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June 2012

Definitely an Order Muppet

Friday night. More than anything else I’m excited that I’ve finally determined how I will archive and organize all my digitized and born-digital home video and that I’m finally making some good progress with that project again after a long lull. Keep in mind that this is essentially the same thing I do as a large part of my day job.

Does that make me pathetic?

And do I care?

Not particularly. Putting the world in order is what I do. When I have the time and energy, that is.

Even if I can’t make sense out of my own life, I want it to be damned easy for someone else to write the finding aid after I die.

 

Would this be a good idea?

7 Comments

I don’t generally ask for content opinions since I’ve always stressed that I am the primary audience for this website.

But…

I’m thinking of celebrating the fifteenth anniversary of the famed Planet SOMA US Tour of 1997 by posting the actual video footage from that trip. Is there any interest? You’d see a much younger me carrying Mark’s Powerbook around the country, visiting random strangers, touring Route 66, and generally having fun with what was really one of the very early online road trips back in the semi-virginal days of the internet (when this site, strangely enough, actually had a much bigger audience).

I ask for this opinion because this really would be an audience-driven thing. I can watch this shit whenever I want to. I don’t particularly want to go to all the effort if no one else cares.

Opinions are solicited.

Saturday night

I’m managing to feel kind of guilty and rotten on three or four different fronts right now even though I probably don’t really deserve to–or at least maybe just on one or two of them.

I fear I’d make a good Catholic.

A dad I never met

In addition to recognizing how great my own dad is this year on Father’s Day, I’m feeling kind of inspired to recognize how very important someone else’s father came to be in my life.

Back in 2003, one of my oldest and closest friends lost his father to an illness that I assumed was either caused or exacerbated by smoking. I’d never met this man. Wouldn’t have known him from Adam if I’d seen him walking down the street. But the day he died, I decided that I would be one less person that my friend would lose to smoking. And I decided that very day that I was going to quit after almost twenty-five years as an addict. I set the date for about a week later and on 3 November 2003, I had my last cigarette. I never once looked back after that day and haven’t touched one of those disgusting things since.

So in a certain way, this dad that I’d never met saved my life–or at least significantly enhanced and lengthened it. I don’t think I’ve ever told his son this story and I probably should have before now, because the son obviously played a pretty big role in my decision too.

Father’s Day just seemed like a good time to mention it. So thanks to father and son…

Yeah. That.

Don’t Listen Here

You can spend $45 to go see Nickelback this week.

Or you could buy 45 hammers from the dollar store, hang them from the ceiling at eye level and spend an evening banging the demons out of your dome.

That $45 would also buy you a lot of pickles, which have more fans on Facebook than the band. It would also buy you an introduction to rock guitar video course that would allow you to surpass the band’s skill level in five hours or less.

$45 is also enough to see Men in Black III five times, buy a dozen Big Macs, do 10 loads of laundry or so many other experiences as banal and meaningless as seeing Nickelback but that come without having to actually hear Nickelback.

But if you must, the band is playing the Idaho Center on Wednesday, June 13, at 6 p.m. Tickets start at $45.

Did I mention that I really fucking hate Nickelback and can find no evolutionary explanation to justify their continued existence?

Rotten day

8:15 AM. (EDT): Arrive at Greensboro airport.

9:15 AM: Board United plane for Chicago.

9:45 AM: Leave plane due to equipment problems.

10:15 AM: Get in line for rebooking.

11:35 AM: Get rebooked.

1:30 PM: Board USAirways plane for Philadelphia.

3:05 PM: Arrive Philadelphia.

4:05 PM: Board plane for LA.

7:00 PM (PDT): Arrive in LA.

7:45 PM: Realize checked bag never made it to LA. Arrange delivery sometime tonight.

8:15 PM: Arrive at Fox Rent-a-Car.

8:30 PM: Informed that fox Rent-a-Car (from whom i’ve never rented a car) will not rent to me because I’m on their “do not rent” list for some transgression they can’t seem to identify or explain.

8:45 PM: Walk next door to Thrifty where I have to pay nearly a hundred dollars to rent a big-ass SUV (all they had left) for one day just so I can get to the hotel which is about thirty miles away.

9:45 PM: Finally arrive at hotel.

10:15 PM: Finally have dinner.

11:30 PM: Luggage still not here.

Am I being punished for something? That’s pretty much every travel nightmare you can have, all pressed into one day. The hotel was the only part without a glitch.

It will get better, right?

Better day

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Things are looking a little brighter today, even though I didn’t get very much sleep last night. I was a little stressed.

This morning, though, I found a Mexican breakfast within walking distance of my hotel. I also yelled at someone at Fox Rent-A-Car…and will do more of that later because it amuses me so. I’ve made other car arrangements, I have my luggage, and I’m about to go have lunch with a friend. So there’s hope…

Done

We did the presentation this morning and it went really well. I was amazed by the turnout, especially considering we were not in the main conference hotel and were part of a session held at the ungodly hour of 8AM on Sunday morning. So I’ve now done my first presentation at a national conference (which is nice) and I’m pretty much done and can start enjoying things a bit more (which is even nicer).

Coming up:

  • My third meal in as many days at a hole-in-the-wall tacqueria.
  • Maybe an evening trip to the beach with a friend who’s never seen the Pacific Ocean.
  • Freebies at the exhibits.
  • More Safeway diet grapefruit soda (I’ve missed it) when I get back to my room.

The actual vacation starts Tuesday.

For some reason, I’m having trouble uploading photos in the WordPress app. I may link to some stuff on flickr later today.