Today is World AIDS Day, so I’m going to join the Link and Think awareness campaign.
Here are some more places to see what people are saying, and to find out more:
Today was a good day. I was able to play a good gig and get paid for it, I was able to park in San Francisco without having to go miles to find a spot, and I was able to get back at a decent hour so Lisa and I could hang out a little bit before she collapsed to sleep.
A songwriter I worked with recently is nearly finished with the record I played on. I’m very excited—his tunes are cool, and I think I played pretty well for him. He came to the gig this evening, which was nice. At least one person (two people, actually: he brought a friend) was drinking and listening.
Speaking of sleep…
It’s been a while since I’ve written anything. No lack of things to do, thankfully.
The computer hand-me-down shuffle is happening around here. My dad picked up a new TiBook, so I got my Christmas present (his old Pismo) a little early. Which means Lisa got a new laptop to write on. She’s been using an old windows laptop she bought… from my dad. Having a much faster macintosh will make life so much more pleasant. Meanwhile, lots of shuffling of files all over the place.
While I was installing software on her fresh hard drive, I updated the friends page to tasty tableless-ness. That design was really not so bad as a table, but I want to be able to mess around with it later on, so getting it out of a table is a good idea. Lisa was asking me when I would update it, and I figured it would be after I do some other little pet projects I’m working on, but the opportunity arose. The new design will also let me add some more friends that I want on there and don’t have. Maybe I’ll make a family page to go with it, if for no other reason than to appease my dear, sweet, tenacious mother. Why isn’t there a picture of your mother on your web site?
I’m looking forward to going back home and seeing my family (and Lisa’s) next month. It’s going to be quite crazy, I imagine, but I’m looking forward to it, especially seeing Danny.
One thing I will say is that I am quite busy these days. I have several clients for web work, and a good deal of gigs. This month I’m playing an average of probably twice a week, with rehearsals, sessions, and classes not included. I’m starting to run into that problem of not having enough time to practice because I’m playing so much. Wow.
I’m probably going to add a few more links to this page at some point, but here are some places where I’ve been reading: rc3.org – a web log The Economist – a magazine The Nation – a magazine
One more thing: whoever has been posting test comments on here, please tell me who you are and why you’re doing it so I can stop being annoyed.
Military tribunals (realaudio link) for civilians suspected of terrorism. If I felt better about my country’s leadership, I wouldn’t be so worried about this. People seem to think it’s an “oh shit, Bin Laden might surrender” move to prevent us from giving him the chance to either buy his own safety, or simply use our courts and media as a way to push his message. The concern is valid, but I still don’t like this idea very much.
Most of the orders and programs we’re seeing instated lately would not be so bad if we could truly believe that they were means to the end of justice. I’m not convinced.
Today we voted on the one ballot measure on the Oakland ballot. Exciting. Apparently the ballots in Vallejo actually had some stuff on them, people to vote into office and whatnot. San Francisco had at least eight measures on their ballot. We in Oakland lead a simpler life.
I took the car up to Vallejo today so the guy we bought it from could fix the leaking coolant system. It was a little scary driving up there, although the radiator was totally full. I’ve had to stop once due to overheating, that’s all I ever hope to do. As he was driving me back home (how good a deal is that?), he told me about many things, one of which was the ballot in Vallejo. This year they took the party information off the ballot, so you had no idea (unless you had memorized in advance) what party these various people were in. Really weird.
I learned a lot in that car ride today: how tuna are vicious predators; how there still exist investors who will give their money to someone who has an idea, but no real business; how shrimp are grown (yuck); how drag racing cars go from 0-300(!) mph in less than five seconds. This is a very interesting person who has sold us his old car.
Under the heading of being more adult, I finally started an application for health insurance today. My parents will be relieved. There’s also the distinct possibility that I’ll be getting a cell phone soon, especially after getting stranded on the roadside last Friday. Had it not been for that good samaritan auto mechanic who lent me his phone, I would have been gone a long time. No more, at least not for long. I aspire to keep it turned off at all times.
Wow, it seems like we just voted so recently, and already it’s time to vote again. Don’t forget! We have a big one referendum or whatever it is to vote it. Fortunately, it’s about school funding, and something for which I can vote a most happy yes.
Car problems already, but at least they’re problems we already knew about when we bought the car, and the gentleman who sold it to us has promised to fix it himself for the cost of the parts. Cars are a pain in the arse, but this is certainly far from the worst it can get.
This site may in design statis, but I know another site that is undergoing a very cool redesign. Lisa makes me so jealous with her analog artistic talents, and her fearlessness at going digital with them. At least I get to help her make the code valid and all that other geeky crap I know how to do.
I want to write about this, but it probably won’t be seen for a little while for fear of inspiring fear in any loving relatives that might end up reading it. Pretty soon it should be perfectly fine to read, and I’ll post it publicly then.
My neighbors, who are Jehovah’s witnesses, quite loud, Italian, and sort of nuts (not necessarily in that order), had a problem yesterday. The family is comprised of a woman in her 70s, mother of all; her daughter who is somewhere in her thirties and mentally disabled; and several other kids who are in their forties (one of them was living there when we moved it—the apron strings just didn’t get cut early enough I guess).
One of the “kids” that I’ve never met has some drug problems I guess. Someone that he owes money to, allegedly, came collecting last night. With a baseball bat. He was screaming at the mother, who was pretending not to be home, and trying to smash their door down with the bat. They have a big, metal door, so they were pretty safe, but it still scared the shit out of them and everyone else in our neighborhood who heard the whole thing. He screamed that they’d be back later or tomorrow or something, and that they’d better leave the check outside or else. Then he jumped in his huge camper and sped away.
However we might sometimes have differences of opinion, this sort of thing certainly brings us all together. I’m not sure how many of us called 911 while this was happening, but the police were there in a couple minutes, and all of us were out in the street trying to sort things out shortly thereafter.
We saw a camper parked down the street. No way were these guys that dumb, but the cops cruised over to check it out. They cuffed a guy and drove him back over to us. Wrong camper. Wrong guy. A thousand apologies later (from us, I don’t know about the police), they release him so he can return to his trailer.
We have new neighbors in the house behind us now, who are in the process of moving in. They missed this whole ordeal between trips retrieving stuff from their old place. Welcome to the neighborhood!
Mr. Screaming Bat returned today to talk it over a bit more civily I guess. Apparently the disagreement is related to misdirected social security checks, and not, as far as we know, drug money. That’s a margin of hope, as is the fact that no one has yet come by tonight for a repeat performance. Of course, why this guy’s social security checks are going to my neighbor’s house is another issue altogether, but one that should be resolvable.
It’s times like these that make one wonder if the city life is the best thing in the world to be doing. It’s hard to feel safe anywhere these days, and certainly events like this don’t help things.