in Housekeeping

Feedbag

Turns out the new blog + marginalia feed was not updating. Should be fine now. Also, by popular request I have added a feed that contains blog posts plus reader comments. Happy feeding.

January 6, 2006

in Notes

Resolved 2006

Recently I have encountered a few people violently opposed to new year resolutions. They say, what’s so special about January 1? If you want to change yourself just do. Or they say, resolutions set you up for failure. Change should be gradual and flexible.

OK, fine. But I like to make lists, especially those that I can cross stuff off of. So maybe what I really like is unmaking lists. Here’s the list to be undone for 2006.

Cook. I like to cook, but I have been cursed with a wife who is both more willing and more skilled at doing so. If only she’d let me do it more often. A few of the blogs I read are by cooks, amateur and professional, so I have resources and inspiration. Pass the olive oil!
Visit San Diego, Philadelphia, Portland, or Santa Fe, all US cities I have never been to.
Rip DVD collection. A much more daunting task in practice (if not in volume) than the CD collection. Decryption, dumping of extraneous video material, figuring out the best format for playback, getting the video from the server to the TV, and of course the immense storage requirements. I’ve been meaning to do this for some time, but the final push was purely practical: our kids have already destroyed one DVD player and one CD player and we’re constantly washing their drool, half-chewed meals, and finger muck off of the actual discs. Ain’t nothing to touch on a video server.
Get to know the south side of Chicago. Lots of hidden architectural gems and great parks, not to mention restaurants and clubs, down there. If it was good enough for the 1893 Expo it is good enough for me.
Look into Italian dual-citizenship. My father and my siblings are all eligible. Still debating the merits of this, but I am sure it will smooth the path to my dream of owning a villa in southern Italy. Of course, it also opens up political possibilities.
Shave head. Or at least near-shaved. The cruel irony of male hair loss is that the more you lose the more often you have to get your haircut so as not to look like you are growing for the combover. There’s certainly maintenance involved in a shaved head, but at least there’s no mistaking my intentions.
Visit Xian, China. Should be easy given my travel to China. Gotta have some “safety” resolutions.
Find Jim LoBianco. My roommate from study in Rome in 1993. In the seminary at the time, most likely ordained now. Why can’t the interweb help me find him? May need to appeal to higher powers in the search.
Run a half-marathon. Once upon a time I regularly ran 25 miles a week. And then the midget squad arrived and my mileage plummeted. Time to ignore the kids.
Teach sons how to swim. One is terrified of the water, the other thinks he can swim, which is far more dangerous.
Call (not ping, not e-mail) my mother more often. Because “hi, mom, love u … brb” just doesn’t cut it.
Return to home winemaking. Made a batch of mostly-swill Mouvedre in 1996. It didn’t kill me, so I must be stronger. A decade later I’m ready to try again.

12 resolutions, 12 months. Begin.

January 5, 2006

in America
2 Comments

“Mama, I gotta make my guitar louder”

OK, so, today. Let’s see.

Had lunch with Les Paul, music pioneer and inventor of the solid-body electric guitar. Encountered a Braille edition of Playboy magazine (yeah you read that right) owned by Ray Charles. Ran my hands through the actual straw that filled the costume of Ray Bolger, the scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz. Chatted about abortion with the inventor of Lasik eye surgery. Went home. Responded to some e-mail. Kissed the wife and kids. Went to bed.

Actually, most of the day was spent with Les Paul, an extraordinary, vibrant 90-year-old Renaissance man who is one of the most charming people I have ever met. Known to one generation as the co-host of a TV show with Mary Ford in the ’50’s and to another as the brand on an exceptional type of Gibson guitar, Les Paul understands his place in history, though he is humbled by it, and knows that it is his responsibility to preserve his contribution to American culture. In his home, Les Paul has a Xanadu-like collection of audio-visual media (on a truly bewildering spectrum of recording media) and the artifacts from his career as a performer and inventor (guitars, effects gizmos, recording equipment). This man was a celebrity geek before such thing was in vogue. Musician, inventor, television personality, storyteller, and (thankfully) packrat, Les Paul probably would not even understand the received wisdom of the left-side right-side brain paradigm.

Today one of my colleagues noted that he was going to devote the next few years of his life to becoming as young as Les Paul. To this Les, in a room full of academics and museum-types, leaned back on his chair and mimicked taking a long drag from a joint. This man is 90 years old. He is obviously physically well; Les Paul plays two sets every Monday night at the Iridium club in NYC. But what strikes you is how mentally sharp he is. His stories do not ramble but arc right when they should. His tinkerer’s mind grasps technology concepts that elude people half his age. And his ear — despite hearing aids — detects the textural differences between pianos made a few centuries apart.

Do I have a man-crush on Les Paul? You bet I do.

He told the story today of being hired to play music to patrons at a drive-in movie theater half-way between Waukesha, Wisconsin (his birthplace) and Milwaukee in 1930-something. To amplify his voice he took apart his mother’s phone receiver. He stuck one half of it on top of a broom handle propped upright in a cinder block and wired the other half into a radio. Voila. After his performance he got a note saying, “Good show, kid, but your guitar needs to be louder.” This note changed music forever. Les Paul went home, told his mother that he needed some way to amplify his guitar, and set out to construct what became the solid-body electric guitar that has been so important to the 20th century music. His prototype, a 2.5 foot length of railroad track (!) strung with guitar wire and undergirded with the guts of a telephone magnet like his makeshift microphone, was the first in a series of inventions that eventually became the Gibson Les Paul.

Documentaries are being made. Oral histories are being taken. Strategies for the preservation of his legacy are being executed. Everyone knows that documenting Les Paul’s life is a race against time (though you would not think there was much urgency from his vitality). But all one really wants to do is slow down and sit on a couch and listen to him tell stories. It isn’t the hundreds of guitars in his house or the vintage recordings or the goofy doodads he created to manipulate sound before digital audio made it commonplace. It is the stories in Les Paul’s head that are priceless, Americana if ever that word had meaning. This is what we must document now. The material culture is but punctuation on his extraordinary exposition.

January 4, 2006

in Notes

Nannylessness

Today is the first day since shortly after my first son’s birth in 2001 that we’ve not had a nanny. Things change. The dynamics of our home life are radically different than they were back then when my wife and I both worked full time separated by a commute and had only a newborn to contend with. Now things are at the same time more complex, a curious four-year-old and a precocious two-year-old with an infant coming in May, and simpler, my wife works from home with flexible hours and school is ramping up to five days a week for the older boy.

We hoped to keep our beloved nanny on as part-time help and to this she agreed initially. But the fact is — and this is the bitter reality at the heart of the matter — however much you and your children may love the hired help, the parent-nanny relationship is, at root, an economic one. You pay for services rendered, even if a portion of that service is love. And if the economics of the relationship don’t make sense, then the bond is broken. There’s something slightly whorish when you look at it that way, but there it is.

In a review of Jonathan Swift’s 18th-century Directions to Servants in the most recent Atlantic Monthly Mona Simpson notes:

For generations women have been puzzling over the ethics and etiquette of “having” help. The very verb is troubling—what boys of my generation said about the girls they’d laid—because “help” has traditionally helped us with what is still, no matter the opinion of weekly newsmagazines and polite company, our responsibility first and last.

So our nanny moves on and so do we. We’ll still need help for sure. Business trips come up. The parent-child ratio is about to swing in their favor. Things change. Hello, 2006!

January 3, 2006

in Words

Engineer

Got a Christmas card from some colleagues in Egypt on my return to the office today. It was addressed to Eng. John Tolva. Eng. for Engineer, an honorific I’ve never seen in the West but which is always given in Egypt to (I think) graduates of science-related or engineering-related programs. I like this. It seems more logical to award prefixes based on the type of degree than the level attained, doesn’t it? Imagine a world where everyone was addressed by the job or role they performed.

“Bricklayer Jones, so nice to see you today!”

“You as well, Seamstress Diaz! Say, here comes Ambulance Chaser Franklin.”

There’s a certain LEGOland quality to the division of labor and labelling, but I think I could like it.

January 3, 2006

in Technology

Cord-free

My guess is that the biggest complaint about the iPod and portable music players is the headphone cord. You do have to wonder about outtake footage from the famous iPod silhouette commercials — dancers getting entangled, accidentally ripping the earbuds out violently, cursing, storming out from in front of the chroma screen.

The cord is a particular pain in the ass for me, especially in the winter when I am bundled tightly with the cord wrapped into my scarf and the iPod buried deep in my coat. Add to that the hassle of basically undressing to make it through the metal scanners at my security-obsessed office building. So, it was a special treat to receive a pair of Plantronics 590a stereo Bluetooth headphones for Christmas. There are a few of these on the market now and because of the lack of devices that support the A2DP Bluetooth profile (or lack Bluetooth support at all, like the iPod), Plantronics includes a dongle that hangs off the headphone jack and pairs with the headphones. Conveniently, if a phone call comes in to your Bluetooth phone while you are listening to music you can easily switch over and talk. There is a small, clear telescoping tube that you can pull out as a microphone boom. When not in use it is hidden away. Actually the physical design of the headset is the nicest thing about it. Slightly retro with robotic-looking hinges, the 590a inverts to sit in its charger and pulses red and blue to indicate status.

This morning was the first real-world test: the L train commute to work. The headphones worked great on the walk to the station, hugging my hat over my ears. Waiting for the train, the flashing blue light on the headset (indicating a strong pairing) literally lit up dark train platform. A bit too bright, I’d say. I can only imagine how annoying this will be to fellow flyers on an airplane. About 20 minutes into the trip the headphones started to drop occasionally, at first for only a millisecond and then for a second or two at a time. Worrisome. That’s basically a showstopper. I’m wondering if it has to do with Bluetooth interference from other devices on the train.

And so I embark on a time-honored post-holiday tradition: contacting tech support.

UPDATE: It did have to do with Bluetooth interference, but from my own phone. I unpaired the phone and the drops stopped. In fact, I re-paired it and the drops have not returned. Interesting. This bit of sleuthing was no thanks to Plantronics tech support which gets a D- for a crappy attitude and absolutely no clue about the dropouts. “Just return it for a new one,” they said. That’s the consumer electronics version of “um, have you tried rebooting?”

January 2, 2006

in America

Rose-colored glasses

The city of Austin is throbbing in anticipation of the Rose Bowl. I don’t follow college football closely at all and can’t claim to be even moderately knowledgeable about matters that generate so much trash-talking and inanity. Still, it is hard to avoid the interesting aspects of this matchup that have little do to with football. There’s a tempting blue state-red state analogy to be made what with the celebrity photo-ops on the Trojan sidelines while most Longhorn fans are, let’s face it, Bush-loving conservatives. (I spotted not one, not two, but three copies of Sean Hannity’s latest book being read in the waiting area for a charter flight out of Austin to Ontario, CA today.) That kind of facile, polarizing thinking does make sports matchups more fun, I suppose, but ultimately it rings just as hollow as all the post-election talk of two Americas. For instance, on NYE Austin held its first ever “First Night” parade and fireworks celebration — easily one of the most eclectic, left-leaning public spectacles I’ve participated in. Yet, nearly everyone — including the freakiest of the paraders — was adorned in burnt orange or celebrating UT in some way. I’d like to see Texas win, but I can just hear Rush Limbaugh or the conservative blogosphere reading more into a Longhorn national championship than is warranted. Some tripe about west coast vs. heartland values. (Maybe they already have?)

And thus you have the first and likely last post about football on Ascent Stage for 2006. Go Cubs!

December 31, 2005

in Housekeeping

Two-Oh

It may not look like much, but Ascent Stage has undergone a major revision this past week. I only just got around to addressing the corrupt database issue from a while back and in the process took care of just about everything else that was bugging me about the site this whole year. So, in no particular order, here’s what’s new:

Browse by Topic category is back from the dead (the corrupt db killed it).
Browse by Date no longer sucks (as bad).
Movable Type has been upgraded to 3.2 — there are more features, of course, but the best is what seems to me to be faster rebuilds.
Trackbacks are off for the time-being — still searching for a way to prevent trackback spam as I have done with comments (which remain open). Ideas?
There is now a merged RSS feed for the main blog and the marginalia, thanks to Feed Digest.
My account at Last.fm, the site which catalogs my music played and powers the sidebar, has been upgraded. Those of you who listen to the streaming radio from Last.fm (which would be — checking — exactly no one to date) can expect it to be faster now.
There is now an actual error page for 404 Not Found. ~~It is not properly catching errors yet, but it does exist.~~
There is now a consolidated Archives page as well as a single page listing every post to date.
Site code has been cleaned and modularized. You care not at all, I know. But the general de-crufting makes me feel good.
Search results and comment previewing are (finally) formatted properly.
I am using Library Thing to catalog my recent reading in the sidebar. Eventually I’d like to write reviews for the books that end up in the margin, but for now I am still cataloging my library.
For you usability folks, I’ve changed link colors slightly to better differentiate visited from unvisited.
I added the now-standard RSS feed icon to denote subscribable feeds.
Lots of other stuff that would bore you even more than the above, if that is possible.

There are some deep links that are broken still and I’ve not fully tested in IE or Safari, but for the most part the ship is seaworthy.

So, enough with the housekeeping. Time for 2006 content.

December 31, 2005

in Notes

Resolutions in review

Twelve months has passed since I outlined twelve resolutions towards my betterment. So, let’s do the numbers.

Learn how to conjugate Italian verbs in a tense other than the present.
Sort of. I know more verbs than this time last year and I got a chance to flex my conjugator (ahem) on a trip to Rome, but the tense thing. I’m still stuck in the present. (Or, in translated Italian: I stick in the present.)
Get a goddamn backhand.
Done. No more do I run a half-court’s width to ensure forehands. I am whole.
Fall in love with NASA again.
I admit, I did. Michael Griffin instills confidence, the Chinese provide the neo-cold-war competitive impetus, and there’s even a presidential mandate to skedaddle out of low-earth orbit, for what that’s worth. Marsward.
Be nice to political bloggers.
Pretty much. Easy now that the screaming and yeah-what-they-said cross-link lovefest has died down after the elections. I’d love to know how many political blogs withered in 2005 with no election fodder to chew on.
Learn to match beats when remixing.
Believe it or not, yes. The DJ console helps, of course, but I did have to figure it out.
When home, watch only high-definition television programming.
I have failed. TiVo, being standard-def (and crappy at that), is the culprit. Plus The Daily Show isn’t in high-def, so right there I’m screwed.
Convert all old mix tapes to MP3.
No, and ain’t going to happen either. However, I did complete the digitization of all my old vinyl LP’s! So I consider this complete in spirit if not in letter.
Become able to change my son’s diaper with one hand.
Can be done, but is not advised as it takes three times as long and often results in fecal matter where you don’t want it.
Avoid LAX like the Black Death.
Not done. Could have routed myself differently I s’pose. Ah, well.
Avoid the Black Death.
Plague-free, baby!
Get to know my nephews better.
Uh, well. I know them better than I did this time last year. Mostly because more time has passed, but hey whatever works.
Figure out how to make my own oak switches for the Russian Baths.
Regretfully, no. And I should be practicing since they are closed for a bit. Bad John bad.

Not bad, then. I completed 7, got 2 half-done, and only blew 3. I made significant gains from the half-year review, that’s for sure. Now to come up with a few for ’06 …

December 25, 2005

in Notes

Tradition

The full family rarely convenes at my parents’ house for Christmas Day any more. With our own families now and out-of-town in-laws it just doesn’t happen as often as it used to. So it is heartening to see that some traditions stand the test of time.

My mother decorates the main bathroom with hundreds (perhaps thousands) of little Santa figurines that she has found over the years. It is actually a little terrifying. Like urinating in the woods at night and knowing you’re being watched by dozens of glowing animal eyes. But one item that is always present is a set of letter blocks that spell CHRISTMAS. Inevitably at some point in the merriment someone scrambles the block into this lovely anagram. Has been going on for years. Ah, tradition.