My Quiet Life

So, this weekend I had a long Saturday, but it was fun. I don’t normally recap random shit from my semblance of a social life, but there are some notable things:

• I went to the monthly GNARAS meetup. What is GNARAS, you ask? It’s the Greater Nashville Area Robotic Arts Society, of course. They had robots. And, I am going to build a robot. No, really! It’s going to do household chores, such as following a line of tape — continuing to follow the line of tape when it turns, and perhaps the ultimate test — continuing to follow the line when it goes grey and choppy. What did we do before we had robots? Starved to death, probably.
• I then went to go see the mayoral debate, which I’ve already written about. This was fun for me, though, cus I had a press pass, so I had all sorts of sekr1t access to awesome places like … uh, a hallway. And a chair that says “media” on it. It was totally better than the non-media chair right next to me.
• After the debate, I went Noshville’s and then to Mirror for a few drinks.
• Theeeeen, I went to see Here Come the Mummies. They’re this band, right, and they dress up like mummies. I figured it’d be a dumb gimmick. Well, it is a gimmick of course, but it’s pretty fun. But, they are also an amazing funk band. I’m not 100% sure, but I’m pretty sure I recognized one of the horn players from the Dynamites. The funny thing I realized at this concert is that if you have a fancy-looking DSLR, people will assume you’re there in some official capacity. I walked right up to the front of the stage, and people literally made way for me. I felt kinda bad, but .. not that bad. Mummies are pretty fun to take pictures of.
• THEN, I went back downtown (without my credit card, oops) to hit up some crappy bars that were still open, where we ran into some friends at a bar, who invited us to a party
• AND STILL FURTHER, we then drove out to this house party at my old friend Aram’s house.. at 4AM. I expected it to be some crazy house party full of people I didn’t know. No, I knew literally every single person there. Wait, sorry, there was one girl at the party I didn’t know. Friends from middle school, friends from high school. Guys I knew from Boston. This is such a small city, I swear.
• THEN, I came home and passed the fuck out … for 5 hours before I remembered I was supposed to be helping setup a windows network at the NHPP.
• then I died.

In conclusion, I declare any day that involves robots, mayoral candidates AND mummies to be a success.

I successfully dragged my ass out of bed early enough this morning to catch the lunar eclipse. I drove to percy warner park, which as it turns out was probably entirely unnecessary, as the light pollution from Belle Meade Boulevard is worse than I expected, and I was too lazy to drive into the park itself. I should have gone to Vandy’s observatory. Anyone know if they are open for these sorts of things? I assume they are..

As you can probably tell, I don’t have a very long lens (it’s all in how you use it, right?), so the results aren’t great. Photographing an eclipse is interesting. It starts off easy enough, as basic moon photography, which is an exercise in stopping down and taking a quick enough exposure, since the moon is pretty damn bright. Then the light goes away, and it gets harder. It becomes an exercise in getting enough light while balancing that with the fact that, well, the moon moves. I found ISO 400 to be a decent sweet-spot to get me enough sensitivity, but even that required 1-4s of exposure, depending on how I stopped down the lens, and sharpness suffered over that time due to movement of the moon itself. Noise was evident at ISO 400, too.

Suggestions for what to do next time? (other than: get a lens longer than 85mm)

UPDATE: Check out Blake’s results here.

My trips to the grocery store are getting embarrassingly short-sighted. Here’s what I got tonight:

• Toilet paper
• Club soda
• A sirloin steak as big as my head
• Asparagus
• One 10lb Pork loin

Yes, 10 pounds. I figure I can either take it somewhere to stuff it and spark a dinner party (i’ve had dates like that — though, usually reverse order), or I can just slice it up into chops and freeze it. Tonight’s dinner: sirloin. Tomorrow? asparagus. Wednesday? uhh.. toilet paper?

Went out last night to check out Blake and the rest of Troupe 93, a great improv comedy group. I had a blast, as expected, and by the looks of it, so did they. Do yourself a favor and check them out sometime.

More pictures here.

I have quit the shaving game. I’m out. It’s been fun, but it’s not for me. Now, I don’t mean that I’m gonna go all hairy. I’m a metrosexual at heart, after all. I’m not gonna just let it all sprout like I’m workin at AT&T as a UNIX sysadmin or anything– you know the ones I mean, the guys that looked like they glued a chia pet to their chin and just let it go.. No, I’ve just realized that the proper approach to facial hair is all about gaming the system. See, back in the day [19th century -- ed.], facial hair used to be the shit. Now, if you don’t have a face that’s as smooth as a baby’s bottom, you may as well flush your love life down the damn toilet. Well, fuck that, I say. This shit grows out of my face every day. It doesn’t stop. It’s not going anywhere. This isn’t a battle that’s worth fighting every day, and besides, I kinda like it.

So, I’ve realized, as I said before, that the answer lies in gaming the system. I don’t have to shave my face with a straight razor down to my baby-butt skin. I just have to maintain the illusion that I do. This is a socially acceptable place to be. It’s not okay if you look like you just woke up in a gutter after a 5-day bender in Tijuana. It is okay if you looked like you shaved a couple of days ago, even if you didn’t. So, I take a beard trimmer to my face periodically to trim down my stubble such that it passes for a 5-o’clock shadow. This is infinitely better for my skin than shaving with a straight razor, and it’s a hell of a lot faster.

Downsides:

• People keep telling me that they “dig the beard I’m growing”, if I get lazy about it
• Girls, how do you feel about kissing high-grit sandpaper? Hot, right? It’s like making out and free exfoliation

Upsides: I don’t look like a fifteen-year old with a bad case of acne after I shave and suffer through enough ingrown hairs and cuts that it looks like a lightbulb blew up in my face.

… or at least my sanity. for the day. I was sitting here at work, having one of those “deer in headlight” moments, where I reached a point in the day where I had so many things to do I couldn’t figure out what to do next (by the way, the way to solve this problem is the equivalent of tossing a dart at the dartboard and starting).

Anyways, it was a stressful moment, and my brain felt primed to explode, and then Bebel Gilberto’s Azul came on my mp3 shuffle, and I just about melted into my chair. It’s amazing how soothing her voice is. It’s better than valium.

This is awesome:

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When I went to last month’s Urban Residents Association meeting (I missed this month’s today), everyone got a good chuckle out of the news that people were actually “rounding up” (their terminology) homeless people to vote in the mayoral election.

“Why can they vote if they don’t even have a place to live?”, quipped one jokester.

Actually, chuckles, it’s because the fucking constitution says they can, that’s why. Courtesy of the National Coalition for the Homeless, here’s a little mini-explainer:

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Things I’ve been meaning to blog about but haven’t but I am now okay?:

• I went to the NHPP-sponsored vigil and memorial for Tara Cole, who was murdered at riverfront park (her home) a year ago. It was sad. I thought it was especially poignant to be standing there at this vigil, with the NHPP campaigning for affordable housing, in the shadow of the $250,000 monstrosity across the river. On a related note, some interesting info from the NHPP:
  

  In the two years prior to Tara Cole’s Killing there were several documented incidents of non-homeless individuals who self-confessed to trying to run over homeless people because they are “lazy and shiftless”, and another who lit a homeless man on fire after leaving a bar. In the last several months there have been several accounts of young people attacking homeless people for fun. At the same time, the Downtown Partnership (business association) and Urban Residents Association (downtown residents) have worked closely with police that has led to a zero tolerance campaign arresting over 80 additional homeless people in the last 4 weeks.

  And then there’s this:

  On the June 13th, 2007 the Metro Police launched the Quality of Life Initiative. It involves undercover officers downtown and along the West End corridor targeting individuals identified as panhandling (not illegal), trespassing, vagrancy, public intoxication and other activities typical of low-income individuals and homeless people struggling to survive as well as many non-homeless Titans fans J. Data shows that officers have arrested 91 unique homeless persons 113 times while working the initiative through Friday, Aug. 3. In their history in Davidson County, these 91 individuals have been arrested 4,397 times on 6,860 charges, and spent a total of 21,339 days in jail since March of 2000. Using a jail cost estimate of $55/day, this adds up to $1.2 million (which is only the Sheriff’s portion of the expense). When reviewing the 4,397 arrests, 2,117 resulted in a conviction.

• I could listen to Say Something by James literally over and over. Until the MP3 wears out. Which can happen, you know.
• I am going up to North Carolina in September for a friend’s wedding (to which I was invited partially to take pictures in exchange for free food, booze, and bridesmaids). I am hoping to extend it into a week or so of vacation and/or working remotely. I am going to drive the Miata and meander through the mountains, and wind up at Aaron’s, and the BEACH.
• I got a cheap RF remote for my camera, but I haven’t been able to do anything good with it. It’s a little hazy around here lately for star trails. It was only $20 on ebay, though. Let’s hear it for cut-rate Chinese knock-off electronics! I think my building manager thinks I’m a drug dealer, though, because I keep getting discreet packages from Hong Kong.

I’ll be damned, it’s actually raining out. A heavy rain, blowing almost straight north and 45 degrees to the ground. This is cool because I can open the window and watch it (normally the rain blows pretty much right into my apartment if I open the windows). There’s really nothing like the smell of a summer rainstorm — all that filth being cleansed away. I probably shouldn’t think too hard about what it is I’m actually breathing in, living downtown across the street from a giant construction site. So much for my poetic waxing. Anyways, it’s nice. I sorta wanted to run out and play in it.