Month: August 2003

Today’s rant is about our disposable society and how it is ultimately affecting everything around us.

“It’s good enough”… God how I hate that term.

Those three little words can do so much damage to the development of something and, unfortunately, it’s become a pervasive concept in our modern civilization. Take audio for example…

CDs are ubiquitous these days; everyone has several of the shiny 5 inch plastic coasters lying about, but the sound quality of these things isn’t as good as an “old school” record. Sure, you don’t get the pops and clicks associated with a cheap turntable running a cheap needle on a poorly cared for album, but you also pay the price in sound quality.

CD’s are compressed, believe it or not, because they are sampled from sounds which are inherently analog. Sampling, by its very nature, misses something in the translation which is why they call it “sampling” rather than “recording”.

The CD format does have some nice features though. They’re smaller and more portable than records and they used to be more rugged before the pressing companies figured out that using softer plastic surfaces resulted in more repeat sales. They essentially switched to a plastic that was “good enough”, but not too good because you don’t want something that lasts too long.

The record companies also, via *much* advertising, pulled a fast one by convincing everyone that CDs sounded better. They like CDs because it costs one tenth the money per unit than a record and, besides, CD sound is definitely “good enough” for the average consumer right?

Ok, time for a little lesson in audio. Up there I mentioned that CDs were sampled right? Well the sampling has a resolution of 16 bits which compresses any point on an infinitely variable analog wave form into one of 65536 possible numbers. Ok, so there is some compression going on there right? Ok. You’re still with me.

Now you have to capture the whole wave form and that is achieved by sampling. CDs are sampled at 44.1Khz and this is where a fellow named Nyquist comes in. Nyquist states in his theory that the highest frequency which can be accurately represented is less than one-half of the sampling rate. So if we want a full 20 kHz audio bandwidth which, by the way, comprises everything a human ear can hear we must sample at least twice that fast; i.e. over 40 kHz.

If we don’t, bad things happen.

44.1Khz gives us that 20Khz of bandwidth plus some fudge factor. This is great right? The record companies want you to think it is. But it’s not…

There’s this little thing called harmonics which can be additive or subtractive of the base sound you are recording. Things like the room the performance is in, the types of instruments played, the location of the instruments relative to each other, and a zillion other things all add harmonics to the sound and that is what makes it “alive”. Well, unfortunately for CDs, most harmonics fall above the 20Khz cutoff of their sampling scheme. There is another little issue with the fact that CDs are two channel and it is virtually impossible to recreate the imagery of a live performance with two speakers.

This is where we get a new CD recording scheme called SACD, or Super Audio CD, which is a new product by some very bright folks at Sony.

SACD is completely different in the fact that it samples one bit 2,822,400 times a second. Yes Virginia, that’s 2.8Ghz. So rather than chopping up the incoming wave form into 65536 possible numbers 44,100 times a second, it takes one number and counts how many times it saw it 2.8 million times a second… The more times it sees the number, the more “pulses” it gets and the more pulses, the higher the frequency, up to about 1.4Ghz… WAY beyond the pitiful 20Khz of a mortal CD.

This gives SACD the ability to accurately reproduce an almost pure analog wave form in a digital format including all of the accompanying harmonics. Plus, the format understands 5.1 surround sound and can really put you “in” the room where the music was recorded.

Pretty nifty huh?

Well, unfortunately it’ll probably never see true market penetration because CDs are “good enough”.

I actually blame a lot of this on MP3s. Today’s listener has grown accustomed to getting his or her music simply off the internet. Sure, it sounds like ass, but they don’t care because it was easy to get and didn’t cost anything. This means that when they –do- decide to actually go and spend some money on an actual CD, it in comparison to the ass-sounding MP3 is GREAT!… So who needs a new CD format? Especially one you can’t pirate…

I realize this was probably a lot more about CDs than you would ever care to know, but “good enough” works the same with all sorts of things…

My store sells lots of things, not just computers. We’re kind of a “mom and pop” supermarket of stuff including sporting goods like snowboards, skis, bikes and golf stuff as well as cameras, high end stereo stuff and firearms.

Well, we’ll be getting a “Gart Sports” store in about 100 yards from the store before Christmas and you know what will happen? The same thing that’s happening with our new Super Wal-World… We’re going to have a hard time competing.

See, Gart’s sells crap. They saw the “good enough” trend coming a few years back and started selling junk real cheap. Gart’s won’t carry something like this year’s Unity snowboard which is the absolute best thing you can buy. We have four in different sizes though… The sad thing is, no one will buy the Unity’s off of us because they cost about $150 more than a crap, mass produced Burton over at Gart’s. The same holds true with bikes…

My store has a huge collection of high-end downhill and trail bikes made by companies like Kona, KHS, and Giant. These bikes cost as much as a used car, but will absolutely last longer… Garts sells Schwinn, Mongoose, and low end Gary Fisher. Crap by any other name that will need to be replaced at year’s end. But it’s all $300 cheaper than anything we have and will, therefore, sell like hotcakes.

Just like how we haven’t been able to sell a single camera since WallyWorld moved in. I carry nothing but top of the line real photography stuff like Nikon, Olympus, Mamiya and Leica. WallyWorld sells plastic cameras for half my price and they fly off the shelves.

So, what causes this? Is it the fact people are incapable of saving these days (they really want you to dispose of your income as fast as you can) and so can’t save up for something nice? Is it simply that no one perceives the intrinsic value of better equipment anymore? Or is it just the whole “disposable society” thing again, covering the world in $50 plastic crap that was designed to break in a year?

I wish I knew…

Today was slow; real slow. Well, ok, there was about an hour of sheer terror as this lady who drops in every now and then dropped in again and wanted to talk to me… For an hour.

Jack says he thinks she’s waiting for me to ask her to dinner or something. I suppose that could be the case, but you pretty much have to hit me with something that says, “I’m interested in you!” Trust me, this has been done before.

Anyways she talked –at- me for over an hour which, in that time, I said exactly five words and nodded several times. When she left to get her computer so she could have me take a look at it, I told Jack that I was going out back to fake my death and I’d see him later… He just laughed.

Geoff was bored silly so I showed him this newfangled internet thing including IRC… He spent the next six hours scaring the crap out of himself by way of talking with all the other conspiracy nuts out there. I think it was beneficial for him, or at least it will be when he runs out of ammo…

The talking lady came back about an hour later and continued right where she left off earlier as I installed a new CDRW into her computer. The install took all of about 4 minutes but getting rid of her took another hour. When she left again I told Jack I needed a better place to hide… He just laughed again.

I guess the day wasn’t a complete waste of time though. I did get to talk to the Secret Service fellow who drops by on occasion to discuss his home made UAV. He’s a pretty cool guy even if he can kill 4 people simultaneously with his shoe… He’s part of the Ford Protectorate. Apparently once you score high enough to be El Presidente, you get a permanent detachment of SS guys for the rest of your life.

He says it’s a lot of fun as he spends the summers at the Beaver Creek Ford Compound and spends the winters in southern California or something at the other Ford Compound.

Other than that, it was a day. I’m off to fire up the fireplace, cook some dinner, and read the rest of this really bad Dragon Lance novel; “Night of Blood”.

Later..

Have you seen all these oval stickers on people’s cars lately? You know the ones I’m referring to: They’re usually used for identifying the nationality of a car in Europe as you can change countries and languages there as easily as we change states here in the US.

You see these things everywhere now, almost as if we were all living in Luxembourg or something and for me it’s almost become a game to decipher these things while I’m on the road: VT for Vermont or Pb for Leadville, Colorado…

Obviously there are some drivers out there who aren’t very good at the game and now “zip code” ovals are becoming all the rage… I saw a car yesterday from Washington State with an 80443 oval plastered on the rear window… 80443 is the zip code for Frisco Colorado.

But why? Why are these things popping up *everywhere* now? What is it that drives people with Ohio plates to put a Leadville “nationality” sticker on their car?

Maybe it’s because of things like mega-malls and clone stores like McDonalds. Every home town is suffering right now; local mom and pop record stores replaced with “Sam Goody”, the local farmer’s coop hardware store with the really friendly old guy who gives you free sodas in the summer is now a 200,000 square foot “Home Depot”, and the gas station your buddies used to work at for next to nothing just so they could tune their cars on the lifts is now a computer controlled junk food store with 28 pumps… Hell, even your bank that used to sponsor a community picnic in the summer is now a massive multinational conglomerate owned by folks who don’t even live in your town, let alone your state or even the US.

The simple fact of the matter is that you can go *anywhere* and get the same McBurger, the same brand of ice-cream from the same chain grocer, and buy gas from the same gas station you saw a few miles back… There just isn’t any adventure out there anymore. Everything is safety caped, warning labeled, and cloned for our ease of consumption.

Chances are, even your house is a clone of your neighbor’s house, and his neighbor’s house… Sure, you might have a different color of paint, but even that was agreed upon by the housing community you live in.

I think this is why these ID stickers are popping up everywhere. For example, Leadville is still an authentic human civilization with authentic humans living there… No clone-homes, no “Super Wal-Mart”… Even the gas station has a real human being who will happily talk to you about the weather as you fill up on $2.00 per gallon gas, not a sterile LCD screen wishing you a nice day as long as you come inside and buy a hot-dog.

People want to connect to that sort of feeling; a human feeling of community. These stickers mark one as being connected either by visiting or even living there. They are a statement that the owner has seen what life should be like, that the owner has seen the sunset in a clear sky, the sound of wind in the trees, had the pleasure of human contact. The sticker is a badge of an ideal, a symbol of a place that exists outside the glass and steel monotony of day to day living. A place free from glaring high rises, house sized billboards, and eight lane side streets…

Maybe, just maybe, the fact that people are so enamored with these stickers is a good thing. Maybe we intrinsically, deep down inside, all desire the things these stickers stand for. That alone gives me hope for us as a people.

Wolf and Lyon came up late Saturday night to spend an evening here, away from it all. Unfortunately they got here very late and, after handing me a Tupperware container full of home made red beans and rice (Wolf is an excellent cook), we called it a night. Sunday we had a good breakfast over at the Route6 Café then came back to the house and spent several hours talking about philosophical things and gaming stuff.

Wolf and Lyon are the folks I do most of my sit-down role playing with and are my two play testers for both my high fantasy world and its associated game system. Unfortunately I’ve been out of sorts and Lyon has been very busy on the weekends this last month and a half and we’ve not gotten much done.

Sunday we spent a little time discussing one of Wolf’s story lines that we’re all involved with which pertains to a secret society of mythical creatures who are alive and well in the modern world. These “Mythagos” have assumed human forms and are just one sect in a secret war between the Unseelie Court, human mages, extra planar monsters, and many others who seek to gather enough power to rule this little rock we call Earth. The Mythagos are the only real group on the side of the “sapes” who, as usual, have no idea this is going on… The rest see humans as either “Batteries”, “Food”, “Slaves”, or “Vermin”…

Sometimes the Mythago even fall into one of those categories above… After all, humans really do suck most of the time and it gets really tough to save some football watching, beer swilling, trailer-trash meathead from the grasping claws of something who’d literally like to have him for dinner.

At first brush the whole shebang sounds a lot like the “World of Darkness” setting from White Wolf, but in turn the “World of Darkness” sounds a lot like old European mythology and stories given a decided American edge. Of course *anything* that deals with unknowing masses and secret wars is automatically labeled “World of Darkness” even though DC Comics really started the genera. Basically one could view Wolf’s idea as “World of Darkness – Pro”… There’s also the rumor that White Wolf will be killing off the “World of Darkness” lines in favor of the Next Big Thing, so we’ll see how it goes.

Anyways, after hammering on all of this for a while, as usual, their daughter called right as things were taking off and brought the whole thing crashing down around us. Once that happened it was decided we’d get a late-lunch / early-dinner over at Paddy’s Tavern then they’d have to run back home to deal with the young one. So we did, and they did, and I spent the remainder of the evening reading.

Thus ended Sunday.

Sometimes you just need a good adventure to work the cobwebs out of your day-to-day existence… Yesterday was quite the adventure.

While we discussed the day’s plans Aryntha demonstrated his grill-mastery once again by whipping up some really good veggie-burgers. See, Rai’s a vegetarian and probably the healthiest of us; so while Aryntha and I chow down on all kinds of thing things that would clog the arteries of the DC metro system, Rai does stuff like salad and veggie burgers. Yesterday was my first meatless meat puck but with Aryntha at the helm of the grill it was actually quite good.

After some debate we decided to do a little telephone system spelunking and, after consulting the circa 1976 bellcorp facilities map we have at our disposal and Aryntha’s amazing Phozone detection abilities, our target was originally going to be a few ancient sites near Craig Colorado. Of course, as with any group of hardcore geeks like us, this determination took quite a while with the mapping, internet lookup, route planning, GPS verification, and battery charging…

Well, by the time we were ready to depart we determined that it was just too late in the day to trek though the mountains and halfway across Colorado so we settled for something a bit closer, Leadville.

The telephone infrastructure is mostly based in the “front range” of Colorado which, oddly enough, is where all the people are. Most of the towns here in the high country didn’t have, or probably want, telephone service till the resort expansions of the late 60’s and early 70’s. By then cable and later optical high capacity systems were in play which allowed the central office to be located quite a ways from the customer. Leadville was a terminus on the southern Colorado microwave carrier route which, as I-70 didn’t exist back then, was routed south along highway 50 though places like Salida. So this makes the Leadville switch a real piece of history and off we went…

The drive south along Highway 24 from Minturn to Leadville takes one through some of the best scenery in Colorado.

It’s a steep, deep canyon called “Dark Territory” that was carved by the Eagle and Homestake Rivers and takes you past such notable things as Red Cliff which is a picturesque little mountain town virtually unchanged since the mining era of Colorado, Notch Peak which rises up above the canyon to a height of 14,307 feet, and the truly odd “modern” ghost town of Gilman which sits at 11,000 feet.

The drive from Minturn to Leadville normally takes about 45 minutes and is 33 miles; we did the distance in a record 1 hour, 28 minutes as we stopped at every turn out on the road so Aryntha could take lots of pictures. Here’s one of the “USS Lincoln”, my car and the vehicle we generally take on road trips.

By far the longest stop was at Gilman which is a ghost town that supported the Eagle Mine and was founded in 1886.

At its high point had over 2000 residents and in 1950 the output from the mine, which was primarily zinc, was valued at 13 million annually. Giman was populated until the EPA closed the town in 1984 due to heavy metals contamination, such as arsenic (commonly found with lead and zinc), of the upper Eagle River. As of 1996 the EPA has assessed that there is no further risk to humans or wildlife by this site and recently they issued their 5 year review which showed yet more improvement thanks in part to the heroic work that the owning company, Viacom, has done over the years by plugging and flooding the mine and installing a heavy metals extraction plant at the site.

The reason we were so interested in photographing Gilman is because the current rumor has it that Vail Associates (the multi-national octopus organization that runs the Colorado high country these days) plans to buy Giman to make yet another resort town… Gilman is located on the back side of Vail’s ski runs and with the addition of a chairlift up through the valley to the north east of Gilman, could take folks to the top of the runs in minutes. So it’s entirely possible that this long standing testament to what people shouldn’t do to the environment, will be converted into hotels and stores in a few years.

Anyways we eventually made it to Leadville and with Aryntha’s amazing Phozone detection abilities he put us on the only road in town where you can see the microwave tower for the old central office. The central office for Leadville is quite a bit smaller than one would expect and we summize that it probably still contains the original ESS1A switch that was popular on the Colorado routes. What was truely odd, and something that will require further investigation, is the fact that the microwave horn faces north east to a passive repeater on a peak near the highway 24 and 91 merge. The microwave horn should have been, according to the facilities map, pointing south towards Twin Lakes as the route back in 1976 came from there and ended in Leadville. This usually means they’ve “turned down” Twin Lakes in favor of a route towards Copper Mountain. This isn’t on our map, so of course we *must* annotate this new route for posterity and go find out what happened to Twin Lakes. We took lots of pictures for archival then headed back to Minturn to have dinner at Chilly Willy’s.

We briefly returned home to gather radios, lights and other equipment of the trade before heading back to highway 24 so we could get a “better view” of an odd antenna bearing hut we found on the way to Leadville. The trip was a bust as it turned out to be nothing but we chalked it up to practice.

Once we returned to the château here we called it a night as it was about midnight.

Thus ended Thursday, which was a most excellent adventure.

Aryntha just called and said they were awake and would be around shortly.

Technology is amazing really. The guest room Aryntha and Rai use is on the other side of the wall from my room, yet Aryntha called from his cell phone, though the cell network to my phone, to tell me something he could have just opened the door and said.

That’s like getting on the MUCK to talk to your roommate in the same room, which most people I know have done, including me.

Aryntha and Rai came up late last night to “get away from it all” for a day or so. This time, due to the projected time of their arrival, it was decided that we’d do some grilling rather than running off to some restaurant. It was a good decision.

Arythna is a master of the all-pervasive powers of BBQ; a true, old-school, “Knight of the Holy Grill”.

He is able, as he says, to “build a rapport with the food being grilled and get it to tell him when the sauce is just right or that it’s time to be turned over.” We, Rai and I, can’t really argue this point as Aryntha turns out some *really* good “Q” and if his secret is in talking to the chicken breast, well, so be it.

After dinner we retired to the Cannibal Special where they got to see, first hand, the wonders of technology that the “Big Box” stores have brought to our little valley here; namely the insanely bright sodium lights they put all along the highway for the new exit these stores “needed”… The last time Aryntha and Rai were up here we took some pictures of the night sky and all the stars one can see here… Those were probably the last photos of the non light polluted sky up here that we’ll ever get. These new lights illuminate the highway very well… And the hillside, the houses over where I live, the buildings in town… You can proabably see the Walmart exit off of I-70 from space.

Fortunately you can still drive about 10 minutes and be on the other side of a ridge that blocks most of the “corporate glare”, but it’ll never be the same. I give it another 2-3 years before we have sky-scrapers here in the valley as they’re running out of ground to put things on. By this time next year the hillside across the highway will be covered in houses according to the drawings I saw that the developer published the other day. Joy.

Anyways, after four hours of playing “lobster” and reducing ourselves to a fine prune-like state, we called it a night.

Right now I’m waiting for them to rise again so we can figure out what to do with the remainder of the day. Rai brought her art supplies and has been trying to get Aryntha to do some art as well… Who knows, maybe we’ll have a mini “artist jam session” and see what pops up.

Later…

Well, ok, I was wrong… It rained all day.

Today was pretty much a continual thunderstorm and, though the lightning has stopped for a while, it’s still raining as I type. I’m predicting a really good winter this year if we’re getting this kind of water in August.

Of course with all the rain it’s downright chilly outside. I’m boiling a pot of water for a nice cup of Earl Grey and I’ll be sitting down to my new book here in a bit… Fall is my favorite time of the year with its grey skies, cool weather, and that “fall” smell you get (or might not get if you live in a city).

Ok, water is boiling so I’ll sign off now.

I guess while the Valley slept, some time last week we were all moved to Seattle or something… It has been raining up here, on and off, though definitely more on than off, for a week now.

This morning it is showing signs of letting up though: The sun is shining though my window as I type which is always good for improving my outlook on things.

Saturday after work I was going to drive down to Denver to drop off more paperwork to our accountant and spend a day or two with Lyon and Wolf down in Aurora. I got as far east as Vail before the hydroplaning from standing water on the highway and zero visibility from the deluge turned me back. I mean, there was a few times my LSC Lincoln turned into USS Lincoln… It was rough out there.

So I swung by the grocery store, stocked up on a few things to make chili and decided to spend the night at home reading…

Then, as fall has fell up here in the high country, it got *cold* outside. Take away the solar heat from us up here, for even a few days, and you get snow… Really. Saturday night and last night they sanded the highway over Vail Pass and Loveland Pass.

So, as I still have the heat off in the house, I spent Saturday night sitting in front of the fireplace in the living room, supping on fresh chili and finishing my last Dragon Lance novel.

Sunday morning rolled around and, after consulting the local weather channel which consists of standing on the back porch with a cup of coffee examining the clouds and watching what the deer are doing on the golf course, I decided that if I got an early start I could make it to Denver.

By 9am I was on the road, Yes’s “Magnification” blasting and barreling through the overcast, fog-laden drizzle that accompanied me all the way down the mountain as far as Floyd Hill. The peaks were shrouded in wispy clouds that clung to the pine trees like slow moving ghosts and the overall effect was much like a Led Zeppelin album cover, very pretty.

Once you crest Floyd Hill the sun comes out, the rain stops and the temperature shoots back up. Denver was hot, dry and about 90 degrees in the shade… Lovely. I think they’re being punished for something.

So I dropped off the package to the accountant at about 11, did a little running around and stopped by Lyon and Wolf’s place at about noon to take them out for lunch. Ate at Mimi’s again then trekked over to –the- book store, Tattered Cover, and bought the next Dragon Lance novel which, of course, is only available in hardback.

After that we went back to their place in Saudi-Aurora. Wolf and I sat around and talked for a few hours about metaphysical stuff like the puzzle that is the symbol of Baphomet while Lyon, much like his namesake, slept off lunch. Once he was back up and running, Lyon, his daughter, and I went to see “Freddy vs. Jason” which we knew would suck but in it’s ‘suckieness’ would provide much amusement. It did. Wolf isn’t a slasher-flick fan and opted to stay home in the peace and quiet to do some reading.

Following that, as it was 10:30 at night, I headed back up the mountain. Denver was still about 80 degrees and, once again as I crossed the magic Floyd Hill line, it started to rain and the temperature dropped like a rock. The external thermometer in the Lincoln was reading 37 degrees as I crested Loveland Pass last night…

The drive home really sucked. They’ve recently repaved most of I-70 and the new asphalt, once wet, is atrocious. The water sits on it like a thin film of grease, it absorbs your headlights like velvet, and the lines they put on the stuff turns invisible when hit with oncoming headlights. Then you have the downhill sides of the passes… Remember that sand I mentioned back there a ways? Well when they put that stuff down every freak in his big-ass dually pickup becomes a road hazard, shot gunning your car with gravel any time you’re within 50 yards of one… On top of that, as I came down Vail Pass, it turned into a biblical downpour out there and if you’ve never hydroplaned in your car, you will on the downhill side of the pass. The water runs down the highway about as fast as you’re driving and for some reason I haven’t figured out yet, this practically lifts your car off the road… It was a bad ride home.

Well, that’s over and a new day has dawned. I think I’ll go fix some scrambled eggs, bacon and toast as I missed out on dinner last night and lunch is several hours away.

TTFN

Just a quick thought…

Everyone by now has heard about the big blackout on the east coast and eastern Canada. Well, I was just looking over CNN’s web site and something funny struck me:

Last night, while the power was still off and the great city of New York was bathed in inky blackness; darkness akin to a Snake Pliskin movie where roving bands of gun toting thugs rule the city, absolutely nothing happened…

Now wait, this is truly odd.

I figured in the security of the night the town would have been torn down to its foundations and high rise buildings set ablaze. After all, this is New York were talking about here. But no, the people of New York showed genuine “brotherly love” last night as they went to bars lit with candles to drink up the last of the beer, for free, before it got warm and slept out in the streets to look at the stars they so rarely get to see…

Absolutely nothing happened…

Meanwhile, we turn out gaze northward to Ottawa Ontario, a city known for its art and culture, where people sit in city parks and watch the clouds roll slowly by…

Today Ottawa is nearly under martial law and anything not nailed down or flaming has been looted. They’ve declared a state of emergency and are requesting people stay indoors…

I really think the scare of 9/11 has really done something to the psychology of the average New Yorker, and that it is a good change.

I spent Monday afternoon / evening in Denver hanging out with Aryntha and Rai. There were some important papers that needed to be taken to the accountant downtown and I was in the mood for a nice drive, so I made the trip. On the way down I got the idea to engage in one of my hobbies while I was down there: The researching of old phone systems.

Years and years ago AT&T helped win the cold war by creating a nuclear bomb proof long distance telephone network that spanned the North American Continent. They dug a trench clear across America for this coaxial line and put in blast-hardened microwave relay sites all over the US. Well, several of these old Transcontinental Cables run right though Denver and it’s not well documented by the groups I belong to.

So I swung by and picked up Ayntha and Rai, who are both into this telephone infrastructure thing. We were well armed for this adventure with my Olympus c2100-uz camera, Aryntha’s Sony and Canon cameras, 2 GPS units (one with street level mapping and the other for simple lat/lon averaging), three cell phones, and two bags of munchies and drinks.

We headed south to a location near Chatfield reservoir where, years ago, Aryntha and I had found an actual manhole for the old system… Unlike municipal manholes, the old L-Carrier types were about 6 feet across and sealed with odd 5-sided bolts. Our intent wasn’t to enter said manhole, but to just get a few pictures and maybe a GPS fix for posterity… Well, we looked around the area for about a half an hour and it appears that they removed it and the vault it covered. This isn’t completely unbelievable as Denver has “sprawled” about 10 miles south since the last time we were there. Places that used to be nothing but open fields and rocks are now housing developments and strip malls.

Well, with that being a bust we headed north along Kipling (the Transcon route across Denver) to the western suburbs of Denver where the AT&T “longlines” building for the lines should have been. We weren’t successful in finding it either. Later I believe I found the address for it and we’ll search for it next time. Hopefully they haven’t torn it down to put in some 50 family high rise or something.

For our last attempt we headed north again to Broomfield to get some photos of what used to be a huge microwave relay site on the Transcontinental route. Fortunately it’s still there and we were able to get some photos and a GPS fix.

The site is owned by American Tower now (as is most of the old AT&T network) and the plethora of microwave horns has been removed to make space for the plethora of cell antennas.

The Broomfield tower used to be one half of the microwave link to Buckhorn Mountain which then took the call north into Nebraska. I figure with a good telescope you could probably see Buckhorn from Broomfield as both towers sit on mountains that are about 1000’ above a vast, flat plain that fronts the eastern side of the Rockies…

When I was 8-10 years old I remember we would drive by this site on the way to my grandmother’s house in Golden. I’d always question my father about the site and he’d invariably give me another 10 minute lesson in microwave radio or telephone technology. I think he was an old school phreak… He was into radio, telephone, and electronics; all the appropriate hobbies and even worked for Raytheon as a senior electronics engineer, but he never admitted anything “phreaky” to me.

Well, once we were satisfied that we were in possession of some history to preserve we headed downtown so that I could finish my mission with the accountant. We drove though a torrential downpour complete with hail which had me parking on a sidewalk under some trees for a few minutes.

To complete the evening we had dinner over at Mimi’s Café in Aurora.

I spent the night at their place (getting to sleep at about 4am) and headed back up the mountain at about 9am. I rolled into the store at about 11, dealt with everyone and everything that needed to be dealt with, and then left early to head home and get some more sleep.

Thus ended my Tuesday.

Well, I’m off to pack my lunch and open the shop. Catch ya later.

So, here it is, Monday *again*… I never seem to be able to escape this day. It promises to be another dull day at work; fortunately I have the last book of the latest Dragon Lance trilogy to finish.

I was a bit worried in the last book, the second volume of the trilogy, when the authors systematically killed off three quarters of the characters in the last 20 or so pages. Not that I’m horribly “into” the story… I was more worried about the quality of the story in the final book. So far I’m happy to report that they were just making room for some new characters that didn’t get much notice in the first thousand pages or so.

Yesterday I drove down route 131 from Wolcott to Steamboat Springs, about 70 miles though the badlands of Colorado, to get a feel for the setting in a new story I’m working on. That area is beautiful in its desolation: Miles upon miles of nothing but scrub trees, low hills, and endless blue sky. Here’s a few pictures:

Well, I need to draw this to a close, pack my lunch and get over to Avon. See you in the next installment…

I usually play a character who was conceived almost 15 years ago named Raeshlavik. Ravik is really quite an interesting character with reams of back-story created over the years. He’s actually an ancient construct created by unknown forces for an unknown purpose (that’s the public version). He appears, when not in his human guise, to be an immense black unicorn bearing upon his brow not the simple twisted ivory spire commonly attributed to unicorns, but rather a razor sharp four sided spike of blackened crystal.

A long time ago Chaos sought to enter this plane but was thwarted in the fact that it could not manifest itself here. It is an extraplanar force, and while it could cause small effects and create small problems, it was otherwise held in check. This angered Chaos for its enemy, Order, had discovered a way to enlist beings of this plane to its cause and give them the ability to tap its powers to combat the minor evils Chaos created. The most powerful forces Order had were the true unicorns, travelers of the planes, and a select group of humanoids known as Keepers.

In a flash of insight, Ravik was created by Chaos by taking half the essence of a unicorn it had captured named “Flinthorn” and twisting it, corrupting it, mixing it with equal portions of itself. Thusly Chaos had found a way to manifest a small portion of itself in this plane of existence.

Ravik was created to be a simple killing machine; a sort of biological bullet sent to eliminate key personnel deemed to be useful to the forces of Order. After many successful assassinations he was sent after a very powerful force for Order, a Keeper named Billy Rae MacIntosh. This person, much to Ravik’s consternation, just simply couldn’t be killed.

Oh sure, this person died, and usually in the most gruesome ways imaginable, but he also kept getting back up. Well, to make a long story short, this individual eventually befriended Ravik and showed him that he could be much more than a simple automaton.

Ravik, by nature and creation, is still a powerful warrior for the forces of Chaos but he is also in possession of free will unlike the rest. While he’s still “evil”, he has no controller, no strings, and does things his way. Currently he runs a large, multi-national corporation which is a world leader in the production of weapons technologies.

In other news I went to go see S.W.A.T. last night, and while it is an entertaining movie in and of itself, it was a trailer for a new movie that caught my eye. The name of the movie is “The Underworld” I believe and it’s a story about the war between the vampires and the werewolves. Its directed by the guy who did “Blade II”, so don’t expect much, but it’ll most likely be a fun few hours with popcorn and soda.

Well, gotta run.

Looks like I’m getting some new neighbors today. There’s a big moving truck sitting out in front of the empty duplex across the street; more Californians judging by the plates on the two cars sitting in the driveway… Just what we needed…

It’s amazing how few people living in Colorado are from Colorado these days. There was a report I read a few days ago that stated that one quarter of the current population of Denver is either from California or drove though there to get here. The problem, in my opinion, is that they get home sick and thusly are trying to make Colorado more like California…

I’ve been to California many times and have seen the state from north to south. Now, granted, every time I go there it’s for a comic/art convention or I’m rescuing someone from a bad idea and I just don’t have a very good opinion of the place. It’s a dry, arid state full of dry, arid people who all live in little bubbles of self-importance; unknowing and uncaring about the world around them.

Southern California is known for its arrogant people, smog, water conservation, a collapsing tech industry, and overcrowding… I came back to Denver after being gone for 5 years to find it rife with arrogant people, smog, water conservation, a collapsing tech industry, and overcrowding…

Closer to home I was talking with a routine customer at the shop, a Vail police officer, about why I’m not riding my bike to work anymore; its just too damn dangerous these days. He told me that, according to their statistics, the vast majority of minor traffic infractions such as ignoring stop signs, failing to yield, and unsafe passing (basically that unknowing and uncaring thing again) comes from folks with out of state plates. The two most prevalent out-of-state folks up here are from California and Texas.

The Texans have their own brand of problems they bring with them, namely these trucks they drive that are about the size of a small house. I just can’t fathom why someone needs a Ford f-350, dually, long bed, 4 door, 4 wheel drive, 8 mile per gallon, needs two parking spaces to park monstrosity. You read about these folks that are pissed off because people drive SUVs? Well they need to look around and aim their ire at things that need it more like these Texas sized trucks. And Hummers; who thought those were a good idea?

Californians drive Hummer H2’s if they feel the desire to own something that has a prayer of getting them around during the winters up here. Last winter I pulled no less than four H2’s out of ditches and snow banks… In the winter I drive a hopped up 1972 Jeep Wagoneer with a 409ci V8, and I *still* get twice the MPG of an H2.

Then, in my opinion, there is a slightly longer standing problem which are all the beat to hell Toyota Celicas with a big, ill-fitting spoiler on the back, a bad attempt at ground effects and tires that are too narrow for the rims sticking 6 inches out from under the car. These guys deserve their own section of this rant simply because three times a year the trip to Denver goes from 2 hours to 5 hours because one of these rocket scientists tries to drive one of these ‘cars’, in the snow, over Vail pass, and ends up closing one or more lanes for a few hours.

Anyways, as you can see, it would be very easy for me to become horribly xenophobic but fortunately I’m pretty detached and just find it all very humorous. 🙂

…Checking in from the shop…

Today’s Topic: It’s amazing what “big business” can do to a little mountain town…

My shop is in a little Podunk mountain town called Avon. About 5 weeks ago we got a “Big Box” store; Home Depot. Then about 3 weeks ago we got another one; a “Super” Wal-Mart. Combined that’s about 400,000 square feet of average / below average quality merchandise. Both of these being here is pretty amazing as the entire Valley has about 40,000 people in it and half of those are only here seasonally.

That’s roughly 10 square feet of store for each resident between Dillon and Glenwood Springs…

No one is exactly sure why these stores are here now. We’ve all heard it has something to do with some marketing company’s demographics wizards divining that everyone up here drives to Denver on occasion to shop… Yeah, so that means we need a Super Wal-Mart?

The town is suffering something fierce right now. See, it’s impossible to compete with a store the size of three football fields when they get to keep all their sales tax to pay their “rent” and you have to pay $21 a square foot for retail space. Your prices just *have* to be higher to cover your lease.

There was a record amount of shady deals and palm greasing to get these monstrosities in here in the first place. The fight took well over two years as the billionaire developer was run out of Avon and sent to the county, and then came back to Avon. He finally, with the aid of quite a few expensive “experts”, managed to convince the town council (a bunch of backwoods mountain folks) that the gigantic stores would be good for them… So good in fact he convinced them to let him keep his sales tax for the next 20 years. Which, conveniently, should completely cover the loan to build the two stadium sized stores. His grand finale was convincing Eagle-Vail to give up a large portion of their Eagle River water rights for his monsters, for next to nothing.

Far too slick of an operator for the nice, laid back folks up here to deal with.

On top of this the Avon town council was concerned that the mega-stores would generate too much traffic so they decided to build an exit off of I-70 just for them. They did this so that potential customers wouldn’t be inconvenienced by actually driving though Avon… Right now people can drive down I-70 from either direction; pull off directly into the parking lots of Wal-Mart and Home Depot, and then leave much the same way without even knowing the town exists.

A month ago the shop here had about 100-150 people walk though a day. Today we’ve had 6. Last week there was a three day period where we sold one PC game for $20. We’re loosing our shirts right now and due to our lease we have to continue to spend $10,000 a month for floor space till March.

The shopping center we’re sitting in is 50% empty now with several of the remaining stores preparing to move out. Our current plan is to take the losses till March then move the whole operation to Southwest Denver where we can get a really nice 5500 square foot retail space for about $8-$9 a square foot… We’ll be paying half as much for 500 square feet more space in a nicer location.

I’m really not looking forward to moving back down to the loud, stinky, overpopulated environs of Denver, but we all do what we have to do.

The current rumor states that Mr. Billionaire is trying to kill Avon so he can buy it cheap and turn it into another resort for Beaver Creek… Imagine having the money to kill an entire town just so you could buy it and make it how *you* wanted it to be.

Well here we are, another wonderful day in the Valley.

Ever notice how bad things travel in packs? Well Jeff from the store was over here at Château D’Isaster working on the decks for some extra cash and a whole herd of bad things happened…

See, Jeff is getting ready to move to Reno and needed some extra cash for the trip. Larry, the fellow who owns the shop where I work and the house I live in, offered to just give him some cash – which Jeff would be honor-bound to repay even if Larry said it wasn’t required… Well Jeff isn’t sure he’ll be making enough money to repay him later and insisted on doing some maintenance around here and Larry has wanted to stain the wood decks for a while now.

Ok, Jeff is in a bit of a panic with this move and isn’t exactly “all here” if you know what I mean. He’s been forgetting things, loosing things; in general he’s in a bad way. The other players in this story, Larry and his wife, are off in San Jose for a few weeks and so I’ve got the place to myself.

Anyways, yesterday Jeff is up on the third floor finishing the front deck when he steps backwards into the tray of dark brown oil-based stain… In slow motion the tray flips though the air, spraying the white stucco of the house with brown on the third floor and as it lands and spills it’s remaining contents onto the deck. The stain falls though the slats onto the second floor deck, spattering the front of the house with more brown stain.

Jeff freaks out and runs though the house and down the stairs to get to the hose so he can wash the stain off before it dries, and tracks brown oil-based stain across the custom fitted light grey Berber carpet. He notices this right about the time he reaches the middle of the stairs, freaks out again and calls me at the shop…

Well, just after all this happens and I assure Jeff that things will be ok because we’ll just get it cleaned up over the next few days, the home rentals place calls and says they’d like to show the house this morning… See, we rent out the house on occasion during the ski season as we can get around $2000 a night having 7 bedrooms, being walking distance from the Beaver Creek ski resort, and about 5 miles west of Vail. But this time, just to add to Chaos’ humor, someone wants to rent the house now rather than the ski season.

Well, to make a long, agonizing story short, this morning at first light I was out repainting the front of the house with Kilz and the carpet guy is here trying to get the stain out of the carpet. Fortunately he’s having some marginal success at it, thanks be to the carpet cleaner god.

I managed to put the rentals lady off till this afternoon.

For me this is all just another example of no matter if it’s good or bad, it’s always an adventure. 🙂

This morning I’ve decided to work a little on the ecommerce code for the store’s web site and once again the ability of the average user to break things astounds me. I’ve been reading some of the horror stories out there in regards to this and it’s pretty amazing.

Kind of reminds me of a few years ago when I was writing the code for the StickerStation, aka “The World’s Most Advanced Vending Machine” which you’ve probably seen as they are everywhere. We would bring in children to test the interface of the machine, making sure that it was easy enough to understand for children and robust enough to handle a 5 year old. Well we got it to the point that none of our test kids could do anything to the machine other than put in their money and get their pictures when the project manager came in stating, “I don’t know what I did, but it’s hung.”

You probably know this project manager and some of you have probably worked with him. He has many shapes and sizes, many first and last names, but he always manages to advance to his highest level of incompetence. He makes twice your income yet has half your knowledge and does a quarter of the work. He’s usually put there by the board of directors against the better judgment of the dev team… Yep, I knew you’ve worked with him.

Anyways the problem turned out to be static electricity. The leather soled $400 loafers, expensive silk shirts and slacks he wore in combination with the new carpet and his $1000 leather office chair imbued him with about a billion volts of electricity which would shut down the bill validator when he touched the machine. Of course this would only happen when it was unusually dry there in Alexandria Virginia so recreating the problem took about a month.

About six months later we discover that the board of directors put this guy in charge to prep the company for sale. His goal was to ensure that the Generation 3 machines never made it to market thereby violating shareholder agreements and opening the company for acquisition by a rival company in New Hampshire. To the team’s credit we not only got the prototypes done but we got about 100 of them out in the field here in the US and almost as many in Europe. The machine was featured on the 1999 MTV Tour and I have a picture of C3P0 standing next to one for the opening of 1999’s Episode 1 where the machine was a key piece for their marketing. We had acquired image contracts with Warner Brothers, Disney, Sony Pictures, Universal Pictures, Toys ‘R’ Us… It was a pretty amazing thing.

I guess I should put the key team members here so years from now I’ll remember this and find out what they’re all up to:

William Miller: Design, Front End Programming, and Interface
Scott Ogden: Design, Systems Engineering, and Acquisitions
Ken McCleaft: Design, Systems Engineering, Back End Programming, Telemetry, and Blue Screen Algorithms
Ronnie Jones: Art, Art and More Art

There were several other people involved, of course, but the above were the ones who put in the sleepless nights, long hours, plane flights, endless arguments with the project manager, and who really made the system go. Thanks guys. I still think, even though the company was sold out from under us, that we set a standard in the industry that few have managed to reach and none have surpassed. Heck, the company who bought us *still* can’t get chromakey to work! (grin)

Today was pretty cool. Did a little geocaching down near Eagle with Aryntha and Rai (and no, we didn’t see anything dealing with Kobe Bryant) which resulted in the finding of a very old 50’s telephone hut half buried in a hillside. We then trundled around the mountains a bit on gravel roads till we’d run into a private property sign and be forced to turn around. It’s amazing how much of the wilderness out there is owned by someone. Aryntha took lots of pictures for posterity then we had dinner over at Fiesta’s in Edwards.

The major topic today was the job market and the economy, which both suck in ways that words alone cannot describe. The comment on CNN was to the effect that layoffs are increasing because sales are decreasing because no one is buying anything because they’re all unemployed… How does one fix this? Can it be fixed? Is this the decline and fall of the American Empire? Is King Bush playing fiddle as Washington burns? I don’t know, but I hope not.

My idea involves the fat cats at the top of the corporate food chain taking a little hit in their 6-7 figure incomes and keeping their employees from hording their meager $500 paychecks and waiting for the axe to fall. Will this happen? Will the RIAA admit that MP3s aren’t the source of their money woes? The answer to both is pretty obvious.

Speaking of MP3s, the BBC did a report recently in regards to the RIAA and their war on Joe Consumer. In this report the BBC points out some interesting facts such as: RIAA members for the last ten years have been making a *lot* of money on vinyl to CD re-releases but now the catalog has been drained and that cash cow has run dry. The RIAA members have halved their yearly releases over the last 5 years. And above all let us not forget that people are simply buying fewer CDs because the music released today *SUCKS*. (Asterisks and caps added by this author)

So, lo and behold we have some data pointing to the fact that yes, MP3 file sharing has impacted record sales, but it’s only a small leak in a ship full of holes.

What does the RIAA hope to do with their Gestapo tactics and “we spend more on lawyer’s retainer fees per month than your entire neighborhood earns in a year” bullying? Will this make people buy more CDs? Will it ensure they start making “enough” millions in pure profit again? I don’t know, but I doubt it.

Anyways, the crows circling the job market and the economy, which both lie in smoldering ruins, has got me a bit worried; though I’ve been though this before. When I got out of the Navy I got a job with a laptop hard drive manufacturer called “Prairie Tech” then within weeks was laid off due to the tech crunch of 1990-1991. I spent the next few years working my way through different job fields weathering the storm till the economy improved.

Well, Aryntha and Rai headed back down the mountain about a half hour ago. They’ve got cats to care for and Jag is driving in tonight on her way from Wisconsin to California. Tomorrow my week resumes with another day of being tech support for the Vail Valley and all will once again be right with the world.

Aryntha and Rai are up here at Château D’Isaster for a few days to get away from all that is Denver and to reaffirm their faith that the world doesn’t completely suck.

They’ve had nothing but trouble down there; cars getting broken into, gas siphoning, extremely rude neighbors (the folks downstairs smoke so much it seeps though the floor and stains the windows and the people upstairs own one CD, 50-Cent, and play it 24/7 with enough volume you can hear the change jingling in the rapper’s pocket clearly from anywhere in Aryntha and Rai’s apartment.)

The sad thing is they live in a “good” part of Denver, specifically South West Denver.

So, after an excellent meal over at Narayan’s Thai in Avon (If you’re looking for *really* good Thai food and are in the area, email me and I’ll send you a map), we opted to just hang out in the hot tub for a few hours where we talked about the future of digital audio formats. Aryntha is a bit of an expert in the field and the topics ranged from the backwards compatibility of SACD2 to the latest reports on the movements of the RIAA’s jack-booted thugs.

This is where the title of the post comes in. The hot tub here at Château D’Istaster is a large, octagonal stainless steel job set flush into the back deck and looks amazingly like a people-sized stew pot…

When I get all the pumps running and its sitting at about 110 degrees, steaming, one can easily imagine dicing up a few carrots and potatoes to round out the boiled human stew.

Right now I’m waiting for Aryntha and Rai to stumble out of the guest room so I can find out what they’d like to do today.