A Pilgrim's Progress

Nyah, nyah Steffie

elzorroviejo — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 18:03:29 GMT

So, I, too, took the stupid test. And le voila! check out these results:

a Ninja
You scored 11 Honor, 2 Justice, 4 Adventure, and 6 Individuality!

You are a soldier of the night. You rely on no more than your cunning and your repuation to strike fear in the hearts of lord and peasant alike. You've a sense of honor, but one that comes from within, not imposed from outside.

Black clothes and shuriken for you. You're gonna do just fine.

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 99% on Ninjinuity
You scored higher than 0% on Knightlyness
You scored higher than 0% on Cowboiosity
You scored higher than 99% on Piratical Bent

Link: The Cowboy-Ninja-Pirate-Knight Test written by fluffy71 on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

I guess I really am a ninja at heart...but with a large dollop of pirate as well.

NINJAS RULE!!

Pirates Rule...I don't think so, Rosie...!

elzorroviejo — Sat, 26 Nov 2005 15:30:00 GMT

Ms. Rosie thinks pirates rule. She is wrong. Here is my first (and I do believe it to be a killer) exhibit as to why she is wrong. So, without further ado, may I present

Captain Feathersword.

'Nuff said!

So, here I was, winding down from a busy day...

elzorroviejo — Wed, 03 Aug 2005 06:44:23 GMT

I've got the headphones on and I'm listening to Radio Paradise (you should give 'em a try), when I am suddenly assaulted my this heavy bass/drum piece. It just kills. I quick check my Firefox's Foxy Music plug-in and find it by the Blue Man Group...wait a sec here...aren't they the people on like an IBM ad or something? But this thing fucking smokes...I mean it just beats you until you say "uncle". So, corporate shills or not, I do recommend this piece. (Gotta be honest in saying that I found two other pieces by BMG which were pretty good, and at least two that sucked big time. OK, maybe I miss the point of "Hamster Dance", but WTF, it sounded like Alvin on speed.

Woot!

elzorroviejo — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 15:36:19 GMT

No, really....Woot! It's a web site (Woot!)that sells exactly one item per day (unless they are cleaning out the warehouse like the did last week. Then they have a "Woot! off". Last week's clean out lasted 48 hours and they unloaded something like 35 items.) which is offered until 12 am CST or it is sold out...whichever comes first. Today's offering is a majorly cool radar/laser detector for $43+$5 shipping. However, I don't want to talk so much about Woot! as I do the person (or persons) who write their copy. Whoever does Woot's writing is very, very funny. Today, for example, there is this Radar Detector for sale. The first paragraph of the copy accompanying the picture of the device is as follows (and I quote):

"Some might say that legal speed limits are pretty reasonable. After all, thereâ™s a car for every man, woman and child in America, and anyone whoâ™s had the misfortune to ride in one knows that most of them are piloted by dim-witted stooges who don't know the first thing about driving, and aren't especially curious to learn."

It gets even better from there.

Even if you have no intention of ever buying any of their stuff, you need to bookmark the place just to read the copy. It is worth it...and I'll bet that you end up buying something sooner or later, too!

Sometimes I am soooo fucking dumb.

elzorroviejo — Sat, 30 Jul 2005 03:58:50 GMT

I hate these places (like my employer) who automatically charge for the next "membership" payment. I just got hit by one of the online music services for such a charge. I haven't listened to any of this site's streams for probably six months, so, frankly, I forgot that I had "upgraded" my membership to a paid mode last summer. Or, rather, I forgot that somewhere in the fine print off on some obscure corner of the site there was a small notice that they would, in fact, continue to charge you for this service until you cancelled.

Well, the instant I saw that charge on last month's credit card statement I was all over the site until I found (again in very small print which sends on off to a page that can only be accessed by clicking on that link in the very small print) the instructions for canceling service. Which I did immediately. Now I'm just waiting for the confirmation e-mail guaranteeing that I will not be charged again. If I don't hear from 'em by Monday, I'll send a registered-return receipt letter canceling the account.

Now I think I'll go beat my head against a wall while repeating the mantra "Don't sign up for recurring charges...ever!!" (well, except for Radio Paradise which I want to support. However, I know that I am supporting them and will cancel should I ever stop listening...)

Stupid, stupid, stupid....

Discipline

elzorroviejo — Tue, 26 Jul 2005 17:41:13 GMT

OK, enough of this depression shit. This year I hit the big 6-0, and I find it very, very hard to accept. In my perception of self, I am still in my prime. And, in fact, while my body might be showing the years, I think that my mind...the way I think and the things I hold as being important...is still "young". Anyway, that is what I am going to have to keep telling myself for the next couple of decades ('cause I do intend to stick around as long as I can; I want to see where all that has happened in the past 30 years or so is going to take us)--it is the mind and not the body which is important.

Now, having said that, I am going to impose a discipline upon myself: I want to write somewhere in the range of 300-500 words per day spread out over my various blogs and journals. This means that I have to write something everyday, 7/52. When I am away from online access (like when I go up to the North Woods), I will have to write on paper and then transcribe to this media once I get home. Because I do have more than one online journal, this may mean that I don't post to each one every day. But, if I don't post here, for example, I think I will start to post links to the other journal/blogs where the day's offering can be found. BTW, I picked that 300-500 word/day target since that is what most columnists consider a reasonable column.

Phew...glad I got that off my chest. Now, I wish to discuss what I see as a major problem in this world: the lack of skinny-dipping experience. One of my friends posted a her responses to one of those survey things, and one of the questions was, "gone skinny dipping in a pool". She didn't check this off as something she had done in her life. I find this incredible. Of course, this question, if answered literally, does not include ponds, lakes, rivers, streams or the ocean, but, still, I had found the opportunity to do a little skinny dipping on warm summer nights well before I had left High Schools hallowed halls. 'Cmon people, get a little adventure in your lives: there is a rush to sneaking into somebody's pool at 2 am on a summer's night for a quick dip au natural. (More so back then when A/C wasn't nearly as prevalent in this part of the country so windows tended to be open...)

God I love this Internet station

elzorroviejo — Thu, 07 Jul 2005 19:44:09 GMT

Radio Paradise is the successor of the old WFMU-FM from Upsala College (now deceased---the college) in beautiful East Orange, NJ. Where else can you go from Los Lobos to David Byrne to Glenn Miller to Shivaree to Elvis Costello to The Cure(actual play list for the last 30 minutes) without having to change stations? They play such good music I want them for the background music of my life. (My goal is to have the rest of my life scored like a movie: to have music wherever I go...) BTW, according to the info box on their web site, over 7,000 people are currently listening to RP. This is better than a lot of on-air radio stations can boast of. RP could very easily sell advertising time to mainline clients, but they choose to remain listener supported. I urge you to listen to them for a bit, and then add your support. I'm doing that today...

On other fronts, I had my phone interview today and the feedback I got was that I did well and will be called in for an "in person" with potential immediate job offer the week of the 18th. I am stoked!! We are talking about IT department manager with a straight shot at CIO within a year. I have been looking for this kind of job for a long time. And it seems that I have a really good shot at it this time. Yeah...stoked about covers it.

I am officially on vacation from the bookstore, and I couldn't be happier.

Been a long time...

elzorroviejo — Mon, 04 Jul 2005 02:56:45 GMT

So, it has been a long time since I posted anything here. Partially because I've been doing other things, but partially because I have been using all my energy to stay positive about life. Work is becoming really, really hard. By hard I mean I have to pump myself up emotionally before I get in the car to drive the three minutes it takes to get there. All in all, I really don't want to be there anymore. The presence of the store manager and at least one of the lesser managers grates on me badly.
One of the original crew at the store has given his notice. I'm glad he has found a better job, but I am also glad he is leaving since he was terrible at what he was doing. One of the Head Cashiers has also found a better job, and, for her, I am truly happy. She's a sweetheart and I couldn't be happier to see her doing something more to her liking. One of my other friends (an LJ person) had her 3rd interview with Bloomie's today. I hope it went well as I would like to see her in a better situation as well. *sigh* And that leaves me....
Actually, I have a potential good thing in the offing. My friend Ken has put me in for a job at his new place of employment. Ken could potentially be running this $50 Million/year company within 18 months or so, so his sponsorship is not an inconsequential thing. I would be starting as a "peer leader" in the IT department...I think...if I pass the interviews. The drag part is that the HR lady who was supposed to call last week, didn't. This coming week they are pretty much closed so I don't expect to hear from her during that period. Then the following week I will be up in the North Woods, and I really don't want to have to deal with this while there. So, that means two more weeks until I know something. Drag and bummer!!

Talent gallops in my kids...

elzorroviejo — Mon, 04 Apr 2005 05:32:56 GMT

I don't know about anybody else, but I'm impressed. I was presented with this

Night
painting the other day. I think it shows definite promise in that I watched as the artist carefully composed this work. She deliberately placed each brush stroke in a specific place and with controlled movements. She painted this using the easel her Aunt Heather gave her for Christmas. The talent springs from the same gene pool that her Aunt Colette got her talent from.

Speaking of Aunt Colette, she is about to depart for the Left Coast to spend some time in La-La land before heading north to Seattle and environs where she will have her next show. I wish I could be there.

Please note that all of the pictures that appear on this page are published under a Creative Commons license. I haven't included the Creative Commons button here yet, but it is coming...soon.

Easter

elzorroviejo — Wed, 30 Mar 2005 17:19:17 GMT

I have a problem with Easter. Christ has been raised from the dead. He walks the Earth as flesh and blood...yet only the select few can see or hear him. I have a problem with that. If one is raised from the dead...the Lazarus story...everybody can see and hear him. However, this is not true for the risen God. And my next problem with this is, "How come nobody else has this problem...or at least nobody in the Christian community. Are we supposed to just gloss over the fact that, if you read the Acts of the Apostles, Christ seems to be more apparition than flesh and blood.

Don't get me wrong, I want Christ to be God-in-human-form. I want God to have actually experienced what it is to be human. I really do want there to be a God behind this whole universe and that there is a purpose to our lives. But...but....but....somehow this doesn't make sense to me. I have problems with "prime cause, uncaused." I keep coming back to the question of the origin of God. My humanity makes it supremely difficult to imagine things like infinity and something (God) which exists without beginning or end.

I want there to be a God. I want to have a soul which pretty much exists on another plane. I want to continue after I die. I'm just not sure that all this is true. Death really sucks. Mortality sucks. Being about to turn 60 sucks. I want to be ageless. I want to be able to live in all worlds at the same time. Ahhh...fuck...lets get on to the pictures....

One of the good things about Easter is that we get to have a big dinner with friends and family, and we get to hunt for Easter eggs and eat jelly beans! So, following is a little pictorial record of our Easter.

This is the dining room the night before. Note the urchin's stuff on the right.

This is what it looked like after Judy got through with it.

A closer look at the festive table.

And, finally, the dining room is filled with our family and friends for a delicious Easter feast.

The hunting of the Easter Eggs. The hunt was held inside this year because the backyard was just too muddy from all the rain we had last week. This year all the eggs were the plastic variety and contained raisins and jelly beans. Next year we'll do the dying of the egg thing...

And, finally, we have the traditional "Eating of the Jelly Beans"--without which no proper Easter Day is complete.

Here we have your humble host pushing the grilling season a little. The Easter lamb has the honor of being the first on the grill in 2005.

And, finally (phew!) a family portrait. (I'm the fellow on the left...)

OK, this is cool

elzorroviejo — Sun, 27 Mar 2005 15:35:59 GMT

I was just fiddling around with Feedburner, Bottomfeeder and Sage when I got Sage to pick up the feed from here. In fact, I get the whole thing, pictures and all, uploaded right into my Firefox browser. If for this reason alone, I do recommend Firefox. Anyhow, I can state with authority that the Feedburner feeds do work for both blogs. Syndication is cool!!

Speaking of the workshop...

elzorroviejo — Sat, 26 Mar 2005 04:19:00 GMT

Somewhere I'm sure that I have written about my workshop before. If I haven't, I'm about to rectify that oversight. When we first moved into this house back in 1999, one of my first projects was to build a decent workbench and the beginnings of a workspace one could really be productive in. I built the bench, but the limited availability of power (there was one two outlet box on that wall) and lighting (two 4-foot flourescent fixtures not ideally placed) made it a little less than ideal. Then, about a year ago, my daughter's (damn! I never know what to call Barry: significant other sounds so...yuppy and all the other substitutions for "husband" are equally lame.) life partner (yech) built another platform to frame some of C's paintings. Then this past Christmas, as his present to me, he wired my workbench and put in four more light fixtures. Following are pictures of the resulting workspace. I love it...

This is the original bench with all the new power (check out the back and front legs) installed.

This is the four new flourescent fixtures over Barry's table whch is now a platform for a bunch of power tools. Also, when he built it, it just sat on a couple of plastic sawhorses. About a week ago, I built these legs:

And another view (I'm proud of the legs...thing is dead level.)

And one more shot of the old desk with the laptop (covered by a plastic bag to keep some of the sawdust off/out of it.)

In one of the pictures you can see the boom box I have down there now. Apropos the previous post, Iwant to remove this and have the/a computer hooked up to the 'Net and streaming music down there. When that happens, I may become a confirmed troglodyte and spend most of my waking houes not mandated elsewhere down there. (the fairly regular trips to the Toy Store (aka Home Depot) would be the primary reasons I would leave that space.

See? I ain't hard to please...

Life with a sound track

elzorroviejo — Sat, 26 Mar 2005 03:28:54 GMT

I really would love to be able to live lfe with a soundtrack. Right now, my sound track would Radio Paradise. I have moved the old laptop with its wi-fi card to the workshop in the basement, but I don't think it has enough processing power to function well in today's online environment. (There are times I think this 500mhz machine is barely adequate.) Anyhow, if I had my "druthers", I'd have outdoor speakers covering the property and speakers in every room of the house (and at the office which would no longer be the sales floor of B&N). Then I'd have the audio stream follow me wherever I went. I truly love this radio station...

The downside of home ownership

elzorroviejo — Fri, 25 Mar 2005 15:39:00 GMT

Comes the summer, July, and it is warm to hot here in Central New Jersey, I truly love sitting out on the patio in the evening. The pool burbles in the background while the lush greenery walls out most of the rest of the world. The sense of privacy is wonderful. However, to get to that point, I have to start with this:

All those leaves have to go away, about 3" of mulch has to be applied, the clump of "whatever" grass (I have no clue) has to be cut back and the dead stuff pulled from the ground.

But wait! That's only the beginning. One of the things that makes our backyard so private is this fence along the back of the property.

Now, you have to imagine it as being all lush and green and beautiful. But, to get it to that point, I have to go cut most of what you see back to the main stems. I am already beginning to see signs of life here, so this job has to be done almost immediately. It is a full day's project. I am not thrilled.

Isn't this fun? I get to post my pictures because Flickr allows links. And, because I have a paid subscription, it is very easy uploading large bunches of pictures in one operation. I had a dream last night where I took hundreds of pictures in a day, and then uploaded them all. This could be really fun!

elzorroviejo — Fri, 25 Mar 2005 01:04:12 GMT

OK, it's been awhile...quite awhile actually...since last I posted here. However, that absence is over and I'm ready to start using this place again. In fact, this is going to be my personal journal site. My other Blog will be for my opinion pieces. Here I will share my life: there I will share my thoughts. To help me share my life, I'v taken a year's subscription to Flickr. Flickr is a photo hosting site. Unlike some others, it'll allow me to link to my pictures so I can document my life.

For example, last year I began a relatively simple project to lay a drainage pipe put in a slate walkway over it. Well, this is what the project looked like last August. And this is what it looks like today. I have about 30 feet of trench to dig for the drainage pipe and then about 90 square feet of slate to lay for the walkway. And I have to get it done by the middle of April. I just can't procrastinate any longer!!

Anyhow, this is the kind of stuff I'll be posting here. A lot of it will involve pictures. I love my digital camera!!

elzorroviejo — Tue, 15 Mar 2005 19:35:27 GMT

One more quick post...for some reason LiveJournal can't see what is being played using Quicktime...or, rather, iTunes (which is part of the Quicktime installation.) When I hit the "Detect music" button, nothing happens. It sees, for the most part, what is playing on both WMP and Winamp, but not iTunes. I would use Winamp, but I find that it is a CPU hog. Right now iTunes is pumping out Radio Paradise and using about 26% of my CPU's resources to do it. Winamp, OTOH, regularly has my CPU meter pegged out at 100%. Oh well, I would rather have to deal with the aggravation of entering music entries by hand and still have a bunch of CPU cycles open than the other way around. </p>

And now I have to go get ready for (*sigh*) work. I am not looking forward to it.

elzorroviejo — Tue, 15 Mar 2005 19:27:24 GMT

My God! It has been over two months since I posted anything here. That's terrible. I knew that I was not really into posting there for a bit, but I didn't realize that my silence had lasted this long. Sometimes I get so wrapped up in "the moment" that I lose track of stuff out on the periphery of my life. (And, sorry, but this journal is a peripheral part of my life. If I had to cut back on my involvement in stuff, this would be one of the first things to be abandoned. I mean, posting here is cool and all, but, when I have to prioritize time, all my online journals are pretty far down on the list.)

My former partner, still friend and now potential future partner, Ken< and I, along with another potential partner, Henry J., are in the process of resurrecting InterViewer. I've got the demo back up and running--although the changes in technology over the past 6 years have forced us to reevaluate and change some of what we were doing. Right now the site is password proteted while we work on getting it ready for primetime. Look for a grand opening a month or so down the road.

So, I was driving to pick up the urchin at school this morning, and I was sorta thinking about my life. I was forced to come to the conclusion that I lead a very sheltered and very safe life. We make almost enough money to "get by": a sympathetic person holding our mortgage is simply taking my payments out of any future inheritance I might receive: all our "stuff" is last year or older, but, for the most part, that doesn't bother me... All in all, I live a protected, privileged life pretty far removed from any danger. In fact, my primary source of adrenaline is going fast in cars. I admit it: I like the rush speed gives me. I like that somewhat controlled brush with danger. It adds spice to anotherwise very...bland life.

The problem with speed these days is that it is getting harder and harder to find places in New Jersey where it is relatively safe [vis-a-vis other people] to drive fast. When I was a young man, I could go up into the Watchung Mountains (ok, hills) at night and drive real fast without much worry of meeting another car. The people living north of Route 22 were primarily farmers and such...most of the land was open and there just wasn't any traffic on the back roads after 8pm or so. Hunterdon, Western Somerset, Sussex and Warren counties were prime for seeing how far you could push that car...and yourself. But, now you can't do that because there are people everywhere and the traffic is there 24/7/52. The chances of having a car coming around that next corner or, just as bad, having a herd of deer wandering out in the road is just too high to ignore. So, every now and then I get to let it hang out, but, for the most part my fast driving just ain't all that fast. *sigh*...it sucks.

Shit....it sucks to be this far behind the curve...

elzorroviejo — Fri, 07 Jan 2005 07:17:36 GMT

So, I tried to get Dulcinea (that's the laptop running Win98) to connect to the wireless router...or is it gateway...whatever...tonight. The good news is that I finally got all the VDX programs loaded that the damn thing was looking for. The bad news is that it still doesn't see the hub. Now, it looks like the drivers have all loaded, but when I go into the Win98 device manager, I am getting an error. It's like banging one's head against a concrete wall...except that the banging of the head would be preferable. Blech!

I've got to go to bed because the urchin will be here in about 6 hours....sometimes life sucks...But other times it is good. Tonight, Tim, one of kids in music, ambushed me with rubber bands; it was like Pulp Fiction--he shot at me point blank and missed. Over the next hour or so I nailed him about 8 times. The Old Fox still rules!! (fist pump should be assumed at this point....*grin*) Anyhow, the rubber band war spiced up an otherwise really boring shift at work. And now I really have to hit the hay....ciao...y'all...*grin*

Bits and pieces

elzorroviejo — Wed, 05 Jan 2005 05:30:13 GMT

Damn...I haven't posted anything here since before Christmas. I hope you all had a great holiday, spent with those you love most (and who love you the most too), and that you made out like bandits in the gift exchange department (should you be among those who exchange gifts.) I didn't do too badly...in fact, you could say this was a very good year. My artist daughter's significant other (a very nice youngish man who I would be more than happy to claim as a son-in-law) came out and wired my basement workshop. I now have all the power I could hope for (18 sockets) on my workbench and the space is now lit by 12 flourescent tubes. It is great...and I am spending much more time down there. Now all I need is an exhaust fan, but more about that later...My other daughter and her significant other (another nice man who I would be glad to welcome into the family (HINT! HINT!)) set up a wi-fi network in the house. At least they got the router in and configured. This machine is hard wired to the router, so all I have to do is either hard wire the other two machines in the office to it or get wi-fi cards for them. The PCMCIA wi-fi card they brought with them didn't work on my wife's laptop (it is still running Windows 98). They are sending a new card which we hope will work. This is cool stuff. I am thinking about taking the old machine down to the work shop so I can at least have streaming audio down there.

I am currently wrestling with one of my personal...well, not quite a demon; maybe you couild call it a character weakness. This is the reason I have not had any weed in the house for the last mumble years. It turns out that if I have access to smoke...I access it. Fortunately, it has gotten too fucking expensive for me to contemplate usage at the level I was on way back when. Shit! In this part of the world it costs $120 per 1/2 ounce. That's half an ounce, people! Jeez! Back in the good ole days, that's what I paid for 1/2 a pound. I was quoted a price of $40 for an eighth...that's one-eighth of an ounce...which works out to a little over 3 grams. That's more than I used to sell ounces for. Now, if I hit the lottery...or get a fucking better job...that exhaust fan in the basement will become a necessity! Otherwise, I'll have to live with an occasional score and booze the rest of the time...speaking of which, it is time to go get another wodka-on-the-rocks.

So, Happy New Year to all. I hope that 2005 is good to all of you. Peace, health, prosperity, happiness and love to all....ciao!

Whatta rush...

elzorroviejo — Wed, 22 Dec 2004 04:07:31 GMT

The hands truly don't forget. Last night I used pretty much the rest of my present to celebrate it almost being Christmas, and I have to say that what I made was just about perfect. It dawns on me that I haven't a clue as to what this shit costs these days. Back in my relative youth (ok, early 30s) I was doing a stint as motel manager and graduate student in a place where I had a lot of regular guests. During the summer months especially, these people would land at the motel on a fairly regular basis. I menation this because while I was doing this gig at the motel, I was also dealing to these persons.

In those days a lb. cost between $250 and $400. I dealt 26 gram ounces at a price where I made back my costs on the first 10 ounces and then the last 6 were pure profit. I also made sure that I had enough "product" to see me through until I had to make the next buy. Of course, I usually ended up "consuming" an oz or two of what should have been retail product, but... ahhh, those were the days. Of course, I have been paying for spending most of the 70s in an altetered state of consciousness for the ensuing 25 (mol) years. It's like the Floyd says,

And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun."

If you lose that decade in like your late 20s and early 30s, it is hard to recover unless you find what you are good at quickly. Suffice it to say that I didn't.

Anyhow, this little zig-zag back into my past has been both interesting and tempting. Fortunately, even weed is too damn expensive for me to make it a regular thing in my life any more. Dime bags (being about 12 grams) don't cost a dime anymore. In a way this is a good thing: If it was still cheap, I'd probably go back to being a "head". [My kids (all of 'em adults now) read this journal: Don't worry, children...your father isn't going to end up living in a refrigerator carton under an I-287 overpass...]

Yep...that's how it's supposed to work...

elzorroviejo — Sat, 11 Dec 2004 05:18:14 GMT

I gotta say that today's version of Mother Nature's Wonder Herb does pretty much what I remember the 60s-70s version(s) doing. Ooops...it's late and I have to get up very early tomorrow. Were did the evening go?? *snicker*

It's like riding a bike...

elzorroviejo — Fri, 10 Dec 2004 19:12:24 GMT

So, after about a decade or so of only partaking of legal drugs, I hit up a friend (who I know pretty much always has some of the noble herb) for a little weed. I simply need a little break from unmediated reality. Besides, I hear that selective cultivation has resulted in a plant that makes the Panama Red of my youth virtually benign. I need to keep up.

Anyhow, my friend was so kind as to give me like a whole bud. This is cool! However, now I have to tell you a little cautionary tale. Should you happen to be a person who feels that, perhaps, a decade or two of unmitigated reality is called for at this point in time, don't discard things in haste. You know that pipe that you have such a strong sentimental tie to? Well, don't, in a paroxysm of misguided fervor, throw it away. Rather, gently place it in a place of safety where you can occassionally visit it to assure yourself that this part of your life is indeed behind you. And then, should, one day a decade or more hence, you discover that this part of your life is indeed not entirely behind you, then you will have your old friend to turn to again. As you may have guessed, I did the former rather than the latter. And now I regret that moment of fanatic purity. *sigh*

But, there is good news here also. While my little wooden pipe is gone, ZigZag is still in business...and the little Indian guy who runs the seedy news and tobacco shop downtown carries them in all their paperness. Now, it has been over ten years since last I manipulated cigarette paper, and I am glad to stand here and tell you that it is a skill not unlike riding a bicycle--you never forget. I brought the papers home and thought that it might be a good idea to practice a little with some oregano. Well, I started the ritural and within seconds it was like I had been doing this just yesterday. One practice (what are they called now? Blunts? Spliffs? J's?), and I knew I was ready for the real thing. And I was.

So, now there is a present waiting for me tonight when my wife is out at her work Christmas Party (spouses not invited). She'll leave. I'll go out on the patio and do it. And then I'll come in and zone to Radio Paradise (streaming internet radio...very cool playlist) for a couple hours. I expect to be back to semi-normal by the time my spouse gets back (I don't think she would understand this...aaahhh...trip.) Who knows, maybe I'll post something incoherent as I move through the evening. Time will tell!

What a long, strange trip it has been...

elzorroviejo — Wed, 01 Dec 2004 05:03:18 GMT

I'm doing a little housekeeping as I settle into the Windows XP operating system. As I look at my program icons on the desktop, it strikes me that, for the first time since I joined the Wide World Web (aka Internet and as opposed to proprietary networks such as Compuserve or Delphi) I do not have a Netscape icon in view. In fact, I haven't even gone out to check to see if there is an update to what is sitting on my old hard drive. Instead of Netscape, which has pretty much been savaged by AOL, I am now using Mozilla's Firefox. It seems that, even though AOL gave Netscape back to the Mozilla organization, it was too fucked up for them to want to fix it. Rather, they have been busily building this new browser which truly kicks butt in the browser department. It is not nearly as vunerable to hacks and attacks as IE and it works a hell of a lot better than Opera.

And that last saddens me because, while Netscape was my very first browser, I have been using Opera as my primary browser ever since Netscape started getting hammered in the Browser wars. When Netscape finally scurried for the safety (relatively speaking) of AOL's aprons, I started paying for Opera, and I have had a paid subscription for at least the last six or seven years. However, I have been completely captivated by Firefox. It is fast, it doesn't hog resources, it is compliant and it is (so far) very stable. You can't ask for much more.

So, we move on and say good-bye to the familiar icons. I'll keep Opera alive as my backup browser, should anything go bad with Firefox. It is somehow fitting, though, that the "Old Fox" use the New Fox as his browser of choice.

elzorroviejo — Tue, 16 Nov 2004 15:21:39 GMT

One of the things that suck in this world is that there is so little closure. People and things cause one stress everyday, but there is no way to respond. Following are a couple of my pet peeves.

1) Pennsylvania drivers: On the whole, this class of driver is virtually clueless when it comes to actually driving a car. In fact, "driver" is a misnomer: at best they are "informed passengers". Personally, I think there should be a test at the border where Pennsy drivers have to successfully navigate a test track where maintaining a reasonable speed and recognition of all traffic signs would be mandatory. Pennsy drivers who did not pass the test (which would, at least initially, be most of 'em) would be directed to the nearest mass transit parking lot.
BTW, I have a brother who lives in Pennsylvania; in the past 3 years he has totalled two cars (the last one just this week). While he claims the first one was due to some black ice and that this one was the other driver's fault, all I can say is that I drive in the same geographic area and have managed to successfully navigate both my share of black ice and suicidal drivers without incident---so far, knock on wood!

2) People who have "I love America" bumper stickers or those American Flag holders mounted on both sides of their cars...and said cars are Hundais or Kias or Hondas. If you are going to be that RAH-RAH about your country, the least you can do is drive a car built by an American car maker. By buying that foriegn built car, you have contributed to our huge imbalance of trade and hastened the day when we will wake up to find that we are owned, lock, stock and barrel, by those same foriegners.

3) Back to drivers: If the last vehicle you drove before the one you are in now was an ox cart, get the hell of my roads!!! Driver's license tests should only be given in English and people coming from cultures where the car is not so ubiquitous as it is here should also be required to show proof of completion of an accredited driving school. Personally, I think that people who learn to drive as adults are, generally, poor to mediocre drivers. I have a member of my immediate family who is now over 30 and has never learned to drive. I hope that person always lives in a major city (with lots of mass transit, taxis and limos) and never, never decides that now is the time to learn how to drive.

4) Badly designed products. Either they are not designed/engineered with enough redundancy to deal with foreseeable stresses and they break, or, they are designed to be impossible to fix. I especially dislike the total lack of standards in what should be generic products. Oh no, each manufacturer makes his widget so that you have to buy all your fittings etc. only from that source. Another source of frustration is parts which are supposed to line up but don't.

And that is only scratching the surface. I'm sure that all of you can come up with a number of things for this list. Might be fun to start a meme about things in modern society which annoy us.

elzorroviejo — Fri, 12 Nov 2004 06:20:36 GMT

OK, so I promised somebody that I would put

[Error: Irreparable invalid markup ('<a [...] don't>') in entry. Owner must fix manually. Raw contents below.]

<p>OK, so I promised somebody that I would put <a href="http://www.fuckthesouth.com./>this link</a> here on Livejournal as well as on my other Blog. A word of warning: this post is scatologically ripe. If you are easily offended by the use of the "eff" word, don't go there. Also, if you have a strong identification with the south...or the Red states in general from the election just past, I think I am on safe ground when I say that you most likely won't find this funny at all. On the other hand, if you are an effete liberal from either the northeast or the west coast of this country, you might find this very humorous indeed. </p>