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Misery is a Missing a Blonde Redhead Concert (and a Butterfly)

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There’s a Blonde Redhead con­cert tonight. I was going to head to Toronto to see it with Darren and we would have made it a week­end together, but the wed­ding rehearsal has taken pri­or­ity. I’ve been going through 23 since it came out last month, and it still feels a lit­tle for­eign. The songs don’t hit you in the gut or give you the same sense of lyser­gic bliss like ones from Misery is a Butterfly, but over­all it’s a decent album. Ironically, the lat­ter album is what I lis­ten to cheer myself up, but now it only serves as a reminder of what I’m miss­ing. I would have given any­thing to be there.

My heart is in Toronto today.

Date  May 11, 2007
Tags 
Categories  Daily Life

A Few Updates

4

Wide angle fun

Thumbnail: Wide angle me.
Thumbnail: Wide angle Bronwen.
Thumbnail: 15mm boots
Thumbnail: Wide angle computers.

The Canon 15mm proves to be a com­pli­cated addi­tion to the lens arse­nal. As a pho­tog­ra­pher, you really have to under­stand how to han­dle the dis­tor­tions, even when it’s on a 1.6 FOVCF body. It’s obvi­ously not meant for por­traits; faces end up being com­i­cally dis­pro­por­tion­ate. It’s great for con­text shots though, when the sur­round­ings say more than the subject.

Contract

I got a con­tract under my per­sonal busi­ness, my first. It’s made my sched­ule rather busy. There isn’t much time to just laze around on the week­ends any­more. I have to plan my fun.

Tai Chi break

Tai Chi classes have been sus­pended indef­i­nitely, as the teacher’s wife has just been diag­nosed with can­cer. While I miss the relax­ing two-hour ses­sions, I don’t miss wak­ing up at 5:30 in the morn­ing on Saturday to make class. With the extra time, I flirted with the idea of pick­ing up piano lessons again, but I’ve decided that it would too much of a com­mit­ment right now. I still need some form of phys­i­cal activ­ity, in addi­tion to the Tai Chi Yang form prac­tice on my own, so I’ll prob­a­bly be going to table ten­nis again.

Nail in the coffin

I’m off to New Hampshire for two weeks next month, for indus­try job train­ing. I had to find my pass­port, issued five years ago for my trip to Hong Kong/China/Macau, with my dorky glasses and hair parted down the mid­dle. In addi­tion to my old address, my mom was listed as con­tact in case of emer­gency, but I changed it to Pat. It would have been John if he wasn’t so far away. Pat’s also a good per­son to go to in a cri­sis; he’s the one who always keeps it together.

I miss my music source

Ever since Trolley moved out, I don’t get intro­duced to awe­some new music any­more. The lat­est find (on Jeff’s recommendation) is Wicked Wisdom, fea­tur­ing Jada Pinkett Smith as the front­woman. I never would have believed a band with Will Smith’s wife would be so good.

Date  February 5, 2007
Tags 
Categories  Daily Life Photos

Christmas Wish List '06

0

Thumbnail: Christmas cupcakes

You know it’s get­ting close to the hol­i­days when the fresh cup­cakes at the local bak­ery start hav­ing Christmas tree sprin­kles, so I thought I’d make a Christmas wish-list. Usually I have no prob­lem spend­ing money when I want some­thing, but I’ve been sav­ing my money as a goal lately. I’ve been good too, only spend­ing $120 on myself in November (two movies, a toque, and win­ter shoe spikes) as opposed to the $500+ I nor­mally do.

This isn’t a fan­tasy list by any means; these are prac­ti­cal things I even­tu­ally plan on buy­ing. I just can’t jus­tify get­ting them at this moment. Of course, I don’t actu­ally expect any of these things to show up under a tree on the 25th, since I don’t cel­e­brate Christmas, although this isn’t by choice.

Photography

  • Canon EOS 5D cam­era body ($3800) — The 5D sup­ports a very nice 12.8 megapix­els, but most impor­tantly, it has a full-frame sen­sor that would let me take full advan­tage of my wide-angle lenses.
  • Canon EF 15mm f/2.8 Fisheye lens ($950) — For those extra-wide group shots, and styl­ish fish­eye distortion.

    Bought a used ver­sion of this great lens for roughly half the MSRP in early 2007.

  • Speedlite 580EX flash ($600) — I cur­rently have the Speedlite 420EX, which can used as an off-camera slave to be set off remotely. It takes a flash like the 580EX to act as a wire­less master.

    Bought this flash with an umbrella and light stand in the sum­mer of 2007. Extremely happy with the off-camera results.

  • Macro Ring Lite MR-14EX ($750) — Macro pho­tos have been espe­cially dif­fi­cult because of the exag­ger­ated cam­era shake with a 100mm lens. A nice macro flash would allow me to increase shut­ter speed, and get evenly lit shots.
  • Wacom Intuos 6x11” tablet ($450) — For edit­ing my pho­tos in Photoshop. I have one of these at work, and I can’t get over how much bet­ter a tablet is over a mouse.

    I was start­ing to get shoot­ing pains in my wrist and fore­arm, so I bought this tablet in early 2007 to ease the strain of mouse pos­ture. It has greatly helped, and on top of that, work­ing with brushes in Photoshop is a delight.

Games

  • Playstation 3 ($650) — I’m cur­rently wait­ing on this one, since none of the launch titles inter­est me, but it’s my next-generation con­sole of choice. I wanted the Wii for the longest time (back when it was code­named Revolution), but the lack of HD sup­port and dated hard­ware quickly turned me.
  • Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess ($60) — I can’t pass up the leg­endary last game in the Zelda series. It’s com­ing out in 12 days for the Gamecube, although I may see if I can bor­row Pat’s/Aaron’s/Trolley’s Wii to play it with the Remote and Nunchuk instead.
  • Neverwinter Nights 2 ($60) — I’ve been wait­ing for this game ever since I fin­ished the orig­i­nal Neverwinter Nights over two years ago. My next pur­chase was either this or Company of Heroes, but John bought me the lat­ter for my birth­day and so we could play online together. It was as much of a gift for himself.

Furniture

  • Saga sofa ($1400) — Getting this in a nice dark-brown leather is one of the options with which I’d like to replace my old Ikea couch. I wasn’t par­tial to leather until I saw the unit in the store, but it boosts the price closer to $1500.

    Bought a Scotch couch in October 2007 from EQ3 in a black leather instead. Sold my old Ikea couch to help pay for this.

  • 2MORROW side table ($150) — To go with the sofa.

    Bought a frosted glass sidetable from the same series as my cof­fee table from Zone in late 2007 instead.

  • B2C 36″ stor­age ($550) — A place where I can store my books.
  • CONICK pen­dant light ($120) — I’d like to have this above my din­ing table. The light fix­ture I have now is a lit­tle dated.

    I bought a rail light fix­ture from Ikea instead. It’s bet­ter for direc­tional light, and much cheaper.

Appliances

  • Grind & Brew Thermal Automatic cof­feemaker ($150) — This baby grinds, brews, and can be set on an auto­matic timer to do both right before you wake up. Unfortunately, it’d be all decaf for me.
  • Ultra Power Series stand blender ($180) — For smooth­ies. Because lunch sand­whiches get bor­ing quickly.

    Got myself a nice Hamilton Beach Eclectrics Blender at the begin­ning of the year. Been mak­ing smooth­ies almost daily ever since.

TV Shows

  • Six Feet Under ($230 for the com­plete series) — I’ve been want­ing to watch these with Bronwen for a while now. I only got to the mid­dle of the sec­ond sea­son, but it really put the hook in me.
  • Trailer Park Boys ($150 for sea­sons 1–5) — I’ve seen up to sea­son 3, and every year, the Trailer Park Boys keep me guess­ing about how much mad­der things will be in Sunnyvale Trailer Park.

    Bought these up to the sixth sea­son in early 2007 to watch with Bronwen. She loved them. Still look­ing for the Christmas special.

  • Battlestar Galactica ($100 for sea­sons 1 & 2) — I only got as far as the first sea­son, and this is one of those shows that you can’t watch out of order because you’d be com­pletely lost.

Movies

  • Best In Show ($20) — This movie charmed me the first time I saw it. One of those movies you can watch at almost any time. Christopher Guest at his best.
  • Punch Drunk Love ($16) — P.T. Anderson’s sim­ple, beau­ti­ful love story.
  • Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle ($15) — Because every­thing about this movie reminds me of sum­mers with John.
  • Contact ($16) — The begin­ning of my fas­ci­na­tion with astron­omy. And Jodie Foster.

    Louise bought me this for Christmas 2006.

  • Boys n the Hood ($16) — A movie that touches me, even though it’s set in a world com­pletely removed from my own.
  • Waking Life ($10) — I wish I could explain what it is about this movie that draws me in so much. Maybe it’s the fact that every time I watch it, I under­stand some­thing new. Also the first movie I ever saw high. Triptastic.
  • The Breakfast Club ($18) — The ulti­mate teen angst movie. Also cur­rently the only movie to use the term “Neo-Maxi Zoom Dweebie”.
Date  December 1, 2006
Tags 
Categories  Photos Random

Musical Context

3

For years, I lis­tened to music based on my mood. Playlists were well suited for this. I had one full of sad songs for my sad days, days that would last months at a time. I had one with only quick-paced, aggres­sive gui­tar riffs and lung-spitting screams, for the pock­ets of rage I’d encounter every now and then. One that was mostly elec­tronic inspi­ra­tion — songs that would move me when I needed to move. One for the par­tic­u­larly dif­fi­cult days, con­sist­ing of stoic melodies that could fill me with grit deter­mi­na­tion. There was even one for the bit­ter­sweet moments, per­fect for a post-show buzz. Every song served a par­tic­u­lar purpose.

This mot­ley group­ing of sin­gle tracks may have been the result of the way I dis­cov­ered new music. Tenaciously, with ears always open, I would record as much as I could that caught my fancy, jot­ting down any dis­cernible lyrics I could use as a basis for a search, and never stop­ping until I could find the song. Hysteria, by Muse, is just one exam­ple, which I hap­pened to dis­cover while watch­ing an awards show. For a long time, it remained a song I’ve enjoyed on my for it’s sub­tle build-up, and ener­getic, nearly chaotic, synth-inspired bass lines.

Things changed when I lived with Trolley. He exposed me to bands of dif­fer­ent gen­res, and being a musi­cal col­lec­tor, this expo­sure took the form of com­plete albums. One of them hap­pened to be Absolution.

Now that I have the entire album, Hysteria is known to me as track 7, com­ing after the pen­sive Interlude, but before the gen­tle, ethe­real, Blackout. In this con­text, pre­ceded and suc­ceeded by two equally sig­nif­i­cant tracks, the song doesn’t sound the same.

Eventually, none of my playlists were appro­pri­ate for what I was feel­ing. At first, I thought that this was the result of increas­ingly sub­tle or com­plex emo­tions, but I’ve come to real­ize that it’s sim­ply because I’ve matured, and as a result, my emo­tions have evened out. With the wis­dom and seren­ity asso­ci­ated with grow­ing older, came the loss of emo­tional highs and lows that would inspire me.

Now it’s become dif­fi­cult to lis­ten to a song in a playlist. Every album has an order. Every track has its place. Listening to a song out of its musi­cal con­text may be hard, but lis­ten­ing to music with­out the rush of inspi­ra­tion is harder.

And this has become my musi­cal context.

Date  September 1, 2006
Tags 
Categories  Daily Life Thoughts

Thanks, And No Thanks

10

I’ve offi­cially switched from Movable Type to WordPress, the lat­ter of which I’ve decided is a far supe­rior plat­form. This involved man­u­ally copy­ing con­tent from the old data­base, includ­ing every entry, com­ment, time­stamp, and ip address logged. Even though it took me nearly a month, I was able to go through my old entries and make the thumb­nails, links, quotes, and for­mat­ting consistent.

Thanks to the expe­ri­ences of every day life, for the peo­ple I hate, the peo­ple I love, the ones I respect, and the ones who inspire me to do more. It’s these that make sure I never run out of things to say.

Thanks to Trolley, who reminds me with his com­ments that I always have at least one reader.

Thanks to Aaron and Pat, for show­ing me that they care when they tell me that they keep up-to-date with my life through this.

Thanks to Bronwen, with whom I’m the per­son I’ve always wanted to be.

Thanks to Number18, for giv­ing me hope with her daily life, and her über cool input jacks.

Thanks to Tina and Aurora, for their enig­matic entries that inspire me to write better.

Thanks to Winston and Barb, for let­ting me know that I, in turn, could inspire some­one to start writ­ing for themselves.

Thanks to Sikander for being the guy who shares music with me, even though we’ve never met in real life.

Thanks to Sophia, for intro­duc­ing me to music like CocoRosie, and quot­ing my own old archived entries back to me.

Thanks to Dru, a design artist I’ve admired for years, for unof­fi­cially steal­ing from me, an unspo­ken com­pli­ment I hold dear to my heart.

No thanks to the stalk­ers, who say they’ll never visit, yet con­tinue to read on a daily basis. The ones who hide behind ser­vices like Anonymouse, naively believ­ing that all their http requests are masked. The self pro­claimed hyp­ocrites, who have the FUCKING AUDACITY to tell me about the vices of blog­ging, yet blog them­selves. The exact rea­son why I never answer my phone anymore.

No thanks to the sequa­cious com­men­tors who say stuff but don’t say any­thing, or those who com­ment for the sake of per­sonal advertisement.

No thanks to the hotlink­ers, who con­tinue to steal my images, and in turn, my band­width and money.

When I was con­vert­ing my data­base and going through the old entries, I could recall each and every emo­tion that drove them. My writ­ing has become less ram­bling, less depress­ing, less cryp­tic since I started back in 2002. As time goes on and the entries become more recent, there seems to be a sub­tle, bur­geon­ing hope, a reflec­tion of the expe­ri­ences I’ve gone through and a chang­ing worldview.

And from the begin­ning of this blog to the entries I write now, the most impor­tant thing is that I always have more peo­ple to thank.

Date  May 12, 2006
Tags 
Categories  Daily Life

Thrice = Love: Far From The End

0

The con­cert was quite amaz­ing. The set lasted just over an hour and a half. Nothing was per­formed off the first album, which makes me think that Thrice actu­ally knows how weak an LP it was. They did two encores, one of which was Dustin play­ing an acoustic ver­sion of Staring At The Sun, and the other which was a short lit­tle piece from the mid­dle of The Abolition Of Man, where Dustin actu­ally hands off his gui­tar to a guy who comes on stage with a grey hoodie, and walks into the crowd to scream the last few bars. Unfortunately, my mem­ory card ran out of space dur­ing the LAST WORD, ulti­mately ruin­ing the clip.

It was good to see that peo­ple knew all the words to Artist In The Ambulance, and Deadbolt (which they didn’t play until every­one was yelling it in chorus).

Thumbnail: Crowd
Thumbnail: Dustin with acoustic guitar
Thumbnail: Stage

On his celebrity, Dustin once said, “It’s pretty awe­some. A lot of peo­ple throw under­wear at bands, but our kids bring us books”. If I ever had the chance, I’d give him Huis-Clos by Jean-Paul Sartre.

There’s more that can be said, but I think I’ll put this to rest for now.

Thrice is Love.

The Thrice = Love Series

  1. Introduction
  2. The Journey
  3. As The Crucible
  4. Rock It
  5. The Rush
  6. Far From The End
Date  November 1, 2005
Tags 
Categories  Photos Thoughts Video

Thrice = Love: The Rush

0

I want to take the bul­let,
The one aimed straight for your heart.
I want to meet the wolves halfway
And let them tear me apart,
But that’s not the way they do it here.

I want to lay on the tracks,
Feel hot steel scream­ing at me.
Expose the bones on my back,
Let me show you what I mean.

Yeah, it’s a dif­fer­ent kind of love.
I want to climb barbed wire fences
And warm our hands in blood.

And this is my gift
Asking you to fix my ruined hands.
And it’s a gift that keeps on giv­ing,
And right now it’s all I have to give.

I want to write the per­fect song,
And play it just for you,
While you are tan­gled up in sleep.
I need you more than I’ll ever know.
Until I stop breath­ing,
My lungs will take you for granted.

—Thrice, In Years To Come

I remem­ber a time in my life when I was scared about love. A set of rather ado­les­cent expe­ri­ences in high school, of which I only now find myself com­fort­able speak­ing frankly, had caused me to cling to an unat­tain­able ideal. In Lolita, Humbert Humbert well describes such a hap­pen­stance that sim­i­larly “made of it a per­ma­nent obsta­cle to any fur­ther romance through­out the cold years of my youth. The spir­i­tual and the phys­i­cal had been blended in us with a per­fec­tion that must remain incom­pre­hen­si­ble to the matter-of-fact, crude, standard-brained young­sters of today”.

Eventually, I had given up my ideal, but still felt for­ever tainted, regret­fully break­ing more than enough hearts in the process.

It only took an ardent, extremely brief sum­mer romance to free me, and a jour­ney of 12500 kilo­me­tres to real­ize it.

And as fleet­ing as the entire expe­ri­ence was, it still enough to gal­va­nize, to make me want to take that bul­let, or let the wolves tear me apart. Being tan­gled up in that mad love, the love that goes against rea­son or bet­ter judge­ment, soft­ened the stone in my chest, and it felt like I was finally alive.

Gimmie a girl who can make me feel this way.

The Thrice = Love Series

  1. Introduction
  2. The Journey
  3. As The Crucible
  4. Rock It
  5. The Rush
  6. Far From The End
Date  October 30, 2005
Tags 
Categories  Thoughts

Thrice = Love: Rock It

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Entertain the hope that some­how you’ll escape me
Weld the bolts and close the iron gate
Drink deeply the illu­sion of your safety
My how wish­ful thoughts ine­bri­ate
Masquerade and revel in your opu­lence
Writhe unfet­tered by your stabs at igno­rance
Swim through hues and whis­pered tones of heresy
A dozen strokes to run your blood cold enough to believe
Remember me
You look so sur­prised to see me here
Hells black wings did I over perch these walls
For stony lim­its can­not hold me out
And now you all die

—Thrice, The Red Death

And now again the music swells, and the dreams live, and writhe to and fro more mer­rily than ever

—Edgar Allen Poe, The Masque Of The Red Death

It’s sim­ple.

Gimmie a girl who isn’t afraid to ROCK THE FUCK OUT to this song.

The Thrice = Love Series

  1. Introduction
  2. The Journey
  3. As The Crucible
  4. Rock It
  5. The Rush
  6. Far From The End
Date  October 28, 2005
Tags 
Categories  Thoughts

Thrice = Love: As The Crucible

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True friends stab you in the front
Keep you from get­ting what you want
When one more fix could kill you
They help you real­ize that
You’re more and less than you first had believed
You’ve so much to give and there’s so much you need
Shortcuts through grave­yards and a brand new way to breathe
Three thou­sand miles just to learn
All that’s gold does not all shine
And help­ing words aren’t always kind
When one more kiss could kill you
They help you real­ize that
You’re more and less than you first had believed
You’ve so much to give and there’s so much you need
Shortcuts through grave­yards and a brand new way to breathe
Three thou­sand miles just to learn
How to let my guard down

—Thrice,The Beltsville Crucible

When you look back at the prob­lems you faced a year ago, they seem insignif­i­cant com­pared to the prob­lems you face now. Finding out how things end up, and see­ing the path that your actions have paved, makes every­thing passed seem sim­ple and log­i­cal. Even know­ing this, I still look back on a time when I was faced with a trou­bling dilemma, a sit­u­a­tion where I con­tinue to won­der what I may have done dif­fer­ently. At the time, I brought my trou­bles up to Darren, a per­son with whom I could always con­fide with­out being judged.

His advice was to give no advice at all. He told me that he under­stood how I dealt with my prob­lems, being one to always weigh the options care­fully, and that he knew I would make the right deci­sion. Perhaps being his older cousin, the one he him­self has always turned to for advice, made the sit­u­a­tion strange to him. Nonetheless, it was the first time I had expe­ri­enced such a trust, and it was heart­en­ing to know that some­one respected me enough to put his faith in me before I know­ing what my choice was.

I admit­ted this to John, and he told me that the worst mis­take he could make was assum­ing that I would make the right deci­sions. As he put it, it’s his job to keep me in check and make me con­stantly ques­tion the things that I do. Of course, he always presents things tact­fully, so he doesn’t end up hurt­ing more than helping.

Neither Darren or John is more cor­rect than the other, because it all depends on the rela­tion­ship. You need some friends to under­stand what you do. You need other friends to stab you in the front. I know I can count on Darren to accept my deci­sions, and I know I can count on John to give me the hon­est truth when I need it. The impor­tant part is the respect that goes both ways. Without respect, an opin­ion is mean­ing­less. My intro­duc­tion to the dominant/submissive lifestyle has given this even more significance.

Gimmie a girl who I can respect enough to under­stand this, and who can respect me enough to be her crucible.

The Thrice = Love Series

  1. Introduction
  2. The Journey
  3. As The Crucible
  4. Rock It
  5. The Rush
  6. Far From The End
Date  October 26, 2005
Tags 
Categories  Thoughts

Thrice = Love: The Journey

0

I see the parts but not the whole
I study saints and schol­ars both
No per­fect plan unfurls
Do I trust my heart or just my mind
Why is truth so hard to find in this world
Yeah in this world

‘Cause I am due for a mir­a­cle
I’m wait­ing for a sign
I’ll stare straight into the sun
And I won’t close my eyes
Till I under­stand or go blind

—Thrice, Stare At The Sun

Even at my age, whether oth­ers may con­sider it young or old, I haven’t decided on a spe­cific set of beliefs, whether they be reli­gious, philo­soph­i­cal, or psychological.

In try­ing times I find myself wish­ing that I had some­thing, some form of struc­ture that would make sense of the things that hap­pen. The most serene peo­ple I know are also the most pious, as they seem to have an answer for the seem­ingly unex­plained or unde­served. I’ve often asked the­ists, the ones whose intel­li­gence I respect, what has made them believe in one or sev­eral gods. Most com­monly the answer is that they have enough evi­dence for such an exis­tence. Even though I’ve had a few serendip­i­tous expe­ri­ences myself, things which I can’t explain by chance alone, it hasn’t been enough to give me a defin­i­tive answer.

Sometimes it feels like I’m wait­ing for a mir­a­cle to give me an answer or show me a path.

I used to be an athe­ist, then an agnos­tic, until I became com­pletely unde­cided. It’s rare to find other peo­ple who are open-minded enough to admit that they are still learn­ing, or have yet to dis­cover what so many other peo­ple already have. What I know for sure is that I still have the rest of my life to find out, to walk that path and make that journey.

Gimmie a girl who isn’t afraid to stare at the sun with me.

The Thrice = Love Series

  1. Introduction
  2. The Journey
  3. As The Crucible
  4. Rock It
  5. The Rush
  6. Far From The End
Date  October 24, 2005
Tags 
Categories  Thoughts

Thrice = Love: Introduction

2

Thumbnail: Thrice ticket

It’s been more than two years since Thrice has released a new album, until Vheissu, just five days ago. I’m still explor­ing the tracks, approach­ing each song with an open mind, but never dis­sect­ing too much through analy­sis. Due to the uncer­tain­tiy of what to expect, lis­ten­ing to some­thing for the first time is always a lit­tle different.

It can be eas­ily observed that they’ve grown through all of their full-length albums. It’s dif­fi­cult to lis­ten to Identity Crisis (2000), because of how rough and unde­vel­oped it is. The Illusion of Safety (2002) was much improved, intro­duc­ing a unique, exper­i­men­tal style, though heav­ily influ­enced by punk and met­al­core. The Artist In The Ambulance (2003) took things a step fur­ther, achiev­ing tracks that were both esthetic and intelligent.

Ever since I stopped smok­ing weed on a daily basis, of which a great deal of time was spent lis­ten­ing to music, I’ve been ener­vated by the fact that songs would never sound as good, until this album.

Vheissu has renewed my hope. Saved my life.

It goes beyond every­thing else to a com­pletely spir­i­tual expe­ri­ence, from the album art­work to the chords and the key sig­na­tures. Thrice has reached out with music that is haunt­ing, mov­ing, emo­tional, try­ing things that they’ve never tried before. Dustin Kensrue sings more than he screams, even goes falsetto(!), only occas­sion­ally call­ing on his hard­core roots. Electronic sounds, piano, acoustic gui­tar have been worked into the tracks them­selves, instead of being rel­e­gated to the intro­duc­tions. The mixed meters are less obtru­sive, but still inter­est­ing enough for prog-rock fans. Even with all of this, they con­tinue to defy gen­res, as they’ve done in their pre­vi­ous albums. It all works.

Thrice is com­ing to town, and the con­cert is just six days away.

I was only intro­duced to Thrice in the last two years, but I’ve been through a lot with them. Different apart­ments, room­mates, girl­friends, breakups. Even the lyrics speak to me, lift­ing, mov­ing, never crash­ing. I only ask one thing.

Gimme a girl who loves Thrice.

The Thrice = Love Series

  1. Introduction
  2. The Journey
  3. As The Crucible
  4. Rock It
  5. The Rush
  6. Far From The End
Date  October 22, 2005
Tags 
Categories  Photos Thoughts

Today, Finally

4

It’s dif­fi­cult to sleep with so much on the mind, and even more dif­fi­cult when you’re filled with anger about not being able to fall sleep. With my duvet wrapped around me last night, I turned my alarm off com­pletely, decid­ing to get into work when­ever I woke up, know­ing that I’d need the rest to focus on a per­sis­tent net­work issue. After try­ing to fall asleep for an hour with­out suc­cess, and feel­ing like I’d waste the rest of the morn­ing, I got up very frus­trated. Those who know me, know that five hours is con­sid­ered calami­tous. I cooked a heavy break­fast of bacon, eggs and toast, know­ing that I’d still have time to get to work early, a bit of sus­te­nance to get me through the rest of the day.

The main prob­lem I’ve been fac­ing for the last week has been the setup of a VPN for a new out-of-office sales rep we recently hired. It was the per­fect morn­ing to get to work early, because I could work on the server for about an hour with­out hav­ing to worry about affect­ing any client com­put­ers. I traced the prob­lem to an out­dated ver­sion of the firmware, and crossed my fin­gers (after my last flash­ing dis­as­ter) as I burned the lat­est ver­sion. This was at 7:00 in the morn­ing. I spent the next 13 hours try­ing to fig­ure out why inter­net access stopped work­ing within the range of inter­nal IP addresses .1 to .36 (which makes absolutely no sense with­out being a power of two, and espe­cially odd when we had no DHCP ranges set).

This meant care­fully learn­ing the exist­ing struc­ture of a net­work I didn’t set up and fig­ur­ing out the Windows inter­net pro­to­col. I’ve had no for­mal train­ing in being an MCSE, so a lot of the day was spent read­ing through white papers and tech­ni­cal notes for a pos­si­ble DNS/DHCP/IIS/firewall/RRA set­ting I may have looked over. Network ser­vice slowly degraded through­out the day as I began trou­bleshoot­ing, includ­ing a simul­ta­ne­ous crash of the main cus­tom soft­ware on every sys­tem, a loss of dynamic dns address­ing (which brought our new online ser­vice down), until I couldn’t even find the net­work address of the router.

When you’re filled with angry per­se­ver­ance, you get a lot done. If only other peo­ple could under­stand that. Wearing a face of deter­mi­na­tion means I don’t have time to be pleas­ant, or have a lunch, or lis­ten to innane sto­ries of your grandchildren.

On the walk to work, I had already decided that as soon as I got off, I was going to play some table ten­nis at one of the bi-weekly ses­sions, vision blurred, eyes dry­ing, as tired as I was, and pass­ing out after din­ner. This obvi­ously didn’t hap­pen. I’d been seri­ously plan­ning on going since last week, but things just kept get­ting in the way.

Until the last 15 min­utes, the only thing I could think about was whether I’d have to pull an all-nighter, and whether or not I’d even be able to solve things if I did. That’s the risk of tech sup­port; the solu­tion can be as sim­ple as it is elu­sive, and there can be no progress until the very last tweak. Halfway through the day, I already decided that I’d call an exter­nal net­work spe­cial­ist to help if I didn’t get any­where by tomor­row after­noon. I was too tired to worry about not get­ting the net­work up before the next busi­ness day, which would basi­cally bring the com­pany to a stand­still, and too tired to be angry at every­thing that was going on. After fig­ur­ing out our net­work struc­ture, three calls to tech sup­port, and learn­ing inter­net pro­to­col the­ory from the ground up, I finally fig­ured out that all I needed to do was do a hard reset of the router, and con­fig­ure every­thing from scratch.

It was prob­a­bly the most dif­fi­cult day I’ve had since I started the job, but I knew that if I could get through it and fix the prob­lem, I’d be able to get through any­thing that could be thrown at me. Not only did I get the web con­nec­tion work­ing through the entire sub­net, I also got the sales reps lap­top to con­nect to the VPN through dial-up. Yesterday was a late night, get­ting a web­site done for a client friend. Tomorrow’s another 14 hour day, and even though I’ve known about it for a month, I don’t think it’ll make it any easier.

I real­ized that I only really feel lonely on days like these, when my body aches, my mind loses focus, and all I want to do is have some­one else take care of me. To have some­one else decide what to do, because I’m too tired to decide for myself.

Stepping out­side, hun­gry and exhausted, I put on a win­tery playlist for the walk home, since it was two hours past sun­set and the fall nights are get­ting frigid. The first song that came on was Explode by the Cardigans. I’d been sav­ing this song for months now, skip­ping it every time it came on so I wouldn’t get tired of it.

Today I finally deserved it.

Date  October 18, 2005
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Categories  Daily Life

Weekend By Bus

0

Thumbnail: Greyhound station

Leaving by bus, in the rain and in the dark, is some­thing special.

The per­fect album to put on is Ágætis Byrjun by Sigur Rós, with songs like Starálfur and Olsen Olsen, but espe­cially Sven-G-Englar and Ný Batteri. Sounds are dis­tract­ing all around with the peo­ple talk­ing, the bat­ter­ing of rain­drops on the wind­shield, the thud-thump of the uneven high­way road, but they grad­u­ally fade to a lethar­gic pulse. The unrec­og­niz­able tim­bres of each dis­tin­guish­able instru­ment take over.

This is the moment. The exact pur­pose of the song. The notes are pure, amor­phous colours in the dark­ness, a dul­cet damper for the out­side world.

Soon the rhythm of the pass­ing city lights will become more and more sparse, and all that will be left in the win­dows are the reflec­tions of those with their over­head lights on, read­ing books or keep­ing eye-contact.

It’s been ten months since the last time you did this.

How has so much hap­pened since then?

Date  October 8, 2005
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Categories  Daily Life Photos

Music Is The Only Thing

3

I wasn’t plan­ning on writ­ing until next Monday, but I can’t seem to get away from this.

With the falling tem­per­a­tures come late morn­ings. Stepping out­side ear­lier, the sky was still dimmed with the street lamps on from the pre­vi­ous night. It felt like the sun had already set, and it was only going to get darker. I was in the mood for some jazz, so I fid­geted on my iPod until I found a Duke Ellington col­lec­tion. Unfortunately, most of it is com­prised of big band swing songs, fast mov­ing, major keys, a sound that didn’t quite match the mood. I set­tled on Going Up, a calm pro­gres­sive jazz piece fea­tur­ing brushes instead of drum sticks, har­mon mutes in the trum­pets, and Les Spann on flute. Four years of pri­vate lessons, with four dif­fer­ent bands in high-school, have made me appre­ci­ate the pol­ished, round­ness of his sound. He trav­els chro­mat­i­cally with utter smooth­ness on the wood­wind, and unlike on the piano, which the fin­gers can move across in one sweep­ing motion, each note is played with a seem­ingly ran­dom com­bi­na­tion of fin­gers. In his head, he’s four bars ahead of his fin­gers, allow­ing his into­na­tion remain pre­cise with each pur­pose­ful note.

Sometimes it feels like music is the only thing that can bring out my emo­tions again. Most of them have been replaced by sim­ple deter­mi­na­tion. Everything is busi­ness busi­ness busi­ness because the world is cold cold cold.

I’m going home for the Thanksgiving long-weekend. A much needed break that I’ve been plan­ning for a while now. Funny that I still call it home when it’s a five hour drive away, and I own my own house in this city. Home isn’t where you grew up, it isn’t where you live now, home is where the par­ents are.

Date  October 7, 2005
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Categories  Daily Life

With A More Pretentious Title Than Last?

0

The new Coheed And Cambria sin­gle (song starts play­ing after the Flash intro) com­pletely knocks me off my feet. I sus­pect that the new album will be darker, mood­ier, and even bet­ter pro­duced than their last. I’m not the only one who’s reminded of Kashmir by Led Zeppelin, with the chro­matic chord pro­gres­sion and orches­tral back­ing, but the sim­i­lar­i­ties end there.

Can’t wait until September.

Date  July 19, 2005
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Categories  Daily Life
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