Found In the Woods

Can someone please tell me what the heck this stupid thing is? I’ve seen this hippie monster creature thing on all these stupid spam/ads for LowerMyBills.com. What a bunch of asshats.

Hope everyone has had a great Christmas. I know I did. My new toy. Bouncing back and forth between in-laws and parents for the last week has left me with a lingering cold and generous amounts of fatigue. Our house looks like Santa asploded a bomb in our living room. But it’s great – nothing comes close to the joy the season brings on so many fronts. Spending time with famly & old friends, giving & receiving gifts, copious amounts of incredible food and great photos to remember it all by.

Kristin and I are in the early stages of soliciting bids to have our Kitchen and upstairs Bathroom remodeled. So far we’ve had some positive leads and are working on a few more. I am thrilled at the thought of having a new kitchen and bathroom. Call me a nerd, but it just gets me going.

I have to make some comments here on Comcast. In general, I’m not a big fan of big business. Especially the cable companies. The last several months our high-speed internet service has been spotty. Some days it’ll go out for minutes/hours and other days it will be out all day long. Very strange. I finally bucked up and called the customer service line, which I’d feared for so long. (I hate talking to inexperienced, mostly foreign tech support folks. It drives me nuts) This was a different experience. The folks I spoke with were knowledgable and friendly and to the point. At first they diagnosed some issues with our line, then a technician came to check it out. Not only did he figure the problem was on the line pole (the signal was fluxuating quite a bit) but he installed a nice splitter and line filter on my line for free. Then when things didn’t change after a few days, I called tech support once more and in about 10 minutes I was up and running again. So far no hiccups… let’s keep our fingers crossed. Thanks Comcast. (I can’t believe I just said that)

We just got a Canon 20D Digital SLR camera at work. Man, this thing is so sweet.

My beloved Steelcase office chair, nicknamed Luscious Jackass (after a mashup of some freebee stickers I got in College), has died. A couple weeks ago a tension bar in the recline mechanism cracked and broke. Today, the bar that keeps the chair from tipping wayyyyyyyyyyy back gave way too. I offer the following effigy:

Luscious Jackass, Jun 1963 – Nov 2005

Oh, Luscious Jackass, how thee will be missed. All the wonderful years of support you provided… those sleepless nights, frantic days and lazy afternoons. You saw it all. I rescued you from the back of a University of Delaware pickup truck collecting old, decrepid office furniture. Among all the others in the heap, you caughty my eye. With your beefy frame and dazzling blue vinyl upholstery, I just had to have you. It didn’t matter to me that you were an older woman; your Jun 1963 build date stamped so neatly on the base in yellow paint only made me love you more. For nine years you’ve been there with me. Through loves and loves lost, good times and bad, sorrow and joy, you’ve always supported me. I guess my 290 lbs of grade A American laziness was just too much for you to bear. There will never be another like you, Luscious. Godspeed my dear, godspeed. You will never be forgotten.

Some days I feel the weight of the world bearing down on my chest. An intense fear and a deep sadness when I look deeply into the suffering of a child, whether from war wounds, disfigurement or otherwise. It’s a hopeless, empty fear. I feel helpless and so frustrated and sad. I just finished watching most of “Aftermath: The Remnants of War”. It was possibly the most moving piece of work I’ve seen all year on television.

http://www.aftermathpictures.com

It’s a disgusting, horrifying chain of events in history that leads me into this dark, deep hole. Seeing it laid out on the screen in front of me, I feel weak. Tonight I lay on my sofa and watch the documentary focusing on “wars that never end”. A presentation of the deadly leftovers of wars in modern memory and the physical legacy they’ve left behind. Shells across France. Bones and munitions in Russia. Agent Orange and Dioxins in Vietnam. Mines in Bosnia.

All of this is a world and an age away. None of this comes close to home… except the pain in the realization of the grand scale of horror this brings to millions of fellow humans in these areas around the world. We live in a very, very fragile time.

Perhaps the most vivid image for me was that of the suffering children in Vietnam. Maybe it’s because since becoming a Dad, issues dealing with the suffering of children are amplified so greatly, striking deep at my heart. Most of the Vietnam war there is a blur to me. Broken memories of news items, various documentaries and photo collections and of course all of Hollywood’s takes on the subject spatter my mind and memory.

Most of it is a real or fairly decent representation, but so much more goes untold. The massive scale of the deployment of Agent Orange in Vietnam is mind boggling. This poison/herbicide is not to be taken lightly. It lasts ages and damages greatly. It is linked to hundreds of thousands of birth defect cases and poisoning in areas where it was used in Vietnam, yet the U.S. Government doesn’t want to pay reparations. The Canadian biologist said it best “there is a general saying, he who pollutes is expected to clean up after himself. That hasn’t happened here.” How shameful.

I don’t know what to do with this. I feel torn. The frustration and sadness builds not just from the outward facts here, but the chain of events which lead to the unfolding and the absolute horrors of war. I’ve said it here before; freedom isn’t free. It’s an eternal human paradox – there is no peace without war. And it continues today while thousands and thousands of men and women fight in battles raging around the world. Maybe it will come close to home some day. Maybe they’ll make a documentary about my corner of the world. Maybe some day humans will take the God given gifts of reason, love, logic and wisdom and use them for the greater good. Maybe some day pigs will fly.

For some of you old timers to my site, you might recall a few months ago when I was shopping for some in-ear headphones. Well, I finally decided on the Etymotic Research ER-6i . I must say, I love these things. My first impression was less than spectacular. When I put them in, they seemed very "tinny" and the sound wasn't really that impressive. Still, the form factor was great and the noise reduction was second to none – heck, they're practically ear plugs. After a few weeks, the sound got much better. I have heard that some pro Etymotic Research headphones need to be "broken in". I'm not sure if these qualify, but the sound quality was much improved after a few months of listening. Now, the bass is signifigant and the sound is so lush. I think one key element of these phones is the fact that they are basically earplugs and thus the ambient noise is eliminated naturally. If you want some nice headphones and can scrape up the $120, go for the ER-6i. You'll hear things in your music that you never heard before and you will find new levels of relaxation along the way.

After a long hiatus I finally got around to working on my model railroad. First step is installing a helix which will allow the train to get from level 1 at 36″ off the floor to level 2 at around 57″. It’s constructed of plywood and 1×4’s mainly. Have a look-see over at my Georgetown Branch page.

Dr. Evil tells us about Pi. How do you like this URL?

http://3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592.com

My friend Randy and I were reminiscing about great quotes from various David Lynch movies. Being fans of both DL and the show LOST on ABC, we wondered what it would be like if DL was a writer for the show…

LOST as interpreted by David Lynch
• One Eyed Jack’s would be inside the Hatch
• The Others would be from the Black Lodge
• Charlie says to Claire: “Baby wants to *uck Mommy!”
• Kate says to Sawer: “Heinekin?! *uck that *hit! PABST BLUE RIBBON!”
• Jack to Locke: “You’re where right now?”
  Locke: “At your house.”
  Jack: “That’s *ucking crazy man!”
  Locke: “Call me. Dial your number. Go ahead.”
• Boone to Locke: “What do you need that grabber for, Locke?”
  Locke: “Grabbin’.”
• Rose to Hurley: “You havin’ a party?”
  Hurley: “No. It’s for Jack… I don’t like Braunschwieger.”
• Shannon to Sayid: “You know why I’m so happy today?”
  Sayid: “Because your skin’s so soft and you smell so good?”
  Shannon: “No… because today I know that I really, really love you.”
• Jack to Desmond: “You know, Desmond, I figure this whole office, furniture included, is worth twenty-seven thousand dollars.”
• Locke to Charlie: “CHARLIE, YOU REMIND ME TODAY OF A SMALL MEXICAN CHI-WOW-WOW.”

Thanks Randy!

I have come to realize that I am just one big sucker. Some get it, some don’t. I don’t. I’m a sucker. Maybe it’s just that I suck. Yeah, that’s it. I suck. Where did it all go wrong?