The Symbol of a Wedding Ring

You know, I've been married going on 9 years now. I got married when I was young and fresh out of college. I was the good husband and wore my wedding ring without ever taking it off. I really never gave the symbolic nature of a wedding ring much thought until today.

Why? Well, today I lost my Claddaugh wedding band while at the gym. "You lost it!" you say. Yes, I lost it and did not realize it until after I finished my work out. I got so used to wearing it and took it for granted that I did not even notice it's absence. Weird. Naturally, I reported it missing, but it also starting the thought process of assessing the symbolism of the thing.

When you get married after being a bachelor all your friends will say that you are putting on the old ball and chain. The wedding ring for some guys is the ultimate symbol of that chain and they rebel or resent wearing it. As time goes on you just wear the thing, take it for granted, never take it off. It becomes like a old pair of jeans that you love and always wear.

Then suddenly (as happened to me after 9 years) you realize that you feel naked without it. This is not exactly a manly thing to confess, but it is true. In the moment I realized that I lost my ring I did a flashback to 10 years ago when I was 25 and I proposed to my wife. I remembered the very day we picked out our rings, etc. Man, we were so young. In that split second I knew that I was not that young kid in Arcata anymore, but a guy that was very lucky.

$20.00 and a Jaguar Rental

You know the old line, "Buddy can you spare a dime?" Well that was me yesterday as I peeled off in a 2003 Jaguar XJ-S for the day. How did this happen? Well, you need to hear the whole story to understand the irony.

Rhonda and I were up very early (5 AM) on a Saturday for our 4 month service on both our cars. We were planning on renting a car for the day to play around Palo Alto for the day (we get this as a free perk from our mechanic). Once we got there we were told to sit tight for 45 minutes as it looked like one of our cars would be ready soon.

Fast forward a half hour and we find out that the Civic needed new brakes, and that the Pilot was the subject of two recalls that needed to be taken care of. So, no fast service for us and I would be 600.00 poorer for it. Ouch.

The dealer called Enterprise rent-a-car in Mountain View to see what/if any cars were available. Unfortunately, the car inventory did not look good, but they came to pick us up anyway. When we arrived at the rental office there were 3 couples ahead of us and they got the last of the cars they had.

It was our turn now to rent a car, but all they had were big trucks (we're talking F-150's here). I really didn't want to be tooling around Palo Alto in a F-150 (free rental or not), so I asked "Don't you have anything else? I mean any other kind of car." The rental agent said with a smirk, "Well, I have a Jaguar out back that I can let you have, but the cost to rent will be $20.00." I turned to Rhonda and asked her what she thought. She muttered something along the lines that I would never be able to rent a Jag for 20 dollars anywhere else. So, I took it.

We pulled out of the lot in a 2003 Jaguar XJ-S with a full sun roof. Oh my god, I was in pure heaven...and all for $20.00. We started cruising up and down on 101 on the Peninsula. The thing just rode so smooth and quiet that I couldn't tell how fast I was going. I passed a couple of ChiPPy cars and the thought occurred to me to check my speed... Friggin' 90 MPH and I didn't even know it. LOL.

It was a great experience that softened the blow to a $600.00 repair bill. Now, if I could just find the 70K to buy one. That ride is sweet.

The Joys of Brand New Home Ownership

So, I bought a new house a few months back...actually, I bought a brand new house, which translates into almost no landscaping and a crappy fence. Back then I thought it was fine, and now it is not so fine. Enter a winter's worth of rain and the invasion of the weeds into an empty pile of dirt. Yeah! Now I have lots of green, but it is all ugly.

I have no real right to complain. I bought the house and I basically love it. Now enter the fun of planning a backyard. There is just so much to think about. Get an accurate map of your property with distances. Transfer it to a grid. Account for slope and drainage. Then start designing zones for irrigation. All that has to be done while you figure out where you want your planting beds (and in my case) also calculating how much nasty native soil you have to remove and then amend. Fun!

That's what I am going through. The fun process of planning my backyard while killing off the weeds. There is so much to do that it is enough to make my head swim. It also looks like we are going to do all this work on our own. All the contractors we've talked to are just too darn expensive. I am willing to pay and arm, but not an arm and a leg for a landscape job.

When it is all said and done. We will have a landscaped backyard, an awning, and a new front gate/fence in keeping with the New England box house style of our home.

Music Recommendations by Listening Habit

This really shows the power and penetration of the iPod and iTunes in society and the marketplace. MusicMobs will dynamically recommend music that you may like based upon your listening habits on iTunes and your iPod.

A simple upload of your play-list library to the site, and they poll the popularity/frequency of the songs you play to come up with related artists that you might like. Think of it as amazon's recommendations system, but for music.

Interesting Photo Series on Boats

Thanks to Jason for this wonderful find. I love photo sites. In fact, I am very much enamored with Photo Blogs as of late.

Here's a great look at old boats via this stunning online photo essay. The power of the colors and exposures in some of these prints are impressive.

The Sound of Cooing Outside My Chamber Door

When I first moved to Tracy, one of the first things my friends said was "have your house pigeon proofed." I laughed uncontrollably. Pigeons in the Central Valley? Pigeons perched in my house? Where would they perch?

Well, now I am not laughing. As the neighborhood has steadily been built up around us, we have noticed more pigeons on other people's houses. Then yesterday, we heard this cooing coming from the alley by our next door neighbor's house.

As my wife was talking on the phone, I proceeded to go investigate. I went around back by the kitchen window and looked up. Sure enough, I found out that I have a pigeon problem in the only place they could perch and nest on the whole house.

Damn. They found a spot where the two different pitches of the roof line meet and form and alcove. It is a perfect place to raise some kiddies. I scared them off in the afternoon, but I knew they would come back.

Fast forward 12 hours. I am asleep on a Sunday morning. It is still early. I am completely out of it. You could drive a freight train through my bedroom and I wouldn't stir. However, for some reason I was dreaming about those damn birds. It was surreal. One part "Feed the Birds" from Mary Poppins, one part acid trip from The Beatles "Revolver" album, interspersed with the sound of two love birds cooing. It was maddening to the point that I woke up.

When I woke up I realized that it was not a dream. It was the damn pigeons making a "cooing" racket just outside my Master Bedroom. Oh, joy. I am awake. No coffee, no breakfast, and very, very angry. I went down to scare them off, t-shirt and PJs on (with the T-Shirt being worn inside out and backwards --I didn't care). One little square of clay thrown their way, and "boom," they flew off.

Now I need to find a guy to put in some "Pigeon Control," and fast. Otherwise I will be really needing some acid trip.

Declaration of War on Sony

So, I got my $1500 receiver back from Sony service the other day (the one that I bought brand new in December). I opened the box, read the service receipt and saw that they made a "electrical adjustment." Definitely not confidence inspiring.

I took the amp out and started to rewire it up to my home theater system. 3 hours later I powered it up and... well...they didn't fix a damn thing. Within 30 seconds it started to drop out all video like a set of Christmas lights....just like it did before.

To say that I am upset is an understatement. 300.00 in shipping to San Diego, 2 weeks of waiting ended with the same result as before I sent it in. Hell, I would have been better off going to Stockton to get it fixed out of pocket.

Now I am faced with 3 options:

1. Make a huge stink with Sony and make them pay for return shipping.
2. Get them to replace the unit with a new one
3. Go to the local repair shop in Stockton and pay to have it fixed.

Note to Sony, I have declared an all out consumer war against you. Never again will I buy another Sony product (after 20+ years of doing so). This receiver will get fixed, be used for awhile and then sold. I do not intend to be stuck with a $1500.00 paper weight.

Current Mood: Moving very quickly from angry to fuming mad.

I couldn't take it anymore

Yeah, I have been besieged by Blog spam. Being the very busy person that I am, I delayed upgrading MovableType for quite some time. Why? Well, I hacked the hell out of the application to make it do my bidding. Customized search pages, built in spell checking, plugins up the yin-yang. All that took time.

Well, today, after 38 (yes, 38) spam comments in a single day, I said screw it. I went ahead and upgraded to the latest version of MT. I am in the midst of installing MTBlacklist to end this insanity.

After it is all said and done, I will have at least 2 days worth of work ahead to restore all the customizations I had. Oh, joy. Note to SPAMMERS, expect a horse's head in your bed in the morning.

Current Mood: Annoyed.

Ultimate Blog Disclaimer

WARNING: THIS BLOG ENTRY IS NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART!!!! IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO HEAR ABOUT VERY ICKY THINGS, SKIP THIS ENTRY. IF HOWEVER, YOU DELIGHT IN THE LARGELY HARMLESS MISFORTUNE OF A TOURING MUSICIAN WITH SEVERE STOMACH FLU READ ON. THIS ENTRY IS MEANT TO INFORM THE GOOD PEOPLE OF ROCHESTER WHY ONE ED ROBERTSON WAS NOT HIS USUAL ENERGETIC, JUMPIN' AROUND ROCK AND ROLL SELF, BUT RATHER A CAUTIOUS, CAREFUL, TRYING NOT TO SHIT ONES PANTS VERSION OF SAME. AGAIN, PROCEED WITH CAUTION.

From BNL's online blog. See it here

Random Links (Part II)

• Belkin iPod Media Reader - Use your iPod as a digital image storage device while on the road. Hey, I need a place to store those uncompressed TIFFs I shoot at 5 megapixels. Not enough SmartCards in the world (in my camera bag) to do that.

I fought Gallery and I won

I recently described my battle with Gallery and how much I hate the customization hell that is involved to make it mine. While I complained about its shortcomings for application on most of my sites, I did not share the fact that I won one of my battles with it.

Although I had to do in in tables and lots of PHP customization, I managed to totally customize the interface of Gallery on one of my sites that STILL uses tables. I have PHP include files, left and right navigation includes, modified style sheets and even a customized theme in this install. Many hours of Googling and hacking later, I have an interface that I own and that is seamless with the site.

Now if I could only make it do what I want in a photo blog. One of my cohorts at work has included photos from his gallery into MT, but it does not go far enough. I want an SQL powered photo blog that ties into my iPhoto/Gallery Library. I am still searching for the solution, but I can say I know how I want it to behave...I want it to have the same capabilities of PhotoStack, but with an SQL backend.

No more image slicing and JavaScript

A cool way to put those sliced images and javascript image arrays into an old pine box, courtesy of Tomalak's Realm and ALA:

And now, with a bit of math and a lot of CSS, we're going to take the basic concept and apply it to the world of web design. Specifically, we're going to replace old-school image slicing and dicing (and the necessary JavaScript) with a CSS solution

Hmmm...this will come in handy on my new site. Read the full article on ALA.

Random Links

• Great Article on creating business cards for the non-print designer - The Fine Print
• Folklore - Original, first person stories by those who were there for the creation of the original Macintosh (including the visit to Xerox PARC).
• eBayers that Suck - The worst offenders on eBay

5 Big Reasons to Hate Gallery

I am a big photography person...I mean really big. Have thousands of black & white, color, and transparency shots going back at least 20 years. I also was an early adopter of digital photography. So, over the last few weeks I have been going through my collection of images, scanning them, and inserting them into iPhoto for local image storage. That, as I am sure anyone can imagine, is a lengthly process in of itself.

Then enter Gallery into the picture. It is a cool php application that lets you serve up your photos from your website and enable online ordering of your prints. That in of itself is a cool idea. It even comes in handy for sharing all those family photos with my relatives around the world, but...it has major shortcomings. I found this out through my slogging through the forums and Google trying to find ways to make it do my bidding.

Here are the top 5 things I hate about Gallery:

1. It relies on tables to represent page layout. Not a good thing if your entire site relies on CSS and absolute positioning like most of todays sites do. This makes integration with my sites a major pain in the ass.

2. The photo album is stored in a phpdb and not MySQL. This makes tying it into a central user account that also manages a BBS or a central image repository for both the web and internal applications damn near impossible.

3. Hacking the applications and CSS files used to make skins are not intuitive.

4. Getting all the jpeg rendering and management libraries configured can be a major pain (read I am compiling them AGAIN as I write this).

5. It does not fully integrate in MovableType to the point that its image management could be integrated into a total photo blog. (Also a big negative for me.)

Although the SQL thing is supposed to be somewhat addressed in the next version, I am banging my head against a wall. I used to be totally against database type installs on sites, and now I am all for them. Everything I am doing now looks to make each account instance talk to another, thus making a central single sign-on for all applications. So, my experience has not been that great.

As for when, if, or how I will make my personal copy of gallery sport that artfernandez.com mast head, god knows. I don't do tables anymore...and to do them for gallery would just create another level of inconsistency and inflexibility in my site that I do not want.

Considering a New Blogging Tool

So, I love movable type. It has all the cool plug-ins and scripts to make it do your bidding. It is also something that you can install and control without paying a cent. This is a very appealing feature. At the same time it has some serious shortcomings

Some of those shortcomings including the inability to control who views certain blogs, the lack of password protection, etc. The only reason why I would want such functionality is for a new site that I am working on for a bunch of college alumni. They have a strong desire to be able to have absolute control over what posts are public/private and the ability to password protect.

Why would anyone ever want to do this? Simple. They want to blog about some sensitive and confidential subjects without worrying about prying eyes. On occasion, they also want to be able to put out public posts. All this using one master template. A tall order even with MovableType.

I ran across the latest incarnation of TypePad and it seems to meet the bill. The downside, it is a hosted service and they charge. Bad on both counts.

I am still considering it for those guys, but I am still a MT lover and will keep on using them for my sites. Besides, my content on this site is not worth protecting anyway. It's not like I have trade secrets or the secret formula to Coca Cola...I have a snoozer blog and I know it. Although, I have thought about doing a subscription only blog covering "As the Half Turns," but that is mostly for my own amusement when I am having a crappy day.

Trip Report - Part I

We left town on the 27th (my birthday) and headed up to Mendocino for our retreat. It was a modern miracle that we even made it our the door that morning. It certainly did not help matters that we spent half the previous night well up until after midnight packing. Nevertheless we managed to get out of the door @ 10 (2 hours after we said we wanted to leave by).

Rhonda wanted to take the scenic route and also allow us time to stop at one of our favorite breweries in Hopland. We took the 580/680/780 to get us out of the Bay Area and then proceeded to take the back roads into Napa and Callistoga. We were in Callistoga by 11:30 when we passed the BBQ place by the blinking lights. Remembering what one of my colleagues told me about this shack, I was so tempted to stop there for lunch. But no...I had to have lunch at the brewery in Hopland. It was tradition. Enough said.

We climbed our way out of the Napa valley and headed North via 29/128 towards Lake County. Along the way we stopped, I hauled out my 35mm and digital camera, and took a few shots of the Valley.

We went through some of the most curvy roads I have ever seen in my life. Not even the roads in Spain along the coast of Malaga could compare to these things. I was amazed by the little towns that would magically appear than disappear in a blink of an eye...all nestled within the trees.

We pulled into Hopland around 1:30 in the afternoon. There it was, one my favorite breweries...the Hopland Brewery. I could just taste several pints of "Eye of the Hawk" and "Black Hawk Stout" to go with their Chicken sandwich with home made beer mustard.

Rhonda and I walked into the brewery to find the place totally deserted and the permanent closure of their kitchen. This was not an auspicious start to my vacation. I was greeted with an end to a tradition dating back to my very early college days...beer and food at the Hopland Brewery...denied.

True to my old fraternity days, we improvised and got food from next door and I proceeded to drink my sorrows away. We got my birthday celebration started with a bang. I figured that if I couldn't get my food here, I could at least drink my way through lunch. Besides there were two other breweries on the way to Mendocino to drink and eat at. I would get my fill for sure. :D