Okay. Everything is set up on Posterous now with my domains pointing here. The theme may change with some frequency in the near future as I figure things out, but for now it’s all stable.
General
sore eyes for the site
Ugh. For now, I’m sick of trying to mess with WordPress. If I had more time to fiddle with it and figure out how to present my content in the way I wanted, I’d do it. But in my breaks between school, work, being a husband, and taking/editing pictures, I can’t really add that extra stuff.
I’m going to see if there’s a way to import my WP blog to Tumblr, or something. Unless anybody knows a good, fairly fluid theme for WP that handles large images well and still allows me to include text posts/asides/stuff like that.
So pardon the jankity look of this site – the misaligned elements, the photos pushing out of their boundaries, etc. I just don’t have the time/energy to make it work better right now.
dead
Last night Twitter erupted with news of Osama bin Laden’s death. Traditional media soon followed, and much of the country likely tuned in while the president announced the special forces operation that resulted in the bin Laden’s death and the retrieval of his body.
I remember when the planes hit on 9/11, and I remember being terrified at the time because my dad made frequent trips to the World Trade Center for business. He was okay, it turned out, though he lost old friends and colleagues, as did many others that day. So it’s understandable that victims and our nation as a whole would feel a sense of relieve at last night’s news. Osama bin Laden’s death doesn’t bring anybody back but, having been exorcised from this earth, he can do no more harm. So I’m not, in all honesty, sitting here wishing he was still alive. But I’m not celebrating his death, either. Osama bin Laden was a man of terribly evil intent, but he was a fallen and sinful man separated from God, as much in need of saving as me.
I only celebrate the death of one man, and it’s not because He’s dead. Rather it’s because of why He died. And because He didn’t stay dead. I celebrate Christ’s death and resurrection every week when I take communion at church because it’s the only death that actually restores anything – actually provides relief and healing.
So I’m not going to be some dude going around trying to scold people who celebrate the death of bin Laden. I’m sympathetic to their revelry, and I don’t miss the man. But I’m not going to participate in cheering one person, made in God’s image, lost to sin and death.
samurai key
I drive a Volkswagen with a key fob where the key flips out like a switchblade. Every day, when leaving the building, I extract my keys from my pocket and open the car key. I extend my right hand along my side, not quite resting at my hip, key angled slightly out and down, like a katana.
institutional apathy
check boxes
lists of action items and discussions offline
that started offline in a meeting around a conference table to begin with
goals with no purpose beyond self-congratulatory displays
of business acumen
check dem boxes so you can keep your job
check dem boxes so your boss can check his boxes
so your boss can check her boxes
so his boss
her boss
can deliver a pat on the back
so you can get a pat on the back
with all the force of a golf clap
check dem boxes so you can prove you did something this year
so you can earn your paycheck
so you can climb that ladder
so you can check different boxes
on a different list
wit and weiss-dom
At special request from my sister-in-law, here’s a little touch of beer nerdery.
For the longest time I was pretty sure I wasn’t a fan of wheat beer. All wheat beer. I know, that’s like saying, “I only drink red wine,” or “I only drive cars over emperor penguins,” but so goes my irrational mind sometimes. The point is, having tasted a few wheat beers over the past decade, I had come to the conclusion that they all had an unrefined bite and little more than summer trend status here in the US. Silly lemon wedge. So when the warmer months rolled around I generally avoided the slim, straight-sided glasses of cloudy blonde libation and stuck to my cloying brown ales instead.
About two weeks ago, however, I sat down at the bar of one of my favorite watering holes and was offered (without asking) a taste of a new Belgian ale on tap. I still don’t remember the name of it, but it do remember that it was a “Belgian white” and it was incredible. I’ve since tried (and quite enjoyed) a few others, and it led me to examine just what differentiates wheat beers from each other.
First off, almost every wheat beer on the market is an ale. That means it’s fermented warm with ale yeast which often results in a fuller and sweeter (if only in aroma) brew. There are rare wheat lagers out there, and they’re likely more crisp and light. Beyond that distinction, we have two major schools of wheat beer: the German “weissbier” or “weizen,” and the Belgian “witbier.”
Hefeweizen seems to be the big German player here in The States, and that’s basically an unfiltered wheat beer made from at least 50% malted wheat (as opposed to all barley). It’s usually quite carbonated to balance out the sweetness factor, and that may be what I don’t like too much about it. But it sure seemed to be a gateway drug to Beer Land for my wife and sister-in-law, so it can’t be all bad.
The Belgian witbier is often made with raw wheat (unmalted) and brewed with a spice/flavoring blend called “gruit” that is often made up of coriander, orange, and hops. This stuff is magical to my palate, and it’s the style of beer that I photographed – and later consumed – in my post last week (Ommegang is the brewery, and the beer was incredible).
I wish I had some witbier right now, actually. It’s hot and humid outside today, and it’s well past 5 o’clock at this somewhere.
move merchants
Oh my goodness, check out this super hot promo video for Move Merchants – a disc from Deepspace5 emcee Manchild and DJ Sean P. So hot right now:
(via my buddy Patrick)
(via my buddy Patrick)
Starting (over) small.
I wouldn’t exactly consider myself to have OCD, but I’m certainly a man of quirky routines. It’s not always about the comfort of familiarity, either. Often, for me, it’s about creating a process. Once I have my process, I can improve and compete against my own past performance. This silly business allows me to turn mundane portions of my day into games and minor achievements.
All of this to say that one of my main routines is the drive back from class (I’m still a graduate student) to the house twice a week. I’m not the type to require a lot of “me” time, but this semi-weekly trip is about right for my needs, so I stretch it out by taking a slightly longer route than necessary. I get enough time to hear an extra song or two, think over whatever’s coursing through my head, and decompress from a long day of work and school. Most of the “game” portion of this routine comes from trying to beat traffic signals, make it off the line faster than my neighbor in the next lane, and time my braking/downshifting so that I infrequently come to a complete stop. I assure you I do this within the bounds of posted speed limits and I always use my turn signals.
The latter stage of this drive takes me down Overbrook Rd. underneath Interstate 95. The weather has finally come down from its woeful high temperatures so I’ve been comfortable driving home with the windows down for the first time in recent memory. So I’m driving along Overbrook as usual and head underneath I-95 where I smelled the familiar stink of city-provided hydrocarbon.
Overpass gas.
5 years
So yesterday was pretty busy. I spent half my day puzzling over a PL/SQL issue at work, then I had my finance class in the evening which pretty much drained my brain of any remaining useful cognition. It seems, however, that I missed something. A milestone, if that really means anything around here. Yesterday, July 19th, marked 5 years since my first post on this website.
In May of 2008 I hit 1000 posts after what was probably the most concentrated period of blogging this site has ever seen, but in the 2+ years since that time I’ve only managed another 541 posts (including this one) and I’m now barely posting more than monthly. Truth be told, prime blogging time for me used to be at the office. But as my responsibilities and workload have continued to ramp-up and I’ve gone back to school (in the past year), my chances to sit down and find interesting content, let alone create any, have greatly diminished.
My readership, too, has dwindled. Most of my daily hits come from indexing services, and even those folks who I can tell are real people check infrequently. I’m sure there’s a fairly direct relationship to my posting rate, of course.
I’m still here, though. No more vacuous promises of a design change or coding adventures or whatever. Just the occasional photo that I took or random question/opinion/review/what-have-you.
That’s that, I suppose.