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Year: 2008

Action packed!

I'm typing this from a brand spankin' new X200 - a sexy beast indeed! I'll have to readjust to the smallish 12.1" screen again, but I'm rolling with a full-size keyboard and speedy responses from the black box. Not too bad. Although I miss the rubbery feel of my old X23.

Yay Big Sur!
This is from last week's Big Sur camping.

Good Morning, Nickel
Nickel in a sleeping bag, hehe.

Finished packing this morning for Yosemite. Weather forecasts light showers all over the weekend, so it may not be picture perfect, but our team of adventurers always finds something to gawk over. Like a rock! Or a shadow!

Congratulations to Marco and Wendy, can't wait to meet baby Isabella :)

Vanessa's New Rug

Paul and Kat's new living room accessory. He he he.

The world is changing as we speak. I am normally optimistic about the way the world turns, but everything that's been happening the past 24-48 hours with the bank meltdowns and that horrible Palin interview by CBS are starting to bother me. This disaster can be real.

Meanwhile, I'm packing my bags and will hide the remainder of the weekend along the beautiful coast of Big Sur for camping. I hope America is still around when I get back. Suckas!

Happy birthday to the newest member of the Paul and Kat lens family! :) Hopefully she will bring us good tidings and cheer in the form of pretentious pixels and incoherent images.

Praying friend

A pencil is useless without it's artist on the other end of the lead. Camera - useless, without it told what to see. Gadgets designed to create, will never serve their purpose without a curious mind on the swing. And a curious mind remains steadfast in its curiosity, as it explores what's on the other side of that rabbit hole.

Caught the Parson Redheads and Citay last night at the Tangier. Second time to see PRs, they're always a fun bunch. Citay is good shizz also, I love their sound!! Glad I pushed through going out, because there's nothing like live music..

Evan Way of Parson Redheads

Alexi Glickman of The Botticellis

i: only the best for you j!! and its up to you to determine what that is ;)
j: thanks g! i really needed to hear that!:D
i: the only catch, is that you cannot blame other people for the choices you make :)
i: so choose wisely, but be happy :)

Lazy days

Art takes time. Understanding takes time. Knowing takes time. Forgetting takes time. Time takes nothing - except for what you don't give.

At the Basilica Minore del Sto. Niño

My domain and websites got defaced! Was down for almost 24 hours. I'm actually pretty flattered. Remember kids, use strong passwords!

So we spent the long weekend up along the Sonoma coast. First night was camped out with Kath and Dan at their friend's pad. The setup was three interconnected trailers along a bluff in the coast. My day was spent polishing off Tecates (my new favorite beer), while the other guys dove for abalone. Lots of cheese and beer, and Kat and I slept on the outdoor deck underneath a canopy of stars and the Milky Way. Great stuff!

I didn't take pictures until the second night, when Pat Pel Kat and I transferred over to a designated campground with our tents. I setup the camera to take one shot of star trails as they traversed the night sky, framed by the tree canopy up above. I left it outside for probably 3-4 hours, before Kat closed the shutter again. The problem is, that the noise reduction function processes the image after it's taken, and takes a terribly long time before it writes the final image to the CF card. And of course, it never reached that point. I come in with a full charge, take one massive picture, and the camera dies. I was really disappointed in the morning - that is, until I had my first can of Tecate for the day.

It seems likely that a new camera body is on the horizon within the coming year..

I like the anonymity of night. I can work tirelessly, without concern and disruption of interludes that daylight brings. During the day you're preoccupied (or too busy pretending not to be preoccupied) keeping tabs on the clock as it ticks to lunch time. Then your senses fail after a heavy meal. Perhaps indulge in a caffeine pep, or energy drink to prop you up the rest of the afternoon. Wait in your windowless cube until the seconds turn to minutes turn to hours turn to another day on your hamster wheel.

The silence of past midnight is all encompassing. The world is quiet. Your mind is free. To create, or to vegetate. The reasons are all your own.

I can find all the reasons to stay up all night. The missing piece of the puzzle though, is finding all the right reasons to wake up earlier in the morning. :P

Downtown LA

Gave the dog another shower this morning. I tried some Avon stuff that the forums swore by, to get mats and tangles out. I can see how it would work, but I didn't dilute the solution enough and left the boy a bit too greasy. Had to rinse him out again to get rid of the gunk. I miss his hair :'c

Leaving for SF in a few minutes to catch the SF Outside Lands Festival, then coming back Sunday morning in time to catch Radiohead (again) play at the Bowl. Should be fun times :)

Pretty darn productive this weekend. Laid down the foundations and revamped Paul and Kat.com. Installed WordPress, that stuff is pretty powerful and slick! I might convert to a WP setup in the future and junk all this Blogger madness. I still need to debug against older browsers (i.e. I hate you IE 6.0), and start broadcasting our offerings of custom buttons and our upcoming 'Make Your Own Fan Club' shenanigan.

I also replaced Vanessa's valve cover gasket, to remedy the small leak on the passenger side valve cover. It was pretty exciting since it's the first time I've really opened anything of importance in the bus, even though it's just a simple gasket replacement.

Valve Cover

The mechanic used some yellow adhesive to afix the old gasket, which was an official PITA to remove. Took me some good elbow grease to get the mating surface clean and slathered on a thin coat of number 2 permatex gasket sealant to fix that puppy. While crawling under the bus my left shoulder started complaining, and I felt its weakness from last year's dislocation accident due to unwarranted hand-stand-walking in a parking lot. Ahh, the bragging rights you earn when you get old!

...

This made my day. Hehe. :)

Fascinating to point out, that the quantity and quality of my posts are directly proportional to my alcohol intake. Not that it's an excuse to drink more - I just find words easier when inebriated. Otherwise, it takes me forever to sit down, gather my thoughts, and pound it out to have no bearing of logical importance whatsoever. It's like spending the time to fix your hair to look like you just got out of bed.

Spent many hours on VW forums the past few nights, to read up about Vanessa's intermittent smoke problem. My mechanic said it was being caused by all the crud on the heat exchangers, which was being burned off since hot air was now going through c/o of the alternator fan. He said it would eventually burn out, but I wanted to take matters into my own hands. I doused the right heat exchanger with Simple Green before dinner, but it seemed useless, so I came back with a toothbrush and some 409 degreaser - that stuff works wonders! Just a little dab and a scrub from the brush took out years of accumulated oil and grime, and I was kinda surprised it went down to the bare metal surface in some areas. I might add that twilight surgery is not very efficient, so I might do another session on a sunny day. Had I left that junk as is, there would have be no way for all that crap to burn out by itself. I'm keeping my fingers crossed, since the burning smoke made its way into the cabin through the heat vents and almost killed Peter Pan. Sayang.

Vanessa
Paul and Vanessa, April 2008. Photo by Kat :)

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