June has come and gone, quickly I might add. I went to a wedding yesterday for my cousin. It was nice to see some of the relatives again. There is a warmth for family even if you wouldn't be friends in other circumstances, what makes it really cool, is when a distant family member would make a good friend in other circumstances. It's almost like a bonus. You don't necessarily expect to connect with family, particularly family that you see once in a blue moon, but it's nice when it happens. It was a fun wedding, the DJ was over the top enough to be entertaining, but he wasn't annoying. What he didn't know is that I would like to be a DJ. If it paid better and I could play what I want to play, it would definitely be something I'd do. But, since I enjoy my day job, I just dabble with making mix tapes for prospective girlfriends, friends and music aficionados. One of these days, I'll sync up my stereo and my computer, buy a CD burner and make some wicked mixes of my favorite songs. Fortunately, I don't have a burning desire to do this right now, because I'm fully immersed in this site. It's the same reason why I haven't bought a video game for the computer. Once I get playing, I won't work on this, and there is still so much to say and create. I have ideas, that I need to put to life.
I was thinking about this whole thing of having a diary and that people will be reading it. I told a few people about my new address, so I'm pretty clear on who my audience is. My audience is people I know, so in some ways, it remains an area that I need to take care with. Meaning, I can't blurt out everything, I can only hint in certain areas, and I certainly can't insult anyone, or even make a comment that could be interpreted in a derogatory way. Not that I have a whole lot of bitter things to say, but sometimes I make observations about people that could be limiting. When I say limiting, I think I mean, it could be a stereotypical remark, or one that does not give that person the benefit of the doubt. In a family situation, you get more of it than you do elsewhere, because you feel vested in those relationships. When you feel like you have the right to help certain people you sometimes come across like you know better, but the truth is you hear a little bit more gossip in a family than you do with friends. That is not to say, that I spent the weekend looking over my relatives and finding deficiencies, more so, it reminded me of some of the pre-conceptions that I once had based on conversations about people, and not about actual experiences that I had. I offended someone once, because of an opinion that I had, which turned out to be someone else's. It is good to remind myself of what I stated above, because by and large my family are very nice people. Not only are they nice, but they have done well for themselves. I'm not talking multi-millionaire well, I'm talking middle class with good values. I could have done much worse, and I haven't. As someone at my table at the wedding said, you've got a lot of heritage there. He wasn't referring to what I am, but the words are right.
I'm a little self-conscious in big gatherings where I know few people. I wasn't exactly an introvert, but I woke up in the morning thinking. "Did I say that?" In a way I feel like I came off as desperate for a wife. It's funny, because over the last year or so, I could have cared less. Yeah, it would be nice, but at the same time, I wasn't on a hunt. I figured, it would come when it did. I think that a lot of my feelings right now come from a situation that was an almost dream. Being that it was an almost dream, I didn't exhaust the situation and then revolt completely from intimacy. When you get out of a relationship where feelings are at play, you can do one of two things. You can run away and keep yourself away from the opposite sex, or you can try to bury the situation underneath the love of another. Normally, I retreat, I don't want anything to do with romance. This time is different, or maybe it's not. Maybe I'm just looking to replace the feeling without actually entering into something real. My pattern is usually of the type that I have a serious relationship followed by an in-betweener. These days, I let the person know when it's probably a temporary situation. It has nothing to do with the individual I'm with. It has everything to do with me. Well, I better close this out and get working on the other parts of the site. I wanted to share one part of the evening which was nice. A young lady asked me to dance later in the evening. She is a very good dancer, and she asked me because she thought that I was good dancer too. Half of dancing out there, is letting yourself go. Rhythm helps, but you can develop some of that. I got a few compliments for my dancing, which is flattering. Dancing is fun, and she was a very fun partner. So, in closing, thanks for asking me to dance, it took some chutzpah, and I admire that. Goodnight all, back to the grind tomorrow.
This has been a nice day off in the middle of the week. It has rained on and off all day. It's still warm and I made no plans for myself for this evening except to make some hotdogs and drink a few Sam Adams. I can see some of the fireworks from my deck, so I'll go do that in a few minutes. The cloud cover is pretty bad though, so I probably won't see much. It's funny I'm not much for holidays. I usually don't do much for them unless family are involved. It was the same when I was in the Air Force. I think it's something I've gotten used to. In the Air Force someone had to work the holiday's so it was usually the single people. Now, when a holiday happens I just look at it as an another Saturday or Sunday. I hope everyone is enjoying themselves out there.
I've been working on the site today. I went out to Yahoo and submitted my site to their list of sites related to U2. I also read an FAQ about how to get your site noticed. During my travels, I read a top 20 list of things not to have on your site. I think I had 5 or so on mine. I'm not planning to change right now, because part of this list was geared towards someone who is trying to sell something. I'm not trying to sell anything, but I am interested in having people see the site. I've also found some good uses for Microsoft's Photo Draw. It does an excellent job in removing scratches from pictures. As a touchup product, it works well, the only thing I can't do with it is crop, which means that I resize and crop in another product and then bring it over to Photo Draw for finishing touches. So, I'm glad the product isn't a total waste. I'll keep using it. I also went through and rescanned some pictures as jpg's. In the beginning, when I scanned pictures in as Jpg's it was making them huge, and the quality was not nearly as good as it is now.
Nothing going on the personal front. Today has been a day of working on the site, listening to music and relaxing. I've been checking into some things at work from here, so I guess I can mark that on my time sheet. Not that it matters. Being salaried will do that to you. Sorry, I didn't have more exciting things to say, but it's been a low key day. Happy 4th of July!
Well, that was interesting... I was working on my resume (yes, my resume, God I hate dating) when I heard yelling outside. I got out of my chair and looked out my window and there were two white-bread high school boys arguing. One of the boys had stepped out of his Jeep cherokee (no doubt, bought by his parents) and left it in the middle of the road with the door open. Cars are driving by, honking and these two guys have girls holding them back. One who I will call "Mouth", because that's about all he had, kept saying things like, "I was your boy" "How you could do this to me" etc. etc. Then, the song "Sunday Bloody Sunday" started playing on my PC, it drowned out what they were saying, but it was the perfect backdrop for what I thought might happen. Mouth continued to talk big but kept his distance, the other kid "Cherokee" kept his cool, but said a few words himself. As the music was playing, cars were honking, people were yelling, girls were pulling themselves away to corners of the battlefield, whispering about what was going on. Fortunately, no punches were thrown and Cherokee drove off. After he drove off, Mouth started whooping (I think that's what you would call it) as he hopped (yes, he hopped) his way down the street in the opposite direction. As calm returned to my little neighborhood, the song "Bad" (also from U2) started to play. The girls dispersed as well, following Mouth down the street. A few minutes later the cops showed up, but there was nothing to see here.
I'm glad that the time of having way too much testosterone, and not enough brains to keep yourself out of situations like that has passed. If I had to guess, the girl in the passenger side of the Cherokee was once Mouth's. Or, more likely, he thought she was his. Ahhh, betrayal. A common theme in literature and life. Sometimes, I wonder how much of it is real, and how much is emotional. What do we implicitly promise people, we certainly don't explicitly promise people much at all. Aside from a marriage, or a loan, or a credit card. We don't promise people anything anymore. Our word is seldom used, because it's seldom good. We usually have an excuse ready for any failure on our part to satisfy our commitments. I'll stop ranting now. This one was born of exercising my brain, it wasn't directed at any given person, organization or circumstance.
This past week or so has been interesting, as life usually is from a certain point of view. Work is really starting to bother me internally. I feel the need for some loving from the company. For everything that I do that is above and beyond the call, I want a pat on the back. I'll grow out of it. What bothers me is that I shouldn't feel that way. No one owes me anything. One of my operators left this past week, he has been an important part of my team the past year and he wrote a very very nice part about me in his goodbye letter and sent it to everyone in my office. I'm wondering if I'm starting to believe my own press, and that I'm not as great as I think I am. Not as smart, not as everything. I pose that because, when you set expectations for performance and worth at this level, you are bound to falter and then it hurts more. The bigger you are the harder you fall. My ego needs a check, I better do it before someone else does. The truth is I'm king of a collapsing kingdom. Wow, I'm great (deadpan the voice for sarcastic effect).
This past weekend I took a drive up to Saratoga Springs to check out a record store that I hadn't been to. I didn't find what I was looking for, but I did find a few items at reduced price, so it was a success. I don't get up there very often. And then, it was no surprise that on my way home, I got off the wrong exit and ended up in Troy. I decided to try to find another record store and I was successful. I hadn't been there before, so I was pretty lucky in finding it. When I arrived home, I started working on my site and I tried opening Front Page and it crashed. I rebooted and tried it again, it wouldn't open. I fought with it all weekend, I uninstalled, installed, changed directories, changed users, I deleted temp files, surfed the net for answers, nada. Finally, on Monday, I called Tech support and it was a simple solution (I had to delete a file) but there was no way to know that which file to delete. So, here I am a bit happier. I added pictures of myself to the me section. So at your leisure, check them out.
Well, I have to get back to working on the resume, and I have to do laundry tonight. Hasta la bye bye and Goodnight!
I did some research on the internet about the 'Bloody Sunday' massacre. I have never really read much about it before. U2 have always been politically active with a number of their songs having origins in the news of the day, but I just haven't held much interest in it. I've never really had a passion to the change the world, or wanted to join this cause or that cause. I'm more passive than that, it's hard to believe in anything but me, and I have my doubts about that too, from time to time. Reading about this subject stirred up some feelings about how senseless this seemed to be. We've had riots and other periods of civil unrest, but it always seems so far away. In the recent past the crimes have been mostly terrorist initiated not government initiated. I don't really want to get into a debate about it, so I'll just say that it opened my eyes a bit more to the sort of things that I haven't had to deal with and how small my world can be at times. I encourage to read about it, it's interesting and tragic and it may make you appreciate the relative peace that we enjoy here in America, most of the time.
It's raining today and I'm going to a going away party for a friend and co-worker. I'll have to leave before it's over because I'm heading to see a U2 cover band play. Their name is the Unforgettable Fire and they are quite good. They play mostly in the northeast and this will be third time I've seen them. I'll write more tomorrow. Hope it's sunny where you're at!
The weekend is nearly over. Too short. Oh well, life is an interesting thing, don't you think? Not that I've had anything happen that warrants that sort of statement, but I sometimes wonder if I the time I spend doing anything is building toward the life I should be building which is of course superceded by the inevitable great beyond. Or, for those who don't believe in the hereafter... What's the point, or more pointedly "What's this life for?" to quote Creed. I'm not depressed or anything, actually I'm a bit upbeat, but as I'm doing whatever it is I'm doing, I pause occasionally for directions. I've been dealt a pretty good hand over all, and I don't mean to waste it, so I sometimes wonder if I should be out there more often making my mark. Even in moments of rest, it is still building something right? This sounds so maudlin. What does maudlin mean? It popped in my head as a sort of depressive word to use, so I figured I'd leave it up.
OK, weekend recap. I went to the party and their is a waitress at that bar, that totally slays me. It's that smile. If she ever gets to the point of reading this, then I figure, we've already gone out, so I can unashamedly admire the feeling that I get when I'm around her. Every once in awhile you meet someone who is that striking to you. She was very pleasant towards me, but it's her job. I don't know if she is somewhat curious or not. Perhaps on another occasion, I'll ask her for her phone number, even though she already has mine. In any case, that moment has passed.
After the party I took one of my buds to see the Unforgettable Fire show. It was fun, they are really good as a cover band. They have learned from the masters and they are having a good time. We ended up at Denny's (you never start there, only end up there) As always, every person in there is so much younger. I did find out that the X-Men movie was pretty good, so I ought to check it out. I also got to see an old U2 fan. It's funny how interests will draw people together as friends, when geography and situations prohibit it. It's a strange sort of phenomenon. I noticed one thing while at the show. If pastors were as charismatic as Bono I'd go to church more, just goes to show you it's all about presentation. Sales man rule the world. Or at least they could if they were smart enough. When talent fails, try charisma.
WWW.U2.COM is up! I checked it out today and it made me think. I was contemplating the direction of the internet. Especially in regards to design. For that matter, not just the internet but the design community in general. Three years ago, Pop was released by U2. It was accompanied with a lot of artistic splash. Finally, graphic designers could do things with computers that wasn't possible three years prior. It was the question of what we can do now? Not what should we do now? I'm not saying that the visuals that accompanied Pop were poor or wrong, I'm just thinking that they may have been as a result of what they could do, not what they should do. Image creation had a lot to do with it and in 1991 U2 cornered the market on the Rock Star image. As in most cases, it drew from the past and propelled it into the future. So, having said all that, the design of the new U2 site, enlists a much more architectural feel to it. I think it's a European thing, Radiohead used a bit of that same sort of angular design for OK Computer (which I think is ahead of it's time, even as it's mocking the present we've created). Here I sound all knowledgeable about these things, but I'm flying by the seat of my opinion, which is ill informed in this case. But, the site reminds me a little bit of the cube life that I'm living at work. Segregated spaces but no offices. Thrifty independence so to speak. As the creation of sites becomes easier and easier to do, and the power of the tools is greater, we'll push the envelope for what is possible. Duh? I've been talking to people recently about the fact that upstate NY has these run down towns that were once thriving because of manufacturing. We've exported much of that work, but I don't think it's a bad thing. As the tools become easier and more formulaic, a new wave of jobs will appear that are not unlike the manufacturing jobs of old. Average Joe's (so to speak) will be creating powerful applications, which is not unlike creating a car on an assembly line. The hope is that these folks will enjoy a better work environment in which they can have more comfort than in a factory. Unfortunately, it takes some time to realize this sort of thing, but when it does it you will see computers generating output at an even more alarming rate.
Time to go to bed. Talk to you more later.