Jim’s Brain Online

Posted by Jim at April 28th, 2007

Recently we signed up for cell phone service for another two years. This is a good thing for a couple different reasons.

First, the face of my current phone got smashed when one of my daughters somehow hit the pocket it was in with her knee. As a result, it’s hard to see much of anything on the screen and getting a new, free phone saves me from buying a replacement.

The second reason that getting a new cell phone is a good thing is that the phone that I had was a basic model anyway. Pretty much all you could do with it was talk. This isn’t all bad since that’s all I really want to do with it, but after a while I did begin to lust after extra features–such as the ability to use ringtones that don’t sound like 80’s era midi files.

The phones aren’t here yet, but in my excitement I decided to check out my ringtone options.

They suck.

Well, that’s not quite true. Many of the options for jazz ringtones are ones that I like and wouldn’t mind having on my phone. On the other hand, the options for rock don’t include many of my favorite artists. The Decemberists and Yes don’t make the list. The Beatles are nowhere to be found. If Led Zeppelin was there, I missed it. Didn’t see Ben Folds or Living Colour either.

Also, despite liking much of the jazz, I couldn’t help but note that they didn’t have any Duke Ellington or Charles Earland.

So basically I’m giving serious thought to making my own ringtones. Mind you, I’m not sure that I will, but I’ve got to admit that it annoys me that ringtones typically cost $2.50-$5.00 while you can get the full song from iTunes for a buck.

You may be amused to learn that the Cingular ringtones list does include Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Baby Got Back.”

Imagine that going off in a meeting.

Posted by Jim at April 13th, 2007

Conversation after the kids have gone to bed:

Kristen: Jim, I’m going downstairs to do some laundry.

Pause. Then the sound of our downstairs closet opening. The laundry chute goes down from the second floor into our basement closet.

Kristen: Jim, they put toys down the chute again.

They do that.

Kristen: Jim, they put the soccer ball down the laundry chute.

Me: Wow. I didn’t know the soccer ball would fit.

Posted by Jim at April 8th, 2007

I think that it may have been three weeks since I wrote my most recent blog entry. I think that that’s likely the longest break from blogging I’ve taken so far.

It’s a great study in what my life is like and what I prioritize, I guess.

The major reason that I haven’t been writing much recently starts with the week of Summit on Racism. I’m responsible for the design of the Summit pages, programming the online registration/payment system, and handling questions and comments about the registration process.

During that week, I did minimal work for clients and tried to reply to as many emails and voicemails as I could (while simultaneously cranking out Summit related documents). The next week I mostly rested. The week after that I began catching up on all the work that had been building up during Summit. In combination with my training for the Fifth Third Bank Run (which has just begun to get hard) and short vacation, blogging has had a lower priority than it might lately.

The funny thing is that I wrote several blog entries in my head (mostly while running). I just never got around to pounding things out on the keyboard.

I like to imagine that that will change soon.

Posted by Jim at March 15th, 2007

I’m training for a race. There’s not much to be said about that other than that it results in me running.

A lot.

Most recently, I’ve spent my time on the track inside the YMCA. There are a few hassles associated with that, but it does beat running in 2 degree weather.

Just recently though, it’s become possible to run outside. I’m thinking specifically of this Tuesday when the temperature reached 69 degrees. Awed by the melting snow and the warm weather, I donned my shorts, t-shirt and shoes to go out and do six miles. I walked a couple times, but overall had a good run.

I was amazed by the number of people outside, some of them grilling.

I overheard a couple people talking about me. I’m not saying they were talking about me personally because I don’t know these people at all. They were talking about my clothes.

I’m not aware that my clothes are worth talking about. I favor clothes that don’t stand out. In this case, the shorts were black and the shirt was gray (dating from my class’ high school graduation party). The shorts were short, but no shorter than most running shorts and certainly covered more than the Speedo I wore on the high school swim team.

Still as I passed, I heard a couple (amused sounding) women say:

“Look at those shorts!”

And later…

“Work it!”

Posted by Jim at March 10th, 2007

My wife plays music instruments (flute, piano and voice). I do too (bass guitar, trumpet, a small amount of piano, and voice), but unlike her I haven’t done much playing lately. I’m thinking I’d like to buy a new amp one of these days and then I’d at least be able to practice bass, but I haven’t yet. I’m also tempted to try to buy a bass Chapman Stick.

But back to the main point… My wife actually plays things regularly and thus bought a metronome recently.

For those of you who have forgotten, a metronome keeps an inhumanly steady beat, helping a musician learn how to play with the correct rhythm.

Unlike the metronomes I remember, it’s electronic and has a digital readout. What I find particularly odd is that the metronome never stops running. You just choose to have the sound off or on. Any time you look at the lcd, however, you will always find it on.

That’s when it works correctly.

When it doesn’t work correctly, the sound doesn’t stop either. You continually listen to a high pitch followed by three lower pitches (at least with 4/4 time) and it never stops. Even when you press the sound button, it stays on or stops briefly, but then just turns itself on again for no good reason.

Thus I spent much of this afternoon suddenly hearing…

High pitch
Low pitch
Low pitch
Low pitch

… in perfect 4/4 time. At the moment it started, I would run toward the metronome, press the “sound” button, hoping that the sound would end immediately.

It seldom did.

More often than not, I would press all the buttons on the stupid thing and it might for some random reason decide to briefly stop.

It would start again shortly thereafter.

After a few hours of random metronome noise I began to consider taking outside and placing it on the porch. Beating it with a hammer or taking it back to the store where Kristen bought it sounded like good alternate ideas.

Late in the afternoon, it occurred to Kristen to open the thing up and pull out the battery. Once we put the battery back in, the problems ceased entirely. Thus, it’s fixed.

For now.

Posted by Jim at February 8th, 2007

One of the benefits from Kristen’s job is partial subsidy of a YMCA membership.

She signed up for it soon after starting work there and actually received it in early January. Grand Rapids’ downtown YMCA (the David D. Hunting YMCA) is only a couple years old. It’s features include a track, swimming pool (with slide), racquetball courts, endless exercise machines, a couple climbing walls, multiple basketball courts, childcare (!), and undoubtedly things I’ve forgotten. For example, one can also take guitar, piano, dancing, martial arts, swimming, and climbing wall lessons.

I’m interested the climbing wall, but haven’t gotten around to doing much about it yet. Mostly I’ve been running and taking our kids to the swimming pool.

Running inside is a vast improvement over running outside when the temperature is in the single digits. It’s a little boring in terms of scenary, but it could be worse. Windows run the length of the building and since the track is on the third floor, you can look out over the city–if you’re into that sort of thing. Personally, I’m too busy reflecting on how tired I am.

Other things I think about while running around the track:
1. Row after row of exercise equipment covers half the third floor. As a result, half the floor is covered with tired looking people lifting weights while sitting or standing in identical machines. Do you remember that bit in the Matrix? The bit where Morpheus tells Neo about the row after row of babies being created to power the machines? The bit where the babies are being fed the remains of the dead?

For some reason I keep on thinking about that when I look at the exercise machines.
2. Another thing I think of while running: Proper track etiquette.
According to the rules that they put up on the signs next to the track, walkers are supposed to use the inside lane. They are also supposed to check what direction the traffic is going on a particular day and go the same direction as everyone else. It is a given, therefore, that some people will completely ignore these directions.

One thing that particularly irritates me is when several people walk next to each other, blocking the entire track. This is bad in that it forces me to consider three bad choices.
–Pushing straight through. This is rude, but tempting.
–Running behind them. This just sucks.
–Passing them in the fourth lane. Problem is, there is no fourth lane. It’s actually the support beam lane. In a collision between a support beam and a person, the support beam wins.

3. Cool Ideas for my novel, role playing games and computer programming.
Too bad I can’t remember them when I get off the track.

The only really bad point about the YMCA is that if you go after work with kids, it takes a really long time. By the time we get home, it’s often 7:30 and we still haven’t eaten supper. Our kids are as you might expect them to be at that point–bouncing off the walls. In our case, this can specifically mean jumping off the top of the grand piano and trying to make it to the couch.

We try to stop this.

In any case, a family membership is overall a good thing. It’s just a bit better on the weekend than weekdays.

Posted by Jim at February 1st, 2007

I don’t often remember my dreams, but here are two that I’ve remembered lately that may amuse you.

Dream One: The Armadillo
I dreamed that I had given my brother an armadillo for a Christmas present. Everyone seemed okay with this, but I was nonetheless bothered.

I was worrying about the damage it would likely do to their house in terms of digging through carpets and such. Also, I’d be surprised if turned out that armadillos could be litter trained.

Dream Two: Vet Appointment
Like all responsible pet owners, we try to get our cats in for shots every so often. On the day before their appointment, I dreamed that Kristen, my sister, and I were outside trying to catch them as they’d gotten out for some reason. We were using a car that was my sister’s (but is not in reality actually her car).

After we chased them for a while, we were suddenly all together (including our cats) at a bar. I don’t remember details of this except that Manuel Noriega was there with one of his generals (I could tell by the hat).

Posted by Jim at January 27th, 2007

It looks like I’ll be moving over to Wordpress as my blogging software in the relatively near future. Those of you who read the blog through RSS feeds probably won’t notice (the feeds will be redirected). Those of you who actually look at the site will probably notice that the design will morph into the default Wordpress template until I find a template I like.

Why the change from MoveableType to Wordpress?

Mostly I’ve been told that Wordpress has less problems with comment spam. Outside of that I’ve been happy with MoveableType.

Posted by Jim at January 20th, 2007

This Christmas my sister bought my kids CD’s. One of them was They Might Be Giants’ album Here Come the ABC’s.

As ever with They Might Be Giants, the album is surreal and silly at the same time. It also leads to amusing conversations with children.

There’s a song on the album in which they sing the alphabet all in names of countries. It lead to what follows:

Daughter:That’s not a real country.
Me: What country?
Daughter: (giggling) Surinam
Me: No that’s a real country. It’s in Africa.
Note: I was totally wrong on that one. It’s actually in Latin America.
Me: They’re all real countries.
Daughter: West Xylophone?
Me: Well, maybe not West Xylophone.

Posted by Jim at January 10th, 2007

I don’t know if it happens to you, but sometimes I wonder what happened to people I know from high school. Specifically, I’ve occasionally wondered about Erik Prince, a person with whom I was on the track team. We weren’t close or anything, but I talked to him every once in a while. Also, his parents were wealthy and financed my class’s high school graduation party.

A few days ago, someone told me that he owned a com pany that supplied mercenaries to protect people in Iraq. “Oh,” I thought to myself, “that’s interesting. So that’s what he’s doing now.”

And then today, this:

Erik Prince, the secretive, mega-millionaire, right-wing Christian founder of Blackwater, the private security firm that has built a formidable mercenary force in Iraq, champions his company as a patriotic extension of the U.S. military. These mercenary units in Iraq, including Blackwater, contain some 20,000 fighters. They unleash indiscriminate and wanton violence against unarmed Iraqis, have no accountability and are beyond the reach of legitimate authority. The appearance of these paramilitary fighters, heavily armed and wearing their trademark black uniforms, patrolling the streets of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, gave us a grim taste of the future.

(From David Brin’s blog, scroll down a bit in the post and you’ll find it in context)

In a science fiction novel or comic book, this would undoubtedly be preparatory to me getting superhuman abilities and lead to a dramatic confrontation in the halls of Blackwater’s HQ. *

In reality of course, superpowers are not forthcoming and it remains very, very strange to find someone you knew mentioned on your favorite author’s blog as a possible source of theocratic dictatorship.

I’ve got to admit though, that I don’t think that either Erik or Blackwater is particularly likely to try to end democracy. The article that Brin pulls the quote from has a certain conspiracy theory quality to it that I can’t quite pin down. It might be that as someone who is a Christian and comes out of an evangelical background, I don’ t know anybody who’d be for a theocracy. In fact, on the rare occasions that I’ve been in Christian bookstores, I’ve been amused to notice multiple Christian, political thrillers in which the presumably atheistic left puts a dictatorship in place.

If nothing else, US citizens of all stripes share a common anxiety.

* Clarification: For those of you who don’t ever read comics or science fiction, it’s worth mentioning that it’s pretty common to have someone that the main character likes turn up later doing something that they disagree with. It’s a good way to ratchet up the tension. It’s kind of overused though.