new location!!!!

I’ve moved to http://www.npuhalsky.com

See you there!

Adding Kids to the Fire

Not watching much television and being too busy to read the news online over the weekend I just heard of the balloon hoax. 2009 is proving the year of the parent using the child as a means of obtaining celebrity.  Why haven’t I thought of this?  Damn it I’ve missed my chance once again with only three children I could never land a reality television deal but I could perhaps launch my son into orbit and knock out the astronomy cub scouts badge requirement while I’m at it.  Or I could get a surrogate mom to carry eight babies for me because for one I can’t have any more children sans miracle and two I just got into these jeans again and pregnancy clothes just plan suck.  Better yet!  I could tie my ability to provide for my children’s standard of living by exploiting them on television.  That’s right kid the televised time out you had when you were five is paying for your therapy as we just got picked up by the rerun channel.  Can’t we just go back to the tried and true methods of obtaining celebrity? Usually the route for those lacking charisma, talent or that certain Je ne sais quoi is through sexual exploitation.   Janet Jackson, Brittney Spears and Hugh Grant I’m telling you the time is now.

Anything goes…

We are trained, educated, pressured and bribed to conform.  Our parents remind us to use our manners, teachers use red pens and employers wave a paycheck over our heads. Rules surround the individual like one of those  Snuggi’s broadcast all over television.  Cozy, yes.  Yet eventually if everyone jumps on the Snuggi bandwagon most society would look like members of the Vulcan High Council.

So I’m jumping off the wagon.  The first jump was with writing all the things I want to say out loud and the second is with beginning to perform with an improv comedy troupe.  There are no rules to improv but these which I have just made up (Okay there are some, but I dare you to find three people who say the same thing):

1. Do not censor yourself or attempt to censor anybody – Lenny Bruce and George Carlin come on in!

2. Try on different characters, new voices, walks, twitches – You can recreate yourself in each scene.

3. And as Mike Napier of the Annoyance Theater says “F&*k Your Fear!” – If a scene doesn’t work change it up, move on, don’t live in the past instead be in the moment constantly.

Can you see why I’m hooked?  I can be myself or anybody I choose to be at the moment and just run with it.  Think about everything you ever wanted to say to your boss or in a boardroom or every good alternative ending to a movie that you’ve had.  It’s been a great boost to my material for writing, surrounds me with others who are insanely creative and it allows for a three dimensional show of who I am without restriction.

Vegas Baby

Below is my brother Josh who lives in Las Vegas.  Seven years ago when I moved back home after leaving out west for four years he stayed on.  And why not?  Fishing, gambling, concerts and great weather for his toys.  It works out great for me too since I always have an inside connection.

Four years ago I made a visit to Vegas.  It was just to be a three day weekend.  I had by some weird fate gotten a three room suite at Binions for $70 a night.  It was in the downtown area and we could see the Fairmont Street experience from our room and the World Series of Poker was next week so the usual sleep atmosphere of the aged casino was alive.

We went to those local spots off the strip sang, danced and were very merry.  On the day I was to leave Josh got a phone call.  He’s a natural people person and very connected through the contacts he makes on his job.  He got off the phone and told me he just got two tickets to Depeche Mode’s concert that evening at the Hard Rock Casino.  OMG!!!!!

He’s casual about it and I’m freaking out!  I’ve loved Depeche since high school.  I tell him that if I can change my flight I want to go with him.  He was giving me a hard time and I had to remind him that he made fun of me in high school for my music, hair, clothes and car (1981 Chevy Chevette).  Begging, pleading and bribing as tickets to this show did not exist for anything less than the few grand I surely didn’t have.  Big heart that he has he gave the two tickets to myself and my friend.

So here’s to the brother that cut my hair when I was four (curls were on the floor), woke up to a hermit crab on his nose, was a bmx bandit, who patched a hole in the wall with me before dad got home, who went to Phoenix eleven years ago with only 1 large bag, who listened to Metalilica in high school and lettered in Chess, and got stung by a jellyfish.

The Girl Scout Cookie Agenda

Okay so I’m a geek and I love economics.  Glad we got that out of the way because as you can tell if you’ve been reading the geek comes out fairly often.  As I sit here staring at some of the popcorn my son is trying to sell for Cub Scouts at the low price of $45 I can’t understand the Girl Scout cookie thing.  Don’t get me wrong I understand Girl Scout cookies.  They are delicious.  I freeze the thin mints and eat them with ice cream and I can kill many a box of Samoa’s so I know these are the Cadillac of cookies. What doesn’t make sense to me is that with the law of supply and demand when an object, say a Do Si Do, is scarce its value goes up.  So if all of a sudden one day there were no Ford Focus’s in the world the hail damaged on with a space monkey on the dash would be worth a fortune.  Why then can’t we have the cookies year round? My solution is similar to Hades marriage deal with Persephone.  Half the year the Cub Scouts sell the cookies the other half the Girl Scouts.  Everybody wins and the market stabilizes.  Girl needs some thin mints already!

Do It Everyday!

Learn something new, what in the hell did you think I was talking about?  For the last couple years I have turned into such a homebody and it really has been to my detriment.  Less time spent in the world around people and adding to my database of experiences, sights and sounds has constrained my intellectual expansion.  As an illustration going to http://treehousecolumbus.com/I had a lesson in science.

The Tree House is a dive and it’s perfect.  Feels a bit like the furnished basement of a friend you would have hung in school to listen to music and play pool in school.  After arriving way too early which is a habit of mine we took our drinks and wondered in the room adjacent to the pool room to listen to the duo that was setting up where there was a tree coming out of the floor and going apparently out into the fresh air above.  Taking a seat on the bench we bullshitted with the duo and when they went off I did the thing I do, take a general inventory of the room.  Thus I looked at all the band stickers plastered on the wall, chalk scribbling on the ceiling and the wear brought by years of musicians adding their own ink to the history of the venue.

On the floor was an amplifier with a panel out.  Musicians are poor I know but there was a vacuum tube looking right back at me.  Briefly, vacuum tubes are controllers of electric energy.  Think of them as the great-great-great-great grandfather to the dimming switch for your wall lights.  Before the vacuum tubes it was either on or not.  I’m no genius but damn didn’t these things go the way of the DoDo bird?  Not being sure I asked Jon if they were transistors or vacuum tubes, I could be wrong.  As an electrical engineer he knows this stuff but usually he assumes that it’s only interesting to him.  In fact his ability to patiently have conversations of this nature was always an attraction to me.

Turns out that for most applications when the transistor, a semi-conductor device used to control electricity, came on the scene the new technology was embraced by most.   Not for the audiophiles.  Sound engineers and musicians for the most part agree that the obsolete vacuum tubes are still the way to go:

Tubes Vs. Transistors, from newsletter #47 of The Absolute Sound magazine:

“… if you want to try to break across the border into something approaching realism, I still think you have to use tubes.” –Harry Pearson, editor

“…tubes are more realistic. They have more bloom; they have more light; they have more body. They do that thing I call ‘action,’ which solid-state doesn’t… tubes just eat solid-state alive.” –Jonathan Valin

“… what you almost never get out of a solid-state piece of equipment is a sense of continuousness…” –Harry Pearson

“… there is a subtle but unmistakable sense of roundedness and solidity that tubes have…” –Paul Seydor

“… [tubes] give you the sense of having much more power. A 60-watt solid-state and a 60-watt tube amp never sound equivalent in terms of power.” –Harry Pearson

“… I hear more stuff with tubes…” –Jonathan Valin

“You can tell some things from measurements … but that tells you nothing about how the amplifier communicates the music. You get that from listening.” –Robert Harley

So I learned something new.  Advances in technology will never suit all users and so what is thought of as archaic by some are heralded as exceptional.  As much as I read and watch all the science and physics programming that I can I don’t think such a living example would have been presented to me.

Beat Your Own Drum, literally

Tones on a Djembe Drum

Whetstone Community Center from 2-4p today!  3924 North High Street, The Clinton-Como Drum Circle will be meeting there every other Saturday starting October 10.

No need to bring your own drums as there are plenty of drums, shakers, flutes and even a xylophone.  Learners as welcome as are those just coming to listen.  How am I involved?

Jon plays the didgeridoo.  It’s a hard instrument to fit with the local music scene but his playing is like my writing.  It’s a joyous labor.

Nikita and the Lawdog

Ages bring some changes with our relationships with authority figures.  Teachers who were feared and the living incarnation of knowledge eternal now stare at us across from the conference table looking plainly mortal.  Parents whose rules made no sense, were unreasonable and just didn’t get us are relatable and so much more erudite than we could have imagined.  Looking back the law and I have not always clearly understood each other.

Sunny day in high school comes to mind.  Rushing to work as at that time I was always late and I am now much to annoyance of many always early.  Listening to the Smashing Pumpkins and Portishead driving my dad’s baby blue 1987 Nissan pick up truck all was well.  A couple of cars passed by me on the left at a higher speed and I decided that I would follow along on the path they had blazed.  Miles and miles without a care in the world until I noticed the police car behind me and I pulled one lane over as he was still a ways behind me.   Disco ball lights went off and immediately started pulling over to the right edge of the road until I was in the break down lane.  Fox had prepared me for this moment with Cops.

Officer exited the car and slowly approached mine.  Ten and two, roll down your windows and put your hands on the steering wheel to put the cop at ease.  Resisting the urge to vomit I sat until he finally was at my window.  “Why did you pull over?’ he asked.  Stupider words could not have come out of my mouth.  “Because I was speeding” I said.  Never did it cross my mind that he had clocked someone else and so I hung myself with my own words.  He gave me the ticket without mercy for my naiveté.   Telling dad was the worse, first he couldn’t stop laughing and he told me then to cry next time.

Roommates suck.  Never had one until I divorced and at 26 this reality was quickly made plain.  My roommate loved to watch Family Food, smoke, be louder than a toddler and was the anti-matter to my matter.  Waking up in the night a stranger opened my bedroom door scarred as I was I told him I had to work in the morning and couldn’t join them downstairs drinking.  Inconsiderate as she and her friends were this was not normal.  He closed the door and went downstairs.  Quick as I could I locked my door, put on my shoes and called my then boyfriend to tell him I was on the way over.  Front door slammed I rushed downstairs to lock the door and saw my roommate asleep on the couch.  “Who the *#)@_@^*!*^#  was that?” I screamed.  She didn’t know so she screamed.  The door handle shook as he tried to come back in.  We ran upstairs and barricaded us in her room while I called the cops.

Cops pulled into our apartment complex before the intruder got out of the parking lot.  It was her boyfriend the ex-carnies’ brother trying to rob us at his suggestion.  Though they refused to tranquilize her I felt protected and served.  A.D.A needs a punch in the face though as they pleaded it down to a misdemeanor.   Anyway this improved the limited perspective I had of the cops.

So, on my page I have a list of things describing me and this goes into one of them.  Loving science fiction I was following this short lived series The Lost Room starring Kevin Pollack.  Reminiscent of Friday the Thirteenth the series I was hooked.  Early in the evening I met a friend around the corner for lunch.  Conversation drifts and the hour faded before I realized if I didn’t get a move on it I was going to miss my show.  At that time I had no DVR so I had to hurry.  Hurry I did, right past a cop, at night without my lights full on.  Dinner was a mile away and I was now just a half mile from home.

Ahhh, what the hell was I thinking?  Ten and two, windows down and music is turned off.  Waiting and waiting, less than five minutes.  Just get it over! Cop walks up and see’s me with my black frame glasses, hair pulled back into an explosion of frizz and I don’t give a damn and a look of AHHH!  “Why were you speeding” he asked.  Again I uttered the dumbest thing I could have.  “There’s a show on Sci-Fi I don’t want to miss” I blurted.  He let me off with a warning and I got to see my show.  What happened?  I had been given mercy without a plea while I looked like the living dead.

Birthdays celebrations aren’t as suitable as we get older and most of the time they just are a bit lamer and more depressing when you’re portioning out the cake because everybody is watching their weight/cholesterol/ blood sugar.  Our friend James had a birthday a few weeks back and frankly things have just been awful lately so when he asked us to join him for a cocktail and to play some pool we jumped.  Boy drank himself under the table.

Getting to his car though he insisted on his competence to drive while standing in the sick he just ejected into the parking lot.  After some quick thinking on my husband’s part and slow wits on James we got the keys from him and took off to get him some food and let him sleep in the car until we figured where he was sleeping.  Waking up now and then he made demands for cigarettes and I really wanted to get food into him so I stopped at the United Dairy Farmers on campus.  Bad move as it was a madhouse I told Jon to stay in the car and not worry I would run in and get some food, beverage and the cigarettes and be right back out.  He was to act as a buffer should James wake up and try to get out of the car as there was a collection of police parked and gathered on foot behind us.  One step out and he could get in trouble with public intoxication.

Jon was worried about me so he was halfway between the car and UDF when I came out.  James was passed out.  Pulling out of the lot in front of the police I went the wrong way one a one way street.  Looking the patrolmen right in the eye I told him “I’m too old for this shit”.  He asked “Why are you down here then?”  And I explained that it was for a friend’s birthday party.  Looking at me at as much as my ego hates to say it, seeing woman over thirty, he accepted me at my word.  Two officers cleared the pedestrian traffic so I could get on my way.

Relationships change over time.  In my youth I feared the police because of little exposure to them and honestly, watching way too many episodes of cops with my brother.  Don’t judge me, we lived in a suburb, how could know if the Fresh Prince was lying to us about the dangers of the street?  As a thirty-two year old woman with the whole family, children and scouting thing going on the cops see me as no threat and unless given other cause will actually cut me a break.  At this age I see them less as an authority because I realize that their authority is anchored in a badge which can be taken away.

Knowledge Hogs

Done well technical documentation can reduce calls to the support desk, ease user frustration and empower novices to build their skills with confidence through trial and error.  Not all documentation is equal as I have learned in the last week.  Rather spontaneously I decided that I would build a website of my own to host my WordPress blog.  Why? Because the counter balance to my creativity is my deeply analytical side.  Consequently this week I contemplated a journey to California to air my grievances.

So I register a domain name and find a hosting service as recommended by WordPress in their documentation which assures me that I can mix and match hosting and domain services.  As a novice I should have verified my assumption but ahead instead I charged.  Nothing elaborate, just connect the host to the domain, right? My first two years of college were at DeVry University where I studied programming so I’d like to feel that I had a clue.  The site with my domain name was easy to work with.  There were just two name servers I had to input and the rest was a formality.  Having a good dose of false confidence I proceeded forward.

ARRRRGGHHH!!!!  The hosting site was an example of minimalism.  Anyone knowing me though would know though when choosing the site I went off of three things first that WordPress recommended them, second the super cool name and lastly cool animal logo.  While I was great at programming and even taken to dreaming in code while in school at DeVry I ultimately decided to finish my studies in a school with the humanities and liberal arts, who would have guessed?  At least Indiana Jones had the guy telling him that he chose wisely in the search for the Holy Grail.  I had the technical documentation written by a bitter helpdesk staffer.

Word to the wise, if you’re hosting provider hides its phone number for technical questions DO NOT CLICK THE SHINY BUTTON!  My eagerness proved my downfall.  Choppy sentences referring to other sites greeted me at the FAQ’s.  Troubleshooting tips were absent so were if then statements for first time users.  Emails to the help desk asking for my server IP address were replied to with “We don’t understand what you’re asking for”.  It wasn’t until I found a site online where I could enter my site address and it spit out in a nanosecond what my IP was that I became a bit peeved.  Everything about the provider assured me that they in no uncertain terms hated beginners to this endeavor and sought to crush them with their indifference.

Not being deterred I transferred my site to another provider and it’s near operational now!  Being a beginner I am a lot of things and a hard worker and researcher is a couple of them.  As the internet was used mostly by academics in its founding so that they could share knowledge and keep the phone bills down it surprises me that the transfer of knowledge between a provider and their customer could exist in such a sorry state so many years later.  It’s not just an internet thing.  Knowledge has become a commodity jealously guarded and prices are quickly set.  America is not as innovative a country as it could be as the price and guarding of knowledge create barriers to collaboration.  Taking one man’s idea or as price is set, product, and infusing with it the abilities, insights, experiences and determination of a collective effort can change the world, like the creation of the internet.

Wrong Way Wedding

Whenever the word wedding or marriage is uttered word associations and expectations run wild.  Oddly enough as a woman I am pretty immune to all of the expectations of a cultural with David’s Bridal around the corner and bride magazines flaunting the thousands that could be spent on the dress alone.  Doing it your own way, on a budget and throwing all convention out the window is sure to leave everybody in your family cheated of the ideal wedding they planned since birth.  However treating it more like a picnic and less like the Queens coronation lets a girl enjoy the process.

Dress, you need a dress or something of the sort.  Forget the bridal stores and keep it real and pick out a dress that you could, gasp, wear again!   Best friend and I went to the massive mall between her house and mine.  Three hours later, counting the lunch, we had a dress.  Found at Macy’s for a total cost of forty dollars.  Dress of my dreams was a white dress with a full tea length skirt empire waist with an intricate black embroidered piece at the waist.  Dress done.

Sentiments lead me wanting to be married in one of the two locations of our first date.  He said no to the dive dinner/bar where we finally met after weeks of talking and then Indie Theater was also ruled out.  Friends of ours suggested a park near their house it was secluded, small and had intricate little garden areas throughout.  No cost so long as our party was less than twenty five.  We didn’t even book the site as our ceremony was to be about ten minutes’ tops and then a few pictures.

The Honorable Ann B. Long, ordained earlier that month online, performed our ceremony.  Friend of both of ours she wasn’t a hired gun doing it only for money nor was she a church official from let’s be honest, a church we do not attend.  Payment for services, adopted a sea turtle at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium in her name.  They sent her “adoption” papers and immediately she claimed ownership rights but that really is another story.

Pictures and video were purchased with pleading and a flask.  Both artist traveled from Cleveland and brought each another friend.  Our video could be entered in Scandinavian film festivals I’m sure.  There is one segment in which the videographer is being “chased” downhill by his camera on its death tripod on wheels.  Pictures were taken with stealth.  So we crashed the ceremony site at the park and were met by the park ranger who wished us luck and informed us that pictures could only be taken on the site of the ceremony and no where else.  In Benny Hill fashion we ran around the park and took posed pictures while someone was always looking out for Ranger Danger.  Word to the wise, golf carts are amazingly quiet these days.

Champagne in mini bottles for toasting was brought in the iced down saddle bag of a Harley.  Ranger was on to us but we were quicker moved by the whole adventure of the thing.  Comfest was the site of our reception in Victorian Village.  Setting up a blanket for the music as base camp we then took off in small groups to secure food and beverage.  No cake, table linens, centerpieces, dance floor, gifts or open bar.  Barefoot in the grass with my love nothing else mattered.

Both Mom’s are still feeling somewhat robbed of the wedding they wanted for us.  Keep in mind that from the beginning we knew that we were going to be footing the bill entirely ourselves.  His Mom saw it coming and doesn’t dwell on it.  My Mom was hoping that traditional middle in the road sort of thing would be brought out in me.  Wedding cost less than five hundred dollars including our wedding night hotel room.  There was a very loose plan and everything else was spontaneous and without any time constraints.  Looking back it was perfect and everything I wanted but was unable to articulate.  Enjoy your wedding the devil really is in the details.

Some pictures…http://picasaweb.google.com/annbrownlong/20090628PuhalskyMarriage609?authkey=Gv1sRgCK3c87rVs4i5wQE&feat=email#