travels kill the pen

I've been on the road a lot over the past 2 weeks. Anything that breaks up routine seems to disrupt my writing habits. I'm writing tonight from Medford, OR. Two more days here and then I'll spend the weekend with Ajai. After that, it's back home to return to no car and two weeks back in Charlotte until it's off to TX for a visit to Houston to work with the PP branch down there and also mix in a weekend escapade with John in Austin. That should work out great because the Austin City Limits Festival will be going on the weekend I'll be there. Kick Ass, more great music. I'll return from that trip and have another week in Charlotte before a long weekend and mini-vacation to Charleston with Katie and a friend of hers from Australia with his wife. That brings us up to October. Whew. There's a trip to Chicago with work in October, then in November there will be the Roche family Thanksgiving beach trip. December brings the holiday hoop-la's and a trip to C'ville to visit the fam, and that brings me up to 2005!

Anyway, back to the present, this trip is working out fine. I drove over to Jacksonville, OR tonight for dinner (about 10 mins from Medford). It's an old Gold Rush town that never really moved on. It was forgotten about when the railroad bypassed it for Medford and because of that, much of the town still looks like the 1890s. I walked around the town and then had dinner in a cool restaurant called Bella Union that unfortunately hired one of the worst waiters that I've ever had. Beyond Alex's horrible service, the food and atmosphere was great. Interesting encounter with the couple at the table next to me produced a half bottle of wine that I got to take back with me: Matthews Cellar: Yakima Valley Red 2000.

So, that's about all about where I am and everything. Hopefully between the travels I'll be able to pick up a car and get that whole car-jacking experience behind me. Looking at the Scion xB but it's probably just more a hobby than anything else. I really need to be considering something used and a little more practical. But then again, as Glen recently text messaged me: This is no time to be practical.

Cam (not in the picture - I don't know who the strangers are, they just got in the way of the camera) and I went uptown this evening to catch the Bank of America bike race. 40 mph is awefully fast on a bike.

XML fun with Dilbert

I spent sometime this afternoon playing around some with XML and XSL. For those of you that are not as into all the geek stuff, these are languages that enable data to be stored and read on the web different ways so it can be shared and understood. For those of you that are reading this that are more tech-savy than me, you're probably thinking: he's just now playing around with XML. It's long overdue.

Anyway, there's some cool stuff you can do with RSS feeds from different news servers. Just messing with it a little I was able to create a page that automatically refreshes with the latest Dilbert cartoon I might put that on the Intranet at work.

Just dial the number...

I guess it's easier than I thought. I promise not to abuse this feature, but it seems to work pretty well. Call a number, leave a message and it's on the blog. Damn I sound goofy in person:

A silly recording that I left from my mobile phone by calling the audio blogger number.

I am what I am...

I've had to spend a lot of time over the past week justifying what I did and who I am. I begin the story most of the time as: "I made a big mistake..." I explain that I was stupid for agreeing to give a stranger a ride in my car and I say that act was where it all went wrong. I tell people that I screwed up and I learned from my mistake. Maybe all this is true, but that sucks.

What did I do wrong? I was at a stoplight, and a fellow human being asked me for a ride. I had a ride and he didn't. It wouldn't have cost me anything to give him and his friend a ride down the street. I offered a simple act of charity.

What's wrong is that we consider that a wrong act. What the hell? If everyone did what I did in that situation, do you really thing that there would be as many car-jackings and other acts of violence as there are in this world? Of course not, it wouldn't be accepted because it wouldn't be expected. FUCK believing what I did was wrong.

Don't take me incorrectly. I blame the two guys that took my car at gunpoint 100%. They are disturbed and ill educated. They are pitiful, poor excuses for humans, and I'm putting my feelings lightly in saying that.

But I hope I have the courage to make a mistake like that again. My days of giving strangers a ride are over. My days of trusting the human race are not. You, reading this right now, are a good person. The person not reading this is a good person. Trust your fellow human, and you will not be let down. Condemn your neighbor, and he (ge - if you want to use the gender-non-specific term that Fig and I devised) will rob you. When will we learn, you cannot beat peace out of ignorance. You cannot strangle justice out of uneducated actions. You cannot scare victims into obedience.

I'm sad, because this experience has made me question my beliefs in the human race. But I will not let my convictions be compromised by the novelties of my own experiences. People are good; people are kind. Some people get misguided and do wrong to others, but that should not scare and prevent the rest of us from being who we really are.

If only I was a youngin' once again..

Have you seen the big air ramp at the X Games this year??!!! My god, I wish I had the balls to take on somthing like this thing. 9 stories, craziness.

NPR also had a cool interview with the guy that designed it.

Tired of having to log into sites?

I hate having to log in just to read a sticking new article that someone has forwarded me a link to. That's why BugMeNot.com is a pretty cool idea. Anonymous logins once more.

I also heard of another one that is good for sites that make you put in an email address and then they send you a verification email: Mailinator.net Poof! Spam be gone!

This is hillarious. I wish I knew the brand!

An Education in Carjackings

Well, by most accounts that I can find on the Internet, I was a classic case of a carjacking. I found a study that was done on carjacking between 1993 and 2002 and on most accounts, I fall into the median of almost all the stats. Except I didn't really fight back or resist and it said that 63% of the people do. Screw that, they can have the car. I'm just glad that I'm not in the 24% of people who are injured as a result of the crime. About 38,000 a year is what they estimate the number of carjackings in the US is. Most of them occur in urban areas. No shit. Only 24% of the cars are recovered undamaged. Looks like I may be going car shopping soon.