b.rox

My parents are coming down for a visit, so we are frantically preparing the household for their arrival. Time to put away the illegal drugs and semi-automatic weapons, the seditious literature and satanic rock music — at least for a while.

We also have to conceal the extensive subterranean dungeon we installed during our renovation. Wouldn’t do for Mom & Dad to wander down there and get lost.

Fortunately most of this work falls on Xy since I have clever means of work avoidance, such as posting to this blog or playing with Persephone.

A couple years ago, I promised myself that when my MP3 collection hit 10,000 I’d pause for reflection. But that pause never happened.

Now I’ve hit 20,000 tracks in my iTunes library, and I’m drawing a line in the sand. At least temporarily. No more! At least not today.

For me it’s become like a sickness, a disease, an addiction.

Firstwith, let me characterize my collection, which gives some indication of the scope of my problem. I have 20,919 songs in my collection by 7,468 artists in 77 different genres. That’s approximately 61 days of continuous audio. 109 GB of data.

Of these, 4,645 tracks have never even been played. “Put Yo Hood Up” by Lil Jon holds the record; I acquired it in November 2005 and still haven’t played it. At least I know what it sounds like. There’s plenty of stuff here that’s a complete mystery. I don’t know what it is or how I acquired it in the first place.

The first thing most people want to know is, “Where do you get it all?”

1. Our CD collection. Over the years I’ve ripped ‘em all, and we recently boxed them up for storage in the basement.
2. Other people’s CD collections. When I’m over at a friend’s house, I might ask to borrow five of their favorite CDs. I take ‘em home, rip ‘em, return ‘em. I believe this is legal.
3. The library. Kinda like the previous, but the library has a way bigger collection. I check out a stack, rip ‘em and return ‘em. Is this legal? I think it still falls under “fair use.”
4. Music blogs. Not sure what the legality of these are, but they’re one of the best ways to get turned on to new music.
5. Other internet sources. There are lots of archives of free music all over the web. This tends to be weird, fringe or obscure stuff.
6. P2P file-sharing networks. Dubious legality, but these account for a small fraction of the overall collection. However, I recently got a decent BitTorrent client and you can use that thing to download whole discographies. That’s frightening to an addict like me.
7. Purchase. I never used the iTunes Music Store because I didn’t like the DRM restrictions. When Radiohead released their own album online last year, it was the first time I ever paid for a music download. Then I got an Amazon gift certificate from my in-laws and I spent it all on MP3 downloads. Convenient and good quality.

I naïvely thought I’d reach some natural limit of my own interests. I thought I’d discover some artists that I like and then hit some kind of horizon beyond which I wouldn’t care to venture. I didn’t account for the appeal of sheer novelty, or the breadth of my musical taste. I’m still discovering artists and subgenres that I find really compelling. For example, most recently I discovered the incredible band Dead Can Dance.

In the interests of full disclosure, kind of like candidates releasing financial statements, here are charts of my listening activity according to Last.FM and iTunes. (Warning, it’s a very large page. Or you could just check my Last.FM profile.) It should be noted that the extreme prominence in these charts of Nirvana, Foo Fighters, U2 and some others is due to Xy’s influence. Keeping these artists high in the mix does wonders for our domestic tranquility. However, I will take full responsibility for the Blue Öyster Cult.

So anyway. So what? So I enjoy hanging out and listening to music. I also enjoy researching and learning more about new music, expanding my horizons. So what’s the problem?

Well, the sheer maintenance and curatorial work involved with this collection is a bit daunting. I like to have things somewhat orderly, even if I’m the only one who ever sees it. Properly tagged audio makes all sorts of interesting things possible when it comes to programming playlists. But each file has roughly a dozen fields of meta data that need to be filled out, and these rarely are filled out completely when I acquire the file, no matter the source, or worse, they’re filled out improperly. Currently I have 285 tracks for which no artist is listed.

So I do research. Sometimes this leads to interesting philosophical conundrums, such as the concept of genre. But it is time consuming.

And then there’s ratings. iTunes lets you rate each song from one to five stars. But just try rating 20,000 songs and you start to feel like a gerbil on a wheel.

Sometimes I get to feeling like the collection is managing me, rather than the other way around.

So. Resolved. I’m slowing down.

Just as soon as I check out the new Renard Poché album…

I’ve never noticed lovebugs around New Orleans before, though they’re supposed to be common all along the Gulf Coast during certain times of the year. Then again, New Orleans isn’t really on the coast — though the coast is getting closer every day.

Anyway, I’ve been seeing the lovebugs here for the first time over this last week.

They remind me of Vero, Florida, which is where I first saw them and learned about their strange lives. That’s also where a certain young goddess was conceived.

So the lovebugs make me happy.

It’s also butterfly season.

Xy and I were getting lunch at Minnie’s Catfish Corner (highly recommended) when we heard the news about the hurricane in Myanmar. Apparently the geography there is very similar to Louisiana. The reports are at least 10,000 dead with thousands more missing. This reminded us of the worst predictions immediately after Hurricane Katrina and the levee failures in New Orleans. One never knows what to think or say or do in the wake of such unbelievable tragedy. I was surprised when Laura Bush got on TV and gave a very political speech, she refused to use the name “Myanmar”, damning the military junta in charge there for their handling of this crisis. And it sounds like they deserve it, thug I have trouble accepting this kind of cricism out of the mouth of anyone named Bush on a subject like this.

Update: My friend John Clark recommends:

If you are looking for ways to send aid to storm victims in Burma I suggest that you consider the program of the Foundation for the People of Burma, which has been doing grassroots work there for a number of years. Information on donating to their aid program can be found at:

http://www.foundationburma.org/may-cyclone-message.php

Information on the work of the Foundation can be found at:

http://www.foundationburma.org/aboutus.php

We took Persephone in to Xy’s school to visit some of Xy’s students. As she predicted, it was a mob scene.

I’ve posted the pix as a set on Flickr. I recommend viewing it as a slideshow.

Dwight D. Eisenhower Elementary School, 3700 Tall Pines Drive, New Orleans, Louisiana 70131

Something about Jazzfest (presented by Shell) inspires me to stay up all night. Even when I don’t actually go to the Jazzfest. Especially when I don’t actually go.

(For the record, we never go, unless someone gives us free tix, and this year no one has, so we’ve been celebrating our own private Jazzfest at home — every day — rain or shine.)

Tonite Tony L. stopped by our house after Jazzfest. He’s back home in New Orleans for a few days, after having moved to Seattle about a year ago. Of course he kind of misses New Orleans. We stayed up all night drinking, smoking, eating, talking.

Reminds me of a night almost three years ago exactly. Except this time I stayed home, with the baby and all, but the vibe remains the same.

Workers of the World Unite!

You have nothing to lose but your chains!

On this May Day I salute my father-in-law Michael Paxson. He is retiring today after I don’t know how many years of bondage to the state as a civil servant.

Here’s the only picture of Mike I have handy:

Let me also add that in the scheme of things Mike is about the best father-in-law a man could have. Xy and I decided to express our love for the man with a subscription to that bastion of his generation, the Rolling Stone. Only in a bonehead move I filled out an online form and it appears that he’s getting the magazine — and he’ll be billed for it. In perpetuity. I don’t know how we’re gonna square this.

In other news, a giant spider invaded our bedroom and we had to bust out the vacuum cleaner and throw all the furniture around to finally get the thing. Normally we wouldn’t mind the odd bug but this thing was so large it was frightening.

In other other news I’ve been contacted by a young woman, apparently from Alaska or Canada, who has shares both our daughter’s names, first and middle. Through the miracle of the internet I already feel like I know a little bit about her, and quite frankly it’s freaking me out. She seems to be very much what I imagine our daughter might grow up to be — or what she might be already if we’d gotten in the procreation game a wee bit earlier. And that’s cool. But freaky. And what on earth were her parents smoking?

A mysterious fungus sprung up in one of our flowerpots this weekend. It looked creepy and beautiful and smelled terrible. What could it be?

Turns out it’s a Stinkhorn, a Columned Stinkhorn, to be exact: Clathrus columnatus. A tip of the hat to Lisa Mulvey for the quick ID.

I think this is the best photo I’ve taken in a while. Somehow phallic and vaginal at the same time. Best viewed large.

Thanks to Carol G for getting me in touch with the very helpful Christopher Elliott. He’s the ombudsman for National Geographic Traveler magazine. Today he published my case. I found it in the Arizona Daily Star, though not, strangely enough, in our Times-Picayune which usually carries his column in the Sunday Travel section. I can tell you that $83 was very helpful. Orbitz actually refunded our tax paid as well so we came out ahead on this deal.
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Yesterday seemed to be getting off to a good start. I’d set my sights on completing a project that I’ve been postponing and procrastinating on for over a year and a half. Nineteen months actually. That’s when Xy smashed a window out in our kitchen with her bare hand, in a blind drunken rage.

I’m just kidding about the drunken rage. Actually she was swatting a fly. Luckily she didn’t slit her wrist and bleed to death.

I tried replacing it back around Thanksgiving — of 2006. I bought a new pane of glass, and all other necessary supplies: glazing compound, glazier’s points, a sanding block, a putty knife, linseed oil. I commandeered the neighbor’s ladder from the yard of his abandoned house.

Only when I climbed up to do the deed, I realized to my horror that the AC unit would have to be removed to properly do the job.

And so the procrastination began.

Eventually the cardboard I’d put in place with duct tape had to be replaced. I persisted in calling it “Xy’s Folly.” Not really fair. But still good for a laugh.

Finally after all these months I got around to it. Our neighbor’s ladder had disappeared in the interim. I posted to my neighborhood discussion group and immediately got two offers to loan me a ladder. Good ole Joe L. was kind enough to bring his ladder by on Thursday.

And so on Friday I removed the AC unit and then lugged the ladder into the yard of the neighboring house. That was an adventure in itself, since Craig’s yard is now overgrown with weeds reaching eight feet in some cases. It’s a jungle over there.

Once I climbed the ladder, however, I was in for another unpleasant surprise. I’d measured wrong a year and half ago. The replacement glass was a wee bit too small. I’d gotten an odd size, 14 7/8″ x 15 5/8″, but upon more careful measuring I found the pane should be exactly 15″ x 16″.

And so I made a trip back to Lakeview, to the nearest place I know that cuts glass to order, the same Harry’s Ace I’d bought the wrong-sized glass from in 2006.

Then, with right-sized glass in hand, I confidently scaled the ladder and slapped some glaze on there.

At last! Mission accomplished. I breathed a sigh of relief. It was a good day.

And then the glass cracked.

Today, the newspaper headlines reveal I wasn’t the only person who had a bad Friday:

• Jim Bernazzani, the head of the local FBI, was yanked from his post and unceremoniously ordered back to DC. The reason? He shot his mouth off about becoming our next mayor. I agree with this action, by the way. As much as I relished his pursuit of corrupt politicians, he stepped over a line, and he had to go.
• But far more horrific: Three masked men invaded a home in the 7th Ward just after noon and murdered three young adults. An infant in the house was unharmed. Police have no suspects and no motives.

Today it’s raining and raining and raining.

I’ve been meaning to post about the Lafitte Greenway Master Plan. Actually I’ve been told it’s more of a “visioning plan” than a “master plan” but nevertheless it’s complete and you should check it out:

Lafitte Greenway Master Plan

This is the most comprehensive statement to date on the Lafitte Greenway. It explains what the greenway is, as well as why and how it should be built.

If you don’t have any idea what I’m talking about, check the above link. This is one of the most positive and promising projects I’ve had the pleasure of being involved with. (I’m proud to say I’m the Chair of Friends of Lafitte Corridor.) If you like what we’re about, please consider getting involved.

In fact, we’re now making a major push to get the section between Jeff Davis and Carrollton built as soon as possible. Details are on the FOLC homepage. Please consider throwing down some bucks to help make this happen.

Last week I posted about how Flickr should make sharing photos easier. (Actually I first started bellyaching about this last October.) I just wanted to point out that (as of yesterday) they seem to have taken my advice. I’m so pleased I’m not even going to bill them for a consulting fee.

Thanks to the inestimable RCS for apprising me.

Dear Persephone,

People kept telling me we should “enjoy this time” with you. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of this advice.

A couple weeks ago I said to Olivia: “She’s only six weeks old. All she does is sleep and eat and poop. Oh, and occasionally she cries. What moments are we suppose to treasure, exactly?”

Olivia’s reply: “Well, you know, her cuteness and when she smiles.”

But I hadn’t seen you smile, not really. You’d only smiled when you were asleep, and that didn’t seem to count.

Then, just one week later, you smiled at your mother for the first time, and a little later you smiled at me, and I finally understood what Olivia was talking about.

Today at your doctor visit you weighed in at 9 lbs 15 oz, so I won our little family pool. During the exam you had another first. The doctor put you on your stomach, and you rolled yourself over for the first time. That was cool.

Then came the matter of getting your shots. Some friends really put the fear into us about vaccinations. We took that seriously. But we also take the threat of infectious disease seriously. Ultimately we decided to trust medical science and get the shots. I held your tiny hands while the nurse injected you. You wailed like a baby, the first real pain you’ve experienced, I believe.

Later, I read a couple articles to reassure myself. But we don’t know what’s right, not with certainty. We had to make a judgment call on what’s best for you, since you can’t possibly judge for yourself. It was the first of many, and I can only hope we make the right choices for you.

Love, Your Father

I’m taking my last Cipro today, the end of a four week course. When I first started taking them, the effect was dramatic. I called it “dropping the bomb” because I could feel it working throughout my body. I was sick; it made me better. It definitely made me sit up and take notice. (No intestinal discomfort, by the way. It did make me thirsty though.) But the longer I took ‘em, the less I felt it. Now I can drop the bomb and not even blink.

The lump on the side of my neck has slowly diminished. Just a couple weeks ago you could see it from across the room. Now it’s not visible. I can still feel it there, my lymph node, a hard swollen lump.

So what to make of this lymphadenopathy? Nothing much, not for now. Hopefully it just continues to shrink until it gets back to normal. Swollen nodes can indicate all kinds of bad things, but this is probably just a lingering overreaction to the bacterial infection. I did have a chest x-ray just to check there aren’t other swollen glands lurking about.

Anyway I feel great.

My new iMac arrived Thursday. First impression: Wow, this thing is huge. It’s mostly screen, of course, but at 20″ x 12″ it’s almost twice the size of my old iMac’s screen.

I tried using the Migration Assistant to move data from the old iMac to the new one. Unfortunately this worked for Xy’s account but not for mine. After four or five hours it just crapped out. I tried a couple more times, and finally resigned myself to doing it manually.

As for the rig itself, it’s pretty sweet. I saved my pennies and got the 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (aka Extreme) under the theory that you should always buy the fastest damn processor you can afford. That’s ultimately what forced me to buy a new computer; 800 MHz just wasn’t fast enough for the software I want to run. iTunes was dragging and iPhoto? I’d simply given up.

I saved money by opting for the smallest hard drive Apple offers (300 GB) because I have a couple externals I use for music and video.

Finally, I bought a memory upgrade from Other World Computing because Apple is too expensive. So, after the easiest memory install I’ve ever done, I’m rocking 4 GB of RAM. Supposedly OWC will give me a rebate on my old RAM.

There have been a few glitches and gotchas. I opted for the wireless versions of both mouse and keyboard. I thought the keyboard would be the same as the wired version, but it’s not. It’s a compact version, totally missing the numeric keypad, and some keys crammed uncomfortably close. It’s stylish but I’m thinking about buying the regular keyboard and selling this one on eBay. I don’t really need a wireless keyboard anyway. Another glitch: when I installed the software to sync up my Crackberry, it hosed my Bluetooth settings, rendering fancy wireless keyboard and mouse unusable. Hard to operate the computer without any input devices. I had to use the old mouse to delete the configuration file and then pair the devices again upon reboot. But and so it highlights the fragility of connecting this way, and depending on wireless for your basic input devices seems foolish compared to good old reliable (but ugly) cable.

All in all, pretty happy with the new rig. Everything’s much faster and more responsive. And this screen is so big it’s awe-inspiring. Now maybe I can get a chance to start working on that new ROX episode.

I got five years out of the old iMac. It goes to Xy now for word processing. Hopefully she can get another five years out of it.

All my friends and relations up in Indiana are talking about the earthquake last night.

None of them seem to remember the Quake of ‘89 as well as I do. Mom thought it was 87, JB thought it was 86, and Lee doesn’t recall a quake in his lifetime. But I remember it like it was yesterday. I was home from college for the summer, losing my mind, and so I was on the phone talking to the police in preparation for hitchhiking around the country. In the middle of our conversation the whole house started shaking.

“Hey,” I said, “is it shaking over there too?”

“Yes,” said the voice on the other end of the line. “I think it’s an earthquake.” Then the switchboard lit up and she had to go.

But I guess the quake of 89 doesn’t hold a candle to this one. Still, this wasn’t the Big One. I’m glad for that. As I e-mailed to Mom this morning:

Let’s hope we never see a bigger one, at least not anytime soon. I know the Midwest would fare better than New Orleans for many different reasons, but believe me when I say our government is not ready for a major disaster. Glad this wasn’t one and that you’re all right.

The USGS has a great graphic showing the Midwest Earthquake Hotspot.

I don’t know if there’s a name for this style of infant apparel. We call them “ghosties.” Here’s Persephone in her favorite ghostie.

“There’s no reason for anyone to worry.”

So sayeth Section Chief Brett Herr of the Army Corps of Engineers. He’s a talking about a wee small leak that’s been discovered at the 17th Street Canal floodwall.

This is one of the floodwalls that breached and flooded the city back in 2005. These floodwalls were designed and built — with fatal flaws — by the Army Corps. They ignored reports of seepage before Katrina.

And who repaired them? The same Army Corps.

No, there’s no reason for anyone to worry.

Speaking of flooding, and the Corps, they opened the Bonnet Carré Spillway a few days ago to divert water from the swollen Mississippi to Lake Pontchartrain. That got me to thinking about how, once upon a time, it was Spring that was the nervous season in New Orleans. Flooding mostly happened from the river rising, what with melting snow up North and April showers and whatnot. Last year was the 80th anniversary of the Great Flood of 1927, but I don’t remember hearing a word about it in the popular media. Now we’re mostly worried about hurricanes. We’ve got a hurricane evacuation plan, and the local media is always full of hurricane tips. But I honestly don’t know what we’re supposed to do if we get flooding from the river.

Update: At the Chef’s suggestion I offer the following image remix.

April 15th is shaping up to be one of my favorite days of the year. Taxes are due, which is a drag, but so what? I always file early.

Thirteen years ago today I was amongst the team that put the first TV show online. I’ve been bragging about it ever since. I have to. ROX fan DBD sent me a note today confirming ““Global Village Idiots” is still the best television I have ever watched and April 15 is indeed a day to celebrate.” High praise from a guy I’ve never even met.

And today, Persephone smiled her first real smile. Now I know what people mean when they say, “enjoy this time.” And here I thought they were referring to the projectile diarrhea.

So, all in all, a great day.

Even as the river rises ever higher.