Bridal Veil Falls

Another test -- this time I'm trying Flickr's ability to blog photos via e-mail. And yet another image from out west this summer, this time of Bridal Veil Falls in Oregon.

Crater Lake

Crater Lake
Originally uploaded by D-.

I just set up an account with flickr, which I'm hoping will make it a lot easier to quickly post photos to this blog. As a test, you should be seeing a photo I took at Crater Lake over the summer.

Back from a tiring yet awesome weekend trip to DC. Will try to post more later, but now must sleep.

24 hours I would rather forget

It started yesterday morning. I got up late and had a slightly lazy morning at home owing to the fact that I knew I'd be stuck at work dealing with elections until early the next morning.

One of my shamefully-bourgeous habits hiring a cleaning service to come in and remove the top layer of crud once every two weeks. (I started this last year, and it has definitely improved my bachelor pad standard of living.) The normal arrangement is that they are supposed to come Tuesday afternoons. Only their definition of afternoon keeps creeping earlier and earlier. Yesterday it creeped to 11:30 AM, a time when I was happily ensconced in the shower with the bathroom door wide open. I knew they had arrived because I heard people walking around the house. When they realized I was in the shower, they were apparently too flustered to turn off the burglar alarm. So the atmosphere of confusion was enhanced by a loud siren started emanating from the roof of my house.

I staggered out of the shower in a towel, shut off the alarm, and made peace with the assembled masses.

Believe it or not, the day got worse after that.

I finished dressing and cleared out of the house, only to discover (of course) that my truck wouldn't even begin to turn over. It just made a sickly clicking sound when I turned the key. So I bugged one of the cleaning folks to give me a jump start, and things were looking up until I got about a block away and the car died again. Admitting defeat, I called Triple-A, who said they would send someone within an hour to tow it.

They told me that they could call me when the driver was 25 minutes out, so I decided to take a chance. The most important thing I had to do yesterday was vote. So I abandoned my car and hoofed it from my house to the polling place. (I know, I should have voted early. I've already heard that one.)

After waiting in a short line, I was signing my name on the voter roll when my phone rang. The AAA dude said that the tow truck was on its way. So I boogied into the booth, pressed the button for Kerry, and skeedaddled. But as I was walking out the door, AAA dude called back to say that he had screwed up, and that the tow truck was actually already waiting at my car. Ack! So I double-timed it back down to my house, luckily making it before the tow truck driver got fed up and left.

Next was the ride over to CarMax, all the way listening to the tow truck driver tell me how much better his personal truck was than the borrowed truck he was using.

After dropping off the car, I waited around until a friend from work picked me up, and then worked until sometime in the neighborhood of 3:00 AM. (Typical election night in the newsroom: bad food and stressed people yelling a lot.)

Finally went to bed around 5:00 AM, at which point there was still hope that the mysterious provisional ballots in Ohio might yet salvage the Kerry campaign. By the time I woke up at 11:00, the illusion had worn off, and Kerry had called Bush to concede.

So I sit here now digesting the fact that I live in a country full of people who think the Iraq war has been a success, that the economy is just dandy, thankyouverymuch, and that the most important public policy issue for the new millenium is making sure that Steve and Roy can't marry.

Furthermore, the mechanic just called. We've now broken the $500 mark.

Today I am 29 years old.

Like a swarm of locusts with a sweet tooth

Last year I only got a few Trick-or-Treaters, so I wasn't expecting all that many this year. Even so, I loaded my trusty tin bucket 3/4 full of candy just in case.

But for some reason, this year is different and I'm getting hoardes of kids. 2/3 of the candy is already gone, and it's only 7:00! I have this bad feeling that I might run out before the night is through.

Furthermore, the annoying yappy dog next door just wouldn't shut up. Whenever he's left outside after dark (which unfortunately happens with great frequency) he barks pretty steadily. But tonight with the masses of costumed critters around the 'hood, it was especially bad. Furthermore, my usual trick of drowning it out with headphones or the TV wouldn't work, because I needed to listen for Trick-or-Treaters. So after about an hour and a half of continuous barking, I finally got fed up, called the neighbors, and asked if they could PLEASE put the dog inside. I feel like Scrooge McNeighbor, but at least I can finally hear myself think!

"How far down the rabbit hole do you want to go?"

It's appropriate that the title of What the #$*! Do We Know!? (AKA 'What the bleep do we know?') is a question, because the film is more about stirring up a tasty goulash of provocative questions than it is about providing any sort of concrete answers. It has been criticized by a number of scientific and religious authorities. And it is one of the few times I can remember a movie audience applauding during the closing credits.

I went to see this movie last night simply because I saw the title on Fandango, clicked through to a description, and decided it sounded interesting. I had no agenda going in. Coming out, I'm not sure. I can say for sure that it's been quite a while since a movie made me think this much.

The film is an effort to relate quantum physics, spiritual mysticism and elements of post-modern thought into a coherent worldview that rejects the idea of objective reality and instead emphasizes the power of thought to influence reality. All this is done through a narrative storyline featuring Marlee Matlin as a neurotic photographer in Portland, Oregon, a bunch of truly phenomenal computer graphics, and a series of talking heads -- everyone from physics professors to "Ramtha," a 35,000 year old prophet allegedly being channeled by a psychic.

In clicking around the Web, I've seen it described as "The Matrix without the robots and computers." I've seen it described as a promotional flick for a new-age cult. I've seen it described as pseudoscientific bunk. In this public radio program, the director shrugs off criticism. He was trying to make people ask questions, he says. That people have a strong reaction to it shows that it worked. The show also features a skeptic of the film and a physicist interviewed in the film, and the two go several rounds about whether the scientific claims hold up. One of the folks on this show said something along the lines of "skepticism is important -- no one should accept ideas blindly without questioning them. But at the same time, skepticism only maintains the status quo. It takes leaps of imagination to move forward."

Interestingly, the idea that advanced physics may provide a theoretical framework for spirituality also popped up in Angels & Demons, a Dan Brown paperback I recently picked up while stranded at National Airport. As a novel, I thought this book wasn't that great (it read like a rough draft for his later and more well known The Da Vinci Code). But one of the premises of the book is that the Vatican had been secretly supporting quantum physics research at CERN because it offered the possibility of resolving conflicts between science and religion. Remarkably similar to the science-spirituality connections hinted at by "What the bleep."

One of the scientists interviewed in the film tells a story about how when the American Indians who first saw Columbus' ships come over the horizon, they literally did not see ships. Instead they saw a large wave in the ocean. They had never seen large ships, so their worldview did not permit such a thing to exist. It was only after a spiritual leader spent several days staring at the sea that he perceived that these were ships bearing people. At this point he passed on this knowledge, and the worldview of the community changed.

Whether or not this story is apocryphal, it effectively encapsulates the concept behind this film -- that the way we perceive the world is rooted in our preconceptions, and that a total paradigm shift is necessary to truly understand human consciousness. Furthermore, advanced science can be integrated with traditional religion to create a new unified worldview.

I honestly don't know what to make of all this, but it already inspired me to spend several hours online reading about physics and mysticism. Fascinating stuff whether or not you buy into film.

Mouse Hunt

The cat cornered yet another mouse, and this time I got to watch the process. I first became aware that something was afoot when I heard a crash in the dining room followed by a squeak and some scuffling. My cat then tore into the office making strange noises and with something hanging out of her mouth. It was yet another mouse.

Here's the thing. Being felis domesticus of the well-fed, 21st century persuasion, my cat apparently views mice not as food, but as self-propelled playthings. So rather than delivering the death blow, she would periodically let the mouse go and then chase it again. This went on long enough to do several complete circuits of the office and dining room while I devised a gameplan to end the carnage.

My eventual plan involved putting on shoes (I had been lazing around barefoot), donning a pair of work gloves, and grabbing my trusty 5-gallon orange Home Depot bucket. I then joined the chase around the dining room. Eventually the cat cornered the mouse near the curtains, after several false starts, I manged to shake the mouse into the bucket from the bottom of the drapes where it had taken refuge. (The cat, not realizing what had happened, is still skulking around the drapes waiting for the mouse to re-emerge.)

The mouse seemed remarkably calm once it got into the bucket. I think it realized it had been given a reprieve from hours of torture by Goldie the Cat. I walked it to the vacant lot across the street and released it, hoping that maybe it won't feel like crossing the street to come back.

The natural order of things

I have my own little "Wild Kingdom" situation going on in the house. Lately I've heard a bit of skittering in the walls. My suspicion that a mouse family had taken up residence were confirmed a couple of weeks ago when I found a dead mouse in the dining room. It was reasonably intact, and I thought perhaps it had died laughing at the cat's efforts to stalk it. (I had noticed her spending a great deal of time staring at the refrigerator -- presumably the doorway to mouse HQ is somewhere back there.)

Early this morning, I arrived home to find a smug looking cat and a another thoroughly disembowled mouse on the dining room rug. And I mean thoroughly. We're talking decapitation and mutilation, folks. I'm writing this entry as in order to avoid the task at hand, which is picking up the pieces. Ugh.

Hopefully that's the last mouse. I'm not looking forward to much more of this.

Keeping up with the news...

Today's highlights:

• William Donald Schaefer is a dumbass, as usual
• Update on what has now become known as the "Voodoo Hand
• Mason's sell out, allow historic building to be demolished by evil developer.

Democracy in action

Last night I escaped from work around 8:30 and dashed over to Two Doors Down, a sports bar where a bunch of Democrats and fellow travelers were getting together to watch the debate. A friend at work told me about this, and I figured it would beat watching it at home or the office. (More beer, if nothing else.) The crowd was pretty tough on Bush, and frankly it was somewhat inspiring to be in a room with a bunch of other people who are fired up about actual issues -- the war, environmental laws, erosion of civil liberties, etc. A pleasant break from the constant horse-race coverage of attack ads and spin.

As the night wore on, one thing led to another, and I suddenly found myself coughing up the $7.50 for a ticket to Michael Moore's appearance at the GEC.

Tonight's event, sponsored by the Music Row Democrats, was kicked off by the head of the Kerry campaign in Tennessee. He introduced a theme present throughout the evening: Kerry could still win Tennessee.

This being music city, there was also a strong musical presence. MRD unveiled Takin' My Country Back a new song produced by Honky Tonkers for Truth. [MP3], and "Bob Something" of Monkey Bowl weighed in with two songs, including Al Gore, featuring a taped cameo by none other than Al Gore, who lives down the street from him in Belle Meade.

The musical headliner, however, was a short acoustic set by Steve Earle, who said he turned down a gig in Arizona to be in Nashville because "we're not giving up on winning Tennessee."

Earle then introduced Moore, who I believe had been watching the opening acts from a seat a few rows in front of mine. He donned his trademark red baseball cap and arrived onstage as disheveled as ever. The crowd, while certainly not a sellout for the arena, was surprisingly large -- and clearly in Moore's corner all the way.

I'll be up front with you about Michael Moore. I don't agree with everything he says. I think in some ways he is to the left as Rush Limbaugh is to the right -- a rabid ideologue with a tendancy to assume the worst about his opponents. That said, I think by-and-large he makes valid points about many things, especially the war in Iraq. And if nothing else he helps stir up debate important issues and balances out the culture of right-wing talk radio television.

The speech was mostly the same schtick that has already made news elsewhere (including the infamous giveaway of ramen noodles and underwear to folks who didn't vote in the last election.) There were, however, a number of interesting factoids buried in the rhetoric. For example, he drew a contrast between the $18 million or so spent by the 9/11 commission to investigate how to prevent future terror attacts and the $75 million or so spent by the Office of the Independent Council to investigate Bill Clinton's personal life. Moore also predicted that if US foreign policy doesn't change, the country will be forced to reinstate the draft simply because there will no longer be enough volunteers to sustain our military commitments abroad. A bold statement, but perhaps plausible given the manpower problems being encountered in the military as the Iraq quagmire drags on.

Moore said that his next film is going to be about the pharmaceutical industry. Word has leaked out, he said, and Pfizer -- the company that brought you primetime impotence commercials -- is worried. Moore read from a memo that he said was distributed within the company warning staff to be on the lookout for a "a bearded, heavyset man with rumpled clothing and a microphone." If Moore began asking questions, the memo continued, staffers should immediately call a hotline number to report it. This got a good laugh, and the entire arena simultaneously whipped out their cell phones to program in the number for the Pfizer "Michael Moore Hotline." (For reference, it's 212-573-1226, which a Google search reveals as the the number of one of the company's PR flacks.) Moore suggests giving them a buzz on Monday and saying in a whisper "He's heeere... Inside the house....!!!"

After the event, I wandered around downtown for a bit and then strolled back across the bridge to East Nashville. On the way I chatted with a (possibly homeless) man who was headed in the same direction. He says that he's been back in Nashville for six months and has been looking for work, but that the temp agencies and day labor places where he used to be able to get work are now mobbed with unemployed jobseekers.

During our conversation, he tossed off the standard line that Bush and Kerry are just two sides of the same coin, and that neither of them would make the economy better. I retorted that while Kerry might not be ideal, could he really do any worse than Bush? That brought a snort of agreement. Perhaps this isn't the best criteria for choosing a president, but one I'm pretty comfortable with at this point.

Speaking of animals...

If I were a dog, I would most certainly bite anyone who tried to dress me as Raggedy Ann. I'm just sayin'...

Blessing of the Animals

I was in DC this weekend for several reasons, including a freelance gig photographing a reunion and an attempt to burn my U.S. Airways frequent flyer miles before the company goes under. It happened to be "Blessing of the Animals" day at my mom's church, so I ended up photographing that as well.

Unfortunately, my good digital camera is in the shop, so this weekend I was using a combination of my point and shoot Powershot S45 (gives decent results in good light, not so much with the flash), and a new EOS Rebel TI that I bought so as to be able to use my canon lenses and stuff with film. After realizing how much it's going to cost to process the 11 rolls I shot, I'm reminded why I like digital so much! :/

Crime in Canada

Dog Drives Off As Owner Watches Hockey Heh.

Something to aspire to:

"The path to profitability, as Peters sees it, is simple. He wants the PBA (Professional Bowling Association) to be Nascar with fewer crashes and slightly better teeth."

(Don't laugh... According to the article professional bowling now has more TV viewers than NHL hockey.)

Two weekends in Nashville

I've been in a bit of a funk lately, and my DSL has been going down every five minutes, give or take. So between those things, my blogging willpower has been pretty dismal. That said, here's an all-at-once update. After the marathon week at work, my brother did show up last weekend. The summer camp where he was working is done for the year, and he's now on a tour of the south before heading back to work at Urban Promise for the school year. This was his first time in Nashville in several years, and we made it count. Activities included:

• Dinner at Jack's Barbeque on lower Broad, followed by a trip to The Grande Ole Opry
• A trip to the farmer's market for vittles, followed by a kebab cookout and a DVDs-I-already-have movie night.
• Me going to work while he went hiking at Fall Creek Falls.
• Heading to Davinci's for pizza, followed by the Saucer, where we watched Olympics and waited many moons for our beer to arrive.
• Brunch at the Pancake Pantry
• Wandering around downtown and going to Hatch Show Print -- where I made friends with the staff and got to explore behind the scenes a bit. (Maybe some pictures to come if I can ever stay online long enough to upload them.)
• Electric guitar shopping at Valley Arts. My brother was a music major, and already has a string bass, an electric bass, and an acoustic guitar. But he lacked an electric guitar. My parents had agreed to buy him one as a graduation present last year, but hadn't actually purchased it on account of not knowing anything about guitars. It had been languishing until now, and we figured Nashville was probably a pretty good place to be in the market for that sort of thing. Alas, we discovered that he could save $40 of outrageous Tennessee tax by shipping it back to Maryland, so I didn't get to play around with it. Maybe over the holidays...
• Ate dinner at the Sylvan Park Cafe, home of the best Southern comfort food in Nashville. Then tore around town despterately trying to buy a 6-pack of GooGoo Clusters, because...
• The Nashville Sounds were having "buy one ticket get one free when you show up with a 6-pack of GooGoo Clusters" night. Even when you add in the extra gas we spent driving around, it was still a good deal. (Hint: the little yuppie market in Sylvan Park and the Eckerd on West End were both found lacking. The Foodland on West End is the place to go for all your GooGoo needs.)
• My brother wanted to leave at the crack of dawn on Wednesday, since he was heading for Roanoke next, and that's a good day's drive. Only problem was that he had been driving, and we forgot that I had abandoned my car at the office after work on Monday. So I also had to either leave at the crack of dawn, or walk to work. Normally walking to work in return for an extra hour or two of sleep might be a good deal. But since it was pouring rain, I decided to take the ride instead.

So that was my exciting last weekend. This weekend I basically did very little productive, but many different things...

• Started a book on the personalities behind the development of the atomic bombs in the 1940s and 1950s. Interesting, but not a quick read. Still going on that one.
• Puttered around the house.
• Wished my DSL was working.
• Did a bit of laundry.
• Wished my DSL was working.
• Watched The Killing Fields off my ReplayTV
• Went out to brunch with a friend at The Red Wagon.
• Drove around aimlessly.
• Browsed at CompUSA but bought nothing of substance.
• Went to Border's, bought a travel book about South America, a photography book, and a Kafka anothology.
• Read The Metamorphesis for the first time.
• Wondered what that guy was smoking, anyway.
• Wished my DSL was working.
• Went to see The Corporation at the Belcourt. It was thought provoking. The filmmakers are dead on in their diagnosis of the problem with big corporations, but they failed to offer workable solutions. As this review points out, governments can make just as big a mess of things as big companies.

  <soapbox>Another thing that grated on me a bit were slightly snide comments by the narrator regarding "pollution tax credits" and related programs that give companies a market incentive to behave responsibly. Rather than present these as a way to charge companies for the externalities that they're responsible for, the narrator breathlessly proclaimed that "corporations even want to own the air we breathe!" This really misses the point -- that these programs reinforce the idea that the environment is a shared resource, and people should have to pay if they mess it up.</soapbox>

  Anyhow... I recommend seeing this if you get a chance.

So that's what I've been up to. Whee.

In good company

Seems I'm not the only one who got a speeding ticket while on vacation in Oregon...

Molasses in January

I'm no expert on the guts of databases, but as far as I can tell there is no reason on God's green earth that this

insert into soccerstats
select s.id,games.game_id,
s.school_id,s.player_id,s.goals,
s.assists,s.saves,s.timestamp
from soccerstatsold s 
left join games on (
(s.game_id = games.old_id) and 
(games.sport='7' or games.sport='14'))

should be taking over eight minutes to run. It's maddening! Think I need to get a copy of this.

I've been back for a while, but have been massively busy with work. In case you haven't already gathered, I work for "the Media" -- although I hate that term, because it's often used to imply some sort of massive global information conspiracy, and I personally know that my company couldn't effectively conspire its way out of a paper bag. But I digress.

The point of all this was that my workload tends to fluctuate depending on various cyclical news events -- at the moment, primary elections and high school sports. Plus our company has a management retreat in two weeks so we've got reports to write and powerpoints to slog through. Plus my brother is coming to visit during the same week. And at the moment one person in my department is out sick, and another is on vacation. So, yeah, things have been a bit crazy.

Anyway, in the meantime, I'll leave you with a nifty link to this story in today's paper about this guy who makes pop-art using etch-a-sketches. Very cool. There's only one photo in the article, but here's his actual website.

A picture or two

I was planning on putting more pics here, but haven't quite gotten to it. Uploading pictures to ClubPhoto is painful over dialup, and I'm too tired/lazy to resize the ones I want to show manually. I did send a few yesterday, so I'll whet your apetite:

   

Mixed bag:

The Good

• saw Crater Lake, several nifty waterfalls and lots of chipmunks.

The Bad

• accidentally got a massive speeding ticket (was busy listening to John Edwards' speech at the Democratic Convention, not paying any attention to my speed until I saw the blue lights.)

• Despite this, pushed on to Eugene, only to find out that it is hosting the "Junior Olympics." This means that virtually every hotel room in town is full of rowdy teens. After trying 4 places (and calling others out of town,) I found one with a cancellation. My room has a stuffed dalmation in the corner. Scary.

• Realized that I totally overbooked this trip. Something's going to have to give. Think tomorrow I'm going to head for the coast and meet up with my parents for a day or two. Not sure what after that.

• Not really bad, but just funny: I ran into the stuck SUV people again Crater Lake. They thanked me again for pushing.