Tue Mar 08 09:55:37 leaving town:

In mid-June, alh and I will be leaving Chicago, destination: California by way of the Northland. We'll be moving home for a month, give or take, and then out to Southern California for school -- law school for alh at Pepperdine (she's doing their Strauss Institute program for dispute resolution) and I will eventually be getting a masters in Computer Science from somebody down there... maybe Frankie's Back Alley University (FBAU)... who knows.

The reality of moving away is really starting to sink in now... I've begun to admit to myself that we will probably never get the office really cleaned up until we box everything up and move away. Embarassing.

Tue Mar 08 10:04:52 thumbs up - thumbs down:

I've been living in Chicago now for over eleven years and thinking about leaving soon has made me want to make a list of things I will miss and things I won't miss about the Second City on the Third Coast. I'm going to try and make a post every day with that topic in mind -- in no particular order. Here's my first entry:

<b>will miss</b>: Having such a spectacularly funny mayor. Every time Daley is on the television, it's comedy gold. Ask anybody.

won't miss: the rustling of plastic bags in the trees. Living in Chicago, you actually think that maybe plastic bags *do* grow on trees. Unfortunately, I'll probably get plenty of that in LA... maybe they'll just be in palm trees or something instead of mulberry and catalpa. I hope not.

Wed Mar 09 11:47:18 yea, nay:

will miss: My job. I really like the people I work with, and the different kinds of challenges I have every day. I'll miss the opportunity to have input over the direction of the department and the campus infrastructure, and I'll miss the laid-back attitude. While I'm ready to not spend almost every day of my life at $UNIVERSITY, I'm going to miss the friendly faces and community I've established here... after all, I've lived here for over a third of my life (this fact is still shocking to me). I'm afraid of ending up in an inflexible job I don't enjoy and/or don't find challenging. Sometimes this job is not challenging, but that's about the worst thing about it I can think of.

won't miss: the smell of the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal. Actually, I'm not sure if the canal smells itself, but up on the North Side where I live, it runs along the parks and up into Skokie next to several water reclaimation plants and I think the Deep Tunnel project. Anyway, the unmistakable smell of sewage is impossible to separate from the canal, at least in my mind.

(1) Thu Mar 10 08:53:13 blinding your ears with science since the 1970s:

The onion has a nice article with Thomas Dolby Robertson of 80s synth-pop fame. Essentially, Thomas Dolby Robertson is a hacker and has been since he was soldering disco lighting consoles to synthesizers for "She Blinded Me With Science". Then he started the company that makes the polyphonic ringtone engine for many major cell phone manufacturers. (via the Diner)

Thu Mar 10 11:28:45 it's bittersweet... sweet and bitter, bitter and sweet:

I'll miss WXRT, one of the coolest and most original radio stations I've ever listened to, commercial or otherwise. They have their niche, which is really several niches including blues, and for being a big city radio station, they really feel down to earth and in touch with the city. They play a lot of local music, support local artists, bring in good concerts, have lots of great on-air appearances, and break interesting artists. Right now they're sponsoring a program with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra which is essentially street-level music education with WXRT people and CSO performers. I'll miss the personalities, especially Marty Lennartz (and The Regular Guy movie reviews, coincidence...?). It's a station you can almost always count on to having something good to hear.

I won't miss Q101, "Chicago's alternative since 1992." Wow, you almost gotta blow the dust off that slogan! 13 years is a long time to be an alternative, and like other alt.stations in the nations, Q101 has stayed Staunchly Alternative -- but as we all know, "alternative" has become it's own kind of mainstream, one which I am not a fan of anymore.

When I was coming to visit NPU as a high school senior, I thought that Q101 was the coolest station on earth; they sounded like our local college station! But then the music industry changed, much like the Borg refactoring sheild and phaser frequencies.

I won't make disparaging, out of touch old guy remarks about "what Alternative is" or "what Alternative isn't," but I will say that when Alternative stopped being an adjective, got a capital letter and became a noun it stopped breaking molds and started, to turn a phrase, "thinking inside the bun." Yuck.

I think I would almost rather listen to any other station in Chicago, maybe even B96. Not because Q101 "sold out" and I have something to prove (I think that was inevitable given their narrow-yet-demographically-lucrative scope), but because now, 11 years later, I'm just not interested in the alternative they offer. It took me a while to realize that, but now I almost never tune in to Q101. Especially not during "Love Line."

(1) Fri Mar 11 10:25:28 president's choice vs. safeway select:

I will miss Jewel grocery stores.

I won't miss Dominick's.

That's the truth, but it doesn't make much sense. Jewel and Dominick's are the two main grocery store chains in town (local brands now owned by Albertson's and Safeway, respectively). In my neighborhood, the Dominick's are not very nice compared to the Jewels, and Jewel was always where we'd go from NPU because it was the closest. But I'm sure in other hoods that situation is reversed. It really comes down to the luck of geography and many memories of grocery shopping at 1AM, chatting it up with Mel, the night cashier. She told me about how they get their music piped in via sattelite or cable or something -- which I had asked about after hearing a pretty obscure rock song on their in-house system twice (The Day Brings, by Brad) -- and how one morning at about 5AM somebody upstairs decided to start piping in classical music over the feed, and how cool she thought that was. I wish I could have been there to hear it. (It seems kind of Kubrickian to me, shopping in an empty grocery store in the middle of the night with classical music coming in over the PA.)

While we're on the subject of grocery stores, sometimes when I'm walking the aisles I would have a fantasy (this fantasy would strike me when I was grocery shopping at 1AM) where I would run down the aisles of the empty grocery store with my arms out scraping a swath of food down off the shelves making a huge mess. I would throw big bags of rice and flour and pasta up in the air so they would burst on the floors and generally wreak havoc. I'd go up and down all the aisles and then I would race out one of the exits. I wouldn't actually condone such an act, and I hope that no one actually does this. I also suppose that realistically, someone (probably the one-handed Osco night manager) would tackle me and I'd get arrested, but in my fantasy I run out into the cool night and walk home, laughing. I think this fantasy is related to the daydreams where I imagine things blowing up.

Mon Mar 14 12:21:41 friendly confines vs. us sellout field:

I will definitely miss Wrigley Field.

I will not miss U.S. Cellular Field (formerly known as Comiskey Park).

In Chicago, a lot is often assumed based on your answer to the question "What baseball team do you root for?" It's a little, but not completely, ridiculous. There's a lot of history and ugliness that goes into the question. What side of town do you live on. What kind of money do you have? Who is better than who?

The Cubs play on the North Side in Wrigley Field, the second-oldest (by 2 years to the Red Sox Fenway Park in Boston) ballpark in Major League Baseball. [Wrigley Field was originally called Weeghman Park when it was built for a new baseball team in the ill-fated Federal League]. The Cubs are now owned by the Tribune Company, which publishes the more traditional, white-collar, and philosophically conservative Chicago Tribune. The Park is smack dab in the bustling North Side near Lincoln Park, the lake, and sandwiched between the hip Belmont and Irving Park neighboorhoods. You can fall off the bleachers at Wrigley and into any one of a number of hip sports bars or comedy clubs. This is because the North Side of Chicago is the so-called "right side" of the tracks, and the Cubs have -- if you believe the hype -- the support of the wealthy, the snobby, and the white.

On the other end of town, across the freeway from the projects (no, really), stands Comiskey Park... I mean, U.S. Cellular Field (U.S. Cellular bought the naming rights a few years ago). It is way down past the loop in the middle of run down housing projects, industrial areas, and 8 lanes of freeway traffic. If you fell out of the seats at Comiskey, first of all, you'd die the seats are so high, but secondly, there's nowhere you'd probably want to go unless you're comfortable with the neighborhood. And if you believe the hype, White Sox fans are all blue collar or minorities (or maybe just South Siders).

The truth is always more complicated than the stereotypes. Simple geography means that most North Siders root for the Cubs (or at least attend games at Wrigley), and most South Siders root for the Sox (or attend at Comiskey) -- it just takes too long to go to the other park. And hey, don't we like to have a team to cheer for and a team to boo for? What's a little cross-town rivalry among friends? Also, as it stands *nowadays*, the North Side (at least where Wrigley is) is economically better off than the South Side (at least where Comiskey is). Property values go up and down, and that affects ticket prices and availability. Wrigley is smaller and supply and demand makes ticket prices higher, and it hasn't always been that way. Comiskey is huge and rarely sells out, which keeps ticket prices cheaper in comparison to the Cubs.

But the truth is also that socioeconomic and geographic and historical realities dictate that the crowds at Wrigley are whiter and wealthier than crowds at Sox Park, and that reality is hard to miss. Unfortunately, the factors that have gone into creating that reality are not just chance and the invisible hand of the market. Perhaps someday, if we all live long enough, rich cyborgs will all go to Cellular field to watch games and the poor will scrape their credits together and go to Wrigley. Who knows.

I'm not making light of the disparity -- honestly, it disgusts me -- and frankly, the worst part of Cubs games are the obnoxious, fratty fans. But I think the ugly side to the Cubs/Sox rivalry is really a symptom of a larger inequality -- and the stigmas associated with both teams (depending on what side you're on) won't change until the underlying inequalities do.

So I guess that one more thing I won't miss is all the crap and analysis and guilt and evil that goes into just saying which baseball team you like more.

Anyway, I'm going to miss Wrigley Field, and I'm not going to miss Comiskey.

Wrigley Field is how baseball was meant to be played. The park is beautiful. The outfield walls are covered in ivy and you can see Lake Michigan from the stands and as the sun sets at the end of a day game it makes you feel like you're in a dream. You really can feel like you've gone back in time and you're sitting in those seats in the 1920s watching Babe Ruth call out his homers. Sox Park by comparison is a gigantic, ugly, concrete monstrosity out of the 1990s. The upper deck seats are so steep, you really feel like if you stood up and fell, you might land on the field. Plus, you're so far away, it's like you're watching from the Goodyear blimp. Worst of all though, the seats are so narrow, you can't help but invade other people's personal space. Even most of the die-hard Sox fans I know lament the loss of the historic Old Comiskey park.

The Cubs are the North Side's team. Due to whatever history (good, bad, and indifferent), I ended up living on the North Side, and that's the team we root for up here. I'm sure that if I lived on the south side, I'd root for the Sox. I just wouldn't like my ballpark as much. I'd probably make cracks about those cake-eating Cubs fans. And Cubs fans would annoy me even more than they do now.

Lastly, I'm a sucker for the loveable underdog. And the Cubs have definitely been that... they haven't won the Championship since 1908.

(1) Tue Mar 15 09:51:07 sports stadiums part II: old soldier field vs. new soldier field.:

I will miss the old Soldier Field. It was a great looking building with classical styles.

I won't miss the new Soldier Field. It really looks like a UFO crash landed in the middle of the original Soldier Field. I don't really care about football, so I don't really care about any of the reasons why it's a better football stadium now, nor do I care about the economics and politics that led to the redesign.

Google Images Of Soldier Field

I guess that's the price of progress, and there is a coolness factor to it, and it's nice that they didn't have to tear it down completely or leave it abandoned... but when I think of Soldier Field, I'll still think of the original -- I'm a nostalgic kind of guy.

Wed Mar 16 12:00:29 politician's names everywhere vs. the cta:

I will miss the CTA (and the RTA). It's not the greatest public transit system in the world, but it's adequate. I'll definitely miss the big old noisy trains rumbling all over the place on their age-old rusty riveted steel tracks. I'll miss transferring to the Red line at Belmont. I'll miss jogging up Ravenswood with Metra trains zooming by. I'll miss catching the Foster bus to Jeff Park to hop the Blue Line to O'Hare. (I won't miss the busses being late all the time.)

Anyway, there's something very cosmopolitan about being in a place where rail transit is a practical necessity. It says something about the kind of city you live in, what it affords and requires, and it's a neat engineering feat, which the geek in me likes. I also like old, rusty things, so I like the CTA for what it is -- commodity parts made into a city transit system. None of these "West Coast" welded rails for us, by gum! Ooh, I'll also miss that big junction downtown in the loop. I like to sit in the back of the train and watch it go by -- it almost makes you feel like you're part of someone's model railroad set.

I won't miss seeing Politician's names and faces everywhere. Richard M. Daley. John H. Stroger. Jesse White. Politics in Chicago is a machine, and the first thing that inhuman intelligence learned was that voters vote for people they know over people they don't. And thus began the practice of the Name Game in Chicago -- slapping a mayor, attorney general, judge, commissioner or president's name all over anything it could possibly be slapped on. SO you drive down the street and see a forest preserve sign, underneath that it will say, it says, "John H. Stroger, Commissioner." Or a sign for Chicago, "Richard M. Daley, Mayor" -- or anything that has to do with the Department of Transportation, and you'll see Jesse White's name, and (for added recognition) usually his face, too! I don't really have anything against Jesse, but there he is, smiling broadly, in front of an bright American flag. At our local DMV on Elston, there are probably 15 portraits of Jesse White on the walls... I don't know if there are even 15 pictures of Jesus on the walls of my church.

Wed Mar 16 17:59:43 on vacation:

I'll be on vacation until March 26th and I don't think there will be any Net access -- no entries until then.

Mon Mar 28 09:29:09 special travel edition of "will miss, won't miss":

We're back from Kaua'i; what a great trip in a beautiful place.

Here's the special "travel edition" of "will miss, won't miss."

I won't miss the old Midway International Airport. Or as I used to call it, Midway Imitation Airport. It's like they took an old high school and converted it into an airport terminal. It really used to be the smallest, goofiest airport ever. Like, the Duluth International (Canada) Airport is more immediately recognizeable as an airport compared to the old Midway. It was so small, and the main part of the terminal was a big gym-sized room that literally looked like it was a soundstage set up for a 80s sitcom scene in an airport, like where Vanessa would be complaining about missing the prom for a trip to Hawaii, and Rudy would get lost after riding the luggage carousel or something.

It's always been nice because if you can fly out of Midway, it's usually much cheaper than O'Hare, but it's also about an hour's drive from where I live (whereas O'Hare is about 30 minutes away)... and if you're taking public transit to Midway, plan on at least an hour and a half.

Still, one of my favorite memories of my freshman year was driving a North Park van down to Midway to chauffer the Jazz Band off for some trip. I had never really driven in the city before, and I didn't know where we were going so I had to follow the guy ahead of me pretty closely. He knew where he was going and was doing about 80 on the freeway. But that story is more about driving and not about missing Midway.

Several years ago, they did a lot of great improvements on Midway and so now it's really quite respectable. But in the old days, boy howdy.

I will miss O'Hare. O'Hare International Airport, formerly O'Hare Field, airport code ORD, newer than Midway.

Many people think that the ORD is from O'Hare Field, but it's actually from the name of the old North Side millitary WWII-era airport it replaced -- "Orchard Place." It was named O'Hare after Butch "Bucky" O'Hare, a WWII war hero who was the son of one of Al Capone's lawyers. The legend has it that he turned informant and quit the mob because he didn't want that life for his family and was bumped off. Incidentally, Butch O'Hare was shot down by friendly fire in 1943 in the South Pacific. Or was it a mob hit? You decide.

I'll miss O'Hare for that story, but also because as a kid I was wowed by the fact that O'Hare was the busiest airport in America. I always wondered what that must be like, and then one day I moved to Chicago and went to O'Hare all the time. It seemed like a cool thing to me; it made me feel important, or that I had arrived somewhere. It's funny what we think is important.

Anyway, O'Hare really is a great airport. I'll miss catching cheap flights -- the kind that are always at the last gate at the end of the last terminal, about 10 miles from where you parked. And I'll miss that crazy underground tunnel with the neon, people movers, and piano music (a variation on the theme from Rhapsody in Blue, which United uses as a theme song). If a space age tunnel doesn't say big, important airport, I don't know what does.

Tue Mar 29 09:50:17 special lincoln edition:

I won't miss Lincoln Park. At all. It's the ritsy, yuppified neighborhood towards the lake and downtown from here. Parking is terrible, everything is expensive (especially rent), and I just don't fit in. Everything's too tall, costs too much money, and even if it didn't cost too much money I wouldn't want to go there! There are some nice stores, but nothing that I can't find somewhere else. I actually can't think of one thing in Lincoln Park (the neighborhood) that I will really miss. I know there are good things there (DePaul students especially can probably come up with a long list) but in my time here in Chicago I haven't stumbled across anything there I will really remember fondly.

I will miss Lincoln Square. It's the neighborhood I live in now. It's located around Western and Lawrence (The Western stop on the Brown Line) and has one of the coolest, psudo-european neighborhoods in the city with a quaint shopping street full of German boutiques and european delis (Meyers, Merz Apothecary). There's a great square with a fountain, a classy indoor/outdoor cafe on the square (Cafe Selmarie), a creative toy store (Timeless Toys), one of the best burrito joints ever (Garcia's), at least two independent coffee shops (The Grind and The Perfect Cup), a comics shop, at least 3 24-hour diners, a cheese shop (The Cheese Stands Alone), a movie theatre (The Davis), a used toys/collectible store (Quake Collectibles), a library, the Old Town School of Folk Music, tons of great restaurants... and much, much more. And to top it off, while it's got a "cool" vibe, it doesn't have the same kind of trendy gentrification vibe that other neighborhoods have. It also has a great statue of pre-beard Abraham Lincoln, sealing it's place as the best Lincoln-named neighborhood in Chicago.

Hat's off to you, Lincoln Square! (And rats off to you, Lincoln Park!)

(1) Wed Mar 30 12:37:59 coolness factor edition:

I'm super busy today so this will have to be a quick one.

I will miss Cabaret Metro (usually called just Metro or the Metro). It's one of the coolest places to see a show in Chicago, and almost all of my favorite concerts took place there, like Kings X, Damien Jurado, Low, Chris Whitley w/the rhythm section of Soul Coughing, Sunny Day Real Estate, and Barenaked Ladies (my first concert in Chicago in 1994. A lot of awesome and historic concerts that I didn't go to also happened there, like the last Smashing Pumpkins show, Dylan, the Stones, etc.). I don't know what exactly makes it so special, but it is.

I won't miss The Alley. The Alley is THE "Alternative Gear" shop in Chicago, and is just a little more than a half mile south of the Metro. It started out small but expanded into this gigantic business. It's not so much that they "sold out" that bothers me -- it's their terrible ads -- they say things like: "Shoes your mother would HATE!" Who goes and buys shoes with the express purpose of antagonizing your mother? Apparently the demographic that The Alley reaches out to. Talk about being a caricature of yourself. Either that or they're brilliantly and shamelessly self aware.

For that matter, I won't miss the whole Belmont/Clark neighborhood, with the exception of the Vic, Chicago Guitar Exchange and Pick Me Up Cafe. (All three of those aren't even right in the thick of things. For a second I thought I would have to list Stars Our Destination, a great sci-fi (and other) bookstore but they moved to Evanston and later closed.)

I won't miss the Army Navy Surplus Store (which now has about half a floor of very limited so-called "surplus" -- the rest is hip name brand streetwear). The used record stores are overpriced, the vast majority of the boutiques are really not my style and the vibe is just... very 1995 Meets Starbucks.

Thu Mar 31 15:07:06 still busier than a bee:

Harsh, but honest: I won't miss people asking for my help with computer jobs unrelated to my actual job. That's one new leaf I plan to turn over when we get to LA -- not getting sucked into outside work that only makes the actual work-day longer or less productive and usually just adds stress to my life and some money to my pocketbook. The money is nice, but time is money, and your life is only made of time.

I will miss having history and a ready-made community. I feel respected and appreciated and that's nice, if a little petty. But I also feel like I've grown into some bad habits here having so much independence and history; I'm looking forward to getting to start over in a few ways.

Gotta go fix some stuff.

Fri Apr 01 17:34:16 QAS vs. the bathroom stall doors in Caroline Hall:

This is a strange matchup today folks, but here it is anyway. Blame it on the rain.

I will miss Queen of All Saints Basilica. It is a beautiful basilica on the very northern edge of the city (near Cicero and Devon) in the Sauganash neighborhood. North Park used to have an annual Christmas concert there (a festival of lessons and carols) that was always really special, and baccalaureate has been held there ever since I've been around.

I sang there for three years as a paid musician, which was really good for me in so many ways.

First of all, I met a lot of amazing people. Secondly, I had never actually been to a mass until I started singing them at QAS. It was really a great experience for me to spend such a long time inside the Catholic church. As an "evangelical Protestant," it's easy to be really ignorant of the people, worship and theology of the Catholic Church, and I really valued and appreciated being a part of that community for such a long time. I didn't convert, but I definitely grew to a have a better understanding, appreciation, and respect for the Catholic church. My roommate at the time independently converted to Catholicism, and since we had been talking theology for many years by that time, my having a place inside the Catholic Church helped our conversations (for me at least) and definitely opened and influenced some of the spiritual questions I still find myself grappling with.

It also helped keep my singing and guitar chops in shape!

I will always think of that place, those people, and my experiences there very fondly.

I won't miss the men's room on the 3rd floor of Caroline Hall (where I work). The building was originally a women's dorm and the bathroom used to be twice as big, but one part was cut in half and turned into a kitchen. The space became cramped and so the stalls are so terribly ill-designed that you literally have to slide in next to the toilet to close the door. And the stalls are so old that you have to slam one of them to even get it closed enough to lock. (Naturally, the other door is really loose.)

One plus from the experience is that airplane restrooms now seem genuinely spacious to me.

Mon Apr 04 13:45:49 hanson hall versus my air conditioner:

I will really miss Hanson Hall at NPU. I had so many good memories, wrote so many songs in the practice rooms, etc. I also broke into that building late at night many times to play piano in the chapel. It's something I would never do now, but at the time it seemed like no big deal and some of my most enduring college memories entail playing those grand pianos the darkened chapel, with the lights from Foster Ave. rolling by.

It's also the site of some of my biggest college failures (freshman spring keyboard skills jury, anyone?). Basically, the most significant place on campus for me.

I won't miss the airconditioner in my office. It's about 20x30 inches and sounds like a refridgerator truck. We can't change the settings on it very well, so it's basically off or on. Plus, it's on my side of the divider, so my office gets to be freezing while Ken bakes on the other side (what does he bake, you ask? Cookies!) Ken rigged up an IBM server box as a little AC conduit. It looks ridiculous, but it works and that means that I freeze just a little less. It's terrible.

Tue Apr 05 15:07:33 more NPU memories:

I will miss my office -- I've really had a lot of leeway to put up pictures and have piles of weird equipment around which has been fun (hmm, maybe that's why I'm back in the corner of the storage room...) but seriously, it's been a pretty central hub of my life for the last six years. Looking around at the walls, the redvinegar posters, pictures of alh, memories. It's been nice to have a "space" that was my own. When I first started working here I didn't really think about why that was cool. But the older I've gotten and the more I've understood what other people's work environments are like, the more I've come to appreciate it. On the other hand, I've probably gone a little too crazy and filled it up with too much junk -- it's perpetually a disaster which does, as much as I hate to admit it, cut down on productivity and increase distractions.

Another thing about my office that I hate (and won't miss) is the terrible carpet in here. It is flat and gray and torn and dusty. It is so incredibly worn out it's really almost not there. I think the main reason we haven't repaced it is that it would just be such a huge pain in the butt... but seriously, it's awful. I realize that's not such a big thing to not miss, but I'm not feeling very creative today.

(1) Wed Apr 06 11:41:22 i'm on an NPU kick, sosumi[1].:

I am totally going to miss being on campus in the early morning. When I was an undergrad, I used to stay up until 4 AM pretty regularly... in fact, 4AM was kind of my defacto bedtime for about a decade. Anyway, back then it was playing Quake, or surfing the web, or who knows what; nothing all that productive, I'm sad to say. When I started working at NPU I pretty often spent all night long in the office working on some project or another. A little more productive, but I should have gotten a hold of myself the first time I considered putting a camping mat and pillow under my desk.

Anyway, I will always (hopefully) remember the early morning city sunrises with their purples and pinks and the birds starting to sing before the sun rose. Cool, early morning cities also smell surprisingly good. The birds starting to sing was always my signal that I had better get into bed or else. (Birdsong has never been so depressing.) This morning I was on campus around 5:45 to do some network upgrades, and it was just like one of those mornings, except the birds singing were encouraging. (alh complained this morning that a bird outside our window was "The loudest robin on the planet!" I had some kind of witty rejoinder but I can't remember it.)

[Haha... oh yeah. Our next door neighbor is a professional singer and she wakes us up pretty regularly with her warmups. I've had dreams where her warmups appear, specifically as a heckler in a crowd while I'm playing a show who won't stop making weird oohing noises. This morning I imitated a robin doing vocal exercises. Rimshot!]

I'm also going to miss being on campus when nobody else is around. I used to stay over many holidays as an RA because home was so far away. I used to love being the only person in the big, empty dorm, or wandering across campus not seeing another single person; especially during those Thanksgiving vacations. It was so crisp, and just for me.

I imagine that down the road whenever I come and visit, it will be when lots of people are around; who knows when or if I'll get to live those quiet Chicago mornings again?

Something I won't miss: bad city smells. I guess part of the reason I won't miss them is because I'll certainly experience them in LA. But as long as I'm talking, I just hate it when you're walking along and something smells rotten, or burning, or ozoney, or whatever. In the country, bad smells are usually just that -- bad smells. In the city, bad smells usually mean carcinogens or destruction, which makes me hold my breath as long as I can, but of course, you can't hold it forever. So then you start breathing it in, and at some point you think (or I think, anyway), who cares, I'm breathing this stuff all the time anyway. This just adds to my already developed sense of fatalism -- "I have to breathe, right? I might as well stroll out on to Foster Avenue in front of this oncoming car."

Coming up: Crossing Foster Avenue -- will I miss it, or won't I?

[1] http://www.boingboing.net/2005/03/24/early_apple_sound_de.html

Finally, did you know that the Red-breasted Robin's latin name is "turdus migratorius"? I hate to think of the teasing they have to endure at Bird School. So the next time a robin wakes you up at 5:45, cut him a little slack.

Thu Apr 07 13:22:46 lake michigan / k-mart at lincoln and mccormick:

I won't miss the old Kmart that used to be at Lincoln and McCormick in Chicago (right by Lincolnwood). It was, bar none, the worst retail experience I have ever had -- in fact, it's probably 3 of the top 5 worst retail experiences I've ever had. I hated that store, but yet I always gave in to the potential convenience of it's location and went there when I needed something "really quick." Except nothing there ever happened really quick... nothing except me getting furious, that is.

Once when alh and I were there (shortly after they opened the BigK Grocery part of the Kmart) we were picking up some groceries because it was close, or we needed something else, I can't remember. Anyway, while we were walking up and down the warehouse-like aisles we passed the cooler and there was a kid standing in front of several opened cartons of eggs. Many had their tops smashed in and he was dipping his fingers in the eggs and licking them.

Then there was the time I was looking at picture frames and there, next to the shadowboxes, was a loaded baby diaper all taped up and left on the shelf.

I could never figure out the layout of the store, which was exacerbated by the fact that they always had the aisles full of pallets of merchandise. I think it was supposed to be tempting but it was only annoying. The merchandise on the shelves was another story -- no organization, stuff on the floors, cats and dogs living together... seriously, it was so bad.

To top it off, the lines were always super long and the help always seemed like it was their first day, which honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if it was. Basically the store was a total disaster. They should have made tons of money -- the location was perfect... but whoever managed the store didn't do a very good job. And then Kmart filed for bankruptcy.

I hated it, yet I always seemed to give in... "this time, it will be fine," I'd tell myself. "I'll just get in and out real quick." Never again. Not only will I be living 2000 miles away, but now there's a Home Depot there instead.

I will miss Lake Michigan. It's no Lake Superior, don't get me wrong. But it's pretty cool. I know that the Pacific Ocean is vastly larger and the cradle of life and blah blah, but the great lakes are pretty... great. I have lots of great memories of running and walking and hanging out down by the lake. I used to dislike (as being too oceany) but now have even really have grown to love the blue-green color of the water. I prefer the stark blue clarity of Lake Superior (of course), but the horizontality of Michigan always reminded me of home. (Except that at home the lake is always north... here it's always east.)

I like using the slang "glass of Michigan" instead of water; it makes me feel cool. (It doesn't take much.)

I also like the "third coast" idiom -- that there's the East and West Coasts, but then we're on the Third Coast... kind of like the Second^H^H^H^H Third City thing. Actually, I guess those "ranking the cities" thing is kind of like an overgrown small-town Rhubarb Capital Of The World kind of thing, but if you take it more in an endearing sense and less as a posturing thing it's nicer. Anyway.

Fri Apr 08 18:32:51 the hump / crossing foster:

You guessed it. I'm not going to miss crossing Foster Ave.

I am however going to miss long afternoons in the sun on the hump. There's such a good vibe on campus when people finally come out of their winter shells.

Sun Apr 10 01:15:49 the skinny on asparagus pee:

methanethiol

Mon Apr 11 19:27:35 magnolia trees / meigs field:

I will miss the magnolia trees blooming in the springtime; I'll miss spring in Chicago in general -- it's a welcome and wonderful change after the usual obnoxious winters.

I won't miss Meigs Field. I've never flew from there and I like the idea of it as a city park. As many of you know, Mayor (Generalissimo) Daley closed it in the middle of the night by executive order after a long and protracted battle over it. He wanted a city park. The proprietors wanted to keep the ritsy, wealthy-only downtown airstrip. Daley cited possible terrorist action and sent in backhoes and dug big Xs in the tarmac -- in the middle of the night -- and that pretty much put the kabosh on discussion. As you know, I've already mentioned that I will miss Mayor Daley, even though philosophically I appreciate democracy.

Tue Apr 12 11:20:56 i love chicago, i love chicago not:

I will miss the Lincoln Recreation Center, a.k.a. Lincoln Lanes, a.k.a The Bowling Alley Above The Ace Hardware. Yeah, you heard me right. In Lincoln Square, there's a bolwing alley above the Ace Hardware. It's totally retro and kind of threadbare, but totally cool nonetheless. The above review says, "Be prepared to dodge the locals." Yeah buddy, that's me.

I won't miss Guitar Center in Chicago. It's another one of those things that I don't have to miss because I'll have it in LA, but still, I won't miss it. I'm not sure what it means that I'm a musician but I hate most music stores. Mom and Pop ones are almost always better than Guitar Center obviously... but I usually don't really like them, either.

Wed Apr 13 13:45:18 band posters on campus:

I will really miss seeing our band posters up around campus. I haven't written much about redvinegar here because I am not sure what to say... there is so much to be said... but it's also sort of it's own thing independent of Chicago. One thing I have always been really proud of in this band is the artwork and graphics that we've put together, which have (mostly) been a joint effort between myself and Phil (with Phil taking the considerably larger part). This includes the website and the record artwork. Anyway, we have made some great posters over the years, and it's usually been my job to put them up around campus.... and I won't miss that job.

I'm not sure why I don't like it. I have some strange personality quirks. On the one hand, I love being distracted -- I practically majored in procrastination and work's major struggle for me is staying on task. On the other hand, I hate interruptions and things which are not necessarily that big of a deal take on these huge weights in my mind. Getting up and walking all over campus taping up posters is one of those things that always feels like an interruption to me, and always takes longer than you think. And so time flies on.

Along with that, I always feel like I'm doing something wrong. And in reality, I am. Our posters are never approved, because we're not an official campus organization (or sponsored by one). So while I put them up, I also realize that anyone can (and probably will) take them down. Plus, I'm 10 years older than some of the students on campus -- I'm this old guy wandering around taping up posters... when I was a college freshman, I didn't get what it meant to be in a band, and seeing some almost-30 year old guy wandering around putting up posters for his band would have made me immediately skeptical, as though that guy should get a life, or something. I don't know. I'm not saying I'm proud of that -- but it's true. Maybe I wouldn't have though that a 28 year old was that old... I don't know. Captain was 24 and he seemed very old, comparatively. On top of all that, I'm an employee of the university. That makes things more ok in some ways; I'm a part of the community. But the older I get and the more serious about my job I get, the less I like blurring those boundaries.

But what I *am* going to miss is seeing the posters up around campus. There's something about seeing your poster up there with everything else, or peeking out from the side of a lamp post, or stuck on a window 2 weeks after the show is over. I'm especially proud of the current poster, which draws on some artwork I did for a conceived webcomic called New Federalia. Phil always really liked the artwork I did, and we got some help from our friend mikeo' with the layout for the poster version. (Incidentally, mikeo' did the custom artwork for the final show poster.) I really like it.

Anyway, walking around, seeing those posters up makes me feel like I'm really doing something, producing something in life, even if it is something small and appreciated by a small amount of people. I have a big complex about doing something "important" in life, which generally translates in my mind into "something that a lot of people really like," which ultimately is a really selfish way about evaluating the importance or relative value of your life... yet I do it. I am a sucker for approval and praise. Seeing posters up, no matter how "small change" or "big fish in a small pond" it may be, still rubs that phrenological spot on my brain. I'll miss that.

I'll probably miss it because I won't have time (or a band for) to put up posters, but hopefully I'll miss that because I'll get over the idea that to live an important life you have to do something heroic or widely appreciated.

Thu Apr 14 15:41:21 driving home / legacy:

I will really miss driving home from Chicago. It was just the right distance to be a real trip, but not so far that I couldn't do it very often. Plus, I think it's a beautiful drive that grows more rural and more familiar to me the closer I get to home. Once I get past Eau Claire and I'm sailing through those woods alone, at night, it really is a sort of magnetic feeling. LA is a little too far away for that to work, and flying into Duluth is expensive. Getting home will become something much longed for and probably not that often attained. That bothers me, especially as my family only grows older.

One thing I won't miss around here is the legacy I've left behind. I don't mean about being in a band or plays or personal relationships or whatever other footprint you leave behind as a visible person on a small college campus; I mean the trainwrecks and failures. Last night and today I spent a substantial amount of time organizing my files and personal stuff as I prepare to leave, and let me just say that the vast majority of my academic work in college was embarassing. Sometimes just because I was an undergrad student who was hasty, but more than that... it was really embarassingly bad and neglected. I did my homework as fast as possible so I could get to all those other things, being in a band, writing songs, making web pages, whatever. "Jack of all trades, master of none," as my piano teacher once said.

Nowadays I find myself really trying to pare things down to the minimum; the things that I really want to work on. In my class (Calculus II) I am really trying to put in the time that I need to, but that pushes everything else aside. "Ah ha," I think... so this is how I had all the time to do other things when I was a student before. Well, I can't handle that anymore. If you're going to do something, you might as well do it well.

I couldn't bring myself to delete the files; but I won't miss the way reading them made me feel.

(1) Fri Apr 15 12:13:19 special viking cafe issue:

I won't miss the old viking cafe (our staff/commuter foodservice cafe) -- the new one is superior in practically all ways. The prices are worse, but I guess that's to be expected. It's kind of like a Panerabucks (part Panera, park Starbucks). Anyway, they have these great panini sandwiches and stuff, which beats the old "hot lunch" type meals they used to sell, and they still have the "perpetual pot of chili" which is old taco "meat" and spaghetti sauce and expired ketchup and who knows what, but it's good. A whole sandwhich is $4.29 -- BUT -- half a sandwich and a cup of soup or chili is $3.29! What a deal! And I get my mystery chili. I'm going to miss that.

I'm not going to miss the half warmed over canned vegetables they used to serve with the hot lunch. Vegetables out of a metal can are almost always a bad idea.

Sun Apr 17 15:27:23 redvinegar on 93 WXRT:

Tonight redvinegar will be on Local Anesthetic on 93.1 WXRT. For those of you who don't know, Local Anesthetic is a short local rock show on (what I think is) the coolest station in Chicago. They've chosen to play something from our record. Tune in -- on the air or on the web. Thanks to Richard Milne and XRT for playing us.

(1) Mon Apr 18 13:49:14 my old laptop vs. ann sather cinnamon rolls:

I will really miss going to Ann Sather for cinnamon rolls and coffee on Saturday moning. Their cinnamon rolls are really one of the greatest foodstuffs on the planet, imho. Two big hot cinnamon rolls with tasty frosting slathered on top. There's not much to say other than it's an incredible edible. If you live in Chicago and you have never had Ann Sather's cinnamon rolls, now is the time. (With locations in Andersonville and on Belmont.)

I won't miss my old work laptop. I had a Dell D600 through work that is totally nice, but lacking in a few regards, specifically it just doesn't seem that well constructed (the hard drive also makes odd, repeptive clicking noises), and there is no support in Linux for the Broadcom wireless chipset because Broadcom won't release the specs.

Dell, Broadcom: I specifically *did not even CONSIDER* buying your product because of a lack of support in Linux (and the construction issues, Dell). It is time to wake up and smell the coffee. Instead, I bought an IBM T-43 with Intel wireless built in, which has Linux support, and a nicer screen and video than the D600, and it seems to be put together very well. If you're considering buying an IBM laptop, I have a good sales rep to send you to.

Update: The IBM T-43 has a Broadcom 10/100/1000 NIC (NetXTreme) which is disappointing. It may be possible to get a different one; I'm not sure if it's built in, or if it's Mini-PCI or something. Either way, there is Linux support for it, and it appears to be source-based (not a binary driver from Broadcom). If anyone knows more about this I'm interested.

Tue Apr 19 17:32:08 macdo / mavis staples:

I will miss, literally, a concert that is being put together in the fall at NPU with Mavis Staples; it's part of the theme for North Park's year (I'm not sure what it is, but for example this year's theme was, "What is Justice?") and the concert's title is something about Singing the Gospel in a Foreign Land. I'm not sure if it's literally about singing overseas (or here, since this land is "foreign" to the Biblical Gospels), or if it is (as I suspect) about singing Gospel music in the "secular" world. Sounds pretty cool to me. Lately I can't stop listening to The Weight with the Band and the Staples Singers from their final concert (the movie of which is called The Last Waltz).

I won't miss the McDonald's at Foster and Kedzie... I haven't compared it to many in the city, but it is consistently worse than the ones I grew up going to. I feel like the best McDonald's are in the towns where they are just large enough to have one, but no larger. Big city McDonald's just seem to get dragged down into mediocrity, wheras I think in a smaller town, they still feel like it's kind of a big deal to have a McDonald's, and there's actually some quality and pride that goes into the process... at least where there is any room in the process for quality and pride, that is.

Just for the record, it's been months since I've eaten in any McD's, not just the one in my neighborhood.

Wed Apr 20 16:57:17 my bosses:

I will really miss working with and for my bosses. They are both really great guys. Today I had a project to work on with S.C., and it made me remember what a great guy he is, and it made me think of the "early days" when we would work more directly with each other. My other boss, J.L., is also really great -- much more a friend than a boss -- but that is really the attitude in this office. Sometimes it is abused, I think, and as much as I hate to admit it, I am someone who responds well to deadlines and pressure, and is sometimes too relaxed when those things are absent. But typically everyone here started young and grew through their unmotivated phase and grew into being integral parts of the team. I'll really miss them.

I can't think of anything today that I won't miss. I could force something out, but that's not the point of this.

Thu Apr 21 15:23:58 random journeys around campus / spyware:

I'm going to miss random journeys around campus to work on tickets. It's great to have a job where you're not trapped in a cubicle all day. In fact, right now I'm in the back room of NPU's Postal Center, because they have a Pitney Bowes computer that is loaded with Spyware (That's not Pitney Bowes fault, but they don't do anything to help, either). I brought my laptop to do research on which processes are spyware, etc., and now I'm making my post for the day.

I'm not going to miss cleaning Spyware off computers. I don't really have to do it that often anymore, so it's actually a good refresher in Windows, but seriously, if I never had to do it again, I would rejoice.

(1) Fri Apr 22 11:39:01 april showers, may flowers / I-90:

I'm gonna miss spring in Chicago, specifically the April showers. It rains here a lot in April, which usually means that the North Branch almost floods. It was one of those markings of the passage of time every year when the North Branch would push it's banks; you knew that soon you too, would overflow the banks of NPU and go somewhere else for a while. (That last sentence was a perfect example of the wordy crap I wrote for several years in the paper here.)

That, in combination with the nice spring weather, the magnolia trees, girls wearing tank tops, etc. has often inspired people to new feats of lunacy with regards to the North Branch. My freshman year, a guy named Andy something (I can't remember his last name... sorry man!) from Park Falls was given something like $25 which was collected from a number of "investors" to do the "Nestea Plunge" off the high railing of the bridge into the North Branch. He went straight to the bottom like a rock and came out of the river about a block downstream, quite a bit worse for wear, but thankfully, not dead.

This is what spring does to the heart of a man.

I'm starting to struggle to come up with obvious things that I actively dislike about Chicago, so this may seem like a stretch, but I'm not going to miss I-90. I'm an I-94 driver myself; I-90 is always full of traffic and (it seems) construction; you always have to go by O'Hare which is usually backed up, and there's something like 7 tolls instead of 2 on 94 (although it is not cheaper either way). I-90 is technically about 20 miles shorter if you're going to Madison, but I hate it so much I never drive it unless I absolutely have to.

Mon Apr 25 13:30:52 amvets / fresh air:

I'm going to miss Amvets (now known as Village Discount Shopping Centers) -- one of the best thrift store chains ever. I'm also going to miss the Brown Elephant and the Right Place in Andersonville... thrift stores are great. I've recently become especially enamored with how cheaply you can get vinyl records at thrift stores -- usually only $1.00 a disk. If you already have a record player, that's an awfully cheap way to get a lot of good music.

I won't miss the lack of truly fresh air here... I won't miss it in LA either. But I'm really looking forward to some good northern air this summer.

Tue Apr 26 15:32:03 sick today:

I'm going to miss the times that Wm. and I were both sick... the TheraFlu flowed like wine.

I'm not going to miss this cold. I had better be healthy by saturday!

Wed Apr 27 09:57:45 still sick; theraflu ineffective:

I'll miss taking the afternoon off and going to Cubs games.

I still won't miss this cold.

Thu Apr 28 13:44:32 foster ave. / jerk drivers:

I'll miss driving on Foster avenue... after 11 years it is quite the beaten path in my mind. It deserves a real writeup, but things are too busy right now with the show coming up.

I won't miss drivers who drive up in the parking lane and get blocked by a park car, and then weasel in to the line and look at you as though you'd be doing them a big favor to let them in. Ususally I just let them go, but what I'd really like to do is give them a fat thumbs-down and not let them in. I don't need to flip them the bird, but I think maybe the thumbs-down sends the appropriate message. Who am I kidding, that's not my style.

Anyway, back to work. Still healing from the cold. Head full of snot.

Fri Apr 29 11:10:08 redvinegar:

I'm going to miss redvinegar. Come see our last show tomorrow.

Mon May 02 16:53:52 being my own roadie / friends:

I won't miss packing up and carrying all my gear home at 3 or 4 in the morning after a show.

Thanks to everyone who came out for redvinegar's last show -- it was a great success and I'm going to miss all of you who regularly came out. Some of you I know I will see again, but some of you I never see except at rv shows, which is really weird; for example, I see T. McGinnis probably 10 times a year -- but only at rv shows. I don't know when I'll see him next. I just hope that everyone truly understands that if it weren't for your support of the band, we really wouldn't and couldn't have continued doing what we did.

Thank you.

Tue May 03 23:21:25 halo/quake fest:

I'll miss game fests at wm's place.

Thu May 05 09:59:39 too busy...:

I'm too busy to post for now... maybe Friday, maybe next week...

Fri May 06 12:25:54 calculus:

I will miss my calculus class. Professor Alice Iverson was really great. She is a legendary teacher here at North Park -- she is in her 80s and has taught for many, many decades here. Not only has she taught for such a long time, but she's very interested in using computers and modern technology like Mathematica to teach class and work problems that otherwise would be too complicated. I think that's really cool.

I won't miss the long hours of working at it in lieu of other things... but the class was fun and it was a good way to not only knock off some math credits but also get my feet wet in a more laid back environment. And, I finally feel like I atoned somewhat for all my slacking in high school math courses. Let's hear it for As in math!

Thanks.

Thu May 12 11:19:21 slacking:

Ken pointed out that I've been slacking on this project; he points out that I was better at keeping up with it when I had Calculus... it's true. I'm still decomressing from being in class almost every day of the week, and even a short entry (which aren't as cool as the longer ones) still takes 10-20 minutes to write. My life is way too busy even now, and so I've been trying to avoid extra committments. Plus, I've been having a hard time coming up with things that I won't miss about Chicago.

Just now I've sat here for 5 minutes trying to come up with something I won't miss.

I won't miss parking tickets in Chicago. I don't know how it works in other cities, but I think that in Chicago they clean the streets only because they make a profit doing it. Cleaning the streets gives jobs to the sweepers and the sign putter-uppers, and all the suckers who don't see the signs or forget have to pay big bucks to the city. It's a racket.

I will miss so many people it's sick. Part of me wants to try and write a little bit about each person that I'll miss, but I know if I do that I will forget or leave out people and that's maybe worse than not writing about anybody.

One person I will miss is Joe Lill, the band/jazz/quintet/many other hats guy at NPU. He has definitely been my "father figure" at North Park through my musical career, which has extended into my work career thanks to my parents making me learn the Tuba in 6th grade. Joe is an amazing teacher, role model, musician and model Chicagoan, and frankly I can't imagine the NPU School of Music, my time as a student, or the city of Chicago without him. Thanks, Joe.

Fri May 13 08:40:37 charcoal delights / :

I will miss Charcoal Delights, although I haven't been a regular patron there since I was a student. I used to always go there and get their cheeseburger special on Sunday nights when ARA was closed. For those of you who don't know, Charcoal Delights is a small fast food chain in the Chicago area that actually uses a charcoal pit for grilling it's burgers and stuff. So it's like what Burger King pretends it does, but only for real. And the food is really great.

Incidentally, everyone around here calls it "The Pit," because their old sign (or maybe the old name of the chain) said something like, "Charcoal Pit." When I was a fresh freshman, someone mentioned (I think it was Greg, because he'd been living here for a while) that we should go to the "Pit," and I was fearfully expecting some total greasy urban dump... you know, the kind of place I ended up frequenting for most of my college career.

People always talk (people being Lukas, I guess) about the Charcoal Chicken Delights sandwhich, which I had never had. It's a breaded and fried chicken breast on a bun with lettuce, tomato, mayo, and somewhat unexpectedly, american cheese. Pretty darn tasty, and I think the breading and the american cheese are the key ingredients. But what tops it all off is that the specials at Charcoal Delights all come with a drink, which includes shakes if you want -- and their shakes are awesome. So yesterday I had what was my first and is probably my last Charcoal Chicken Delight. A+. If you're ever in the 'hood, you need to go there.

In lieu of something I won't miss (I can't think of anything good right now), here's something else I will miss:

Superdawg!

Mon May 16 11:23:56 barry the rich homeless man:

I'm going to miss Barry, one of our neighborhood's homeless. My friends here call him "the rich homeless man" because he has a source of income, never asks for money, and is reluctant to take anything even if freely offered. I remember once he was counting change at McDonalds for a cup of coffee and he was short a dime or a nickel and I practically had to force him to take it -- something that I would do for any friend. When he bums smokes from you, you are certain to get a fresh pack from him some time down the road (or so I'm told).

Barry is a pretty eccentric guy -- he used to have a dog until he was stolen, and his gait, clothes, and hair are always pretty creative. I understand that he reads quite a bit at the library, and he often paints while sitting on park benches along Foster Ave. (Wm. has one of his paintings, a gift from Barry). He goes to rock shows every once in a while, taking Wm. out for pizza and a punk show at Metro several years ago. He takes cross country trips when the urge strikes and Wm. has gotten post cards from him from Maine and Los Angeles, where Barry often winters. He owned an ice cream and philosophical book store in the neighborhood a long time ago... at least that's what he says. He really likes the Rolling Stones and he's almost always up for a chat.

I'm not sure where he lives now, but he lived for years in a shack he built behind the Marine base along the canal, which the city would come and tear down periodically. We're pretty sure he was a vet and that the Marines give him some support, but that he probably has either a military pension or some kind of disability check coming in. I know that he does odd jobs for people, too.

Anyway, Barry is a fixture in this neighborhood and I count him as some kind of a friend (albeit a unique friendship). I hope only the best for him and I hope he is happy.

Nothing to not miss today.

Wed May 18 08:40:59 reggie, the mayor of giddings:

There is a cat in my neighborhood -- Reggie -- and he clearly owns the street. Our next door neighbors refer to him as The Mayor of Giddings in a very sort of Emperor Norton kind of way and I think it totally fits. We see him everywhere, and everyone seems to know his name. Kids, old people, whoever. He's seriously, probably the best known individual sentient being in the neighborhood.

Last week, as I was leaving my apartment to go to work, some people down the street were also leaving, and one of the girls said, "I wonder if Reggie will be out this morning?" Last night, as Anna was coming home from the train some boys were playing ball in the cul du sac (under the "no ball playing" sign) and were calling to Reggie to come (probably for some friendly attention), but Reggie had his own plans, as any good Mayor does... maybe he was planning to shut down an airport in the middle of the night... anyway, Alh was walking behind Reggie and after an askance glance, Reggie paid her no mind.

Some guys on a stoop were talking to each other, and one says, "Man, that cat just cracks me up."

Too true. I'll miss him.

Thu May 19 15:49:10 stupid closet:

I won't miss the closet under the stairs in our current apartment. We love our apartment... I'm really going to miss our apartment and our neighborhood -- but the closet under the stairs (where the down-stairs to the basement used to be before it was boarded up and turned into a closet), while large, is really a wedge shaped thing where you can only get out the last thing you put in, which, when you think about it, is really the crux of the whole closet problem.

Sat May 28 11:38:24 lutz cafe:

alh had her last day of work yesterday.

Last night, partly to celebrate, partly just because, we went to Bistro Campagne on Lincoln between Wilson and Sunnyside -- it's a cool French cuisine restaurant -- and pretty affordable, considering. I don't think anything on the menu was over $20 (except wine). Great food.

This morning, we went to Lutz Cafe which is on Montrose, just west of Western. It's in a storefront that you would probably just drive by if you didn't know better... but locals know better. Their pastries all look absolutely incredible, and people in the know order their cakes and such from them, but what alh and I have fallen in love with is their little cafe, especially the garden in the back. The eggs benedict are great, and they serve coffee in little pots on a tray which alh says is how they do it in Austria (and other places, I'm sure), and they give you a couple little sweet rolls while you wait... anyway, it's really cool and I'll miss it.

On the way home, we saw Reggie crossing from Giddings to the square today to hang out on the lamp pedestal. alh said, "He's everywhere! He's the 'Cat Ubiquitous!'"

Wed Jun 08 08:37:22 today is my last day:

It's the end of an 11-year odyssey for me. I don't know what else to say, other than that most of it was absolutely great. NPU isn't a perfect place -- no place is -- but it was the right place for me.

Two nights ago, I had a dream that I had graduated and moved off campus, but never actually cleaned out my dorm room in Burgh hall -- it was still locked up. I had to go clean it out to leave. When I opened he door, there was all my dorm room junk -- the loft, the desk, my old 13-inch monitor, the homemade burgh hall desks. Everything was covered in dust and looked about 6 years forgotten.

Somehow, my houseplants were all still alive, and I specifically remember there being a cool bonsai tree in there (although I didn't do bonsai in college). I also had a fish tank with all these alien-looking animals (something else that wasn't true to life). One type of animals were "Blood Minnows," that were these fish, but they looked almost more like mottled leeches. But there were also leeches, and some kind of crabby-spider type thing. Anyway, they miraculously survived because one of the houseplants bore fruit which dropped into the tank and the animals ate the fruit, and then they also ate each other -- but had reached an equilibrium within their little ecosystem.

Anyway... it was a weird dream. I told alhp about it last night, and she said, "awwww.... you had a 'leaving north park dream'" In telling it now, if I were to interpret it, I would say that it was about finally leaving, physically and maybe psychologically, the last vestiges of still being in college, still being in that kind of "undergraduate" mentality.

Anyway, I have a <b>lot</b> to get done today, so I better get crackin'.

I will miss: working for NPU and my memories of burgh hall.

I won't miss: blood minnows. yuck.

Thanks, North Park.

Wed Aug 10 02:26:04 the eagle has landed:

Well, here we are in beautiful Los Angeles. Well, Pacific Palisades, really. We're living, yes, on Sunset Boulevard, which to non LA people sounds really funny and ridiculous (or maybe cool), but to LA people it just sounds normal. Saying that you live on Sunset in LA is like someone in Chicago saying that you live on Western Avenue. In Northern California (which split from Southern California after Emporer Norton I's death) saying that you live on Sunset Boulevard is slang for saying that you have infectious boils.

Incidentally, there is some argument as to what is actually the longest street in the world. Canada claims Yonge Street in Toronto to be the longest (at 1900km) and Guinness agrees, however this depends if you consider Yonge Street to be synonymous with Canada's Highway 11. If Settlers of Catan has taught me anything, it's that The Longest Road is an important asset. I have to believe that there's somewhere in America where I-80, or I-90, or US Hwy 2 is named "Bob Johnson Way" or something like that and so we can steal that crown jewel from Canada's, um... crown... jewels. But that said, Russia probably has Tchaikovsky Way from Moscow to the Bering Strait. which would beat us, so let's just let Canada have it.

Anyway, I digress. Yonge Street may be the longest consistently named roadway in the world (about 99km in Ontario before Highway 11 starts), but Western Avenue in Chicago is a continuous, arrow straight city street that stretches 23.5 miles (37.8 kilometers) within one city's limits. Canadians can't even hope to have that kind of city planning technology.

(3) Wed Aug 10 14:38:03 the most dangerous game:

Went running in Topanga State Park (via Temescal Gateway Park) on the trail between Temescal and Will Rogers State Park with alhp. Pretty great trail, although I am having a hard time getting used to the dominant vegetation being scrub brush and cacti. I don't think I'm going to miss that when we finally leave.

M*A*S*H* was filmed in the Santa Monica mountains, and I have a feeling that I saw the mountains in the opening credits today -- or at least ones that looked so much like them that for the whole run (or run/walk since I'm so out of shape) I had the M*A*S*H* theme song stuck in my head.

Did you know: The M*A*S*H* theme song is titled "Suicide is Painless" and was written by director Robert Altman's son? The iMDB says that Mike Altman made more money off the royalties to that song than his dad made for directing the movie!

Anyway, it was driving me crazy. When I have a song stuck in my head while running, the pace of the song slips into rhythm with my breathing (which is in rhythm with my footsteps) and it makes me start to feel really claustrophobic. I tried my sister's tactic of singing "Hey, Jude" whenever she has something stuck in her head -- it works for me. The worst thing that could happen is that you don't get the first song out of your head. And the second worst thing that could happen is that you get "Hey, Jude" stuck in your head which, for me, isn't much of a punishment. That song is so long, there's tons to appreciate. There are the regular verses, then there's the bridge, then there's the na na na part, and then there's the part at the end (my personal favorite) where Paul sounds like he's being electrocuted whilst trying to sing the lyrics.

Did you know: if you're attacked by a mountain lion, you're supposed to fight back? The theory goes that mountain lions can't afford to be injured predators and so would rather let a meal go than get injured in a fight. Before fighting back though, you're supposed to be loud, look big, bare your teeth, throw stuff, pray, etc., and hope you don't have to remember your karate.

In Chicago, the most dangerous animal you might come into contact with is some random rabid mammal, or perhaps a pit bull or something. In LA however, the most dangerous animal you might come into contact with is a real live mountain lion. The kind with sharp fangs and claws whose M.O. is to leap on your back and sever your spinal cord as you run by. This freaks us out. Now, truth be told, no one has been killed in our area in 110 years and we're much more likely to be killed crossing the street -- but those cats are out there, and I have to say that I think I probably look pretty tasty.

Thu Aug 11 19:57:12 the DMV in Santa Monica:

Went to the DMV today, without an appointment, and got both drivers licenses and both cars registered in CA. Not too shabby. The key was getting our number taken *before* we had to wait in line outside to get the cars VIN numbers inspected by a certified car VIN reader person. Then once we got back inside, we only had to wait about 20 minutes to see one person who handled everything for us. It was great to see one person who was drivers license, plates, cashier, judge, jury, and executioner all in one. So now we're really officially residents.

I had to run around the block to find an ATM since they didn't take credit cards (although the pamphlet with the Governator's picture in it said he made it easier to use credit cards at the DMV... not sure how.

Anyway, it worked out fine, and the lady who helped us was super awesome.

So, our last feature here at bread and cheese was the "will miss/won't miss" list. I think the new feature will be "That's Not How They Do It In Chicago!"

That's Not How They Do It In Chicago #1:

In Chicago, politican's names and faces are plastered everywhere. When you go to the DMV, you see Jesse White. When you go to the park, you see the commissioner's name. Richard M. Daley's name is everywhere. In LA, you see celebrities' faces and names instead. Restaurants, billboards, in your grocery store, and yes, even the DMV. I think that Arnold is the center of this Venn diagram -- he is both celebrity and politician.

Wed Sep 07 17:47:57 bruschalsa:

In a culinary brainstorm that could only be called Richardsonian, Peter A. H. Peterson thought, why not combine the great taste of salsa with the great taste (and similar ingredients) of bruschetta? You could call it Bruschalsa™ and die penniless. Or you could call it Salsetta™ and make millions instead!

I've tried twice now to implement and improve Salsetta (or you might unimaginatively call it "Spicy Bruschetta"). The first effort was a C-... edible, but not actually better than (or even as good as) either salsa or bruschetta alone. I worked from two recipes -- one for bruschetta and one for salsa -- and it turned out gross. Too oily, the bruschetta recipe called for balsamic vinegar (a mistake, IMHO), etc. It failed because I had never even tried to make either foodstuff.

The second time around I was more prepared, and also less ambitious. I bought some fresh Pico de Gallo from the grocery store, to which I added minced garlic and chopped fresh basil. It's pretty good! The basil has toned down after a night of mingling in the fridge. I think it is more successful as a "spicy bruschetta" than as a "basiley salsa." I'm just not sure if basil is good in salsa, or if it's just a distraction. Anyway, it's an interesting thing to play with. I think the overnight sitting in the fridge definitely helps.

Wed Sep 07 18:45:58 activities:

I finally found out what I can do with all my free time.

Fri Sep 09 12:16:14 Now I know my E-S-I's, let's go out and eat some fries!:

So, as I was sitting in class last night, I had a question. "Why is the alphabet we know sorted in 'abc' order? Or why is the (English) alphabetic order 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz'? I figured that it must have something to do with usage; a is very common, x,y, and z are not that common. Clearly though, it is not a strict order by usage or commonality. I thought, why don't we learn the alphabet in order of usage? It would certainly be interesting to see. Then I figured that it must be on the Internet somewhere, or if it wasn't, it would be a pretty easy program to write.

Well, I couldn't find the answer on the 'net, so I wrote a quick Perl script to count the letters in a list of words. I used the Enable2K list, which is a "Official Scrabble Player's Dictionary"-like list of words. It's good for this purpose because it doesn't contain things like, "dog, dogs, and dogs'" which lists purposed towards spell checking often do -- it contains each word once and let's you haggle about suffixes.

On closer inspection, usage really has nothing to do with the alphabetic order, and there were even a few surprises... here it is:

e s i a r n t o l c d u p m g h b y f v k w z x q j

I knew that e, s, i, a, r, n, and t would be way up there. Anyone who watched Wheel of Fortune knows that -- "RSTLN and E", right? But there were some surprises (for me). I didn't realize that m would be in the middle, and I certainly wouldn't have thought of b as being less common than m. I really wouldn't have guessed that j was less common than q.

Here is the software I wrote. It allows you to interchange or add lists easily... but be careful what lists you use.

A-ha! Just now, by searching for "the least common letter in english" I found a more scholarly (and slightly different) version of this information. Their list is:

e a r i o t n s l c u d p m h g b f y w k v x z j q (ask oxford)

e s i a r n t o l c d u p m g h b y f v k w z x q j (tastytronic)

Discuss.

(3) Fri Sep 16 01:40:11 food is expensive -- and other random thoughts:

I went to Quizno's tonight to get a regular sub combo and the total was $8.85 by the time it was done. Is that normal, people? I might as well eat out at a real restaurant if a Quizno's sub is going to set me back 10 bucks.

My Computer Architecture class is really interesting, although it is (understandably) a huge nerd-fest. I'm just one of the nerds, don't get me wrong... but wow. Nerds of all stripes.

Played Halo 2 with some friends in Chicago the other night... the Internet is great.

I also have a line on a job which is pretty exciting -- I'm really looking forward to seeing how this stuff pans out. I have enjoyed having a little "vacation" (or, as my mom said this summer, "You're not on vacation, you're *unemployed*!" -- hi mom!), but I'm just about ready to be back in the saddle doing something constructive and I've just about worked through the pile of "things I told people I would do but never got around to." I need a job so that pile can start growing again and I can get stressed out about it. Just kidding.

I have been really good at trusting God lately -- I feel like that's a major theme in my life; trusting that God will put me (and alhp) where we need to be, and give us the things we need to be there, if we are open to his leading. But I feel like, in being so trusting, I have let other areas of my spiritual life, like general prayer, or study, or just "quiet time" really fall by the wayside and I've been starting to feel a little needy in that regard. I haven't really talked about religion/faith much in this venue, but I'm a religious person and there's no point in hiding that here.

What else has been noteworthy? I'm sure a lot, but I guess that's it for now.

(1) Mon Sep 19 08:05:34 PST monday, monday la laaaa la la la laa:

Had a great weekend. Friday night we stayed in. We started the evening by going for a long run in the Santa Monica mountains. There are so many different trails and ways to get on them that it's hard to get bored. There are also mountain lions, and they help you stay not bored as well. Also helping you is your huffing and puffing as you run straight up for 30 minutes. But I'm a wuss. Then we went to the Reel Inn on PCH (very close by)_for fish. They're a fresh fish restaurant where you tell them at the counter what you want and then they grill it and give it to you... like a cross between fast food and red lobster or something. Fans or owners of the Reel Inn would probably be mortified by the comparison but I promise I mean that in a good way (and I recognize that it's a poor description). It's also a lot like the Southern California Fish Market version of Moody's Pub from Chicago. Really chill atmosphere, super good food, not too expensive, considering.

Then we went home and watched both episodes of The Office's "Christmas Special". For those of you who don't know, The Office was the british "mockumentary" that inspired the American show (also called The Office). We're not big fans of the American show, but that's no surprise I guess. The British show is, IMO, probably one of the greatest things ever made for the small screen. It's BBC so it's not G-rated television (just warning you). Anyway, they only made two seasons of the show because that's all they had to say... mostly. Almost 3 years later, they went back and did a "where are they now" show to tie up some loose ends and revisit the characters in two episodes centering around the office Christmas Party. Brilliant.

Then Saturday we slept in and kind of lazed around. Anna did some homework, I worked on some hacking projects, and then Saturday night our friends Laura and Jon came over and we just hung out and chatted.

Sunday Anna went for a run with her trail-running club; then we made eggs florentine (benedict with sauteed spinach instead of ham) -- hollandaise sauce is not nearly as high-maintenance as I expected it to be, it's basically an egg yolk, some lemon juice, and butter -- and then we just worked on stuff around here. Sunday night we went out for sushi at this place in Santa Monica called Wabi Sabi... instead of ordering for ourselves we just asked the chef to make a big plate for the table. It was awesome. I feel like people (or maybe just me as a kid) have this aversion to the idea of sushi because it's "raw fish" and that idea is foreign to western tastebuds (unless you like steak tartar). But really, the idea is foreign but the flavor is not -- good sushi tastes so good on it's own that you don't even think about the fact that you're eating raw fish (in a negative way -- I think about the fact that it's raw fish but I like that now), it could just be some kind of "thing" the chef made in the kitchen. Another part of that is the kind of fish and the way they cut it makes it so delicious and melt-in-your-mouthey that it's really nothing like what we would normally think taking a bite out of a salmon filet would be like. Without that knowledge, the idea of sushi does seem kind of weird to a Westerner. So my recommendation to you is that you try a good sushi restaurant, and just don't think of it as raw fish. Or do, but get over it -- sushi is good!

I have a job in the works, but the people actually doing the hiring are in Britain right now and won't be back until next week, so I'm going to keep looking just in case this other job falls through. But I'm very excited for this opportunity!

(2) Tue Sep 20 09:25:47 PST it's raining poached eggs:

It rained today for the first time since we've been in LA -- over a month and a half. It was great to see the rain; one thing I'm definitely starting to be annoyed by is the almost total lack of weather (especially on this side of the Santa Monica mountains). I guess for some people, weather is made up for by earthquakes, or perhaps traffic... but that's not likely to work for me. Anyway, it was great to have it rain... but it brings up maybe my least favorite thing about LA: water usage.

Don't get me wrong; the traffic here is ridiculous. Totally ridiculous. It is crazy that a city like Los Angeles relies on everyone having cars to get around. The city is so spread out, and so "mountainous" (not really so much mountainous as just hilly) that roads can't be straight, must be curvy, and must go up and down a lot, which includes freeways, and which necessarily builds congestion. Also because of the mountains, there are places (like out where we live) where there is really only one or two good ways to get from point A to point B, and you really only have one or two opportunities to change over to one or the other. Contrast this to Chicago where, if you wanted to take Cicero Ave. all the way to Midway Imitation Airport because 90/94 was blocked up, you could, easily, and you could get onto the surface streets from the freeway just about every half mile if you wanted to. Not only could you do that, but taking Cicero all the way there was not that much dramatically slower (with traffic) than taking the freeway, because the surface streets are direct and traffic flows. None of that is true here, as far as I can tell.

So the fact that there is no good public transportation here is really shameful. How many hours of peoples' lives do they give up every single day? Most people here drive an average of an hour, I would think, each way. Averaget that together with the old chestnut "Time is Money" and figure out how much pain the lack of good transit costs Los Angeles every day. I for one would much rather ride in a train that sit stuck in traffic, even if it ended up taking the same amount of time.

But the problem is that putting in public transit here would be a nonstop project that would cost a lot of money. At least a billion, I would think, to put in real public transit in LA. (Especially because they wouldn't do it the cheap way out here.) I'm making these numbers up, but I bet they're pretty ballpark.

No, that is not the most annoying thing to me about LA. The most annoying thing to me is water usage here.

I never really understood growing up how LA is really virtually in a desert. I don't think that fact is quite obvious unless you drive here from Las Vegas, and you see firsthand how much desert surrounds the city. Sure, it's not Death Valley, but there is practically no precipitation and all the vegetation in the mountains is low-water usage. It's scrub. Scrub on rocky soil that doesn't hold water.

Most people know that LA gets most of it's water from outside reservoirs and sources, many of which are far away, because the aquifers here aren't nearly enough to support the size of the city. The Owens River (near Yosemite), and the Colorado River (which no longer reaches the ocean due to overuse) are major sources. Yet practically *every day* when I walk down the street I see *rivers* of water running down the gutters straight to the ocean because people watering their lawns or plants do not care enough to actually watch and see what is getting absorbed and what is simply running off. Literally, gallons and gallons of water just running down the street into the drains. I sort of have a philosophical problem with cities built in areas which cannot even *hope* to naturally sustain themselves. But when residents of that city, living on resources borrowed from other ecosystems (sometimes borrowed at great cost) care so little about the resources they have that they can't even be bothered to think about it, it tells me a few things: 1., that people are selfish, self-centered beings. Big surprise. 2., that the water system here is very inefficient. The street drains run into the ocean because the water doesn't in theory need to be "processed" for safety but it also won't be reused. What? And 3., water in LA doesn't cost nearly enough. We have rivers being dried up, lakes and other communities destroyed hundreds of miles away, but water is so cheap here that people can just afford to let it run down the street because they can't afford to pay their groundkeeper (who is probably getting less than minimum wage, wink wink) to turn off the water when it overflows. It's so cheap I don't even know what it costs. I try to conserve water -- not because it has any economoic penalty for me (as a person living on savings) -- but because I care. Water should be expensive, and maybe it should be billed on a sliding scale -- rich people are no more morally or ethically justified in wasting -- literally wasting -- water any more than average citizens.

I'm not a "crazy environmentalist" -- at all -- but this is just totally insane and I'm looking it straight in the face every day.

Oh yeah. Also, we poached eggs for breakfast this morning.

Tue Sep 20 17:52:33 PST losangeles.craigslist.org > software jobs:

spam post or target marketing?

Thu Sep 22 12:55:11 PST waiting is the hardest part:

I'm waiting to hear about a Linux-related job that sounds really cool and I am extremely excited about. I'm also doing my homework for Computer Architecture, which I enjoy. It's fascinating to me how the elementary basics of binary computers are such valuable concepts, because literally everything inside a computer can be boiled down to those basic concepts. I find that learning those basics really assists you in learning at any level in the field. So that's cool.

We've been here in LA for over a month and a half now, and all this time I've been out of work ("on vacation"). I'd like to say that I was squeezing every last drop of life-giving freedom from these days, but when I'm honest about it, I can't really say that I have. Too much time surfing Wikipedia and the web in general, and not enough time making music or writing code. I have gotten a lot of constructive things done however, many projects which have been waiting for months to be picked up again, and I've been able to do a lot of housework and errands so that they didn't swallow our evenings when Anna is back from school. So maybe it's a wash. I'd like to have produced some tangible, important things in this month and a half, but I feel like instead I've produced a lot of intangible, small things. You can't be creative all the time, right? Anyway, that struggle is the story of my life.

Therefore, I'm going to get out of this chair and get my interview clothes ready in case they call.

Fri Sep 23 14:32:23 PST time!:

So, as I was doing dishes today, I listened to the Skates Sharpened and Repaired Christmas demos, and was really taken back a long way in space and time. My good friends Dave and Crystal are getting married next weekend, and I'm participating in the wedding (I'm the Master of Ceremonies), and I remember being really excited about this music, sitting in my van in the cold outside Dave's apartment, playing it for him. He had helped me record one of the songs, and we had just had a goofy night of hanging out in Duluth. I remember feeling very joyful about the music that I was making, and joyful of the process and the product. Listening to the music now, I understand why it made me feel that way; I'm still proud of it, and I still feel like it captured something then that was unique and simple -- a one of a kind moment, and something that I created that nobody else could have. That music was all recorded, or mostly recorded, 4 years ago, and I have been too busy with other things in the meantime to do anything quite like it. That needs to change.

Tue Sep 27 19:26:07 PST tuesday afternoon:

Getting ready for my friends' wedding this weekend. Also spent some time working on a new music project that is pretty exciting... I'll be sure to link to it as soon as there's something to show.

I've been thinking that I will declare the original "skates sharpened and repaired" project as complete (for what it's worth), and put together a CD of the best of that project (maybe all of that project). I have two new things in the works, both similar, but different than *Skates*, and I don't plan on adding to *Skates* any time soon. I still like that name though, and can definitely see using it for something else down the road.

Wed Sep 28 09:44:10 PST Who said "God helps those who help themselves"?:

I don't think that one person can really sum everything up in one article in a way that is completely fair yet incisively truthful but also won't offend anyone, but I think if you are "...quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger” (James 1:19) you might learn something interesting in this article.

Wed Oct 05 16:23:54 PST job search:

I had an interview today for a very cool job that I'm really excited about. I don't want to talk too much about it, but it's primarily Linux oriented and the subject matter is really exciting, so that's cool. I like them and I think they like me, so I'm very hopeful.

Wed Oct 05 21:38:36 PST no hot water -- cold water conjures up lost memories:

The hot water heater in the building died recently, so we've been out of hot water for over 24 hours. Today, before my interview, I took a cold shower, literally. It reminded me of being out at camp, and having all the hot water alread taken up. I can't count the number of cold showers I took there. Then at some point I just figured that swimming in the lake was as good as a shower and began showering a lot less. I also bought some random lye soap from TJ's because it reminded me of the Fels-Naptha that my scoutmaster used. This makes me think of the giant spiders and nasty floors that were to be found in the showers at camp.

Good times.

Great oldies, and the best of today!

(1) Thu Oct 06 12:28:45 PST i've got a job and other news flashes:

I've got a job! Apparently the interview yesterday was a success from the client's perspective and I will be starting next week! The people from the hiring company told me that the client had actually looked around at some other candidates but didn't find anyone that was anywhere near as good a fit. I am super excited about the job, so that's cool.

In other news -- I am surprised by how little people here use their horns. In Chicago, if the light was green for half a second and you hadn't started rolling forward, people were honking. But on a scale of 1 to New York City with Chicago being a 7, I think that LA has to be a 3 or a 4. I don't know if I've been honked at once.

I was listening to the band Barenaked Ladies today, as a nostalgic romp back in time, and listening to them embarasses me a little, because I hear a lot of my own musical sensibilities that were shaped in early college when I listened to BNL a lot. Much of what I would like to cut out of my own musical stylings was put there (or amplified by) BNL. I don't even say that to dis them; I think they're great musicians and they put on a great show (at least they did in 1994 when I last saw them). But I don't want to be them.

Finally, our hot water is out. We're pushing about 36 hours with no hot water, but they are working on it. Our dishes are stacking up like lepers around the pool of Siloam, except that the pool is dry as a bone. Monday I heated water up on the stove to do dishes just like we used to a boy scout camp, but I'm not going to do that today.

Maybe the cold shower before the interview was what did it?

Mon Oct 10 08:27:44 PST great weekend:

Had a great weekend hanging out with our friend Peter. We went and saw Corpse Bride; pretty entertaining and very well done. Peter and I were both wowed by the use of piano playing in the film... it was so well done and sounded so good that it really added to the sense of realism.

I had a couple of random thoughts that prompted lookups on Wikipedia:

1. The Hollywood Sign -- several movies make reference to it formerly saying "HOLLYWOODLAND" rather than just "HOLLYWOOD" -- did it really, or was that just such a good bit of myth that it showed up in several movies? Who built the sign, anyway? If it did have "LAND" at the end, what happened to it? I can't do as good a job recapping the history of the sign, and it's a short article, so you should just read it yourself if you're curious.

2. The Moody Blues -- my old roommate, The Captain, once told me that the Moody Blues recorded their orchestral rock as a last ditch joke at their record company's expense as their contract was about to expire... or at least that's what I remembered of the story when I thought about it. The true story is not far off -- Wikipedia says that they were in debt to their label, who offered to forgive their debt if they made a rock and roll version of Dvorak's New World Symphony as a demonstration of Stereo recording. They managed to instead do a hybrid rock/orchestra version of their stage show, which became the huge Days of Future Passed, and cemented their style. I am always creeped out by the guy in this picture with the orange coat on -- his eyes peer into my soul!

We were looking for a cool place to have brunch that was also close to Union Station in Los Angeles, preferably one that was vegetarian and vegan friendly. We found Alexander's Brite Spot at 1918 W. Sunset Blvd in Echo Park (at Sunset and Park just west of Sunset and Glendale). Just 2.6 miles from Union Station, and with a huge menu and tons of vegetarian fare. It has a very classic greasy spoon feel, but with a very classy vibe (it's been there since 1949). There is free parking at the bank next door on Sundays, and since it was Sunday afternoon, traffic was minimal. They are also open from 6 AM to 4 AM daily -- as Peter said, "They're open a lot!" We all really enjoyed it and will definitely be back. It was an awesome Sunday Brunch location.

(1) Sun Oct 16 09:04:10 PST compression:

I had a brainstorm this morning. I've been copying some of my old vinyl records to the computer while I still have a record player. It occurred to me that tracks on the outer grooves of an LP will sound better than tracks on an inner grooves due to the way a record moves. This is old news to some people, but not to me. The issue is that records move at a "constant angular velocity" or CAV for short. This means that the disc always spins at the same velocity. For 12 inch LPs, that velocity is normally 33 and 1/3 rotations per minute.

If you consider that a standard LP is 12 inches, it's radius is 6 inches. Circumference is 2 Pi times the radius (or Pi times the diameter), or 2 * 6 * 3.14, which is 37.7 -- 37.7 inches around the outside groove. If the record spins 33.33 times a minute, and a minute is 60 seconds, then this translates into 20.94 inches per second (37.7 * 33.33 / 60).

By contrast, the inner grooves are only 3 inches away from the center of an LP, giving us a diameter of 6 inches and a circumference of 18.84 inches. Using the same translation to inches per second, we see that the surface of the record at that distance from the center hole is moving at 10.5 inches per second -- essentially half the speed of the outside grooves!

This matters because the more space you use to store image or sound information, the better that representation will be when you play it back -- one way to think of it is that you can draw a more detailed picture on a 3x5 card than you could on a postage stamp -- well, if the outer grooves of a record are like that 3x5 card, then the inner grooves are about half that size! Not a lot of space.

This is also basically true with computers -- the more bits of data you store, the better the representation of analog data (images and sound) can be. That's why we care about the "megapixels" of digital cameras (and that's largely why MP3s don't sound as good as a CD -- they're smaller). The way compact discs avoid the "postage stamp" problem of the inner track of LPs is that their discs spin at "constant linear velocity" (or CLV) -- this means that as the laser moves across the face of the CD, the disc changes speed so that the laser is always scanning the disc at the same speed; when the laser is on the inside "tracks," the disc spins much faster than when the laser is on the outside. The data is more "tightly packed" on the inner rings and more "loosely packed" on the outer rings -- therefore the quality is always constant!

(Incidentally, unlike LPs, CDs read from the middle of the disc out!)

This is not new news at all -- it's just a lightning bolt that hit me this morning. In fact, I'm going to guess that an article very similar to this was in Hi-Fi magazine in about 1984!

(1) Wed Oct 26 22:01:30 PST the patience of job:

The new job is great. I started out working from home for a week and a half, but now I am in the office. We're in the middle of a big project, and due to the workload and the constraint that much of the work has to be done when nobody is around, we're working weekends. (I'm working with a consultant from the UK who will be here for a couple more weeks.) I'll probably put in about 60 hours this week. Luckily, I'm getting paid overtime right now because I'm still hourly via the hiring firm that got me the job in the first place. It is really interesting work, and a very interesting work environment, unlike anything I have ever experienced. Someday I will explain, but not right now. Every day is a new adventure, that's for sure.

From the IT perspective, it is very different from NPU, but also very similar.

Essentially, we are rebuiling the company's network, which has only been tended to by hourly consultants who came in to do occaisional backups or fix minor "helpdesk" kind of things, and contractors for their more specialized software. So the similarities are, at a very basic level, lots of control and authority, hands on with Windows, Servers (Linux, yay!), and telecommunications stuff. Much of my work at NPU was indispensible for this job, and the Linux I have been doing is a big plus now.

What's different is organization and infrastructure. When this is done, I'll be the "cowboy" IT guy in the building, responsible for everything. And as I said, they have never had a full time IT guy. As a result, the system is a total mishmash of random bits of hardware as things have been cobbled together over the last 20 years. There are switches plugged in that we're not even sure if they do anything (but they're buried in tangled patch cords). The fiber switch is, I would guess, around 10 years old and is covered in strange fuzz. It sounds like a dying cow and has a post it on it that says "do not turn off -- 1999". Of course, changing some of the settings requires a reboot. I guess we'll figure out a different solution. There was a T1x2 (3 megabits) installed in March, but it has never been used as far as we can tell. The network switches are full so there are many smaller chained, unmanaged switches. Network pulls were insufficient so 2 signals were sent on one CAT-5 cable by means of a breakout box. I think the PBX is older than North Park's.... seriously, I could go on, but I think you probably get the idea. Thankfully the issue was organization and not resources that led to the current situation. As we rebuild the network we get to take a fairly "ground up" approach (within the confines of "not looking funny at the fiber switch") and that's fun to think about too.

At North Park, there was a lot of good redundancy and duplication, and that was great for the school's infrastructure, but here it will be only me (with occaisional contract help for small things if necessary). So there's a lot riding on my shoulders, which is both good, and bad. Overall though, I think it's a great experience for me to have to really step up to the plate in a way that I never really had to at NPU.

Basically, it's an exciting situation, I'm working a LOT right now, and that's ok. I'm glad I like it though; I can't imagine working 60 or 80 hours a week at a job I didn't like.

Fri Oct 28 09:55:02 PST road rage:

last night my coworker got his windshield fist-cracked by a dude with crazy road rage. i will now start locking my doors.

Sun Dec 25 22:24:15 PST merry christmas:

It's no coincidence that I stopped posting just after I got my job... I have been working an average of about 60-hour weeks. Last week I worked 67 hours and that was with a day and a half off!

We are home right now, enjoying a little R&R. ALHP is done with her finals, and it's really nice to be somewhere with proper trees and snow and a giant lake.

Anyway... back to the R&R.

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