Eddie Vedder and me

Last night I had a dream. No, not a vision for a better future where all people are truly equal regardless of color or orientation or anything. Just the regular kin of dream you have at night when your subconscious is doing its daily housecleaning. I knew it was a dream because the day was sunny and warm. On this sunny and warm day Pearl Jam was playing a concert in a park somewhere. I have the first three Peal Jam albums, which I rate roughly as Love It (Ten), Like It (Vs) and Listen to Songs From It When They Come Up On My iPod’s 2200+ Song Playlist (Vitalogy). This is to say that I like Pearl Jam so my brain wasn’t actively trying to punish me by having them put on a show for me. I believe this may have been an acoustic show of some kind because I do not recall the wailing of electric guitars. Eddie was a bit soft and flabby. The crowd seemed very sparse, so maybe it was a secret rehearsal or something.

The weirder part is that I was onstage and it was clear that Eddie and I were a couple. I was also a musician of some sort or at least someone had handed me a mike. At one point I made a comment to the crowd as an aside, pointing out how I loved it when Bob Dylan did this certain song. Because Bob Dylan was also there (to the left of Eddie and me). The show was interrupted at one point when a softball came bouncing in near the stage. A couple of apologetic ball players came by and took it away. The concert continued, with Eddie being just a generally nice guy and kind of smitten with me. This was definitely not the lean, growling “Jeremy” era Vedder.

It was a pleasant little dream and I thank my subconscious for not hooking me up with someone dead like Kurt Cobain, which would have been all kinds of creepy.

This is why you don’t refuse sunscreen

Yesterday I was at a WESA softball game. Unlike most spring days, it was actually sunny and warm. Prior to game start I was offered some sunscreen. For some reason I was convinced I was impervious to the sun and declined the offer.

This is the result:

Yes, I am dumb but perhaps a smidgen more humble today than I was yesterday. I will now look for “Sunburning for Dummies” on Amazon.

Random questions answered

In this thread on Quarter to Three Tom Chick asks for random questions for a gaming podcast he does. A question is asked during the podcast and the first person to correctly answer wins a game of some sort. It seems this week he was drawing a blank, hence the seeking of suggestions. I am compelled to answer some of the random questions being proposed, specifically the ones in posts by Wade42 and Jason Cross.

Random Answers to Random Questions, Part 1

Do you sing when you’re alone (in the shower/in the car/etc)?
Yes. Many years ago I shared an apartment that had hardwood floors and pretty good acoustics. My roommate once came home early and heard me singing from outside the apartment door. He said I sounded pretty good!

What’s the state of your sock drawer?
Remarkably organized, right down to color and size (the ankle socks I wear with shorts on one side, the longer socks on the other).

What did your parents do for a living, and does it at all relate to what you do for a living?
My dad was a logger and owned his own logging truck until he retired early. My mom was a housewife and had her hands full raising five kids. The closest I have come to logging is chopping wood for a fireplace. I’ve pretty much been my own housewife, though.

What time do you generally go to bed/wake up?
These days I am usually to bed between 11 p.m. and midnight. Getting up depends on where/if I’m working but generally between 7 and 8 a.m. I don’t sleep in on weekends.

What is the last new food you tried?
I can’t remember this one. I don’t shy away from trying most new foods but it’s been awhile since I had something truly new and different.

Boxers or briefs? (Wait, do we really want to know?)
Boxers, but the modern kind!

What was the last live music performance you attended?
Not counting something outdoors and free, probably a Morrissey show back around 1998. Yeah, it’s been awhile.

Who is the most famous person you’ve ever met?
I once served coffee to David Duchovny.

What would you like them to print on your tombstone?
“This wasn’t the kind of immortality I wanted.”

Which is your favorite Muppet, and why? (Don’t even PRETEND that there isn’t at least one Muppet you like.)
Rowlf the Dog. Easygoing, friendly, plays the piano, doesn’t pee on the rug. What more could you want?

What is your favorite alcoholic beverage?
I don’t drink much. When I do, it’s usually an apple cider and I’m not hung up on the brand. After two my face is numb and I’m done, anyway.

If you could make yourself a little more attractive or a little smarter, which would you choose?
A little more attractive. I think I’m smart enough to get by but I’m just vain enough to want to look a little better. Smaller ears or better hair, please!

What is your worst bad habit?
Procrastination.

What is the oldest thing in your wallet/purse, besides a birth certificate or social security card?
Everything in my wallet is no more than a few years old. I recently cleaned it out, so all the old junk got tossed.

Does your phone number spell something? If so, what?
My phone number does not spell anything except gibberish.

What was your first computer?
An Atari 400 with 16k ram, purchased in 1982.

Who is your favorite relative (besides wife/children/parents)?
I don’t have ‘favorite’ relatives. They’re all pretty decent, for the most part.

When you’re hanging out at home, do you prefer it to be dimly lit or brightly lit? Why?
Watching a movie or TV, dimly lit. At the computer, eating/cooking or reading, brightly lit. For movies and TV, the picture is more vivid and immersive if the room is dark. For the rest, bright light just helps to see things or reduce eyestrain (in the case of the computer).

What is “God” to you?
An abstract concept.

Are you going to eat that?
I already did. Sorry!

My taste buds are all grown-up

I really like non-sweetened cereals now. To keep my sugar intake low I look for cereal with no sugar. This eliminates nearly everything you’ll find on the shelves of most grocery stores, but there are a few brands out there, most of them of the puffed wheat variety (you know, the cereal that came in those gigantic plastic bags you could stuff the pet dog into). The one I prefer most is Grape-Nuts. I quite like its crunchy texture and nutty flavor — and I mean nutty in the sense of “it tastes like nuts” rather than “the flavor is clinically insane”. I have an occasional bowl with unsweetened soy milk when I get that breakfast cereal craving. The fact that it satisfies me, that I actually look forward to the bowl is somewhat remarkable considering I grew up on Cap’n Crunch (the shredder of mouths), Count Chocula and Lucky Charms (I always saved the marshmallows for last, so I’d have  a bowl half-filled with pastel-colored milk and spongy yet still strangely kind of crunchy marshmallow bits at the end).

Kids really are amazing. How did I eat all that crap and not balloon up to 300 pounds? Oh yeah, metabolism, that thing that left me in a huff around the time I turned 20.

This is not the June weather I ordered

As someone who has lived his whole life in the southwest corner of BC, I am used to rain and I really don’t mind it.

Come June, one expects mild to warm temperatures, more sun, some clouds and occasional showers. So far we have been seeing mostly the latter. If I was still running the Locarno concession I’d be in full panic mode now.

Dear Mother Nature: cut it out! Make with the sun. (Please!)

The ghosts of jobs past -or- Stupid brain!

Recently I recounted how I had dreamed that I was thrust back into working at the Locarno Beach concession, something I last did 12 years ago. My brain or more specifically, the subconscious part of it, has apparently decided to use sleep time to revisit all of my previous jobs in chronological order.

Last night I found my dream-self back at the store I used to work at. At one point I asked about the schedule, to which the assistant manager of the computer department gave a coy, non-commital answer I did not care for. I had visions of barely getting enough hours to make ends meet. And Ramen noodles. I suddenly found myself outside, in a gravel parking lot, looking toward the ocean, except blocking the view was the Locarno Beach concession, with the stand opened up facing toward the road and not the beach as one would expect. It was clear that I was still working there, too. The joy of 11 hour days covered in grease and the happiness of working a low-paying retail job, together at last!

I woke up shortly afterward. If things keep on track my next dream job will take me back to my days of telephone technical support. I can’t wait!*

* yes, in fact, I can wait. More to the point, I would like sexy dreams of daring adventure and not the dregs of my past jobs. Dear Brain, please comply. Thanks.

It’s a magical day in Canada

Today the iPad went on sale in Canada, the base unit going for $549, $49 more than south of the border, as is the way with Apple’s pricing.

iPad

Apple describes the iPad as “a magical and revolutionary product at an unbelievable price.” I believe this is the first time Apple has referred to one of its products as magical.

magic:

  1. The art that purports to control or forecast natural events, effects, or forces by invoking the supernatural.
    1. The practice of using charms, spells, or rituals to attempt to produce supernatural effects or control events in nature.
    2. The charms, spells, and rituals so used.
  2. The exercise of sleight of hand or conjuring for entertainment.
  3. A mysterious quality of enchantment: “For me the names of those men breathed the magic of the past” (Max Beerbohm).

I’m going to assume they’re going with #4 here, though who knows, perhaps the iPad runs on pixie dust and mystic rituals. Of course, it’s all too easy to bash Apple these days, as they have become a big, juicy target with the popularity of the iPod, iPhone and Macbook. Wait, Macbook? How’d that one slip through? There’s no ‘i’ in there anywhere! (Ironically, the Macbook replaced the iBook.) I’ve walked by local cafes that appear to have an ‘Apple notebook only’ policy in effect, where you may be forbidden entry should you enter without some flavor of Macbook tucked under your arm. When I ride the bus, a good number of people plugged in to portable music players are wearing the telltale white Apple earphones. The company’s products are everywhere.

Popular companies are popular targets and people love tearing down the big guys, perhaps to allow the little guys to rise up so the process can start all over. A circle of life thing for the petty and jealous, if you will.

I own two iPods (the classic and nano) and they work well enough as music players. iTunes isn’t as horrible for me as it apparently is for others and it’s nice that Apple finally abandoned that horrible brushed metal look on its interface. I was worried they would be adding wood paneling in a future version. I do not hate Apple, even if I don’t embrace their vision of a closed-off, proprietary future where all content is vetted by Apple on your behalf but the iPad is a pretty big meh. For me it fills a niche I don’t need filled. I simply have no pressing need to check my mail, view photos or surf the web in a portable format, especially for $549. I’ll admit if it had supported a pressure-sensitive stylus for input I’d have been mightily tempted, though. Having a portable electronic sketchpad is probably too sexy for me to resist, so I should thank Apple for saving me an “unbelievable” amount of money.

There are a few glitches with the Canadian rollout. One of the selling features of the iPad, shown in the image above, is iBooks, Apple’s answer to the Kindle and other ebook readers — except the iBook store in Canada doesn’t have anything you can actually buy on it yet. Oops. I’m also not sure if I’d want to read a book on an LCD screen, even a really nice one, but if someone wants to loan me an iPad, I’d be willing to run some tests, though. In the interest of science, of course.

I was downtown today and while I was in Pacific Centre I went upstairs to see if there might be a line-up at the Apple store. This was around 3 p.m. and indeed there was a line-up. And security! They had (velvet?) ropes to keep people orderly and a big sign for one line-up labeled “iPad purchases”. The other line, not worthy of an actual sign, may have been for iPad lookie-loos or people just wanting to grab some ear buds for their iPods. The reports of the thing selling out will be arriving shortly, no doubt, so kudos to Apple for another successful product launch. Who’d have thought the same company that put out the Newton, the Macintosh “Portable” that weighed 17 pounds and the original iMac mouse which was designed for hands that have never appeared on humans would end up so blazingly successful?

I do wish they’d stop with the whole iName thing, though. It’s as outdated now as the brushed metal look.

This is still not the May weather I ordered

I knew something was up when Environment Canada issued its national spring forecast that called for warmer and drier conditions across the entirety of the country this spring. You know how those things go. They forecast sun, it rains. They predict overcast skies, it rains. They predict rain and it rains.

This is the forecast for the remainder of the month:


Allow me to translate:

Friday: rain
Saturday: rain
Sunday: rain
Monday: going out on a limb here — rain!

When I worked at Locarno Beach back in 1996-98 I was understandably obsessed with the weather. Even now I occasionally recall the days of yore when I prayed for sun so I could open the concession and earn a few meager dollars, even as I loathed opening the concession and actually having to be there.

The other night I dreamed I was back at Locarno, arriving rather suddenly, it seemed, and the scene was one of barely-contained chaos. A guy at the counter laughed at me while explaining he was the one who always had some difficult order. It seemed to be whatever it was he wanted — one of those energy bars or something like that — was in one of many boxes in the back. I tried to explain that I didn’t know any of this because I wasn’t there the previous year (or ten). A line-up started to form and I went to the till. An order was rung in for something but I didn’t know what. There was a $20 bill on the counter. I asked the guy if it was his, so I could make change. There was also another separate pile of money on the counter, a bunch of 20s and 10s. Things were cooking. My staff was running about, except they weren’t my staff, they were a bunch of strangers, presumably the staff that had worked there the previous summer. All that was missing was for me to look down and see I was only dressed in my underwear. Just before the dream ended I remember thinking to myself, “At least I’m making some money!”

It was awful. Yech. Dear Brain: No more Locarno dreams. Thanks!

The exciting world of new keyboards

I have a Saitek Eclipse keyboard and the main reason I got it was for the backlit keys. They’re cool in a geeky sort of way and practical in low-light conditions. However, I discovered over time that I preferred not working in low-light conditions on the computer, so the backlit keys seemed less necessary. What was worse, though, was the lettering on the keys being obliterated by my apparently acid-spewing fingers. The E, O, P, A, S, H, L and N keys are all smudged to the point of being nearly unreadable. Awhile back I had bought the Microsoft Digital Media Keyboard 3000 which, as the name implies, comes with a hojillion multimedia keys that do everything but iron your clothes and walk the dog. I pulled it out and remembered why I had not taken to it when I first tried it. The keys are ‘low travel’, which is fancy keyboard talk for the keys not sticking up as much and being scrunched a little closer together. The idea is you don’t need to press down as far or stretch as much, thus saving wear and tear on your fingers, whether or not they spew acid.

I find it makes me more prone to make typos because it feels funny. However, this seems as good a time as any to do battle once again with that unforgiving shrew, Mavis Beacon. Stay tuned!