Toby's Log page 122

Mimi’s hair

in

Every other Thursday, I take my grandma, who we call Mimi, out to get her hair done. She lives in a retirement type home, and the hair dresser at the one she lives at isn’t nearly as good as the one she used to live at, so she needs somebody to transport her over there. I go home or do something else while she gets her hair done, then I come back and we go out to eat at Park’N’Eat, El Rincon, or some other place.

She hasn’t been in the best of health for years now; that’s why she’s in a retirement home. She had a stroke a while back that has eventually led to her inability to walk. Last night, she went to the hospital, as she was having irregular heat beats. She felt very weak. They gave her some medication and are going to run some tests. Because of this, she will not be going to the hair dressers today. I’m hoping she’ll get better soon here. She’s getting fairly old now; wouldn’t want to stop a good thing.

New Drummer

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I had been thinking about it for a while, the possibilities and problems. Two weeks ago, I made up my mind to tell them, but I didn’t get to see my band mates. Rockwood’s dad was leaving the house to move in with his (Mr. Rockwood’s) mother to help her with gardening in her old age. Rockwood and his sister, Connie, were thus given the house. Rockwood went to South Carolina or the like to help Connie move back to Ohio. So two ECC shows and one practice were cancelled. Friday was the first meeting of the Yars in two weeks, and I had waited to tell them the whole time. It allowed me to mull it over more and weigh the plusses and minuses. In the end, I decided it would be for the better.

I’m leaving the band. I will stay with the band until a suitable new drummer is found and learns the music or our last currently scheduled show on August 19th, whichever comes first. I plan to put up flyers in Kent seeking a drummer willing to play in an established band. We’ll probably have them come to one of our shows to see if they are interested in our music and the Yars in general. Then they can come to our practices and Dwight and Rockwood will talk to them in more detail about the band and find out if they will work out. I will show them my current parts to the music to give them an idea of the style wanted and also a starting point in coming up with their own parts. Hopefully we will find someone that can learn the songs and make parts for them quickly, parts that compliment the music well (perhaps even better than my own). They also must get along with the band members and be willing to play the music already written. Hopefully by August 19th.

Many things influenced my decision. I don’t have so much fun playing in the band now. Sometimes it is fun, but a lot of times it isn’t. I enjoy the music a lot, but I don’t neccesarily enjoy playing it all the time. I’m not the best of drummers at all, never having really gotten any lessons on the set (only on individual percussion instruments, requiring much less coordination), and the Yars music would likely be improved with a better drummer. Sometimes I don’t like the parts Dwight or Rockwood want me to play for the songs, or even the tempo or other aspects of the song, yet they may be better off with those changes, and a more experienced drummer may be better at telling what works well. I’ve got a lot going on in my life right now, and want to make some changes. Drumming for the Yars takes a bit of time and effort and ties me to it. I don’t necisarily like the place I’m in right now and hope leaving the Yars will allow me to find a better place. As my interests are less focused on the Yars and more elsewhere, I can’t be very dedicated to it. Hopefully the new drummer will be quite dedicated and more interested in the success of the band and going places rather than in playing some music for fun. I am very stingy, and drum equipment and other band costs can be quite expensive; leaving the band will allow me to focus my precious resources elsewhere. All in all, I think this will work out for the better of both the band and myself.

In other news, our former fellow band, the Living Deadbeats, got a bit of air time on 100.7 WMMS. MMS plays a ‘local bands’ type show sometimes. I was at work and was surprised to hear the Deadbeats popular (to fans) tune ‘Machine Gun Sam’. I was even more surprised to hear that it was on the radio and not a CD. This means they must be doing alright after we lost contact with them, following the Europe Gyro incident. Good luck to them. I’ll have to watch for them and perhaps catch another of their shows, as it’s been a little while.

first sailing trip

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Paul and Uncle Al went out sailing on the Pyewacket Sunday, but I was working and unable to go. There was little winds save for big gusts at the end. Today, Paul and I went out. My first sailing trip, save for as a passenger (and then only the second I believe). These trips take quite a while, especially since Paul lives an hour away. I woke up at 7:00 (getting only a few hours of sleep) and got out there around 8:30. We made some peanut butter sandwiches and grabbed some cranberry juice, hooked up the boat, and headed off, back to Rocky River. Stepping and raising the mast was the hardest part of getting ready; quite hefty bugger for two. We were in the water before 11:00 I do believe. We motored out to the lake, then put up the sails. There wasn’t much wind, but enough to move around a bit. We were eating while sailing. We got to see a little bit how to set the sails, then the wind died down to nearly nothing. I tried fruitlessly to move at any reasonable speed. Soon, we found ourselves in a large group of small bugs that flew around us relentlessly, unaffected by swinging hats and shirts. They occasionally made their way into our eyes, noses, and mouths. We scrambled to get the sails down and the motor running to jet outta there. That motor really cruises along. We then figured out how to put the cover on the main-sail and the jib into a bag from which it could be easily raised. We dropped anchor for the first time, and sat in the cabin a bit. My was it hot. It felt good down there, especially when a slight breeze would come along through the window. It also felt good to dangle the feet in the water, though it was too cold for any swimming. We then went back out, motored inland a bit (we had made it out to about the mile marker by sail), and raised the sails once again: the wind had picked up a bit. We had some strong pulls there, and got to mess around with setting the sails a bit more. We were going at a good clip for a short bit. We jibbed and tacked. The wind soon died down though. With a low wind, it was very hard to tell what was happening to set the sails properly. The wind also frequently changed directions, making us jibe or tack at unexpected times. We lowered sail again and went into port, Paul motoring us along. The landing at the docks can be hard, as the motor idles too fast to come in: we have to put it in nuetral and steer with the rudder. It wasn’t too hard getting it on the trailer again, though it seemed harder than last time. We then motored her over to the parking lot to unstep the mast and tie down for travel. I noticed my sunburnt arms there, as I hadn’t put on suntan lotion until halfway through our trip. All in all a decent first trip, but hopefully we’ll get more wind next time.

apple to use Intel?

in

I say boo. After all these years of touting the advantages of the PowerPC, I’ve really come to prefer them. Some have pointed out that Intel is doing well with mobile processors, but I think the PowerPC is doing well enough: good computing to power consumtion ratio as compared to Pentiums anyway. Via I am more interested in for mobile devices.

For numerous reasons, this is a very odd change for Apple, and their reasons don’t seem to make much sense. There is speculation that Apple is covertly making this change-over to later announce it has been bought by Intel. I wouldn’t have put any thought into it, except for the extreme oddity of the move on Apple’s part. Still seems a little far fetched, but it would certainly explain Apple’s recent decision.

Pyewacket: Maiden Voyage

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I have wanted to learn to sail for at least several years now. I had been planning on buying a boat for a couple of years with my brother, but never got around to finding one or reserving the money to do it. My cousin Paul also became interested in sailing, to the point that he plans to live on a sailboat for at least a while. Are interest provoked my uncle and his dad to purchase a vessel at an auction a few weeks ago. It was a Precision 18, part way between a dinghy and a cruiser. It’s a regular bermuda yawl with a small cabin that can sleep four (albeit a bit crampedly). It ran him $1550 and came with most of the basic parts of the boat, including a trailer to haul it. It was a might dirty, and needed a little work. We christened her the USS Pyewacket, after a friends boat Uncle Al once crewed. Uncle Al and Paul, and to a much lesser extent I, worked on it for the past couple weeks, cleaning it and fixing it up. Today we bought a motor for it (a 5hp air-cooled four-cycle with reverse) and took it down to the Rocky River area, without the sails. Getting her in the water wasn’t very hard. We motored along the river and out into Lake Erie. The motor was excessively powerful: we were speeding along well too fast to dock it at an idle. It was also quite hard to switch from forward to reverse, making careful manuevering difficult. The lake was calm for Lake Erie, though the small waves still chopped the boat about a bit: it’ll be better when the mast and sails are up and the centerboard and rudder are down. The boat, being a sailboat, turned very easily under power and was hard to keep straight. It had quite the small turning radius, however. We went back into the river and dropped the centerboard. No leaks at all, which is all this trip was testing for. We went back to dock, and ran into it because the boat was coming in too fast. Next time we’ll have to have the rudder on to steer so we can put the engine in nuetral and coast on in to port. We got her into the trailer, including getting the keel into the proper position, rather easily just by pulling the ropes on the dock. It only took two tries.

We’ll be sailing very soon on her. All she needs now is a few bits for the rigging and a few other small things. We’ll move on to other fixings later, after we’ve learned a bit of sailing and what modifications are most important. Hopefully it won’t take us long to learn, and then we can enjoy ourselves sailing about and even camping aboard.

Brakes went out

in

Wow. My first time. The brake line to one of my rear tires developed a hole, allowing my break fluid to leak out. My brakes at first would grab, then sink toward the floor. The sinking slowly become more and more significant until it would reach the floor and the brakes would stop grabbing if I were stopped long enough. Then it got to the point where the breaks did nothing at all. I used the emergency brake and engine braking (thank goodness for the manual transmission) to come to a stop, but I still required quite a bit of stopping distance. At my uncle’s house, we found which line it was and crimped it to stop/slow down the leak. It worked for a while to keep enough fluid, but there was of course air in the lines, so my brakes still didn’t do much. The leak was also significant enough that after I got home, when I went to go back out, the brakes didn’t work at all again. It’s kinda scary being unable to easily stop. I’m gonna try to fix that soon. I may have to stay at my parents house for a bit (I’m unable to work on my car at my house because of the stupid park rules) and cycle to work while working on the car.

commune

in

After noticing how much time I spend doing things like cooking and washing dished, I’d somewhat like to live in a commune, a group of people providing members needs efficiently. Everyone would likely live in an efficiently designed apartment like building.

People would be free to leave at anytime, join (back) in any time space is available. They may also move to other communes around the country/world anytime space is available.

In its simplest form, this would merely be a large shared living quarters. Each person would have their own private room for a bed, personal possesions, etc.
-Bathrooms could be in each room or, to be much more efficient, on each floor. They would be much more private than standard public restrooms, with rooms for each facility. Bathing rooms would be seperate from toilet rooms.
-There would be a large restaurant type kitchen servicing the whole place. Food would be purchased as used from the full-sized store of regular goods. Any irregular goods could be specially ordered and made regular if needed. The amounts being ordered would be closely monitored to ensure nothing runs out while nothing spoils.
-Community spaces would be provided for playing sports and table-games, watching tv and movies and playing video games, conversing, and other such liesure activities.
-Many commonly used items would be purchased by the entire community for their benifit. The proper amounts for the demand would be monitored. Tools for automotive work and carpentry would be available, with a garage and workshop. Cards, board games, some sporting equipment, tvs, and furniture would be purchased for the community areas. Some cleaning implements, such as vacuums, mops, and brooms would be available for use.

Cooks, dishwashers, and community area maids may be wanted to be payed for by community members to provide their services and allow others to concentrate more fully on their own lines of work. Cooks would cook to order some meals or take orders in advance to allow for better planning. Or a more 24-hour cafeteria like approach could be used, where choices of meals would be available, plus a set selection of items always there. These personnel would be paid by the system, either not bringing in money from the outside at all, or working short enough hours to still allow an outside job.

In a much more involved commune, in which many more of the needs of the community would be provided ‘in-house’, the less specialised jobs would be shared among a lot of people: cook one meal, dishwash for a bit, work on committee for calculating how much food should be ordered next for a bit. This would ensure no-one is forced into doing undesirable jobs all the time.

This article is incomplete.

Hierarchical Site DB Storage

in

a prototype hierarchical site database will be made containing a description and discussion of everything I own organized by category. for now this’ll allow children to have only one parent, but it will need multiple parents in the future.

page display:
a nav box at the side of each page will have links to its parent, siblings, and children. children will be ordered by type
the content will be in a box. content may also contain links to other pages, especially children, when mentioned.
a site map will provide a hierarchical link list of all pages in database

each page will be a entry in a database. It will have:
a unique id to identify it
the id of its parent page (what links to it)
type/template defining display of page by type
style of page (style sheet for colors, etc of sections). parent inherited if blank. will be unimplemented at first
content of page

root page will be home, with links to all first level sub pages.

example for stuff
transportation page
children: car, sailboat, bicycle, foot
content: It is essential to get from point A to point B: to get products stored elsewhere, see different things and people, go to locations better suited for certain functions. One comes with feet with which to travel about. This mode of transportation is very easily accomplished, requires as little as oneself, allows careful manuevering in tight places, and can easily handle terrain other transportation types have trouble with. It is also relatively very slow and tiring for longer lengths and can only handle ground. A bicycle provides transportation with the body as a motor, allowing more speedy and efficient travel. The bicycle is a fairly simple device, lightweight and easily storable in most places. A car is a much faster mode of transportation that requires very little exertion on the users part. It allows great distances to be achieved within less time and easy transport of goods. It is also big and much more expensive to own and operate…
(this is a brief overview of transportation. children are linked to in content with a brief summary of each. Each child will go into more depth.)
template: this would probably be a “summary” or “directory” type template, just a overview of a category with summaries of each child. Its children would probably be as well. The car category might have children that are of a “product” type, giving a review/discussion of specific instances of the parent. the parent of a collection of “product” pages may contain a comparison summary that provides a conclusion as to which is best for a given situation.

mobile phone expired

in

I have one of those prepay type mobile phones, where you pay money in each period of time and then have that money to spend in calls as long as you keep paying. I was a day late in trying to pay, so my previous balance was lost. I had about $83.95 before that, part of which was the leftovers from a $75 card I got when I purchased the phone. I don’t use the phone all that much, since I have a phone at home that is much cheaper to use. I am just going to discontinue the service, as I no longer have a major insentive to use it. I was going to keep paying in the $15 a month just because I had such a high balance, making it an almost unlimited use phone for that price, but that is now gone. My land phone works for my calls, and I believe I can still make 911 calls from the phone if needed. Maybe once I can figure out how to get broadband internet for cheap without the need for a land-line, I’ll go solely to the cell phone with one of the cheap plans (I think there are good ones for like $20 a month), which I find much nicer in so many ways compared to a land phone (able to use ‘anywhere’, free caller id, free voice-mail, built in speed-dial that only really expensive land phones can come close to). So you can probably say goodbye to 4729782.

Practice at the Khameleon

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John’s dad disliked the idea of us playing at his house anymore, so with a little luck and perseverance, Dwight got us a practicing slot at the Club Khameleon every Friday, 5-8. That’s almost our old practice time-slot. We do have to move our equipment back and forth though (we can still store it in John’s garage, luckily) so it’ll be a bit more efforted. At least shows won’t seem quite as bad then.

Our first practice at the Khameleon went quite well. We played through our songs with the not-so-perfect sound on stage at most shows. Since there were a few folk listening to us, it was actually sort of like a show, but much more laid back. I think the practice will actually be better for us than at a house.

Right after our practice, a storm rolled in. It was pouring and we had to run our equipment out to the truck in the rain. Got a little wet, and so did our equipment, but I think all survived just fine.

If anyone wants to watch us practice, you can, Fridays 5-8; just expect a few more slip-ups and longer breaks between songs.
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