12/28/2001 at 5:04pm funny how fast things come with every passing minute. the end of 2001 is nearing. what a year in many respects. i am hoping that 2002 will be better for everyone, myself included. i sometimes feel i have been dealt a shity hand in life, but cards aren't my strong point. painfully, i deal with it. only way to change or manage it is to be aware and stay in control. i manage.
still, i have a many things i am happy for. the bad seems to overpower the good.
There's no way out of here, when you come in you're in for good
There was no promise made, the part you've played, the chance you took
There are no boundaries set, the time and yet you waste it stillSo it slips through your hands like grains of sand, you watch it go
There's no time to be lost, you'll pay the cost so get it right
There's no way out of here, when you come in you're in for goodAnd never was there an answer
Not without listening, without seeingThere are no answers here, when you look out you don't see in
There was no promise made, the part you've played, the chance you took
There's no way out of here, when you come in you're in for good
-david gilmour
12/27/2001 at 7:30pm great... i have a cold. sore throat, head pounding, puffy eyes...the phone calls consisted of, 'sorry for my voice i have a cold.', or 'i got a cold for christmas'. everyone has their own special remedy. the strangest one was from a client of mine. he said i couldn't drink any liquor for 3 days [was he hinting at something?] and to drink a combination of tomato juice with 15 drops of tabasco sauce. mix well strain into small glass [i threw in the last part]. he told me to swig that three times per day. wow, that is amazing...i probably won't try it just because it is out of my routine. i took 2000mg of vitamin c. that is it so far, although i may chew on some aspirin to kill this headache.
i can't be sick for new years eve!
12/24/2001 at 8:00pm home for the holidays
12/23/2001 at 8:10pm
so much for leaving by noon today. time was out of control today. walking around town for last minute gifts. the gifts are wrapped and ready to be torn open on christmas morning.
should i leave right now? if i do, i bet i will forget to pack something. not too far of a drive. i should leave in the morning.
i hope i am not getting sick. illnesses over the holidays are the worst. most people would hate it, because they don’t get the sick day from work. they already get the days off for the holidays. i hate because i just hate being sick, plain and simple. it is my stomach right now. maybe it will pass...did today's sandwich contain tainted turkey meat? or sour cheese?
12/22/2001 at 6:10pm camera experimentation
peanuts' christmas
glowing light
shot from floor. black and white always produces the best contrast between light and dark capturing more ambient lighting when compared to the above color photo.
the shutter speed is too slow to capture the suspended flames. this is the cleanest one i shot
nice glowing effect the lights project onto the wall
i rotated the camera as i took this shot
taken while i rocked the camera from left to right
12/21/2001 at 11:01am running out of time. i am trying to get a lot of work done before i leave on sunday. i will only be gone for 3 days, but i just want to make sure everything is done with my clients. even these last few days it is business as usual.
i just realized i never put up a link to the photos from the cps insurance christmas party. here we go.
i still have to make my sister's present. i think she will like it, i am making it, come on!
the day is going fast but i guess tonight is supposed to be the longest night of the year? it all seems fast to me.
In the Northern Hemisphere, the winter solstice occurs either December 21 or 22, when the sun shines directly over the tropic of Capricorn. The winter solstice marks the shortest day and the longest night of the year. The sun appears at its lowest point in the sky, and its noontime elevation appears to be the same for several days before and after the solstice. Hence the origin of the word solstice, which comes from Latin solstitium, from sol, "sun" and -stitium, "a stoppage." Following the winter solstice, the days begin to grow longer and the nights shorter.
i have be takening some random pictures with that eyemodule camera i bought for my handspring pda. i will probably post some kind of collage with all the photos which are blurry and grainy...but it is fun. can't complain about the much crisper, colorful shots from my canon a20 camera.
12/20/2001 at 4:50pm i was driving back to my house today and noticed the driver in the car next to me was banging his thumbs in the steering wheel of his honda civic. i didn't think anything of it. people do what they want to do in their cars. i looked away and stared at the little red light telepathically trying to change it to green. i succeed and it changing to green. i looked back over to the thumb tapper and he was now beating his palms on the steering wheel. so the song picked up. i pulled ahead of the herd of vehicles. looked in my rear view mirror as a good driver would and noticed he was merging behind me still beating his palms except this time he was very animated with his arm movements. each hand raised above his head then ascending down forcefully onto the wheel. i was thinking he was listening to bongos. had to be, nothing drummer plays this fast. i wondered how long he could keep this up. his head was bobbing, no movement from his mouth though. no lyrics? our little herd of vehicles reached the next red light. again, i looked back. he was persistent. still beating on the wheel. he must be listening to a cd containing a bongo solo. i couldn't believe it, the light stayed red for a minute and a half. i took my foot off the break, he was stilling playing the bongos, but not singing. should i search for a radio station and spot this song? it has to be a cd. i placed my foot on the accelerator and forward i went. he turned off my our path. no more bongos.
it is raining on a massive scale today. thunder, lighting, the whole bit.
still have a few things to get done before my three day break visiting the family next week. i actually went out into the christmas buying populace today. not as crowded as i thought it would be. i imagined the stores teeming with little children with runny noses, crying, yelling, running, perfectly normal to their oblivious parents. sears of all places too. the experience was fine. maybe sears isn’t for families anymore? maybe the rain had something to do with it? sections of the streets are flooded.
12/19/2001 at 7:22am i am supposed to be on my way to an open house at a local bank. every year they have this. although i have always been invited and say i will attend, i never do.
i have nothing to eat in this house right now. i found two slices of wheat bread, which i lightly toasted, and covered with apricot preserves. i am hungry. i should go to the bank open house they are serving breakfast.
i watched the movie blow. it was a good little movie. i really like Johnny Depp as an actor. he seems to always do really great work playing a vast array of characters. my favorite of his performances was in fear and loathing in las vegas, great stuff - 'you're not portuguese man'. anyway, the movie blow. was good as i said, shows this guys life, and how you start to feel sorry for him, how rich he gets, the highs the lows, and then the end. you begin to sympathize with him and hate the bum rap and begin shouting to the tv, 'no man, don't do that...ahh', etc. but then i am thinking. he is a drug dealer and this is his story right down to the sugar coating. ***if you haven't seen this movie don't read the next few lines. at the end he has no money because of his foreign bank changes hands and places a hold on his $60 mil. so then he does one more deal. the last one he says, then he is out. well he said that before...he is a drug dealer...the last deal he goes on is a setup. the end is all sappy with him missing his only daughter...but he is a drug dealer...that is all i can focus on. ***you can begin reading here now i am off my soapbox.
colin and i are trying to watch the entire season of twin peaks, episodes 1-19. they are on vhs. being a big fan of dvd, it was amazing to see them on vhs, i had forgotten the difference in quality between the two formats. we have only watched 1-4...many more night ahead.
well, i am missing the open house.
12/16/2001 at 8:36pm friday night was the last christmas party i attended. the cast included everyone and their significant others from the cps insurance company. i had a blast. fun times always happen with this crowd, so it was no surprise. this is my third invite to their party. the story goes that i am the last one to stumble out the door. of course i stayed true to the story leaving at a measly 2 am. you might be saying 2 am is a bit early to be the last one to leave. however, these are married, non night-owl, need lots of sleep, people. i was ready to rage until the sun rose...not exactly. i drank so much that i passed out when i got home. getting old i guess...which may be true because i had a nasty hang over. yuck. it's been awhile since i had one of those, hence the getting old reference.
i had to meet with a client today in the little town of cambria for about an hour. since it is about 45 minutes away, i brought jen along so we could walk around the town, visit some shops and grab a bite to eat.
12/12/2001 at 5:09pm thought i would take a break from working and post something. i actually went to the bank to deposit a much needed check today. that made me happy! there is a lot of construction still going on here in town. i took some shots of the new parking structure being built behind the post office. it is an addition to the adjacent structure.
second christmas party tomorrow night, then the third on friday night!
back to work...
12/09/2001 at 11:32am went to my one of many christmas parties this month. this one was for the slo ea association. that is the business group i belong to. a bunch of older business men and women. it was fun, the one last year was more of a party though! that one was great. this year things were a little laid back and low key. the gift exchange was fun, i ended up with a festive coffee cup with a small stuffed dog shoved into the mouth of the cup. the great part about that is i can take that to the next party. save money on buying these white elephant gifts just recycle i say! jen, however, was not so lucky. she ended up with a god awful orange retro candle holder and bead type trivet thing...ugly as all hell.
still transferring domains to the new server. things are so out of control i have actually become a little sedated to it.
my friend tom and his girlfriend are coming to visit today with their new baby boy. i haven't seen tom in a little over one year, and his baby is only 11 weeks old. looking forward to that.
i would also like to say hello to some of the new visitors to this site and thanks for the kind words.
12/06/2001 at 2:40pm have you ever had something go wrong with a particular situation and you think to yourself 'this can’t possibly get any worse'? i think that almost all the time. so maybe i am a gluten for punishment.
i started a web hosting company back in 1997 with a friend of mine. never turned a profit but it was fun, and we had complete control over the servers. the past year or so i have been wanting to leave those servers because of the ongoing up-keep of equipment, t-1 lease, co-location facility fees, etc. i found a hosting company back east that sold accounts for $9.95 per month. i immediately thought of the old adage, you get what you pay for, but i ignored it and decided to test it with one account. the account came with everything you need to host a site, lots of space, sql, php, control panel, ssl, etc. after the site transfer went okay and the site didn’t have any problems after a week. i decided to transfer a few more sites to their servers [17 total as of today]. i would buy the accounts and then mark up the price to $20 per month for my clients. still things were going good. however, as things seem to go, they had hardware troubles and hours of downtime and lost data on more then 2 occasions. but, i stuck with them for some reason [the gluten reference]. my clients didn't complain about the downtimes, but i just hate when that happens and many times i was in the dark as to what the problems were. the hosting company i started never had any down time [unless you count the time i spilt coffee of the hub, luckily we had an extra one]. their service has just been really shitty over the months. now, to my point of things not getting an worse, i receive an email stating a hacker got a hold of their customer databases that included credit card numbers...son of a bitch...i hate this company! now my visa check card has been shut down by my bank. that card is also my atm card. no money was taken from my account, which surprises me, but it just plain suck...those fucks.
i am now transferring accounts from that server to this new local company. i had coffee with the owner...i think this one will work...all looks good. plus he invoices me instead of charging a credit card.
i just needed to vent!
went to the post office and i received the eyemodule i bid on for my handspring visor. it allows pictures to be taken right from the handheld. i just got it because i always carry the visor, plus it was cheap. the shots are what i expected, nothing too hot, just for quick dirty shots of whatever is around.
call me crazy...
12/05/2001 at 11:36am i am beginning to enjoy soup. jen has made two types of soup as of late. one was after thanksgiving, a turkey soup, the recipe specifically requested the use of 'left over turkey'. it was quite good. she made another batch last night entitled 'lots of lentil'. it was quite tasty! looking forward to some of it for lunch. not sure where the sudden interest in soup came from. i have never really just wanted to eat soup or order soup at a restaurant.
on a work note - i am running into a lot of trouble transferring some of my clients domains to my new server. the old server i used for hosting is absolutely pathetic. a joke really. i am transferring sites to a new server in a new location that is more reliable and much, much faster. anyway, when network solutions was the only game in town to register a domain name with you did everything via email. now i use dotster to register domain names [much easier and i have more control, plus it is only $14.95 per year]. well, most of my clients have changed email addresses since they signed up for their domain name. so now it is almost impossible to transfer the domain name to a different host. the only way besides spoofing email addresses which sometimes works, the owner of the domain name has to send a fax template on company letterhead to request the hosting change....fax...what the hell is that about, a fax! calling network solutions is a waste of time as well. it is all just a complete pain.
thought - getting in touch with friends from the past is very uplifting.
12/04/2001 at 9:55am 'mmm' coffee....this morning i am drinking the guatemala blend, it's a dark roast. i have flavored it with a tablespoon of coffeemate non fat hazelnut creamer. i hate hazelnut. looking forward to the next cup which will match my mood - black.
maybe it is because i am sitting in my room doing work in complete darkness and it is almost 10am. light doesn't start coming into my room until noon. i can see beams of sun light peeking through the vertical blinds on the far window trying to fill this room, but i don't want it to, not just yet.
i need to get myself together. this will be a busy month professionally and personally.
12/03/2001 at 9:13am
i had a good weekend, not too productive work-wise. dinner night on friday with some friends, we cooked, talked, laughed, drank....fun.
went to the theater to see the man who wasn't there with colin. very good movie. billy bob was excellent his best role since sling blade and what can i say about the coen brothers, brilliant. very entertaining movie. grabbed a bite to eat afterward at a new place in town z-pie. it is a sit down restaurant that serves pot pies...how funny is that? it wasn't bad. talked with the owner and he actually bought us a round of beer. it was fun it's good to be back into the social scene. which made us head over to mccarthy’s for some stiffer drinks. i haven't been there in over three months. it felt good. the bartenders and door guy still remembered us. it seems trivial but it was exciting.
sunday was spent loafing around. did some work on a new shopping cart that i am going to be selling at a lower price. it is customizable but really easy for me to setup and deploy on a site. it is for the client that has a few products for sell. then i switched over to jazzing up the code on my guestbook...not sure why i did that.
and now it is monday. monday, monday, monday...tired.
12/01/2001 at 5:43pm december first already. like i said before, i can't believe the last month of 2001 is now upon us. so much has happened this year that maybe a new year is needed this quickly. 2001 was a very eventful year for myself and the whole world as well.
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