December 26, 2003
pre-new years blues
killing a few more hours tonight on the internet. all the regular sites had been checked so i fired up metafilter and started browsing. i read a post about japanese christmas traditions that linked to justin hall's website. for the last three hours reading about nebraska, his ex-girlfriends, the internship at wired and i was feeling pretty depressed even before i about his father killing himself.
the whole thing got to me on two levels. first i'm a sentimentalist, i really love thinking back, remembering how things were, what i though. reading about his ex's reminded me of mine only i don't have any real record of them, just memories and maybe a photo or two. the worst part is he's such a good writer.
number two centers somewhere around him being a kindred spirit who was born five years earlier and done many of the same things i've done but seemed to just do it better than me. it reminds me of how as a little kid watch those disney movies where the kids have crazy adventures i'd end up depressed because i didn't ever do anything exciting like that. about the same time he was interning at wired, i was getting on the internet for the first time with slipknot and a borrowed dialup shell account so i could check out the wired website (it was one of the few that had graphics). for a fair comparison i took a quick look at my, by comparison, thoroughly lacking blog, and looked at what i was doing in 2000, five years later. apparently i rode from reno to salt lake city, setup a blog with blogger.com (i think before that i was trying to use my own homebrewed blogging software), worked for rc, and built the renodrama site (think friendster-lite for reno, way ahead of it's time).
looking back on all that i'm proud of what i've done but i'm reminded of the part in high fidelity where he talks about looking at the picture of himself as a kid and feeling like he'd let him down. i it's probably a bad thing to be in this kind in this kind of a mood this close to new years, i might go and make some kind of resolution. hopefully i can keep it simple, trying to write more instead of trying to get an internship at microsoft research. actually, i guess that's the attitude that got me where i am.
December 25, 2003
merry holidays
well another year, another christmas. dan and shannen headed out to alaska today. steve heads down to chile on sunday. charles and i head over to see my grandma tomorrow then we're headed up to pdx for a couple of days, well he'll only be there a couple of days.
i've had a good time in reno, it keeps getting better every time i come back. i went out to the new sushi place in sparks with brad so he could do a resturant review for the reno news and review. it's called, get this, sushi marina, i loved it. nice and low key with great food. i'll be going back.
hope everyone's had a good day off. love to the homies.
December 19, 2003
showing id for no reason
went out to breakfast at mel's diner with dan, steve, and shannen this morning. when i was trying to pay with my credit card the cashier asked to see my id. i told him that they're not allowed to that he insisted so i showed it to him then went home and filled out a complaint. hopefully next week there'll be one less place violating privacy for no good purpose.
ps: it probably makes more sense if i explain that i'm down in reno for the holidays
December 17, 2003
summer photos are up
with my camera still out of comission (canon has a bunch of bitches running thier service department) i've been going through all the old photos trying to get them up on the web. todays accomplishment: this summer's road trip photos.
no more free apple juice
washington state is starting to crack down on the people who toss urine bottles out the window of their 16-wheelers. i wish oregon start something similar, i've spent many an hour out on tour counting urine bottles out in east oregon:
After that the riding was pretty uneventful. I spent quite a bit of time staring at the side of the road. I'm a bit disturbed by the number of urine-filled Gatorade bottles I saw today. I counted at least 10, there were a few more that were filled with something yellow but I wasn't going to check.
Thinking about it a bit I started to wonder how many of the cars and trucks passing me were being driven by some one peeing into a coke bottle at that very second. Forget talking on a cell phone, this, is distracted driving. Imagine for a second the mechanics of driving an 18-wheeler, holding the bottle and... ummm... operating your equipment, maybe if you use your knee to steer... I guess you have to appreciate that sort of dedication to a job.
December 08, 2003
pool reporting
nytimes had an interesting article on the whitehouse reporters pool in today's paper. had a couple of cool anecdotes, my favorite was one about the reporter who started his report "'twas the night before christmas", and then did the rest in rhymed verse.
