ShitOuttaLuck

…but, you should read this book.

If you know me at all, you know I read a lot of non-fiction, and often when I turn to fiction it’s the stuff of Gore Vidal or James Mitchner, or even James Ellroy where the storyline is deliberately set within an historical context. Rarely do I recommend these books to other people. I understand that my taste in literature is not that of most normal people, and I’d never subject my friends to this stuff. That said, I just finished reading The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey by Candice Millard, and it was excellent. This thing was a page-turner. I couldn’t set it down.

This is the account of Teddy Roosevelt’s poorly planned and nearly fatal expedition to map an uncharted river deep within the Amazon. I’m not very familiar with South America, and this book got me really interested in Brazil and it’s history, especially Candido Rondon, a great explorer and the first director of Brazil’s Indian Protection Agency. Its motto: “Die if necessary, but never kill.”

Millard relates this story using accounts and diaries of the expedition party members, Roosevelt, his son newly engaged son, Kermit, Rondon, naturalist George Cherrie and others, giving you a sense of what each man was thinking and feeling as the expedition continued further down the river. With no way to turn back the men must face dwindling supplies, impassible rapids and waterfalls, an inhospitable jungle, death and even murder. This book also gets into the geography and ecology of the region, explaining why the river was so dangerous and why it was so difficult to survive in the Amazon, a jungle so dense that all the plant and animal life has become so competitive as to make it nearly impossible to find fruit, successfully hunt animals or catch fish, and where disease is a real and deadly threat.

Roosevelt never fully recovered from this journey and died 5 years later. Rondon went on to recieve his nations highest military rank of marshal and lived to see the state Rondonia named after him.

Download link
More videos at the Library of Congress.
Wikipedia entry: Roosevelt-Rondon Scientific Expedition

Ever feel like all the music you listen to is the same?  Turns out it’s all Pachelbel’s Canon in D major.

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This is exactly how I feel right now:

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Odds are it won’t snow in Oakland this year.

It was nice to see some in Colorado last week.

This is a display west of Boulder I saw when I went out by myself to get lost for awhile.  I couldn’t get away from the sprawl and the lights.  That said, these were lights I was happy to see.

I got out of my car and tried to snap off a few pictures with my gorillapod, but just as I was getting started, they all turned off.

Then it was pitch black.

Tom told me to check out The Decemberists a while ago. I did, but I couldn’t get into them. But today, I’ve decided that The Decemberists are really good. I’ve got a Decemberists station running on Pandora right now. Originally, I had a real hard time getting over Colin Meloy’s voice, and the band’s style which smacks of the Moody Blues at first listen. I was listening to the 20-minute ep The Tain, and suddenly, my brain switched - I think I dig them afterall.

If you haven’t tried out Pandora (www.pandora.com), you’ve gotta go over there and check it out. You create stations based on artists or songs you like. Then as it plays music for you, you rate the tracks. As your listening progresses, Pandora gets better at picking out songs that match what you want to listen to, based on the characteristics fo the music. It’s remarkably good at it - plus it’s free.

My grandpa passed away last week. I went to the funeral and spent time with family. That’s the best, really the only thing we can do. Be there, share, remember, think, comfort eachother. We’ve only got so much time here. I only hope to have a life as full as his.

I had been racking my brain trying to remember a joke he told me in September. He had been in the nursing home since June, but for some reason he thought to tell this joke he hadn’t told in years according to my Grandma.

Did you hear about the constipated jitterbug?
He couldn’t jit.

We miss you Grandpa.

I’ve been secretly working on this for awhile and wonder how long it’ll take for folks to notice our new digs.

Tom and Lance and Ted all swear by Wordpress, so it’s only reasonable that I follow the crowd.  I actually have done quite a bit with DotNetNuke and while I think it’s an excellent application, especially for building websites, I was stuck with .Text blogs which were outdated - a fact that would only continue to make posting and any future migration plans impossible.  The blogging module for DNN is pretty nice, but it’s not got the hordes of users and developers that WP has.  At the end of the day, both systems have their advantages.  Don’t get me started about Drupal…

So enough nerding out for now.  I’m actually really excited about the prospect of being able to blog regularly once again, now that I have a cool new toy to post on.

Yeah, yeah.  Here come the I told you so’s.  Wordpress is pretty cool, but there are some things missing that I sure hope I can find replacements.  Once I get it all together, I’ll be able to ditch the DNN 2 / .Text site we’ve been running for the last two years.

i’m gonna fuckin puke.