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February 29, 2000
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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February 29, 2000—Leap Day
We've had a remarkably mild February here in Salem, the only downside being an ant invasion the size of the D-Day landings. For the kitchen and the living room, we've repelled the invaders in pretty short order using a tasty boric acid solution, but I'm sorry to say that the bathroom infestation is comprised not of the sugar ants we saw in the other locations.Instead, it's made up of carpenter ants ready to make our lives miserable. We've sprayed with Raid as a temporary fix (and boy did those beasties—thousands of them—die in a big hurry), but long-term we're probably going to need to spray boric acid powder into the bathroom wall. The boric acid solution that was so effective on the sugar ants killed the carpenter ants but far too slowly.
I talked with our neighbor Fred and he informed me that ant problems are very common in the neighborhood, though only the sugar ant variety. The carpenters appear to be our very own singing sensation. This is so not what we needed right now.
Despite this inconvenience, Erin and I took 90 minutes to watch the entertaining Strictly Ballroom, a critically acclaimed small budget foreign film. Nice theme ("A life lived in fear is a life half-lived") and good dancing. Too short and too simple to be considered a great film, but certainly excellent for what it is. Recommended.
February 26, 2000
Laundry day for me over at Ma and Pa's since our dryer has gone out. Not sure exactly what the problem is, but I'm guessing the belt. Not looking forward to pulling everything apart for a look-see, but there's really not a lot of choice in the matter unless we want to spend money on an appliance repairman. And we don't.Congrats to the two Oly wrestlers who won state titles in their divisions, and congrats to Sprague overall for finishing third. Were it not for a couple of unlucky breaks (wrestlers unable to make weight, etc.) the team might have finished higher, but third at state is nothing to get down about.
February 25, 2000
Dave and I have been trying—in vain up to this point—to get an Internet phone thing working via PGP Fone and a late beta of AIM 3.5. For whatever reasons, the communication seems to be working in only one direction, from me to him. Although my voice comes in fine for him, Dave's transmissions either sound distorted or like the songs of humpback whales. We'll continue to experiment to see if we can solve this problem, especially since success effectively renders long-distance phone calls (and their costs) obsolete.Erin and I went to Sprague's Battle of the Bands this evening to listen to seven up-and-coming bands play consecutive 30 minute sets. As one might expect, it was a deafening experience. This was only partially off-set by two bands, Faded and Sixteenth Hour, who happily had a nice sense of melody and provided a dramatic counterpoint to the wall of sound approach employed by their competitors. In the end I voted for Sixteenth Hour, whose musicianship and lyrics (what I could make out anyway) were very mature for a high school rock band.
February 24, 2000
Erin and I headed out to dinner at a really great and really inexpensive Chinese place, Chan's Chinese Restaurant (2290 Fairground Rd. NE, (503) 585-1775). The atmosphere isn't anything special, but the portions are yummy and huge, and, as I say, the prices are quite low.Congratulations (yet again!) to Sprague High School, this time to their wrestling team who won district for the sixth year in a row. Apparently, Sprague has some of the top wrestlers in the state, and should make a run at the state title. Either way, I continue to be amazed by the quality of the athletic program at my old high school. I don't suppose this all started back in 1987 when a certain Sprague boys' soccer team finished third in state?
I didn't think so.
February 20, 2000
Bret came down, and we shot hoops and ran his taxes through MacInTax. Looks like the program got him another $100 in refund, though he appeared a little skeptical of the legitimacy. Looked fine to me, though, and I told him what I tell everyone about this kind of thing: Once upon a time (when I was Finance Manager for a multi-million corporation), I dealt with the IRS on a very frequent basis, and unless you're trying to willfully defraud the government, there really isn't a whole lot to fear about the tax thing. It may not be fun to pay them a lot of money (a truth to which I can attest annually), but as long as you're playing things straight and can show why you do what you do on your tax returns, even an audit isn't a whole lot to worry about. Of course if you're cheating, then all bets are off....Bush stomps McCain in South Carolina by a reasonably wide margin, spelling increasing trouble for McCain's insurgent campaign. Not that it means a whole heckuva lot, though. I'll grant a McCain victory in his home state of Arizona and I'll even concede a possible McCain victory in Michigan (where recent polls—though prior to South Carolina's disastrous result—showed McCain with a slight lead). None of this alters my contention that both the Republican and Democratic primaries are a foregone conclusion and that, barring extraordinary circumstance, it'll be Gore v. Bush in November.
As I've said before, it's not that I think that's a good thing; I just call'em as I see'em.
February 19, 2000
Matt, Ginger, Erin and I probably stayed up too late chatting given that 3 out of 4 of us are teachers who have to get up bright and early on a regular basis. Nonetheless, I don't think anyone really wanted to call it a night even after the midnight hour struck. Earlier in the day, Matt and I futzed with his G4 while Ginger and Erin powwowed about school stuff. We followed all this with an exceptional dinner and the aforementioned conversation. My kind of Saturday.February 17, 2000
Tonight's soccer game was a thrilling one, and though I didn't play a lot I thought I made the most of it when I was in. We gave up three early goals, came back in the second half, and remained down 5-4 for about 12 minutes. We tied the game with about a minute to go, then booted in the winner with 10 seconds left. Despite outplaying our opponents in the second half, we probably didn't deserve to win. Of course neither did they: Not packing in your defense when you have the lead with less than two minutes remaining is just stupid, and it was nice to see the soccer gods punish such lack of forethought appropriately. The victory runs our record to 5-0 on the year and sole possession of first place. (The team we played drops to 3-2.)I've been going through the Adobe Classroom in a Book for Photoshop 5 for the past week, taking it nice a slow so that all the lessons sink in. I now have a solid understanding of selections and layers. That might not sound like a lot, but in many ways it really advances the useful of the program for me. I'm currently learning about painting tools (lesson 4) before heading into the land of masks and channels (lesson 5), two things I know virtually nothing about.
It's not officially online yet, but it's close enough that if you want to check it out you may. My latest online work is at www.Schwab4Homes.com. [Now offline.] There will be a couple of changes to things before we go fully active, but a lot of it is in place.
If you'd like, you can compare it to the original at www.Schwab4re.com. [Now offline.] This site has a somewhat attractive (though overly dark) opening page, but the sub-pages are about as inconsistent and ugly as one can imagine. You can't always tell by browsing the site, but the directory and file structure is a mess as well (making updates a real challenge).
February 12, 2000
Bret and Grandma Norma both made the trip down from PDX yesterday to join a Davison birthday get-together in my honor. The highlight was undoubtedly my failure to blow out the four candles on my birthday pie. The family was understandably very amused by this, not accepting my thoroughly valid excuse that I was caught in the position of getting that fourth candle blown out and spitting all over the dessert or only getting three. Nobody seemed impressed that I went for the more socially acceptable (not to mention polite) alternative. They were too busy laughing themselves silly.Nonetheless, this kind of humorous abuse sure beats herniating a disc or receiving a 26 percent rent increase like I've done in previous years.
February 11, 2000
Despite scraped knees in last night's romp of a win in indoor soccer, I appear not too much the worse for wear as I hit year number 31 in this reality I like to call "life." It's like the board game only I haven't had to sell the cattle ranch yet.Thanks to all my family and friends who've called or written with birthday greetings. I appreciate hearing from you all. (But why no money? Hehe.) I am so lucky in so many ways that it's a real shame that I'm not better at math, or I could tell exactly how lucky that is. Regardless of specific numbers, please know that I'm as grateful as one can be without the aid of cue cards. Or maybe more so.
Whatever that means. (Hint: It's Guy-Speak for "I love you.")
Mom and Dad showed up at my door this morning and hustled me off to Collette's Restaurant for breakfast. Yummy eats!
Erin and I watched Pierce Brosnan remake of The Thomas Crown Affair and Bill Murray's Rushmore this evening. The former film is an enjoyable action/romance while the latter is a quirky, intriguing, thoughtful pseudo-comedy. Both are easily worth seeing at least once.
February 10, 2000
After a day spent mostly studying Adobe Photoshop 5.5, I met Dave at Chevron along I-5 this evening and we headed over to the Corvallis Macintosh Users Group (CMUG) meeting. There we were treated to a demo of Apple's Final Cut Pro 1.2 by Andrew Baum, the product manager. Along the way we both also managed to score t-shirts. As I mentioned to Dave later, our t-shirt to attendance ratio at these types of events has got to be considered fantastic: It seems like we're getting shirts everywhere we go.The Photoshop studying I mentioned is yet another run-through by yours truly of an Adobe Classroom in Book. I tried an Illustrator 6 book a few months ago, but I never really got past about chapter 6. I don't know if it's that I found that Illustrator was a boring program to me or if I just lacked the willpower or what. Since I find Adobe Photoshop delightful, I'm hoping that my initial enthusiasm for the program will keep my motivation level high. Although I'm only in the midst of Lesson 1, I've picked up several helpful bits, and unlike Illustrator, these are tools and techniques which I can put to use immediately in my web design work.
February 9, 2000
I was bopping around the 'net and discovered a neat cartoon series called Penny Arcade. Featuring to computer geek slacker types, some of the humor is a little on the technical (not to mention vulgar) side, but a lot of it is readily understandable and very funny. My favorites include: Condiments; Like lepers, but worse; Got skillz?; Welcome to Pain City; Balls, come get your balls; Word of the Day: "Outside"; Gone Shockin'; and Linux Shminux. Check it out.February 8, 2000
Yet another round of applause and congratulations to Sprague High School, this time for their racquetball teams. I kid you not. Apparently, theirs is one of the top teams (boys and girls) in the state. Indeed, they won the league, state, and national titles in 1998, and were second in both state and national play last year. On Sunday, Sprague won the girls state title and the combined team state title in addition to the girls doubles state title. Go Olys!I've hooked up Roland XP-80 to Zeke once again, and I'm going to try to get some stuff recorded in a demo form in the next few days. If I have time and if I can get everything figured out, I'll try to post a song or two to the web in MP3 format.
February 6, 2000
Perhaps that LAN party wore me out more than I thought. I slept 12 hours last night, the longest straight shot of sleep I've had as far as I can remember. I might have done a 13 hour stretch one weekend in high school, but you get my drift. I slept a lot.Regardless, I finished Stephen Covey's The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Families, one of the best books I've read about how to build a successful family culture. Every family is different, of course, but correct principles are timeless, and Covey hits the nail on the head repeatedly here. Highly recommended.
February 5, 2000
With Bret, Dave, Matt, and Dennis in attendance, I held a QuakeWorld LAN party today. Nothing like a like multiplayer first-person shoot'em up to really make the day fly by. Indeed, I'd say that this was the fastest I've seen time move in years. It seemed like the party started and was over in no time at all. But somewhere along the way there we ordered a pizza and played a bunch of games.Dave was nice enough to come up last night to help me set up the network and configure everything. This, in particular, is one task made almost infinitely easier by using Macs instead of PCs, and true to form, the Macs' performance over the weekend was flawless.
February 4, 2000
Congratulations to Sprague High School, winner of the Grammy Award for best high school music program in the country. Though I was never a part of the Sprague music program when I attended, I can attest that even then the school's program was superb.A good example came more recently this year during half-time of the first football game. Simply stated, it was the finest performance by a high school marching band I've ever seen, and not that I'm a connoisseur, but I have at least a passing idea of what quality is in this regard. It was an incredible performance, and, as I say, it was their first of the year.
Last year, Sprague's music program was selected as one of the top 16 in the nation. Now they've received formal recognition as the best in the country.
The accolades continued this week in another way for Sprague. The state issued their report cards on the work of all the schools, and Sprague received a "Strong" rating, the only high school in the Salem-Keizer District to win that distinction. You might hear me whine about students once in a while, but the fact is Sprague remains a very good public high school.
Last night's indoor soccer game was a good victory over the best team we've played up to this point. I had a couple of assists, but my conditioning continues to stink despite my treadmill-based activities. I hate that it takes this long to get back in shape. At least I feel like I'm moving in the right direction.
February 3, 2000
I just checked out my site tracker (eXTReMe Tracking), and were the results ever amazing! Not only is Davison Online averaging almost 170 unique visitors per month, but the geographic spread is astounding as well, with visitors coming at us from Norway, Canada, the UK, Portugal, South Africa, and of course the US. The idea that, globally speaking, people don't have anything better to do than tune into my web site is really terrifying. (But I do thank you! Come back again! Hehe.)Despite my continuing dislike of Microsoft, a substantial number of viewers (31 percent) are using either Windows NT, 98 or 95. That's a whole lot of pain, and I'd like to say that I know what you're going through, but I traded in my 486 DX-100 years ago. In self-defense, my brain has pretty much wiped clean all memories of that horrid 486 nightmare. Over two-thirds (68 percent) of viewers are looking at this site the way I do, which is to say on a Mac.
More interestingly still, a full 75 percent of viewers are running at a 1024 x 768 screen resolution. Perhaps even more telling, 89 percent of viewers are running at 800 x 600 or better. That's a very interesting number to me since usually web designers try to aim at the 640 x 480 screen size when they create their designs. It might be time to think higher.
Netscape 4.x holds a more than 2-to-1 advantage over MSIE (67.25 percent to 27 percent), though I did find it revealing that MSIE 5 had 19 percent to MSIE 4's 8 percent. That's pretty quick adoption of a new browser, meaning either that version 5 is really good or that version 4 really stunk. I've not yet tried version 5, so I can only confirm the latter. (Also I received word recently from Mark that Intuit's latest QuickBooks upgrade requires MSIE 5 for all features. Maybe that sort of forced adoption playing a role in the high version 5 rates.)
February 2, 2000
Despite the political pundits claims that the big John McCain win in New Hampshire changes the Republican race for the presidential nomination, I continue to see nothing there which alters my belief that this contest has been over for some time. Bush has the organization, money, and backing of the Republican establishment, and McCain, frankly, doesn't have a prayer. My short-term prediction is that Bush will win Delaware (no surprise since McCain doesn't have the resources to campaign there), and Bush will win by a slight margin in South Carolina. Regardless of the outcome in either of these primaries, however, McCain has neither the organization or money to challenge Bush much beyond that point.On the Democratic side, Al Gore is in a similar position to Bush: he's got the party backing, and Bill Bradley is the outsider. Here, the playing field is a little more level in terms of money, but good grief, what a vitriolic campaign. No matter who gets the nomination (and I'll be stunned if it's not Gore; I consider this race long-over as well), the Demos will have serious money woes to contend with come the fall campaign. Even worse, because the Gore v. Bradley debates have been so mean-spirited, there's a good chance that the Demos will be raising a really tattered banner on the field of public opinion come general election time.
I noted with what I guess I'll call "satisfaction" that the Illinois governor has temporarily suspended the use of the death penalty in his state. What's happened is that inmates on the state's death row keep getting found innocent thanks to DNA testing, falsified testimony, and so on. Those who have read my Opinion section piece on the death penalty ("The Death Penalty: Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong") know that I'm opposed to capital punishment for a variety of reasons, not just that the innocent people can wind up in the electric chair.
What I do strongly support is Oregon's new "Life for a Life" initiative which would call for a mandatory life sentence without possibility of parole. In addition, the plan calls for those convicted to be required to work in prison to pay restitution to victims' families for their crimes. The signature collection for the ballot initiative is just beginning, but I obviously urge all Oregonians to sign it. For more information, see the Oregon Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty web site.
