Max: Teal Highways

For as long as I can remember, I have suffered from wanderlust. Almost all of my most cherished memories involve travel. When I am not traveling - which is most of the time - I find myself wishing I was traveling. Or reading about traveling. Or watching TV shows about traveling. Perhaps my favorite way to get someplace other than where I am is the road trip. Flying is great, but there is something about driving that makes those miles seem more real. Even when I was living in London, I loved hitting the road. Okay, there it was the railroad, but the same principle applies. And now we are coming up on Fall, which along with Spring is the best time to hit the road. The temperature makes being outside more pleasant. And watching as the world transforms to or from Winter and Summer makes those roadside views all the more worth the trip.

There is one road trip I have long been dreaming of taking. Every road trip I have taken has been to a particular destination. On those trips, road time was merely an enjoyable means to an end. They were scenic and sometimes adventurous. But they were also the most convenient route (ie, Interstates), and sometimes rushed through for the sake of what was on the other end of the road. That is not a complaint. I still treasure those trips. But at the same time, I have longed to hit the road with no destination in mind. Instead of Interstates I would ride the back roads. Instead of McChain restaurants, I would eat the local greasy spoon, or that shack out in the middle of nowhere that barbecues whatever happened to die that day. Free of any ends except motion itself, I would stop whenever I found something interesting enough to stop for, then hit the road again until I found the next thing worth stopping for.

If only I had the time/money/whatever...

Last week I was complaining to the Mrs. about how little I am able to travel, about how I long to just hit the road. Somewhere in that bitch session, a thought occurred. As much as I dream of hitting the road for days at a time, if I have no destination in mind, then there is no reason I can't take a one day road trip. Despite Jericho's protestations, the potential for adventure does not increase in direct proportion to one's distance from Saint Louis. There is something to be said for putting some serious miles between me and my home. But just because I can't get prime rib does not mean I won't enjoy a good cheeseburger.

That's a metaphor. Hitting the road for days at a time is prime rib. A day trip is a good cheeseburger. In case you didn't get what I was going for there.

With cheeseburgers in mind, we resolved to take a one day road trip. As yesterday was my birthday, it seemed like an ideal day. We decided to make the Great River Road our first one day, blue highway adventure. Laura, the dog (still smelling a bit from her recent introduction to skunks' natural defense mechanism) and I crossed the JB bridge, jumped off of 255 onto the River Road as soon as we could and we just drove. Having the dog with us was fun but limited the sort of places we could stop at. Next time she's getting dropped off with Laura's parents so that Laura and I can stop at more places. Regardless, it was great driving along roads we've never been on, seeing places we have never seen and generally getting away from the familiar. The scenery was captivating. We saw more corn than river along the River Road, but we also saw old barns, small towns and other such sights.

At one point, we were debating how to get back to MO. We didn't want to just turn around and drive the roads we just drove. I had heard from my parents that there are still ferries crossing the Mississippi not far from Saint Louis. We even managed to find one, but it did not seem to be running at the time. Eventually we found ourselves in Quincy, IL. We drove around there for a bit before dropping by Maid Rite, a restaurant recommended to us by one of Laura's friends. It turns out that it was a chain restaurant, but we didn't know it at the time. They specialize in loose meat sandwiches, something I have heard of but had never tried before. A couple of loose meats, some excellent fries and we were ready to start back towards home. We crossed back to MO and once again back-roaded it most of the way back home.

It was a fun day. I can't think of a better way to kick off my 35th year on this planet. And I think there is a lesson to be found there. Maybe the grand adventure are always going to be rare and mostly out of reach. If so, maybe it is time to worry less about prime rib and start helping myself to the cheeseburgers.

Irate Birthday to Maxy! Irate Birthday to you!!

Hey, folks, help me in wishing our dearest Max a Happy Berfday! He is 34 and still as hip and "with it" as a man twice his age! I kid!!

Leave a well wish for him in the comments, he could use all the birthday advice you can give him!

How old were you when I met you, Max? Seventeen? Doesn't seem like a decade and a half plus some, does it?

Well, all I can say, my friend, is here is to 34 more! Then 27 more after that. Followed by a 16, a 57 and two 19s. We'll toss in a 3 and a 873. After that, we'll talk and see what you need from there! :)

Jericho: Put'em on the boat!

Okay, I know I have blogged about this twice already, but this story just gets better and betterer! If you want the blogging history, look here and here.

Pres. Hugo Chavez is calling for the extradition of Pat Robertson. You know what I have to say to that? Put his ass on the boat! Get him on a plane, NOW! The Reverend Doofus puts himself on the world stage, says something crimminally stupid and thinks he can get away with it just because he's an American?

Bull!

Hey, Pat, stand up and feel that Global Justice, baby! Be a man and don't hide behind your lawyers or Bush's skirt. If you had said this about Bushy, you wouldn't have made it back to your dressing room before the Secret Service was there to pick up your holy tushy! Nice knowing you! I hear those Venezuelan jails aren't too bad, ya know, when compared to something in say, Turkey or maybe Mexico ...

Jericho: Make Your Own Jericho

I used to love those "Make Your Own Adventure" books. I remember getting my hands on one of those sometime in 5th or 6th grade. I thought those were the coolest thing ever! There were multiple endings! I controlled how it went! Brilliant!

Well, we got to choose which way things went, but it was never any form of "control" - most of those books should have been called "Choose Your Own Doom." I even ran across one that had an ending that you couldn't get to by making any choice in the book. You just saw this two page illustration enough times to be curious, so finally you "cheated" and just read the section, where it told you "you got here by no choice of your own" - oy!

I got older and found a series of books produced for Dungeons & Dragons! Some of those were so cool to my young mind. I was totally addicted and collected them all. Of course, I had to wait until they were on the clearance rack or at the dollar store, but I collected them all. A vast adventure held in only a few hundred pages! Amazing.

In high school, TSR again produced some D&D MYOA books. But, these were more the size of a normal paperback novel. Plus, they came with a book mark that had stats for the character you played. You needed to use dice and keep track of hit points and everything. I reread the one that I bought dozens of times. Erased a hole in the book mark.

These days, if you look around the internet, you can find a few MYOA sites. They are usually just goofing around on some point like dating or working or what not. A couple of years ago, after seeing "Being John Malkovich," I thought it would be fun to put together a MYOA about being me. I wanted to show how I'm wasting my life in as humorous a way as possible. After all, I live to entertain all of you!

This project lived on my back burner for three years. It takes a bit to plan all of those flow charts to make this kind of thing work, and I had other things to do. Now that my job has slowed down and I'm not producing a womic, I have a little time. I grabbed Visio and set up the simplest structure for this project I have ever created. I finished that initial set of Visio diagrams in under two hours. For the last week I have been programming a simple, text based web game and it is finally finished.

Ladies and Gents, I present to you: Being Jericho

This is a permanent addition to the site. There is a link off the Features page, and I'm putting a temporary link on the right side of the main page. The great thing about this is that now that I have the simple frame work of the game up, it will take nothing to add new parts to it now and then. I want to grow it into something great! I want it to be a simple game that will be fun to play time and time again.

Have fun and let me know what you think.

Jericho: Whoops! Now what?

I was out reading some distressing bits of someone else's blog today. I won't mention who, because it leads somewhere I don't want to go right now, I'll explain more in a moment. Let's just say, I bet this person knows who zie are and my thoughts and wishes go out to you. I'm really sorry this is happening to you ... AGAIN!

As I scanned through the comments left for this particular blogist-in-crisis, I ran across a name I recognized. An unusual name, one hard to confuse with anything else. What's worse, there was a link under this person's name, a link to a blog.

Why the fuss? I'll tell you why. This person is a co-worker. Well, not so much a co-worker as a manager.

This presents me with some interesting problems. Being a blogist who has watched blogging cause loss of job, loss of liberty and loss of livelihood, I'm feeling a little, well, off center, even vulnerable. I've blogged before about my feelings on work and blogging.

I like this person. This person's blog is interesting. No one is commenting on this person's blog - not one comment in the whole thing! I want to comment. I want to blog-roll. I feel like I'm violating some rule by reading this blog. I feel like I'm endangering myself by even knowing this thing exists. I also feel a real relationship to this fellow blogist who is also writing about the recent challenges at our place of employment. I want to show support and friendship to a person-I-know-from-work-that-I-would-befriend-outside-of-work.

Sure, I know I'm over thinking this. I should just ignore this and move on. I shouldn't be so paranoid about a non-event. But, in all the time you have been reading IWDC, when have I done ANY of that???

Jericho: Hey Hugo! Duck!

Hugo, buddy, this is the kind of thing I was talking about.

For the rest of you, have a look here to get some history.

Hugo, dude, this is the kind of thing that you stir up when you start talking smack! I mean, you pissed off a "holy man" - the American equivalent to a extremist Taliban Cleric. Pat isn't the Idiot that I predicted you would have problems with, but, he sure is an idiot and now you have a problem!

New plan for you: shut up, keep your head down, keep your paranoid delusions to yourself and keep pumping out that oil at $60+ a barrel. Your people will love you and when you are as old as your buddy Fidel, you will see the wisdom of my plan.

Max: Birth Days

Just a reminder, my birthday is coming. Just in case you want to get me anything.

Max: Brain Flakes

Right now I am spinning some Michael Manring. That dude is just scary. His approach to rhythm is unlike almost anybody else. I wish I could put what I am hearing right now into words. Even more, I wish I could put something like it into my bass playing. He was someone who really opened my eyes (ears) to the power of the groove. I guess I always had a sense that it was rhythm that (to me) made music. Most of the music training I have had has centered on harmony, treating rhythm as window dressing. But as Jon Anderson once sang, "The space between the notes lends the color to the scene." So, lately I have been working more on my sense of rhythm. It can be hard going. I will play a simple groove along with my metronome, thinking I am grooving along. After while I realize that I have stropped paying attention to the metronome and when I tune back into it I find that I am completely out of time with it. Two lessons there. Work harder on rhythm and listen to the musicians you are playing with. Even if that musician is a small box powered by a triple-a battery.

Today I dropped by Borders. I wasn't looking for anything in particular. I am just that much of a sad geek that I window shop for books. I spent a while in the math and engineering sections. One thing I deeply regret was not doing better in math when I was in school. It always interested me. But it also always frustrated me. It just seems I could be doing more interesting things with my time, even on a hobby level, if I had just studied math harder. I always have ideas for neat electronic gadgets. But I have no way to bring them into being. I sometimes try to dig back into math and science through various "Dummy" type books and educational toys (yes I play with toys, fuck you). In the end I usually end up walking away frustrated. I wish neuroscientists would get off their lazy asses and get us to the point when people like me can get our defective brains rewired so they work right.

My birthday is a mere 15 days away. I am currently spiraling towards 34. If I somehow manage to lose weight and get into shape, I may manage to squeeze another 30-35 years out of this life. More likely, I have already passed into the second half of my life. So far, I have to say I have done a poor job of things. It hasn't been a total clusterfuck. But for the most part, 0-34 has not left me breathless in anticipation of Act II. I had a ton of hopes and dreams. Opportunities were being thrown at me like Mardi Gras beads. I spent a lot of time hoping and dreaming bt never quite got around to doing the work it takes to make hopes and dreams real. Fear and laziness ruled in sweat and stuggle's place and I managed to end up living the sort of life I once swore to avoid. Of course it is never too late to blabbity bloobity blah blah blah.

Anyway, I think I am done here for now. It is time to go dig up a book or toy and pretend for a while that I can improve myself.

Jericho: The IRS and Me

Last week we get a thick envelope from the IRS. This is never a good sign, ever! I opened it up and tried to read the contents. All I got was that they wanted me to pay $361 for a discrepancy on my 2003 return. Yeah. Okay. Needless to say I lost my marbles and went right into panic mode.

A day or two later I called my tax pro, the lovely, brilliant, wonderful Judi Dobberstein. She asked me to fax over the forms. Turns out that the IRS recieved a report that one of our bank accounts earned $1300+ dollars in interest. Judi tells me that we would have needed something like $200k in that account to get that interest. I don't hink so!

A little history. When I moved to Seattle, I set up a bank account. When Steph moved out here, she felt we should set ourselves up like her folks are set up; each of us would have a personal account and there would be a central account for bill paying. Between the fact that we both have ATM cards on the central account and that there isn't much left after bills, the two personal accounts are basically a joke! Since Steph moved out here, my account has rarely been above $50. And this was the account that supposedly gave me $1300 in interest.

I got in touch with my bank. They sent me details that I earned $.26 cents on that account in 2003. I paid out over $600 on the maxed out credit card that is attached to that account, but no where was a number even remotely close to $1300.

I wrapped up all this information, shoved it in the provided envelope and sent it back to the IRS as a registered letter. It cost me $8 bucks, but that's cheaper than $361 any day. We'll see what the IRS has to say about that.

I just wanted to again thank Judi. Tremendously helpful!! If you are reading this, let me know if you have a web site I can point to - I have no problem being your shill!

Jericho: Stupid Small Potatoes

Quite possibly the DUMBEST thing I've ever seen out of a Communist country.

So, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez stands up and says; "Check us out. We want to look tough, so we'll bad mouth the US. But, since Venezuela is so small and poses no threat, there's no way my words will come back to bite me."

Yo, Hugo! Are you nuts? What are you thinking, man? Do you think that we have control over the Idiot in the White House? Do you think for one moment he wouldn't invade you and turn your country into a missile test site? Right now he's got Rumsfeld trying to start a fight with Iran! He's got three more years in office. THREE! We are closing in on being done with Afghanistan and Iraq. Iran, North Korea, China, Cuba and now your little country are next!

According to the CIA World Fact Book, you all spend about $1.6 billion dollars annually on your military. You must realize that this is about what we spend every month in Iraq alone! Saying things like "The US would bite the dust" is just moronic, your people have to see that as well. You are making a fool of yourself!

Here's the deal, Hugo, we don't even have to land one tank on your soil to destroy you. We don't have to drop one bomb. All we have to do is inflict one embargo. That's right, all we would have to do is say that the US is no longer buying oil from Venezuela. (I'm sure we can trump up some reason for doing this, say, the war on drugs?) Suddenly, 60% of your oil sales dry up. No one else is going to make up that short fall. That $65 dollars a barrel thing is currently propping up your economy, isn't it? You could head back to your economic problems of 2003 and 2002 real quick.

The great thing is that this embargo could help the US. I mean, what are you going to do with 1.2 million barrels of oil a day that was headed for the US if we aren't buying? The only thing you can do is try to sell them to someone else. So, you lower the price. Ah, yes, you are selling oil for $60 a barrel. Europe and Asia buy up the stock, until OPEC lowers prices to $58 dollars a barrel. Then you have to lower prices. A price war ensues, oil prices drop rapidly, your economy spirals out of control and I get to ride in my car to work everyday for $.69 a gallon. Your people will drag your butt into the street and stone you until you are dead!

Keep talking, Hugo, you're doing me a favor. I'm really starting to hate riding the bus!

Max: FCC Requiring Tap Friendly Design

Via the EFF

"Practically, what this means is that the government will be asking broadband providers - as well as companies that manufacture devices used for broadband communications – to build insecure backdoors into their networks, imperiling the privacy and security of citizens on the Internet. It also hobbles technical innovation by forcing companies involved in broadband to redesign their products to meet government requirements."

Jericho: Bobby Henderson - Honorary Irate Weirdo

May His Noodly Appendage forever touch you. May Kansas be smited by meat sauce!

From the Daily Illuminator ...

Jericho: Definitely not Star Wars

*Sigh*

I totally bought the hype when I was a kid. I was told there would be colonies on the Moon and Mars. I was told we were going to have a big space station (not a space double-wide.) I was told that we would have shuttles run to and from space all the time. I watched Star Trek. I watched Star Wars. The Shuttle finally took off. I got more and more into sci-fi. Lots of Shuttles went up. There was talk of a space station. I wanted to graduate high school, go into the Navy and then into NASA. It looked like the world was turning my way.

Then, Challenger was lost. NASA had it's budget cut. I grew over six feet tall (six feet is the cut off for Navy pilots.) NASA had it's budget cut. They flew the Shuttle, again, finally. NASA had it's budget cut. The Gulf War came along. They delayed the International Space Station. NASA had it's budget cut. They cut the budget for the ISS. NASA had it's budget cut. The Hubble had vision problems and we lost a couple of Mars missions - all probably due to budget cuts. We lost Columbia.

My hopes for an adulthood out of a sci-fi novel were dashed a while back. But, I kept hoping it would get better. I kept hoping to maybe retire to Mars or something like that. I have hoped to take my mom into space as a birthday present somewhere along the line - she's a sci-fi fan, too. But, no, none of that looks to be happening.

I'm sure most of you have seen the hub-bub about the Shuttle getting back into space and the "repair" mission they undertook, etc. Thousands of engineers all working to put up a handful of astronauts in a single vehicle. Amazing, but not exactly the vision we had in mind.

In sci-fi, space travel is never easy, but it's at the very least common. Sure, the Enterprise had Scotty running around repairing stuff al the time. But, it was a big ship that often saw combat. The Millennium Falcon was constantly getting repaired, but, it's a race car and it, too, often saw combat. Luke's X-Wing fighter had fewer repairs! In all cases, these vehicles allowed brave people to venture from the surface of their planet and go see what else was out there. The vehicles allowed them to do it every day. The vehicles gave them freedom.

We won't see that freedom in our life time. It pains me very much to write that, but it's true I'm afraid. We could be so much further.

Dear Sir. Richard Branson and Mr. Paul Allen, if you are reading this, please save the human race from it's own lack of fore sight. Amen.