Category: Daily Life

What a beautiful downpour we are having right now. I love the sound of the rain!

2am and the keys are clacking!

I forgot to mention that at the time I was on stage with no mic and basically having to choose between speaking to the crowd or performing, which ruins the comedic timing when much of what I do relies on the ability to speak to the crowd, that I was in front of 500 or more people. I really had no way of judging. It could have been 1500 for all I know but I know a crowd of 100 and this crowd was at least 5 times that.

Had my 15 minutes of fame today from the show. Ran into Fuddruckers for a drink for my parched wife and the casher declared, "aren’t you that juggler?" to which I responded, "yes, were you part of the crowd that could hear me?" Front row.

I’m glad people enjoyed the show.

Here’s an example of one of my routines. I have these huge, 9 inch bean bags not quite the size of bowling balls. I get two kids on the stage and I ask one "is this juggling ball heavy?&quot and toss the volunteer one. They respond yes. I then ask, "if I give you another would they be twice as heavy?" to which the response is either yes or no. No is always fun. The third, 3 times as heavy? The other volunteer I give a noise making toy I call my "portable drumroll." I then talk about juggling heavy things and explain "I am going to juggle for you tonight ping pong balls while volunteer 1 juggles these heavy balls" Of course, the volunteer typically protests. I then explain that balance is important in juggling and that I will juggle the ping pong balls and catch one upon my noise (despite the wind and other environmental comments). I juggle the ping pong balls and then toss one high in the air and it lands and stays on the bridge of my nose. I pocket the other two and then reach for a bean bag. Using my peripherial vision I make sure I miss as the volunteer tries to hand the bean bag to me. I usually end up grabbing the top of his head. I then ask volunteer 1 to toss me the third bean bag. As the bean bag leaves his hands I yell "one.. two…" and on "three" it plops to the ground. Sometimes as it leaves his hands I say "on the count of three" It all depends on the volunteer. As I continue to balance the ping pong ball on my nose the volunteer gets the bean bag and then tosses it on the count of three. I juggle briefly, then toss a bean bag up in the air and catch it on the back of my neck. I encourage my volunteers to take bows with me all the while the ping pong ball defies gravity as it hangs from the bridge of my nose. End of routine.

Today my tasks loom ominously above me
Today I cower in ambivalence and distraction
Today I see an unmovable mountain
Today I lift a single grain of sand
And the mountain falls.

The plain expands endlessly
Touching horizon to horizon
I am frozen
I look to my feet and they move
I look to the horizon and it stands still
I look again to my feet and the ground passes quickly
The horizon does not move
I shall focus on the task at hand
My feet move
And know that the horizon shall come.

-DM 7/4/5

Student: Happy Independence Day!
Master: Are you independent?

So my strange feelings toward the show were more premonitory than nerves. We get comfortable with our lives. We have routine and exceptations of order and performance. I expect my juggling gear to be in its place and my show to basically be prepackaged. I can pretty much grab my bag at a moments notice and be ready to do a 30-45 minute show.

During sound check I discovered my mic had be crushed. The resulting short meant brief spurts of audio followed by unbearable speaker popping crackling.

I did the best I could but my current show is based more on cornball humor than juggling talent. Hopefully this was the inspiration I needed to develop a purely visual show which would be more physically challenging where my current show is more mentally exhausting. Regardless, I had a good time and the audience seemed to have a good time also I as received many good words after the show.

terror. thrill. excitement. ambivalence. torment. joy. rush.

"America is just a timeshare dictatorship;"

You heard right! I just threw out a shirt that I bought circa 1990! It was a comfortable shirt with a nice Grateful Dead image on it but alas the time has come for us to part.

I want to type and type today. I need to be doing other things.

I so did not intend to sleep last night. I mean at all. At 8:30 I wanted to be back on my computer. At 9:30 I thought that opportunity had finally come. At 10pm I’d distributed root beer floats and sat down to have mine and talk with the wife. At 3:41am someone, probably Noah, rolled out of bed. At 6am I woke with a start.

I’ve already begun the self-flagellations. They will continue through the weekend as I fail to prepare myself physically or mentally for the juggling show on Sunday. I am on the main stage this year instead of off in a corner and only doing one 30-minute show instead of 2-3 hours of juggling. I really need to find a local juggler that would like to join me on an occasional show. I think I’ll post signs on campus.

$%*& it’s July already!

So I’m programming like a mad man yesterday. Everything is going well and looking sharp then suddenly my website on my development server does not look at all like the website on the production server. It will take nearly 5 hours of troubleshooting and 5 hours of sleep to figure out what happened.

The Problem: The CSS in Mozilla Firefox don’t load on the development server but load fine on the production server. To confound the issue the style sheet works in IE on both servers. The problem is reproducible from multiple computers. If the style sheet is referenced by <link> as in <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="stylesheet.css"> it doesn’t load. If it is referenced with a

block it works fine.

The Solution: I found the solution in MozillaCssMimeType (led to by this article)

some servers are misconfigured and return an incorrect MimeType for CSS files (typically text/plain or application/x-pointplus) which should be sent with a text/css MimeType

Adding "text/css          css" to apache’s mime.types file (usually found in /etc/mime.types) solves the problem. For IIS simply map .css to text/css using:

site (or directory) properties, then HTTP Headers>File Types>New Type, .css, text/css.

Now to get to work. I feel two days behind.

“Justice Souter’s vote in the “Kelo vs. City of New London” decision allows city governments to take land from one private owner and give it to another if the government will generate greater tax revenue or other economic benefits when the land is developed by the new owner.“

On Monday June 27, Logan Darrow Clements, faxed a request to Chip Meany the code enforcement officer of the Towne of Weare, New Hampshire seeking to start the application process to build a hotel on 34 Cilley Hill Road. This is the present location of Mr. Souter’s home.
…
The proposed development, called “The Lost Liberty Hotel” will feature the “Just Desserts Café” and include a museum, open to the public, featuring a permanent exhibit on the loss of freedom in America. Instead of a Gideon’s Bible each guest will receive a free copy of Ayn Rand’s novel “Atlas Shrugged.”
…
Clements indicated that the hotel must be built on this particular piece of land because it is a unique site being the home of someone largely responsible for destroying property rights for all Americans.

I heard that around mile marker 250 I-40 is closed. Apparently at midnight last night 5 tractor trailer including a mail truck collided and burned killing one person. They are still re-routing traffic down rural roads to Hwy 70 (Kingston Pike). If you are expecting a package or planning on traveling I-40 today you might be in for a surprise.

I cannot find any information online about this which is pathethic either on my part or our news agencies or department of transportation. My information comes from a traveler’s account via cell phone.

Update: Ah! Finally found the incident report.

Interstate 40 Incident, Wilson County
Date Last Revised: 6/29/2005 12:46:54 PM
Description: Interstate 40 westbound in Wilson County – Crash at MILE MARKER 239 reported at 12:40:00 AM 6/29/05 and estimated to be cleared by 2:00:00 PM 6/29/05. Westbound traffic is affected with the roadway partially blocked with the LEFT LANE OPEN. Eastbound traffic is affected with rubbernecking delays.
Incident Start: 6/29/2005 12:40:00 AM
Estimated Clearance: 6/29/2005 2:00:00 PM

Wonder if its related to:

Interstate 40 Incident, Davidson County
Date Last Revised: 6/29/2005 12:40:09 PM
Description: Interstate 40 eastbound in Davidson County – Disabled vehicle at MILE MARKER 202 (Mile Marker: 202.0 ) reported at 12:20 PM 6/29/2005 and estimated to be cleared by 12:50 PM 6/29/2005 (Central Time Zone). Eastbound traffic is affected with the roadway partially blocked.
Incident Start: 6/29/2005 12:20:00 PM
Estimated Clearance: 6/29/2005 12:50:00 PM