Daily Diversion Archive for July, 2000

7/1/00

Oops...

I missed yesterday. So sorry to all of you out there who were left jonesing for your daily dose of blather. I had too much to do and was too ill to do it. I didn't even get to work. I hate being ill. I really do.

The firecracker and fireworks are dying down in our neighborhood. I have come to find that nationally, only two people lost their lives to fireworks. That's good. I'm sure a pile of fingers and toes that were blown off could be assembled, but that would be not so good now, wouldn't it?

I felt a bit better last night and so I chanced a visit to First Thursday down at Dulono's Pizza in south Minneapolis just east of Lake and Lyndale. There was much fun. The police were out in force keeping the people from having too much fun and blocking traffic so the good residents of the immediate vicinity wouldn't piss and moan too much. Sorry, I just hate to see cops at biker affairs. It gives me the creeps. Anyway, I ran into a bunch of people I hadn't seen in a while. My wife also went along and we shared a carbonated sugary clear beverage before we left.

In other news, big doings are afoot at Northome. We're probably going to tackle the office mess sometime this weekend. This is in preparation for my lovely to telecommute and for me to do this column from home at night rather than on my lunch break.

I took my very first real computer class the other night. I learned the beginner's points of Microsquish Front Page. The class was a bit easy for me, but I did learn some valuable things. Unfortunately, it seems that I might need to have more features than my free web host is willing to give up for free. This bites. Paying for computer classes out of pocket when you're a professional bites even worse. Big doings, man. Big doings.

I've also found that a job that I have been itching for here where I work has been handed off to a nepotisme. Big doings...

Because of big doings, for the next few days there will be very short updates. I might miss a day, but if I do, it will be for a good reason. Peace to you all.

Big doings...

7/5/00

It was a very productive weekend, but not in the way I'd hoped. It started off well and on track. Friday night I sauntered out to the garage and traced the Gold Wing's power problem to a faulty ignition switch. I just happened to have one on the parts bike and so the whole thing was fixed by about 8:30 PM for exactly zero dollars out of pocket. Score that a win for me.

Saturday was a hot and steamy one here in Minneapolis and that usually means only one thing for my wife and I: Let's dejunk! And dejunk we did. We filled both of our city trash bins with old textbooks, papers, junk, shred, and various and sundry goo. We didn't even work on the office. We worked on the "Lodge." We have a lot of storage there and so we decided to put our books in that storage rather than in the various boxes, containers and loose stacks they were found in all over the house. We will be buying bookshelves in the near future, but in an effort to clear the clutter, we decided that this was our best short-term option. It was a long, hot day, but it was over by about 2. We then rattled around the house getting clean and cool.

Getting cool is a popular idea at Northome. We decided to chuck our old enormo-power-sucking window air conditioning unit in the dining room window to perhaps make our living area more comfortable. After a bit of slapdashery in the carpentry vein, we were able to slide it into the window and power it up. "Wow, the lights really do dim when you turn it on..." my wife was heard to say. It wasn't the cold-air powerhouse it was during my college days. It's been sitting in cold storage for about 4 years. It does still work, and it was very handy to have it when my friends Pete and Helena came by to watch a movie on Sunday night. Not to state the obvious, but cool, dry air is good.

We went out to a party that night and the treat for all our hard work were some cold, frosty Gin and Tonics. We had Beefeater Gin rather than the usual Tanqueray. They were a little less zippy, but good nonetheless. I think we'll be going back to the big "T" for the next batch.

Sunday was more work: Pickup poop in the yard, mow the lawn, weedwhack the weeds, do some landscaping, pick up the trash in the front lawn, wash clothes, do 2 loads of dishes and go grocery shopping. Work, work, work. Monday, I went to work and ended up moving stuff all day. I just hate that. I really don't think my talents lie in the hard, physical labor category. Nothing makes me feel more bitter about my current work situation than doing manual labor. Fun.

Tuesday was nice. My wife surprised me with breakfast in bed and we then just sat around the house. In the mid-afternoon, we went to my stepmom's place and had a barbecue. It was nice and restful. We returned to our place around 9 PM and we were just too tired to go out and watch fireworks. That's OK because the neighborhood folks were doing their level best to rival the big fancy displays downtown. From the time we got home to around 1:30 AM when I finally stopped looking at the clock, the whole of the outdoors was aburst with firecrackers, bottle rockets, Roman candles and various other sorts of loud-noise-making pyrotechnics. It was truly amazing. I was just stunned at the sheer volume of stuff being set off. I guess that's a good way to make something really desirable: Make it illegal. I doubt that we would have had more fireworks going off it were legal, and there probably would have been a good deal less. I had insomnia for other reasons--I think diet Barq's Root Beer has caffeine in it even though it doesn't say it on the label. I drank about 3 cans of this after 6 pm and I had the feeling until about 2AM or so that I had put away too much caffeine during the day. I really hate being up that late.

7/7/00

Stifling. Sultry. Hot. These are words that described this weekend's weather. It was darn hot. Thanks to the wonders of modern air conditioning, we were cool, but I'm sure the check to NSP will kill us. I don't really care because, you see, I consider myself "hot blooded." Not like the bad Foreigner song of the early '80s, no, more like the guy who's spent his whole life battling snow drifts and other joys of winter who's internal thermometer doesn't reset quite right to summer's blazing heat. It's true, I really don't like to sweat, nor do I like to be really hot. I find it impossible to sleep when I'm hot. Humidity is the worst thing I can think of for sleep.

We spent the air conditioned weekend around the house addressing the various things that annoy us. We have been on a de-junking spree since early this year and I'm happy to say that we filled both our trash bins again this weekend. There's a pathetic kind of satisfaction in dropping a dead piece of electronic equipment that you paid well over $200.00 for into a trash bin on the lawn from the second floor balcony. "SSSSSSHHHHHONKKK!!" Craptacular! Anyway, the megabux broken stuff only contributed a small amount to the general volume of shred, boxes of junk and various other things we chucked.

We have stopped telling our families about our de-junking sprees. They tend to ask us when we are going to get our stuff out out of their houses.

7/11/00

I have a new toy. Actually, my wife and I have a new toy, but since she got a new Powerbook from her job, that counts as her new toy. I'm now ducking to avoid the shoe that she will most assuredly throw at me after she reads this. The new toy and the object of some fixation around here lately is the Stowaway Keyboard for Visor PDAs. It's really darn cool. Imagine a full-size keyboard that collapses to the size of the Visor. Full size keeps those of us with fat fingers happy, and collapsible means it doesn't take up much room in my already too-full bag o'shite I seem to have to drag around with me. Life is good. I got a chance to play with it last night and again a bit this morning, but from what I can tell, it is really darn cool.

My buddy Pete dropped by last night and we went out for a short motorcycle ride. He has a '78 Suzuki GS750. It really scoots. We swapped rides for most of the ride. He wanted me to check out a problem he'd been having with the back wheel on the bike. It really didn't hinder the joy of the evening. It was about a perfect temperature out and even the numerous patches of sand on the road left over from the gulley-washers we had this weekend didn't make the trip too unpleasant. I did have a huge flash back to the last accident I had when I passed a similarly shaped patch of sand. Fortunately, I didn't have to stop or turn on it and it passed me by without breaking my ribs.

I was going to watch the Major League Baseball All-Star Game tonight, but I've been called to play softball instead. I may tape it, but I don't know. I find that I've only watched a part of one game this whole year. I don't recognize half of the Twins' lineup, and I've only listened to about 5 games since April. I consider myself a baseball fan, but I'm just not very connected to it this year. I think the reason is that we don't have cable TV anymore and that puts the kibosh on catching very many games there. Notice to the Twins' management: If you put it on TV, they will come. I often wonder if Stan Hubbard's communication satellite hadn't blown up, if the Twins wouldn't be as well known and loved as the Braves or Cubs are today. Think of it: "THE SUPERSTATION OF THE NORTHWEST.....KSTPTV, MINNEAPOLIS/STPAUL....HOME OF THE MINNESOTA TWINS!!!" Yeah, that'd be cool. The Twins wouldn't even have to be a good team. It hasn't seemed to have affected the Cubs any.

7/17/00

I'm back after taking a few days to do that crazy stuff I've been doing. Aside from the big doings going on around these parts, my wife and I continue the fight against clutter. There have been several skirmishes and an all out battle, and we've managed to fill yet another trash bin with our junk. This leads me to the rhetorical exclamation, "Where does it all come from?!?" The answer will appear in this column as soon as I find out.

I've started longing for a new PC lately. It's not that my current computer is all I could want and more, it's more that I want something faster, with better stuff and more things. No, I don't need a new monitor, nor do I need a new sound system or speakers, but a new audio card, video card and 10 times the processor speed would be keen indeed. I was rather pissed to find in one of the computer magazines I read regularly that I could go out and buy the very system I've pieced together here on my desktop for the measly price of $200.00. The only difference is this machine has 32meg more RAM and it's connected to my stereo and doesn't need powered speakers. This really was quite a blow. I've known for some time that I've expanded this machine to it's physical limits for some time now. I've no more PCI slots and the ones I have are the "old" kind and won't accept new PCI stuff. I have no more memory slots, either and I only have one more ISA slot for legacy stuff. I tried to run a PCI audio card in this box, but it was an unmitigated disaster. I went back to the ISA card because it worked.

To deal with this new PC want, I've decided to completely reject all wants for a new machine. If I really need a new one, I'll just build it like I built this one. To upgrade this box, I'm going to have to get a new motherboard, processor, PC100 memory sticks and an AGP video card. These are the things I desire in a new system. I'll probably go Pentium III, but if something else comes along, I certainly consider it.

I've also been toying with the idea of installing a "web bug" on all my pages to start to track hits per page. I have a counter at the front door, but this doesn't do anything to count the directed hits to this page, the other webringed pages and the other site. I think I may do this just as a way to say I did it. One must gain experience in this stuff, you know...

7/19/00

My good pal Paul had a stroke of bad luck this last weekend. He was racing his flat-tracker motorcycle up in Cambridge, MN when he lost control coming out of a corner. He rode it right into a concrete barrier at track side. Now if he were less lucky, the story might have ended right there with the expected trip to the morgue. Paul is a lucky fellow and having stacked the deck in his favor by wearing all the protective gear he needed, he ended up only spending a night in the hospital for observation. Apart from a concussion, he's broken his already messed up shoulder. That's about all.

Paul, I hope you're feeling better soon.

Paul helped me get my bike home last fall when I had a spill and broke two ribs, so sometime this week we'll be going to Trackstar to pick up his truck that has somehow ended up there.

It's kind of odd being called early in the morning at work by a buddy who's just pretzeled himself, but it's not unexpected. I would say that, on the whole, my pals are still engaged in activities where they could get hurt. I am a firm believer that nothing that is worth doing is without risk, so I understand when Louie messes up his already messed knees and when Paul hits a wall and Aaron tosses his bike down the road. It is almost expected, really.

7/20/00

Here’s the thing, folks…

I was reading Wired last night and read a great article by a guy who claims to have been present at the event that started one of the greatest urban myths of all. You’ve heard it before. The winner of the 1996 Darwin award, the Rocket Car of JATO death.

It was a great article and completely plausible. I say: Myth debunked. Now here’s the rant:

I’ve received this email myth about 40 times. It’s always passed along by well meaning friends and associates, but it’s always uninvited. I was pretty blown away the first time I read it and have been taking note of changes in the story whenever I see it. The thing is, I don’t want tosee it again. Nor do I want any spam anymore.

I don’t quite see the logic in sending unsolicited meaningless or commercial email to anyone. Especially spam email. Wait! Here, let me clog your inbox offering you things you have no use for! I’m going to tie up your phone line for minutes! You could be missing out on this great offer from AnnoyingfucksRus.com! What? You don’t like our ad? Cool! Send us an unsubscribe request and we’ll send your validated email to 200 more spammers. Yeah, that’ll be cool! Not for you, of course, but we’re making money on your naïveté, so what do we care?

There’s apps out there that search websites and list anything with an @ sign in it. The app captures this string of data and compiles a list of people who have their shingle out on the net and have posted their email address for the purpose of getting feedback on their site, doing ecommerce or whatever. What they get then is spam.

Hey spammers, thanks for really fucking up a good thing.

OK, now given the hostility of certain folks towards unsolicited email, why on earth would you buy a list from someone, or compile it yourself, and then send your ad out to a bunch of people who want to be left alone? The sense in this is what?

I especially like the craftyfucks who think it’s cool to send email without a “TO” address. This really chaps my ass. I want to know which node these idiots are spamming me from. I want to know who is selling my name. I give each vendor I deal with personally a different email address on my domain to track who is selling my address. So far, only these address blocked emails come in. This makes me want to kill.

I’d also like to see Hotmail disappear. I would say that about 90% of spam I get is from an alphabet soup email account at Hotmail.

Here’s the funny thing…I’ve heard of people call themselves garbage men, sewer technicians and crap haulers, but I’ve never heard someone refer to themselves as a “nuisance email marketer” or “spam agent” or “Hotmail spam account bastard” or “a life-wasting ninny” or anything I would consider an appropriate moniker for the job title of spam-hack.

It’s a funny old world, innit?

7/24/00

Here I sit watching the Twins game on television with the sound turned off. I've been a big fan of having a lot of things going on at once. Tonight I'm using my new keyboard for my Visor to write a column while taking in a rare Twins game on broadcast TV while I have "Whole Lotta Love" by Led Zeppelin playing on the brain stereo.

Sometimes when I tell people that I almost always have a song going on in my head, they look at me like I'm bleeding grape jelly from my eyeballs. "Doesn't it drive you nuts?" they invariably ask. The answer is yes, but only if it's a sucky tune. I don't mind Zeppelin at all.

Led Zeppelin's first album was my first "real" rock and roll album in my collection. I had bought a ton of 45's, but I never saw the need to buy a whole album of one particular artist. I thought that singles were the way to go. I had even used my paper route money to buy one of those all-in-one stereos that even had an 8-track tape player in it. This way I could put my favorite 45's, the good songs off my dad's 8-track tape collection, and cool stuff off the radio all on cassettes. This idea still makes good sense today, but I'm much more finicky about my audio quality. Of course, I found out pretty early on that the good songs and the good albums don't always make the radio.

No, sometimes the whole album is a much better experience than just one or two songs off of it that have been deemed by some coke-sniffing record company executive to have "radio appeal."

Anyway, my first album was Sgt. Pepper's by the Beatles. This was then followed by an Air Supply record and the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever. Yep, it sure did look for a while that I was going to be a brainless teenybopper.

No such luck. The next record I bought was Led Zeppelin's first record. It had been vigorously recommended by one class-skipping wasteoid to another smoking-in-the-boys-room type in the bathroom of Stillwater Junior High. I overheard this conversation from my anonymous listening post on the throne. I too was skipping class in my own way, and I felt I needed to buy into that whole rebellion thing. So from this recommendation and the fleeting hope that if I had something to talk with them about, the wasteoids wouldn't beat me up, I marched right down to the local music shop/head shop/record store and bought into some quality tuneage.

When the needle dropped, I was never the same again. This has only happened a handful of times since then:

Dead Kennedys, In God We Trust, Inc

The Replacements, Stink

Oh No, It's DEVO, DEVO

Ruby Vroom, Soul Coughing

Oingo Boingo, Oingo Boingo

These are the tunes that have gotten me through many a tough time in my life. I would like to personally thank all those musicians who wrote and performed these songs. I should hope to do the same by you someday.

Anyway, the point here is that music is almost always with me. Sometimes it's good, sometimes not. Sometimes I'd really like it to stop, and other times it keeps me company going down the road.

I'm not sure what I'd do without my tunes. I really couldn't begin to wonder what would happen if all of a sudden I was left alone with my thoughts. Perhaps I'd get more stuff done. Perhaps I'd have an easier time getting the stuff I do done. Perhaps I would not be as groovy a person as I am presently. I don't know. I just don't know.

7/25/00

Turn two, Lambert Raceway, 100mph righthander and I'm airborne. A lot of things had to happen to get me in this pickle. The van had to get me here, my wife had to understand that this was something I had to do, I had to have equipment, training and be good enough to make the main event.

All these things are behind me now and they've come back to visit me as I fly through the air. I felt the rear wheel letting go the last lap and was very proud of myself for getting both wheels to slide through this very corner. What's not fair is that nothing is different save for one more lap on these tires and the passing of the 20 odd bikes past this point.

Finnegan had said he had lost some coolant during the qualifying race. I hope I remember this after the crash.

Don't back off, don't back off, don't back off. That's what the instructor said. It's better to lowside than highside any day. Less damage to you and the bike. Just keep a steady hand on the throttle until it doesn't matter anymore. Whatever you do, don't back off.

I backed off.

Shit.

I've always loved living on the edge, just as long as I could control it. Nobody ever understood this except some of the people here. Some are technicians, others are thrill-seekers, still more are just playing with their toys. I always felt as if I fit in.

I'm upside-down now. This is going to hurt.

When the rear wheel started unloading, it was much faster than the last lap. I thought I felt it early enough and backed off in time to avoid chucking her down the road, but I didn't. Wow, did it kick me up in the air. It was like being kicked in the chest, thigh and arm at the same time. There was no where to go but up. I hope I hit the grass.

They call this "The Flying W."

I'm numbed as my hand contacts the ground. It's something of a shock and I can feel it rippling up my neurons to the other side of my body. I have become pain as I grind along the unbelievably hard pavement. I'm rolling, looping, and listening to the roar of scraping noises coming from my helmet and the nearby motorcycle on the pavement.

I can tell I've left the track by the change in the grinding sounds and by the now softer surface I'm still not very attached to.

I've stopped. It feels as if my blood has stopped. A warm, numb rush covers my body. There's a piercing pain like a train's headlight in a tunnel coming from my right arm. There's just so much of it I can't even tell what's hurt. Breathe, must breathe.

I can't really breathe. I've had the wind knocked out of me before and this feels familiar. I'm calm and my foot reports back that it too is not doing so well. I think it's my foot at least. I'm acutely aware that my hip is present as well as the area just below my knee.

My first breath is pretty lame as it hitches due to a stabbing pain from my back. I'm hearing other bikes now and people yelling. "Back board!"

Back board?!?

I suddenly realize that my eyes are closed, but opening them just shows me a blurry close up of gravel and grass.

My bike is still running, but it sounds as if it will stall soon. Before I'm aware of it, I try to move to save it, but moving is a big mistake. The light gets brighter as the pain in my arm soars to meet the brightness of the sun. Nope, something is not right with my arm. No question about that.

Fuck you Finneburger...Finebush...ah, Finnegan. Fuck you Finnegan. Confused thoughts and double vision. "Hey buddy, just stay still. You've had a nasty crash and the paramedics are on the way." I try to say thanks, but "ungh" is all that comes out. I gotta take this helmet off 'cause I'm gonna puke.

I hear the chirping of the ambulance and this gives me hope that sometime soon there will be a bunch of people around to help me shake this feeling. I'm not sure what's going on, but it looks as if I'm walking backwards into a tunnel. I think I'm passing out. Seeya in the hospital.

7/26/00

I hope everyone enjoyed the little bit of fiction I wrote for yesterday's column. No, that accident didn't happen. I'm a bit too chunky to be out on a track with a motorcycle. I'd love to do it, but not now. I've had enough motorcycle accidents to know what post crash pain feels like. It's not good. I'm glad last year was over. I had two. Yucko.

I spent a tense evening at home last night. The TV news weatherheads were forecasting the apocalypse. Given the destruction in Granite Falls, MN., I can now see why they had their undies in a bundle, but it still seemed to be a bit much. Of course, I enjoyed having as much information available as I did, and by the time the storm was overhead, our fears of tornadic activity were mostly allayed. However, I wonder if perhaps there is a call for a broadcast channel that does nothing but weather in times of weather emergencies.

I believe we had the EBS system back in the '60s and '70s, why not a weather EBS now? Yes, I'm sure all this information was available and more on the internet, but do you really want to have your computer plugged in during an electrical storm? Me either.

I see it happening this way: Let's take channel 7 and stick a transmitter up in Shoreview. Put a redundant one on top of the IDS Tower. Then, when the National Weather Service puts up a Watch, crank up the transmitter and start broadcasting one of the local channel's weather feeds until the watch is over. If there's no feed, run a blank screen with some basic info on time and weather, or the NWS/Kavouras feed that channel 17 runs presently. The stations could take turns being responsible for the feed on a monthly, weekly or daily basis. It certainly couldn't cost that much money, and since the channels are granted for the greater good of the citizens of the United States to serve the public interest, tax money or fees on the broadcasters themselves should be able to support the WEBS channel (WEBS, I like it!).

Channel 17 does an admirable job of keeping the whole weather thing up during the day, but ask any weatherbody when prime time for severe weather is and they will say during the late afternoon and early evening. This is precisely when KTCI TPT17 or whatever they're calling themselves these days turns off their weather feed and starts regular programming. DOH!

I would argue that a weather obsessed place like here needs this kind of service. It wouldn't hurt the broadcasters much as they don't pay anything to start with for the airspace they transmit on. They can use their existing feeds and if they must run ads to support it, have them run creepers. This will give us, the citizens of this region, all the weather info we can stand without having to log on to the internet, or subscribe to cable TV.

But Tim, what about radio?

What about radio?!? You know what? I want to make the decision when to take cover. I want to see the Color Doppler Radar screen paint a tornado BLOCKS away before I hit the cellar. I want to not have to spend the evening in the basement after someone blew the civil defense sirens in North Minneapolis for a POSSIBLE tornado in St. Bonifacious. That's a long damn way away. Hennepin County is big--it's about 30 miles between those two previously mentioned points. When the Civil Defense sirens blew last night, it hadn't even started to rain where I live. It didn't rain for another 20 minutes. We got 20 minutes of intense rain and that was it. Not a letdown on par with Y2K, but when the sirens go off in my vicinity, I want to make sure I'm going down to the cellar for a good reason. Not "just to be safe." Last night John Lundell, Skywarn dude and former unforgettable voice of Metro Traffic Controll was chatting with the weatherdude on 'CCO TV and saying "...my wife and kids are in the basement right now, but I'm up here on the balcony doing the Skywarn thing..." he continued, "...I see a lot of other people outside looking around. This is dangerous and these people should take cover right away."

John, I agree with you, but if it isn't raining where I am, what's the immediate threat? If I can see on the Doppler just as well as you can that the tornadic cell will not get within 4 miles of my house, and it is STILL not raining, why should I hit the dirt? I want the information to make the best informed decision I can. I want it at my fingertips, and I want control over it. Is that so wrong?

7/27/00

I went for a long motorcycle ride last night. I had come home, walked the dog and really felt like I needed to get out and go. So I did. I had good reason--I had just brewed up yet another rear turn signal rig for the Gold Wing, and I wanted to test it out. I think this is the fourth or perhaps fifth set of turn signals I've grafted on to the back of this bike. It's not that the bike breaks them, it's just that I can't leave well enough alone.

I could get into talking about the history of rear turn signals on my bike, but I think I'm going to add that to the Gold Wing page. What I'd really like to talk about today is the Milling District.

The West Side Milling District on the West Bank of the Mississippi River through downtown Minneapolis is being renovated. The old mills are being restored and turned into museums, condos and othersuch, but the most exciting thing (for me) is the excavation of the buried ruins of the East side of the Milling Canal buildings. These buildings were mills of various sorts that lay between the milling canal and the river. They were serviced by an elevated railroad trestle that ran at street (canal) level along their backs. The ruins are just the foundations, as the buildings are long since gone.

During my ride last night I paid a visit to the site. Way cool things are happening down there. There as been tons of sand and gravel excavated from adjacent to the road that leads to the lock office--the dead end of Portland Avenue. There has also been several covered walls exposed and in one of the buildings, several timbers can be seen sticking up to support non-existing floors. Along the wall one can see the pockets where the beams that supported the floors fit in. This is all crazy-cool for me to see. I was just so charged to see them starting the project. I may head down there with a camera tonight if the weather holds and snap a few shots.

Walking around the site after the workers have left was very interesting. Not one chunk of rock wasn't a piece of brick, limestone or other building material that a person hadn't either created, mixed or chipped out of a quarry. It's a human ruin. It's a ruin that was a vibrant industrial area not 70 years ago. I must say that I'm totally jazzed that the work is being done.

7/28/00

Weakness is everywhere...

Not that I have any reason to say such a thing, it just sounded like a good way to start today's column. Not that it's a column. It's more of a diary... but for a guy. Yeah, guy stuff. Manly men with manly dreams of power, corruption and lies. Weakness is everywhere...Speaking of Republicans... weaknessblubblaglongodddmmmmssst. There must have been something funny in that barbecue sauce. Yes, I was weak and went to Ribfest. Ribfest--the festival of charred dead animal flesh still on the bone. Don't get me wrong, I love ribs, it just seems really decadent to have a festival and competition over who chars the best ribs. Mmmm decadence. Weakness....

So I just couldn't help myself and went back down to the Milling District to take a few photos. I ended up shooting 4 rolls of film even though I know I just won't have enough money to get them all developed. Damn. I can resist anything but temptation. The urge to document the day to day happenings of the digging up of the east side of the street mills is almost overpowering.

I climbed around inside the ruins, climbing on rocks, raising a sweat, mashing my eyeball flat peering through the lens of my camera. I love the sound of the shutter firing. KerLacKK! It's the sound you might hear in the movies as the soon-to-be victim takes an embarrassing or incriminating photo of a desperate murderous villain. Attention piqued by the amazingly loud shutter, the evil-doer makes the photographer an evil-doee. Evil is done and we think, "Man, do cameras have to be that loud?" In the movies, yes. In real life, I doubt the new ones are that loud, but this is an old Pentax K-1000. I think the folks at Pentax tuned that sound to be as addictive as possible to hook people on photography. I think it's the very sound my brother-in-law's digital camera makes when it takes a picture. It's absurd to hear a "KerLacKK" sound out of a $2,000.00 Sony digital camera, but I guess that was part of the 2 grand package. Make it sound like a real camera so the visceral appeal of photography is not lost.

I shot a bunch of photos of the now-exposed walls, the general area, and the stairway to hell. If that shot comes through, I'll have it posted somewhere on this site, mark my words. None more scary than that.

There's really not a whole lot else to say today. I'll try hard this weekend to get working on one of the various life-improving projects I need to make some progress on. I may not make much progress here, but I like this site the way it is, really.