Miers gets Mired in a Quagmire of Ire

Now that she's withdrawn, the conservative pundits will dictate the next nomination. Hypocrisy and more hypocrisy. I've read a lot of people saying that Miers was a bait n' switch tactic from the git-go. I don't believe it. Mainly because I don't believe there are any such thing as liberal judges. Judges are all conservative. Maybe not as far right as some of these neocons but they are conservative none the less. They're all cut from the same bolt of cloth. In a word, Inhuman.

This whole Supreme Court thing is nothing but a distraction from the real issues. As long as the lobbyists control Washington in terms of the legislation that gets passed then Americans are going to continue to be raped by our own congress. Congress has taken away your right to sue corporations. Congress has taken away much of your rights to shield yourself through bankruptcy. Congress has protected corporate America while it raided the Pension funds of millions of elderly Americans. It's disgusting and I wish Americans would pull their heads out of the sand.

It's hard to do this!

Blogging without feedback is like....uh, like uh, well it's it's it's....a useless gesture? Hehe. I envy all the folks that have the time to wax philosophical on a daily basis. When I get computer time, I'm more inclined to get in a game.
I wish I could find solace and release by writing about my wonderful life. I'm damn lucky and I know it. At times I have the urge to document parts of my life. But an overwhelming desire to be cute and jocular ends up making me feel embarrassed and small for having told the tale at all! I want to paint the history of my day with the brushstrokes of Faulkner or Brautigan. But it always comes out looking like I painted it by numbers. *sigh*

My Mom and stepdad are rolling down the highway once again. Yay Mom& Tom! They are living the good life in their fifth-wheel. I inherited an intense curiosity from my mother. She still exhibits the same curiosity today. I wish I could be there with her in this time of discovery. Rock on Mom! I love you.

RJ

Dog Bathing and the Zen of Cat5E

I applaud my wife for her dog bathing efforts. Love the dog, hate the way he smells. But dogs don't have sweat glands. So if dogs don't sweat, why do they get so damn stinky after a jog around the block? At least this dog does. My wife says it's anal glands. WTF? We had to adopt this dog because my mother-in-law has been in denial for a year over the fact that SHE DOESN"T LIVE at her house anymore, she's out of state at least 50% of the year but the DOG stays at the house 100% of the year. Yeah, guess who had to pick up that other 50% of the dog maintenance? 25 mile round trip at least twice a week.

I am sad to say that my son has graduated from Peanut Butter and Jelly to Bologna & Cheese. Growing up waaaay too fast.

A week post! :)

Sheesh…A week since I last posted. It’s been a busy one. Oh well…stuff happens then you get on with it. We start our homecoming week here next week and everything is really coming together. We kick things off with Dashboard Confessional this Friday. It ought to be a good show. I’m currently doing mixdowns for the Athens 441 radio program that I recorded last month. The show will air sometime in 2006. Athens 441 is recorded live at the Morton Theater, one of Athens oldest venues. Next Friday we’re going to host a band called Right Foot Red on our field and have carnival rides, including a Ferris Wheel, set up all around the concert area. That ought to be interesting!

Horrible day.

Really amazingly horrible. Someone from outside my workplace who is running a program in our movie theater didn't do their homework. Didn't make the arrangements she should have weeks ago. She called me yesterday and I believed I was helping her identify the problem areas and formulate a plan to deal with the oversight on her part. She was actually setting me up. I need to start recording all my business phone calls. People are so stupid and useless.

No Blog For Today

None. Nothing to say. Not going to go there. Nada.

too tired from uploading photos.

Enjoy!

Look at the pictures!

Making Blog-sense of it all!

After a couple of weeks of blogging I'm now beginning to get a feel for where I'm going with it. Of course I've been reading a lot of blogs both by following links randomly and finding really popular blogs from media sources etc. I must say, it's exhilarating to find so much fun stuff to do and read. At the same time I find it depressing that people are so darned mean spirited. And hey, I'm not always the voice of wisdom, justice and moderation. But some of the really vitriolic ones need to take it down a notch.

I didn't really expect to find a whole lot of pr0n in blogs. Whoa, Mr. Naive making a brain check here! Have to be careful about surfin blogs with your 8 yr old looking over your shoulder.

I posted a while back, lamenting the loss of old friends and acquaintances from my checkered past. One thing I've really been hoping to find in the blogsphere is some of those folks. There seems to be a predilection for assuming an alias for your blog. And I don't really understand that. The blogs of fame are usually pretty up front about who's running the show and who's saying what. So I just wonder what people are thinking when they use something other than their own name for a personal blog. I mean, if you are unwilling to accept responsibility for the things you say and put your name where your mouth is what's the point of blogging? Some of the best blogs I've seen so far were actually parodies of real blogs. I find that absolutely hysterical. But anyway---back to my point. I've tried searches for some of the folks I knew without any luck. If they're blogging they're doing it under a weird screen name or alias. Hey, anyone know Gibby Haynes from the Butthole Surfers or Chip & Tony Kinman from Rank & File/Cowboy Nation? If you do, tell them to call me damnit!

A Soundman and His Trusty Equimetric Paralyzer goes up against a Python Script!

I've been trying to learn how to setup my website so that I can operate it as a business. I'm developing two different manuscripts for eventual publication. I'd like to be able sell these on the intranets without paying someone else a bunch of money to develop a website capable of e-commerce. When I began making self indulgent webpages in 1995 (often called "vanity" pages back then), HTML was very simple and straight forward. I learned it pretty easily and could do all my stuff in notepad. There wasn't much you could do in the way of content. Bandwidth was so limited that anything more than text and very tiny pictures meant a long wait while your browser downloaded the page. My 14.4 baud dial-up modem is in a box somewhere around here. :)

Needless to say, websites have moved so far beyond that now that it usually takes a team of coders, each with their own area of expertise, to build an engaging and interactive site. I've decided that I need to at least try to learn the basics and attempt to build my own site before I pay someone else to save me from ridicule and embarrassment!

I'm writing a short handbook on child rearing. I have raised my son without the use of any form of corporal punishment or mental abuse. If you spank your kids, better be prepared to deal with a child who solves their problems by employing physical strategies. They tend to see whipping someone's ass as the primary means to solving a problem. Hitting is a hateful strategy for raising children. I found a far better way. I didn't invent it but I'm going to write a how-to based on the only success story I know, my 9 yr old son.

The other manuscript I'm working on is called "Golden Ears" with a subtitle of "It's in the ear, not the gear silly!". A handbook for young sound engineers. Kinda like a "Zen and the Art of Parametric Notch Filters". I started writing about my experiences on the road many years ago. I haven't updated it with new stuff cause I realized what I really needed to do was make an actual book. Reality is far more bizarre and entertaining than fiction. Especially in the world of Rock and Roll concert production. There's plenty of writing on the technical side of equipment operation. What I'm writing is more of a personal account of my techniques as well my emphasis on communication and customer service. Soundmen have a bad rap in general as far as bands and managers are concerned. And for good reasons. When a band is on the road, the house sound guy where they're playing literally has the power to make you or break you. More often than not they don't care about your band or your production even though that's exactly what they are getting paid to do. They just stop paying attention to what's happening and then band suffers sound-wise. A really good soundman has to anticipate the dynamic changes of instrumentation and tempo and adjust the outputs accordingly. A really good sound engineer is engaged in the performance as though he were the fifth wheel of the band.

Well I've swerved well away from my original intent of this post. That was to lament the fact that my webhost doesn't allow commandline access through SSH nor do they support Python scripts. I need both to build a google sitemap. *sigh* Wish I would have read the support page at my webhost before I went to all the trouble of setting up the sitemap stuff. :(