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glow

Went to Glow last night.
http://www.smgov.net/smarts/glow/

What I hoped to be something of a laser, light, glow in the dark extravaganza turned out to be an overcrowded, sparsely artistic, lines for everything loitering festival. Not enough lights, way too many people. They even had police holding back people because the pier was overcrowded.

I expected an outdoor rave like party. I got a theme park, boring sheep fest.

The event had so much potential from the photos and sound of it but it was just so unorganized, there was nothing really do to do except people watch and follow the crowds. Certain drugs at certain times might have helped but with so many people all doing the same thing in the same place, I don’t think it would have helped much. I was kinda expecting more of a Bourbon Street type atmosphere but it just seemed like everyone was confused as to where to go and what to do. Someone should have handed out millions of glow sticks at the top of the pier, that would have been amazing.

It was inspired by Nuit Blanche which is held in Paris every year. I’ve never been but I’m gonna guess it’s a little more interesting than this was.

Unless I know this gets better next time (IF there’s a next time), that’s the last time I go to that!

sunday lists

In the last month:

  • I met my friend at the local hospital just before 5am. She was rear-ended at a stop light and suffered minor cuts and physical shake-up. She showed up just before 7am.
  • I spent a few weeks after that helping her get her personal affairs in order. We also looked for cars, bought one, and I helped her with her job.
  • I learned what a dog walker does for a living. If I ever needed to get into a job that can make good money inconsistently, dog walking would be kinda high on the list.
  • At times, I was completely needed to take care of someone. I’ve never been in a situation where I am tending to someone and I can’t imagine doing this for someone in critical need is any better. I’ve gained respect for those who do this for a living. It’s mentally draining at times.
  • I left the house every single day. Sometimes, normally, I’m home for days in a row now because I have work or no incentive or need to go anywhere. It also helps save gas. I like alone time but need a social balance more often.
  • I helped someone to buy a new car. Out of all the SUVs out there, one of the best purchases anyone can make is a Honda CR-V. They’re one of the most fuel efficient, solidly built SUVs.
  • I realized how detailed one should be when buying a new/used car. VIN numbers, background checks, mechanic checks, registering, renewing, time, time and more time. It’s so consuming and tedious.
  • I learned first hand that car dealership salesmen are very aggressive even when you warn them not to be. Some don’t get the point when you tell them to back off.
  • I realized that car dealerships don’t carry cars older than about 5-7 years. I had no idea.
  • I went to Disneyland for a night and another full day. I love going to Disneyland randomly.

During this last month:

  • I did not go into work. I wasn’t called into work, I didn’t respond to or initiate anything. I will spend the next few weeks playing catch up. I spent 30 minutes on the phone for a meeting one morning. That was it.
  • I kinda dropped off the social radar from most people. The majority of my time was consumed.
  • I got sick with a summer cold. It lasted from Monday until today. Today I am 100%.
  • I paid no attention at all to this website. I’ve felt very apathetic about writing lately.
  • I spent less time online than usual. It was kinda freeing.

Escaping the monotony of life was nice for a few weeks, but within that escape I formed another routine of montony. It reinforces my belief that we’re beings of habits, complacency, and addictions. We find habits, we form too much complacency in the mundane and we become addicted to aspects of our habits and complacencies. Maybe I’m only speaking of myself, but I doubt that few who read this won’t identify.

hearing hurts

I was desperate.
I had to fix this.

Upon entering the Urgent Care center, I was anxious to get through this not knowing how long my wait would be. No one was waiting in the waiting room. It made sense after my visit ended.

After the routine check on my vital stats, I waited for about four minutes before a large, leathery doctor entered the room. Not one crack on his face showed his desire to help me. As cold as ice, this man shortly inquired about my condition. Two views into both of my ears indicated that he saw ear wax.

I followed him into another room where his nurse prepared to hold water below my ear. He mumbled for me to turn 90 degrees away from him with my right ear facing him. A nurse held a plastic box full of water below my ear. Then, as I watched his finish connecting the water pik, he slowly thrusts a cold, metal tube pretty deep into my ear.

WOOSH.
OW!!

I felt a very high pressure of water threatening to burst through my ear drum into my middle ear. The pain of such high water pressure in my ear made me cringe. Not only did it hurt, but it started messing with my other senses. I sat there, eyes shut tightly, teeth gritting, body tense. This pain was unbearable.

“Turn around,” he said.

Rinse and Repeat.
Unbearable pain, intense pressure, extreme loudness. This time, however, I looked into the water to see several pieces of ear wax, one as large as two peas. It was unbelievable that this was causing me so much discomfort.

He did this a couple of times to both my ears before we went back to the other room and verify my ears were unclogged.

“You may go,” he mumbled in a low, monotone voice.

As I walked to the waiting room, I noticed my center of balance was off. Whatever pressure was exerted to my ears had caused me to lose some balance. It was slightly simliar to being intoxicated, but luckily lasted only a couple of minutes.

This better be the first and last time I ever have to go through that. I’m now a little concerned that my ears are worse than they were before.

listening through a tube

french kicksMy ears aren’t happy today. Last night, however, they were ecstatic. I was joined by a couple of new friends to accompany me to a French Kicks concert. We were front row, just feet away from the band. Seeing them live was great since I’m a relatively new fan of their music.

Today, however, I feel like the world is in a tube. I can hear half of what I was able to hear last night. When people talk, it sounds like my tubes are cutting out half of the timbre and tonality of their voice.  So, if there’s a lot of noise in the background, it’s not that I can’t hear the person talking. I just can’t always make out what they say.

Although these earplugs are rated well for me, Hearos branded earplugs don’t work for me as advertised. Supposedly, the rating for hearing protection with these plugs are better than standard plugs you’ll find at any drugstore, but my experience unfortunately has left me half deaf. Sadly, I’m already half deaf as it is so this is tragic. I can’t say I’m a little upset at my experience too but I really had little to no control over the situation.

I love seeing good music, I really like supporting bands by going to see them. I do not, however, like going deaf. It’s back to the cheap foam earplugs!

balls

Balls.

Just as I was leaving childhood and entering adolescence is when the pool full of balls was really popular. You know, it’s that thing that all the kids go jump in. They used to be at Burger King. They still exist at Chuck E Cheese. I only remember a few occasions where I played in that pool of balls because I don’t remember them being too common at my younger age.

Now I’m older. I know what happens when kids of all backgrounds and kinds of cleanliness play in the pool of balls. I’d love to jump in a huge pool of plastic balls again without remembering how many stinky, unwashed, germ filled feet and bodies have touched each and every ball. But I can’t. I’d probably still dive in but I’d feel so unclean afterward.

It’s time like this that I miss childhood.
Ignorance is bliss.

Dear Internal Revenue Service

When I decided to look at my bank account tonight, I noticed you left me a present. I didn’t even ask you for one and yet I’m richer than I was just one day ago. Good times.

Although I appreciate your charity, I’m a little confused. Where is this money coming from? When I look at the amount of debt the US has, it makes me wonder from whom we’re borrowing to stimulate our economy? See this site? Most of the numbers on this site are flowing in the wrong direction. These numbers also mean you’ve sent me some kind of magical money that our government doesn’t have.

I see the Federal Reserve lowered interest rates just recently. This also means they are printing more money. Hmm… Doesn’t printing more money, “magical money” like you’re giving me, basically stimulate inflation? But wait, I thought this was an economic stimulous package?

My TV broke a couple of months ago and I’ve been eyeing a new one. But wait, doesn’t a lot of the money go back to the manufacturers of the TVs? Bummer. Most of the TV makers are foreign companies. So I guess buying a brand new HDTV isn’t going to do much, is it.

I think I’ll just store this money in my savings account until I need to take it back out to pay for my rent. So much for stimulating the economy.

IRS, thanks for the good effort but how about next time we look at better solutions.

Sigh.

Signed,
Micah

i’m too quiet, but i’m busy

SupermanFor the last few weeks since I upgraded my site, updated my design, and “up, up, and away!”… Oops, lost track of my thought just now. Can you believe it’s been nearly two years since the latest Superman movie? And who knows when the next one will come out!

Back to my original thought, I’ve been getting some help from a couple of people trying to consolidate my site back to its original glory and I’m happy to note that I’m closer than ever! The first accomplishment was getting all my old comments and importing them into the site. I was lucky that I found someone who knew how to do it without too much effort! He then imported really old posts I made on another blogging system from 2002 to 2004 into my current site. I now have the long, tedious task of going through all my posts and tagging them, relinking, and cleaning up. Thanks Jay!

The other accomplishment is forwarding all my old posts. After reading this post I found from another valuable blog, I was determined to somehow forward all my old, outdated posts to match my new format on my new system. There are times where you can scour Google and it will still be linking to a post I made in another format that doesn’t exist anymore. Now the correct link will appear! After many back and forth emails with the author of the first post, we finally found the right solution with a custom mod_rewrite for me and so far, so good. I’m very grateful that random strangers with lots of knowledge will help me out. Thanks Matt!

So now, this site has every post I’ve ever made on my site since October 2002. Be sure to check ’em out!

life philosophy

Do what you love and be around those who love you

it’s april 2008!

My room is a total mess. Boxes on the floor, random items in random places, receipts, suitcase, and CDs in the spots I pushed them off to. I’m living like I’m too busy to take care of them, and that’s kinda true.

My website upgrade has so far been a nice success. I want to incorporate visual imagery somehow, but haven’t gotten that far. One of three biggest tasks, however, has been accomplished! My old comments are all imported and up! It was a task I had no idea how to do and I graciously received help from a friend back in Houston! Next, I hope to import posts and comment from 2002 and 2003, but that might take a while.

I recorded a new Footalk podcast so expect that in the next few days. I think it’s the best episode yet!

Speaking of audio, I’m kinda getting back on my feet with music. I’ve recorded a friend playing the piano and I’m going to do what I can to help out on a few songs. It’s a good way to get my feet wet and back into the swing of things. I’m glad I’m finally making progress because the frustration has definitely mounted and lingered.

Oh, while getting everything up and running for this site, I’m revisiting all my old post and tagging them! See that section at the bottom of this page which says “Tag Cloud”? That’s a way to quickly access certain posts based upon my keywords with which I tag them. It’s another form of getting my content out there quickly!

Finally, as I hope my melatonin will hurry up and kick in, I need to speed my site up a little. All the plugins and new code I’m using is having a negative effect. I have lots to do.

This is called planet unicorn. It’s hilarious!

WordPress 2.5 against MovableType 4.1

Wordpress logoWhen I decided to try a weblog so many years ago, I had no idea where to start or what to do. I started out with a couple of years on a no name system before falling in love with Movable Type in 2004.

Movable Type became my CMS and was solid. It appeared to be superior in development and features compared to its rivals. They later changed their business plan and charged for their blogging system. I think the community was offended and I noticed less support and praise. Suddenly, out of nowhere, comes open source platform WordPress.

WordPress had a quite a buzz. When I first tried it out in versions 1.5, I was impressed. However, with all the upgrade and plug-in problems, I decided it wasn’t worth it for me to switch from Movable Type. I was happy with what I had, knowing I had a growing problem.

To end a long story with a short ending, I integrated Movable Type’s lackluster commenting system with the power behind phpBB. This served me wonderfully until my web host decided to screw me over a few years ago and shut down. Setting Movable Type back up and reintegrating it was a nightmare; it was an ongoing mess.

Fast forward: Movable Type 4.1 released itself as open source, WordPress 2.5 was released. As I’m a huge fan of Happy Cog and their products, I knew 2.5 would be an amazing update to WordPress’ admin system. Indeed, it was enough. MT 4.1 was an amazing update, but its anemic community and lack of interest was enough to drive me away. Not permanently, however.

Jump over for some additional commentary.

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