Golden Ribbon

Saturday I went to an SCA event. In addition to the regular rapier tournament (I won 4 fights out of 15, but the four I killed were all cadets!) I was chosen to carry the Golden Ribbon for the next six months.

What, you ask, is the Golden Ribbon? Well, it seems a few years back there was a rapier fighter who was upset that his inspiration was in surgery and thus unable to come to an event. In her honor he offered to face all comers until he was exhuasted or the sun set.

Today, the holder of the Golden Ribbon ties it around the hilt of their rapier for roughly six months. At the end of that time they offer to face all comers at an event, holding the field regardless of victory or defeat, until they can't fight any more. They then present the ribbon to the challenger who showed the best spirit. I was quite surprised to be picked. It was an exhausting but highly fun and rewarding fight, and I look forward to holding my own in six months.

Also at the event was a bardic circle (I sang about King Rorik), and a fire dancing demonstration (fire breathing, dancing with flaming swords, fighting with flaming swords, juggling torches, etc.).

A year older

Why do we celebrate birthdays?

I mean, when we're young, or even up until you're 21, they're milestones to look forward to. Mostly. I vividly recall that I carefully spent my 21st birthday on duty with an EMS service to avoid being dragged out to get drunk, but that's another story.

Why do we celebrate them after 21 though? What's so special about getting older?

Is this all there is?

Does everyone feel like this? Does anyone feel like this?

Why am I stuck being the basically nice, safe guy? Its always been that way. I'm the one you tell all the details of your life, the vital moments that you remember, that mean everything. But I'm never there for the moments themselves. I HATE IT. Its all I have. Without that, I've got nothing, and I'm slowly loosing that anyway. I was a loner in grade school, a loser in high school, had some good moments in college to go along with the bad ones, but now? I've got a job, an apartment, and I feel like I'm going no where. I'm not anybody interesting. I'm fifth business. The guy in the background. Oh, and you. Would it be so wrong to provoke something other than indifference for once? Would it be the end of the world to have someone vaguely interesting think I was hot? Could someone even know I was safe, but wish I wasn't?

I know the highs come with lows. I know for every triumph there has to be a tragedy. I can deal with that. I want that. Let me have the triumphs, I'll take the tragedies. All I have is mediocrity. Niceness. Slow poison.

Most men lead lives of quiet desparation. Well, now I'm screaming. It won't last, of course, but in this moment I have to let it out somehow, and of course I'm doing it the safe way. What other way do I have?

I never let it out. People depend on me. They want me to be boring. To come to work and do the daily grind. To go home and do the dishes.

Never in the inner circle. Never part of the cool crowd. Known to them, but I'm not the one they drop what they're doing to greet. I come back after two weeks gone and its "Hey, nice to see you again." Nice. OK, let's keep going. No big deal. Oh, SHE's here! Great to see you! How you been? Oh yeah? Great!

Is it just that the grass is always greener? Is all the adventure really gone from the world, and people just make it up?

Where's the person who thinks of me as their best friend? Where's the person who never got over me? Where's the life I changed? Really changed, not just a little. Who stood on the edge with my hand on the scales?

There's the people who died because of me, except everyone tells me it wasn't my fault. Maybe I cling to that so much because their lives I did change. The only power I have - the power to destroy? Is that better or worse than no power at all?

Why am I always sitting around waiting for someone else to answer my email? Why am I waiting for someone to log in to chat? Calling three times and getting three answering machines, two of whom will never call back. Is there any way out of this?

Its not like I've never tried. I've stood in the front of the room and fought for something different. I've tried to change the system. I've told people how I felt about them. I've given the warnings that the sky was falling. Result? Indifference. Voted down without passion. One or two supporters shrug and go off to fight another day. The person I bared my soul to tells me they knew, and walks away feeling like at least that's over with. Not once. Time after TIME after TIME. I've tried being the party guy, the active guy, the energetic guy, the you-name-it guy. And another day goes by. Sieze the day! But it slipped through my fingers like water. So live to fight another day.

I'm not sure how many other days I have left.

What the...?

Today at a workshop we got box lunches. These typically include some sort of sandwich, a bag of chips, a cookie, and a piece of fruit. So I open my lunch, and find that instead of the typical apple or banana, I have "Apple Sweets Natural Apple Slices (Wild Berry Flavor)."

Now, in the first place, why go to the effort of slicing an apple and putting it in a sealed plastic bag? In the second, how is 'wild berry flavor' added to an apple 'natural'? Or are there some unnatural apples out there I should be worried about?

The bag also notes that it should be kept refrigerated, and is best if used by April 26th, 2007. There's a set of notes that include a website (www.applesweets.com), and explain how the slices are bathed in vitamin C and calcium to 'lock in the freshness'. You know, the apple's skin is often considered to do a good job of that. And those slices taste like no fresh apple I've ever encountered. The change wasn't a beneficial one, IMO, either.

I continue to be amazed at the ability of the human race to take good, simple things and add needless and often harmful complications.

What makes an Engineer?

What allows someone to call themselves an engineer?

I think of myself as an engineer, but how do I know I am one?

An engineering degree is neither necessary (plenty of engineers never went to college) nor sufficient.
A Profession Engineer license isn't something I have. If I'm going to consider myself as an engineer, that can't be part of the criteria.
Working in a job with the title of engineer - now we're getting warmer. Again, though, it is not necessary, and there are a fair number of examples to show it isn't sufficient either.

The mindset, then? Is it enough to think like an engineer? Closer, but I think if you think like an engineer but don't act on those thoughts, you're still missing something important. We do not (thank all the gods) live in a world with Thought Police.

Professional achievement? An engineer is someone who does engineering. A tautology, of course, but the closest to the mark we've come yet. Engineering is about creating items that are usable and useful. The problem here is that someone who has not yet created something can't be an engineer. Maybe that's OK - back when I was a paramedic, several senior medics told me that you weren't a real paramedic until you'd worked a pediatric code. So perhaps that first creation is your initiation. Every time you create something, you renew your engineeringness.

Unrelated, hi Kathy! Congratulations on the first non-anonymous comment!

Of course, since your profile is blocked, I'm still waiting for the first comment I can VERIFY comes from who I think it is coming from...

Forward into the Past

Today on a whim I decided to look up my original livejournal. Not only does it still exist, I remembered the password!

At some point I'll get around to cross-linking these, but if you're curious, here's where I was five years ago:

http://gridley.livejournal.com/

First Comment

Ladies, gentlemen, lamas, and others, please welcome this blog's first commentator, Anonymous!

(Wooohooo! Yay! Huzzah! Huzzah! Lama!)

Letting people in

Monday night I had a conversation I should have had a long time ago. I'm not sure exactly what let me finally start that conversation - probably equal parts frustration, alcohol, and hope. I'd gone to the beach that morning, and something about the ocean always affects me. It isn't always the same effect, but this time it gave me strength to risk opening up.

Afterwards I felt both relieved - one of the reasons I'd held off so long was that I was afraid it would push someone out of my life, and it doesn't seem to have done that - and sad.

How do you know when it is time to let someone deeper into your life? I've gone almost nine years without there being someone in my life I could tell anything, absolutely anything, to. Is that normal? Do most people have someone they can tell anything to?

Well, it is done now.

California Dreams

Well, Friday the 13th wasn't nearly as unlucky as it could have been.

True, we were seated between the engines of an MD-80, but while we were waiting at the airport we saw the Large Cargo Freighter (often referred to by me as "the tumor plane") do a few liftoffs and landings. I have no idea what it was doing, but it was cool to see something that's part of the 787 program.

True, the plane was almost an hour late, but that meant my friend could pick me up at the airport instead of trying to find her place at night.

All in all, not so unlucky.

Yesterday we met up with my sister and went to the Irwindale Ren Faire. My friend hadn't been to one before, but she really seemed to enjoy it. Overall, it was a pretty good faire - not as good as the Ohio faire, but about as good as Gig Harbor. I invested in matched sword/dagger pair - the sword is a heavy one hander or a light two hander, battle-ready and being sharpened by the smith for shipment to me. I plan to add it to my gear for faires and some SCA events. I was pulled from the audience to be on stage for a "Bold and Stupid Men" show, which was a lot of fun. One of the things I love about Faires is that you can just let go and have fun, and almost nothing you do will draw unfriendly looks. Looks, yes, after all people are looking to be entertained and amused, and what's wrong with being the entertainment if they enjoy it?

I also watched a short soccer game my friend was in - her team won 4-0. :-)

I'm really glad I came - things aren't perfect, but they're at least as good as I expected, and I expected quite a bit from this weekend.

Lots of California songs are running through my head - "Wish they all could be California Girls," "Surfin' USSR," "California dreams"... I say running through my head to mean that the parts I know are. Hey, those are some good parts.

Flying on April 13th

So today I'm going to be flying down to California to see one of my best friends.

Flying.

On Friday the 13th.

Now, I'm not highly superstitious. Normally, however, I also prefer not to tempt fate. While I've had a reasonable share of good luck in my life, I've also had quite a bit of bad luck.

I'm not really fond of flying. Yes, flying a commercial widebody is the safest form of transportation in the history of the world. Only one in 2 millions takeoffs results in a major problem. On the other hand, I knew hundreds of things that could bring down an airplane even before I joined Boeing.

I think the thing that bothers me the most is the utter pointlessness of airport security. "Aha! You have a bottle of water! Confiscate this immediately! And pull over that 80-year old woman in the wheelchair for an additional search. Oh? You want to ship air cargo? Oh, just stick it on the plane, I'm sure its fine." The FAA has a "Red Team" that tests security by trying to slip firearms and explosives through. They are successful over 90% of the time. Clearly, the TSA is too busy taking my sunscreen and toothpaste to worry about a mere semi-automatic pistol.

April 12th

Happy Yuri's Day, everyone!

"We still pray for one last landing
On the globe that gave us birth
Let us set our eyes
On the fleecy skies
And the cool, green hills of Earth."
-Robert A. Heinlein

Mindfield

I wrote this about four years ago.
I've been accused of only writing depressing poetry. That's not true. However, 99% of the good poetry I write is depressing, and I don't tend to keep the rest. A friend of mine who used to look at most of the things I wrote while I knew her commented that it almost seemed like the more depressed I was, the better I got. Perhaps it is good, then, that I haven't written anything new in a while. :-)

Mindfield

Tread softly - not for yourself.
You walk unknowing - uncaring?
I see around you the dangers.
Patches ready to erupt in pain.

You dart to and fro.
I can not warn you.
Any moment any moment.
Any place you step.

Darkness comes to this place.
The patches fade before me.
Not fast enough. A step, a word.
Pain. Searing remembrance.

An uncaring step strikes a wire.
The connection is made.
No time to scream.
The past is coming.

Primal scream

AAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!

Nothing to see here, move along, move along now...

Steakhouse!

Saturday night five of us went to a Japanese steak house for dinner. For some reason I really love those places - something about watching the food be cooked right in front of you. Combination dinner and floor show. :-)

On returning to the apartment, however, I found the source of the wobbling sound Lupae (my car) had been making for the last week - fifteen of her sixteen lug nuts were loose (five of them not even finger tight), and one was missing. I think I'm rather lucky I didn't loose a wheel. The dealership can say what they want, I think they forgot to tighten my lug nuts after they checked my breaks.

And now Mars

I saw an article today that said that the temperature of Mars is rising - Mars, too, is having global warming.

A few weeks ago I saw a similar article about Saturn.

And 'everyone knows' that the Earth is experiancing global warming.

Right away, I remembered the old saw "once is accident, twice is coincidence, three times is conspiracy". If three planets in our solar system (which now, apparently, only has eight of them, grumble grumble) are all warming up, isn't it reasonable to look for a common cause? I tried to see if the other five (or six, depending) planets are also starting to take off their sweaters, but nothing readily showed up in a web search. If they are, too, isn't it a little unlikely that humans are causing it? Even if they aren't, surely even those people who ignore the 4 billion year history of non-man induced climate change on this planet should have a hard time saying that a change now must have been caused by the human race if changes are also happening on TWO other planets we AREN'T on?

Post hoc, ergo propter hoc is still one of the worst arguements around.

Politics and issues

So today I did a little exploring - it looks to me like there are five major, declared candidates right now (Clinton, Obama, McCain, Romney, Edwards), so I visited each one's website. I wanted to see what they were saying about certain issues.

On four of their pages (everyone but Clinton) I found some issue information in under five seconds. I was struck by how much all five pages looked alike, but even hunting for several minutes I couldn't find anything on Clinton's page on how she felt about any issue, substantive IMO or not.

Is it just me, or is that rather frightening?

Ever more out of touch

I'm not good at staying in touch with people, even people I care about and want to stay in touch with. My lines of communication with other people tend to be rather fragile.

So I was rather upset when Boeing decided that they would block access to the gmail chat service. I've been keeping in touch with four of my friends pretty much exclusively that way. So now I either need to keep in touch some other way, or loose them too.

Add in the continuing pressures of work, and this week is really not going well.