The Bear Down Blog

新年快樂

2012-01-28T21:05:00.000-08:00

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jtvanlew/tags/chinesenewyear/

Those links above will take you to my photos of this year's Chinese New Year parade downtown in LA.

Los Angeles

2011-12-08T11:47:00.000-08:00

Sky blue fenders

2011-12-04T19:00:00.001-08:00

I got the itch to add some color to my Soma last week -- and settled on the fenders. I did my pre-prep check through the internets and found this write-up by Steven Vance. I went upwards navigating through the rest of his site and he's got a lot of interesting information on bicycling for someone looking to kill some time. But back to the point, I reference his site for fair citation as I used it as a guide before dumping cash at the hardware store. The information he gives is clear and concise and thus precludes the need for me to rewrite it. However, I think he may have gone a little overkill, I'd edit his How-To like this:

Clean fender with water. Dry fender.
~~Wipe down fender with paint thinner. Allow to dry - this won't take more than two minutes.~~
Sand the entire fender by hand. Make sure to move to new areas of the sandpaper to ensure the best contact between the sandpaper and the plastic.
~~Spray plastic primer spray. Follow the directions on the spray can, especially regarding multiple coatings (one coat should be enough) and timing. Cover with box.~~
~~After waiting the appropriate time (probably at least an hour), sand down the paint clumps and other imperfections. Spray these areas again. Cover with box and wait the appropriate time (yes, again).~~
Spray color paint spray [jon edit: get some of that primer/paint combo spray paint and you can skip the two steps above]. ~~It doesn't matter which kind of spray you buy~~. Just find the color you want. Follow the directions carefully, especially those regarding multiple coatings ~~(one coat should be enough)~~ and timing [jon edit: concentrate on spraying evenly and keep the can at a good distance from the fender and you won't have to worry about sanding between coats]. Cover with box. [jon edit: I didn't have a box big enough to cover my fenders and it wasn't a problem so use your own sense]
After waiting the appropriate time~~, sand down the paint clumps and other imperfections~~. Spray ~~these areas~~ again. ~~Cover with box and~~ wait the appropriate time.
Spray clear coat. Again, follow the directions. You may want to apply more than one coat, but be sure to wait the appropriate time.
~~Cover with box and wait a week before using your newly painted fender.~~ [jon edit: a whole week?? I don't have this patience. I'd installed them within 2 hours of the last clear coat drying. I was just careful not to scratch or mar them with the tools when reinstalling. So far so good.]

That's it. You can either look at my list as coming from one who is lazy or, as I prefer, from one who is impatiently pragmatic. Anyway, here's the rear fender after a second coat of paint, drying in the sun.

So why did I choose sky blue? Well I missed that snappy blue from my old Peugeot, for one. Also because it fit nicely to the overall color palette of my bike. Two other websites helped me reach this conclusion too. First I uploaded a picture of my bike to this website and got the hex code of the main colors on the Soma. Then I went to my old favorite site, Colour Lovers (yes Chrome spellchecker, I too prefer not to have the British 'u' in the word either), and searched for palettes with colors close to mine -- many had some form of light blue in them. Ok, right, how boring, let's see how it looks on the bike.

Well hot damn! And the rest of the bike?

Mmm.. subtle, but I like it.

2011-11-23T17:55:00.001-08:00

Dear gargantuan woman with porcine child in the SUV who cut me off, nearly ran me over, then had the nerve to honk at me this morning,

I appreciate your concern for my safety -- and expressing that with your unnecessarily loud horn in my ear. After all, who better to warn me of drivers' disregard for my presence than someone who can barely see over the dash of their 60 ton behemoth of a vehicle? I apologize for the indignant behavior I expressed - and with what nerve! To think I momentarily entertained the idea that I deserved to ride in that broken-glass littered, pot-hole riddled gutter that passes for bike lanes here in LA! Complete codswallop! Well, you can rest easy with your handfuls of Twinkies knowing you did your part to make the streets a little safer. I've learned my lesson.

Warm regards,
JVL

How the English Language was Developed

2011-11-22T08:23:00.001-08:00

Here's a brilliant 10 minute summary of the history of the English language.

I'd say it is most often a pride of purity that gets people into an uproar (early 16th century: from Middle Dutch uproer, from op 'up' + roer 'confusion', assimilated to roar) -- lest we ever forget the treatment of muggles. But for exactly the opposite reason I have this soft infatuation (mid 16th century: from Latin infatuat- 'made foolish', from the verb infatuare, from in- 'into' + fatuus 'foolish') with English's cobbled history. In the conclusion of this video the authors surmise (late Middle English (in the senses 'formal allegation' and 'allege formally'): from Anglo-Norman French and Old Frenchsurmise) that in the future English (the strange language) won't be any more English (the shitty island) than football.

So the next time you hear a foreigner barbarizing (Middle English (as an adjective used depreciatively to denote a person with different speech and customs): from Old French barbarien, from barbare, or from Latin barbarus (see barbarous)) English with their mix of native tongue, perhaps you should stop and thank them for beautifying and enhancing this language for the next generations.

damn you cotter pin!

2011-11-11T11:11:00.001-08:00

update: i rode the raleigh to school and that cotter pin is hosed. I must have put some permanent strain on the soft metal - and furthermore it was probably the wrong diameter to begin with. the crank is clunking worse than ever. for the 0.0002% chance someone that finds this and is in the same predicament, i found the website of a machinist in Minnesota who will make a high quality pin for Raleighs.

http://www.bikesmithdesign.com/CotterPress/cotters.html

So the mystery of my Raleigh's limp has finally been solved. me and my ol' pal Max who stopped by on business, took my bikes out to westwood park so we could commence with tom foolery without keeping cindy up last night. after we poked around on the Raleigh for a while, he says to me it seems more like the crankarm itself is loose instead of anything with the bottom bracket. As he's saying this to me it flashes in my memory that when I'd last worked on the bottom bracket i'd mashed the old cotter pin and had to replace it with one that i just thought might fit.

This morning I went downstairs and "tapped" on the cotter pin with my claw hammer and encouraged the little bastard to wedge down deeper into the crank axle. wouldn't you know it? it worked like a damned charm. I'd sort of shelved the Raleigh because i absolutely loathed the idea of putting it up on a work stand and spending another 2 hours repeatedly trying to adjust the bracket cups to _juuust_ the right torque.

I also caved recently and shelled out the dough to get Park Tools's wire cutter. I shortened up all the cable housing that looked ridiculous because i didn't want to ruin the housing with my old shitty wire cutters. Hoowee, that Raleigh is one fine looking ride now.

Passing through Tumblr -> Wordpress -> Blogger

2011-11-09T07:59:00.001-08:00

This is probably a niche action (if more people wanted to do it then I'm certain someone smarter than me would have created a script to automate it) but for anyone looking to export their tumblr to blogger there is a solution, albeit rather inelegant. I'm going to sort of talk the way backwards through this since it's the logical path I took trying to accomplish it. Then i'll summarize more clearly.

First, blogger can import certain .xml files so we need to create this. Second, tumblr has no native tool for exporting, but some clever people made a tool to convert from tumblr to a file wordpress can understand. This was the only decent tumblr export solution - i found a few other codes that will snatch the tumblr and make an html but that is useless in regards to getting it into blogger. Ok, so let's say we did export from tumblr to wordpress, would be stuck in that limbozone between wordpress and blogger? nope! there's a site that will convert a wordpress to blogger too! So that's it, that's the path we have to take. Tumblr exports to an .xml that Wordpress understands, Wordpress exports to an .xml that Blogger can import and voila you've moved from tumblr to blogger. oh, right, you have to temporarily create a wordpress account (it took me all over 5 minutes to create, import, export, delete the blog on wordpress).

So here it is again in a step-by-step summary.

1) Visit http://tumblr2wp.com/ and give it your tumblr information, it will save an .xml file
2) Create a temp account on wordpress and activate it
3) Go to Tools - Import on the left menu and select to import a WordPress file.
4) Make sure everything went right and then go to Tools - Export to create another .xml file (the free option)
5) Visit http://wordpress2blogger.appspot.com/ and choose the most recently created export .xml where it asks you to choose a file. This will create yet one more .xml - this is the one blogger needs.
6) In your blog settings, choose the Basic tab, then choose to Import Blog and when prompted, select the last file you created. That's it, choose whichever or all posts and publish them.
7) You're now ready to LOOT TOWN.

I found that some images were maintained and some were lost in the multi-transfer process. One must accept some sacrifices in the struggle.

Hooray for Fall

2011-10-31T21:42:00.000-07:00

Apparently this year in LA, Fall means Fog. But whatever weather the season brings, I'm happy to be welcoming sports back into my life, pumpkins into my home, and Fall seasonal brews into my belly. That last point is actually the whole purpose of this post. One of New Belgium's seasonals, and I have to assume that it's brand new since I've never had it before, is Hoptober. I just got disappointed to read that the regularly reliable resource, Beer Advocate, only gives it an aggregate score of a B. Well, forget what they say, I say it is great. Because of my limited capability of word use-ingness, I can't say what about it that makes it special. part of it is because it can satisfy the hop-lust while being sweet and light flavored.

When drinking it, to taste test it by comparison, I have bookended it in two ways: with Ranger IPA and Fat Tire. It makes Fat Tire feel too sweet and Ranger IPA too bitter. What does that comparison even mean? I don't know and I won't pretend to. But I did it for science and am obliged to report the details.

I've sort of gotten away from the point a bit. The most important thing is that this is a fantastic Fall beer in the tradition of good Fall beers being a fantastic way to usher in the changes in the season. So, once I finish this up, I'm off to ride my bike home, crack open a Hoptober, and enjoy the rest of the night.

Waiting for my man

2011-10-08T10:18:00.000-07:00

Google+ must be integrated into the blogger sometime soon. When that day comes this blogger will be ready for it. My temporary foray into Tumblr might be very short lived. I just pulled this out of the attic and am going to go shake out the cobwebs.

My 20 years of Pearl Jam

2011-09-25T09:27:00.000-07:00

Last night, Roger and I plunged into West Hollywood to engorge ourselves on a showing of the Cameron Crowe’s documentary, Pearl Jam 20. If that film’s got a 109 minute runtime, I estimate I was sporting a shit-eating grin for about 120 minutes. Later in the night, as I lay in bed riding down the end of the wave of buzz from the movie and gratuitous post-movie brewskis, I tried to come up with a reason why the excitement I feel about Pearl Jam is so unique. I gathered some great, deep, and delicate truths in the dark of my room and stacked them up into a nice crystal tower in my mind. It would have taken a building of much stronger foundations to survive my barrage of snoring that followed just after; so this morning I collect the fragments and shards and now write them here.

I feel no cliche-based shame when I say that my personal philosophy has been greatly shaped, or at least informed and influenced, by my collection of Bob Dylan albums. The other heavy hitters of my musical background — The Flaming Lips, Zep’, Radiohead, Neil Young, Yo La Tengo, John Vanderslice, and the Beatles, to name just a few — have all also played their part in what has I guess become my artistic aesthetic; my life’s soundtrack. But not even Mr. Zimmerman himself seems to reverberate with me quite the same way Pearl Jam does. So why is that?

My conclusion is that Pearl Jam’s story is, if I may be so bold, my story.

I was 9 or 10 or close enough to make no matter when Ten made its way to Arizona. My older brother and all his friends must have had a copy each. It’s no exaggeration to say there was no love lost between my brother and me at that time. But even still, a kid is going to try and fit in with the older boys on the block and so, for me, I guess it wasn’t a matter of choice; I was going to be a Pearl Jam fan. This one kid living down the street, Pat, being only 2 years older would often be my bridge to the gang of kids that were all 4+ years older. I remember distinctly hanging out with him one day at the daycare house - him singing along to Black and me watching every move to try and ape later to the other young kids to demonstrate just how hip and cool ol’ Jonny boy really was.

As I entered my teenage years and that quiet under-grumbling of rebellion naturally creeps into a boys life, also crept in vs. and Vitalogy. Naturally I picked up those albums up and ingested them bit by bit. In their way, they were also products of the band’s closest equivalent to teenage angst. They were loud, self-conscious, and raw. I loved them. It was because of these first three albums and how they seemed to fit into my life right when I needed them that I was, am, forever hooked. Even when I started getting exposed to other music and among friends it became a measure of how well-versed you were by how obscure were the bands you listened to, I would never abandon Pearl Jam.

It was then in that time of experimentation in my later teen years, a time when a kid tries out different personalities like a different winter coat, looking for one that fits right, that Pearl Jam was musically doing the same thing with No Code and Yield (and I guess we’ll fit Binaural in here because… well, this poor orphan of an album doesn’t seem to know where else to go). I think had Pearl Jam rehashed a Vitalogy during this time I’d have still listened and enjoyed, but I would have ultimately put it up on the shelf and that would have been that. I’d go back and listen to their early albums here and there but that would probably be the end of my story with Pearl Jam. It would just have been natural for me to drift away and find something less stagnant. But Pearl Jam didn’t do that. Though to say that I liked these albums only because they were different is to do them an injustice. The band was exploring new ways and I’ll be damned if I wasn’t going to try and go with them and enjoy it. In fact, I enjoyed what they tried so much that these have, in time, become my most enjoyed and nostalgically-linked PJ albums. I love them.

Shall I go on? Isn’t it clear what will happen with the rest of this story? We’ve got the college years and anti-establishment, anti-The Man periods and we’ve got Bu$hleaguer; we’ve got the ‘I’m getting older and don’t really care what these kids think because I enjoy what I do’ age working its way into my bones and we’ve also got Pearl Jam (or the avocado album). Actually… in this narrative I’m not sure where I place into the story now. Backspacer is a really good album but I can’t quite figure out how to categorize this, or me. Maybe when Pearl Jam 40 comes out I’ll be able to look back and see how they once again the script of my life and this band’s plays are intertwined.

But still, the thesis of this story is I think clear but I’ll state it again: Pearl Jam’s story is my story and this is why I am so endlessly fond of them. As a dude in love with himself as much as me, how can I not smile when I see 2 hours of film chronicling his love on the big screen?

More Raleigh rebuild talk...

2011-09-15T03:43:00.000-07:00

One of the biggest headaches of working on old bikes is their lack of interchangeability with modern parts (hell, even the tools don’t sometimes fit). I am thankful that the Raleigh, being British, is at least partially in the same vein of evolution that went to some current American, Japanese, or Taiwanese manufacturers. This of course compares with the Peugeot which, like all things French, would only work with French Stuff and was infinitely frustrating.

For the most part, the Raleigh has been easy on me. Things which could have been very expensive to replace ended up working great with a little polish and lube. But there has been one great… inconvenience that I’d avoided since I started working on it.

As reference, here’s a recent picture of the Raleigh. note the conspicuous absence of a back wheel.

Do you see that triangle part of the frame in the back? That rear frame section comes together and holds the back wheel, obviously. Well back in the day they expected a wheel to be about 100mm wide and built the frames accordingly. New manufacturers with our fancy 30-something-gear bikes have widened that rear triangle to accommodate the wider wheels. The same is true for the front fork, though to a lesser degree. So if you want to get a new wheel into this bike there is really only one solution: spread the frame.

You literally have to just manhandle the bike and “cold-set” the steel so you can jam a larger wheel in there. The ineffable Sheldon Brown has a whole page about it. I of course was fairly nervous about what damage I could do to my bike. My patience often escapes me when I’m doing work that requires strength and precision. I could imagine myself bending the frame to the point of being unrecognizable as a bike. So I actually took this bike to several shops around Westwood to see if they had the ability to spread and align my frame — no takers. Finally, though, I couldn’t postpone and accepted the fact that I’d have to do this myself.

Well, for brevity, I’ll just say I did it. And it was actually rather painless. I just kept checking the alignment of the back wheel after each little bend and, so far as I can tell, the rear wheel will track just fine. But I want to add some of my own information to the wisdom of Sheldon Brown. Sheldon Brown is noticeably quite on the point of spreading the front fork. Maybe no one else has as much of a mismatch as what I’ve got and can just spring the front fork open? I dunno. But if google crawls this page and in the future someone is thinking of cold-setting the front fork of their Raleigh 3-speed, let me give my advice.

Sheldon Brown recommends a 2x4. This is perfect for the rear fork but left me staring quizzically at the front. There was not a single lever arm I could imagine that would let me stretch the front fork with a single 2x4. My solution: a pair of 2x2s. Thinking of how you can tear open a sesame bun with a pair of chopsticks, I did this:

lay the front fork face-up

stand on the base of the fork (around the area where the fork attaches to the rest of the bike frame)

stick the 2x2s side-by-side into the fork

pull the 2x2s apart, evenly, and then pause to measure the fork spacing.

as the fork begins to spread, slide the 2x2s further up the fork so that they are wedged against the fork posts and will bend when you open your giant chopsticks again

Simple as that. Once you finish the front fork, you can go back to Sheldon’s website and use the 2x2s the same way he recommends using the 2x4s for the rear frame. I did this all yesterday afternoon and for the first time in about a year the Raleigh is standing on her own with a set of clean wheels under her. I even got a new chain stretched onto her drivetrain. She is only 2 brake handles away from actually rolling around the streets! I’ll meet my mom in San Diego this weekend who is bringing the original brake parts from Phoenix where I’d left them 2 years ago. Oh Boy!

Yasheng Huang: Does democracy stifle economic growth?

2011-09-13T04:09:00.000-07:00

Using a Dragon vs. Elephant economic comparison as a backdrop, Dr. Huang makes some great talking points. Even an economic layperson such as myself always hears some economists lamentation that if only the US occasionally had the same opportunities as China to force policies without public appeals, we’d be much better off. One of Dr. Huang’s points is that, perhaps we should actually look at the dozens of other countries mired in poverty that did have the same strong government force to force public policy. China’s is one example of a non-democracy success. There are in fact more examples of the failures. This is sort of one of his conclusions.

http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf

it approaches...

2011-08-24T15:07:00.000-07:00

In the mornings in Taiwan I normally get up well before Cindy. Every day I work my way downstairs and set some coffee on to drip then flip on the TV. Sometimes I’m in the mood to test out my listening skills and watch some Taiwanese TV but normally, and today was no exception, I just put it on one of the sports stations and watch whatever they’ve got. The past couple days have been the Little League World Series; before that I watched a lot of the Jones cup, a tournament building toward the Asian games — aside: I ran into the Jordan team at the Taoyuan airport and talked with some of them about the tournament before their 27 hr flight home.

But today, a golden light doth shine upon me for what I hath seen-th was nothing less than THE sport of sports —— College Basketball. Now by my clock we’ve got about 3 months before the non-conference seasons start but late summer always entertains - no, teases - with some friendlies and exhibitions. A fact which I was pleasantly reminded of by today’s broadcast.

“Naturally,” you think “there most surely must be a catch.” And of course there was. One of the teams was none other than the most despicable, most vile, most rat-face-coached team in all of College Basketball. It was Dook vs. the Chinese Olympic team. Albeit a friendly, it seemed I had to make a choice: cheer for The Reds to humiliate Dook or support these representatives (loathsome as they may be) of college basketball to get a win and thereby give due respect to the league I love so much. I decided on making no choice and just enjoyed watching *a* game, any game, and during timeouts relived the Arizona-Dook beatdown from last year’s Elite 8 in my mind.

In the end China lost by 15-odd points. Doc River’s son embarrassed himself a few times playing point and shooting guard. I will look forward to him further embarrassing Dook a few more times this season as he seems wont to wow but lacks some talent. And fuck me, there is a THIRD Plumlee on the team. Where the hell is this family raising these mutant freaks?

But the most significant point is that this game heralds to beginning of another season of the greatest sport on earth. As my friend Ned Stark would say “Winter is Coming”; yes my friend and Winter means College Basketball. I can hardly wait to see what Coach Miller is going to do this year.

Calendar tells me it's time to go

2011-08-06T12:29:00.000-07:00

This morning I wrapped up just about all I’m going to here in LA… and not a day too soon. Our flight to Taipei leaves at 1:50 AM tonight (tomorrow morning) — it is back to the Orient for me. I’m looking forward to a month of fantastic and cheap food, relaxation, a little Bob-o action, and even a week in Osaka with Cindy.

I’m glad that I won’t have to suffer through the same blunder as last year — when I got to Taiwan all the clothes I had were the leftovers from what had survived the Eastern European Winter. That sweaty little island did not humor me in my jeans and thick cotton shirts.

I’ve left all the planning up to Cindy. This is a nice polar opposite to the months of reading travel books and preparation for the minutia of the epic trip of 2010. The only thing I’ve done is make sure I’ve got my flip flops and some charged camera batteries.

再见, suckas!

Raleigh Restoration and Basket Build

2011-07-23T01:06:00.000-07:00

Excuse this entry on the Bear Down Blog. It is going to be long. And all about bike stuff. Take this as a warning and stop now if you’d like. For anyone with the proper intestinal fortitude, enjoy…

The first time I began restoring the old Raleigh 3-speed I’ve got was in Tucson. This mostly had to do with cleaning grime off parts and hoping anything that was sealed was sealed well enough to not need maintenance. I rode it around for maybe a week before giving it up. This was not in consideration of the horrible condition of the tires and the fact that any rough bump would have probably made the front tire crumple, no I only gave up because it was so exhausting even riding on flat streets. At the time I blamed it all on the internal gears. It’s true I couldn’t ever calibrate it properly so it was always in the highest gear. But the real culprit was inside the bottom bracket, the internal gear too, and every other moving part of the bike.

I began restoring the Raleigh a second time this past school year. This time I’ve been doing it slowly and properly. In the late winter, after stripping the frame down and completely washing it through, I repacked the bottom bracket with new ball bearings and grease. The restoration took a hiatus while the prelim dominated. And now I’m back at it. After fiddling with the old steel front tire I came to the conclusion that this old tire was going to take too much effort to get true and solid and even then would be rough for stopping (see my Peugeot for evidence of old steel braking performance) in the rain. With the steep hills between me and school, repairing didn’t sound like a fortuitous choice. Besides, I’d found a good deal for a replacement online for a lighter alloy rim and hub so just opted to replace both tires.

Waiting for the new wheels, I got busy on another little project I’d been interested in for a while. Wald makes a lot of high quality, inexpensive baskets for bicycles. I happen to have a few. But I’d seen this “Wald Woody” and thought to myself “say, that would add a classy touch to the Raleigh. But, self, you own that same sized basket would it not be silly to purchase yet another?” After puzzling for a while on why the voice in my head sounded like Mandy Patinkin I decided he was right and I should take it on myself to make a woody! Well yesterday Cindy had some event in Long Beach that took up a handful of hours so I killed time waiting for her at Home Depot. My vow to get a woody was remembered and the search was on.

I’d not really considered how I’d go about building this back when I was near the basket and could easily visualize the attachment of slats onto the wire cage so it took quite a bit of imagination (and time) when I bought the hardware. You’ll see what I eventually settled on.

Sizing the slates and bolt placement

The crucial hardware: Speed Nut for my Woody (teehee)

All three slats are placed and spaced

A close-up of how the speed nuts were re-purposed for use on the wire cage. Ignore that blood stain on the wood under the nut, I poked my thumb on the sharp metal :”(

I was on the phone with my mom at the home depot when I was thinking about this basket. We talked about a few different methods of attachment and I wasn’t really satisfied with any of them. My conclusion was to begin with one of those lock washers that had big teeth I thought might be able to span the wire rack and grip into the underside of the wood slat. While looking for those, I saw a bin of these speed nuts and knew I’d found an ideal solution.

Virgin material laid out for a shellacin’

After a single coat of shellac.

Some say you should do 3 or 4 coats of shellac. Some say that between each you should sand down the wood and smooth it up. I say two whopping coats of that shit and you’re golden or rather, a rich amber, as it is.

Some detail of the final build

I was not finished with the speed nut. They had to be pried open quite beyond their nominal size in order to pinch around the wire cage. I rectified any movement or loosening they might be inclined to do this with a few standard hex nuts on top. The lengths of the screw extended beyond the nuts is not ideal. But, oh well, they’ll give me points of attachment for bungee chords? Whatev.

I’m pretty proud of the result. It looks sharp and will look even better when in place on the Raleigh.

happy 4th

2011-06-30T16:31:00.000-07:00

hope everyone enjoys teh weekend. i’m ducking out early to drive back to arizona and meet friends and family at my mom’s cabin. hope everyone else has some plans!

I tried to get the same perspective as my google sketch-up model for this shot. Other than using

2011-06-30T03:23:00.000-07:00

I tried to get the same perspective as my google sketch-up model for this shot. Other than using my old square desk as the dining table, you can see we’ve pretty much kept to the plan. That’s what happens when an engineer and a scientist design a room. NO DEVIATION FROM THE PLAN.

While Cindy was mopping at the new place I took some measurements to throw into a Google Sketchup

2011-06-21T16:26:00.000-07:00

While Cindy was mopping at the new place I took some measurements to throw into a Google Sketchup. For reference, that stone texture is the wall with the fireplace you could see in the phone upload I had on flickr yesterday.

I built the walls from the measurements and then starting importing models based on the dimensions of the furniture we’re intending to get. This kind of model has really helped us figure out what we can manage for space in the joint. Like, the old Expedit bookshelf I’ve been storing at my mom’s house was huge in my mind’s eye but when I placed it in the corner, it left plenty of room for the storage shelf Cindy wants next to the kitchen. This is basically how we’re going to make the place in the next two weeks. Yup.

Day 65 This day 5 years ago I was walking out of a meeting at work and only happened to ge

2011-06-14T14:09:00.000-07:00

Day 65

This day 5 years ago I was walking out of a meeting at work and only happened to get back to my office just as my cell was ringing on the desk. It was a nurse asking if I was Jon and then that she was going to hand the phone over to my mom. My mom started to speak but I could hardly understand her. She was clearly in a medicated haze but I soon learned what was muffling her voice was the major trauma she’d sustained on her lower face. Still, she was able to communicate to me that she had been in an accident on the way home from Utah and that my dad wasn’t with her; the nurse then got on the line and said I probably wanted to drive up to Flagstaff to see her.

I couldn’t believe what I’d heard. I didn’t want to believe what I’d heard. When I went to my parents house to get things for my mom I filled a duffel with some spare clothes for my dad too. At my house on the west side I grabbed the book him and I had started reading together when I was in grade school and never finished. We’d joked that by the time we finished that book, I was going to be reading to him at a nursing home.

5 years later and I still don’t want to believe that phone call.

I rarely speak about my dad and even rarer will say anything about him for the internet at large. Somehow putting stuff online seems to steal any of the real truth from a feeling. But I do feel proud, in a way, of what I’ve become in the last 5 years. I use that day I got that phone call as a sort of watermark; what I was doing and who I was as a person then and now. And for that I feel like sharing.

Anyway. There’s also 1 more day of review left before the prelim.

Danny sent me this drawing that’s b’dazzled on the cover of a menu from some Thai pla

2011-05-25T16:47:00.000-07:00

Danny sent me this drawing that’s b’dazzled on the cover of a menu from some Thai place in SLC. He says it is def me and Cindy. After a cursory “ha!” I actually thought it did look shockingly like Cindy and me. Complete with bunnies and all.

Danube Go

2011-05-18T15:35:00.000-07:00

Danube Gorge - 051 by jeannievl on Flickr.

my mom just got back from 2 weeks on the Danube. As I was farting around on flickr just now I saw she is starting to upload the photos from the trip. ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-check-em out

Mt Baldy in

2011-05-18T15:07:00.000-07:00

Mt Baldy in March on Flickr.
found this little 3 picture set on my drive. i had a video that went along with them. it was of me catching Roman going down and then hitting my own patch of ice and going down hard. It was the last image that little old camera ever took.

Droppin some cartography knowledge-bombs all over this place

2011-05-11T19:53:00.000-07:00

A guy, Carlos Furuti, has made a pretty bitchin’ cartography site.

I found it because I was doing what any awesome dude does at midnight on a weekday — searching the internet to satisfy my curiosity of the pros/cons of the Gall-Peters projection map. He had some great info about that particular projection and some excellent discussion of others so I ended up reading way too much about the philosophy of cartography and map projections for… nearly the last hour and a half now. Anyway I’m willing to accept that cartography is not everyone’s cup of tea BUT everyone loves neat little toys so that’s why I’m writing here.

The guy has some nice polyhedron cut-out stencils of maps to download, print, and fold-up - for pleasure!

I got myself a dodecahedron (the sexiest of all hedrons) that i’ll be putting together for my cubicle at school.

awwwwwkward

2011-04-10T13:09:00.000-07:00

I’m checking out of Ralph’s today and… [enter Checkout Lady]

Lady at checkout counter: these yours?

In her hand is a box of tampons that’d fallen over the divider and into my stuff. While she asks me this she raises the box way up high so I can see it clearly. I look closely and my brain processes exactly what the item is.

Me: I… uhh…

I turn to the person behind me to get any kind of backup from them on this. The person behind me is this biker-lookin dude and the two of us lock eyes. We both know this is basically the exact sort of worst-case scenario discussed in Dude Meetings when we, as men, all collectively agree we don’t want to shop for tampons.

In hindsight this seems kind of silly but there is a innate embarrassment attached to buying those menstrual mops and the two of us are momentarily silenced. So there we are; this guy and I are staring at each other and Checkout Lady is waving the box of Maxipads waiting for my response as claimant.

Me: uhhh no. not mine *force awkward laugh*

Bikerdude: … *pause*… they ain’t for me neither!

Me and Bikerdude: *force another awkward laugh together*

Me: *pay money and get the hell out of there*

Sitting cross-legged on the floor

2011-04-01T21:22:00.000-07:00

I was in high school the first time I heard Chicago’s song “25 or 6 to 4” — I think I was driving my van late at night after my shift at Dairy Queen. I remember when I heard this song I started this wild daydream about being older and living in a big city. I could see myself staying up way too late after a night of insane debauchery and cruising the city (most probably in a big awesome brown van) or going home to my slummy apartment with a creaky ceiling fan and sepia light reaching through the curtains. In my place I’d do something cool like sit in the shadows and play guitar - or, I dunno, I’d just do whatever it is a 17 year old kid imagines is the epitome of cool for a hip, bohemian urbanite. Of course my whole lifestyle in this future city is soundtracked by 25 or 6 to 4.

This was like 1999 and my friend Matt had just introduced me to Napster. One of the very first songs I downloaded was this track by Chicago. I couldn’t even remember the name of the song and I had to call my mom into my room to mumble a couple lines and see if she could think of anything. She hummed the eponymous chorus a few times before it suddenly came to her. I typed the name into Napster’s search and at a blazing 2.8kbps that song was mine… in 30 to 40 minutes. I treasured that mp3 and kept it as long as I’ve kept any computer hardware with it.

Yesterday I started transferring music from my old external hard drive onto Amazon’s Cloud Drive so I could listen anywhere with the Cloud Player. Tonight, a Friday, I was in my cubicle until 1 or so in the AM already studying for the Ph.D. prelim exam I’ll have on June 17th. With my headphones on, I leaned back in my chair and previewed some of the tracks that’d been uploaded to the Cloud. As the fluorescent bulbs of the cubicle farm buzzed above me and that ache in my hamstring reminded me I hadn’t stretched recently a familiar bass line came in through cans. Then came the blaring horns. Then the daydream that still always comes to me when I first hear the opening lines: “waiting for the break of day searching for something to say, flashing lights against the sky, giving up I close my eyes”. Well, I’m definitely a lot older. I do live in a pretty big city. The spinning room was sinking deep. I wonder what Jon at 17 would think about his future. I doubt he’d be surprised.