| It Should Never Have Come Down to Me |
[Jul. 12th, 2008|11:45 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | poetry, timbers | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  somber | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Nothing but the dishwasher... | ] |
It Should Never Have Come Down to Me
by Michael Newlyn Blake
(c)2008, Michael Newlyn Blake
It should never have come down to me.
But it did. Now the season is done.
Just turn off the lights, leave me be.
Undefeated at home: PGE
This year we should really have won.
It should never have come down to me.
I had your backs, kept you goal free.
During non-scoring run after run.
Just turn off the lights, leave me be.
So now, in the end, do we see
our final shots missing, but one.
It should never have come down to me.
You scored just one, how could this be?
1 of 5 might as well have been none.
Just turn off the lights, leave me be.
And now it's just them vs ME.
It is here I am always undone.
It should never have come down to me.
Just turn off the lights, leave me be.
( The image that inspired the poem ) |
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| Fun with Live Journal |
[Jul. 12th, 2008|11:25 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | frogtown | ] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Home | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  geeky | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Doctor Who - The Sea Devils (Commentary Track) | ] |
For a while I've been embedding my live journals in my web side at home. (It's much easier than maintaining my own blog software installation). For some time, I've been doing this by creating a couple of communities and posting to individual communities for specific items. This for the frogtown front page went to a frogtown community, things about Joe went somewhere else, etc...
It seems that Live Journal has implemented tags over the last few years and it's possible to structure URLs that will only show posts for those tags. So I can ember, in different pages on my site, posts that are specifically about certain topics. So this post, for example, will go to the frogtown main page because it has the frogtown tag on it.
Neat, eh? |
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| The Website Is Down |
[Jul. 10th, 2008|01:56 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | funny | ] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Work | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  amused | ] |
| [ | music |
| | The Website Is Down | ] |
Why am I always the last to learn about cool things like this?
The Website Is Down |
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| No Pity |
[Jul. 9th, 2008|09:14 am] |
In case anybody has any ideas, I'm trying to find Klingon translations of some Portland Timbers chants, etc...
Post in Klingon Language community |
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| Weekly poem... |
[Jul. 6th, 2008|09:21 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | poetry, sonnet | ] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | Home | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Doctor Who - Warriors of the Deep | ] |
I'm going to run out of old stuff eventually. Better start writing new stuff soon...
My First Sonnet
by Michael Newlyn Blake
(c)2008, Michael Newlyn Blake
If I should ever find the words to say
the things that always seem to go unsaid.
The words don't come. My silence must betray
the pointless shame I've learned to feel instead.
Why must it be so hard to give, to share
our hopes, our fears, and love as partners do?
Take off the masks, our inner selves lain bare,
is what we each owe and what each are due.
But is it all for love? Have we been played?
For love, must we be so completely known?
Grand gestures, empty, insinerely made.
Love disbelieved when not overtly shown?
And still I feel such gestures have their place,
If just to see that smile upon your face. |
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| Love Patiently |
[Jul. 1st, 2008|12:40 pm] |
Just realized I hadn't posted my weekly poem. Here goes...
Love Patiently
by Michael Newlyn Blake
(c)2008, Michael Newlyn Blake
We live concurrently but still apart.
Our thoughts, when not expressed, remain our own;
But when we think, we speak, we share, we start
to grow together. Known and not alone.
But others covet harmony like this.
Attempt to corrupt or worse to invade.
Pursuing contact, desperate for that kiss.
This is not how love is won or made.
Why do they always fail to see the truth:
That love does not come to those who can't wait?
The feverish impatience of our youth
That must surrender, patiently, to fate.
When happiness and love come from within
This, in life, is when we truly win. |
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| Welcome to Clackamas County |
[Jul. 1st, 2008|12:40 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | house | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  frustrated | ] |
I have found my new nemesis, in the form of the Clackamas county planning office.
We are supposedly getting a heat pump installed today. Supposedly. However...
Last year, the prior owner of this house tried to move the driveway.
He got a letter back in November telling him the move was illegal because of the lack of a permit and because it was too close to the intersection.
He restored the driveway to it's original location.
This was verified and approved during the address change process.
7 months later, after lots of work has been done (some with permits), the county had told the heat pump installers to stop all work because of an outstanding permit issue relating to the driveway. No details, the lady who does that is out in the field today, just stop.
We think it's tied to the letter. We don't know for sure. We won't know until tomorrow morning. In any case the furnace is already out so we have nothing. If all goes well (and why would it?) we should be able to continue (and finish) the install tomorrow. |
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| Work Haiku |
[Jun. 22nd, 2008|12:51 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | haiku, poetry, work | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  pensive | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Mike, N7LMJ & John, KF8KK: HamGeneral 01 | ] |
Not really proper Haiku but still... it did the job.
A few years ago I found myself in a work situation that I found to be very oppressive, depressing, and just generally hopeless. I basically survived by writing my observations/reflections into little Haiku. (What's the plural of Haiku?)
I called it Haiku Therapy
So, here they are:
We thought you were good.
You don't know how we do things.
You just don't know jack.
Sit there and learn things
as I ask empty questions
and judge you a fool.
I've been here longer.
Your attitude annoys me.
Damn your fool suggestions.
We are paranoid
Lacking the capacity
for goals or reason.
Why? There is no why.
Discuss? There is no discuss.
Hope? There is no hope.
You think you're so smart.
If you're so damn clever,
Why do you work here?
On rule enforcement:
All rules enforced evenly
Some more than others.
Sign of bad job:
Spend all day looking forward
to sitting on bus.
How many haiku
does it take to sell a book
to retire on?
Why bother planning?
It's easier to react.
Method gives me gas.
Be free fo the self.
Give your soul to your masters
or your children starve.
No booze on the clock.
Meet us at the local bar.
It's mandatory.
We killed the last two.
It wasn't something we did.
It was just the stress.
Your fresh ideas
are why attracted us to you.
Stop rocking the boat.
Unthinking people:
"We've always done it this way".
God, I hate my job. |
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| Cool "3d" pictures... |
[Jun. 19th, 2008|07:42 am] |
It never would have occured to me that you could use a process like this to turn old l+r photo pairs into electronic 3d pictures.
Old Images Now in 3D
Isn't the brain cool? |
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| Ars Poetica |
[Jun. 14th, 2008|11:37 pm] |
Ok, so I took a poetry class at PSU this term. That was kind of fun. I'll see if I can keep a pace of one poem a week. You'll have to forgive me if I occasionally mix in things I've written before (especially from that class).
This week, it's my Ars Poetica:
Ars Poetica
by Michael Newlyn Blake
(c)2008 Michael Newlyn Blake
If your thesis you want to convey,
understand what you're trying to say.
Look to flow and to rhyme,
and the keeping of tume,
unless that is just not your way. |
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| Post Office Stupidity |
[Mar. 23rd, 2008|04:56 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | house | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  pis | ] |
Ok, this is getting kind of annoying.
As many of you know, we bought a house back in December. This house is build on a corner lot where anything house has recently burned down. The old house faced out onto a very busy street with no sidewalk. The current house faces onto a nice quite side street.
The area of the mailbox is somewhere that is inconvenient and unsafe considering how the house is currently laid out, so we're in the process of changing the address with the county. We have a new address which we are told should be globally recognized anywhere from 3 months to a year depending on who it is.
In the mean time, we've been trying to communicate with the post office to work out what the requirements are for a mailbox. You know, where we have to put it. We've tried calling the post office, where they said they would pass a note along. We've tried sitting around and just waiting for the guy but we always seem to miss him. Just recently, I decided to just put a note for him in the old mailbox addressed to "Our Letter Carrier". That's it. No address on the envelope or anything that would indicate that it was mail. The flag on the mailbox was down so I thought he must have gotten the message but still no communication.
Today, 5 days later, I checked the mailbox. The flag was down but the envelope was still in there... with a circle drawn around the postage area. He didn't even look at it to realize that it was for him!
How the hell am I supposed to communicate with these guys? |
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| 5 Years Old |
[Mar. 16th, 2008|11:29 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | joe | ] |
| [ | mood |
| | amused | ] |
He turned 5 years old over the week. We had his birthday party today.
Still hard to believe it's been 5 years... |
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| Nostalgia time |
[Mar. 7th, 2008|09:33 am] |
So, my wife and I were at Gustav's a couple of nights ago. It's a sort of German pub and restaurant out here in the NW. Anyway, they have these mints out in the library. Usually they're the red striped ones but, occasionally, they'll have these green striped ones.
At the time they had the green ones again and I decided to try one. The mint flavoring was very familiar to me... not just in that it was spearmint but in the exact level of mintyness, sweetness, etc... it reminded me of... well, I wasn't sure at first. Eventually I realized that it was this liquid filled gum that I used to chew on occasion when I was a kid.
Unfortunately, I could not remember what it was called at first. When I eventually tracked that down, I tracked down a place that actually still sold it. Well, I couldn't find it at a local store but I did find it online.
It's Spearmint Freshen Up Gum
Coolness. I'm in nostalgia heaven. |
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| Timber Jim T-Shirt? |
[Jan. 29th, 2008|08:45 pm] |
In honor of Timber Jim retiring, there was a discussion on talktimbers about creating a shirt for him. This was one of the designs somebody suggested. I would totally buy one of these if somebody made them...
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| Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency on Radio 4!!! |
[Aug. 21st, 2007|07:45 am] |
First they dramatize the remaining Hitchhikers Guide books and now BBC Radio 4 is moving on to the Dirk Gently books. I'm so excited!!!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/dirkgently/ |
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| iPod / Cell Phone weirdness |
[Feb. 10th, 2007|12:26 am] |
I just noticed something odd. If my Treo is next to my iPod while it's talking to the network (you know, downloading mail or something) the click wheel starts acting like it's haunted or something. Starts moving randomly. Can be a bit shocking if you're not expecting it.
We're a Cingular family so this would be with the GPS version of the phone I guess. |
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[Feb. 8th, 2007|02:28 pm] |
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| An amusing idea... |
[Mar. 20th, 2006|11:36 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | ideas | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  giddy | ] |
Thought this might be a nice way to have a little fun.
1) Sign up for one of those 30 day / $25 unlimited search accounts at carfax.com.
2) Wander down to 82nd Ave and start writing down VIN numbers from various cars.
3) Look them up and see just what kind of interesting lives these cars have had. (And those guys on 82nd Ave have some... interesting... cars.) |
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