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March 31, 1999
News
Information about Ty Davison straight from the horse's mouth.
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Years worth of mind-numbing details, ponderings, and events.
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March 31, 1999
It's been a painful last few days with fun doses of Vicodin, Flexeril, and Motrin to stop and/or deaden the "ouch! that hurts!" signals coming from my lower back. This morning's visit to my doctor at Kaiser was worthless, with the sum of his advice being essentially to do some stretching exercises and take it like a man. That's not very useful when you can't even get out of bed.Nonetheless, time is healing what medical professionals apparently can't since my back is definitely improved over yesterday. I'm having to do everything slowly and carefully (as opposed to my normal fast and haphazardly), but so far, so good.
The cheerleading squad didn't place at nationals, but Erin reports that they performed well and had a very good time. (It's difficult not to since the competition was at Disneyland.)
March 28, 1999
So I threw out my back again yesterday, this time while playing weekend soccer. It's not a disc-related problem so far as I can tell, but my lower back muscles are none too pleased right now. This will definitely put a short-term crimp in my exercise plans.More pills, more bed rest to come.
March 26, 1999
Erin is away at cheerleading nationals at Disneyland, so I've busied myself by watching action flicks that I checked out of the library. First up, Steven Seagal's surprisingly good Under Siege. It's derivative, generic, and violent, but it's well-done as action movies go and it packs a little more suspense realism than most.I was going to watch Lethal Weapon 3, but it turns out I've already seen it, and frankly, I don't remember it as being all that good. The first Leathal Weapon contained interesting psychological points which really don't hold up throughout the series. I've seen 2 and 3, but I've not been impressed.
Finally, I watched Gregory Peck in 12 O'Clock High, a World War II picture about a bomber squadron in England. Good but not great. Needed better screenwriting.
March 23, 1999
I don't know if it's a sign of arrogance or maturity (arrogant maturity? mature arrogance?) when a person begins to look at well-regarded works of art and thinks, "You know, I could do better than that." Having just finished John Grisham's surprisingly bad New York Times #1-Bestseller The Chamber, I'm currently in touch with those emotions.Simply put, Grisham is no writer. He's a lawyer who writes books. That's okay so far as it goes, but it means that other than legal terminology what we get is a lot of small words using an I-Can-Read-type vocabulary. I can only conclude that the author of the Washington Post quote on the cover, "Full of booming, echoing prose," was drunk when he wrote those words, because the alternative is that one of us read the wrong book. (I know I wasn't drunk when I read it, though maybe it would've helped.)
Being easy to read is no crime, to be sure. But it is when coupled with the most linear, unswerving plotline I've encountered in years. This story goes from A to B and takes no turns and makes no pit stops along the way. As a reader you just keep waiting for something to happen that will inject some excitement into the story. As a reader you are sadly disappointed. There is no twist—not even one—to be found, which is why 676 pages later you find yourself wondering what the point of the whole thing was other than to tire your eyes.
There's very little point in attacking Grisham's character development, since there's very little to attack. The Chamber introduces a variety of characters which are static in the extreme; outside of the protagonist and his client nobody develops one bit.
The Chamber is ultimately something of a statement against the death penalty, or at least that's the way I read it since Grisham never bothers to weigh in directly. As I'm already opposed, I hardly needed the repeated descriptions of the effects of poison gas on human beings. (And I doubt these descriptions will entice death penalty advocates to change sides.)
The major disappointment, however, is that a work like this should achieve such popularity. It says something awfully sad about the state of affairs when stuff of this quality is a literary success. Maturity, arrogance, whatever. I'm sure I could do better.
March 21, 1999
Free tickets from Erin's parents in hand (thank you!), we attended the Peninsula Symphony's performance last night of Elgar's Soliloquy for Oboe and Orchestra, Francaix' The Flower Clock, Dvorak's Concerto for Cello and Orchestra in B minor, and Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade—Suite Symphonique. The performances, to my untrained ear, were excellent, and regardless of my lack of musical sophistication, it was highly enjoyable.Erin and I agreed that Scheherazade was our favorite of the night, though I found elements of Dvorak's Concerto very powerful as well. Certainly my familiarity with and love of his New World Symphony led to a greater appreciation of this work. (Classical music novice that I am, I confess that the New World Symphony is the only Dvorak piece with which I am acquainted.)
Based on a motivation I received from a book by Oprah Winfrey (of all people), I've been trying with mixed success to get started on an exercise program in the course of the last week. I was running a couple miles at Rancho San Antonio on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday, and I played a game of soccer yesterday. Boy did this used to be easier. As of last night, I had giant blisters on both heels, my feet were sore, my calves and quads ached, my back hurt, and I had a headache and a sore throat. Come this morning, I find that many of the aches and pains have lowered in intensity. Glad to be taking the day off, that's for sure. But I do plan on being out at Rancho again tomorrow morning, rain or shine.
The other half of the equation, of course, is a better diet. I'm trying to up the servings of fruits and vegetables (difficult), lower my daily caloric content (difficult), eliminate alcohol usage (easy), not eat too close to bedtime (easy), and drink lots of water (sometimes easy, sometimes not). The Oprah book that got me started on this whole thing is called Make the Connection: Ten Steps to a Better Body and a Better Life by Bob Greene (Oprah's personal trainer) and Oprah Winfrey. The bottom line is really "eat less, exercise more"—something everybody kind of knows anyway—but it was useful to hear about Oprah's weight struggles and how she won her battle.
The 10 steps are these:
- Exercise aerobically, five to seven days each week (preferably in the mornings)
- Exercise in the zone (at a level seven or eight)
- Exercise for 20 to 60 minutes each exercise session
- Eat a low-fat, balanced diet each day
- Eat three meals and two snacks each day
- Limit or eliminate alcohol
- Stop eating two to three hours before bedtime
- Drink six to eight glasses of water each day.
- Have at least two servings of fruit and three servings of vegetables each day.
- Renew your commitment to healthy living each day.
Do these 10 steps work? Well, they did for Oprah (but give most people a personal trainer, a nutritionist, and a chef, and it will work for them too). Will it work for you and me? I'll keep you updated on my progress.
March 18, 1999
I resigned my position as the Assistant Coach of the Boys' Varsity Soccer team today. Simply put, financial considerations made it impossible to return. On an annualized basis, the amount of our recent rent increase was more than the salary for the position. Way more. And I can hardly afford to coach soccer and lose money.It's been three years of highs and lows. We won a lot of games, and we lost a few that we should have won. We played some of the most dominant soccer I've seen at the high school level, but we were also capable of losing to some really awful teams. This last season, though it had a painful conclusion in our exclusion from the CCS playoffs, was a great deal of fun. Taking #1-ranked Bellarmine to double OT with 10 guys in the WCAL Championship was an achievement in itself, and that says nothing of our 16-5-2 season record.
Although we lose a boatload (16) of seniors from this year's squad, the team should continue to do quite well next year. The returning players are, on the whole, quite good, and in some cases they are superb. They've got a decent shot at contending for the league title, in my opinion, and though I won't be coaching, I'll certainly be cheering them on and hoping for their success.
March 15, 1999
"Beware the Ides of March," the saying goes. For who knows what it portends? In our case, it brings a profound change (though clearly not so profound as Caesar's). In any event, Erin and I will have a major announcement coming in the next few weeks. Right now I'm not at liberty to say more, but trust me when I say that big news lies ahead.March 14, 1999
After a 11.5 hour drive with my dad back to Mountain View on Thursday, we spent Friday driving a big loop around the Bay Area. We hit various sights in San Francisco, took the Bay Bridge to Berkeley, and then jetted back down through the East Bay before taking 237 back to Mountain View. Then we went hiking at Rancho San Antonio. Dad's Saturday hike of Rancho was done solo, while I convalesced.I'm still in catch-up mode after my trip to Oregon. It's amazing how many emails, newspapers, letters, bills, etc. get piled up when you go away for a few days.
March 9, 1999
I drove back to my parents place in Salem late last night, and I've essentially gone into "recovery" mode. I've loved seeing family and friends but the mileage and the late nights have taken a short-term toll. The order for the day is pretty vegging in front of the tube and sleeping. I'm exhausted.March 8, 1999
Visited my friend Julie in Portland and upgraded her PowerBook 1400/133cs ("Bella") with an additional 48 MB of RAM. Julie had to give a belly dancing lesson (not to me, in case that's unclear) while I was busy on the computer, so I also got to listen to about an hour of Middle Eastern music, something I found almost surprisingly tranquil considering the rapid percussion in most of the songs. Hearty internet-based congratulations to Julie on her acceptance into graduate school!Out to Troutdale in the evening for a visit with Joy and Mike and their precocious 3-year-old Skylar. Skylar was having a bout of the flu, so I didn't hang with him as much as his parents. I had a great time talking with Joy and Mike and of course I managed to squeeze in the obligatory Macintosh activities by helping them with their Power Mac 6500/225. (Interesting discovery: Virtual PC runs just fine on this 603e-based machine.)
March 7, 1999—Clackamas, Oregon
The last few days have been a whirlwind of activity. I spent March 4-5 in Eugene with Dave, Missy, and Jacob. Watched the highly entertaining Toy Story, along with another computer animated kid series called VeggieTales. Dave and I did tons of Mac work and not a little bit of Quake as well. I also had the opportunity to hang out a fair amount with Jacob, a very happy 8-month-old. Having very little experience with kids, I found this both very fun and very useful.Thanks to Dave acting as broker, I sold the Plymouth Champ to grateful new owners for its Kelly Blue Book price of $150. I suspect that the Champ, which has really run well for us as a point A-to-point B type car, will continue to serve its new owners as well as it served us. It's no great shakes as a car, but it is affordable and reliable.
Bret and I met our grandma Norma for breakfast at our all-time favorite breakfast place in the Gateway District, King's Omelets. Despite the moniker, what I really recommend are the buttermilk pancakes. Still the best I've ever had. After breakfast, Grandma was kind enough to beat me at a game of cribbage.
My friends Helana and John and their 9-month-old son Keith made the road trip down from the Seattle area for an afternoon get-together. It was my first chance to see Keith, who turned out to be an incredibly well-mannered child. John and Helana took turns giving him little bits of food to play with and Keith happily picked up and ate half of it and picked up and dropped half of it onto the floor.
That evening, I headed to Matt and Ginger's place, where we stayed up late talking and upgrading Fauna, Ginger's PowerBook 5300. I think it was roughly midnight when we finally turned in.
Today I awoke to continue the work on Fauna. We completed all the various upgrades and such before Matt and I headed over the Dennis' place where we met Dennis and Joe for the wild Macintosh ride I'm calling "Macapolooza 99." We ethernetted a couple Macs and played liberal amounts of Quake in deathmatch form, ordered a pizza and logged on for some QuakeWorld action over the net. Yes, it was a regular Mac game-fest and a wild good time. Special thanks to Dennis for hosting the event!
March 4, 1999—Eugene, Oregon
I've been bopping up and down the Willamette Valley, visiting family and friends hither and yon. Been doing lots of Mac stuff—everyone I bump into nowadays seems to have one or to be getting one—and it's been a lot of fun to play with the machines, to answer questions for people, and to help soup up various personal computer hot rods.Two days ago I was helping my friend Garr with his Quadra 840av. Yesterday I fiddled with my friend Julie's PowerBook 1400/133cs. Last night I installed RAM and a L2 cache into my brother's new Macintosh Performa 6115CD. Today Dave and I will be doing more ethernet connecting between my G3-upgraded Power Mac 7500/100 and his new Yosemite G3 300. It's like everywhere I turn there's a Macintosh, and I must confess to being utterly thrilled by it all.
March 1, 1999—Salem, Oregon
Having completed the 10.5 hour drive from Mountain View to Eugene on February 27, I spent most of my first night in Oregon busy with Dave playing with his new blue-and-white G3 300-MHz machine and the corresponding Apple 17" Studio Display. The computer is blazingly fast particularly in disk and video functions and the screen display is perhaps the best I've ever seen.Dave and I established a 10BaseT ethernet network between Zeke, my G3 320-MHz upgraded Power Mac 7500, and his new G3, Spook. File transfers were like copying to a hard drive. As some of you might have suspected, networked Quake was pretty cool over the ethernet as well.
I left the Champ at Dave's in Eugene since he's got a friend coming later in the week who's a potential buyer. Dave, Melissa, Jacob and I packed into Dave's Jeep Cherokee and headed to Salem. There we stopped in on Dave's folks where I was about to answer a few questions about their new grape-flavored iMac. In truth they really didn't need too much in the way of my help—they're figuring a lot of it out on their own.
Later Sunday, February 28, Mom, Dad, Bret and I assembled to do a celebratory dinner in honor of yours truly and his 30th birthday. Chowed yummy Mexican food, laughed a lot, and had a really good time.
Bret brought up his new Macintosh Performa 6115 CD (aka Power Mac 6100/60), Apple Multiscan 15" monitor, and Apple Color StyleWriter 2400 printer so that I could give it the once over. Initial assessment: Needs more RAM, a L2 cache, and a bigger hard drive. (A G3 accelerator card would be nice, too, first things first.) Bret ordered the RAM and L2 cache on Monday morning, and we hope to have it installed by Thursday.
Buoyed, perhaps, by all this fantastic Macintosh activity, my parents decided to buy a blue-and-white G3 300-MHz machine themselves via the Apple Store. The hope is, I think, that it will arrive while I'm here so that I can set it up for them (or help them set it up), but the truth is they'll be able to handle it whether I'm here or not.
I've set up additional meetings with family and friends over the course of the next week or so, and that'll keep me plenty busy, but what wonderful stuff to be "plenty busy" with!
