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Damnit. How can this possibly only be Wednesday? The Godsmack/Metallica show last night at the Toyota Center was great. Mike, Urs, and I had a blast. I had oysters for lunch and am sipping an eggnog latte. I hope that doesn't cause some chemical mischief in my stomach. I have a million things I want to do and no motivation to start. I just found out that my good buddy, Dwayne, and his better half, Anita, are buying a home near EL and I. Awesome. I'm shooting tigers again this Saturday. I can't wait for Thanksgiving. This rain sucks. Seriously. I need to get back to work.



Randomness.

If anyone is feeling like sending a Christmas present my way early, B&H has the 1Ds Mark II in stock now. update: the couple they had are now gone... damn that sexy beast

The separation project on Saturday morning went successfully and I only ended up working until the early afternoon. I arrived at the house and put on my lumberjack hat to chop some wood for the chiminea. The plan was for Barrett to come over for a few hours and we hang out by the fire and catch up. What actually happened led to my being relatively broken yesterday and my weekend slipping yet further from my grasp. He showed up at the house around 4:30 with a chardonnay and a extremely fine bottle of cabernet for EL to accompany the big box of Godiva chocolates he brought her. For me, he brought a 1.75 liter bottle of Crown Royal Special Reserve. It was quite a surprise... daddy likes. We did start at the chiminea as originally planned. The fire was roaring and the weather was fabulous. I could have just stayed there sipping special reserve and listening to the crackling fire break the silence of my neighborhood air, but the majority decision was to get food, so we left. It was full on at Perry's... a couple of martinis over tiger prawn cocktail and jalapeño sautéed cherry pepper calamari led to a really tasty merlot, New York Strip, center-cut pork tenderloin, grilled Australian Rock Lobster tail, and Chateaubriand, Our meal was wrapped up with tableside flambéed Bananas Foster and EL's favorite, the Nutty DeAngelo (a deep cold frozen vanilla ice cream ball that has been encrusted with white chocolate and slivered almonds is placed on a plate striped with dark chocolate, a flambé cook makes homemade chocolate-caramel sauce in a pan tableside before firing it with brandy and adding a healthy dose of pecans, then pours the molten decadency over the super-frozen crusted ice cream previously described... words don't do it justice). We actually had some NY Strip left over, so even Éclair could share. By the time we returned homes, the chiminea was out and the temperature had dropped a bit, so Barrett and I took the party to the office upstairs. I think I actually made it to bed around 5:30 Sunday morning after we had killed 750ml of bourbon between the two of us (on top of the libations from earlier in the evening). I did it. I successfully dented my liver. So after a day of nursing my aches yesterday over the Colts whomping the Texans and suckling some Sonic tater tots in honor of my bro, EL and I rolled over to Urs and Sandra's because Markus was in town from Zurich and he was cooking Italian. He is the manager of a Italian restaurant there and he dazzled us with the best Italian food I've had outside of Italy. It was so, so good. He made a sort of homemade spread that had the consistency of pâté, but was made up of blended cheeses and tomato. His home batch of bruschetta was more flavorful than any I've ever tasted. The main course was similar to an eggplant parmesan, but so much better... wow. The rest of the gang enjoyed sweet vermouth or espresso after the meal as my tiredness caught up to me. I went into a deep coma as soon as we got home. The weekend was a blur of work and play. The best part was the time I spent with EL. I'm running a little late this morning and have an eight o'clock meeting for which I'll surely be tardy. I am at the mercy of the public transit system and there was a stalled bus in the HOV. c'est la vie. Have a good Monday.

Slow going, but things are looking good. I need to start my weekend soon.

Too early to be sitting in the office working.

From Slate via Greg A Connoisseur's Guide to Sideways Sure, the movie's good. But how's the wine? By Mike Steinberger Posted Friday, Nov. 5, 2004, at 3:25 PM PT Sideways: great wine porn When I first heard about Sideways, the film that follows a wine buff and his friend on a weeklong, wine-soaked misadventure through the vineyards of California's central coast, I braced myself for two cringe-inducing hours at the theater. My apprehension wasn't all that surprising, I suppose—whenever obscure hobbies become fodder for major motion pictures, the hobbyists get restless. We worry that the filmmakers, in some misguided effort to render a beloved and complicated subject accessible, will dumb it down and produce a work riddled with errors. Sideways is a major disappointment for those of us who relish pointing out such mistakes. It is not just a terrific movie: It is a terrific wine movie, one that should put an appreciative smile on the face of every oenophile. The movie doesn't get everything right, of course. At one point in the film, Miles Raymond (the wine obsessive played by Paul Giamatti) is dumbstruck to discover that Stephanie (the saucy tasting-room hostess played by Sandra Oh) has a Richebourg in her small wine collection. But the fact that the wine is a Richebourg (a grand cru red Burgundy) by no means guarantees that it will be celestial; what matters is who made the wine and when. The important point is that Stephanie's bottle is a Romanee-Conti Richebourg—which is impressive. (Unfortunately, we don't get a close enough shot of the bottle to see the vintage.) A more substantial sticking point is Miles. It is impossible to say that Paul Giamatti's portrait of the oenophile is inaccurate, but it is not exactly flattering. Apart from being luckless and joyless—his life is truly an empty glass—Miles is also a bit of a wine asshole. At the first winery he and his friend Jack hit, Miles claims to detect in one wine a "soupçon of asparagus" and a "flutter of nutty cheese," descriptions that had me sliding a little lower in my seat. Later in the movie, he pompously dismisses another wine as "quaffable but far from transcendent." Miles is also condescending. When Maya (the love interest played by Virginia Madsen) observes that the alcohol overwhelms a pinot noir the two of them are sharing, he seems excessively surprised that she recognizes the flaw in the wine and can diagnose it using the correct lingo. Sideways casts a bemused eye at wine geek culture generally. It suggests that all the sniffing, swilling, and pontificating is ultimately BS and that, even for an aficionado like Miles, the real point of tasting fine wine is to catch a nice buzz. (Miles is forever getting tanked and nursing hangovers.) In The New Yorker's recent food issue, Adam Gopnik caused some gnashing of teeth among oenophiles when he claimed that the rituals and rigors of wine appreciation are essentially a smokescreen, a way of prettifying the grubby business of getting bombed. In online chat rooms, aggrieved wine lovers weighed in: "The enjoyment of wine qua wine, distinct from the joy of imbibing alcohol to get drunk, seems lost on Mr. Gopnik," one wrote. "The twin pleasures of the wine and its alcohol combine to produce an intoxicating effect, but to collapse the former into the latter is to effect a fruitless reduction. ... I have been pleasantly drunk on fine wine and cheap lager. Sorry, there is a difference." So far, wine fans have been kind to Sideways, even though it echoes Gopnik at points—perhaps this is the best testament to how winning the movie is. And it is winning. Sideways is great wine porn. The vineyard scenes are, of course, stunning, and the wines paraded across the screen will certainly put that knowing smile on the faces of those who like to drink well. When Maya and Stephanie join Miles and Jack for dinner one night, the bottles come fast and furious, and all are recognizable, estimable names: Kistler, Sea Smoke, Andrew Murray, Dominique Laurent (a slightly odd presence, given that Miles indicates early on that he is no fan of excessive oak). When the ladies retreat to the bathroom for a moment and Jack chastises Miles for having subjected the table to a lengthy disquisition on Gaston Huet's Vouvrays—perhaps the ultimate insider's wines—I nearly fell out of my seat. Huet's Vouvrays, mentioned in a major motion picture? Delicious. There were other things I never thought I'd hear in a mainstream movie. Miles outside a restaurant: "If anyone orders merlot, I'm leaving. I'm not drinking any fucking merlot." Maya to Miles: "Why are so you into pinot?" Miles to Jack: "I just don't like the way they manipulate chardonnay." There was also one thing I hope I only ever see in a major motion picture: Late in the film, sad sack Miles takes a 1961 Cheval Blanc to a local diner and proceeds to drink it out of a Styrofoam cup while chomping on a burger and onion rings. True, he is borderline suicidal at this point, and maybe this is his death-row meal, but a '61 Cheval Blanc certainly deserves a better death than that. For this wine geek, it is Miles' affection for pinot noir that is most thought-provoking. Pinot, at least in its Burgundian incarnation (and it is in Burgundy that pinot reaches its apogee), is the most fickle wine grape. It also happens to produce, in Burgundy at least, the most ravishing and seductive wines of all, and I've always regarded pinot as the grape that has the greatest appeal for sensualists. But because pinot is so temperamental, it delivers a lot more frustration than pleasure—for every truly sublime red Burgundy, there are probably a dozen that are thin, tart, and insipid. That Xanax-popping Miles, whose life is one long catalog of disappointments, is drawn to the one wine grape that rarely fails to disappoint raises an intriguing question: Pinot may appeal to sensualists, but does it also hold a perverse appeal for masochists and tortured souls? It is a question the sensualists may ponder over their next bottles of Volnay.

In the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, we may find ourselves on Veteran's Day. My head is bowed on bended knee to all my brothers and those that came and lost before them... God bless you all.




In Flanders Fields In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below. We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved, and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders Fields. Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields. - John McCrae, 1915

Arrrrrrrrg! Well, the site is back up. I am having a terrible time with finding the CSS tag that is causing the body text to be white in IE while simultaneously black in Mozilla. Damn you Microsoft. Damn you to hell.

I received a phone call from someone in Indiana last night chastising me for my recent "write more, post less crap" decision. All I have to say to that individual (who will remain nameless) is: I can't believe the fucking Colts beat the Vikings. Bitch.

I am vaguely ill. Yesterday was spotted with slight dizziness and a thick head... not like those found on poorly poured Guinness, but like those found in allergy bogged sinus troubled people. I don't have any known allergies, so I must be getting a head cold or something of the like. I woke up this morning with a neck ache, head ache, back ache, and that same waterlogged density in my brain that was there yesterday plus the added benefit of a scratchy and irritated throat. I am positive it had nothing to do with the beer imbibed at Molly Maguire's last night after Pei Wei. I mean... after all, "beer ain't drinkin'". I received an email from yet another tech support "escalation" person whose name I can't pronounce because my Punjabi is rusty. It said nothing more that "this problem has been resolved". There was no explanation... no "oooh we screwed up and fixed our mistake"... no "the problem was X and we did Y"... nada. Assholes. Anyhoo, I'm happy that it's fixed and I now have the task of rebuilding the site. Joy. It shouldn't take more than a few days... me thinks. I'm off to see how many Mai's bar-b-que pork spring rolls I can stuff in my face over the period of an hour. Hooty hoo!

Rocky (over 600 pounds)

Panthera tigris altaica - MAMMAL - Order Carnivora Description Largest of the living felids. Length: 8-10 feet. Weight: 500-700 pounds, males larger. Record weight 845 pounds. Coat: long, thick, yellowish. Reddish in summer, without red in winter. Belly white extends onto flanks; tail white and black. Ears black with white spots outside, white within. Range Formerly Korea, China, and east coast of Russia to the edge of Siberia; currently probably extinct in Korea, and nearly extinct in China. The last viable population of wild Amur tigers survive in a region of Russia known as Ussuriland, along the Sikhote-Alin mountain range, which is in the Amur River drainage. Status This species is listed as endangered, and commercial trade of this species is prohibited by international law. Since dissolution of the Soviet Union, poaching has increased dramatically. To attract foreign investment, Russia has begun selling its old-growth forest logging rights, and Amur tigers’ large home range makes them especially vulnerable to habitat loss from logging. Lincoln Park Zoo participates in the Amur Tiger Species Survival Plan. Habitat Mixed deciduous and coniferous forests in mountain areas. Niche Carnivorous: will eat whatever it can catch, but wild boar make up more than half its diet. Other prey includes Sika deer and elk. Solitary ambush hunters, this species uses the dense cover of forest growth, tracking prey through the deep snow. Tigers have been spotted prowling coastal beaches when deep snow forces hungry elk to feed on ocean kelp. Territorial, requiring a large home range: 500-620 square miles. Life History Mating usually restricted to winter months. Gestation about 3.5 months, 3-4 cubs weighing about 2.2 pounds each are born blind, follow female after about 8 weeks, hunt independently by about 18 months, disperse at 2-2.5 years, mature at 3-4 years. Life span about 15 years, longer in captivity. Special Adaptations• Striped coat disrupts outline of body in dense cover. • Massive build with heavily muscled forelimbs and shoulders add strength for capturing large prey. • Hindlimbs longer than forelimbs to facilitate jumping. • Paws equipped with long, retractile claws to help grab and hold prey. • Loose belly skin permits the animal to be kicked by prey with less chance of injury. • Eyes in front allow for depth perception and ability to isolate and efficiently capture prey. • Rough tongue designed to peel skin of prey animal away and rasp flesh away from bone.

Sugar

Panthera leo krugeri - MAMMAL - Order Carnivora Description Male has thick mane around the head that extends down the chest between the forelegs; broader and heavier than the lioness. Maximum weight: 500 pounds. Females lack mane. Color is primarily tawny. Tuft at the end of tail. Cubs are covered with dark spots, which they lose in about a year. Range Southern Sahara to southern Africa, excluding Congo rain forest belt. Habitat Grasslands and open woodland. Niche Carnivorous: when hunting in a pride they eat large mammals like zebras. During drought, the pride splits up and individuals eat smaller mammals because they are easier to catch. A pride can have as few as 3-4 individuals or as many as a few dozen individuals. Ruler of pride is a male who often has support of 1 or 2 male cohorts. Females and their young make up most of the pride. Young males are usually expelled from pride by age 3. Young bachelors, in groups of 2-3, will periodically try to take over a reigning monarch. Once a monarch is beaten, it leaves the pride (if still alive). Life History Males mate with several females during the same period, so more than one mother has young of the same age. This lets some mothers hunt while others stay in charge of cubs. Lionesses mature at 4 years. Cubs are raised in a “nursery area” shielded from bad weather and from hyenas or leopards. After a 3.5-month gestation, 2-4 cubs are born. Cubs begin an all-meat diet at 4 months. By 6 months they begin to participate in hunts. Cubs usually will not kill by themselves till they are over 1 year old. Special Adaptations • Thick mane helps male look bigger and protects the throat. • Tawny coat color camouflages animal and young among scrub vegetation. • Eyes in front allow for depth perception and ability to judge distances when stalking or ambushing prey. • Heavily muscled forelimbs and shoulders add strength for capturing large prey. • Forepaws equipped with long, retractile claws which help to grab and hold prey. • Rough tongue designed to peel skin of prey animal away from flesh, and flesh from bone. • Resonating roar used to warn intruders of territorial boundaries and to communicate with other members of the group occupying the same area. • Loose belly skin allows animal to be kicked by prey with little chance of injury

I hate incompetence and apathy in customer service. I have been living and breathing it the last couple of days. If someone is paying you to care and it is in your job description to care when someone pays you to care, then fucking care. My site is down... hard. The rolley polley fish heads over at Lunarpages dug my last nerve out with a jackhammer this weekend. I have had that service for 8 months or so and never had a problem. I found out yesterday that the reason I never had a problem is because I never asked for assistance. I ditched the remainder of my hosting contract in a fit of pseudo-rage... not like when you want to squeeze someone's neck until their head pops off, but more like when someone empties all the coffee out of the pot without making more... anyhoo, I found another place with a good deal (better than what I had) and made a few calls to their "support gurus" to verify minimum server requirements were met before pulling the trigger. Everything checked out and so I leapt. The moment my feet were in the air, I could see the broken glass in the landing area. I rapidly discovered that the server they put me on didn't have Zend Optimizer installed as they had led me to believe. Ticket #1 begins and leads to an escalation in the middle of the night. They apparently came through for me to save face and dodge the egg of false advertisement upon it, but my shizzle is still fizzled. I now have three (yes, 3) separate tickets open with them... one in escalation, the other just plain vanilla, and have logged calls to everyone I could reach all with the same result. Dust settling on my inactive web site. I don't even think I would care so much if they just sent me a little snippet saying they were busy and couldn't help until later... OR that they didn't know what was wrong and it was beyond their capabilities to figure it out... OR that they misinformed me and they don't support the software I require... ANYTHING. Anything that is, that would let me formulate a plan of action. I could get a refund and move to another host provider. Whatever. I just hate this complete and utter inaction. Fucktards.

Friday night was just right. I stopped on the way home from the office and bought an axe… a giant axe. I'm no lumberjack and I'll be the first to admit it, but I did alright making little logs out of big ones. When the neighbors tree cracked in a huge storm this summer and a large (6 or so inches in diameter) branch fell on EL's car, they had a service come and remove the obviously ailing tree. They agreed to give us the wood since we weren't going to have them pay for the damages. I mean, really, it's not their fault. Anyhoo, Sam drove over on the Vespa for beer. Urs and Sandra showed up a little later and then Raymund arrived. In the interim, I had built a roaring blaze in the chiminea and started libations like a professional. We all sat around the warmth as the flames lapped the neck of the hand crafted gift from Mexico. I love that pottery. By the time everyone left and we actually headed for bed, it was late. Raymund bunked in the guest room because of the early start we had the next morning. The damn alarm clock started hammering away at my last nerve around 3:30 aye emm. A short freshening later, we were on the road. I had booked a photo shoot at a private sanctuary of sorts for large cats that either had retired from show business or were no longer wanted by their irresponsible owners. I really wanted to take Urs, but the bookings were done months ago and they only allow 5 people per visit. My shoot was filled up. We arrived in McKinney about seven-ish. Raymund races SECA Autocross at the semi-pro level, so we made good time. Heh. The big cats were amazing. They were no like zoo animals. They were full of life... awesome and powerful. They would run and charge the barrier we were behind. The first cat I saw was "Sugar"... a lioness. She always had the "I want to eat you" look in here eyes. We had to sign all this legal mumbo jumbo and various liability waivers to get in... crazy. The tigers were my favorite... gorgeous. The largest was a male named "Rocky". Rocky was over 600 pounds and the size of a horse. These cats are so fast and so silent that if you were their prey in the jungle, it would be all over before you even knew it started. We stopped at Tom Mangelson's Images of Nature gallery in Plano. That man is inspiring to me... my hat is off to him. Well, if I were wearing a hat, it would be off to him. The drive back was tiresome, but we had good conversation. I just wanted to veg when I got home. I'm trying to research a new stock image management system and ecommerce front end for my business site this morning. After that, it's hanging shit on walls and maybe some bookstore visits. A lot of slow paced nothing for Sunday. Have a great afternoon.

Scratchy eyes... like when the wind is gusting asymptotically from gale to fucking hurricane across an empty Wal-Mart parking lot in west Texas and you have your lids kissing forehead courtesy of industrial duct tape. Yeah, the Friday's that won't quite make me like that... tired with scratchy eyes. I'm so pleased that the same bandwagon that was preaching the closed mindedness of the Republican masses have now adopted their own flavor of blinders and can only see religious lemmings jumping off the polling cliff or conspiracy theory. A fine example of another "thing" that makes me weary. Important issues are not always easily solved and never resolved exactly to everyone's liking. You can't please everyone all the time. 'Tis life my graceful ladies and horney gentlemen. I was reflecting this morning on getting off my non-blogging ass and moving this site to another host provider, ditching the onslaught of photographs, and writing more... like the old days. That lasted right up to the point I discovered that MT is charging for use now. It's not that I wouldn't pay. It's a great platform that I will forever and hopelessly under-utilize however, I just have no time (read: patience) for installing "the new and improved" version and porting my hoo-ha over to it. I would probably drop the proverbial ball and lose all the mind-dung I've been shoveling here for the last couple of years. I think the thing that led me to the whole blogournal revamp was the fond remembrance of friends that have slipped through the sanded neck of the hourglass and become distant from neglect. Friends that I met specifically via this blog, but enjoyed dialog and correspondence outside the confines of this medium... namely Melissa and Beth. If you can shield yourself from the blog-drama, there are folks out there that are worth knowing. A lot of it is RealLife™ and how time and priorities have their own Doppler effect as we pass through it. Some of my closest friends in the world have been victimized by this very unswervable artifact of reality. My brother Sean, who I am more happy for than words with the announcement of his fresher-than-new-car-smell engagement, is not even the start. My lifelong friend Rob... we never keep in touch as we should. My consigliori buds Greg and Jason... I miss them a lot. Kirk, John, and countless others of varied acquaintance. As Guy would say, I need to find all the friends that I've lost on the road... maybe then I will find me some peace. Back to the basics muthafukkas.

Tonight, I raise my glass of wine (ok, big arse goblet) to you all. God bless you and I'm sorry I am so damn busy. I'm working on it.





(my eyes are still scratchy)

Learn about The Internet today... then go home and masturbate.

Located in the Alps of Switzerland, Eiger is a mountain rising about 3,970 meters (13,025') above sea level and is actually the easternmost peak of a ridge crest that also contains Jungfrau (4,158m) and Mönch (4,099m). Mönch can be seen as the peak on the far right edge of this shot. The first ascent of Eiger was made by Swiss guides Christian Almer, Peter Bohren and Irishman Charles Barrington on August 11, 1858. The North face of Eiger was first climbed on July 24, 1938 by Heinrich Harrer, Andreas Heckmair, Ludwig Voerg and Fritz Kasparek of a German-Austrian expedition. The Eiger Nordwand (north face) holds a unique place in mountaineering legend. Last of the great north faces of the Alps to be climbed — after the North Face of the Matterhorn and the Grand Jorasses — it was for a century considered unclimbable. Eiger translates to ogre, and this huge north face of the Bernese Oberland has lived up to its name by killing the first nine climbers who attempted it. The landmarks of the face: the Difficult Crack, the Swallows Nest, the Death Bivouac, the Hinterstoisser Traverse, the Ramp, the Traverse of the Gods, the Spider, and the Exit Cracks. Although the clouds were not cooperating with me, I wanted to share my vantage of this beast. This is the only shot where most of the ominous 6000 foot sheer face can be seen. The largest sheer cliff in the world to the best of my knowledge. The photo doesn't do justice. The Ogre Waits for the next adventurer's visit... could it be you?

If I hit the lotto, my mountain home will have one of these.