drewish.com

down by the bay

got back last night from an excellent trip to san francicso with my friend etta. we stayed at spaceman's place an amazing converted warehouse named the hansom devil's hide away (or something like that). he put together the desalvo, you remember, that track bike i ordered almost two years ago... yeah, that one. i actually got to ride it around the block on sunday night. it still needs some more work done on it but that really stoked me out.

we did a bunch of riding around with dan and his (totally insane) messenger friend peter. we went out across the golden gate bridge and then did a grand tour of the city. it was some crazy riding, i finally got to try that whole left hand turn at a stop light into the oncomming lane and then cutting over into the direction you want to be going type turn. dan's got some pictures from that day up.

even the drive back up was good, we stopped at the jelly belly factory and bought a disgusting about of sugar. on the way up i-5 we stopped at lake shasta and took a swim, perfect solution to the central valley heat. the whole things got me ready to finish school and move down there.

things i did while not working on the book

i think my editor wants to kill me. i'm a week+ late turning in my revisions to my chapter on rss feeds. trying to sumarize the difference between the various rss 1.0, 2.0 and atom 0.3 and 1.0 feeds sucks. i made a list of the things i did today while avoiding working on the book:

• made a new gtalk/myspace image
• uploaded the attached drawing i'd made last week of the bike-eat-asarus to flickr
• did a bit of chatting with etta about how the sequel to the bike-eat-asarus would totally destroy her etta-tron:

  Etta: nice!
    not as good as my etta-tron blowing your shit up, but good nonetheless
  me: well yeah, but the next one will breath missles!
  Etta: RBM's?
    sweet.
  me: and shoot bullets from it's mechanical eyes!
  Etta: fortunately my death ray renders them useless.
  me: it'll overwhelm your meager death ray with it's MISSLE SWARM!
  Etta: ?
    (i'm giving you a skeptical look right now, FYI)
  me: and then when you're distracted the tail whip will destroy you
  Etta: tail whip?
   yikes...now that's a little scary
  me: and then meca-zilla will pour out an over sized novelty 40oz in 
    memory of the etta-tron

• decided to start a webcomic wherein ?-zilla monsters will battle robots, ninjas and bicycle messengers. mostly so i could have monsters pouring out a giant novelty 40oz
• my bike now has a myspace page
• planned a trip to san francisco for the weekend of may the 12th. if your in that town, start saving up to buy me beers

movie people

for the last week they've been filming a movie at PSU. the movie's about some guy who came back from vietnam with hearing damange and became an activist. he's being played by the lead guy from office space that i always confuse with charlie sheen.

part of it's being shot down at KPSU today. they needed a place that looked like an 1980s radio station and i guess we fit the bill. they came in and built a big fake wall and pulled out a bunch of the old equipment we'd had in the back closet. they're getting ready to shoot now, the funny part is listening to them talk, it's all "hey which movie did i work with you on?" they both rattle off a bunch of titles and then decide on one.

not me

just in case you're wondering, this isn't me. this isn't either. though, this will be.

poker cards

in preparation for the upcoming poker ride, i just placed a bid for 101 decks of playing cards on ebay. if i get them, i'll have a lifetime supply of playing cards for about $0.50 a deck.

deford bailey

as you may know, my father wrote a book on an country musician by the name of deford bailey. he was the first african-american in the grand ole opry and part of the origin of the opry's name. this week, deford was finally inducted into the country music hall of fame. a year or two back, i helped my dad setup a basic website, defordbailey.info to host some of the photos he'd collected. in honor of deford's induction, i've setup a new website using drupal that looks a lot nicer and should be much easier to update. next stop, content.

ahhh!

man i don't think i've ever had 12 credit hurt so bad. i'm doing a cs class, public speaking and a photo class. they're all pretty good but between that and working at the radio station i'm stretched pretty thin. it's cutting into my internet time.

my desalvo finally turned up, it sure looks great. i'm looking forward to having the money to finish it up.

charles is married

last weekend krista and i went down to reno for charles and mary's wedding. i'd have had more to say if i'd posted this sooner but as it is, i just wanted to make sure i made note of it. i only shot film and i haven't had a chance to get them developed/scanned.

more about kristine

billy spaceman has a post up on the graveltech site. i talked to him last night, her parents got in yesterday and started the process of taking her off life support. she was an organ donor so her tragedy can lessen someone else's. spaceman is talking about putting together some type of memorial for her. i'll post more as it's decided.

update: there's going to be a memorial ride friday night. check the graveltech site for details.

kristine got hit

kristine, spaceman's girlfriend, got ran over by a semi this morning. i talked to billy earlier and he said that she's up at oshu in pretty bad shape. the word is broken pelvis, ribs, punctured lungs but her spine and head are okay. she was alert when she got to the hospital but they're going to keep her sedated for the next couple of days.

i don't know if she's got insurance or what'll happened on that end of things but the icu isn't cheap. to me, the thought of having to pay for it almost as scary as the actual injuries. instead of helping people deal with real catastrophes like this, we'd rather worry about the practically non-existent risk of a terrorist attack. my girlfriend krista's almost done with school, her big concern is finding a job with health insurance so she can keep her thyroid straight. i'll try to stay off the soap box but i'm really upset about the way the whole health care/insurance issue is being ignored in this country.

anyway, i hope everyone can keep kristine in their thoughts.

update 2005-06-29: fuck. i ran into dabby as i was coming back to the house. he told me that kristine had died this morning. i really don't know what to say.

dan and mikey are in town

dan and his cousin mikey (that we stayed with in new york during the rnc protests) are in portland visiting. they're doing a cross country road trip, stopping along the way to do some mountain biking. billy nickey and i went out with them on friday. today the three of us went out to go skittering around on rain slickened trails. it was much fun.

finished one project

this semester i've been working as an intern in congressman david wu's district office. the main project i worked on was redesigning the website. well, it's been posted to the server, take a look.

at this point it's all valid html and valid css with no tables. i'm also proud to note, both of the photos on the side bars are mine.

almost done

i'm almost done with this quarter and couldn't be happier. this quarter i'm taking three classes and working a 9-hour a week internship. i'm also working for kpsu, doing a little on the side for cypress, and trying to maintain phlickr. and on top of that i've got a 3-hour a day internet habit to support. it get's pretty draining.

i've got some big plans for the summer. one of which i can't really talk about but is pretty cool, a possible road trip with dan and his cousin mikey, and a trip to australia with my dad. all of which sound a fuck of a lot better than school.

lots of good news

back in october i'd ordered a track frame from desalvo cycles down in ashland. i met the owner, mike desalvo, down at interbike last year and fell in love with his stuff. last week i got an email saying that the frame was done and shipping off to be painted. mike said he felt bad about the delay so he was throwing in a free chris king headset. fuck. he was already hooking me up with a fat deal on the frame so i wasn't expecting that at all.

finally, i talked to my brother charles on the phone yesterday. i don't think i've mentioned it on here yet but he and mary are getting married in october. anyway, he asked me to be his best man. i was stoked on it even before he mentioned that there couldn't be any strippers at the bachelor party. it hadn't even occurred to me that i'd be responsible for the bachelor party.

new house

billy and i signed paperwork on a house yesterday. the new ranch is on ne russell right off mlk. best of all, it's totally walking distance to the queen of sheba.

moving?

been hanging out with billy nickey a lot more since i got back from dc. it's been good, he's a good kid. i think we're gonna try to get a house together. the hard part is that we both want to be on the west side of the river for school. it'll take some searching to find an appropriate place.

pdx biatch

makeshiftmouth: so you all bax in the ptown?
koppernigk: yella
makeshiftmouth: awes
koppernigk: it's been a little wierd
makeshiftmouth: how so?
koppernigk: the whole problem with air travel is that it doesn't give you any concept of space
koppernigk: i feel like i should be able to just ride/walk to where i was in dc
makeshiftmouth: hehe yeah
koppernigk: abrupt changes in location. my life here was just put on hold and then i get to pick it back up. kind of like the last 2 months didn't happen, i just dreamed them.
makeshiftmouth: yeah i know that feeling

maybe i'll get around to summing up my time in dc. if my track record of doing so on previous trips is any guide i probably won't. a day back and it already seems like something that happened a life time ago.

sweet baby jesus what's the matter with flickr?

flickr seems to be going down more than jeff gannon. i'm getting pretty sick of seeing that "getting a massage" message. i just want to upload today's pictures before i go to sleep. maybe they'll add a flickr.state.ismassaged method to the API so we can keep track.

bye to nick

we sent nick off this evening. it was a great weekend. yesterday we went down to the mail and saw the nation museum of art and then the air and space museum. nick paid my way to convince me back in their crazy-ass-nausea-inducing flight simulator. that evening we went out to see some of the many crappy bars that dc has to offer. i ended up at the falafel shop and realized that i didn't have enough money. fortunately i was able to trade a metro card to someone one else in line for just under it's face value and enjoyed a late night falafel.

this morning we went down to the international spy museum. it was a great example of how given enough money you can put together an amazing learning experience. that was followed by a diversion to the urban outfitters where i broke my vow never to give them any money. nick's 25% discount card wore me down and the shoes i got were pretty darn pimp.

nick james biatch!

nick is down for the weekend. it can only lead to no good.

popcorn on the cob

krista and i went down to georgia to visit relatives last weekend. i'm planning on doing a full post about that trip so i'll only mention a highlight right now.

we stopped at a gift shop outside of ft. valley and came across a package of uncle ozgood's microwave popcorn. it was pretty freaking sweet, it's a whole corn cob that you micrwave. you take the cob out of the vacuum sealed pouch and put it into the enclosed popping bag. throw the bag in the microwave and bam! literally, it's the loudest thing you've ever heard, the thing goes crazy popping. best of all, the popcorn is great. the texture was much more substantial than most microwave popcorn.

so, moral of the story is, if you ever see uncle ozgood's popcorn do yourself a favor and buy one.

woot for wifi

sitting at the gate in pdx waiting for the plane. at some point they put free wifi in covering the entire airport. i've gotta say it's pretty cool.

we should be in dc by 17:00. i'm still getting used to the whole airlines-trying-to-charge-you-for-food thing. i've been flying southwest pretty exclusively for the last few years so being back on one of the old school dinosaur carriers is a bit of a slap in the face. i like the way southwest has some dignity, they don't try to sell you crappy ass airline food for an extra 5 bucks. if you want some food bring it on your damn self.

traveling

i'll be going to australia this summer with my dad for about 3 weeks. i'm rather stoked. we leave for dc on the 3rd. much to do but all i can manage is screwing around on my led projects.

happy new year all

growing up

i went over to steven's tonight and played a little yahtzee with some people. the whole game is excellent metaphor for growing up.

when you're six you really wanted to be an astronaut. at the beginning of the game you can roll just about any thing and you're stoked at what ever turns up.

about high school it's clear that that whole math and science thing is a huge pain in the ass and the odds of you becoming an astronaut are somewhere between bad and not likely. halfway through the game it becomes clear that you aren't going to win and that you'd be happy to just roll something that you can use.

by the end of the game it's all you can do not put your coat on and wave good bye but half the kids want to add up the scores and figure out the winner. about middle age (which i'm not ready to claim yet) it's pretty clear that you're done with the easy rolls and are not going to become an astronaut.

finished with the schoool

got done with my last final today and sat there pondering which of the many projects i've been putting off to start on. kind of a nice feeling. did a little work trying to setup gallery2 on the graveltech site. tonight i'm going to get a little time in on grand theft auto. this weekend nick is coming to town. i'm looking forward to some good old fasioned fucking around for the next week or so.

going home

school finishes up next week. i'll be headed down to reno on or around the 20th of december. i'm gonna rebuild the server (upgrading from a dual 300mhz pentium 2 to a 2.0ghz pentium 4) so watch out for down time. big gink says he'll be in town so we'll get to do some bro-ing down.

i'm really looking forward to a little time off before heading to washington dc next quarter for my internship in congressman wu's office. that should be pretty fun and i'll only be working mon, tue, wed so i'll have long weekends to go check out the east coast with krista (who'll be in dc too).

also little bob, of katherine house fame, is setting up a webpage for the record lable he's starting: bicycle records. not much there right now but check back soon.

a new bike

spaceman just called to tell me that the john deere is finished. i'm pretty excited that i get to pick it up tomorrow. now before you ask what the fuck the john deere is, i'll give you the short version story.

back in the spring my friend martin shipped me a bike that had lived in someone's back yard for a while and gotten a rather rusted. i'd been toying with buying a fixed gear so this seemed like an excellent chance to put one together on the cheapst. i took it down and had spaceman help me get it disassembled (okay, i sort of stood there and watched while spaceman worked on it). he pronounced it a lucky find, and brandon asked why he never got anything good like that for free.

eventually, it made it's way to colorfx (a super cool paint shop in north portland) to be striped and powder coated. i wasn't sure what color i wanted so asked for the dealer's choice. when i picked it up i found a john deere green frame (that matched someone's lawn furniture) waiting for me. knowing that every bike worth it's salt has a theme to it, it was clear that this one was to be known as the john deere.

there's still quite a bit of work to be done yet. before the weather goes totally to crap i'm going to get a set of fenders and spray paint them john deere yellow. after that i'm going to try and pick up a set of decals to complete the look.

all totaled i'll probably have dropped about $400 on it. not a bad price for a hot looking fixie considering that the price include the the booze to pay for bill's labor. i'll get some pictures up when it's finished.

update: talked to chevil and he pointed me to some yellow fenders. when i mentioned that i was looking for something to use as a head badge he told me how while on a 300 mile bike trip he'd come across one of the bicycles that deere made in the 70s sitting on a junk heap. he popped off the badge and had been holding onto it ever since. i've got to come up with something to trade him for it.

saying bye to steve

walked steve down to the bus station last night for his trip to walla walla. it was lots of fun having him in town, school work prevented me from getting to do some real hanging out but what little there was was good.

little gink is in town

steve is in town visiting on his way back down from alaska. it's probably been a year since i've seen him so it's good to catch up. i've been socked in with school work but i sent him off on the zoobomb last night and it sounded like he had four solid runs before the cops arrested someone. you'll have to ask him about it.

rooting for nature

james wolcott is far braver than i. i often root for natural disasters but with out his leadership it wouldn't have occurred to me to announce it. i'll admit my favorites are hurricanes and forest fires, it's just the best imagery.

catching up

as you can tell, i haven't been posting that much. my blog was fucked up for a while and i wasn't really into messing with it. i've got plenty of news though.

first off, i'm selling the katherine house. i'm a bit sad to give it up but i don't see myself moving back to reno and this is a great time to be getting out of it. i'll avoid paying most of the taxes and what we're selling it for is almost double what we bought it for.

second, brad and danielle came up to portland for a few days. it was really nice having them up. i spent way too much money (especially ahead of the nyc trip) but i can't think of a better excuse to do it.

moblog

a couple of weeks ago i got a new camera phone. it's the samsung sch-a670 and i'm pretty into it. it takes good photos (i really like the tone, krista said it was like 70s polaroid photos) but it's kind of a pain that they only way to get them off is by email (at $0.25 a pop). i've put up a gallery with phone images.

new rss feed

i've setup my rss feed through feedburner so it will splice in my del.icio.us links. let me know how it works.

going to the rnc

dan and i have just booked tickets to the republican national convention. he's looking to try and make a little money writing a story for the news and review and maybe get me a little money for some pictures. i'm also going to look into doing a couple of radio stories for the public radio exchange since kpsu's news show is now on an indefinite hiatus.

playing pool

i'm back down in reno trying to get the katherinehouse ready to sell. last week charles gave me a barnes & nobel gift card he'd picked up someplace so yesterday i went down and bought a book on how to play pool. it has plenty of good tips that i raring to try out so i got billy (of the chapterhouse gallery) to go and play a few games with me. the process of changing everything around on my shooting really screwed up my playing but it'll be a good thing in the end.

links

i've never been a big fan of web browser bookmarks. they're never there when you need them either because you're on a different computer or you upgraded the browser. rafe over at rc3.org was all stoked about using del.icio.us so i gave it a try. it's great, i've found myself using it to keep track of stuff that previously would have ended up on the blog with a little one line comment.

i'm going to figure out how to insert a copy of my links on this page so i can save the blogging for important stuff.

new job

got me a new job. i'll be working part time as a production manager at kpsu. not sure when i'll be starting. i guess after i get back from reno.

heml

i came across a link to the historical event markup and linking project yesterday. the aim is to use xml to standardize the format of historical data. i'm really impressed with both the concept and execution. now that school is out i'm going to try to start putting some time in looking at and hopefully contributing to projects like this.

(mostly) done with finals

fucking a, i've had a nice morning. back to back physics and calc finals. a combined 5 hours of test taking. at least their done. now i can get good and drunk. still have to do a paper for the news radio class.

richard stallman

i've been busy trying to study for finals this week but tonight i took off a couple of hours and went with steven to see a lecture given by richard stallman. i'd read his biography free as in freedom last year so i wasn't to surprised that it seemed to come directly from it. it was still pretty cool to get to hear the story of xerox's printer with no source code straight from the horse's mouth. it got me thinking about the work i'm paid to do right now. i'd really like to be working on open source free software but it is nice to pay the bills.

on a related note, i'm always amazed by the stupid questions audience members are able to come up with after seeing someone speak. i want to jump up and shout "where were you when he spent the last hour explaining the philosophy behind it? sit down and shut the fuck up!". and please don't get me started talking about the guy who tried to argue that an analogy using a waiter in a restaurant was flawed because he'd been a cook and the waiters never tipped him.

my facial hair

haven't mentioned it yet but i'm growing out my moustache. gonna hook it back up with the chops. krista hates it, as do most girls asked. but no matter, i'm fucking stoked. i think i'm gonna cut my hair into a mullet too.

debt free

paid some bills today. called one credit card company to ask why i hadn't gotten a bill, i figured i was gonna get reamed with late fees. apparently i'd paid my bill off back in february. cashed this months paycheck and turned around and wrote a check to pay off the other card. as of today i'm now debt free, down from owing something like two grand. let me tell you, it's a nice feeling. now i can put together that fixed gear guilt free.

sy hersh strikes again

my dad pointed me toward the latest sy hersh article about the prisoner abuse. apparently he's located quite a bit of evidence linking rumsfeld and the pentagon's civilian leadership to the torture. my dad is certain that rummy will resign by the end of the week. i expect this to be the top story tomorrow and for the rest of the week.

radioing it up

i've been doing a few stories for kpsu's radio news. yesterday they aired my piece on kucinich judging the vegan cookie contest. last week they played my piece on bike theft. it isn't great, it was a bit of a learning process but i'm getting there.

today i went out to america votes' voter registration event. it was a great event and i got some good audio for next week's story. i had a great interview with the executive director of moveon.org, peter schurman, but in the process of trying to organize the tracks on the minidisc deleted it. i'm pretty pissed about it but i think i'll be able to do a pretty good story without it.

in the afternoon i went over to see amy goodman of democracy now speak as part of the tour promoting her book, the exception to the rulers. she's a very moving speaker. i was slightly nauseous for about half of her presentation as she detailed all the wonderful things the cia is doing in our name. listening to her arguments about the way the american media has worked to shape public perception of the war has me pretty fired up about perusing the independent journalism. not that i'm not planning on switching majors or anything but that's where a lot of my energy is going to be directed.

did i ever tell you the story of the pretty lady?

once upon a time, i bought a bike at a thrift store in reno. it was a 20 inch kids biked named the pretty lady. it cost five dollars. the pretty lady went to burning man with me then returned to reno to live in the katherinehouse's shed. last christmas charles drove it and it's cousin the turbocycle up to portland for me. about two weeks ago my mechanic billy spaceman helped me put together a bastardized track wheel for it. "don't pedal it backwards", he told me, "this is either one of the stupidest or one of the most dangerous projects i've ever been a part of, i can't make up my mind". oh it was a thing to behold. i loved it so. the day after it was finished, i left it locked up out front of krista's building. along came some evil little bmx fuckers and stole my bastardized track wheel for the tire. the left behind a sad, sad lady. sooner or later i'll get another wheel together and the pretty lady will ride track once again.

okay enough of that tone. the side effect of the theft is that i'm doing a story on bike theft for my news radio class. i've interviewed the campus public safety office's director of operations and some random cyclists. i think it's going to come together really well. more news to follow.

a better quarter

school started about 3 weeks ago. this quarter (i keep starting to say semester) has been a lot better than the last. i scraped out of the last one with a C+, a D and an incomplete. i'm putting it in persepective, everyone always tells me that the second year is the hardest motivation wise. i've been way more on top of things this time around. believe it or not: taking notes and doing the homework makes it easier. now i know what your saying "but andrew, you made it through highschool without taking notes or doing the homework!" it's true but, as they always say, this aint highschool.

the good news is that i was picked by the honors college for an internship slot in washington dc next winter. that means i'll have to find an internship, i really want to work with josh marshall of talking points memo but i don't know how that'll pan out.

my fun class this semester is radio news. psu has a college radio station that's trying to start a news show so they turned it into a class. by the end of the semester i'll have two stories done. i think my first one will be on bike theft, it should pretty much write itself i've got questions all i need is to get ahold of one of the minidisc recorders so i can get my interviews.

in other (non radio) news: i'm still trying to fit too much stuff into one tiny studio. i ordered a bike rack from amazon.com to try to at least get the bikes off the floor.

a most enjoyable read

i came across a new blog today. after reading the first entry i was convinced that krista was living some sort of a double life, the sense of humor was so close. i've added it to my blog roll. go check it out. you'll be cracking up. to help motivate you i'm going to shamelessly copy and paste one of my favorite bits:

1. There is no such thing as one beer. Well, maybe there is, if you are out with your parents for Indian food or something. But other than that, one beer does not exist.

2. Two beers. Two beers is what you say you had when you are LYING. "I only had two beers." Right. Of course you did. Liar.

3. Then we come to the paragon of righteousness, the guardian of your untroubled deep-REM sleep, Mr. Thirdbeer. Mr. Thirdbeer is a truly good citizen. With Mr. Thirdbeer you feel safe and protected. You have a proper little buzz on, but you can go home right now, have a nice conversation with your roommates, watch a little TV, drink a little water just for the hell of it, and climb into bed like the safe, sane, healthy, non-problem-drinker that you are. (Note: this is where I was at last night. Yay for me, all sensible on a Tuesday.)

4. Did you know that Mr. Thirdbeer has an evil twin? Not many people do. His name is Prince Plastered the Fourth. Welcoming this dark prince into your evening greatly increases the chances that you will hear the words "LAST CALL," and then you will be all making like David Byrne: "Well? How did I get here?"

5. Why? Because Prince Plastered the Fourth, being royalty, never travels alone. He has many courtiers and hangers-on, like Footman Fifthbeer and Little Lord Cuervo Shot.

good times

boy, i'm not really into posting on the website. i managed to avoid any mention of my spring break trip to death valley with krista. i'll say simply that it was fun.

my dad came and went. we got to eat some really good food. it was nice getting to see him. i love oregon (in the summer) but do miss the friends and family in reno. and speaking of reno friends: dan has also come and gone. it's been good.

my new conceptual art project

i had an idea for an art project but since i'll never do anything with it i've decided to just post it here so i can say "man, i thought of that years ago" if i ever see it done.

there'd just be a bowl of fortune cookies sitting on a column in the middle of the gallery. you'd be encouraged to take a fortune cookie. instead of "fortunes" each piece of paper would have the subject line from a spam received by the artist.

super, ninja quiet fans

i've got this little asus terminator pc that i got on close out from fry's. it came with some of the noisiest fans i've ever heard. i couldn't leave it on overnight or i'd end up having dreams involving heavy machinery.

last month, right around the time i'd moved, ordered some fans from silenx to replace them. well long story short, the post office lost the fans in the process of forwarding them to my new address and silenx was gracious enough to send me out another order. they arrived yesterday and i'm oh so happy. i turned the computer on and, well, couldn't even tell it was on.

if you're looking to reduce the db your box puts out, i can't recommend silenx highly enough.

been busy

this is finals week, i'm really just hoping to limp through the term. instead of studying i've spent the the last few days:

• screwing writing code with the new version of visualbasic.net
• playing gunbound (i finally got to stone hammer!)
• calling the RAs repeatedly to complain about my upstairs neighbor's party (the final straw was when beer was poured out her window and it ran down into mine)

i've finally found an rss reader i can use

rss, for the uninitiated, is the an XMLish format that lets websites publish lists of headlines/recent posts. my blog for instance has a feed, as do most. what an rss reader allows you to do is download the rss feed, parse it, and present it in a manner that lets you see the headline and tell if you've already read the current stories/posts.

my problem with most readers is their use of internet explorer as redering engine and i'm too much of a diehard mozilla fan to settle for any thing ie based. i'd tried using news monster, one java/mozilla based reader, but it never seemed stable. besides for the last 6 months i've moved from the mozilla suite to mozilla's next generation firefox/thunderbird browser/mail setup. yesterday, i finally found it, the holy grail: a firefox rss reader extension. it's pretty sweet, all y'all firebox users out there should go pick it up.

built to spill

krista, nick, his friend dereck, and i went and saw black heart processional and built to spill play tonight. the sound for black heart was horrible i couldn't even understand the lyrics they finally go it worked out for the last two songs but by then i was ready for them to be over. on the other hand, built to spill was amazing, one of the best shows i've seen in a while.

so i finally got hit

after 5+ years of riding regularly i finally got hit by a car. actually, let's say bumped, it's more accurate. i was riding down market st and crossing park ave as a honda sedan pulled out in front of me. i couldn't tell if they were going to punch it or stop so i started cussing at them as i slammed on the brakes and tried to point the bike out in front of them so if it came down to it i'd end up on the hood instead of tacoing a wheel in to their door.

when she finally stopped my thigh was pretty much resting on her hood. if it hadn't been for the clipless pedals i probably would have stayed on my feet. as it were i couldn't kick out and ended up with a bruise on the back of my calf from hitting the top tube as i fell over. i was pretty pissed when i got to my feet. the girl and her friend got out. she was white as a sheet. the four pedestrians that had just crossed the street helped me move the bike out of the street and reminded me to check that it was alright.

after looking at the bike next thought was settlement. i've got a few friends who've gotten new bikes after getting hit. i felt fine and i didn't really want to fuck with. it was a bad intersection and obviously an accident, i was in a hurry to get down to senator smith's office to drop off the moveon.org petition. with an hour of hindsight i realize i could of at least gotten a free tune-up out of it.

but let this be a lesson for you. no matter how fine you feel, always get their information, you can always throw it away later.

those wrong handed people

miss molly mott has a post on the simple joy of being a left hander in a room full of left handed desks. oh those poor people.

an old friend

krista and i went over to the other side of the river to eat dinner and see a movie. we go there early so we went to kill some time at the powell's. age old friend chris larson was working at the coffee shop there. spent a while talking to him between customers. found out he's getting married on tuesday. what i forgot was his birthday is the day before my brothers (valentine's day). the flake that i am i didn't even say happy birthday. so i'll try it here. congradulations chris and sierra and happy birthday chris.

mr president, what were you doing between 1966 and 73?

when you're shopping for your next president you might find this product comparison handy: kerry vs bush, the war years.

radio scanner freqs

for future reference: portland radio frequencies.

eastern standard tribe on your calculator

on thrusday i read cory doctrow's new book eastern standard tribe as a pdf on my laptop. friday i replaced my venerable hp-48gx with a ti voyage 200. on saturday i converted est to the ti-reader's ebook format. now instead of playing games on my calculator i can read instead.

moving

i've moved three wagon loads of stuff to my new apartment. i've very much in like with it. i can't say i mind the internet. i've got to have all my stuff moved by sunday night. it seems like a good reason to get rid of some of the crap i've been hauling around for the last four moves.

unix spam tools

i've been been on an anti-spam tear for the last week. found a couple of tools:

handlespam

a perl script written by one of the spamassassin developers that lets you report an entire mbox full of spam to spamcop, spamassassin's bayesian filter and razor (et al).

spamcup

another perl script. it gives you a command line interface to spamcop's web based reporting. now you can avoid repetitive motion injury from clicking report now/submit 120 times.

moving

been a while since i've done much posting. that'll probably change soon. i'm moving into a new apartment on feb 5 and it'll have internet included in the rent. i've managed to make it a year and a half with out internet at home and i'm over it. not having the worlds greatest distraction at my beck and call did help my focus but at this point most of my classes have some online component so it's turning into a requirement.

the new apartment should be pretty cool. the place i'm in now has a bunch of space but it's on the inside of a U shaped building so it's really dark in there all day long. i'm looking forward to having a window that faces out and gets some morning light.

week free from school

thanks to all the horrible weather i got a 4 day break from school. getting four weeks off for winter break is almost like going to a university with a civilized schedule.

it's been an experience watching portlanders dealing with the snow. no one seems to understand that you need to shovel the snow off sidewalks. i guess there'll need to be a couple of lawsuits to get that message across.

new photos

i've finally stated getting my backlog of photos up on the website. i've been sorting through three months worth and the best of them are now in the portland.random gallery. i've still got a bunch inspired by john margaris' freeway paintings that i'm picking through. i'm going to try to get a gallery together this weekend.

new years

had a nice new years, it's snowed twice in the last week. it's unheard of for portland. the pretty much just shut the city down. i'm always a bit annoyed when it snowed, i guess having seen it for so long sort of takes the fun out of it. i do get a kick out of watching the foreign exchange student squealing with delight as they take each others pictures. until yesterday i'd never seen anyone use an umbrella as a shield in a snowball fight. the weather's supposed to say like this for the next week or so.

the snow was kind of a bitch for charlie and i when we were trying to drive up last week. we were making great time until just after we crossed the state line into oregon. going down the grade from the pass it was tail lights as far as you could see. there were probably 6 cars spun out along the side of the road and not enough tow trucks to go around. our 8pm arrival in portland turned into a 10:30pm arrival.

sushi marina reviewed

brad's review of sushi marina is up on the web. i'm very happy with my quote:

The place has an impressive selection of handrolls. Highlights include the Sansei ($4.50), with unagi, avocado, cucumbers and teriyaki glaze and the Marina ($4.50), crystal shrimp and bay scallops in a spicy sauce. I had to order one after watching my buddy Andrew eat one.

"How is that?" I asked. "It looks really good."

"It is. In fact, it's so good that I'm not going to offer you a bite."