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Ohlone Greenway

First day back at work after the move. Miraculously, I was able to keep my bicycle commute (had been prepared to sacrifice that if necessary to become a home owner). It’s 50% longer than before, but the beauty part is, 80% of the ride is now totally off city streets. The Ohlone Greenway cuts north/south through Berkeley/Albany/El Cerrito, several miles of quiet asphalt amidst trees, along a creek, through grasslands, beneath the BART tracks. Not only is it an even better way to start the day, but Amy is happy knowing I’m safer on dedicated trails rather than battling for space with cell-phone drones in rolling caves.

Music: Mildred Bailey :: Someday Sweethart
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14,600

Speakeasy’s max allowable distance from the C.O. is 15,000 feet. Our new house is 14,600. Line speed drops with distance, so we’re on the outer limit for acceptable DSL service. Jacked in yesterday (no phone jack in new office, ethernet across the kitchen floor for now) and was pleasantly surprised – very snappy and we might have gotten lucky. Still need to do careful upstream testing — if too slow, will have to rethink birdhouse hosting. Three possibilities to solve: home T1, put server in colo, drop the business altogether. There had to be a gremlin in the bush.

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Dust Bunnies, Clean Slate

Saturday a huge effort — half a dozen friends helped us load and unload a 14′ truck twice and a half. Everyone sore and exhausted and totally satisfied by end of day, wrapped up with beer and a big Thai feast — El Cerrito has a bunch of great Thai restaurants. Head cold deepening and worsening, worked right through it, no choice. Sunday Amy and I back to Raymond St. alone to clean up – three hours of excavating dust bunnies and Murphy’s-ing the floors. Kind of a drag to be working on the old house when all you want is to assemble the new one, but in the end it felt really good — pardon the cliche’, but “closure” felt whole. Ready to move on. Head cold turned into chest cold. Hacking chest and it hurts, but Monday spent bootstrapping the house, bringing up systems, putting the kitchen together, etc. Clean slate. And the million hidden expenses begin.

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Hackett, Peck

Me: Did you know Buddy Hackett died yesterday? I read in his obituary that he was born “Buddy Hacker.”

Wife: When I was a girl my dream husband was Gregory Peck.

Me: I’ll try to fulfill your ideals and be more Gregory Peck-like.

Wife: Not just Gregory Peck. Gregory Peck as Addicus Finch in “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

No problem, baby.

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Mass Distraction

Stirring piece at The Email Activist summarizing the story thus far re: absence of WMDs in Iraq, and the total public apathy about it. We bombed the hell out of a country and were wrong about the reasons why we did it. And no one seems to care. This is serious stuff, but you’d think from watching the news that Lacie Petersen was more important/interesting than 3,000 dead innocent Iraqis.

The piece goes on to connect our collective apathy to right-wing media control. A recent CNN piece on the absence of WMDs stepped through a long list of reasons why we haven’t found a smoking gun, but did not even mention the possiblity that there were no WMDS to begin with. Feed the public a steady diet of subtle manipulation and this is what you get:

A recent CNN-USA Today poll revealed that nearly 80% of Americans believe that the war was justified even in the absence of WMDs.

Sums up with an interesting example/argument showing why claims that the media is left-manipulated are false:

The Radical Right has been railing for over a decade against the biases of the “liberal media.”  But if they truly believed their own claims, then shouldn’t they be protesting with us against the loosening of media ownership regulations?  Shouldn’t they be shaking in their jackboots at the prospect of a monopolized liberal media?  Ah…but on this subject all is silent from the bad boys of talk radio and trash TV.  They seem to know the truth about who pays them and why.

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The Turgid Miasma of Existence

Walking with Miles in the stroller last night, came across a box of free LPs on the sidewalk, one of which was The Celibate Rifles’ “The Turgid Miasma of Existence” — one of the great album titles of all time. Turntable is packed so haven’t yet listened, but sure came in handy for swooping a hornet out of the house this morning.

Music: Palace Brothers :: I Am A Cinematographer
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Heat Wave

Because life is rich, the hottest days of the year mount as we prepare to move. Just want to flop over sack out, but must keep packing. The bummer part is that the heat wave really kicked in as I applied the final layer of acrylic to the floors. The idea is to let it pool up, then let gravity work out the irregularities and bubbles as it dries. But in the heat, it dries faster, i.e. with imperfections. Not terrible, just not the icing on the cake I was hoping for. Tomorrow expected to challenge Oakland’s all-time record of 103 degrees.

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Smart Quotes

Historically, students send their resumes to the jschool. Assistants key them into Quark for a publication called the “facebook.” Then other assistants copy resumes out of Quark and into Dreamweaver, format them manually, and post to the web. Time and energy wasted in every direction. I’ve been building a web-based database that lets students input their own resumes. The database will then feed both Quark and the student resumes portion of the site. Because a lot of this will be pasting out of MS Word, had to deal with the smart/curly quotes problem.

Took a while to figure out that the quotes were represented by HTML entities #8220; and #8221. “Smart” dashes were 8211. The final solution looked like this:

$foo = str_replace(“&#8220”, “\””, $bar);

Repeat for right quote and smart dash, for each affected variable. Also set up browser-based image uploading, so students can upload their own faces.

Music: Ozric Tentacles :: Mysticum Arabicola
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Team America

Matt and Trey Stone of South Park etc. are creating a new movie called Team America, this time using marionettes as actors rather than cardboard cutouts. A nod of respect to Thunderbirds Are Go! A $20 million nod.

“Our cast will be deliberately made of wood, but that will only be taking to the extreme what is evident in many Hollywood movies right now,” Variety quoted Matt Stone as saying about the movie.

Thanks Sean.

Music: Pere Ubu :: Perfume
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Life Is Normal

Up at crack of dawn to apply acrylic to floors this morning and tomorrow, and after work as well. All told there will be three thin and three thick coats. On way back home this morning, car started to sputter and choke, running on three cylinders. Mechanic can’t take it till tomorrow. Amy tried to rent a car, they brought it over, but it wouldn’t accomodate the baby seat. Borrowed neighbor’s car instead. Will and Sage blow back into town and as quickly back out. Marina had her twins today – Abigail and Claire — not sure yet whether they’re identical. We reserved a moving truck three weeks ago for this Saturday’s move. Today called to confirm it and they had had no record (despite our confirmation #). More digging, turns out the central office at Budget has promised the same truck to seven people, but doesn’t even know where the truck is — they have to call everyone and tell them their weekend moves are flummoxed. Found another truck locally, just in time. Amy and I both have caught Miles’ head cold – he’s a regular snot factory the last three days. And his front teeth are coming in, so he’s double whammied. Preparing to move birdhouse hosting to a temporary network during the move (expect some downtime Thursday night). Got the news yesterday that in addition to the crack house up the street that’s been making neighborhood life crummy the past few months, we now have actual machine gun violence a few blocks away — getting out just in the nick of time. Read today that according to the EPA, 40% of the nation’s waterways are unfit for fishing, swimming, etc. G5s are out.

     

Floors after three days of sanding, then after a couple coats of clear acrylic. Wish I had taken a “before” shot.

Music: The Ethiopians :: Gun Man