Down the Road with Linux

About a week ago my System76 computer arrived at my doorstep. I'm getting a bit fed up with the graft and bloat of Big Tech, so I'm learning a new operating system for the first time in 30 years. I've poked at Linux before, but I'm just jumping in now. While I still have my mac, it's relegated to the basement. It's just too bloated and locked down. I did managed to kill PopOS as I know just enough to be dandgerous. I then loaded Ubuntu on there, but the system wouldn't boot after a day. I probably did something to it, but have no idea what. The current install is going well and I always back up important stuff to other places. My computers, tablets, and phones could always go up in smoke and I could just move on. Which is good as I know enough to be dangerous.

Another Week

Another week has passed since I've posted. So I've been up to... I went up to Minnesota to visit my friends. I picked up their kiddo at Hamline after buy too much (is that possible) vinyl at Agharta Records. I picked up: Lost in Translation Soundtrack Pilgrim/Surfer Rosa - The Pixies Pink Moon - Nick Drake Songs of Leonard Cohen Songs in the Key of Life - Stevie Wonder The Cars first album The Virgin Suicides - Air Duke Ellington & John Coltrane American Water - Silver Jews The guys at the counter complimented me on my taste or maybe my spending habits. Either is fine. We managed to catch the Northfield No Kings Rally and watch Death Becomes Her. I've also managed to by a mount for my camera to take good pictures of photographs, ordered two yards of dirt and three yards of mulch, made minestrone soup, and watched a couple of good movies. I need to write more oftern.

Through Another's Eyes

My nephew was diagnosed with autism back at the end of the 90's when the broader public didn't have much of an idea with it. When I would tell friends I would say like Dustin Hoffman in Rainman. Looking back, that's a really simplistic example. It just shows where we were not that long ago. Safe to say I learned a lot about people and especially myself learning through how he saw the world. We are a lot alike and I understood more of my quirks with him in my life. On Saturday, we went to the opening of the Morex Music Machine Museum in Pleasant Prarie in the southeast of the state near the Illinois border. Sam is someone he met online through their shared love of The House on the Rock, especially all of the music rooms featuring contraptions built at the turn of the century. The family was kind and graceous and Sam a great host. I wouldn't have seen something like this if not for my nephew.

A Little Dirty

I feel a little dirty as I just gifted the first Twilight book to my niece today. She emailed asking me if I'd buy it for her. Before anyone (all 0 of you readers) get on my case, I used it for good, I think. I also said she had to read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. She was going to get Twilight one way or another, so I got to bundle a better-written and a better-example book.

Life As It Is

It's kind of nice to finally use my laptop for the excuse I bought it for. Speaking of, is anyone looking for a kick-ass laptop? Anyway...

In the "What the Fuck!?! Oh yeah, it's just Pat", I finished the original Degrassi series. Yeah, it's hokie, but the characters were the same age that I was at the time. The look of things was familiar with lots of big hair and mullets. The only difference was instead of saying "ruht" and "fir", they said "aboot". The complete series of Daria arrived this last week, so I'll dig through that to pass time and remember why I hate humanity, mostly because I can relate to a cartoon than most people. On a more respectable note, I ordered the Modern Lovers album and Meat Puppets II on vinyl.

Louie has ennui and a black beard. He could have an impacted digestive system or maybe I need to get a new UV light. I'll take him into the vet this week. If I get the same vet as when I took Leopold in, she'll think I'm a terrible owner. Aaagghhh!

I'm tired, I'll post more tomorrow.

Bo Knows Hockey

So a co-worker came into my office this morning as I have the communal mini fridge. It went like this:

Me: The Red Wings won last night. I'm not happy about that.

Her: Who are they?

Me: The Red Wings? You don't know who they are?

Her: No, who are they?

Me: The Red Wings?

Her: Haha!

Me: The Detroit Red Wings?

Her: Oh! I don't follow baseball.

Me: Leave.

The Weather Outside Is Frightful

But inside it's so delightful. In grand upper-Midwestern style, a huge blizzard will soon bury us in so only the most strident and/or foolish venture out more than the few feet it takes to get to the nearest tavern. I do have a bar/restaurant nearby, but I'll take something else.

Good Food

Today I had to cart* my father over to Milwaukee for a job meeting. It was at the new space for Gloriosos', an Italian Deli, we went across to the old one for lunch. The owner bagged our purchases. He's 87. His brothers and other relatives work there. So if you get to Milwaukee, go there.


*My father got caught going 26 over right where the speed limit drops from 65 to 55. Although the judge reduced it to 16 over, he suspended his license for 15 days. It's only the third ticket he has gotten in 52 years of driving. Stupidity incarnate.

Random Babbling With Some Purpose

Those of you who have been (un)fortunate enough to be around me when caffeinated or, even more so, caffeinated and slightly drunk know my propensity to talk a mile a minute and switch from subject to subject. Although and I neither caffeinated nor drunk, I still have that mindset now.

Ye Be Warned.

So the past 3-4 months have been the most anxiety and self-doubt free months I've ever had. Strange really. I can't say anything really phases me anymore, at least not deeply. Such a vacation it has been.

If you want to catch a couple of movies, see District 9 and 500 Days of Summer. The former is a social commentary on racism & immigration. The main alien in it is the most humane CGI character that you'll ever see. Imagine Jar Jar Binks.... this alien redeems that. I didn't get too excited about the last third focusing on the main alien and main human, but that was more a personal preference of mine. It doesn't take away from the film at all in general. The second focuses on a brief romance or fling between two people. It roles through the light and fun of the start of a relationship to the bitter end, then resolve. There's a couple things the guy did that wasn't how I'd handle things, but it gave food for thought.

Ted Kennedy is dead. Next.

I'm working on a playlist called "Pornicopia". Yes, it will have one porn song in it, but mostly it's a collection of new music and some old that I've been listening to recently punctuated by audio of movies and such.

Rugby is going well and last night's practice burned my lungs. We're ultimately preparing for the international tournament in Minnesota next year. No broken rib, concussion, severed foot, or carotid artery will keep me from it.

Shaun moved out and into a new place with his girlfriend. It is strange to both Naida and me that he's not around. Tim has moved in a is a good presence. Unfortunately, his cat, Sophie, is very territorial and my cat is a complete wimp. We're working through the drama using gates and spray bottles.

Um, that's it.

'tis But A Scratch!

So my right pinky is only sprained, not broken. I saw a sports medicine guy who plays rugby and he gave me some padding to put between my fingers.

So Oshkosh Pigfest is a go.

Of Marches and Puppets

I'm a devoted citizen of this state, yet I occasionally find myself in first-time experiences integral to this state and city that most people do before finishing high school. Such was the case last Thursday when I finally made it to Summerfest in Milwaukee.

A friend who covers music for the local paper texted me that she had an open ticket to see Bon Jovi on Thursday. I kind of scratched my head as I'm not a big fan of them despite buying "Slippery When Wet" when I was 13. But then I thought why not as it gets me out of the house and I'll find a way to enjoy it anyway. My friend bought two tickets and then was comped two press passes.

She picked up the press passes and her and another fried of her's took the press passes. She almost sold the extra ticket to some strange older guy and it's thankful she didn't as the press passes were to take photos of the event, not enter. Since I wasn't all hot to see Bon Jovi, they took the tickets and I thought about heading to downtown to hang out for a while. Then I remembered that she said the Meat Puppets were playing at 8. I had seen them last month as a +1 with my friend, so I bought the $15 general admission ticket and headed in.

The first stop was the Water Street Brewery booth and I promptly had two glasses of beer in my hand. I enjoyed walking around seeing the wares and food. The Meat Puppets were as good as they were at the Annex the month previous and crowd was really into it. I also realized my age watching all of the other aging Gen X'ers in the crowd. I also watched some of Matthew Sweet, but didn't stay for the whole thing. I tweeted on it here. I think I'll head back next year.

On Saturday I headed up to Pride in Minneapolis. On the car ride up, I caught up on all of the team drama of the last month from Stephen. I have to remember to use Priceline as Stephen got a room at the Hilton downtown for $50 a night. I think it's usually $150. We caught a little bit a Lorring Park, caught dinner with Michael, Shari and Sophie and then headed to the Eagle around 10. We didn't stay long at the Eagle as it was full of older, sweaty men and I didn't think Melissa, who I was catching up with and who would be only one of three women there, would much enjoy it. Stephen, Melissa and I caught a bar across the river whose name I forget. Then we dropped Stephen off at the Saloon and hung out for a while at Town Talk Diner. That was the first time in two or two and a half years that I'd been able to sit and talk with her, so that was great.

Sunday I marched in the parade holding one end of our banner. I'm thinking that I may be platonically gay given all of the stuff I do. So be it. We played about a half hour of rugby and even though it was touch, I managed to jam my pinky while putting the ball down. Ain't it pretty?



I caught dinner with Michael, Shari and Sophie again then headed home daydreaming all the way back.

Morning Drive

So these are the songs that played on my ipod on the way to work:

- Deep Blue Day: Brian Eno
- All Dead, All Dead: Queen
- Meeting in the Aisle: Radiohead
- Suicide is Painless: Jon Mandel

Cheery shit, eh?

Yes!

I'm drunk now!!!!

Carrots and Beer

That was my dinner tonight.

Love, Approximately

Yep, I've made another playlist. I don't have art for it, yet. But here it is.

As It Is

It's about time I actually wrote something so when I'm old and gray I can read this and wonder what I was thinking. So...

Rugby is starting up. Not practices, but the board is meeting more often and I'm doing the whole Monkey Bar training so I can hit the ground running when practice starts. We have a few things to work on, mainly recruitment but we have some good ideas. My rugby goal this year is NOT to break a bone.

Work is fine. I'm plenty busy and we're still open despite the beautiful economic crisis. Then again commercial construction has dropped badly yet. That will probably change.

I started up my MBA again. This semester I'm taking Corporate Finance and it's been pretty good. I chose Autodesk from the professor's list mostly because I used AutoCAD at work. I think it'll be good but now have tuition payments again.

Um, not much else is new. I've been nostalgic for the 90's, so I put together a mix. You can find it here. When I have a little more time, I'll make some artwork for it. I have it all put together in my head so it shouldn't take me long.

That's as it is.

Wrong Choice

Ugh.... I ate a whole calzone from Deli Roma at lunch. It has just about burst open my gut. That's not very comfortable when you're driving four hours after work.

This Last Weekend

So the weekend was fun and mostly relaxing. I caught dinner with my parents on Friday night and then caught up with Tim. We went to a friend of his place she's house sitting. After a nice dose of bug spray, I was all comfortable. We played a celebrity charades game and I nailed both "Warwick Davis" and "Wicket the Ewok". I thought about jumping on the trampoline, but remembered that I'm not the most graceful person.

On Saturday, I managed to clean the entire ground floor,including moving furniture around to sweep and mop. This gave me some time to hang out with my vinyl. I've found that "The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society" is even more amazing when in analog! The rest of Saturday yielded a lunch at Red Robin and, um, passing out in the living room chair, waking up at 2 am.

On Sunday, Tim and I started research on making our balls pretty. We searched some sites and found some good deals on custom rugby balls. Then we drank a pitcher and ate some food at Glass Nickel. Turns out we both hate the Baby Boomers! The rest of Sunday was sitting on my ass.

I had some bad premonitions this morning when I dumped my chai all over the place, but it's been pretty low key. Such is life.

Goal Accomplished!

Last weekend, I went up to Oshkosh for Pigfest, an annual 10's rugby tournament. It was my first taste of rugby since the end of June, and that was just a little bit. Unfortunately, the taste was brief. At kick-off, I (not quite) tackled someone and hit my left ribs against him while doing so. That set of sparks of pain up and down the left side of my torso. I ran around until a whistle was blown and subbed out of the game.

My ribs hurt when I breathed deep or if I picked up anything more than five pounds. So I got to watch everyone but me play rugby, although I was thankful I wasn't the one who had his scrotum torn open by a goon.

Skip to Monday and I headed into the doctor's office to see if my ribs were broken. After some x-rays and an examination, she said that I most likely bruised a rib deeply, but she would have the radiologist look at them when he was in. I figured that I was just being a big, whiny wimp - not exactly what you want to be in rugby.

Skip to Tuesday, I received a call from the doctor. She said that the radiologist determined that I broke my rib two months ago. On Monday I had told her that in mid-May I tackled a teammate in practice by pulling him forward and his full weight hit me focused on his knee against my rib. Funny thing was it hurt a lot more when I aggravated it on Saturday.

So I'm not a wimp and I achieved my goal for the season by breaking my very first bone. It sounds like a rather dour goal, but I figure the odds of getting injured in rugby were even and that I might as well get it over with. Besides, I played for three weeks with a broken bone. How cool is that?

So On and So Forth

For some reason I've been a bit tired lately. A little bit physically, but mostly mentally. I pretty much am happy to be left alone to daydream and when bothered, I feel like raising a white flag. Thankfully programmed responsibilities drag me into the real world. Otherwise I would have move permanently into Henry World many moons ago.

Last weekend was my immediate family's first trip together in twenty-one years to see my cousin get married. All in all it went well and we got along well enough. Of course our quirks and such came out but no SALT negotiations were needed. Tonight is rugby practice followed by a rugby tournament on Saturday. So I have to get my aggression up and socialibility out.

In other news, I had some dream about filming a movie in 1933. It was a musical and part of it had the leads riding on the back of a flatbed truck and singing. I was filming from a car following them. Then we showed it for Adolph Hitler and his entourage in some shack of a house. He seemed mild-mannered at the screening and no one was killed.

Ugh, no for actually doing something....