My Sister Rocks

My sister is a college professor and she teaches reading. How does that work you may ask? Well here she is in this video explaining it:

Eugene Happenings

The other day our local video/dvd rental shop closed. They had been in business for 24 years specializing in art, foreign and independent films. They were one of the special things about the neighborhood we live in. They will be missed but will live on through the library which is buying up 10,000 titles from their great collection.

On the other side of the coin we discovered the coolest coffee in the world which actually opened last December. This is the coffee shop run by the same local roasters that roast the coffee we drink at home. They are called Wandering Goat. This coffee shop is so vegan friendly that it costs extra for dairy milk and not for soy, rice and any of the other non-dairy options (every other coffee shop I've ever been to charges extra for soy.) As well all of the treats are vegan. We love the location and it has a great atmosphere. Nothing like riding our bike over there for an iced soy mocha.

/begin rant

It drives me crazy when you make an additional principal payment on a loan and the loan company's default action is to NOT apply it to principal but rather apply it as if you made a whole bunch of pre-payments. This happens even when I ask to them apply a certain amount to principal on the check memo. So now I have to waste time calling in to ask them to change it.

The default action should be to apply any extra payment to principal because I'm sure that is by the more common reason for paying extra on a loan. In fact, I can't think of a good reason for making a bunch of minimum payment pre-payments. Why would you possibly do that? They make the same amount of interest on your loan, AND they get to take your pre-payments and put them in the bank and make interest on them.

In the specific case today, it happens to be a mortgage loan. I tried to call in and spent a long time trying to get through the automated "press 8 to press 2" section because obviously the automated section won't be able to help me with this. Finally I get through and it looks like I'm on hold for a person and then suddenly a recorded voice says:

"We are upgrading our phone system for your convenience, please call back at a later date," followed by a hang up.

Nice. Does this happen to anyone else?

/end rant

M&M Photography

Way back in highschool, my friend Paul and I decided to start a business. I was working in a photolab and was heavy into photography and Paul was business minded (it's a genetic gift.) He would get the jobs and I'd take the photos.

We formed M&M Photography. We named it that because both our last names start with an "M". We only got as far as getting business cards made. I present to you The Business Card. The best part is "Since 1984". It was probably 1986 when we had the business card made so we figured that I had been involved with photography for 2 years so we could say that (Paul's idea of course.)

All Life is Sacred Except When it's Not

sa·cred /ˈseɪkrɪd/
–adjective
1. devoted or dedicated to a deity or to some religious purpose; consecrated.
2. entitled to veneration or religious respect by association with divinity or divine things; holy.
3. pertaining to or connected with religion (opposed to secular or profane): sacred music; sacred books.
4. reverently dedicated to some person, purpose, or object: a morning hour sacred to study.
5. regarded with reverence: the sacred memory of a dead hero.
6. secured against violation, infringement, etc., as by reverence or sense of right: sacred oaths; sacred rights.
7. properly immune from violence, interference, etc., as a person or office.

"All life is Sacred." - George W. Bush, June 21st, 2007

Yesterday Bush used the premise "all life is sacred" to justify why he vetoed the stem-cell research bill. His argument goes something like this:

1. All life is sacred
2. Embryos are "life"
3. Stem-cell research violates embryos
4. By definition, sacred things should not be violated
5. Therefore, stem-cell research should not take place

In order to agree with his argument, you have to accept his premise that "all life is sacred". Let's take a closer look at it. The first thing to notice is the word "all". "All" means the whole amount. By "life" does he mean human life? With the word "all" there he either means "all human life" or "all living things". Since I'm skeptical that he doesn't mean "all living things" we'll go with "all human life". And the definitions of "sacred" are above. Which one does he mean? I would guess he means it something like "secured against violation, infringement" with some religious overtones.

So premise #1 is probably "All human life is secured against violation because it is sacred".

I believe bush uses the phrase "all life" to really mean that embryos are human beings and that he would use the same argument to say that abortion is wrong. My point here isn't to debate the status of embryos. My point is that by saying "all life" to make a very specific point (viz., that embryos are human beings") he steps into a huge logistical trap. If anyone has followed the words of G.W. Bush closely you'll know that logic really has no meaning for him and I hold no illusions about this. However, I want to spring the trap anyway.

If we hold Bush to his premise that "all (human) life is sacred" then we can make the following argument:

1. All life is sacred
2. The invasion/occupation of Iraq violates human life (many humans have been killed because of Bush's decision to invade and occupy so this premise is clearly true)
3. By definition, sacred things should not be violated
4. Therefore, the Iraq invasion/occupation should not take place

We could take it a step further if we thought he literally meant all life and not just human life:

1. All life is sacred
2. Factory farming violates animal lives
3. By definition, sacred things should not be violated
4. Therefore, factory farming should not take place

Or how about:

1. All life is sacred
2. The death penalty violates human life
3. By definition, sacred things should not be violated
4. Therefore, the death penalty should not take place

Wow, "all life is sacred" sure is a handy premise.

Does Bush really mean "all life?" Or is it "all life, except Iraqis, convicted murderers, terrorists, animals or ...?" Or is it "all life is sacred except when it's not?"

Global Climate Change: An Interesting Argument

I love this kind of philosophy. He asks not whether global warming is true, but what action should we take. Thanks to Shawn for sending me this video.


Interesting Argument About Global Warming - Watch more free videos

Serious Coffee

Irie and I are really enjoying our road trip north. We started in Eugene and spent the first night in Portland with some friends. The next day we headed to the Olympic Penninsula and spent a couple of days there enjoying the rain forest and the most north western coast of the continental U.S. After that we took the ferry across from Port Angeles to Victoria, BC on Vancouver Island. We love Victoria. We're enjoying the incredible food and the many coffee shops. One local coffee shop chain is called Serious Coffee and here is Irie in the doorway waiting for our Soy Mochas to be made.



Speaking of soy mochas, Victoria is very vegetarian/vegan friendly. We found the ultimate restaurant: The Reef. The Reef serves Caribbean food and has vegetarian options for almost everything. I had the Tofu Jerk and it was unreal. Usually Jerk is chicken so I've never had it before. Along with the tofu jerk I got some rice and beans and the tastiest vegan coleslaw ever. The Caribbean atmosphere is accented by sweet roots reggae music playing all the time. Rastafarians tend to replace part of a word with the letter "I", for example, "natural" is "ital". At The Reef they used "ital" on the menu to refer to the vegetarian options. We loved this of course.

Today we drove up the coast checking out more of Vancouver Island while taking sort of a knitting shop tour. Tomorrow we head to Vancouver (the city) where Irie will stay for two months doing her yoga teacher training and on Saturday I'll head back to Eugene.

Swimming in Snow

Went to Hoodoo yesterday to go snowboarding and it was snowing like crazy. The weather was right around freezing or just a little warmer so the deep "powder" was kind of slushy and heavy making for miserable boarding conditions. In this picture I'm swimming in this "powder" trying to get to a less deep spot after losing my momentum and sinking. It is a very difficult task to get out this situation with a board strapped to your feet and no solid ground to leverage. This is like quick sand. I eventually wiggle-wormed my way out and it was exhausting. M@ was down the hill taking this picture and laughing at me. Later on he got stuck and had to dig himself out a number of times. Somedays on the mountain are better than others.

Snowboarding Hoodoo 1/21/2007

I went to Hoodoo with M@ yesterday and he filmed me going down the longest run (summit to base).

I'm amazed at how well M@ was able to film this. It is not easy to do while boarding.

Thanksgiving

I'm on my way back home from visiting my family in Orange County for Thanksgiving. This is a two part flight (Orange County -> San Francisco / San Francisco -> Eugene) and I'm currently sitting at the food court in San Francisco Aiport on a 3 hour layover.

I had a great week seeing my family. On Thanksgiving my sister and I teamed up and prepared an All-From-Scratch-Vegan-Feast. It's not ideal living away from family but I just can't see myself living in Southern California. This was the first Thanksgiving in as long as I can remember with my parents and my sister's family all together. I also got to spend a lot of quality time with my niece and nephew - they are so wonderful. I'm blessed to have the family I was born with and the family in Eugene that I've become apart of.

The loudspeaker in the airport keeps reminding us that we are at "Homeland Security Threat Level Orange". I'm not sure what this actually means and if I'm supposed to do something different. When I was going through security the guy in the line next to me had his little clear baggy of liquids and gels out and in a separate bin as instructed. It turns out he was over the limit of having 3.4 ounces. The TSA guy didn't have a scale or measure it but determined the violation by sight. I read a story about this the other day where a guy was over the limit based on the total measurements listed on the bottles and tubes and not what was actually in them. One bottle was mostly empty but counted as full and so he was sent to the back of the line to figure out what to do with his extra liquids as was the guy near me today. I figured I wouldn't carry on any liquids so there would be no problems. The same TSA agent who turned away Mr. 4.7 Ounces happily let Mr. Tacklebox through accompanied by some fishing hooks. I got a glimpse of the tacklebox with it's clear covered compartments fulled with HOOKS. If a box cutter can take a plane down so can fishing hooks ... or pens .. or fingers. Fear is a funny thing.

Soon I'll board the next plane and make my way home to Eugene where my sweet girl will pick me up and we'll spend the rest of the weekend chiling out with each other and our cats.

Husk

The band I'm in is called Husk. Here is a track called "Roman Candles at Walnut and Main." This is a demo track recorded live with the original trio of the band: drums, bass, guitar and singing. Since this was recorded we have added a couple more members to the band. We just booked our first Eugene gig for January 2007. We're very much looking forward to it. Enjoy this song:

Update: The below now plays the entire Husk Demo. You can choose which song you want to hear or just hit go and they will all play.

bMuze.com

Rain

It's raining today and I love it. Fall is in full swing as we move towards winter and it just beautiful around town with all the colorful trees and the rainy mist.

Our petite cat Meetu sprouts huge amounts of fur in the winter. She's been spending a lot of time outdoors doing what we call "furring". "Furring" is like "tanning" or "sunning" but it's the opposite. She needs to spend time in the cold so her winter coat will grow in. She's not so petite in the winter with all that fur.

Smurfing

In my early teens I used to breakdance and was actually pretty good. In my mid-teens we moved on to a new type of dance called Smurfing. It evolved out of break dancing in the sense of it being a competitive dance. A circle would form on the dance floor and we would "bust". My Smurfing confederate was Damon and he just recently created a couple of videos about it. The first is a lesson on what it is and how to do it.



The second is an actual demonstration of the man tearing it up.

Snowboarding Coming Soon

With fall upon us here I started thinking about how snowboarding season is coming soon. Here is a video we shot last season at Hoodoo. I am wearing the red jacket. M@ from Planetranch.com is filming and Badvoodoo is in the white and gray jacket. Make sure to watch until the end.

Pictures of the Sequential Biofuel Station

As promised here are the pictures of the Sequential Biofuel Station in Eugene. This place absolutely rocks! Not pictured below is the roof cover over the pumps which is a giant solar panel that provides the station with 50% of it's power needs.

Our BioBug getting fuel


One of the pump stations


The price list (all gasoline cars can use the E10)


They sell wine in the store along with all kinds of great local products and produce


Can you make out the green roof (soil and grass and plants)?

A Beautiful Fall Day in Eugene

Irie and I took the camera and went to the top of Skinner's Butte and took some pictures of the dramatic Eugene skies. The first day I was in Eugene I noticed the clouds and I knew where I wanted to live. We get these dark clouds mixed with deep blue sky. Sometimes it will be pouring rain on you from dark clouds and you drive 10 minutes and you're under blue sky with the sun shining. You can look back and the clouds on the other side of town.

Today was a day like that and we captured it. Here is one example:

Celebrate Eugene

There is an article in the Eugene Weekly about why Eugene rocks. It coincides with a yearly weekend festival in the downtown area called The Eugene Celebration. The article lists many reasons why Eugene is a great place to live. I was going to include some of my favorite things from the list but then I couldn't decide because they are all good! Ok, I'll try.

Eugene and Oregon are beautiful. Lots of trees, rivers, mountains, coast, parks.

Eugene is an earth friendly city: 90% of the people here recycle; we have twice as many bicycle commuters per capita than Portland; the average commute is 17 minutes; one of the least polluted cities in the country; rated the greenest city in the country by The Green Guide.

Eugene is filled with over-educated artists living in a 60's type culture. The people are friendly, quirky, artistic, relaxed and they live cheaply and have lots of festivals and community gatherings.

Eugene is a great place to eat - especially if you're a vegetarian or vegan. There is such a large range of great privately owned restaurants.

I could go on and on but in short: Eugene rules and I love living here.

My cat Meetu looking a bit crazed

My cat Meetu looking a bit crazed, originally uploaded by da5idblacksun.

She's hard to photograph as she moves a lot. You can see in this photo her face is blurry because she moved. I love the look in her eyes. She's got her summer coat (believe it or not) right now. Once winter hits and her fur explodes I'll post a picture of it.

The Joys of Working in Information Technology

Well it's 4:42am and I'm sitting on a work conference call to fix a system outage. I've been on this call for over 2 hours now. REMus Sleepus Interuptus. I'm in an on-call rotation where I have to be available 24/7 for one week every third week. I get paid extra money for this. It's a flat rate for the week no matter how many times I get called. Some weeks I don't get called at all but other weeks I do.

I find it amazing that we build computer systems with uptime in mind and we add every kind of redundancy available and yet things break on a regular basis. I think it's just the sheer complexity of the systems and the large number of different hardware and software components involved. Most of the complexity comes from making the systems more secure. As we see with any type of security situation, more security usually means less convenience. And I work for a software security company so we are very diligent about security.

The system we're working on tonight is a website. Just to give you an idea of the complexity, we had members of 8 different technical teams on the call. For one website. 8 teams.

A Magical Surprise

As stated before, I lost out on the chance to by a classic antique magic book. After not buying it at Powells, there was my failed attempt to call and buy it. Someone had beat me to it!

That someone was Iriewoman. What a sweet and thoughtful thing to do. She was laughing inside for a week as I talked about regretting not getting it and then it just showed up in the mail a few days ago. She rocks.

The book is interesting because there is no date in it although it says that it is the first American edition. I did some research and found it was first published in 1876 in London and then the first American edition came out in 1881. My research also confirmed that this edition did not have a date in it - kind of strange. So I have a magic book that is 125 years old! I love it.

Family

Had a great visit from my sister, nephew and niece over the weekend. I picked them up at Seattle aiport on their way back from an Alaskan cruise. We spent a few hours in Seattle downtown then made our way back to Portland and stayed the night there. Had a great Italian dinner at Mama Mia's.

The next day we went to Powell's book store - if you're ever in Portland be sure to go there. They had what appeared to be an original copy of Modern Magic by Professor Hoffman which was first published in 1876. It was the definitive book on the state of magic at that time. They want $85 for this book. I didn't get it but now I'm thinking I should have .. maybe I'll call and see if they still have it.

The rest of trip we hung out in Eugene and ate good food, played cards and disc golf and just relaxed.

I was sad to see them off but glad we had the chance for this improvised visit.

Update: I called Powell's and the book sold 2 days ago :( You snooze, you lose.

Pizza Research Institute

We ordered a calzone from Pizza Research Institute tonight. It came decorated to look like a sort of crazy face. This is the best pizza place ever. It's run by a family, they always have reggae music playing in there, they cater to vegetarians, and the food is tasty. We always order the "vegan chef's choice". Often times our pizza has peaches or pears (the eyes in the picture below are each made of a peach and an olive), a small slice of corn on the cob with a spiral of hot sauce, and all kind of interesting and seasonal vegetables.

Husk

The band that I play bass in is called Husk. The singer/song writer/guitar player is Stephen Mathys. Shawn is on drums.

Here are some demo tracks you can download (Right Click -> Save As):

Alibis
Any Old Thing In The World
Bonny & Clyde
Corva Lay Down
Roman Candles at Walnut and Main
Where Lunch Counter Divas Go To Die

This is a picture from our first gig in Portland:

Bionic Man

Sometimes when I ride my bicycle I pretend that each peddle stroke is one of my legs taking a large running stride. The sensation is that I feel I am running really fast; that I am a bionic man.

This is when I realize what a true marvel a bicycle is.

South Africa Hosting the World Cup in 2010

I'm really happy to see that South Africa will be hosting the Football World Cup in 2010.

I remember back in the Apartheid days when South Africa was banned from most international sports. I spend my first 8 years there during the 70's which were some of the roughest years before Apartheid was abolished. We moved to California in 1978 - I'm blessed to have such wonderful parents who made sure that I would be able to grow up with opportunity and peace (thanks Mom and Dad!). Because South Africa was mainly known for racism by whites, for many years I was embarrassed about my country of birth. Travelling there recently for the first time since we left in 1978 showed me a country that has come a long way in short time but still has a long way to go. It takes many decades for countries to recover from being colonized and South Africa is doing great.

Hosting the World Cup is yet another sign of recovery and it's just great to see South Africa coming back together with the world community.

Here is a view of Cape Town from half way up Table Mountain:

No wonder my laces come undone

I came across a web site devoted to shoe laces. It has all kinds of details on different ways to lace and tie your shoes. Reading this article, I realized I've being tying my shoes wrong all my life - I've been creating a slip knot by making my starting knot and finishing knot both in the same direction (the article describes it much better). So now I make the starting knot the other direction and my laces are more secure.

Matthew

Here is a picture of my nephew Matthew. I was noticing how much he looks like me in the old picture below when I was his age. And now we both play large stringed instruments. He's got a huge headstart on me though :)

Time is fun when you're having flies

The family gathered pictures of Gary for his funeral and I was emailed some of them. This picture is a gem that I didn't know existed. I would estimate it to be taken around 1979-1980.

Photographs are pretty incredible when you think about it. We are able to actually capture a part of the past. I have no memory of this photo being taken or why we were all together. I can only guess that we were together because Leslie was visiting. Without the photo it would be a moment completely lost to time. Now I know there was a moment when the 4 of us stood together and peered into the future.

From the left going clockwise we have my dad, Leslie, Gary and then me.

Leslie and Gary are my dad's nephews. My dad was the youngest sibling of 4 and he waited to have children until his 30's. His older siblings all had children when they were in their 20's. The result is that all of my first cousins are much older than me so my relationship with them is more like uncle/nephew. Adding to the strange dynamic of the relationships is the fact that all of us were born in South Africa and moved to the States at different times and to different places. The diaspora from South Africa segmented our family all over the world. Some of my first cousins have had children who are now in their 20's and having kids of their own. My sister and I are sort of in an inbetween generation.

Meetu the Cat

Meetu is our other cat. We adopted her on the same day we moved into our house. She is small cat with huge fur. In the winter she seems to almost double in size when her fur comes in. Check out the fur on her ear.

She got her name because she has a tendency to learn from Morgan how to do stuff around the house. She often gives us a look that says "me too". As with Morgan, Meetu is a blessing to have in the house.

Gary

Sadly, my cousin Gary passed away on Saturday. He was 49. His death was shocking and premature but he died while doing what he loved.

Morgan the Cat

Morgan is our cat who we brought back from Ireland. Iriewoman took this photo today and I love it. The macro really captures lots of details. Morgan is as sweet a cat as you'll ever meet. We're blessed to have her in our family.

Soon I'll post about the other cat.

Double Bass

I've been playing electric bass for about 10 years and it's time to try the upright double bass. A local store has a cool rental policy that allows me to apply my fees towards buying an instrument. This gives me the chance to try it out without investing a large amount of money and if I decide to buy I'll be able to "rent-to-own".

The Great Ruairio

My friend Ruairi (pronounced Roo-ree) from Ireland is a great magician and definitely a mentor to me. This picture shows him in action doing close-up magic and just look at the reaction. Every magician is striving for reactions like that - Ruairi gets them all time.

Pollen

I live in the little red spot on the left coast and I have really bad grass pollen allergies. In fact, I live right by "grass seed capital of the world". The grass that gets me pollenates for the month of June. It's been a pretty good month (many thanks to the miracles of Flonase) but today has been rough. This map (from pollen.com) just made me laugh.