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January 31, 2000
News
Information about Ty Davison straight from the horse's mouth.
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Years worth of mind-numbing details, ponderings, and events.
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January 31, 2000
I've been working like a dog the last few days trying to get a SiteRev.com client web site finished up. Not quite there, but it's getting pretty close. I'll be sure to post a link when it's ready so everyone can see how I'm wasting my evenings and late nights.Erin and I attended a Red Cross blood drive today, and I gave them a pint of my precious O negative. I'd not donated for three years or so, but—almost embarrassingly—this happened to be gallon number three for me, so they gave me a gold "3 gallon donor" pin. Boy did I not feel like I earned it.
It will be interesting to see if this leads me to a renewed commitment to whole blood and/or hemopheresis donation. I used to do this stuff all the time, but it sort of got shunted aside when we moved to California (even though Stanford Medical wasn't that far away). I guess I just fell out of the habit.
Once upon a time, I used to conceive of blood donating in almost holy terms. A gift doesn't get much more personal than blood, after all, and if this isn't the gift of life, what is? (Answer, with a prayer for the soul of the person who saved my mom: Organ donation.)
As fate would have it, I've got low blood pressure, good health (at least in blood donor terms), and two arms with great veins for sticking needles into. I also happen to have an O negative blood type, making me what's called a "universal donor." This means my blood can be transfused into any patient without problem, and because O negative is relatively rare (about 10 percent of the population has O negative), once they find out I have it, Red Cross nurses tend to see me as their new best friend.
I also used to ponder (and perhaps I still do) whether this confluence of factors which make me a golden blood donation candidate carried with it any extra social obligation on my part. We all owe something to our society. Maybe in my case it's a pint of the red stuff every 56 days. And if greatness is born and not made, who's to say that my calling isn't to be the world's greatest blood donor? (I confess to having set my sights a little higher, but fate is a fickle mistress.)
January 29, 2000
I finished the very well-written and highly entertaining A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. A gift from my friends Dave and Suzanne, the book is rich with descriptive humor and thoroughly embarrassing situations. Protagonist Igatius J. Reilly is remarkably well-drawn and the mix of contradictions he exhibits is perversely enjoyable. Recommended.January 28, 2000
My weekly soccer game last night wasn't nearly the triumph of the previous week. We won, but I played very sluggishly, in no small part due to my time on the treadmill, I'm sure. Short-term pain, long-term gain, I hope.Dad has bet me lunch that McCain will beat Bush for the Republican nomination. I readily concede that McCain may win New Hampshire, but he has nowhere near the resources (especially in terms of money) to keep up with Bush. For better or worse (I would say worse), the majority of the Republican party leadership has anointed Bush as their choice, and party politics being what they are, that's about all it takes. On the Democratic side, Bradley finds himself in a similar position to McCain: outside the party structure and powerbase fighting to win. Good luck.
I've been working fairly feverishly on a new web site for a client this last week. Hope to post a link to the results early next week.
This has been finals week for Erin, so she been busy creating tests, and I've been busy typing them in. For a lot of kids its time to pay the piper and they're not too terribly pleased about that prospect. Generally this is no big deal, though it can get very annoying when parents show no more integrity than their kids. Erin's had to talk with a couple of different parents who are particularly un-actualized, if you get my drift.
On the brighter side of the educational world, Erin's just about passed through the six-month waiting period necessary before she can join PERS (Public Employees Retirement System). How good a deal this is varies by employer. In the Salem-Keizer School District it's a pretty good deal; they pay the employers' six percent contribution and they pickup the employees' six percent contribution. So an amount equal to 12 percent of Erin's salary is headed into her PERS retirement fund with no paycheck reduction and no immediate tax consequences to us whatsoever. That's kinda spiffy.
My AtHome internet connection, despite the email server occasionally going down, is proving to be a big productivity enhancer. I downloaded a 50 MB file this morning in about 6 minutes, my sustained speed being about 150k/sec. That compares with my best 33.6k modem speed of about 3.4k/sec, where a 50 MB file would've taken over four hours.
January 23, 2000
Just a quick political note for those of you who think that there's an actual horse race going on in the Republican and/or Democratic primaries. The November presidential campaign will feature Al Gore against George W. Bush. I prefer Bradley to Gore and McCain to Bush, but presidential politics is not about short-term momentum (despite what the press would have you think from their coverage of Iowa and New Hampshire). It's about organization, and the fact is the Gore and Bush have the operational machinery of their respective parties behind them. Even if Bradley or McCain scores an early victory, this race is over and has been for a while now. (Quick historical example: Dole's 1992 New Hampshire victory over the elder Bush.)It's a tragedy of American politics, of course, because people across the nation have no say whatsoever in their own party's primary process. At one point—before he went flakier than Bill Gates without dandruff shampoo—Ross Perot offered the tantalizing possibility of a legitimate alternative to these two entrenched political structures. Now that the Reform Party makes Monty Python look normal (Buchanan? Ventura? Trump?!?), all hope is lost.
Gore or Bush. Choose your poison.
January 22, 2000
Erin and I headed to Powell's in Portland for a quick romp through their French and English sections in an effort to find her some class materials. Mission accomplished.I'm pretty sore today after my first run on the treadmill yesterday. Burning 300 calories didn't used to be this painful. I'll take the weekend off to recoup, but I'm on it again come Monday.
January 21, 2000
Important news for deluded posers like myself from a recent study by a couple of social psychologists: Incompetent people rarely are aware of the depths of their idiocy. According to the Reuters article, in "a variety of skills—logical reasoning, grammar, even sense of humor—people who essentially were inept never realized it, while those who had some ability were more self-critical."The authors of the study, Justin Kruger and David Dunning, found that "incompetents lack the basic skills to evaluate their performance realistically." Indeed, only in areas like athletic competition where the results are highly quantifiable did study participants have anything approaching a clue concerning their own ineptitude.
Personally, I think I'm gonna run spellcheck more often. (And, hehe, maybe you should too!)
January 20, 2000
Had a glorious return to indoor soccer this evening with a victory and even my first hat trick in a while. (That means I scored three goals for those of you who don't follow soccer or hockey.) It's only a Men's Third Division team, but my exercise routine has to start somewhere, I'd prefer that somewhere be a place where I can win a few games and score a few goals.Soccer is a supplement to my latest "get-in-shape" effort. I've done these repeatedly throughout my life, but I have high hopes that this may actually work since it follows a successful precedent. This past summer I dropped about 15 pounds by running 3-4 times a week on a treadmill while we lived in Clackamas. The health and appearance difference was noticeable (at least to me). I had more energy, I looked better, and I felt better than I had in a long time. (Interestingly, I also wasn't as hungry and I ate less.)
Unfortunately, when we moved away from Clackamas, I also lost the use of a the treadmill and pretty much gained all the weight back. There's always health and fitness clubs, but in the past I found that I wasn't willing to make the effort to drive to the club, do the work, and drive back. In Clackmas, the fitness center was literally 20 seconds from our apartment, so it didn't take nearly the effort to just hop on and start running.
Today, I bought a treadmill for home use. It's a SportsArt 3120 and has a few bells and whistles, but primarily, it's just a good solid treadmill that will let me run and burn calories. My fervent hope is that—like when we were in Clackamas—this will be the thing which turns the tide and enables me to get and to stay in shape. I don't know that it is, and betting on my willpower in this matter has always been a dicey proposition at best. It goes against my fiscally conservative nature to wager $1900 like this, but in many ways I suppose I see this as my last, best hope at physical fitness. At any rate, the die has been cast....
January 19, 2000
It's hard to believe that the income tax countdown is on again. Sure, we get a couple of extra days this year because April 15 falls on a Saturday, but sheesh. Didn't we just leave this nightmare?It's pretty complex for us this year because we've got moving expenses, Roth IRA conversions, huge capital gains, mortgage complications, a Schedule C sole proprietorship, and two different state tax forms to deal with. I've installed MacInTax and given everything a general run through using estimated numbers, and it looks like we'll owe $1400 (since we bought our house too late in the year for it to make a difference in terms of itemizing). The good news is that I set money aside from the stock sales when we bought the house, so everything should work out okay.
Let's see if my mood on the subject remains as buoyant once I have the real numbers to work with.
January 16, 2000
It started as a get together with me and Dennis to test his new ethernet card. We ended up with a 4-person QuakeWorld LAN party as Dave and Matt joined the fun. The hastily improvised original plan was to play some WarCraft II as well, but we never stopped playing MegaTF 2Fort5, and I dare say nobody here was too broken up about it. Great fun![Addendum: Apparently there was a big wind and rain storm blowing through the Northwest while our LAN party was happening. No problems here.]
January 15, 2000
Our friend Joe stopped by briefly last night and had a chance to see our place as fully furnished as it's liable to be for a while. (Joe helped us with the move-in so he'd only seen the place with boxes everywhere, which isn't to say that we still don't have boxes strewn about.)Saturday afternoon Erin and I spent at the Salem Home Show trying to get remodeling and product ideas. We're nowhere close to remodeling, of course, but it's always fun to look.
Following that we headed to Gonzalez Family Restaurant, our favorite Mexican food place in Salem. Yummy eats, as always.
January 12, 2000
We received a nice dusting of snow last night and this morning which pushed the start times of school back a couple of hours. Day time temperatures will be too high to keep it from melting, but it sure was fun to watch! Even these small amounts had packs of kids playing in the park.According to AtHome the Salem area is now connected to the Internet via a DS3 line, and I can vouch for the difference it makes. Unless a web site is hosted on a slow server or there is some kind of unusual internet lag, web sites pop up with an amazing speed.
Speaking of speed, I've ordered an ATi Rage Orion video card to try to boost my everyday computing speeds. Because the 16 MB card will handle the video processing, it should free up Zeke's G3 to handle other tasks. It should also help provide good compatibility with any software that requires acceleration as the Apple hardware line has used ATi video cards for the last couple of years.
Dave and I have switched instant messengers from Excite PAL back to AOL's Instant Messenger (AIM). Under MacOS 8.1 and 8.5, PAL was a wonderful little IM. Under 8.6, it became a crash-happy pain in the neck. AIM is more memory intensive, but AOL seems to have fixed the crashing problems that plagued earlier versions and development continues on the product, so it seemed to make a lot of sense to us to move back.
Those who are interested in putting me on their Buddy List should do a Find by Name and Address and look for "Ty Davison." (My screen name is TyDavison.) I unexpectedly and quite delightfully bumped into my friend Shan last night during testing, and the brief moments we chatted were marvelous. Expect to see notification of a scheduled online chat series hosted by me (just like in the old days!) coming soon.
January 9, 2000
Dave was busy while I was at MacWorld, but not too busy to get a MegaTF QuakeWorld Server arrangement figured out. He came up and we messed around with it a bit today, and oh boy, is it cool to have a 50 ping and virtually no packetloss.I'm also happy to report that AtHome in the Salem area has finally fixed the cable modem connections. My speeds are now in the 100-150k/sec range (compared to 3k/sec for my old 33.6k modem) and I downloaded a 5.8 MB file this morning in under 30 seconds. Clicking to new web pages is now like changing channels on a TV. Do I need to add that I'm much happier?
January 8, 2000
Very special thanks to Bernard and Liz for housing me for a few days while I attended the MacWorld SF 2000 Expo. I appreciate your hospitality!Thanks also to Michael and Marilyn for the wonderful dinner as well as the opportunity to help out with your iMac DV SE. I hope I didn't overload you too much with all the info.
Today's drive back to Salem was uneventful except that the AM radio station reception cut out on me as I went through the pass. Normally, no big deal. This time? I was listening to the end of the Titans v. Bills game, and as those of you following the NFL know, it was one of the more exciting finishes in playoff history. I heard only the exclamation "Unbelievable!" amid the radio interference during the final kickoff.
January 6, 2000
I'm updating this from the road without the benefit of Adobe GoLive, so bear with me if something goes awry. I was at the first day of MacWorld yesterday and it was every bit as cool as I'd hoped. It's a touch smaller than Seybold, but unlike that event, at MacWorld one never has to contend with PC vendors. The crowds were large, enthusiastic, and friendly. I'll have a specific Macintosh report when I return in a few days, but I can safely say that MacWorld is a Mecca-like journey that every Mac person should make at some point. I'm already planning to be here next year.On the down side, my back forced me to take today off from the show. Eleven hours in the car followed by walking all over the hard cement Moscone Center floors had me pretty wiped out. So I'm taking today off and planning to give it a go again tomorrow.
Neat stuff after the first day: Apple's iTools upgrade to MacOS 9. That operating system just got a lot more compelling. QuickKeys. I didn't know a lot about it before stopping by the booth, but it appears this product is sort of a universal macro environment that's really easy to use. It looks like it has the ability to automate a whole lot of stuff for me. MOTU's Digital Performer. As someone harboring longtime music production dreams, DP 2.7 blew me away. Sound Jam MP. I've not done a lot with the MP3 format, but this inexpensive program looks like it can get me up to speed in a hurry. More to follow in the Macintosh section when I return!
January 2, 2000
I think it's safe for everybody to come out of their underground bunkers and stop eating Spam now. I've been trying to tell everybody that Y2K would be no big deal, but a lot of otherwise intelligent and rational people have, I'm afraid, bought into the hype. At this point, we can safely say that the computer glitches appear minor and, barring some apocalyptic terrorist attack, we'll probably make it to 2001 without much problem.As for Erin and me, we did a low-key evening of candles and music with a little swing dancing thrown in for variety. I'm still suffering from a terrifically annoying cough, but Erin is as immune as ever. Lucky her.
We watched three movies in the last few days: The Matrix, Bound, and LadyHawke. The Matrix, as everyone knows, is my pick for best film of 1999. Bound is sort of lesbian film noir. It's violent, exciting, sexy. You never know where it's going, and it's very well done. That said, the story requires a certain taste in order to appreciate fully, and I'm not certain that even with its drool-inducing lesbian sex scene this is a movie that most people will enjoy. LadyHawke, on the other hand, can be enjoyed by just about everyone for its wit, elegance, and romance. The problem is that Alan Parsons has contributed what could rightly be argued is the worst soundtrack in the history of film. With the proper orchestral score, LadyHawke takes its place among the pantheon of great love stories. As is, the film is rendered average at best.
