Month: August 2005

Katrina Arrives

Another downside of being unemployed and home all day: I just can’t stop watching the damned hurricane on CNN…

I’m also thinking about how I made my first visit to the area less than three months ago, and just happened to be editing my video of it this weekend. I’m glad I sw it while it was mostly still there…

CNN just mentioned that they were able to have some reports filed from within the storm area using a “new” and incredible technology called “FTP”. Wow. I didn’t realize I’d been such a trailblazer; I’ve been posting this site using the same technology for almost a decade, and using it to download dirty pictures even longer than that…

The Most Easily-Solved Crime Ever

Today on Inside Edition:

They call It Gas And Dash– High gas grices are driving some people to fill up and take off! But wait- some gas stations are taking extraordinary steps to stop them!

What “extraordinary steps” are necessary other than the one most gas stations in most civilized parts of the US took fifteen or twenty years ago: make people pay before pumping their gas. What could be more fucking simple?

I’m sorry, but I’m really sick of hearing about this big “controversy”. This whole issue was being argued in Charlotte even when I lived here before, almost two decades ago. Local police announced in the late 1980s that they would no longer pursue “drive offs” beacuse it was such a waste of resources given that this particular crime is so totally preventable…

I didn’t even know there were stations left which let you pump before paying. Those that do pretty much deserve what they get just for rank stupidity. Gas station owners whining about “drive offs” are worthy of about the same level of sympathy as fat people who complain that McDonald’s “made us this way”…

Homebound

It’s almost the weekend, for alll that really matters in my unemployed state. If I sound a little down, it’s because I probably am. Not about being in Charlotte, which still makes me quite happy, but about the fact that things aren’t quite taking off as I’d expected…

Finding a job hasn’t been as easy as I might have hoped, and that’s affecting me in other ways as well. We’re not destitute or anything; Mark has landed a full-time gig and we both have a bit of freelance work, so for now, I’m something of a kept boy. Or a housewife. But my self-esteem has taken a bit of a battering from the fact that no one really seems to want me. This, in turn, is making me feel a little useless all the way ’round…

Then there’s the fact that I don’t really feel like I ought to be going out and doing anything, mainly because it would cost money, but also because I should be home trying to convince someone to give me a job. So the house sort of feels like it’s closing in on me. At the same time, though, I feel quite comfortable here, working on my little video projects, keeping the laundry caught up, etc. I just don’t feel like I have any business enjoying it…

None of which makes for very interesting copy — nor very exciting phone or email conversations — so I apologize for the lack of a spark on the site lately, and for my lack of attention to my social obligations. I haven’t been too pleasant to be around lately, I fear. But I imagine this self-pity party will be over relatively soon. I try to limit them as much as possible. I’ll keep you informed…

Drowning in Records

We didn’t already have enough records. Oh no, not by a long shot. So we had to claim an extra couple hundred that my friend and ex-roomie Dan was clearing out of a storage shed while visiting his family at Lake Norman this weekend. And we ended up not only taking his stuff, but his dad’s as well…

We’ll be digitizing ’til 2008, but there was definitely some good stuff…