Conn 580 Organ
Conn 580 Organ side view
Conn 580 internals
With luck, having a keyboard in the house with provide me sufficient impetus to get around to relearning how to play a keyboard. I feel like I want to get back to knowing how to play the piano (or, in this case, organ). Failing that, though, I’ve got the potential to make some pretty fun sounds.
A while back, I was introduced by a boingboing video series (1, 2, 3) to the chocolate manufacturer TCHO. Sometime after watching the video series, my friend Josh showed up to one of our poker nights with a block of TCHO chocolate. That, beta bar that Josh brought was fantastic and TCHO has further perfected their recipes in the interim. Having recently discovered that TCHO has opened a retail store at Pier 17 on the Embarcadero, which is quite close to where I work, I decided to pop over and grab some chocolate on my lunch break. I grabbed a TCHO-A-DAY 60-pack and have thus far tried the “Citrus” and “Chocolatey” flavors, which were excellent. This may well be the best chocolate that I have ever had.
If you would like a little bit of truly wonderful decadence in your life, I highly recommend getting yourself some TCHO chocolate. The engineering, quality and flavor to this chocolate is truly top-grade.
Took me a bit of doing but I’ve updated my old theme to work with the latest version of WordPress. Most of the effort and time was taken up because I decided to do it in as much the, so to speak, right way as possible.
Other than changing two lines of functions.php, everything is accomplished using CSS.
If you want it, you can grab my theme.
Arising from a nap taken while sprawling across three seats on MX976 from Guadalajara to San Francisco, I am reminded of a desire to comment on the so-called swine flu. Of the five flights taken during my trip, none have been at capacity and two have provided me with full rows for myself. The true utilization is in stark contrast with the near full planes that were described when I purchased my tickets; I understand Mexicana was allowing refunds of some sort on account of the flu.
Cancun was, I have been led to understand, empty relative to other years at this time. The resort at which I stayed was likely at no more than 30% occupancy; near full capacity is the norm. Other resorts and hotels were closed due to a lack of guests. This, of course, meant that we largeley had the resort to ourselves but, selfishness aside, it also means that the local economy is suffering an absolutely horrible collapse and any locals without sufficient savings may need to seek other work. Compounding with the general global downturn, there will likely be a profoundly negative effect on Cancun and other Mexican resort areas.
The response of the Mexican government is rather interesting as well. The government had health checkpoints set up at airports and state borders. Individuals are required to fill out a questionaire as to whether or not they are suffering any flu symptoms and then have their temperature checked by thermal camera or infrared probe; neither of which I suspect is particularly accurate. What they would do to one who fails such testing is unclear as they did not seem set up for any sort of quarantine. Furthermore, a few tylenol, aspirin and lies ought to be enough to get anyone through. The whole exercise reeks of security theater, a topic which I fear raising lest I rant far beyond your patience.
Having just finished Heretics of Dune, I am, once again, wowwed by Frank Herbert’s skill as an author. There exist very powerful thoughts within his writing that seem to plant themselves in the psyche as Leto II planted himself in the worms of Rakis. As I sit here, I can’t help but react with a desire to better myself mentally, physically and socially. I feel as though this is a moment of openning and from here my choices are to pass through into the chapel perilous or step back, allowing the doors to close.
As to which path I shall take, I cannot say but it is my great hope that I will have the strength to push forward.
Something that I have been acutely noticing is that I have had extremely vivid dreams every time that I have slept or napped. The dreams have been vivid to a degree that might be described as bordering on hullucination. I suspect that the dreams have been present on account of the adequacy of the sleep that I have been receiving. I am inclined, however, to attribute the vividness to the potency and desication of the sun and heat. It is, perhaps, as if I had ventured into the desert to undertake a vision quest of sorts.
I am enjoying this dreaming to an extent that strongly suggests the adoption of a decent sleep regimen.
Today, shortly after spending ten or twenty minutes following a sea turtle and listening to another thirty minutes of the Heretics of Dune audiobook, I found miraculously that my personal stress levels had reached zero. This stress level turns out, as one might suspect, to be wholely pleasant.
I am inclined to suspect that this state is not driven purely by the vacation; the Dune books tend to put me in a particular philosophical/spiritual state. In this case, I blame the combination; that is, I suspect that some trigger was pushed whilst I was in a receptive state.
There exist other aspects to my current state, which extend beyond a lack of stress to a calm clarity. This clarity and calm may well be of greater import to me than the pleasant lack of stress. The question that I find arises for me now is, how can I make myself receptive and intentionally self-trigger; this will, hopefully, serve as a continued avenue of self-inquiry in the future.
Today is Wednesday of my Sunday through Saturday week in Cancun. It is currently the evening, about 11p and, before I go to sleep in preparation for tomorrow’s activities, I thought that I should check-in with y’all. I think that Im going to structure this as a summary of some of what’s been going on and follow with some more general thoughts that have been crystalizing.
It being Cancun, the obligatory sun bathing, swimming and strong, frozen beverages have been happening but, as that is largely not interesting in any detail, I’ll leave it at that. I have been staying with friends at the Royal Sands, a timeshare resort. This is one of five timeshare resorts owned by this company and I have to say, it’s pretty sweet; honestly, if my family didn’t have property on Cape Cod, I would strongly consider signing in to this whole timeshare thing. The amenities are nice, the weather is fantastic and, let me tell you, the water is amazing. Evenings here have primarily finished off with games of Dominos, Fluxx and Set,which has been a wholely pleasant experience, and makes me want to play more casual games with friends.
This morning, we traveled to the Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza, which were truly fantastic to see. The degree of engineering, architectural and astronomical knowledge expressed by the structures of the ruins is truly impressive. I am certain that the experience was greatly enhanced by the quality and character of our tour guide. One of the major things that caught root in my mind as a result of the experience is the impermanence of everything that I am doing with my life. Even a relatively modest Mayan dwelling still exists and expresses something about its inhabitants; what mark have I left on this world that will not be gone two generations from now? For that matter, what mark am I really leaving now?
Certain, deeper things seem to be gaining focus for me as well. One that seems truly clear is the degree to which I have missed the Atlantic Ocean and Woods Hole. Hopefully, my plans to work remotely from Woods Hole this summer will succeed and I shall get some substantial time there.
Another thing that occurs to me is that I need to spend more time with my good friends and, perhaps, make a few more.
Today, for the first time, my travel was slowed down as a result of not checking baggage. With a two hour shift, it is now 4:00p, and I am eating a so-so ham and cheese with a freely provided Tecate. Having just left Mexico City, I feel as though I almost didn’t make it.
So, I debarked my first flight, passed through immigration and proceeded in the direction of “Connecting Flights”. Before reaching my gate, I encountered a checkpoint where I was asked how many bags I had checked. Having checked no bags, with the intent of expediting my journey, I said as much and was told to go back through immigration and go to customs. Passing immigration again, I was told to continue as I had the first time. Please realize that my inability to speak or understand Spanish was not to my advantage. Returning to the checkpoint, again, running out of time to catch my flight, I was turned back once more. This time, asking for very precise instructions from the quite competent English speaking head of the checkpoint. It turns out, what I had to do was go through immigration, again, ignore “Connecting Flights”, and pass through customs as though Mexico City were my destination. It was then necessary to turn around, pass through a different entrance and find my gate as a domestic flight. With about twenty minutes before departure, I was very pleased to catch my flight.
All is now well and that was a mighty tasty Tecate.
As I write, I am sitting in seat 20E on a Mexicana Airbus A318 en route from San Francisco to Mexico City. It is 9:30a; I am writing on my Nokia N810 (a device, which I will have to tell you of some other time); I have just consumed a wholely decent omelette; and, I it is my intention to publish this as soon as I next encounter Internet access. The omelette has arrested my attention and is what prompted this post.
Though the omelette fell somewhere between edible and passable, this really is more of a “thought that counts” sort of thing. I have become so accustomed to the nickel-and-dimeing of bankrupt United States airlines that I was astonished to be offered food: “omelette or enchilada?” It took me two tries to understand through the Mexican accent, but that’s probably a failing on my part. Not only is there food but there appears to be free beer, though, it being 9:30a, I opted for milk.
Based on my experience thus far, I’m liking Mexicana and feeling reminiscent of British Airways. If you’re reading this, as is, nothing has interfered with my opinion sufficiently to justify revision.
I just read two fantastic pieces from the Free Software Foundation. The first, a guest post on TorrentFreak, addresses the question of Why the FSF cares about RIAA lawsuits and is a very insightful view into the dangers involved in the direction that copyright, patent and trademark laws seem to be headed. The second article, which was linked from the first, is an article by Richard M. Stallman on the term “intellectual property”, and the dangers of conflating copyrights, patents, trademarks and physical property. I find the article to be both interesting and insightful to a sufficient extent that I have decided to strike the term “intellectual property” from my lexicon. Henceforth, I will discuss such matters in the frame of what they are, not the frame that major rights holding organizations would like to phrase them in.
I feel that these articles are both extremely well written and make strong points on the nature of copyrights/patents/trademarks. I also feel that these articles give me a better vantage point from which to discuss the juxtaposition of copyrights and physical property rights. There are certainly some sharp people, doing some very important things at the FSF.
I finally got around to watching the end of Battlestar Galactica (sure took me long enough) and I have to say that I was somewhat displeased, to say the least. Don’t get me wrong; the series, as a whole, was quite pleasant and I did enjoy watching the end but, still, somewhat displeased.
SPOILERS FOLLOW:
Points of contention:
Seriously, you guys couldn’t come up with a better way to write a conclusion to this thing? I guess mediocre closure is still better than no closure. Thanks for the four/five seasons of pretty great, Battlestar Galactica. Oh well, time to catch up on Lie to Me and Dollhouse, I guess.
I have finally gotten around to updating my blog to the latest version of WordPress (I used to be horribly behind). As you may have noticed, I am back at the default theme; I will likely do something about this eventually; you may have to bear with me until then, if you haven’t already left due to my extended silence.
Speaking of that whole silence thing; I’m hoping to return to posting more often than I may have in the past (not that I haven’t said that before). For right now, I’m focusing on being in flux and getting things back to where they were; with luck it’ll just involve writing some new css to go with the default theme. To get those square boxes, borders and the like back; perhaps fit to width as well.
Anyway, just wanted to break silence and let you guys know that that’s my intent for future times.
Let me add Outlander to the list of awesome movies that you’ve never heard of. Outlander came out in US theaters last Friday and having followed it for a while, I went and saw it. Now, let me come clean here, Outlander isn’t a particularly good movie but it sure as Hell is a totally awesome movie. That said, I do recommend going to see it while it’s still on the big screen.
Vikings versus aliens really should be all the synopsis that you need to convince you to go see it but, I guess if you want more, I can give you a brief synopsis. Earth is actually an undeveloped, abandoned seed colony for the spacefaring human race. Kainan, a man from space, crash lands his ship on Earth in viking-age Norway. Kainan soon realizes that a particularly nasty alien, called a Moorwen, had stowed aboard his ship and is now on the loose. There are subsequently a lot of spaceman/viking integration/culture-shock dynamics and eventually it becomes vikings+spaceman vs. alien monster.
Just to be clear, I keep saying that this is vikings vs. aliens because that’s both what it purports to be and what it delivers phenomenally well. Outlander has cult classic written all over it.
Sandwich the monkey Jesus.
Did you know that there is a National Fenestration Rating Council? They rate windows.
Just a bit ago, I was performing a quick search of my blog for monkeys, because that’s the kind of thing that I do sometimes; got a problem with that‽ Anyway, I happened to come across one of my old posts, which happened to remind me of my dear old friend, Mr. Tickles. Good Lord, he was a great fish and I, absolutely, still miss him. Ditto, if not more, for Browder. Thankfully, Baldr’s probably got 7 – 9 more years in him.
Sometimes my sentimentality really catches me by surprise; I would have thought that I was colder hearted than all this.
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