These photos of Drake Brodahl’s process of making some art are inspiring—PUMML: Process. It’s almost like a how-to. It definitely gives me ideas. Maybe it will inspire you too?

I might have paid four bucks per gallon before, but last night was the first time I recognized it as such. This was in Calabasas on my way home.

Still mildly sick. I was thinking of going swimming this morning, but I still have some phlegm. I thought about swimming last night but it’s still too chilly out.

That’s really all I have at the moment. Happy Friday!

I subscribe to several mailing lists. A beelion years ago we used to call these things “listservs”—basically it’s an email address that is an alias for a whole group of people, and when you send mail to it, everyone on the list gets a copy. WebSanDiego was my mailing list for a long while.

Anyway, on mailing lists, occasionally there are people who are annoying, or do what’s called trolling, or are otherwise jerks. Not sure what an internet troll is? Think of YouTube comments. Those are internet trolls.

Now, most civilized lists don’t let in people who are merely idiotic jerks. But there are some people who are frustrating. Again, in the old days, I used to simply send any email from such people to the trash. Nowadays, since I use Gmail for email predominantly, I have a different solution.

I tag them.

People who I find begin to act like bozos, I add a little filter to my email such that when email comes from them, it gets a little tag that says “bozo” on it. It’s a reminder of the previous history with that person, and the red color I give the tag in Gmail’s interface functions like a stop sign. It’s personally satisfying. It also discourages me from replying. Because I don’t want more email with bozo tags in it. My bozo tags make me smile, and not frown, when bozos are bozos.

I have no doubt some might consider me a bozo on email lists. I have been that, at times.

Live and let bozo, I say.

Headed out. Only a little phlegm, and only a bit of vomiting this morning. Luckily I’ve scarcely eaten. My head is clear, my fever is gone, and I’m not coughing at all. My throat is a bit sore.

There was a bomb threat yesterday at work apparently, but I’d really like to get out of the house—so I’ll take my chances with the outside world.

No swimming today though. We’re coming up on a week without swimming.

We have a tiny grapefruit tree in our yard. I’m told the fruit is small and tart.

We have possums in the yard. Leah saw a cat-sized one maybe 2 weeks ago. Yesterday I saw a tinier, cuter one.

We go through so many headphones and earbuds. I think the kids really do eat them. If you have a source for earbuds by the dozen please leave a note in the comments.

Alex liked the Elmo I got her on FreeCycle. Febreeze apparently did the trick.

The next IRS payment is in the chamber, ready to fire on the 15th.

I’ve not delved into Xubuntu as much as I intended to this weekend. Mostly I laid in bed and tried to get well. I also missed Ty’s basketball game this weekend. Tony worked hard on a project yesterday and only occasionally checked in on Star Wars Galaxies to see if his trade had gone through. The TV was off and he took no calls. That counts for some pretty good discipline these days. Lastly on the kid front, I really am finding myself a patriarch. The kids listen to me and ideally I’m expanding their mind to the possibilities and perils of life. Yesterday we talked about resumes and interviews at the dinner table. Big topics like: “what do you include on a resume?” and “can you just leave off jobs that were bad?” and “can you include anything on your resume?” Leah and I did our best and pretty much stuck to what the best advice would be, and I tried to include plenty of my own experiences and difficulties. I find the kids respond best when I simply tell them my story and not try to abstract everything into a general rule that they must follow. It feels good and natural and still bizarre to be a patriarch.

Lastly, I am still sick. Not as much as I was, but not well. Still coughing up phlegm. Still sneezing. My nose is nearly raw. I want a fast-forward button for illness. People would buy it.

Wellness, ahoy? Oi.

This morning, after a fitful 14 hours of sleep, I woke up feeling better. This crud I got—microorganisms all taking over my whole nasopharyngeal area and causing systemic disruption that among other things caused me to miss swimming 3 days in a row. Actually, I shouldn’t go today either, so that’s like 4 days. Teeny tiny jerks! Stop messing with my life!

Leah has been a champ. I even randomly, on Friday went off on her about various stupid stuff around the house that normally we’d have a civilized conversation that would begin “hey, some things around the house are bothering me and I think we need a plan to get them done”—instead I suddenly started doing those random things and muttering that Leah never does anything. This was met with supreme restraint on the part of my partner, who then excused herself from the situation. Meanwhile, after doing 1 and a half of the things that suddenly bothered me, I collapsed in a heap unable to do anything more. I took a long bath and slept fitfully for hours. I woke up apologizing.

It’s a particularly interesting event to me because I see very well the guy who Jenny divorced, and who Leah got fed up with those many years ago. This is the pure “my way or the highway!” id version of Joe that apparently lies dormant. I like to think of it something like Windows crashing and you’re left with DOS. It definitely indicates that the transformation that’s occurred in me in the past two years is not entirely complete. It also indicates, contrary to what some of my co-workers think, that I do have strong opinions occasionally. No longer wishy-washy, I can be a jerk with the best of them.

Of course, the strong-willed version of DOS Joe also has bad judgment, no people skills, and zero patience. If I could harness the jerk part maybe I could be one of those genius-maniac type people who gets shit done. Sadly, I’d be a lonely crank. He’s not the person you want on your team. He might make a good Unabomber though.

This blog post is the second energy intensive thing I’ve done today. The first was cleaning out my nasopharynx in the shower—basically irrigation with water and expulsion—coughing and noseblowing— ith great force and energy. This process grosses out Leah. However, with the new configuration of the new house Leah need not hear it. That’s a nice win for the new place.

Hey kids, onward!

Still feverish. Nasal congestion ahoy! Cough productive now. I would rather move than be sick right now. That’s pretty bad.

Some miscellaneous items for you:

Hindsight is 20/20: quotes about Iraq from before we started: Voices: The Quotes That Sent Us To War. My favorite:

“Having defeated and then occupied Iraq, democratizing the country should not be too tall an order for the world’s sole superpower.” – William Kristol, Weekly Standard editor, and Lawrence F. Kaplan, New Republic senior editor, 2003-02-24

Around my house we try to avoid the word “should.” Maybe that’s why.

Also, Pinguino moved her blog to DeviantArt, and in my opinion she needed RSS, so I set it up using these instructions. It took all of five minutes.

Jenn moved her blog and today wrote about a new blog type deal in San Diego. It sounds promising!

Yesterday I went swimming early, which was great. I was tired after about 15 minutes, but pressed on to do a full 30 minutes. I actually noticed myself getting tired the night before at about 20 minutes, but went 45.

One of the things about exercising (ugh! I despise that word!) is that I’m more aware of signals my body is telling me. I have a baseline for what I’m able to do in the water—how should it feel if I hold my breath all the way across the pool? How should it feel if I go down 12 feet? how should I feel after 10 minutes of laps? The answer is “better than I feel right now”—and I am sick. It started with some extra weakness during swimming. Yesterday it progressed with backache and a nonproductive cough. Now I have the backache + headache + slight fever. I took it easy yesterday night.

I’m a bit resentful that my better judgment is telling me to avoid swimming right now.

In other news, I bought a new hard drive for the Windows box yesterday at Fry’s. Installed without a hitch. I tried out Ubuntu yesterday but the UI really didn’t run very well given the limitations of the video card. I ditched that and went with Xubuntu. So yesterday I spent a little time customizing that. I have a lot of stuff to migrate, and much to learn. I’ve not used any Linux variant as a desktop computer, but Windows 2003 Server is just not cutting it anymore for this machine. Then I think, maybe I just need a new video card, but a nice one is almost as much as a whole new machine, and heck, free software is free, and it’s a great environment to learn new things. That’s very important because as May comes in, this is the last month of my contract with Vivendi, and I want to brush up on my technological skills.

What I’d really like to do is have a new Mac, but financially that’s not a smart plan—not till we get the IRS situation squared away. I tell you kids, if you’re going to contract all year, be putting away those taxes as you go. Yes, it’s nice to have big dollars and put away debt. But the taxman, he will have his due, if not now, then later. Big lesson learned there for Leah and me.

Leah is doing great, the book she’s in is out, and some DW dough has showed up too. Also, any minute now we have our deposit money coming back from the previous place; Leah did a great job taking care of all the loose threads that needed cutting there—from cleaners, the floors, to dealing with the management company. The day before yesterday on the Dave Ramsey podcast Dave said to a person considering moving—I’m paraphrasing—“moving has big costs: financial, emotional, relational.” I agree with that wholeheartedly. April was really packed, and we got through it. Leah has done a great job. She may not think so, but she’s totally taking care of business.

That’s all for now.

I didn’t go to the Web 2.0 Expo last week, but I did read Sassy’s concise wrap up.

Some video from the conference is out there, here’s social software thinker Clay Shirky:

Both covers. Both awesome.

Blitzkrieg Bop (about this song) by Gus and Fin (via BoingBoing):

Rock the Casbah (about this song) by Rachid Taha (via Neil Kramer):

Now that should start your day off right. It did mine. Off to the pool! And possibly Fry’s Electronics. Possibly.