Darkroom update

This weekend will be a big push. We're totally boycotting Thanksgiving to finish the walls and start prepping (and maybe even painting). We have some electric work to do as well.

I think L is starting to feel left out of the process. Tonight she said: "So, we have to have a discussion before starting about whether I'm just going to do what I'm told." I guess I've just been jumping in and doing the work. Sorry honey.

Here's what the wall with the vent fan looks like now:



And here's the view of the same wall from the laundry room:



Here it is with the fan mounted:



I still need to put some legs underneath the fan. I've promised some shelves and hooks for laundry stuff. The de-humidifier fits really nicely right underneath the fan. It should still squeeze in there if there's legs.

Here's the view from the outside again, with the beginnings of the innermost wall of the decompression chamber. Note: the wall is sitting on a 2x6 PT board, which has been bolted to the floor. I've used the same method throughout. The partition walls are bolted to the concrete walls as well. (Well, one of them just has a couple screws-in-anchors--but it's damn well attached to the floor and ceiling)



And finally, the wall is framed:



The outer wall is done now too, but it's leaning a bit. It's a long story. I'll be fixing that first thing in the morning.

Not taught in civics class

I think I've finally figured something out about anti-gun control folks. This came to me yesterday when I got a little miffed at a newspaper article about a bill being held up anonymously by a senator. First of all, I had no idea they could do this--and I think this is why I was angered by the article, more so than the stopping of the bill. If someone in congress is going to be rabidly pro-gun, don't we have a right to know who it is? We get to know how much money our politicians get, don't we at least get to know what they do to bills?

Anyway, I got to thinking about who in their right mind wouldn't want to ban plastic handguns. They seem pretty obviously designed to evade metal detectors, right? They're certainly not for hunting or personal protection, so those classic arguments go out the window. The slippery slope / civil libertarian argument might apply, but wouldn't you want to take a public stance on that one?

Nope--it's fetishists. And I know there's all sort of Freudian gun-as-penis and masculine power stuff that can go here, but keep in mind that a fetish isn't necessarily sexual--though in this case I'm perfectly willing to listen to arguments. The only explanation I can come up with for gun nuts is that they have a gun fetish. And that is the only reason I can imagine that a senator wants to remain anonymous is that fetishes and shame come as a package deal--Even if Dan Savage says that people shouldn't be ashamed of their urges to be pooped on, isn't that's part of the fun of licking feet and getting tied up, feeling a little guilty about it?

Or maybe it's a little dirty. That's how I finally thought of this. When I was small, and we would go to someone's house and my grandmother would put her purse on top of the refrigerator so that the kids wouldn't get at it, it was a gun safety issue--she was either on her way to or from work, and she had her service revolver in there. As I've grown up, I never thought of it as anything other than safety. I certainly don't remember ever, ever going through her purse.

But thinking about the gun thing yesterday, I remembered that the notion at the time wasn't that it was dangerous, it was just a little dirty. The emotion that I remember is a little bit of shame--the same emotion that would have been hanging in the air if she was packing a dildo (which I can't imagine) or a spare colostomy bag (which I can--as my grandfather had one near the end of his life). Everyone knew what was in there, but we generally didn't ever talk about it. And if we did, there was this tinge of shame in the air.

So it is with the gun nuts. They just don't talk about it. Once in a while, someone will talk about hunting, or it will come up in conversation ('Do anything last weekend?' 'Not much. Had lunch in Town X.' 'What were you doing there?' 'Oh, I was out at the range, shootin my gun.') Those conversations turn out to feel very close to 'Got a new piercing' and 'Got laid--but I'm not gonna date her/him.' Tinged with guilt, but feelin' good.

New action at SITO.org

SITO is one of those things that, when I look at it, I slap myself on the forehead and say, "Why don't I do this more often?" Like, every day or week.

So I added a couple new things under my ID, and poked around, and continue to be amazed that this strange beast keeps going after all these year.

SITO, then known as OTIS, was the reason I originally started learning a little (and I only ever knew a very little) about UNIX. There was this discussion group, way back in 1993, that kept talking about how they were trading computer generated images back-and-forth over the internet. Since back in the day it was all character based, I had no clue what they were talking about. Little did I know that this Internet-thingy would become a major part of my life, a big part (for a while all) of my livelihood, and an everyday part of culture.

Strange life.

Speaking of books...

There is nothing like the excitement of going to the big library to pick up an Orbis-Cascade loan from another institution. 2 days after asking, holdings from any of 20-odd universities appear magically at my local main library.

When I request a book like this, I feel an almost overwhelming urge to go to the nearest bar and start reading it immediately.

I just don't get that feeling when typing in a URL.

Blog book

Oddly, I am reading a book about blogs and blogging.

Now, I know this is inherently weird, but give me a break, I'm teaching a class next year and we're expected to use things like, uh, books.

It's not a bad book. It does rely pretty heavily on entries from people's blogs though--one chapter I'd already read online. But I'm not here to talk about the content. No, I'm going to talk about the interface.

The interface to this book sucks. First of all, it has endnotes. In this age of computerized typesetting, endnotes should be banned. The are so hard to use--flipping back and forth, having to use two bookmarks, forgetting the number of the note, or the name of the chapter you're in.

This particular book compounds the sin by simply listing its notes under chapter numbers. So one of the endnote pages looks something like this:

• Chapter 1
  
  • note 1
  
  
  • note 2
  
  
  • note 3
  
  


• Chapter 2

etc. etc.

What's the problem with this, you ask? Well, after you leave the first page of the chapter, how the heck are you supposed to remember the number of the chapter? It's not printed at the top of each page--the name of the chapter is. So not only do I have to flip to the end of the book when I want to read a note, I have to also flip back to the first page of the chapter to figure out where to look.

Fortunately, I've stopped looking at the notes in this book, because I've looked ahead, and they all consist solely of URLs. That's right--there is no explanatory text in the endnotes, just references to online material, thus making it nearly impossible to read this book when you're not near a computer. I'm sorry, but that's one of the reasons I got the book--so that I could read away from the machine.

harrumph. Pure laziness Perseus Publishing. Shame on you.

The final straw though, in Chapter 6 the text refers to a definition of a blog that was written in a blog entry. This reference then becomes Note 17, which is the URL to that particular entry. The pisser here, is that the entire blog entry that the note refers to is reproduced in its entirety, word for word, as chapter 4 of THIS SAME FRIGGIN BOOK! Didn't anyone read the book as they were producing it? Couldn't the note have said something like, oh, I don't know, see page 23?

note: I love the fact that Blogger's spell check constantly wants me to change blog to bloc, and bloggin to flogging. I wonder if this would sound more revolutionary if I accepted those substitutions.

Darkroom progress.

Well, it's time for a little construction update. The first actually.

Let's get you oriented first. Here the view from the outside:


The blue tape marks where the de-compression chamber (read: light trap) will be. The wall we removed went, basically, diagonally through that space. The X marks the spot where one of the enlargers will be.

Next we have the view from the inside looking out:

Later on, I hope to give you a finished view from here--both enlargers should be visible from this angle.

Finally, next week I should be able to give you an after-look at this end of the room:

as this is the wall that I've framed in already. The wall will have the blower for our ventilation system on it. This will exhaust out the window where the dryer vent is currently.

Quality of life.

An old professor has gotten involved with Take Back Your Time (or maybe just simple living--I'm not sure). Librarians are always whining about being over-extended (and overworked and underpaid). While I fall into the same behavior, I've begun to wonder why.

I'm not going to blame technology. At a conference I attended recently, someone questioned why we put up with a technology in our home (the desktop PC) that breaks so frequently and take so much maintenance. It was one of those moments that makes you go hmmmm. (Like: 'Why hasn't Phoenix gone solar?')

That led me to ponder all the things that are broken in my house that I live very happily with:

• Broken shower/batch faucet handle
  
• Missing knobs from baseboard heaters
  
• No thermostats (this one is sort of geographic--couldn't have done it in Chicago)
  
• Wonky screen doors
  
• Sticky side door
  
• Non-functioning cd-burner
  
• I still watch TV on a 10 year old Macintosh
  
• No chimney flu
  
• Bookcase door knobs broken
  

I'm sure there's are many others. The point is, having a pc in the house isn't really different than having a clunky car or an old bike. There is a balance between not doing proper maintenance and just how much degradation in performance one is willing to put up with. I just re-installed windows to gain a minute on boot time and to get rid of the various demos and sharewares that I've installed over the last couple years. It's my understanding that most people never re-install windows. Do they just buy new PCs?

To me, it's not the PC that this is about. It's the network. It's easier for me to find the movie listings online when there's no paper in the house. But when there's a paper handy, that's faster. Looking for a recipe? If I know it's in one of my books, I'll look there. If it's an unknown? The Internet is the answer. Same with hiking trails. Same with fishing. Same with dozens of other little factoids. All these things add up to technology having changed my life significantly for the better. The time lost in the care and feeding of my PC? It's sort of like picking snails from the garden and washing dishes--a slightly unpleasant task that leads to greater benefits.

Serious work avoidance

New colors!

The wife and I have a few photos hanging in a show dowtown starting tonight. I guess I'm just sitting around waiting for the day to end so I can go down there. There's so much stuff I should be doing.

Traffic ticket

I got a fucking ticket on my way to work this morning.

(by the way: in case you didn't know it, I ride my BICYCLE to work.)

Yeah, I'll admit it: I blew that stop sign. I didn't put a foot on the ground. I did use my brakes though--it's not like flew straight through.

I know this will get me nowhere in court, but I ride on this street everyday and I've never seen ANYONE getting a ticket. (I've seen people getting arrested, yeah, but never a ticket.) Cars pass me at stop signs (ie: they roll through faster than I do) almost every single day on this street--which is a bigger public safety problem?

I slow down. I look both ways. If there's anyone else in or near the intersection, I do put my foot down. If that's not good enough, then fuck you.