Once more into Chicago

Seems that the only time I make any entries around here is when I'm out of town. I guess being in other cities inspires me.

Ah... Chicago....

The land of Sue, the Frontera Grill and Karen at the Blue Agave -- and the icy wind that blows in off the Great Lakes. It's 21 degrees outside. Brrrrr....

I'm here doing some work for Delloitte and Touche. I'll be here all week, leaving Saturday evening.

I don't know how much sight seeing time I'll get. At a minimum, I hope to make it to the Frontera Grill a couple of times, as well as over to the Blue Agave. Cool selection of Tequilas.

Hopefully I'll add more here over the next couple of days. I brought my camera, so maybe there will even be pictures!

No promises. We'll see.

Wasn't it Thanksgiving just last week?

I was talking to a friend today about the holidays, holiday plans and the how general relativity doesn't seem to apply to holiday seasons.

To wit: from the perspective of any given yearly celebration(Valentine's Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc.) looking back at the previous occurrence of that day causes some sort of counter-relativistic time dilation. The rearly celebrations seem to recur at some crazy speed that defies Newton and Einstein and, seemingly, the speed of light. Want proof?

Think back to last Thanksgiving. How long ago does it seem? A year? Can you remember where you were? What you did? Who was with you? what you ate? I can. Seems like it was last month, doesn't it? Not last year.

Now think back to last the Thursday just before Thanksgiving. Just one week before. Can you remember where you were? What you did? Who was with you? what you ate? I can't.

See? The holidays suffer from time dilation.

Happy holidays! Enjoy them while you can. They'll be back in just a couple of weeks (or so it will seem). ;-)

Poignant Fallujah article in the NYT

Yesterday, in the New York Times, I read a disturbing article by an embedded reporter who is with the Marines in Falluhah: In Falluja, Young Marines Saw the Savagery of an Urban War by Dexter Filkins.

I was first struck by how it seemed more like a story from a novel, or a biography, more than an article from one of the most important newspapers in the world. The style wasn't sterile and fact-bound, though it was certainly factual. It was an account written by someone who was touched by what he saw, touched by the soldiers he met and who he saw die.

It was a very moving account and gave me some insight into what these young kids are going through, though, obviously, I could never being to understand the true horror and terror these young soldeirs must have felt during the assault.

Worth reading...

When it rains, there are multiple posts...

So, I go for weeks without posting, then I get all prolific-like. What's up with that? Anyway...

This one's about FireFox, the new kid on the browser block.

I've been a paying user of Opera for years. I wasn't going to look at FireFox because I paid for Opera. I've always been happy with Opera, its features and performance (usually) and it's certainly way more secure the Internet Explorer.

For some reason, I broke down yesterday and installed FireFox. Now, I suspect, Opera may fall by the way side.

Though Opera is faster than IE, FireFox is even faster than Opera -- and FireFox is free. It starts up faster and its page loads are snappier. Both support tab-based browsing, stop pop-ups, are skinnable (not that I care much about that), and are more secure than IE. But the quick response from FireFox is refreshing.

Recommended.

Are you a whacker?

No, not that!

I'm referring to GoogleWhacking, a game wherein the contestant (you) sends two-word search requests to Google to get back a single result. With over 8 billion pages served, it's tough to find the perfect combination.

However, I did it with cryonic gerrymandering. And it only took 45 minutes of trying random words that I didn't think fit together.

If you hurry, you can still see my "whack" in the "WhackStack" at www.googlewhack.com

What I found interesting about this is that there are pages out there that I was sure would come up either without hits or maybe one, but I'd get 10, 50 or a hundred. It was amazing.

Wanna play? There are rules for this, but it's pretty easy. Go to Google.com, type in two words that can both be found at Dictionary.com, get back a single hit and you can record your hit in the WhackStack.

Fun and an insidious time stealer.

Enjoy!

Diablo's a busy gal at CityPages.com

I followed a Pussy Ranch link over to the CityPages.com to read some of Diablo Cody's work (see below). On her the article I found, her name is linked to a page that lists all of her articles to date.

I think it's worth sharing.

I'm WAY behind on posts...

You know, I started this Blog thing so I could... because I wanted to... uh... well, I forget. Now I find that I really don't keep up with it like I should. Bad Tom! Bad!

But today, I got inspired. Yesterday a friend of mine read back through some of my posts and said some nice things. Lessee, there was "laughed my ass off" and "you should write part-time." Very sweet. Thanks, Kell. (Btw, she was reading the Spaz posts [here and here], which I, too, think are pretty funny. Kelly obviously has discerning taste.)

Soon after, there ensued a frenzied email exchange wherein we made each other laugh. A lot. Good times.

So. Anyway. I find that I'm way, WAY behind on posting here. Since being in Denver, I've been to San Diego (I did a partial post on that), Chicago, the Outer Banks, Orlando and Philly.

No, I won't try to get caught up. Too much work and it wouldn't be "fresh" and "topical," anyway.

However, there are a couple of things to bring to your attention. I've opened my Wiki up to the universe at large. For better or worse. You'll find a link to it at the top of each page of this site.

There's a sub-section of the Wiki I've also put at the top of the page: the Outer Banks travel page. That's mostly for my benefit of my Outer Banks family.

The Pussy Ranch signs off

Relax. Take a pill. We're all adults here, right? Besides, this is my site and I make the rules here and I say it's OK to say "pussy" on this site. Sorry, Mom

Well, I got some bad news today. Actually, it happened back in August, but I haven't been 'round to this site in a couple of months.

The Pussy Ranch is permanently closed for business. At least until the cows come home. (see the last post)

The Pussy Ranch is (was?) the home of the incredibly clever, heart-breakingly cute and eye-tearingly funny Diablo Cody. Until a few months ago, Diablo worked in the sex trade. At various times she's been an exotic dancer (stripper), a peep-show dancer at a sex-toy shop and a phone sex operator. On her site she chronicalled, lampooned really, her experiences in the business. She also shared with us her thoughts on music, Jon, celebrities, art, sex and other such important life-matters.

Diablo is brilliant. She's every bit as funny as anyone I've ever read, funnier than most. Her turn of phrase is uniquely hers, achingly fresh, and her insight belies her tender years (26, I think). She has a knack for stringing words together, like so many shiny little baubles, into sparkling strands of language.

She's been wanting to get out of the sex trade for quite some time and finally got two breaks, almost simultaneously, that allowed her to take the leap: she got a "straight" job (one that isn't in "the biz") and she started writing for CityPages.com (a weekly online magazine published out of Minneapolis). At about the same time, she and Jon, her live-in lover and the emotional center of her universe, bought a home together. All this activity left her less and less time to work on the blog.

Toward the end, her posts became more infrequent, with Jon sometimes filling in with links to her City Pages articles (like this, this and this). Finally, back in August, with surprisingly little fanfare, Diablo Cody made a farewell post to the Pussy Ranch. That's it. Done. Well, at least until the cows come home.

I strongly encourage you to read her blog and her archives. You'll thank me.

Warning: this is adult content. Baudy fun, some nudity and keen-witted humor; definitely not for youngsters. You have been warned. You, too, Mom. ;-)

Now I'm at LAX on someone else's wireless network

(this was drafted back in August and has been sitting patiently in the draft queue waiting to see the light of day. Why I never finished it or posted it, I don't know... Fly away! Be Free!)

So, my trip to San Diego is drawing to a close.

This has in many ways been the trip from Hell.

At every turn, it seems like I've met with problems of one kind or another.

Rather than filling this page with lamentations about this trip, I'll push that to a different page.

Being back in San Diego was great. Seeing the family is always good.

I'm in Denver

Yep, the Mile-High City.

I'm here giving training to First Data Corporation for VisuaLinks and DIG.

It's pretty here, with the mountains off to the west. Plus, there's little humidity, unlike FL and DC. The weather's been great the past few days, too.

All in all, this is a nice place to visit.

My brush with Blogger tech support and why is the sky blue?

Something a little weird happened here a couple of weeks ago. I found that one of the archived files that make up this blog has an HTML file extension. All the other files have ASP extensions. Because of the web server my ISP uses, this causes the files to render differently. HTML files display stuff in the HTTP stream that doesn't get displayed by ASP page (if you want a more detailed description, drop me a comment, below).

Anyway, I found this little "thing" and posted a note to blogger tech support. It fell to Kimmy to help me with this little conundrum. Which she did quickly and cheerfully (from what I could tell in her email). She even tried to explain how I messed up the site.

Sadly, I just didn't get her response. Which led me to send her a follow-up message asking "why?"

It occurs to me that "Why" is an important part of my life. Somewhere along the way, I never let go of those silly little questions like "why is the sky blue?" "why is the grass green?" "why did that little doggie kick that tree?" "why did that beeyatch do me that way?" LOL!

So, how about it? Are you a "Why?" person or are you cool going through life without pestering others with silly little questions like "why is the sky blue?"

Oh, as for my brush with Blogger tech support: two thumbs up. Kimmy was helpful and responsive and so far hasn't minded my pestering. ;-)

I just found this very COOL site: deviantART

This site, deviantART, is fascinating.

It's a crazy collection of photographs and photomanipulation art; anime, faerie, dark, abstract, Goth, digital, and cell phone art; poetry, prose, flash, buddy icons and other stuff.

It's an art gallery, a poetry forum, a gathering place for artists ("deviants") and just generally a wicked-cool site.

The only critique I have is that it's a little hard to navigate. (Caution: narrowband users need not apply) There's so much to see; you can't get nearly enough of it on the screen at once. This is one site that uses too much white space, and that's a rare thing. Of course, it could just be me. There are a number of settings you can change (like the number of pix displayed on a page when you browse a gallery), so it may be possible to see larger chunks of artwork on a page in a single viewing.

deviantART, check it out.

New companion blog created: progBlog

I've started a new blog on this site: progBlog.
 
progBlog will be my little contribution to the programming world. Follow my intrepid journey as I learn Lisp, one of the first languages ever, and still one of the most powerful.
 
See progBlog for details.

Going to visit SD in August

I just found out that I'm going to visit San Diego (see also the San Diego Convention and Visitors Bureau) in August.
 
I'm going out there to give a VisuaLinks demo for VAI to the ARJIS data mining evaluation team. ARJIS is replacing their CASS system and  VisuaLinks is one of the finalists in the bake-off (ignore the article; it's the only IT related definition, or pseudo-definition, of "bake-off" that I could find).
 
So, I'll be traveling back to work, and to play. The ARJIS offices are downtown, so I'll spend two days there, then travel to the SDPD Training facility in Miramar.
 
I've been talking to my contact in SD, and I'm getting pretty excited about going. It's been a while since I was home, and talking about it has me just a bit home sick.
 
I'll take my new digital camera, and I'll post updates with pix whenever I get the chance. 
 
I'll be staying with family in Murietta before and after the demo.  Of course, Mom's planning a family gathering for me the Saturday just before I leave.  That should be big fun.
 
I'm really looking forward to this! ;-)

We kissed and made up.

Well, we didn't actually kiss, but Spaz and I did made up.

I ignored him for two days, no eye contact, no talking (yes, we actually converse [see 3/28/2004 06:30:43 PM]), no sounds, I walked past him without a glance, filled his food and water bowls in silence.

And he sensed that chill in the air; I could tell. He gave me a wide birth as he walked around the place. He didn't try to get up on the couch behind like he usually does. And he was unusually quiet, himself.

Serves him right.

Shitting and pissing on my bed. Who does he think he is?

I got a Webcam.... Why...?

So, I broke down and got a WebCam.

But I'm not really sure why. Thought it would be fun. Most of the folks I IM with don't have a webcam, though. Maybe now they'll are run right out and get one.

I got an even more fun toy along with the WebCam: a shredder! Woo-hoo!

I got that puppy home and shredder the crap out of a bunch of snailmail spam. I had a small stack of credit card ads and some other stuff.

They make a fine whirring/grinding sound when they hit the hungry teeth of my 11-pages-at-a-time spam grinder.

Yeah. Quite gratifying.

If only getting rid of the e-spam were as easy....

Cats are sneaky and can't be trusted

I have a cat that I "inherited" in '92 from an ex-live-in girl friend. Long story, short: she and I were having some problems, I thought (since me told me so) that we were improving things. I came home one Friday night from working out of town all week and she, her kids (whom I loved dearly and still miss) and all her stuff were gone. And at the door to greet me was our stupid cat, Spaz.

Now, at the time I was royally pissed-off that she'd left me a cat that I didn't want in the first place. However, over the years, Spaz and I have actually grown to like each other. I think. Thought. I don't know anymore. He certainly can't be trusted and has a twisted sense of justice. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

We have one inviolate rule around here: that hairy lug of a cat is not, not, NOT allowed into my bedroom. I want one place in the house that is mostly free of his hair. Plus, for a long time I wore suits to work every day and I didn't want them to get hairy before I left for work in the morning. So, no Spaz, and, ergo, no Spaz-hair in the room. Them's the rules.

Now, Spaz is quite aware of the no-trespass rule in force for my bedroom. Whenever he looks at the door, I tell him in stern tones that he doesn't really want to go in there. If he walks toward the door, same thing. If he actually dares to cross the threshold, something soft gets thrown at him accompanied by loud recriminations about his lack of intelligence. Then scary arm-waving ensues and he runs away, likely fearing for his pathetic, worthless hide.

If he actually goes into the room (as occasionally happens) and I find him in there, he runs out quickly before the loud noises and scary arm-flapping begin. However, so as not to disappoint, I always treat him to my usual territorial display (perhaps chest-thumping would help), followed by at least one flying pillow. Maybe two, since he dared to actually cross the line. I usually try for a kick in his furry ass, but have yet to actually connect. Then for the next hour, he's treated to surly tones questioning his intelligence, heritage and masculinity (He's a cat. How masculine can he be? I mean really....).

Believe me, Spaz *knows* he's not supposed to go into the Inner Sanctum.

(I sometimes wonder how many times he's slinked in there and back out, getting away with his crime and whether he laughs at his cat-burglar prowess at not getting caught)

Today, when I got home from work, follow by a dinner gathering with friends (total time away from the house was well over 12 hours), guess who *didn't* meet me at the front door like he usually does? And guess where that dumb-ass, dim-witted, pea-brained sorry wretch of a feline was? Right. LOCKED in my bedroom all day.

The dolt sneaked in there while I was upstairs bagging my laptop, preparing to leave for work. I came back downstairs and left the house, heading off to work and dinner. As always, before I left I checked that the bedroom door was closed. It was. So, off I went for a very long day, giving my sneaky and mentally challenged cat not a single thought. I figured he was on his window perch, watching the world go past (or, more likely, sleeping as it passed him by).

Well, I got home tonight and was not met by Spaz at the door. My first thought was that he was hurt, sick or, perhaps, dead. Spaz is pushing 11 or 12 and I sometimes wonder how much time we have left together. Anyway, I hear bone-head whining like the little pussy that he is, and tracked the sounds to behind my closed bedroom door. He was whining to be released from his prison of nearly 13 hours.

I opened the door, and he *flew* past me, knowing fully well he needed to dodge my futile attempt to kick him in the ass as he sped past. I was furious. He'd spent all day in that room -- getting his hair all over everything. Hairy damned moron.

Sure enough, there were clumps of hair on the bedspread. Plus, he'd bent the aluminum Levelors all to Hell and gone, trying to get between them and the window to watch the world, since his perch was unreachable.

Then I found what I thought was the last straw, the piece de resistance: he shat upon my bed. On my bedspread and a corner of the sheets that were peaking out from under the spread. Shit. Cat shit. Feline feces. Smelly, disgusting, stomach-turning cat shit. AAARGH!

So, I stripped the bed and boy was I surprised. I found what was REALLY the piece de resistance: he peed on my pillow. Peed. URINATED. Not on the floor, or somewhere else. On my damned pillow. No doubt as retribution for locking him all day in the room. It was his statement on his unhappiness about how I'd sequestered him away from his food, his water and a proper cat box (surely my bed as inadequate for the task). He thought the whole thing was somehow my fault. Me. MY fault.

See? Brain damaged. He's by-God brain-damaged.

Well, the pillow pee sent me over the edge -- into resignation. The anger turned to cold, blood chilling hatred of all cats everywhere. And leading the hate parade is my dim-witted cat with a perverse sense of justice (after all, he's the idiot that sneaked into my room when I wasn't looking, only to be trapped when the air conditioning started and blew the door shut).

So, he's the dumb-ass, but I'm the one doing laundry in the middle of the night so I can put my bed back together.

Anyone want a stupid, hairy, self-serving, disloyal, brain-damaged, fat cat that doesn't follow rules? Hmm?

Grrrrr..... >:(

I made the Recently Updated list!

(click this image to see a more detailed view, below.)

Now that I've "gone public," when I make a post it goes on Blogger.com's Recently Updated list! After my previous post, announcing the auspicious public "coming out" of my Blog, the update showed up on the Recently Updated list. Woo-HOO! I'm somebody!

(if that doesn't work, you can
view the picture in a separate window)

Finally going "public"

(last post today, I promise)

After playing around this "Blog Thing" for nearly two years, I've finally decided to "go public."

Yes, Spaz, the world can now read about the little bits of our lives that we post on the web.

So, welcome to my humble site, whoever you are... ;-)

Today was a Good Day.

I went with Tashu, a friend and business associate, to the Drug Information association 40th Annual Meeting here in DC.

It was interesting. Since leaving Visual Analytics (I'll write about this in the near future) I've been working with Tashu and another new friend, Tom Rogers, on a start-up to address some issues in two areas: improving the quality and speed of conducting financial audits and the collection of pharmacological adverse events.

The DIA meeting was both instructive and interesting -- not to mention the excellent ratio of women to men. Being a technology guy, in an industry dominated by men, tech conferences have a much poorer ratio in this department... Let's hear it for the Booth Babes! ;-) But I digress.....

After the conference, we moseyed over to the National Air and Space Museum (ya just gotta love living in Washington, DC -- except during rush hour!) We needed to kill and hour or so before going to the monthly meeting of the MIT Enterprise Forum of Washington and Baltimore.

The Case Study company of the month was DataSource, Inc., a company transitioning itself from a services company, doing CMM Level 3 full life-cycle software development, to a product company.

They are about to release a "J2EZ" product that generates the "plumbing" for J2EE web services from a graphically-designed description of interconnected logical components (this from a short discussion with their CTO). It's an interesting application that I think will do very well in this market niche.

Hell, as a soon as it's available (early in July), I'll be heading over to their site to check it out. The tool allows a fairly inexperienced programmer to define and generate the very-difficult-to-create, repetitive minutiae that is much of J2EE development. It will allow a seasoned developer to skip the minutiae and go straight to the important stuff: solving problems for the customer.

The discussion revolved around the business decisions and challenges DataSource has faced, and will face, in its move toward a product-centric business model. The panel had a number of interesting insights on the process.

Plus, I got to rub elbows with some Washington area entrepreneurs. Cool.

So, I'd say: yes. Yes it was a Very Good Day.

Daaayaaammmmn ! Her head's too big for her body!

Have you ever noticed how some women (and men, too, I guess, but I don't keep up ;-) who get really thin, also grow bigger heads? Whazzup w'dat?

Cases in point: Laura Flynn Boyle<%=imdbLink_sm%>, Elizabeth Hurley<%=imdbLink_sm%>, Angelina Jolie<%=imdbLink_sm%> and, at the risk of being thin-clichéd, Calista Flockhart<%=imdbLink_sm%>. Poking around entertainment news sites will yield other examples. Many Hollywood starlets seem to be yearning for that oh-so-svelte Dachau look. Not a pretty site. The pictures shown on these ladies' IMDb<%=imdbLink_sm%> publicity head-shots don't illustrate what I mean. Some women get so skinny that, proportionally, their heads are just too big.

Call me shallow, but I find that I buy into the media hype that thinner is prettier than fatter. I like the fit look. Note that I said "fit." "Fit" can cover a lot of ground, and a wide range of body types. Fat is not, however, "fit." I like fit.

Still, too much of a good thing is... too much.

I don't like a big head on a bony body.

Ladies, eat something, please? You're scaring the children.

Some like that anonymity

Have you ever chatted in a public chat forum?

I don't mean where you chat with a friend or family member using an instant messaging utility, like MSN, AIM, ICQ, etc., but where you go to a web site of interest, find that they have chat available, log in and strike up a conversation with a roomful of strangers?

It's a very popular past-time on the web.

I do it, all the time. However, I'm not so sure it's All That.

Where some folks like the anonymity of it, I find the lack of secondary-channel feedback (aka non-verbal feedback) distressing.

I like to look at the folks I'm talking with. I like to see when they furrow their brows, scratch their heads, cross their arms in frustration or see the gleam in their eyes when they "get it." I like all that stuff. Online, when you're chatting (or emailing and IM-ing, for that matter), you don't get that feedback.

From where I sit, I much prefer eyeball-to-eyeball chatting. There's so much that gets sent on those secondary channels that's missing in a chat room.

Call me old-fashioned. ;-)

Babylon 5 Marathon

I just finished going through the Babylon 5 DVDs again. Five seasons of shows. Show after show after show...

What an amazing work.

Originally aired from 1993 to 1999, the core concept of the show was to write a five-year story line, a novel for television, so to speak. Each season was a chapter of that novel. I won't go into the story line, as you can find that all over the web by doing a Google search. I'll say only that the story is epic in scale, but human in execution.

To me, this show is unique. It's an overwhelmingly character-driven sci-fi show, where the main characters are flawed, struggling, every-man (-woman) types, caught up in galaxy-changing events. They are driven by enlightened self-interest, seeking, for the most part, despite their flaws and weaknesses, to Do the Right Thing.

J. Michael Straczynski, the show's creator, primary writer and executive producer, wire-walked five seasons of stories while juggling a galaxy-sized story arc; complex, approachable and compelling characters; the requirements of creating a plausible and interesting "hard sci-fi" universe; CGI that had never been seen on TV before and a fan-base that became a force that made networks and studios take notice. The effort, as JMS says, is a once in a lifetime event. Surely, along the way, he occasionally drop the ball, but I can't think of anything.

If you've never seen B5, you should. I think you'll thank me.

And then we lose a President

Lately, the posts here have been.... gloomy.

It started back in April with the loss of my Uncle Don. Then I came across some links about Sonia, who also left us in April. Then came the passing of Rick Biggs, of Babylon 5 fame.

Now we've lost Ronald Reagan, the 40th President of the United States. It's a sad thing, indeed, to lose a President, even at the almost-dead-anyway age of 93 years.

The body of the Mr. Reagan will come here tomorrow, to lie in state the rest of the week. The biggest part of the news here in the Washington, DC, area is that tomorrow's traffic will be even worse than usual. When he gets here tomorrow, they're going to cut the city in half with street blockages, for his procession.

Oh, and federal employees are looking forward to having Friday off.

Still, it's a shame to lose Mr. Reagan. He was a popular man.

Sad news in the Bablylon 5 world...

While watching the Babylon 5 fifth-season episode "Day of the Dead," and then embarking on a web-hunt for information about some of the guest players (Marie Marshal, Ed Wassar and Fabiana Udenio), I ambled over to my first stop on such travels, Lurkers' Guide to Babylon 5.

At the top of the page, in the newsflash section I found a notice that Richard Biggs (who played Dr. Stephen Franklin) passed away on May 28, 2004. He was 44 years old.... My age.... (yikes).

This is very sad news. I know that you can't really learn very much about actors, personally, from their performances. However, I believe that some small part of an actor's true self seeps into every performance. His character was intelligent, honorable and principled. His performances seemed to me to be heartfelt and genuine. Mr. Biggs also provided commentary on a couple of the episodes on the Babylon 5 full-season DVD collections. In this context, he seemed to have a quick wit and a good sense of humor.

I didn't know him. Nonetheless, I feel a keen sadness and some grief over his passing.

Some of the B4 cast and crew are sharing their thoughts. J. Michael Straczynski, Babylon 5's creator, said some kind words about Mr. Biggs in the B5 Newsgroup. Patricia Tallman (who played Lyta Alexander), left a note on her Galactic Gateway site.

There are a number of other sources on the web that talk about Mr. Biggs, and B5, and allow the grief of the B5 fanbase to be expressed. The B5 Newsgroup, above, is very active. You can Search Google for information about Mr. Biggs. The Galactic Gateway, a B5 fan site, has a forum called, appropriately, the Zocalo. There's even a sub-forum for Mr. Biggs' fans to leave messages for his family.

My heart goes out to Mr. Biggs' family and friends. As has been said elsewhere:

"If I don't see you again here, I will see you, in a little while, in a place where no shadows fall" Delenn to Sheridan, in Confessions and Lamentations, Babylon 5, Season 2

Aesthetic - Epitonic.com: Hi Quality Free and Legal MP3 Music

Once again, I've run across an interesting site that I believes needs sharing: epitonic.com. On their "About Us" page, we read:


Aesthetic - Epitonic.com: Hi Quality Free and Legal MP3 Music:

"Epitonic.com is a site for sore ears. We are a campaign - a group of individuals who share a zealous lust for music - music that invades our thoughts, music that propels our bodies - music that allows us to revel in passion and pleasure....

"Our goal is to exalt the unexalted, to bring you goth, noise, electronica, techno, punk, indie rock, darkwave, no wave, jungle, hardcore, world music, and things we would dare never even classify. Utilizing the liberated mp3 format, Epitonic.com aspires to live up to our neologistic moniker, the center from which waves of disruptive purity emit."


You gotta love a site with a mission like that!

Sonia is gone. I didn't know her, but wish I had...

The blogosphere (also at USA Today and PBS) is the most web-like community of the Web's many communities. All blogs are related, connected, forming an interlaced mesh of bloggers, blog readers and blog friends. If one could map the entire blogosphere, I suspect it would look like a classic Small World.

On these blog-things, people type words, send their words out to the world, and other people read the words. The bloggers discuss their lives, their work, their spouses, children and bosses. They share with the world their highs and lows, the banal and the provocative, who they're sleeping with and why Fantasia should win American Idol. And they share their feelings about the deaths of their dearest friends.

I've been a long time occasional visitor to Ana Voog's web site (anacam.com) and her live journal (blog). Ana is an artistic and creative sort, who's been blogging since before it was so named. Her site is "THE INTERNET'S FIRST 24/7 life+art cam!" (her words).

Ana gets synthetic hair extensions at a salon called Hair Police. The proprietor, Sonia Peterson, was a close and dear friend to Ana. Sonia passed away on April 23. Ana was devastated. As was everyone who knew Sonia. It seems that Sonia blessed the lives of all who knew her.

Now, I live in Maryland, hundreds of miles away from Minneapolis (the home of Ana and Sonia). I have never met Sonia, nor anyone who knows her. However, by traversing this filigree of blogs, I have read what Sonia's friends think of her, how they miss her and how they grieve for her. How they loved (also here) her. After reading tributes to Sonia and articles about her, I've come to believe that my life is somehow less complete for having not met her.

To all who knew Sonia: I grieve (also listed under Charlene) with you from afar for your loss and wish great, warm hugs upon you all. I thank you for sharing your memories and your love of Sonia Peterson. She is missed. Her passing creates a void in this universe that reaches far beyond Minneapolis, a void that you have partly filled with words of wonder, joy, love and hope.

I didn't know Sonia, but my life is slightly more complete for having shared a bit of her through your words.

Too long since my last post; and an update to a previous post

Geeeez... I can't believe it's been a month since my last post...

I have an update to a previous post: it would seem that Elena may have been stretching the truth just a bit.

In a posting to the e-POSHTA Yahoo Group, Mary Mycio says that Elena's story is mostly fabricated and is factually inacurate. Her post is reproduced as a forum article at the Urban Exploration Resource site.

Uncle Don is gone...

The other day, I got this message from my Mom:

Dear Family,

Don passed away this afternoon. He was peaceful and died quietly at home. Pat told me he'll be cremated, but has not yet decided whether to hold a memorial service or not. We all knew Don was very sick, but we also thought he had more time. In a way, it's a blessing that he didn't suffer longer. The doctors told Pat he had about 8 months, but Don and the Lord were on a different schedule.

Thanks for all your prayers.

This was a bit sudden. He was diagnosed with lung cancer a couple of months ago. He'd been feeling ill for sometime and Aunt Pat (his wife) finally talked him into seeing the doctor. A few weeks laters, he succumbed to the cancer.

As with so many other members of my family, Uncle Don has just always been there, a fixture in my world. I can't believe he's gone. It's inevitable, of course. We all pass on eventually. My Aunt Rose, all the grandparents, my Dad. And now Don. There have been others, too.

Death is a natural part of life. Still, why does it always hurt so much?

Good bye, Uncle Don.

Ghost Town, or Ninja Riding near Chernobyl

I stumbled across an interesting site, as I often do when looking for stuff on the Web (how did we ever get along without it??).

As I read Elena's story (Elena is the author and webmaster), I kept getting a chill. She's knowledgeable about the topic, and completely at ease balancing the risk, as she puts it. Still, the idea of flying down a hiway on a Kawasaki Ninja, just miles from Chernobyl is.... disconcerting.

This is definitely worth a read: GHOST TOWN

Major Happ'n's Goin' On

I don't know if anyone reads these... but there are some major upheavals going on right now in my life.

I've not said much to anyone, but will soon. As soon as I finalize A Plan.

Anyway, if you keep up with these pages, check back now and again to see how things progress.

Sometimes I just crack me up...

Do you ever talk to your pets?

Sure you do. We all do. It's human nature to anthropomorphize lots of things. Cars. Plants. And pets. We're really bad about it with our pets.

I have this cat, Spaz, who likes to hang out on the "back porch" (a small balcony, three floors up). When it's time for him to check out his kingdom from this perch, he whines and talks and carries on like, well like a cat who really, really wants to go outside (if you've ever been around a cat in this frame of mind.⁽¹⁾, you know exactly what I mean).

So, I let him out for a little while. And then I brought him back in, somewhat to his chagrin.

Now, here's why I crack me up....

When he came in, he started "explaining" to me just why it is that he should be outside surveying the vastness of his kingdom. To which I responded:

"Nope. You're done. You can't go out. I have work to do upstairs. Done. Nada. Nope."

"Meow-meee-eeewwww-mrowl-mmrrrrrr-owww," says Spaz, unconvinced. (yes, Spaz and I have actual conversations, where we take turns "speaking." It tends to compound the anthropomorphic dilemma)

To this I replied, resolute in my decision, "No, Dude. You're not going out. Done. Nuh-uh. Done. What part of 'done' do you not...."

And that's where I lost it.

Laughing out loud at myself, I say to him: "pretty much all of it.... There's no part of 'done' that do you understand." More laughter.

After all, he is only a cat and doesn't understand a word I say -- despite the many "conversations" we've had over the years. Despite the years of treating him like he's some language challenged, very short, very fuzzy human, who purrs like a freight train and... did I mention the fuzz?

⁽¹⁾ "Frame of mind?" Can a cat have a "frame of mind?" More anthropomorphizing, methinks

We don't need no stinking.... whatever!

I've always been a fan of the Blazing Saddles line "Badges? We don't need no stinking badges!" Classic Mel Brooks Humor (is his humor "classic??"). It's especially funny (at least to me), if you're familiar with the original scene from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

Here's a site that did all the leg work to let me to find the myriad references to the reference: Stinking Badges Home Page.

What's funny about this is that the The Treasure of the Sierra Madre lines were parodied in Blazing Saddles, but the "original" The Treasure of the Sierra Madre lines are even different than the truly original lines from the book.

Does that make these references parodies of a parody of a variation on the original?

Good fun.

Isn't this pretty?

This is coming along so very nicely, don't you think?

If you'd care to comment, feel free

I hate spam... except when it's poetic

I found this site at blogger.com. It's cute.

I despise spam, but here's someone who's turned a terrible blight into something amusing: she writes Spam Poetry

http://www.sperare.com/spam_poetry/blogger.html

Enjoy!

Disgust and embarrassment win the day....

So, as can be seen by the delay since my last post, I don't get 'round to this WebLog thing very much....

Today begins the Great tdfunk.com Site Rebuild.

Some friends of mine came to this site to see the pictures of my fat cat. I've never really liked the format of this site and their traipsing around the nooks and crannies of this digusting mess was more than I can stand. I've been shamed in to putting a new face on my site.

So be it.

Thus begins the "fun..."