Journal

Spike health update

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Spike

I didn’t mention it here yet, but the other thing I’ve been doing all week is looking after my dog Spike. I little while ago, we discovered a small tumor on his neck, and on Tuesday, I took him in for surgery to have it removed. He’s been under the weather ever since; the incision is pretty uncomfortable and he’s having trouble lying around and some difficulty eating, too. He kept fussing with the incision, so I took him back to the doctor and we got antibiotics and steroids to help him heal. I’m glad I was home to look after him; he needed help and lots of attention. And delicious treats.

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Random News from Home

Friday was Stephanie’s birthday, so I took a lot of pictures.

While were were hanging out outside Barcelona Tapas talking, I took a bunch of pictures at the Corner of Alabama and Ohio Street.

We spent all day Sunday putting more bottle caps on the car.

Last night we went to see the Indianapolis Indians play the Durham Bulls. It was an eventful game – while we were up getting ice cream, the man sitting next to us took a line drive to the face. He was gone when we got back to our seats, but there was a LOT of blood everywhere. Yikes. Later in the game, John Jaso – #15 of the Bulls threw his bat into the crowd hitting someone, and then a couple pitches later threw his bat again. And, yet again, when he got up to plate in the next inning – whoops! Butterfingers. Sheesh. I took lots of photos during the game; we’ll have to see what comes out.

Several friends are using the mint.com site to plan and organize their finances. Looks interesting.

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The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

By Wendell Berry, from A Country of Marriage: Poems

Found at The Phenominal Field. It’s been a long time since I added anything to the inspiration category, and much needed.

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion — put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

Continue ReadingThe Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Damn, where’d all my free time go?

I’m sitting here making out our “To Do” list for this weekend, which includes:

  • Putting together new treadmill
  • discarding non-functioning television
  • putting loads of stuff on ebay or craigslist.
  • taking all the recycling to the recycling center
  • laundry, laundry & more laundry
  • Garrett’s birthday
  • Church on Sunday
  • Visit the rental house & install locks and pick up old lawn mower

I haven’t written a recap of last weekend’s festivities at the Kentucky Art Car Weekend yet – although all the photos are on Flickr so you can work out a general narration for yourself. I must say, driving down the street being chased by a Giant Red Phone that keeps ringing at you is quite surreal.

I also took a spin around town yesterday hunting down some elusive Big Things – something I haven’t done in quite a while. Those photos are still on my camera, though. Will need to take them off this weekend, if I get the chance. I found a hippo that I thought had disappeared, and a giant tomato, and also found nice retro 50’s signage and a cool diner on U.S. 40.

I really need to rework my “Big Things” pages again. I so want to get comments on the pages, and there are lots of things I need to add. I hope now that Movable Type is upgraded to 4.1, I’ll have less frustration building new sections. Although the upgrade has stopped posting my links regularly, which I need to figure out. That’s annoying, because I’ve written a lot of funny commentary in link descriptions that haven’t made it to my site. My wit should be preserved for posterity, people.

Continue ReadingDamn, where’d all my free time go?

PayPal Fuck-Ups

So I’ve had a PayPal account for something like 8 or 9 years. All of the sudden, they have decided that I set up my account as a Not-for-Profit organization, and that I need to “prove” to them that I am indeed such an entity. My account is locked until I do.

Yeah, I thought it was a phishing email, too. Until I logged into my account directly and discovered the same error messages. I believe the error is on your part, not mine, PayPal. Point those messages at yourself, please.

I don’t recall what the account settings were like back when I set it up, but I wouldn’t have had any reason whatsoever to claim I was a not-for-profit. They only thing I can think of is that my account is so old that they didn’t have such a thing when I created it, and somehow in their database, they toggled an “on” switch for that field because I didn’t have anything associated with my account.

The trouble is, nothing on the account allows me to say “What? I’m not.” The only option on their site is “faxing them my papers” to prove that I am. I had to call customer service to get any information, and I got the SNOTTIEST woman on the phone. It turns out, you have to send an email to their “compliance” department, because (I swear to Maude she fucking said this to me) THEY DON’T HAVE PHONES IN THEIR DEPARTMENT. Riiiiiiight. I totally believe that. But, you know, they don’t provide the email on their fucking site on the “compliance” page where they give you all the haughty “you’ve fucked up! Please fix it!” messages. So they only solution you have is dazed wonder, followed by customer service phone calls, followed by an email into the ether. That’s a rather fucking dumb way to support your internet product.

So, right now, PayPal is on my shit list. We’ll see what the fuck happens going further.

UPDATE: I got a very polite email in response to mine from PayPal, in which they restored my account. Apparently back in 2004, there was a field that you could check describing your website if you were taking PayPal donations, and in the field description, “not-for-profit” was lumped in with several other categories, including the appropriate descriptions for my site. At the time, this didn’t mean anything except how you were categorizing your own site. Later, they started using that field to actually test for “not-for-profit” status — catching not just “not-for-profits” but other folks as well. And now you have to actually apply for that status, so they changed the way the input for that field works. So I was a victim of someone’s bad business rule changes, apparently.

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Dear Diary…

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So, it’s been a long time since we really sat down to chat, hasn’t it? I mean, we got back from the honeymoon, and it’s been a couple weeks, other than posting some photos of cool clocks and a video here and there (complete with misspellings in captions) I haven’t really talked much about life in general.

First of all, let me say, there were a couple of people who read my blog who sent us wedding gifts. You are wonderful, and that was completely unexpected. I promise, we are working on Thank You notes to individuals, because you certainly deserve our appreciation. You are awesome, and we love what you got us.

On July 1st, there were some changes at work, but I still don’t know whether I can talk about them or not, because there hasn’t been an “official” announcement yet. Hopefully I can say this without it being a problem – I have some more responsibilities, and there are some positive things that go along with that. Read between them lines.

Since I got the new camera, I haven’t had enough free time to actually sit down and learn how to take the thing off auto mode, partly because of the above-mentioned job-related thingy. I hope to get to that… sometime.

I haven’t been exercising enough, and I’ve been eating too much. That needs to change. On June 25, I planned to take 21 days and not have any caffeine or meat, just to see whether I could have enough discipline to make a change in my lifestyle. They say if you can do something for 21 days, it will become a permanent habit. I got as far as 9 days, and the July 4th weekend tanked me. That’s… well, decent for me. I need to try again, because making a change would help improve my life in lots and lots of ways.

As you could probably tell from the recent photos, I was in Columbus, Ohio for a business trip for a couple days this week. Columbus looks pretty much just about like Indianapolis, from what little I got to see. We were in either a hotel or an office park the whole time. I’m sure it’s a lovely city.

It’s quite hot here at the homestead, and our downstairs air conditioner is on the fritz. That’s caused a bit of consternation in the last couple days. I would like to order up some better weather, but my weather machine is not working because IU stole my 10-ton magnet. I would have gotten away with it, if it hadn’t been for those meddling kids. At least I still have my mind reading helmet and my teleportation gun hidden away.

Stephanie has made good progress on the Art Car, without a whole lot of help from me because I’ve been too busy trying to decompress. Of course, you can’t see the most complete photos yet, because I haven’t had time to take them off the camera. Sigh.

In two weeks, we’re going to Louisville with the car to attend the Kentucky Art Car Weekend. I hope to Maude I have learned some stuff about my camera by then, because that is one cool event at which to take pictures.

No, I haven’t seen Dr. Horrible, yet, or Mamma Mia, or The Dark Knight. I will get to all of it. Someday. I swear.

Continue ReadingDear Diary…

Olympus Evolt e420 Camera

For my 40th birthday, Stephanie got me a great new DSLR camera. I’ve been dithering around about wanting one for quite a while, but hesitated for a couple reasons; I just got a new camera in 2006 and kinda felt guilty about wanting another so soon. I also couldn’t decide what I wanted – compact or DSLR. I carry my point and shoot everywhere with me, and take tons of photos, and was afraid a DSLR would be too bulky to have with me at all times. I was also hesitant because it’s been 20 years since I last took a photography class and taxed my brainz with apertures and shutter speeds and such.

But at the same time, I’ve really been feeling the limitations of my point and shoot camera, and wanted to take better pictures; to shoot photos with greater depth of field or in low light situations that compact cameras really don’t handle well.

For a long time I’ve been reading reviews, looking at stats on Flickr about camera usage, and lurking around the websites of photographers that I like and learning about what equipment they carry.

For a long time I had my eye on the Canon G9, a high-quality point and shoot. I also considered the widely popular Canon Digital Rebel series, but never could quite bring myself to go that route, given the $800+ price tag. That’s quite a bit beyond what we spend on birthdays or Christmas, and is hard to justify spending on something recreational when we’re trying save all we can.

But my birthday rolled around, and Stephanie completely vetoed my campaign for a new toilet for the upstairs bathroom. I couldn’t decide what I wanted at all. And then Digital Photography Review came out with this review on the Olympus Evolt e420 DSLR Camera. It was highly rated, small and light-weight, but a real DSLR. And it was under $600. That’s still a lot of money for a birthday, but I only turn 40 once. And it’s cheaper than a mid-life crisis sports car.

The e420 is pretty great so far. It’s quite light and easy to carry around, although bigger than point and shoots. There’s a lot I need to learn about it, but it takes some pretty great photos so far. This is a shot I could never have gotten with my old camera, which would have flattened out:

Drusilla

A nice night shot that wouldn’t have come out:

July 4, 2008

And the colors are really rich:

Walking Tour of Old Northside

I’m looking forward to really digging in and learning how to use it.

Continue ReadingOlympus Evolt e420 Camera

Anecdotal Evidence

People I know who have either been laid off or are on the verge of having it happen, or who are otherwise struggling financially:

8

Yes, that would be 8. Eight.

There’s no way you can tell me we’re not in a recession. And I’m frustrated with anyone thinking about voting in more of the same old crap. There’s at least one guy I work with that I really want to kick in the shins every time I hear him start in on politics. Even the sound of his voice sets me off now.

When it was one person, we thought, “oh, we could help them in an emergency, if things get too bad.” When it’s eight people – OMFG. We can’t float loans to eight people.

And though we’re doing okay, it’s bound to swing around and affect us soon, so we’re frantically saving every penny, which is good for us, but bad for the economy as a whole.

I’m as anxious for January 20, 2009 as everyone else, but it won’t mean a thing if McCain “Four More Years” gets in office.

Continue ReadingAnecdotal Evidence