I thought the photoshoot this weekend was great. The models were beautiful and patient. The photographers worked well together. The Art Director/Make-up Artist had more testosterone than any man in the room. (Squeeze your boobs! Look Surprised! “Hey! I have boobs!”) Heather was a great hostess and peanut gallery. Everyone contributed something. Wouldn’t have been the same any other way.
And Pete looked damned good in (and out of) womens’ clothes.
You can check out each model in their own set, as well as some candid and after-hours shots here.
Or if you’d prefer to see them all at once, check it out here.
Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!
Sitting in a bar in one of those moments where I have absolutely nothing to say to the person across from me, a thought popped into my head.
Through much of college and the early years of my life in DC — including and especially my last job — I dealt so much with dysfunctional, damaged people. People who needed more than they could return. People you constantly had to be there for, totally sacrificing yourself. People who had to hear that certain something from you or they would just break down.
Those are very tiring people. In fact, I’ve become less tolerant of them. I’m not very proud of that. It wasn’t intentional, but I just ‘saved’ one too many people, one too many times. And suddenly, while I would do my best to be supportive in any given moment, afterwards I was hard-pressed to follow through. From vast experience, I was an expert at knowing what such a person needed to feel stable, but it just wasn’t in me any more to try and save someone.
But life changes. I generally work alone, now. And the scope of friends I come into regular contact with has greatly increased. Either by divine intervention, luck, or just inevitable odds, I seem to be surrounded by ‘healthier’ people, who don’t constantly ‘need’. And I’m not really sure how to handle it any more. When did I forget how to just sit back and talk with someone; someone who didn’t need to hear all the right words?
I don’t want to be constantly supportive at the cost of my own life. It’s fucking exhausting. And in my head I have constant ideas, and desires, and plans. But … I don’t know any more how to talk about them to… a normal person.
Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!
I love that picture of Shannon, up above. There were several good one’s from yesterday’s birthday party. But that one… as soon as I saw it pop up on my camera’s screen, I was blown away. Shannon does tend to take great pictures when she’s not scrowling at the camera, or tackling someone.
Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!
I’ve been away. That is to say, “not available”. (holy fuck I’m sick of the firetrucks)
It’s been a month, and it wasn’t particularly fun. One month ago, my computer started to die. My laptop started to die. From the first glitch to the final flash of life from the screen was maybe a bit over a day. That’s plenty of time to clone the whole damn thing, and futz around with it just enough to realize I wasn’t going to save it.
But this is hardly the first time. I have a stack of repair slips so thick they barely fit in their box. This is the first time since the warranty ran out. I really couldn’t do much about it, but it kind of ticked me off that it ran out while I was in the hospital. The current machine was already over 3 years old, so no one was going to insure it. But from past experience, I knew enough to keep a backup under the desk. It wasn’t fast and it wasn’t pretty, but it was a machine, and it meant I could keep working. And that’s what I did.
When I get busy, I don’t have time to worry about fixing stuff. I work for 16 hours, just to keep up. Then I eat dinner while watching something from Netflix, and go to bed. And maybe I just don’t want to face up to the loss of my exterior brain. Right up until this week, it still sat on the corner of my desk where I always worked with it. Taking up space. Always careful not to pile too much on top of it, in case something could be done to fix it. (geek-mourning). And even when I did admit it was beyond being worth fixing, I held out. I held out for rumors of new toys and new features from Apple.
Well that didn’t fucking happen.
Do you use a laptop? Do you use one religiously? Do you use it like a laptop, and not just a slick looking desktop? A laptop takes all those second-brain features, and makes them move right along with you. A desktop is a tool. A laptop is an opportunity, a possibility.
And I had lost my laptop.
I think it took about a week before I consciously realized what crap it was working with a desktop again. What crap it was being restricted to the desk and the chair. What crap it was that my spur of the moment thoughts were all dying on the vine. And what crap it was that I had to work around my tools, and not the other way around.
And I’m not that stupid. My backup machine isn’t even as powerful as my laptop was. A laptop that was already 3 years old. This, of course, is the cue for a couple jobs involving massive, fucking photo collages to come along. If you don’t know why that sucks, just imagine cutting fire wood with a steak knife.
My taxes were done. And all hopes of new toys were dashed when Apple announced a delay in shipment for at least 4 months. So I went ahead and with the help of a friend, I ordered a new laptop.
It’s just fucking beautiful.
It’s got every bell and whistle, and a few spinning pasties, for good measure. I absolutely cannot afford it, but I absolutely cannot live or work without it. I feel like I’m back reliving good-ole-days. Relearning what worked, and why I did certain things.
And now my camera is back. My other baby had gone away too. It had served me faithfully, suffering slings and arrows and dusty rooms. I finally got sick of spending more time touching up dust marks than doing anything else with a photo, and I sent it in to be cleaned. (This was while I still had … thought I had… money.) But my second baby… she is back. I missed her.
And it feels like a new golden age of overly expensive toys. Everything is clean and snappy, and aims to please. My gawd, I’m in geek heaven. (If you’re a real nerd, you noticed the dates and ages don’t match up, on my laptop. This is actually the third full machine in what I consider to be one computer. The first was stolen off the delivery truck. The second served me well for half its estimated life, before being replaced by the manufacturer with a newer model, after they scratched the screen fixing a error they made on a previous repair. And both machines I had in my actual possession had their guts swapped out multiple times. Five years total.)
Right… so now where was I?
Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!
I just came back from Artomatic. I was a bit worried with it taking place in Crystal City. Normally it takes place in abandoned buildings in run-down neighborhoods, letting them essentially do whatever they want to the building. But Crystal City is about as uptight, over-developed suburbia as you can get. But they did a good job. A ton of art, some good, some notsogood. My only regret is that there seemed to be less insane artists this year. Nobody really doing completely off-the-wall, freaky shit. Though I didn’t see much of the 8th floor… so maybe they’re all kept up there.
God damn, do I miss my camera. It’s been just shy of two weeks now, since I took it in to get it cleaned. Given that they estimated 1.5 to 2 weeks, if it isn’t back by Tuesday, I’m going to start bugging them
The freaks were out tonight, and there I was, camera-less.
Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!
Thanks to everyone who came out to RFD tonight, for the mini-celebration. I took my last pill over dinner.
Thanks to everyone who helped me and offered kind words or entertainment while I was less-than-optimal.
Thanks to Bryan and Sarah for rides to and from the hospital, and waiting for ridiculous hours.
Thanks to Shannon for bringing me groceries.
Thanks to whoever it was that brought me cat food and cash for the taxi-rides. (Hey… I was probably hopped up on Percocet when you came by).
Thanks to Drew for bringing me said Percocet.
Thanks to Percocet for making it possible for me to change the cat’s litter box.
I don’t know what to say about the illness itself. There was incredible discomfort. But no giant shooting pains like some overly melodramatic movie. Just an inability to do things. Like… walk or shower. But I got to make doctors nervous. Really cool, because so often it’s the other way around.
But it happened, it was found, treated, and went away. And other than an increased likelihood of it happening again, and a big hole in my bank account, it leaves no sign it was here.
The treatment was much worse than the disease. But I survived that just as well, if slightly slower. I learned my body knows more than the doctors do. And nobody really knows shit about how to react to embolisms. But like every other trial in my life, I came through stronger than I started, and even more motivated. And I was able to conquer a little bit of that fear every person living alone has, of being incapacitated and helpless. And anyone with back injuries or severe pain has my unending sympathy. I don’t know if I ever felt greater joy and freedom than when I was once again able to walk around the block.
And now I hope… I plan… I’ll try… to stop talking about it. I feel like it’s the only thing of interest in my life for… ever, now. I don’t want next year’s “year in pictures” to consist of lots and lots of pill bottles and bored looking people.
Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!
World Press Photo recently posted a gallery of the winners from their 2006 competition. There are some incredible images there. I can’t even link to the ‘good ones’, because there are so many there. Just start anywhere and look at them all.
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I went to the DC Copynight this week, for the first time, over at RFD in Chinatown. From their website:
CopyNight is a monthly social gathering of people interested in restoring balance in copyright law. We meet over drinks once a month in many cities to discuss new developments and build social ties between artists, engineers, filmmakers, academics, lawyers, and many others.
In general, it was a positive experience. The moderator referred to it several times as a “salon”, which was a very apt description. The discussion was very intellectually-based. The people were fairly intelligent, (some of them consciously so). But it was very much a discussion group, with no thought, speech, or action given to remedying the problem they believe exists. It’s a small group, that still seems to be trying to find it’s feet. I’ll definitely consider going back again next month. And maybe offer them advice on what seems to have worked for Refresh DC.
I did get to meet the man behind the Command Line podcast. We didn’t really talk, but he seemed friendly. And listening to yesterday’s podcast, he brought up my name, which made my skin crawl in self-consciousness.
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Observation:
Independent workers — be they self employed or professional freelancers — seem to be much less emotionally invested in their work than people employed full-time by a company or organization.
It’s great when you can find people who are enthusiastic about a goal that’s not their own, But by being emotionally involved with a project that they do not control, it leaves those people open to a lot of personal conflict.
Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!
I wrote before about using a secure connection to retrieve your email, using OS X’s Mail.app. The biggest problem was properly importing the secure certificate.
Well, it worked faithfully for me, right up until this evening. The certificate expired today, and a new one was issued. You cannot, however, import the new certificate without removing the old one. The existing certificate does not reside in any of the keychains that show up by default when you open Keychain Access.
After a bit of searching and misinformation, here was the solution:
Open “Keychain Access”.
Under the ‘File’ menu, select ‘Add keychain…’
Navigate your way to the ‘System’ folder at the top level of your hard drive. Inside there, go to ‘Library’, and then go to ‘Keychains’.
In that folder, open the ‘X509 Anchors’ file.
When this keychain loads in ‘Keychain Access’, look through the list and delete the existing certificate.
From this point on, follow the steps in my original post to import the new keychain.
Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!
I miss winter. Winter in places where it’s really winter, anyway. Winter should be snow in drifts you could lose small people in. Winter should be bone-chilling winds that the best coats and hats can’t keep out. Winter should mean every body of water being hidden beneath an icy blanket for 4 months. Winter’s should mean storms where you could lose an elephant if it strayed more than 6 inches away from you. Winter should mean something.
Here winter tends to mean being careful not to slip in the slush.
I love this above picture, (taken by Michael Tinkler). A boathouse on the campus in my hometown. It’s frozen in, with ice extending probably 40 or 50 feet out from the shore, on this massive 42 mile long lake. The water is choppy and steaming, although it’s hard not to think of it as some dry ice or liquid nitrogen gas release. And of course, the sun beats down perfectly clearly, not making the least noticeable difference in the temperature.
Nature will have its way whenever it feels like it.
Hard to believe I used to sit on a bench in that exact spot, during the summer, reading. (Or, when I was even younger, watching with my friend, as college co-eds made out on the dock).
It’s really not the same, but a recent cold snap here in DC froze over much of the Potomac. You can see the unending field of snow in the picture below, leading to the foot of the Jefferson Memorial. The snow of course is just dusting the sheet of ice that buried the Tidal Basin.
Please keep in mind that this post is more than 6 years old. Who the hell knows what I was thinking back then?! Damn kids... get off my lawn!
