It's been so long since I've written a substantive post here that if we've only been keeping in touch via this blog, there's no way to really catch up. The list of people this applies to is woefully long: friends, relatives, there are many folks whom I've been negligent in keeping in touch. Of course, those folks also know that this is nothing new, that I've a pattern of falling off the map with tide-like regularity.
Also, I have a half-hour, well 25 minutes now actually, before the Dark Mistress comes home and we go out to eat. We're celebrating the passing of my winter break. In the next, uh, 23 minutes, I hope to sum up what I've been up to lately.
As my previous post alluded to, I sent in all the needed materials for my MFA applications on December 8th, the deadline I'd set for myself. Ahh! I just spilled corn husker's lotion all over myself! 21 minutes!
On the beginning of my last day of work December 18th actually, I decided to pop into the English building, having seen my Professor's car in the lot. He happened to be in, and I learned that he and his wife suffered a horrible personal loss, which is why he was so hard to get a hold of this semester.
Over the course of the nest few weeks I'd get various notices from schools that they hadn't received the letters of recommendation from my professors. As of last week, I've sent 5 or 6 emails out to them (the professors), and I'm done. They're adults, they're professionals, and if emailing them doesn't work, what else can I do? It's break, so it's not like I can track them down in their offices.
After work ended, I hung up my hat for some serious and long needed decompression. It actually began with a bit of depression. Applying to MFA programs had been my sole purpose since the summer. It was incredibly stressful, but it also shut up that little voice in the back of my head that always says things like "what you're doing isn't important", "how is this bettering yourself in any way?", "you're going to end up a boring nobody that no-one cares about unless you get off the couch". (Those voices, by the way, are counter-productive)
Shit! 11 Minutes.
Well, anyway, I got through the slump by working on a craft project and ended up coming to a sense of calm and accomplishment. One of my biggest sources of anxiety in my post-college life was how hard it is to find the time to do the things that are important to me, the things that make me feel like I am doing something important. Well, for one, applying to MFA programs involved a lot of research, reading, and writing. I had to do it while also helping the Dark Mistress move in, cooking, and cleaning (though not as much as I suppose I should), and working. My life wasn't in a good balance necessarily, but I managed to find the time to do it. And it was much, much harder than doing those things I like to do, like writing.
Second, I came to appreciate how much I really do love writing and why. I won't go into it here, but it feels like the past several years of my life have I slowly worked towards realizing that I'm happiest with life, and myself, when I'm being creative. When I'm trying to make something beautiful or striking or at least fun. It's something that seems pretty obvious to my friends, I don't know why it took me so long to figure out.
Lets see, 6 minutes. Other highlights from break:
The house is driving the Mistress and I nuts. It's so cluttered. We've simply run out of room to put things, and that means there's a lot still unpacked. We've made some great progress though. The living room is slowly becoming a nice place to be, and just today I cleaned up the Middle bedroom, which was a re-god-dammed-diculous disaster, rivaled only by those people with mental illnesses who can't manage to throw anything away.
The Mistress and I watched The Ballad of Jack and Rose, Into the Wild, and finished the series Six Feet Under, the finale of which had us both sobbing for what felt like a half hour. Assholes. I cut up my first whole chicken to make a crock pot recipe that was basically chicken, spices, zucchini, and broth. (It was delicious).
AHH! I'm out of time! We had an awesome new years, I played many video games, drank a fair amount of liquor, saw old friends, and ate out perhaps a little too much, but hey, it was winter break, man.
Maybe there'll be a part II tomorrow, maybe not.
Showing posts with label New Years. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New Years. Show all posts
Monday, January 12, 2009
Friday, January 11, 2008
Holiday Vacation SuperPost!
Back to work with me. I started yesterday, though I had a retreat to attend Monday. At first I thought it wasn’t too bad. I thought that if I could clear my head and stay aware of who I was and why I was here, I could better handle the stresses of work. That plan worked until I got on the phone with my boss. She’s high strung, and understandably so, but the moment I heard her voice darting from crisis to crisis I felt my blood pressure rise. Other people’s problems becomes her crisis which then I have to adopt. Week in, week out, until summer. Assessment: work is going to continue to blow.
I’ve wanted to post all during break, but it felt too daunting of a task, as each day brought more to share. Last post I wrote before break I mentioned I wanted to do something creative each day. What I had in mind was to write each day, if just for a little bit. No dice. I wrote word zero all break. What really sucks was I was working on a longer story on which I was making quite a bit of progress back in October, but in November something happened and I stopped making time to write. When I went to try during break, nothing was coming to me because I became foreign to that world I created. I got frustrated, bowed to the page, and gave up. I didn’t have time to mull on that for long as Christmas was coming and Santa had some business to attend to.
Back before the Dark Mistress and I were a “thing”, she once asked me, upon my mention of previous electronics experience, if I would be able to build a Theremin. I replied that yes, it’d be possible to purchase and build a Theremin kit, I imagine. The topic came up again a month or two ago, and apparently she’s always wanted one.
I remembered this six days before Christmas, and thus began my five day obsession with building my love a Theremin.
A quick google search revealed several kits online, but they were all fairly expensive. Then I came across a site that promised I could build my own for about $75, which was still more than I was willing to spend, but I couldn’t resist how awesome a project it could be.
Now what is a Theremin? If Wikipedia hasn’t told you by now, it’s a music instrument that is played without touching it. Traditionally there is a vertical antenna and a horizontal loop antenna. The distance between your right hand and the vertical antenna controls pitch, the distance between your left hand and the horizontal antenna controls volume.
The principle involves two oscillators, which are circuits that produce a waveform. (think of ripples in water… a rolling up and down wave like that) A Theremin uses two oscillators built and fine tuned to create identical waveforms. They are attached to the pitch antenna in such a way that the distortion of the electromagnetic field put out by the antenna by your hand throws the oscillators out of sync. If one oscillator is oscillating at 1100khz, and the other is oscillating at 1540khz, the difference between the two would create a tone at 440hz, which would be an A.
I knew very little of this going in. I had to start from scratch. I started Thursday when I etched my own pc board by printing his track layout on glossy photo paper and ironing it on, then soaking it in a mixture of hydrogen peroxide and hydrochloric acid. It was messier than I expected, and I didn’t feel quite right the rest of the night. By Saturday I had the first set of components in and tested.
The circuit is built so it oscillates around the frequencies of AM radio, so each oscillator it is tested by tapping on the coils and tuning the radio until you can hear it. This happened for me on Friday night, I believe, and was cause for much celebration. I'm pretty sure I ate a whole box of Runts. It was around this time Slim Jim stopped by.
I told Slim Jim of my Christmas Theremin project, and he ended up being a huge help. Though he wasn't able to directly solve any of my problems, he knows a thing or two about electronics, and just being able to explain a problem to someone is enough sometimes to clear a mental blockage. One of the problems I was running into in trying to get it working was there are a few parts that dangle loose whose position is essential cool noise production, so I set about mounting the project in a case before I went any further.
I recognized in one of the examples on dude's site a DVD shelf in which he mounted one of his Theremins. I happen to have two of those exact shelves: one in use, one in the basement. (One used to be Leggolamb's. Random Fact!) In the name of Love and Science, I cut into that mother. It was then that my long term vision crystallized: not just to build a working Theremin, but to build a case it could be packed up into and transported. What's the point in building this cool as hell thing if you can't take it to parties, right? Would I seriously give her a mess of boards and wires, when I could give her a hinged plywood masterpiece? It's without Slim Jim that I would have failed here, as he showed me some wood working basics needed so as not to look like a damn chimp tossing around Samsonite.
Once mounted to the shelf, it “came to life” for the first time. (Okay, once I mounted it to the shelf, realized I reversed polarity on a component or two, then remounted it. I was under the gun!) What had been a faint whistle earlier became a full bodied... louder whistle. Again, I was giddy. If I had another box of Runts...
It is just about one of the coolest things to experience for the first time. I have no idea why. Perhaps there's something fundamentally spooky about a speaker's whistling in response to how close I slip my hand towards and antenna. The interaction becomes intuitive very quickly, and every time I hook it up, twenty minutes of my life inexplicably disappears.
If Christmas is anything, it's a chance for those of us who get off on withholding to taunt and torture the hell out of our loved ones. In this case, it was the Mistress, who knew I was doing something related to a gift for her. By some miracle, she had no clue what was keeping me up nights and exposing me to Chlorine gas. My lie became “playing Half-Life”, which of course didn't hold water, but didn't tell her anything either. I never managed to finish the doors for the case, the wiring for the panel, or the volume control circuitry, yet it was all more than worth it to see the look on her face when she pushed her hand into the sweet field of radiation and heard a sweeping whistle come through a pair of computer speakers.
Christmas for me was a little strange. On one hand, it's the first time I've had to drive any distance to my folks place for Christmas. (Last year was the first time I wasn't staying there for some extended period of time, and that was disturbing enough.) It just made things feel different, more adult. On the other hand, my folks got me an XBOX 360, which I did not see coming at all. It was the first time in a long time I felt like a kid at Christmas: barely being able to wait to pry into my new toys. I'd wanted one for two years now, but I would probably never buy one. I could never justify it, and by the time I could, the next generation of consoles would already be out.
This is the first video game console I've ever had during the prime of it's run. I was given a Playstation year after the PS2 came out, and an Atari 2600 at the dawn of the age of Nintendo. Not that I'm complaining. I think it's for the best, as I know my attention span and I needed all the focus I could get. I'm just trying to express how much I enjoy its presence.
The time between Christmas and New Years is, frankly, a blur. D.M.H. and I hung out almost all the time and it was wonderful. I didn't get to play 360 as much as I wanted to, say, Christmas day, but D.M.H. was very accommodating. We were both really spoiled by seeing each other every day though.
For New Years, we stopped by Spanky and Zanzibar's place for some Taboo, then some Scene-It. Dark Mistress Hawthorne was billed as top seed against a mysterious figure with ties to the past. Named Skidmark. We played in teams, and D.M.H. was my (drunk) partner. I was so proud of myself when she didn't know the first question we were asked but I did. (Trading Spaces, thank you.) I, however, did not answer one answer correctly for the remainder of the three games we played, while our team went on to win every one. I have to say, we had Skidmark uncomfortably close to our tails most of the time. The Dark Mistress is, apparently, a half crazed movie trivia machine.
Shortly after that, she went back to work, and I turned my focus on the house. And the XBOX. Well, first the XBOX, then the house. Two weekends ago we visited Slim Jim and got to catch up with one of my favorite people from college, The Blue Zipper, whom I hadn't seen in over a year. It was fantastic to see her again. It was also super cool to visit Slim Jim for once and to see what it's like where he lives. Before we left, he gave us a video projector to try hooking up to the iMac. He'd picked it up at some point but had no use for it at the time.
So the remainder of my break was spent on three projects: cleaning the laundry room, turning the kitchen out, and setting up this projector. And wouldn't you know it, I somehow got all three done! My clothes are off the floor for the first time in months, for the first time since I've moved in I know what is in every drawer and every cupboard in my kitchen, and finally, I have to say there's no joy greater than getting lost in the mountainous crags of Commander Adama's four foot high cheek.
I'd post you some wonderful pictures, but at the moment I am sans camera, which isn't nearly as cool as being Santana, but you gotta go with what you know.
I’ve wanted to post all during break, but it felt too daunting of a task, as each day brought more to share. Last post I wrote before break I mentioned I wanted to do something creative each day. What I had in mind was to write each day, if just for a little bit. No dice. I wrote word zero all break. What really sucks was I was working on a longer story on which I was making quite a bit of progress back in October, but in November something happened and I stopped making time to write. When I went to try during break, nothing was coming to me because I became foreign to that world I created. I got frustrated, bowed to the page, and gave up. I didn’t have time to mull on that for long as Christmas was coming and Santa had some business to attend to.
Back before the Dark Mistress and I were a “thing”, she once asked me, upon my mention of previous electronics experience, if I would be able to build a Theremin. I replied that yes, it’d be possible to purchase and build a Theremin kit, I imagine. The topic came up again a month or two ago, and apparently she’s always wanted one.
I remembered this six days before Christmas, and thus began my five day obsession with building my love a Theremin.
A quick google search revealed several kits online, but they were all fairly expensive. Then I came across a site that promised I could build my own for about $75, which was still more than I was willing to spend, but I couldn’t resist how awesome a project it could be.
Now what is a Theremin? If Wikipedia hasn’t told you by now, it’s a music instrument that is played without touching it. Traditionally there is a vertical antenna and a horizontal loop antenna. The distance between your right hand and the vertical antenna controls pitch, the distance between your left hand and the horizontal antenna controls volume.
The principle involves two oscillators, which are circuits that produce a waveform. (think of ripples in water… a rolling up and down wave like that) A Theremin uses two oscillators built and fine tuned to create identical waveforms. They are attached to the pitch antenna in such a way that the distortion of the electromagnetic field put out by the antenna by your hand throws the oscillators out of sync. If one oscillator is oscillating at 1100khz, and the other is oscillating at 1540khz, the difference between the two would create a tone at 440hz, which would be an A.
I knew very little of this going in. I had to start from scratch. I started Thursday when I etched my own pc board by printing his track layout on glossy photo paper and ironing it on, then soaking it in a mixture of hydrogen peroxide and hydrochloric acid. It was messier than I expected, and I didn’t feel quite right the rest of the night. By Saturday I had the first set of components in and tested.
The circuit is built so it oscillates around the frequencies of AM radio, so each oscillator it is tested by tapping on the coils and tuning the radio until you can hear it. This happened for me on Friday night, I believe, and was cause for much celebration. I'm pretty sure I ate a whole box of Runts. It was around this time Slim Jim stopped by.
I told Slim Jim of my Christmas Theremin project, and he ended up being a huge help. Though he wasn't able to directly solve any of my problems, he knows a thing or two about electronics, and just being able to explain a problem to someone is enough sometimes to clear a mental blockage. One of the problems I was running into in trying to get it working was there are a few parts that dangle loose whose position is essential cool noise production, so I set about mounting the project in a case before I went any further.
I recognized in one of the examples on dude's site a DVD shelf in which he mounted one of his Theremins. I happen to have two of those exact shelves: one in use, one in the basement. (One used to be Leggolamb's. Random Fact!) In the name of Love and Science, I cut into that mother. It was then that my long term vision crystallized: not just to build a working Theremin, but to build a case it could be packed up into and transported. What's the point in building this cool as hell thing if you can't take it to parties, right? Would I seriously give her a mess of boards and wires, when I could give her a hinged plywood masterpiece? It's without Slim Jim that I would have failed here, as he showed me some wood working basics needed so as not to look like a damn chimp tossing around Samsonite.
Once mounted to the shelf, it “came to life” for the first time. (Okay, once I mounted it to the shelf, realized I reversed polarity on a component or two, then remounted it. I was under the gun!) What had been a faint whistle earlier became a full bodied... louder whistle. Again, I was giddy. If I had another box of Runts...
It is just about one of the coolest things to experience for the first time. I have no idea why. Perhaps there's something fundamentally spooky about a speaker's whistling in response to how close I slip my hand towards and antenna. The interaction becomes intuitive very quickly, and every time I hook it up, twenty minutes of my life inexplicably disappears.
If Christmas is anything, it's a chance for those of us who get off on withholding to taunt and torture the hell out of our loved ones. In this case, it was the Mistress, who knew I was doing something related to a gift for her. By some miracle, she had no clue what was keeping me up nights and exposing me to Chlorine gas. My lie became “playing Half-Life”, which of course didn't hold water, but didn't tell her anything either. I never managed to finish the doors for the case, the wiring for the panel, or the volume control circuitry, yet it was all more than worth it to see the look on her face when she pushed her hand into the sweet field of radiation and heard a sweeping whistle come through a pair of computer speakers.
Christmas for me was a little strange. On one hand, it's the first time I've had to drive any distance to my folks place for Christmas. (Last year was the first time I wasn't staying there for some extended period of time, and that was disturbing enough.) It just made things feel different, more adult. On the other hand, my folks got me an XBOX 360, which I did not see coming at all. It was the first time in a long time I felt like a kid at Christmas: barely being able to wait to pry into my new toys. I'd wanted one for two years now, but I would probably never buy one. I could never justify it, and by the time I could, the next generation of consoles would already be out.
This is the first video game console I've ever had during the prime of it's run. I was given a Playstation year after the PS2 came out, and an Atari 2600 at the dawn of the age of Nintendo. Not that I'm complaining. I think it's for the best, as I know my attention span and I needed all the focus I could get. I'm just trying to express how much I enjoy its presence.
The time between Christmas and New Years is, frankly, a blur. D.M.H. and I hung out almost all the time and it was wonderful. I didn't get to play 360 as much as I wanted to, say, Christmas day, but D.M.H. was very accommodating. We were both really spoiled by seeing each other every day though.
For New Years, we stopped by Spanky and Zanzibar's place for some Taboo, then some Scene-It. Dark Mistress Hawthorne was billed as top seed against a mysterious figure with ties to the past. Named Skidmark. We played in teams, and D.M.H. was my (drunk) partner. I was so proud of myself when she didn't know the first question we were asked but I did. (Trading Spaces, thank you.) I, however, did not answer one answer correctly for the remainder of the three games we played, while our team went on to win every one. I have to say, we had Skidmark uncomfortably close to our tails most of the time. The Dark Mistress is, apparently, a half crazed movie trivia machine.
Shortly after that, she went back to work, and I turned my focus on the house. And the XBOX. Well, first the XBOX, then the house. Two weekends ago we visited Slim Jim and got to catch up with one of my favorite people from college, The Blue Zipper, whom I hadn't seen in over a year. It was fantastic to see her again. It was also super cool to visit Slim Jim for once and to see what it's like where he lives. Before we left, he gave us a video projector to try hooking up to the iMac. He'd picked it up at some point but had no use for it at the time.
So the remainder of my break was spent on three projects: cleaning the laundry room, turning the kitchen out, and setting up this projector. And wouldn't you know it, I somehow got all three done! My clothes are off the floor for the first time in months, for the first time since I've moved in I know what is in every drawer and every cupboard in my kitchen, and finally, I have to say there's no joy greater than getting lost in the mountainous crags of Commander Adama's four foot high cheek.
I'd post you some wonderful pictures, but at the moment I am sans camera, which isn't nearly as cool as being Santana, but you gotta go with what you know.
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