Never been one to let the carrier drop

So, this morning I walked outside to find that a used ion laser I’d purchased was sitting on my doorstep.. packed in a regular cardboard box with

A: No cover on the laser tube assembly
B: a 20 lb power supply directly under the laser assembly, and flopping around loose
C: a couple of foam peanuts.

Now, a peice of background information – a argon laser is a plasma tube, and in order to protect the inside of this tube, it’s coated with berellium oxide. This substance, when it meets with water, turns into a extreme nasty so extremely nasty that the suggested action if you break one of these tubes is to cover it with a dessicant, and call the hazmat people. Yes, really.

[It strikes me that if I were a terrorist, I might just break open a few of these tubes, scrape the powder off, and mail it. Be a lot more effective than anthrax, for sure. Easier to get, too..]

Anyway, so I left him some stunningly negative feedback [I was a little upset by this somewhat reckless endangerment of my life, for some reason], and discovered ebay’s latest addition to the auction community: private feedback. Now you can opt out of the public feedback system, at which point users can no longer read your feedback. But they can still tell he got a negative one. Wonder if he’ll give me negative feedback as revenge?

S.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040912/ap_on_re_as/nkorea_explosion&e=1&ncid=

Okay, so, yes, that’s news. I love how we’re downplaying the possibility that it was nuclear.. what else causes a 2.5 mile mushroom cloud, exactly? That’s a little big, don’t you think? Okay, so, now we know where the weapons of mass destruction are. In the hands of a genuine, certifiable nutcase.. [do you get the feeling I’m not totally impressed with the leadership of North Korea?]

I wonder where the next one will detonate.. and what Our Fearless Leaders will have to say about it.

I also wonder why I’m not hearing more about this event…

I do not live in the united states of america. I live on planet earth.
I am not black, white, mexican, korean, or japanese. I am human.
My earlier post about 9/11 was largely caused by [aside from personal depression, which is another issue entirely] my being upset that 9/11 has turned into this media circus, while we completely ignore the anneversery of the day we levelled chunks of baghdad, based on a lie.

I’m sorry, that upsets me. It always will. Ours are not better than theirs. We are not more valuable, we are not more important, we are not god’s chosen fucking people, okay? EVERY human is equally important. When you hold a media circus for every other tragedy that caused great loss of life that has happened in the last four years, then I won’t complain so much about 9/11. But until that day comes..

.. I still won’t be watching any television. And I’ll begging the rest of you to turn yours off.

I do regret the events of 9/11. While I respect the brilliance that went into the attack, I do not and can not condone attacks against innocent people, _ever_. Those attacks were just as wrong as our attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan. I understand what motivated them – or at least, I think I do, although Osama, if you’re listening, next time we need a note.

I also understand what motivated ours – or at least, again, I think I do. I suspect the full motivations may never really be understood – it’s just too big and complex.

So yes, I’m sorry for all the innocent people who died in 9/11. But I’m not any more sorry for them [or any less, for that matter] than the innocent people who died in any of our wars.

Come on, humanity, get your shit togeather. Please.

[coming from one human who can’t even remotely claim to have his shit togeather, yes, I agree that’s rather funny. I’m a bit like Harry Chapin in the 60s.. (difficult reference to explain, but I’ll know what I mean when I look back over this which is probably allt hat really matters)]

S.

Who else thinks that Seal might have been to the odd rave?

I refer you to Future Love Paradise..

One of the 450s was a infant mortality.. I hope that Petosa will just swap it for me instead of making me ship it back to Mackie. They *better*, since they were floor models.. someone really should have tested them before packing them back up..

It’s a weird failure mode, too. Power supply checks out okay, power stage is still making watts, but preamp is beyond toast.

S.

This 9/11 – the annversery of the ‘national tragedy’ (and I’m sorry, but I can’t even say that without my voice dripping sarcasm any more) – I sat and contemplated, for a few minutes, what it would have been like to be in Iraq. We got two towers and the pentagon – they got most of their city.

I won’t go on on a long political rant. Instead, I’ll just say that I’m sorry I didn’t do more to stop the war, and I’m even sorrier that it turns out that every ‘viable’ option on the ballot is someone who thinks that the war – which we now KNOW was over ficticious things (not that we didn’t have a pretty good idea before) – was a good idea.

Can’t we just throw the lot of them in jail and start over? The CEOs who make millions while their workers starve or have their pensions robbed, the leaders who would start wars to make money, can’t we just overthrow them.

Yes, I know, revolution is bloody, and I hate blood and violence and all things similar. But couldn’t someone figure out some way for some _evolution_ to occur?

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Lately, it seems like ebay has been indulging in more and more untrustworthy behaviors that enable sellers to, with a minimum of effort, get you to pay your maximum bid amount.

Two obvious ones:

1) with a shill bidder, have the bidder put a very high bid, and then retract. When a bid is retracted, the high-water mark does not move down, as it should, but stays at your maximum bid amount. handy for ebay, since they make more on auction fees, _really_ handy for sellers.

2) ‘Second-chance auction’. This one is beyond bizarre. You can sell multiple identical items, using a second-chance auction, for the same amount as your maximum bid.

In general, I think ebay is waning seriously in my list of ways to buy things.

Okay. I survived bumbershoot. 3 gruelling days of:

Food [I must have gained at least ten pounds]
Music [In specific, Toots and the Maytals, Burning Spear, The Marley Bros, United States of Electronica, Seal [who rocked, I don’t care what you say, Seal is cool], The Drive By Truckers, a little bit of the Presidents of the USA, Left-hand Smoke, a laptop battle with much drum&bass and glitch, and I know I’m forgetting at least five..]
Sun [Well, sort of]
Movies [the 1-reel film festival, which the bits I caught were great as always]

It wasn’t too crowded until today.. Fri and Sat were pretty chilled out. It was definately a orgy of something though. I’m actually *not* listening to music right now .. a very rare thing for me when sitting at my computer.. just because I’m trying to recover.

And week after next I might be seeing Billy Idol and Tears For Fears in CA!

I’m so suffering from burnout.

I’m also feeling the urge to do something with my hair. I’ve debated cutting it, or putting a blue stripe in it (why this strikes me as cool is beyond me, but somehow it just seems like it might add to the amusement value of it a bit.. of course, I’d have to pay someone to do it because I’m hopeless when it comes to hair hackery)..

Got a email back from Kindabuffer about my attempt to get MC to play at presence. He didn’t say yes, but he didn’t exactly say no either.. I sent him some MP3 links, hopefully he’ll be swayed by our tunage..

Sadly, now I must return to work.

Okay, so I’m noticably stiff today, which I don’t understand (I’m assuming it’s just from hauling gear around), but MC has managed our first truly mobile adventure, in the Aurifice coffee house in scenic capitol hill.

We, of course, forgot a couple of cables, hopefully that won’t happen again 😉 But otherweise all went very smoothly (other than some evil drunk guy menacing the DJ who was on before us – or at least threatening to expose himself, I’m not really clear on what happened other than that it sucked)

I’m looking forward to our next gig, just as soon as we have one. I emailed Kindabuffer and asked if there was any chance of us playing at Presence – I’m guessing no, but then again, if they’re just spinning mix CDs over there *why not*? 😉

We did a pure jam session, no planning, no net, and – amazingly – no problems. The only frustrating/annoying thing was that Alex, who originally wasn’t going to be part of the event, decided at the last minute he wanted to be, and there was mad scrambling for cables/stands/etc – in the end, Alex ended up sitting on the couch in front of the stage playing his groovebox. But it all *sounded* good, and from where he was sitting he could even fire off the occasional sample, so I guess all’s well that ends well and soforth.

On the Mr. Fusion project, we’re investigating the possibility of a ‘atomic laser’ i.e. a coherent ion gun. Need to do muchos more research on this subject but it looks like a promising method for synchronizing all the ions in a fusor. [The odds of fusion go up dramatically if all the ions are equadistant from the grids when you turn on the juice]. It’s been good hanging out and talking physics with Deadman, who’s visiting from CA. I think I may have to drag more of my friends out here..

Sadly, one of my friends and musicians i worked with a lot has (apparently) been forbidden by her SO to ever see anyone she met online ever again. Hopefully things will cool off a little there and she’ll be allowed to return to Sheer Sound for some more projects.. I’ve been working on what ought to be a wicked cover of ‘Hazy Shade of Winter’ in the hopes of using her vocal talents.. we’ll see how all that works out.

ANd the beat goes on..

Well, had a great time camping.. it wasn’t really ‘car camping’, since we had about a quarter mile walk and three streams to ford.. which was bad, because I hadn’t brought adequate padding because I thought I’d be sleeping in the car. But we had a great time

Now I’m off to run to Sundazed to say hi to Lara for her birthday, then back here for practice w/ Tory [we have a show Tuesday at the Aurifice in Cap Hill! Well, not a show exactly, but a two hour timeslot and we’ll be jammin’ downtempo-like..

Monday, tuesday, weds, thurs, all got something going on. Enjoying the last dregs of sunshine in Seattle..

S.