Monthly Archives: May 2008

Dissolve

I have said and written before that I believe music to be the most powerful, influential, and all affecting human art.  For me, looking at pictures or reading printed words pales in comparison to the effect that music can have on my entire soul.

Any feeling or emotion that I can or will experience has been emphasized, amplified, and fully experienced with the assistance of music.  Likewise – great music is capable of actually producing these feelings and emotions.  It’s really almost impossible for me to accurately articulate into words.

With that said, there are few and rare cases where a ‘song’ transcends the bounds of my mortality.  It becomes more than a catchy rhythm, more than a consistent beat, more than meaningful harmony, more than lyrics, more than vocals, and more than words can describe.  The only way i can find to describe this situation is that the artists do not simply play their instruments, write their lyrics, or sing their songs.  Rather, they wield pure and unbridled emotion via their instrument of choice; harnessing and culminating the entire universe’s energy into one cataclysmic event. (or, ‘song’).

One such artist is “Drist”.  One such song is “Dissolve”.

I am fairly convinced that this song my most favorite song that I have ever heard.  The combination of music, vocals, and lyrics pull my emotions from sorrow and empathy, through hope and inspiration, and finish at absolute contentment.   I find this nearly impossible because the lyrics are almost completely objective – but nevertheless, it is an amazing experience.

Different forms of music have different effects on different people.  This particular music has a profound effect on me.  And I thank the band Drist for the experience.

Listen to the song
Drist on MySpace

The lyrics:
Oceans arrived, let go
So sure, how could my confidence be wrong
I sacrifice, and hold the pain
Of each and everyday alone

All I know, is all I loved
All long forgiven
All I knew, are all my wrongs
I’ve long forgotten

Watch as the tide dissolves
So sure, that the lines I drew
Were all gone
I sacrifice and hold onto
The chance that I will soon dissolve

Break all your ties
Face the one
Held inside.
Take your breath
Keep your head
Held back while
I show you. See them
Watch it go

Gary Fisher Wingra

Gary Fisher WingraFor the last two to three weeks, I have been stuck on the notion that I MUST own a bicycle.  I haven’t had a bike since I was probably 13 or 14, and I figure riding a bike is about 500 times more enjoyable than running.  I’ve been shopping around with the thought that I wanted a “roadish” bike that I could ride back and forth to work (4.1 miles) comfortably, but that could also hit a light path without dumping me.  I definitely didn’t want a full on road bike with the underhook type handle bars.  Doing a fair amount of research put me onto a class of bike called a “commuter” or “urban” depending on which brand you’re looking at.

I started looking at Trek, really because that’s the only bicycle brand that I’ve ever known to be top notch.  So, I spent alot of time shopping Trek bikes online and reading reviews about their different models.  In the end, I was certain that I would be purchasing a Trek SU 2.0 just from reading online about it.

Then i started to call around bike shops and ask some preliminary questions – what size frame do I need?  Is a Trek SU 2.0 going to do what I want it to?  What accessories are must haves?  etc.  From there, the next step was going into a bike shop and checking out the goods first hand.  And I was completely amazed that after one trip to a bike shop, some discussion with the biker guru employees, and a couple test rides – I had put a bike on layaway.  Not a SU 2.0.  Not even a Trek.  Rather, a brand and model I hadn’t even previously heard of: The Gary Fisher Wingra.

I picked up the bike last friday, and in the first 4 days of ownership I rode it 20 miles.  I rode it 8 miles home from the bike shop right after picking it up.  I road it to work a couple days this week (thank god our office has a shower.) and I rode around our neighborhood a few times just getting a feel for it.

The bike wasn’t too bad really pricewise – but I bought a speedo/odometer, a helmet, a lock, some bar end grips, a water bottle holder, a rack/pack carrier, and a little carry bag that attaches under the seat.  After all was said and done, we had to spend a little more than I liked – but I figured out that each day I ride my bike to work will save me about 2 bucks in gas – and I only live 4.1 miles from home.  Not to mention, riding my bike to work is a pretty good way for me to get some much needed exercise.

All in all – W00t Gary Fisher’s wingra.  Check out some pics.

Look n’ Feel

As per usual about once every 6 to 8 months, I compulsively decided to change my website’s theme.

Even though I feel drastic needs to make these changes, I hate doing it.  It’s so hard to find a decent theme to start with, and I definitely don’t have the time or the motivation to write my own theme from scratch.

Hoping for a solution to this ongoing problem, I have decided to use the theme “K2” – a popular theme that is currently embraced by Vanlandw and CSH.  This is a very simple, yet very aesthetically pleasant and easy on the eyes.

With that said – I am never using any other theme on palmerforpresident.com.  Any design, look, or usage of theming will all be based on K2.  I may slightly modify the theme, but it will always be K2 as a base.  Out of the box, the main thing i didn’t like was how dynamic K2 is.  It dynamically generates the sidebar and header nav on every single page that is loaded.  I modified both of these to be quite a bit more static – for me that’s a little nicer.

I don’t mind the theme, so any modifications will be fairly minor, but there will be a bit of a ‘transitional’ phase for me to get everything formatted to this themes css styles.

w00t k2

Overteched

This week has been nothing short of an overload on my sensory nervous system from a technical standpoint.

The week started with a drive to Detroit, where I proceeded to reside for the remainder of the workweek. I was attending a VMware training course since my company is going to invest fairly heavily in virtualization this year. The class was an ‘advanced’ course with accelerated curriculum. Long story short, I had VMware jammed at me from 8a.m.-6p.m. 5 days straight. Normally a structure like this would be result in a distinct lack of sanity – however, with VMware the class was actually very enjoyable and interesting for me. The entire concept of virtualizing operating systems is fascinating to me, and it really is changing (or, has already changed) the entire IT industry.

In a sense, this course almost motivated me. The very second I got home on Friday evening I started to mess around with my own home network. Here I sit on Saturday evening with an upgraded Destkop computer (Ubuntu 8.04), a new Ubuntu 8.04 server running on a spare 2 ghz workstation we have, and a fairly cool home network.

I now have all my media and documents centralized on this Ubuntu server, and I’ve published that using NFS so the files are accessible from both my laptop and my desktop computers. It’s been a learning experience for me because I’ve worked with Windows server systems for so long, but it’s been really fun for me to tinker around with Ubuntu from a server OS perspective.

I went even further and also set the server up to take over DHCP and DNS (vs my netgear router giving out IPs and resolving names), installed apache web server, added a web based management front end called eBox, installed MediaWiki, and finally added a cool little “Chat with Eric” applet that I had noticed Google published for their Google talk service. (click on the About page, it’s there too)

A little odd for me to start on a tech bender like this, especially since I was over-loaded with tech info all week long.

Either way, it’s been fun.