The Blog with No Name

Man, it’s got cold quick here in Seattle, but we’ve had some great weather! I hope all those kiddies trick’o'treating have warm costumes.

Had a good but long day at work today. Went to the dump a bunch, and my co-worker went nuts taking pictures. I would have them posted now, but I forget my camera in our truck, so I have to go back and get it. We ran across a few cool Seattlites with neat Halloween costumes. We found Gene Simmons driving a forklift. Of course, nobody really at SPU had costumes. One guy had a cow costume, but I couldn’t get a pic of him. I’m not sure what I’m doing tonight. Jess is coming over, so I have to entertain her somehow. . . *stroking goatee*.

Tomorrow I’m probably going hunting again with my co-worker. We’ll be shooting for quail again, but, as always, our motto is “If it flies, it dies.” It’s going to be stinking cold too. I hope my fingers aren’t so numb I can’t pull the trigger.
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Currently listening to Rerun (Live) from the album “Black Lines To Battlefields” by Acceptance

I really gotta start proofing my entries more often . . .

We live in a very complex world, full of complex people who have complex relationships with other complex people. I don’t pretend to know a lot about what’s going on in the world. This is mainly because I often hear two contradictory stories about the same thing. So somebody has to be wrong, but it’s difficult to determine who. Thus I get stuck in an epistemological quagmire. However, some events sharpen the divide between who is right and who is wrong, clearly delineating who’s got an accurate view of the world. One such example is found here.

What a twisted world it is when an army that fights to remove a heinous man from power, liberating that country and giving it a chance to become something greater, is branded as an invader and a loathsome occupation force. But homicidal bombers blowing up innocent civilians, police officers, and Red Cross workers are viewed as idealist freedom fighters who have been provoked by the stupid actions of a world superpower (oh poor them). It’s a shame that here in Seattle I hear more people decrying the “corruption” and “immorality” of the Iraq “War” than people enraged about the terrorist bombers. That just seems so skewed from reality. Anyway, I’ve gotten sidetracked.

The first point I wanted to make was that these recent attacks only underscore the crazed barbarity of the bombers. This latest spasm of bombings killed more Iraqi civilians than anybody else. And they attacked the Red Cross! I can’t even begin to comprehend why they would do that. Who would want to attack nurses and doctors? What do they do in Iraq besides bring life and health to a nation that so desperately needs it? Atrocities like these only affirm my belief that these evil men will only stop if we’re dead or they’re dead.
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Currently listening to The Dolpins Cry by Live

The other day at work, my co-worker and I decided to compile the Top 10 Coolest Jobs. I thought I’d be able to come up with 10 pretty fast, but it ended up taking a lot longer than I presupposed. We were trying to think of the ideal job not based solely on income, prestige, or power, but we were looking for jobs with raw appeal. For me, the guiding principle was “this is a job i can tell stories about.” Obviously, some of the jobs I will list will involve high pecuniary benefits, power, and prestige, but that’s not why they are there. In no particular order, here are the jobs I came up with*.

1. Rock star
2. Movie star
3. Wrecking-ball operator
4. Exotic car test driver
5. Respected syndicated columnist
6. Mountaineering guide
7. Smokejumper
8. Deep-sea fisherman in the Bering Sea
9. Special-ops soldier
10. Astronaut

As you can see from that list, I will greatly benefit from my philosophy and sociology degrees . . .

Last night, I thought of one more that didn’t make it onto our list: star football player. Just think of this moment. You’re a receiver or a rusher, you get the ball, you make the break, and you’re sprinting as fast as you can to the goal line. All around you tens of thousands of your fans are cheering for you as you leave your enemies in the dust. In front of you is just God and the grass, and you’re running to meet up with Him. I think that would be one of the most exhilerating feelings possible.

*I hate dangling prepositions, but sometimes getting around them is more awkward than the danglers themselves.

Finally finished the upgrade. It took quite awhile to finalize the CSS. Lots of trial and errors. I’d just make changes and hope they did what I wanted. Anyway, I tried to keep the site design roughly the same, and I think I succeeded. There are a few improvements. First, I believe the site design (links, text, headings, etc.) is more consistant than the previous design. Second, the software I’m using has many more options built in. Like one cool new feature is that I can password protect entries, meaning I can write a blog that only one certain person can read. Sneaky, huh? Third, I believe the site design is cleaner and more modular. I can change things up and add things better.

The only problem I have with it now is that the little program I use to do entries from my computer (non-web-based entry) can’t work with the current version of this software. Hopefully, a quick update from the developers of the blog software will change that.

I discovered on Sunday that development of the software I use to do this blog (b2) has ceased and has been replaced by a new blog software. I’ve taken a look at it, and it’s definitely a step up from what I have now. So, I’m currently working on getting the new blog up and running how I want it to. This means I’ll have fewer entries for the next week while I’m dinking away with it. It’ll be slow going because for parts because I’ll have to decipher and write PHP and CSS on my own. I enjoy the challenge of it, but I dislike the exactness of it. One misplaced “;” can screw the whole page . . . Anyway, that’s what will be going on here for the next week.

I’m sure, somehow, you will all survive with less than your usual dose of steevak.com.

I put up a short video of this dude who works at the Seattle dump. He’s hilarious, but you have to check him out for yourself. I also have a photo of the city dump itself. It’s a neat place. I wouldn’t want to work there, but it’s really cool to see where all the garbage goes. On Tuesdays it looks like something out of a post-apocalyptic movie because of the enormous mounds of garbage and the big bulldozers pushing it all around. I’ve wanted to get pics of the place for almost a month now and I finally got them! Yay! Enjoy :thumbsup:
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Currently listening to Brokenhearted from the album “Before Everything and After” by MxPx

One final thought for the day. The box truck I drive around in at work only has a radio, so I’ve been listening to quite a bit of radio these days. Normally, I never listen to the radio. So, I’ve been thinking about the radio business a bit, and for the life of me I can’t figure out a few things.

First, how the heck do the stations make money? Yes, I know they sell advertisements, but who actually listens to those advertisements? I for one know of nobody who either pays attention to the ads or doesn’t flip to a different station when the ads start running. If nobody really hears the advertisements, they won’t do their job. Theoretically, the businesses will discover this and then not run any more ads, thus the stations will cease to generate income. However, this is not the case. Indeed, there are so many stupid ads that it’s annoying to even bother listening to the radio.

Second, why do people listen to the radio? I’m thinking about the song selection specifically. I see there are several problems with radio song selection. One, the listener has little to no control over what song is played. Song requests are relatively rare, and listener-determined “countdowns” are a relatively tiny portion of total playtime. Two, in my experience the rotation is frustratingly shallow. There was one day I heard The End (Seattle’s big new rock station) play the same song three times in three hours. If you spend any significant amount of time listening to the radio, you too probably have noticed the repetitive nature of play order. Or, worse, one of the few good songs is overplayed until it just becomes annoying. Three, songs often have negative qualities that incline the listener to stop listening. Such qualities may be that the song is offensive, boring, poor sounding, too loud, too soft, too slow, too fast, annoying, juvenile, or just plain stupid. It seems to me that most listeners probably only tolerate songs rather than actually enjoy them.

Finally, why DJs? Seriously, does anybody want to hear some idiot or group of idiots jabber on about some inane subject? I sure as heck don’t want to. And, again, I for one know of nobody who actually enjoys listening to DJs. Usually when the DJs start yammering, people mutter some type of oath and change the station. Why don’t the stations just play music and every so often read the news, traffic, and weather reports? Just read them. No commentary. Of course, there are some stations that are exceptions and have very little in the way of DJ babble. These stations are like a breath of fresh air.

I’ve come to the conclusion that there is a vast body of people in this country that actually pay attention to radio ads, prefer only a few songs to be fed to them at a time, and enjoy the prattle of DJs. These people must exist, but I have never met one. Maybe they all live on the East Coast . . . but how would that explain West Coast stations? I don’t know. I’m at a loss.
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Currently listening to The Radio Still Sucks by The Ataris

I only loosely keep track of baseball during the post-season because that’s the only time I ever find it interesting. The series between the Cubs and the Marlins turned out to be very interesting. A quick recap, in Game Six a Cubs fan deflected a foul ball that the Cubs outfielder mostly likely would have caught, and thus would have ended the game and the series. That fan was Steve Bartman. For shame! Woe unto him! Because of that careless deflection, it gave the Marlins a chance to come back and win the game. And the Marlins snapped up that chance, scoring eight runs in a row, winning the game and forcing the series to Game Seven. As luck would have it, the Cubs lost Game Seven, prolonging their 58 year World Series draught. I’m sure there are a lot of new atheists in Chicago. Apparently, Steve Bartman is at his house, guarded by the police. I don’t believe he will be staying in Chicago for very long. I know I’d want to get the heck out of Dodge ASAP.

I’m now waiting for Fluger to correct me.

I seriously hate having this stupid French class. There is nothing about it I enjoy. I hate the dread I have every Monday and Wednesday morning. I hate why I’m taking the class. I hate how I feel during the class. I hate the time of the class. And I generally dislike the language spoken in the class.

There are two things about the class I do like: it ends and it’s only 5 weeks long (2 weeks after tonight).

As of today, my lovely womanfriend, Jessica,[img]http://pages.prodigy.net/rogerlori1/emoticons/swoon.gif[/img] and I have been dating for ONE WHOLE YEAR. It’s the longest relationship I’ve ever had, and definitely the best (and I’m not saying that just because I have to). Of course, we’ve had our share of spats and difficulties. What real relationship doesn’t? However, we’ve worked through all of those and have come out on top. There have been many many days when she has blessed me so much with her presence, her love, her support, her beauty, and her care.[img]http://pages.prodigy.net/rogerlori1/emoticons/love3.gif[/img] Plus she’s just so much fun to be around. For example, we celebrated our anniversary last night and guess where she suggested we go? Gameworks. Yeah, we were blowing up aliens and zombies until late at night.[img]http://pages.prodigy.net/rogerlori1/emoticons/AR15firing.gif[/img]

Here’s to more years of happiness and [img]http://pages.prodigy.net/rogerlori1/emoticons/love4.gif[/img]love[img]http://pages.prodigy.net/rogerlori1/emoticons/love4.gif[/img].
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Currently listening to I love Jessica from the album “Love Songs for Jessica” by Stevie Poo

It’s always refreshing to find some local music that is actually really good. I’ve sorta rediscovered Rocky Votolato. I saw him live a long time ago when he opened for Dashboard Confessional. I wasn’t too impressed with him then, if I remember correctly. However, somehow I got an mp3 of a song on his new album, and I really like it. You can stream his whole new album from here. The second song should be “Suicide Medicine.” It’s really good, so check it out if you can. I’d describe his sound as something between Dashboard Confessional’s older stuff and Jack Johnson. I was going to buy his album today at Tower Records, but it was $15.99. I can’t remember the last time I payed that much for a CD, so I’m going to try and find it cheaper somewhere else. Thank goodness for the iTunes Music Store and concerts.

While I’m discussing music, I have a pressing question that I must ask. Is it cool to like the Polyphonic Spree?

As you can see here the AK Permanent Fund Dividend is only $1107.56 this year. I guess that’s good for free money, but I was hoping for more. This will probably be the last dividend I receive for a long time.

Yay, now we can get on with our CA-recall-less lives.
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Currently listening to In Keeping Secrets of Silent E by Coheed And Cambria

I love many things, and I hate many things. Today, I was in Fred Meyer’s check out their DVD deals (I did not buy any). Most unfortunately they had one of the worst bands ever to pollute the airwaves being pumped through the Muzak-distributors. You may have already guessed the band: Smashmouth. Yes, Smashmouth. I mentioned them here once, but let me just say this again. I hate Smashmouth.

That is all.