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November 3rd, 2009

11:53 am - Abortion musings WARNING: biased mild polemic to follow. So today on a bit of a lark, I said to myself “gosh, what are the REAL arguments against abortion?” In the interests of disclosure, I am pro-choice, or anti-life, depending on how you choose to define things. However, I also like to ask questions, even if the answers undermine my own opinions. So I decided that instead of looking at Wikipedia, I’d look at Conservapedia. Presumably, they would have the conservative viewpoint on why abortion is a Very Bad Thing™ and thus this would provide some food for thought. What I discovered instead was: no real discussion of the moral issues of abortion, beyond a few quotes from very dead people like Hippocrates and authors of a few verses from the Bible (specifically, the Old Testament, even - you know, the part BEFORE the establishment of the New Covenant, yet is still somehow deemed relevant. I digress here, apologies). In fact, what the Conservapedia article instead consists of was the following: 1) Discussions of health risks associated with abortion, including an increase in the risk of breast cancer (they took two paths here. One path included references to studies of those women who had abortions and those who did not. Another path used the argument that giving birth reduces the risk of breast cancer, thus, logically, having an abortion increases the risk of breast cancer. Extending their logic past the point discussed in the article, this implies that abstinence also increases the risk of breast cancer, since of course you are also not having a child by that path as well - however I did not see any references to this fact in the Abstinence article), increased risk of premature births for subsequent pregnancies, and the necessary psychological load of having had the procedure done. 2) Discussion of alternatives to abortion (all of which, I noted in my ever so biased way, referred to what to do with the child and mother, as opposed to a real abortion preventative - of say, not getting pregnant in the first place) 3) Discussion of Abortion Issue PACs. Well, one Abortion Issue PAC, anyway - Emily’s List. And a statement that there are no ‘serious’ anti-abortion PACs: “There is no comparably funded organization opposing abortion, because there are no monetary rewards to defending human life. Instead, candidates and supporters who oppose abortion are motivated by religious and ethical principles.” While I cannot attest to the funding level of Susan B. Anthony’s List, I am, to be honest, somewhat surprised that this PAC which does exist and which has had measurable positive impact on the election of anti-abortion officials, was not mentioned. At all. 4) Discussion of the History of Abortion. Or, more accurately, 2 small paragraphs of same, one of which quotes Hippocrates, the other, highlighting that it used to be illegal in the US until it was made legal via Judicial Activism. 5) Discussion of how the Abortion Industry actively targets minority communities. 6) A once sentence statement of the (nearly) obvious: “Liberals support abortion” - credited to the Pew Research Center. 7) A paragraph detailing that eugenics has contributed to justifications for abortion. And then the usual endings - lots of external references, sites, see also’s, and so forth. Looking back over those 7 items, I have trouble determining where, in all of that, is there an actual discussion of why abortion, in and of itself, is always a bad thing. Cancer risks are cancer risks - women choosing abortion should obviously, as good citizens, inform themselves of the risks, and no, they shouldn’t assume the Abortionist will provide clear and complete details. Whether or not the Abortion Industry of itself is an Evil Giant Corporation Out To Kill Babies is also largely irrelevant. Discussions of the politics of the issue are irrelevant, although stating that it is legal is a relevant fact. The best conclusion I came away with for the Conservative Argument Against Abortion, based on Conservapedia, is as follows: “Abortion is bad because liberal organizations encourage minorities to have abortions, liberals spend more money on saying it’s good than conservatives spend saying the opposite, and all women should have children to reduce the risk of breast cancer. The only reason it’s even legal is activist judges. Also the author of the Hippocratic Oath was against it.” I didn’t even find any text discussion the “Abortion is Murder” arguments, or the “Life begins at conception” arguments. As an aside: I discovered the existence and influence of the Susan B. Anthony list from . . um . . that other ‘pedia, the leftist one. I dare not speak its name. Current Mood: amused

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April 28th, 2009

08:05 am - Welp, we made it. Well, almost made it, but close enough. Payday’s less than 2 days away. At the beginning of April, in another round of attempts to claw our way to the surface of our financial morass and start actually looking for the shore of monetary security (ah, metaphors before 8:30 am, this may work out to be a good day), Dawn and I sat down and assessed where we were, where we wanted to go, and how to chart a course through the rocky seas of reality to reach the continent of financial independence. The net upshot of it all was to develop a process and a related budget. The process has to do with actually tracking what we spend and where it goes, something we have largely failed at for a number of years now. We combined this with budget tracking via a free online tool called Mint (www.mint.com) - which while Big Brothery and scary as all fuck get out, at least appears to believe in a semblance of security and provides us with the means to both have access to our financial information at all times, from anywhere. So we ran with it. Naturally, it being our first month out to try this, we overshot our budgets like mad. Bills were very close, fun money we missed by around 20%, several other categories we also overshot. Then again, most of those categories were “averages”, not month to month absolutes, and certain realities crept in, like forgotten about/unplanned birthdays and requisite gifts and supplies for, camping trips that needed capital investments made in, insertion of a second child into our life for a week, and so forth. I personally think we did pretty damned good, for our first foray into trying this out. We’ve made the decision to compromise on debt payment vs. home improvement, paying off the credit cards at a consistent pace while also saving enough from month to month to be able to purchase larger items about once a quarter. For the first time in a very long time, exactly zero dollars in a month were charged to a credit card - this alone is a major accomplishment for us. Naturally into this relative sea of financial tranquility, to keep that metaphor going as long as I possibly can, a hail storm was inserted, with a total damage cost to our property estimated at around $14K. Yay payoffs from gambling via insurance. Our deductibles account for about $2,300 of that, which we can’t afford - but fortunately between our contractor’s estimate for the home repair coming in a little below what the insurance company is paying, combined with my newfound-in-light-of-the-fact-we’re-in-bad-money-shape willingness to do things myself, we will probably get out of the home repair for a net cost of $200 + paint/supplies for me to do the leftover exterior work - and that includes ADDING gutters. The car is another story, but the deductible there is $500 so we’ll see how that goes. Generally I’m feeling pretty good about this whole thing - having a plan, sticking to it, designing the plan to be flexible and adjustable from the outset to support intervention by real life, and setting it up in such a way that both of us can monitor it sure is nice. I’m still ballscrunchingly scared of our financial future, because when it comes right down to it we’re still in shoddy shape and we have major, major expenses coming (ranging from a new A/C next year to Alasen’s college in less than a decade, not to mention a now largely crushed hope of being able to retire before my 60’s and actually go spend some serious quality time in Scotland, Italy, Australia, SOMEWHERE with my hot wife before I require a machine to breath at night and have to actually worry about falling while crossing the street), but at least instead of mere raw panic I am filled with confidence that I have put a foot forward on the path, we have the best plan we can make at this point in our lives, and we’ll get through this one way or another. Dawn also reports that my girth has diminished somewhat, which is supported by my somewhat regular metric of measuring my widest section weekly - while the dimension is dropping much, much slower than during my first explorations with South Beach, it is dropping - so the addition of 4 hours a week of Tai Chi and 4-5 hours a week of Martial Arts (when it’s not raining), an hour or two of yardwork (when my back isn’t busted as it was a few weeks ago) plus parking at the back of parking lots and smugly walking past all the fatties fighting over the spot next to the handicapped zones, and an overall reduced caloric intake does actually appear to work. Thank you science. In addition I can now go up the stairs in the house without getting winded, always a plus. Next goal: getting up the stairs TWICE without getting winded. I’ve made little progress in the RPG camp of lately, having lacked either time or energy to do so - home server is up and I’m digesting the rule book, but my schedule has been pretty compressed recently. Dawn pointed out I may be setting myself up for failure if I’m not careful, given previous evidence from me trying to run RPGs. She has a point, but I’m also a stubborn German asshole. I’m rediscovering that it’s ok to veg and play video games without feeling guilty, so that has provided some avenues of relaxation. I’m slightly less tense than I was in my last post - but then I did have 3 straight nights of rum this past weekend so perhaps I’m just still fuzzy. Cleared Guitar Hero World Tour band mode on Medium. Woot! Current Mood: muted Current Music: Bill Laswell and Tetsu Inoue - Open URL

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April 13th, 2009

08:19 am - Not sure what is the up . . . I’ve been feeling .. off, lately. I’m not really sure why. Something is missing, somehow. In the past few weeks I have found myself becoming more and more “process and task” focused, less “random gibblies in the oatmeal” drifting. Not that I was ever much for random behavior - but I feel like I’m missing out on some fun, or something. When I am not at work, working, I am at home, working - resolving issues, making plans, setting up file servers, doing yard work, designing calendar solutions - hell, even the video games I play now are task oriented. The various Facebook apps, the playmesh crap on the iPod. . no creativity in any of it, no freshness - and yet it’s “fun”. Somehow. City of Heroes was a potential shining star of entertainment - a mmorpg similar to WoW but different in so many respects. A new potential hobby, I was hoping. No, not really. The group I was running with has largely disintegrated - but even when it was active I enjoyed the people more than the game - after all, running around in a city as a super villain is still . . . running around in a city. While most modern landscapes do not feature gang members on precisely every single street corner, or giant man-sized snakes clustered in tidy groups of 3-5 every 20 yards, and there is generally not a plethora of individuals running around 6th street shooting lasers out of their eyes - that wasn’t QUITE enough to create a sense of immersion in a fictional environment. And, I discovered that purely instanced quests have their own issues - if you are not in a group, you are alone in your quests. Always alone. Which is fine, to a point - but there are inevitably the occasional mobs that you can’t solo, or you can but only after 10 to 20 minutes of stress inducing micromanagement which is entirely unlike doing stuff as a group, where you pile drive everything into submission in a few seconds. And in an instanced mission, there is zero chance of some higher level person wandering by and on a lark giving a hand. There is no “community” like that - while there is still one in text, I never really felt like I was involved in something larger. At least in WoW if you went into an area you could see who else was there. In CoX, well, here is an office building to explore, have fun. Speaking of: going home from an office full of whiteboards with management notes on them and logging into a game full of offices full of whiteboards with management notes on them created a continuity of experience I do not relish. This is not meant to be a critical review of CoX. Rather, given my experiences with WoW, CoX, and EVE, I find myself wondering if perhaps I’m just not cut from the cloth of mmorpg’er, despite my interest in the technologies that underlie them and the communities that emerge from them. WoW was the most seductive in that respect - I believe that had I not been married to such a wonderful wife and was instead married to some other person or just single and pseudo-dating, I may still well be playing. It was only the recognition of what I was missing out on by playing 30+ hours a week, coupled with an external person saying “you’re not really having any fun are you?” that set the stage for an honest assessment of the game and my role within it - and my eventual departure. I think I would have left eventually anyway - but not for some time. So at this point I find myself somewhat casting about for a new hobby that costs almost nothing. I am hoping that I might be able to get off my ass and run an RPG again, as that is some fun shit. Meanwhile, I find myself still locked in this tunnel vision “must do what’s on the todo list” approach to life that, while efficient, doesn’t feel terribly satisfying. On the flip side our lives were interrupted by the needs of my 4 year old niece, who is on a weeklong stay with us - such events do add a dollop of random - everything from hour long ordeals over eating 2 bites of salad to sitting on my ass and doing literally absolutely fuckall nothing while sipping on a tumbler of excellent bourbon on my back porch, surrounded by freshly raked yard that actually looks like something might GO there after all instead of a 15 square yard involuntary compost pile, with two kids being kids in the dirt. I still quest for what the fuck is my quest. Sated fat guy with a mild drinking problem who is a good father and husband? Acrobatic martial artist with the capacity to kill but who prays he never has to and goes to a leftist church on Sunday? Popular and creative author or musician? Lost mid 30’s guy who has long ago realized he knows nothing but doesn’t really have a path to learn something? Whiny emo bitch who drinks coffee and gripes about the world? High school and college were wonderful things - opportunities to do and explore and be were thrust upon me hand over fist. I couldn’t not do something if I tried. Real life, on the other hand - real life is the time in between all the responsibilities of adulthood, and there’s not all that much of that. The biggest challenge that faces me at this point is not worrying so much about how to spend my time that I find myself without any time to spend. Oh look. iTunes needs updating. Current Mood: ambivalent Current Music: Celtic Frost - Synagoga Satanae

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February 23rd, 2009

08:11 am - Holy shit. I found out today that one of my friends from way, way back, Brent Hurd, fellow NASA employee back in the mid 90’s, was killed last November by, of all things, a fucking city bus while he was riding his bike in Bangalore. He was riding his bike in Bangalore because, among other things, he had become a Professor of New Media at an Indian university, and was teaching journalism techniques. Because, as it turns out, he spent a large chunk of his post NASA days reporting on all sorts of random stuff from all over the world, along the way crafting award-winning documentaries. Some of the inspiration for his research and study of Islam stemmed from the 9/11 attacks, in an effort to bring greater understanding of the Islamic faith to non-muslims. This was of course after his 3 year stint in the peace corp, teaching good business practices to aspiring Bulgarians. At this point in the day it is very difficult to focus on the menial work related tasks that face me so I can check off fucking boxes on a fucking form that say Yes, Lord, We Art Doing Our Job Correctly, Please Bestow Upon Us Thine Merciful Counter-Signature, Amen. I haven’t spoken to Brent since we parted ways during our NASA work tours. I have missed him off and on, but Brent struck me as one of those guys who generally had his shit together, and also carried within him enormous potential for . . for something. I figured he’d sort it out one way or another. He, I, and a few other cronies enjoyed coffee and conversation. I was admittedly the drunken lout of the bunch, but a well-tolerated one. What does one do when you get a random email about a friend’s death in your inbox from another friend who you miss dearly but see at best once every 5 years and in between exchange perhaps 2 emails. I have no fucking idea. A cavalcade of thoughts has washed through me in the past half hour or so. In years past, this news, in addition to grief, would be mixed with regret. O woe is me, I am wasting my life in engineering/personnel management, doing fuck all of worth or import, if I go now I will at best have a small obituary and not a single publication to my name, no memorials, no foundations, having died creating nothing new for the world, by and large a betrayal of the potential my wit, charm, general overall academic and intellectual brilliance, and personal ingenuity seem to offer. But hey, I beat Guitar Hero on medium. I am happy to report that, in fact, I did no such thing. Minor twinges of that did occur, but as it turns out they only were notable because they were so minor. Truth be told, I enjoy managing people. I also have a wife who, at this point in her life, can finally pursue her dreams of being active and involved in volunteer efforts in our and others communities, because before me, she was stuck in the never win circle of non-degreed non-wealthy single wager earner and single parent with a near-deadbeat biological Dad who provided an amount of child support so minor it would have barely covered a month of groceries. I have a child who, while not fruit of my loins, I nevertheless love dearly, and aspire to be the best Father I can be to her, guiding her and teaching her, passing on my experience and knowledge, and dare a 37 year old say it, a gem of wisdom or two from time to time, so that she may enter the world at large a better, more fully functioning and mature adult, capable of critical thinking, and interested in the state of others as well as herself, than I was when I hit 18 and went to college. These sorts of things do not win awards or lead to best selling novels or serve in the capacity of improving the world in some dramatic, newsworthy way, but for the first time in a long time, I do believe they are tasks of merit entirely on their own. After all, it takes a solid offensive line to protect the quarterback while he makes the plays that earn the points and get his name in the paper. I also found a small part of myself being childishly content it wasn’t one of the many health issues my same loving wife is constantly concerned about may strike me down due to my inherent laziness when it comes to exercise and general good practice of staying alive. Out of the blue random shit that kills you is the hallmark of some of my philosophies - you have to enjoy today because you just never know what shit is going to happen tomorrow. The tricky part of course is finding that balance between living for today and preparing for tomorrow - and it sure seems like Brent managed to get that straight. He and his sister (who was hot) used to joke about coming from a dysfunctional family. Things were not so rosy for them as children, and while most of the details were never shared with me, and, true to form, I probably forgot whatever was shared, I did get the sense that despite their family’s wealth (or at least, comparative wealth to mine) they did not have an easy path of it, and largely had to learn to be self-sufficient at an early age. Brent was one of the two folks in this world who I completely misjudged at first. I thought he was some shallow guy who had an instinctive and consistent desire to manipulate others for his own ends. He was neither - and in this taught me to watch my own hubris, and to be aware that even my awesome intuition was not infallible. Brent was my inspiration to become a Unitarian. He first mentioned the church when I was bitching about my religious upbringing, and the place did sound pretty cool. At this point I have re-affirmed my commitment to our Unitarian Universalist congregation, by rejoining the ranks of volunteers at our church and, among other things, stepping in to become a youth advisor for our high school class, hoping to help prepare the next generation of community leaders for their journey. It was a bittersweet moment, to see that his final memorial service will take place in a Unitarian church. Today Brent teaches me that life is something you have to live. That shit does happen, but that’s ok, so long as you don’t fret about it and instead get your ass out there and do what you love. That it’s ok to not talk for years, as a friendship will endure. The saddest part for me now is that I can’t sit over coffee and share my thoughts with him. God Bless you Brent. Current Mood: sad

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February 16th, 2009

11:31 am - I believe. Since the following phenomena are occurring: 1) people I have not heard from in decades are finding me on Facebook - some I barely remember, some with whom I wish mightily more beers be exchanged forthwith, and some squarely in the middle (hello Mayde Creek!), 2) people I know “in the real world” either from church or friends or the workplace are wandering to Facebook in some form or fashion and wandering into me, 3) I have been tagged by various folks who are curious about me. I don’t “get” facebook and am somewhat inept - so hey, here’s some general stuff for the grist of the entire friend’s list. And, since I haven’t gone through this process of self-discovery in some time, I thought it might be useful to me and you if I outlined where I stand, personally and honestly, on a variety of issues. I may not hit them all, but eh. I can only type so much. Some of these things I’ve even thought of justifications for. I’ve also couched everything as “beliefs”, so while I don’t mind zesty debate on some topics, be aware that on others I’m just as opinionated and stubborn and blockheaded as the zealot down the street, and reason will not necessarily apply. I will not hold it against you if you drop me from your friends list after reading ;) 1) I believe in the inherent worth and dignity of all persons. No one is “useless” or “should be shot in the face”. I readily admit some do unspeakable things, and some folks are just purely psychotic. These individuals should be institutionalized in places which should have as a priority endeavoring to rehabilitate them back into society as a functioning individual, and in cases when that is not feasible, they should be afforded appropriate care for their survival and intellectual and physical health. I would point out that even the most hardened of criminal minds may be capable of writing the next great work of art. As such, while I believe in lifetime imprisonment, I do not support the death penalty. I think it is a grotesque fit of ego that we, fellow humans, believe we can place judgment upon the head of another, and I do not have sufficient faith in our systems of government to believe that it is completely impossible for an innocent person to be put to death - a potential result I find particularly offensive. That said, I also recognize my own human failings - there are easily envisioned circumstances I would literally rip the head off of someone, with no guilt, hesitation, or remorse during or after. I do not see this as much of a paradox, since one system is, or should be, designed to be “fair” and the other system is a reaction level response to highly stressful situations. 2) I believe in the free practice of religion - so long as your religion does not hold as a tenet that you need to be trying to recruit me to your cause. If I come asking, by all means, provide me with information. Do not, however, throw your religion at me out of some desire to steer me clear of threats you envision but that I regard as irrelevant or non-existent. 3) I am a practicing Unitarian Universalist. I leave to the internet savvy to look up the various principles, opinions, and beliefs of that religious tradition, but suffice to say I sum up the whole thing as “don’t be an asshole”. Obviously, definitions of asshole vary. 4) On the political compass, I’m squarely on the left, about the middle of the “liberal” region. As such, I believe in personal responsibility, but I also believe one of the aims of good government is provide an equal floor for all citizens. Folks can and will succeed or fail on their own merit, but at the very least we all need to be on the same track in the same stadium with a relatively fair shot at starting the race when the gun goes off. 5) I believe that a gay person chooses to be gay at approximately the same rate that a straight person chooses to be straight. As such, I also believe that gay marriage breaks down into one of two choices: either support gay marriage, in full, with all rights and privileges that are afforded to straight couples, or, alternatively, remove from the body of law all reference to and special rights given to the married, and instead revert the entire process to one dictated purely by various churches and faith traditions, and restrict these faith traditions from directly influencing the government on issues stemming from relationship choices. It is a fact that in this country we have established a class of citizen (the married) that are granted special rights and legal privileges (taxes, inheritance, power of attorney, survivorship, hospital visitation, etc), and then we have determined that another class of citizen cannot ever obtain those benefits with their life partners, merely because they represent a biological minority. 6) I believe that one of the fundamental flaws of capitalism is its reliance on competition. The end goal of any true competitive company is to achieve monopoly, since that is where profits are maximized. Thus, the very process of competition leads to the eventual end of competition. This is worse for certain large and costly industries than smaller cottage type industries, nevertheless, I find it to be a concern. I also believe that of the available and practical economic systems, capitalism is the best option we’ve got. I do believe that, if our species is to thrive and prosper, we will end up in some form of socialist system (many point to the fact we already are drifting that way), however, I do not think it’s a practical form of government at our present state of evolution. 7) I believe in representative democracy. Pure democracy is too chaotic to achieve organized long term success, particularly with the amount of information there is out there now that needs to be absorbed to make informed and relevant decisions. That said, I believe the American two party system has completely failed the American People. The parties now differ on 2 or 3 planks, the rest is perception and biased reporting. However, it is in the interest of the Two Parties to survive and third parties to fail, thus, without some serious groundswell of effort we are stuck with this set up for the foreseeable future. I believe that dictatorships are far more efficient than democracies - nevertheless, I would rather move forward slower but with more personal rights than move faster and lose my liberty. 8) I believe that most people are fundamentally good. I think that most folks, if they actually sat down and talked about things, would discover they are not quite so angry at one another anymore. 9) I believe that religion is dangerous. Not as in “will always be bad” but as in “must be used responsibly”. Religion by its nature requires belief in unprovable conjectures. While this does provide a sense of community and wholeness, and allows us as a specie to tap into our inner, spiritual natures (which I do believe exist), it also justifies the use of rhetoric instead of fact as a means to an end, and that can have very bad consequences for large sections of the population. So I’d put myself somewhere between Dawkins and the fundies, in that regard. 10) I believe the greatest failure of our education system is the inability and, in some cases, pure unwillingness, to teach critical thinking and research skills. Logic and philosophy are not taught as much as they should be, and in my opinion, should be up there with memorization of multiplication tables. Our society would grow leaps and bounds if it was more informed, and was taught the tools to become more informed. I admit - this is one of my more “out there” beliefs, but there it is. 11) I believe that the greatest bands are Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. 12) I believe that we will be hard pressed to ever see art greater than Beethoven’s Ninth. 13) I believe in evolution - but I also believe that does not preclude the existence of a Creator. In fact, I believe arguments about the Creator are irresolvable and thus, by and large, irrelevant except as a philosophical discussion. I’d like to note as an aside the recent discoveries regarding Lamarckian evolution is rather damned interesting. In any case, discussions of a Creating Entity are the purview of philosophy and religion, not science class - thus, I do not believe creation science, intelligent design, or any other named “thing” that proceeds from the belief, or implied belief, in any cognizant external agency that somehow has an ability to wield conscious power, do not belong as part of a Science class - as they are not scientific discussions. Science is a distinct process that does not mesh well with the supernatural. I would much prefer to see a comparative religions course added at the high school level, than incorporation of creationism into a biology text book. In fact, I think a comparative religions course is a damned fine thing to add in any case. It’s very clear religion is a big deal in this country - we should be educating our future leaders on what it is, how it came to be, and what belief sets are out there. There’s no reason it has to wait until college. 14) I believe that fear is a weapon used by politicians with all too much regularity. 15) I believe that invading Iraq after the events of 9/11 was a mistake - then, and now. 16) I believe that the woman is in a rather special place when it comes to reproductive rights. I believe in the right to have an abortion, so long as appropriate legal limits are in place. I agree there is a tradeoff between the life of the actual human and the life of the potential one, but I also believe that the woman’s takes priority at least until the fetus is viable outside of the womb. That statement gets a bit tricky as we move forward of course - medical technology is moving fast enough that I would not be surprised if we can eventually save a fetus after just a few months of gestation - which will raise another set of arguments. Fundamentally, discussions about these kinds of things should be relegated to the woman and her chosen advisors, be they priests, doctors, fathers, etc., and in any case access to legal abortions should be maintained in all counties. I also believe the number of abortions is best lowered, not by political rhetoric, but by proper, fact-based education. I believe informed citizens make better decisions, and hiding facts to try to get someone to do things your way is improper, dishonest, and will always be ultimately unsuccessful. 17) I believe the best way to change a mind is not to hide or distort information, but to make a better argument. 18) I believe we work too much, and don’t play enough. The richest, most prosperous nation in the world may have gotten there with a lot of work, but at this point, I really don’t understand why we have surpassed even the Japanese at hours worked per week. 19) I believe that alcohol is dangerous, but can be used responsibly. I have a similar opinion of marijuana, and am still amazed that, with the evidence at hand of the toxicity of one and the relative safety of the other, they both aren’t legal or, at least, their statuses aren’t reversed. As a local aside, I believe the proprietor and business owner should be setting smoking policies, not the state legislature. 20) I believe the rights of the individual stop right where another’s begin. I believe it is not the place of a governing body to set morality, but rather to construct a consistent and fair (there’s that damned gray area word - we have lawyers precisely because nobody can agree what “fair” means) system of rules and laws that permit society as a whole to function. 21) I believe one of the defining characteristics of being human is the ability to hold two ideologically opposed viewpoints at the same time, or at least, to be able to truly understand and argue for your opponents point of view even if you don’t agree with it personally. 22) I believe I have blathered enough for today. Current Mood: accomplished

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January 6th, 2009

08:35 am - Bye Bye GameStop So over the years I have heard from one or two folks that “man Gamestop sucks”. I myself had nothing but reasonable to pleasant experiences there, particularly at the two locations I frequented here in Austin. Well, some time ago one of those two closed, and the other is not convenient to work. Which puts me going to the one that is convenient to work yesterday to acquire a fresh band kit for Guitar Hero World Tour, just in time to jam with some family friends coming into town this weekend and accomplish my goal of getting the big family Christmas present as soon as possible. The transaction proceeds normally. Last night, I got everything constructed and set up. Alasen and I fired it up to give it a whirl. Only to discover the left cymbal didn’t work. After a bit of fiddling, troubleshooting, cymbal swapping, and reconnecting, I determine we’ve got a bad main unit. Based on my relatively sufficient knowledge of electronics, there’s either a bad wire connecting the cymbal to the CPU on the unit or a we’ve got a fried component somewhere in the chain (or just a bad solder). Since all the other drums work fine, I figure it’s probably not the main processor that converts the velocity information for the wiimote (unless of course the wiimote handles all of that and the unit is a pure dumb connect the wires to the wiimote operation). Well what a piece of shit, I think. So I make a call to Gamestop, to see about exchanging this unit this evening. They won’t let me. I’m referred to the little slip of paper in the box that says “in case of problem go to the Activision web site”. Well I don’t want to fucking go to activision’s fucking website. I want a fucking working game. But you know me. I remain calm. Sorry sir. We can’t take it. Company policy. So in order to salvage part of this evening that is rapidly becoming a pile of sheep dung, we go to the bookstore connected to this Gamestop. Alasen and Dawn wanted some books, after all. I go in to Gamestop, in person. I speak to The Manager. Well, at first I speak to sales rep guy - oh, who is the manager. Sorry, my mistake, you pimply faced prat. They won’t take it. Sorry. Not our problem. Just call Activision. But I just bought this. 6 hours ago. The corpse isn’t even cold yet, I say. Nope. Sorry. It’s defective. If I bought this at Wal-Mart, or Best Buy, they’d take it back. Perhaps. Even Target. They’d probably take it back. Maybe. We don’t. Sorry. It says right here, right here on your receipt: “Opened product may be exchanged within a week”. Yes, yes it does sir, but that doesn’t apply to these band kits. I am having trouble staying calm. I raise my voice a little, as at this point there is a small audience of about 6 folks. So you mean to tell me, this product, that I bought, here, today, this very afternoon, that is defective, you will refuse to take it and exchange it? Yes sir. Well. Thanks for nothing then. I walk off. Cool down. I go back. The Manager is on the phone outside. As he hangs up: So what if I just return it then? You have a return policy. I want to return it for store credit. Sorry, it’s defective. Well, I lied. It actually works just fine, we’ve just changed our minds. Sorry, you told me it’s defective, so we can’t take it back. At this point the ludicrousness of their position was driven home. If I had fucking lied to start with, I could have stuck them with a bum box. But no, I was Mr. Honest Dumbshit. I call the Other Gamestop. They won’t take exchanges from other stores. Even more so if it’s defective. So I actually do lie to them. “Oh it works? Well. It’s still open. We’re not supposed to take back open ones, our manager is a stickler about it. You might be able to work out something with the folks at that Gamestop tho”. So apparently even company policy is flexible, depending on who is on duty and what stories you spin. At this point I give up and put the shit back in the car. Dawn takes over. I go hang out in the nice calm bookstore and try not to think about homicide. Dawn catches the even younger redhead, who is not The Manager. She’s more sympathetic, but still won’t budge. The fact we’ve got a child is brought in. Late Christmas presents are brought up. No dice. Dawn pushes, gets the regional manager’s number. She’s continuing the saga today, but at this point, we’ve decided: Fuck you, Gamestop. Our money will go elsewhere. We’re now trying to get our money out of Gamestop so we can in fact buy this product from someone with an actual customer service, as opposed to customer assrape, policy. To all of those out there who have told me Gamestop sucks, well, you have a new acolyte. We have no less than all three next gen consoles at this point, and are now hunting about for a new game store. Fuckers. Current Mood: irritated

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December 16th, 2008

09:08 am - Gays. Marriage. ZOMG. After watching the Daily Show last night (a re-run of last week’s, featuring Huckabee and Stewart going around their friendly jibjabs, concluding with the issue of gay marriage and their respective positions about it), during which Dawn and I had one of our zesty conversations concerning the means and methods by which gay marriage will be accepted in this country - someday - we pray, and then after a comfy dump this morning while reading the Newsweek cover story concerning “Biblical Justifications for Gay Marriage” . . Which was a sad article, really. Sad in the sense that it could have been a lot better and more in depth, although it did capture many of the standard arguments well. I don’t see how it would remotely sway a convicted bigot, however. But after all of this, something crystalized in my mind. The path is this: 1) I believe that the core reason there is so much debate on this particular topic is largely for similar reasons there is so much debate on the topic of abortion: each side chooses to define terms differently. 2) In this particular case, the bigot defines terms as “being gay is a choice”. The more accepting individual reads it as “being gay is . . being gay. Like being straight, but with different parts”. 3) So that brings us to the “choice” argument. The bigot has decided that this choice, this particular choice, above ALL OTHER POSSIBLE things people could choose to do (pedophilia, rape, incest, abuse, murder, extortion, black mail, espionage, religion, philosophy, bestiality, genocide . . .. ), this one choice somehow means “sorry pal, you can’t get married, you’re too different/evil/awful/disgusting”. You can do all that other stuff and get married (perhaps from prison, but that’s been done many times), but not, you know, be gay and get married. If that all melts away because the bigot is just a bigot and not because of some high falootin’ thing like “definition of terms”, well. Nevermind. But there it is, my thoughts for today. Current Mood: at work Current Music: The Chemical Brothers - The Big Jump

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December 12th, 2008

08:16 am - The Human Body + Dreams Some things always will amaze me. I had a dream last night - perhaps inspired by the fact that as I drifted off to sleep wondering just how many ‘isms’ applied to me in some form or fashion, at least partially if not completely . . . I ran through solipsism, satanism, christianity, taoism, zen buddhism, socialism, perhaps others . . . but was asleep before I completed the list. So at some point on my nocturnal journeys, I found myself being inducted as a Mason. Not the Seth kind, the secret society kind. My token of membership was a hand painted porcelain talisman of some kind, some sort of curved cylinder-like object with a tassel on one end, the whole thing was about 3 inches long. The painting was of a bust of a Russian composer. I recall asking for Rachmaninoff, but I ended up with a name I of course recognized in the dream but this morning the best I had left was “Tatuuta----t” or something. In any case there was a special place in what I can only assume was the Mason clubhouse where you went to piss. Large flat trays about 4’ off the ground, covered in gravel, with a drain in the middle - except you didn’t pee into these trays, you peed UNDER then, into another tray beneath this one. I apparently had to pee many times in this dream. Long, continuous streams of piss. To compound this imagery, the way you flushed this type of toilet was to take a nearby hose that had one of those diffuser heads on it, like you’d see on a watering can, some 3“ in diameter, and run this over the gravel bed above. In my dream after the first long piss, followed by streams of clear water, I had to pee again, so I continued to pee and flush in this near continuous cycle. I recall feeling that sense of bliss that comes from relieving the bladder - only to realize that no, I still had yet more, and so on. This began to become a lengthy process, as compared to the apparent length of the rest of the dream. So of course you see where this was going. I awoke somewhere in this, with a burning desire to urinate. I remembered then I had not gone to the bathroom before bed as my custom (Dawn was wanting some warmth under the covers NOW, as it was pushing freezing outside by this time) so I figured I could skip the nightly tinkle. Nope. I hustled to the bathroom, had one of the most invigorating pisses I’ve had in some time, and chuckled at the body - taking an overriding desire to urinate and turning it into a dreamscape of piss fantasies, coupled with extra streaming water just in case the effect wasn’t strong enough. I was also grateful I’m still youthful and continent enough that I just didn’t piss in the bed. Current Mood: tired Current Music: Stars Of The Lid - Broken Harbors, Part 3

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November 17th, 2008

08:39 am - A very interesting weekend An interesting gathering of notable and/or nostalgic events wandered through the weekend, leaving me in various states of thoughtfulness . . . ( Read more... ) Current Mood: coffee

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November 5th, 2008

12:01 am - Whee! So Obama won. I find this to be a good thing :) at the very least, significantly better than the alternative that faced us. At the same time I take amusement at the initial response from the right, that I am reading at NRO, Redstate, and elsewhere: “gee, we lost . . but look we voted in a black man hooray us whee racism is so dead or at least struck a mighty blow . . . ” while true, the whole concept of a party I generally find to be made up of (at least in part) a bunch of bigots resting in their own superiority and historically acting to reduce the ability of minorities to vote now turning around and praising the election of a black man just rings with irony as rich as a peanut butter cheesecake. I mean seriously. At least they found something positive to spin up ons. Current Mood: drunk

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November 3rd, 2008

12:50 pm - MY WIFE RULES My lovely wife - is like, totally published now :) she got top billing here - she’s the “Texas Mom” referenced. If you missed the post on that site she’s got it on her blog as well, and me, well, I dumped it to pdf for posterity :) GO VOTE. Even if you don’t like the two candidates chosen by the corporate elite, at the very least participate in your local elections, and/or vote third party, vote for ficus, whatever. Current Mood: happy

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September 22nd, 2008

04:28 pm - Pinwheels + Thoughts So last night Dawn approached me with a request: “Honey, could you please read this sheet and make a pinwheel?” she says. “But of course my dear” I say. Off I toddle to do a “craft project”, the sort of thing I do once in a blue moon - usually because someone asks me to. The assignment for this pinwheel was: On one side, write your thoughts about the concepts of peace/living in harmony/war/tolerance. On the other side, draw things that illustrate how you feel. At which point, hey, it’s me. The adult engineer brain kicks in and I actually give some thought to these things, and then create symbology to match. </p> I’ll get to what I said in a moment after the cut. HOWEVER: turns out this is part of a children’s thing known as Pinwheels for Peace which, while a fine program in its own right, is more a celebration of what peace and tolerance MEANS, from a child’s point of view, as opposed to what I took it to be - a debate oriented discussion on what they are and the costs and benefits thereof. So here I was on a day that’s supposed to be mega-cheerful and pro-peace and I’m off dissecting the inability of humanity to reach any sense of meaningful peace in our lifetimes. I am, apparently, not cut out for children’s programs and need to remain being a snarky twit in online forums instead. My next pinwheel featured bright colors, hearts, and the word “LOVE”, which was well-received and in keeping with the intent of the day. BUT: I did like what I had to say, even if it was inappropriate to the audience, and have included it herein for posterity. ( Read more... ) Current Mood: satisfied

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August 30th, 2008

11:35 pm - Holy Hell. It's like Pine all over again. So the other day I got to thinking: “gee, I should look into this whole RSS thing.” As many may know I’ve expressed frustration in the past over synchronizing my blogs, in that I want to be able to read all my friend’s blogs in one place, and presumably they’d like that as well . . so what to do, what to do. I’ve debated moving my blogs around for some time now, until I got MacJournal running at home and now, well, I can make one blog update and upload it everywhere - except Myspace, of course, bastard stepchild of lazy indifference to usability coupled with greed-based advertising topped with a cherry of hoped-for monopoly in the social networking arena - which makes things so convenient I don’t really care WHERE the damned thing is now since, effectively, it’s everywhere - minus Myspace, which requires I manually copy it again to post it there, which I’m not always inclined to get around to doing. Easy or not, I find it retarded. But anyway. Between watching Rick’s little window pop up every 5 minutes with an RSS update about Slashdot and seeing all these “add RSS!!!” feed buttons on a growing number of websites, I got to thinking, hmm, mebbe that’s a path worth poking along on. A few minutes of research this evening I’ve got a slick RSS feed reader that will synchronize via .Mac to all of my computers and pretty much every friend’s blog added for reading. The program even supports “private” blogs such as the ones on Livejournal where you have to be on a friend list to see it - you just add your log in information into the keychain of the program. It even supports Growl, which makes me all happy in the pants. Except, of course, and again, for Myspace, which instead will just pretend the blog doesn’t exist. Myspace, incidentally, also only shows the first line of the post for non-private posts, to get you to go sit through the horribly buggy and cluttered interface that is the gloriously craptastic Myspace empire. As an aside, Myspace reminds me of Microsoft in so many ways. Not the “EVIL CORPORATION SUPERPOWER ZOMG” ways, but in the “since everyone uses it, it can be as crappy as possible and no one will care” way. The sheer lack of design and forethought of Myspace’s interface and overall look-and-feel, compared to Facebook, Orkut, hell, even Virb - I mean come on. It’s like comparing raw egg to a bacon quiche. One is merely potential, the other - awesome. But I digress. Thumbs up on RSS. I might even be able to get through folks blogs more often this way since I don’t need to wade through custom friend pages and piles of bookmarks. The few folks I know who maintain private Myspace blogs will still trip an email to me so I’ll still be in the loop. And by way of backstory, for those of you who don’t get the reference in the title: Some years ago I was puttering about on a Unix operating system. I was accustomed to the wonderful little Unix application called “mail”, which allowed you to read electronic messages sent from others. I thought that was pretty spiff, really. A friend of mine, many times, had encouraged me to look at another program, called “pine”. “pfft”, I said. “I can read messages JUST FINE in this other application, called mail. Why do I want to clutter up my brain with the ins and outs of a program that does EXACTLY what my current solution does, with all of its loaded on allegedly value-added complexity and so forth? That’s just silly.” Then one night I got bored and fired up pine, you know, just to see what all the hullabaloo was about. After about 30 seconds I called this friend: “AARON!!!! You mean you can organize mail in FOLDERS?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!!!” Between that, my comments that the internet was a stupid idea that would never take off, and the fact that as I age I am discovering most days I don’t know my ass from a hole in the ground, I generally endeavor to refrain from making such pre-judgments any more :) Speaking of I suppose I should go look at Twitter now. Mebbe they do RSS feeds . . . Current Mood: accomplished

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August 2nd, 2008

10:55 pm - Four. Four is the number of joy and happiness that overcame me this evening. Four great things have happened on this little vacation: 1) I have met both sets of Dawn’s grandparents 2) I have met Dawn’s biological mother and step-father 3) I have seen vast stretches of the United States, having been on a road trip stretching from Austin Texas to Jackson Mississippi to Lakeview Arkansas to Battlement Mesa Colorado, with lots of little pit stops and various tours in between (including crossing the continental divide - TWICE. durr.) 4) Brewpubs. FOUR of them, to be precise. We left Dawn’s folks this morning, full bellies and warm hearts all around. Well, they hadn’t eaten yet as it was a bit early for them on a weekend, but the warm hearts I can vouch for. Nice folks, and I’m glad we got to spend some good quality time with them. Dawn and Dad spent some time last night computing a new route that would NOT involve driving through the fucking wasteland that is I-70 in Kansas - and instead we drove through Ouray and the subsequent pass in the mountains - and it was FUCKING BEAUTIFUL. Good cripes. The road scared the shit out of me but the view was well worth the resulting chocolate stains. If you ever wind up in southwest Colorado (and it’s not winter - for God’s sakes don’t drive in this area during snowfall season) give it a shot. I fell in love with the town and it’s now in the list of places I’d like to live if I win the lottery/find a successful portable career/inherit millions from an undiscovered relative. In any event, we reached New Mexico without incident and the views continued to be fantastic, though obviously at a slightly lower elevation and somewhat smaller mountains - plus more desert. And then we reached Socorro. The Holiday Inn Express in Socorro, a fine little place with free internet and included breakfast. The Holiday Inn Express a mere TWO DRIVEWAYS away from Socorro Springs Brewpub. (I can actually link one finally since I have internet WHILE BLOGGING). Conveniently enough, it’s one I’d really like to link :) Sampler platter here: the so far typical $9. Contents: NINE fucking beers. Nine. I should also point out they had a total of 11 beers on tap (2 of which were not theirs, I believe, as they also sold other non-brewpub beers - leading me to utter the catchphrase “this place goes to eleven”). The waitress arranged them (cute waitress, for those keeping score - tall skinny brunette with a nice smile) in order that they were on the menu - annotating the substitution of one of their usual beers with another, a new one they were trying out. Then something totally unexpected happened. I tried all nine of them, sipping water in between (that’s not the unexpected part, bear with me). . . . ALL OF THEM WERE AWESOME. I shit you not. They hit a clean homerun. Every beer a winner, every beer worth getting again, every beer Fucking Tasty. Schlafly: you are on notice. You are now demoted from “Favorite Brewpub in America” to “Favorite Brewpub north of Oklahoma”. At least in my little book which no one may care about but that I read heavily, and often. I was sufficiently stunned by this turn of events that I didn’t take very much in the way of notes. I wanted to spend more time drinking. However, here’s what I was able to capture: Dutch Lager: very good - for a pilsner. But this pilsner was far better and less “stinky pilsner” tasting than the one I reviewed at . . that other place listed above somewhere. As I’ve said before, I’m not a lager man, so reviewing these is a little harder. Isopod Pale Ale: a very NICE sharp pale - good hop bite to it - but they actually did it right, and balanced it out with a strong malt character. Fantastic beer. Not recommended unless you enjoy hops - but if you do, while this may not blow your socks off like a Anchor Liberty or a Lagunitas IPA, it’s certainly par for the course and a nice well-rounded friend for those long nights at the pub. Cherry Wheat: a chick beer. Sweet, but the cherry was not overpowering, so they actually turned this “oh you don’t like beer? try this” product into something drinkable even for us actual beer drinkers. However, I’d not get a pint of it. I mean, what’s the point with the other tasty stuff lurking around the corner. Still: as fruit beer goes, this is the best I’ve had. Period. Mo’s ESB: Holy fucking shit. They nailed this bitch to a tree and started a religion. Almost like my old standby Fuller’s, but a bit sharper in the hop palette. This is a fantastic offering of which I’ll mention more in a bit. This was also the only beer I subsequently ordered (sadly, only had time for one pint of the six or so I would have liked). Very well balanced, excellent malt and hops, just a really tasty and comfortable beer for me. It was like coming home to grandma with a keg in each hand and a tap in my mouth. Red Lager: ah, the lagers again. As an aside, Socorro had more lagers than any other brewpub I’ve been to, which was actually refreshing. While not my preferred style, I’m pleased to see folks going out on a limb and offering up some serious variety in the beer preparation game. But I digress. This was a damn fine lager all the same. Very malty, and not too sweet. Had a nice rich character to it that I’d recommend to those who like flavorful lagers. Pick Axe IPA: This was a nice offering indeed. Unlike most brewpubs who seem to say “time to make an IPA! put in fifty bajillion ounces of Cascade in the fermenter and call it a win!”, this one had some class. Good strong malt backbone topped off with a nice buffet of hops, both on the nose and tongue. Aroma + bitter + finish, at last, a beer with hops strong enough to hit you in the crotch and smooth enough to hold you afterwards. Loved it. Pacific Goldrush IPA: this was the bock replacement. I believe they’ll bring back the bock, but this new one is a test brew, or a new style, or something. But anyway: wow. No less than two worthy IPA’s from the same place. Granted, this one was much milder than the Pick Axe - but it was a well balanced member of the style, somewhere around Sierra Nevada Pale in aggregate, but with a markedly different hop character that had very citrusy notes - almost like it had been hopped with a bit of orange or lemon zest as well as the usual gamut. I liked this brew - not enough to order another given my time frame, but this was definitely one I’d have again given the chance. Black Bear Lager: hoo boy. Again with the lagers - but again with the uniqueness. We had one light and happy one for the Bud drinkers who are trying to develop into something more recognizable as a human, a nice middle of the road malty one for the hungry - and now a delicious schwarzbier for the adventurous. This was a tight well-oiled machine of a beer, rich dark malts to the forefront with a light hop afterburner and a gentle bitterness that left you feeling loved. Probably one of the few lagers I’ve had that I actually thoroughly enjoyed as much as I do ales. Was very reminiscent of what a stout might taste like if you, say, accidentally used the wrong yeast and oh, um, refrigerated it during fermentation as a science project. Prohibition Stout: This beer was the first to be brewed post Prohibition, so said the liner notes - but then again, this pub opened in 1999 so I’m not sure how that math works out. Regardless, this was an excellent “bitter” stout - I say bitter to contrast it to something like Guinness or Murphy’s, as this particular stout had all the richness of those cousins but also tossed in a nice refreshing dryness that just left you thirsty for more. Oh - and the food was great too. Again with the italian themed menu - no fish and chips, though it did sport a Rueben. I went for the “New Mexico Cuban Pork Sandwich”, featuring pork marinated with red peppers and toasted on some damn good bread. The pizzas and calzones looked top notch, Dawn’s shrimp and pasta dish was delightful. I could spend a week here trying this place out. So on a total lark I thought I’d try to stir up some shit. I chatted up the waitress and then the manager, inquiring as to what sort of distribution chain they had set up, if any (this was at the instigation of Dawn, who has these sorts of good ideas nearly constantly it seems) - with the goal of seeing if perhaps they might be able to work out a way to get their beer into the hands of my local pub - the Dig Pub. In support of this little scheme I snagged a growler of the ESB to lug back to Cedar Park, and see if I can interest someone in charge in a sample of it this Monday. The staff at Socorro assured me it would keep - and the growler cap itself is sealed, so I’m hopeful the carbonation will remain solid. We’ve got chests to keep it cool in, so temperature should not be an issue. To sum it all up: this place is worth going an hour or two out of your way if you’re traveling in the southwest. Maybe even three for those who enjoy car trips. And with all that, time to shower and bed. It’s almost 11 and we’ve got another 10 hours of travel for tomorrow, plus a return to >100 degree heat. Oh boy! Current Mood: tired

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July 31st, 2008

10:23 pm - BREWPUB MANIAAAAAAAaaaaaa . .. . Only on pay per view. (Written 7/31) So today was the last big “outing” day while we are in Colorado. Primary mission: hit no less than TWO brewpubs and do a farmers market/street festival all at once. We drove down to Grand Junction about 2:30pm, stopping at a Walgreens to collect a photo order (Dawn downloaded the camera contents onto Devitt/Debbie’s computer via a conveniently located CF reader slot - and then she sent it all off to Walgreens for development so the folks could have some prints) and then hitting Rockslide Brewery for a pint. We were only going to stay for a little while so doing a full sweep of the selections was not in the plan. We had some munchies in the form of giant potato slices covered in cheese, and between the five of us sampled three beers. The Amber: very good, well balanced nice brown ale. Quite drinkable, altho not landmark making. The Wheat: light in texture and generally awesomely easy on the palate. Dawn’s Mom liked this one. Had a very nice character - not an outstanding offering, but a nice entry point indeed. The ESB: Very solid beer here. My overall impression was that this was a great beer - but had a few arenas of improvement. The malt character was present and full - but obscured by excessive dry-hopping and/or finishing hops (my palate is not yet fully trained in the ways of Beer-Fu). The bitter dry end point of the taste flushed out the malt character and left the overall impression that this was more an American Pale or IPA style than a ESB - which to me means there should be a fairly even balance between the hops and the malt. Then again I’m biased - I tend to measure everything up against a draft pint of Fuller’s ESB. Overall: I give the place an A-. Definitely better offerings than the previous brewpub, and had time allowed sticking around for a few more samples would have been a good use of the afternoon. After Rockslide, we hit the market. On the main street, there were a variety of statues done by different sculptors, so I snagged a few shots of ones that caught my eye. There was also a band of old-timers - or folks dressed as such, some of the mustaches looked mighty fake - picking banjos and so forth outside of the Republican Headquarters office. I do get the impression that Colorado, or at least these parts of it, are highly likely voting for McCain this fall. Good for them. I don’t live here. Anyway: The Market. Standard Market Stuff - fruits, veggies, handmade flutes, one or two women wearing very little, some dance troupe, a blues band of 16 year old boys, etc. However - not in the market - was a great toy store that made me feel like I’d walked into an upscale version of Toy Joy, but with the same personality. Including a huge blonde guy who would sneak up on folks (like Alasen) and do a flawless Donald Duck. Good times. So once all that was done we ambled on to the final stop - Kannah Brewery. Holy shit. This place rocked on all cylinders - EVEN THO THEY HAD NO FISH AND CHIPS. Yes, I said it. A brewpub worthy of a visit even without the obligatory fried fish and malt vinegar action. They didn’t even sell fucking hamburgers. Instead the cuisine was distinctly italian in bent - pasta dishes, panini sandwiches, many, many, many different pizzas, and calzone. And man what calzone. I ordered the Godfather. It was basically a giant meatball made of pepperoni, ham, and salami, mixed up with cheese, wrapped in bread, and baked. Fucking awesome. I mean damn. I finished eating it 2 hours ago and I’m still stuffed. The BEER: At last I have found a place worthy of mention in the same breath as the Tap Room in St. Louis, albeit with a smaller selection. If these folks keep moving along they are going to be at the top of the food chain brewpub wise, based on my awesomely huge sample of THREE. But anyway. Since I had some time here, I went for the sampler plate. Unfortunately they were out of two of the 8 beers I’d normally get, but I still got 6 different beers to nibble on. First, the two special ones on tap: Pilsner: Pretty good - for a pilsner. Very crisp, had a good body and flavor. Not my favorite of course, but then lagers are not generally something I aspire to fill up on. One of the better ones I’ve had in a while, however. IPA: I found their IPA a little on the “too dry” side. Granted, they tend to be dry - but this one seemed unbalanced. However, this IPA was the best IPA I’ve had since I left Austin. A solid beer. Then, the regulars: Hefeweizen: they did this right. Smooth, easy, nice. An excellent representative of the style. Porter: hot damn. This was a fine porter. Just dry enough, just rich enough on the tongue. Different notes than Sierra Nevada Porter, but similar overall character. Highly worth ordering. Standing Wave Pale Ale: BAM. Here it the fuck is. A beer worth drinking again and again. This one hit on all cylinders for me - balanced hop character, nice malt undercurrent, rich flavor, great mouthfeel, just awesome. Turned out to be the table favorite - my pint for the night was this beer, and Mom and Dad each got one as well (Dawn went for the porter). Stout: whoohooo. Another outstanding offering. They even used a nitrogen system to give it that fine textured head. As it turned out they were nice enough to replace the missing 2 tasters on my plate with 2 more tasters of whichever ones I wanted to double up on - I requested they both be this stout. Rich and flavorful, smooth and delicious. This was a great beer. To this brewpub I give the highest rating of the three - a solid A. They’ve got a ton of potential, and I hope they succeed. I found out from Devitt that after their first year of business they were left with $10K in the bank, and made the call to go for it. Their second year turned a tidy profit, and they are now investing in an expansion site on the currently-under-consruction riverwalk in Grand Junction. At that point they’ll have something near the college AND something on the riverwalk, so if enough people with taste find them they should be good to go. Great night all around. Now chatting with the fam, time to move on and have me some whiskey . . . Current Mood: sleepy

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July 30th, 2008

09:36 am - Colorado Adventures, continued (Written 7/30). So yesterday we hopped over to Glenwood Springs and visited the somewhat predictably named Glenwood Springs Adventure Park. This is a small but good sized park that is at the top of a mountain (smallish, perhaps, but mountain nonetheless) that is normally accessed via a sky tram ride. The park also had three different “thrill” rides - a giant four person swing that tosses you out over the side of the mountain, a two person zipline thing, and a coaster car type thing where you go down a track along the side of the mountain with a few unnecessary turns thrown in for funsies. The beauty of that particular ride, for a non-thrill-seeker like me, is that the cars have brakes on them - so if it gets going a little too fast for you you can just slow down. Granted, I didn’t slow down much - just knowing I COULD slow down made the ride much less irritating and much more fun for me. The main attraction, at least in my opinion, was the caves, however. The mountain is believed to be riddled with caves - but back at the turn of the 20th century a gentleman discovered one part of a complex of them near the top, and so the Fairy Caves were born, in a sense. Today there’s a network of them explored, and there are three different ways to visit them at the park. The easy way (the one we chose) was a 70 minute or so guided walking tour that featured nothing more strenuous than stairs (in some cases, many, many stairs. Remember: stairs count double at 5K feet). There was also a 90 minute “adventure” tour that featured crawling and various other awkward positions, and then the whopper, a 3 hour “wild” tour that was listed as very strenuous. These other two tours also had you in gloves, kneepads, hard hats with lanterns, all that good stuff. The cave was fucking AWESOME. This was my first trip into a cave, and I was pretty much in awe the whole time. The raw sense of age was very humbling - the guide said cave formations grow at the rate of 1 cubic inch per 1000 years. Then I’d look around at all the various formations of stalactites, stalagmites, soda straws (the description of how these form, and that basically you are left with a tube the diameter of a single drop of water with walls incredibly thin led me to utter a mild oath that carried a bit further than I had anticipated), “cave bacon” (what a soda straw is if it forms on a slope, instead of a horizontal surface), flow stone, etc etc etc - and damn. Dawn is already talking about going to Carlsbad Caverns and I’m all for that. Had there been more time and a different group make up I might have pushed for the 90 minute tour but between Devett getting fatigued from the vast amounts of stairs and Alasen and Dawn really wanting to do the rides I figured such a thing could wait till next time. We left around 6, I think it was, having spent a good 5 hours at the park, and while tempers were starting to flair we did all have a great time. I did suffer a bit - having fallen into the trap of the Colorado Sun, and forgetting a key facet of sunburn: The skin burns REGARDLESS of air temperature. So my stupidity had its day. Yay. And . . ow. Next stop on the Tuesday Tour was a BREWPUB!! Ah, glorious Beer. We went to the Glenwood Canyon Brewery for dinner, and I had the obligatory fish and chips. I went for the sampler platter since I figured folks would not be patient enough either with the time involved or the wobbliness of me after 5 or 6 pints. I am not sure what all they had there, but the sampler had 8 different beers on it: 1) Honey Ale: this beer fell in my “adequate” category - drinkable and tasty, but not particularly notable 2) Weizen: very easy drinking and crisp. Much better to me than the 3) Raspberry Wheat: which ran into my usual issues with winecooler beers. Tasty of course but not something I’d ever order except to drizzle over pancakes. Dawn’s Mom had a pint of it, and liked it a lot. She also liked the Weizen. 4) Amber: A decent session beer. Nothing really stood out. Overall character was of the guest chair that is comfortable enough but not one the owners ever sit in by choice. Mild. 5) ESB: They did this one right. Nicely balanced hops and malt and an overall character that would have encouraged me to have another pint or three under different circumstances. Granted, I have a strong bias toward this style, but hey, so what. I’m on vacation. 6) IPA: I had high hopes for this one, given that I rather like them. However, it seemed almost - TOO overly-Cascaded. Furthermore the perception on my tongue was that most of the hops were finishing hops and there was very little bittering hops. Just tons and tons of nose with no rich mouthfeel, malt character very much lacking. Reminded me of the beers that used to be at Waterloo Brewpub in Austin - excessively dry and lacking punch other than aroma. 7) Nutbrown ale: Dawn had a pint of this herself. This was a solid beer, hit well on all cylinders. Comfortable to drink and worthy of another glass. 8) Stout: They did a nice job on this one. I called it a “bitter stout”, in that it had more of a bite to it than say, a draft Guinness does on the palate. Great mouthfeel, rich character. A solid beer. Overall the clear winners were the Nutbrown, the Stout, and the ESB. The Amber and Honey were decent, along with the Weizen - the others were at the bottom of my list. Overall none of the beers were clear standouts as far as other beers are concerned - my final conclusion was I put them all in the C+ to B+ range on the Brian Scale of “would drink again”. Restaurant wise - service was largely lacking. The food was tasty, but there was no spark of “hey, they give a shit about their product here”. The menu had no story of the pub, etc. Our waiter brought our food and our check but we didn’t really see him in between. Was the first time in some time I didn’t tip at least 20% at a bar. That in turn led to an interesting discussion on Coloradoian labor market forces (outside of the restaurant, of course). The labor market on the western side is nuts. Oil and Natural Gas production here has produced a vast surplus of cash, and the cost of living is ridiculous. To support that, wages are very very high - $18/hour to run a cash register, for example. Naturally this means rents and other costs scale accordingly, if not excessively. Thus: the youth who do work the lodges during winters or wait tables, etc - need 2 or 3 jobs to be able to afford to live here. Consequently there’s no real employee loyalty anywhere - labor is tight in supply so workers come and go as they please and/or finances dictate. Most of the folks who work here don’t live here - since the ones who do live here have a crapton of money so hey, why bother working. On top of that immigrant labor is rapidly rising, which I suspect is a combination of anti-immigrant labor sentiment along the southern border of the US coupled with the much higher wages available here than Texas and surrounding states. The net result is warm bodies who do work but no one really gives a big shit. It’s just a job, after all. On the flip side the restaurant we ate breakfast at yesterday (The Cowboy Calf-A) was a notable exception. Owned and run by friends of Devett and Debbie, it’s been doing booming business in the 6 months they’re open - so much so that they are close to putting an older restaurant across the street out of business. And MAN the food was awesome. One biscuit was about a four inch square, and a solid 2 inches thick at the middle. Bacon - oh man the bacon. Best I’ve had since I can remember. Wrapped up the day with conversation and a Jack and Diet Pepsi Max and slept like a rock. Good times - they continue! Current Mood: accomplished

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July 28th, 2008

04:28 pm - Oooo! A Mother-in-Law! Started writing this post on 7/28. Not sure exactly when I’ll get around to posting it (internet access is non-continuous). So I’ve now met my actual mother-in-law :) as opposed, of course, to the step-mother-in-law. How I’ll keep all these names sorted, who knows. Naturally, my mother-in-law is married to . . . my step-father-in-law, just to keep the titles interesting. I like these folks. They swear and drink, and nicely fill in the genetic source of other Dawn traits remarkably absent in her father. I suspect they’re also pretty liberal, but I’m being nice and not poking at such “sensitive” topics. However, Mom did mention today she hates Wal-Mart. Mmm. Common ground! Colorado is fucking beautiful. There is a huge fucking mountain out front of the house and it’s visible from our bedroom window too. The air is dry, the temperature much better than what is in Austin at the moment (I think it hit 80 today! omgsohot!). I’m having allergies out the ass, but those are most likely due to the dogs than what’s in the air. Hard to say tho. But, a little Zyrtec and I’m stable for the moment. Speaking of dogs, for what I believe the first time ever Alasen had an unpleasant dog experience. Debbie (the mom) has two horses of dogs, great dane things of meat and bone and muscle. They are not all too excited about strangers in general, and haven’t that much experience with children specifically. So Mom attempted to introduce the dogs to us today. One of them would have none of it, and wouldn’t stop barking even with us far away but in the same room. So back to the backyard he went. The other was much calmer, so while he was restrained we had Alasen walk over and present her fist for smelling. On first whiff the dog lunged, and while we suspect he wasn’t trying to actually bite her (she’d not have a hand, if that was the case), he did smack her hand pretty good with a tooth leaving a minor but ugly looking bruise/scrape combo. Needless to say he’s back out in the backyard as well and folks were pretty upset for a while. I suspect given the incident today if other attempts happen they’ll be in a day or two, and with muzzles this time. Kinda sad, really - Alasen loves dogs. Not to mention her being upset and Mom being in tears herself. We’ve got activities planned for tomorrow and Thursday thus far. Today is “sit on our ass day”, and so far it’s pretty damned nice just sitting, drinking tea, and looking forward to an evening of Uno and Jack Daniels (they had a little snifter of the stuff. At last, a little drinking on my vacation - boo ya!). We’ve got at least two brewpubs and a winery on schedule as well so this is going to be some srs fun, I do believe, this week. So we left Mississippi this morning with nearly no incident (minor issue of forgotten lunchmeat) and arrived at Grandparents Pair #2 - Buddy and Willeem. Not sure on the spelling on that latter one. MInor pre-insertion stemming from a current conversation with Dawn - I learned some new things today that’s for sure. The corn made to eat via gnawing off of ears is in fact a different specie than corn made to pop, or corn made to crush up into cornmeal. Wacky :) First impressions out here - man, there are different ways to age gracefully. The set of grandparents in Mississippi (specifically, my step-grandparents-in-law - step mother-in-law’s side) are active, pursue new interests, and actually made serious efforts to pull information and stories out of us, the visitors. This set - quite the opposite. Far more interested to share their tales (which is fine in general) - but with the sensation they just wanted to pass on their stories before they died. I lost count of the times they referred to their impending deaths, as if it was some thing just around the corner and so utterly unavoidable they might as well just sit and wait for it. The folks in Arkansas didn’t mention it at all. One comment that stuck in my mind tonight was “we only own one thing in Mississippi now - our burial plots”. I wished them an early 60th wedding anniversary - which will happen in January. The response: “well thanks, if we live that long”. Less than half a year away. Now granted, I suspect a lot of this may stem from the fact that they have placed such faith in the Christian religion that they really feel everything, exactly everything, is so utterly out of their control that the entire package of their remaining years is a completely mapped crapshoot of sorts that God will take care of and no point in trying to do much beyond prayer to make sure it’s a good last few days/weeks/months/years. And that’s fine, I suppose - but for me such a seemingly passive way of approaching my last time on earth just wouldn’t sit right. Meanwhile the Mississippians are very Christian as well - but in a more open and flexible framework, or something. They’re all about getting out and doing stuff, meeting new people, piddling with things, and adapting to the physical and mental limitations of aging. More “young at heart” is my impression. Made of course yet more ironic by the fact that the folks in Mississipi are actually older than the ones here ;) I feel I have to be more guarded here as well too. Absolutely no swearing. Political discussions, already somewhat dangerous in Mississippi, would be suicidal here. Religion? I may just pretend to be a devout fundie to smooth over the rough spots. All the same, I’ve already drawn inspiration from both families: In Mississippi, I was encouraged to seriously consider a Ph.D in something, or at least pursue teaching opportunities at smaller colleges closer to areas I’d prefer to live in. Furthermore, I had a brainstorm after discussions of companies started and sold of a business idea I may go into with Dawn (assuming I obtain some buy in from her that it really is a good idea, of course :). In Arkansas, after viewing some old film made by Grandpa of the family, I am now motivated to dust off the video camera I’ve had languishing all this time, and also get something set up to transfer what VHS tapes I have that are already worth keeping. Also, I want to pick up another instrument besides piano, and the longer I dawdle the less good I’ll be at it. Today’s Racist Comment: (Subject: Jackson MI zoo maintenance): “Well, you know, the blacks have just about taken over all of Jackson’s government, and now they’ve just overspent the budget, what taxes they can collect, the works.” Dawn warned me they are a little more “biased”, shall we say, out here in Arkansas. We’ll see what other jewels fall :) Right. More to say, but bed calls. Ta Ta! Current Mood: accomplished

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July 24th, 2008

10:17 pm - Made it to Arkansas! So we left Mississippi this morning with nearly no incident (minor issue of forgotten lunchmeat) and arrived at Grandparents Pair #2 - Buddy and Willeem. Not sure on the spelling on that latter one. MInor pre-insertion stemming from a current conversation with Dawn - I learned some new things today that’s for sure. The corn made to eat via gnawing off of ears is in fact a different specie than corn made to pop, or corn made to crush up into cornmeal. Wacky :) First impressions out here - man, there are different ways to age gracefully. The set of grandparents in Mississippi (specifically, my step-grandparents-in-law - step mother-in-law’s side) are active, pursue new interests, and actually made serious efforts to pull information and stories out of us, the visitors. This set - quite the opposite. Far more interested to share their tales (which is fine in general) - but with the sensation they just wanted to pass on their stories before they died. I lost count of the times they referred to their impending deaths, as if it was some thing just around the corner and so utterly unavoidable they might as well just sit and wait for it. The folks in Arkansas didn’t mention it at all. One comment that stuck in my mind tonight was “we only own one thing in Mississippi now - our burial plots”. I wished them an early 60th wedding anniversary - which will happen in January. The response: “well thanks, if we live that long”. Less than half a year away. Now granted, I suspect a lot of this may stem from the fact that they have placed such faith in the Christian religion that they really feel everything, exactly everything, is so utterly out of their control that the entire package of their remaining years is a completely mapped crapshoot of sorts that God will take care of and no point in trying to do much beyond prayer to make sure it’s a good last few days/weeks/months/years. And that’s fine, I suppose - but for me such a seemingly passive way of approaching my last time on earth just wouldn’t sit right. Meanwhile the Mississippians are very Christian as well - but in a more open and flexible framework, or something. They’re all about getting out and doing stuff, meeting new people, piddling with things, and adapting to the physical and mental limitations of aging. More “young at heart” is my impression. Made of course yet more ironic by the fact that the folks in Mississipi are actually older than the ones here ;) I feel I have to be more guarded here as well too. Absolutely no swearing. Political discussions, already somewhat dangerous in Mississippi, would be suicidal here. Religion? I may just pretend to be a devout fundie to smooth over the rough spots. All the same, I’ve already drawn inspiration from both families: In Mississippi, I was encouraged to seriously consider a Ph.D in something, or at least pursue teaching opportunities at smaller colleges closer to areas I’d prefer to live in. Furthermore, I had a brainstorm after discussions of companies started and sold of a business idea I may go into with Dawn (assuming I obtain some buy in from her that it really is a good idea, of course :). In Arkansas, after viewing some old film made by Grandpa of the family, I am now motivated to dust off the video camera I’ve had languishing all this time, and also get something set up to transfer what VHS tapes I have that are already worth keeping. Also, I want to pick up another instrument besides piano, and the longer I dawdle the less good I’ll be at it. Today’s Racist Comment: (Subject: Jackson MI zoo maintenance): “Well, you know, the blacks have just about taken over all of Jackson’s government, and now they’ve just overspent the budget, what taxes they can collect, the works.” Dawn warned me they are a little more “biased”, shall we say, out here in Arkansas. We’ll see what other jewels fall :) Right. More to say, but bed calls. Ta Ta! Current Mood: tired

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July 22nd, 2008

10:22 pm - Ah, Mississippi Well, leg one was successful :) Starship RAV4 docked in Jackson (yes, that Jackson) around 8pm last night. I met Ann and Henry, my new step-grandparents-in-law, a charming mouthful that I have chosen to just abbreviate with “Grandpa” and “Grandma”. Uncle Mike was in town as well, so my knowledge of Dawn’s family got to grow a little extra. Very relaxing time thus far - even the somewhat spirited discussion with Mike this evening on various forms of taxation, the future and past of the American style of government, and all that fun stuff. I tread lightly here - given the fact that Grandpa and Grandma have pictures of every Republican president since the 80’s I hesitate to let too much of my liberal Unitarian Universalist pro-choice pro-gay rights anti-death penalty anti-Bush and Iraq bullshit cat out of the bag. Grandpa gave me a little test of sorts earlier today - we somehow ended up on the discussion of history, and I mentioned I’d taken a pre-civil war history class in college that was the first class of history I’d ever been interested in. He popped the question thusly: “in your studies in there, what did you come away with as the cause of the civil war?” I answered truthfully: “there were probably many causes and factors, but it’s my opinion it was a final test of what, exactly, states rights meant and to what extent they were relevant in this country.” Turns out he agrees. He further went on describing how upset he was that history of this country has been slowly shifting to the point of view that it was “completely about slavery”. So we had a nice side discussion about that - and then he offered to take us out to a personal tour of Vicksburg (yes, that Vicksburg) to look at some civil war history sites and so forth, which I’m rather looking forward to. Also had a tasty lunch and more root beer than I’ve had in months. I may start seeing if Dawn can stock some in the house from time to time. Anyway, time for bed. Actually have to get up at a specific time tomorrow :) Current Mood: content

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July 18th, 2008

11:22 am - VACATION So YES. Just wrapped up the tiny bit of work I had left to do - and NOW, at LAST, I am truly ON VACATION. Two weeks of NOTWORK, the highest plane of enlightenment possible :) Dawn and I are going to go visit all those inlaws I’ve not met yet, including a mother-in-law and two sets of grandparents. We’ve rented a car and will be driving to Mississippi, Arkansas, and Colorado. Should be QUITE awesome, even if we’re having to penny pinch a bit to do it. Nice way to see large chunks of the country I’ve never been to, so overall this should be a smashing success. Not sure how much internet access I’ll have on this journey, so there may or may not be blog updates. I hope all are well out there in Blog-o-land :) Current Mood: happy Current Music: Der Plan - Ich Bin Schizophren

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