I managed to get season tickets to the Notre Dame home games this year. This year it also looks like I won’t be able to go to any of them. Having a five-month old and limited child-care options will do that to you. I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to enter the lottery, even with my Monogram Club membership. Membership dues for alumni who’ve been graduated for over seven years went up to $300 a year.

I tried to share my Pitt tickets with my friend Chas, but his grandmother is having her 90th birthday celebration that weekend. My alumni friend Liam didn’t have time to enter the alumni lottery this year, but he wants the tickets to the Pitt game to meet up with some other alumni friends.

The rest of the tickets are going to my uncle. Corbin is probably the biggest ND fan in the family, and he subsidizes my ticket ordering [which amounted to $800 this year]. I really only ever want to go to one home game per year, so he always takes the rest of whatever I get. He laid dibs on the Michigan tickets right away.

Basically I jumped through all the hoops that I usually do, but don’t get a payoff this year. No vacation, no ND football game, its a good thing I have a baby to play with.

A wannabe Travis Bickle in a green-colored van-taxi tried to kill me on my ride home from work today. It tried to squeeze me off of the road three times, the last time it cut me off, slammed on its brakes, and went up on the curb. Apart from blessing him with a few choice words and the ubiquitous hand benediction, and thereby amusing the hell out of a carful of people in the other lane, there wasn’t much I could do. I was too busy trying not to crash to get the number of the cab, or even the cab company’s name. So if you know which cab company drives forest green vehicles, let me know. I’d like to give their management a piece of my mind too, since they almost got a lot more than a pound of my flesh.

With all of the stuff I’ve been up to lately, doing a bit of writing has fallen by the wayside. Work on the house is still incomplete, but has slowed down because what remains isn’t critical quite yet. Once all of the painting is complete, and I’ve managed to get all of the doors rehung, there will be pictures.

I’ve gone to see The Dark Knight, which was the first time since Abraham graced us with his presence that Debbie and I managed to get out alone. I went to the zoo, where the boy and I became an exhibit to all of the women around when Debbie went to the restroom. I went to Whiskey Island on Friday afternoon for a picnic, took a walk by myself to get some alone time with nature, watched swallow bug-catching, a swallow-heckling oriole, and played with a groundhog for a little while.

Last Monday my office was one of the three County offices raided by the FBI and IRS-CID as a part of their investigation into corruption by County officials. Apparently they came over the intercom and told folks to go to the canteen [which is what everywhere else is called a lunch room]. The design room keeps the overhead speaker turned off because we’d rather not listen to the best in soft rock from the 80s, 90s and now, so I didn’t hear the announcement. I happened to be both on my computer and on the phone, both no-nos, when the FBI knocked on the door. I’d already managed to tell Debbie everything she needed to know to get the scanner at home working though, so it was no big deal.

I went to the canteen, where everyone else was, and filled out a sheet that asked for basic information and job duties, and then got to take the rest of the day off.

When my mom rolled up here for the 4th of July, we planted a tree for Abraham. I had a tree planted for me when I was born as well. I even wrote about it for Young Authors, so you can read that here. Although that picture is from a month ago, Abraham is already much bigger, I’d say near 12 pounds. He’s started smiling and chuckling a little, and I can actually sort of play with him now. The only rough part is that when I’m at work he’s in his best mood, so when I come home I get to interact with him for the part of the day when he’s at his worst. It gets frustrating at times.

I got season tickets to the Notre Dame football games this year, blessed be my monogram. I don’t know that I’ll be able to get to more than one of them, however.

The weather has been wonderful, and today looks as if it will continue that pattern. Dinner is a daily choice between eating on the porch or watching some old school Muppet Show episodes. I recently discovered that I can get Mr. Wizard on DVD as well. Abraham’s going to talk to folks at school about these crazy shows that aren’t on TV anymore and no-one is going to know what he’s talking about except his teachers.

I haven’t been to a rock and roll show in forever. It hurts.

The most common semi-smarmy question I get about riding my bike to work is: “How many MPG do you get with that thing?” So I decided to do more bike math. There are 2080 calories in one gallon of 2% milk. Using the calories burned count from last year [220 calories per day [6.6 miles per day]] I get 62.7 miles per gallon of milk while riding my bike.

2080/220 = 9.454545

9.5 days * 6.6 miles per day = 62.7 mpg.

If the average cost of milk is $3.50 a gallon, it costs me a little more than 5 ¢ per mile.

3.5/62.7 = 0.0558 $ per mile.

So the next time someone asks, I’ll tell them that I get 62.7 mpg of milk which is about 5¢ per mile; and secure my nerddom for all time.

While my Mongoose gets me too and from work dependably, the thing is so heavy and bulky that riding it into the wind is a real bitch, especially since I can’t even pretend to ride the thing in an aerodynamic fashion, it’s a mountain/road hybrid after all.

When I was a kid I had a sweet bike, with a big fat back tire that was perfect for laying a nice thick piece of rubber down when I skidded out. The only problem was that it was red, white and blue, and not a very aesthetically pleasing design either. So I took the thing apart, painted it black and silver, wrote a name I’ve since forgotten on the top tube, and basically pimped it out for an 8-10 year old.

Now I want to do the same, but this time I want to build my own road bike. This biggest obstacle to this project is that I’m no bike geek; I don’t know what brand of frame to look for, who makes good rims, gears, shifters, brakes, etc. The learning curve will be kind of steep if I’m to get anywhere with this. The biggest help for this will be the few folks I know who are hardcore cyclists; Lou, Jeff and Andy, I’ll be on y’all like Mama Cass on a ham sandwich about this, once I’ve got the renovations under control.

I’m taking Basics of Programming; Intro to ASP.Net; Intro to SQL and JavaScript classes this summer. So far I’ve had one each of ASP.Net and SQL. I’ve learned a bit about ASP.Net programming through having to mess with the code of the County’s CMS and tweaking what the developers provide me, but the class is helping me understand the gestalt much better. The SQL class is a blast. I completely understand everything that has been covered so far.

The only downside to these classes is the timing. Some are at night from 6-9, which eats up a whole day including work, and others are all day on Saturday, which eats the better part of my weekend. Since I’m working on the house and biding time to the impending baby, I’m having less chance to work off the sympathy weight I put on over the winter. My legs are in good shape from biking to work for two months now, but I’m doughy from the waist up. The only answer to this is making my life more disciplined; rationing my meals and setting aside time for other aerobic exercise. I need to drop back to 180#, and the only way that’s going to happen is if I eat right and run off the extra 10#.

$30 isn’t a successful yard sale. I was pretty crabby that day; but that was made up for by grilling stuffed pork chops on Monday, making homemade green tea ice cream, and finding out that home renovations can continue next Monday. I just have to get rid of all the unsold yard sale crap, the free crib that we got [sans proprietary hardware for assembly] and try to get our hands on another one via Craigslist, finish cleaning the walls, prime them, paint them, move all our crap out from the midsection of the house for the renovations and find out what the hell is taking my second batch of flooring delivery so long. Still much to do.

Also, I was cat-married the other night, apparently.

I suppose I should explain this. Deborah was cat-married to an actual cat in a previous life [aka Baltimore]. She was unaware of this at the time, but after I explained it to her, she decided that she should cat-marry me as well. I guess she’s a cat bigamist.

So Debbie calls me yesterday from the hospital. A kid fell on her and the kid. Or, to be precise, a kid pushed a kid right into her belly. I’d never ridden my bike home so quickly, and rolled out to Huron hospital to find out that everything was okay. So we sat starving [not allowed to eat!] until they let us go. Had sushi to recuperate, but this week has been madness in the evenings, rescheduled appointments, and hospital unexpectedness resulted in me taking the day off of work today to try to keep the house together.

I got the vegetable garden started. Or, more precisely, I got the row of tomatoes planted. Straightened the house, puttered in the yard, did the laundry. Almost ready for the garage sale tomorrow. So much to do.

To all those who have negative things to say about the future of Cleveland, I submit the Lottery League.

I showed up to the Beachland about 20 minutes before the show started and stayed for the duration. The ache in my feet and knees today is a testament to the fact that I’m not as young as I used to be. However, the beer flowed like wine and I started out with a triple shot of Cuervo to get drunk as quickly as possible. I knew I’d have to be sober 7 hours later when the show ended. The tequila needed some playmates, so I had 3 Straub to balance things out. Then, they ran out of Straub. Straub is, I think, the cheap beer of choice for Cleveland rockers. Anyway.

Nothing cooler than last night is going to happen in Cleveland this year. Over 150 local musicians were randomly shuffled into 33 new bands; these bands had six weeks to make music for a 10 minute set at the Beachland Ballroom. The resulting music was an outstanding inversion of Sturgeon’s Law. There was a bit of everything from, Japanese pop [Dr. Widget] to death metal [Born Raped [OK, no one else probably thinks so, but I do.]] It was obvious that some bands took their League status very seriously, while other were out to have a fun time. Yeah, a few of the bands sucked, but then there were bands like Free Moments and Postcards From Foreign Shores who sent me shrapneled in different musical directions. The first few bands had shows with their official bands later in the evening [Hot Cha Cha was playing in Detroit, I believe] and the last few had the tough job of pumping up the music-wearied masses that came to The Big Show.

The ballsiest band, in terms of their angle, was Semper Fi. A bit of performance art punk rock that involved Abu Ghraib references and Nazi salutes. I don’t think anyone knew what to make of it, but thankfully there was The Big Show mascot rambling around variously as a bear, a parrot, and a crocodile [at one point the crocodile suit was on backwards so the tail became an engorged reptilian phallus.] One of the bands had a dude in a panda suit. Secret Cleveland Furrys?

There was also plenty of swag, well made T-shirts, programs, tickets and the greatest collection of local music for sale outside of Music Saves. The sheer collaborative momentum behind the event is a testament to what Clevelanders can do when they believe in something. I talked about this with several people throughout the night, but most notably, Pat from Pat’s in the Flats. The Cleveland music scene doesn’t compete, they cooperate, and all are better for it. That’s why we get to have awesome events like the Lottery League and Straight Outta Compound.

Of course, I took some video. Swayze All Over:

and Postcards From Foreign Shores:

More on the Lottery League:

• Lou Muenz weblog posts
• Lou Muenz photos:
  • Lottery League Drawing
  • Lottery League Practices
• Cleveland Scene Feature
• Plain Dealer Article
• Ron Kretsch’s Weblog [By Invitation Only, WTF?]
• Lottery League MySpace [Features many links to Lottery League band pages]
  

Watched a hunting peregrine falcon from my office window and another raptor, much larger, stopped in for an inspection. Didn’t look much like a bald eagle, but could have been a juvenile; they don’t have the markings yet. I don’t know of any other sizable birds of prey in this area.

Lost my fountain pen. For real this time. About 8 years ago, a motherly Christmas gift. It had some serious sentimental value. I could buy the same model & color from Staples, but it wouldn’t be the same.

Great MetaFilter post on Wendell Berry. I’d read Feminism, the Body, and the Machine before, but he’s got a sizable body of work and some serious wisdom on community, environmental, educational and just about any other sort of attitude adjustment you might think the world needs. He’s a poet too.

I’m scheduled to be interviewed by a Boston University journalism graduate student this Saturday about Tremonter and my apparent status as a citizen journalist. Tremonter woke up from its regular winter nap this week. Nice to see.

I renewed my STOP SMILING subscription using the BOGO Superfan offer they currently have going. Sent my cousin Heather the other half. Heard from them today, they upgraded my current ’script to superfan status just because they rule.

I want my yard, though it became too cold again for much work out there. I think all of the grass in my front is kaput, rue and lamentation.

Quite the puzzle; the last little bit. After getting my iMac back in November, I had to refigure the best way of taking vids from my consumer model still camera and getting them YouTube ready. Hassle. Apples don’t like MPEGs, so I had to figure the loop-de-loops to get MPEG to MOV to MPEG, so I could edit, et cetera. iMovie is virtually impossible to use. I dicked around with MovieMaker on my old laptop and it did the job. Now, I’ve got to save the MPEG from my camera, convert it to MOV using MPEG Streamclip, edit in Final Cut Pro, and buy DivX for Mac just to get an optimized file for YouTube.

It says something when FCP is easier to use than iMovie. I had some vids from the Red Black and Green Christmas show at the Grog Shop, but the quality was poor, as my camera sucks in low light. I put together this collection of clips from when I was at the Pittsburgh Zoo instead.

Debbie and I spent three days in Pennsylvania for a last gasp at coupled freedom before the Kid arrives. I planned out our itinerary well in advance and we had a great time; plenty of stuff to do and plenty of time to do nothing. We left Monday morning and went to Pittsburgh where our first stop was the Strip District. The Strip is basically Penn Avenue and is a bit like Cleveland’s West Side Market area, except longer in distance and less corrupted by expensively uncomfortable townhomes. We ate at the Smallman Street Deli right after we arrived, basically a shot in the dark choice, but an excellent one. They cure all of their deli meat in-house, buy their bread from a local bakery and make their sides fresh. Debbie got a roast beef sandwich with mozzarella and tomatoes as her side, and I went with pastrami on rye and macaroni salad [pic].

After lunch we strolled down Penn Avenue and window shopped. I ended up buying some tart pans from a kitchen supply store, an item I’ve been unable to find in Cleveland. We also went to this place called Fudgie Wudgie which has the smoothest fudge [pic] I’ve ever tasted. Then we drove around downtown Pittsburgh, gawking at how much livelier and less run-down it appears than Cleveland and went to the Pittsburgh Zoo, which isn’t nearly as nice as the Cleveland Zoo, although it does have a much nicer aquarium. Debbie bought the coolest a stuffed octopus in the world. While getting lost downtown I got a glance at the PPG Wintergarden, which I thought was a great idea and certainly something that Cleveland could benefit from having. Throughout our Pittsburgh stay I couldn’t help but compare Pittsburgh and Cleveland; after a few days of reflection I think the main difference between the cities is that Pittsburghers seem to have a greater sense of solidarity and pride in their city than Clevelanders. I’m not sure what the reasons are for this, but I heard no one say anything bad about the city the entire time we were there, something which it seems even people who claim to take pride in Cleveland [like myself] can’t help but be down on the town quite often [something I try not to do.]

We left Pittsburgh and headed southeast, toward a little bed and breakfast called the Glades Pike Inn. We got one of their package deals to go see the Frank Lloyd Wright constructions, Fallingwater and Kentuck Knob. I’d been to both houses years previously on a trip with my mom. It was such a good time that I decided to go back. The Inn was built in 1842 as an inn, and was perfectly suited to be a bed and breakfast. Our room had a fireplace, which was very very nice. The innkeeper, Janet L. Jones, was very hospitable and eager to direct us to other local restaurants and places to visit. She’s definitely interested in building up the tourism for her neck of the woods and is a go-getter. She recommended that we have dinner at the Pine Grill which was delicious. Debbie and I got the same thing, pesto-topped orange roughy with herbed rice and steamed vegetables [pic]. I also had a Penn Dark, which tasted a bit like alcoholic Coke, without the sweetness.

The next day we went to both Fallingwater and Kentuck Knob. Debbie and I both agreed that Kentuck Knob was our favorite, which was my opinion so many years past when I went with my mom. Kentuck Knob is owned by Lord Palumbo who opened it for public tours in 1996, which was probably right around the time I first visited. The panorama at the top is the view from Kentuck Knob, and the farm pictured is where Lord Palumbo and his family stay when they are visiting. They only use Kentuck Knob for entertaining visitors. On the far hillside are some huge wind turbines producing electricity for the area. If someplace that rural can make it happen, I sure hope Cleveland can do the same. In transit from Fallingwater to Kentuck Knob, we stopped at Ohiopyle and ate lunch by the waterfall.

The sculpture garden at Kentuck Knob is something that I think was added after my first trip there. Some of the sculptures were of the boring various-bits-of-rusted-metal-welded-together-nonrepresentationally type, but there was a Claes Oldenberg applecore and some man-made ponds that were beautiful under the pines. Pictured to the left is Ray Smith’s Red Army. They also have two pieces of the Berlin Wall, I think they only had one when I was there last. Somehow I liked it better when they only had one. After the tour, we had a nice walk down the hillside and back to the car. All that we purchased from the gift shops were post cards and a reusable grocery bag, $4.67 total.

We got lost on the way back, but ended up in Somerset for dinner, and another relaxing night at the Glades Pike Inn. The next day I was starting to get sniffly, and I’m full blown congested [again!] now, but on our way back through Pittsburgh we stopped at the Andy Warhol Museum. It only took about an hour to get through the whole museum, the only things I really liked in there were a couple of Jasper Johns paintings, mostly we went because I thought Debbie would like it. Warhol has never done it for me. Since we had so much of the day unexpectedly available to us, we went to the sales-tax-free Prime Outlets in Grove City and blew a few hours clothes shopping. We got home around 7 on Wednesday night, made dinner, and zonked out. It was a good vacation.

You can view all of the vacation photos here.

As I passed the House of Blues today on the way to my bus stop I saw a high school emo boy throwing a tantrum at his girlfriend. She caught it and threw it right back, but was certainly the more “mature” of the two. He was almost high-step stomping his way toward me with a giant poutywhine face half visible under his dirty combed-over-one-eye hairstyle and he tore something out of his pocket and slammed it to the ground as he stomped along. His girlfriend was behind him yelling for him to come back. He took out his concert tickets and threw them to the ground as well before continuing his stomp around to East 4th toward Lola.

The girlfriend yelled “I’m tired of your shit!”, picked up one of the tickets and went into the HoB. I picked up the other ticket before it blew into a puddle and dropped it back at the ticket booth in case emo boy’s tantrum wore off and he decided he actually wanted his $21 ticket to see “Hot Topic Presents The Sub City Take Action Tour featuring Every Time I Die, From First To Last, The Bled, August Burns Red, The Human Abstract”

By the way, From First to Last has an album called Dear Diary, My Teen Angst Has a Body Count. I suppose, technically, that makes Tantrum-thrower emocore, but I don’t really care.

I was at the County Coroner’s Office yesterday for a meeting about redoing their website, currently one of the oldest in the County. After the meeting we were given a tour of the facilities, which are impressive. I learned a lot about their procedures, saw where the autopsies are performed [on the top floor, with plenty of windows], saw the safe where all of the weapons that result in a death by accident or suicide are kept, and even saw a bit of a training autopsy. Those few seconds, being a few feet away from hollowed corpse were much different than watching the Stan Brakhage film on the subject and my subsequent poem about it. The actual event is much more fraught, I left with the feeling that working at the Coroner’s office must demand a very specific mettle for all parts of the job. I don’t know if I could work with unknown corpses, knowing that infectious disease transmission like Hepatitis B is a very real possibility. Even transcribing the autopsy reports must be a relatively surreal act.

Their forensic photography and video departments are very very capable and manage some extremely interesting tricks with their equipment.

At the other end of the spectrum, today Debbie and I went to our one-shot lamaze class. Six hours long, it ate up our Saturday, but was quite informative. When we were doing one of the various breathing techniques, I had to count on my fingers at Debbie, and accidentally flipped her off. Of course, she cracked up and everyone thought she was the crazy one, not me.

Whew.

The reason I’ve been putting in so many late hours since the first of the year is now live to the world. The new Cuyahoga County Board of Elections site is now live. Our whole group has done pretty much nothing but recode the site from the ground up since January 1st. I put together a site tour to show off all of the new bells and whistles, but I’ll touch on my favorites here.

My Voting Information

The My Voting Information page is a great one-stop-shop for personalized voting information, all of which is public record. If you enter your last name and date of birth you get detailed results concerning your polling location, ballot, district information, past election participation [not your votes, just the elections you've voted in], poll worker participation and community outreach events in your city. There’s even a Google map which will give you directions from your home to your polling location.

Election Results Wizard

The Election Results Wizard lets you follow only the races you’re interested in instead of having to scroll through the huge master results list.

Events Calendar

The Events Calendar lets you search for the events that you’re interested in, and only the events you’re interested in.

Validation, Accessibility

Working within the design constraints [not a big fan of having to use #EF3E42] and the constraints of the ASP.NET CMS was great for the most part. I’m still having fits trying to get the server to stop spitting out so much trash code, but I’ve learned a lot about styling within .NET itself. Despite that, I’m at a loss of what to do with the remaining validation errors since even the three images missing alt attributes are inaccessible because they aren’t hard-coded. I managed to give them title attributes, but can’t figure out the alt text trick. I’m trying to convince the developers to take the Google Map API key out of the web.config and put it back into the script where it typically is because ASP.NET doesn’t allow code blocks within the header. This means there are script references outside of the header. And, ASP.NET labels spit out everything between tags which the validator also chokes on because block-level elements can’t be contained within inline elements.Update: I’ve whittled down the validation errors to one, the onClick attribute that’s called as a user control for the site search. That’s definitely one for a developer to look at. The alt attributes were inserted by using a text=”" attribute in the asp:hyperlink line. I’m used to a text attribute actually spitting out text, so that wasn’t an intuitive choice for me. The Google API isn’t called until someone actually clicks on a directions link, so there are now no scripts outside of the header, and all those span tags can be gotten rid of by using ASP:Literal elements instead of ASP:Label ones. That simple switch cleaned up about 80% of the trash code that I was seeing upon viewing source. I’m learning even more. Maybe I’ll even learn some programming here in a bit.

There might be a better way to go about this, but I’ve not had the chance to take an ASP.NET course yet, and it is new hat to the developers as well. Those guys are friggin’ heroes though, no doubt.

In accessibilityland, unfortunately the site is heavily dependent on JavaScripts. There isn’t really anything I can do about that as a designer, and most of the interactive items depend on it. I made sure to provide access keys and tab indexing where it would be helpful and we’re now providing an accessibility statement, at least. There is always more to be done, but the honest truth is that accessibility becomes a low priority when the limits of time, money and interest are more concerned with other things. On the bright side, the new site is worlds better than the old one for those who use alternative browsing methods.

The End

In the end I hope that [as cheesy as it sounds] my work on the BOE site will help improve the electoral process and experience for folks in Cuyahoga County. Although I say so myself, the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections site is the best board of elections site I’ve seen. I hope it influences others to step up their game as much as the Web Group at the ISC has these past two months.

Time for a beer.

Life has been too busy to pay much attention to this website. I’ve got a redesign about halfway done, but it will continue to languish until I don’t have to put in quite so many hours at work; so, after the March 4 Primary. There have been a lot of errands to take care of lately, framing art, working on curtains, getting a rug for the bedroom, so the bed doesn’t ruin the wood floors, working on the wall in the entry room, paying down debt, doing laundry, doing dishes, along with various other appointments.

I’ve had a bad sore throat/chest congestion for a week now. I finally bought some Mucinex, but although others swear by it, I notice no change in my ability to hack up dense globs of phlegm. Sleeping is a nightmare.

On the baby front, we can feel him kick and punch and throw dance parties all of the time. Apparently he really likes peanut butter.

For dinner tonight I’m making sweet potato gnocchi with sautéed artichoke hearts and broccoli with meatballs on the side.

• $110 will get you approximately 250 items of secondhand baby clothes. No one needs to buy us anything resembling a baby cloth for at least the next 9 months.
• The Bobby website accessibility validator is no longer available online. It is now bundled into a piece of IBM software for purchase only. This makes it harder, not easier, for web designers to build accessible websites.
• It is faster to ride RTA downtown than drive, since the E 9th and Euclid intersection snarls everything up. It is actually faster to exit on E 22nd Street and backtrack.
• No one is used to the bus lanes yet, they’re being used as right turn lanes, which further snarls traffic.
• After 3 years of paying my consolidated college loans on time, I just received at 1% reduction in the interest rate. Now it is at 2.375%, which is awesome. I can pay it off faster now.

I received bear paw mittens for Christmas, and they’ve become my favorite gift. They give me near endless amusement, I get to act like a bear and make infinite puns about doing things with my bear hands. In addition to this, I also get to act like a bear and make infinite puns about my bare hands. These mittens are so awesome that people do triple takes. I pretend they are my actual hands and wonder aloud if I’ll ever find gloves that will fit. I probably exasperate everything within ear-sight of me when I have them on. They even have the bonus of being fairly warm, despite their acrylic nature. The next time I’m in Canada, I might try fishing with them.

It has also been suggested to me that I get a shirt that says “Everyone has the right to bear arms.”

The new year always kicks off some great new projects at the County, mostly because everyone has money to spend after budget approval. The focus last year was getting the new county home page off and running, and in the year since we’ve made sufficient technological progress that the home page now requires another rewrite. This time, if all goes according to plan and my knowledge of RSS and our Synapse Content Management System pays off, the home page will be able to update itself. This is probably some time off though, as we have to put most of the current county sites into the CMS in the first place.

There are a few sites already out there running the CMS, the most notable of these is the Department of Development’s site. While I’m still having fits over getting .NET to serve valid, standards-based code, the site itself has much better flow, and a significantly updated look and feel. Hopefully it actually feels like it has been designed, instead of just built.

The big ticket item for the first quarter of 2008 is a complete overhaul of the Board of Elections site, putting it into the CMS, making it more like a portal and creating pages with voter-specific information and interactive election-tracking as well. In addition to the end-user bells and whistles, behind the scenes we should end up with less labor intensive updating processes and significantly less server load.

Other sites currently in the pipeline include the Office of Homeless Services, the Board of County Commisssioners, Coroner, and Justice Affairs. This is a good chance for me to build up some earned time so that I can take time off when the kid arrives.

Here at home, I’ve switched O/M over to Bluehost, an all-around good idea, as I can and am doing a redesign with multiple Wordpress installations and databases.

The creation of enclaves of like-minded people had a second effect: It made both liberal groups and conservative groups significantly more homogeneous — and thus squelched diversity. Before people started to talk, many groups displayed a fair amount of internal disagreement on the three issues. The disagreements were greatly reduced as a result of a mere 15-minute discussion. In their anonymous statements, group members showed far more consensus after discussion than before. The discussion greatly widened the rift between liberals and conservatives on all three issues.

The Internet makes it exceedingly easy for people to replicate the Colorado experiment online, whether or not that is what they are trying to do.

Cass R. Sunstein - The Polarization of Extremes

Baltimore is a postindustrial city, wedged between D.C. and Philadelphia and struggling to find its future and reconcile its past. In that sense it’s like St. Louis and Cleveland and Philly and a lot of other rust-belt American places, and so stories from here have a chance of being about more than Baltimore per se. The storytelling here might be quite detailed in referencing local geography and culture, but it translates easily to elsewhere and therefore acquires additional relevance easily.

David Simon - Creator/Writer/Producer of The Wire as interviewed by Nick Hornby.

I’m pregnant. That’s right, you heard me. To be perfectly specific, my girlfriend Debbie is pregnant. I’m going to be a father! We’re going to be parents! This wasn’t expected or planned, but we both want children so we’re making the best of it. This news explains the intermittent noise amid all of the radio silence here lately. We’ve been moving in together, breaking the news to our family, and doing some serious psychological adaptation to our new roles. She’s 15 weeks along at this point, so we’ve had time to get over the initial shock and get excited about the actual birth. The due date is June 20th.

I’m not too good at keeping a secret and I would have felt like I was lying to post continuously with such important news kept in the bag along with the cat. We heard the heartbeat the last time we visited the doctor, and a sonogram will show up in a few more weeks. Debbie had pretty awful dawn-to-dawn morning sickness for the last three months, but now that it is fading away a bit everybody is less stressed.

We spent Thanksgiving with Debbie’s parents and Christmas with my family. Christmas week was a flurry of driving and it was good to get back into town, especially since, while we were gone, I had wood floors installed in part of the house. I still have to put down quarter-round and grates for the ventilation, not to mention work on the walls in the main entry room, but at least two of the room feel like home now.

New Year’s was celebrated with a couple of friends and a tense game of Star Wars Monopoly. You’re pretty much caught up. I’ll now take a few questions.

Nearly a month ago I received my new iMac. I got the 20″ with a 750GB HD, 2.14GHz Core Duo and 1 GB of RAM. I ordered it after October 26th, so it shipped with Leopard. My intention in getting an Intel-based Mac was so that I could avoid all of the cruft that now accompanies PC purchases and still run Windows XP and therefore all my old computer games; Starcraft, ho! No need to run an emulation, to worry about the inevitable bogging down of Windows installs, and native on-the-fly installs using Boot Camp. Easy. Well, not really.

There is a common error when using BootCamp where the Windows install doesn’t recognize any of the partitions created, so I quit the install which corrupts the partition map and gives the iMac a white screen on restart. I took it in to the Apple store for the first time and found out that it was borking at the boot selector, which is a serious problem.

After getting the drive wiped, I tried again; this time accepting the incorrect partition and trying to install Windows. This time it worked well enough, installing Windows at least, but XP thought the drive only had 130GB on it, and it destroyed the Leopard install. Since I couldn’t boot from the Tiger disk and run Disk Utility from it, I had to go back to the Apple store, where the same guy wiped my drive again. This time when I got home and reinstalled Tiger and Leopard, I wiped and repartitioned my external drive and installed Leopard on it. This way if I borked things again I’d be able to wipe the HD on my own. Good thing I did this, because I wiped the drive 4 more times before I got everything working.

My XP volume-licensed disk was Service Pack 1, so I had to get my hands on an XP SP 2 volume license disk before I got BootCamp to behave itself. This took a bit of time in itself, as the disk I was using kept throwing a Manifest Parse Error at me. Eventually I got both XP Pro and Leopard installed on the same machine and could start installing software. Just about everything worked, but Leopard has some similar problems as Vista when installing older software.

Apple sent me Tiger install disks and the Leopard upgrade disk. Installing Leopard offers the option to completely erase Tiger and install Leopard cleanly. The problem with doing this is that iLife is only on the Tiger disk and won’t be installed if you do an Erase and Install using the Leopard upgrade. The Airport Express Base Station software disk can’t run on Leopard either, and Leopard doesn’t support any Java runtime environments or development software, which has the Java developer community up in arms.

On the plus side, my Mighty Mouse supports right clicking in XP, and other nice driver access is available for disk eject and volume control from within Windows, and all of my peripherals installed cleanly and seamlessly on the OS X side.

I bought an extremely discounted paired kit of Mushkin 2GB RAM and installed them on my own. Took about five minutes, worked like a charm, and saved me $700 if I had purchased it through the Apple Store.

I also picked up Halo 2 for Vista using my Best Buy Reward Zone certificates and using a simple hack found online, got it up and running on XP. This basically proved that Microsoft marketed and released it as Vista-only in order to encourage more people to upgrade to Vista. It runs on Direct X 9 just fine, even though my iMac comes with Direct X 10. The only goofy part is that Halo 2 doesn’t like my third-party computer controller, which meant I had to buy a Microsoft xBox 360 controller in order to play the game, which I purchased with the gift card that I got from Neighborhood Connections. Of course, the proprietary Microsoft controller [after scrounging around for the correct driver to install, since the website listed in the xBox controller manual was non-existent] worked like a charm. You also can’t play Halo 2 multiplayer online via a standard server setup like every other multiplayer on the market. You have to subscribe to Live. Screw you and your proprietary strong-arming, Microsoft.

Now the only problem I have is that file-sharing between the operating systems is limited because you can only do it natively if Windows is installed on a FAT32 which limits the size of the partition to 32GB, and my Windows partition is already full! If I can find a third-party piece of software that will enable me to share files between OS X and an NTFS partition, I’ll wipe and reinstall Windows with all my games, with Visual Studio 2005 and be good to go, completely, finally.

I used to watch The Price is Right all the time with my grandparents. It came on and still comes on at 11am, right when they’d eat lunch. Plinko was my favorite game, of course; my least favorite: Blank Check. Today in the Canteen at work The Price is Right was on with Drew Carey and slightly modified production values. Barker’s Beauties are long gone, replaced by even more plasticky-looking vapidities; same old crappy merchandise though.

The main epiphany that I had is the genius of the show itself. It gets people to watch a full hour of commercials in the guise of a game show. The Price is Right is the epitome of American capitalism and consumerism. That it took a major change of cast to finally clue me into this fact is indicative of just how entrenched in that system I am. Yikes.

It might be a bit unfair to make the statement apply solely to America, as The Price is Right is internationally pandemic. America has always been good at exporting culture and entertainment.

I finally had the chance to try out the Euclid Corridor today, riding the #6 to a Flash ActionScript class at the Cole Center for Continuing Education. When I started at the ISC just over a year ago the director emphasized his encouragement for us to take skill-building classes. If there was an award for most classes taken, I’d probably win it. I haven’t quite figured out how the whole Euclid Corridor thing works, but the bus drivers know it, and stepping off a bus right onto the bus platform was much nicer than stepping off a bus into a big puddle of snowmelt, and I only had to walk half a block to get to the Center.

First snowfalls and mornings are hand-in-glove. It was very quiet and dark waiting for the bus, then chattering brightness.

Now all the days and nights of journeying through the forest drew together and were behind Falk. He was not camping: he had come to a place. He need not think at all about the weather, the dark, the stars and beasts and trees. He could sit stretching out his legs to a bright hearth, could eat in company with another, could bathe in front of the fire in a wooden tub of hot water. He did not know which was the greatest pleasure, the warmth of that water washing dirt and weariness away or the warmth that washed his spirit here, the absurd elusive vivid talk of the old man, the miraculous complexity of human conversation after the long silence of the wilderness.

Ursula K. Le Guin - City of Illusions

Time for class.

The way home wasn’t nearly as fun. The #6 doesn’t run westward on Euclid just yet, and the 9X, with its status as an Express, doesn’t stop and runs relatively rarely on Chester, so I had to walk 30 blocks to Public Square, where I was just in time to catch the 23. On the plus side, during the walk I saw a roller-blading Santa Claus wielding a ski pole.

Birthdays get progressively more boring as one ages. Other than the initial “Yay It’s my birthday!” upon waking up today isn’t going to be much different than usual. Although I might stop by Dave’s and pick up a sugar-cream pie on my way home. Oh man, I love me some sugar-cream pie. One year ago, I put in my notice at my old job. That was a great birthday present. Whenever I get frustrated here at the County, I just remember how life-sucking the work at Thomson-West was and thank my lucky stars.

A lot has changed in a year. I’ve grown into my job, there is a new confidence in me when I hop around town talking to different County departments about improving their web presence. I actually have an expertise that can improve the way they interact with the public on the web, and the chance to use it. In the last year, I broke up with an old girlfriend, bought a house, found a new great woman, rode my bike to work for seven months, and took public transportation for the other five. I also broke a big toe and an elbow and finally got to play Punk Rock Softball. I’m also seriously cash-strapped as the house absorbs all of my money. So if anyone wants to treat me to my new favorite meal [a cheeseburger, sweet potato fries and a Guinness at Prosperity] tonight, I’m certainly down for that. Tuesday is the day for the cheeseburger deal at happy hour, if I’m not mistaken.

I didn’t make ribs this year, which was unfortunate. I am going to have two Thanksgivings though, so that will make up for it.

I must be hungry.

I had my second physical therapy appointment today. The therapist put heat on my bicep for ten minutes and then gave it a massage for a bit more. She thought that it might be tightened and preventing my arm from full extension. She was right, a bit. I’ve made good progress with the exercises already, only 10° [the hardest ones to get back] from normal on extension, and about 20° from bending it in half. Pretty good considering that I have four more sessions to get the rest back on track.

I received an Airport Express Base Station today and just got it configured. It was nearly a life-changing experience. My speaker-out jack has been busted for 9 months or so, so listening to music on my computer while doing other work was nearly impossible. But thanks to AirTunes and the handy 3.5mm stereo-mini jack on the base station, I’m blasting some Alice & Chains while cooking generic tuna helper. I can finally get caught up on all the music that’s been stagnating on my hard drive lately. What’s even better is that I’m typing this in the kitchen and the music is coming out of my speakers in the living room. Wireless music, holy shit. I can control the volume, playback, etc. anywhere within range of the base station, and be connected to the internet while I do it. Technology rules. The base station even has a USB jack, so once I get a splitter, I’ll be able to access my external hard drive and printer wirelessly as well. It might seem a petty thing to be so excited about, but it really does free me to do a lot of work.

Or watch stuff on VideoLemon, whatever.

I had a physical therapy appointment today at MetroHealth. I must say, I’m impressed with their hospital. They’ve got excellent, good-natured staff, and they follow-up on small problems like a dachshund down a badger hole.

I’m sans 70# of grip strength in my right arm because of the broken elbow, and my range of motion degrees for straightening the arm are poor as well. I also realized just how underserved and orphaned I was at Notre Dame when I dislocated my kneecap. The extent of my physical therapy there was being told to ride a bicycle until I felt better. No one measured my range of motion or monitored my progress; and I wonder if I would have an arthritic knee now if I’d some professional assistance at the time.

I’ve got five more appointments for physical therapy, some exercises to do at home, good literature and a determination to get my dominant arm to 100% again. Thankfully, I have some good help this time.

My street just made the cut to be one of the pilot areas for a retry at Cleveland Curbside Recycling. I’m quite pumped about this because I recycle most of my waste, and piling it into my car and driving to the nearest dropoff point seemed a bit cockeyed. My cans showed up today. In addition to the curbside recycling, there is also a City of Cleveland Approved Regular Trash Can, a 96-gallon behemoth that I will pretty much never fill. I average about 1 kitchen-sized bag of actual trash every two weeks. Since my house is a 2-unit, I got 4 cans. In addition to the two cans I’d purchased on my own, this brings my trashcan total to 6. Four of them are in my tumbledown shed.

The recycling can is already full.

The doctor told me that I don’t need a sling anymore, [the elbow is still broke-joke, but a sling would hinder more than help healing] and gave me a better boot to wear while my toe heals. What I haven’t figured out is how the hydrocodone and prescription-strength ibuprofen is affecting me. I try to go at least 8 conscious-hours per day without taking any meds so my body doesn’t get too used to them, and they don’t hurt my liver too much, but I get these pounding headaches not long after discontinuation. I don’t know if this is because of how close my upper wisdom teeth were to my sinuses, or whether my head hurts because my body is detoxing from the meds. It could also be because I’ve not been eating too much lately, doubly hard to do so when it hurts to chew and I have to eat with the wrong arm.

This is why I don’t like other people around when I’m sick. I’m grouchy about piddling stuff.

This is the first Halloween in something like a decade in which I’ve not watched The Crow on Devil’s Night and The Rocky Horror Picture Show on All Hallows Eve itself. What with my double-gimpédness and various other responsibilities, I had to forgo the pleasure.

I did, however, get to hand out candy for the first time in about a decade as well. I estimated fairly well, based on the number of goblins that my neighbor had last year. I have perhaps 20 Kit Kats left. It was fun to sit out on the porch and encourage the littlest ones to say “Trick or Treat” and give the older kids without costumes shit for not having costumes. I made paper cranes for the adults, and it was good to pass the time folding in between groups of goblins. The mothers were all tickled to get them.

The Pumpkin Tide

I saw thousands of pumpkins last night
come floating in on the tide,
bumping up against the rocks and
rolling up on the beaches;
it must be Halloween in the sea.

–Richard Brautigan, 1968

I carved on Sunday with some friends. Last minute planning resulted in a lack of pumpkin, but carving watermelons was just as fun, and ultimately more effective on display, when carved and lit appropriately. Still my favorite holiday, even as the flavor changes with age.

A few months ago the web group at the ISC was approached by a local design firm to host and code checkthefence.us, a site meant to provide information about art put on the construction fence surrounding the Breuer Tower, a space for public comment on the construction, and an interactive Flash gadget where visitors could design their own wall.

This was right when the furor over the Breuer Tower demolition decision and the sales tax increase was at its peak; and, at least from my perspective, it was obvious that checkthefence.us would be a PR nightmare, a tax-payer funded waste of time drawing even more attention to the PR nightmare that the Breuer Tower [now for sale] already was. I wanted nothing to do with it, and though I wasn’t at the actual meeting with the folks, I did see the mockups of what they wanted, prior to. I was and still am under the impression that every aspect of this particular design project was ill-advised. I think we told them that if they already had the design and URL purchased, they didn’t need us to implement it. We didn’t hear back from them, so I thought it was dead in the water. Then as I hobbled to work earlier this week, I saw the URL stenciled on the side of the wall. Checked the site, essentially an under construction page with the County logo on it. The full site went live today. The wall is currently playbilled with Preserve/Conserve banners, the irony of which is either completely lost on those in charge of what goes on the wall or something a bit more frightening.

And the Office of Sustainability website that they say is coming soon? Don’t bet on it. The design has been done since the office was first launched, but I’ve spent months trying to get the necessary information to put on it. At one point we were asked to go with a theme like “Green County on a Blue Lake” and I had to point out that Cleveland already has a site like that.

I’m certain that posting this might get me in trouble, since talking like this with my coworkers often results in fearful looks on their part, but the whole thing is so ridiculous from my perspective that I can’t not share it. I’m at such a lowly position in the County’s hierarchy that I am meant to be neither seen nor heard. But when our department reads about County news in the Plain Dealer, instead of receiving the press releases internally, even a peon like me can see that there is a problem. Much of the time it is easy to do quite a bit of good web work completely under the radar, so it is frustrating when high-visibility cost-centers like checkthefence can’t be curtailed. I mean, I saw the mounds of hate email we received when we did a simple redesign of the County Home Page. I can’t imagine what the public comment section of checkthefence is going to generate. I bet only positive ones make it on the site itself. You can be sure they’re moderated.

I’ve been thinking about PR and tech a lot lately, and the conclusion I’ve reached is that if your message needs to be controlled and go through a spin cycle or two, you’ve got the wrong message or you’re going about its dissemination in the wrong way. There is no room for fear in public relations, especially on the internet. I like the way Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief of Wired thinks.

Even with my wisdom teeth extracted, in addition to all of the other current injuries, it all still hurts less than one dislocated kneecap. However, it is hard to do most anything without the use of my dominant arm. It is pretty much like I only have one arm, period. It is hard to wash my hands, put on deodorant, wash dishes, tie shoelaces, button or zip up a coat, type, and wipe.

Eating is actually easy, or was until I got chipmunked in my mouth. I’m deft with left-handed utensilry. I ended up getting my hydrocodone Rx filled, because the tooth throbbing was so ridiculous. [Apparently no special character exists for the prescription symbol]. I only have a $5 copay for generic prescriptions which is sweet. I did have to drop 20% of the cost of my extraction though. Buying a Mac is going to have to be put off for a couple of months.

It is starting to get cold enough that I am anticipating the end of bike-ride-to-work season. I was surprised this morning to feel a pang of regret over this. The early morning exercise, concentration and surprises [like the groundhog across from the VTR] helped me be a better worker.

That was written yesterday. There is a unique savor to self-inflicted irony. I went ass-over-teakettle last night on my way to a meeting about crime in Tremont. I was mugged by the sidewalk but it only took my dignity. The damage report is a scraped left palm, abraded left cheek, busted chin, broken left toe and broken right elbow. That’s what I get for riding down the sidewalk too fast, and using my front brake too much. If I get my wisdom teeth out tomorrow I’ll look like I belong to a fight club.

I’ve always wanted to learn how to do more shit southpaw anyway.

You can make six paper cranes out of one letter-sized sheet of paper. The two smallest ones would make perfect earrings.

The conundrum is that the language to describe the ineffable splendors and possibilities of our lives takes time to master, takes a certain unhurried engagement with the tasks of description, assessment, critique, and conversation; that to speak this slow language you must slow down, and to slow down you must have some inkling of what you will gain by doing so. It’s not an elite language; nomadic and remote tribal peoples are now quite good at picking and choosing from development’s cascade of new toys, and so are some of the cash-poor, culture-rich people in places like Louisiana. Poetry is good training in speaking it, and skepticism is helpful in rejecting the four horsemen of this apocalypse, but they both require a mind that likes to roam around and the time in which to do it.

Ultimately, I believe that slowness is an act of resistance, not because slowness is a good in itself but because of all that it makes room for, the things that don’t get measured and can’t be bought.

- Rebecca Solnit

I think I really only have one pet peeve; people who complain about a part of their life but do nothing to fix that problem or improve upon it. Drives me batty.

On my wet, windy walk to work this morning, a broken umbrella flapped on the sidewalk like a dying bird.

Lamb says somewhere that if, of three friends (A, B, and C), A should die, then B loses not only A but “A’s part in C,” while C loses not only A but “A’s part in B.” In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets. Now that Charles is dead, I shall never again see Ronald’s reaction to a specifically Caroline joke. Far from having more of Ronald, having him “to myself” now that Charles is away, I have less of Ronald. Hence true Friendship is the least jealous of loves.

- C.S. Lewis The Four Loves

I’ve finally started painting, I have to have three rooms completely painted by November because I’m getting flooring put in then. My life has been topsy-turvy of late, very busy and alternating between ridiculously stressful and ridiculously chill. I think it is going to take another few weeks before I know for sure where I’m heading for good.

I got a parking ticket in Cleveland Heights the other night. The violation was for parking in a no parking zone between 3am and 6am. The sign right above my car says, quite blatantly, no parking between 3:30pm and 6:30pm. I called up Cleveland Heights and they said that there is probably a sign at the beginning of the street or upon entering the city that states the no parking ordinance. I’m pretty sure that’s a load of bullshit, but I’m going to go check out Mayfield Road to make sure. Then I’ll contest it. It is only a $10 ticket, but Cleveland Heights has the sort of reputation for this kind of abuse of power, that it is certainly probable that they would “accidentally” make out a ticket and figure the unlucky person will just suck it up and upchuck the 10-spot. Good thing I’m stubborn. If they’re going to waste my time, I’m happy to waste theirs. Besides, what kind of sense does it make to disallow parking between 3am and 6am, it only makes sense if you think the prime time to ticket people is when they’re the likeliest to be asleep.

The only downside to having a second generation iPod Shuffle is that the damn thing is so tiny you can lose it fairly easily. I can’t find mine. I remember getting into my car last night and taking it out of the ashtray, but I don’t remember where I put it. I searched for awhile but no dice thusfar. The Stupid™ attacked when, for a brief moment, I thought about asking Google “Where is my iPod?”

I’ve officially been online too long.

Found! Apparently I stored the iPod in what was obviously the most appropriate place at the time, the toe of my left running shoe. Thanks Google!

Tequila and I got reacquainted last night. Our relationship has matured and doesn’t hurt me as much as it used to. I surely needed some of that after getting called into work yesterday for six hours of frustrating, ill-planned, deadlined updates. I was gung-ho to get some significant work accomplished at home. The Blue Collar Bar Crawl was a good way to rub off that stress, and I think I might relax for a few hours today anyway instead of doing house work. I’ve just got too many things to do and not enough time to do them, unless I give up all my down time which results in the grouchy Adam that is writing this post.

Decided to head into work a bit later than usual today and biked into Jeff Schuler at the downtown end of Carnegie bridge. He invited me to the brief Bike to Work Day meetup at A.J. Rocco’s and I tagged along and met a few folks. Ended up with a Cleveland Bikes t-shirt and a contact for some freelance web work. Learned about fixed gear bikes and something call the track stand. I also found out that A.J. Rocco’s has breakfast sandwichery, something I’ve been desiring of late. Fortuitous.

At lunch I tipped the hot dog lady $1.40 and I think it made her day. She was grumbly and non-eye-contacting until I tipped her, then she looked at me and smiled and thanked me loudly. I am liking this fall weather. Need to be 15 degrees cooler so I can bust out the scarves though.

I see plenty of those huge banners downtown and billboards in the immediate Cleveland vicinity promoting Cleveland Plus, but I’ve yet to see one anywhere outside of Cleveland proper. I was under the impression that this marketing campaign is for folks outside of the region, trying to attract them [and business] here. Has anyone actually seen a Cleveland Plus billboard, TV spot, or other marketing effort outside of Cleveland?

I put an ad up on Craigslist for some leftover furniture and I’ve been getting the most grammatically inept and nonsensical emails I’ve ever seen in response. I know in the abstract that a vast amount of people using the intertubes give off the slack-jawed idiot impression in their usage of all caps, no punctuation, mixed tenses, abbreviations and such, but being inundated with 4 dozen or so similar yet different messages is a constant reminder that half the population is, by necessity, below average intelligence. My two favorites, quoting the entirety of each email verbatim:

HI I NEED THE TABLE . IS OT VERY HAVE

where are you

Those aren’t even C+ quality.

I’m retiring this week. I got a wire through my back bike tire on the way home from work last night; I was coming around the corner of Abbey and Columbus at a good clip and the back tire felt fat and fishtaily making the turn, so I got off, checked, and ended up walking the last mile or so home. Took the bike in to Fridrich’s for a tune-up, recalibration and retiring. Then I zipped on over to NTB in Lakewood [since Westown Tire wouldn't pick up the phone] and got four new tires put on my beater. Basically my car was totaled, since the cost of the tires was more than the car is worth. However, that valuation is based purely on fungibility. The fact that my beater is spacious and the engine runs like a dream is worth far more to me than the actual comparative value of the beast.

While waiting to retire, I ate at Dianna’s. I could’ve walked around the corner to My Friends, but I was feeling lazy. I’d forgotten how purgatorial eating at Dianna’s can be, especially alone. It is certainly the lowest rung diner in that area. To class myself up afterward, I got a Frosty from Wendy’s across the street.

I’m taking an Illustrator class at CSU’s CCE. I’ve picked up a couple of good tips, but what I’m starting to discover is that all of these continuing education courses move far too slowly for me. These classes only move at the pace of the slowest student, which is typically someone who has never used a graphic design program before. Granted, these are beginner classes, but when you’re moving at the pace of the accountant-student, it gets tough to stay interested.

Plus, there is a required book for this course that the CSU bookstore didn’t have in stock. The instructor said that we wouldn’t be able to take the course without the book, so some other lady, after telling us it was our fault for not having the book, made some calls and apparently got some shipped to us overnight by UPS. There are only a few hours left of this class and I still don’t have a book. When it comes in, I’m certainly not going to purchase it. Okay, I bought it. The County will reimburse me, and then anyone else there who wants to learn Illustrator can just borrow the book instead of taking the class.

I do enjoy learning the the things that are new to me, but I keep hoping these classes will give professional workflow and productivity tips in addition to the intricacies of the pen tool and the difference between raster and vector. It is also pretty lame when the course just follows along the book. If I wanted that I’d've just bought the book in the first place.

• How DNS works.
• How to set up a Mac share that is accessible by PCs.
• How good challah bread is. Especially with Boar’s Head tavern ham, a slice of edam and some brown sugar and pecan mustard. [I'm also aware of just how religiously inappropriate that sandwich is.]
• That sex can sometimes feel so good to a woman that they are convinced that they are going to end up pregnant afterward; even if that is not possible.
• That olive oil cake is ridiculicious. [Now I must learn how to make it.]
• The basics of how artists appreciate art. [DAIJ.]
• To use the tag.
• That picking a paint color for the wall of the master bedroom will likely determine the basic color scheme for the entire house. [White it is?]
• That people will bicker over the same things incessantly even when possible courses of action appear; because they are lazy.
• About serifs.
• Seats at the Cinematheque are too close together for my knees. [I already knew this, but keep forgetting.]
• How to pitch my team’s capabilities so that clients trust us with most of the design and development process.
• The wind on Carnegie Bridge can get so strong that it becomes nearly impossible to pedal a bicycle.

It has been a busy few days. Thursday was the Night to Unite which I have a bunch of photos of since I let Amy use my camera. Friday I ended up working a bit later than usual since some important web maintenance came in right at the end of the work day and I was the only one left around to post it. I suppose I shouldn’t complain too much though, since I got to watch the Thunderbirds practice for the airshow most of the day out of my office window. Once I got home my friend Sandy needed some help replacing her ancient 200#+ stove with a much newer and hipper model. Since I just went through that myself, I helped with the gas and sundries. Then I had to rush to get clean and hit the grocery store for the fixings for dinner. I had a friend over and grilled some marinaded ribeye steaks with baked sweet potatoes and snow peas. It was delicious.

Saturday was an early start in order to get to the Georgia Tech versus Notre Dame disasterbacle. I met up with Liam and once-again pregnant Anne [this time Liam won and it is a boy] for a brief moment before going in search of Jeremy. [jmay, I was gonna surprise call you when I got in town, but don't have your digits anymore. I sucked at that. Sorry to miss you man.] After the game there was an interminable hour spent waiting to get out of the parking lot, because everyone kept letting people in front of them. I vented my road rage for a bit and then realized it would be much better to appreciate the good company I was in. Stopped at Fazoli’s on the way home and got back into Cleveland without even being drowsy thanks to great conversation.

Sunday was pretty much a wash, late breakfast and a couple of recupernaps. Watched a pretty terrible movie called Sunshine [it is just as forgettable and pretty much exactly like some movie that I once saw about going to the center of the earth and setting off a bomb.] while doing infinite laundry and cleaned house.

Today I finished scraping the walls and sanding in the master bedroom. I also mowed the yard and trimmed and swept and made a list and checked it twice. Tonight or tomorrow I have to watch The Wages of Fear and use the recommended Zinsser primer on the walls prior to picking out some paint. Probably tomorrow, since I’ve been invited to hang out with Sandy and Amy tonight for some grilling.

In other gym-related news, there is this dude who I’ve seen at the gym since I started going there that never lifts weights. He dicks around the entire time, almost always looking at himself in the mirror and going through the motions of lifting weights, setting up the bar, adjusting seat heights, switching out handles and weights, cleaning the bench, sitting down and getting “in the zone”, but never actually doing a set or even a rep. He spends something like an hour in the locker room, grooming and combing his hair and shit too. I once showed up and he was in the locker room combing his hair, did my approximately one-hour workout, and when I went to the locker room he was still combing his hair. Weird thing is, the guy is frigging ripped, so he must actually lift sometime.

Saloio bread is gross. I picked up a loaf from Dave’s because it seemed to be the closest bakery approximation to whole wheat, since they were out of the latter. It is salty as hell, crumbly, dense, and chewy. It tastes worse than the homemade hosts that Fr. Stan makes back at St. Gabriel’s in Connersville. Never again.

I get so much weird junk mail about mortgages now that I’m a homeowner. A lot of it is obvious scam stuff about PMI and refinancing, but some of it is not so obvious scam stuff that looks like official documentation from Fifth Third. Today however, I received a scratch off ticket. It says on the ticket that all tickets are winners for stuff like an xBox or iPod Video, the only obligation is to sit through a demonstration of some home care products. Fat chance.

I also both like and have a crush on someone.

Lou shot me an email today to help him restore his WordPress after his site was hacked, he came over right after I got home and we fixed it fairly quickly. Then he and I met up with Shawn at the Lincoln Park Pub for Taco Tuesday and I ran into my old boss. Found out she reads this and has been keeping tabs. Hi boss. Had some tacos, met some new folks, shot the shit and had a nice relaxing time for a couple of hours. That’s the kind of society I dig. Spontaneous, chill, hilarious, food.

Married women have been hitting on me the last few days. I was at my friend Sandy’s birthday party on Saturday and Amy and I both got the vibe that this runway catalog modelish woman was flirting with me. Then, at the gym today, this other lady kept moving to work out in front of me and checking to see if I was looking at her and asked me if I was getting a good workout. Wedding ring on the finger. Maybe they aren’t hitting on me [postulate] and I’ve an enormous ego [fact] or they feel like I’m safe to flirt at [postulate] when the hubs isn’t around. This is just as strange as getting hit on by gay guys while running was a year ago; but not as funny. My current boss says that being married doesn’t mean what it used to, and that expectation that married folks are going to cheat troubles me.

My tolerance has been wearing thin lately for unreasonable bullshattery. I’ve got a pepper-pot of rants a-simmer on a fair range of topicality and have for some time. My typical behavior is to only be as salty as necessary when necessary, but I’ve had some visions of using my still camera and making some video rants to post on YouTube, with the deliberate attempt to offend everybody while also being tongue-in-cheek reversive humor pummeling myself. While this seems like a new to me idea, I have the distinct feeling that is is already played. I would need to carefully craft the rantwrits to not trip with bullshit and resound not founder. This, I see, as the only positive improvement that such activity would have on my life, whereas apart from general entertainment value to the non-offended, I would be deliberately hurting others, which is not something to even be considered so much as enacted upon. The write-desire isn’t very much around anymore, but the music-bug is reasserting its old effect. Maybe instead of mouthing off I should start saxing it up again. That’s a good way to spell relief.

I thought I just invented a word, a portmanteau of man and answer: manswer. This word would indicate a man-standard response to a given question. Thus,

Question: “Honey, do these pants make my ass look big?”

Manswer: “Baby, you look great in everything you wear.”

or

Question: “Want another beer?”

Manswer: “BELCH.”

Turns out the word manswer already lives at the Urban Dictionary, and has so for a couple of years. Must just be a case of delayed subconscious parallel invention hoo-ha.

I ran around the secondhand furniture stores and antique strip on Lorain today in search of furniture. I’d forgotten how ridiculously over-priced most of the antique places are compared to back in Indiana, but I lucked out and found a dude actually interested in selling some merchandise and finally picked up the exact kind of library table I’ve been looking for years. Quartersawn oak with a middle drawer. I got it and a chair for $130. A better price than buying something new and not as sturdy.

I’ve also brought back the sidebar posts as my researches on various topics have been turning up lots of amazing links. Here’s a feed for it.

• Samurai Appliance Repairman rules.
• HyperTemplates has some sweet stuff, but finding it is a bitch.
• I swear to God that the panhandling one-legged saxophonist that sits outside the West Side Market on Saturdays was playing Albert Ayler’s Love Cry today.

I made another collage box last week. I’m still lacking a critical mass of materials to choose from but I think this one turned out a bit well despite the restrictions. It was also a welcome break from washing wallpaper glue, scraping linoleum off of wood floors and noticing various cock-eyed tipsies in my 107 year old house.

I’m taking another Flash class today, this time through CSU instead of Tri-C. Not only is it cheaper for a longer time period, but my instructor actually knows what the hell he is talking about instead of constantly having to backtrack and recant and figure things out as he goes along like the last dude. I’ve learned more in the first 4 hours today than I did in the entire 6 session class last time.

I’m Downtown too, at the Cole Center. I drove in this morning because of the rain, but I’m regretting it now since it is absolutely beautiful outside, perfect weather, only perhaps a tad too breezy. I’m so glad we finally got some rain, even as little as this morning’s fall. I think it is too late for the grass this year, but at least I’m not going to have to worry about a yard-sized fire hazard.

I’m anxiously awaiting this weekend. I’m going to Chicago to meet my friend and for the Pitchfork music festival. My mom asked if this was a Satanic festival because of the “pitchfork.” She’s been asking me if things I’m going to or doing are Satanic for at least 12 years. You’d think she would have figured out whether I’m a Satanist or not by now.

Oh yeah, just ran across this: OK X - A tribute of OK Computer by contemporary bands. Free download.

I’ve come to enjoy riding my bike to work, even on days like today when it is 82