work. I played a DTM gig on Friday night and with the LLJB for the Sacred Jazz Fest last Saturday. My mom's birthday was this weekend, and she came down, so I got to see her a couple of times. My finger is healing, so I started playing a bit of guitar. I did 3 songs on Friday night at the show and practiced off and on yesterday.

I went out with a friend on Thursday to the DMA's jazz night. She wants me to join the local Hash House Harriers, and I might. I have other people I know who run the Hash, and I just found out what it is recently. It could be fun. I'll probably give it a go and see if I'm still able to do a 5k without stopping.

On Saturday my plans to do the Halloween parade fell through, but I got to go to Thrillvania instead. Very cool locale. I really enjoyed the people, and the 2 main houses were very fun as well.

kacih is still in Khartoum. There were another couple of kidnappings that forced them to cancel her plans at the last second, literally. She was packed and they called her into a security briefing saying that they were going to hold her in Khartoum for a week or two and then she'd either be allowed into the field or they'd make other plans. It's even possible that she could come home early.

I've been really lucky this last week as well. I won tickets to a big haunted house in Arlington, tickets to the new opera house on Nov 10, and Blair ended up with 2 seats to the Mavs game tomorrow night. So I know where I'm going to be.

I guess that's the week in review. I'll try and write more, but work's been busy, so I haven't had much time to do it. I'll try and make it happen.

Current Mood: good

12:13 pm - 5 months is a shortened eternity

I've just gotten really used to chatting with her daily. She logged off about an hour ago, likely for the last time until December or January, and possibly for the last time until March when she's back in Khartoum doing a knowledge transfer to her relief.

Fittingly, as trillian popped up the alert that she had just logged off, my iPod selected Bittersweet Symphony as the song to be played.

I've spent the last hour trying to remind myself that I have been out of contact with her before, and that it's already been 3 months since I saw her. Somehow though this time is tougher. I can feel why it is, but it's hard to put words to.

She won't be able to have much direct communication but she is going to send her sister letters, which will be digitized and forwarded to a bunch of us that she wants to keep in contact with. I need to find out if her sister knows how to send her messages as well, but I am going to guess that she does not. I'll have to content myself with sending out an email into a black hole to act as a holding tank every couple of weeks.

Anyway, it's still only 5 months until I see her again. That is only a short eternity. I will survive.

Current Mood: unhappy

11:53 am - Mostly for xkookykrysx

but anyone who is learning or loving German should check this.
Supermario-Brüder

Current Mood: amused

10:03 am - U2 Show

Oh yeah, the show.

designmojo and I had a blast. The stadium is incredible to look at. It's annoying to listen to.

I can't tell you much about Muse. The acoustics where we were destroyed their sound.

U2, luckily, often bathe their entire sound in reverb, and we had good balance where we were, so it wasn't bad. And their stage presence and showmanship are incredible. And there was one little sequence where I was nearly moved to tears.

Bono talked about Aung San Suu Kyi and how she inspired their song "Walk On". Then the band played it while there was a montage of her and the people of Myanmar. He then asked the crowd to pray for her and led the crowd through "Amazing Grace". 90,000 people singing Amazing Grace is an incredible sound. Shortly after he talked about the One Campaign and, of course followed it with One. It gave me chills.

It also made me think a lot about kacih.

Anyway, the show was a lot of fun. I'm really glad I didn't sell my seats. I'll remember it for a very long time.

Current Mood: good