Journals: 2002(6)
by Ric Carter
Journals: 2002(6)by Ric Carter |
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Journal: Dreary Winter Notes |
(( INDEX )) >> NEXT >> CONTENTSGame, Here Are The Rules ACCOUNTS |
Designing a RatBookMonday 2 December 2002, Sonoma Co.OK, so it's another round in the Bizarre Game. It's Monday morning. Cold and foggy on the drive from Novato to Forestville to pick up the mail, see if I can find some way to procrastinate long enough to get back to Sebastopol in time for some antique shops to be open. I wanna go looking for Arizona Highways, March 1953, the Harry Oliver issue. Got an idea of doing a parody, a Desert Rat Scrap Book parody site online, the Desert's Crap Rat Book, A Great Online NewsLetter Covering The Great Southwest Or Whatever.Do it in a split 3-column format, actually sort of a bLog format like Arts & Letters Daily. Yeah, thinking about the RatBook as a bLog, it'd be very easy to do it as a Pitas bLog, Diaryland -- where the format for each entry is as a table row, and the contents are 3 or 4 TDs. It could incorporate graphics, no problem. The thought came to me that rather than working out a detailed format of what the page would look like NOW, I should maybe study the way the Desert Rat Scrap Books evolved over time, look the evolution of Harry's design more closely. OR, I could just go out and experiment. Now it's kinda tough experimenting in the bLog format precisely, because I'm offline for a few days. BUT I could work up a stylesheet and setup some dummy pages and see what they look like. In my copious free time. Monday afternoon, NovatoMaureen hasn't gotten any response from the company yet so we don't know WHEN she can resign. Getting tedious. There's the prospect of having next week off, and then having to come back again yet *another* week if she can't submit her resignation before this Friday. She gets to see a Workers Comp doctor tomorrow. Well, this is certainly a lack of fun. But I digress.For the RatBook I need some nice small black'n'white graphic of a snarling rat, to serve as its primary icon -- I know I've seen that rat before, somewhere. I just have to dig it up. If I don't have it in the clipart I have along I'll just have to look thru the ScrapBooks and find one of Harry's, and scan that. Or maybe I'll be lucky and there'll be one on a page I've already scanned. I'll have to take a look there... Back to format: the easiest might just be a fixed-width table, 640 or 720 pixels, and 3 fixed-width columns, the text always justified. Text and/or pictures can span 2 or 3 columns when necessary. And a smaller picture set within a block of text in one of those columns can appear, can change the proportion of the column. I might have to forego the "torn page" look, I don't know if that'll really fit in, in this. But I can try setting up styles for the H2s and H3s and so on, so that they automatically adjust to fit the width of the column, no matter how many characters there are in the title. Or line. And look for small clip-art of related symbology, like Egyptian, and other desert symbols. And of course deal with UFOs in the desert. And with contemporary desert issues, which would mean: suburbs, pollution, wargames, Indian rights and casinos, illegal immigration, drug-smuggling, terrorist infiltration, NewAge festivals, mothballed air fleets, solar power, spaceports, water wars; hallucinatory Las Vegas; secret tunnels going between UFO stations; seismic activity, global warming, jojoba plantations, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. If I do the RatBook, be sure to include quotes from not just Mark Twain and Davy Crockett, but also Edward Abbey, Ken Kesey, the Cowboy Junkies, Hunter Thompson. And of course I'll have to write my own stories, I can do inclusions from my old journals and songs, and maybe point over to Rev66 too, heh heh. |
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Pearl Harbor EveFriday December 6th, San RafaelNo resolution yet. Saw a licence plate, plate was BI-GOTH, and the frame said: Can't Sleep, Clowns Will Eat Me -- saw a plate a few days ago: 4MA MAMA -- for my mama6 November 2002, NovatoTomorrow is Pearl Harbor Day, a good day for a sneak attack. Uh huh. I saw, glimpsed, caught a glimpse of, a decal proclaiming JEEZ-NUTS -- maybe they're believers.As I said, no resolution yet this week, that I know of. But I did manage to get all of Issue 2 and most of Issue 3 of DesertRat ScrapBook entered, should finish off Issue 3 by tomorrow, get all that text online. Don't know if I'll get around to doing the ScrapBook parody. Might. I may HAVE to, I keep getting ideas of what could go into it. And just saw a licence: YOG-SOTH -- which I suppose stands for YOG-SUGGOTH, probably a Cthulhu enthusiast. Another plate: OTYC4US -- O tick for us? I dunno, I'll have to see if ODYC is eaningful. There's a plate: COITNLY and the frame says: Woo woo woo - The 3 Stooges. I guess that's Soitenly! On a red Mustang, old Mustang - not oldest, but pretty old. |
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Pearl Harbor DaySaturday December 7th, Volcano.Well it didn't go quite as smooth as we'd hoped yesterday on the way home. Blew a tire around Rio Vista, and a well-intentioned but inexperienced young lady was sent out to change it, spent nearly two hours doing so, with considerable help from me. Well, at least I saw how those duals on the RV are affixed, and I can probably do it myself next time. But also a mud flap was terminally damaged, and I had to drive slowly hope, didn't get back til around 10 pm -- considering that we left Novato at around 3:30, that was an awful long drive.I got the first 3 ScrapBooks entered and online. Did a little searching, found a bookshop in Wyoming that has a number of copies, a number of ScrapBooks that I don't have. $8 each plus shipping. Now I have to think about just how Harry-Oliver-mad I am? What do I want to go thru to get those? I mean like, it IS a limited universe, there's only a total of 48 editions altogether, 48 issues, and I have 11 of them. So it's not like the possibilities for acquisition and expense are open-ended, there is an END. There's also other stuff to do. Yeah and I wanna go look for that Arizona Highways issues at antique shops, March 1953, the one with the spread by Harry Oliver. BUT there's some [mumble] and decorating to do around the house here, and schlepping of boxes, especially going thru boxes that might have valuable prints that we can auction off for some money. Well, it's really cold here in the house, early in the morning. Electric blanket doesn't work. Guess I'm gonna have to start sleeping in longjohns. Bummer. Sunday, 8th of December. Volcano.No sneak attacks yesterday. I guess that's good. And here we laid around the house virtually all day, unlike yesterday, when we dashed down to Jackson and Sutter Creek and back to Jackson and back to Sutter Creek and over to Amador City and Plymouth and up to Fiddletown and Volcano and around. Tending to things. Seeing things. Today was lying-about-the-house day, doing some puttering, putting up a Christmas Tree for the first time in 18 years maybe. [mumble] -- no, some of them. Decompressing. Tomorrow I guess we'll go down into Jackson, get the flat repaired, tend to some chores, don't know what else. Tomorrow somebody's supposed to come, er Tuesday, someone's supposed to come around to work on the house some more. Wednesday, who knows? Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, something to decompress. And I must stioll schlep many more boxes in from storage and the trailer. Um, last night I DID order a BATCH of DesertRat ScrapBooks from a book-dealer in Wyoming and got a confirmation message today that they ARE being sent, so in a few days I'll have 20 of the 48 possible editions. More stuff to enter while waiting in the RV camped in the Fireman's Fund parking lot waiting for Maureen's resignation to take effect. Whenever that is. |
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Day Trip to CarsonThursday December 12th 2002, Volcano.20 minutes to midnight. Since we got back last Friday night, o let's see, Saturday and Sunday and Monday I seem to recall we laid around the house a bunch. Tuesday the contractor from Skyline was here and did a little bit of work. Wednesday, yesterday, right around noon, Maureen's mother and aunt both showed up, her mother, Roberta to have us cut a Christmas tree for her, and Ginny to cut some greens for decorations. She was looking a lot healthier, a lot better now.Today we drove over to Carson City for the day, looking thru antique shops, in Minden, Gardnerville, Carson City, Moundhouse. Also looking for furniture and a lamp but not that hard. And that's really not the place to get them, apparently. Furniture being a Mission-style TV armoire. The drive over to Carson was delayed because of accidents on the highway this side of Carson Pass, below Silver Lake. Once over there we poked all around, and actually found some nice stuff at a bookshot in Carson, got a CALICO PRINT. Had nice food at the Thai place. Coming back it was clear all the way, only took a little over an hour and a half to get back. Cold out there, the road was icy, and it rained a day or two ago, um expecting more rain this weekend, not snow but at the high elevations there it'll be, is IS tricky, treacherous. So we'll doodle around the house and decorate for the next couple days, couple days, and beyond the weekend we'll go back down the mountain again for another week, even longer than the last one since we won't be able to leave until Saturday morning since Maureen's on production support, on call for production support. Hopefully the batch of Desert Rat Scrap Books I ordered will arrive by Saturday and I'll have those to transcribe during the week, plus the other ones that I've had and haven't entered yet. Friday December 13th 2002, Volcano.It's just after midnight now so it's early Friday morning. As we were driving towards Carson yesterday morning I worked out a methodology for dubbing the 78s, which is, to record them in mono at about 40k onto harddisk, in the Sony Vaio computer - take those .WAV files and transfer them, either by network or by Sony SmartCard [SneakerNet] to the Monorail and write them to CDRW disks - those'll be the orginals [for archiving] -- then take the .WAV files that've been stored on the Sony,do any editing or filtering necessary, and burn those to MiniDisk at lowest compression for playback. So this methodology uses equipment and software that is at hand right now, and it will work. No need to buy anything new -- but a SmartMedia reader would let me do the recording onto the Zoom processor, then move them to the Vaio etc. Whatever. And a Sony analog-to-optical cable will let me dub tapes & radio with the greatest fidelity. More goodies to get... |
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Bizarre Game AgainMonday 16 December 2002, Novato.Back in Marin playing the game again, drove down last night, terrible storm, heavy storms all around here now. I'm sitting in front of a medical office building, Maureen has just seen a Workers Comp doctor, she just walked out the door and is heading back over here. So, see what she says, and if she's going on disability right away and if we have to spend the week here. We shall see...No luck. She's ALMOST disabled, she's ALMOST unemployed, but not quite yet. Oh well. Soon. Tuesday afternoon, 17 December 2002, Fulton.It's been pounding rain off'n'on all day today, really pounding rain last night, alternating with little clear periods -- it's looking VERY beautiful coming out Piner Road right now, all these fluffy clouds and blue hills and green meadows. It shouldn't be TOO rainy the rest of today and tomorrow, and then it should be pounding again on Thursday. And for me it's the same-old same-old, right now heading out to Forestville to pick up the mail.Just stopped by Robert's, no money yet, maybe in two weeks, maybe not. Quien focking sabe. Out Forestville the water's high, the fields and vineyards adjacent to the Russian River and Mark West Creek are flooded. If RESTRUCTURING Is A Game... click hereTuesday afternoon, Sebastopol.Right now, crossing the Laguna de Santa Rosa, it is big and bloated and beautiful. There are clouds, stormy clouds off to the north, just to the east of Mt. St. Helena. There are clouds behind me, coming over the Coast Range. Right ahead it's remarkably clear, looking over Sonoma Mountain, although there are some clouds just to the south of it, hovering over the north end of the Bay.So, back to recording. Umm. Possibly that analog-to-optical-digital cable might not necessarily be worth the $20 bucks or whatever, I mean, what might it do? It might reduce noise at one connexion very slightly. Or it might not. I could be that just going analog-to-analog at line level to minidisk will be just as good as any other way of getting there. So before purchasing one, don't do it this week, go back to the HOW TO RECORD ON MINIDISK page and loot at the arguments for it, for and against. For the SmartMedia-to-USB connector, it does make sense to buy one. I'm considering putting together a ox or a bag, a custom boombox just for audio gear, portable audio gear, recording and playback, with fitted pockets for the small sound system [speakers], minidisk devices, CD player, cables, power supplies, blank media. A box or bag that can be quickly stashed under the RV banquette seat, quickly pulled out when we get someplace and I want to do some recording or playback without having all the disparate pieces stuffed in various bags laying somewhere around the coach here. So this would be an RV soundbag. That box would also contain the Sony shortwave radio and antenna, and somewhere in the neighborhood should be some small digital stereo FM receiver with its own antenna, or at least an antenna input. So if I consider the media I'm going to be recording from, dubbing CDs or cassettes or 78s or 33s or 45s, all of which have certain noise inherant in them. I want to take those, record those to harddisk and run filtering software on them before burning them [on MD] for playback -- well, everything but the CDs, the CDs can just be burnt straight to minidisk. Otherwise I'd be recording from radio, mono or stereo, and my own generated music, which I'll probably want to record onto the mixing cassette deck and/or the Zoom deck. In either case, anything I put on the Zoom can go thru the SmartMedia reader straight into memory, to harddisk for filtering and processing and editing, whatever. And I think that just about covers it. |
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Churning Ikea, EtcThursday 19 December 2002, San RafaelI'm just about to get onto the Richmond Bridge, a sign is up saying HIGH WINDS ON BRIDGE, so I will stop recording here in a couple minutes. I'm going over to Ikea to get a few things, I have this window of opportunity this morning, just as a monster storm is blowing in. I hope things go well here...OK, I made it across the Richmond bridge. Boy, the Bay is sure churning! At times water was splashing up thru the cracks, the splits in the pavement on the section of bridge just above the water. There are seagulls, tons of seagulls circling around both ends of the bridge, but nowhere else. OK, a quarter to eleven, same morning, right on schedule, heading back towards the Richmond bridge westbound. I think my calculation was right, the winds were heavier coming over eastbound, then the front went thru while I was shopping, spent a half-hour in the store, da-da-da ... And so right now, approaching the bridge, it's raining heavily and everything's gray and cloudy, er y'know foggy, but the winds seem to have decreased so I think the front has already gone by and I shouldn't have any problems going back, I hope. Ha-ha, ha-ha. O, a question: I see cars with California licence plates with a purple hand on them. I know what the purple heart is, think I'll have to find out what the purple hand is. Check AAA or CalTrans, the DMV, whoever... OK I survived getting across the bridge, and yeah the winds weren't quite as bad as going the other direction, but now on the San Rafael side I'm in a REALLY torrential downpour. Ah, haven't seen it this wet in a long time. This is some of that one-inch-an-hour rain. Not like out in the desert, where a six-inch-rain means the drops are six inches apart. HaHa. Thursday 19 December 2002, San RafaelThursday afternoon, we're driving the China Camp loop around Point San Pedro, looking north across the Bay here in this break in the storm we can see snow on the mountains, the hills between Sonoma Valley and Napa Valley. Forecast for tonight is snow down to sea level. Oh goodie. And we didn't bring chains for the RV. Eerily gorgeous, looking across the Bay, like an ice-storm with fog at Lake Tahoe. Winter pastels, green grass, "new grass," Maureen says. Here and there, we look across and there's a break in the clouds and a beam of light illuminating a section of city on the other side of the bay and we can see every building. Looks like, I guess that's Mt. Diablo, illuminated over there now, and it's all in snow also.Friday 20 December 2002, NovatoEarly in the morning, at 2:30, rain was pounding down on our camp[er]site, on the west side of the FireFund campus. I roused myself a little bit, and pulled open the curtain, looked out the window, I think I had the screen open too. Looking out at the rain pouring down on the trees, LIGHTNING STRUCK! IMMEDIATELY NEARBY! Within a thousand feet -- there was the flash, and then the BOOM, and then a big crackle, like maybe a tree falling over, or something. That woke us up, heh-heh. So after a bit we got up, had some hot chocolate with Old Deathwhisper, and read and talked, went back to sleep. So now it's 9:00, less than 24 hours before we depart from this stage of The Bizarre Game and head back home.Friday afternoon, Sonoma CountyRight now, I've driven out to Forestville for the last mail here on Friday afternoon, only one piece, and now returning thru Sebastopol. It's getting pretty grim now, it's been raining heavily, roads are pretty clogged. I don't know if we will get a chance to go walking around the factory outlets in Petaluma after work, weather might not quite be up to that. Oh well. Bugger all.Saturday morning early, Marin County [A song fragment to work with. Bongo beat:] It was down at TJ's that I met a girl named Manny She was kinda short but I really liked her fanny And I think she was another / / Queen of the World Saturday morning, December 21st, Amador CountyWe crossed the Amador County line on highway 88. Once again, the emu fails to show. I really do need to dig up some maps of the county. Just after 7 in the morning, it's been raining off and on all the way since we left Novato around a quarter to 5. Now we're gaining elevation, just passed the Ione Dump Road, going up into the clouds, it's getting wetter and wetter and wetter -- soon we will be totally saturated, we will leak from every pore. Oy. The landscape has an austere winter beauty. That's because it's winter. Today is the Winter Solstice, it should be happening RIGHT ABOUT NOW! Or maybe in 20 minutes. We have to get naked and make a bonfire in the yard and jump around, what?Maureen: In the mud!
Me: Right. What mud? We don't have mud. We have clay.
It's only when it's wet that it becomes mud. Ha!
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Christmas Eve, EtcEarly morning, Christmas Eve 2002, Volcano.The world is a purposeful place. All about are people with purposes. All around me are people with purposes, everyone intent one something. Everything has a purpose, hasn't it? Of course, of course.I try to act as though what I do has a purpose. I try to find purposes for what I do. Sometimes that is not easy. I cannot argue with what seems to be a major purpose, which is, survival with some comfort and dignity [and grace and style]. I very much like all my toys, [tools,] possessions, publications, recordings -- they give me much enjoyment. How much grace and dignity and purpose, I am not sure. And comfort. The road to comfort seems to be, to have adequate food, adequate climate control, and adequate objects upon which to sit and lie. Many of those objects, we have had for quite a while. Some, we would like to exchange for better. Other objects that we place around the house are there to give us visual enjoyment ad hopefully give others visual enjoyment, or at least impress them to the extent of our capability to obtain objects of visual elegance. Where is all this leading? I don't know. I'm no stoic. Good night. Early Christmas morning, Volcano.Christmas Eve was interesting. We found a local tow-truck, Amador Tow and Recovery, ATR, a 4-by tow-truck with a big winch that pulled the RV out [of the snow], and we drove it down the hill to Jackson to keep it down below the snow [level] when the next storm comes it. Which should be soon.Had a Christmas Eve present party over at Bobby's place. Lots of fun. Kitra liked the kitchen implements ande ancient aprons, Trevor liked the sleeping bag. Tomorrow we're hosting a Christmas Day dinner here. Most of the prep work has been done -- still have some floors to scrub, some pork-roasts to butterfly. The easy way to do that would be to drive over them, but I don't know if that'll be allowed here. Allowed here. So we have a few more days of fun up here in the mountains, there may be a storm coming in over the weekend. Hope we can get down the hill Sunday to get to the RV and go back to the next-to-last stage of the Bizarre Game. Pretty soon now we'll stop living here in alternate weeks. We'll get organized, uh huh. We'll get things down pat, and then hop in the RV and drive away to warmer climes and new places. At least that's the current fantasy. And that's how it is, early Christmas morning, 2002, Volcano California. |
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Slouching Towards 2003Saturday night, 28 December 2002, Volcano.Late, who knows what time it is -- oh yeah, it's 10:10, otherwise -- the power went out about a half-hour ago. Snowing -- it started snowing *heavily* a few hours ago. We were at Bobby's, gone in to visit, it was clear when we went in. After a half-hour, 45 minutes, went out and there were two inches of snow on everything. Going by exceptionally fast, however now it's just a few hours later, it's warmed up, things are melting, we should have a nice crop of slush in the morning.Hell of a week this Christmas week, I've been sick all week, since we got back last Saturday. Last Saturday night I noticed that I was having, showing the signs of an incipient cold --first symptom: that characteristic tickle at the back of my throat. It had me *down* during the week while we were preparing for the Christmas dinner. Somehow managed to get to that, then rested up, then cleaned up, now packing up, and ready to go tomorrow for another focking week. I managed to get the RV stuck last Monday, stuck in the snow. Got it towed out Tuesday but it's not winterized. Now it's parked down in Jackson below snow level. Been reading Mark Twain, ROUGHING IT, much powerful writing on conditions and circumstances on the plains, in the western mining camps, and in Hawai'i, 140 years ago. Conditions change but people don't. I can hardly wait to read his follow-up, AN INNOCENT ABROAD. The day after Christmas we were down in Jackson to move the RV into its refuge at the newspaper. Had lunch with Beth and her kids, all of'em. Had a nice long talk with Chris about his upcoming re-wedding in Guatemala and why WE should go. We, we might. Seeing Antigua, Guatemala during the Holy Week celebrations, should be very exciting. [mumble] I described Holy Week in Amalfi, he [Chris] said it sounds just like events in Antigua. Except that in Guatemala, women also participate in the masked processions, not just the Brotherhood. Monday morning, 30 December 2002, ForestvilleHeading towards Santa Rosa. Next to last week of this Bizarre Game. It's a thoroughly soggy morning out here, not a downpour, just a constant rain now. We made it out of the snow in Volcano with no problems, drove the Explorer down to Jackson, tossed our stuff into the RV, and made it across the Valley forthwith. Tired and sick, but not buffeted by the elements. Supposed to be major new storms coming in today or tomorrow, so it'll be fun here. Two days hanging around Fireman's Fund, then a day off for New Year's, then two more days back at the Fund, and stay there until early Saturday morning.The levels of the Russian River and the Laguna de Santa Rosa are high but not exceedingly so, even Trenton Road is not under water at the laguna viaduct. Swarms of egrets in the wetlands over here, east side of the viaduct. Several dead 'possums by the side of the road, picked the wrong day to cross the highway. When I get back online I want to search for CLONE SONGS, put my RiverRat ScrapBook up onto a weblog, maybe SkeptiNews. Link to a few specific chapters of ROUGHING IT, about silver mining & milling and the environmental results of gold mining. Email XMas thanks to those I missed, also dig up the names of everybody, all my HarryOliver DesertRat ScrapBook correspondents and re-email them with invitations to join the group. Maybe take down the Barbara Hambly site and, or move it to GeoCities or something. Delete that station driver from my home area on Sonic, otherwise free up some space on Sonic, cause I'm getting pretty clogged there. Maybe see if there's another dummy address I can use for the cellphone. Also when we get back, if that $6 DesertRat ScrapBook and $5 Arizona Highways are still available, get'em. Find online lists of buzzwords... Tuesday night, 31 December 2002, Novato[muttering] tuesday focking night focking new years eve focking firemans fund parking lot focking sitting out here waiting for the night yeah we're focking in it for the money 2400 dollars for this week but fock it [muttering] yeah it's a bunch of money but still i'm focking sitting here in the focking parking lot focking pain in the ass fockit fockit fockit | |
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