Jodag.NET

I’m so excited that I’ve got half a mind to scream out loud. I’m excited about photography again recently. There is a photo contest coming up, specific to and located in Death Valley. I’m trying to figure out which photo(s) to enter. I’m limited to two entries this go around, so I’ve got to choose a little more carefully than the shotgun effect of the last one.

It’s exciting (expensive), frightening and wonderful all at once. Over the years I’ve fallen more and more in tune with Death Valley; it’s solitude and it’s quiet beauty. Few people go high up into the mountains and even fewer wander outside the tourist areas of DV. I like these lonely areas, I find serenity there and am reminded of Buzz Aldrin’s famous description of the moon as, “Magnificent desolation”. What a perfect description for Death Valley.

I’ve even applied (by submitting some sample photos) to a stock photography company.  I’m excited for a lot of reasons lately.

You may remember a spanking I received a year or two ago at the SCVPA photo contest.  Time marches on, my tears have dried and my wounds have healed and I entered another local gallery’s photo contest.  As you can probably guess by the title of this post, I did much better this time around.  I entered five total photos and took first place and honorable mention in landscape category, as well as an honorable mention in the man-made scenery category.

Three new ribbons, 25 dollars cash money and a picture on the front page of the local newspaper.  I could get used to this high rollin’ lifestyle.  Small pictures of the pictures I entered are below, along with a shot of the dolla dolla bills I won.

I originally wrote a thought provoking post on big brain descriptions of each of the pictures, but I wrote that on my phone and somehow lost it.  Looking at these shots, I want to get back up to Bodie to do some more lens work as the place is just teeming with potential shots.  Even better I’d like to work there for a season and see all shots the behind the closed doors.  I obviously am getting back to Death Valley this year, once the temperatures are a bit more benign.

It feels good to get some applause for the shots I put up, we’ll see if this starts anything big.

It was announced today that the remains of Lt Cdr Michael “Scott” Speicher have been located and returned home. He was the first American casualty during the first gulf war when he was shot down over Iraq.

I remember when he was shot down, and the stunning realization that despite our technological prowess and military power, good men and women still die in war. He was mentioned in no less than two state of the union adresses, his status changed from KIA to MIA to captured over the years and now his remains have been found and he can be laid to rest.

I am so godamned proud of the military that kept looking and almost two decades later found him. I hope our young PFC who has recently been taken hostage in afghanistan stays strong long enough for someone to get to him out safely.

Welcome home Lt Cdr Michael “Scott” Speicher, rest in peace.

Lots of new stuff.

http://jodag.net/Media/Movies/mystary.wmv

Direct link, rather than embedded due to IE’s failure to respect HTML standards.

So, for 5 years I have been on satellite Internet. For those who are unfamiliar with this concept, it blows. The latency is obscene, which makes any form of online gaming impossible and the speeds are equivalent to that which you would see from a tortoise with only two legs, both of which are broken. The price is 70 a month, you can only download 375 megs per day and you are responsible for paying technicians to fix your trash when it doesn’t work.

To put it simply, the satellite Internet company knows it has you by the short hairs. Their customer service sucks, prices are atrocious, policies make it worthless and speeds make it only a slightly better solution than dial-up. Five years is a long time and technology advances.

Because of this, today I get to call and cancel. A friend of mine cancelled his service with direcway / hughesnet once. The end result sucked for him.

He was having tech support issues and used cancelling as a bluff to see if they would help him out. He told the guy on the phone, “if you aren’t going to fix it (the problem he was having) I’m going to cancel my service” the customer service tech replied, “then you’ll have to cancel”. Jared cancelled right there and then, his bluff was called.

To make things even better, after only a minute or two, Jared said fine, I’ll pay for a tech to fix it, just send one out. He was told since he no longer had an active account, he would have to pay the account reactivation fee and pay for the tech.

WWAN has finally caught up to my little slice of real estate though, and satellite is no longer the only option. I can’t wait to terminate my relationship with these idiots.

Ps. This is my first post from my iPhone. I love technology.

I seem to have had an odd effect on my last two employers.  You may remember in April of ‘04 as Interplay was seemingly in the final throes of a long, drawn out death I quit.  Mainly because I had my current job lined up and finally ready to start, but also because they were bankrupt and bouncing checks.  So, I received my final paycheck and the very day I received it, I tried to go cash it at my company’s bank.

After some snickering and muffled laughter the teller gives me my check back with this neat little NSF (Non-Sufficient Funds) stamp on it.  Eventually I did get it paid sucsessfully, but it was just a delightful way to end four or five years of employment with them.

You can read a bit more about that here.

Now, seemingly happily ensconced in my current job there’s economic turmoil coming to find me here as well.  The good Governor has seen fit to cut everyone’s paychecks by 10% starting next month and all sorts of other fun ideas.  Whether or not that’s necessary isn’t anywhere near my scope of practice or knowledge so I’m not going to get into that.  I will say that I personally believe that unions can be a huge portion of the problem.  Unions protect the jobs of those who don’t perform their work adequately and demand equality in pay for the entire range of competence in job performance, instead of being based on merit.  Honestly, I respect Arnold for what he’s trying to do here.  I think the unions are too strong though, and stay strong by feeding off of California’s carcass.

We’ll see what happens there, but again like in April of ‘04 I’m beginning the job hunt process again.  I can stick it out here just fine, but my job has recently lost most of its appeal, nothing to do with the budget.

Speaking of money though, in other worrisome news I am either getting audited or have a fan at the IRS recently.  The last five days of visits to jodag.net include some visits from everyone’s favorite federal agency.

Hopefully it’s a fan.

I met up with a very old friend of mine, Vu Bui who I haven’t seen in about 4 years.  He asked me, “So no more APM’s?”  I had to explain to him how it has been more of a posting malaise, since I have been keeping active these last few months, just not writing or documenting much (any).  I’ve also had a few things that I’ve wanted to write about but I’ve just been reluctant to.

Blank.

I’ve heard it said that all that is required for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.  If there’s a need and you have the capacity to fill the need and do nothing, you bear the responsibility for that failure.

Blank.

I respect Hugh’s spirit of adventure and hope to be half that spry when I reach his age.  Thank you Vu for forcing me to write again.  It feels good, though I may take this down if I even put it up.

My adventure for October was a visceral visual event.  I saw my first rocket launch the other day.  Those of us living in southern California have our own launch pad at Vandenburg AFB.  Vandenburg is involved in most of the testing of the ballistic missile shield, launching in conjunction and generally in the direction of Kwajalein Atoll.  They launch Atlas, Titans and other rocket bodies and do it just about every month.

You can see the launches from most anywhere in Socal and there’s a great mailing list dedicated to information on launch times, dates and payloads at spacearchive.  The launch I got to watch was a Delta II, you can see a picture of the launch here.  I was standing near the top of 7,300 foot Alamo mountain to see it and it was beautiful.  The launchpad was over 50 miles away, but my perch was so high I had a clear view of the rocket quietly streaking into the night.

This lead me to think about change and how hard it is.  A rocket, weighing tens of thousands of pound and holding thousands of gallons of fuel is built for change.  It’s entire existence is built around one simple task, to go from stationary to 17,500 mph in under nine minutes.  They are built to beat gravity, to slip the surly bonds of Earth if you will.

A rocket will burn most of it’s fuel within the first three minutes of flight.  Each minute it gets a bit easier though, the gravitational pull of the Earth lessens second by second and it’s speed increases bit by bit.  Easier and easier it gets the farther it is from the point where it changed trajectory from a stationary hunk of metal to a speeding hunk of metal.

I think that’s true of any and all change, it takes a lot of effort to change the course or path of a life, but it gets easier with every step.  Once that initial decision is made and you are off to whatever change that is, it gets easier.

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air. . . .

Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or ever eagle flew —
And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

— John Gillespie Magee, Jr

My Cubbies are in the postseason.  I have fond memories of returning from a sucsessful White Mountain summit and driving back down that long road listening to my other team (the Giants) lose to the Angels in game 6, back in 2002.  Kari, GJ and I trying to translate the game from Spanish into English and Kari being an Angel fan made for a sour ending to a great day.  Don’t get me wrong, that was a great game and a beautiful comeback but it came at the cost of my team.

Now, another LA team is beating up on my team.  I’m not going to say they’ve lost yet but it is the bottom of the 8th and the Cubs are losing 6-2.  I really hate LA teams, if I have to wind up cheering for the White Sox in the post season I’m going to vomit.

In other news, I just finished a book called, “The Cactus Eaters” by Dan White.  I love that book, it’s funny and inspiring.  He’s a clusterfuck on feet and he attempts to hike the entire Pacific Crest Trail, starting with a girlfriend.  I won’t say anything more about the book outside of the fact that it was a great read and makes me want to through hike the PCT myself.

I don’t know exactly how I’d swing 5 consecutive months off work, and the portion of the trail that appeals to me most would be the Sierra Nevada section, it’s even covered in his book most extensively.  Seemingly by a ratio of 70-80 of California/Sierra pages to 1 page of Oregon/Washington.  Now that could be due to one other major event that takes place at the Oregon border, thereby making the California story a more appealing one to read, but that’s speculation.

Either way, this goes up there with, “Touch the top of the World” by Erik Weihenmayer for purely inspirational adventure books, though in different ways.

It’s always hard ending a good book.  You want more, you’re forlorn without the friends you’ve made in the book but you can’t get any.  It’s a hopeless feeling, like being in jail while those new friends are out living their lives and unaware of the people they left behind.  I need something else to read now

I wish I knew as big a scifi geek as myself so that I could buy them one of these sweet sweatshirts.  I have never in my life spent that much money on a clothing item (that wasn’t a required uniform item), but I am severely tempted to do so now.  That thing is calling my name!

In other news, the bailout can go to hell in my opinion.  I don’t care about Wall Street and Main Street, blah blah.  People done screwed the pooch somewhere and my tax money isn’t to get them out of trouble, they can suck it.

Now back to drooling over that sweatshirt, just why is it so damn expensive?  Because I want it that’s why.  Marc Ecko is a dick.