This will combine two previous thoughts/ideas/posts I’ve put on my site over the last year or two…

I live in Seattle.  Seattle is a fairly ‘wired’ town.  WiFi coffee shops abound in pretty much every neighborhood, and many of the places that don’t advertise WiFi still have it, and if you’re lucky enough to know the staff well enough, they just might give you the password.  And even if you don’t have the password to a local WiFi signal, if you’re within a block of a condo or apartment building, well then there’s always the chance that you might have a wireless signal that has been left unprotected, and you can then surf using somebody else’s signal.  WiFi, DSL, cable modems, txt msgs, PDAs, cell phones, we got ‘em in Seattle.

So why is it so hard for my house to get a reliable signal?  When I get home and turn on my computer, I don’t know if I’ll be able to surf the web in 5 minutes, or in an hour.  OR, I may just not be able to that night, PERIOD!  I don’t know what the problem is, other than a whole house full of people who don’t know the ins and outs of the digital world well enough to make it work right.  Or maybe the landlord only knows how to set it up for PCs, cuz everybody who has ever lived in this house who has used an Apple computer has had problems.  So in the midst of this fully wired and online city, I live in an oasis of modem incapacity.  It’s frustrating as hell when I want to download system updates or big pictures from my sister in Egypt.  And you can FORGET about streaming porn, folks.  That just ain’t gonna happen.

So why then is it that I get up to Juneau for a long weekend, and no shit I find a wireless signal floating about the neighborhood?  I was here in June of ’06 and May of this year, and every time I come here that signal gets more and more reliable as time as goes on.  I’m 3 miles from a glacier, in the shadow of Thunder Mountain (that name is so metal!!!) and I’m surfing the web via WiFi!

Go figure.

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In the last couple weeks, I’ve fallen asleep with the TV on a number of times. This makes for some strange dreams.

Last night I dreamt that Dean and I were at the bike shop when an emergency arose. I’m talking National Emergency, like call the military or get the NSA or somebody involved kind of emergency. Well, the van was parked way over in Kirkland about 10 miles away, so me and the other guy tore off on our road bikes and got to the van asap so that we could get to the jets and take care of whatever threat we were on alert for. Okay, that makes sense. In Dreamland that makes sense. Well, not too much later on, we got another call and everything was the same except that this time I was running instead of on my bike and since the other guy still had to get to Kirkland and fast, well he took off and I waited for him where I was. Now here’s where logic starts to buckle a little bit. Everything in the scenario was identical, that we had to get to the van that was parked a ways off so that we could drive to the jets and crush the enemy. The thing is that when the other guy left me and I waited for him, I went to a parking spot right nearby where the van was parked and I had to decide (because I didn’t have my bicycle with me) which baby trailer I was going to hook up to the bumper of the van. I couldn’t decide between the blue and yellow one (which has a superior attaching mechanism) or the plain blue one (which looked like it might last longer in a combat situation). Oh yeah, and the other guy? He wasn’t anybody I’d met before, he was just some 6ft Asian dude who must have been my partner. I know that I didn’t know him at all, but in the dream it was just understood that he had my back and I had his. Done! [More]

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Nothing might happen. Or something might. Or maybe you see the body of your enemy float by. Or SOMETHING!
Well, here’s something. On this site, you the reader may post comments about what you read if you like. I have to moderate them, because there is a LOT of spam that comes through from those same folks who are trying to sell Cialis and Viagra and making promises of huge, fulfilling erections for your lover. So every couple of days I get some incoming action and I have to decide who is who and that’s that.
So a little while ago I got something from somebody calling themselves Lost in Marin. ??? I know somebody who lives in Santa Rosa, but he’s not certified to operate the internets, so it can’t be him. I did email a friend who lives in Concord, but it wasn’t him, and I got puzzled. So I deleted that shit. And then I read a post on my buddies’ site and it made sense. But still I didn’t say anything to him, cuz I’m an idiot and so thoroughly enjoyed his most recent post and forgot all about the fact that he may have left me a post. Got it? Good.
So I get another response from him which totally through me off, cuz while I new it was a ‘fake’, I had no idea who it might be from!!! Until I saw some info that he left to purposely tell me who he was. Go take a look at the comment left on the previous post. I got a kick out of it.
Jason, you rule. And you die.

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I’m at work, posting stuff up on eBay, when I looked into the My eBay Manager screen and I noticed that one of the items is near the end of the auction. OH SHIT! So here I am, glued to the screen and hitting the Refresh button over and over. Let’s see what happens!!!
There’s only 5 minutes left to go and there are no bids. However, with eBay, you get nothing until the VERY end and then it’s a freaky feeding frenzy/bidding war. Ooooo shit, I have no more fingers left, cuz I done chewed em all off!
Well that was bullshit. The item didn’t even sell! We had one jerkoff asking questions via email about the pack, too. Whatever. I’m taking my toys and going HOME!

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We’ve moved our bike shop to downtown and one of the things we’re doing is getting rid of everything we have on eBay. Once we’ve liquidated enough stuff, we’ll figure out what direction we’re going in and then we’ll re-open the store and all will be back to the same ol’ same ol’, except that it’ll be NEW same ol’ same ol’.
Dave brought down some lights and a big white roll of plastic that we use as a backdrop, and I’ve been figuring out how to take crisp, clear photos with not many shadows so that the products look professional up on eBay and all that. It’s pretty cool and I already got some stuff sold and shipped, so it seems to be working.

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I don’t even know what to think about this one. We’ve all seen the ads on TV about how some company bought too many of this or that widget and so it’s all on HUGE clearance sale, or last year’s models MUST go!!!

This was just odd.

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I had dinner with Whitty and his family. At one point Tyson (age 4) was told that he’d better behave or he’d get a knuckle sandwich. So I asked Ty what a knuckle sandwich was. He said, “Ham, 2 turkeys and a fist.”

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