Cooking up the Egg of Shame

watch?v=u253BBNnDmM

I’ve always loved this song, since the first rock and roll show I ever attended, a Day on the Green at the Oakland coliseum with Journey headlining. It’s an awesome song about my hometown, what more is there to love about it? These days it hits me a harder, bringing up homesickness for a town in which I’ve never lived, but that my mind and heart have not departed from in the year since I’ve been away. Well, almost a year. One year ago today I arrived in Pattaya for forty days, and part of me has never come home.

A few leaps of association later I find myself googling that show and another, searching youtube for a taste of those times. I hope you enjoy what I dug up

Day On The Green #1: Journey, Santana, Toto, Gamma, The Tubes (June 26, 1982).

More Journey (because they deserve it)
watch?v=ZYaRaRKhi3Y

Santana
watch?v=SiGSsP60BLA

Toto
watch?v=Gq4ychrRkQA

Gamma
watch?v=VsAF2aB_MIs

The Tubes
watch?v=Fgjfi1DU1mQ

The next year, a handful of months after graduating high school I attended another Day on the Green. Amazing. I went to see Oingo Boingo, but The Police put on a show that I have only witnessed matched a handful of times in the decades since, and never bested.

Day On The Green #3: The Police, The Fixx, Madness, Oingo Boingo, and The Thompson Twins (September 10, 1983).

The Police
watch?v=-wpX6drarrs

The Fixx
watch?v=z17CiM2a1M4

Madness
watch?v=-QnBccG_ChI

Oingo Boingo (They get extra because Danny Elfman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Elfman was crafted by the musical gods from bonus awesome)
watch?v=ED-fGndZx7U

watch?v=ryRHJ04OLKo

watch?v=SPBddVIUrU4

watch?v=eGOfPSdWYdI

watch?v=rG3trYRpitQ

watch?v=PiNpZ6yHXoQ

The Thompson Twins

watch?v=MiAtjpgH4Hc

Asteroid orbit before and after diversion.

Chinese scientists are studying the possibility of bringing an asteroid into orbit around the earth to study and eventually mine for its resources. I applaud them in their efforts, I only wish it was us here in the US that were doing it. But regardless, I wholly favor any projects that brings humanity closer to inhabiting space.

I remember watching moon landings as a small child, I saw 2001: A space odyssey long before I understood a fraction of it. When 2001 came along, and again with 2011, I am ashamed at the lack of progress we’ve made in space exploration. Sure there is a space station, but it’s a clunky patched together beast that is in danger of being abandoned because Russia’s still using a rocket design based in the 70′s, and we shut down the shuttle program with no replacement.

We haven’t set foot on the moon in decades, let alone established a base there.

I believe this lack of progress hurts all of humanity. There are pressures building that cannot be denied. There will eventually be too many people on the earth for the planet to sustain us. Famine or disease will eventually catch up with us, solving the problem brutally, or we could try forcing people to stop having babies, an impossibly horrific scenario.

The only real humanitarian solution to this problem is to find room to expand. It’s what we were made to do. Humans have expanded across all the climates of the earth and made tools to help us in that expansion. Mother Nature, the Gods, the Life Force, whatever made us who we are, wants us to expand off this rock and spread life. Not just human life but all the funk that comes with us. Bacterium and fungi, rats and cats.

It’s a belief I’ve held for a long time. It colors my outlook on life and my fiction pretty heavily, as you will see.

The serendipity of the internet amazes me. I was looking for something to give me a bit of inspiration this morning and I came upon this trio of short films. It’s amazing how in just a few minutes the filmmakers have captured the essence of what makes travel great.

Move

Learn

Eat

Heya folks, It’s an exciting day here, I have posted  an excerpt, albeit a short one, which marks the first time any part of Keystone has been published on the internet for public viewing.

There is a draft of another chapter that I have let one or two close friends see before today, but that’s it. I have been keeping this project close to the vest until today.

Besides the excerpt, things are fairly quiet here at the compound. I have made contact with a US/Thai law firm that is helping me with my Visa. I’m happy to report they have assured me I should have no problem getting a one year Business visa. It’s not gonna cost me an arm and a leg either! But before I do that I still need to renew my passport. So much to do!

Not a whole lot to report from here folks. I haven’t got as as much writing done in the last few days as I would like because I have been switching over to my new iMac. The transition went pretty well once I got a hold of the correct FireWire cable.

A bit of advice for any of you out there switching to a new Mac soon. The System Migration software works great so long as you have a fast enough connection between the two computers. Otherwise it’s insanely slow! What took a few hours using FireWire looked was going to take three days using Wi-Fi. So, if this project is in your future I recommend spending 20 bucks or so on the proper FireWire cable. The new Macs use a nine pin plug and the old Macs use a six pin plug, so do a little research and make sure you know which one is which and get the right cable.

Essentially everything moved over flawlessly once I had the right cable. The one thing I did find odd was my Dragon Dictate profile did not come over. I guess I’ll dig into that and figure out why, though it’s sort of irrelevant because I just went through the training again and it’s actually working just as well as it did before already.

I had to reset my profile once before because of some weird error where it was capitalizing every word of every sentence. When I reset it then, and again this time, I decided to go through all the training exercises, including giving it some copies of my own writing to analyze. Taking a few minutes to do this really helped the ability of the software to keep up with my voice. I think it was under fifteen minutes of of work including picking some files to give it.

I have to admit I spent a little time goofing around with the two games that I love to play, Starcraft 2 and World of Warcraft. Both looked beautiful on the new computer. With Starcraft 2 its just nice to be able to finish the game without it crashing. The old iMac just was not up to the modern demands of video gaming.

Speaking of World of Warcraft, they have recently launched a promotion for all “veteran” players where they’ve given us a code to give away that is good for a free copy of the basic game and a 30 days subscription. It’s a real (digital) copy and subscription, not a trial account.

As soon as I saw this I figured what a great prize to give away to readers of my blog! So I’m opening up a contest. If you are interested in joining the contest the details are below.

Otherwise, I hope everyone’s well and thanks for reading.

Contest details:

OK, nobody commented to enter to win so the rules have changed, it’s time for the lightning round! The first comment asking for the game is the winner!

In order to win the free copy of World of Warcraft all you need to do is comment on this entry, indicating you want into the drawing. I am going to leave entry open to submissions until July 1st, 2011 at Noon (12:00pm) Pacific Daylight Time.

Within 48 hours after the deadline I will randomly choose a winner from all those eligible and notify the winner via the e-mail address used for the comment. The winner has 48 hours to respond by email confirming they want the prize. When I receive confirmation I will then send the code ASAP. If I get no confirmation e-mail from the winner I will make another random choice from the pool of those eligible and start the process again.

If the winner chooses to make a character on my home server and in my home faction, (Bonechewer, Horde) I will also kick you a little in game cash to help you get started.

Good luck!

Seriously I do. There are not many big industrial corporations that I can say I get excited about, at least not in a positive way, but just about every time I deal with Apple I find myself really happy that they are the folks I chose to spend my money with.

My trusty old iMac has been treating me well for many years, but recently I have see some signs that the graphics processor may be getting ready to fail. A little screen tearing here and there under light usage and then a lot of screen tearing when I put the graphics processor under strain. I was thinking about how productive being stuck without an operational computer would be, consulted the piggy bank and decided it was time to bite the bullet and do some serious shopping for a replacement. I checked out the usual suspects, eBay, Amazon and others around the web. But once again Apple came through.

If you like Apple stuff and are looking for a deal, the Apple store factory refurbished section is usually full of deals. The 21.5″ model I picked up is not the current model, but the one that was the current model until this spring. It was a deal at $929. They might have some left.

Here’s where the story gets great. I ordered it Friday evening and the message Apple sent me said it would ship within 24 hours, but as I watched over the course of the weekend it just sat there and sat there. 24, 48, 36 hours pass and no movement. It kind of annoyed me, so I called them this morning. The individual I spoke with explained that they don’t actually do any shipping over the weekend.  I asked why not just say ships next business day?  With a little prodding, he essentially said I was probably right and offered me 100 bucks off my total to make up for my inconvenience. 100 bucks off? Thanks, I feel better already.

Greetings gentle readers. It’s been a little too long since I posted an update, so I thought I would let you folks know how the project is progressing.

First off, the Dragon Dictate software is awesome. I’m using it now to write this entry. The training takes a little bit of time, and it takes a little getting used to to speak in a way that the computer can understand. It’s actually sort of like speaking to someone who has English as their second language. Just slow it down a little bit, enunciate and they can keep right up.

As far as the book goes I have been getting pages drafted and spent time going back and polishing up some stuff that’s in the ‘finished for now’ bin. I am hoping to put a couple of excerpts up on the blog sometime in next few days. Not a lot, just a tease, but that’s what this whole thing is about right?

I have realized I’ve been remiss in recommending (warning you against) my various distractions. So I thought today I would share something that I’ve been enjoying over the last several weeks.

I am a bit of a sucker for reality TV shows, particularly ones where you can see people doing something that they do well, under pressure in some sort of competitive format. The  show I have been really digging lately is a singing competition show called The Voice. You can go back and watch the competition from the beginning on Hulu.

I won’t go into detail about the whole process, but the show starts off with blind auditions where the judges/coaches cannot see the singers during their first audition. The show continues keeping the focus on the voice above the image of the singer and it’s been good fun watching these new unknown singers attempt to wow the audiences and the professionals they hope to work with. Plus it’s packed with a lot of of powerful and mostly non-cheesy vocal performances.

My favorite to win the season is Dia Frampton

Oh, and  for you karaoke warriors out there, season two auditions are opening soon.