insert clever title here

2010-05-22T19:07:00.001-04:00

YB is at work today so I've been keeping busy around the house...you know, the normal stuff a guy does on a Saturday when his wife is at work. Did some budget stuff, doing some laundry, some dishes, all after having hit three buckets of golf balls at the driving range. I also managed to find a program that would let me view the video a friend took of our wedding last year. It was sad to find the video so dark. So now that you know the dishes are going, the washer is going and a DVD of Ratatouille is playing I'll get to the point.

A year and a half or two years ago I moved YB and I onto a family cell plan with Alltel. We had both been with Verizon. YB was paying way too much and I couldn't get reception when I was at work. Alltel gave us a better plan for less money and I could get reception at work. Not only that, but I looked into which towers would be kept on and which would be shut off after the Verizon/Alltel merger completed and found that Verizon would keep the tower responsible for the good reception and the world would be a happy place. Well, lo' and behold, that tower got shut off and now our contract with Verizon is up again and, in a way, we're back where we started two years ago. I no longer get good reception where I work and so am basically paying for a service I can't use for a chunk of the day.

To me, this is unexceptable. $100 for two lines, one of which can't be used during the day, is a lot of money to throw away. So in response to this conundrum I decided to shop around for other plans and networks, perhaps prepaid or an iPhone which can use the WiFi network in my building to place VOIP calls needed during the day. The problem is there are no plans close to what YB and I currently have that are anywhere near as cheap as what we are paying and prepaid is a joke. We text more than we talk and never come close to using our monthly minutes. Prepaid access fees and per minute rates make it more like calling long distance from your home phone in the 1980's. After taxes and fees the closest comparable plan on Verizon (which is still the cheapest as far as I can tell) would be close to $130. I wish it was possible to port your cell number to an iPod or iPad with 3G capability because then you could make and receive calls with the Skype-like options out there without having to let everyone know your number is different. Plus you could save a bundle of money because the 3G data access would only occur when you're not in WiFi network which, for most of us, isn't that often anymore.

I hate getting scammed with texting plans, taxes and fees. It's like the cell phone companies don't realize just how much they're gouging their customers.

2010-05-07T20:56:00.001-04:00

It's interesting being newly married at the age of 30 and 31. YB and I decided to keep the apartment I've lived in for the past couple years. It's small, she deserves better, but she says it's cozy and doesn't mind the closeness; a fact which is still hard for me to believe because, as a guy, I should be giving her way more than I have.

Anyway, since I moved in to my second floor apartment between two other units and above the one below (it's only a two story building) I've had, and now YB is sharing in, some very interesting neighbors. The older lady on side of me and the grandma kiddy corner below are very quiet. They've both lived here longer than I, the grandma longer than older lady I think. The most I hear from the the older lady is her trip down the stairs in the morning on her way to work and turning on her shower or flushing her toilet. I never hear from the grandma, at least when she's in her apartment. But sometimes we chat a bit when our paths cross on our way in or out. She's also famous for smoking outside her door (my complex has private entrances to each unit) and talking on her cell phone with the spearkerphone going. My other neighbors are a different story.

The other kiddy corner lower neighbor (since moved out) had a son who liked to have gamer parties with fairly loud volume. It didn't bother me too often because of the two apartments the sound had to go through to get to mine. There have been two sets of residents in the unit next to me that I can remember. The first set consisted of just a guy who later got married. That couple decided to put their bed right next to the wall where I slept so I was privy to whenever they decided to take part in extracurricular activity. They weren't very loud, but that was about the time I started sleeping with a fan on to drown out any noise I didn't want to hear. They've since moved to Texas I believe and were replaced a time later by a guy who likes to smoke cigars, his wife, and, from YB says, their kids. I think I may have seen the kids a few times but not enough to actually believe they are their kids. They are the gamers now, probably have a Wii...and fans of American Idol. Their volume isn't terrible, but loud enough that I can tell what they're listening too.

I've had three neighbors in the unit below me (four if you count the one who moved out days before I moved in). The first was a middle eastern looking guy with his wife and two kids. He drove a taxi and didn't talk much. I said hi to him once or twice. I hardly ever saw his wife or kids (one of them just stared at me when I said hi the night they were moving in), but they moved out after a little while leaving him behind. I don't know how long it was before he moved, but I can remember it was sudden. After that the unit was empty for a long time until a couple from Pittsburgh moved in (they were Steelers fans and I think had PA license plates when they first moved in). They were fairly quiet, and newly weds, and moved out after a short stay.

Now there's a new resident downstairs. I don't know if it's a man or woman, though I suspect woman from the contents left in the car. Whoever it is has an affinity for nailing stuff to the wall around 11pm and has one or two large, very loud dogs that bark at everything and everyone. I'm hoping the dogs get used to the people walking to and from their cars, and the strumming of my guitar that they can hear through the floor. They are by far the loudest of the resident neighbors to date, or at least consistently the loudest.

Once on a visit before I was married my dad made the remark that my apartment complex is a blue collar worker's place. It's very true. It's a ghost town here during the day. But to YB and I it's home for now, small and cozy, filled with character that'll hopefully make for good memories down the road when we reminisce with each other, "Remember our first apartment?"...

...barking dogs and all.

2010-05-05T17:31:00.001-04:00

Summer has arrived in Virginia. It's getting hot outside and YB is off at work tonight. I just got home from my day, a very strange day mind you, at work. A handful of psychos decided to attend the show this morning and disrupt it on air. It's the kind of thing you wonder about, when it will happen, how it will happen...something going screwy with the show. And there are certain rules you remember when faced with those situations that'll help get you out of many of the possible jams you could find yourself in. It doesn't matter what exactly happened today, or what we did in response. At least, that's not the focus here. The question in my head is wrapped around one word, a word requiring action independent of what is happening on screen; execution.

You see, being involved in a team effort requires that everyone executes. Everyone does what they're supposed to do. Most of the time things are mundane, everyday type occurrences requiring little adjustments that are negligible. Even at my place of employment these kinds of adjustments are made. The challenge that I run into in my job is there are too many team players spending way too much time wondering, "What will **** say?". These people are the ones who, in the everyday occurrences, ask if a graphic we use fairly often is still available, explain why we may or may not use a set, spend more time freaking out about small stuff rather than letting the other members of their team handle the scenario like the should, are trained to do, and have been doing for years. It's frustrating to shoot/aspire for excellence, try to be professional and yet have people constantly treating you like it's your second day on a job you've never done before.

Then there are days like this where the irregular occurs, the 500 year flood comes and your training, your "What To Do When" lessons from college and maybe the one or two other real life similar experiences are supposed to kick in. It doesn't seem to be the case where I work. Where I work curiosity about the disturbance (and possibly "What will **** say?") supersedes training; the few times where the knee-jerk reaction was needed and should have been taken was not executed. Would it have looked awkward? Yeah, probably. But it would have been way better than letting what the group of psychos said go out over the air live. Much better.

We're supposed to be professional, we're supposed to be one team, united in purpose to achieve a goal. A team's true traits are only revealed under pressure. Anybody can do the easy stuff, but the hard is a different matter. My quandary is this. Fear has no place when setting the bar, when shooting for excellence, when trying to be professional and the best at what we do. There are times when hesitation cannot happen. If we're trying to set the bar, aspiring for excellence, working towards being professional and yet are hampered by fear and hesitation, why on earth are we even trying?

2009-10-04T00:45:00.000-04:00

Tired and night bring out the deepest thoughts. I'm not quite sure why that particular mix does so. Perhaps the crickets outside the open windows allow a measure of disengagement and reflection on the past and present with a wonderment at what tomorrow and the days ahead will hold in light of it all. Perhaps it's the way the waxing moon lights the sky on a starry night with a few picture perfect clouds that causes a pause in thought, ceasing where your mind was, starting it up again in something else, something deeper.

So where am I? Where are my thoughts in this quiet? What is going through my head when I wake to the sound of crickets on a near perfect Fall night? Perhaps it is not for all to know. Perhaps I am still getting used to what will be. Perhaps many more near perfect waxing moon-lit, starry and tired nights of open windows and crickets in the background will be what is necessary before I can say.

2009-09-19T18:34:00.000-04:00

Hey all, thought I might let you all know I'm alive...but then some of you know that already because of the invites you've gotten in the mail. 27 days...we're so excited...and not communicating well with the outside world including Tomdle who has been emailing me about music requests and whether Enya tracks will be allowed on the playlist. That was last week. I still haven't gotten around to answering, "No, they won't be allowed." My soon-to-be Hot Wife didn't think they would fit. The wording of the answer, by the way, being an inside joke to a post of a blog MP found, the site of which I may link to just because of the overall hysterics.

This is actually the first Saturday in three I've had off. A TD'ing freelance gig presented itself at a local college doing the video board production for their football and basketball games. It's a great gig. Today, though, my soon-to-be Hot Wife and I are spending our Saturday as we prefer. Mostly unplanned, allowing the spontaneous and taking in the required. After sleeping in we got together to shop for food, make said food, watch "The Office"'s Season 5 bloopers, try watching "Lost in Translation" and chat for a while before the full-of-food feeling made one of us extremely sleepy. So now I'm writing this post while my soon-to-be Hot Wife sleeps on the couch and I work through email and remind myself of people I need to be calling and emailing back but haven't gotten to yet. Oh well, there's always tomorrow...

...Oh yeah, we're going to visit Williamsburg tomorrow.

2009-07-14T23:26:00.000-04:00

SM posted this on Faceboo and I thought it would be fun to work on while winding down for the night and waiting for YB's text saying she got home okay...

==================================================================

Put an X by the states you have been to.
Put an O beside the states where you have lived.

Airports don't count! At the bottom, add countries you have been to also!

Alabama -
Alaska -
Arizona -
Arkansas -
California - X, O
Colorado -
Connecticut - X
Delaware - X
Florida -
Georgia -
Hawaii -
Idaho -
Illinois -
Indiana -
Iowa -
Kansas -
Kentucky -
Louisiana -
Maine - X
Maryland - X
Massachusetts -X
Michigan -
Minnesota -
Mississippi -
Missouri -
Montana -
Nebraska -
Nevada -
New Hampshire - X
New Jersey -
New Mexico -
New York - O
North Carolina- X
North Dakota -
Ohio - X
Oklahoma -
Oregon -
Pennsylvania - X
Rhode Island - X
South Carolina -
South Dakota -
Tennessee - X
Texas -
Utah - X
Vermont - X
Virginia - O
Washington -
West Virginia - X
Wisconsin -
Wyoming -
Washington, D.C. - X

Canada - X
Israel
Mexico -
England - X
Jamaica -
Germany -
Honduras - X, O
France - X

2009-07-11T23:52:00.000-04:00

It's 11:38pm. Church is tomorrow. The apartment has grown very quiet with the exception of the neighbors next door whose gaming system, I'm assuming, is pumping through their too loud sound system. YB's oversized clock now has a batter driving the 60 second clock. It's another sound to get used to when all is quiet like tonight.

I'm waiting for the phone to ring. Some old church friends were kind enough to let YB rent a room until she heads north for the wedding in October (97 days!). They are super nice people with cool kids. The only downside is they live 25 minutes away. Tonight is the first night she is driving back alone which makes me a bit nervous. So I'm waiting for her to call when she is close to arriving.

The ol' blog won't turn into a wedding blog, I'm just in a reflective kind of mood tonight. Or thoughtful. Maybe. Maybe I should have my vitamin regimen that I never took today. That sounds like a good idea. Maybe I should consider taking a B vitamin complex. I've heard that's good for you. All you North Carolinian folks can weigh in on that one. Then I can start filling out a questionnaire type thing. That sounds like a plan. My air conditioning should shut off shortly after I start, followed by the phone call. After the call the apartment will grow quiet again, filled with sounds from the neighbors next door and a clicking second hand and the footsteps of myself going to bed.

2009-06-13T20:42:00.000-04:00

Well, it's a brave new world out there. America has made the transition from analog to digital broadcast television. "What is that," you ask? I won't go into it because the answer is too tied up the particulars of technical jargon and individual station circumstance. Suffice it to say, the industry has been forced to "improve" itself by Congressional mandate and has spun the forced coercion into telling you they are upgrading their picture and sound quality. What a load of crap. Ask yourself this question, why did virtually all stations make the switch, and on the same day? I doubt the answer will be because the consumer demanded it. No, I highly expect the average viewer will wonder why their picture freezes and sound completely drops out on a sunny, cloudless day. Or why some people in urban settings may not get a usable signal at all anymore. Yup, it's a brave new world out there.

I, for one, am at least glad something good will come of this nonsense. Yes, I for one am glad the government sold those old PUBLIC analog frequencies to private companies. A poorly implemented 3G cell phone data service just wasn't enough. Nope. Now we're going to get 4G. Next year, when 4G becomes more readily available, we'll probably see less news stories on the dangers of driving while texting. We might be seeing the dangers of cell phone video chatting while driving.

2009-06-10T21:36:00.000-04:00

Some time ago I needed to revisit an old post. By old I mean one from shortly after I started keeping this blog. My search ended in vain as I realized that Blogger somehow deleted the old material, I'm assuming, around or after it was bought out by Google.

Stupid Google.

So now I am in a quandary. What do I write about? Originally, if I remember correctly that is, I was going to write about "stuff" in my day to day life that was worth writing about, or other things that happened to get me thinking, or anything else that didn't bore the living daylights out of a certain Tomdle - that exchange of posts and comments are now somewhere in cyberspace trash because of the aforementioned deletions. All this is to say, before I attempt to write the rest of this post, I think I will be taking suggestions on what to post on the blog. Just leave the suggestion in the comments section of this post.

Some quick research revealed that my last post was on April 26. That was a long time ago. I suppose the Cliff Notes version of the happenings is always welcome, so I suppose that's a good place to start. It was on or around April 26 that I ordered a certain piece of jewlery. I couldn't blog about that for obvious reasons. It came nine days or so later. I couldn't blog about the hassel of delivery either, for obvious reasons. 13 days after the 26th was RU Commencement at which YB was originally not going to participate in, then was going to participate in, then decided not to. I'd tell the story but this is the Cliff Notes version. Comment if you want the story. Instead of commencement I took her on an absolutely fantastic day trip to Hatteras, NC, where we got engaged. Since this is the Cliff Notes version I can't go into what happened there. Again, comment if you want to hear. Two weeks ago YB and I went into full force move mode, moving her out of her apartment as per the student housing folks - boy, there's a rant. Since we're planning on using my cozy one bedroom we moved most of her stuff here. My apartment has never been so full. In the roughly two and a half years I have lived in this apartment it has thrown up three times. The first was last year during a parental visit. It vomited out parts of an entire sofa bed. The second two took place when we moved YB's stuff. No amount of Pepto was going stop a mattress and $30 desk (Walmart special) from landing on the trash heap. YB is now temporarily living at a friend's house, but will hopefull relocate soon to a nice grandma's house.

128 days and counting.

2009-04-26T20:44:00.001-04:00

It's official, Spring has been skipped as Summer has officially come to Hampton Roads. This past Friday the weather warm enough to warrant shorts. I didn't really take advantage of that because of the cool cave I work in. Yesterday I had the opportunity to direct, with YB coming along, the local broadcast of an Air Force Air Show at Langley Air Force Base. The weather was great, sunny, some high clouds, topping out around 95. Today was more of the same except hotter; the gauge in YB's car measured 99.

I don't want to sound like I'm complaining, I'm just getting a good appreciation for those middle seasons called Spring and Fall. The only time I really experience them is when I visit home for Easter or apple picking season. Perhaps the area of Hampton Roads doesn't know there should be something between the extremes of Summer and Winter, something which gradually allows the body to adjust to the changes in temperature with those seasons. Keep a loose track of the patterns this past Winter, one would have no choice but to agree especially when a certain blogger put his motorcycle on the road for Spring in February but had to take it off again as the forecasts took that un-surprising surprising turn for the worse with the area having another month and a half of that biting kind of wet cold.

All is not evil, however. Hampton Roads may not have the most comfortable weather in the world and its wide changes from day to day may mess with peoples minds and systems, but at least I can offer YB my couch to sleep off the sun she got yesterday now that my cat has found a home with a nice old lady who already has nine others (or so).

2009-04-01T21:16:00.000-04:00

I don't know if I'm a particular fan of the "Live Blogging" thing...at least for me...at least as long as I have to text the posts in. It clutters up the blog too much which is ironic considering how my apartment looks at the moment. I don't think I'll be doing any more of those live events but instead would rather spend the time waiting for a delayed flight to depart by listening to some lady's phone conversation from a gate down the terminal.

So YB is currently in NYC trying to show the folks at the UN how it should be done...work that is. But it's a tough assignment because they're beaurocrats and haven't done any work since the opening of the first session in the 18th century. Needless to say, it's slow going for her. The building seems to have caught the beauracracy disease as well. It hasn't done any upkeep on itself since the late 17th century when it was constructed. I'm sure some of our hard earned tax dollars are being thrown at the very definition of a wasteful spending pork project via our wonderful stimulus package which also manages to provide us a whopping 30 extra dollars a month. But that money wouldn't be used for upkeep and repairs. It would go into squatter's population control. I could envision Lennon's ghost roaming the halls if it wasn't first at the G20 summit with Putin's lackey.

I still don't know how people manage long distance relationships, let alone long-term long distance. There will probably be comments made saying, "Just get over it," or, "Deal with it, she'll be back soon." I don't care. It kills me when some NJ or NYC jerk is being a jerk to her and I can't do anything about it except hear about it on the phone. I will be extremely thrilled and am looking forward to her return on Saturday. In the meantime I've been keeping busy with swimming, getting some pictures made into collages and hung on the wall (I finally got some of the framable France pics up) and have picked up a side editing project which I am currently working on (I love the idea of multitasking while importing footage). It's not paid, just a side thing from something we shot here at work the other day. I won't go into the details but will definitely post it when I'm done. Suffice to say there are a good number of skills I can brush up on, others I can hone, and some that I've been wanting to develop. We'll see how it turns out.

I'm sure there was something else I wanted to write about but I can't remember at the moment. Oh well, if I remember I'll tack it on the end of this post. There is another ISO Cam and a line cut to import.

2009-03-29T15:20:00.002-04:00

Well, she's down the jet way. Time to head out. See you in six days.

2009-03-29T14:19:00.002-04:00

We're fighting the urge to fall asleep...delayed flights...what to do, what to do?

2009-03-29T14:03:00.002-04:00

Going through my phone's pictures at the airport and came across this gem.

2009-03-29T13:23:00.002-04:00

Trying a mobile update. Dropping YB off at the airport. Her flight is delayed but they gave me a gate pass

2009-03-26T18:19:00.001-04:00

I'm not trying to make up for lost time in the lack of posting...really.

No, really. I'm not.

Anyway, I'm at YB's place and she's teaching her roommate a recipe of something. I don't know what it is but it smells good. I'm multi-tasking my smell enjoyment of YB's cooking with checking out some blogs, Macrumors.com (the WWDC date is set!), and remembered something. It's random, but I remembered it nonetheless. In a few months my cell phone contract with Verizon will end and I'll either renew it and get a new phone or get a new phone with a different company. Since BP is heading out of the country I was going to ask him what he was going to do with his phone because I'd possibly buy it off him and transfer my number to it. I have yet to do it. Maybe I'll just wait to see what Apple does with the 3rd generation iPhone.

2009-03-25T20:50:00.000-04:00

I know it's been awhile...again...but bear with me, there's just one item of house keeping to do. Perhaps you've heard El Rushbo recently mention a blog out there kept by President Obama's teleprompter. If you have I hope you've checked it out. If not, the link is now in my links section. I do not know who is keeping this blog, but it is ingenius. Thanks for emailing in out UF. I highly recommend the first couple of posts found at the bottom of this page and then making a point of checking in from time to time.

Okay, on to business...

I've been trying to figure out what to post on lately. Many of the stories I could write about violate my rules of posting which used to be deep in the annals of my blog, but there was a loss of dated material after Google aquired Blogger which obviously makes me sad because there might have been some pretty good stuff in there. Maybe it's time to switch to Wordpress. But I digress.

And now I digress even more. These are from the weekend trip to Lynchburg to celebrate YB's birthday with one of her friends. And this pic is from my surprise birthday party. I wasn't feeling well so now you understand why the Smith's didn't want to get too close.

2009-03-15T22:17:00.000-04:00

I notice it's been a while since my last post so I'll try to give the cliff notes version of the events of the last couple of weeks and then head to bed. Here goes...

Since my last post I've;

1. Gotten a case of "The Crud" which was rid of by a combination of Nyquil, Musinex, a Robitussen/Codine mix, prayer, and food and tea made by an awesome girlfriend.

2. Celebrated my birthday with a surprise party thrown by YB at a coworker's house.

3. Celebrated YB's birthday.

4. Taken a trip to Lynchburg where I cooked kabobs made by YB and her friend on a park grill that I didn't clean but still turned out really good.

5. Found that the weather in Hampton Roads can be exactly like that of springtime in Western NY.

6. Written a post for the first time since February 24th.

I know this is pretty lame, but I need to get to bed.

2009-02-24T12:40:00.000-05:00

A Glimpse of Control Room Conversations:

"Roger, what can we do to make the set more attractive?"

Roger kind of nods a little.

"I was thinking something raspberry."

...

Things continue from there and then turns to politics.

2009-02-22T20:36:00.000-05:00

Outside the door of YB's apartment we found a very wet and chilled 35 degrees. Sunny, yes, but coldly cutting through our layers. Hopping in her car we made for the theater. After last week's bust at "Slumdog Millionaire" I wanted to redeem myself with a film she originally wanted to see, a chick flick, "He's Just Not That Into You." We arrived at the theater around 2:30pm and walked right in with the tickets I bought yesterday because the showing we planned on seeing yesterday was sold out and didn't want to pay $10 a ticket for an evening movie. This afternoon's showing cost me $5 a ticket.

The theater is fairly busier than what I would expect on a Sunday afternoon. I'm glad to see PBHO's stimulus plan is being put to good use...wait a minute. The concession stand has a fair amount of people waiting to buy their popcorn and other goodies but we skip that and head straight to Theater 18 to find two seats.

As always the theater is dark, the pre-showing TV style featurettes are in full swing. The difference is this theater is already packed, full with many many people sitting in groups of two and four. There are some couples, girls and guys, but I would venture to say most are women. As I soon found out I would further venture to say Middle Aged Man Haters type women. I think YB and I stand there for a second looking for a few good seats. Nope. How about two seats together? Nope, at least not unless we wanted to sit in the first five rows. We walk to the opposite side of the theater and find more of the same. Groups of two or four separated by one seat.

YB points to the back row. A group of two women is seated with an empty seat on either side. I approach and inquire to the possibility of possibly scooting over one seat.

"No," they answer briskly. "That one's saved, and so is the other."

Okay, you didn't have to get all uppity about it, I thought.

YB and I make our way back down to the main level. The theater is filling up even more. I sense urgency to find a seat before we have to sit on the stairs. We spot two empty seats on either end of a group of four. I inquire if one of the seats is taken, find out it is not, and that these women would not mind moving if the other two women (not in their group) would move.

"Hi, would you guys mind moving down one chair?" I very politely ask.
"Yes we would," they answer with no attempt to hide their rude snottiness and make no attempt to hide it in their next statement. "We got here 30 minutes ago and have the prime seats."

I must have stood their for a moment in a blind stupor because they tried to go on, but I didn't let them. I didn't say anything mean...yet. My reply was made very politely but contained language that they hopefully will chew on and realize what a bunch of spoiled kids they made themselves out to be.

"Thanks for your kindness," I replied, and repeated as they tried to talk over me.

YB and I found two seats nearer to the front. She asked me what the woman said when we sat down. I pulled out a line from a movie we watched recently.

"She was just being 'a complete and unmitigated ass.'"

2009-02-21T18:10:00.001-05:00

Vietnamese wraps for dinner anyone?

2009-02-18T19:18:00.000-05:00

As kind of an off-shoot to Babba's brilliantly written post, I thought I'd set up a link to just the table of contents of the wonderful spending monstrosity our brave congress and fearless President shoved down our throats. Take a look. Remember, this page is only the table of contents.

2009-02-15T17:14:00.001-05:00

Dinner anyone?

2009-02-12T09:33:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure which is more crazy, the fact that 480 miles is considered "low altitude," or the fact that old "crippled" Russian military satellites - old being 1993 - equipped with nuclear reactors are going dysfunctional and colliding with and destroying US communications satellites.

"The collision ... prompted space scientists and engineers to assess the likelihood of further collisions."

I'm glad we're into the whole "assessing" thing now. Heaven forbid we take matters into our own hands and actually take some of these things down on our own. Obviously we know they're up there. I mean, we knew it was an '93 model Russian Nuclear Military Satellite, right?

2009-01-29T09:37:00.000-05:00

I am at a loss as to what to actually post about. There's been so much happening in life, let alone the news...it's like being taken to an Old Country Buffet that serves good healthy food.

Yesterday the temperature topped out around 70 degrees. Granted the skies were cloudy, it rained and the wind knocked out power for an hour or so, but the temperature was around 70. I if drove three hours north I could have helped Ben chip his car out of the inch or so of ice from the ice storm that hit DC. All of this on the same day that AlGore has the guts to go before Congress testifying that global warming is upon us. I'm shaking in my boots. If anyone is interested, I don't think the temperature will get over 40 today.

If anyone wants to know what the country will look like in a purely socialist setting, just take a look at the digital television (DTV) transition mandated by Congress to occur on February 17th of this year. I will say that again, MANDATED. By the government, not consumers. For the past couple of years, as a result, EVERY television station, network and content provider - except the low powered stations - has been transitioning to DTV, in some cases biting the bullet and going High Def. Aside from the cost of replacing almost EVERY piece of infrastructure in the buildings (one high def camera cable alone runs around $50,000), stations are operating two transmitters, doubling their operating cost for transmission alone. Now our new President, and the Congress in all their brilliance, doesn't think their low income, non tax paying, uninformed voting base did not follow the instructions that scroll across their television screen every 15 minutes by taking initiative to ask for a rebate card (funded by your tax dollars) to buy a converter box so they can watch more television. Their solution? Penalize the local stations who are already running their bottom line into the ground by delaying the DTV switch until June.

Still need proof that the government has no business in the private sector? How about this quote from Senator Jay Rockefeller from the same article:

"Delaying the upcoming DTV switch is the right thing to do," said Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., author of the bill to push back the deadline. "I firmly believe that our nation is not yet ready to make this transition at this time."

Oh really, Senator? You should have thought about that way back when you and your comrades were thinking up you brilliant plan. But then again we all know you weren't concerned with giving the American people a better picture on their TV. And you sure didn't take into consideration the good possibility that city dwellers will no longer receive a usable signal much less the resulting possibility of major stations tanking as a result. No, we all know that you and your comrades found out you could get away with globalizing and selling the old television frequency spectrum to the highest bidders, taking PUBLIC AIRWAVES AWAY FROM THE PEOPLE and making them GOVERNMENT OWNED AIRWAVES without so much as a piece of legislation to be debated on and shot down.

2009-01-20T16:08:00.000-05:00

January's Winter Storm. A pretty good three to five inches of snow wouldn't you say?

2009-01-19T22:39:00.000-05:00

My phone rang a few minutes ago...at 10pm at night. Apparently there is a Winter Storm Warning in my area. I didn't realize such a warning was in effect as the most weather I could make note of on the drive back to my apartment moments earlier were the overcast skies. Anyway, the call was from a coworker stating that, due to the Winter Storm Warning, I could take up residence in a hotel room near my employer, the expenses of which would be paid by said employer.

I'm tempted to take it up, but it would delay my arrival into bed much more than this post. I think I'll just leave a little earlier tomorrow.

In case you're wondering, we're supposed to get two to four inches of snow tomorrow, none of which has actually started falling yet.

2009-01-19T11:50:00.000-05:00

I found this article to be pretty funny, though it's sad how close to reality it really is...

2009-01-12T19:26:00.000-05:00

Macworld 2009, traditionally the conference or venue at with Apple shows off their latest, greatest and up-and-coming stuff, was last week. At this point it's almost a by-line and not even worth posting about because of the sheer lack of anything late, great or up-and-coming. But I haven't been posting much lately and thought it would at least be interesting to point out that this was Apple's last year to attend a conference of this scale and one which contains their own nickname in the title.

The high point of the conference, the keynote address, the speech/demo a Mac Lover geeks out about all year, was delivered by an underling of Steve Jobs, the Apple CEO who normally gives said address. Jobs was absent because of health reasons. I'd like to give Apple the benefit of the doubt as to how unimpressive the keynote was. Perhaps Jobs likes to show off all the cool stuff, the stuff people will talk about for days, the stuff programmers won't shut up about even though you tell them you have no idea what they're talking about like the Cocoa powered Finder in the next release of OS X, or the 16 Core Intel processors supposedly going into Mac Pros not too long from now. But somehow I just can't do it. Not when an hour and a half is spent on iLife, a consumer level desktop media authoring application suite, DRM free music from the iTunes Store and the 17 inch unibody MacBook Pro (MBP). That last element could be summed up in the following sentence, one that takes less than five seconds to say; it's just like the 15 inch MBP only bigger. But it wasn't and it took half an hour or so to say it. Perhaps the only high point of the keynote address was the announcement of the 8 hour battery life in the new 17 inch MBP. That's amazing regardless of how poor the keynote address was.

Anyway, if you're interested in watching the address for yourself you can find it here. This page at Macrumors.com sums up the event. And if it wasn't $24.95 I'd consider getting this for my iPod Touch.

2009-01-11T22:28:00.000-05:00

It's Sunday night. I pulled into my parking space 20 minutes ago or so. A couple guys walked past my truck headed toward my apartment with a keg and a tap. I suppose their night is just getting started. Mine, however, is winding down, along with my weekend. I'm in my apartment - kind of obvious I guess as I'm writing this post at the moment - listening to some good music. The stairway light is on for a few more minutes. It will soon get turned off as I turn in for the night, getting some rest before starting the work week tomorrow.

Funny, isn't it, how an opinion can change so quickly, an outlook can be rearranged in so short a period of time. Three months ago weekends and I did not get along. I viewed them as monstrous lengths of time that I had to fill with something, anything, to pass the time until I could look forward to Monday morning. I would be sure to go somewhere, anywhere, on Saturday just to be out of the apartment because it got too quiet. Sunday consisted of church and, during football season, football on the 10 foot HD screen at a co-worker's house. The rest of the year I was in the same predicament as Saturdays. Three months later I find myself, having made fond memories, saying goodbye to the weekend in preparation for the work week ahead in a job I thoroughly enjoy and am thankful for with the knowledge that another weekend could be in store holding the possibility for more fond memories.

Funny, isn't it, how things can change so quickly?

2009-01-05T20:12:00.000-05:00

Lessons:

Lately I've found that aunts don't mind emails that to me seem book reportish, that a half hour or 45 minutes with YK is better than nothing but nowhere near long enough, that coworkers will randomly IM you late at night on Facebook while eating Cheetos, that WalMart cashiers notice you have a deep voice, and that you're never too old to have your mom pick you up after taking a swim.

Think that last item is a little weird, a little out of place? Picture this: the time is 9:20pm. The rec center where you swim closes in ten minutes and has just closed the pool for the night. You are in the locker room having just rinsed off in the shower and are changing into street clothes in preparation to leave. The center's employees, desiring to also leave, start walking through the locker room checking to see who's there, telling you and the other patrons that it's closing time and they need to leave. Employee Number One comes through and says his schpeel. A few minutes later Employee Number Two comes through and says the same thing. "Are they rushing me," you think to yourself? After pondering the closing time schpeel you decide they just want to go home and continue getting dressed. The old wall mounted fan is loudly blowing hard in one direction like normal, the locker room quiets down. Your shirt is on, then the pants, one boot gets put on, and just as you start to reach for the other Employee Number One makes another round. You think he says the schpeel again. You look up at him to acknowledge that, yes, you are just about done getting dressed and about to head out the door. He then proceeds to ask you, "Is your mom waiting outside to take you home?"

I wish I could remember what my facial reaction was. I know my answer was, "I'm 29." Either he wasn't fazed, recovered well or hid his surprise. His attempt at an answer was, "Well, you're never too old to be picked by your mom, right?" If I wanted to I could have been quite smart with him by answering something to the effect of, "Yeah, but that would be quite a drive for her seeing as how she's in NY." But I wasn't and I don't remember my exact answer either. Keep in mind I honestly find this funny. It's just been a while since someone thought I was young enough to need to be picked up by my mom.

2009-01-03T16:11:00.000-05:00

Writer's block ain't got nothing on this. It's not like subjects to write about or stories to post about have been lacking. On the contrary, the days have been so full and so good and experiences so abounding that write about them would do a grave injustice. I'd leave something out or, more likely, the stories would become more like reports; "First this, then that, then another...". Yeah, I'm not a fan of that. In all fairness, though, I'll try and give a quick rundown of life. Since my last post I took YK to see "A Christmas Carol" in DC, visited the National Christmas Tree in DC, TD'd boku numbers of taped shows for playback during the Christmas week, drove home with YK through the tail end of a winter storm, saw "Marley and Me" (good movie), saw "Seven Pounds" (horrible movie), saw just about everyone I know in NY, tried to drive to Richmond through a winter storm, gave up trying to drive to Richmond through a winter storm, spent New Year's Eve in NY instead of Richmond, left for VA on New Year's Day - a day late - because of the winter storm, visited BP and Elizabeth in DC, visited friends of YK in DC, arrived in VA 12 hours after leaving NY, tried to pacify the cat upon return to the apartment, worked the next day and continued to try pacifying the cat. I'd say life has been pretty full as far as events taking place in one month go. But I think the bigger event happened today; I resigned my lease.

Resigning my lease marks the beginning of the third year of living in the same place, a number unmatched since I moved to VA in 2003. I'm not quite sure what to make of that fact. One thing I am sure of is that I'm looking forward to what this year holds in store. I'm excited.

2008-12-17T20:13:00.000-05:00

I have a question. It's something that kind of have no relevance on everyday life yet is important enough to make everyday people wonder just what in the heck is going on. What in the world is the "Office of the President Elect"?

Has anyone out there besides me noticed the sign on the front of President Elect Barak Obama's (PEBO) podium he makes speeches from? Aside from the fact that he gets more face time than the sitting President - despite what you think of President Bush - and the fact that PEBO still hasn't said anything of substance that I've heard, we now have to deal with the fact that our next President of the United States has made up an office for himself, an office that never existed before 2008. Just what kind of idiots does he think the American people are? Oh, wait, that's right. Enough of us are more concerned with spit and shoe polish concerning issues like what names we should use for terrorists, what the government is doing to fix the economy, that we need health care given to me by the feds and that PEBO is the greatest thing since Al Gore's creation of the internet. Somehow PEBO is going to solve all our problems starting with, and pulling off, the creation of the most ridiculous public relations spoof to ever be spoon fed the American people. Somehow PEBO standing behind that podium telling us that we need to think of something to do is supposed to comfort and fill us with the confidence that he does in fact know what he's talking about.

"Excuse me, Mr. Obama, what specifically are you planning to do?"
"Well, uh, what, uh, we need to do...is come up, uh, with a comprehensive plan which takes, uh, everyone's best interests to heart."
"Thanks for shedding light on that. I appreciate it."

Gosh, I could be one of his writers.

"Office of the President Elect." Just what have we elected? A showman? The national leader version of "The Music Man"? I cannot believe there is not more furor over the audacity of PEBO concerning the tricks through speeches and good public relations he's successfully pulling on the American people. I just hope the American people remember there is such a thing as black magic.

2008-12-13T14:01:00.000-05:00

This past Tuesday I went out to lunch with a co-worker, a super cool older lady who ADs among the many other responsibilities she has at our workplace. Neither of us had any clue as to where to go, I was drawing a blank and she didn't care. Sushi sounded good, but the particular establishment we tried was still closed at 11am. The Chinese place we tried next was technically open but couldn't get their fire alarm to shut off. The third place we tried was a coffee shop I had camera op'd a film in a few years ago and remembered the food to be pretty good. As it was right around the corner from the fire alarming Chinese place and having less than an hour to eat we decided that would be good enough. Ironically, neither of us were very hungry and both of us ordered the same thing, Cream of Potato soup.

Now to be honest, the soup wasn't all that bad and didn't taste like it had turned. For me, returning to the States after having some of the best food of my life in France, it was pretty normal American stuff. But after having the soup, I started going downhill which was a huge problem as it was a nice day, cloudy but warm. One of those sporadic Hampton Roads nice days you get in late Fall or early Winter. Since the weather was supposed to get cold again in the following days, I called up my girlfriend (YK), walked and chatted with her around a lake, played some music, chatted some more, and then dropped her off so I could go home and pass out only to wake up a few hours later and lose all of the contents in my digestive system which mainly consisted of lunch. Barring my digestive system's spontaneous contributions, it was a great night only to be one-upped by a better morning when YK made me tea, amazing oatmeal with apples and caramel from scratch, and included some kind of stomach medicine which, for the life of me, I could not figure out how to take because the instructions were written in Japanese.

I'm sure if Esop were around he would be able to come up with some deep morals of Tuesday's fiascos. Since he's not, you'll have to deal with mine. First, if you aren't hungry don't eat. Second, if you do eat, stay away from places you shot films in, especially their Cream of Potato soup. Third, you should learn how to read Japanese so that if, fourth, you are given Japanese medicine for upset stomachs, you'll see that you should not not mix it in with your tea but take it straight out of the packet.

2008-12-05T22:46:00.000-05:00

AD has been kind enough to remind me to post stories from France and I can only be kind enough to actually take some time to do it; one or two of them at least. It'll have to be sufficient to say that I literally hit the ground running since I've been back and writing a post has consistently been put on the back burner.

Since I've been back people have been asking me what my favorite part of the trip was. While I loved almost every aspect of the trip there is one place we visited which impacted me more than any other, visiting the D-Day beaches in Normandy.

Some facts amaze me in life. One of those is there are some things in life you can learn about all you want, research, read, look at pictures or footage of, even become an expert in, but will never more fully understand than when you see the thing for yourself. How many times have I heard about D-Day? How many times have I ready about it? How many times have I seen footage of it or seen reenactments in movies? I had respect for our boys, tremendous respect for our boys. They accomplished a feat that I hope we will never have to do again if just because of the tremendous price that was paid to do it. But all of the books, all the lessons, all the pictures, footage and movies and documentaries could not prepare me for what went through my mind when I walked out on Gold Beach, stood with my back to the English Channel still containing the artificial bay made out of sunken allied vessels, and looked up and down the coast at what our soldiers looked at 60 years ago under very different circumstances. This is what I saw.

The stretch of Normandy the allies landed in is a perfectly defensible position. There are sheer walls on one side (toward Omaha and Utah Beaches) and almost sheer walls on the other (towards Juno and farther east). The low part in the middle (Gold Beach) is now occupied by a town. In the expanse of all those beaches there is no reason why a well fortified and determined defender should not be able to drive back an attacker. Thank God the Germans guessed incorrectly as to the actual landing site and were waiting for our forces in the wrong spot. That isn't to say our boys didn't have it easy. Looking at the positions the Germans had and the task our boys had in driving the Germans from those positions, little imagination is needed to visualize the sea running red with blood that day.

I had a tremendous amount of respect for the WWII vets before this trip. Now that I've stood on one of the beaches where they ran forward for their lives and mission, seen the now eerily quiet guns in bunkers the vets disabled or took while being fired upon by other guns in other bunkers, I now have a different, deeper kind of respect for what our troops did that day. It's a kind of respect words cannot describe but can only be summed up by the depth of understanding in the eyes and the feeling behind the words "thank you" when talking to or shaking the hand of a veteran.

I realize this is not so much a story as it is a reflection but maybe I'll be able to put some stories together. The difficulty is that they all run together so keeping them all straight and giving enough context to give understanding while not so much to make the story boring is difficult.

Anyway, pictures are posted. Mine are separated out by album into days and groups of days so each of the following links will take you to different albums. Here is FrancEcapades Day 1 to ?, FrancEcapades Day 2, FrancEcapades Day 3, and FrancEcapades Day 4 to The Sad Sad End. If you're curious, the Normandy pictures are in the FrancEcapades Day 2 album.

2008-12-01T18:32:00.001-05:00

Save for the two small lights in the bathroom and the glow of MP's laptop, all is dark in the apartment. MP and TD are both fast asleep. It's after midnight here in Rennes and I am awake still trying to burn off the dinner that was had three hours ago. It's a peaceful night at the end of a super crazy, fun, busy, fun week filled with adventures, a rented car, new found respect for WW2 veterans, amazing sights, historical landmarks galore, and food that I will never, never forget.

At this point I cannot post any stories for they would take too long, nor any thoughts on the country, differences in thought or approach to life for it may take a while to process. Suffice to say that there are many stories, some of which I will post, and many things I will process. This I am sure of, however. I am thankful for an adventurous family who allows its members to travel abroad and allows other members to visit those abroad. And I am thankful for those family members who are abroad to allow and receive visitors. So thank you MP for allowing TD and I to spend the week with you. Thanks for being our translator, thanks for being our guide, thanks for the amazing time we were able to have and that, hopefully, you had as well. You are so kind and so generous and so patient with two American cousins who landed on your doorstep without the ability to speak the language or even know the culture. Thank you very, very much for letting us come.

2008-11-21T20:47:00.000-05:00

Talk about miss-communication, I texted MD and Tomdle today, at the same time, so they received the same message. It was tapped and sent while walking across the street from work to get something to eat. I thought it strange that every word was spelled correctly the first time and thought it was alright when I got a reply from MD to the effect of, "Wow! Post it!" I got Tomdle's later on. His was something like, "...I can't understand a word you're saying," in the chicken farmer speak of Napolean Dynamite. To say I was confused was an understatement, so I took a look at what I sent, now that I was in a place where I could actually read what I wrote. This is what I sent out:

"I net glenn beck a killiexiile ago!"

I'm curious as to how many second glances MD took to figure out that what I meant to send was:

"I met glenn beck a little while ago!"

Now you're like, "Wait, you met Glenn Beck?!" Yes I did. It's also the reason for the post...not some deep discussion on miss-communication. He came to the studios for two interviews promoting his book, "The Christmas Sweater." In between the two he signed books some of the employees had and, since I knew he was coming, brought my camera to work and was able to get a picture with him.

2008-11-17T10:55:00.001-05:00

"Don't plan on sitting around all day, Jondale."
"Don't worry, I never plan on sitting around all day when I visit you guys."

Around about 1am Saturday morning I parked my truck in front of AC's and Babba's house, pulled my backpack and lappy bag from the passenger side, called AC to let me in and went to bed an hour later. The nor-easter making its way to the Atlantic gave me rain, fog and, I believe, a headwind to fight all the way from Hampton Roads. Slightly annoying, yes, but entirely worth the while if it meant spending the weekend in NC in the mountains.

How I miss the mountains. At almost every turn there is a new country to explore, seemingly undisturbed terrain with only a road concocted by some magic to get you from one pass to another. I've found traveling at night to be most convenient, especially when making the trek home. I can set my own pace, open a window, turn up the music loud and let the road take me where it will. But the mountains, they make dealing with a bit of traffic and a slight delay worth it. Taking advantage of the opportunity on the drive home I stole some pictures with my camera. I'll post the one that turned out well later on today. It's of a bright and sunny day, the road leading on into a mountain forest two weeks or so past its peak foliage with a mountain top in the distance capped with snow being blown off the other side by blustery winds.

If you haven't realized, I love a good drive every once in a while. There's nothing quite like the rythm of the road beneath your tires with music playing now and then and nothing but you and your thoughts the rest and, once you make that final turn, the promise of a warm house with a warmer greeting, a dog not unlike Chewbacca's son, and good memories to speed you on your way wondering when you will be back to make more.

***Updated 12:05am 11/18/08***

Pictures are now posted from the trip. I posted four of them. Check them out here.

2008-11-11T21:04:00.000-05:00

Facebook just may be in the process of blocking me. One of my friends, a co-worker, posted a snippit from one of PE Obama's speeches pertaining to his plans for a civilian police force. My reply summing the idea up as SS/KGB/Sharia Law Enforcers all rolled into one and paid for by your tax dollars got the attention of another friend, an Obama supporter. This person asked that I stop the partisan politics and support Obama as the new President. I'll copy the exchange between this person and I at the end of this post. It looks like Facebook is allowing me access after all, though it is running incredibly slow. In the course of the exchange I decided to look up the definition of Socialism and include it in my arguments as so many people are blatantly denying PE Obama is a Socialist. This is what I found off of dictionary.com, the American Heritage Dictionary:

Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy.
The stage in Marxist-Leninist theory intermediate between capitalism and communism, in which collective ownership of the economy under the dictatorship of the proletariat has not yet been successfully achieved.

The first one is probably pretty widely known. The second is what raises my eyebrows because we just put a guy in office who supports theories of Carl Marx and Vladimir Lennin.

With that, here is the complete exchange:

DC: As long as the Progressives don't recind(sic) the second ammendment(sic)!

JD: The Second Amendment already allows us to be our own security force. That's the whole reason it's there. Obama basically wants Sharia Law Enorforcers/Gestapo/SS/KGB
all rolled into one...in America...paid for by your tax dollars.

RD: scary

RR: Obama is NOT proposing some new paramilitary organization. If you listen to the entire speech, or at least a couple minutes prior to this 20 second clip, you would realize that he is talking about expanding domestic and international agencies such as AmeriCorp and the PeaceCorp. As well as adding some new ones that are also proposed on his website. “He will establish a Classroom Corps to help teachers and students, with a priority placed on underserved schools; a Health Corps to improve public health outreach; a Clean Energy Corps to conduct weatherization and renewable energy projects; a Veterans Corps to assist veterans at hospitals, nursing homes and homeless shelters; and a Homeland Security Corps to help communities plan, prepare for and respond to emergencies.” It time to start supporting Obama and moving beyond partisan difference as McCain so graciously said in his conceding speach.

JD: If you can't accept debating ideas when someone disagrees with you then I suggest you move to another country. Expanding government to solve social issues is the very foundation of Socialism. It is done with good intentions and, generally, widely accepted by the public because of that. The very programs you name are the foundations of a Socialist state which means that government, not individuals driving the free market, get to decide just who needs more help and opportunity. I will always favor "Partisan Politics" if it means I get to raise my voice in opposition because I don't agree with the direction our country will take. Ending "Partisan Politics," though, is starting to become a form of government enforced censorship because I don't agree with the other side. The only countries that takes place in are those moving toward, or in, Socialism, Communism, Dictatorship, Theocracy or Monarchy, not in a Democracy.

SM: Well said!

RD: Owned!!

RR: I am totally open to debating ideas and I have no plans on moving to another country because I very proud to be an American and extremely happy with positive changes to come. My comment is directed towards this 20 second clip taken out of context saying Obama plans to build a "new civilian force" which is not true. Claims that Obama is a socialist are all based on the distortion of Obama's tax plans and misconstrued quotes. Obama is not trying to redistribute the wealth. He believes in allowing the free market to work so that more people can earn money, rather than using government to enrich a small number as Republicans have. With Obama’s plan those people who are making under $280k would be taxed less than when they were under Ronald Regan, hardly making Obama a socialist.

JD: [R], thank you for your reply and for being open to debate ideas. My reply will be made in at least two parts. I agree that statements given by anyone should not be taken out of context at a later date. The Civilian Police Force President Elect Obama is advocating in this clip is a complete thought, summed up in 15 to 20 seconds just as a thesis statement is proposed. It is very hard to take a statement made in such a fashion out of context, even when singled out in a presidential race stump speech.

JD: Pertaining to the agencies he would like to enlarge and create I have would submit these thoughts. First, no one makes money in the Peace Corps, and almost no living in the Americorps. Expanding these agencies is a direct assault on the American Dream part of which involves working hard to earn money and passing it on to one's offspring. Second, what can a tweaked and streamlined Department of Education, Health, Energy, Homeland Security and Citizens using their 2nd Amendment rights not do which requires yet more levels of government bureaucracy?

JD: Third, Socialism, from the American Heritage Dictionary (Dictionary.com) is defined as, "1. Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy. 2. The stage in Marxist-Leninist theory intermediate between capitalism and communism, in which collective ownership of the economy under the dictatorship of the proletariat has not yet been successfully achieved."

The very fact that Obama said he wanted to take the success from one American and make it available to others, his own words being "spread the wealth around," gives light to his socialist tendencies. I will not even address the fact $280K tax cap is the highest I have yet heard. It started at $250 and went down from there.

JD:Finally, Ronald Regan inherited his terms in office after President Carter, the man who almost single-handedly destroyed this country with high taxes, through the roof inflation and weak foreign policy. One cannot form views and opinions about a President based on what he inherits when he takes office, it's more how he governs when in it and the state of affairs when he leaves that more the key.

2008-11-11T21:00:00.000-05:00

Something of interest to America's "In" network and all those other cell phone customers who couldn't be happier with their service (or so I've noticed), the Verizon merger-with/acquisition-of Alltel has been approved by the FCC. There are other articles out there, but information on the deal can be found here.

The decision on November 4, was not the only one the FCC made that day. The Federal Agency also opened up the "white noise" frequency spectrum to commercial business. My understanding of frequency ranges is quite limited, so forgive my uninformed explanation and commentary on the matter as I am relying on the explanation I received from the published Video Colorist at work. The FCC's job is to regulate the air wave frequencies in America beginning at a certain power/frequency level on up. The intent is not to limit businesses and individuals from using the airwaves, rather it's to keep them from overlapping those signals in a given market or market overlaps. It's why radio stations, for example, in neighboring cities, for the most part, don't have the same channel number. The consequence with opening up the "white noise" range to commercial business is the possibility the governement may start requiring licences for products using this range. Licenses cost money. The problem with that? Many wireless consumer products use this frequency range, namely wireless microphones. How does that impact you? Are you or someone you know a sound technician or engineer? Does your church use a wireless microphone? Can those people afford the cost of getting a license for each wireless microphone purchased? Do you as a consumer want to pay for a license to use your 900mHz phone on top of the cost for the phone?

I'll be sure to get my coworker to point me to an article or something that will shed more light on the subject because, lets face it, if you're a business providing a service that uses this "white noise" frequency range, you're not going to want anyone else using that frequency as it would have the potential to interrupt that service.

2008-11-07T22:25:00.000-05:00

Pixar has released the Theatrical Trailer for their 2009 full length release, "Up," directed by Pete Doctor. Doctor was a writer for "Toy Story," "Toy Story 2," "Monster's Inc.," "Mike's New Car" (the short included with "Monster's Inc.), "Wall-E" and also directed "Monster's Inc" and "Mike's New Car. Take a look at his page on the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) to see what else he's worked on and in what roles.

With that, here's the trailer

2008-11-05T22:31:00.000-05:00

Some posts are harder to write than others, some ideas harder to express. Some conversations are had out of light-heartedness while others had out of necessity the latter of which leaving those involved with the assurance they connected on a deeper level but really wondering if some offense was made the other party didn't let on about. I had such a conversation with a coworker today the contents of which revealed, to a degree at least, the level of acceptance of politically correct stereotypes of differing political persuasions.

One of my haunts when not TDing the afternoon news is watching it get taped back in my employer's tape room. It allows me to interact with some of my coworkers, make sure there are no problems during the broadcast and add my own commentary to the news of day. One of our stories today focused on some financial something or other which President Elect Barack Obama was discussing. My reply to whatever it was he said was, "Yeah, right." Just to my right was an editor who most likely voted for Barack talking to a tape room op who also most likely voted for Barack Obama. My comment got her attention. She asked me what I meant. My reply, mostly to keep it light and not start a debate, was something about the increase in capital gains tax we would see under an Obama administration with Democratically controlled Congress. She asked if I had any stocks or investments or something along that order to which I replied, "I would like to," inferring I would be more hesitant to invest more money if I was going to be taxes more. My comment was no big deal. I used to be her assistant editor. She left after a few minutes, and after a few more minutes I started to leave to head home. The tape op she was talking to stopped me before I left and, very politely, inferred that he voted for Barack Obama but didn't want that to stop me from coming to the tape room to hang out and asked why I did not vote for Barack, assuming that was the case. This is where I am astounded by the level of acceptance of certain stereotypes.

My reply, consisting of his socialist ideas and agenda, was that I did not vote for Barack. The reply put him off. To him, Barack is a Democrat who wants to help people, give the poor, and those who can't "get a break," a chance to succeed along with the successful. I, being a Conservative, do not care about the poor and those "who can't get a break" and am not going to do anything about them much less give my money away to someone, or some institution or organization, who will. The following is a paraphrase of my overall reply about why Barack and his Socialistic agenda is a bad thing and what a Conservative is, as it applied to the content of the conversation:

The Democrat platform of Socialism, plain and simple, takes the rewards from the hard working few and distributes it to the non-working many. It punishes those who have the drive to succeed and rewards those who don't. I don't have any problems with Barack wanting to help out the poor and those who "can't get a break." The problems I do have is, one, how he wants to do it (through increased taxes and government spending) and, two, that a large majority of his supporters are only looking for a handout, not an opportunity to succeed. Those who adopt the idea of Socialism do so under the guise that the poor and unfortunate will be better off through a government system.

Conservatism, plain and simple, lets those who work hard not only reap, but keep, their rewards; it lets them do with the fruit of their labor what they see fit. I, as a Conservative, care just as much for the poor and unfortunate. My approach, however, is completely different. Because I care, because I want others to succeed as I have, I will give you a ride to work everyday if need be. If you fall on hard times and need a place to stay I will offer you my couch. If you're short on cash and need something to eat I'll cook something for you, buy you some groceries, take you out to eat. I, as a Conservative, care for and help the poor and unfortunate just as much as the Democrat. The difference is that I will help them today and through my own means, not four years from with a program that might accomplish the same task. I will do it, most likely, without fanfare and public recognition as compared to a highly publicized, high budgeted government program. I, as a Conservative, desire personal responsibility over and before government intervention. America as it has been known contains more opportunities for success than any other country in the world. The only thing keeping the poor and unfortunate from those opportunities is the choice and drive to take hold of them. When they succeed, they'll be able to help out the other poor and unfortunate.

When I finished my explanation, which covered more ground than this (like how President Bush is not a Conservative, nor John Mccain), I could see the light in his eyes start to turn on. It was a strange sight to behold and a stranger idea to ponder that, even in a work environment such as mine, the Conservative stereotype, uncaring, unsympathetic, had to be broken down. This kind of scenario will need to be common place from now on to break the misconceptions of what it is to be a Conservative and, though I only mentioned it in passing, why Conservatives and Republicans are not the same.

I am grateful that my coworker had was able to listen. The line between religion and politics is blurred to the point now that when either side disagrees with the other something occurs on the order of ugly, arguments, hurt feelings so it's a thing to remember when you find someone and actually have a conversation about political viewpoints without either party getting mad, insulted or offended.

2008-11-04T11:31:00.000-05:00

I just hope everyone out there realizes that Election lines aren't all that different from how Universal Health Care would be. Need a brain specialist because you've got a screwdriver stuck in your skull? Well, the guy with the flaky scalp got in line before you.

2008-11-03T20:23:00.001-05:00

Today I went into work at 7am, did the show. Immediately after I started setting up for the next show, building it up and such, until noon-ish when I went with a coworker to Starbucks. He got something with four shots of something in it. I got a Salted something or other hot chocolate. It was very good. About 12:30pm the next show started on into production, I was working this one too, and finished about 2:30 or so when I, taking advantage of the half hour opening up, then continued nailing down the needed graphics not yet in my possession for Election night. 4pm rolls around...I take a break for 20 minutes or so. The afternoon news show wrapped about 4:30pm, I work feverishly for half an hour putting together enough elements and DDR flies and opens and bumpers and double boxes and quad boxes to have a rough rehearsal with a phoner and two -more or less- satellite feeds pretending to be the six or seven we'll have tomorrow. I wrap up for the day around 6pm and head to the pool in some kind of dazed haze only to find it is closed until 8:30pm for some swim league or something. It is 8:16 now, I'm at the library. I won't go swimming tonight because I'm pretty tired. Tomorrow I'm getting up around 4am because I'm going to the polls before I go to work because I don't think I'll be able to make the time to vote during the day. What does the schedule hold for tomorrow? Be to work at 7am. Do the show. Probably tweak stuff for the two shows scheduled to tape starting at 12:30pm or 1pm. Start working on Election Night stuff as soon as that is wrapped. Break for the afternoon news. Start on the Election stuff again as soon as the afternoon news is done and continue through till 9pm when we run through another rehearsal for the show at 11pm that is live until around midnight where we then wrap, sleep and show up for work at 7am the next morning.

I'm wondering when I'll get to sleep and eat.

Then there's a special broadcast scheduled for Friday morning, the parental units show up Saturday till Tuesday with another special broadcast Sunday night.

I can't come up with a clever way to end this off the top of my head. So I'm going to go now.

2008-11-01T20:22:00.000-04:00

I was going to delete the last post until I saw all the great comments. Normally comments are emailed to me, but none came this time. It was so melancholy even I couldn't stand it, which is saying something, and too melancholy for the email server. Anyway, I think I must have been overly hungry and didn't realize it. I had to huge meals today and my demeanor came back up. My ride around the Dismal Swamp helped too. November in the South is great.

As far as that job interview goes, I decided at some point last week against going for the position. The prospect of leaving where I am and going to that was unsettling, the bad kind of unsettling, the kind where you're making a bad decision and going out of bounds unsettling. One of the upsides to where I am right now is that I'm learning and watching more than I can take in and the kind of things I'm learning and taking in would be...hard to find elsewhere...chalking it up to learning wisdom and understanding and lessons on how to not have to learn future lessons at the School of Hard Knocks.

Oh, today marks the end of Daylight Savings Time. Be sure to set your clocks back one hour and check your smoke alarms and maybe watch a Pixar or other excellent animated film.

2008-10-30T18:46:00.000-04:00

I'm finding something out. No, check that. I've been finding something out. Being creative takes an enormous amount of energy and brain power. At least for me it does. I have a feeling it comes naturally to some people, how I wish it would come naturally to me. Case in point, there have been lots of things for me to write about in the past week. But I haven't written anything because all the energy used to write creatively has been taken up by the demands of work. My department at work is in the process of moving a show from one studio to another, resetting the set, relighting the set and turning it High Def with the goal of shooting some episodes next week. It's a tall order. Add on top of that next week's elections and all the graphic prep, show organizing, figuring out where six or ten satellite feeds are going along with rehearsals and the very fluid daily show with all the normal demands that makes. Is this complaining? I hope not. I can't find a sane moment with which to decide.

Anyway, I've got pictures from last weekend's DC Shenanigans, but with the super full schedule at work I keep forgetting to post them there and then forget that they're at work when I leave. Maybe at some point I'll remember to post them. I also had a job interview a month ago that seemed to go pretty well. It was one of the ones that gets filed under "weird." "Why," you say? I went to it on four or five hours of sleep because of the work schedule. I kept getting asked questions that you need to be awake to answer. Like, "How do you approach a project," and, "Who is your favorite editor and why?" The latter question I couldn't even answer because I couldn't come up with the name of the movie that was playing in my mind much less name its editor. Somehow they put my resume on top but after trying to figure out what, exactly, to do, it just didn't sit right moving to another job at the moment. ...

MP, I forwarded your latest post on to one of the senior news producers at my job. I'm not sure he'll use it, but I'm sure he'll find it interesting. It's an amazing post.

2008-10-27T07:39:00.000-04:00

I've noticed a trend with each subsequent recent visit I've made to Washington, DC. I'm not sure the humor will come across because I don't have much time to write and the scenario may be one of those "you just had to be there" moments.

Way back in July Tom and I visited DC for the 4th Fireworks. One of the stops on our tour was the Library of Congress. We didn't know it until we got there, but, being the 4th of July, the library was closed...bummer. The entryway did provide a good shelter from the rain that was falling, though. So at least we got to see the outside. Back in August I visited BP. I don't remember what we actually did (heck, I don't even remember what I did three weekends ago, but I know I didn't get in to see the LOC. Then, middle last week, I noticed my weekend had completely freed up. So after some emails, Facebooks, phone calls and voicemails, I made my way back up to DC to BP in his new digs.

This time the LOC was actually open, allowing visitors, we entered the building and I stood in the foyer emptying my pockets of all things metal. It was almost as hard getting into this building than an airport. BP was first through the metal detector and had pointed out his pocket knife, the graduation gift from the aunts. It was not allowed in the building and left him with two choices. It would either have to be thrown out or he would have to leave. At some point I walked through the metal detector not noticing that BP had walked back through on his way out deciding it was better not to invoke the wrath of the aunts by stashing the knife or asking a guard to hang on to it.

All of that to say, I can tell you the exterior of the LOC is quite nice. The building is pretty old and kind of impressive. The foyer is quite nice as well and pretty echo-y. Maybe next time we'll actually be able to get in the library room itself, especially since BP and I have decided that he should leave his knife at home and remember to bring his Fed ID.

2008-10-22T19:31:00.000-04:00

I was remarking to myself earlier today how different swimming is from running, the difference between the two workouts. After a run I typically collapse into some mush somewhere thoroughly satisfied that I have just worked out and lay there for the rest of the night. It's a great feeling. When swimming I never really feel like I've worked anything out until I stop. It's then that I realize I'm breathing hard and am having a harder time than normal lifting my arms. The major difference in swimming is the high after the swim. I can't really explain it because it is so unlike running which I am accustomed to. After running you're tired and can't move and have a high. After swimming you are also tired, can move around easier but don't want to because of the high. It's like you can enjoy the high more after swimming because your body isn't beat up from running. I just thought I'd share that especially now since I can do that cool underwater swimming turn in some kind of fashion like the pros.

Anyway...

Fall, I believe, has officially arrived in Hampton Roads. In the course of a week we went from highs in the high 70s to highs in the high 60s and even those highs are dropping a degree or two a day. Although it's kind of sad as another summer is ending and I took my bike out for one of the last rides of the season last night, it's a welcome change from the highs in the 90s with a ton of humidity. We're having bonfire in the backyard kind of weather, which I would definitely be taking advantage of if I had a backyard to take advantage of it in. But aside from the welcome change in weather, Fall means at least one more thing, sooner than later jondale and tomdle will decend on France - literally - and, with MP, will have more fun than humanly possible.

On the agenda is Rennes, Normandy, Paris and the Palace of Versailles (three days in Paris). I cannot express the level of my excitement, nor will I try. Hopefully the pictures will speak for me in that respect.

2008-10-18T19:32:00.000-04:00

This morning I came across a bit of interesting news that deserved some research. It looks as though Mac OSX's Finder - along the lines of the Explorer for all you Windows users out there - will be rewritten in Cocoa as opposed to Carbon, the programming language the Finder has been on for at least as long as OSX has been out. Honestly, I have no idea what this means except to say that if Cocoa speeds up the Finder at all, even approaching the snappiness it had in OS9, I will be upgrading as soon as it becomes compatible with my Post Production apps. Some interesting reads on this are out on the web. This one from Apple Insider has the generic "official" rumored report. Three more I'll link to are from way back in 2001. The Register's report is why OSX's Finder was not made a Cocoa application, a blog post from MacRumors.com taking note of Apple CEO Steve Jobs remarks at a Keynote address regarding the Finder's sluggishness, and, perhaps the most interesting, further discussion on the subject from a seperate The Register article which MacRumors.com linked to in their blog post.

Now to something completely different. Over the course of the last week or past couple of days, I've broken down and decided to get a gym membership to some place that has a pool. Since the area YMCAs are relatively close to work and home I decided on them, until I saw the lap swim schedule which was not friendly to my schedule at all. Bummer. So I landed on the next best thing, a city rec center. Since I no longer live in Virginia Beach I had to pay $100 for a three month membership which is not too shabby seeing as how the Y was going to cost $60 a month. Sucking it up and shelling out some money for a pair of goggles after digging out my board shorts bought across the street from Huntington Beach and packing up the beach towel AD gave me, I made my way to the rec center, gave them their money, and swam for about 25 minutes; my first aerobic exercise in about two months. Top it off with a celebratory BK Whopper and you've got yourself one incredibly happy, possibly the most content, infamous jondale.

2008-10-15T20:23:00.000-04:00

So I was in Subway today. More specifically I was in line at Subway today awaiting my turn to order my usual foot long tuna sub on Italian Herbs and Cheese with Pepperjack Cheese, everything except jalapenos and pepper sauce red stuff, with mustard.

I love that sub.

I am a usual at this particular Subway. One of the employees must love his job as a submarine sub preparer, and there is this little oriental woman, maybe a grandma age, they make the subs just right. It's worth it to go this particular Subway. Anyway, I'm in line behind a guy, giving him his "space" or, at least, what I consider to be "space" which is far more space than normal people give. Then I get poked in the back. An older gentleman walked in the door after me and is almost standing on top of me. He's taller, has on a golf/polo shirt and a pair of sweat pants that are too short.

"You can stand closer, he won't bite you," he says to me, or something like that.

"I like to give people their space," I replied. Following with something to the effect of not liking to stand on top of people.

Now, mind you, this is one situation I have never been in. I hate it when people stand so close to me that they could share their gum but I've never been able to tell some other person just in casual conversation that, no, I'm not going to stand closer to the person ahead of me and have that double as saying you are too close to me could you please back off. He didn't get mad, which was great, because I didn't realize what I actually said until after it left my mouth.

Luckily we had something else to joke about. One of the employees was making subs so fast she could have either entered submarine sandwich making as an Olympic sport or had been hired from MacDonalds and not been told she doesn't have to work at Warp 9.5.

The whole thing just goes to show the kind of entertainment you can have when you get the hankering for a sub, watching a super fast sub maker try and figure out if a person who hardly speaks any english wants another sandwich besides the one she's already making, and the old guy behind you who wants, among some other condiments, exactly five jalapenos on his sub.

2008-10-14T16:32:00.000-04:00

Okay, I thought you all would like to hear of my escapades from the past 30 or so hours. Almost three weeks ago I got my cast off and was told that after two weeks I could buy a pair of Vans and work myself into those, slowly getting out of the air cast. Last Thursday was two weeks. Since I flew home for the weekend on Thursday last week, I decided I would wait to buy a pair of skater sneakers until I got back, which was yesterday. So yesterday for lunch I went to DSW, Sears, Macy's and some other sports shoe store in the mall. I could not find a pair of Vans that were not gangster and decent looking. I thought I was going crazy. After work I went to 17th Street Surf Shop (a surfer/skater store) to no avail, Kohl's had nothing I was interested in, Dick's also had nothing. They didn't even stock Vans. You see, I remember the old school Vans style. It was a simple skater shoe. Nothing about it stood out, no big lettering, no overt design to go with super huge baggy pants. It was a simple skater shoe. No more. Now they are angry shoes, gangster shoes. They have huge lettering or skulls or are just not cool enough to wear. It was frustrating.

After my trip to Dick's I called home and was counseled to get a shoe like what I had in mind, not necessarily Vans. This was about 6:30pm or so. So from Dicks I went back to Sears where I saw a pair of Converse that I liked. They didn't had my size but the sole felt weird on my formerly casted foot. I found another pair that could work except those had a defect in the sole and the store didn't have another pair in the same size. At this point I went home.

Today I went to a different Sears, one about 20 minutes from me. They didn't have my size of my back up choice but did have the size of the one that felt weird.

Sheesh.

My decision was to just chalk the weird feeling in my formerly casted foot up to the fact that it hadn't worn a sneaker since August, wasn't molded anymore to any sort of sneaker and bought the pair of Converse. I have them on right now but will take them off to drive home with. I'm constantly paying attention to what my foot is telling me in case I made a bad choice.

2008-10-13T08:20:00.001-04:00

Well, the weekend is over. Praise the Lord, all of my flights were right around on time. Pictures will be up soon, sometime today maybe. I'll post the link when they're up.

I think the coolest thing to think about is the next time I'll see Tomdle. It'll be in Dulles International Airport on our way to France. Look out MP, trouble is coming your way...better be ready.

=======================================================================================

Update #1: Pictures are up, just go here to see them.

2008-10-12T09:42:00.000-04:00

Once again an all too familiar day like this one has arrived. Later on today I will be at the airport waiting to board a plane that will take me back to where I rest my head these days. I'm not unthankful for such a place, nor do I despise it there, I'm just not ready to go back. I have not come down from the last weeks of life yet and had hoped that a weekend away would help me come down at least ten notches (leaving about 1000 to go). I think I almost came down one notch. Going home before you're ready is like being told to finish your ice cream as fast as possible or you will have to throw it out. There's still ice cream to enjoy, but eating it so fast gives you a wicked brain freeze and almost makes you wish you had either thrown out the remainder or passed up the offer preferring to wait for a time when you could sit down and enjoy the whole thing.

I suppose I can't complain too much. This weekend was all about an eye doctor appointment which went very well and seeing a certain sister do a fantastic job drum majoring GC's football game. The weather was awesome. There will be turkey and stuffing in my bag and an extra bag of freshly picked, in season, upstate New York apples traveling back with me as well. And this trip being over means I'm that much closer to the France Adventures in a month or so and then Christmas where I can hopefully get a whole week to do absolutely nothing save a movie or mall outing filling an hour here or there and then only at need.

2008-10-06T08:16:00.000-04:00

I'll expound more on this later, but I'm throwing this idea in the mix. I would like to form some kind of coalition, something along the lines of the '90s Contract With America. I'm, and I suspect many other people, are fed up with Taxation without Representation and I at least am ready form a redress of grievances, even consider running for office with the intent to do accomplish a list of tasks and then move on. The tasks to accomplish? The platform to run on? Here goes, at least what comes to the top of my head at the moment:

1. Energy Independence, including drilling here, removing old, crazy stupid, nonsensical environment standards and promoting development of new consumer technologies but allowing the market to decide what is best to implement.

2. Securing the boarders and working to remove the inability to put troops on the boarder of Mexico.

3. Deport ALL illegal immigrants.

4. Work for a 10% Flat Income Tax, significantly reduce the size of the IRS, get rid of the Death Tax, Marriage Penalty Tax, Capital Gains and whatever other taxes are the most ridiculous things in the world.

5. Begin to significantly reduce the size of our Welfare State, reallocating those and other monies, particularly those new monies generated from the Flat Tax, toward actively paying off the National Debt and continuing to do so until it is paid off.

2008-10-05T14:32:00.000-04:00

Ah, the weekend. Two whole days to get so much accomplished which usually has nothing to do with anything during the rest of the week. Take today for instance. I am writing this post. How nice of me. I probably won't get to write one again until Thursday night or Friday. And I'll probably take a nap when I get home today. That never happens during the week mostly because I never sit on my couch for more than 15 or 20 minutes, enough time for the body to dictate to my conscious self what it is about to do. And I'm also downloading some programming software. I'm tired of having to go through two menus on my iPod to turn off the Wifi. I want to do that on the home screen so I'm going to try creating a little program to do just that. Yesterday was my recharge day. I'm not sure how well it went. Probably worse than normal because I'm not feeling very alive today at all.

I got tagged by MP the other day. Supposedly I have to write six things about myself that I haven't written on the blog yet? Yeah, sorry MP, that's not happening. There are probably a good amount of people who already know me better than they wished so I'll spare the rest.

Yeah, anyway, some really good stories and situations happened last week. I can't write them all because it would take a very long time and I think my comments section would go on forever. Suffice to say that Monday's work schedule went from 7am to 10:15pm and Thursday's from 7am to 11:15pm. Honestly, I don't mind all those extra hours because most of that overtime will be going to the big November Extravaganza. It does, however, not help things when one tries to do the best job one can do and gets climbed on for the effort. We'll just say that, if certain people had been in charge Thursday night, certain other people would have either been fired or been asked to finish the night and not come back the next day. I'm glad certain people were not in charge. I may make a post about this story when I am more awake.

Wow, this is getting pretty aimless. I think I'll end it here and finish trying to figure out what to write later.

2008-10-02T16:57:00.001-04:00

This post is doing nothing but testing out the ability to post via email. If you're seeing this it means the test was successful.

2008-09-30T19:02:00.000-04:00

If you haven't noticed by now, take a moment and check out the new look of the blog. I decided it really needed a face life especially when I realized RNF was the title of my links section. How long it was there I have no idea but it's fixed now. Nothing against you Ben, just thought I'd be a little less sloppy. Speaking of the links section, there are some additions in there, some family members that were missing, but one in particular I'd like to point out which I found maybe a month ago. The Pixar Blog is an unofficial news and information blog kept up by a Pixar fan. It caught my interest as a huge animation fan and provides links to interviews, interviews and info regarding future Pixar releases and other news as it touches on and/or relates to Pixar itself. I highly recommend it if you're looking for some light easy reading. I believe that takes care of the housework, now on to some funner stuff.

I'm writing this while at the library seated at one of my favorite tables that has a good view of a main isle and a window next to my right shoulder. The entertainment options are endless. I can take a minute to pause and think about what I need to do or write next while watching a little kid be a little kid or gazing out at the rain that just moved through and the glowing super warm yellow sunset that ensued all while listening to music befitting the end of just about any day. It's almost the perfect end to a day that started out by realizing I'm starting to tune out my alarm clocks - yes, plural...I have three alarms. The amount of effort it took to pull yesterday off production wise was absolutely incredible. Combine the long day that wrapped officially at 10:15pm with the ramp up starting to happen in future productions on a normal day and one's mind starts to tire, followed by the body. The good news in this is I don't remember running into anything this morning, but did do a fair share of wandering around and saying hi to people (something I do when the limit is encroached on), and I believe my foot is getting better by the day. I think I can feel it getting stronger. Moving around my apartment without it is getting easier. I must remember to call the doc tomorrow and see if I can swim.

If you can't tell at this point, I'm rambling, which means I need to get back to the apartment, unwind and head to bed. It sounds like such an excellent idea that I think I'll take myself up on it.

2008-09-28T15:04:00.000-04:00

I decided to pull my nose away from the grindstone for a day, pay some bills, finally catch up on reading some of the 'ol blog list, write this post and perhaps catch up on some Scramble games which MD nudged me on earlier in the week. What can I say? It's been busy around here and will continue to be busy for the next couple of weeks. Tomorrow I'll be at work from 7am till 10pm or later...special broadcast. Thursday features some auditions for a Spanish show requiring me stay late followed by the 11pm update due to the debates. If I don't surface for a while, you'll know why.

As I wrote before, I am out of my cast. It came off a day early (Thursday) with much rejoicing and shower taking on my part. The AirCast - which I've dubbed as the "Storm Trooper Boot" - is now a part of my life for the next couple of weeks, turning then into a new pair of Vans. Friday I got my truck back. One of the guys I work with was nice enough to swap my truck for his Ridgeline until I could drive a manual again, which is what my truck is. It's a nice truck but drinks gas like it's going out of style. Yesterday I finally got my computer back. For some reason it took about two thirds of the month of September to replace three fans. I also realized yesterday that the internet signal I used to be able to pirate at my apartment is extremely not so good for pirating anymore. Since I don't want any more bills in my life I'll just complain about it a little and forgo the 20 to 30 dollar per month charge to get cable or dsl service.

There's probably something I'm forgetting...hm. It's slipping out my ear.

2008-09-26T15:07:00.000-04:00

This time yesterday I got my cast off. The x-Rays look good, the doctor is happy. I am happy, too, because I can now take a shower without three garbage bags tied to my leg with two shoelaces from an old pair of running sneakers. An air cast now surrounds my foot and most of my calf, but the cast is removable making better the sleeping and showering experience. For two weeks solid I will be in the air cast after which I'll be able to go out and buy myself a pair of Vans (a stiff soled shoe is what he wants me in and said Vans are acceptable).

This afternoon I must go to Walmart and procure some foot fungal fighting spray (because I can use it now) and something else which has been nagging me that I know I'm forgetting but can't remember what it is.

I'll write more later but at this point must go.

2008-09-23T08:00:00.000-04:00

At the behest of a certain suggestion I'm now writing this post. I didn't realize my last one was ten days ago. Wow.

So there are three days left until I get my cast off. It's kind of a surreal thing at this point. This cast has become a part of my life. It has caused me to take a shower every other day and wake up some nights after crazy dreams one, of which, was about some snake or snakes wrapped around my foot and/or leg. Yeah, that one was weird and probably the only or one of the few times I've woken up with my leg in the air. It's gross, but my foot is starting to stink, to the point where I smell it even when I'm driving. I don't think everyone else smells it (you know, the whole you pay attention to your own smells much more than other people do) but if the cast doesn't come off on Friday I think they will. The funny thing about Friday is that it comes at the end of a dual-studio week. I had to work a little to keep this appointment, not moving it to Monday.

The plan on Friday, as said by the ortho guy at my last appointment, is to go in, take the cast off, get another xray or two or more or however many they want to do, and go into a fashionable orthopedic boot, the kind sports players wear. I don't know how long I'll be in that. I suppose I'll find out.

Ummmmmmmmmm, oh yes, airshow. I worked the Oceana NAS airshow this past Saturday. I was hired to TD it, but ended up directing as well. I can't say it's the best thing I've ever done. Only having three action cameras, none of which have a true 360 degree view on a grey, blustery, low ceiling day is very challenging. But I think the producer was happy with what we got. I made use of my media pass on Sunday, at least the parking pass, and went back to actually watch the show. Pictures can be found here. Had I been more brave I would have seen where my media pass would have allowed me to get into. I found out yesterday I could have hung out by the main announcer stand out in front of the whole crowd about 100 feet or so from the parked Blue Angels. Yeah...instead I had the amazing ability to pick out these weird spots that had less than ideal angles for picture taking. Weird, though, that as many came out as good as they did.

But now I must go and find some Cheese Nips for my stomach is kind of empty.

2008-09-13T11:35:00.000-04:00

So it's Saturday, it's sunny, hot, it's before noon and I'm already dressed, ready for the day and at the library. This is a thing unheard of, to be up and out of the apartment before noon. I even got yesterday's mail before I drove here.

Will wonders never cease?

So anyway, it's pretty much a miracle I survived the past couple of weeks. Two Saturdays ago I slept for 13.5 hours. Last Saturday I slept for 14. Needless to say, the ol' schedule was of the insane kind. Yesterday's paycheck made it worth it, though, as I can now, if I wanted to, pay the early termination fee with Verizon and get an iPhone and ATTs service without dipping into any other budget line. But I'm not going to...not yet anyway.

I'm glad there's less than two weeks left of the cast. I'm having trouble coming up with stuff to do on the weekends. Rented DVDs are okay, especially after insane weeks at work, but they wear off and I start to get very antsy...like right now. I was thinking of going to the Portsmouth water front today, walk around, take some pictures. But I'm rethinking that since I'll have my crutches with me. You don't have to go very far from the Portsmouth water front to be in the bad part of Portsmouth. Plus it is supposed to be in the low 90's today with high humidity. Normally I wouldn't mind that but having a good five pound insulator on my leg and foot makes for weird body temperatures.

So I suppose what'll end up happening is I'll get something to eat soon and let the brain percolate up some good ideas of where to go and what to do. Yeah, that sounds like a good Saturday.

13 days...

2008-09-11T12:59:00.000-04:00

Most likely I'm one of the last people in America to have learned about theonion.com. Since I'm work I won't go into details, but if you're looking for a good read I highly recommend this article, and this one as well.

2008-09-09T09:16:00.002-04:00

I'm getting a kick out of watching events unfold in my life with a broken foot. A week ago my iMac started making a weird noise. I figured it was a fan out of wack, something that would work itself out over a few days. Well, it didn't. After some research into the problem I came across this little tidbit. Turns out that fan rattle is more of an internal design flaw which requires the computer to be brought into an Apple Store for repair. This normally wouldn't be much of an issue, but the iMac box is clunky to carry for someone with two free hands and the iMac itself is around 30lbs. So I'll look around for someone who would like to see the Apple Store tomorrow night, that's right, tomorrow night, to help bring my computer in to be fixed (it would go in today, but there is a highly publicized Apple event releasing updated iPod lines. Apple handles tech support in their stores like doctor visits. It seems that the Apple event has them full up till then). That appointment required a phone call to Apple, which I made this morning.

Every now and then I check the flight itinerary for my flight to France in November. Last week's check revealed my airline had changed my first departure flight. On paper I would still make my connection flight to Paris. In reality, a one hour layover in an international airport two days before Thanksgiving doesn't leave one with the utmost confidence that what looks good on paper will actually happen. This problem also necessitated a phone call, which I also made this morning. It was less painful than I thought. Not only was the lady on the phone extremely nice, she also had no problem with my request to be put on an earlier flight at no cost and was able to get it done. That's good news to me and also to TD who will have some company earlier than expected as he was going to be spending a good chunk of time at the airport by his lonesome ;).

17 days...

2008-09-08T07:30:00.001-04:00

18 days...

2008-09-07T14:32:00.000-04:00

19 days...

2008-09-05T23:16:00.000-04:00

Friday has arrived. I'm glad and happy about that. No it's true, I'm not just saying that.

The two week CastON anniversary was today. I went in for my appointment and found out that I was 20 minutes late. Luckily the doctor hadn't taken off for the weekend yet so I was able to find out that things are progressing nicely but that I won't be losing the cast for another three weeks. You see, when I do things, I don't do them half way. Not only did I do a fantastic job of breaking a Metatarsal, I broke it in a place where it is necessary to keep the cast on for at least five weeks. In the close words of the doctor, "I've been doing this for 25 years and know better than you what you need." A little snide on his part, but I knew the point he was making. At least I can start putting some pressure on it.

So, 21 days from now the cast is scheduled to come off, another x-Ray taken and then I get to wear the boot. Great. I need to find a way to exercise.

And now, being the bachelor that I am, I need to hit Wal-Mart for some supplies.

2008-09-04T21:06:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow I go in for my two-week follow-up x-rays. At this appointment I plan to lobby exchanging the cast for a boot. So here is my question, especially to all you doctor types out there, this was what the break looked like two weeks ago (the 5th MetaTarsal). Am I off my rocker requesting a boot?

2008-09-01T17:14:00.000-04:00

Along the lines of my recent iPhone 3G comments, this is an interesting article from a Mac blog/newsgroup regarding a pay-as-you-go plan being offered for the iPhone 3G in Britain.

I'm curious of the logistics of such a plan and why ATT can't do something like this here in America.

2008-09-01T16:53:00.000-04:00

Oh wow, it's even the red shirt I didn't send AA a picture of!

2008-08-31T18:55:00.000-04:00

Quite the opposite of my last post, I thought I'd shoot out a broken foot update. It'll be two weeks this coming Wednesday since I broke it and two weeks this coming Friday since I've had the cast on. In general I am doing alright. With every passing day I can put more and more weight on it. I still need the crutches and don't worry, I am using them though when needed I can Long John Silver it. There is very little swelling now so I only have to take IBprofin when needed. This coming Friday I go back for a follow-up xray, presumably, to make sure the bone is setting correctly at which point I will lobby for a walking boot.

That's about it. Oh, shout out to Keith and Melinda for letting me use their washer and dryer today.

Oh, have a safe flight and train ride MP! TD and I will definitely be in touch and we'll see you in November!

Now I must be off to clean and run the bike for a little while (Just starting it up. I'm not going to be riding it). I don't want all that work I had done on it to go to waste.

2008-08-28T18:28:00.000-04:00

On a completely unrelated note to pretty much anything I've posted in the past couple years is this thought about Apple Computers' latest gaffs in product marketing, roll-out and implementation. This post on the Unofficial Apple Weblog will catch you up on the 3G Iphone and Mobile Me issues that have been plaguing Apple since their simultaneous roll-out a few months ago. The primary cause I see in the latest Apple craze is a case of Apple biting off more than it can chew. Apple's media machine did a fantastic job of marketing a terrific second generation device with first generation technology while Apple simultaneously launched Mobile Me and migrated its existing .Mac customers to that new home consumer web service. To not expect hiccups in either of those processes is, on Apple's part, short sighted, extremely short sighted. With that said I believe there is also some blame to lay at the feet of the excited masses who bought these new products who don't realize that 3G does not mean cable modem download speeds, that GPS will not work indoors and that first users of a new all-in-one web service can expect unforeseen problems. Calling and writing Apple because they can't fix the problem overnight is, in all honesty, unrealistic. From my 3rd party point of view Apple has done a fantastic job of continuing to work out the bugs though even I am surprised that there were bugs in the first place.

On a remotely related subject, I am glad to hear that Verizon is acquiring Alltel. It hopefully means I'll be able to get a good cell signal in my workplace and that, unless the iPhone problems are resolved, I'll more than likely be able to stick with my cheaper Verizon plan and settle for an iPod Touch that may be GPS enabled.

2008-08-23T21:58:00.000-04:00

Life is funny, it really is. Want to know why? This summer has been very hot, hot even for me which, as some of you know, says something. Daily highs in the mid to upper 90s for a month straight gets old fast. Add the Hampton Roads humidity and one finds themselves doing whatever they can to stay cool which generally means staying inside where the air conditioning is. Last week the temperature seemed to break and now highs are only in the high 80s and low 90s which is still hot, but a huge difference from highs of 97 with 90 percent humidity. My runs were becoming enjoyable again and, after dropping a pretty penny on bike maintenance, I was looking forward to some nice weekend rides. Last weekend I rode around the Great Dismal Swamp, found the airport where people skydive and crashed a birthday party. On Wednesday I broke my foot.

Yes, you read that correctly. No, I am not kidding. I broke my foot.

So this is how funny life is, that the best days of the year are just starting to roll around - when one can count on the days being sunny with comfortable temperatures, great sunsets, no afternoon downpours, cool and rain-free nights, the perfect environments for runs and weekend rides - that I would do something so monumental to myself to miss some of it...it's just funny.

I know everyone is dying to know how I did it so here goes. For a while now I've been running after getting out of work for the day. Wednesday was no different except that I was a bit more tired than normal, but not enough to keep me from going. My route is mainly a two mile circuit around a lake which is a short drive from work. About 1000 feet into my route I noticed a tree root. Since I didn't feel like tripping on it I jumped over it. I would have run around it, but there was a fence on one side and a curb on another. I jump over this root all the time so I didn't bother going down on the street. What I failed to notice was the pinecone my left foot landed on. In my defense, it's one of those big, freak of nature pinecones. The kind that are big but don't break when you step on them. I did my best to save myself from falling down, and normally do when I step in a hidden rut or on something I misjudged. But this time I guess my foot rolled to far and too fast. I heard a pop that I thought was the pinecone but later found out was my 5th Metatarsal and fell completely down. Since I've fallen before I got back up, though this time it took longer, and was planning on continuing after the pain went away. It was a different pain than I've experienced before and would not go away. I actually tried jogging on it, to test it out, see if I could do it, but decided against it. I hobbled back to my truck and went home. Ultimately the truth boils down to me breaking my foot on a pinecone. Since that sounds very lame I decided on a cover story that I could tell before admitting the truth. I like to watch people attempting to figure out what sort of golfing accident one could have which would result in a broken foot.

I do thank God that I didn't break my foot farther into my run. The farthest I get from my truck is perhaps a mile or mile and a quarter. I'm glad I didn't have to hobble that far.

2008-08-10T17:17:00.000-04:00

“So, have you gotten anything figured out?”

“No,” I said. “That's the part that sucks about it.”

I had been sitting with my pad of paper outside for the better part of an hour like I had done for the past week that turned into a month and then another. I wasn't anyone famous and didn't have a grant backing my latest novel, allowing me to take months at a time coming up with some story that would be the marvel of critics everywhere. I was Joe Blow, among the teeming masses of other Joe Blows but in a slightly worse place than they because I wasn't about to write a bad idea and get paid for it. I'd rather spare myself the derision and not write anything until a good idea came to mind. The only problem was, in place of any good ideas, none were coming to mind.

“If only you could see the trash basket in my mind.” I quipped aloud. “It's one of those wireframe ones, the kind that Clark Kent or Louis Lane would have at their desk only it's in a corner accompanied by two very white walls that give no warmth and rests on a floor as unoriginal as any ever attempted to have been described. It's filled and overflowed with every cliché and unoriginal thought ever to be thought up for any story ever known to man."

“Why don't you write about that?”

Why don't I write about that, I thought? Maybe because there are a million reasons why the story would be a hopeless bore, full of convenient conveniences and ridiculous ridiculousness.

I allowed my mind to wander anyway.

The garbage can would be a superhero, quite the superhero, in fact. All superheros have their mild-mannered side, their cover story. His would be quiet and out-of-the-way, like most garbage cans, and people would know his exact whereabouts at all times, because like most people they would constantly make use of his services. His name would be GC, short for Garbage Can. It is a little known fact that garbage cans take their names from used name tags that people stick on the side in jest. They have a natural ability to read any language and learn their name when the trash emptier, normally a custodian, happens to walk by a mirror with the name tag facing outwards. GC has no name because his powers have a sterilizing effects on foreign substances, like sticker name tags. His superpowers would come from the particle accelerator accidentally installed in his wire framing that was intended for some test facility located in France. The particle accelerator would allow him to shift out of phase, allowing him invulnerability and invisibility at will, give him the ability to levitate and propel himself (flying essentially), and allow the discharge of electricity like a teslacoil. GC's alias would be CG because of his appearance when in his “super” state.

Like any superhero, GC has enemies, some lesser, some greater. The comic relief, lesser enemy would be recycled paper. Paper, like everyone knows, is not alive. But during the recycling process, recycled paper takes on certain properties which renders GC completely immobile and unable to activate his powers. This is partly why he does not move at all during the day, for he has been placed in an office setting. The only person to have ever seen GC move is the custodian, a friendly, normal kind of guy that has been labeled strange by the office personnel due to his conspiracy theory that the office supplies are alive. GC was only caught once, but because of that one sighting the custodian has become GC's pseudo sidekick; being sure to empty the contents of the basket whenever possible (the recycled paper especially).

GC's arch nemesis is Mr. Green, head of The Green Movement, whose goal is to make illegal the making of garbage cans and also the rounding up every garbage can on earth, then destroying them by rocketing them into the sun. His reasoning by his own mouth is, “If I can make it so no company and no person can make a garbage can, and get rid of the ones we have already, I will force the whole world to stop throwing stuff out which will make the earth a paradise to live in.”

Devious as Mr. Green's plans for garbage can destruction are, GC foils them easily enough by adventures far and wide. The only time Mr. Green gets further along the path to success is when the custodian can't, or forgets to, empty Recycled Paper from GC's bin or when plans by Mr. Green are put in motion during the workday when GC can't move without his absence getting noticed...he is a fairly good looking garbage can.

I sat there wondering if this was a good idea or something totally stupid. Perhaps I should have wondered if it was a good idea of something stupid. What I ended up doing was throwing the idea I had written down into my garbage can which, from that time on, I called GC.

2008-08-08T14:06:00.000-04:00

One of the engineers wanted to know what was going on that was exciting in my life. After getting back from a standard Dale weekend frenzied getaway there wasn't much to report. My motorcycle is in the shop so seeing some sights around town this weekend is out. I may get (and probably will) extremely antsy and end up taking a trip to a mall with a Gap, go with the intention of buying some clothes (which I'm in terrible need of), but not buy anything. That would make a fairly normal Saturday for me.

Anyway, my "Weekend At Ben's" was fantastic. If you visit, be prepared to get lost at least once. We got lost twice, once looking for the Newseum, and the other looking for the White House. It is harder to find than you'd think (and that's not some underhanded statement). Be ready for non-stop fun at something either you or Ben have never been to before. For us it was a major league soccer game with crazed fans who threw their five dollar cups of beer in the air when our team scored, which reminds me that I still have to do laundry. Third, you will experience amazement at how short your waits for the metro will be. Ben has a particular talent for showing up a few minutes before or just as your desired train shows up. It's kind of like driving with Tom and getting all the green lights. And last but not least, you must forget to bring or neglect to own, a pair of swim trunks for the heated pool. I so would have jumped in had I brought a pair if I owned a pair. Yes, I know I live 30 minutes from the ocean.

I would mention the traffic, but that's just a normal DC thing. My traffic jam came on my drive home. It started before the 95/395/495 split completed and lasted all the way to Woodbridge. Yeah....that was fun.

And as promised, especially for everyone who doesn't have Facebook, here is the Barbershop Trio we had the pleasure of listening to during one of the few 10 minute Metro train waits.

2008-08-05T13:17:00.000-04:00

While I'm thinking about it, here are pictures from my weekend visiting Ben. When I get some brainpower together I'll make an actual post about it along with the video of the barbershop trio we listened to in one of the Metro stations.

2008-08-03T00:12:00.000-04:00

At the time of this writing, the clocks reads 11:54pm. It is Saturday night at Ben's temp apartment. I am typing quietly as he is across the room sleeping in his cool one-bedroom apartment. Outside all is quiet with a little haze and mugginess mixed together and patches of wet ground reminding you of the afternoon DC rain. This is starting to become one of my favorite stretches of time, when all is quiet and somber and you have only the memories of today gone by with the anticipation of tomorrow that comes with a vacation. The only problem is this is a weekend get-away so all the fun must be crammed in to too small a time, and I won't always have someone else offer part of their per-Diem offered to pay for the fun times planned out at the beginning of the day. But fun are had nonetheless and I will only look forward the fun times to be had tomorrow and those coming after this weekend draws to a close.

I have decided that I like the city of Washington, DC. It is a pleasant place to visit at least. There is more to see and do here than most places I know of. But to much of a good thing can be bad for you so living here may be a different story. I've been told that very fact, the living here fact. But I will not allow that debate to rage in my head, at least not now.

For now I am clean and dry and cool in a quiet room late at night. For now, I suppose, that is good enough.

2008-07-23T20:21:00.000-04:00

I love to run. Running is, in fact, one of my favorite things to do. Three times a week I go for a run, six miles plus a little more to be exact, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. I run year round, which really isn't a problem in Virginia. In New York I wouldn't run if the temperature dropped below ten degrees. It is, you see, my way of exercise and stress relief. I hit a stride and disengage, concentrating only on the cadence, the rhythm of my feet on the ground and inhales and exhales of air. During the summer my runs serve another purpose, working on tanning what would otherwise be a very, very white body. So hopefully you can understand what I go through when I can't run, especially on days like today when the rain just won't taper off enough and long enough for me to run my two mile circuit three times.

I know what you're thinking. It's probably something along the lines of, "Just suck it up and get it over with." Trust me, I would, and can probably say I do more often than not. I pay for doppler radar service on my cell phone so I can see where the showers are, partly, for this very reason. Today, though, I preferred not to come back charred from a lightning strike, and I am not die hard enough to run six miles through a semi-southern downpour. I did that once. My sneakers became five pound weights and couldn't see well due to the rain moving my contacts all around my eyes.

It's not like the night has been a total waste. I watched part of a movie, updated some software, prepped a cover letter and am now writing this post for your reading pleasure.

Now the question is what do I do with the rest of the night?

2008-07-06T15:59:00.000-04:00

How can one count the ways to have fun? I vote it is near impossible. There's three volumes of Animaniacs to watch, a Wall-e viewing, Fort Monroe exploring, Monsters Inc, Batman Begins, a cat that goes nuts, shopping for food after a flight that gets in late, a July 4th spent in Washington, DC where you find out that you'll be corralled like cattle under the name of security, spending half an hour looking for your truck in the Metro parking lot hoping you didn't get towed, getting lost three times trying to leave Washington, DC, honking your horn under every bridge on interstate 64 trying to stay awake, playing overpriced miniature golf on two sorely unimaginative courses in the Outer Banks after spending an hour or so on a bridge that takes less than five minutes to cross...

Oh, how can you count the ways? There is just way too much funness that the D brothers had this weekend, so much that I cannot even do one store justice, at least not at the moment. So, to satisfy any curiosity as to what we did and where we went, here are some links to our trips to Fort Monroe and Washington, DC. I'll post a video as well. Babba, this one is for you.

2008-06-27T07:23:00.000-04:00

Progress came much quicker than I originally thought, which is good news. So, all things of comments, questions and critiques are welcome for version 2.5.

2008-06-26T15:44:00.000-04:00

One of the audio guys I work with has a gem of a video sent to him via email every once in a while. This one was worth posting.

2008-06-25T15:29:00.000-04:00

I have been counseled to take more days off. I'm liking the thought of that and even officially have July 4th off now which means there is a good chance, if TD would ever call or write back, that I will be spending the day in DC for the fireworks.

Call me back TD.

Anyway I posted a rougher version of what will become my reel a while back. A closer, more awake, examination of that version revealed some very large and embarrassing gaps that needed tending along with the whole needing to be finished up anyway. So I am aiming to have a version done by Monday, one that will probably be tweaked more but can be farmed out, and will post that by then. Be sure to leave feedback.

2008-06-17T23:19:00.000-04:00

If you're not on the family email then I must apologize. The only two photos I've been in or taken on this trip (actually...been in because I've taken none) are on Facebook or now involved in a caption contest. I was thinking about getting all philosophical or writing something deeper as perhaps I normally think about doing before I head back tomorrow, but I've come to the conclusion that my mind is tired, that there is not enough gumption to get from "A" to "Z" in a thought pattern.

What was I just saying?

Anyway, there's not a whole lot to say. Tomorrow I fly out of Buffalo and head back to HR. My cat will either be extremely ecstatic I am home or maul me for leaving and bar from ever doing so again. Her caretaker stopped by to feed her on Monday and had to close her in my room as my front door was going to be painted on Tuesday. So my cat will have been in my room for the better part of two and a half days. Yeah.

My mind is searching for a way to use my California tickets before the end of the year. I'm not sure exactly when that would be, but I'm working on it. You never do know when I'll show up somewhere. We'll see.

The Memorial DVD will be heading back with me so I can make boku copies in a small amount of time. They'll get mailed out within the week. I always wonder what the TSA folks think when they look in my suitcases heading back to HR. They always have something interesting in them. Tomorrow it'll be the leftover Vanilla Coke, Peanut Butter M&Ms, maybe some peanut butter cookies, the memorial DVDs and blank DVD-Rs with which to make copies and most likely some other such thing or things that I'm forgetting to write here.

Which leads me to tell TD that he should let me and Mom know if he can get off that week in November...it would be nice to know. And to let myself know that I should not forget my DVDs that I brought with me.

Well...now I am rambling and yawning. I guess it is time to go do the last load of laundry, pack, shut the lappy off for the last time while on vaca and go to bed.

*insert clever last line here*

2008-06-13T23:00:00.000-04:00

I think it is rather a good thing I try to stick by my rules of posting. If it weren't so I'd probably wish I hadn't publicly written a good deal of material. Today is as true as ever for I highly doubt I'll ever write here the thoughts and musings running through my head. But having traveled by air today I can say that the ambitious American way is cheating people out of their nickels and dimes more now than ever. The disservice I speak of is the Internet access one must pay for at nearly every airport. I am of the opinion that a service provided for is different than one bought. If I were an airport or airline in these days, I would try to take every chance possible to provide meaningful services free of charge as incentive for using a particular airline or flying from/through/to a particular airport. Apparently, though, the quick, short-term five bucks would rather be earned than long-term repeat business of a couple hundred.

But what would I know? I'm just the lowly consumer.

2008-06-08T15:49:00.000-04:00

I am in the library on a Sunday afternoon trying to escape the 100 degree heat outside and the quiet of my apartment after the AC cycle turns off.

There is a lady about 20 feet away from me relaxed on a chair...talking on her cell phone...in the library. It could be worse. I could be over at Regent pirating the wireless internet there while trying to maintain the resemblance of concentration while the same guy walks in with the same cough and sniffle he's had for the past six months. Of course, I can't really complain. It was from this chair that I made the cell phone call to book my France trip.

I'm wondering if it's time to pack up and do something else, if I've been here long enough. Nothing is changing, nothing is new to speak of. The only change I can see is that of the passing days, months and now years.

Now cell phone lady is becoming too distracting. Time to go back to my book in my apartment.

2008-05-31T16:20:00.000-04:00

Disney, being the entertainment conglomerate it is, cannot blame Caspian's release date on the film's poor ticket sales. This article mentions, among other things, why Caspian was originally pushed back from it's original release date, Christmas of 2007, but fails to mention why Disney never thought twice about sandwiching it between Iron Man and Indiana Jones, both of which are not childrens films but ones which parents will take their kids to.

Of course, if Disney does truly know what it is doing, sandwiching Caspian may have been the best move they could make if focus group screenings gave any evidence as to how it would perform at the box office. The film industry has its name for a purpose. It doesn't make something that doesn't earn money.

2008-05-29T20:34:00.000-04:00

Okay, I'm going to break a rule and make a post about nothing in particular because I feel like wasting some time. So here goes nothing.

On two different occasions this week I came home to notices wedged in my front door. I used to get nervous about such notices, but the cops have never paid me a visit and I've been good about being on time with my rent payment (except that once...only a day late). The notices range from "You're not allowed to have grills because of some law from the state of Virginia" to "You people are putting your trash out way too early and we're going to start charging those who violate the rule." This week's two notices were about a contractor that would be making a house call to my apartment to do some work on the vents in the attic. He was supposed to show up yesterday but didn't. The notice said the work would happen weather permitting and since it poured yesterday morning, the job must have been put off. I figured it was no big deal because the notice said the work might run into today, the next day. So, being the logical person I am, I figured the contractor would show up today. He didn't. How do I know? Easy. There was another notice, the second notice, wedged in my door when I came home today. It stated that, weather permitting, the contractor would be at my apartment tomorrow, Friday, to work on the vents or ventilation or whatever in the attic. Also he might have to return Monday.

Now normally this wouldn't bother me. I can understand that jobs have to be postponed sometimes. But my bathroom needs to be cleaned and I've put it off because I only want to do it once, preferably after a contractor has had his gear all over my bathroom where, coincidentally, the entrance to the attic is. In addition to the inconvenience of postponing the cleaning of my bathroom is my cat. She does not understand the concept of, "Please secure your pets," as she has had to stay in my room for the entire day the past two days I thought the contractor would be in there. Upon letting her out of my room when I come home she goes into this psycho mode of not knowing what to do with herself. She wants to eat, play, be pet and make sure the apartment is still there all at the same time. I do put her food and water and litter box and some toys in there before confining her to solitary, but still, it's rather saddening to have to do that to her.

To be honest, I'm not quite sure what the lesson here is. Maybe it's that if you want to see your cat go berserk, lock it in a room for a day and see what happens.

2008-05-26T18:02:00.000-04:00

Today is Memorial Day. Salute your local sailor or soldier.

So I haven't posted in a while. Everyone is probably mad at me. Believe me, nothing that interesting has been going on to warrant a post except maybe my last trip to Wal-Mart when I needed to by soap and was foiled until I couldn't stand to be delayed any longer by a wife trying to get her husband to help her decide which bodywash to get because she could remember or decide but was directly in front of what I knew I wanted and wouldn't even move out of the way when I got my Dove six pack.

It's pretty pathetic when a trip to Wal-Mart is the best blogging material one can come up with.

Anyway, I've been working on my reel for a position and reasons I won't get into here. It's been a painfully slow process but I should finish up tonight with the entire DVD.

I'm aiming to submit it tomorrow.

So, for your viewing pleasure - if Blogger will let me upload this format - I'm posting a rough version.

2008-05-13T20:42:00.000-04:00

If this post had a title, it would be "Thanksgiving In The Works." It may be six months until Thanksgiving, but for me and our family planning can never start early enough...which I suppose is why I am writing this post. I sent MP a reply email today to her reply of my original email letting her know of where I was thinking would be a good destination. She should reply to me so I can get the ball rolling on my end.

You see, I am thinking of spending Thanksgiving with MP in Paris.

2008-05-12T16:48:00.000-04:00

It's cold outside. And windy. And wet. And grey. If I didn't know any better I'd say Rochester had moved in for a small visit. But I know better. It's just cold and windy and wet and grey. It's the perfect night for a fire in the fireplace with a cup of hot chocolate, a good book or a movie save that I'm stir crazy from lack of movement this past weekend.

Stupid stir craziness.

I thought I'd post now since I probably won't get a chance for the rest of the week. Tonight is my only night off. Tomorrow night will be another edition of election updates. Wednesday on should be slightly more fun with setup, practices and the actual production of the Virginia Symphony at Regent which I get to TD. I am looking forward to the symphony. It should be a quality production. I'll be sure to save room for the peanut butter M&Ms I'll need to keep me going through the night...along with the stir craziness of sitting.

Somewhere I hear someone saying the sun will come up tomorrow, the silver lining will show itself. I thank them for that, or Annie, wherever she is now. But for now this day is cold and windy and wet and grey and I must at least make the attempt at being responsible by seeing the rest of it through.

2008-05-06T21:31:00.000-04:00

So here I am. It's 9:18pm. I'm in the control room hawking internet on one of the producer computers waiting for 11pm when we have our special Election 2008 news update concerning North Carolina and Indiana. Babba, CP, MP, BP, I expect you have all participated in Operation Chaos.

My coworker just informed me of a 500Gig hard drive on NewEgg for $80. I might be dropping some money.

Last night I continued working on my reel. I then stopped to go for a run before all the bugs came out, then I watched Deal or No Deal and House, then I continued my reel until 11:30pm when I decided that I should go to bed because otherwise I'd be up till 3 or 4am which would not be good seeing as how I go to work at 7am. Needless to say my reel is going slow. I've also decided that a good deal of my reel footage is aged. I need to get on some more projects.

Hmm.

Oo, drive enclosure for $30.

Anyway, I guess it's time to return to making fun of the Hillary campaign in the tape room. Every once in a while they start up with some mindless chant or slogan or get excited about the lighting guy stepping up to the podium to check his setup.

2008-04-22T15:25:00.000-04:00

As a child I used to sit and wait for my uncle to come and take me to the movies. I don't know if I quite remember doing this, the picture in my mind may have come from the number of people telling me I used to do this. How weird to think that was at least 20 years ago. We lived in the city, in a neighborhood that was safe but now is probably not. Since then we moved to the suburbs, I graduated from community college, Bible college, moved south, graduated University and am now out on my own. Much has happened since those years past. Today, 20 years later, it was my responsibility to drive my uncle around town as he flew in on important business. Who would have ever thought that would happen? Not I. I never thought I would be in the position I am in now, a position of learning how to live life. Sure, I've learned the knowledge, heard some of the "this is what you do in this situation"s, but never had to navigate on my own, never walk through it by myself, never have a vehicle break with no backup and no knowledge of where my ride to work will come from, never wait for a doctor's word or diagnosis before canceling a vacation to visit someone else and certainly never watch loved ones say what could be their final goodbyes to their dearly loved mother.

Some people try to get through life. Some try and navigate it and maybe even succeed. But there are people who know how to walk through life, those whom, by trial and error or advice or an amazing gift of wisdom walk through life with a strength that astounds me. It is the latter I love to watch, love to glean from, learn from in all situations they walk through. They have learned which tools are useful in life, which ones can or need to be thrown away. They have learned how to make decisions, they have learned sound doctrine. After 20 years of growing up I am finding myself starting to grow up, facing and walking through challenges on my own that I could not have navigated on my own 10 years ago, even helping others face and walk through challenges that are large in their eyes. Driving my uncle around today, helping him where I could, does nothing but reinforce the idea that the mantle will someday pass from the current generation. The responsibility they carry will no longer rest on their shoulders, but on the shoulders of those of us who come after them. It makes me wonder if we'll really be ready.

I'm not quite sure if people think about these things. They should, though, because it's important. Who will take the reigns when they need to be passed on? Who will have the maturity, wisdom, knowledge and understanding when the baton is passed? It's a question that has been on my mind for a while, answered by a foreboding stillness. It is frightening to think that a generation could be coming with no one able to take the lead.

2008-04-22T14:50:00.000-04:00

He parked and walked in. He was a little early, but more or less on time, which was fine with him because the business at hand was joyous yet serious. He soon found the waiting area and a place to put his feet up. There would be no problem finding the traveler from this view.

The next half hour dragged on. Some construction workers were tearing out old duct work, the security guard would move her station as they requested, some other patient waiters gathering, watching for there particular traveler while observing the construction and the security guard's dance. One by one, though, the audience thinned out. A traveler emerged, embraced whoever was waiting for them, and disappeared down the stairs out of sight, out of mind, out of existence. Only he was left, waiting, wondering. Funny how things hadn't changed much in 20 years.

2008-04-04T16:21:00.000-04:00

Today I:

Woke up early, went to work early, shot the show at a remote location, stood around for the show and tell, changed the control room to SD for Friday afternoon show number one, reset the control room to HD for Friday afternoon show number two, took a hint, decided to be done with the week, came to the library to write something which turned into what you are now reading.

This weekend I:

Wish I could get of Dodge, plan to get a project done and ready to be mailed, need to find something other than that to do.

2008-03-29T16:27:00.000-04:00

It's the weekend, Saturday to be specific. The original Star Trek series that Fox usually airs today was pre-empted by Family Guy, one of the all time worst shows ever and so my day is completely thrown off. I'd spend an hour watching Star Trek, then another featuring Star Gate. Call me a geek, call me what you like, but there's nothing like good science fiction to help one recoup from the week. You're probably sitting there wondering, "How bad could his have been?" And you're right. It isn't like I'm unloading UPS trucks anymore. But I spent most of the week shoe-stringing shows together as my employer moved to High Def with a brand new graphics package. Our afternoon news show was half an hour away from not broadcasting on Tuesday. Friday featured a show that needed to be recorded in regular TV standard along with the old graphics package, then back to high def with the new package for the next show.

Needless to say it is tired where I am today and not having my sci-fi shows to disengage with is having a bad effect.

If anyone needs me I'll be wandering the silent halls of my mind.

2008-03-20T21:01:00.000-04:00

Today is Thursday. Tomorrow is Friday. It has felt like Friday since yesterday which, as you may have guessed, was Wednesday. I had to keep reminding myself that yesterday was, in fact, Wednesday and not Friday. There aren't any plans for the weekend yet, aside from maybe taking in a showing of "Horton Hears a Who" - which I hadn't planned on seeing but the previews are intriguing enough to go see it - and playing guitar in church on Sunday and then going over to a coworker's house for his Easter activities. Gosh, forget everything about not having plans. My weekend looks pretty dang good

Anyway, if anyone cares I'm loving my new compy. It is cooking right along. I finally brought myself to buy a mouse pad yesterday (even mice pads are going up in price) so my arrow shouldn't randomly jump to a corner of the screen that activates the monitor sleep mode anymore...which is good. That was annoying. And I've been contemplating getting internet at the apartment seeing has how it isn't easy to cart 25 or 30 pound computer to work to do updates and make cool webpages on the internet to show what I'm working on. I find that all my contemplating, the reasons for and against, cancel each other out. Kind of like when Superman battled the evil version of himself except that neither side of my reasoning trumps the other and so both sides die.

"Death is all around us!"

So now it is 8:59pm and I should be going home. Tomorrow I have a half day and am really wondering what to do with the other half. I am taking suggestions, all of which are welcome. If I take anyone up on their suggestion they will receive in the mail a small tupperware full of sand.

2008-03-14T14:57:00.000-04:00

Somewhere in this crazy world is a time called 4 o'clock. It's both a magic time that releases me into the wilds of the weekend and fills me with terror at it's coming since I have no idea what I'll do to fill that void. Will I see a movie? Will I watch cartoons and Stargate Saturday morning and afternoon, or will I read a book and practice my guitar or clean (which I will be doing some of this weekend).

Today's magic hour can't come fast enough. The sun is out for another three hours, the temperature is warm and I might go for a walk on the boardwalk even if gas around 3.10 a gallon. Perhaps I will walk down to the bridge and hopefully watch some boats go by. Maybe I'll take a trip around the outskirts and find some hidden road somewhere with scenery that makes the trip worth it until the sun goes to bed and the chill of night sets in. I never do know what exactly I will do after 4 o'clock. This much I do know, today at least, it can't come soon enough.

2008-03-13T20:25:00.000-04:00

I've been installing software on my computer for around three hours now.

...I should have brought a book.

2008-03-10T19:45:00.000-04:00

I really don't have anything important to say at the moment. There was one thing I wanted to write about the other day (but blogger wouldn't let me log in) so you'll here it now...which doesn't make it any more impressive because it wasn't impressive to begin with.

The other month one of my co-workers found some kind of stamp on a dollar bill, at least I think it was a dollar bill. The stamp directed the bill's current owner to a website where he or she could enter the bill's ID number and find out where it has been in it's lifetime. I know I know, amazing. Anyway, I came into possession of such a stamped dollar last week, enter the ID number and found that, since released into circulation in 2006, my dollar has been to Jessup, MD, Columbia, MD, Essex, MD and finally to me in the Hampton Roads area. Simply amazing. I hope this service is not provided by my tax dollars because, fun though it may, it does not warrant the spending of tax dollars.

So anyway, I went to the beach today. I do not think I've ever seen the parking lot as empty as it was. See for yourself:

And this is part of my shadow on the beach. Regardless of how warm it looks, which is a relative term as I sent a video I took to mom who has more than a foot of snow on the ground, it was cold. I left shortly after.

2008-03-01T16:42:00.000-05:00

Dark the room should have been. Instead it was brighter, like the lights in so many 4th grade classrooms after being turned on following a film in the early summer months. Screens flickered of controlled animation, people trying to achieve some goal whatever that might be. I did not care. We did not care. We were not there for that.

Plugged in the machine came to a less than noisy, louder than quiet life. The devices levitated, floating to one side of the table, along with the game's lone projectile. The machine was not perfectly level, but it would serve the purpose. A claimed title was being challenged.

The ensuing match was one of which song would be sung years to come. Full of drama, sorrow, cheers, frustrations. If any had been watching for more than a moment, they would have realized the importance of the game. But they did not, and no song was written. Back and forth, back and forth the game went. Leads exchanged hands time and time again. Who would be victorious? The challenger, or defending champion? Firing back and forth the projectile found it's target many times and when the dust settled, the defending champion had lost her title. It had been claimed, in appropriate form, by another.

The challenger, however, was not a poor sport and since the defending champion had displayed courage by playing the game in a less comfortable position, he decided to swap sides and give his opponent a fighting chance. The second game was akin to the first, fast and furious. The outcome was different, though. The champ had come out on top and both parties agreed a tie-breaker must be played.

The tie-breaker was less akin to the first game. Slower by a pace, perhaps, but faster at the same time like the tortoise beating the hare by use of roller blades. Straight shots and banks, firing back and forth. More dust, more cheering, more and more, faster and faster, pausing for a moment, starting again. The clamor rose and fell and rose again and at the end the upset had been pulled off. The challenger had fairly won the title, "Air Hockey King."

2008-02-21T17:48:00.000-05:00

The weather is cold in Virginia today, cold being a relative term. It isn't the drier, colder upstate NY cold. Nor is it the warmer, first winter cold which blankets all things exposed with a sticky, serene layer of snow. No, this cold is a wet cold which makes the outdoors seem much colder than it really is yet doesn't drop a flake of precipitation. It is a torture-some kind of cold. One that lets you know things could be much colder than it is but doesn't give you any of the benefits of what should be happening at the real temperature. In Narnia it would be winter without Christmas. It's winter without the perks, like watered-down hot chocolate in front of a fire that gives no heat.

Not to fret, though. Soon enough winter will be over and before you know it I'll be writing about how humid it is and measuring the days in sweaty gym socks.

Babba's twin arrives for a good visit in a few days which I really looking forward to. Fun times should be had by all. I hit a good portion of the red lights on the way to the library today. But I suppose that's not all too surprising for some of these readers. I'm thinking of getting an 8mm film camera since they are so cheap and stock, developing and transfers aren't outrageous. What can I say? I like being able to get that look. And I've begun to dive deeper into the world that is After Effects. I've got the time to, and animation is something I've been wanting to try for a while.

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