here’s life

Today I went to a park and played kickball with some people from my company against people from another company. We had lots more people show up, and we beat them handily. Then we bbq’ed food, and played on the playground equipment.
This evening I went with a guy from work to a play. It seems there is a secret underground theater life here in town. There are lots of theaters, but nobody (myself included) don’t know about them. This was my first foray into this world, and it was an auspicious start. Trixie Trueheart, Girl Aviator is an original piece, set in a struggling radio station in the mid 30’s. It was rather touching at parts. It is interesting to willingly suspend belief, and while in a different world, your ideas of what is important is changed. It’s as if it is true, and what happens to the characters matters. There was another level of abstraction, since the story centered around the title radio drama, so the actors are sometimes acting for characters within another story. One character in the outer story has a difficult time remembering that the inner story is just a story, which just makes it more confusing.
Then, after getting our emotions wrenched by this set of stories, it wraps up, and we walk out…where the cast is waiting to greet us. And they are back to being people in our normal reality, and the dream collapses in on itself, but part of you is still in the story.

I was traveling through Missouri, and I stopped, as I am wont to do, at a Subway. Thomas, the cheerful highschool student behind the curved glass and boxes of vegetables, was having a horrible day—he was at work. As I made my order, he removed the lids of the containers he would need. This was a new method I had not seen before. As I named off veggies, he stacked up the lids, giving me an instant visual of what I was ordering, and making it easy for him to remember what I had asked for. I thought all Subways should do this.

There is an oil refinery on the way from MO. Evidently they have some waste liquid or gas, and they vent it up a tall pipe which terminates in a huge orange flame, producing a pall of dark smoke. Seems kind of wasteful—-power that does nothing but light up the sky. It could be used to power my car, and probably yours too. And the smoke just floats away, to drop as ash onto my food. I think I will write to them and suggest they do something about this, and I think I have a solution: Remember that big eye thing on the top of the tower in LOTR? A flame on top of a tower could easily be converted into a lidless eye. Inject the fuel in a pattern that makes it into a glowing, flickering ring.

Tomorrow I go to play practice, to practice so that when I perform, the audience is able to willingly suspend belief, and invest themselves into the story, so that when the spell is broken, part of them is left behind, or part of the story lives on in their mind, and so the story never ends.

It turns out a bottle jack won’t fit under my car’s jack point. Not with a flat tire. At 10pm. Toward the end of a 5 hour drive. But, I found a place to put it, and got the car jacked up enough that by deflating and mashing the spare I was able to get it on. A police officer stopped and held a flashlight while I finished pumping it back up. I traded in the bottle jack for a floor jack.

I found out one good thing about rap. I don’t mean to sound like a racist, but I have had a hard time enjoying rap as a valid and useful genre. I guess I have been tainted by the stereotype that gives all the law-abiding, peace-loving, self-providing rappers a bad name. So, when a guy I work with handed me a CD, and it turned out to be Christian-themed rap, I had a hard time buying into it. But, I noticed that this artist talked about his faith in common terms—the music was in the same world we live in, not some abstracted higher plane. I found myself reacting to the words in the split second before I could switch into theology mode. My normal music uses a large amount of imagery and non-standard diction. This makes it easier for me to have two different brains: the one I think with all the time, and the one I use when I am spiritualized. Imagery is fine, if it helps you understand. But if it doesn’t, don’t worry about it, and find something that does.

I went to the Ozark Renewable Energy and Sustainable Living Expo. It was interesting. I found out some useful information, some from workshops, some from just hanging out with people. It turns out that running Straight Vegetable Oil in your diesel is fine—I used to think that it was better for your engine to run biodiesel. There was a guy with a TDI Jetta that he had put 90,000 veggie miles on it, and had no problems related to the fuel. Another guy had a nice set up in the back of his older VW that was elegant, and primitive. Everyone seemed to agree that SVO was a good alternative. Except the guys selling the biodiesel setup. “Do you want this going through your injectors?” he enthused, holding up a jar with a layer of biodiesel and it’s black, glycerine, by-product. Well, it looks worse when it is pulled off the carbon chains. The guys who sell SVO conversion kits told me about people with cars almost like mine, who had success with Vegetable Oil. One good thing is I could run SVO in the winter—since I have two tanks of fuel, I can start my car anytime it will start on normal diesel. (Biodiesel becomes unusable as it gets cold)

Some people who have different worldviews from me, act in a consistent manner. A total stranger, Luke, and I worked late into the evening on wiring up a PhotoVoltaic system some guy was putting on a little trailer of batteries. It turns out Luke is a vegan. “It is amazing how little you can eat if you eat healthy”. He didn’t want any of the 40% DEET I put on myself, and instead of slapping the mosquitoes that landed on us, he shooed them away. Another guy I talked to was looking into alternative forms of energy, because he lived off the grid (i.e.: not hooked to the electric company) I asked him what he currently used, photovoltaic, wind, generator? No, just primitive—no electric. “I go to third world countries a lot, and when I get back, it’s like I’m in heaven! There aren’t flies, I don’t have to carry my water a long way…was down in Haiti, helping set up solar ovens–a lot simpler than the ones they have here. Trying to make so the people didn’t have to use cow dung for fuel, grow food with it instead—there are no trees, just bare dirt. We were planning to use cardboard for the ovens, but they don’t have cardboard. Most places have at least paper, but they have nothing.” I don’t think he drives a hybrid, but if he had, he could have parked much closer, in a special area.

I found out that cutting your hair with a vacuum cleaner and a scissors is difficult if not disastrous. Even with a spacer taped to the vacuum hose. I also found the clippers at walmart (near shampoo), in the middle of the night. It took two trips and some info from a friend.

So, I learned some stuff, but now I must go to bed. I played Ultimate this evening with people who were way better than me. My body is screaming things at me.

I like my car. It drives differently from my other car, but it is cool. I am now one of those single, well-paid, technical people who buy cars so that they can feel like they are important. Why do I need two cars? Even I can only drive one at once! Before you know it, I’ll be in my garage all the time, shining the hood ornament.

The world in round, but it is inside-out from what you were taught in school (unless you were homeschooled–we know they all think the world is flat, and PI is “about 3″). So, when you look up at the sky, and see a blue dome, what you are seeing is the Pacific Ocean. It is huge and has no visible continents on it. But, at night, you can see the lights from the ships and stuff. Oh, and the classic “proof” of the earth being convex and round—the fact that when you see ships in the distance, you can only see the tops of them? This is a mirage. The temperature differences between the sky and water make the air have a temperature gradient and an inversion layer forms that refracts the light, and makes it look like the horizon curves away. Plus, they can tell you whatever, because you’re never going to watch a square-rigger disappear over the horizon.

There is a billboard I’ve seen around town that has intrigued me. It has a picture of a baby, on whose forehead is printed a blank Nutritional Facts label. The billboard reads: “Everything comes with Nutritional Information. Except her.” And then there is some text that is too small to read without swerving off the road. If their message is what I think it is, I totally agree: don’t eat babies! I thought this was pretty obvious, but then I figured it was obvious that when you are turning, you should use your turn signals.

And here is a [rant] that I was sending to a friend instead of getting some sleep. I figured I’d just stick it here. He was asking me what I missed about Windows:

When I switched from Windows to Linux, it was while I was in college, about a year after getting my first computer (a cast-off I bought for a couple bucks or scavenged). So, I didn’t really miss anything from windows 98, other than a driver for my webcam. Now, what I have trouble with are: web-based graphics occasionally don’t work quite as expected. Also, there are no good CAD programs for Linux. In fact, there are very few “good” CAD programs in the world, and the only one that gets ten out of ten (that I have used) is SolidWorks, but that is another subject. (if you want a free, OK CAD program, try the free version of Alibre). If I used windows I would probably use the little, random programs that make some particular task easier. All those little downloads that fill up your desktop and Start menu.

What do I anti-miss about windows? Never having to worry about viruses. Never having spyware, or adware or even having to scan for it, or worry if it is slowing down my computer. The package manager for Linux/Debian/Ubuntu is hugely superior to anything you find in windows. In windows, when you want a program, you either, drive somewhere and buy it (it’s only 39.99!) or you find it, download it (only 19.99 or even free) then you save it to your desktop, Then you unzip it, run the installer script, tell it where to save it. It puts an icon in your start menu in a new folder along with some junk icons, it puts an icon on your desktop, and it puts an icon in your QuickLaunch, and it is always running on your system tray. Then you reboot, delete the zip file off your desktop, and you are ready to go! Until an update comes out, and you have to repeat the process.

In Linux, if you want a program, the easiest way to get it is using the command line: “sudo aptitude install program name” (and because you have tab completion, you only have to type part of most words, and it finishes it for you–including the program name). Then you hit enter, put in your password, it tells you how much space it will take, and asks if you want to continue. Hit enter and….in a moment, the new program show up in your menu (once). If you can’t type things for some reason, you can use a graphical interface, with search, and rightclick on one or many programs and check “Install” and push a button, and it will do the same thing as the command line. There are thousands of programs. Oh, and to update all of the programs on my computer, I run two commands (or click a couple buttons) and it will go download and install all of the updates. All of my operating system’s updates. All the updates to the little programs I’ve installed. Everything. (unless I installed something using the primitive download-unzip-install method—which is rarely worth doing) And, you have to reboot for: updates to the hardware, updates to the kernel. (or if something locks up too bad, which does happen to me).

And, I never have to worry about Genuine Windows Advantage. Nobody turns off my security if I replace some hardware and don’t call up MS and beg them to let my computer work. Everything on my computer is there because I want it to be, and because I can choose what goes and what stays, the people who develop stuff make sure that they are working in my best interest. If it looks like they are pawns of some company that wants control over the users, the community moves away from them. There is incentive to make their system replaceable, rather than locking in the user—because the community cares about choice.

For only the low, low price of $29.99 a month, you too can have this freedom! Just send us your firstborn as a deposit–to make sure you don’t use my system in the wrong way, and we will get you signed up. And for complete functionality, “your” computer must always be connected to our server, and don’t put tape over the webcam at any time. We hope you enjoy the music we have selected for you. This month’s theme is “Why you should buy a Toyota”….

Today I went and picked up my new car. This is the first car I’ve actually picked out—the others were just sort of there, and available when I needed transportation. Not this Mercedes. It is the car I have wanted for quite a while: a 1984 diesel 300SD. I drove back from Kansas City without incident—except for the black smoke when I accelerate hard. My brother said it was some valve someone must have disabled, which made me feel better about it. By the end of the 3 hour trip I was pretty comfortable with the car.
On my Mazda, I’ve been ignoring most maintenance and upkeep that is not totally necessary. Things like vacuuming it out, or replacing parts instead of just removing them. But I plan to do a little more to this car. As a gesture of goodwill, this evening I wiped down the interior, cleaning the layer of dust off of it. It is still going to have some tears and dings, but it will be a little less dingy.
This car is sturdy. I was looking at it’s structure—the word that comes to mind is “tank”. The undercarriage looks like you could drive over flaming engine blocks without a problem. Not that I plan to do that, but I could. It isn’t impervious to damage, however. The drivers-side doors are slightly bent where it ran into something. I have another set of doors, but they would need repainting to match the rest of the car (dark silver with pealing clear-coat). And I would need to repair the rear door sill where it has been bent inward. But, I’m not sure if I want to do that much work to it. But I do plan to clean the floors, if I can find an outlet to plug the vacuum into.

In other news, last weekend I went, with some people from church, down to Turner Falls—a place in Oklahoma where a creek runs through some mountains. In fact, it seems to be the best place Oklahoma has where cool water and rocks meet in a picturesque way. Which is probably why we couldn’t get in Sunday midday when we arrived—they had admitted 5000 people already, and had closed the park to any more. So, we went to the cabin where we were staying, and played in a different river. This one was warm and red. It was, as they say, “to thin to plow, to thick to drink”. You couldn’t see the bottom when you cupped the water in your hands. But, all this silt piled up along the edges, and made nifty “quickmud”. You could walk on top, but if you stamped your feet, you would sink in above your knees. It was kind of tricky to get back out of once that happened. The river rushed along very quickly—I could barely hold my own in a slow area—standing waist deep, or swimming against the current. But a lot of the 100′ wide river was only knee-to-waist deep. And the bottom was very hilly. It was a fun way to spend the afternoon. As it got dark, I wandered around the 70 acre hayfield between the river and the cabin where everyone else was sitting around a fire. It was quiet and peaceful in the country. I sang “The Spacious Firmament” as the stars came out.
After eating s’mores, we all found places to sleep. There weren’t enough beds to go around, so I slept outside, on a round bale. The bugs bothered me some, so I brought out the DEET and sprayed it on until they all went away. Then all I had to deal with was the fact that a bale is shorter than me by about 2 feet. And, my single, thin blanket was pretty chilly as the night wore on. Other than that, it was pretty ok, out under the stars and the dew. And it was more like camping than just living in “cabin.” (It actually was a house, and other than lacking an oven, was nicer than my own.) Next time you need to sleep on a haybale, here’s what to do:

• Bring a warm blanket. Even in the summer, the nights get cold
• Stack bales together. One bale is too short, and lying crosswise is only comfortable for a little while.
• Bug spray. Bugs live near bales. If I hadn’t had it, my life would not have been much fun.
• Have something between you and the hay. Even if you aren’t allergic to hay, you don’t want in all over you.

So, if you have a choice between a hard floor and some bales, go with the bales. But, roll two bales end-to-end. Or better yet, flop two or three on their ends, so you have a flat platform to lay on. You won’t feel like you’re camping.

Oh, then the next day we went to the Falls, scrambled around on some rocks, and went swimming in the cold water, swam under the falls (we weren’t supposed to) and ate lunch in a trashed-out, overcrowded picnic area. The water was full of minerals, so it was milky, and deposited rock, gluing the creek bed together. After lunch we went down to a big dammed-up pool area where they had a slide and diving board. It was fun. And about as crowded as the Y. Unlike the Y, no one was there telling people not to go down the slide head first. Or when it is safe to follow the next person.

Next time I go, I’m going to Missouri. I guess Turner Falls would be more attractive if my previous swimming experience was in a pond full of cows.

Oh, and this is an awesome video of the sun: http://www.orbitingfrog.com/blog/movies/SuninUV.mpg