Zortnac's Primer, Being a Book of Intergalactic Etiquette

On Dealing With Emotion

2008-11-05T16:41:00.000-08:00

I could write. I've got things I want to say and express, but I spent enough time putting my ideas in to sentences before the election. For the moment, I just want to try expressing my sadness, frustration, and anger in a more creative way, turning to one of my favorite internet memes.

Write To Marry Day

2008-10-29T09:06:00.001-07:00

It's Write To Marry Day today. In the spirit of things I took what I wrote in my last post and re-vamped it a little, and then submitted it to the Santa Barbara News Press as a letter to the editor, inspired also by this great letter to the editor I read over at BTB. I think the News Press must be getting at least a dozen letters on Prop 8 per day, and there's nothing terribly good or special about mine, so I doubt it will get published, but here it is:

Please Help Me Protect Families

I want to appeal to your empathy, but please don't dismiss it a fallacy. I want to appeal to your love for your family, as I cherish my own. I am son to Chris and JoAnn, grandson to Noel and Lenore, Joseph and Helen. The relationships and bonds that strengthen my family are those that we are being asked by Proposition 8 to ignore and deny to same-sex couples.

Please don't be persuaded by claims that domestic partnerships are equivalent to marriage. This issue is not about the total count of benefits that make up each, it is about whether we are willing to look a family in their eyes and tell them they cannot have legal marriage, to instead settle for something separate but mostly equal. These families do and always will exist. These families are our friends and neighbors, they belong to our schools, our secular and religious communities, and we must lift them up, not categorize them separately.

I respect that we all have different views and values concerning what makes marriage sacred, and I know that we all value our families. I know that we can coexist without those views being threatened or our families being diminished. We can all enjoy our equal right to legally marry in the eyes of our government. Please don't take that right away from so many families and couples; please don't put a limit on what my relationships are allowed to become; please vote No on proposition 8.

A Simple Plea

2008-10-17T18:44:00.000-07:00

Next month Californians will all have the opportunity to vote on Proposition 8, which, if passed, will end the right for same-sex couples to marry, a right which has existed since the ruling from "In Re Marriage Cases" in the California Supreme Court this past summer. It will do this by amending our state constitution, and for the first time placing in to our constitution language that places restrictions on rights rather than defending them.

I respect your view of marriage.

I respect your traditions, your religious beliefs, and all that you hold dear concerning marriage. I respect and acknowledge that for you, true marriage only exists in one specific form, or only through an honored religious ceremony.

We can coexist peacefully along side each other, each with our own values concerning what marriage is, what it means to us, and how we choose to honor it. We can coexist peacefully in this way without any of us having to feel like second-class citizens in the eyes of our government; we can all enjoy the right to be legally married in the eyes of our state.

Please do not amend and destroy my right to legally marry in California. Please do not be persuaded and tricked by anyone who tries to convince you that in doing so you would be protecting children's education or your church's autonomy. Please vote No on Proposition 8, and maintain the legal right for all couples to marry.

For Posterity (who am I kidding)

2008-09-30T23:21:00.000-07:00

I think I'm going to write this post because I want to have a personal written account of what I did the day of the greatest stock market crash in US history, maybe to help cement it in my memory so that I can tell my ~~grand kids~~ great nieces and nephews what I was doing. Actually, it was a pretty full day. I got up early so that I could have breakfast at Max's with my Grandmother, and then I stopped at work but really only long enough to say goodbye to whomever was there to hear it. I got dropped off at SBA, caught my flight to PDX and had a pleasant conversation with a French teacher about life in big cities, dating, and education. Back in Portland, I headed to my now-standard coffee shop to work, and later in the evening helped my friend Greg restore his lap top's wireless capabilities that the instillation of Service Pack 3 had completely gimped. When I got home I was so exhausted that I fell asleep fully clothed on my bed while still holding a glass of The Balvenie, which I then spilled on myself, waking up smelling like a drunk Scotsman.

That day's Talk of the Nation was brilliant.

Proposition 8 On The Streets

2008-09-22T19:52:00.000-07:00

That is, opposition to prop 8 on the streets. Today some of my friends sent me a photo of a "No on 8" sticker they spied on the corner near a coffee shop we like to frequent.

I'm heading back to Santa Barbara tomorrow, and I'm excited about volunteering to work the phones for the No on 8 campaign. My confidence is still pretty high that this bill is going down, and such positive thinking is exactly what I need to cut through my new-town-loneliness doldrums.

You can tell from the absence of my return that my exit was genuine

2008-09-21T09:30:00.000-07:00

So I finally did it, I moved my ass to Portland. Leaving Santa Barbara was something I've been thinking about for a while, though i knew it would only really be a possibility once I had finished grad school, which happened just over a year ago. Whereas in some sense you could say that my time since graduation has been wasted in SB, I don't think that was the case for me at all, having had a year's time to spend with my friends (living with one of them in once case), getting to know and become friends with my coworkers, etc. The only downside is now that I'm finally up here, my friend Aspen, who has been bugging me to move up here for a few years, is now living in Queens NY. It was a move that had very good reason behind it and I'm looking forward to when he and his partner can one day move back, which I think they plan on doing

In the meantime I think I've managed pretty well to make some friends in my new home, two guys that I first met when visiting Aspen with my friend Dana, both of whom are really great people (and one of which was instrumental in me visiting my first strip club, but I digress). When I say "my home," I mean that in a loose sense, one reason for which is that even though Portland is now my home, it doesn't really feel like it yet, maybe instead more like an extended vacation where I'm working. The other reason I use the phrase loosely is because right now my physical home is a very short term one, on the order of a couple of months: a furnished room with a meager stash of essential clothing and belongings where I'll live while I find a lease that's more long-term. The rest of my earthly crap is back in SB in storage where it will stay until I find a way to get it up here.

The drive up here was long. Long, straight, and for the most part, very boring. I guess that's Interstate 5 for you. Shasta National Forest and some more mountainous parts of Oregon provided some great scenery and mental refreshment. I saw the most awesome and ridiculous billboard promoting creationism along the I5 in rural Oregon, and I regret not having my camera ready, though I do remember the website it pointed to. My Grandmother gave me a sunflower from her garden for the drive, and while I had initially thought of doing something cool like leaving it on the CA/OR border as I passed it, turns out that would have required stopping on the highway immediately after a sharp bank. In the end I decided to leave it on the grass where I eventually parked my car at the official end of the journey.

I didn't make the entire drive from SB to Portland in one day though. I stopped in San Francisco at about 4:30 and spent the rest of the day with friends who live there, whom I had been planning to visit for some time. We all went out to dinner at a great German style pub, ate pub-style food and drank some fantastic bier. I stayed the night at my friend James' house, where he, his partner and I stayed up late looking at old children's books in his library, in my case, this great magic book for kids that I remember owning myself years ago. I need to visit SF again soon and maybe spend a full weekend there in order to spend some more proper time with my friends.

So now I'm here, taking it all in, adjusting to a new way of life, and drinking WAY too much coffee in my make-shift office that consists of a table at a local coffee shop. I've been getting some good work done, which so far has calmed my fears about the lack of an office environment killing my productivity. I can't wait to meet new people and get to know my new friends even more. One of my huge motivations for getting out of SB was that I always felt that it was a very hard town to be young and single in, especially if you're queer. I get the feeling so far that Portland is a completely different scenario in that respect :)

A note on the title...there's this old folk group called The Kingston Trio, and I'm totally ripping them off. They have this thing on one of their live albums where they return for an encore saying, "you can tell from the speed of our return that our exit was fraudulent."

I feel like we're not on the same page...

2008-08-14T18:16:00.001-07:00

Me:

Goooooooogle

Them:

Goooooooogle

Anticipating November

2008-08-09T19:46:00.001-07:00

A couple weeks back, some Democratic Party volunteers were going door to door to collect voter registrations. I never re-registered since moving out of my parents house, as over the years it's never been a problem to drive the 5 or so minutes to my old polling place. But since I plan on being in another state when the election comes around, I wanted to make sure that I was registered absentee. I'm excited about the presidential election, but I hope it doesn't reflect poorly on me to admit that I'm just as excited, if not more excited, or maybe anxious is a better word, about defeating California's Proposition 8. It's been sort of a roller coaster ride since May when In Re Marriage Cases was decided and Prop 22 was struck down as unconstitutional by way of the equally landmark precedent that identified Sexual Orientation as a suspect class worthy of strict scrutiny.

Since then it's been an exciting (nerve wrecking?) series of victories and defeats for both sides of the battle, starting with same-sex marriage opponents getting enough signatures to place Prop 8 on the ballot. June 16th was a great day for California when the first marriages now legal under the ruling took place around the state. I had let myself get a bit excited hoping that Prop 8 might be taken off the ballot for being improperly written, but that attempt failed when the judges denied the motion unanimously. That disappointment however was turned around when Prop 8's ballot description was re-written to focus on the effect of the bill, and then later upheld in court when the proposition's backers sued to have the re-write reversed.

Pepper all of that with good news of opinion polls that show the majority of Californians narrowly rejecting the proposition, but temper that good news with the unfortunately true fact that same-sex marriage bans tend to poll smaller than they actually perform in the real polls, similar to what I've learned is called the "Bradley Effect," where prejudices simply tend to "come out" in the voting booth.

Even after all of this, I really am hopeful that we will defeat this measure as a people. The campaign to fight the bill has raised enormous funds, and our Governor has taken a strong stance against the proposition. The new wording that will appear on the ballot will remind people in the voting booth exactly what the effect and true motive of this proposition really is, and speaking of the voting booth, the polls should be filled with younger voters thanks to our fabulous presidential candidate, and younger voters overwhelmingly vote progressively in favor of equality.

On top of all that it feels like we're at a point where it's simply the right time for marriage equality to be affirmed by the people. I've always maintained (and still do) that matters of civil rights should not be decided by public opinion, which is why our system of legislature and courts exists as it does, but there's nothing to be done about it now, and I have to admit that I'm eager to see what the religious far-right's next move will be after marriage equality has been affirmed by the executive, legislative and judicial branches, and now the people as well. Maybe they'll finally explain just how traditional marriage is being "threatened" enough to warrant "protecting," or what such rhetoric really even means. Is a little substance so much to ask for?

It's going to be interesting for me to see how this proposition will come up in my family, if it comes up at all. There are some relatives who I feel might be voting in favor of it, and I know that all of my family cares deeply for me as I do for them, but I wonder how that conflict resolves itself in their minds (maybe it wasn't a conflict at all?), and I wonder how a discussion of that would play out.

On How Not to Treat Your Gracious Host

2008-05-09T19:06:00.000-07:00

Last week I was listening to a Talk of the Nation podcast like I usually do at the gym. Actually...sometimes I wish I listened to them live so that I could have the opportunity every now and then to try and call in. But then, of course, I wouldn't have new material to keep me entertained at the gym. The closing segment was a pretty good discussion about the then newly released Grand Theft Auto 4. Neal Conan had on a guest from G4 (Adam Felbur? Adam Sessler? Who is Adam Felbur and why did that name first pop in to my head?), and they had a pretty nice discussion of the game's non-controversial aspects, but then gave fair attention to said aspects that do in fact exist. It was the kind of conversation that grown ups like to sometimes have until everyone's favorite fallacy jockey, Jack Thompson called up.

The interview was actually pretty predictable once Mr. Thompson got on the air, that is to anyone familiar with his hyperbole and his boasting of how he plans to bring the game's producers to justice by having them face criminal charges. Somewhere in the conversation Jack forgot that he was on Talk of the Nation and not the O'Reilly Factor. From what I've heard being a fan of the show for almost a year now (I know people like to make fun of how dry public radio is, but what can I say...it's like learning to love the taste of popcorn without butter and salt), I would say now that Neal Conan is not the type of radio host on whom you try to pull the same kind of bullshit that thrives on major television news networks' pundit-personality talk shows. The man is largely respectful, gracious, even-handed and maintains a pretty high level of objectivity in his questions.

During his time on the air, Jack made a comment that he was working with Florida law enforcement agencies to see that justice is served with regard to the afore mentioned criminal charges. After admitting that he was being harshly critical of a game that he had not even played yet, Neal Conan asked Jack which law enforcement agencies he was working with, because that's generally the type of follow up question you might expect in an interview after having brought up the topic yourself:

Neal: "...and which law enforcement agencies are you working with?"

Jack Thompson: "I'm not going to tell you."

Neal: "Alright. Well, thanks very much for talking to us."

Jack Thompson: "I'm done?"

Neal: "You're done."

Jack Thompson: "Oh great, well maybe I'll go play the game now."

Neal: "Good luck." *click*

I think what's so funny and telling about this is that Jack Thompson might literally be stuck in "O'Reilly mode." The man is such a joke at this point that the only type of media attention he can get is on shows like The O'Reilly Factor, Glen Beck, Hannity & Colmes, etc, shows whose ratings rely not on the intelligence of their content but how fun they are to watch, and we all know controversy = fun. I can only imagine this is why Jack not only felt it was appropriate to tell his host to go shove it, but also why he seemed shocked from being given the boot after only a minute or so of air time and before he could really start ranting like he's become accustomed to.

We're Overwhelmed

2008-04-29T21:43:00.000-07:00

I came home from work the other day and found a framed portrait on the couch; I didn't give the photo much attention, I figured it was something that belonged to my housemate that he was planning on hanging. A bit later when he came in from the garage...

"Hey, did you see the gift our landlady sent us?"

"She sent us a gift? For what? Is it that picture of some guy that I saw?"

"I don't really know why she sent it to us. Did you see who it is?"

"It was some guy in a hat, I didn't really recog.."

"It's Mel Gibson. It's a signed autograph of Mel Gibson."

"......shut up."

The disbelief didn't last that long because it was quickly replaced by the giddiness of the surreality of it all: our landlady, virtually out of the blue, sends us a nicely framed autographed photo of Mel Gibson. It's so delightfully random that I love just thinking about it. I like to imagine that she might be some sort of collector of autographed photos of famous people. Maybe one day she thought of us and wanted to send us a gift, and then, like some fine connoisseur selecting a delectable little tidbit from her collection, not at all one of her most prized but at the same time delightful in its own special ways, she blows off the dust and wraps it up, smiling all the while.

Despite the horror behind the idea of having Mel Gibson up on our wall, not only is this a photo of pre-anti-semitic-crazy-face Mel Gibson, but both my housemate and I have agreed that given the circumstances, this is just too completely and utterly an awesome thing to not hang on our wall.

Breaking News From Liberty Counsel

2008-04-17T15:43:00.000-07:00

Liberty Counsel, the socially conservative law firm famous for showing us how "freedom of religion" really just means "Christianity; everyone else can take a number," has made a breakthrough in their understanding of National Day of Silence:

"Students Have the Right Not to Remain Silent on the Day of Silence"

Amidst responses such as "No shit, Sherlock," "OLD!," and "noob! lolz," I'm hoping that their next epiphany might be along the lines of "Straight Christians Not Obligated to Have Gay Marriages." I won't, however, hold my breath. There's a post at Good As You that points out certain embellishments Liberty Counsel has taken.

More over, considering the socially conservative opposition to Day of Silence, a response they call Day of Truth, you can almost picture a parallel headline: "Students Have the Right Not to Be Truthful on the Day of Truth," though for the people behind said counter-protest, I hardly expect this to be news to them.

At Least, It Was Until It Broke

2008-03-19T22:48:00.000-07:00

I'm thoroughly convinced now that bad people go to the gym. Having my zune stolen marks the 3rd item of value stolen from me while at the gym, and also raises the important question of who in their right mind would be stupid enough to steal a zune? I really just...and I know this is sad...can't imagine life without my music collection and my podcasts (mmm...public radio, so dead pan and delicious), especially when at the gym, and so I wasted no time in replacing it with a zune 80, which is an 80 GB, 2nd generation of the first. Bigger battery life, a glass screen, an aesthetic re-design, a new touch-pad-but-also-clickable "sqircle" button, etc. Actually, as much as I love the term "squircle," as the button is a square with heavily rounded edges, Microsoft names it the zune...pad, or soemthing stupid, I don't recall. I think the most important upgrade with the new generation is that this is actually novel hardware, as opposed to the face-lifted Toshiba Giga-beat, which is essentially what the original zune was, that was rushed out on to shelves so that Microsoft could get their foot in the market in time for the holidays that year.

Whatever. All of these things were enough to sway me towards the 2nd generation zune instead of an ipod. It arrived in just a day's time thanks to amazon prime, and after an evening of use, it basically bricked. The unit froze during a file transfer, and afterwards when the software was insisting that it, for some reason, needed to re-flash the firmware, my brand new zune 80 proved to be un-firmware-flashable. A total bummer, or so my spoiled, privileged ass thought. Amazon, though, has a really prompt product return service, and the day after next I had my replacement, which works just fine.

I hate dwelling on negative things that can't be helped, changed or positively resolved, but I really wanted to find out who stole my original zune. I had left it on the floor accidentally and found it missing not 20 minutes later. If it was something I had lost on the street, I could understand more if I never saw it again, though I still think that the ultimately honest thing to do would be to turn it in to the police station or use craigslist, but in a gym, where you know that the person who forgot a certain expensive device on the floor will be back to look for it and to check the lost and found with about 99.99% certainty, not turning it in is a pretty shitty display of character. Enough ranting about that though; what's done is done. I had been hoping that when I eventually upgraded, I was going to give my old zune away or donate it or something. Now someone else certainly does have it, just not anyone that deserves to.

Responding to Hate; An Open Letter to Rep. Sally Kern

2008-03-09T11:01:00.000-07:00

A representative from Oklahoma, Rep. Sally Kern, was recorded making an anti-gay speech at a conservative Family®-based political group's meeting. Media coverage of the fallout from the release of the recording is here, and the recording is available on youtube, here. The youtube piece was produced by an LGBT political action group, the Victory Fund. My response:

Rep. Sally Kern,

My response, my opinion, is short and to the point: I think that the irrational hate that you are capable of expressing publicly makes you wholly unfit for your office. I think that to compare the gay men and women of this country to terrorists...pardon me, to say that we are even more threatening, and to describe us as a cancer, is to proclaim a brand of hate that is no less vitriolic and dangerous than the speech uttered by the KKK decades ago. I am a member of a community that faces violent acts of harassment and intolerance, and you, in your position of influence and responsibility, are contributing to, and enabling, that climate of violent intolerance. An uneducated individual who already harbors feelings of homophobia, and who hears his state representative claim that the homosexual down the street is more of a threat to him than terrorism, may choose to respond to that "threat" with violence.

I think you were right to say that you jeopardized your position with your words. As a gay American who feels affected by the horrible words you choose to share, I hope to see you loose office.

Regards,

- Christopher

Look Away!

2008-03-06T12:22:00.000-08:00

I had to blog this because it is just...so vile. My housemate and I have had a Indian meal moths, also known as pantry moths, in our...well, pantry. When first we noticed the problem it just seemed like we had an annoyingly large influx of these harmless little moths fluttering around the house. A couple weeks later, it was pointed out to me that moth larvae were crawling on the walls of our pantry room. Disgusting. We threw out all our open grains and sugary goods, sanitized the room, and started storing grains and similar sundries in tighter containers. The moths would appear in small numbers every now and then, but never as much as that first time. Once I had found that a moth had managed to actually lay eggs in a container of loose Tazo green tea that I had, and anyone familiar with the shape of the tins knows that this particular moth must have either been the Houdini of its species, or it was equipped with a miniature welding torch (which you have to admit is just a little cute, with the little matching face shield and all)

Recently I had noticed some moths hanging out in the pantry, and I've been trying to keep a watchful eye on which dry goods looked like they had been used as a breeding grounds. Last night I discovered one of those things that is so horrifyingly vile that when you see it you shudder and feel the need to retreat to a place far far away. I was trying to find a container of sunflower seeds for a salad, and while I noticed a container on the top shelf that looked like it was the same shape, it didn't seem right for a thing of sunflower seeds to look like it was filled with a greenish-grey spongy material. Turns out moths had laid eggs in the seeds and had filled the container with a dense webbing, which may have also been mixed with mold. Stuck on the surface of the container were all the moths that had matured to adulthood but couldn't find a way out, and had later died. I can't describe how disgusting a chore it was to rinse off the sunflower seeds so I could use them in the salad.

A Touch of the Plague

2008-02-23T17:24:00.000-08:00

This week I've had to work from home, leave work early, and call in sick all-together, thanks to this nasty fever/head-cold combo bug. In retrospect, trying to work from home the first ill day instead of just resting while cartoons on the television invaded my dreams, as well as going to work the next day, and going to the gym afterwards, and going to the gym the following morning, all while I wasn't "all better," but instead, "definitely feeling better so what's a little exercise going to harm me," were all bad ideas. Leaving work early was the start of a bout of fatigue and dizziness that developed in to one of the most hellish nights of sleepless fatigue, fever-dream-logic (both waking and non-waking), and dry mouth I can ever remember. I think I need to learn to take care of my body more because, ironically, it's my compulsive nature to want to take care of my body in one respect that has me completely failing in another.

I've been spending my time trying to do things that aren't physically assertive: reading, playing video games, watching Lilo and Stitch. Today I paused to wonder why my villagers in the town of Kasandora would build their homes so close to the very same evil pyramid that they were asking me to vanquish in their prayers not two burnt sacrifices ago. On that note, I beat the game in one sitting, though still with not enough world population to reach the maximum level.

The image I posted is, again, of the town of Kasandora, which is the city that is stricken by plague...and here I am myself, plague-stricken...hmmmm

On Being A HiFi Consumer Whore

2008-02-19T21:47:00.000-08:00

I think I'm done throwing money at my ears at this point. After grabbing a pair of Etymotic Research ER-4P in-ear headphones (or IEM's [yes, I know that the 'M' does not stand for "headphones"]), even though they sounded fantastic, I had let a friend of mine talk me in to investing in a portable headphone amplifier. The one I ended up choosing after some research on the fantastic head-fi.com forums, was the Minibox-e+. This was because I liked the look of the build, it had great reviews from the community, but mostly because I couldn't ignore the fact that a feature on the amp, "PtoS," was stuck there specifically for my model headphones. Etymotic makes two versions of my headphones, the ER-4P and the ER-4S, the only difference between the two being the amount of impedance. Etymotic made the ER-4P with less impedance so that it could be driven by relatively weak amplifiers in devices like iPods, though what you gain from that in bass and volume you loose in detail, and so the "PtoS" switch adds that exact amount of missing impudence back to the headphones, which can now be properly driven.

What's cool about the headphone amplifier scene is that, with few exceptions like headroom.com, they're nearly all hand-made by individuals, not larger companies. The community on head-fi.com likewise is very personal with people giving frank and detailed reviews of the products, and where the amplifier manufacturers also interact with people and seem to respond to questions and feedback.

I have to concede though...the one thing that really sucks about having a hi-fi setup is you really start to notice songs that were recorded poorly or with low bit rate. Still, though I know I have friends that call my excessive or throw around nasty names like "audiophile," listening to the albums from my favorite ambiance/trance label, Sending Orbs, encoded in lossless format sound...wonderful.

I Hope Aspen's Not Reading This; Strategies Of The Frustrated

2008-02-12T18:44:00.000-08:00

I really hope not...though I know the odds are against me (read: function of 1 out of total number of people who read this {read: small}, multiplied by some co-efficient {things usually are}). So, the usual theme of "woe is me"-related-conversation between my friends and I is that I feel like I'm suffocating in Santa Barbara. The gay community here is small, closeted, and frustrated from virtually zero grounds for social interaction (read: gay bars or some other form of social scene where being gay is, at most, assumed). Because of this, I find that it's impossible for me to date people, and it doesn't help that I'm finding out that I'm actually kind of picky. I think I average about 2 dates a year, and frankly, it's driving me mad and making me more than a slightly bit depressed. The part where this becomes shameful is that I...joined an online dating service.

...yeah.

On a whim on a monday (the day when this problem is on my mind the most), I checked out Chemistry.com, took the personality test and created a profile, and was shown 3 of my "matches." It should have been a strong foreshadowing of just how worthless a service this would be when I only received 3 matches, considering that before becoming a paying subscriber, you're allowed up to 5. Now..."free matches" doesn't mean the ability to interact with those matches, it's just sort of a tantalizing sales strategy. You can see your matches, people can see you and, if they're subscribers, express interest in you through the site's infrastructure (which is very strict about leaving no hint of alternate means of contact in your profile, which might threaten their business model). Aside from it being stupid of me to think that a website dedicated specifically to matchmaking would somehow magically make more gay people appear in this town, my dissatisfaction with this...scam, is the way they lure people in. The problem is that upon becoming a paying subscriber ($50 moneys for one month), there is absolutely no guarantee that these people who show up in my matches are, themselves, paying subscribers.

I've "shown interest" in 5 people now, the last 3 merely to test my theory, with no response, and that means neither a "yes" or a "no thanks, not interested." I'm thoroughly convinced at this point that I'm one of very few actual active, paying profiles in the tri-county's presence on chemistry.com. I'm looking at this on the bright-side and figuring that my $50 was well spent on being able to contact a friend from my past, circa 10-12 years ago, who ended up being one of my first 3 matches, and with whom I had a fun time hanging out and catching up. Of course, being a non-paying user himself, he wasn't able to use the site to respond to me, however knowing my last name, google was able to accomplish the rest. So...in a sense, given that this is, I'm pretty sure, the only good thing that will come out of this shitty service for the remainder of the month I bought, what I payed for was a $50 bit on information sent to an old friend. A very expensive ping.

I have a coworker who tried to cheer me up by telling me about a website he had seen on digg called lovetastic.com. When he asked me how I liked it I responded by showing what turned up after searching for my zipcode with a 50 mile radius: 3 people. He took it that I was not amused. However...I still made a profile. Ha.

Back in the Bird

2008-01-12T20:30:00.000-08:00

I'm really happy to be writing this in room 512 of the Iron Blossom lodge, in Snowbird, Utah. My family has had this time share up here in Salt Lake since before I was born, and my whole life it's been a yearly tradition to come up here for a week, go skiing, hang out in the pool at night, goof off in the rec room on the second floor, have lunch on the same bench of the middle floor of the Snowbird center...I could go on but I won't. Suffice to say it's a tradition that's very rich in experience and memory for me. Ok...one last thing...some of the walls here in the lodge are concrete poured in to a mold that left penny-sized indentations, and over the years I've been sticking pennies on to the holes. They're still there!

The big deal, for me, is that because of the UCSB school schedule, I haven't been able to come for the past 5 years. Coming back, today, has been...well, not overwhelming, but it's one of those great memory recall situations where just about every sense is triggering memories that are 5 years old. The sight of the lobby area and fireplace on the bottom floor of the lodge, the smell of the building and of the snow, the sound of the X-men arcade game in the rec room that's been there for at least...15 years. Being my first time on a pair of skis in 5 years, hopefully I won't hit any trees. One thing I'm excited about in particular is a tunnel that's apparently been built in to the side of the mountain connecting it to the basin on the backside. Sweet.

Begenning Anew in the Tradition of the Old

2008-01-09T11:55:00.000-08:00

Mike and I have a personal tradition of ours to play through the classic System Shock 2 together in co-operative mode around once a year. We employ all sorts of great mods that the community has put together, and yes, there is a very strong community behind SS2, it's awesome. Some of the mods enhance the game's dated visuals and models, and other mods enhance or modify gameplay mechanics to provide either a more challenging experience, or simply a different experience. After our 3 or 4 times through, I think Mike and I have played all the roles available to us, being the hacker, the psychic, the heavy-weapons wielder, the hi-tech weapons wielder, etc. We're thinking of trying to bring on a third player this time, because although the co-operative mode of the game does not provide more resources, it does provide equal "cyber modules," which are the games version of experience points, allowing you to essentially level up and develop your skill tree. Given that, when people choose their roles in a co-operative manner, you end up using the game's existing resources in a more complete manner. For example, a heavy weapons guy and a psychic would make a good pair, as their competing for neither the game's ammo nor the game's psi-hypos (which provide energy for your psychic abilities). We're pretty sure there's no way the game could support 4 players, but we're eager to try it with 3.

However, in the mean time, we're taking our first stab at a co-operative run through of a Black Isle classic, Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn, complete with the expansion, Throne of Bhaal. Our first night at it had me falling asleep at 3 AM after we had spent far too long installing all the different gameplay mods and bug fixes that we wanted to employ, but I'm excited that with all of that being finished, we're ready to get started. I'm using this extra time before then to decide on what kind of character I want to play through as, last time having played a Paladin, who is obviously lawful good (duh!).

Shadows of Amn and Throne of Bhaal represent one of my fondest memories of video game role playing. The story-telling, the voice acting, the choices Black Isle made concerning classic 2nd edition advanced D&D rules, it all came together for a great experience. Like System Shock 2, Baldur's Gate II has a similarly strong community online devoted to creating the various mods that make replaying the game a pleasure.

In my new place, we're using a couple of TV trays and my bed to help set up our co-op experience in the same room, as opposed to over a network. Mike is reserved about appearing on the interwebs, so the picture to the side, his appearance has been slightly modified.

Arts and Crafts!

2008-01-07T10:41:00.000-08:00

I was in the market for a pocket watch because I could no longer explain me not owning something so cool. I really wanted to get one with lots of exposed gears and clockwork, "skeleton" style as it's called, but from what I saw anything that was of that style also featured mechanical movement, which, don't get me wrong, totally appealed the steam-punk in me, but the practical side in me knew that I would eventually get tired of the pain in the ass of having to wind the watch daily. I once had an imitation Penari kinetic mechanical movement watch, a mechanical watch with a pendulum that winds itself automatically from everyday movement, and I couldn't even keep that going. I suppose I'm just too..sedentary...and I didn't like wearing the thing to the gym, which is too bad because from all the crazy movement I'm throwing down when I'm at the gym, it would have been clockwork, positively clockwork.

So I ended up choosing a cool quartz movement watch, the Wenger standard issue stainless steel pocket watch, which sounds boring I'll admit, but it's actually a pretty nice-looking watch. What I really like about it is the cool leather case it comes with, and a sort of matching leather plait chain. However, in an incident very un-becoming of Wenger, the plat chain broke under normal every day use within a week. Rats.

So I made a new one!*

* "made a new one" involved buying leather straps and practicing how to make a leather plait, with no luck, and so I ended up seeking out the expert opinion of my best friend's dad, who was raised on a ranch and was also an eagle scout, so, he was very helpful.

HTPC (pronounced "aych tee pee see")

2008-01-06T12:42:00.000-08:00

One of the things I always said I wanted to do after I graduated was to put together a Home Theater PC, or as the FLA goes, an "HTPC." It's fundamentally no different from a regular PC, though it does differ in form and in function. For my HTPC, I knew that the primary purpose would be a music player for my library of digital music, a video player for my library of digital video, and most important, a sort of hub of all things emulated. So far the menu consists of NES, SNES, Sega Genesis, GBA, N64, MAME (coin-op arcade games, essentially), a DOS emulator, and ScummVM, which very specifically plays a collection of old Lucas Arts adventure and a handful of others.

Turns out, what's also been loads of fun is firing up the ol' 'fox and browsing Youtube with friends. Here's a screen shot of the desktop, wherein I'm using a cool utility called Avedesk, which lets you deck out the desktop with over-sized icons that pulsate with various effects when hovered over with the mouse pointer.

In it's form, an HTPC is usually meant to be different insofar as it should look good when placed on your media riser next to your other toys, be they an xbox, a dvd player, a receiver and stereo, etc. I ended up choosing Lian-Li's PC-35B because it's the smallest PC case available, and a slight smidgen of sexy thrown in. The downside was that it is, in fact, so small, that I have no room to add any expansion cards to the motherboard, and so when choosing said board I had to find one that would have on-board video and sound that would be good enough. On-board sound these days is actually quite good, and since this was never meant to be an HTPC powerhouse capable of playing modern-day games, the on-board video does the job well enough.

I've got lots of USB controllers too, so come over to my house and we'll play through Secret of Mana 3-player style, or maybe run through the classic X-men arcade game :-D

New Digs part 3: Newest Digs

2007-09-06T18:45:00.000-07:00

I'm writing this, I think, about a couple months or so after I created the post, so the associated date does not at all reflect my laziness, and I want to be honest on that front. I am very lazy. I'm also very living in a new place. In fact, the time spent on laziness has allowed my new place to collect more things, and I can show nicer pictures! One can't simply make a post about a new place that's nothing but a bunch of moving boxes and spent plasma cells. Goodness, no.

I've moved in with a good friend of mine from college, both of us having decided that we would probably make good house mates, both of us having fairly similar standards for cleanliness and a good number of common interests (the most obvious one being other guys). After what turned out to be a pretty depressing sequence of failures in applying for housing, we found a really nice place downtown that's close to where both of us work, especially so for myself (5 blocks).

So far...I think it's safe to say that we're both enjoying post-college life. We have a year lease for this place, and come the end of it, I'll have to re-evaluate my life. Pictures follow. Correction: one picture follows, one of my room. Turns out it's the only picture I've got so far...but as a service to myself, I'm going to post more as they become available.

Stick A Fork In Me

2007-07-07T20:20:00.000-07:00

I'm done. Well, at least for now, since my friends keep telling me I should leave open the possibility of a PhD, though I currently have no such plans for piling it higher and deeper. To the right is my adviser Tim and I after I had passed my defense. I was fortunate to have a professor that I really admire on my committee, though she did catch me off guard with a couple of her questions. It's an exhilarating feeling...finally being done with school after, dang, after nine years. Four years at SBCC, and 5 at UCSB, though I don't regret a single one.

So, Masters degree in hand, I'm out in the "real world," currently working at a really fun place only blocks from my new place where I'm doing really fun stuff with ruby on rails. Web development is worlds away from my research, but it's challenging and fun to write and that's really all that matters. Also, I have a chance to work with some people I went to school with that I greatly admire. The plan right now, I think, is to be in Santa Barbara for at least the next year. A year from now I'll see where I'm at and re-factor.

My Time Is Valuable Young Man, Only I May Waste It!

2007-06-02T13:15:00.000-07:00

I was at the Home Depot today getting keys made for Shaun and I for our new place, and I was waiting in line for customer service to ask where I get the keys made (turns out my initial guess was correct and I waited for nothing; c'est la vie). Their line was pretty lengthy and there was no one behind the desk, and in fact I had seen the people who were behind the desk leave to help a pretty demanding customer. Having worked in retail for 4 years I know what it's like to try to run a store when short-staffed, and how hard it is to keep everyone happy, so I waited patiently. This old guy, hereafter referred to as Mc'Farty, was getting visibly impatient, making jokes to me about how bad the service is, etc. Funnier than Mc'Farty's jokes, however, were the outcomes of his rude attempts at getting attention from the busy staff, such as when he tried to use the store phone to access the PA system to broadcast his cause to the entire store; Yes, customers actually pull shit like that, and a quick side note, on most MUD servers, using a broadcast feature out of character to announce something stupid will get you in trouble; Mc'Farty was making both a social and RPG faux pas. I say that Mc'Farty tried to use the PA system because all he earned were a few beeps in his ear for not knowing the right key code. Ha.

The titular part of the anecdote is as follows. When help did finally arrive, Mc'Farty waived his right to be serviced and instead insisted on speaking to a manager to complain. I asked where I go to have keys made, and that was that. Twenty minutes later when my keys were done, I saw Mc'Farty still waiting off to the side for the manager with a proud and stoic look on his face, bless his little heart. I looked at the sign with the picture of the manager and saw a guy not much older than me, in his later 20s. I knew from experience, that on this busy Saturday with an understaffed store, that grumpy old people complaining is the very last on his priority list, as is the case in nearly every large cooperate store. I think it's funny because Mc'Farty not only probably thought that he was high priority, but that he had at that point officially waited longer for the manager than he had during the wait that had originally pissed him off, and if my hunch was correct, he'd easily wait another 20 minutes before he was given any attention. I really hope I don't get like that when I get old. If I do, they better not make me wait, my time is bloody important.

Fond Farewells; On The Ending Of A Dynasty

2007-04-11T10:36:00.000-07:00

I quit Borders today. Despite looking forward to it for some time, I was actually pretty down-hearted about it. Having worked there for...3 and a half years I think, I had built up some pretty strong friendships. We sort of see our self as a family at Borders...the kind of family that all go to the same parties getting drunk with one-another. I'll miss parts of it, other parts I won't. I'm still on contingent status so that I can be called in to cover a shift if they need me. If I do this at least once every 3 months I can maintain said status, and on those days that I'm working I'm allowed my hefty discount of 33% off of books and CDs, though it's hard to find CDs to buy that aren't RIAA affiliated. As a point of etiquette, being a major recording industry organization with vast influence, one finds that it is not polite to reduce yourself to acts of extortion.