Nothing to talk about today.

I didn’t get up early (well….I did get up early in order to feed the cats), and I spent most of the day lying in bed watching football.  Atlanta lost to Houston. 

Not a good day.

I’ve spent a lovely day doing nothing.  Today was the first Saturday since September 3rd that I wasn’t on the road – you may recall that on the one off-weekend of the football season, I had a board meeting in Cincinnati, and last weekend (the first post-season Saturday), I drove to Greenville to help a friend move.  So I spent most of today lying on my bed watching movies.

Did take a short break from that to go to the grocery store and get some milk and bread, but once I got home and made my sandwich, I took my clothes off and scooted right back to the bed.

I must admit that the day didn’t start all that pleasantly.  I got a phone call at about 4:30 this morning.  It was a wrong number, but that wasn’t the annoying part.  See, when my phone makes unexpected noises, my female cat (Boo) loses her freaking mind and goes into full-scale attack mode against my male cat (Bo).  Neither Bo nor I really know how to deal with this, as Boo is simply batshit-crazy during these little feline seizures, so Bo did what his tiny little brain decided was the best thing to do:  he ran under the bed.  Bad move on his part, as Boo can fit under the bed, too.  So, although the phone didn’t wake me up, the screams of a full-blown cat fight going on 18 inches under my head most certainly did.

It is not an enchanting way to wake up.

Should you be wondering why Boo doesn’t do this EVERY time I get a phone call, it’s because the contacts in my phone have been assigned ring tones to which she’s become accustomed.  Since the call this morning was not from one of my contacts, it was a new and magical sound to her – which required her to go insane.

I was able to restore peace by giving the two of them their breakfast 90 minutes early.  Then I went back to bed, but couldn’t sleep until after I’d watched an episode of The Joy of Painting.  The host, Bob Ross, has the most soothing voice imaginable.

I may try to get up early tomorrow and go take some pictures somewhere.  Haven’t really done that since Betsy moved, and I miss it.  

TWD

Damn.

There was a possibility that I’d be playing brass carols at the mall tonight as part of an incentive to get shoppers to dump more money into the Salvation Army’s red bucket there.  In anticipation of this, I took the tuba out of the case this morning, discovered that two valves (out of four) were pretty much completely frozen, and spent an extra 15 minutes before I left the house getting them cleaned and oiled and movable and yada yada yada.

Then I got an email at about noon informing me that our group wasn’t needed.

Just damn.  I was looking forward to learning if I still knew how to play tuba.  Maybe next week.

I think I wrote an entry in this’yere blog a year or two ago that described my general blase attitude each December.  In fact, I know I did.  Maybe I’ll put a link to it in this entry if I remember to later.  As a recap, I get incredibly unmotivated to do anything during the last 5 or 6 weeks of the year.  This year is no different.  I’ve had one project on my plate for the last week.  ONE project.  Normally, there are no less than 4 lined up and waiting.  Now it’s down to one, and my group has decided that we’re going to use the month of December mainly for cleaning up/organizing our web server and rewriting/improving older stuff that can be improved.

One project and then it’s just goofing-off for the rest of the year.

And I just cannot motivate myself to do that one project.  Oh, I take a look at it every now and then and I send emails to the person who requested it  (just to ask a few questions and let her know that I’m still thinking about it and it’s the most important thing in the world, etc.), but I’m basically just ignoring it.  I’ve got the attention span of a bowl of peanut butter these days, and even though I get to work with every intention of taking care of that one project, I end up surfing the web and editing photos and talking to other people in the office and fixing old code and before I know what’s happening, it’s 5:00 and I’m gone.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll take care of that stupid one project.

Today, however, I started a new blog.  I mentioned yesterday that I was considering putting it on the tumblr.com platform.  After I took a closer look at that solution, I decided to stick with blogger.  I could’ve gone the WordPress route, I guess, or just built my own, but blogger is an old friend at this point.

At any rate, I’ll be locking down this blog within the next week or two.  If you want to continue to read it (I’ll still be updating it), drop me an email and let me know.

The new blog, which I will attempt to update regularly, is called “Frowsy Noise” and you can click on that title right there if you want to see it.  It is not associated with any of my existing email addresses at the moment.  If I’m able to lock “Stuff Nobody Reads” down then maybe I’ll move FN under my regular email at some point.  Until then, however, it’s out there all alone and it needs your support.

Go ahead.  Follow it.  Comment on it.  It’ll be fun.

TWD

So.  December 1st already.  How ’bout that?

I’ve decided to attempt to go out of 2011 in the same manner that I began it.  To wit, by posting every day for the month of December.

This publishing marathon very nearly began disastrously, as I’ve been trying for several days to get an operating system installed on my laptop, and – until about 15 minutes ago – had been completely unable to do so.  I’d go through all of the installation steps, reboot the machine to finish up, and get cryptic error messages or missing displays or (in the case of the current system that I’m using) security errors whenever I tried to launch a browser.

At least for the moment, however, I’m able to see this page long enough actually to get a post written and, one hopes, published.

I’ve also decided that, sometime this month, I’ll launch a new blog to replace this one, which was never really intended to be very public.  Google’s continual combination of various things, however (blogger.com, gmail, google+, facebook, etc) has gotten me nervous that I’ll forget to hit a check box somewhere and “Stuff Nobody Reads” will suddenly become common knowledge to about 1200 people instead of the 8 or 9 who currently know about it.

So, as I said, I’ll be starting a new blog – probably on the tumblr.com platform – and will more or less lock this one down and continue to use it as a more personal journal for myself.

I’ve yet to come up with a name for the new blog, but you can rest easy knowing that the title of it will be clever and witty and the content will be topical, hard-hitting, and generally grammatically correct.

If you have suggestions for the new title, please feel free to let me know what those suggestions are.

For right now, though, I’m just going to run a few more software updates on the laptop (I’ve settled on Fedora 12 for the OS if you’re wondering), try to get it to reboot successfully, and then go to sleep.  The year may have gone by very quickly, but this week is dragging by slower than a very slow thing.

TWD

Yes.  I know it’s been 6 weeks since I wrote anything here.

That does not mean that I haven’t been writing anything.  I’ve been writing LOTS of stuff since my last entry, but most of it is in a form sort of like:

if ($TEAM_PLAYED == 999){ 

if($GAMERESULT){ 

$TOT_WIN1 = $TOT_WIN1+1;

}else{ //LOSS

$TOT_LOSS1=$TOT_LOSS1+1;

}

}else{ 

if($GAMERESULT){ 

$CONF_WIN1 = $CONF_WIN1+1;

$TOT_WIN1 = $TOT_WIN1+1;

}else{ 

$CONF_LOSS1=$CONF_LOSS1+1;

$TOT_LOSS1=$TOT_LOSS1+1;

}

}

Fascinating stuff, huh?   That little bit updates the standings on my football page based on scores that I input in a form.  I’ve also been writing a bunch of stuff dealing with a contest that I’m running on that website, completely rewriting the nabba site, trying to write a library system for the brass band (and if you want some amazingly convoluted and boring code to look at, ask me to send THAT to you)…and I’ve done a bit of coding for my actual jobby job, too.

In my spare time, I’ve spent most Friday nights and Saturday afternoons shooting high school and college football games, respectively; and I’ve done a lot of sleeping on Sundays.

It has gotten wonderfully cool in Atlanta, with temps in the 30s in the mornings and afternoon highs in the low 70s.  I love sleeping during this time of year, but I hate getting up – it’s always pitch-dark in the mornings, and humans shouldn’t have to get out of bed before the sun comes up.  It’s not natural.

My football team has fought back after dropping a couple of games and putting themselves on the brink of playoff elimination; but after knocking off the (then) #4 team in the country two weeks ago and then winning a defensive showdown with another very good team last week, they’ve got a chance to sneak into the playoffs – and even win the conference – if they can win the next two games.   Things don’t get any easier for them, however: the #3 team in the country will be visiting the stadium this Saturday.

I don’t have a good feeling about that game; but if the guys do win it, I think they’re in really good shape the following week.

My renter lost his job today.  It was not unexpected, and he seems pretty happy about it – he’s never liked the job.  I don’t have a problem with it just as long as he continues to pay me rent, and he says he will.  Time will tell.  My last renter moved out within two weeks after losing her job; though, truth be told, I was pushing her to get out long before that happened.

“Occupy” groups have taken over most major cities since I last wrote anything here (putting that in for historic reference more than anything else), and I basically agree with their sentiments, though I wish they’d put some thought into actually expressing those sentiments rather than just wandering around aimlessly and making themselves more and more irrelevant.  My “demands” if I were protesting with them would run along these lines:

• The big banks are too big.  Break them up.
• The big banks that caused what can only be defined as a mild depression are still acting like morons after being bailed out.  Put somebody in jail and send a message.
• Congress needs to stop acting like children and start getting something done.  If that involves cutting some social services, so be it – and if it involves raising taxes, so be that, too.  
• It’s not going to kill anybody making more than $50K a year to pony up an extra $1000 in taxes every year, and it’s not going to kill somebody making a million a year to come up with an extra $25K every year.  If you like something, you pay for it.  If you don’t want to pay for it, then don’t expect to use it.  
• Companies – and I work for a pretty freaking big one – shouldn’t have the right to funnel God knows how much money into political campaigns, so overturn the “Citizens United” decision and put a $5 cap on ALL political contributions.
• Implement term limits on ALL politicians at any level.  There are plenty of political jobs out there, and the same guy doesn’t have to stay in the same one for 50 years.  Do your time and move on.
• Make it a crime to be a conservative.

I’m sort of running late this morning, but wanted to put a brief update in here about what I did this weekend,  which was to go to Cincinnati for the NABBA board meeting.

As expected, I’m now secretary of that august body.  Honestly not sure how I feel about that, although it gives me something to do (the meeting minutes) and possibly gives me more legitimacy when I contact non-member bands to try to cajole them to get involved.

There were a couple of things decided at the meeting with which I very much disagree.  While trying to make my argument against one of them, I was (quite literally) shouted down by the president and chastised by a 20-something girl who (I think) may find out why I’m right sooner than she thinks. Ultimately, my argument against that proposed rules change was voted down, 14-2.

At least I got one other vote….

After the meetings, I spent a few hours walking around a street festival in downtown Cincinnati and taking pictures of the board members and anything else that looked interesting, and on Sunday Betsy and I drove back to Atlanta.  On the way home, we took a side-trip to Rock City (that of “See Rock City” fame) near Chattanooga; but after seeing that the entry fee was $20 each and realizing that we could only spend an hour or so there, we just snapped a few pictures from the side of Lookout Mountain and continued to the house.  Betsy returned  to San Antonio on Monday.

After shooting a total of 4 football games so far (two high school, two college), I’ve decided that my new approach this year is working.  I ditched my super-telephoto lenses in favor of a sharp and fast 200 millimeter lens, and I’ve been really happy with the results so far (as always, you can view my efforts at theuffp.smugmug.com).  Other folks have liked the shots, too.  Furman’s SID has already used a couple of my shots for press releases and one of the team mothers for the high school team “purchased” about 20 prints of last week’s high school game.  Unfortunately, I’d set the prices on the HS shots to cost – something like 19 cents for a 4×6 print rather than the $4 that I’d normally charge – so I made nothing on those sales.

That was my plan from the start, though.  The rest of the HS game galleries will have normal pricing schedules, and the coaching staff is fine with that.  Basically, I gave them two weeks of shots for free, and now I’ll charge for the other two or three games that I shoot for them.  Hopefully, it’ll be a win-win.

Only a few sales of the college prints so far, but that usually picks up mid-season.

Must now head to the office.  Oh, yeah – I’m getting sick again.

Shit.

TWD

Yes, it’s been a few weeks since I wrote anything here.  It’s still hot and I’ve been sick for the last few days – that’s no excuse for not writing in the previous three weeks, but it is a fact.

I’m not entirely sure what kicked off this latest bout of what I shall deem to be sinusitus.  Last Friday night, I gathered my camera gear together and drove over to Riverwood High to shoot the first football game of the season.  It was amazingly hot.  Disgustingly hot.  Unbearably hot.  Bind-me-with-duct-tape-and-throw-me-into-a-1957-Chevy-Bel-Aire-Trunk hot.  Here’s an example of how hot it was:  It was 96 degrees at 9:30 at night.

Okay, so that’s not really an “example” so much as it’s a fact, but here’s the point I’m trying to make:  It was really hot.

So I shot the game – didn’t do a very good job, but you can look at the few shots that I didn’t delete immediately here – and then (it being hot) stopped for a beer on my way home.  The beer was incredible, by the way. 

I spent most of Saturday morning indoors – did some cleaning, went through the shots from Friday night, watched some movies, and psyched myself up to do some lawn work. At about noon, I got out the hedge trimmer, pruning shears, rakes, shovels, hose and wheelbarrow and proceeded to hack the ever-loving crap out of the bushes (privett and otherwise) in front of the house.  After about three hours, I was (you guessed it) incredibly hot, and decided not to mow the lawn – there’d be time enough to do that on Sunday. 

Saturday night, I spoke with Betsy (on the phone) for a while and noticed a slight tickle in my throat.  Didn’t think much of it.  I was hot.  I ended up sitting in a tub of cold water for a while and then went to bed.

By Sunday morning, it was obvious that, at some point between going to the football game and sitting in the tub, I’d managed to make myself sicker than I’d been in years.  It was one of those deals where there was so much snot in my head that I was basically going deaf.  The pressure in my sinus cavities was such that I felt I could pop out all of my teeth if I just pushed on them hard enough with my tongue.  My eyeballs resembled those of Kermit the frog, my head was on the verge of exploding, every joint on my person was screaming for the application of Icy Hot balm, standing up was an exercise not unlike walking on a water bed…it was bad enough that I actually decided to call a doctor if I wasn’t better in a couple of days.

That’s bad, folks.

I managed to get to sleep Sunday night, but emailed my team on Monday morning and told them I wouldn’t be working.  Spent all day Monday in bed, alternating between sleeping and frantically blowing my nose. Sleeping, if I haven’t mentioned it before, is not only my most favorite thing in the world to do.  It’s also my cure for all forms of sickness.  I’m convinced that I could chop of my foot with a hatchet and, given enough sleep, grow a new one.

Sometime Monday night, I woke up with unbelievable chills.  At that point, I knew everything was cool.  That’s my other pet theory.  I can feel like crap for a long time, but once I start violently shivering (while sweating) and have to curl up into the fetal position in order to keep from falling out of the bed, I know that the worst is over.  I woke up yesterday morning and went to work for half a day – took the laptop home at lunch.

As expected, I’m on the way back up today.  I informed my team this morning that I’d be working from home (and yes, I have indeed gotten quite a bit of work done), and my head, while still pretty stuffy, is slowly clearing out.  The body aches are gone, the teeth don’t hurt any more, and I actually ate a sandwich for lunch (this after living on raman noodles and tea for the last three days).

Getting better is a good thing, because I’ve got my first college game this weekend.  It’s in Myrtle Beach, SC, and I’m planning to camp at a state park in the SC lowcountry on Saturday and Sunday (Monday is Labor Day). 

I hate camping with a snotty head.

TWD