Bryce

My dad sent me another of his "I used to be smart but then I got older and more paranoid and now I'm a nutcase who can't think any more" emails. This one was a "global warming test" which of course said that it was scientific and not biased and not political.

Here it is: http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/GlobWarmTest/start.html

It was written by a MINING ENGINEER. In VIRGINIA. Where COAL comes from.

Anyway, I normally ignore my dad's stupidity, preferring to allow him to carry on unharried and watch his nuttiness develop as a sort of sick sideshow, but I had to say something this time.

Here is my response:
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I was waiting for the part where it admitted to being a joke, but to no avail. Written by a mining engineer in one of the most coal-centric parts of the country, I can't expect much. I mean, seriously, what kind of person makes the argument that adding CO2 to the air is a good idea because plants need it and we need plants? Plants also need sunlight, so let's make the hole in the ozone bigger so we can have better plants!

I shouldn't have to mention it, but you certainly didn't consider this, so I shall write it out here: yes, natural temperature variations are normal, but I am not aware of any evidence pointing to cavemen driving cars or burning coal for electricity. Converting fossil fuels into CO2 didn't happen until extremely, very, extremely recently, so comparing modern society's CO2 production to the historic trends in any way is absurd.

As a side note, if you (or anyone else) has to say that the information in a link I'm going to go to is scientific and not political, it's highly likely that the information in that link is not scientific but political. Information speaks for itself.

Call climate change a hoax, fine, but nobody can tell me that fossil fuels will be around into eternity without giving me cause to consider their sanity. When we have so many alternatives available (as you know), why even bother using the old, outdated dino juice? There is a mountain of money (yes, money, the motivation for all life) out there in the alternative energy business, and the ones who tap into it are the smart guys. The guys who insist that we need to hold onto fossil fuels for any reason other than entrenched financial interests/power are going to be laughed at the same way that we now laugh at Bill for saying we didn't need more than 640k. At nearly any level of consumption greater than zero, fossil fuel supplies are finite, period. That's why they're called fossil fuels. It doesn't matter if "peak oil" has or hasn't happened or won't happen for 300 years, we already have workable alternatives that depend on an energy source that is about as infinite as our brains can conceive.

And don't think I'm some hippie eco-groovy planet-loving people person. When it comes down to it, we don't need to "save" the planet for its sake, we need to "save" it because it supports our own life. It is selfish to compost or ride a bike instead of driving or heat your water with the sun. The planet will recover from anything we do to it, as it operates on a time scale far more vast than we can imagine. Drop a few nukes and kill everyone? Fine, in another fifty million years the radioactivity will be gone and it'll be business as usual, but will have stupidly eliminated ourselves. We are going to go extinct sooner or later. The point in being concerned with things that could potentially hurt our environment is that doing so could delay that extinction by a few hundred or a few thousand years. When you're looking at the survival of our species, even if global climate change is a complete hoax made up by those damned hippies to sell more patchouli, what is the harm in switching to other energy sources that already exist, especially when you consider the fact that we are going to have to make that change eventually? It's not like using the wind and the sun and whatever else we come up with is going to make things worse, is it? I hope my sense of logic doesn't evaporate when I turn 50.
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Yeah, it's a bitchslap of logic that I don't think my dad expected. Then again, he isn't used to visits from Logic these days.

Now to segue into something related to that last paragraph, sorta...

I'm not very active in the political process because I know that my efforts would be futile. As a collective people we have made progress, via politics and in other ways, over the past few hundred/couple thousand years. Women can vote, we don't have lords and vassals and such, we aren't dying in the streets from diseases and malnutrition, etc. I can conclude from that observation that while the graph of human progress has its dips and dives, its trend is a line going up and to the right, which is good.

But then I think of how many good, useful, or just plain morally right things have not been allowed to happen because of politics and the quest for power. We would all be snuggling in big people-piles and eating ambrosia that comes from machines that convert our shit into food, and the machines themselves would be edible when they stopped working, if it weren't for politics and power.

To get to the point, the thought that I've had lately is that, though I consider myself a humanist, I have to conclude that progress will never be as fast as it should/can be and we will always be battling the privileged few to provide for the many. It's human nature, at least for part of the species, to lust for power and all that. Unfortunately for the rest of us, those few who feel that urge get to take what should rightfully go to all of everyone.

We will always have inequalities, riots, revolutions, and all that jazz. It's not going to be like the books and movies say, where there is some sea change in all paradigms that leads to a utopian, or at least far less screwed up society, than what we have now. There will be progress, but it will be slow. Very slow, as it always has been.

We are also going to always have war. We can strive for peace, as we should, but war is here to stay. Again, most of us don't want war, but there are people who love it, and they are the ones who get what they want. It's an animalistic, natural thing that probably almost every human has. Most of us keep it in check or vent it in good ways, but there are always going to be the assholes who love war.

In a sense, we are screwed, in that we will probably never live up to our potential, which I define as the progress we have made divided by the amount of time we have been around to make it. We are probably going to go extinct, for whatever reason, before we stop fighting and before we get all of these things that we should have already gotten. I mean, seriously, it's 2010 and we're still DEBATING gay marriage? What the hell is wrong with us?

I'm still optimistic though, as weird as that sounds. I see a lot of potential in our species and I think that some of our progress that we will make will be in our ability to make progress more quickly. I think most people are good, in the sense that they don't want to hurt each other.

Okay, my hands are hurting after all of this typing. Gotta head to bed.

There were a few chiropractors at the home show yesterday, one of whom had this fancy computer muscle analyzer thing. The dude was giving free demos of it so I gave it a try. As I understand it, it analyzes the tension of one's muscles for each vertebra using electrical stimulation (which I felt). It showed a line next to each vertebra as it was tested, the length and color of it denoting the degree of tension.

Well, not surprisingly, the muscles in my lower back showed up as very long red lines. I believe the upper limit of the "tension scale" is 255. The least tense of my lower back muscles registered 219, the most tense, 251. I was probably the worst case, as least for lower back tension, that he tested that day.

It's not like I need a computer to tell me how bad it is, but if anybody I know had been watching, they might get some idea as to why I'm always framing everything I do in the context of how much it will hurt.

I went to the local hippie-groovy eco-sustainable home show thing today to talk up woodworkers, photographers, and other such folk. I also got this thing called a "back up" which touts itself as "the world's first frameless chair" and they're right. It's a back pad with straps that go over my knees, so my knees keep my back straight without having something to sit against. I was sold as soon as I tried it, and I'm using it as I type this. It even zips into its own carrying pouch.

I watched a presentation by a local cabinet/furniture maker and then talked to him afterward. He was as friendly as virtually all of the woodworkers I've talked to, which is to say extremely so. While he doesn't have any work for me (as I expected), he did tell me about Splinters, the local woodworker's guild/society/bomb-making group. I also talked to Angie, another woodworker. She and Jonathan, the other WW person, both pointed me in the direction of Seth. He owns a business doing woodworking and he salvages logs/trees and mills them into boards. Anyway, I talked to him for a bit and gave him the usual info about me looking for an "in" and after a bit he softened up and told me that one of his guys recently quit unexpectedly.

Turns out he needs a woodworker/welder/photographer, three of my various useful skills! We both agreed that this was a serendipitous meeting and he said I should email him. I'm afraid of the amount of physical labor that may be involved, depending on exactly what the job entails, but if it isn't too much (my back couldn't take me hauling logs around), I'll probably go for it. Sure, ideally I'd have a job doing R&D on some snazzy new thing, but then again, I also like welding/photography/woodworking and I've really been wanting to get my foot in the WW door, so this might be ideal. We'll see.

So that was a good day, though my back is totally thrashed from standing up and walking around so much, which I expected. I wanted to go to the barn dance tonight but I probably wouldn't be able to move tomorrow if I did. Besides, I met some cool folks today that I'll be seeing at the next Splinters meeting, so I got some people-meeting needs taken care of anyway.

I just got back from an awesome end to a good day. I'll start from the end and work backwards.

I've decided that on the 1-2 times a week I'm allowing myself to have a beer, I have to ride my bike to whatever bar/pub/watering hole to get it, thereby accomplishing the beer-quisition and getting some exercise in. Not knowing of any places other than Sam Bond's and Tiny Tavern (which are right next to each other), I looked online and found a place called The Blind Pig. I rode the 5 miles out there, got a beer, and within 15 minutes started talking to the guy, Dave, next to me.

I talked to him and this guy Jim for a while, then Dave left and Aven came in (cool name). He grew up in Arcata! That happens all the time, me running into people who are either from Arcata or have been there a few times. Anyway, the big deal is that I talked with these guys continuously for about two hours and got some leads on where to look for jobs. Just before I left Jim said "you seem like a hell of a nice guy, and very intelligent too" which was nice. Turns out that Aven worked at the same place as Joe (from the electric car place) and knows him; we both agreed that Joe is a great guy. Small-town syndrome, again, not that I mind.

The guys all said the same thing: the job market here is seriously bad but such is the case in most places it seems. I told them that Humboldt is worse, which is saying something, unless you're a grower or know the son of the CEO or something.

Earlier today I decided to completely change my tack on this job search voyage. Looking at job listings is now a secondary task; networking is first priority. I knew all along that I probably wasn't going to get a great job just by looking at listings but I didn't do much about it. Today I felt great knowing that what I'm pursuing now is more correct. I want to meet people and make friends and I need to network to find a job and I want to get more connected with phellow photographers and sell some photos. All of this led to the obvious conclusion that networking is more important than anything. I'm also going to look at listings, of course, and I'm going to just show up at businesses and talk myself up, but my main focus will be talking to everyone in sight and telling them about myself and what I'm looking for.

That's why tonight was so good: it was a confirmation that this is how I should be approaching the situation. Normally I'd just shoot the proverbial shit with bar folk and maybe pursue hanging out in the future, but tonight I made a point of talking about my situation and asking about job opportunities here. It worked marvelously. Dave recommended that I talk to Fish and Game about building their birdhouses or whatever they're called. I never would have thought of that! We exchanged numbers and as he was leaving he said "we're going to find you a job!" Aven and Jim made some recommendations too and we all got along great. I talked to the bartender a bit too, just to get to know folks.

I found the local photographer's society and I'm going to go to their meeting next week. I also found the "Oregon Newcomer's Club" and I'll probably give that a shot too. Tomorrow I'm going to see what I can find in the way of woodworking groups.

This is why I needed to move out of Humboldt: I was more or less avoiding meeting people and becoming involved in the community because I was fed up with the place for various reasons.

All of the depressed, upset anger-y feelings I've had lately, with regard to the job search, pretty much evaporated today. One reason is that I finally have a place to live. Another is that I've combined making friends, looking for a job, and FINALLY promoting myself as a photographer into one activity.

Speaking of photography, I got a decent light table, much better than the crappy one I made years ago, for $5! Thank you Craigslist/professional photographer guy! I've been looking at the slides from my trip and I'm still awe-struck that I took such good photos. I normally like maybe 10% of the photos I take but these rolls are more like 80%!

What REALLY SUCKS and PISSES ME OFF is that I can't do anything with those slides because my expensive slide scanner just up and decided to stop working. I've had it for 3 years and made maybe 100 scans with it so it's virtually unused, yet now it won't show up on any computer I plug it into. I am SO pissed about this. I saw a post online from a guy who had the same problem and he ended up giving Nikon $315 to replace the main board to make it work again. That's half of what the scanner cost in the first place! What the fuck Nikon?! I mailed mine off the other day (the postage alone was $40) to have them tell me what's wrong. I know what's wrong: they made a great scanner with a shitty USB connection and I'm going to be stuck with it unless I shovel even more money at them. They're going to get a very nasty letter from me if I have to pay that kind of money to get this fixed. I literally did nothing to the scanner but plug it in and now it doesn't work.

Grrrr.... Well, in other news, I bought an EOS-3 film camera with power winder/vertical shutter release on Ebay. I spent more on it than I probably needed to, but it's basically unused and in mint condition, so it's worth it. This is going to be awesome: it's rainproof (all buttons and openings have gaskets), loaded with features like Eye Control focus (I just look at where I want it to focus and it follows my eye), and it has a much better viewfinder with interchangeable screens. It's Canon's second-best camera they made and it'll be my first truly professional one.

For all the digital SLR people out there, let's compare. My 8.2 megapixel dSLR with battery grip cost $1,700. I got this 22 megapixel-equivalent film camera with battery grip for $250 AND it's waterproof and has a better viewfinder. That $1,450 difference would buy a shit ton of film which, when scanned, yields images with three times the resolution of my dSLR and better color. Also, slides are future-proof in that they can be re-scanned with technology that doesn't exist yet and get even more resolution and they're immune to viruses and hard drive crashes. And one shouldn't forget that my dSLR was outdated almost as soon as it was released but the EOS-3 is 10 years old and will go another 30 before it just wears out, since film technology doesn't really change.

I'm really hoping that they keep making slide film for a while or I'm going to cry. All right, enough with the shop talk.

Yes, today was good, and so shall tomorrow be.

There is an enormous pile of stuff I can write about on here, but I'll just put down two things.

1. I am typing this from my new room! Yep, I'm officially not moved in at all in any sense but I did arrive back in Eugene a few hours ago and I have a place to live. This is good.

2. I just looked at the 7 rolls of slides and 2 rolls of infrared film I shot on my trip. HOLY SHIT! Normally I'm glad to get 2-4 photos per roll that I consider to be decent, but almost every one on each roll looks incredible. Granted, slides always look stunning before I look at them on the light table or scan them, but even so, wow! I guess it's a good thing that two of the three people I know here are going to be gone, 'cause I have 300 film photos to go through, and it looks like I'll be scanning quite a few of them which takes forever. Also, it looks like I've really gotten good at shooting slides, which are pretty unforgiving as far as exposure is concerned. I bracketed like crazy, taking three photos (with different shutter/aperture settings) for each shot and it looks like I may not have to do so much in the future.

I'm going to spend some of my Christmas money on a camera. While it's possible to get great photos with the lens I have, the cheap piece of shit body I'm using with it (for film) is, well, a piece of shit. It doesn't have a depth-of-field preview button, it's difficult to change the aperture because it lacks a dial on the back, its low-light performance is piss-poor, the autofocus and viewfinder are a joke, and so on. Anyway, I'm going to get an EOS-3, the 2nd best camera Canon made, and a truly professional one with weather sealing and all. They're pretty cheap on Ebay too, especially compared to the 1v, the top of the line ridiculous ultimate camera they made. That one is several years old and they still go for $600!

This was the best winter trip I've had. More details on it later, but I'll say here now that the Saline Valley hot springs experience was borderline cosmic/religious.

I've had a weird semi-kinda cold for three days now but I think I'm getting better. The first day was the worst, what with the feeling exhausted and all (I took 3 hours of naps!) but even then I have had only a slight sore throat, a slightly stuffed-up nose, no coughing, hardly any funky yellow stuff, and I just haven't really been too sick in general. My mom has this too, though she's mainly just feeling tired instead of having the throat and such.

I'm leaving for socal tomorrow regardless, figuring that if this is all this is going to do, I should be totally fine by tomorrow or the next day. I'm going to do the dad thing, stay with my brother, and then get the hell out of that evil place and high-tail it to death valley with the most expedient of expeditiousness.

I've decided to do the crazy thing and go to the Saline Valley hot spring there again, only this time I'm going via one of the more backwoodsy roads. That's saying something, as the "normal" road to the springs is 3 hours of tooth-rattling washboarded curvy roads. I'm going to go to The Racetrack again and then head east through Lost Burro Gap and follow that dirt road down to Hunter Mountain. The road is 55 miles of winding, canyon-following awesomeness, but my concern, other than the remoteness, is that it's at 5300 feet and probably has its share of snow. I am of course prepared for such a thing, but it would be vastly better on my nerves if I didn't have to deal with that. Everything I've read about the road is along the lines of "spectacular scenery, great drive, very remote, make sure you have another vehicle with you."

Then, after getting to the end of that road, where it joins with Saline Valley Rd., I'm in the valley, 3 hours away from the edge of the park. My plan is to head to the hot springs and post up for a full day for once. No more of this drive in and soak and leave the next day business, I'm going to stay the night, wake up, spend the whole day soaking in the various springs, stay the night, and leave the next day. I'll be able to take a shower there thanks to the hot and cold running water that comes out of the ground and is literally piped to a shower, so that will be nice.

After three days of Death Valley, I shall then head north to more snow and springs and such, assuming I don't get stuck in the pass in the Panamints. I'm going to try damn hard to get to Buckeye, a hot spring near Bridgeport. I tried the last two years but the road is gnarly and very snow-laden, so this year I've got snowshoes and determination. And if that does fail, there's always Travertine hot spring a few miles away.

Eventually I'll end up in Humboldt on the 12th and stay with a friend there for a couple of days. Best of all, when I head back to Eugene I will be moving into my new place! I'm sending off the rental/lease agreement today, after a great deal of pestering to get the paperwork. This is good in many ways, not the least of which is that I can drive right up there like I live there ('cause I do) and unpack my truck right into the garage! Sweet!

Yeah, I'm a little nervous about the Death Valley wing of my trip, but that's much of the point of doing it: one does not overcome fear or learn new things by avoiding them.

And now I shall get to work on the many things to do before I leave tomorrow. Those Jerry cans aren't going to re-seal themselves, I've discovered.

My brother mentioned this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Mayall

It's the Wikipedia entry for my grandfather, and it's much more comprehensive than I imagined. It also refers to this entry for the big-ass telescope named after him:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayall_4m_telescope


Speaking of that telescope, I'm going to be getting a private tour by the director of Kitt Peak on Sunday, along with my brother. I had such a tour in 2000 but didn't realize at the time that no, non-family people do not get to walk around the floor of the 300-ton scope or go in the control room. I shall make sure to take many photos. My earliest memory of the telescope was when I was maybe 6 and we got to walk on the catwalk around the circumference of the structure, which scared my brother to death (it's maybe 80 feet off the ground) but I enjoyed. It had a hell of a view.

I'm cleaning up my largest-capacity external hard drive right now and I took a look at my film scans directory (or "folder" for you non-former-DOS folks). It is 26 gigs in size but has only 225 photos! To put that in perspective, my directory of all of the photos from my digital SLR and such is twice the size but has 13,000 photos in it!

In other words, film scans are enormous, about a hundred times larger than images from my digital camera. To get that same resolution in a digital camera I'd have to spend $3,000 minimum but the film camera I've been using to take those enormous pictures is literally the cheapest one Canon ever made; a used Rebel X can be found for around $40.

I like to refer to this as my avoidance of the "digital arms race". The slide film I'm using is not too different from the stuff that was being produced in 1950, yet a digital SLR made today will be outdated in a year.

I also prefer shooting slides because A. I like the "Christmas" effect of not seeing my shots until they're developed and B. there is a lot to be said for holding a physical manifestation of a photo in my hands instead of looking at it on a screen. I'm pretty sure that a good digital SLR can produce photos of quality equivalent to that of slide film, though I may be wrong.

And yes, I realize that film costs money and digital files more or less don't, but the $3000 for that fancy-pants digital SLR would buy me about 300 rolls of slide film, including processing.

I put the solar panel on my new camper shell today! It took a lot longer than it did on my old truck since I actually care about the shell and plan on having it for a long time. Instead of just bolting the panel down (via the L brackets I made previously), I made rubber standoffs for each bolt so that the top of the shell doesn't get all scraped up from the brackets. Pretty sweet, and in theory it adds a minute amount of shock absorption.

I biked to Sam Bond's (most awesome bar ever) last night in 20-something degree weather. Only my hands got cold; the rest of me got too warm. I talked to a dude there for a while who had been addicted to opiates for a while and had weaned himself off of them onto chewing tobacco. It made me realize that I've never really dealt with real addiction, even though I've felt like I was going down that path more than once. Popping 20 Vicodin a day just to maintain "normalcy" is something I've never even come close to doing.

I'm enjoying looking for a place to live, which is good. I also have to do some stuff before the trip, so balancing the two is necessary. What I've almost decided to do is do all of the trip stuff at once so I'll have a solid block of house-hunting time. But really the main factor is the weather. I want to get the new battery and coolant in before it starts snowing next week; I can house-hunt in inclement weather, but doing truck stuff in it is about as unappealing as putting my nuts in a blender.

..it's supposed to be 17 degrees on Sunday night! Holy Jesus titties! The coldest I've been in so far is around 10-12 degrees, so that's impressive. Of course, I was also sleeping in my truck in that 10-12 degrees, so it's a bit different.

Apparently the passes and peaks in the Cascades will be seeing sub-zero temps when wind chill is factored in.

This makes me wonder how stupefyingly cold it might be during my trip this year. The easy part is setting up the nest and climbing in, the hard part is getting up in the morning when you've slept in a deep freezer overnight and getting to a hot cup of something requires working with a frozen metal stove that is as unhappy about the situation as its operator.

In other words, I'm totally stoked to be doing that again, especially with a new truck. I've come to realize that much of why I like these trips is that it's the one time of year when I get to do what I want, not worry about things (other than falling off of cliffs or having a truck malfunction in the middle of nowhere), and rely entirely on myself. Yeah, I could spend the time beating my head into the wall over job stuff but that's just what I'd be doing; I'm vastly more capable and efficient when my brain has had some time to itself. I noticed that this past week when I started looking at places to live, I felt a lot more clear-headed and it came more easily since I had taken the prior week off to do the Humboldt/T-giving thing.

Today I got up and started looking at jobs and got to feeling more discouraged than ever. I ate breakfast (if you can call broccoli, chard, and beef "breakfast") and told myself that the best way to cheer up is to not think about the job situation as much and focus on finding a place to live.

That helped a lot. I talked to three people today about houses, all of which sound pretty good. The first person said that she's already got someone in mind for the room but I'm going to see it this afternoon anyway in case that falls through. It's expensive (for Eugene) but no more, in fact, probably less than what I was paying in Humboldt. But judging from the pictures, it's a pretty high-end house, fully furnished with really nice furniture, and it has a sweet backyard with an orchard. It's about as non-standard of a rental as they get, it seems.

Another place sounds good, especially since it has AN OPEN GARAGE! Whoooo! But I don't know how big the room is or whether it's upstairs or down, which could be a deal-breaker. We'll see.

I just got off the phone with a woman who has a good-sized room available in the place she's renting. It's on 2.5 acres and has a barn and a carport. She said I could probably work something out to use some of the copious shop space in the barn that her friend is renting. She was really, really cool to talk to and I'm excited to see the place this evening. There are chickens, goats, and some other critters there and did I mention it's on 2.5 acres?

So that's good. I'm basically ignoring job stuff for today because it'll only get me depressed (very easy to do these days) and I feel like the victory in finding a place to live will really help me out, as will just going through the process.

A HUGE, WONDERFUL thing to look forward to is that I will be able to go on The Trip this year, as my mom and grandparents want to see me and know that getting me down there in my new truck will do wonders for my mental state. I don't have a million things to do to get ready for it nor do I have to buy too much stuff, having already figured all of that out before. I do have to put the solar panel on the camper shell, replace the battery, replace the coolant/thermostat, and do some other minor things, but I don't have to do any real repairs for once. It's going to be around 3200 miles round-trip this time, a hell of a drive, but one that I'm looking forward to, especially since my shoulder/upper back situation is vastly better now. It turns out that a high school friend of mine works at Death Valley NP so I might see her on the way.

I looked at a couple of jobs in Portland, one of which I probably have excellent chances at getting. I really don't want to live there but I'm considering the possibility, as the job market in Eugene so far is only marginally better than it was in Humboldt.

For the past few years I've had this nagging stress in the corner of my mind about how my $5,000+ of cameras and associated gear were uninsured. I just took care of that, and it's not so bad, about $6/month! Of course, half of my camera gear is irreplaceable, but at least I'd get the money if the unthinkable happened. An additional benefit is that I entered the serial numbers for each part along with the rest of the information that the insurance company wanted, so that's backed up.

I should probably take pictures of all of it now.

Things that suck:
1. My back isn't too much better and I had to turn down a decent job because of it. That sucks.
2. Turns out that the electric car guys were misleading me, though probably not intentionally. The job doesn't actually exist, and I was told that when it does, I'll have to have a "formal interview" along with a bunch of other candidates. Hmm, funny, I went in and talked about my abilities, job history, availability, and goals, and was asked when I was going to move here and if I had references, yet for some reason that isn't considered a "formal interview". And I suppose that the two hours I spent talking to dude so that he could get to know me and see if I'd fit in there was just for entertainment. And at the end of that second interview, being told that I should talk to Erik again because he'd want to know more about my technical abilities and see what they had for me....well, that didn't seem to mean anything either. Yeah, that really blows. This came about because I finally asked Erik if I had the job and he replied along the lines of "no, because we don't have the funding yet and when we do we'll open it up to multiple candidates for interview and that'll be your chance to make your case." Which makes me wonder what the hell the past 2.5 months has done.
3. My prostate/whatever it is bullshit hasn't changed and this morning it really sucked.
4. I have no income but several bills, which also makes doing anything about #3 rather difficult.
5. While I am eternally grateful to Eric and Lynne that I get to stay at their place while I figure things out, there are certain factors (Eric knows what I mean) that make it rather stressful to be around the house.
6. I'm not going to be able to go on The Epic Trip this year, even with the new truck. That REALLY blows. I'm hoping that I'll be able to do it in February or so, but I dunno. I also have no idea what the Christmas situation is, as leaving here 'taint cheap and I don't know if I can afford the time.
7. The job market here sucks too, but not as much as in Humboldt. What sucks a lot is that I'm physically incapable of doing at least half of the jobs out there because my back won't let me stand for any length of time and I can't carry heavy things.
8. I can't do jack shit around here (I'm talking meeting people and socializing) because I have no money.

All of these things together mean that I'm fighting off the first stages of depression again. This time I recognize them, which is better than before, but it's hard to see the good in the day when I wake up when I feel like I'm lower than I was before I left Humboldt. The early stages of depression are already clouding my thinking, making it hard for me to figure out what to do with this job search.

Things that don't suck:
1. I'm in Eugene, finally. That's progress right there.
2. Regardless of the expense, I'm going to Humboldt for Thanksgiving because I need a good morale boost by seeing friends and I'll be able to pick up the stuff I left behind.
3. I posted a "let's go biking and maybe take some photos" thing to Craigslist and one dude responded, so that's encouraging. I'm going to use CL more for such things.
4. I am able to stay at a friend's place while I figure things out.
5. The weather here is much better. When it's cloudy it usually rains and when it isn't, it's sunny. No more of this cloudy all the time with no rain bullshit.
6. Eugene seems to be populated almost entirely (well, one half anyway) with hot women. This also segues into this thought: once I do have some money coming in, I'll put myself into the dating pool like I haven't done before. I'm feeling incredibly positive about that. For example, a week or two ago I went to watch a really good band and ended up talking to a pair of girls named Sam, both of whom were definitely attractive. Well, the reason I didn't ask for numbers is because the big ugly unattractive thing about them is that they're smokers. Yeah yeah, call me a Californian, but I can't stand to be around that kind of stinky poison and I certainly don't like kissing it, having tried in the past.
7. I went to the hot springs last Saturday and loved it. It's a 100 miles round-trip to get there, not too bad really, and I talked to this one guy for a while about car stuff (he's a mechanic) which was nice. This is in stark contrast to the Bryce who moved up to Humboldt and was too scared to talk to anyone for a while.

So there you have it. In general, life sucks now more than it ever has, but I'm forcing myself to have fleeting thoughts of what's good to keep myself from getting too low. And now, I'm off for a walk.

I've had this constant uber-tightness in my shoulder and neck muscles for years. I did a bit of reading which confirmed what I had considered but forgotten: I've been jutting my head forward. After two days of consciously pulling it back to where it should be as often as I could remember, my upper back is already feeling better. I'm not going to say that everything is fine, as this could be just a random improvement (I've become skeptical of things "improving"), but I have a feeling that this is the main reason for my issues there. I'm hoping that my neck muscles, which feel like hard lumps beneath the skin, will also loosen up and get happy.

So I've potentially hopefully cured, or at least vastly improved my upper back issues. I got a book, "Fix Your Own Pain" which had a ton of good reviews on Amazon. The author is the one who's site contained the information on "forward head" positioning. Anyway, she repeats herself more than one can even imagine (the book could easily be half as thick) but I think it'll help. She focuses on posture and paying attention to how one does things.

It's been almost two weeks since I moved here. The day that I got here I emailed Joe about coming in for my third interview. He said he'd talk to Erik and then get back to me. I didn't hear back from him, even after an email. I ended up calling him to find out that he's got the flu, which totally sucks. Joe emailed me and suggested that I contact Erik directly, which I did. Erik replied to my email on Monday and said that he's incredibly busy but he'd talk to Joe about the interview I had with him and then on Wednesday we might be able to see if we can set up a time to meet.

I replied to that email with a line stating that while I understand they're really really busy, it's been nine weeks since I first started talking to Joe and I'd appreciate some expediency. Tomorrow I'm going to email Erik in the morning and if I don't get a response I'm going to call him. I'm really going to push things now, as I don't like this limbo phase and I feel like I'm less of a priority than I think I should be. I really really don't like the stress of not knowing what's happening with this job situation. We'll see what happens.

I'm listening to The Decemberists' new album, The Hazards of Love. Whoa, them's some good musics! I've always considered them to be notably different from other bands and this album really proves it. They have a way of making an album into a coherent, contiguous journey (rather than a bunch of songs) like nobody else I've heard. The Tain was a great example of this, but this new one blows it away! I feel like I've been watching, er, hearing a movie, if that makes sense. It's like the album has a plot and characters and everything, which, if I listened to all of the words closely, it probably does.

Awesome!

More like a new volume. I have officially moved to Eugene, meaning that outside the window my truck sits, completely packed full of my stuff, with a Uhaul trailer full of more stuff. Tomorrow I will unload it all into my storage unit, then I am going to get some serious chillaxification on. I did a clutch replacement, packed for the move, loaded up truck/trailer for the move, and drove 7 hours for the move, all within one week. Impressive, yes, but my main point is that my back, neck, and shoulders are in the worst shape they've been in in, uh, this might actually be the worst they've ever been. So tomorrow I will rest after I destroy things some more in the unloading.

It's weird to think that this isn't a trip or a visit; I'm not driving back home in a few days. This is home, or at least it will be.

I'm staying at Eric and Lynne's place until I find an awesome spot to live. Did I mention that Eric and Lynne totally rock, like gneiss?

I haven't hurt this much in a while. My usual knots and back/neck/shoulder stuff are there but they've got friends this time. Pretty much every muscle above my waist hurts now.

But on the positive side, my truck has a new clutch and fuel filter. It took three days (not full days, mind you, but full enough) and a good chunk of cash but it's done. Mostly. I put the transfer case lever in the wrong way (I think) so I'll have to flip it tomorrow and I'm going to change the tranny oil and the clutch fluid. But the vast majority of the work is done, and I'm SO glad. I saved $500-$800 on labor and did a better job than a shop would have done, like my replacement of four big corroded bolts with stainless steel ones (which cost $5 EACH!).

After I finish up the truck stuff tomorrow I'm going to pack some more. I may have to add yet another day and leave on Thursday, as this clutch replacement and the concomitant thrashing of my body do not make for a packing-capable Bryce.

And now, shower time.

Had my second interview over at the place with the thing yesterday. It went very very well, and it was explained to me that, as I expected, it was more of a "do I like you?" thing than anything pertaining to my skills. He bought us each a couple of beers and we talked for two hours. The end result is that yes, I am a good fit there so far and I have the right attitude and approach and such, which I figured. Having an obsession with quality that borders on excessive and not being a conceited jerk definitely helped.

Now I've got round three coming which is the final interview (or at least it needs to be, as I will vocalize if need be) with Erik the electronics guru again. He'll want to know what I'm capable of and how well I'll fit into the position, though it sounds like the definition of the position is somewhat fluid. It sounds like I'd be turning his circuit designs and such into working prototypes, which I'd like. But I wouldn't like to be staring at components and PC boards forever, so I'm going to see what all we're talking about. I'm not too worried, as I have a feeling that such a job would lead to me doing other prototyping work there, on non-electronic systems.

I certainly don't have the job yet but I do have an odd but pleasurable feeling of calmness. It's because I know that my twenty years of mostly self-taught electronics experience means that I can probably do what they need and if not, I can self-teach myself whatever I need to fill in the cracks. I'm really not too worried about it, though I will be doing my homework beforehand to be doubly sure.

Now I get to spend my time next week replacing the clutch in my truck (a highly unpleasant chore), packing some things, and taking stuff off of walls and repairing wall-holes. Yay. That said, I am looking forward to moving here and bringing a truckload of my tools and other garage stuff up this trip definitely has helped me to feel like I'm making progress.


I have an old high school friend on Facebook who is working on getting a fancy job himself. Apparently they'll be digging through his past and doing a background check and all that jazz. What bugs me is that he's censoring his Facebook profile, deleting comments that people leave. He wrote a status message, got 4 comments on it (I don't remember the message or the comments), and then deleted the whole thing and re-posted the status message again. That irked me. It's entirely possible, indeed likely if it weren't for the uber-ultra-overly-busy-ness of Joe and crew, that the company is reading my Facebook page and these very words right here. I am not, however, changing anything that I write here or there or anywhere because I think that's a form of dishonesty (that's my opinion anyway) and I shan't do it. If they want to get an idea of who I am by reading these things, it would be a bad idea to change anything, as that wouldn't be representative of me.

Anyway, good things are on the horizon and now I just need to focus on moving. And yelling obscenities at my truck when a bolt won't come off or something.

I emailed Joe the electric car guy and in his reply he asked if I had moved there yet so I could come in to talk some more. Whether it's an offer or another interview he desires, it's another very good sign. I can see long hours of work ahead of me, hopefully, and I don't mind. Time to grow some more fingers so I can cross them as well.

Today I went to Rebecca, Alysia's magical Chinese medicine miracle worker today, for my incredibly weird prostate strangeness. She gave me a similar diet that she gave Alysia, which sucks. I get greens and protein for breakfast and lunch, but at least I get whatever I want for dinner. I've also got a list of things to take, like vinegar and calcium and a liquid B vitamin. Rebecca said that I'm still showing after-effects of the long course of antibiotics I finished months ago. She said it'll take at least 6 months for things to improve. Considering that I've had this extremely rare problem for a year now, I can deal. I say that now and hopefully I'll still be saying that after having 232 breakfasts of chard and chicken. Today was the first day in a week or two where I didn't pee air which I most certainly cannot attribute to one day on this diet/supplement regime, but I'm telling myself that it's encouraging nonetheless.

Today was The Big Day for Arcimoto, when they showed off the prototype to the public in Portland. They also launched their full website today and started taking pre-orders for vehicles. They're up to ten right now which I think is probably pretty good. Yeah, I'm setting myself up to feel not so good if I don't get the job with them but so be it. I'm feeling quite confident about this and I feel like this might finally be the big It. Let's hope so. I've got a ton of pent-up ambition to unload.