Category: Life

Dog Day Afternoons Ad Infinitum

John Winkelman

Weelll I got an email from my mother asking why I wasn’t updating my site very often, so I though it only appropriate that I update it with a telling of a summer job which she arranged for me.

Back in 1990, the summer after my sophomore year at GVSU, I kind of found myself at loose ends, job-wise. My mother was quite sympathetic:

GET A JOB!!!1!

So I went out looking. Spent hours on monster.com, surfed the job boards, built a few websites. Then I realized that none of this stuff had been invented yet — and the Commodore-64 version of Photoshop was too buggy to use in any profitable way — so I would have to get my hands dirty.

A few days later I found myself at the front desk of the Jackson County Road Commission building on Elm Road, just down from the state prison (this figures prominently later in the story). They needed a couple of fellas to spend the summer doing traffic density surveys all over the county.

The terms were good: 6:30am to 5:00pm, Monday through Thursday, at minimum wage ($3.50/hour at the time). A whole summer, driving around in a 1977 Suburban, laying rubber hoses across the road.

Training for the job consisted of the usual questions: You know how to drive a truck? You know how to read a map? You ever kill a man? We also got to try out the Nail Gun of Death.

The traffic counting apparatus works as follows: At the side of the road is a small metal box, about a foot square and eight or so inches thick, weighing about 25 pounds. Inside the case is a circuit-board with a couple of pneumatic pressure guages and a small tape drive. All of this is firmly bolted to the case in an attempt to make the counter redneck-resistant. Two spigots extrude from one side of the case. It is to these that the rubber tubes are attached. The tubes are about an inch in diameter. At various places along the length of the tubes are little metal Chinese finger cuff-type contraptions which have a solid loop at one end, through which is driven a nail to hold the rubber tube to the pavement.

I fired the Nail Gun of Death exactly once,aiming at a piece of hardened concrete. There was a ricochet. The sound of a .22 calibre long-rifle driven hunk of hardened steel whistling past my ear is one I will carry with me to my grave.

This story will be continued tomorrow, or thereabouts.

Go Outside! Get Some Exercise!

John Winkelman

You didn’t really think I would spend all summer in front of the computer, did you? Well, I’m not. Even though I made the horrible mistake of buying an addicting video game a week ago, I have soaked up more sun in the past five days than I have, I think, in the whole rest of the year up to now.

How, I hear you ask, and Why? Why go outside? Because it’s there, and it’s bigger than inside. How? On my new bicycle . First one I have been on in about fifteen years, and first one I have owned in twenty.

Ia!

John Winkelman

Sometimes, and by “sometimes” I mean “a lot”, a feel bored and disaffected at work. On these occasions I do things like look for new versions of the “lorem ipsum” filler text. Occasionally, I find something useful, and occasionally I find something fun. I mean, sometimes you just need your lipsum to be in Morse Code or Quenya .

Well, that wasn’t enough for me. I wanted Lovecraftian Lipsum, full of consonants and apostrophes. I didn’t find it, but I did find something almost as good: Cthuugle : The complete HP Lovecraft Search Engine.

Patterns of Holding

John Winkelman

Thursday of a short week and the annual Project From Hell is practically done. Every day for the past week the PFH has been done at 8:30am, undone by 10:00am, and re-done by 6:00pm. Every day for the past week. Every NeoCon since the day I started working here. I get the work done, but I am so fried that I don’t feel safe driving home, and I certainly can’t face the Infernal Machine once I get there.

Heh. NeoCon.

Going to be interesting seeing the Google fights between the annual interior designers’ convention and the right-wing chickenhawk lickspittles who have sprung up in the past couple of years.

All I really want to do is stay home and read.

Stiiiiilll Rising!

John Winkelman

Today the river rose up past the edge of its east bank in front of the WaterWorks Pub on North Monroe Street. According to weather reports, if we have no more significant rainfall, the river will rise another two feet before cresting on Thursday afternoon. That means all of Monroe Street could be under water. I work on Monroe Street. I may have to borrow my neighbor’s kayak.

You Know What’s Funny?

John Winkelman

Americans fighting over what it means to be patriotic.
Millionaires talking about sacrifice.
Fat people blaming food.
Alcoholics blaming beer.
Dumb people blaming television.
People who vote blaming people who don’t vote.
People who don’t vote blaming people who vote.
People who mistake the Administration for the country.
People who back their beliefs with violence.
People who are willing to kill but not to die.
Christians who blame God.
Buddhists who blame God.
Atheists who blame religion.
Politicians who take credit for anything.
Politicians who consider themselves to be leaders.
Politicians who call other politicians dishonest.
People who believe that The Right exists.
People who believe that The Left exists.
People who put themselves in categories.
People who believe in precedents.
People who believe in presidents.
People who believe presidents.

Re-BOOT!!!1!

John Winkelman

Weeellll I thought es.o was looking a little dusty. Originally I planned to get the new look up on May 1 to coincide with the ReBoot , but for various reasons that just didn’t happen.

The background photo is from a few months ago , and the colors used in the design are taken from the photo. Mr. Bock offered much design advice after seeing my original concept, which would have hurt your eyes and killed your computer. If you are looking at this page on a PC, and you are using any flavor of Internet Explorer, Shame On You! Go download Mozilla or FireFox and you will see the beauty which is translucent backgrounds.

So where have I been? A brief recap: The Kendall class ended at the end of April. All of my students passed, there were more As than Ds. Several of the projects completely blew me away. For the next few months my time is my own, then in September I go back to teaching. Same Bat Time, Same Bat Class.

Much time and emotional energy went to assisting Cliff and those around him, through what was absolutely a trying, scary few weeks.

Any free time in addition to all of this was taken up by work, or recovering from work. This past Friday a major project launched; one in which I had to wield mojo as I have never before wielded mojo: Discovering Design . Normally I don’t post Day Job projects here, but this is one I of which I am quite proud. The posts I made about The Brain a few weeks back? What I learned there went in here.

Last and MOST IMPORTANT, I have been training hard in Master Lee’s class . We have a tournament in a couple of weeks, and the Grand Rapids Festival of the Arts show a week after that. This year the show will take place on my birthday. My 35th birthday. I can think of no better gift.

As miscellaneous addendum, the news of the world around us has kept me rather depressed. I made the grievous tactical error of watching The Video last week. The non-Hollywood-ized violence, the everyday banality of the decapitation, as if it were no more important to the participants than the butchering of a pig, gave me nightmares. I grew up near a slaughterhouse, and what was on The Video could have happened, with a slight cast change, therein.

What next? Sleep. Sleep and maybe playing around a little with game development. Bock is working on one, and it kind of whetted my appetite for that kind of thing.

More as time and energy allow.