A TWIN THING

Last night I went to a local brewery, The Standing Stone, with some friends after watching the over-hyped Pats vs. Giants game. There was a band playing, which was unusual at this particular venue, but ever since the Jefferson State Pub closed due to gross mismanagement the other bars in town have taken up the slack. Originally slated to wait around for a table in the back with the friends I came with, I decided to walk to the back area to see the band play. After standing around for a few minutes watching everyone else enjoying their beers, I went back to the bar to see if they had this year's Barley Wine available. They did, and I ordered one while sitting at the bar on the last remaining bar stool.

Next to me were two very pretty girls, and I asked them what types of beer they were drinking. We exchanged samples of each others' beers, and I then asked them if they'd been friends for a long time, even though I could tell they were twins. I just wanted to see what they'd say, since I'm a twin myself. It turns out one of them—Carrie—lives in West Virginia and had just flown out to surprise her sister. And her sister, Jackie, said she happened to look up in the sky the evening of Carrie's arrival and saw the plane she was on and said to herself, "I bet my sister's on that plane", even though she'd had no advance warning. I understood perfectly.

We then proceeded back to the dance floor and these girls, who are 29, could really dance. I was overdressed in long underwear, and had to decide whether to really cut loose and get all super sweaty, or take it easy and not be a turnoff. I took the take it easy route, and we danced together for some time. During a set break, a guy I know from the first week I moved here (he hired me to do a freelance job on his poster) said hello, and I saw what clearly had to be his twin brother (which I didn't know he had) sitting next to him. I then introduced him to the twins I was already with, and we proceeded to bore everyone else with our twin stories for awhile.

So there we were, three sets of twins. It felt like we'd somehow landed in a twin convention or something. I would have liked to have made further plans with the twin girls, but I cheesed out and took off with the guys I came with when I saw they were leaving. Maybe I'll run into them again...

CHRISTMAS EVE 2007

My mom and her husband Chris were visiting Oregon this Christmas, and I took them on a tour of the wine country between Eugene and Cottage Grove on Christmas Eve. The soundtrack is a local radio station that was playing in the car as we were driving.

GO READ MY BROTHER'S BLOG

What are you doing reading this? You should be reading Matt's blog; he's in Mexico with his girlfriend Marla and he got a sunburn on Winter Solstice. Check him out here:

http://photomatte.wordpress.com/2007/12/17/tulum-mexico/

Merry Christmas

HOORAY FOR SENATOR DODD

My decision to continue to avoid joining the cellphone generation was made easier by the fact that AT&T is one of the main criminal organizations within the telecom industry who are involved in illegal wiretapping. I was very close to purchasing an Apple iPhone until I learned of AT&T's willingness to break the law and join the fearmongering campaign of this current regime in Washington, DC.

So, thank you Senator Dodd for not being a S.C.U.M.B.A.G. (State Controlled Ultra Military Bogus American Government)!

HEY GOOGLE

This entry is an addition to the entry I just made below. It might help if you read that one first....okay, are you done with that one now?

Well, I wasn't entirely forthcoming about the randomness of the blog I was accidentally logged into. The blog actually belongs to a friend of mine, and I just called him to see if he'd logged into his blog on my computer, and he said he didn't think so, and that he hadn't updated his blog for awhile.

I then went to the question mark next to the Remember Me text on the initial login screen, and clicked the question mark to see how Google handled the Remember Me option. Well, here's a screen shot of what it said. Notice that it says the cookie expires in two weeks for any automatic login. This means that even if my friend did happen to login to his blog on my computer, which he doesn't think he did, and if he did happen to click the Remember Me checkbox, which I can't imagine he would have, it STILL would have expired after two weeks. But the initial screen shot I took (see below), says his blog was last updated Nov. 20, 2006 which was well over A YEAR AGO!

I'd love to know Google's explanation for this huge hole in the security of this blog service.

THIS BLOG SITE IS UNSECURE

Warning, anyone who has a blog on this site runs the risk of having their blog accessed by anyone. I was about to make a new post tonight, and when I arrived at the blogger.com homepage to login, my screen refreshed before I could even type in my info and suddenly I was in another person's blog, with the Sign In/Sign Out link set to Sign Out, which means I was signed in to another blog. Here's a screen shot of the blog I was signed into. Hey Google, fix this shit, now.

DOGGONE IT

This morning my next-door-neighbor's dog started barking right outside my bedroom window at 7:34 a.m. Luckily I was already awake and dressed, which is normally not the case at that hour. Still, that didn't stop me from thinking about all the other times the dog has woken me up at that hour when I wasn't up and dressed.

Then this evening I thought it would be a good idea to take a little cat nap (with my cat, of course, who never wakes anybody up but me) before going out tonight, so I went in and laid down next to the cat. I was at that point where you don't really realize you've drifted off to sleep until something wakes you up, when sure enough, there went the neighbor's dog, right outside my window. And it's one of those small dogs with the yippy bark that everyone's really afraid of.

I immediately had this thought while laying there in bed: I should include in my blog how many times a day, if any, my neighbor's dog has woken me up. And then, as this thought was still in my head, my phone rang, which would have woken me anyway. And who was it? It was my neighbor, the one with the dog. I told him that it was ironic that if his dog hadn't just woken me up, he would have with his phone call. Then he said he wasn't at home, and didn't know his dog was barking. To which I said, "if a dog barks and you're not home to hear it, does it really bark? Why yes, yes it does."

So, today the dog tally is two and counting...

DAVE GETS A BIKE HELMET

Yesterday I went into the local bike store to see about getting a new back tire, as the one I have now is getting worn out. They didn't have the one I wanted, but I was also in the market for a new helmet (my first helmet purchase ever, actually). After looking at the most expensive ones, I saw one for $39.99 (no tax in this state!). The price wasn't what convinced me, however. It was the name of the helmet (a Trek helmet) that really made my decision for me. It was called the Vapor, which is the name everyone down here in Ashland has me as in their cellphones, and the name I'm pretty much called by most of my friends here.

Seriously, my friends down here will start a sentence with, "hey Vapor", or "hey Vape". I'd say I'm called Vapor a large majority of the time, and it's a name I can live with I guess. As to how I got the name, well, I can't really say here.

So, there you have it, Dave gets a new bike helmet, and he's even planning on wearing it. But if I get in a crash and hit my head, I'll still think that it wouldn't have happened if I'd left my house a few seconds earlier (the time I would have saved by not putting on my helmet).

to iPhone or not to iPhone

Within the past year, my laptop has had water spilled on it and died, my digital camera was in my front pocket as I tried to lift a pool table and the LCD screen is shot, and now my iPod—which is the earliest version ever made—has decided to freeze up when attempting to sync with my iTunes.

This could mean two things. It's either time to abandon modern technological devices altogether, or it's time to get an iPhone.

But there's another issue—I've never owned a cellphone. I find them to be highly annoying, 'til I need one, then they're great. I also don't like the EMF radiation they put off. But since there's so many out there, I just borrow one from a friend, or in some cases I've even borrowed them from random people (in Amsterdam last year I borrowed a woman's cellphone to get ahold of the person I was staying with, whom I'd connected with via craigslist, and the other week I borrowed one from the girl sitting next to me on the flight to Cleveland to tell my pickup person I was going to be early).

So I'm in a quandry. The iPhone has the ability to replace my laptop, digital camera, and iPod, but it's still a cellphone. But the price it would cost to buy all of those items individually is way more than the $399 iPhone. But then there's the monthly charge, which is about the same as I'm paying for my old-school landline. If I got the iPhone, it would seem a waste of money to have both a landline and a cellphone, yet if I cancelled my landline, I'd be relying on the iPhone for all my phone calls, which would then cause me to be exposed to all the EMF radiation I don't like. But, the iPhone has the ability to listen and talk via the headphones, which theoretically would reduce the EMF radiation coming into my brain via my ear canal. Of course the radiation would still be there, it'd just be closer to whatever body part my iPhone was nearest to (chest pocket would by my heart, and pants pocket would be close to, well, damn).

I've always sworn I'd never own a cellphone, and I can rationalize to myself that the iPhone's not really a conventional cellphone, but yet it's still a cellphone.

If I get one, I'll have to listen to all my friends give me shit for talking trash about cellphones for so long and then becoming a sellout hypocrite. Then they'd want my cell number, and then they'd be texting me.

What to do...

WHAT'S UP WITH ASHLAND?

Lately I've been hearing a lot of people complaining about the Ashland Food Co-op here in town. The co-op is the only game in town, and they know it, so they price accordingly. Since most of their clientele are retirees who move here with lots of money, they can get away with it. But it sure does squeeze out the working class (what, a working class in Ashland? No way!)

Recently I was back up in Eugene, and I stopped by my favorite store in the world, Sundance. I went to their salad bar, and knew I'd find a killer selection made with progressive ingredients. Like instead of any of their noodles being wheat, they're all rice or quinoa. And instead of any of their sweeteners being cane sugar, they're agave or honey or brown rice syrup.

Sure enough, there was a great selection, and I ate like a king. And the price was only $6.59/lb, as opposed to $7.50/lb at the Ashland co-op, which does use cane sugar and wheat noodles. Hmm, cheaper ingredients, higher price. Greed? Nah.

Why does this matter to me? Well, because this town likes to think of itself (if a town can be said to think of itself, which is another way of saying what the majority of locals think, whatever they are) as a progressive, healthy, spiritual town. There's a place here called the Rogue Valley Metaphysical Library, and there are more naturopaths and chiropractors and spiritual healing centers than anywhere I've ever been.

Yet they still smoke cigarettes in some of the bars here. How 20th century is that? And everyone drives, everywhere, even though it's a very small town.

All of this has led me to the idea of putting out a hoodie that says UC Ashland (University of California at Ashland). And it wouldn't even have to be on organic cotton.

CLEVELAND WEDDING VIDEO

Okay, I tried using blogger's automated video sharing with YouTube, but it doesn't recognize my username, or maybe it's my password. I know I typed it correctly, so this is a bug that Google needs to address.

In any case, here is the official wedding video from Sidney and Heather's wedding in Cleveland.