Home Invasion
11-12-2007 4:02 AM
(San Diego, CA) -- Authorities are searching for three men who robbed a Bonsall home carrying AK-47 assault rifles. The Sheriff's Department says the trio kicked open the back door of the residence on Calle Joya just off Camino del Rey about 4 a.m. yesterday. They tied up the resident and demanded cash. The men got away with 300-dollars. No one was hurt.

Well, I'm glad to hear no one got hurt. AK-47 assault rifles? This happened just a few miles from my house!

Can't get around to posting anything of significance today, I'm transferring about a Terabyte of video files to the new Mac...

Instead, I encourage you to go to this website and marvel at the concept, take a look around. This is a new arm of Pizza Port, who has started a line of premium beers by way of taking over the old Stone Brewery in San Marcos. (If you're looking to get me a Christmas gift, the "Devotion Ale" is my favorite. Best beer I've had in years.) The old Pizza Port Brewery, which was next door to the Pizza Port Carlsbad, is now the Pizza Port Bottle Shop, where you will find a selection of only the best beers from around the world. And the new Stone Brewing Company and their "World Bistro and Gardens" is simply awesome.

I always did think Pizza Port did it right.

The Future is Now!

Life can be so cruel. Intel's new computer chips -better, smaller, faster- ship today. Which means we can expect the MacPro2 or the MacSuperPro or the MacTasticSpeedemon or some such permutation by the end of the week. That's what happens in this arena. The next big thing is always just around the corner. Sooner or later you've just got to settle, so I gathered myself and found a shady spot.

But it's great! Can you just feel the power? The completely untethered speed at which this page loaded up when you clicked to it? No? Hmmm... must be a problem somewhere. I'll have to look into it. It's possible that my new Mac was just completely demoralized by the news of the new chips, and just decided to run at a half step slower pace. It's like any race. A close second and a distant second is still only a silver -why work so hard for it?.

Buying a new computer is like buying a new set of tools. They're nice and shiny and they sit there in your garage until you've got something to do with them. You never really go out and buy the tools, you just agonize when you're trying to fix something and you realize you could use some new tools. That's why I saved up the money for it -so that it wouldn't be so painful to the bank account when the purchase was finally made. Cash is king! I'm trying not to use credit cards, if only to avoid the tsk-tsking of Mrs. Ditchman. I'm not entirely dumb, though, I got the Apple Family Discount and then I used the Visa for the points and paid it off. If I focus on the good deal I got, it takes my mind off the new MacPro that will probably be released tomorrow. I'll deal. As long as the new release isn't faster and cheaper than the one I got, I'll deal. We'll see.

Truth is, I didn't get the fastest computer out there anyway. Couldn't afford it. The rate I was saving up money wasn't as fast as the rate at which they improve these things, which is good for civilization I guess. I always said that the next computer I got was going to be the fastest, best thing out there, so as to prolong the lifespan of the thing, but you know when it comes down to it, Necessity trumps all the Good Intentions, which is what makes life so confusing. Ah well, it all works better than it did.

So I spent a good portion of the weekend just floating 1s and 0s from Mac to Mac, with some problems. Everything on the old 'puter is a few operating systems old, so it was like a teenager trying to communicate with a geriatric. With Alzheimer's. We're still trying to find some common ground, but I was able to post this, so there's hope.

Thanksgiving is coming! Can't you hear it? It sounds like clinking glasses and yelling children and it looks all cluttered with the mismatched chairs, but it's awesome. I suppose it's supposed to look like the Pottery Barn catalog, but there's a reason why those photos are completely devoid of people.

NEW MAC UPDATE

At 10:14 PM on Wednesday, November 7th, the package data was transmitted to FedEx. At 5:18 PM yesterday the package itself was picked up in Anaheim -this is just about when I quit building for the day and rushed home to wait for it to arrive, but it was not to be. For at 5:46 it arrived at the FedEx location where it sat for eight hours. It was probably on the loading dock, with the FedEx employees sitting on the box, flipping cards and smoking cigarettes. At about 1:01 AM this morning those guys finally got up off their lazy backsides and left Anaheim and were last reported in transit at 1:13AM in the City of Industry. I got up at 5:30 this morning in eager anticipation -I wanted to greet the delivery guy at the door, invite him in, offer him some coffee...

As the coffee gurgled through the percolator, I noticed something strangely afoot outside. In the dim morning twilight I saw a few hundred mature crows amassed on the rooftops of all the neighbor's houses. Autumnal scarecrow decorations nearby having no effect. This Hitchcockian omen cannot bode well for such a Friday, one originally filled with enthused hope and eager anticipation...

It's 8:00 now. The crows have moved on, but still no computer. Do you think everything is okay? I mean, it's only about an hour and half drive from the City of Industry. There might have been traffic. But wait, no, it was pretty early... -you don't think... no... NO! I'm sure they're fine. The truck's not on fire and the Mac hasn't rolled into a ditch somewhere around Camp Pendleton, right? I need to clear my mind. Maybe I should go for a run. I'll make sure my wife isn't leaving the house while I'm out.

UPDATE - 9:30AM:

Still not here. Got back from my neighborhood 5k circuit a full minute faster than my current PR when I heard that Mrs. Ditchman was heading out to Jazzercise. Mac still in transit. Prayers requested for the FedEx driver. Won't shower until Mrs. Ditchman returns. Will pass time standing idly in the yard, raking the same pile of leaves over and over.

UPDATE - 11:03AM:

Drank all the coffee. Moved on to Coca-Cola. Shaking in raw anticipation. Showered with the bathroom door open so I could hear the delivery guy. Panicked when I was sitting on the toilet and heard a rumble coming from down the street. Ran out front in my boxer shorts and toilet paper, only to be greeted by a diminutive school bus full of down syndrome kids.

UPDATE - 12:24PM:

Googling "flocking crows" to pass the time -working with the old dinosaur so my first experience with the new one will feel like saddling up and riding lightning! Another rumble from down the street and my heart skips a beat -I know a diesel engine when I hear one! CURSES! It's the UPS guy dropping off something for my neighbor. Why didn't Apple go with UPS? What's the deal? Sending angry Email to steve.jobs@apple.com.

UPDATE - 1:11PM:

The FedEx guy is here! What's this? That package is much too small to be a Mac... wait a minute... he's going to the neighbor's! Again with the neighbor and his god-forsaken wine clubs and Ginzu knives! Okay, delivery guy's going back in the truck, now. No -No! He's firing up the van and pulling away from the curb! DUDE! HOLD IT!

I see him look up at me in the office as he drives by, and I can tell by the whites of his eyes that's he's scanning for addresses... yes, he's pulling around and slowing... stopping... he's fumbling around in back now... struggling with something...

YES! GOOD GOD IN HEAVEN, YES! PRAISE GOD FROM WHOM ALL BLESSINGS FLOW! (he sings exuberantly) MAY THE ANGELS HOLD MY PEN STEADY AS I SIGN FOR IT!


1:12PM:

Late for work.

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Check the Tracking Status of Sean's new Mac here for full story immersion!

Holy Great Wall of Aluminum!

Actually, I think I've done a few that are bigger -50, 60 feet long, but those were pieces spliced together. This one has double rafters suspended from double headers, and I felt that splicing anything would compromise the integrity of the structure. So I had them deliver it from the plant, and today will be an interesting one as I hold up a 38 foot piece of aluminum with one hand and screw it up (in) with the other. Yes, picture me building it, just me, by myself. The projection on this cover is only 9 feet so it shouldn't be too difficult to -hey, where did all my readers go?

That's one of the funny things about blogs, they seem to take on the structure of your own life as you find yourself emphasizing the most significant things of your days: work, family, current obsessions, and then it fritters away into desultory political opinions. It's boring enough for me to live out, so I can't imagine someone being interested enough to read about it -though I would love to hear about Dr. Weaver's heaviest patient, or Escrow Officer Linden's largest file, for example. Anyway, I guess that's the challenge of creative writing, so enough! (And thanks for reading!)

Speaking of boring... still no new computer. Still staring at empty screen. Though they did send an Email this morning claiming it had shipped! Hopefully someone will be here at the office to receive it, while I'm out flailing beneath 38 feet of aluminum.

Speaking of work... Got a call the other day from a neighbor of the customer whose house I posted pictures of last week (the one that didn't burn down.) Seems the neighbor still has their house standing and their wood patio cover and they want it torn down and replaced with aluminum (the cover, not the house.) We will give them an estimate with a competitive price and put them on the schedule. That's business. Keep it coming, Lord.

What else? Well, this broke my heart a little bit, especially the ending. Still, I can't help but wonder if this kind of stuff impedes the performance of our troops in the field. Don't get me wrong, never in a million years would I ban or disallow this sort of thing, it just seems a sort of unhelpful distraction in a combat operation. Of course, the guys we're fighting love their children too, I'm sure, but they don't get a teleconference. Then again, I've seen the images of mothers raising their hands in holy celebration when their children strapped with bombs blow themselves up in a crowded marketplace. It's on Al-Jazeera, so I guess it could be considered a cultural equivalent. I like to think that the video teleconference of the soldier's kid's birth actually boosts the soldier's morale, and not just his, but everyone's. It's what they're fighting for, after all. I saw a bumper sticker the other day: THE U.S. MARINE CORP: DEDICATED TO LIFE, LIBERTY, AND THE PURSUIT OF THOSE WHO THREATEN IT. Sounds about right. Anyway, fighting wars has changed quite a bit since WWII, the least of which is that it isn't so much nation vs. nation anymore, but more ideology vs. ideology. (Ours is better, by the way.)

Speaking of the troops... The AP reports that troop deaths are at a record high in Iraq. I find it interesting that a few days before that, the AP reported that Iraqi deaths are at a record low. I guess they had to add the second (non)story to keep the record straight, lest you begin to think we were actually winning the war and that conditions in Iraq were steadily improving. Also, you have to read to the end of the first article (after "Meanwhile,") to learn about the recent mass graves that were found. MASS GRAVES! MASS GRAVES! MASS GRAVES OF DEAD MUTILATED BODIES! How many times do I have to say it to get a headline? The Associated Press. Just who are they "associated" with anyway?

So that's my two cents. Sorry, I know you didn't ask for it, but it is Thursday, which can be a tough haul with the weekend just peeking over the distant horizon. I promise you, when the new Mac arrives, I'll be in a much better mood. I'll blog all about it!

...hey, where's everybody going?

Whoops, missed a few days there. I suppose one can expect that, in this The Period of Great Transition in the Ditchman family abode, as I work to move everything over to (your attention please) THE NEW MAC! (applause)

Okay, so it hasn't really been delivered yet.

Spent an extended weekend up in Silicon Valley, staying with some friends and visiting with some extended family after an extended drive. Seems nearly everyone up there works for either Apple or Microsoft, so there was much ado about my new Mac purchase. Seated around the table at the Los Gatos Brewery, half the folks pulled out their iPhones and cued up the Apple website to see what kind of Friends & Family discount I could get, which was awesome. By the end of the weekend, decisions were made, the money spent, and buyer's remorse would kick in -reminding Mrs. Ditchman that there's an actual mortgage to pay for, so here I am back down south, rushing off to deliver the longest single piece of aluminum in American metallurgic history.

I would have mentioned the trip on the blog, but I don't see any reason to alert the OBG (Oceanside Burglars Guild) to our absence, especially while the time is wrong on the alarm system. (It's all caught up now, burglars do not have to arrive an hour early.) Minutes after we arrived home yesterday, there was a knock on the door and LO AND BEHOLD! the Fedex guy was standing there with my new monitor! My heart soared immediately, and then I watched as the delivery man got in his truck and drove away. It was like having a pizza box delivery, pizza to follow. So I sit here, hungry as ever, staring at a blank screen on my desk, next to my crooked and miniscule old screen with the glaring red pixel that will never disappear. It's like looking at a broken digital watch while waiting for a movie to start at the Cinerama. And a thousand other pedestrian metaphors, too, while-u-wait... For example: I know there's a metaphor in here somewhere, I just can't find it.

But it was a nice weekend. Got to see my cousins and their new kids, and a few friends and theirs. The Little Ditchman had the time of her life and it was a joy to watch, as this holiday season unfolds. There are parties and engagements galore for the next few months, so it will be a challenge to blog about. You can only say "Went to ***'s house -had a great time with ***" so many times and in so many different ways. Add that to the fifty jobs I have to do before the end of the year and the calendar runs out of space fairly quick.

Still, life is good. And when the MacPro arrives, life will be digitized and disseminated to the nether environs of the Ditchman Matrix forthwith -accessible by Internet. It will be one of the Seven Wonders of the Ditchman World, alongside the Eastview Water Feature and the piece of aluminum to be delivered moments from now. Why, one can almost hear the rolling up of the cargo bay doors of the Spruce Goose as they load it up at the plant.

P.S. Missed the news over the weekend, but it looks like there's hope for the world after all: "One can be a friend of America, and yet win elections in France."

Friday! No costumes, no candy, no jack-o-lanterns, just the slow, cool haul of November. I like this month, mostly because when you go to flip the calendar you take a look at the days ahead and there's always a couple of days off two-thirds of the way through, a breather before the parade of lights and plastic that is December. I always feel optimistic about November, "I can make it through this month, easy!" It's December that's a killer. Cold and dark, with that Uber-Holiday way down at the end, and you only get a single day off for it. How come not two? Or at least three, for Christmas? And this year, it lands on a Tuesday! Oy.

X-mes.

(Still cracks me up.) But Thanksgiving is nice -no buying gifts, no obligations, just get together and eat. Seems to me we should have Thanksgiving after Christmas, so everyone on the receiving end would have something to be thankful for. For that matter, all these holidays need some re-structuring: Christmas should always be on a Sunday. Like Easter. And speaking of Easter, let's just call it on the first Sunday in April and be done with it, dig? 4th of July, Labor Day, and Memorial Day stay -they work good where they are, though it'd be helpful to have the 4th on a Saturday every year because even though the fireworks always start at dark, you're still stuck in traffic on the way home worrying about work the next day. Veterans Day is always lost in the shuffle and it makes me sad. Can we replace Labor Day with Veterans Day -as Labor Day is a communist holiday anyway- and then hold Election Day on Veterans Day, because that's what they died for! Dennis Prager says we should abolish Presidents Day. I say we abolish Fat Tuesday until Ash Wednesday gets due recognition. St. Patrick's day stays, though it should be on a Friday, but no Oktoberfest? It's never on the calendar. We all know how I feel about Columbus Day, and don't even get me started on Administrative Professionals Day, Grandparents Day, All Canadian & British Holidays, and Earth Day -which is, duh, every day, don't we already have Arbor Day?

And then there's the issue of Daylight Savings Time. Lord, can we just leave the clock alone like the sane people in Arizona and Hawaii do? And, look. the date to change the clocks is wrong on my printed calendar here! Okay, DST is a complex issue -so complex, in fact, that more energy is wasted dealing with it than is saved instituting it. Half the clocks in my house changed themselves a couple of weeks ago, and I'm just waiting until this weekend for it all to catch up. Among the problem timepieces was Mrs. Ditchman's PC, incidentally. I think the thing was built in 1985, so it figures. (This old Mac is okay, for now.) The time changed automatically a few weeks ago on the house alarm system, too, so all burglars are kindly asked to rob the house an hour earlier so that we can get the Time of Crime correct on the police report.

But we'll survive the "long, dark tunnel of winter". The dark tunnel actually lets up on the first day of winter, when the days start getting longer -also confusing. So we just deal. When you lean back in your desk chair to think about it, there's an awful lot in life that you have no control over and you j u s t l e t g o .

Like Boxing Day. What I want is an American Calendar -Is this too much to ask? I want Ronald Reagan's and Teddy Roosevelt's birthdays on it. And Henry Ford's and Thomas Edison's. And I want to know when all the states were admitted into the union. I want all the federally recognized holidays and all the military remembrance days and I don't mind the Jewish holidays but I've no need for Victoria Day or Mexico's Independence Day or St. Jean Baptiste Day (Quebec), those country's can have their own calendars. And from now on September 11th should be in bold print.

There's a lot of people out there who get all in a lather about the Mayan Calendar being so superior, even though it did nothing to save their race. And then people are mad about the days of the months being off, and the mixture of Roman gods and Norse gods and emperors and Jesus birth year -well, you can have all that, I just want a list of American Days. Don't clutter up the squares with foreign stuff that doesn't pertain to me because I need the space to write: "Sparklett's Delivery" and "Street Cleaner" and "Aquarium Water Change" and "Dinner at your Mom's".

By the way, the Mayan Calendar expires December 21st, 2012, which some say is when the aliens return to whisk us all away to the interstellar zoo, seeing as we're obviously just fermenting here in a big galactic lab. Don't forget to set your clocks back for that one, or you'll miss the ship! (That is, unless we already have, which explains where the Mayans went in the first place.)

And get your hoe ready!

Well, it was much agreed: it was the best Halloween ever! Mrs. Ditchman and I smiled and nodded after the last guest left and the kid finally went to sleep, not without a serious amount of coaxing off the sugar rush and prior Halloween stimulation -spookulation, I'm tempted to say. It was the best Halloween ever mostly because I didn't make it through the work day, and went on home to carve pumpkins. Standing there at the manufacturer yesterday, I watched the clock tick on endlessly as they cut my few little pieces, only to bring them out the wrong length. Yes, monsieur, there is a difference between seven feet and eight feet. There is also a difference between Desert Sand and Mojave Tan, isn't it obvious? Well, sure I can just spray-paint it. I could spray-paint your car and your house, too, but it wouldn't be the same, now would it? By the time I got out of there, it was just too late to haul out to the other end of the earth, install it, and then return before the ghouls came out, so I just went on home. Yessir, such is the benefit of being the boss of me. Mrs. Ditchman just laughed knowingly when I walked in the door -almost made me turn around and keep working, but I'm smarter than that, of course. It's a holiday!

My holiday tasks were as follows: carve pumpkins, set up tiki torches, barbecue the teriyaki drumsticks, roast pumpkin seeds, put on wry-but-mildly-amusing costume, drink pumpkin beer. I'm happy to report that I was 6 for 6 yesterday! Even finished a couple more pumpkin ales in the bonus round!

And Mrs. Ditchman looked hot! (And she looked hot before the pumpkin ales, I assure you.)

And I believe it was the first holiday that the Little Ditchman could live through and appreciate. We weren't sure she would take to the trick-or-treating, but after the first house, she was leading the way. There was something that sounded like "trickortreat" when she would arrive at the door, and then there was always a "dank yoo" and the eager collection of candy bars, which was curious in that she doesn't really understand what candy bars are. Her best buddy, Zac, and his parents joined us -Zac was a dinosaur- and the two nineteen-month-olds were impeccably cute. At one point one of us said, "Bye guys!" and the Little Ditchman picked up on it, so after every house it was "Bye guyz!" -which was awesome. The kids walked until we had to carry them back, and that was trick-or-treating on Eastview Court.

The whole neighborhood came out for it, and kids from surrounding neighborhoods apparated on our street, too. Our cul-de-sac was fairly spirited, so it seemed a safe venue, I guess. Mrs. Ditchman and I were wondering if our neighbors were going to be cool enough to wear costumes and we were enthused by the sight that some of them had. One of the men folk, the beer aficionado of the block, was dressed in his best lederhosen as a Bavarian beer swiller, but I suspect that it wasn't a costume at all. He was walking his two little princesses around and when he turned to go, I noticed a half-finished bottle of suds in the water coozy on his pack. "Part of the costume!" God bless him.

The holidays take on all new meaning when you have a family. It's like a satisfying sequel to the Great Movie of Life -in this go-round, all the old characters are back for more, there's a few new ones, and they do all the same great stuff only with more gusto (and more wisdom) than ever before. In the immortal words of (the ghost of) Tiny Tim, "God bless us, everyone!"

So today, it's back to finishing out the previous day's mess. Today I order the longest single piece of aluminum I've ever ordered. (38 grand aluma-feet. Don't worry, I will have it delivered.) It's been a week of constant movement but going nowhere, like paddling upriver. Hopefully this Thursday will bode well for us, and less water will be flowing over the dam. It's November now, and this year is begging for a close. There's something about odd years not being particularly good or memorable. I'm not sure why that is -my wife was born in an odd year, we were married in an odd year, we bought our home in an odd year, and this year hasn't been entirely loathesome... Perhaps it just lies in stark contrast to the benevolent wonder that is the Even Year. Well, one is coming, folks! Fortify the smile muscles and brace yourself: 2008 is on its way!