• Discovering last years comfypants christmas present.
• Coffee w/organic ultradarkbrown sugar and heavy whipping cream.
• Accomplishing an oil change on the one sunny day in a week or rain.
• Norwegian pancakes.
• A clean kitchen.
• Planning Thinking about a real-deal vacation for the spring.
• 30:00 / 4.38 miles / 506 calories.
• New servers.
• Cute girls with boy haircuts.
• Figuring out a way to manage contacts well w/my Blackberry Storm
• Setan fajitas!

One of the ideas I’ve had for quite some time on the old OJ.com is some kind of “life index.” I’m attracted to the notion of tracking my own shifts in mood through some kind of quantitative system, and then representing it graphically.

It would be pretty simple to work in with a new theme. My first move is to pick up something stock, maybe like I Feel Dirty, or Marinelli or Deco.

Eventually if/when I get more serious about the old personal brand (or when I start some other non-personal website for wild cultural revolution action) I’ll end up doing something custom. Suggestions welcome!

Anyway, nerdy digression aside, I’m attracted to the idea of creating more/different kinds of content again. In sync w/Sam, or maybe like my old classic Bridge Trips sidebar. I mean, shit, those are some quality posts.

Tracking data would be another neat thing. I’m thinking I could integrate it with Twitter (or maybe Jaiku, or something else; I’m going to have to do some evaluations) and update it from my phone. I was simply blown away at what Francis and the Lights did w/their twitter feed. They also incorporated instead of signing a record deal. That’s some 21st century cultural entrepreneurialism we can believe in, friends.

More on this later…

2009! I spent a good couple hours nerding out (Nate Gelbard style: with scotch!) on my site. It looks the same as ever, but is now served off Drupal 6.8 and backed by both the memcache and boost cache optimization modules.

I think this combo might represent a holy grail: in most “normal” situations, boost’s method of serving static files is the ideal for non-logged-in users; which is everyone except me on this site, but in your average high-performance situation means a million peeps via a link off drudge or digg or the like. At the same time, for logged-in users — forum users, community members, etc — memcached’s faster cache system for actively used data provides a tangible boon in pageload speed.

There are other concerns when you hit the real bigtime, but if my insights hold up tomorrow sans Laphroig, I’ll do a workblog post on same topic.

Also, swallowed my pride and had the kid down at the Verizon store transfer my numbers from my old phone to new Blackberry. They use a purpose-build machine. Crazy.

This Storm thing is, as professional reviewers have pointed out, totally beta, and very frustrating, but for someone who’s going to pick Verizon for other (reception in my house) reasons, it’s a damn sight more usable than the slew of WindowsMobile based phones, or at least that’s the impression I get after 72 hours of ownership.

Having a fancyphone is interesting. Phones are really different from the Internet, obviously the result of massively proprietary monopolies rather than and open-wide end-to-end Public thingamajiger. In other words, from a technology perspective, they suck. Closed and lame. I had high hopes that OpenMoko would make a dent, but it seems like it’s not getting that much traction.

Sadly, with mobile tech, we’re already at the point where marketing (e.g. the million$$$ you can spend on teevee) means a lot, so the institutional establishment have a massive advantage. If they can convince millions of people to pay $0.99 per ringtone, even though said people already motherfucking own the music in question, it makes perfect GD sense to invest a couple mil in “can you hear me now?” episode 659.

It’s saddening from the perspective of one who sees behind the curtain. Comcast, AT&T and all these other information-related utility cartels are a pack of unenlightened bastards who can only make money by making things hard for you. In a great world they’d all be run out of business by real Public Information utility (with strong constitutional provisions for privacy in the mean-time, natch).

Look for that to happen in Japan or Continental Europe, where they’ve got a stronger legacy of standardization. For instance, they didn’t build three distinct, incompatible, overlapping networks of cellular phone infrastructure. Focused on better service instead, go figure.

One of the dark(er) side(s) of capitalism is that it lets people think they’ll really rule the world. We should teach children to resist megalomania. It would pay off bigtime down the road. You won’t ever run the universe, but if you do good things you can be cool, so focus on that. Everyone wins!

Anyway, bigger changes here soon. Video and shit. Just wait.

I’m back in Westhaven, after driving through the guts of a cloud. It was a hung-over drive, thoughts wandering to and fro; a good meditation. The Smith River was positively three-dimensional in its rush, the ocean muddy with washed-down silt. iPod lost its batteries and I explored the radio, learning that “New Rock” is apparently mostly stuff from when I was a teenager.

So I’ll be taking an easy week, some work but not too much, and maybe some trips to the gym. I think it’s probably time to initiate the post-holiday physiological turn-around, and getting my body taut once more will be good for my mind too. “Looking good, Feeling good,” as Ricky’s reminds us all.

Last years New Years resolutions — “Less Work, More Sex, Flossing” — could be retreaded, though in truth I think the whole resolution thing is bogus. There’s always stuff to work on. The dream you live begins today.

I’ll be doing a little overhaul on the old website too — I got myself a fancy phone, so will be noodling with all things mobile — so it might go offline for a bit or the like. Exciting!

I’m back in Eugene, at the house of my youth w/the moms. Was a good thing to unplug for a couple of days and let the 100 or so emails just pile up. Everybody wants a piece of me.

It appears that among my peers, text messaging has hit a tipping point. Holiday greetings all around.

My self-improvement plan of “letting myself get really bored” is paying off so far. I have to get back to work for a bit here — true vacation will have to wait, again — but I felt like I made some personal progress in the last couple days, re-reading and then writing several new entries in my offline paper journal.

So, I’m getting organized for the time being. Not sure yet what my partyplans might be for New Years, etc, but I’ll make some calls today.

Hope you and yours are having a very merry Boxing Day:

Boxing Day dates back to past centuries when it was the custom for the wealthy to give gifts to employees or to people in a lower social class, most especially to household servants and other service personnel. The name has numerous folk etymologies.

As with Christmas itself, some elements of Boxing Day are also likely related to, and ultimately derived from, the ancient Roman Saturnalia, which also had elements of gift giving and social role reversal.

So tip well, etc.

I’ve never been much of a scenester. As a younger man I hung around with a pretty punk rock crowd, and later I lived within spitting distance during the great metastasis of hipsterdom in Brooklyn, but as often as I’ve stylistically appropriated elements of those (and other) cultures, I’ve never really felt like calling any of them home.

I wonder about this for a few reasons. I’ve been considering my relative lack of a peer group anywhere in California. LGD and the Redman are moving on up/out, to Portland and South America and various new forms of domesticity beyond. I say more power to them, and in a lot of ways it’s possible that having them on hand as my crew was a contributing factor to my late psychosocial cocooning. Nothing like your old friends to make you feel comfortable. But the takeaway is that with them on the go, I’m going to have to find some new ways to spend my time.

Another prompt for this thinking is that the bounty of Facebook has been visited upon me in spades this season. In the past month it seems like there’s a been a surge there outside the nerdy/poitico factions who heretofore were in the majority of my connects. I’ve discovered/been-discovered by old lovers, highschool and college crushes, and most interestingly a whole slew of my old fellow-artisans from the Experimental Theater Wing.

For, you see, this brings me to reminisce about those heady old days in 721 Broadway. Studio. It was a shining time; young and firey and flexible I was, making art pretty much all the time. Granted, ETW could itself be something of “a scene” — though in keeping w/the above I shied away from that for the most part — but it was also a real community, and the friendships that remained after college formed a foundation for, I think, the most positively connected phase of my life to-date.

Certainly there were all sorts of other folks from other places in the mix there, but studio was at the heart of things, much in the same way that a successful fraternity or sorority will set the tone and establish a natural center of gravity. The two to three years immediately following college are among my favorites in life so far, eking out a post-postmodern bohemian life in the midst of recession and terror, the whole world up for grabs. It was pretty fantastic.

But this isn’t about nostalgia; it’s about the future. If there’s one thing I can predict for 2009, it’s changes in my social habits, some welcome upheaval in existing routines. Internally I’ve been doing well over the past several months, growing up in my own way, but I still lack a peer group. Seems like the thing to do here is tackle that issue head-on.

It’s a tough nut to crack. As an inveterate gap-straddler, I spend time in many different dimensions, none of which I can really go for completely. Genetically I’m predisposed to rootlessness: “at home” isn’t a feeling with which I’ve much experience. I’ve got plenty of friends who I treasure, but no community of interest, of purpose. It rankles that there’s nobody I really care to impress.

Perhaps part of the reason is that I don’t have enough of said purpose in my heart to engender the camaraderie I crave. That would fit with the vaguely unfulfilled taste my ambition leaves in my mouth.

My biggest project over the past couple years has been my business, and I’m proud that it’s successful, but I don’t feel drawn to the world of other engineers or the community of other businesspeople, even on the hip Silicon Valley/Open Source tips. I enjoy being an entrepreneur, and I enjoy making things happen with code, and I have good friends who do these things very well, people whom I deeply admire, but I just don’t see myself in those particular movies. My breakthrough role remains in the wind.

In the mean time I’ve got plenty of things to do, but there are a lot of empty spiritual calories in there, or at least an over-abundance of carbs. Am I ruining myself with doughnuts and cheap beer, or loading up for some new marathon? Time will tell. Until then I’ll have to keep pushing forward sans-scene, muddling along my internet businessman political gadfly late-nite writer performance bachelor little scene, trying not to take myself so fucking seriously.

It’s getting to the point where one begins naturally, maybe inevitably, considering the year in review. Comparing, contrasting, looking ahead to what new things may come.

The new year is going to be different. For the past two and a half years I’ve been existing in a kind of insulated social world, living with old friends from High School and investing most of my energy in this business that I started.

The habits that I’ve developed as a result are going to have to change. Staying home on a saturday night to do the dishes, make a fire, drink some wine and watch TV… probably less likely to be in heavy rotation.

And that’s probably a good thing. My life can be overly comfortable, and it’s real easy to slip into a rut — having external events force a bit of improvisation and self-definition may be just what’s needed.

Like most people, I’m still figuring out what I want to be when I grow up. Sometimes I feel like I’ve got a good idea. Other times a little exigent circumstance is welcome.

Ultimately, my ambitions will drive me out into the universe one way or another. Too much wound up inside to ever really be satisfied in any one place or with any one thing. Feeling my way through to the new thing should be fun. There’s a big beautiful world out there.

My buddy Dave’s final piece for his Columbia Journalism Masters pretty much explains it all.

So, the annual talent show came again, and I reached into my bag of tricks and pulled out another performance piece. It was well-received. Matt Barry (local skate video superstar and all around quality kid) said I won the contest, but it wasn’t a contest, and anyway I think his talent of shotgunning five beers gives me a serious run for my money.

Getting up and doing the thing felt good though. The piece had a bit of my own meta bullshit in it; doubt anyone really picked up on the “head-fake towards sex-piece” inside joke in the opening, but that’s ok. It’s really just a meditation on fear of success vis-a-vis the Black President, internet dating, becoming a boss, and popular self-help quotations, wrapped with a couple choice musical cuts. A good pep-talk.

Full text is here: It’s our turn

The upshot is it makes me think I can do this more often, and gives me some internal steam to push ahead on the video idea. While hot gossip and unicorns help keep things rolling along, the most popular posts of mine over time (top of the pops) are the noodly think-pieces. If I can stand to look at my face enough to convert these into video form, it might actually get some people jazzed. That’d be fun.

Christmas party went off good. Gift exchange. Talent show. Funtime. My performance/pep-talk went over well; I’ll post the text for the archive in a bit.

Number one quote of the night: “Motherfuckers try to front, but the Greatful Dead were hard as fuck.”

In the meantime, here’s something sure to make you smile:

2008 is winding down. Quite a busy year. I’ve fallen a bit under the weather — plague running rampant at the office — and am generally feeling the decompression beginning. It’s been cold at night up here, good for making fires and nice and contrast-y with the hot tub. Moon is almost full, and tonight we took a quick little night mission down to one of the overlooks by Luffenholtz beach where you can walk all the way out to the jutting end of a rock outcrop and watch the waves crash in on all sides.

It reminded me of when I first came out here, going camping with a girl up in the Redwoods north of Orick and walking/sliding down what turned out not to be a real trail, or at least not one made or typically used by humans, ending up on a coarse-grained sandy beach miles from the usual access road. We came for an adventure, and to carry salt-water back for cooking, and to make out a little bit. Something about the way the froth of the waves catches light in the night… connected those two moments for me. Made me feel like a page is turning.