LowGenius.Net

Ah Wih Be Yah Hero Behbeh…

lowgenius — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 10:46:30 -1300

Time flies too fast when you get older. I had no idea it’d been nearly two weeks since I last updated. Let’s see… I got to feel really good last night; a small group of friends of mine who are also regular customers, college girls from the dorms, went to a big party in frat village. One of them was way drunk, and one of the others tried to borrow a phone to call me and get her a ride home. Someone insisted to her that there was no such person as “John Henry,” and things went downhill badly from there – just a lot of little things that came together all at once in a bad and ugly fashion. Worse, the third girl’s phone wasn’t working – she tried to call me like 15 times and they could hear me, but I couldn’t hear them. Suspecting this might be the case, and knowing that I was expecting a call from them, at a number I didn’t have in my phone, I actually told them where I was and so forth, and made my way there. With THAT many calls, I thought...

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Changing Gears – Upcoming Photo Post Info

lowgenius — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:20:47 -1300

I started playing around today with Picasa and it’s really just what I’m looking for in most regards. I’ve got SO many pictures to go through, and the more I can do with them all in one tool the better. In this case I can store, organize, tag, and caption all of my photos, plus embed them in my blog and post them to Facebook and a bunch of other stuff, and it saves bandwidth load on my server. What you’ll see is something like this: It has very basic controls that, when not obvious, will be easily explained by a couple of clicks: the little person floats a link to the album on Picasa; the little box turns captions on and off, the usual forward-play/pause-back buttons, and a link at bottom right to another “page” within the slideshow that has yet another link to the album @ Picasa on it. This will allow me to accomplish several things: keeping more images to show publicly, needing to write less to accommodate a one-photo-at-a-time approach as I’ve...

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Smoke Break – The Making Of A LowGenius Photo Essay

lowgenius — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 07:39:44 -1300

So I’m sitting here writing part 6 of my photo journal of my trip from NC to CA back in May, and I’m kinda tired of looking through pictures right at the moment so I thought I’d describe this process, and maybe give an idea of why it takes me so long to get them done. This series of photos, which I’m calling “Goin’ to California,” started life as 705 photographs starting with my mom and dad and ending with photos that I *think* were taken on the way to the photography job I never got paid for (by Collegiate Studios in Woodland and other surrounding towns, CA – sixty measly bucks that could have covered my ass, and I never got it). It was about a week after this that I “moved” into my van, and eventually headed home for the first time in ten years at all, and the first time I’d lived here since 1994. After going through these pictures repeatedly, taking out more and more with each pass, I’m now left with about 144 that I’d intended to use, and I’ve already taken 34 out of...

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Recovered

lowgenius — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 04:22:14 -1300

I’m mostly recovered from the weekend. Very busy, met some cool people though. Adding to the list of beautiful women I’ve met is always a good thing…adding to the list of drunk obnoxious fratboys, not so much. Best tip of the Halloween holiday: A thong, direct from the wearer. Well, strangest tip anyway. Maybe I can sell it in Japan… It was a pretty crappy party season for a lot of people, judging by the ones who were in my cab. Seemed like everyone Saturday had some kind of drama or trauma or bad night happening. I did get a few good photos though; I’ll get them on Facebook or something in the next day or so. I need to get better business cards so I can get hooked up on FB and elsewhere with people. I’ll take more pictures then. Plus I’ll get more traffic here and hopefully make a few friends. I hope everyone in Kalamazoo is voting Yes on City Ordinance 1856. Still nowhere near the money I need to be, although...

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God, Glue-Guns, and Glory

lowgenius — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 06:45:15 -1300

I’m definitely missing my camcorder today as this pointless, divisive kerfluffle over some redneck getting fired for pushing his religion on people on the workplace. What a great topic for a video rant… I find it hilarious that so many people get all het up and whiny about BOYCOTT HOME DEPOT THOSE ATHEIST EVUL COMMIES, but boy wouldn’t they feel differently if the guy expressing his religious views on his work uniform was a muslim, druid, or follower of Cthulu? But no, it’s shove those noses in the air, start wringing your hands, and quick everybody get wrapped up in a my-god-is-better-than-your-god argument that solves nothing and distracts us from dealing with the very REAL and PRESENT and OBSERVABLE problems that we are wrapped up in. A friend on Facebook linked to the Today show’s little fan page there, where one such conversation is taking place. it’s hilarious. “It’s not freedom FROM religion it’s freedom OF religion!” Uh…same thing, Captain...

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More Pictures and Site Updates

lowgenius — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:36:05 -1300

I really hope people are checking out and digging my little travel diary/reminiscence thing and the photos. I’m only just now getting into the mountains on my way out – there are dozens of pictures to share from NC to CA, in CA, and all the way back to MI. I hope my “narration” has the intended effect of being entertaining and personalizing, rather than dull and tedious. There are some really gorgeous photos going up, and more coming (of better quality, too…). I might even work on some video of the trip tonight, if I have any captured. (Update – I do have plenty capped, but I don’t know if I’ll get anything done with it tonight or not.) I also whipped up a quick change to the site design again, doing away with the rounded corners and making the rest of the content container look less like a giant Chiclet. Apparently I have to track down a theme that can handle the nested comments feature in this latest version of BlogEngine and see what I need to do to...

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Goin’ To California Photos 5 – Entering The High Country

lowgenius — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:07:51 -1300

In spite of realizing at the moment it happened that it was wholly irrational, I found myself surprised to not just go directly to mountain vistas the minute I crossed the state line from Kansas into Colorado on I-70. This is where the road dog in me started drooling...I'd never seen REAL mountains in my memory. I went out to Colorado with my family when I was like two years old, but I have zero memory of the trip (although my earliest memories can't be much later than that). All my life I’ve enjoyed making pencil sketches of landscapes with mountains and cliffs and trees. I feel full and powerful looking at things that are bigger than me – thunderstorms and mountains and hurricanes and tornados and teenage daughters in bad moods – and this is one expressive mode of a deeper, less-understood part of my personality that gravitates and responds toward “big” and “profound” and all that boring self-indulgent claptrap that nobody wants to hear about anyway. It...

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Goin’ To California Photos 4 – Westbound and Down

lowgenius — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 23:51:55 -1300

As I’ve been going through these photos and preparing them for web publication, I realize that most of my stills weren’t taken until I hit the mountains. Falls Lake is a large man-made lake on the Neuse river north of Raleigh and Durham. The photo here was taken from the bridge on I-85, which is between Oxford and Durham. From here I proceeded west across the state via I-85 and then I-40, which carried me out of North Carolina “for good.” West out of North Carolina, I stayed on I-40 through Knoxville, TN to Nashville, where I cut northwest via I-24, and I was officially Where I’d Never Been. Somewhere near Ledbetter in northern Kentucky just south of the Illinois state line, I pulled off and slept for maybe 90 minutes or an hour. I was making fast time, but I didn’t know how far I was going because I’d never been that far in one trip before, so I was anxious to keep on rolling. Much of this first half or so of the trip is documented mostly...

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Interlude – Facebook and Me

lowgenius — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 22:21:00 -1300

Part 1: Apps, Games, Causes, Etc. As my group of friends on Facebook grows, I find myself being hit with all the games and kisses and mafia wars and farmvilles that each of those friends plays. I don’t play any of them. One of the reasons I don’t play any of them is that I don’t have the time (or, honestly, the inclination; it’s just Not My Thing) to play ALL of them, and so I’m always worried about hurting someone’s feelings because I joined the Society For The Prevention Of Lettuce In Teeth but I [Ignore]d the Wear A Plaid Ribbon To Raise Awareness Of The Need For Scottish Underpants campaign. I’m not asking people to stop sending me things; once in a while I’ll pick something up. I just don’t want anyone’s feelings to get hurt if I don’t “hug” them back or join their cause. I like seeing things go by, and once in a while something will catch my eye – something I would have...

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Goin’ To California Photos 3 – Oxford, NC

lowgenius — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 11:56:09 -1300

This is the same intersection as the previous photo, but looking to the right (northwest) rather than the left. This direction leads you to Old NC Highway 75, which is one route to Durham, NC. US-15 also runs along this street for a bit; in this direction a few blocks away, a veer to the south will put you on 15 proper bound for Creedmoor and Durham, NC and, eventually Sanford, Southern Pines, and with a turn or two, Cameron, where I used to hang out with some old friends of mine. US158, which I described running east in the previous post, does also run west, but not from this intersection. You have to follow through town, catch north a couple of blocks from here, and then follow it out of town to the east-northeast, where it runs to Roxboro, NC, Yanceyville, Reidsville, and Winston-Salem before ending in Mocksville, NC. US 158 bears the minor distinction of being a ‘spur’ highway of US 58 that never actually intersects the main highway. (I used to...

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More Goodies

lowgenius — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 08:48:33 -1300

So let’s see…I’ve posted a few photos to the blog already. I’ve also turned on Selective Twitter Status for FB. Changed the front page of the site back to the “Home” page, although I changed the verbiage on it quite a bit and added a new graphic. I’m going to try to get at least a few more pages of photos posted…it’s only been almost six months since I left NC, it’s about time. Maybe I’ll get the ones of me and my daughter Amber and granddaughter Haleigh up before Haleigh graduates high school. In between doing things with the site and pictures, I’m polishing my resume and cleaning up my accounts at places like Monster, looking for some steady work. I’m not sure how I want to deal with LowGenius.Com yet. I don’t want to just abandon my customers, but if I don’t get more work soon from this, there’s no sense in continuing to do it. On the other hand I’m considering continuing to sell web design, but farm out the production work to someone...

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Goin’ To California Photos 2 – Oxford, NC

lowgenius — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 08:17:10 -1300

This is facing southeast down North Broad street at West in Oxford, NC. The main stretch of “downtown” is a couple of blocks south and to the left (see below). The city auditorium, where I performed or worked several times as a technician and/or technical director for Granville Little Theatre and The Road Less Traveled Theatre is two blocks south and about eight blocks east. The large home on the left was just restored, which seems to be an ongoing pastime in Oxford along with hanging out at Wal-Mart and leaving town. This particular area of North Carolina actually looks a great deal like southwest Michigan, except a bit more lush. Oxford itself is dominated by what’s left of the tobacco industry (some of which is converting to other crops), along with a couple of large manufacturer’s including the world headquarters of Revlon cosmetics and a large plant operated by Bandag, a company that makes retreaded tires. When I first moved here and was working at...

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Finally, Pictures

lowgenius — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 07:20:21 -1300

I’ve got a few thousand photos and vid stills to dig through, but here’s an early taste. The first batch of these will be posted across several blog entries, with a couple of photos for each entry with descriptions and captions and all that nonsense. I’ll be sort of narrating my trip along with the pictures, which will be in sequence. Let’s get right into it with a few pictures from good ol’ Oxford, NC. I left around six in the evening on May 18th, 2009. You can find a nice overview of my route and trip plan using the Page links in the left-hand menu here. First, we have Mike’s Country Store. This is the closest retail establishment to my folks’ place in NC, about 8 miles. I’m facing east here (my car is facing south) at the intersection of Cornwall Road and NC Highway 96. If I was going to Michigan directly from here, I’d have cut to the north of my folks’ house and caught NC96 just south of Virgilina, and then headed through South Boston...

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Site Changes

lowgenius — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 16:43:01 -1300

Shifted some things around and changed the graphics here at LowGenius.Net again. Please let me know if you like them. Please bite me if you don’t. I’d also love to hear thoughts on other changes, including doing away with the ‘Home Page” (opting instead to display the 20 latest posts on the front page), stripping out some of the distracting verbiage from the menu on the right, and just generally trying to clean things up a bit and make it more habitable. Plus I’ve successfully migrated to BlogEngine.Net 1.5, which introduces some tools and things I’ve not even begum to play with. I also changed the preview length on my syndicated feed (which is where you get my posts through Facebook or Myspace r anywhere else) to hopefully make it more interesting. I really want to experiment with some less flamboyant layouts, but I just don’t have time right now. Hope to have some time tomorrow to get a few pictures online, at least. Well. Lah de frickin...

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Upgrade Time

lowgenius — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 08:14:41 -1300

Before I make another blog post, I’m going to upgrade my site engine. This will involve a fair amount of work and may result in the site going dark for a bit while I get things back in order.

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Another Week Gone By

lowgenius — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 07:57:02 -1300

Time keeps on slippin’…into the future… Gonna have to start trying to find other work…didn’t really make enough this weekend to do anything I needed to do other than eat. I actually enjoy driving most of the time, but the money’s just not there. I’m going to start looking for other work…if nothing else, maybe something part-time days during the week and still drive on weekends or something. I meet tons of cool people (and a few tuckfards), plus if I could ever get cash going it’s a great way to publicize this site, Asylum Lake and any other band/s I get involved with, etc. First three songs we’re working on: Radar Love (I will et that bass drum accent behind the shuffle if it’s the last thing I ever do), Livin’ After Midnight, and another one that I’m not going to tell anyone about because I’m singing and playing guitar on it, and when we get it sounding good I want to youtube it and knock people’s socks off. It feels soooo good to be creative...

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Catching Up

lowgenius — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 07:09:42 -1300

Had a busy week. Got killed on Saturday with the WMU-CMU game, but made some fairly decent money for the first time really since I’ve been back. I’ve got Thu-Fri-Sat night this week; hopefully I’ll make enough to get some bills taken care of. I want to try a ghetto diet, like just eat peanut butter sandwiches for a couple of weeks or something, but I’m concerned with the nutritional aspects of it; need more than just protein and sugar. Bananas are cheap, I could go that way. Ramen is horribly unhealthy, but very inexpensive. I’m eating too much fast food while on the road, and it’s a habit I need to break for both financial and health reasons. I played all the way through ‘Master of Puppets’ at Shawn’s the other night and thought I’d given myself a heart attack. I need to lose a bunch of weight and save a bunch of money, and that’s about the best way I can think of to do it. Putting this band together (“Asylum Lake”) just sharpens...

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Name That Tune, What’s Up Lately, and more

lowgenius — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 11:49:17 -1300

*waves at all three people who actually read this site* hi guys. Sorry I haven’t been around much, I’ve been working mostly days at the new company except Thursdays they put me on night shift. Hopefully I’ll be on nights full-time soon, as that is where the money tends to be. I apologize to anyone I’ve not been in touch with – with my NC phone offline and my regular cell costing me an arm and a leg per minute, I’ve not been really staying in touch and making phone calls and such like I should. It’s taking longer to stabilize financially than I would like, but I’m stabilizing regardless. I’ve got a metric buttload of messages in multiple places to try to get through before I go back to work tomorrow night. And at some point I need to do laundry, clean my room, and shower, too. Of course, this is when I must have client work coming at me left and right too, all of it filed under ‘maintenance,’ which is built in to their design contract. That...

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Something More Positive

lowgenius — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 11:51:56 -1300

So I do all this bitching and whining about what sucks and pisses me off, but I haven’t been as engaged in sharing some of the things I think are really cool with people, be that in music or politics or life in general. Attached below is a really awesome performance by a group of genuinely talented musicians who meant what they played and rode the moment in which they played it. This was a jam session both in memorial of George Harrison who had died earlier in the year, but also in celebration of his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Leaving aside the tired arguments over the value, validity, purpose, scope, and inclusion or exclusion as regards the Hall, and additionally leaving aside criticism of Prince’s solo as self-indulgent, it’ a great moment in music and has all of the ingredients that I’ve found so lacking in my various bitching about the state of modern music. This is Jeff Lynne and Tom Petty, both of whom worked with Harrison in the...

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Another Bunch Of Random Thoughts

lowgenius — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 13:15:59 -1300

Things are moving along…well, not beautifully, but nicely in my personal life. Makinig more money than I had been previously, and the company and people seem like good folks. Only complaint right now is that I’m working days and the money’s on nights…but I’m not broke right this minute. (Sorta – bills. But still.) This Is A Good Thing And A Step In The Right Direction. :P You meet all sorts of people driving a taxi. If you’re dropping by here because I gave you a card, welcome. You’re part of the secret club now… So yeah, let’s see. Went and jammed with my friend Jamie and her husband Shawn. Well, I jammed with Shawn, if Jamie plays an instrument she didn’t the other night. Was a f’n great time, huge thanks to my gracious hosts for the use of their basement and musical instruments. I kinda surprised myself by pulling off two perfectly reasonable attempts at “Call Me A Dog” by Temple of the Dog…on guitar and...

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