well, I keep on thinkin’ ’bout you, sister golden hair surprise
and I just can’t live without you, can’t you see it in my eyes?
i’ve been one poor correspondent, and i’ve been too, too hard to find
but it doesn’t mean you ain’t been on my mind

It’s a beautiful day.

The chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity of adventure!

My experience has been essentially the same as Rafe Colburn’s:

rc3.org: Vox: day one
after using the invitation I got my first surprise — when you sign up for Vox, you don’t start out with all of the toys that everybody else has. You are initially inducted at Starter level. What’s that mean?

I’m at artlung.vox.com

This day is spelled ridiculously.

Or maybe beautifully.

Brand new day.

Kick butt.

Changes on the work front on the horizon.

Stay tuned.

Last night around 9:45pm the power went out. Didn’t come back on until about 12:30am. Then we went to bed.
We occupied ourselves with non-electricity related activities. Well, actually, Leah drafted her bio for the BlogHer conference and we talked and stuff. It was kind of a nice mellow night.

I did a kind of stalking panther thing. We lit candles, and I checked outside out front, and I checked out back. I went out to the van and checked the radio for news or trouble. I listened to the neighbors a little. I felt very protective of this rented home and my family, just my wife tonight, no stepkids here last night. There was no trouble on the radio. No natural or unnatural disasters. No special breaking news for Ventura County or Simi Valley. So after about 10 minutes of radio listening I hung it up and came back in.
I couldn’t get any work done, since all my work is digital. I called Southern California Edison. When I first called they had no information on the outage. It thanked me for reporting the outage. I called back 10 minutes later, then the machine-woman said to me that I would get a callback to my phone if the outage were anticipated to be more than 4 hours.
It’s interesting that I never spoke with any human being at Southern California Edison. Is it the future?
So this morning I woke up early, about 8:15am. I got started with my day, did some cleaning up, start up a computer to check email. Just as I answer one email, *poof* the power goes out again.

So much for work and email, again.

I call SCE again, they report that the outage has been ongoing since 10pm last night, and should be back online at about 11am. It came back on at 10, after Leah and I were just about to get in the car, laptops in hand, to go get breakfast and check email and work.

I don’t know what the problem was in Simi (western end of town) — the SCE robot woman said it was “Equipment Failures,” but it’s definitely flaky as of last night and this morning.

It’s a brand new day. Full of possibilities. The reset button of life has been hit.

Grace.

i now have a standard account, which means i can post posts. artlung’s blog

(this is a followup)

leahpeah » Jason Scott

I’m a big fan myself of Jason via the BBS Documentary. Leah gets some great interviews, indeed!

I have decided my new favorite characters in film are the penguins from the movie Madagascar. I didn’t see that in the theatres, but I remember seeing a Christmas short with them in it and really enjoying it. I love the four way interaction of the characters: Skipper (also, “Joe”?), Kowalski, Private, and Rico. It’s a whole lot of fun to watch.

In doing some, “ahem” research on this and found that wikipedia has a whole category of “fictional penguins.” I was happy to see Badz Maru and Tux on there.
That rocks.

They have their own page as well. That also rocks.

I know someone whose name is Pinguino. She runs Penguin Palace. She’s not listed, although she draws a mean penguin (ninja penguin, actually).

Last night I got into a conversation with a fellow “on a journey of changing and growing” (as I am) about free will. It’s comforting to know that wikipedia also does an admirable job with that topic as well. I found myself defending the universe’s arbitrary nature as a mystery. I was arguing that it “feels like we have free will” and that pretty much, we’re limited by that. The fellow I was talking about was asking about the fact that other people also have free will too, and asked if their free will affected my free will. I said that “yes indeed, people affect other people, this is the way things are set up.” He asked why God would allow people to do bad things with their free will, maybe (s)he/it/they might intervene and protect us from such things. My answer was that perhaps we’re meant to learn something. I vividly remember arguing, as a college student (maybe 20 years old?) that pain was not required to learn things. Well, I’m 36 now, and I can tell you that my experience is that learning only comes with some degree of pain. I admit it would be nice to take a week or month off from this fact. It’s nonetheless true that this does not happen very often.

Hey, I’m learning to listen to my inner voice and let it guide me in my life.

Also, funny penguins are funny.

The dude abides.

“Just for today I will act in a way I would admire in someone else.”

Awesome video. I like hearing Noam speak. He may not be easy to agree with, but he knows how to formulate an argument and provide evidence, as opposed to mere bloviating.

I read about this appearance on Red State Son:

You’d think that when someone like Noam Chomsky speaks to West Point cadets about US imperial history and the high power hypocrisy that justifies it, there’d be a lot of online commentary, across the board. Personally, I didn’t know anything about this until a friend mentioned it to me the other night — so yesterday I looked it up, and there was Noam, laying down the righteous s**t in front of an audience of well-scrubbed, soon-to-be butterbars. It’s an hour long, but worth the time.

via robotwisdom

also, butterbar = military slang for “a Second Lieutenant; a reference to the insignia of rank – a single gold bar”

If you are in San Diego, or just like San Diego, read this thread, and if there’s something cool that’s been missed, leave a comment too! Ask San Diego Blog!

I’m fixing to sell my copy of ultra-rare copy of the Blade Runner Sketchbook.Pictures will be online sometime in the near future.

Interested? Leave a comment with your email and I’ll get back with you.

I’ve seen the book online for up to $950. Serious inquiries only.

(in other news: thanks for the condolences, everyone. and also, there are many changes happening in my life. positive ones, but not easy ones. progress is being made. oh heck, I AM MAKING PROGRESS).

Onward, Christian Soldiers!