INFidel's blog

artificial inflation

2009-03-25T00:14:00.000-07:00

i recently read this old post from my friend Tami's blog, in which she touched on populist opinion running both in favor of preserving UAW workers' salaries, and against the executive compensation packages at companies involved in the recent bailouts, and how it smacks a little of wage/class envy. i think she's right, and i started to comment on it...and before long i realized i was writing a book. most of the following marathon of keyboard calisthenics has been building for a while now, but she deserves credit for the spur. i encourage you to read her post first, as she's more talented at this (and generally more interesting) than i am, and since this post began as a comment on her post, it probably works better with the segue than it does on its own. feel free to click away, i can wait...

see? i'm still here.

as i was saying, rather than post this indulgently wordy manuscript as a comment, which would be somewhat bad form, as her post is fairly old and this rambling diatribe is ridiculously lengthy for that format, i posted here, simultaneously contributing to my cobweb-covered blog (which will no doubt amaze and/or horrify both of my long-neglected readers), and exploiting the convenient push to facebook, where excessively careless f-bookers might accidently click the link, fail to recognize their error, and start reading.

it's a given that 90% of those unlucky, click-stumbling accidental readers have, by now, navigated expeditiously away, but the remaining 10% may have gamely pulled on their galoshes, wading in further. of those, i estimate 50% will soon give up their well-intentioned self-delusion of interest and move on to something entirely more satisfying. i hereby absolve the aforementioned 95% of all Guilt, and bid you/them a fond farewell (pre/post-exit as appropriate).

extensive privately-funded (uncorroborated) laboratory studies show that 50-75% of both the remaining errant facebook clickers and prior-inf-blog-readers will fall gratefully asleep long before reaching the end of this post, and to those i hasten to express my sincere gratitude for the attempt, and wish the very sweetest of pleasant dreams. if they could put me in a bottle, i would be quickly rushed through FDA trials, as i'm an amazingly effective sleep-aid, and profoundly non-habit-forming.

that leaves maybe 1 or 2 people with a reasonable chance of making it to the finish line. depressing as that may be, this does not deter a True Wordsmith (or, for that matter, people like me). if you're one of the intrepid finishers, this post is Especially for You.

(commemorative trinkets available for a nominal fee in the Finisher's Circle, all proceeds benefitting the nonprofit National Organization of Disenfranchised Investment Counseling Experts, aka "NO DICE".)

for You (Especially) i begin the actual post, again:

there was a time in this country when labor unions were absolutely necessary but, for the most part, that time's passed. the labor laws and labor market conditions in general, not to mention organizations such as the National Labor Relations Board and OSHA, state depts. for workers (Labor & Industries in WA), etc., have long since addressed the majority of issues the unions were formed to deal with, and by and large, unions now function primarily as redundant systems for these formerly union-exclusive areas, and exist as collective bargaining systems and self-perpetuating fundraisers.

i've held union construction jobs, and have a reasonable degree of experience working with and/or supervising union workers (in the entertainment industry), and it's my experience that, as a rule, the majority of union employees are overpaid for their skills and effort and routinely need and expect a lot more coddling. it generally requires more of them to accomplish anything, and they have an overwhelming tendency to Whine and be a Pain in the Ass. as with all rules, there are exceptions, and i speak from my own experience (individual results may vary).

furthermore, during my own union employment, with Local #292, Everett, WA, i've been in a position to require their advocacy and they did not/could not/would not effectively resolve my issues. the union's attempt at advocacy was wholly half-hearted to begin with, their representative was unreliable, and i was forced to seek outside help. the National Labor Relations Board took my case for free, immediately consulted with me, gathered detailed information, and pursued my claim for months, ultimately resulting in my day in court. the details of my case aren't important; let it suffice to say the union didn't earn their money, and the federal gov't was there to pick up their slack anyway, and i began to form my current opinions.

in terms of the UAW: absolutely its members should earn compensation somewhat commensurate with others in similar industries, but the vast majority of them will do whatever is in their own immediate financial best interest, which means perpetuating the union stranglehold on the Big Three, and collectively swamping their own boats. as long as the federal gov't is demanding others jump in to man the buckets, why whould they abandon the heavily-listing Detroit? why would investors?

[cue "disgusting sucking noise" and "faint human female shrieking noises", intended to conjure mental image of 1950s-B-movie-style Giant Leech]

this is also true of the (decidedly non-union) financial sector companies benefiting from the ludicrously bloated bailout fiasco.

[end sound effects]

the "little guy" at the bottom end of the U.S. economic food chain (others like me) is probably going to disagree with me about the UAW, but they're all wrong, and i'm right: workers cannot continually take more from a company than it can afford to spend, and remain employed, without an endless supply of injected capital. the marketplace cannot infinitely expand to supply that capital, and there's no justifiable reason to place that burden on the public at large.

the exorbitant executive salaries at the tops of these and similar pyramids- morally offensive to many, and not unjustifiably so- don't equate to any significant increase in the average pay of a pool of workers that large, or to the value of individual shareholder earnings, nor do they significantly impact the profit margins of the companies or the price of the goods they produce. though there are exceptions, most companies that set labor policy without collective bargaining agreements do a fair job of creating shareholder value, and a pretty fair job of compensating their employees. conversely, despite and (partially) because employee compensation at UAW plants is artificially inflated, Detroit is generally unable to create shareholder value. an unsustainable level of wages, health care costs and retirement benefits (in no particular order) are the biggest problem in Detroit. the other is mismanagement.

the people making the decisions there haven't made products attractive enough to the marketplace, or made them efficiently enough, or marketed them well enough to support themselves as currently organized. to quote my friend, and use one of my son's favored terms: EPIC FAIL. propping up companies that fail epically, perpetuating artificially inflated compensation packages and shareholder earnings, is the corporate equivalent of non-results-oriented sports [shudder], and should be relegated to things like lemonade stands. are we really so desperate for mismanaged companies to exist that we should go to ANY lengths to perpetuate them? i don't think so. if they dried up and blew away, all the hungry-to-reproduce investment capital will seek out new, feasible opportunities, and eventually those businesses will need employees, and everything will balance out.

the UAW may finally be acknowledging the unsustainability of their previous agreements, as evidenced by recent changes in contracts with Ford and GM, in which the union assumes responsibility for large portions of workers' benefits packages. it will be interesting to see how that plays out in the long term.

it's arguable that the most exclusively talented people (i.e. top executives) should be paid a lot more than entry-level workers. assemblers shouldn't makes as much as machine operators, machine operators shouldn't be paid as much as machinists, machinists shouldn't be compensated like engineers, etc. it's perfectly reasonable that the more responsibility you hold for an organization's success, the more you should be compensated. it's also therefore reasonable that the most responsible people be held the most accountable for performance. people who run companies into the ground should not leave with huge bonuses. companies that extend wildly lucrative offers to entice superstar executives without tying those contracts to performance are Stupid, and taxpayers shouldn't be strongarmed into paying for them.

the kind of twisted logic in which that's acceptable equates to raising the price of admission at the zoo to cover the medical bills/funeral services of people who jump into the tiger cage. "what? that's ridiculous! the sign's on the 15-foot bars of the cage! it says 'caveat emptor' in 3 languages, and there are little pictograms for people who can't read! there's a 20-foot wide moat! and they told everyone at the door, and it's printed on the back of the ticket!"

maybe they should forego the other measures, and show patrons the video of the tigers eating the last guy.

there's a lot more unaccountability at the tops of these corporate pyramids than at the bottom. i suspect it's because the people who make the decisions are the ones at the top of the pyramid. (no, i'm not a rocket scientist, i just play one online.) how long does Mary Assemblyline last if she holds up the line? about 5 minutes. her Golden Parachute is an empathetic manager who makes sure the door doesn't strike her in the behind on the way out. (OK, he's also minimizing the company's exposure to litigation.) the lack of accountability at the top is a real problem- and it's their problem, not yours and mine.

it's no mystery why the politicians aren't hearing the masses gathered around the bases of these pyramids. the pyramids are staggeringly tall and steep-walled, and their offices are at the very top. the mosh-pit of suits present are tripping and climbing over each other, scrambling for position, screaming at the top of their lungs, pointing fingers at each other, and slapping their IOUs down on the desk.

i'm running off on a tangent. (unless you're new to this blog, you're used to that by now.)

in Detroit's case, the UAW has been the biggest problem. those workers' wages and benefits have been artificially inflated over decades. i think everyone knows this, including the UAW and its members- but the members don't want to hear it. picture kids with their hands over their ears, eyes clamped shut: "NANANANANA I CAN'T HEAR YOU!" but the fact is actually OBVIOUS: those workers can't go find a comparable job in another industry for anywhere near the same money, or with anywhere near the same level of benefits, or some combination of those. this is a testament to the effectiveness of collective bargaining, but it's also an indictment of the possible end results. (the prosecution rests.) the workers aren't going to willingly let go of their jobs, or their artificially inflated compensation packages, or the union that secures them. i believe something similar is happening in the majority of longstanding collective bargaining situations, but the UAW, in my mind, is the poster child of artificial wage inflation.

artificial inflation is rampant everywhere, from health care (and insurance costs in general) to union and government wages to commodities and housing markets to protectionist industrial and monetary policies, professional sports complexes and on and on. speculation in the marketplace (by fat cats who can't get fat enough) and collective bargaining agreements (by alley cats with sharp teeth and claws, who got fat representing scrawny stray kittens, and stay fat representing pretty-well-fed housecats) and government subsidies and selectively-favorable policies (by fat cats elected and influenced by other fat cats) push values of certain things too far up, and eventually the bubbles must burst. they were never sustainable to begin with; they weren't based on anything real. it's all, to quote another pretty fat cat, "irrational exuberance".

when it falls apart, a whole bunch of people lose their shirts. we're getting the Grand Mal lesson in seizure of property right now, a very expensive primer on how much the fattest cats hate to go shirtless, even if it means taking the shirts off everyone else's backs. more fat cats pontificate passionately from the pound the pulpit in Righteous Indignation, and while we're lulled listless by their loquacity, or scared silly by the sermon, they're skillfully- with practiced hand- removing our shirts and handing them over, freshly pressed, in boxes with pretty bows. they're gifts, alright...but don't expect a thank-you card.

the problem for taxpayers is NOT that this bank or that huge insurance company fails, or that any particular piece of "real" estate "lost" half its "value" overnight; it's that the value these things were (mis)construed to hold was artificially inflated in the first place, even willfully misrepresented in the most blatant cases, and that these misconceptions were reinforced, even encouraged, by policies that made these values SEEM reasonable, and that this was true for a long enough period of time to ensure that almost everyone everywhere has some amount of exposure to the risk.

that's enough to make some people believe in conspiracy theories...but not me. i don't think anyone's got enough intelligence. there are too many competing agendas and players for anyone to manipulate events that deftly. i'm convinced that more harm is done by combinations of ordinary greed, shortsightedness, failure to learn from mistakes, and (most of all) misguided faith in the ability of individuals to fully comprehend- and by extension, organizations to effectively manage- complex systems (read: hubris) than by your garden-variety Evildoers.

i give you, by way of example, weathermen. people have been studying the weather for untold years, and increasingly complex and comprehensive observation, analysis, statistic gathering, variable quantification, and computer modeling still can't accurately predict what's going to happen. they can make some very educated guesses- but they're still guessing, and they're still wrong a LOT. full-scale economies are the financial equivalent of weather, and economists are like photogenically-challenged weathermen- except the weathermen freely admit when they're wrong a lot of the time. people used to own barometers, and pay enough attention to the world around them that they could make their own educated guesses what the weather was going to do today. not anymore. that's what weathermen are for. it's a pretty good system, but don't bet the house on it.

if Detroit needs to die to fix Detroit, i say, "so be it." if AIG needs to die, RIP. there is no fixing some things. in many cases (in language Detroit can understand) they're totalled. they're zombie corporations, the fiscal living dead, and they want to eat your brain. all these failed companies are going to be sold off at a loss eventually, and all the stakeholders involved are going to suffer anyway, and no matter what, a bunch of other people (and many of the same people that lost money) are going to make a lot of money in the long run from their failure. if we're collectively smart and careful enough, they won't create as much artificial money next time around.

surely, allowing the hands-off failure of overgrown financial institutions would have huge, unforeseen consequences, and yes, those consequences would impact millions, but how is that any different than what's already happening? at least if these companies are allowed to fail, people might start to learn from their mistakes. is anyone really smart enough or qualified enough to orchestrate a significantly less destructive failure? the "experts" are grasping at straws. economists certainly don't agree on things- except that the sky is falling. maybe everyone just needs to completely lose their ass, so we can collectively get a re-education in the meaning of "risk".

no single person, no organization can fully comprehend the unfathomably convoluted machinations of the global economy. it's just too big, and too complicated. policies which attempt to address these problems at too large a scale are inherently doomed to failure, because they have consequences even their architects don't understand.

i suggest we therefore step back a bit, and begin by addressing how money unduly influences the political process. it's the wellspring of a whole river of other problems.

(looking down, the Author realizes his equine companion has long since ceased respiration, and abandons the lash, continuing afoot.)

along those lines of thought, imagine what the average American workers' pay would be if we had to compete industrially in a completely free global market. there are reasons people are flowing inexorably north from Mexico by the thousands, and immigrating to the U.S. from every corner of the world (in numbers unequalled anywhere, at any point in history): there's more opportunity here. why? partly because of artificial controls that insulate America from the global economy. we're not alone in this; to some extent, all the industrialized countries in the world are guilty of Protectionism. the P-word is another way of saying 'artificial inflation'. if some of those controls didn't exist, the already huge numbers of immigrants would be astronomical, and if others weren't, the discrepancy of conditions that causes the influx of (artificially-inflated-wage-killing) cheap labor in the first place would diminish. jobs go overseas because in those places, less is more. less is more overseas because the jobs are all over here. when sufficiently capitalized countries make infrastructure investments in less-developed markets, they make a lot of money, quickly.

if you're going to re-tool your widget factory, why do it in the U.S. labor market, when there's Indonesia, Taiwan, China, Bangladesh, Turkey....? Iceland's national power company Landsvirkjun recently made a huge investments increasing hydroelectric power capacity, to entice struggling American aluminum company ALCOA to build a massive smelting plant. ALCOA has considered building a 2nd smelter there as well. all things being equal, it's simply good business for developing or struggling economies to collaborate with industries struggling to survive in the most industrialized countries. (Environmental arguments aside, that's a different, if related subject.)

in my opinion, the existence of truly open, free global markets is the human rights issue of our time. there are literally hundreds of millions of people the world over who will gladly work at least as hard as the average American, for far less than any American workers will at the same job. even living here, they still work for less, meeting the same types of financial obligations you and i do. the only argument anyone can make to restrict immigration is that this depresses wages in U.S. labor markets. (incidentally, increasing legal immigration and cracking down employers exploiting illegal immigrants mitigates that effect to some degree.) the immigrants' standard of "a good living" is just much, much lower than ours. our whole idea of what constitutes "a good living" is artificially inflated, because we're insulated from the types of challenges the majority of the developing world faces. for the fattest cats among us, that standard is an order of magnitude or so higher, but it's the same thing, isn't it?

damned if Joe Sixpack will willingly give up his seat at the nice, clean table so some faceless untouchable scrabbling for existence in a muddy hovel somewhere can belly up. damned if Joseph Reginald Fatcat III, Esquire will willingly give up the Kobe prime rib and the private plane for the occasional dinner at Olive Garden and a Kia.

this speaks to us all, as individuals, and how we act collectively. a "higher" moral standard, or an elevated standard of what constitutes basic human entitlement (i.e. posturing like i've been throwing out for paragraphs now) doesn't necessarily preclude acting in our own self-interest, but they're not exactly complementary philosophies.

where's the balance, then? that's the $1M question.

i submit we should try not frown too much as the latecomers file into the cafeteria, that we make as much room as possible at our tables, and that setting up some picnic benches outside will probably be necessary; that to the extent we're able- without taking too much food off our own plates, or failing to feed our own children- we should let as many people as possible come to the buffet; that we collectively keep an eye on the biggest bullies stealing food off other plates, and send them to the back of the line; that we try not to let our eyes grow too much bigger than our stomachs.

when everyone's better fed, there'll be plenty of help with the cooking, and eventually we can build more and bigger cafeterias.

that was my Kum Ba Yah moment. i don't have a whole lot of them, so it's equivalent to, say, seeing a shooting star, or buying a winning scratch ticket.

i'm not preaching here; i'm as guilty as anyone else of looking out for myself and my own. it's what we do here; there's nothing wrong with self-interest. but forgive me for not spending much time lamenting the loss of American jobs to people who watch their children starve and have no shot at an education, and for my failure to cry long over the crash of artificially inflated wages or stock values, or the demise of companies that slit their own throats, or for people who bought $1M+ houses on $60-$80K incomes. too many of the people who are yelling the loudest right now invested and doubled down and frantically overextended themselves trying to parlay their artificial profits into the Motherlode.

we should be identifying with lower-middle class people who've lived within their means their whole lives but lost their retirement money in investments that were deemed safe by "experts"; with people who showed up every day and worked hard at their jobs but lost them anyway. we should be holding the companies and people that negligently gambled away other people's money on absurdly complex financial instruments accountable. they've unapolegetically made BILLIONS for their investors over the years, and just as they were legitimately entitled to their profit, they're absolutely responsible for their own losses. we should concerned with pulling licenses of companies and prosecuting sharks who lied about the terms of mortgages (a far smaller group than might be indicated by the clamor of people upside-down in their properties). we should be far more eager to show all these incompetent "experts" the door, and carefully supervise the next crop of (hopefully actual) talent while they cautiously try to fix things. we should be Meaningfully Reforming the regulatory agencies that fell down on the job, and we should be taking stock of the names of politicians responsible for their oversight and booting them out of office ASAP.

(all Faithful Readers have hereby proven themselves Fully Worthy, and are coming around the bend now. sprint to the finish!)

recently unemployed though i may be, and broke as i definitely am (i lost about 1/3 of my only savings, a 401k probably worth less to begin with than most), if i don't do something pretty soon i'm going to lose a lot more than that. but i still can't seem to summon up a full head of self-pity. i'm typing this on a computer, in a heated house, with a well-fed animal that i have no intention of eating lying contentedly under my chair. i can go take a shower, and there's some (admittedly unremarkable) food around. i even have some beer left in the fridge. i will eventually get hired somewhere, and depending on where that is i may have to give up some things. if that happens...i'm not going to step in front of a train.

a long time ago i spent a large portion of time, including a very cold winter, living in a 1-room warehouse with no heat, no running water, no toilet, no way to cook food. i was lucky: i had a $300 car that lasted me a year, and usually a couple gallons of gas in the tank, and a couple places i could go to take a shower. i've also spent a lot of time working graveyard shifts in downtown Seattle in the winter, watching frozen homeless people shuffling from trash can to trash can, wearing every filthy stitch of anything they could get their hands on, while i decorated 60-foot trees with pretty lights, all the way to the top, so people would be encouraged to come spend money.

things could be a lot worse here, for me, and in general. we should try to remember to count our blessings; fat cats, auto workers, market players, homeowners and taxpayers all. a little less-artificially-inflated sense of entitlement can serve us all well.

pretty nasty facebook virus

2009-01-11T14:09:00.001-08:00

so, here's a little info on the nasty virus i got on facebook.

first off, it was some kind of wall post about a video, which "required me to update my flash player". that's a red flag right there. friendly advice: never click through a supplied link to download software updates. go to the company's site instead.

i'm pretty familiar with all this stuff, so i'm careful about clicking on things from unverified sources.

i tried to click somewhere else on my screen, blank space, whatever...somehow the virus stole the focus from the operating system, snapped the mouse cursor back across the screen to the "video" and my click landed there.

i've been using McAfee virus software; it IDs the virus as a form of what it calls "Vundo", aka Koobface (etc. etc.). it would quarantine the files, allow their "removal" but never ID everything because the virus re-established itself every time.

i've seen all kinds of advice on how to get this virus out of your system, and i tried a lot of those suggestions, and went beyond that into manually searching the registry and eliminating dozens of suspect keys, deleting suspect system files- i was ready to kill thge operating system to win...but i couldn't find all the components, and the virus still caused the computer to shut down improperly (choking on closing "explorer.exe") and the virus checking software would re-ID the same files when it started back up, and i'd be back where i started.

i've run into some viruses before, but this was by far the nastiest bug that didn't actually kill my system.

finally i just reinstalled the operating system- which almost always will do the trick.

more info:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/155017/facebook_virus_zombie.html?tk=rss_news

PCWorld shows this virus as coming from email (which is certainly possible if you have facebook applications set to send you email notices) but i ran into it on the main facebook page you get when you log in.

hope this saves anyone the hassle of dealing with this themselves.

PEACE

as for the truck...

2008-10-26T02:24:00.000-07:00

...for those who were left hanging: the truck lives, in a manner of speaking. it sits on the lawn next to the driveway, having weathered a summer immobile, by virtue of having been replaced by my new 2008 Ford Escape.

following repair, the Dakota ran well for some weeks of normal duty, constituting the time elapsed to the closure of my home mortgage refinancing, followed by a period of researching some intended purchases.

having traded an increasingly daunting, mounting stack of credit card bills (about $24,000, with payments in the neighborhood of $550/mo.) for a $34,000 increase in principal (equal to a modest $120 increase mortgage payment and a five year increase in term), and having locked in a fixed rate approximately 1 percentage point lower than the rising, variable rate i replaced, and having paid closing costs from this same draw from my home equity, i was left with about $6,500 in cash.

with this cash i intended to purchase outright both a new computer and a new HDTV.

it is with no small satisfaction that i view the creation of this post on what may be the most impressive 24" LCD monitor i've yet seen: my Acer P243WAid. i could type the specs but i'm sure neither of my readers are particularly interested.

unfortunately, for the moment- for a very long string of moments now, actually- it remains coupled to a donated, decidedly outdated computer which is nevertheless a substantially more powerful machine than the P3 500MHz i'd been using up to that point (thanks Scott). i intended to relegate this newer dinosaur to work duty months ago (sans kick-ass monitor, naturally) but the absolute madness that is a summer spent working at Hollywood Lights has so far seen half the components of the most badass computer i've ever seen still in their boxes. at this rate they'll be obsolete before i ever get them assembled.

(readers are graciously excused their great collective sigh of relief as i inform them i hereby avoid including copious self-indulgent paragraphs of in-depth analysis of the painstaking research and complicated purchasing procedures and shipping disasters associated with the acquisition of those components.)

nonetheless, the lack of progress on the computer assembly front is unacceptable! progress must be made!

thankfully, we've seen the last of full-on summer madness (it is, after all, nearing the end of October) and the hours i work should diminish signficantly at this point, which of course leads to an increase in the amount of free time i have.

as usual, i follow a tangent too far forward. allow me to digress a bit.

having spent a considerable amount of time researching makes and models of more fuel efficient vehicles, i was further spurred toward the purchase of one by further difficulties with the Dakota.

the first stimulus was the unknowable longevity of my repairs. though they held for weeks, they were unfortunately followed by the death of the Dakota's ignition switch. this ushered in a pathetically prolonged period of starting the truck with a screwdriver across the solenoid terminals.

incidentally, this required a surprisingly stressful constant vigilance in the selection of opportune parking places from which the truck, lacking a functional parking brake since the day it was purchased in November of 1995, would either not roll (in neutral) while i opened the hood to start it, or would roll back slowly enough, after being taken out of gear, to allow for the placement of something behind one of the back wheels (usually a 2-gallon antifreeze bottle filled with water, kept in the truck bed against the possible failure of the coolant system repairs), while i opened the hood, started the truck, and closed the hood, and then again roll back slowly enough, after removing the ad hoc wheel chock, to allow me to jump in the cab to apply the brakes before hitting anything.

during this period of pseudo-manual starting of the motor i realized it would soon be much more convenient to have 2 vehicles. Loren was rapidly approaching driving age, and i figured i'd be less apprehensive handing him the keys to something less likely to leave him stranded on the side of the road. i also began to feel it would be basically irresponsible NOT to buy something better equipped to protect him in a collision if i had the means to do so.

but once again, i veer from the story of the pickup. its battery eventually died, refusing to charge (despite passing bench testing) and though i replaced it and continued driving the truck for a few more weeks, that proved to be the last push i needed to buy a new vehicle.

i'd basically made my mind up to buy a Honda Civic, probably a Civic Si 4-dr 5sp; i even made an appointment to go test drive a slightly used one with every option i'd imagined, at $8000 below list, but i was diverted by a loss-leader ad from Jason's brother JR's dealership (Frontier Ford in Stanwood, WA) for the Escape i now drive. i got an excellent deal on it, and bought it from someone i know, so i know i'll be taken care of if i ever do have a problem. i have to say buying a car from someone you know is an experience i highly recommend to any that can do so.

still, sometimes i wonder if i made the right choice. the Escape is a great vehicle; it gets between 27 and 30 mpg overall (note that probably 90% of my driving is on the freeway, predominantly in moderately-to-extremely-heavy traffic and my Escape is 4-cyl 5sp manual), and it has superior ground clearance, and likely much better visibility than the Civic (it certainly is much easier to see out of than the '08 Focus i test drove the same day), and the added size and accompanying practicality of an SUV are certainly positives, but the Civic would likely have been an extremely reliable sport sedan, and it's certainly a sexier ride, having a more powerful engine and superior handling, and it gets a bit better mileage. in the end i opted for the cheaper of the two vehicles (comparing showroom prices) and for something less likely to tempt Loren to put the hammer down, and for something less likely to be damaged by the huge potholes in the often-barely-gravelled excuse for a road that is the last quarter-mile or so approaching Loren's mom's house.

Loren is enrolled in driver's ed and able to get his permit, though he opted out of doing that today (basically his earliest possible opportunity) in favor of sleeping in and attending a birthday party this afternoon. nonetheless, he'll be climbing behind the wheel of the Escape in short order, likely next weekend. by the time he gets a full-fledged license, i may let him drive the pickup sometimes, depending on his skills. some have thought my intention Loren drives the better (more expensive) vehicle strange, while his skills are developing, but 2nd-generation airbags are the deciding factor for me. i'm looking to err on the safe side with my only son.

i've told Loren if he manages a 3.0 cumulative GPA throughout high school, he can have the Escape when he graduates; or, if he prefers, and i believe his driving skills are good enough, he can have the pickup. if his GPA comes in below 3.0 he'll have to take over the remaining three years of payments on the Escape if he wants it, or buy the pickup from me if that's his choice of vehicle. i'm hoping it's enough motivation for him to apply himself- which is all it will take for him to hit the mark. so far this year he's on the honor roll, with a 3.5 GPA for the year at mid-trimester- the best grades he's managed in a long time.

so far the Escape has seen 3 trips to George, Washington, for concerts at the Gorge Amphitheater (an addition to the summer routine that Loren welcomed enthusiastically, including- in reverse chronological order- the Dave Matthews Band, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, The Police w/Elvis Costello and the Imposters, and- in the pickup, prior to buying the Escape- Rush). i've racked up about 11,400 miles on the new ride in something like 4 months. my daily commute is about 75 miles; a single trip to Loren's mother's to pick him up is 26 miles round trip....the Escape will likely be nearing 100,000 miles by the time Loren inherits it. it's my goal to give it to him without a scratch on it. technically, this is already impossible, since the deflowering of the paint job- less than a week after i drove it off the dealership lot- was accomplished by Moose, Loren's otherwise AWESOME big galoot of a dog (at his mom's). that taught me quickly not to leave Chowder in the vehicle and Moose unattended outside the vehicle while parked there. i managed to buff nearly all the claw marks out of the driver's side door by hand (you have to get your nose very close to the paint to notice them), and i could probably get a bit more out with some more aggressive buffing compound, but for the moment i've let it ride. i'm happy to report i've managed to avoid spilling any drinks or staining the upholstery with fast food thus far.

i tried not to smoke in it, but settled for never smoking in it without at least one window open. so far, though it doesn't smell new anymore, it certainly doesn't smell like the interior of the Dakota, which lacked the luxury of heat.

however...allow me to change course once more, from the 2nd of my post-refi purchases to the 3rd.

happily, i can report i successfully acquired a rather stunning, top-rated 50" Panasonic plasma TV, model THPZ800U, for the steep but quite reasonable sum of about $2000- a $130 discount on an already-decent list price from Video Only in Lynnwood, due to their being out of stock at the time i purchased it.

interestingly, having recently given a one-hour summary of my weeks of television research to my parents, who found themselves lacking a television upon the death of their very nice standard-definition Sony, they purchased the exact television i was leaning toward, and i was afforded the opportunity to put it through some of its paces in their living room prior to my own purchase. ironically, they purchased the set at the same store i did, and their purchase contributed to both the lack of that model in the store's stock when i purchased, and the subsequent discount which allowed me to purchase the set for less than they paid. the wait was worth the money.

the setup and implementation of the new TV was obviously much easier than that of the new computer, and was accomplished before the 2nd Sunday of football season. to be honest, i'm sure partial credit for this can be attributed to the absolutely massive box obstructing my living room. the set is heavy, at about 100 pounds, and the weight, combined with the dauntingly unwieldy shape, forced me to wait for help (Loren's) to remove it from the box and place it upon the TV stand. i opted against a wall mount, since the best available are about $300, require even more complicated installation, and preclude turning the TV 90 degrees in relation to the wall. Loren and i have a longstanding habit of turning the television toward the dining room while we eat, and the wheeled stand we've used works excellent with the new set.

i opted to upgrade to Comcast's telephone service, and digital cable w/the NFL network (in order to catch the Thursday night games available in November) and a DVR box, which i'm hooked on now. having never experienced OnDemand or the ability to pause or rewind live television broadcasts before, not to mention surf the HD content available or record 2 programs at the same time, as well as getting a complimentary 1-yr subscription to the Starz premium channels, and eliminating my $30 Verizon land-line bill and lowering my overall Comcast bill by $20/mo. for a year (effectively saving me $600 over that time), i'm happy with the new setup.

all this leads me closer to the present, in which things have taken an unexpected and decidedly somber twist, which seems to me to belong to another post.

here's to a long post after a long dry spell. more to come sooner than later but later than now.

PEACE

facebook is a trip

2008-09-17T21:18:00.000-07:00

watching people hook up is pretty khoul. i don't mean in the biblical sense. people who haven't seen each other for a long time, that used to see each other all the time.

i used to know so many people, back in high school and for a few years after. the 'college' years are a trip for people who don't go to college. there's a whole generation of guys more or less like me, that spent their early 20s or even early into their 30s workin' graveyards at 7/11 or workin' on an assembly line, or whatever, just squeaking by with minimal effort, partying constantly...

it's nice to be immortal and not even consider consequences...to be naive and bulletproof...

i definitely make better long-term decisions as i'm approaching 41 than i did at 21. at 31 i had a lot figured out; i have a little more figured out now. i suppose i'll get a little wiser before i'm finished, and that's something to be gained.

being bulletproof would be nice, however...

lots of stuff has changed. everything changes all the time.

i should post more often.

[is this thing on?]

it might be the end

2008-01-20T01:06:00.001-08:00

of the road for my truck.

since sometime approximately coinciding with the onset of winter, i've been having cooling system problems. leaks, blown hoses, overheating, etc. i noticed when the truck was getting low on water it would overheat quickly when i got stuck in traffic. i tried winding the engine up a little while stopped in traffic and the temperature would go down. start driving again and the temperature returns to normal. this prob'ly happened infrequently for about a month- the month of December, which was was (predictably) more insane than normal, driving-wise. let it cool off when it gets hot, put some fluids in it. check the fluids a lot, fix everything that goes wrong as it goes wrong, never get the engine hot for long, baby it. but the killing blow might have come a week ago last Friday, Jan. 11.

cruising along in the morning on I5 southbound, in very light traffic (south of 128th in Lynnwood, for anyone that means anything to) with no problems, i heard a pretty loud bang, and it seemed like all the water blew out at once- very strange. never seen anything like that: huge cloud of steam, maybe bigger than any i've seen come off a vehicle. but the truck doesn't overheat, and it seems to be running fine. scratch head. consider worrying. consider not worrying. seriously consider pulling off the road. decide to pay attention and wait for a sign confirming that something is actually wrong...and keep driving. light a cigarette.

drive remarkably far with no problems, cynically acknowleding the way the hope that nothing's wrong struggles to overpower the certain knowledge that something must be. step on brakes as traffic thickens and slows.

slow down, speed up, slow down, wait- wait- ...yup. stop.

nod inwardly as temperature gauge rises rapidly. experience morbid satisfaction that world is operating as it should. weigh options. gauge position. (halfway between 175th & 145th exits in Shoreline, for those same few that means something to). weigh options: [1] exit on 145th (2-way 4-lane arterial literally miles from anything resembling a service station, for anyone who doesn't already know), or [2] drive approximately the same distance to a downhill exit which ends precisely at a gas station. wring hands, pull hair, gnash teeth.

decide to stick it out.

drive about 4-5 minutes in heavy traffic. listen to engine getting very loud- as i pass the point of no return- resembling the sound my '63 Rambler made, circa 1985, when i ran it out of oil, in what i didn't realize until this very moment- as i'm typing this- that that happened in the exact same place...22 or 23 years ago. wow.

ok where was i? my truck engine making lots of noise- getting damn hot- gritting teeth- approaching exit! coast as much as possible aaaaaaaand shut off engine! coast down exit ramp, turn key to AC position so the steering doesn't lock up, coast through S-cuuuuurve....to red light. growl. wait for a couple cars to clear the intersection. turn key- engine totally protests for the first time ever...but turns over. bump truck into gear, give it enough gas to pull right-turn-on-red U-turn into gas station parking lot, killing engine ASAP. park truck, pop hood, protect hand, pull radiator cap, retrieve water bottles from truck bed. light cigarette. slowly, carefully empty water from one bottle onto passenger-side exhaust manifold, avoiding the head and block. repeat with 2nd water bottle on driver's side. discover formerly-free air and water facilities have become coin-operated, and missing the water hose entirely. grumble. check oil. YIKES- very low. and strange; the truck doesn't go through much oil at all, and usually lights up on the dash before it's this low. shake head grimly.

take bottles inside and ask for some water. buy some oil. follow directions to spigot on far side of building, fill water bottles, walk back to truck, put 2 quarts of oil in. turn key to AC and check temperature gauge: acceptable. pour more water on exhaust manifolds, walk back, fill bottles, walk back, fill radiator. light another cigarette. cross fingers.

turn key.

truck starts right up, idles fine. sounds normal again- incredibly normal. too normal. pull truck around building, fill bottles, head for the road.

drive in off-and-on traffic to work (maybe 8 miles?) with no problem, waiting for the loud bang that says, "game over." it doesn't come. truck begins getting hot as i approach work.

work.

fill all 5 water bottles with hose. fill radiator. check hoses and look for leaks. sure enough, it's slightly streaming out the bottom, just a little. exactly like it did the last 3 times i had to replace the water pump. experience the particularly irritating kind of annoyance that only comes when (you think) you know what you're in for. resign myself to fate.

drive work van home, get Loren from his mom's, deal with stuff i always deal with on the weekend. set up water pump purchase for following Monday, drive van to work, home to get pump. bring pump to work in the morning, wait 'til quitting time, start truck, pull into bay, start tearing it down. remove radiator fan cowling, pull off serpentine belt (bloodying face with cheater bar when the wrench slips off the stripped spring-tensioner bolt), disconnect a couple hoses....realize i have the wrong water pump; i have the compression-fit-nipple pump and need the threaded-nipple pump.

often the parts stores get the wrong part, but i couldn't remember which was on my truck (it could be either) and had to guess at the parts store; it's my bad. grimly acknowledge the truck will not move in its state of disassembly. put everything except hoses back together. pull truck back out into lot. drive van home, to parts store, exchange water pump. experience relief they have it in stock. bring new water pump to work. miserably fail to again summon the motivation to fix the water pump after work. very busy, all week....decide to fix truck on Saturday.

which brings us to the present, precisely 11:47pm PDT, Saturday, Jan. 18, 2008 A.D.

figured i'd throw that in there, since this post is obviously not going to post until early Sunday morning.

drive to work on Saturday. pull truck in bay. re-disassemble everything i already did. drop appropriate number of bolts and fasteners into engine cavity, skin knuckles in predictable ways, remain calm, try to be methodical despite everything that could possibly go wrong going wrong, a pattern which would continue until my efforts were exhausted. remove remaining hoses and water pump mounting bolts, pull water pump free of block. comes loose, but still stuck. hmmm. realize i missed the Dastardly Bastard hose that's never been removed (only disconnected at the water pump in the past) at the top of the water pump, due to its position (buried under the air conditioning motor, and the bracket it- and the alternator and some other stuff- is mounted to. loosen clamp, attempt to pull water pump from hose, watch hose tear effortlessly. swear loudly, knowing i must go to parts store. remove air filter assembly, remove air conditioning pump from mounting bracket and set to side, remove alternator and mounting bracket (without disassembling) and associated crap, loosen now-accessible rear clamp on Bastard 4" slightly angled hose. remove hose with malicious intent.

attempt at great length with inadequate tools to remove fan clutch assembly from old water pump, eventually crushing old pump blades from spindle with vice. clamp newly accessible spindle in vice and forcibly remove fan clutch assembly with reluctant disregard for scoring the huge fan clutch assembly mounting nut.

go to NAPA (closest store). attempt unsuccessfully to buy a chunk of the same-size hose. no can do, they sold out of (what they identified as) 1-1/4" ID radiator hose a couple hours ago, some guy bought it all up. great. helpful-but-ultimately-unhelpful sales associate finds a pre-formed hose that has a section on one end with approximately the right length to "match" my hose...for $15. realize i should have measured the pump fitting before i left. buy hose, and a putty knife to help scrape the rest of the gasket material off with. sigh. return to truck, methodically final-clean the water pump mounting surface. debate whether to attach fan clutch assembly to water pump. hmmm. disinclined to hold new water pump in vice after watching last water pump destroyed. prepare gasket and mount the water pump.

realize with horror that the last bolt (one of the far shorter ones, on the passenger-side bottom) will thread but not tighten: STRIPPED. since the bolt hole on the water pump is a pass-through hole, the threads must be stripped in the block. imagine a bell, tolling once, faintly, in the distance.

pace. review options. only one option: try it. torque down water pump as well as possible. wrap bolt in...first choice would be aluminum foil, second would be teflon tape....have neither...screw it: electrical tape. it will almost certainly melt but i just want it to grab a little- and see if the truck holds water. check new hose. too big. i knew it! dammit!

drive back to NAPA for smaller hose. NAPA is closed. realize i should have tried the hose FIRST and that it's getting late, 6:30pm. i'm 6 hrs into a project i've done previously (more than once) in 2-4 hrs.

drive to Schucks in Rainier Beach (much farther), get the right hose, return, install hose and all remaining hoses, replace alternator and mounting bracket and associated crap, replace air conditioning motor, replace air filter, serpentine belt. scratch head about how to install fan clutch assembly to water pump. hand-tighten fan clutch assembly to water pump as well as possible while holding water pump pulley as steady as possible, with very limited success. scratch head about how to hold pulley still. try unsuccessfully to feed something through tiny, much-closer-to-the-center-in-the-new-water-pump pinhole in water pump pulley. scratch head. feed tie line through pinhole, hoping i can make it feed out from behind the bell of the pulley- success! tie off line to rigid air-conditioner pipes, torque down fan clutch assembly hard enough to break tie line. guess that it's on tight enough that it won't fly off while idling long enough to determine if the thing holds water or not. hope i don't shred my hoses if it does fly off.

realize the fan cowling doesn't fit over the fan clutch assembly without the fan blades loose. remove fan blade assembly from clutch assembly, try to feed cowling in. no. works coming up, but not down; the edge of the cowling catches on heat-sink grooves in the clutch assembly at this angle- it's impossible. swear loudly! break out brand-new battery-operated sawzall (19.2V Alltrade/Kawasaki brand, xmas present from my folks- thanks again), repeatedly shoo Chowder away from large reciprocating saw blade, deftly cut clean arc through cowling bottom one-handedly, while holding the cowling with the other hand, removing just barely enough to clear the fan clutch assembly. install cowling and upper radiator hose. cross fingers. pour water in radiator, waiting for leaks. huge leak! wtf? oh. did that last time, too- forgot the bottom radiator hose, the one that's a lot harder to do once it's all back together...but not impossible. install hose. fill water bottle, pour in radiator, check for leaks. nothing by the stripped bolt. good. nothing out the bottom where it was leaking before- also good. tiny, tiny leak seems to be coming from...where?....the upper radiator hose? no way. wierd. that hose is new, and the clamps on right, and it's the most accessible piece of the whole job. check clamp. repeatedly top off radiator, waiting for water to settle, until full. try to figure out how water is leaking from upper radiator hose....jiggle connection a little-

SNAP! plastic upper radiator nipple breaks off effortlessly, taking a jagged, sizable piece of the radiator top with it. realize the BANG i heard when all the water blew out of the truck was the radiator blowing it's top. experience wonder and amazement that i managed to make it about 16-18 miles to work with a blown radiator, and that the engine still runs. wonder if the 20 or 30 teflon-enhanced oil filters i used for 10 years (until they recently became unavailable) has anything to do with that. realize that it's now 9:30pm and there's no way this truck will be road-worthy today. weigh options.

coat edge of broken piece and edge of hole in radiator with thick coat of tube-gasket adhesive/maker. set in place as well as possible and apply pressure by wedging edge of radiator hose against the nipple. stuff another piece of hose between the radiator cowling and the broken piece on the other end. realize there's no way this can work but still hoping against hope that it will be enough to get the truck on the road....long enough to replace the radiator.

pull truck out of bay (experience mild relief that it's able to move out of the way!). realize engine seems to be running rougher than normal. it's firing smoothly, started easily, responds to the throttle strongly, but is vibrating more than normal. realize i know this engine really well, having run it and worked on it for the last 12.5 years. acknowledge that this means something is most likely out of balance with the water pump, and/or i did actually damage something when i overheated it. run engine for a few minutes and watch fan clutch assembly....it's a little rough looking but not too bad. it doesn't have to be that bad to completely fry things. acknowledge that the temperature outside has been hovering in the low 30s to low 40s with high precipitation and the gasket material i'm trying to use as a temporary seal on the broken radiator piece will likely never set up in these conditions- let alone the 3-hr normal set-up time.

clean the place up. drive the van home. light cigarette. write blog post.

sign off, thinking it's time to buy a new car, knowing i don't have the money to...let alone the time to find one, or a vehicle to drive around and find one in, except the company van (which may also be on its last legs due to a serious suspension problem in the driver's-side front wheel). and i predict my boss's patience for me borrowing that van is going to be understandably limited...

you MUST have wheels to work 37 miles from home and ferry a kid back and forth, etc. i need to buy a car, like...now.

it got big

2008-01-18T23:40:00.000-08:00

a month and a half since i turned 40 and i still haven't posted anything.

as if nothing happened at all...except (obviously) things did.

where to start posting about them? argh! everything just gets big.

that's the phrase my friend Pat and i came up with (many moons ago) to describe a circumstance in which two people (usually two who are very close) are having a conversation about something, and one is explaining some (often very complex) concept to the other, and while the explainer endeavors to express that concept in exactly those terms which fully and accurately convey that complexity, simultaneously avoiding digression along any of a seemingly-endless torrent of pertinent tempting tangents, he realizes that ultimately, though his expression of the concept remains unfinished, its full meaning yet undefined, the listener has intuitively identified with the concept, in all its subtlety and complexity, rendering the explanation prematurely complete (and/or moot).
(or)
less often (but no less appropriately) it can be used by the explainer as a term to indicate his inability to continue the explanation in the face of insurmountable tangent formation.
(or)
it may be used (possibly, but not necessarily, in combination with the first example) in cases where, during the explanation, it becomes apparent to the explainer that the language itself has no words for expressing the fundamental essence of the concept being explained (which, incidentally, does not preclude the possibility of the listener's understanding).
(or)
it is sometimes used as an escape route for the explainer when it becomes clear that the explanation is inconvenient, annoying, or otherwise unwelcome to the listener, or the explainer determines mid-explanation that the effort required to finish the explanation isn't worh it.

in proper usage, when any of these circumstances occurs, the next appropriate thing for the explainer to do is immediately discontinue the explanation and utter, "...it got big."

(please note that there is some lingering uncertainty regarding whether or not the appropriate subsequent response from the listener is, "shboing.....shboing shboing."

this whole post seems to be a demonstration of the inability to refrain from following a tangent, as i mentioned in the

...it got big.

goodbye to my 30s

2007-12-01T12:54:00.000-08:00

so long, youth. it's been fun.

now what?

wait for the grey (actually white) to completely take over my beard? maybe i should buy a rediculously expensive sports car. get some Rogaine? it might work....

ok, that's as inspired as i'm feeling right now. time for chores.

oh, btw, it snowed a little bit last night. going out to dinner with my family tonight. going to see Van Halen on Monday with Loren. then i'm going back to work.

after all, 40 isn't life-changing...it's just one day older than yesterday...just like every day.

PEACE

on Christmas, copied from email:

2007-11-26T01:19:00.000-08:00

as for me, Christmas means time with family, giving gifts to the people i love, the coming end of another year, and the illusion- if only for a short time- of shared hope, of a little joy for the sake of it, of people walking around with less hostility toward their fellow man. the peace on earth / good will toward men thing is paramount in my book. i can work up a pretty good deal of that good will in myself, and i like that change when it happens.

i'm one of the very least religious people i know, and the fact that Christmas was originally (and is arguably primarily) a Christian holiday doesn't bother me a bit. it's certainly moved beyond it's original intent. i wish people a merry Christmas and it means what i intend it to, and they can take that however they want....and vice versa. seems stupid to me to not say "merry Christmas" to the other 90% of people who celebrate it to avoid offending the rest. i'm an atheist, but i don't take offense when people ask God to bless me when i sneeze, and that happens year 'round! they've done me no harm; rather, they've wished me well, and i take it like they meant it and that's that.

some people are just miserable unless they're offended by something, and i think we should all go out of our way to oblige as many of them as possible as often as possible. crabby people deserve their unhappiness!

i've worked retail during enough holiday seasons to get a good idea of exactly what commercialism has done to Christmas, and felt the stress associated with trying to finish doing everything i want to do, and watched countless people behave terribly, dealing with their own stress. i've experienced what it's like to run round-the-clock crews decorating businesses and city streets and parks all over the area for weeks on end (for sizable fees), hung Christmas lights 60 feet up in trees in freezing and/or wet weather in a lift and rain gear from 10pm to 6am for weeks on end, fought many times over who Loren's going to spend the time with, and endured a whole litany of other things conspiring to rob me of my Christmas spirit....but it never totally works.

sometimes i don't feel very Christmasy until the last minute, but something always gives. some great piece of Christmas music that hasn't been beating up my ears comes around, or one particularly clever television commercial strikes just the right note, or someone's card will be perfect. or i'll catch a bit of a Christmas special that i loved when i was a kid. sometimes it's my first trip to the mall. maybe even just watching someone (especially a kid) having their "wow, it's really Christmas" moment. sometimes it's just someone genuinely wishing me a merry Christmas....sincere well-wishes are gifts in and of themselves. sometimes it's the week before Christmas when we get a little early snow.

something always gives. i'm happy i'm not yet so completely jaded and cynical that it still does- because i like what Christmas does to me. for me thats the whole point, and what makes it worthwhile.

but whatever Christmas (or other holiday one celebrates) means to each, i hope they get in spades.

is it just me

2007-10-29T23:39:00.001-07:00

that cannot seem to summon the motivation to cover anything but the basics (and those only barely)?

seems like i've been exhausted for as long as i can remember.

everyone else seems to do OK, going about their business, taking care of what needs taking care of, eeking out a little fun with some regularity. i can't even put a meal on the table, unless Loren's around. funny (but not so surprising, really) how everything seems less pointless when he's here...not that i'm exactly bursting with enthusiasm then, either.

is everyone else less than impressed with their own company?

maybe i'm like a leech, and lacking any of my own i just feed off other people's energy. maybe it's just too damn quiet here. maybe i'm just here too much. watch TV? mostly it's uninteresting crap, and the droning blather of this or that idiot about who-effing-cares-what is like trying to drown out the stink of moldy bread by layering more and more peanut butter on it. listening to music is better, but only to a point. even that begins to feel a bit like forced distraction. talk on the phone? to whom, and about WHAT?! "i went to work today." "i came home." i have nothing to offer the conversation that's worth talking about. (hence the large gaps in posting here as well.) i don't have anything worth writing about either, but since no one's reading this that's at least semi-poetic.

i just don't seem to enjoy ANYTHING, have any drive to do ANYTHING.

that's really not like me. i've always been the amped one, the guy who brings something to the table. i don't think i'm depressed, at least i don't feel like...sad or anything. just tired, constantly. like everything's just a pain in the ass; like it's all just going through the motions.

but then, all this smacks a little of "i'm a spoiled little brat, pouting because he just found out there's no prize in the cereal box." well, no one said there was. shut up and eat your damn breakfast.

by the way, all the questions were rhetorical- i'll thank either of my readers in advance for kindly ignoring this post, and ask that they forego well-intentioned pity mail, please.

that's all i got. pathetic.

even just having enough money

2007-10-11T22:25:00.001-07:00

to hop a plane to anywhere you wanted to go at any time without looking at the bill....the ability to drive whatever vehicle you wanted.

billy joel said it pretty good: money can't buy you happiness, but it can buy you a car so you can drive around and look for it.

gotta bail.

this...i never do this

2007-10-11T22:22:00.004-07:00

i like totally never do that

2007-10-11T22:22:00.003-07:00

it's wierd to just post post titles

2007-10-11T22:22:00.001-07:00

they say money can't solve all your problems

2007-10-11T22:20:00.001-07:00

but it would solve all of mine. if i had a million dollars i would quit my job and spend the next year or two doing something totally amazing. after i just totally screwed around and slept for like a couple weeks.

y'know....it all just boils down to not having any goddamn time.

2007-10-11T22:18:00.000-07:00

that sucks.

so, once again, it's been awhile

2007-10-08T21:22:00.000-07:00

regretfully, i cannot regale you with tales of intrigue or adventure, as i've been experiencing neither. similarly, the minute details of the time passed since the last blog entry are so pathetically bland as to approach invisibility; or at least translucency.

such is the sad summary of the unremarkable life of an unremarkable man doing unremarkable things unremarkably.

assuming my readers (both of you), are (with sullen determination, vague resentment notwithstanding) still flagellating themselves with the unfulfilling and ultimately dissatisfying consumption of this unimportant diatribe, this excercise in futility that is my niggardly monument to mediocrity, i shall likewise endeavor to persevere, wringing though the cloth be dry.

i know there must be a horse in here somewhere. where's that shovel...

today i drove to Yakima, by way of the Sodo district and back again. looking at a map for the (plausibly) accurate mileage is a task requiring more motivation than i can presently muster. and running the route through one of the online map programs is an unimpressive task, easily completed, and therefore a trivial pursuit. suffice it to say it's a long damn drive.

i spent part of the afternoon coiling up cable in Yakima's SunDome. i'm not sure if one is actually obliged to capitalize the 'D' in 'dome' or not, another inquiry that could be easily answered which presently seems meaningless. the sUndOme is like a mini Kingdome, only not blown up and hauled off in pieces.

i like driving through the mountains and the desert, though. i think it's good for your soul to see wide open stretches where the land takes dramatic shapes.

[editor's note: the previous section was actually written yesterday, Monday, October 9, 2007; the portion below was written today.]

i use the word 'soul' as a generic term for one's 'being' or 'self'; i don't intend to imply any connotation of spirituality, insofar as such connotation would pertain to any religious dogma. actually, having tried a few unsuccessful sentences on for size, it appears that delineating which things don't fit my definition of the term 'soul' is much simpler than supplying an accurate definition....

but since i started this post yesterday and never posted it, and the news i began talking about yesterday is old news, and nothing i have to say today is any more interesting than the things i failed to finish writing about yesterday, and since there's more than a fair chance i'm not going to finish this anytime soon, i'm just gonna shut up and go back to what i was talking about before. please forgive the interruption.

[editor's note: the following portion was written yesterday.]

many of us stare hour upon hour at an endless sea of constantly changing but absolutely identical brake lights, and street lights, and traffic signals, sleepdriving the same stretch of road to the very lane, at the same time of day, mile after mile, day after day, week after week, month after month after month.

[editors note: i'm sure that was a reasonable segue at some point, but it's certainly less than stellar now.]

"Hey, dude in the Rob's Electric van. I see you're 2 minutes late this morning as well." "Good morning, hoodie-up-over-your-baseball-cap/bad-muffler-Toyota-driver-smoking-a-cigarette." "Excuse me, piggyback trailer log/gravel truck." "Hey, slow down there, '92-Prelude-with-huge-whale-tail-and-bad-custom-body-work-overkill-still-all-just-primered/lawnmower-soundin'-P.O.S."

it's not just driving- all the mundane events, running on into blurred years, continuously surrounded by the same walls, dealing with the same people, talking about the same things, eating the same food, thinking the same thoughts, feeling the same, dreaming the same....

what's the point, if nothing very interesting ever happens? the sum total of experiences over the course of years could be accomplished in a busy week or two.

some people think information overload causes stress, but i think it's only a symptom, a side-effect of subconsciously self-prescribed distraction therapy. monotony weighs a lot more than stimulus. it's like getting a blowjob while you're trapped in a burning building: why not?

and we search for meaning in all the smallest things; we try to convince ourselves that the unremarkableness itself is noble, our obscurity heroic; we are the romantic Everyman of oft-sung praise. or we're all superstars, unique, each of us special!

[editor's note: the remaining final portion was written today.]

i want the Hallmark version of my life: an endless string of perfectly lit poignant moments and easy laughter, basking in a warm glow of goodwill that permeates all; when every day is Christmas, and every night you fall in love for the very first time.

there is this facet of our existence, for most of us. it's just the good parts are so rare, and the trudgery is endless, grinding us down into ever-more-shrunken, lesser copies of ourselves.

i don't think i've actually been happy all day since i was in my early 20s, and that was a long time ago. nowadays, a good day is when nothing disastrous happens. but that's wrong! life used to be all about making today amazing. but then you get married, and you have kids, and you buy a house, and you get a dog, and slowly all the likewise-fun-minded people you used to hang around all go their own ways doing the same things, and you have to get up and go to work every damn day, and come home and scrub toilets.

it all just seems really pointless sometimes. like this post. which is so long i should just post it. so i will.

ok, it works.

2007-09-09T21:36:00.001-07:00

not sure if i'm sold on the method, though. overall it's less click-intensive than meandering through the blogger.com logon & interface labyrinth...i'll try it again next time. but since i'm already here....

one of these years i'll get around to updating the other pages of this blog, but not tonight.

another weekend in the books. no shortage of chores for me yesterday, followed by a great salmon dinner at Nichole's, to which everyone but Loren made it out. nice to see everyone; i haven't seen any of the Sargent clan for nearly two months. my nephews are getting big!

i suppose it's only fitting i mention Harley's condition deteriorated last week and Jason & Melissa relucantly put him down. i suppose the only good thing to say about that is he's not suffering, and as hard as it is to have your dog put to sleep, it's surely much harder to watch him struggle and decline. i'm gonna miss Harley, he seemed to like me almost as much as i liked him, and he was a great dog.

Dozer was a hit for the Sargent boys last night- they sure love dogs. they asked me where Chowder was, but i was pretty sure Dozer would make an appearance, so i let him ride out the evening at home.

my neighbor Bruce had an extra (season) ticket for the Seahawks regular season opener today, and invited me along. he likes to take the train, so we did, a first for me. the train's clean, but probably not as fast as driving- especially if you get downtown somewhat early, know where to find parking, and know the right way to get to the freeway afterward. most people make the mistake of trying to get on the freeway as quickly as possible, creating a bit of a backup along the two southernmost on-ramps north of the stadium; pass those two up and head a few blocks north and you're in front of all those brake lights.

i checked the fares and timetables while i was on the train to get an idea of what it would be like to commute to work on it- not going to happen. even if it were cheaper or quicker, i just like having my truck with me. it's pretty easy to get used to having wheels at your disposal.

anyway, the Seahawks win at home; they looked pretty rusty in the 1st quarter, but started to get it together late in the 2nd, and looked pretty good in the 3rd. i think the final was 20-6; the Bucs never made a touchdown and never scored after the 1st quarter...at least as of the time i left, with about a minute and half left in regulation. ran into Jeff & Dean's little brother on the way out of the stadium; he tells me Jeff recently moved back from Montana, to Mountlake Terrace, and that Dean's flying solo again, this time living off of Olympic View Drive in the Perrinville neighborhood, over by Meadowdale Beach. for the life of me i simply cannot remember their little bro's name, which is bugging the crap outta me. real nice guy; totally didn't recognize him at first since he's got a thick goatee now. he saw me, actually, and called my name a couple times- i looked right at him and didn't recognize him before realizing who he was. always khoul to run into khoul people you haven't seen for a long time.

came home and caught the night game, the first Sunday Night game of the regular season. for me (as of last year) Sunday is the new Monday, since Al Michaels (my favorite) and John Madden (my other favorite) host that show. the Giants put up a good fight, but 3 starters and 1 backup guy got injured, and the Cowboys played pretty well (with Wade Phillips at the helm for his first regular season game) and chalked up their first W. Eli Manning went out in the 4th quarter with a "bruised" right shoulder, and they lost their starting running back, so welcome to the War of Attrition. not that i'm particularly a Giants fan...

so, two trips to Qwest Field under my belt this year, both Ws. gotta like that.

back to work tomorrow, with boats moving in for the Boats Afloat show, and a truck heading east to retrieve gear from the Gorge. i forgot to grab Jason's CDs to burn over the weekend, maybe that'll take up some of my evening time over the week this week...assuming i actually have any free time this week. i know now, that until the end of August, working where i work, i'm going to spend the majority of my time working and commuting. the sad part of that is, i think with just a little more organization and planning (admittedly not always possible due to lack of necessary information in advance) things would move a lot more smoothly there. i have a much better idea of what to expect in the course of a summer next time around.

Loren's started 9th grade...hardly seems possible. i'm going to turn around and he's gonna be all grown up, and i'm gonna wonder what the hell happened to the last twenty years. he seems to like his teachers alright, so far, which isn't altogether too surprising considering they haven't had the kids do any real work yet, and i think he's enjoying the difference in the atmosphere. he mentioned that he was considering playing basketball and baseball, and i told him for the 1,00th time that i totally encourage him to play any sports...he mentioned tennis, which would be interesting. i love racquet sports. told him again i think he's a natural for football, but the question is whether or not he's aggressive enough. personally, i think that's a long shot for him (he's just WAY easygoing) but you never know....when he gets a little hair on his chin he might surprise the hell out of everyone and become Captain Testosterone.

alright that's it for me, i'm not particularly inspired tonight.

this is the test

2007-09-09T21:30:00.000-07:00

of the email-to-post settings on blogger (through which this content is posted to my website).

soundclick stat update

2007-08-20T17:25:00.000-07:00

10,334 page hits, 2,626 streams, 651 downloads. total. since like mid-2004, ~3 yrs. averaging 9.437 hits per day, 2.398 streams per day, a download every 1.682 days. with absolutely no promotion. that's it.

since you were dying to know.

another weekend almost gone

2007-08-19T23:42:00.000-07:00

Loren's down for the night. we dug into Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows a bit more this evening, played some darts and chess this afternoon, and went to pick up a C. S. Lewis book (Out of the Silent Planet) which he was assigned to read over the summer, for a 200 question multiple-choice test in store for all the incoming 9th grade advanced-placement English students. we got some laundry done, and the dishes, and ignored some other chores that failed to demand loudly enough for our attention. yesterday we played racquetball in the morning, and followed it up with a short visit to my folks' house, where i took one of their old teak & leather wooden chairs (with its matching footstool) off their hands. it's a nice chair, and quite comfortable, but i don't exactly have a place for it...maybe i'll get to figuring that out this week. we also watched our requisite Star Trek DVDs (8 episodes of Voyager over the course of the week) and squeezed in the newly-released animated Dr. Strange video yesterday, as well as playing some of Loren's newly-exchanged and now-functional Tony Hawk: Project 8 video game. still fun stuff. we got in a few episodes of DBZ (the end of the Frieza or Namek saga...not sure which, but we left off with the episode where Frieza gets diced by his own power disc attack) over broiled chicken with rice and peas for dinner, and this is all- i'm quite certain- terribly fascinating.

so. nothing too out of the ordinary, but you won't find me complaining over having the opportunity to spend two uninterrupted days with m'boy. tomorrow he's back to his mom's and i hunker down for another week of work. the boss suggested i take a day off this week, possibly Friday, which would make for a 3-day weekend upcoming....might be nice. been working a lot of hours lately, and there's no shortage of household business to take care of.

s'pose that's all i got for the moment. PEACE

i was wrong

2007-08-12T11:01:00.000-07:00

Chowder was sleeping on the floor, in what sunlight was afforded Loren's bedroom through mostly grey sky.

sunday morning, midsummer

2007-08-12T09:38:00.000-07:00

a little coffee. a little nicotine. a shower is in order, as well as some food. on tap for the day: a good half day's work. in seattle. which requires driving.

got to bed pretty damn late last night, and woke up fairly early, but i'm not really tired. not bursting with energy, mind, but not tired.

some minor chores are in order, and the same major ones which i've managed to put off far too long. at some point in the immediate future i'm going to have to decide which of today's objectives takes precedence and begin accomplishing them, but for the moment i'll sip my coffee (somewhat thicker and mildly sweeter than normal, with a bit of Carolan's Irish Cream) and type this post.

the dull ache lodged in my head last night persisted throughout the frozen pizza, and the naproxen sodium, but succumbed (as i suspected it might) to a decent, if somewhat abbreviated night's sleep. all in all, any complaints i'd make this morning seem trivial, so i'll forego them and stand pat.

Chowder sleeps still, most likely sprawled on my bed. he invariably lays in his own when we retire for the night, but often, once i'm settled, he'll hop up and avail himself of the majority of the free space. i generally indulge him with some calm scratches when he does, and i'm usually rewarded with the amusing feedback of his satisfied groans in direct proportion to his appreciation of this or that technique. he has a surprisingly large vocabulary of sub-vocal communication, another facet of his remarkably deep personality. he's a smart one, as dogs go, and he's been a good friend. i think we're in about the same head-space, insofar as a middle-aged man and dog can be.

"he sleeps, and i compose a post," types the author, having just drained the remainder of his coffee, which would have been enjoyed more before it completed its descent to room temperature.

so it's 8 o'clock on a Saturday night

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and it's obvious to me that i have nothing better to do than post something...anything, really, just something.

i have a mild headache, most likely brought on by inactivity, or lack of caffeine until a relatively late hour, or the lack of actual nutritional value offered by the scant remains of most of the easily prepared substitutes for real food, through which i've half-heartedly ruminated periodically over the course of the day, or by some other reason which i'm either failing to notice or opting to omit, or some combination thereof.

i could turn to the medicine cabinet, which would require my leaving this chair, negotiating the doubled-back flight of stairs to the 2nd floor hallway, which shortly leads to the upstairs bathroom. there, a few tablets of generic naproxen sodium would likely take the edge off the dull pain in my head within 20-30 minutes, at which point i might feel entirely more motivated than i do presently. whether i ultimately summon the motivation to do so remains beyond the scope of this narrative to this point.

it's likely no coincidence that the pain in my head seems to a fair degree to be exacerbated by smoking cigarettes; after all, nicotine is a well known vasoconstrictor. i suppose it's entirely possible that my cranial discomfort is due to a restriction of blood flow, and further restricting my brain's access to gas exchange might very well increase my discomfort. or maybe it's all in my head.

i have the impression that being more physically active increases blood pressure and circulation and raises the body's metabolic rate. i'm generally quite active, typically, especially on working days, but this morning i made a vague resolution to attempt to "rest" today, as it's necessary for me to work at least a partial day tomorrow, in order to meet the demands of the following day.

despite the fact that smoking cigarettes makes my head hurt worse, i've chosen to light one as i remain seated here, typing, rather than make that journey to the medicine cabinet upstairs.

after all, i made, earlier this afternoon, a special trip to spend around $25 of hard-earned money i've not yet been paid on 100 of these little paper-wrapped tobacco-and-chemical nicotine delivery devices, for the express purpose of ensuring i need not today confront an interruption in their supply- a familiar occurence which periodically occurs to all those who've succumbed, willingly or torturedly, to their addiction. clinging pitifully to their (our, my) short end of the stick, they (we, i) reach that familiar point in their (our, my) often decades-long love/hate relationship with the seductively evil product of American Tobacco and dutifully, resignedly march, head bowed, to renew their (our, my) financial/physical/emotional bludgeoning at the hands of gleeful corporations and perennially thirsty government revenue collectors.

the cigarette i lit when i began that above paragraph has done its damage. its contribution to my (presumably worsening) Pulmonary Obstructive Disease is complete, and having fulfilled its mission it died, predictably, its quiet death with neither comment nor protest. its crushed, lifeless body lies motionless amid the foul-smelling corpses of its brothers, a pile of tar-stained cotton filters in random disarray, sporting charred shocks of tobbaco filaments like haircuts of punk rockers burned in their beds.

and there is still the question, the unresolved issue of whether i'll traverse the staircase to the medicine cabinet.

it's certainly not the only possible course of action. i could light another cigarette, for instance, or put my fist through the monitor before me. i could take off my pants and run screaming around the circular cul-de-sac outside the front door. i could put the 2nd DVD of the evening into the player in the other room, and once more vegetate before a cathode-ray tube, this time in the more-fitting darkness which has accrued in the hour i've taken describing these things. i could opt to tell you which DVD i've already watched today.....which might or might not be entertaining to any with eyes following this narrative. perhaps i'll do exactly that, later. perhaps not.

looking inside the finely engineered, foil-paper-lined, precision-folded, mass-produced utilitarian marvel which is the "pack" box, an apt term for the tightly-packed delivery vehicle in which 20 of the aforementioned cylindrical, smoldering kamikaze soldiers infiltrate our lives, i chose to select the left-most of the two remaining candidates. exhaling the last of the particle-laden exhaust, for which it was conceived and created, and to which it owed both its existence and ultimate destruction, i began this sentence.

the longer i remain in this chair, slouching slightly toward the monitor, the more discomfort i feel in my neck and upper back. this is an ergonomically challenging chair which came to me approximately 15 years ago in what i believe was a random series of events involving a former friend and the redecoration of a bank lobby. it's certainly no chair i'd choose to purchase. in fact, i've never purchased a chair, nor a table for that matter. nor a bed or bed linens of any sort. nor a nightstand, bookcase, entertainment center, or desk, nor any dishes or plants. i could make a very long list indeed of the things i've never purchased. suffice it to say that nearly everything furnishing my residence requiring the expenditure of any significant amount of money had that expenditure provided by others. the furniture manufacturers are simply not winning the competition with the tobacco companies for my business.

my stomach is increasingly attempting to persuade me to follow the "put-the-frozen-pizza-in-the-oven" scenario, while my head concurs, and suggests i make the journey to the medicine cabinet.

but enough of all that

2007-08-07T20:06:00.000-07:00

in the elapsed time between March 2, '07 (when i dropped the blog ball) and the present, i've both been on vacation and worked a lot. vacation was fun. work...not so much.

summer is here and business is booming. everyone's working a ton, and my boss seems to be balking at the OT i'm putting in. most of the people there have a lot more OT than i do; i imagine my wages are somewhat comparable to most of the other guys', but i'm starting to get the impression my boss has the impression i'm spending too much time on things he didn't intend me to spend this much time on....which is another way of wondering if he thinks i'm not getting enough done...? i feel like i'm working pretty hard, and staying plenty busy. i move pretty quickly most of the time. i feel like i'm doing a pretty good job, overall, though i have been late a couple times. it's not unusual for me to feel some anxiety over things that are naturally stressful (like working a lot of hours, always flying by the seat of my pants putting out fires, commuting a lot, trying not to make mistakes when i'm thinking about a lot of things...or forgetting something). overall my job's pretty stressful, and i think i have less authority with the long-timers there than my boss thinks i do (or should? or will exert?), so i'm also trying to work hard enough, to be organized enough, to get on top of everything enough, to get credibility with them.

work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work

i have work on the brain. that's not too surprising since i got home just a little while ago. i guess it's just buggin' me that my boss has actually told me to go home the last couple days in a row- even though everyone's working more hours than me. i bet he didn't expect this position would run into OT, or as much OT during the summer, as it has so far. but he seems to be happy with me, overall, so...i'll just keep working hard and keep my fingers crossed. the last job i had which lasted for a long time (working in Newcastle at Precis Architectural) didn't pay very well, but it was a pretty good place to work. this is a decent job, working with pretty good people; the worst thing about it is the commute (long and expensive). if i'm not at the top of my potential wage scale, i could stick around a while. some paid vacation would be nice- and good benefits are a plus. i guess you can only show up, play your best game, and hope that you make the cut. i suppose that's the extent of my confidence in my ability to hold a job long term.

i suppose that's enough for now. there's actually a lot more to talk about, but maybe i'll be able to catch up on some of that in future posts...considering i've done all the writing about work that i can stomach. PEACE

ok, ok- i give, already

2007-08-07T19:41:00.001-07:00

i cannot use my normal tools to post posts anymore, ever since blogger got swallowed by google. that truly sucks. i hate having to run my post through their form in internet explorer. i used to click very few buttons to post. surely there must be a better way. i may have to switch blog hosting services. i've always wanted to check out Movable Type. i wonder if Macromedia makes a 3rd party blog-posting app that interfaces with any (free) major site? UltraDev pretty much rocks....posting blog posts thru internet explorer via web-based posting tool via external site logon is unnecessarily unwieldy.

so, plenty of stuff has happened since i posted last time, including the composition of the backdated, belatedly-posted previous post (May 10, 2007) which i will now re-create from a saved file, from a time when i was still too stubborn to log on to blogger to post....which, incidentally, is even more hassle than logging on, etc.