The Empirical Manifesto

My first car was TEXAS DDD-67. Easy for me to remember because my car was a 1968 model and I was born in 1969. It true you never forget your first. Guys are funny that way I guess. I remember also the plate which finally replaced it, TEXAS 526-TCG. And my Neon's VIRGINIA ZUZ-3119 which became TEXAS VYL-31G. These things happen. I asked her if she remembered her first. She just gave me "that look."

My wife and I oncesaw a commercial when we were living in New Jersey of an infant strapped into a car seat singing the praises of his "big bad dad" as he crooned extolling virtues of his father for considering his safety by purchasing a Mercedes Benz ML-class SUV. My wife thought it was the cutest commercial ever. I asked her if she thought it was targeting male or female demographics what with a singing baby and all. She answered, "female of course." Interesting. "For what product was the commercial attempting to market?" She didn't know.

My powder-blue Jag was UK TGT 480R which was easy enough to recall because of the targeteers at the 480th Reconnaissance Technical Group, my follow-on assignment from Britain.

My wife's Saturn was purchased in Wichita so my name has been associated with a Kansas plate before, but the very next we registered it in Texas - then she got Missouri plates a couple years later. Me, I always try to just keep Texas plate and a Texas license, but the NO-FAULT insurance debacle is toying with my plans. No worries, I'm still getting the windows tinted on the Land Yacht in Texas. I've already let McKinney Auto Glass & Tint I'll be in town next week.

But today, getting the front-end alignment before my trip, they somehow broke the air conditioner. So...still leaving early Friday, I just hope its in a car with refrigerated air. At least its legally tagged now.

ehowton, Kansan.

Its been nearly three years since I posted about mouses. The two mouses I use to date are a black version of the Microsoft mouse in that picture, and a silver version of the Logitech scroll-mouse. Still my two favorite.

But I found myself in Texas and in need of a good mouse. Something formidable since my hand is on it sometimes sixteen hours a day. And since my hotel in near MicroCenter, that's where I went first. But they don't open unitl 1000 and I needed to pick up an overnight FedEx at the front desk pretty early, so I went on to Fry's Electronics.

Fry's had probably 75 varieties. I wanted once which was built as sturdy as a gaming mouse, but didn't want side buttons, which bother me when moving from left to right. I wanted laser, but the last time I spent $75 on a Logitech laser mouse, it didn't hold up well. I like my mice to last me at least a decade, and that one did not. I found my standard marble scroll-mouse, but what I needed this time was a wheel. I finally decided I needed a braided cable, but only the gaming mice came with those - in fact, it was hard to find a non-gaming mouse which wasn't wireless. Unless it was a no-name brand. And of the seven $5 mice I brought home the day I found them that cheap, only three survived the first year. Not good odds.

And while I considered all the price ranges, I was hoping to spend less than $100 on a freaking mouse, and hopefully half that. But I was getting into some pretty slim pickings with my requirements. For awhile, I was going to to with an $80 gaming mouse, until I saw the R.A.T. - by Saitek - the manufacturer of my amazing keyboard.

They also make something unusual; a wireless gaming mouse. It was $149. The full adjustable one was $79. And their "first" R.A.T. was $49 - with an additional 5% off at the register. I'll admit I was skeptical, but I love it! My favorite? The thumb rest. It moves with the mouse. My second favorite? The side buttons are not at striking distance when moving the mouse. Which, with the thumb rest, wouldn't matter.

What an weseome input device! And something I could really do with, given the nature of my work, and my play.

Wizard101 has probably been the most expensive free game I've ever played. Unless you count the individual copies of Starcraft II we collectively purchased when it was released. I understand companies not wanting someone to pirate their software, but its difficult to explain to a 10-year old that for LAN-disabled play, Blizzard required us to shell out $60 for each computer in the house. Which is, in a way, where Wizard101 shines - family accounts!

But my empirical mindset didn't take the easy path. There are two forms of in-game money, "gold" and "crowns." Gold is gathered via quests and hidden caches while crowns are purchased either online or over-the-counter at brick & morter businesses with real money. Some special items you can buy with only gold and others only crowns. This is perfectly acceptable. Because we were on the free account, we didn't have access to every area in the game - those were for monthly subscription users - or - you could pay for them with crowns. The upswing is that crown-payed areas are open to you FOREVER. Monthly-subscription users only have areas open to them while they're paying.

But after several, several, increasingly-priced closed areas (they started at around 700 crowns or $1.25 and quickly jumped to between 900/1200 or multiple 900/1200-crown purchases nested inside 2000-crown areas) it was quickly becoming untenable. The children had exhausted their savings at multiple crown purchases at $25 a pop - something I was NOT willing to bankroll. We, collectively the children and I as I discussed this with them, decided that perhaps the monthly subscription was the way to go after all - every new world, every new dungeon, is open and accessible and NOT 900+ crowns. Which means we could play and level freely, then later, if we wanted - go back and pay for the areas we thought might be worth it, rather than paying up front and not wanting what we got once there.

To make matters easier, Wizard101 gives a deep discount on family accounts. So instead of the $150 we invested in the game last month, all three of us can play for $20/month and that is something I'm willing to bankroll.

I had this conversation years ago with drax0r when he was paying a subscription to play World of Warcraft and I was unconvinced this paradigm shift was going to be in my favor. I think it was Tim Buckley (I could be mistaken), the author of the web comic CTRL+ALT+DEL who, in his blog compared those bitching about game subscriptions akin to people who buy automobiles and then are aghast that to run them they need to additionally pay for gasoline. I found his example simplistic because we hadn't been getting the gas for free for the past 100 years.

So with the entire world open to us this weekend, we gamed. All weekend we gamed.

And I drank wine while gaming.


Enormous, Obscene & Large

Have you ever supposed that you may really be better off dead? Douglas Tibbets never thought so either, despite the fact his life was a wreck. But everything began to look better after he met Myra, an advanced psychic who awakened his own psychic abilities and slowly helped turn his life around—growing self-assurance, a promotion at work, and a new love interest, Shirley. Then came the telepathic assaults. Douglas and Shirley narrowly fend off the bizarre forays into their minds while seeking the unknown assailant. But when they at last, find the attacker, they are both murdered. And that's when their lives truly begin.

I've often wished I could novelize my philosophies on life, much as Ayn Rand did with her two flagship novels - to provide a vehicle in which to promote them. And while Beyond the Mortal Coil cannot be compared to a Randian masterpiece in any other way, it does deal with the nature of the human experience, and its manipulation. Mostly shit I've been saying in the annals of this blog for years - that planting even very tiny seeds of positive change and watering it with repetitious practice, can reap enormous self-confidence later. That practice being of course, "Fake it until you make it." By pretending to have the very characteristics you desire, you will soon have them for realz. Its like r/l larping.


I greatly enjoyed this book, more than I anticipated. There were too many similes in the three-chapter exposition for my liking, and the contrast between the antagonist's vocabulary and his milktoast shamefacedness was a little off-putting, but by chapter eight I'd forgotten all about it, and was entirely engrossed. Total read time: Approximately 8 hours.


Now I didn't know this, but you can purchase kindle e-books and save them to your Amazon Cloud e-reader and read them in your browser - without actually owning a kindle. Which I don't. This is how I read the last three chapters of the book, so I could post this the next day :)


Anyway, reading the epilogue got me to thinking about love again - and all the limitations we place on it. Too many limitations on who we're allowed to love, and who not. Love transcends all these artificial barriers we place on ourselves and others. Class and station and race have mostly gone away, but not other malum prohibitum taboos. I guess we all have a little Puritan in us. His will be done. Why I've heard a lady who wouldn't bat an eye at homosexuals announce that "25 years is my limit for age differences!" Really? What if the *perfect* mate were 26 years older, or younger. Think about that - the perfect mate fell outside your rigid limitations by a single year. What then? And if you give in for the sake of a year, what about 27 years? Would you give in for two? And we all know where this leads - back to Sodom and Gomorrah. And yet if something as easy as when we were born can be set aside, cannot other limiting factors as well? I've fallen in love with much older women, and I've fallen in love with much younger women - simply because of who they were and nothing else. Hell, I've even dreamed I might've fallen in love with a dude. Love simply, is. If I've learned anything this past year, its just that, that love is. It exists and there is nothing we can do to control it.

Go out today, and be excellent to each other.

And don't worry so much about what other people might think.


FOR A LIMITED TIME THIS E-BOOK IS ONLY $.99!



Not an accurate representation of ehowton reading.

Its not just fine things I enjoy, though I do have a bit of an eye for them, but I marvel in joyous practicality when a work of art can also be utilized. My favorite mousepad is a reproduction of a Persian run - a gift by photogoot many years ago - its next to my laptop where I put my external drive and back-up blackberry. That is because I have a new mousepad which isn't really a mousepad at all - ita a Spitfire Kentish Ale pub mat, and very nearly identical to the look and feel of a mousepad only double its length. And since I use two mice, it lends itself beautifully to the task. A gorgeous and unexpected gift from somebritinmass.

But when michelle1963 posted on her Harvest-themed table runner she made for my wife, she called it a "small project." I fired back that it was enormous compared to a coaster - and had to eat my hat when she made me one. My own quilted coaster! And she even chose scraps for it from her mother's Asian-themed king-sized bedspread (again in HDR) I'd been so enamored with.

Its the finer things in life...

He to whom mysteries are revealed.

Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, “In my dream I was standing on the bank of the Nile, when out of the river there came up seven cows, fat and sleek, and they grazed among the reeds. After them, seven other cows came up—scrawny and very ugly and lean. I had never seen such ugly cows in all the land of Egypt. The lean, ugly cows ate up the seven fat cows that came up first. But even after they ate them, no one could tell that they had done so; they looked just as ugly as before. Then I woke up.

For the second night in a row I dreamed of being with two of my remaining co-workers. I was visiting them both as they lived adjacent each other in the country, and we had just finished a meal and were sitting outside on the deck under a gorgeous blue sky when I became fascinated by quickly-gathering white altocumulus clouds started forming from the right and moving to the left in an intricate dance of surreal eddies and waves like a three-dimensional saw-toothed cutout ocean set from a Gilbert and Sullivan opera.

I pulled out my Blackberry to photograph these amazing clouds when just as suddenly these even puffier charcoal gray clouds appeared from the right, arrow shaped and penetrating into, and overtaking the white clouds. I was awe-struck by the contrast between the white ever-moving clouds and the stark enormity of the gray clouds. I was frustrated that I couldn't quickly change the exposure settings on my Blackberry's camera in order to get a proper bracketed shot and was cursing myself for not bringing my camera. The gray clouds overtook the white clouds quickly - before my second shot, and I stared up at the darkness of the sky with fear and wonder.

Gathering or black clouds in your dream may suggest real-life feelings of apprehension. Gray clouds denote despondence, but white clouds symbolize contentment....To dream of a blue sky brings good luck. If the sky is bright, it suggests joy and the prospect of respite of worries, but if the sky is dark is can suggest a mood of gloom and hardship.

Because one was overtaken by the other, I don't have a good feeling about this foreshadowing - etymological pun intended.

I never made it to Andover. The work, nonetheless still required doing. I worked 12-hours on Saturday, 13-hours on Sunday, and 14-hours on Monday. I burn through my blackberry's battery once-per day, Within a day this weekend my bluetooth headset went from intermittently not working to only intermittently working. As it was a long day, I was in a near panic. I stumbled through and now have two bluetooth headsets. Not cheap ones either. The kind which will run for 6+ talk-time hours continuously.

Given what I do for a living, I never thought I'd be one of those guys.


My new Blackberry 9800 "Torch" paired with the Plantronics Voyager PRO+

The Bold was soooooooooo twenty-ten.

Since I'm in Newton, I snapped a pic of our new rent house for the houses blog, Edifaces: 1969-2009 / A 40-Year Retrospective.

Year #42; House #42.

Adios, Bosquecillo Pacana

We're moving to Newton, KS at the end of the month!

Into a rent house temporarily while we look for a new home in "West Side" Wichita (Maize).

I'll be keeping my same job and telecommuting 100% of the time.

Off on another adventure!

My Street

I dreamed drax0r and I were walking back to my house from down the street when it started to get dark. "We need to hurry," I coaxed nervously, my eyes darting around. As we neared the next-door-neighbor's house I saw the coyote between the cars and stopped, extending my arm to indicate he needed to do the same. I wasn't too worried about slipping past a single coyote, but as I cautiously moved forward I saw a second coyote, and approaching quickly - perhaps too quickly - a wolf.

About the time I saw the second wolf I'd also noticed some movement peripherally to my left and looked that direction. Two skunks and a badger, meandering to be sure, but definitely moving my direction. We started to backtrack, very slowly moving backwards, our eyes never leaving the shockingly growing amount of animals almost accidentally making their way toward us. Only, this was no accident. I wasn't sure what all was at play here, but by the time we reached the large two-story house it was dark as pitch and I was hoping the occupants of the house didn't sleep too soundly, because those animals would certainly turn toward me once I started knocking. I whispered something to drax0r but right before I knocked, I remembered the house was vacant and on the market - and no one would be home!

I turned the doorknob and we tumbled inside. I was shocked! I sat up on the floor and noticed the wolves and coyotes and skunks and badgers all coming for us. drax0r closed the door and I realized we weren't at the vacant house - which is why the door was unlocked - in my fear I'd backtracked across the two empty lots to the second two-story house! Our other neighbors! I yelled out that we have just come into their house unannounced. There is an office right off the entryway, so I darted in there to announce myself and came face-to-face to with the lady of the house - topless - she was hurriedly dressing. I averted my eyes and stepped back to the foyer with out another word. The lady of the house called for her kids to "bring the shotgun" and we holed up by the door adjacent the front door - the once which leads to the garage, shotgun ready.

It was a tense night, straight out of a zombie movie. We could hear the animals outside, but once the sun came up, they were gone. We'd been up all night. I offered to go home and make pancakes to bring her for breakfast, as a show of thanks for protecting us.

---

HIDING FROM OR BEING TRAPPED BY ANIMALS: You are feeling controlled or threatened by your urges or the emotions or feelings of others.

BEING THREATENED OR ATTACKED BY ANIMALS: You are repressing your instincts.

SKUNK: Your suppressed anger is on the verge of exploding.

COYOTE: Associated with death.

WOLF: dreamer may be feeling threatened by something *or* symbols of repressed sexuality and anger.

BADGER: Needing to get away from the influence of other people.

SEEING NAKED BREASTS: can denote a feeling of exposure and invasion of privacy.

BREAKFAST: Attitude toward a new project.

---

Needless to say, I've had some fucked up dreams here lately, and this one freaking brims with repressed anger. Funny, I don't feel angry.



Taken August 15, 2010

I found that I feel differently knowing I have, at my command, 306 horses ready to be unleashed at a moment's notice against unsuspecting left hand lane drivers and/or those who consider using blinkers a "nuisance." While my Tiburon is quick enough, light enough, small enough, and maneuverable enough to get me out of most would-be-mouth-breather driving situations, I discovered today that RAW MOTHERFUCKING HORSEPOWER can mask a multitude of sins. Sure the Genesis Coupe 380GT is a larger, heavier car - but its also wider which means it corners (and more tightly "jumps" from lane to lane) better, and with nearly twice the horsepower and six gears (with the shortest throw of any vehicle in my expansive repertoire of cars I've driven) in which to choose from, problems just seem to...disappear. In my rear view mirror.

Thanks, Clone.

Eric