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Thursday, October 31, 2002


A few minutes to kill while I wait for the new Sun Blade 2000 I've just configured to come online.

Jenni and I are taking a Couples Massage class at the University's Informal Classes. It's taught by the owner of Austin Body Works. Last night we learned about fascia and fascial release. I'd never heard of it. Very strange indeed. The release can cause a release of hystamines.... my inner ear started itching when Jenni was pressing down on the fascia below my collar bone. This class is pretty good. Of course, the timing is bad for us, because Jenni still hasn't recovered from her surgery and can't lay on her stomach yet. We've had to kind of limp along, adapting some of the techniques.

And, continuing the theme of therapy and mind&body work, I had my first appointment with the biofeedback therapist this morning. I think it's going to be quite interesting and helpful. She took an initial, baseline reading of my GSR (galvanic skin response), heart rate, breathing, muscle tension, and skin temperature. During the course of the sessions, I will try to learn how to recognize and control what I had thought were involuntary reactions. Well, they are involuntary, but don't have to be.... I guess that's the point. Still haven't gotten hooked up to the brainwave (EEG) machine. That comes later.


posted at 2:39 PM


Tuesday, October 29, 2002


Went kayaking both Saturday and Sunday, Upper and Lower Guadalupe River, respectively. Man, oh, man. Much fun. This photo was taken on a little spring runoff creek feeding in to the Guadalupe River right below Huaco Falls.

Here is my latest batch of kayaking photos, including the photos of Kipp and Kathy's kayak wedding.


posted at 8:42 PM


Monday, October 28, 2002


Wire, a really great band, has a really great song called, "Map Ref 41°N 93°W." I stuck the coordinates into MapQuest's longitude and latitude mapper, and voila, a map (of nowhere, out in the middle of Iowa). Geek fun. Wonder if hardcore Wire fanatics make pilgrimages to that spot and listen to the song..... you'd need a GPS unit to find it, I imagine. Here's the song in RealAudio, thanks to stereosociety.


posted at 10:20 AM


Tuesday, October 22, 2002


Today would've been my maternal grandmother's 92nd birthday. Happy Birthday, Nana!


posted at 11:17 AM


Monday, October 21, 2002


anti-telemarketing EGBG counterscript
I hate telephone solicitations. I was going to say I hate telephone solicitors, but they're just folks with a very bad job. I did it for a week in college - it was hell.


posted at 10:58 AM




Sunday night, or rather Monday morning, insomnia. I'm up, surfing the web about biofeedback and insomnia. (Woke up from a fear-of-heights anxiety dream.) Just sent an email to the biofeedback therapist who taught the class last week, to see about making an appointment. By gum, I want to try that brainwave biofeedback. I should be in Delta sleep right now, not wide awake, pounding on my keyboard.

However, I did sleep 10 hours on Saturday night - something I almost never do. I was wiped out from kayaking. The Lower Guadalupe River is finally open and the levels were up! It was great. It rained all night Friday night, and it just started raining again.


posted at 3:43 AM


Friday, October 18, 2002


Finally saw 24 Hour Party People last night, the 'docu-drama' (I don't know if I agree with that description) of the Manchester music scene. And now I see it's going to be a book, too. Neato. Fun movie. As this reviewer said on Amazon, "24HPP may be the first feature film to include a reference to its own future status as a DVD." And I'll probably want the DVD, whenever it comes out. I hope they have some vintage footage thrown in for good measure.


posted at 5:47 PM


Thursday, October 17, 2002




a hand came down
and POW I got illuminated
-Soul Coughing, Monster Man


posted at 12:43 PM


Wednesday, October 16, 2002




Some days all you can do is post a mandala.


posted at 8:08 PM


Tuesday, October 15, 2002


"Thou cullionly fen-sucked boar-pig!"
Shakespearean Insulter - Ye haw! (So to speak...)


posted at 8:19 AM


Sunday, October 13, 2002


Went to a introductory class on biofeedback yesterday on campus. It's something I've been curious about for years but never have gotten to try. Pretty dog-gone interesting. It was a hands-on class, with several pieces of biofeedback tools. The simplest is a little thermometer that you use to monitor the temperature of your hands. Apparently, if you're very relaxed, your hands will be much warmer. I was able to change the temperature of my hands from 85° to 90° F just by breathing deeply and relaxing. We also got to try the Galvanic Skin Response (GSR), which is the change in electric conductivity of the skin caused by an increase in activity of sweat glands when the sympathetic nervous system is active...." That one was a little harder to work with in the classroom because it was making a loud squealing sound that let everyone know just how tense I was, which just made it squeal louder! The feedback created feedback, in a sense. A sonic sense.


Anyway, some of the class, but not I, got to try the heartrate monitor -- the breath monitor wasn't working. Then I got to try the muscle response monitor, which measures the electrical charge (I don't think I'm phrasing that correctly) of the muscles as they tense. I discovered why I have the beginnings of carpal tunnel syndrome - my left shoulder holds a high amount of tension for no reason at all. When I thought I was completely relaxed, it showed the tension to be off the chart. When I pulled the muscle back, which felt like tension, the monitor showed my muscle to be relaxed.


Unfortunately, we ran out of time before we could try the brainwave monitor, which I would've been extremely interested to try! I'm thinking of following up on this stuff and then I'll get to try it. One of my brothers has been doing it for awhile at Austin Biofeedback Center and has been pleased with the results.


I'd like to have the hardware and software at home, but for some reason, it's extremely expensive. The usual explanation for the high cost is that it's very sophisticated equipment and whatnot, but I don't think it's anymore high-tech than a lot of more affordable gadgetry (computers, DVD players, digital video cameras, etc). I just think that it's not mainstream, household gadgetry and there's no competition to make it cheaper. Also, I think there are a lot of quacks trying to get rich off of it. When you search biofeedback on the web, you find a lot more hucksters than legit therapists or scientists. And, of course, a lot of charlatans with a New Age slant to their hucksterism.


But it really was interesting and actually a little more than I'd expected. Or maybe it was just more immediate than I expected. The feedback was instant. I'd like to experiment with it more....


I used to have a rich friend that would get interested in some offbeat thing like that and just buy it or build it for himself. He built an honest-to-god sensory-deprivation floatation tank in a spare bedroom once that was phenomenal. I wish he were still around to buy the biofeedback set up (he'd probably already have it). In fact, we used to talk about starting a 'Brain Gym' to cash in on the gullible and so we could finance our own curiousity about this stuff. Oh, well.


posted at 8:14 AM


Saturday, October 12, 2002


"Nobel Peace Prize Awarded to Carter, With Jab at Bush"

For his peacemaking and humanitarian work over the last 25 years, former President Jimmy Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize today, and the Nobel committee used the occasion to send a sharp rebuke to the Bush administration for its aggressive policy toward Iraq.

"In a situation currently marked by threats of the use of power," the Nobel citation read, "Carter has stood by the principles that conflicts must as far as possible be resolved through mediation and international cooperation based on international law, respect for human rights and economic development."


Sorry, Mr. Bush, there's no such thing as a Nobel War Prize. Congratulations, Mr. Carter!


posted at 9:34 AM


Friday, October 11, 2002


Jenni's doing a lot better today. She was released from the hospital this morning a little before noon. She says, "Nothing like Vicodin and Benadryl."


posted at 8:31 PM





Reading Captain Beefheart by Mike Barnes. Man, what a trip the Captain is. At first, I was put off by the book because it paints him to be a real tyrant to his bandmates, and I put it down for several months. I picked it up again this week, have pushed beyond that consideration and am quite enjoying the book. (My copy has a different cover than the one available on Amazon.)


Gerry turned me on to the Captain about 12 years ago or so and gave me the bio this year for my birthday. Thanks, Gerry!


posted at 6:52 PM


Thursday, October 10, 2002


Jenni is spending the night in the hospital. She had her gallbladder removed this morning. We got there at 7 a.m., and she was supposed to be able to go home this evening, but no such luck. Probably tomorrow morning. She did not expect to be in so much pain... I guess because it was supposed to be outpatient surgery, she didn't think it would be as serious. Poor Jenni!

I elected not to spend the night in the hospital. I may spend an awful lot of time there, but I don't really like them that much.


posted at 9:27 PM


Wednesday, October 09, 2002


Sometimes spam is funny. Just got one with a viral attachment and this dumb jpg from Slurpie Tucker. Haw haw, what a funny name.


posted at 9:57 PM




Man, I tell you what, I'm diggin' PHP.
Re-did my photo pages of our UK trip last year with a couple of php scripts. It's a nerdy good time.


posted at 8:22 PM




Dixon's Edge
haw haw! What a funny name for a book!


posted at 3:18 PM


Monday, October 07, 2002


Damn. The Fall cancelled their U.S. tour. Mark E. Smith couldn't get a visa. Sheesh.


posted at 8:34 PM




Kipp and Kathy's wedding was fun, the weather was flawless, and the river was cool. The wedding was low-key, to say the least. Los Romanceros played while Kipp and Kathy danced. The bride and groom walked through an arch of kayak paddles after they exchanged vows.


No alcohol was allowed at the campground; the first booze-free wedding reception I've been to, I think, unless maybe there was a Baptist wedding I went to at some point....

Anyway, afterwards a large group of us paddled downriver. Kipp and Kathy paddled over Martindale Dam side by side. It was my first time over the dam... damn, what a rush!



posted at 4:32 PM


Sunday, October 06, 2002


Off to a kayak wedding now. Our paddling friends, Kipp and Kathy, are getting married on the San Marcos River. We're going to paddle there and then paddle after the wedding.


posted at 8:27 AM





Jenni and I went birding in the afternoon. A friend had told me of a spot outside of Austin where the birds congregate. It's part of the city's waste water treatment system, and it smells pretty funky, which attracts the bugs that attract the birds. Tons of Red Wing Blackbirds, Scissor-tail Fly Catchers, and lots of wading birds, like Snowy Egrets and Glossy Ibis. (What's the plural of ibis? ibeses?) Thousands of really pretty dragonflies, too.



posted at 8:25 AM





Bought a bike yesterday morning to replace the one that was stolen. It's pretty nice. A mountain bike. I went ahead and bought a better bike than I had. Yukon by Giant. I'll have to keep it inside, I guess, which is a big drag in our little place.


posted at 8:20 AM




Gerry and I went to see and hear some Indian slide guitar last night. Chitravina Ravikiran and Vishwa Mohan (V. M.) Bhatt. Quite enjoyable. It had been a long time since I'd been to an Indian concert. I'd seen V. M. Bhatt 10 years ago or so, without knowing who he was. Then 5 or 6 years ago, Gerry loaned me a CD of V. M. Bhatt and Ry Cooder, 'A Meeting by the River', and I thought, hey, wait, I've seen this guy. They play modified guitars that are kind of a cross between Hawaiian slack key guitars and sitars; they've added sympathetic strings that kind of give that sitar ringing sound. Ravikiran was a little more mellow. Bhatt put an extremely energetic performance. The percussionists were really good, too. One tabla player, and the other guy was playing a clay pot! He played it almost like it was a tabla.


posted at 8:16 AM


Wednesday, October 02, 2002


Man, this is weird. My cousin sent it to me. I don't know the story behind it.


posted at 3:26 PM


Tuesday, October 01, 2002


Good lord, what a mess the last few days have been. Last Friday, we had a total meltdown of our Windoze network at work (my Unix network was unharmed). My boss and I have been working like dogs to get everything back online. I worked through part of my weekend - no kayaking for me!

And then yesterday evening, when Jenni and I were heading out for a late dinner at Marakesh, I realize someone had stolen my bike. Cut right through the Kryptonite cable and swiped it. That just ain't right. It ain't right to steal someone's bike.

But Marakesh was good. They had a few tables out on the sidewalk, to take advantage of slightly cooler temperatures, I guess. We had dinner out on Congress Avenue, while the city's unwashed wandered by, asking for quarters, ranting and raving at us, etc. And while 6 cops arrived to talk to one ranting and raving black woman -- though they eventually left her alone. Dinner theater! Though, to tell the truth, it's difficult to enjoy a rich meal while the hungry poor wander by. Glad it wasn't really Marakesh, Morocco, where a kid came up to me in a sidewalk cafe and showed me a festering wound on his leg.


posted at 11:30 AM