Thin Glass (Friday, May 09, 2008 GMT)
| A new friend inspired me to write a short poem or two lately (thank you!). I jotted down Thin Glass quickly after listening to my son's description of a new video game that sold over $500 million in the week it was released, topping pretty much anything ever in terms of sales and demand. | |
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Tipping Point (Monday, April 07, 2008 GMT)
 Balance, tipping, change, struggle, rebalance: through this we are all confronted with opportunities to grow and learn. Relationships grow too, or necessarily end. It's rarely an easy equation to be drawn through, but we are inevitably left with an increased balance of possibilities. To the optimist this is a blessing, and a wide open field for better things. |
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Caving, Ex, Pre-Prom, P90X, et cetera (Saturday, March 22, 2008 GMT)
| I went caving with friends this past weekend and had a wonderful time. I absorb details and stories (most of them true!) like a sponge about things that are fun and memorable, so just ask me if you know me and are interested. The kids have been on Spring Break this week, so they have been taking it easy. Today I took my daughter to shop for and buy her a dress, shoes, and other items for her prom (again, ask for details if interested--Aowin is going to be very beautiful at her prom next month). Her friend "Sharebear" and my ex helped out, thankfully as I have limited to no fashion sense. I appreciated the help, and we actually had a pretty good day where everyone got along. I'm not one to follow fad diets or workouts, but I had ordered myself an intensive diet and workout program for my birthday earlier in the month. It is basically a fad diet/workout, but I hoped it would be useful to get me going. I was already in pretty good cardio shape given that I had been doing a lot more outdoor activities in the past several months, and I've been being careful not to injure myself, both dietarily and physically. I don't really know why I bought the program, but I did, and it rocks. I'm rounding out my second week of workouts, and my body has taken to the program like it's been ready for this sort of thing for years. I seem to be picking up more steam, and feel great. Another good thing about me, I suppose, is that I stubbornly commit to things and see them through. One of the workouts in the program is called "Extreme Yoga", and I have to say that it has been the hardest of all the individual workouts for me. I know that you're supposed to start out with basics in yoga or you can hurt yourself, but I've stubbornly made it through two full workouts so far. I need better form, flexibility, balance, instruction, and probably less body fat to do the routine 100% correctly--it's really hard, but I've surprised myself at how well I've done by myself with just the two times trying it. I wouldn't make mention of it given that there are a dozen other varying workouts in the program besides the yoga one, but I had a strange reaction to it. The first time through the yoga routines on week one wiped me out, but the second week I did significantly better. Something really strange happened that second time: I had this powerful full-body rush near the end of the session that felt like powerful drugs taking hold. Wow, but very unexpected. All the colors in the room became vivid and glowing, and it lasted for at least two hours after the workout. I really liked this, but I figured: either this is normal, or I have a brain tumor or something (just kidding). It was very interesting, though, and can't think of anything to compare it to really. I haven't turned up anything with Google searches yet (e.g. searching for "yoga rush" turns up many hits about a branded workout series of the same name). Next week I'll repeat the workout on the scheduled day and see if I have a similar experience. There are many other things going on I could write about, but that's all the "blogging to no one, blogging to everyone" therapy I can muster for now. |
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Glimpse of the Eclipse (Thursday, February 21, 2008 GMT)
 My sister called to remind me of the eclipse tonight (thanks, sis!). Clouds obscured the sky all evening in my area until a brief hole opened up around 10:30pm EST. I just happened to walk outside to give a sad last look skyward when out popped the Moon, Saturn, and Regulus. I didn't have time to get my Newtonian reflector set up to check out Saturn's rings, but I scrambled and grabbed my digital camera. I was able to snap a better picture of the partially eclipsed moon than I expected with the 10X zoom, and am generally happy to have been able to see the event. The thumbnail to the right is the scaled version of the actual view I captured from my front yard. |
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Single Parent Cooking (Monday, January 28, 2008 GMT)
 That's right: cooking. Yeah. And please don't ask my kids how that's working out for a while!Seriously, though: so far, so good. The kids have been very positive about getting regularly-scheduled meals, and both my son and daughter have pitched in to help--which is great. I never considered myself a complete noob when it came to cooking, but all of my past skills were centered around quick, easy, and "guy" food (grilling, pizza, etc). Even now I'm not aiming too high, just trying to get our finances back on track and ease things for my kids while they finish growing up. I'm encouraged by the fact that the simple additional effort I've put in so far has really been appreciated. I've started to read up more on the basics, spending a couple of hours a week researching and trying to learn a simple new dish in the limited time I have. I'm still pretty much at herbs/spices 101 and 30-minutes-or-less cooking at this point, but here are a couple useful links I've run across so far:My 16-year-old really likes smoothies, and since this past Fall I have been buying fresh vegetables for a "green" smoothie I googled, along with frozen berries and other fruit for the more traditional smoothie (Nick's favorite so far is frozen blueberries, a frozen banana, and 1% Mayfield NuTrish milk spun in a blender). I'm impressed: I definitely would not have tried the green smoothie when I was his age, but we've been splitting a blender full about twice a week for breakfast for a while now. He's certainly going to finish growing up healthier than I was given the variety of foods he likes. My daughter eats a pretty healthy variety of things as well, but has been a little dubious about the whole smoothie thing. Maybe I just haven't hit on something she likes yet. Smoothies are definitely much healthier than the types of desserts we used to routinely eat. I'm still messing around with them, and we may all move on to something else after a while. We'll see how it goes. |
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Turns of Phrases (Monday, January 28, 2008 GMT)
| In keeping up with new slang and clever twists on older words, the phrase "escape goat" stuck with me. All interpretations of this phrase are basically negative, from misuse of the term scapegoat to the definition I find most interesting: Someone flirted with, obsessed over and generally courted by a person in a relationship they want to get out of in the hope that it will give them the courage and will to leave. As is said often: don't try this at home. - karma police |
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Cusp (Tuesday, January 15, 2008 GMT)
| Appropriate for today: a ten-minute (to write, not read) poem. | |
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Battery Breakthrough (Sunday, December 23, 2007 GMT)
 Researchers at Standford have made a revolutionary breakthrough in lithium-ion battery technology that yields a marked improvement in battery storage density: 10x the energy storage for the same size battery. When the technology materializes in the consumer space, it could finally tip the economic equation in favor of electric vehicles, not to mention accelerate trends in mobile and miniature electronics. |
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Slow Stream Live Again (Tuesday, December 18, 2007 GMT)
 This feed of occasional ramblings is back up. Google's Blogger changed their support of the Atom format a few months ago, breaking my feed script. I can honestly say life has been way too busy and "interesting" for me to fix it until now (you know ya gotta have priorities when your world is shaken up). As for other new things: I've some outdoorsy photographs in my gallery annex over at Picasa. |
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Underground (Wednesday, July 25, 2007 GMT)
| After months underground, I have emerged to write this brief entry. Then underground I go again, literally this time around. What little caving I have done recently and in the past has been very educational, challenging, and fun; it's definitely an incentive now for me to get more physically fit and maybe learn some ropework. Tennessee has world class karst resources, and there is an increasing amount of awareness being placed on local conservation. I've posted a few new photographs in my gallery. | |
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Lunar Eclipse (Wednesday, February 28, 2007 GMT)
I'm getting a nice lunar eclipse for my birthday this year.  |
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My Latest Pretension? (Wednesday, February 28, 2007 GMT)
| Because I had expressed interest, a colleague was kind enough to give me a slightly dog-chewed copy of Ulysses. I am filled with a mixture of anticipation and dread as I sit and eyeball the novel. My mind has circled all around the book, reading all the introductions, back of the book, estimating its thickness at two inches. My memory of beginning this novel a couple of times in the past and later losing interest is fresh. I tell myself that my focused determination has improved, and this time I will make it through, maybe even get something useful out of the effort beyond a mental endurance exercise. You can probably help me by asking how it's going from time to time, and offering any of your own insights. | |
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What will the motes be saying? (Wednesday, February 28, 2007 GMT)
| Particles whispering information all around, measuring, monitoring, and enmeshing the air around us? How smart and how soon is such dust at hand? The progress in miniaturization of these peer-to-peer sensor network devices over the past few years has been amazing to those who have been paying attention. For the impatient I ask you to consider RFID powder, google around a bit, and ponder both the useful possibilities and dangers. | |
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Spicy Supplements (Sunday, January 28, 2007 GMT)
 I have been slowly building up a taste for a variety of spicy foods for a few years. While I stay away from the extreme stuff (I'm definitely not into the major pain of macho-style hot-hot cuisine), I like to coast for a while on the heat of a moderately spiced meal when I get the chance.How I came to try cayenne pepper herbal supplements was quite by accident. They had been presented to me before, but a coworker had recently tried them in the office with mildly adverse and humorous results. I asked to try one out of curiosity, and found it to be no problem for me. I did experience the gentle warm heat buzz I was accustomed to feeling from eating a spicy meal, so the gears started turning in my head days later when I found myself with a bottle of cayenne supplement capsules purchased from the local health mart. Why not try them for a while, at least until I had used up the bottle? I've been taking the cayenne supplement capsules for a couple of weeks now, and have been surprised to realize that the majority of the knee pain I had been having for the past few years had gone away. I'm not completely sure I can attribute this to the cayenne regimine, but I am certainly going to keep up the supplements for a while longer and see if the pain stays away. If it does, I'll be closer to being sold on the stuff. The heat from cayenne hasn't caused me heartburn, ulcers, or other digestive problems that some people who are sensitive to spices sometimes report. I haven't read that much about cayenne pepper as a dietary supplement yet, but what I have read is encouraging: capsaicin, the major active ingredient in cayenne supplements, purportedly stimulates metabolism, fights cancer, aids in circulation (apparently its major benefit), helps the heart, and so on. I'm always skeptical about such claims because it seems like there are scores of purported super foods and supplements these days; wouldn't it be great if most of those claims were true? As it turns out, I think, if we can manage to eat the right amounts, less of the bad foods and more of the good foods and supplements, we can expect to have a bit of a nice edge with our overall health. If cayenne in particular turns out to provide a lasting health benefit for me, it will be worth becoming a lifelong "hot head" for. |
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Snowless, Checking In (Sunday, January 14, 2007 GMT)
| I still try to write the occasional new poem. Every couple of months I get the urge to scratch something down on a clipboard, and then maybe I will post the words if they look somewhat interesting to me the next day. I read poetry when I can, and the short verses I write of my own are an hobby I enjoy for myself. I've posted only 16 poems in three years, and I have received some feedback, though very little that is particularly encouraging, constructive, or positive. Mostly I've asked friends and family what they think, and usually the answer is something like: WTF!? Since I suppose most of the comments I've received were fair, I'm considering pulling items like the poetry off the site entirely, and reducing down to a minimal boiler-plate of utility items. It's hard to justify keeping things that apparently drag down people's perception and assessment of my general level of intelligence. I'm going to leave things as-is for a while until I'm sure what I want to do. I'll continue to write in private regardless. |
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Concretehenge (Friday, October 20, 2006 GMT)
| This video is very thought-provoking. A retired construction worker in Michigan was figured out how the original Stonehenge blocks might have been moved around and into their final standing positions using very simple technology and limited manpower. Wally may be on to something. | |
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Meteors and Skywatching (Friday, October 20, 2006 GMT)
Be sure to check out Heavens-Above for other interesting things going on above our heads. |
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Portals, Portals Everywhere (Friday, October 20, 2006 GMT)
 Portals have been driving me mad at work for the past several years. I'm talking about enterprise information portals, not the common door variety or exotic stargate variety. Swimming in the data stream of other technologies I and others have spent seemingly endless cycles and effort helping to build portals, guide perspectives on how to fit portals in appropriately, develop necessary supporting infrastructures, and generally try to keep dumb stuff from happening. It has not been the technology and project scope issues that have been a challenge so much as the bizzaro IT bureaucracy, politics, and personalities involved. The good news is that a corner has been turned, and "things are going to get better". |
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Teching Things Up a Notch (Friday, September 29, 2006 GMT)
 I am really a left-brained technology nerd trying to get away from work and career by building an exoself that excentuates everything but what I'm very good at. In my day-to-day life I have to live and breathe computer technology.I even literally think differently than most people. My son has been diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome, and his therapist pretty much unofficially pegged me with the same upon our first meeting. I share many of the characteristics that earned my son the diagnosis. My father has the characteristics as well--and I think even more so in many respects. And it bothers me on many levels to to see my son struggle with these things. But far from a career disability, having obsessive, focused, logical thinking in some fields can be a distinct advantage. In other areas, most folks really do not know how to deal with those who are not socially hardwired as they are. Back to the subject: "teching things up". I should be trying to strike a balance, rather than mostly omitting the technical elements on the website. Besides programming in a dozen or so computer languages, some of them daily, I have a body of softwares I would like to brush off, clean up, and contribute to the Net community. I'm invested heavily into network, system, and security administration, as well as many other things too boring to mention (right-brain kicking in here to shut me up). What I am short on these days is time. But I am obsessive, so things I don't have time for tend to happen anyway. Eventually. As a warning, if you entirely despise technology: run, run away from this place and never look back (all approximately five of the people who read this blog). |
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Away (Wednesday, September 27, 2006 GMT)
| Another very short poem: Away. I usually enjoy the month of September, but I seemed to have missed most of it this year. Nice Fall-ish weather in my woods today, though. I suppose I should post more things of wider interest on this blog, but I don't really care all that much. Nor do I have the time. I wish I did. I've barely had time to sleep lately. Any ideas and feedback are welcome. Have a great day. |
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Five Years (Sunday, September 17, 2006 GMT)
| I've posted a very short new poem called Five Years. At least one nice thing about my poems is that I try to make the information content very short and compressed, so there's very little to wade through if they aren't very good or interesting. |
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Coulrophobia (Saturday, September 09, 2006 GMT)
 Clowns. Got to love 'em. Or NOT. I must admit that as a child the sight of clowns had me trying to claw my way to safety. My fear of clowns has translated to general uneasiness as an adult. Happy clowns are the worst. Overtly evil clowns don't seem to bother me at all for some reason. First-person clown-shooter, anyone?Possibly it's the perceived insincerity of the happy clowns that disturbs me. I mean why would 'ol creepy white-face be that jolly unless he was thinking about feasting on... tender flesh? Maybe that's what the hidden clown agenda (tm) is really all about. Look at 'em: pasty white, painted, too happy, they like to be around kids. Kids! They could be undead, they could be cannibals, even worse. What hides behind a mask of happiness? Kind of makes you wonder. Anyway, it turns out I'm not alone. All around the Net I've found other people who share my issues of clown wariness. There's this guy. And her. And her. There are the products at www.ihateclowns.com and www.ihateclowns.org for starters. You have all been warned. Please help get the word out. |
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Google Juice (Monday, August 28, 2006 GMT)
| Google Juice? Apparently my konscia.com personal site has it. Someone had pointed this out to me recently: typing the keyword konscia into Google will bring up my home page as the first-ranked search result (i.e. pressing the "I'm Feeling Luckly" button will go directly there), if only for a flicker of days. This is completely unexpected from my point of view. Is konscia.com popular? Hardly. "Obscure with occasional content" should be my tagline. So why the Google juiciness? The keyword konscia: is a relatively--13,000 results--obscure word (an Esperanto adjective), a toplevel domain, a couple of people (thanks, sis!) may link to me, and I serve up a customized melange of Unix fortune quips on the toplevel page. I enjoy the shifting text because it always stimulates my brain in some small random way every time I visit the page. Could it be the shifting text on the toplevel page that attracts the Google ranking algorithm? |
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Edisto (Wednesday, June 21, 2006 GMT)
| I've posted photos from our recent family vacation at Edisto Beach, SC. Edisto is fairly non-commercial with the biggest attraction other than the beach itself being the local serpentarium. Edisto is located about an hours drive south of Charleston, and we spent a rainy day poking around near the Charleston Old City Market. Other than a few hours without electricity, we managed to miss the bulk of Tropical Storm Alberto. The coast: nice to visit, but not a place to live year round. | |
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Like an Arrow (Monday, June 05, 2006 GMT)
| There has actually been lots of stuff going on lately, so I don't even know where to begin. Nothing bad, though, and mostly stuff I'll not be discussing on the Net. My mood has been on the upswing, and quite a bit of creativity has been on tap lately. For all I know this could just be due to the change of seasons. Just drop me a line or email if you know me, and we'll catch up. My eyes are slowly getting better from the LASIK. I'm having a bit of trouble focusing with the left eye. In general I can see much better now, especially when it comes to wider field of vision and depth perception. Using the computer and reading has been a little more difficult. I'll be going back to the doctor later in June to find out more. If I have to get a "touch up" to one or both of my eyes it's no big deal. I remain very positive. There are dozens of new online articles I could recommend and discuss, but I'm trying to refrain from just linking to other people's stuff, posting "me too" write-ups, etc. I'll probably get around to posting a blogroll soon. I'm almost ashamed to admit that a good portion of the things I read routinely on the Net are very tech-oriented, although I am trying to balance things out in other directions. |
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