A Weekend in Blacksburg: Part III of IV

Sunday in Blacksburg was a relaxing affair. After breakfast at a bagel shop(pe), Nikki and I drove up to Mountain Lake to poke around the wildlife and enjoy the nice November weather. Unfortunately, the parking lots were closed off at the resort, so we could only drive by the water. The lake, which had started draining a few years ago, now covers less than half of its original surface area, and the boat ramp has been "temporarily" extended with floaters for about one hundred and fifty yards before finally reaching the new edge of the water. It was a pretty sad sight, since I'd seen the lake when it was fuller (pictures on the Photos page under May 2000). That afternoon, I also stopped in to visit Paige who's running amok in her elementary music teacher position.

Sunday night was the semesterly concert of the brass ensemble, which I played in for the few semesters it existed. The concert was hit-or-miss... the accuracy and intonation suffered often, and I wasn't sold on the arrangement of Pictures at an Exhibition that comprised the second half. There were a few nice sounds though, considering the high brass players who've graduated and moved on.

After some more gathering and socializing with friends, I went over to Anna's and fell asleep on the couch. She was supposed to get in from her hectic weekend of family affairs that night, but the Fates conspired against her (as did the deer they hit on the road near Charlottesville). I didn't know this when I fell asleep though. My cat slept on the couch with me for awhile, when it wasn't tearing around the living room and leaping up the side of the patio door.

I also caught a familiar "Blacksburg Cold" which I'm just now getting over.

To be concluded tomorrow...

I did a reformat of my hard drive this afternoon, which is why this update is so late. Now I've got problems: The CD I backed up all my e-mail on has gone wiggy. All the files are plainly on it and there are no scratches anywhere, but both of my CD-drives refuse to read about half of the files. PMO.

We went and saw the Eminem vehicle, 8 Mile, last night and it was surprisingly good. Eminem has a great stage presence, and never made me wince with his acting. It was interesting to see what kind of audience the movie drew, and we probably shared the theatre with half the high-school population of Tallahassee.

I spent the weekend down in Colonial Beach. Now I'm back and preparing a whole chicken for boiling.

Stay in school and don't do drugs.

I just got spam from Minotaur K. Barbarossa for online drugs. I guess email from Joe Johnson just isn't believable anymore.

Anna won tickets to a local Avril Lavigne concert tonight by answering silly questions on a radio morning show. I just gained $20 from a memory card rebate I mailed in about six months ago. Sounds like a watershed day in the history of the Uri! Zone.

I removed the bandage from my finger last night to find that the gaping wound was healing nicely, although my finger smelled like death after three consecutive days of being covered.

Speaking of things that smell like death, I voted after work yesterday. I'm sad that Levi Levy did not run for anything this year. I, too, am concerned about the possibilities of typhus spread by wharf rats, and I was not a resident of Virginia the last time he ran for office in 2003.

I find it amusing that the sample ballots those clowns distribute outside of the voting centers not only show you how to vote for candidates along the party lines, but also how to vote on referendums too. I apparently went in the Democratic door, and took one because it's easier than ignoring the volunteer. The Democrats wanted me to vote for all three Democratic candidates (not surprising) and also to vote YES for all eight or nine school construction referendums (also not surprising).

Ultimately, I voted for the Democratic representatives and NO to all the requests for construction money, except for the school in my neighbourhood. I figure that kids are quite far off in my future, so a lack of new schools won't bother me for quite some time (I voted for the local school so I can sponsor classes on where your garbage does not belong, like the mouth of a lion or BU's front lawn). Plus, if the decision ever comes back to harm my child's education, I'll just demean his intelligence, enroll him in vocational school and convince him to become a plumber (this will also save on college expenses). My erratic voting record is most likely the reason neither major party would want me as their spokesperson, though I had a 100% track record at voting for the losing candidate in all major elections until last night. I guess Kilgore blew his remaining funds on the Presidential endorsement and didn't have enough money to buy the ballots off all those dead folks. All the schools won quite handily though. It's cute that the Rolling Ridge Elementary School had a higher margin of victory than the Republican candidate for governor.

This dovetails nicely into the announcement of my intention to run for Virginia governor in 2009 at the ripe old age of 30. I will outlaw SUVs and widen all roads that lead to wherever I want to go, and you can bet your ass that I'll be running on a platform so people can see me over top of the podium when I give speeches. Taxes will remain the same, but I will generate extra revenue by claiming all the possessions of people in jail, much like they did in feudal times. I've hired a major advertising firm to create a highly innovative campaign poster, which you are welcome to print out and post on your fridge.

New Lost on tonight!

Safari Day: Evolution of a Tag

The tag I started six months ago only made it through five generations before dying. How did the "Soundtrack of My Life" tag fare?

• BU (Wedding: Leonard Bernstein - Oh Happy We)
• CC (died here)
• Sam (Dance Sequence: Theme from Transformers, The Movie)
• Brianne (Breaking Up: New Order - Bizarre Love Triangle)
• Mike (Falling in Love: "Squeeze My Lemons..." I am obviously in love with a total tramp.)
• Christine (died here)
• Jamie (Prom: Led Zeppelin - Ramble On - Looks like I went to the prom with Mike.)
• P-Chris (died here)
• Danielle (died here)
• Elena (Driving: Frank Sinatra - New York - I must be driving Grandma's Buick)
• P-Chris (died here)
• Mike (already tagged)
• Chris (Driving: Incubus - Drive)
• Elena (already tagged)
• Mikey Ray (Reconciliation: Eagles - Witchy Woman - Make-up-sex with Bette Midler from "Hocus Pocus" mmmm)
• T-Chris (Birth of child: Splendor - Yeah, Whatever)
• Christen (private page that cannot be seen by laymen)
• Beth (Dance Sequence: Marvin Gaye - Let's Get It On)
• Adrienne (Breaking Up: Paul Simon - 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover)
• Marty (Sex Scene: Stephanie Mills - Comfort of a Man, Funeral Song: Theme from The Smurfs)
• Meg (died here)
• All Brians (died here)
• All Robs (died here)
• Kathy (Final Battle: The Who - Pinball Wizard)
• Caty (died here)
• Caitlin (died here)
• All Brendlers (died here)

Conclusions: No tag can survive in the wild for more than five passes before dying out completely. Also, every music major has at least one classical song in their iPod. Finally, guys are highly likely to have one or more theme songs from shows or cartoons and be damn proud of it!

Friday Fragments

revealing the secrets of the universe to the unworthy since the dawn of time

♠ Newest in the series of "songs where you compare yourself with inanimate objects is Katie Melua's new single, If You Were a Sailboat. This came on the radio the other night and I could help but to burst out laughing at the line "If you were a piece of wood, I'd nail you (to the floor)". Obviously there are no hidden double entrendres in that lyric, or at least no more than in the line "If you were a house I would live in you".

♠ When I first heard of Katie Melua, I kind of liked her music, but now it seems like every one of her songs sounds exactly the same -- sterile, emotionless, and slightly annoying in the timbre department. "If she were on TV, I would mute her."

♠ I've watched very little TV since I finished the first season of Heroes, but in the interim, I wrote three symphonies, discovered a home remedy for conjunctivitis, and built a spaceship for my cats.

♠ I haven't watched any of the second season of Heroes but I chuckled at this Superficial article: (no spoilers)

♠ Last weekend, I raked my entire yard to keep the new grass from spoiling underneath the heavy leaf coverage. It was round one of about four in the annual fight against the leaves. The bad part about having a forest in the back yard is how many leaves fall, but this is counterbalanced by the fact that I can just dump all the leaves in the woods and pretend I'm one of those illegally dumping industrial plants. Since the first frost was just two nights ago, pretty soon I'll be able to move around some of my hibernating flowering plants in an attempt to appear as if I had a green thumb.

♠ It's a good thing that my roses and tulips essentially thrive on their own, because garden maintenance is one of the few things I never got around to picking up from my Dad. Usually, such secrets are passed down from father to son, as part of their floral tradition.

♠ One plant which is doing surprisingly well is Pointy the Cactus, the spunky cactus Rebecca gave me six months ago from Colorado. After three months of feebly surviving indoors, I finally gave up and put him outside, where he was exposed to rainstorms and frigid temperatures. Ever since then, he's gone from being moldy and soggy to having multiple shoots and pricks -- this may or may not be false advertising. I'm not sure what I'll do when true Winter finally rolls around.

♠ Since Winter is almost here, I'll be putting up my blue-light-special Christmas lights soon. It's not truly Christmas unless the porch is festooned with blue lights like some homely edition of K-Mart.

♠ This weekend will be a mix of working, going to some far off land called Clarendon for Annie's birthday dinner, and the first of three "Month of Thanksgiving" dinners. Usually there would be four, but I was so wiped out on entertaining after the Halloween party that I preemptively cancelled the one that would have been last weekend in favour of sitting around my house setting up a computer.

♠ Happy Birthday to Vu today and Kelley Corbett on Sunday! Have a great weekend!

Weekend Wrap-up

Thanksgiving #1 was a success, in spite of the balmy 75 degree weather that prevented me from playing Christmas tunes in the background out of fear that the guests might experience some sort of shocking brainwave dissonance from the jarring juxtaposition.

This meal was a turkey meal, which allowed us to use the new high-tech Turkey Baster from our wedding registry (we actually registered for two of them, for unexplained reasons that we still cannot recall). My previous baster from the bachelor years was made of melted poisonous plastic from the 70s and incapable of maintaining suction, so oven liquids often splashed around and ended up on whatever nonfiction books I was reading near the stove (this is baste on a true story).

After hosting eleven Thanksgivings over the past five years, I have the preparation down to a science. It's made easier by the introduction of sous-chef Rebecca, who has proven that four hands are even more helpful to have than Whose Line Is It Anyways? might suggest. We now have low-stress Model T assembly line perfected (and the T is for Thanksgiving, of course).

This meal also featured a pound of bacon in various forms.

Museday Tuesday

As part of this feature, which I started in 2007, I compose a very brief work (under 30 seconds) inspired by a randomly generated title from an online word generator. The composition can be for any instrumentation, and could even be a purely synthesized realization that might not be possible to perform in the real world.

I work on the excerpt continuously for an hour and then post whatever I've managed to complete, even if it's a poorly constructed slum of a song supported by a foundation of droning double stops and abused tubas.

Captious: (adj.) apt or designed to ensnare or perplex, especially in argument

This excerpt is for accompanied horns, and mixes 9/8 and 2/4 time signatures like an astute arguer trying to change subjects.

Chart Day: Steam Games

The Steam Store allows you to easily stream games onto your computer (not unlike an Internet bladder without stones), but then shames you on the convenience by recording how much time you've wasted on each game. The fact that Terraria was the most recent purchase shows how addictive it was.

Surprisingly, I actually beat 9 of these games. In my defense for the remainder, Might and Magic was discriminatory against the colorblind, Braid was just plain retarded, Puzzle Dimension got repetitive, I only downloaded Monkey Island for kicks, I nearly fell asleep during Death Spank, and I couldn't find a good server for Team Fortress 2.

2012 Election Recap

In case you missed my live-blogging of the 2012 Election on Facebook last Tuesday, here is a transcript. I tried to include a little something for everyone, regardless of their politics:

Weekend Wrap-up

• Cleaned the house and did a load of laundry.


• Finished development on a work project task to migrate from MongoDB to PostgreSQL.


• Played Elder Scrolls Online.


• Took a 40 minute nap with a chest cat.


• Went to Costco for vast quantities of apples and yogurt.


• Made beans and rice burritos after Early Thanksgiving Dinner plans got postponed.


• Played the co-op Hearthstone brawl with Rebecca.


• Ran on the treadmill to new episodes of The 100.


• Performed Raking #2 of 3, as evinced by these blisters.


• Finished adding all of the plot points from the third book in the series to the Paravia Wiki.


• Pretended to be a physical therapy patient so Rebecca could practice her techniques for measuring range of motion.


• Mixed in episodes of Person of Interest and You're the Worst.

How was your weekend?

Despair Is Not a Long-Term Solution

When Clinton and Trump applied for the position of US President, I did my due diligence as hiring manager. In Clinton, I saw a career politician with strong policy credentials and an inability to prevent self-inflicted political wounds. The email controversy, while serious, was no worse than established practice of other politicians before her (although her flippant comment about wiping the server with a cloth incites Hulk-levels of rage in me to this day). In the "Miscellaneous" portion of her resume, I liked the symbolism of electing the first woman president.

In Trump, I saw an erratic, ineloquent businessman with no experience in politics. His actions and words showed clear racism and misogyny, and he used fear to gather and excite his voting base. Subjectively, he gave me the impression that I would be wiser to interview the advisors he surrounds himself with to prepare for the day (somewhere in Year Two) when he got bored of governing.

Both candidates were flawed, yet one clearly had the stronger resume for this specific job. The hiring recommendation I submitted was based on what I felt was best for our country in spite of my personal feelings. In the end, I was overruled and Trump was elected.

There are arguments to be made about all of the reasons that this was possible -- the Electoral College is an outdated institution, the spoiling effect of third party votes, or media oversaturation -- but these are just trifling details. Simply put, Trump won because people voted for him. REAL people, some of whom you might see on the street or at work every day. REAL people with legitimate concerns in search of a solution. I remain highly skeptical that Trump will be the solution that these voters had hoped for, but I can empathize with the feeling that their voices were finally heard.

So what will the US look like under a Trump presidency beyond a loss of international prestige and an uncertain, fluctuating market? As it has for every presidency, that remains up to us as citizens of this country and the world. We are still the best defense against institutionalized hate and we still have the power to accept or reject the qualities we want in the communities we establish.

If you're feeling despondent right now, go ahead and take a day to get that noise out of your system -- torture yourself by browsing all of the online "what-if" punditry, finish off that bottle of stale caramelized dessert wine, and rewatch Dave. When you wake up tomorrow, here are my suggestions for what you should do instead of giving up in despair (simplified into a Buzzfeed-friendly list of 3):

1) Nurture your local community

Exemplify the type of person you want to be around. Love your family, take care of your friends, and say hello to your neighbour before you dart into your suburban house to hide from real social connection. Practice the values of diversity, civil rights, and personal responsibility that you hold dear and let them virally infect your personal network and beyond. No amount of negative policy changes at the national level will ever be enough to overcome a strong, loving community.

2) Strive to understand the anxieties of the "other side"

Dismissing the concerns of the voters who put Trump in power dehumanizes almost half of our country. It's very easy to adopt an "us vs. them" or "enlightened vs. never-went-to-college" viewpoint but this will never heal the divide. In the face of manufactured factions, we need to remind ourselves that we're not as far apart as we have been led to believe. Make a conscious effort to empathize with other peoples' concerns even if surface appearances suggest an obvious bias. Be skeptical of your own stances sometimes and read news stories from sources you normally wouldn't deign to consider -- not to change your mind, but to see issues from a different perspective. It will never be as simple as saying that "everyone who votes for a racist is also a racist".

3) Work within the system to change the system

Our political system is imperfect and in need of change, but protest voting simply doesn't work. If you seriously want a third party candidate to ever win at the national level, start them organically from the local level in one of the big parties and give them a platform with broader appeal beyond people that want to smoke pot, get Wifi cancer, or abolish all government. If you dislike both big party candidates in future elections, consider choosing the one that would have a net positive impact on humanity in spite of your personal views. It's possible to work within the system without abandoning it wholesale -- as an outsider, Trump used every flaw in the process to get the nomination of a political party he doesn't truly represent and then went on to win.

We are still the same good people we were before the election, and in spite of its problems, our country is still a better place to live, raise a family, and thrive than it ever has been. If you believe that yesterday's election was a giant step backwards, it is your responsibility to keep the trail maintained until we can move forward again.

Review Day

There are no major spoilers in these reviews.

American Vandal, Season Two:
I figured it would be hard to follow up the "Who Drew the Dicks?" mystery of Season One, but Season Two opens with an unfortunate laxative incident at a preppy private school and seeks to determine who the "Turd Burglar" is in the style of a crime documentary. This season is actually better than the first, and has a satisfying ending that actually raises relevant questions about society. It's more than just turds all the way down.

Final Grade: A

Unguilded by Jane Glatt:
Magic of Thieves made me hesitant to continue reading the Secrets and Spells anthology, but I'm glad I did. Unguilded shares a few of the broad story strokes of the previous story but weaves them together much more effectively. The protagonist is one worth rooting for and the magic system is just different enough from the norm to be intriguing. A few of the villains are rather moustache-twirly, but I enjoyed the world-building and resolution. I added the sequels to my reading list based on the strength of this story.

Final Grade: B

Shake the Spirit by Elle King:
Elle King's second album is good, though a little more swear-y. Her voice is also super-over-sampled throughout as if she sang too close to an awful microphone or just required 800 filters to correct something about her voice. I still prefer the 1st album but this one isn't bad.

Final Grade: B-

Mage's Tale (Oculus Rift):
This is an innovative dungeon-crawler by the team that rebooted The Bard's Tale. It has an initial wow/fun factor as you hurl fireballs and maneuver through a dungeon with a sarcastic imp helping you, but this wears off somewhat quickly. The interface is totally motion-based (for example, the Save / Load / Options menu is navigated by grabbing the "Save" potion and drinking it) which is "neat" for about 5 minutes and then just gets in the way of years of established UX design principles. I ran out of steam about 4 hours in, not helped by the very long load times.

Final Grade: C

Election Day

While I doubt that there will be notable forward progress in the next 4 years, I'm definitely looking forward to politics reverting back to traditional, predictable form. Biden as President will be familiar, unsurprising, and likely hamstrung by lack of Senate control. In my opinion, that's exactly what we need to decelerate our parallel freefalls in global prestige, economy, critical thinking, and public health.

Sure, there's a case to be made for changing things quickly, but "move fast and break things" doesn't work when our country's government is intentionally designed to enforce methodical, stately progress. Let's clean up the mess a little bit before we scare the other half of the country with ideas they've been inculcated to fear.

So, give me four years of people feeling like Biden isn't moving fast enough, an emphasis on arresting the entropy, and the occasional idyllic scandal about a House rep who uses campaign funds to decorate his office like Downton Abbey. Let's dampen the effects of disinformation, subdue the either/or tribalism, and get the other 100 million eligible voters involved.

If we're all still alive in 2024, THEN we can talk about what's next.

Invention Day: The Pedt Saver, Part II

I first introduced the idea for the Pedt Saver 8 years ago when I had two cats that destroyed the circulation in my feet every night. Now I have zero cats on my feet because one died in 2017 and the other has been exiled to the basement each night because she's deaf and is too loud for a two-child household. Still, I was having sore feet issues from the natural cover weight at the corner of the bed, so I resurrected the idea.

I looked online and realized that this type of device already existed, but at price points over $100. You can charge a lot when you classify your device as a health-related device. Unwilling to spend that much money, I went the cheap route instead and got $10 worth of PVC pipes and fittings at Home Depot.

I diverged from the original plan slightly -- there is no adjustable setting because my feet do not expand and contract based on the position of the moon, and the bar goes straight up instead of crossing over the top of my feet.

I've used the Pedt Saver for three nights now and it's very pleasant -- like having a personal yurt for my extremities. I'll have to see if the air pocket gets too cold in the winter (especially since the device raises the covers off the edge, allowing some airflow) but I'm satisfied by my minimal ingenuity so far!