entombed in the shrine of zeroes and ones

I'm currently listening to NPR First Listen's streaming preview of Sleater-Kinney's new album, No Cities to Love.  And i dropped some coin on tickets to go see them at the Hollywood Palladium with my stepdaughter and her husband, while 2wanda babysits our adorable grandson.

I'm also working for eBay again, on the OpenStack support team.  So far, so good.

I found a trove dated 2010-01-12.  Some are a little dated already ("whuffie", Google Wave, The Boondocks)

the question is not "should i start pimpslapping people at work?" but "how hard should i slap them?" [should i be concerned that this seems to keep happening to me?]

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i just realized that The Boondocks' Uncle Ruckus is what Alan Keyes will become in 10 years

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fair warning: i've moved from mild-mannered tolerant agnostic to angry scorched-earth atheist. this is just a phase.

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"out of ammo"'s just another phrase for "nothing left to loose"

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i just attended my first lacrosse game and we were treated to a halftime show of competitive eating. i felt so very white trash.

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i seem to spend an inordinate amount of time flipping off inanimate objects

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George Carlin famously said of golf on TV "It's like watching flies fuck" but i think these days it's more apposite to MMA 'fights'

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2wanda is driving us home from a party and she just had to stop when she saw the "FREE sewing machine" sign

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bizarre Mayan triangle: every time I think of you / I get a shock right through the Popul Vuh

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is it bad that upon inspecting Google Wave, the first words that popped into my head were "scuttling horror"?

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i am banning myself from using "tweet" meaning "twitter update" because I don't want to sound like a complete dipshit [this didn't last long, sadly]

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good news: my Dad has a Weblog now. bad news: he can't figure out what its URL is.

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any time someone uses "whuffie" like it actually means something in the real world, i want to slap them

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when someone tells you something scary and it gets stuck in your head, that's a #fearworm e.g. finding maggots on your pet

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"Big Bang Theory" does for geeks & nerds what "Will & Grace" did for gays: turn up stereotypes to 11 and give squares something to laugh at.

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"Dali's Mustache Ride" would be an excellent band name.

• Yesterday was my last day toiling for eBay Advertising (née shopping.com)
• Today is our wedding anniversary; more importantly, however, it's captain_nesky's wedding day
• I start my new job at MapR Technologies on Tuesday, riding side by side with palecur for the first time since the days of Best Internet Communications

My dad is a nerd.  Like every nerd i know, he was a nerd from very young, back in a small town in the Andes of Antioquia, Colombia.  A huge Kafka fan, he used the pseudonym "José K." when writing essays for publication.  He's good with tools (despite the occasional accident); he built us a toad-in-the-hole table ("juego de sapo").  He taught me how to drink like a grownup (and the lesson eventually stuck).  He taught me how to be a loving husband.  Today's his 40^th Father's Day, and i hope that he's having a really good one.

<ronebofh> more exciting moving goodness today for us.
<davewsmith_blog> what stage is your move in?
<rone> dws: it's either in the 'anger' or 'despair' stage.

My stepkids' father died in late March.  Since then, things have been a bit of a blur.  I changed jobs, which didn't help (although it certainly helped other problems).  But after months of insane and almost conspiratorial setbacks (bad contractor, credit gone wrong, car difficulties, health problems, insanity at work), we've finally closed the deal on a loan for the house, which frees the estate (my stepkids) from any further fiduciary responsibility.  Escrow closed today, and once probate closes (in another couple of months, we hope), the kids will have full access to the money.  That's good!

Now we have to move to the new house.  That's bad.

We get to throw away all kinds of junk.  That's good!

There is a lot of junk.  Still.  After several garage sales and uncounted dump runs.  That's bad.

We're going to rent our current house; in addition, we're renting the cottage in the back of the new house.  That's good!

We have to clear out the current house and finish doing work to it before we can rent it, and we need to do it fast so we aren't paying two mortgages for too long.

That's bad.  But it needs doing, and it's, overall, the best course of action for everyone involved.  So off to bed with me, so we can tackle the situation with a full head of steam tomorrow.

Right now, i'm having three separate conversations with palecur over IRC, IM, and Twitter.

2wanda and i went to Las Vegas last weekend for our 12th anniversary.  We visited her dad, who cooked us some marvelous meals, as he always does when we visit.  Their tortoise likes to come into the house once in a while.

We saw Zumanity and, boy howdy, that was a titillatingly good time.  My only complaint was that it was shorter than your typical Cirque du Soleil show, at 90 minutes.  We also went to Death Valley to try out Kim's new camera (i'm sure she'll write about it soon), and while driving over the mountain pass between Las Vegas and Pahrump, it snowed.  It frickin' snowed a week from June.  Crazy-ass shit.

But enough about the good stuff... god, i hate Las Vegas so much.  It seems to me sometimes as if it's a practical experiment in how unfettered capitalism fails society.  It's an affront to civilization, the greatest karma sink in the nation.  We stayed at the Mandalay Bay and it was the first and, in all likelihood, last time we'll ever stay at a Strip casino hotel.  Mediocre service, a dirty tub, damaged furniture, and one insanely crowded pool that was really making me stabby.  And on the way back, our plane was delayed an hour, so we missed our connecting flight at Mormon Central (don't ask why we got a flight from SJC to Vegas with a stop at SLC; i know that it's stupid, but that's all that we could find), and ended up snagging a flight to SFO so i wouldn't have to try to catch some sleep at the SLC airport and end up going straight from home to work.

My brother-in-law has been raising chickens for about a year now (starting with some neighborhood strays, if i recall correctly), and my mother-in-law had wondered for some time how we'd end up having the ones who weren't laying eggs turned into food.  So i volunteered to learn how to process chickens, because i've felt for some time that, as a meat-eater, i should be able to look at my prey in the eye and lick my lips.  Or something.

The result was that my MiL signed me up for a slaughtering class at TLC Ranch last Sunday, and 2wanda was able to join me at the last minute due to a cancellation.  There were about 10 of us there, ready to get with the cuttin' and the guttin'.  It's a fairly straightforward procedure: catch the chicken; put it upside down into a metal cone with no point, so that its head sticks out; grab the head, and sever the jugular below the jawline; let it bleed out; throw the body into the scalder; when it's ready, throw the body into the plucker; pull the body out and clean it.

Of course, there's nothing straightforward about any of those individual steps, but that's where the actual learning comes in: grab the chickens low by the legs; keep it upside down for a while so it doesn't thrash while you put it in the cone; sometimes the head refuses to be within fingers' reach, so you have to raise and lower it again; you want to make the cut just right to avoid various complications; the chickens will sometimes manage to climb themselves right side up in the slick metal cone, somehow, so you have to grab them and turn them over; don't scald them too long or too hot, or the plucker will break the skin; do not cut into the intestines or you will get chicken crap everywhere and nobody wants that.

One guy couldn't handle giving a good swift cut so he instead ended up slicing the chicken's neck like he was trying to get it to confess to a crime, and one woman insisted on naming her chickens.  She also had one of her chickens killed by having its head severed (by boltcutters) so that its body, well, ran around like a chicken with its head cut off.  It was weird to see how accurate the cliché is, but i don't think i want to see that particularly barbaric act again (besides, the chicken might break its wings while thrashing about).

Then we came home and Kim made coq au vin and it was delicious the end.

It's been a rough few weeks, interviewing for jobs, getting turned down by some, waiting for contact from others, and dealing with family shit.  Once we finished moving butterflygenius to her new digs yesterday, 2wanda and i finally got to unwind and went to Hallcrest Vineyards for a barrel tasting which toropeza kindly paid for.  While there, i spoke to the winemaker, and knowing that it's getting pretty close to harvest time, asked him if there was anything i could do for him, so that i could get practical experience in commercial wine production to go with my fancy book larnin'.  He told me that, in fact, he'd be giving some training today on using the equipment involved in the crush, such as the crusher/destemmer and the bladder press, as well as other equipment and steps.  I jumped at the opportunity and not only did i learn a lot this morning, he fed us all some very tasty baby back ribs for lunch.  I need to look at my schedule so i can send it to him so he can let me know when he can use me next; they'll be bottling tomorrow, but i have an interview, so i'll be sadly missing that.  Nonetheless, today was very encouraging and educational.

I like going back to look at previous years to see what i wrote on my anniversary.  Looks like i skipped 2002 (i hadn't gotten a handle on the journaling thing yet) and 2004 (to bitch about Bush? inconceivable).  It's the same ol' thing every year... and that's what makes it so darn cool.

2wanda suggested that Big Strong Man go hunt fish for sashimi dinner.  So i went to Mitsuwa and their selection included some very fine hamachi which was as good as any i've had in any restaurant, and also some chutoro (which is hard enough to find consistently anywhere). Mitsuwa was out of my favorite shochu (Fusanotsuyu Misty Blue), but they had a bottle of the awamori that i found once at Sushi Masa and never got to finish because Masa-san drank it despite it having my name on it... anyway.  Kimmy and i shared the meal with captain_nesky until we were stuffed (i tend to go a bit overboard with the amount of fish i buy).

Anyway... here's to eleven more.  Now i have to finish doing the dishes.