September 2007 Archives

i seem to remember being more prolific in the days of espresso.

perhaps this will resume.

i kinda quit drinking espresso about a year ago. it wasn't exactly on purpose, it's just that it's kind of a lot more effort than drinking drip coffee, and hops drinks drip so it's easy to share, and it's a pain roasting two types of beans each week, and it's messy, and so on and so forth. plus, summer hit, and espresso on a hot morning isn't so nice.

but by far, the worst thing about drinking espresso is the insanity that accompanies the making of espresso.

espresso itself is liquid insanity. it takes 2x3 times as many beans to make a "serving" of espresso as a "serving" of drip coffee, and after a shot of espresso, or even a double shot, you're not "full" in the same way you're full after a cup of coffee. to make that single shot of espresso you have to warm up your espresso machine for half an hour. you have to heat your cups (okay, should be doing that for coffee, too). you have to have an expensive grinder (uh... more on that later) to not to mention a costly machine (and let me tell you, it's difficult to have an expensive machine staring you in the face every morning you visit the kitchen, unused, lonely, dusty, and shiney from misuse and repeated cleanings). espresso is a pain in the ass, and i haven't even gotten in to dosing, tamping, adjusting the grind, cleaning every gorram thing, including the floor where you dropped grinds and the counter where it got sprayed out of the crotchless pf, and a million other things.

but the rewards... when everything is "just right" from the roast to the grind to the tamp... well, there's a reason they call it a "god shot".

this morning marked my return to espresso, and though all i pulled were sink shots, they nonetheless stirred in my memory a powerful yearning to return to the insanity of making good espresso.

i keep using that word, and i mean it. the insanity of espresso is self-reinforcing -- the better the shots (and especially, the worse the shots), the more of them get drunk, the jittery i become, the faster and less logically my thinking spins, and before you know it, i've ordered a new grinder because the last time i took rocky apart i put him together 90 degrees off and now he won't grind fine enough for espresso and anyhow he never did grind to my satisfaction and he's got crappy vanes in the doser hopper and the doser switch cover keeps coming off and i was going to buy a new grinder anyhow but then i quit espresso so i didn't really have any reason to but now i plan to stay back on the stuff so dammit i need a better grinder and it's ordered now so it's too late to change my mind.

and that was all just from a couple of sink shots. imagine how much worse it will be when silvia delivers macap assisted god shots every morning.

the men's room on our floor smells like broccoli.

not broccoli flavored shatner. not broccoli infused wee-wee. just plain broccoli. wtf?

my friendly neighborhood IT guy just called me down to the datacenter to help him hoist a new server into the rack.

now i know what a $50,000 server looks like.

(it looks like a PC. in a rack.)

five year olds don't like it, but one year olds do. a thirteen year old liked it but was informed not to get to like it too much, since all he'll be able to afford in college is the cheap shit.

a clear distinction between the product of my laborious toils and cheap college swill! score!

also, i didn't give beer to kids. i wasn't in the room when someone else gave beer to kids. i was on another continent when this fictional account was transmitted to me by my imaginary friend.

after a week and a half exile from my beloved weight room, an exile imposed, oddly enough, by my prescription steroids, i'm back in (hopefully) good form. light deads (i boast!), dips instead of bench press (too lazy to put the bar up), push press instead of military (still too lazy to put the bar up). a wimpy workout by july standards, but good enough for today.

after all the excitement, i can't seem to recall whether i took my daily antihistamine. i guess i'll find out later on, something to really look forward to!

over the course of my weeklong roid rage, i had many many good ideas for some stories, but i never got around to writing them.

it may have been the chems, or it may have been something else, but one thing was for sure: i wasn't generally in a happy mood, and we all know what that means: i was in a writing mood. unfortunately, my writing mood was countered by headaches and nausea, which don't lend themselves to sitting down in front of a keyboard, so nothing got done.

and now, without the roids to bring me down, i'll probably get all happy again and then that will surely be the end of my writing. alas.

as i lay on the floor thursday night, trying and failing to manage to either harf or go to sleep, in a haze of quadruple-threat (hard-breathing allergies, piercing headache, immobilizing gut spasms, and almost-but-not-quite-enough nausea) full-system decrepitude (and possible poisoning from ingesting 7 year old pepto bismol (immediately after having thrown out month-old PB on account of it "was expired" but having forgotten to check the date on the other bottle)), i realized: i'd forgotten that hops' birthday was the next day.

my experience with the roids has definitely been a negative one, and one that i'll seriously think twice about before repeating. sure, the rash went right away, but for more than a week i couldn't lift, couldn't think straight, had hot flashes, flushes, and constant nausea, difficulty sleeping, and a zillion other unpleasant side effects. with the urushiol, there's just one effect and it's All Natural. the best course of action, of course, is to avoid the poison in the first place. short of that, i'll stick to caladryl next time.

worst of all, i haven't had a gorram drop of beer in well over a week. that's bad enough, but i'm a homebrewer fer chrissakes! how can i relax and don't worry if i can't have a homebrew?

also worst of all, i couldn't cold-turkey the roids because, they say, that's actually much worse than what i did, which was to gradually lower the dose from day to day. day today was the final dose and i'm still not exactly feeling tops. but i'm feeling better than when i had Lots Of It In Me.

bleh.

spent some time this weekend with my friendly neighborhood mixing engineer. he's got his name on the back of a successful green day album, so it can be deduced that he knows what he's talking about on topics relating to the work for which he got his name on the back of a successful green day album. we spoke of my hobby and he thought it funny that audiophiles (my word, not his, and mine only after i'd explained that i'm not one, since i've never bought an expensive cable (though, and this i did not mention, i will have to soon, though that only because i've chosen a DAC that has output terminals in a format that is standard for pro gear but not "audiophile" gear, and i'd connect the DAC to "audiophile" instead of pro gear, which requires a custom cable, which means $$ -- but that's a different story)) spend loads of money to listen to stuff that was recorded on $300 worth of gear.

we had a chuckle about that but of course, 300 bucks in the pro world is equivalent to $1000 or so in the "audiophile" world, since the latter insist on upgrades that are of questionable utility. and ultimately, at the end of the day -- and it really often is "at the end of the day", all music is at the mercy of the tired ears of the mastering engineer. this was this engineer's explanation for why some music sounds like crap on a decent system: essentially, because the guy who signs off on it was sick of listening to it and declared it "good enough".

curiously enough, this is exactly how software gets released.

not only am i sensitive to poison oak, molds, trees, animals, plants, and just about everything else, i'm sensitive to the meds that docs like to prescribe to treat such sensitivities. case in point: the junk they gave me for the poison oak.

now, i was skeptical about it from the start. after all, it's an anti-inflammatory, which is fine and dandy for ceasing the swelling and itching and leatherskin and all attendant goodies, but what's that got to do with ridding my body of the pathogen? not much, as far as i can tell, and in fact, as my dosage lessens i am beginning to regain some itches here and there.

but that's not a big deal. the upset stomach, the shakes, and the General Malaise, now those are the problems. would i prefer the maddening, sleep-nullifying, mind-crushing itch and the icky leatherskin heatpads? actually, it's a tough call.

as far as i understand it, i'm done with the "effective dose" of the stuff, and now i'm just slowly weening off of it so as not to throw my system into even more havoc. after day 2 the rash was pretty much (amazingly, considering its size) gone. so now i get to enjoy the nausea just so that i won't havfe more of it.

bleh.

on the plus side, i ended up with new birks because there's a good chance the old ones are covered in urushiol -- the pattern of re-infection on my feet suspiciously matched the outline of birkenstock straps. how the substance U managed to get on those shoes I'll never know, since i washed my feet between hiking and wearing the sandals. but they're a decade old and a local sale just ended so it was time to get some new ones.

man, i'd forgotten how uncomfy these things are until they're broken in.

had the chance to demo some RS-1s today (and can probably do so at nearly any time in the future).

while the listening environment (my cube at work) was relatively noisy, i got a pretty good feel for the cans -- or maybe not, since i couldn't really find any particular difference between them and my (much cheaper) 225s. there was certainly something ephemerally "better" about the RS-1, and they were much more comfy, and far better made. but those points are really less to the credit of the RS-1 and more to the detriment of hte 225s -- the 225s aren't "cheap" but they sure look like they are.

now, grados are sposed to be rock headphones and they did get me involved in the music, i reckon. but i thought i spotted something funny in "american idiot" (my test music) so i came home and listened on my rig. i was mistaken about whatever i thought i'd heard, but i noticed one thing: as soon as "holiday" came through my DAC and my 701s, my head was bobbing. grados may be "rock cans" but the 701s kick ass for rock, electronica, trance, classical, classical guitar, and just about anything i've thrown at them.

i guess maybe i just don't care for the grado sound. it's nice, but i think i really prefer separation, headspace, and circumaural phones -- you know, all the things that the AKGs have that the grados dont.

all in all, i'm glad i have my cheapo (ha!) grados. i get to experience the grado sound without sinking a Woo6's worth of cash in woody headphones.

i swear i heard green day say that in "extraordinary girl".

i probably misheard.

the blisters were not from kettlebelling, no, they were poison-oak re-infection. best i can tell, there was urushiol on my shoes, or leftover in my socks, which ended up all over my feet and my hands.

now, if you search the internets for poison oak rashes, you'll come up with a range of images: people have varying sensitivity and varying reactions to the poison (it is not a histamine reaction, apparently. the mechanism is different between allergies and poison oak, with the poison oak being a far more powerful irritant: cortizone cream is helpless against it). when you come across the image that makes you say, "dear god, that looks awful!" that's what my reaction looks like. if you just think, "ouch, that looks horribly itchy," keep looking. that ain't me.

so i suffered through this for a week without resorting to the medical profession, but the reinfection brought me into the docs office. really, there are only two places on the body where it'd be worse to have poison oak than the feet. when it hurts to walk, that sucks. but aside from that, i wasn't sleeping, and my body was in a constant state of heightened itchyness. this is actually quite fatiguing over time (try it!) as the body struggles to set a new ceiling threshold for receiving pain signals. i can't imagine how bad it must be have a real injury.

anyhow, the doctors threw steroids at me, as they tend to do. i asked the doctor if he sees much PO, and if so, where mine ranks. he said he does, and that mine is about as bad as it gets. lucky me. but not surprised me.

after 2 days of the prednisone, my feet are still quite unhappy but they feel like they're approaching some degree of betterness. that's the nice thing about a "course" of meds: they sort of put a date on when you can expect to be better, unlike waiting for it to "run its course" which could be weeks or months. after 2 days, i can now wear my wedding band (finger was too swollen to get it on this morning) and that's a bonus.

for all the unpleasantness, at least it gave me something to write about, eh?

the dmv wants me to come in and get a new drivers license. this, i hate. first, i like the photo i have on my license. it looks nothing like me. i was 16 or so when they took it. i'm not 185lbs these days.

the pointlessness of all this cannot be overstated. doubtless, the visit will be less of a hassle than i anticipate, if only because of the enormity of the hassle that i anticipate, but beyond that, it's just... well, a hassle.

i decided that since i almost never have a full beard anymore, i'd grow a big gnarly one for my dmv photo. then, i decided i can do better than that: i can grow a big gnarly one, and remove patches of it with a shaver. and dye parts of it, and the same with my hair.

i think i'll go in with the most ridiculous assortment of dyed, patchy, uneven facial and head hair that i can manage to sprout between now and novermber, and then revert to the norm the day after (or day of!) my photo.

that'll show them.

it appears that my super-simple approach to avoiding spam has worked.

itchy all over is no way to go through the day, but it's a swell way -- oh, hey, swell! get it? swell? hah!

it occurred to me a moment ago that i've now exceeded my previous record for length of time living with someone.

i've been soloing it since junior year of college, a long time ago. my record back then was 3 quarters.

woke up today with blisters on my hands. that's odd, i didn't do anything yesterday to deserve them. monday night i did plenty of blistrific monkey-bar swinging and kettlebell snatching, but that was monday and all day tuesday my hands were fine.

deadlifting sure is fun, oh boy, with painful pre-blisters.

the lame "comment authentication system" is back in place. find out if the spammers are bots, i reckon.

guh, i had to do perl. bleh. bleh blhe bleh.

bleh.

may have tougher, more interesting climbs. it also may have (by which i mean, of course, "does have") that funky-cool monkeybar thingy. it may have tightropes and climbing ropes and all sorts of fancy architecture. but what really makes it shine: it's got kettlebells!

i took a couple for a swing and showed rictor/veg some of the basics. after i managed to convince him that the bell moves by thrusting the hips like a gesturing duff-man, i showed off a little and snatched their heaviest bell, which, sadly, was only a 50, so i didn't feel like i was showing off.

heh.

i'm only used to 24, 32, and something nuts like 72. they've got more than a full complement, enough to do double snatches, double cleans, double anythings. i'm used to snatching heavier than 50, but i'm not used to doing double anythings, so that may be something to enjoy next time. a couple minutes with the bells at the end of the night is enough to turn a PG visit into an actual "workout".

which i rather need.

it's Frobuary 2, YOMHC 0x18!

in the quest for the ultimate cheap haircut, i took the final step: i had hops administer a buzz. all we had handy was my adjustable beard trimmer, but, since i'm now in favor of the buzzcut, i feared little for myself. at worst, she'd do a poor job and i'd get a "real" buzz from supercuts later in teh day or something. at best, it'd be just as good as a supercuts buzz. honestly, i didnt see how anyone -- amateur, pro, or howler monkey -- could screw up a buzz. turns out i was right. she did a fine job. only thing is, as i suspected, a "#2" on the beard trimmer does not equate to a "#2" at the barber shop.

that's why i asked for a "#4". tragically, a "#4" on the beard trimmer corressponds to about a "#1" at the barber, so i still got a plenty-short cut. i called my barber this morning to complain that i'd gotten a scalp burn on the walk in from my car in the company parking lot. har!

another thing about my fancy beard trimmer: it's a beard trimmer, and it turns out, the stuff on my head is neither a beard nor in need of a trim. it's hair, and it needed to be cut.

as a consequence of these facts, hops had to dissassemble the trimmer in between every half-stroke across my head and knock out, wipe out, and brush out all the clumped hair. it was a tiresome job, and she's promised to spend her next paycheck on a better, more appropriately purposed set of clippers.

argh!

what's really irritating is that they've now got me beat for posting frequency.

that separates lyrical genius from boring, pedestrian fakery?

is it the makeup? the guitars? the tattoos and the heroin? the spandex? the skulls on the cover?

i don't know. both cases -- the genius and the fakery -- seem to be defined by resonance with my own experience/way of thinking. is it simply a matter of a-priori bias against some bands that make me not want to have shared experiences with them? if i knew what the hell Therion was saying, would i find their lyrics irritatingly close to home, or brilliantly insightful?

or is it that certain lyrics resonate with different parts of me, some parts that i like, some that i don't, and that the ones which associate positively, i conclude are "brilliant" and the ones which remind me of negatives, i label "boring" -- and that, mostly because i myself am bored of the relevant feeling?

whatever the case, "american idiot" isn't bad, but i find the lyrics irritating and pretentious, probably because they're so genuine.

and the math is correct, my 1096 => 1022 un-intentionall imperial stout is going to have upwards of 9.5% abv, making it almost surely the strongest beer i've brewed. 1022 was the SG when racking to secondary so i may get another couple of points.

all i wanted was 5 or so abv. surprise!