Category: halloween

The best holiday ever.

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i’m a jerk

fried = good
I’m a jerk. I overcommit, I don’t call people back, and I sometimes don’t answer the phone when people call. No one in particular, I’m pretty impartial. I forget stuff, I pretend to forget stuff. I get in moods where I just wanna lock the door and be in my box. Other than that, I’m a fairly social person I guess.

Weekend roundup: Friday night Sharaun and I did a “double date” kinda thang with Eric and Suzy. We grabbed some dinner and then took in a show of the new Matrix. And yeah, what you’ve read is true – the new Matrix sucks pretty bad. Saturday Pat and Eric came over and we watched college ball and drank a few beers from the neverending keg (all served up without pumping the thing once). Sunday I woke up feeling pretty crappy, this cold seems to have migrated into my chest. Time to call the doc I guess. I tried to work in the backyard, but it was too muddy to get anything done. So I took a nap instead because I wasn’t feeling well. Sunday night is “Alias Night,” where we rotate houses and cook dinner for each other before we watch Alias – it was at Kristi’s last night and we had some yummy fried chicken. Wow, what an exciting life I lead.

Why the heck does Word always open up with the “reviewing” toolbar active? I don’t think I’ve ever used the stupid reviewing toolbar – yet every time I start the program, there it is, just takin’ up space up there in the toolbar place. I mean, I’m starting a new document from scratch, there’s nothing on the page, what the crap could I be reviewing? Stupid Word always doing the wrong crap. Why is the third bullet in my bulleted list a different color and size than every other bullet, seemingly for no reason? Why, all of the sudden, did the font size of the last sentence I typed increase by 1.5x when I hit the carriage return? Stupid stupid Word. How many years has Redmond been working on this dang thing anyway? No, I don’t want that little lightning bolt by that address, and get those red mountains out from under my wife’s name – I think I know how to spell it, thank you.

Finally got a haircut last night, and shaved this morning. With the addition of wearing a newish shirt, I figure I’ll probably get several phone numbers today. I did that “oops I don’t have that much hair anymore” thing with the shampoo this morning, squirting out a nice huge glob and having it run off my no-hair down into my eyes. I swear… While I was in the shower, I got to thinking about various diseases – and had a funny thought. What if all diseases could be cured by something that rhymes with the disease? Like, you could cure the flu with stew, or pneumonia with ammonia… yeah, those were really all I could think of. I thought maybe AIDS with parades or arcades, but I gave up on cancer and bronchitis.

So as you can tell I have nothing to write. I didn’t scan in any love letters, or write any short stories, and I can’t think of anything more to write. A full Halloween pictorial is upcoming, but other than that I don’t really have any planned topics. Guess I better start doing something interesting soon. It was cool to see my dad comment on the blog the Friday past, but I still see he maintains hi innocence in the Niagra debacle… shame pops, shame. Man, I’m even too lazy to go back through this entry and do the customary hyperlinking thing. So that’s it, I’m done. Dave out.

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you can judge me

it's supposed to be camping...
What profession is it where I get to think and write all day? Because I really want to try and make a career move into it. I could do this all day, but only if you give me money for it. Sometimes I think I want to be a comedy writer for the Simpsons, or SNL or something. I wonder if that’s as cushy a job as it sounds? All I know is: I love computers and engineering, not to mention money, but sometimes I long for a completely structureless environment. Where I can sleep whenever I’m tired, and sometimes even when I’m not tired just because it feels good. Where I can drop everything and go camping for three days in the middle of the week because the weather is amazing. And also where I have time to learn to play guitar.

Tomorrow night is the Beulah / John Vanderslice show in SF. Should be a good show. I’ve been listening up to some Vandeslice, since I’m barely familiar with his stuff.

OK, I’m not in a writing mood – so I’ll just drop the link and call it a blog. Without further ado – the Halloween Bash ’03 Posthumous Costume Contest. Have fun.

Dave out.

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pick your own

clash!
This morning I did something a lil’ crazy. See, I constructed a new “outfit,” without external consultation. That’s not something I normally do. Usually I’ll throw on a shirt/shorts combo that is already proven. That means that someone, almost always Sharaun, has already told me that the items I’m wearing “go” with each other. That way, I have preset combos that I know look OK – so I cycle through those. I mean, I don’t even buy clothes. I get a wardrobe “refresh” every December when my birthday and Christmas roll around. That usually lasts me through the year. Since I have very little idea (and really don’t care that much) what looks good, I’d rather take what I get and trust in my gift-givers’ abilities to decide on my accoutrements.

Anyway, today I got all creative and tried to make a new ensemble, and what’s even more strange, out of items I’ve rarely worn before. Ends up I’m wearing a powder blue sweater that’s (in my mind) a tad too tight, and some really dark blue jeans. I have never worn the sweater before (perhaps because it doesn’t quite fit) and I normally loathe dark denim. So, I’m sitting here wondering how gay I look. Note to my gay readers: I ain’t got nuthin against ya, I just don’t wanna be mistaken for ya… no hard feelings? Cool.

Nobody’s really said anything yet, so I guess it’s not too aggregious of a fashion faux pas. But somehow, whenever I stray from my tried and true clothing combos – I end up sitting in my cube staring down at what I’m wearing and thinking “Damn. Do I look like a huge tool right now? Man, I do. I look like a friggin’ tool. Nah… maybe not…” Bottom line I guess is that I could care less really. As long as my junk isn’t hanging out or something, I’m cool with it. I’ll just wait till I get home and Sharaun goes: “Did you wear that to work today?” Then I’ll know.

I’ve finished the code portion of the Halloween costume voting page. And don’t complain about it not being ready yet, I put a lot of effort into that mess. For the nerds who appreciate it: involved a masterful combination of cookies, Javascript, ASP, and JetSQL. Probably all for a page that will be stale from inception anyway, but whatever – like I said before I love projects. So working on it was fun enough. I should have it ready by tomorrow morning. You’ll be able to vote on the best costume, as well as leave comments for each individual costume. Should be cool, but I’ll let the end user decide. There were some awesome costumes, so I think they should get some time on the web – as all awesome things should.

Last night Anthony and Ben and I put our best effort into finishing off the Halloween keg. From the “liftability” of it, I figured it wouldn’t be very hard. However, turns out it had me fooled as it easily served up two liters of tasty brew for each of us (that’s six liters total: dave conquers multiplication) without hinting at being dry. I mean, it feels empty – but the beer keeps coming. Could it be I bought the fabled neverending keg? Who knows… I’ll keep testing it though, just to be sure. Then we watched some TiVo’d Reno 911 and threw in the Matrix Reloaded. Bah… Reloaded blew to me… too much mystical crap, and that orgyrave scene seemed really dumb and gratuitous. I like the first one a lot, but the second one either went over my head or I’m not interested enough in it to invest the time to appreciate it’s intricacies.

OK, I’ve got lots more to say – but my fingers aren’t willing. Look for the Halloween page to be linked in tomorrow’s blog, promise. Dave out.

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mizouse in the hizouse

dave is tiiiirrrred....
Man, that weekend seemed looooong… which is awesome. The party on Friday night went off without a hitch, and I think it was a rousing success. At least, everyone I talked to seemed to have had a good time. If you were there, thanks for coming – if you missed it, you are one sorry sucka. Anyway, Ben and Anthony had a great idea and suggested I code up a belated costume contest page with pictures from the party. I thought it sounded awesome, so I started coding on it right away. I’ve got it working to the point where you can make comments on each costume, and almost have the voting taken care of (involves some cookie-work to stop cheaters from voting more than once). Anyway, I hope to have that up by tonight – because the longer I take to get it done, the less fun it will be.

As for the party itself, it was rad to the bone. Nearly everyone showed up, and there were only a few non-costumed bums. Sometime during the night my neighbors even dropped by to enjoy themselves. We played Pac Man, danced in the fog and strobe light, drank copious amounts of beer and other… it was a good time. One reason I wanted to do the costume page is because so many people were good sports and dressed up for the occasion, and there were some great costumes too! A lot of effort went into them, which made the party even more fun. I got a lot of pictures, and there’ll be a proper page about the whole fête as soon as I can cobble something together.

The remainder of the weekend was cool too. Saturday was cleanup. The carpet got pretty trashed from the night’s activities, so we busted out the steam cleaner that my folks had given us as a housewarming gift. We hadn’t used it yet, but we were both really happy with the results. All the party-stains were erased, and the carpet was nice and shiny new. After some more sweeping, mopping, and general tidying – the place was brand new again. Saturday night was a recoup night, since this cold is still dogging me.

Last night was the Modest Mouse / Shins show in SF. Ben and I had originally got tickets a while ago, and it was set to be just the two of us for the outing. The show last night was the 1st night of a three-night stint at the Fillmore for that lineup, and all three nights had completely sold out. Just knowing that made me a more excited than normal about the show. At the last minute, Sharaun and Anthony decided they wanted to come along and try to pick up some tickets outside the Fillmore. The chances were slim, since the show had sold out three nights, but they both figured they could hang out and have fun somewhere even if they didn’t make it in the door.

Once again, traffic was terrible on the way out there. We parked and walked through the cold drizzle to the Fillmore, where millions of people had the same idea as Anthony and Sharaun. Ben and I said our goodbyes and goodlucks, and headed indoors. Unbeknownst to us, there was a 2nd opening act – the Helio Sequence. Now, I’d never heard of them, but Benz seemed to know who they were.

Helio Sequence took the stage at about 8pm. It’s just two dudes, lead guitar and drums – with the remaining music being served off a PC loop. Man did they rock, they made a lot of noise and sounded really good. I was super impressed with their stuff, and they were really entertaining to watch. I’m sure it helps that the sound in Fillmore is always amazing, the acoustics in that place make live music sound great.

We called Sharaun and Anthony after the first act, and let them know there was still time. They had wandered into some dive-looking place called the “Boom Boom Room” and were staying warm and dry in there – but said they’d poke around for tickets again soon. They mentioned the outlook was grim, since everyone seemed to be wanting tickets and not trying to offload any. They found a couple people taking some $75/ticket noise… and promptly shut that down – it was a $20 show! They never did make it to the Fillmore, and ended up hanging out in the Boom Boom Room for the whole time.

The Shins came on around 9pm and played for about an hour. They also sounded in top form. The singer’s voice was a dead ringer for the album, and the only thing missing were some of the fancy harmonies and overdubs from the studio. The set was a pretty good mix of old and new, with one track that neither Ben nor I could spot. It was a nice long set, with a couple slow songs to give the stoners their chance to spark the tweeds. Man, I think Benz and I were the only two dudes in there not puffin’ chronic… it was more evident than normal it seemed.

After their set, people started pushing up front in anticipation of the headliners. As the Shins’ keyboardist said… it was about to be “… Mizouse in the hizouse.” Yeah, he was funny. Ben and I managed to stand firm and push up pretty close. We had a nice spot, right next to some girl who I had halfway fallen in love with by the end of the evening.

Modest Mouse came on around 10:30pm, and played until 11:30 on the dot. Right off the bat the singer apologized, saying he’d lost his voice at a previous gig – and would do his best to “Lou Reed through this.” Well, it was hit or miss… this is the 2nd time I’ve seen them live, and neither time was particularly stunning. Musically, they rocked – crunching guitars and heavy drums, but the vocals were seriously marred by the whole laryngitis thing. In fact, they couldn’t even do an encore it was so bad at the end, they sent some roadie up to apologize as the house lights came up and people started booing.

We rounded up our other two from the Boom Boom Room, and headed home. After our requisite getting lost in SF, we eventually found the Bay Bridge and were off. We made the traditional stop at Krispy Kreme for donuts and coffee – and were back home in bed by 2:30am or so. ‘Twas a good night.

Well, as I promised – more about the Halloween party to come. I wanted to do a special blog about it, and I just haven’t had time to craft it up yet. I’m going to try and throw it together tonight, so keep an eye out. Sorry for the long boring entry.

Dave out.

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trick or treat


Ahhh… the day of the party is at hand. Happy Halloween all! As you can see, blog got all up in the festive mood also. Go blog.

Heard a band on 3wk yesterday that piqued my interest, so I looked ’em up with the trusty Google. They are called The Potomac Accord. I have no idea if the name refers to an actual event in history (forgive my ignorance). The music is what Sharaun calls “the stuff you listen to that makes me wanna kill myself.” Yeah well, I do kinda dig that dragging, minimalist, hushed/sad sound sometimes; plus they play the quiet-loud-quiet card really well, and I am a big fan of that. I’d maybe put them on a comp with Kepler, Early Day Miners, Low, Mogwai, Godspeed, A Silver Mt. Zion, etc. Hmm… describing that imaginary comp makes me wanna actually put it together. They have some mp3s on their site, which I downloaded and have been listening to a lot. Who knows, I may break down and order the disc. Check ’em out for an idea of the post-rock (whatever) “sound” I’m talking about.

I don’t think it’s strange that I put whatever I want on the blog. I’m not worried about who sees what or what impact it might have on whomever. I’m not concerned about people reading the blog and thinking I’m crazy. Yeah I write it for an audience, but I also write it for the hell of it. I would write it if people didn’t read it, I’ve been doing it for years – just not online. I’ve got 500 pages of shit that’s not online, and this is jolly #60 of the stuff that is online. So all you blog haters, take note of my cool and aloof rebel attitude – and don’t step to me… we clear?

Wouldn’t it be cool if people dressed up as you for Halloween? I guess when you see a you costume in the Halloween shops, it’s just another sign that you’ve “made it.” I think a Dave costume would be fly.

Dave out. Party on.

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thank you mr. axworthy

cough cough sneeze sniffle
I’m sick. I feel crappy. So today, you get a break from the 3-page blogs while I rest.

I put my old camera up on Ebay, hopefully I can make some cash. I didn’t get to work on the yard or the Halloween stuff much this weekend. I did have to repair the FCG on Sunday, because the blacklight fell from where we mounted it – and was swinging by it’s cord. I also finished a few tombstones and set them in the ground on Sunday, while I had a bout of feeling well. Equally as rad, I discovered Sunday night that while securing the graveyard fence in the front yard, I had managed to pound a piece of rebar through a sprinkler pipe. So, today I have to repair that so I can get the lawn watered again. Not a very productive weekend.

Oh yeah, speaking of the crank ghost – I took some video last night so you can see just how awesome this thing looks. Remember, the final effect includes a haze of fog that obscures the ghost. I didn’t have the fog running for the video, but I still think it’s pretty impressive. Judge for yourself below:


FCG movie for broadband users.		        
FCG movie for dialup users.

I think it looks pretty good! Hope ya liked it, I’ll have more pictures of Halloween night sometime next week. Everyone’s costumes are sounding really awesome, so there should be some good snapshots of the whole affair. Oh yeah, more blog stuff in the news… see, I’m not that crazy…

Dave out.

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my brother the squad leader

i'm gonna sit right down and write me a letter
Got my first letter from Frank at bootcamp. Reading it made me quite emotional, and not because it was an emotional letter, but for some other reason. Maybe hearing from him that things are hard, that he’s having a hard time and he sometimes gets lonely. Maybe reading that he was appointed squad leader of his barracks, or that he and Angela plan to get married soon after he’s out. Maybe just the simple fact that he wrote me a letter, and talked to me like a friend. It’s not like we ever hated each other, or ever weren’t on speaking terms – but we’ve been far from that “brotherly” vibe for quite some time. Anyway, I’m proud of him.

He mentioned how much he likes to get letters, as they’re his only contact with the outside world. So I started the “write Frank a letter a day” campaign, I’ve been doing it so far – although it doubles my required writing per day – so the blog entries may suffer a little bit in terms of length (just to give my typing fingers a rest).

Sharaun’s really been into the latest Strokes album, and she successfully lobbied the crew this weekend and got us to commit to the show tomorrow night. She bought the tickets last night, and we’ll be rolling over to the bay after work to catch the show. We saw them last year (nearly a year to the day, as we caught them on Halloween), and the show wasn’t that impressive to me.

Don’t get me wrong, I love their music – but the show was kinda uninspired, and they only had one 40min album at the time, so it was a short set. And, Julian cussed so much it was comical. You know, he’s one of those “‘fuck’ isn’t good enough as a stand-alone word, so I’ll insert it befuckintween the syllables in my words” kinda guys… for some reason I didn’t like that. It was like New-York-rock-star-to-the-extreme.

<begin tanget>
Julian Casablancas is possibly the best rock-‘n’-roll lead singer name ever. Even if he wasn’t in the Strokes, he would surely have to be a rock star. With a name like that, you’re destined to be. Casablancas… with an ‘S’ at the end… smoooove!! I’m so jealous.
</end tangent>

But, hopefully with this new album (which is great, by the way) they’ll have some more material – and the show wasn’t bad… it just wasn’t one of the brighter spots in my concertgoing career. So, we’re going – and I’m listening to the album now to get pumped. I’ll a review of the evening posted in Wednesday’s blog.

Two projects came very near completion this weekend. The retaining wall is about 3/4 backfilled, with the slope graded and all. Eric came and helped me on Saturday morning, which I thought was totally awesome of him. Now I owe him work. Then later on Saturday, Anthony and Ben came over and we finished assembling the FCG, and got it running. We did our first test at night with the blacklight, fog machine, and music. The results were far better than I could have imagined. Neighbors were coming out to check it out, and we got several compliments on her. We must have stood in the street for like an hour and half, just watching the ghost and drinking beer. It really is that cool. I also nearly finished the cemetery fencing, so things are definitely on track for all decorations being up and operational by this coming weekend.

I’ve made my backyard schedule a little more aggressive, after seeing how much work I was able to get done this weekend. I think I can have the entire wall backfilled by this coming weekend. Then, I plan to call the dirt movers and have them cart away our excess dirt during the week before Halloween. I know it’s gonna be close, but I think it’s doable. That way, at least my yard won’t look quite as “under construction” for the big Halloween party. Ahh… there’s a chance it’ll happen… maybe…

Dave out.