Author: Karel Kerezman

Zap! Bleep! Score!

I may not be writing here very often, but that’s mainly because breaks from the routine are rather unusual anymore. Nobody wants to read post after post about my routine, right? Right. We’re all on the same page, then.

Anyway: Yesterday was a definite change of pace. I left work at 3pm and headed to the kids’ place so I could attend Alex’s birthday party at Ultrazone. I went ahead and gave Alex his present right at the apartment.

He’d been talking about saving up his babysitting money to buy a network adapter for the Playstation 2, so my bright idea was to pick one up for him. Great, but the only places I could find them were either disreputable online venues (uh, NO) or stores that said they carried the devices but were sold out. Never mind that, new, the things go for $99.

For a whopping thirty dollars more, I could just get him the “Silver” edition Playstation 2… which comes with a built-in Ethernet port. Problem solved, and he gets a fresh console into the bargain. Never mind that I can finally take “my” PS2 home… something for everyone, really. It was on what could best be called “indefinite loan” since we kept getting the kids more games, and I wasn’t about to take the console back and leave them nothing, was I?

We left for the party, but the original plan was to take little Bryant to his father’s place in Vancouver first. After 5pm. Through rush hour traffic. Wendi decided to go with another plan after a few minutes in stop-and-go, so Alex and Erica and I were deposited at Ultrazone to await the guests while she made the long slog north and back.

After some initial worry that nobody was going to show up, over the course of half an hour after the party was supposed to start we greeted three of his friends from school (one from the drama group and two from the strategy gaming club, if I have things correct) and two golfing buddies from his church. All together there were nine of us, which made for a good “laser tag” group.

Everyone was astonished to see Alex’s chin, by the way. Wendi insisted that he shave off the thick mat of a beard that he usually sports. He actually looked like a teenager again. Go figure!

There was trouble with the pizza order, so the folks at Ultrazone gave us an additional game round beyond the two that the “party pack” came with. This means that over the course of an hour or so we all ran around in the dark with bulky chest packs, “firing lasers” at one another. (Our host pointed out that the words “shooting” and “guns” are verboten. Oh, political correctness, you’re so adorable.) Everyone had a great time, especially during the second round when our entire group faced off against another entire party group. We took seven of the top eight spots in individual scoring, and I led the pack by several thousand points over the #2 player. Go me!

The third round was just our group playing as three teams of three, but by that point I’d been running myself ragged more than I’m used to and really slowed down a lot. (All that root beer and cake probably didn’t help.) Erica, on the other hand, had her best game ever and came in second place overall. Way to go!

Everyone agreed that it was a great party, and most importantly Alex was completely delighted. I think we’re wrapping up his sixteenth year on this planet in grand style. He deserves it.

13 August, 2008
Summer Music Project 2008: Week Eight

We’re starting off the back nine eight seven with something silly and not terribly meaningful. I like an occasional bit of Duran Duran, not because they’re the greatest band ever or because of some event in my youth or anything of that sort. No, they just happen to write some songs I like tapping my feet to on occasion.

So, for want of any other criteria for selecting songs, I went with (sort of) a theme. Enjoy “Planet Earth,” “Taste the Summer” and “Winter Marches On.”

We’ll be plowing ahead next week with one of the old masters of the trade. Stay tuned, won’t you?

8 August, 2008
Spelling FAIL

I submitted these pics to the English Fail Blog, but given how lousy of a camera my phone turned out to be, I’m not surprised that they weren’t accepted. In the interests of sharing, however, I put the pics into my own gallery.

First up: If you’re going to make a cheap knock-off (**) of a cheap and silly bumper sticker, you should at least get the spelling right…

And then: Over the years, TriMet went from a “rear doors are opened by the driver” to a “rear doors are pushed open by the riders when the light turns green” system. Some of the older buses, however, don’t support the push-to-open trick. Thus we have new signage for old buses. Too bad nobody at TriMet knows how to proofread…

This little exercise has taught me something, though. I clearly need to own a real camera again.

(** – According to this eBay posting, what we’re seeing is “the original printing…from the 80’s.” Uh huh. Sure it is.)

2 August, 2008
Summer Music Project 2008: Week Seven

Usually I take a slightly unusual path to finding and following a particular musical act. To the older “progressive” bands from the UK I’m a latecomer, and to the Japanese performers I’m a foreigner. In the case of Midnight Oil, however, I’m like a lot of American fans from the mid-80’s: I heard “Beds Are Burning” on the radio and became curious about this politically-motivated band from Australia. “The Dead Heart” hooked me even deeper, and giving their Diesel and Dust album a full listen made me a fan for life. It is still, arguably, their finest album. They’ve written fantastic songs before and since, but Diesel and Dust is entirely brilliant and timeless.

Naturally, then, I won’t be playing any songs therefrom. Call me perverse if you must.

What you’re getting instead are a track each from 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1 (the very second music CD I purchased), Redneck Wonderland and Earth and Sun and Moon. I recommend working outward, chronologically, both directions from Diesel and Dust if you want to get “into” the Oils. A couple of steps forward and backward through their catalog will take you to two of the three albums listed above (barring EPs and live records, that is). Redneck Wonderland comes a bit later and takes getting used to, as it’s considerable harder in tone early on than much of the material from the previous few albums.

So without further ado, please enjoy “Short Memory,” “Seeing Is Believing” and “My Country.”

I think it’s time for more bouncy pop music next week, don’t you?

1 August, 2008
Small Tweaks, Big Boost

I noticed Thursday evening, while working on the two mixes, that this site was loading very slowly. I removed some plugins and dynamically generated content to compensate but that only made things tolerable instead of actually peppy.

This morning the page load timed out just trying to get to the WordPress “dashboard,” so I dug in deeper and researched the problem. Restarting Apache (something I should’ve done Thursday night as soon as I noticed the problem) made a night-and-day difference in performance. Based on my research I’ve also tuned Apache’s configuration to better utilize timeout values and keep-alives. As a brute-force measure I’m also restarting Apache every week; that should clear out a lot of cruft and clutter in processes and memory that accumulates and bogs the system down.

A server admin’s work is never done… and that’s just the way I like it. Good for you, eh?

26 July, 2008
Summer Music Project 2008: Week Six

This week’s musical selection is one of those acts that most people think peaked and went away within a few short years back in the ’80s. While the case could be made that they’re not as commercially successful in the “hit records” sense nowadays, they’re still packing ’em in on the dance floors, not to mention collaborating with musical stars both new and old.

Coming up with an approach to the Pet Shop Boys mix stymied me for days. This evening I had almost settled on starting with the single version of “Left To My Own Devices” from 1988 when I realized that the song is twenty years old and counts among their early material. That’s when I decided to look at what albums came out when, and the solution finally presented itself as I noticed that Please, Bilingual and Fundamental are spaced at a ten year interval. (What? Bilingual is twelve years old now? That can’t be right…)

Please enjoy, in chronological order, the songs “Tonight Is Forever,” “Up Against It” and “Integral.”

That last track is a bit sociopolitical in lyrical tone, which leads rather neatly into our next musical selection. Join us for a trip Down Under next week…

25 July, 2008