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Blog - April 2005 |
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This page stores my blog entries from April 2005. The entries are dated April 12, April 20, and April 30.
Moldy Wallpaper / Brief Note on John Paul II and Papal Elections / Monitor Update Tuesday, April 12, 2005 The battle between me and my wallpaper runs from humorous to potentially dangerous. Normally, one does not think about wallpaper in such terms, but my room appears to not be a normal room. Before my parents and I moved into this house, we needed to do a lot of cleaning. The brown carpet held stains that would never come out. I kind of liked the brown walls in my room, though. It had a nice light chocolate color to it. It seemed pretty uniform in cover and didn't show any signs of fading or failing. My parents decided to go with a creamy white color for the whole interior, so we washed the walls well before painting. Curiously enough, the brown paint started coming off the walls. Then, upon closer inspection and acuteness of nose, we noticed a certain tobacco scent and determined that it was not paint at all. We figured that a previous inhabitant must have smoked a lot and spent a decent amount of time in that room. After getting as much of the brown off the walls as we could, we painted. I moved my stuff into my new room, eager to get things in place as I had imagined. Thankfully, all the furniture I wanted to put in my room would actually fit where I thought they'd work best. We put up some shelves to hold some of my books and various random items and collectibles. The posters still needed to be hung. The home builders didn't use plasterboard in the 1940s to make this house, and the material they did use will not accept a thumbtack. I used some of that blue tacky stuff on a poster, only to have the paint come off the wall. Naturally, I stopped attempting to hang any of my posters and left the walls bare. Over the months of sleeping with my bed in a corner, something odd began to happen. A weird cracking occurred along the walls in odd patterns. Eventually, small pieces started falling off. After a very close look, I figured out that my whole room was wrapped in wallpaper. Whoever put it up put it on horizontally rather than vertically. For some time, we couldn't even tell it had wallpaper until then. Gradually, more pieces feel, forcing me to take my pocket knife and carve off pieces from the wall. At one point, I had a section that, for the space remaining, looked a lot like a profile of Fred Flintstone. The wallpaper seemed to stabilize until recently, when more crackling occurred and another chunk fell off. That piece fell into my bed, creating, somehow, a white smear spot on my green sheets. After finding entirely too many chunks of wallpaper in my bed over the last few years, I finally got fed up and decided to hack back the wallpaper again. Unfortunately, this time, I found mold and a rather nasty scent. So, this past Sunday, I spent a few hours scraping away the rather moist wallpaper and bleaching the wall to get rid of the mold. The Fred Flintstone shape remains with some sort of odd dark stain forming the right-side outline of ol' Fred. It now looks like Fred's forehead exploded at about a 20-degree angle from level, possibly caused by the roughly stake-shaped item that seems to have poked through him (a segment of wallpaper that I removed from "Fred's back" looks rather pointy and painful if it were real). Eventually, ol' Fred will have fresh paint covering him when I get that chance to strip all the wallpaper and repaint. ***** The passing of Pope John Paul II brought mixed emotions. On one level, I felt saddened with appreciation for his place in history and for the things he attempted during his tenure for the church and towards other religions. He held firm on the traditions of the Roman Catholic religion, and it takes a lot of strength to hold to one's convictions and traditions as he did. On the other hand, I didn't care too much, due to our differences in opinion regarding contraception, marriage, and probably a lot of other issues that, to me, make the Roman Catholic faith a little too outdated and unreasonable. It felt rather weird to think of him as being dead, though. Despite living during the reign of three Popes, I remember only one: John Paul II. His reigh proved to be unusual especially because it was roughly the second-longest reign of any Pope. Most Popes live for a few years before kicking the bucket (naturally ... or with a little help). With rumors swirling at the thought of voting in a non-European Pope, much may change this time around. Given that I do not remember John Paul I's or John Paul II's elections or inaugurations, I have never experienced such a thing before. The suspense of knowing that the Cardinals are all holed up in there, trying to make a decision on the new Pope. The attempts on maintaining the upmost piety while choosing someone who would aptly represent the Church and lead it. The excitement of seeing the white smoke to indicate the election of John Paul II's successor. I shall look forward to all of this in the next week or two. ***** After nearly a month, my new monitor, a Samsung SyncMaster 997DF, works rather nicely. Initially, I did have a bit of a hiccup with it. At times, when my computer would shut off my monitor, I would not get an image back. I updated the monitor driver and changed the screen saver, and it seems to be working ok now. I get a rather clear image from this monitor (running off a Radeon 9600 Pro video card), though I can see the rather small dots that compose the images. I don't have it running at its optimal 1200 x 1024 resolution (it's running at 1024 x 768) due to it making things a bit too small. My brightness is turned down to about 21 to keep the colors from looking washed out. Hopefully that's a good sign for monitor life. Whenever I get the money together to build a new computer, I'll probably go back to a Viewsonic monitor. I still love the color quality and imagery displayed by them. But, for now, my 19" Samsung will do wonderfully for me.
Low Percentage of Interesting E-mails / Sac Bee writers failing the Journalism Grade / Triple Dose of Good Occurrences / Busy Set of Weekends Wednesday, April 20, 2005
Number of new e-mails for Juno e-mail address: 31 Number from an alleged "Delbert Fraser", all spamming me for the same thing: 18 Number of Juno "spam" e-mails: 2 Number of other spam: 2 Number of legitimate e-mails deleted due to apathy: 4 Actual number of e-mails of interest: 5 Percent interesting e-mails: 16% ***** The Sacramento Bee, nearly a decade or two ago, became the sole major newspaper in the area. I like many segments, currently focusing on the Sports and Comics. I really do not like their reporting. More often than not, I have to read down to the very end to find out what the article is about. The writers craft a story around the topic and meander around, eventually getting to the point. What happened to good journalism? When I read the paper, I expect to see all the basic information I'd need within the first two or three paragraphs or so. I shouldn't have to dig through to the end to find out basic information. When the terrorists flew planes into the World Trade Center buildings, one didn't have to read an obscure paragraph buried near the end of the story to tell what happened. ***** Not much transpired through the election of a new pope. I could not watch the processions or the first prayer and speech from Pope Benedict XVI, but I did find it rather interesting. I guess a part of me figured the dramatic bits would be more pronounced, but I did not experience it. I may have expected more out of this and expected it to be more of a big deal to me than it ended up. During the first day of the conclave, the news showed the crowd as the smoke turned from white-ish to black. A woman in the crowd started crying at the sight of this. Did I miss something here? I really don't find the signal of not having elected a pope to be something to cry about. I wonder whether I'm too detached either in proximity or in Christian faith. I really don't expect much of anything different from Benedict XVI than we had from John Paul II. ***** Fortune has smiled on me this week in the form of three different elements:
***** This weekend starts a rather busy month's worth of activities:
Pam and Dave: 2 Years coming soon / Various GNR Thoughts / Listening Grooves and Streamlining CD Collections / Dave Listening to Commercial Rock Radio Again? / Jade Plant House Saturday, April 30, 2005
***** Lately, I've been on a big Guns N' Roses kick, and their semi-small catalog frustrates me. They were a band from whom I would have loved to hear many more albums. Sadly, that will never happen. Instead, I make do with what is out. Nearly 5 years after first becoming a fan, it feels funny to listen to them in comparison to current commercial radio. I've come from a time of seeing them in music videos to a time when music videos really don't seem to have nearly as much air time. I've gone from listening to "Pretty Tied Up" through a friend's small radio in the counselor's office to driving around town and listening to full albums on CD. Nowadays, no real difference exists between the "hard rock" stations like 98 Rock and the "alternative" stations like KWOD 106.5 FM. They both play the same type of current rock. It doesn't have that same edge that something like Guns N' Roses had. A co-worker and I agreed that Guns N' Roses would never make it these days. We'll ignore the fact that the last incarnation of the band had a total of one original member (Axl F'ing Rose), and I normally refer to that incarnation as "The Axl Rose Five". Rock music simply doesn't sound the same in the least right now. All the bands out there in commercial rock radio are too soft and passive, lacking that indescribable "edge". It feels too "safe" with no attitude whatsoever. I'm afraid I cannot sufficiently describe the feelings that float through my brain with respect to this. For kicks, I thought about what tracks I'd include in a compilation CD of my choice. By album, I think this is how it'd go down:
My lists certainly don't indicate that I don't enjoy the hits. Hit songs always have their place. Once I hear the hit songs enough (generally, doubly so between radio and CD listenings), I want to hear the non-hit tracks more in order to enjoy the band deeper. I feel it gives me a deeper understanding and impression of the band and its subtle complexities. A co-worker friend of mine has offered to take my VHS of the pay-per-view concert live from the Hippodrome in Paris (1992) and record it to a DVD. I'm a bit nervous about having someone else handle it, since it is my only copy and would crush me if I lost it. On the other hand, I know that tape won't last forever. I'm split between going through with it and trying to find a DVD of it elsewhere. My copy, sadly, was recorded in mono. The VCR my parents had back then was a mono VCR. We'll see what I can find and dig up online as to a stereo recording. ***** As I may have mentioned before, my current-time musical interest changes over time. For some period of time, I may get really stoked for heavy metal. A couple or few weeks later, I may be into punk, hard rock, or something else. I'm not certain why it changes as such. It could be from a gradual aural starvation from whatever kick I find myself in. Maybe that leaves me wanting it more after being away from it for so long. To add to these thoughts, I tend to keep whatever CDs I bought, regardless of how long I've had them or how often I listen to them. Would I be able to use my listening fluctuations to determine whether I can safely sell CDs without regretting it? It's possible I can, but I'd have to be careful and arrange it in a manner like this:
Naturally, it wouldn't actually be that easy. Plus, some listening grooves don't come along as often as others. ***** As soon as I get out of my current Guns N' Roses groove, I'll have to try something. I haven't had a major radio station be my main listening pleasure in over 10 years. Despite this, I have been able to at least keep track of who's being played and have a general understanding of what certain bands sound like. Recently, I have felt a bit out of touch of that. So that I can continue to scare Adam with my knowledge of bands I don't like, I'll have to start listening to 98 Rock regularly every day I can. I'll have to decide how to approach this, since I've developed a fairly large distaste for commercial music. I don't expect to hear anything earth-shattering. Heck. I don't expect to hear anything new I'd like at all. That thought, alone, tells me that I need to wipe my mind of expectations and preconceived notions. If I do anything otherwise, I may ruin the listening experience. Or, I may find that the current rotation merely supports my previous preconceived notions. Afterwards, I may have to find shows on KDVS or the punk shows on the commercial stations. ***** I recently bought a jade plant to accompany my faux bonsai at work. It needs re-potting, but I have yet to find a suitable Japanese-ish pot for it. While bounding around online, I found this image. If my jade plant ever gets large enough, I may have to try this for the heck of it. |
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