Long time no speak
It's been a slow week, this first week of
December. It's been slow because the weather hasn't been altogether conducive
for anything except chores. I've had a few hankerings to get outside, maybe
take the ferry to Vashon Island and then the bus to the other end and another
ferry to Tacoma and explore the Point Defiance Zoo and downtown Tacoma, what
with it's new light rail down the main drag and about three new museums, one
devoted to just glass art. But, I'd like to take images and so have been
waiting for the right day for that jaunt. In the meantime I've been doing the
typical homeowner and parent kinds of things.
This time last year I was preparing for our first
Christmas here in the new house. I was also spending a small fortune at the
Apple store and at Apple online and a few other places (like B&H Video-Photo
in New York, better than 42nd Street photo for selection and prices). Last year
I was finishing out the final upgrade of my kids (yeah, Redmond Kids Version
2.0). That is, I'd already gotten them during Christmases past a good (low end
of high end) stereo system - preamp, amp, tuner, speakers, and CD player, they
each had their own television and/or television and VCR, they each had a good
Macintosh computer (which, actually, were graduation presents and not Christmas
presents), and Leif had an iPod and a good Canon digital Elph camera. They'd
previously been given or bought themselves good Pentax silver cameras (and Leif
has extra lenses which were the gifts since he got the camera himself). It was
then Adam's turn for the digital camera and iPod, and, of course, they both
needed iSight cameras. So last Christmas was the end of the "toy" phase of both
my son's lives.
This year we're into hiking and camping gear and for Leif and Adam we did most of that shopping over Thanksgiving. But, last year, I was so devoted to getting my kids up to digital speed that I overlooked everyone else (well, not my wife, but everyone who wasn't going to be here in person). So this year I've been busy getting together stuff for my mom, Katherine's mom, and thinking (yeah, just thinking at this stage) about my brothers and brothers-in-law. I shot some really good pictures (see next entry in blog) of Leif and Adam together over Thanksgiving and had spent about three days working them both with Photoshop and the Costco do-it-yourself photo kiosk until I was satisfied. Then, with the right image, I made several 11-by-14 copies and went to find the right frame. Did that and then wrapped them and mailed them off to both grandmothers. That'll be a really sweet Christmas present for the both of them (my mom and Katherine's mom). Our mothers don't need anything these days, except maybe their youth back, so a really nice photograph of their grandsons will work just fine. Last year at the last minute I used Teleflorist to have some flowers delivered to my mom - that was nice but somewhat cheesy so this year will be much better.
I've also spent several days this week cleaning gutters of all the fallen leaves and sweeping patios and decks and raking the yard. One disadvantage to having all this deck and balcony space is that it fills up with leaves in the Fall. Three days of that, dashing in and out in between rain episodes and filling my clean-green containers with wet leaves was enough. In DC, I usually spent only one day raking our yard there and then I'd dump all the leaves down the front hillside which was bordered on the street side with some tall and skinny trees, perfect to catch the leaves and keep them. Over the years I'd lived in DC, the front hill slope of our yard had begun to fill in with all that mulch turned into dirt by the ants and worms over time. Here, I've got no slope to pitch the leaves into and I've got no "back forty" to hide them either. Our corner yard has a driveway at one property line end and two street frontages which are basically "front yards" and the back of the house has to be kept clear for the entire length because of the sanitary drain "easement" which my luck would have it runs down my property. I guess the good news is that I'm right there - thirty inches away from the main sewer line for the block. However, I'd like to see what happens if they ever have to backhoe that line since there's basically no way to get a backhoe into the yard even if the easement is clear.
What else have I been doing. Well, for one, I've been going for five-mile hikes in the neighborhood virtually every day to keep this maddening Seasonal Affective Disorder from hitting me. Thirty percent of the metro Puget Sound population, which comes to nearly a million people, suffer from SAD and it actually shows in the general overall "feeling" of the place once Daylight Savings Time goes away. We're far enough north and the Winter weather patterns keep enough clouds over the area that the whole Sound region does into a "night" phase. Even in the broad daylight, or what passes for broad daylight these days, there are nowhere near the number of people out on the streets as there is any other time of the year. The coffee shops, which otherwise would be moderately busy or nearly empty, are now filled with all seats taken by folks trying to use caffeine and free wi-fi as a palliative for their blues. A lot of people eat to fight the blues - and that's not really good because eating makes you even more tired and sleepy. Some folks I know have spent entire weeks inside their apartments or homes, hiding, as it were, from the darkness and gloom. That's why I've been adamant about getting outside and walking for five or six miles simply because exercise can compensate for what the sunshine can't deliver these days - and that's a sense of well-being and "aliveness." Hiking around the hills here in West Seattle means I get to see what the place looks like in the gray and contrast it in my mind with what it looked like in the Fall with all the leaves changing color, or back in Summer when everyone was out, either playing or working in their yard or garden. Another oddity I've noticed this year and didn't last year (mostly because I had no reference) is that in the dark you can really tell what the traffic on the various roads is like because every car has its headlights on. In the Fall or Summer, when there's plenty of daylight still, there are the same number of cars but they're not nearly as obvious because you only really look as far as you need to in order to safely cross a street. In this dark season, the lights of the cars miles away shine brightly and so one gets a real sense of the "thread" of traffic on the various main arteries and cross streets. Last year I had no reference since we arrived here mid-Fall and I hadn't been out exploring as much and so didn't really know what were the arteries and cross streets from what were plain old neighborhood streets. It doesn't mean anything except it's one more notch in the knowledge post.
And, I've been playing on the computer. Did some messing around with my keyboard recently and am working on the various components of what will be an original composition where I play the various instruments and merge them together. Listening to KEXP as I've been has reawakened an urge in me to want to "make" music rather than simply listen to it. It'd be easier if I had a faster computer and didn't have to reboot into a faster drive but even so it's been fun - and frustrating. Frustrating because I'm not very good on the keyboard never having taken piano or organ and having only spent about two years learning chords on guitar. Drumming only requires rhythm and beat, but the rest require some sense of melody and maybe even lyric. I've also had some thoughts about penning some songs. I think, given my life and experience, they'll be a combination folk-blues-alternative. I'm past the point of love's frustrations but not quite past the point of life's frustrations. This is one of those things I think about for a while and then go into a binge period. I'm still in the thinking-about phase. I have recently been re-listening to my Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Richard Thompson, Graham Parker, John Wesley Harding, Lou Reed, Neil Young, and Peter Case collection and contrasting it with groups whose words as well as music appeals to me like Blues Traveler, Collective Soul, The Church, The Clash, INXS, James, Jesus Jones, Live, Modest Mouse, Rusted Root, The Stone Roses, Screaming Trees, Sister Hazel and Soul Asylum. I'm trying to find out what it is about the words - lyrics - and music which I like and whether it's the combination or one or the other.
A recent interview with The Pixies lead Frank Black (neé Charles Thompson IV) sort of fell on its face, as did the 60 Minutes interview with Bob Dylan. The reason the interviews fell flat (and the interviewer fell on his face) was because they were trying to get both of these songwriter-singers to explain "how" they come up with the songs. "As if there's any single method which I use to write these songs," Black said. "They just came to me, it's like a gift," Dylan said. Black also said that there's a more fundamental problem with defining a group or a singer-songwriter and that is there is a presumption that these types can write music whenever they want and that music will sell. "No one knows what they're going to like," Black said. Paraphrasing Black, "how do I know that something I'm writing is going to be something you like? I don't." That's the issue here. What is it that I actually "like" and how to define it so that I can create it myself. Is it the chords (well, yes to some degree, I know, for instance, that there are Symphonies of Haydn and Beethoven which I don't like and it may be because of the major or minor chord they were written in), is it the lyrics, is it the melody or the internal riffs or the melody and rhythm? I don't know but that's the next step in this present music evolution of mine. Finding out what it is that I like and why.
Other things which have kept me busy on the computer included the recent release of Microsoft's online blogging tool - MSN Spaces. It went live this past Wednesday and by Thursday night, about 36 hours after it went live, I decided "what the heck, it's free, it's a blogging tool, why don't I try it?" So I did. It's not bad. It's actually a lot like Blogger (the Google free blogging service) and a lot like homepage.mac - except that in the case of homepage.mac one must pay. So I started yet another blog on MSN Spaces, and I'll probably keep it up. I get ten megabytes of storage. I don't plan on uploading any images on the new blog because Microsoft's user agreement states that they, Microsoft, own all content. In the case of my dot-Mac stuff, I own all content and agree to play by Apple's online rules which prohibits such things as piracy but not much else. So I'll use Spaces to post daily thoughts, more along the lines of every other blog on the planet. My original blog will stay on my dot-Mac account and will continue to reflect more lengthy thoughts and expositions and will always be a much longer read. Just when you thought I couldn't write any more I've turned another stone upright and found that I've got plenty of words for both kinds of online services - longish (or if you prefer, really outrageously longish) pieces on chasBlog <http://homepage.mac.com/credmond/iblog> - and shorter, more pithy, pieces on chasBlog2 <spaces.msn.com/members/chasBlog2>. I've referenced all my existing online stuff on the MSN site and added some things which I don't actually track on my dot-Mac site such as music I'm interested in and other blogs I read. I'll keep the content of the two separate and write separately for each (realizing that the listserve content will almost always be an approximate identical posting to the main blog - chasBlog).
And, finally, I spent the better part of this morning installing all the native OSX programs I hadn't installed onto my iBook. These included Final Cut, Peak, Painter, and Dreamweaver. I ran afoul of the install when I tried to launch Painter, it wanted a previous serial number because the CD was an upgrade to a previous version. Well, I originally bought Painter 1 through 3 from MetaCreations, which was then bought by Fractal and so I had purchased Painter 5 from Fractal, which was then bought by ProCreate, which released Painter 7 (which is what I wanted to install), which was then bought by Corel. I fumbled around looking for my Painter 5 serial number and then realized that although I had the CD, the serial number was placed in the manual (as is my usual practice) and that I had thrown out all my non-present-version manuals several months ago - filling up our recycle bin in the process. Which meant that I didn't have the previous serial number and therefore couldn't install Painter 7. But, wait, Corel has a free, 800, number where I could call and number two on the touch-tone punch list was "problems with serial numbers." I punch two and wait for a live person and then explain my predicament and how I had really, really purchased these programs and actually did own them and wanted to install Painter 7 on my OSX machine even though I had already installed it on my OS-9 machine. "Well, what's your name?" and so it went until he found me in Corel's database and saw that I had, in fact, registered Painter 1 and 3 through MetaCreations but saw no record of the Fractal registration. "Hmmm, wait a minute," he said while he checked if a version 1 or 3 serial number would work with Painter 7. "No, but let me try something." I waited a few seconds and the guy from Corel, who was in Ottawa, their home office, read me a new, temp, serial number for Painter 7 which I entered and, bingo, the installation process was underway and I had it installed in less than a minute. We then chatted a few minutes about Canada and America and how he'd been hearing a lot of stories from Americans about the recent election and wished us well. I bid him goodbye after thanking him one more time. I thought, wow, isn't this just exactly like those Canadians, helpful to the very last and gracious and courteous about it as well. Canada is a great neighbor and their people are pretty damned decent human beings. I wish them all well and hope we don't step on their toes too seriously during the next four years.
Now I've got a bunch of new programs (well, new to the OSX platform for me anyway) to play with. I have been wanting a Wacom tablet for quite a long time now and with Painter 7 installed it's probably time to go spend a few bucks and begin to learn to paint digitally. By the way, the Corel guy did remind me that Painter 9 was their current version and he did say that his database showed I'd also registered Bryce 5, the last version they made for the Mac. The next question, since I can upgrade to Painter 9 from ProCreate Painter 7, is will they take my Painter 7 serial number as part of the deal or will I have to get another Ottawan online again?
I did all this upgrading because Apple recently released an upgrade version to OSX which allows for easy migration of installed applications to a new machine and though I'm probably months to a year away from an upgrade to a G5 or maybe by then G6 Mac, I want to be ready when it happens and I want to start playing with all these programs again.
Even though I haven't been out exploring much and even though the weather's been generally dismal, I've found plenty of things to keep me busy. Also this week I really should get out the house lights and get this place ready for Christmas. Last year we did a real suave job of lighting the house - basically lighting the ridge line of the fence which lines both front yards - and received a lot of neighborhood compliments. I'll redo the fence ridge line and have ordered some "special" lights to put in the upstairs foyer, which has four floor-to-ceiling windows showing on the "front" of the house which will enhance the fence lighting. I'll post pictures when I'm done and the lights are installed and all working properly. In the meantime, by all means, get started on your holiday preparations and remember that it's not about the gifts - it's about the spirit and company and companionship.
Oh, and do check out chasBlog2 <http://spaces.msn.com/members/chasBlog2> (and, NO, it's NOT case sensitive, so there).
This year we're into hiking and camping gear and for Leif and Adam we did most of that shopping over Thanksgiving. But, last year, I was so devoted to getting my kids up to digital speed that I overlooked everyone else (well, not my wife, but everyone who wasn't going to be here in person). So this year I've been busy getting together stuff for my mom, Katherine's mom, and thinking (yeah, just thinking at this stage) about my brothers and brothers-in-law. I shot some really good pictures (see next entry in blog) of Leif and Adam together over Thanksgiving and had spent about three days working them both with Photoshop and the Costco do-it-yourself photo kiosk until I was satisfied. Then, with the right image, I made several 11-by-14 copies and went to find the right frame. Did that and then wrapped them and mailed them off to both grandmothers. That'll be a really sweet Christmas present for the both of them (my mom and Katherine's mom). Our mothers don't need anything these days, except maybe their youth back, so a really nice photograph of their grandsons will work just fine. Last year at the last minute I used Teleflorist to have some flowers delivered to my mom - that was nice but somewhat cheesy so this year will be much better.
I've also spent several days this week cleaning gutters of all the fallen leaves and sweeping patios and decks and raking the yard. One disadvantage to having all this deck and balcony space is that it fills up with leaves in the Fall. Three days of that, dashing in and out in between rain episodes and filling my clean-green containers with wet leaves was enough. In DC, I usually spent only one day raking our yard there and then I'd dump all the leaves down the front hillside which was bordered on the street side with some tall and skinny trees, perfect to catch the leaves and keep them. Over the years I'd lived in DC, the front hill slope of our yard had begun to fill in with all that mulch turned into dirt by the ants and worms over time. Here, I've got no slope to pitch the leaves into and I've got no "back forty" to hide them either. Our corner yard has a driveway at one property line end and two street frontages which are basically "front yards" and the back of the house has to be kept clear for the entire length because of the sanitary drain "easement" which my luck would have it runs down my property. I guess the good news is that I'm right there - thirty inches away from the main sewer line for the block. However, I'd like to see what happens if they ever have to backhoe that line since there's basically no way to get a backhoe into the yard even if the easement is clear.
What else have I been doing. Well, for one, I've been going for five-mile hikes in the neighborhood virtually every day to keep this maddening Seasonal Affective Disorder from hitting me. Thirty percent of the metro Puget Sound population, which comes to nearly a million people, suffer from SAD and it actually shows in the general overall "feeling" of the place once Daylight Savings Time goes away. We're far enough north and the Winter weather patterns keep enough clouds over the area that the whole Sound region does into a "night" phase. Even in the broad daylight, or what passes for broad daylight these days, there are nowhere near the number of people out on the streets as there is any other time of the year. The coffee shops, which otherwise would be moderately busy or nearly empty, are now filled with all seats taken by folks trying to use caffeine and free wi-fi as a palliative for their blues. A lot of people eat to fight the blues - and that's not really good because eating makes you even more tired and sleepy. Some folks I know have spent entire weeks inside their apartments or homes, hiding, as it were, from the darkness and gloom. That's why I've been adamant about getting outside and walking for five or six miles simply because exercise can compensate for what the sunshine can't deliver these days - and that's a sense of well-being and "aliveness." Hiking around the hills here in West Seattle means I get to see what the place looks like in the gray and contrast it in my mind with what it looked like in the Fall with all the leaves changing color, or back in Summer when everyone was out, either playing or working in their yard or garden. Another oddity I've noticed this year and didn't last year (mostly because I had no reference) is that in the dark you can really tell what the traffic on the various roads is like because every car has its headlights on. In the Fall or Summer, when there's plenty of daylight still, there are the same number of cars but they're not nearly as obvious because you only really look as far as you need to in order to safely cross a street. In this dark season, the lights of the cars miles away shine brightly and so one gets a real sense of the "thread" of traffic on the various main arteries and cross streets. Last year I had no reference since we arrived here mid-Fall and I hadn't been out exploring as much and so didn't really know what were the arteries and cross streets from what were plain old neighborhood streets. It doesn't mean anything except it's one more notch in the knowledge post.
And, I've been playing on the computer. Did some messing around with my keyboard recently and am working on the various components of what will be an original composition where I play the various instruments and merge them together. Listening to KEXP as I've been has reawakened an urge in me to want to "make" music rather than simply listen to it. It'd be easier if I had a faster computer and didn't have to reboot into a faster drive but even so it's been fun - and frustrating. Frustrating because I'm not very good on the keyboard never having taken piano or organ and having only spent about two years learning chords on guitar. Drumming only requires rhythm and beat, but the rest require some sense of melody and maybe even lyric. I've also had some thoughts about penning some songs. I think, given my life and experience, they'll be a combination folk-blues-alternative. I'm past the point of love's frustrations but not quite past the point of life's frustrations. This is one of those things I think about for a while and then go into a binge period. I'm still in the thinking-about phase. I have recently been re-listening to my Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Richard Thompson, Graham Parker, John Wesley Harding, Lou Reed, Neil Young, and Peter Case collection and contrasting it with groups whose words as well as music appeals to me like Blues Traveler, Collective Soul, The Church, The Clash, INXS, James, Jesus Jones, Live, Modest Mouse, Rusted Root, The Stone Roses, Screaming Trees, Sister Hazel and Soul Asylum. I'm trying to find out what it is about the words - lyrics - and music which I like and whether it's the combination or one or the other.
A recent interview with The Pixies lead Frank Black (neé Charles Thompson IV) sort of fell on its face, as did the 60 Minutes interview with Bob Dylan. The reason the interviews fell flat (and the interviewer fell on his face) was because they were trying to get both of these songwriter-singers to explain "how" they come up with the songs. "As if there's any single method which I use to write these songs," Black said. "They just came to me, it's like a gift," Dylan said. Black also said that there's a more fundamental problem with defining a group or a singer-songwriter and that is there is a presumption that these types can write music whenever they want and that music will sell. "No one knows what they're going to like," Black said. Paraphrasing Black, "how do I know that something I'm writing is going to be something you like? I don't." That's the issue here. What is it that I actually "like" and how to define it so that I can create it myself. Is it the chords (well, yes to some degree, I know, for instance, that there are Symphonies of Haydn and Beethoven which I don't like and it may be because of the major or minor chord they were written in), is it the lyrics, is it the melody or the internal riffs or the melody and rhythm? I don't know but that's the next step in this present music evolution of mine. Finding out what it is that I like and why.
Other things which have kept me busy on the computer included the recent release of Microsoft's online blogging tool - MSN Spaces. It went live this past Wednesday and by Thursday night, about 36 hours after it went live, I decided "what the heck, it's free, it's a blogging tool, why don't I try it?" So I did. It's not bad. It's actually a lot like Blogger (the Google free blogging service) and a lot like homepage.mac - except that in the case of homepage.mac one must pay. So I started yet another blog on MSN Spaces, and I'll probably keep it up. I get ten megabytes of storage. I don't plan on uploading any images on the new blog because Microsoft's user agreement states that they, Microsoft, own all content. In the case of my dot-Mac stuff, I own all content and agree to play by Apple's online rules which prohibits such things as piracy but not much else. So I'll use Spaces to post daily thoughts, more along the lines of every other blog on the planet. My original blog will stay on my dot-Mac account and will continue to reflect more lengthy thoughts and expositions and will always be a much longer read. Just when you thought I couldn't write any more I've turned another stone upright and found that I've got plenty of words for both kinds of online services - longish (or if you prefer, really outrageously longish) pieces on chasBlog <http://homepage.mac.com/credmond/iblog> - and shorter, more pithy, pieces on chasBlog2 <spaces.msn.com/members/chasBlog2>. I've referenced all my existing online stuff on the MSN site and added some things which I don't actually track on my dot-Mac site such as music I'm interested in and other blogs I read. I'll keep the content of the two separate and write separately for each (realizing that the listserve content will almost always be an approximate identical posting to the main blog - chasBlog).
And, finally, I spent the better part of this morning installing all the native OSX programs I hadn't installed onto my iBook. These included Final Cut, Peak, Painter, and Dreamweaver. I ran afoul of the install when I tried to launch Painter, it wanted a previous serial number because the CD was an upgrade to a previous version. Well, I originally bought Painter 1 through 3 from MetaCreations, which was then bought by Fractal and so I had purchased Painter 5 from Fractal, which was then bought by ProCreate, which released Painter 7 (which is what I wanted to install), which was then bought by Corel. I fumbled around looking for my Painter 5 serial number and then realized that although I had the CD, the serial number was placed in the manual (as is my usual practice) and that I had thrown out all my non-present-version manuals several months ago - filling up our recycle bin in the process. Which meant that I didn't have the previous serial number and therefore couldn't install Painter 7. But, wait, Corel has a free, 800, number where I could call and number two on the touch-tone punch list was "problems with serial numbers." I punch two and wait for a live person and then explain my predicament and how I had really, really purchased these programs and actually did own them and wanted to install Painter 7 on my OSX machine even though I had already installed it on my OS-9 machine. "Well, what's your name?" and so it went until he found me in Corel's database and saw that I had, in fact, registered Painter 1 and 3 through MetaCreations but saw no record of the Fractal registration. "Hmmm, wait a minute," he said while he checked if a version 1 or 3 serial number would work with Painter 7. "No, but let me try something." I waited a few seconds and the guy from Corel, who was in Ottawa, their home office, read me a new, temp, serial number for Painter 7 which I entered and, bingo, the installation process was underway and I had it installed in less than a minute. We then chatted a few minutes about Canada and America and how he'd been hearing a lot of stories from Americans about the recent election and wished us well. I bid him goodbye after thanking him one more time. I thought, wow, isn't this just exactly like those Canadians, helpful to the very last and gracious and courteous about it as well. Canada is a great neighbor and their people are pretty damned decent human beings. I wish them all well and hope we don't step on their toes too seriously during the next four years.
Now I've got a bunch of new programs (well, new to the OSX platform for me anyway) to play with. I have been wanting a Wacom tablet for quite a long time now and with Painter 7 installed it's probably time to go spend a few bucks and begin to learn to paint digitally. By the way, the Corel guy did remind me that Painter 9 was their current version and he did say that his database showed I'd also registered Bryce 5, the last version they made for the Mac. The next question, since I can upgrade to Painter 9 from ProCreate Painter 7, is will they take my Painter 7 serial number as part of the deal or will I have to get another Ottawan online again?
I did all this upgrading because Apple recently released an upgrade version to OSX which allows for easy migration of installed applications to a new machine and though I'm probably months to a year away from an upgrade to a G5 or maybe by then G6 Mac, I want to be ready when it happens and I want to start playing with all these programs again.
Even though I haven't been out exploring much and even though the weather's been generally dismal, I've found plenty of things to keep me busy. Also this week I really should get out the house lights and get this place ready for Christmas. Last year we did a real suave job of lighting the house - basically lighting the ridge line of the fence which lines both front yards - and received a lot of neighborhood compliments. I'll redo the fence ridge line and have ordered some "special" lights to put in the upstairs foyer, which has four floor-to-ceiling windows showing on the "front" of the house which will enhance the fence lighting. I'll post pictures when I'm done and the lights are installed and all working properly. In the meantime, by all means, get started on your holiday preparations and remember that it's not about the gifts - it's about the spirit and company and companionship.
Oh, and do check out chasBlog2 <http://spaces.msn.com/members/chasBlog2> (and, NO, it's NOT case sensitive, so there).
Posted: Mon - December 6, 2004 at 09:41 PM
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Published On: Jul 04, 2005 05:41 PM
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Published On: Jul 04, 2005 05:41 PM