I present to you..

Mr. and Mrs. Holiday! That's the new name and I rather like it. It will take a while to get used to. Goodman has been just Goodman for so long that he has entered the one-name celebrity circle, like Cher or Bono.

The wedding went off without any real hitches. There was a part in the ceremony where the parents stood and gave their blessings but in all the excitement leading up to the event kelly and Good forgot to actually tell the parents this. Luckily they had a pro at the wheel (cough me cough) and we smoothly got the parents to give their hearty blessings without missing a beat. The ceremony even had a small part for Hanah, Kellys daughter, who seems to dig Goodman and the feeling is mutual. I will have pics soon from family as I took none of my own. It was a very fun wedding. The laser tag contest to determine the best man was a blast. I am proud to say that I took second place. All those days I spent playing Photon in my youth were not wasted.

The pizza place/arcade/go cart/laser tag place was pretty cool and everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves tremendously. Sometimes adults don't play enough. I got Rossana to play a samurai sword fighting game that uses a virtual sword you really swing and she rocked on it.

After the ceremony I signed the marriage certificate. As I had registered with the Universal Life Church so that my job as minister would be legit, I took great and wicked delight as listing my title as "The Right Revered Steven Pack". You may feel free to address me by this title when you see me, but I insist you say it correctly, loudly and with a slight southern accent.

I also hope to post a copy of the wedding program which is one of the funniest reads I have had in a while.

The Big Day...

Arrived in Austin late but without incident. The parents made it, friends and family gathering for the big day. But today was pretty relaxed. We slept in, then took a walk down to the trendy 6th street. The weather is mild and the city is pretty damn cool. It also has a sense of humor about itself with restaurants that proclaim "Free straw with every beverage" and "It's only binge drinking if you stop".

There's a new Alamo Drafthouse theater that just opened not far away. It's a kick ass concept. Show cool movies AND take out every other row of seats and put in a bench like table and serve food. Brilliant. I wish we had something like this back in Cleveland.

My luggage was not lost (hurrah) and the wedding ceremony has been tweaked and finalized. In the last update I learned my brothers new last name. (He's simply been "Goodman" for about 15 years or so) At about 4pm today my Brother and his wife will be Mr and Mrs....

Nah, I won't spoil it.

Besides, I wouldn't put it past my brother to put out incorrect details to throw off the press. Tune in later for all the fun details.

Busy little ants

I have alluded to several projects that I have been working on over the past few weeks. Well here are a few pics. The big one was fixing, or rather building a roof at our Ohio Ren Fair booth. When we got the place, we knew its was little better than a tar paper shack. There's no polite way to say it. It was not built well. This was made worse by adding an extension off one side. At some point the previous owner must have planned to build a roof over the back quarter of the building but this project never happened. There were only a few bare rafters which we have thrown tarps over to keep the worst of the leaking at bay. Our booth is so ghetto that no rennie will work on it. That says something. So I made a call to someone who knows no fear. His name is Cowboy and with his abundant help we managed to build two complete roofs in two days. I wish I had more pics but we were pretty damn busy.


Here's what we had to work with. Three rafters, uneven floor, useless rolled roofing material. The one good thing is that the booth is made from rough sawn Red Oak.


Action shot. The extra fun part was that the stairs leading up to this roof are completely rotted and totally unsafe. But there was no time to work on them. We just kept praying we wouldn't drop straight through and break a leg.



By midnight Friday we had gotten this far. You can't see it here, but we built another complete roof near the front of the booth. A week later I finished the flashing, used a crapload of silicone, closing off the open area and finally put something on the back wall which was exposed studs. I'm pretty confident that this will stop the leaking.

The other project has been helping my friend Grimm fix up his house so that he can sell it. His wife is already in North Carolina at her new job. So he's basically on his own for most of this HUGE project. I am amazed at how much he's gotten done but it's the last 10% that can just drag on. I'm proud to say that I helped rebuild a deck, install a drywall ceiling & texture it as well as move a lot of heavy materials. Oh yeah, and I helped burn a lot of things that made me feel fairly guilty. I mean my hippie gene was just disgusted with myself. At some point a whole lawnmower was consigned to the flames.

It's close to completion now. Some painting, trimwork and a lot of yard work. I'm glad to lend a hand but it's a bittersweet project. Once it's done the house goes on the market and Grimm will be free to join his sweetie permanently. I'll miss him and his wife. They're a great couple. I've learned a LOT from Grimm on all manner of subjects and his IS my closest neighbor.

So, anyone looking for a place in the country? It's got land, a pond, a barn and has had a LOT of high quality renovation done on it. I'm talking an amazing marble tile bathroom, radiant floor heating, new carpet, kitchen, the works. Sure it's in Amish country, but you can shoot off guns out there and no one will mind. Interested? Drop me a line.

My Mornings

This video clearly illustrates the morning routine of our "pet" known as The Great Cat of Reh (or "Ray" for short). Thanks to Grisette for sending me this!

Cars!

Rossana and I took her Dad to the Crawford Auto & Aviation museum today. If you live anywhere near Cleveland you really should visit it. It's part of the Western Reserve Historical Society near University Circle so there's lots to see and do.

The visit took a lot out of us. Although there were a few sparks of interest here and there, it was overshadowed by the constant moaning about his hearing, the place he lives, phone solicitors and the general aging process. I have been listening to these same complaints for about 10 years now. Despite relatively good health he refuses to DO anything. It frustrates Rossana no end.

On a positive note, we saw a great car built in the early 1900's. I forget the name but it's one of those massive Deusenburg types. Wood spoked wheels, no windscreen, seat belts or power steering. Apparently one of the Museums directors took it to a public function and took it on the shoreway. He was pulled over for speeding, clocked at 91 miles per hour!!!! I cannot conceive of taking a 100+ year old car on a public highway and doing over 90. Hell, I don't do 90+ in MY car! And remember, no seat belts ands no windscreen. Amazingly, the cops let him go with a warning.

Happy Halloween

We all loose...

I made no post on Sept. 11 this year. For me it was too horrible to wallow in the sadness and depression of recalling that day. But so much of our lives today is impacted by that day. So much about our country was twisted... So that we almost don't recognize it any more.

In the days after 9/11 a terrible mistake was make. I'm not talking about foreign policy or the start of the war drums. No. A simple mistake was made by a pilot who forgot a radio in his hotel room. Later, a hotel employee "found" the radio in another room. A room where an Egyptian man was staying.

And this is where things went very wrong. This is where men in good faith did something that changed America. The FBI believed they had a 9/11 conspirator. He denied the radio was his, but of course, a terrorist would do that. Never mind that the radio doesn't fit into any terrorism scenario. These were the first few days right after the attack and no one knew how it had been planned or executed. All the FBI agent knew is that an Egyptian national had a radio used by pilots. This was all the proof he needed. But when the Egyptian wouldn't give him what he wanted he threatened to sick the Egyptian Security forces on his family back home.

These guys wouldn't simply make life unpleasant, they would very likely torture those who they suspected might be associated with terrorists. Let me be clear. He didn't threaten the Egyptian with torture, this is before we started sending people to secret CIA facilities where we only used the most human and White House sanctioned torture. He told the man the Egyptians would get his family, and Egypt (A country I love and hope to visit again some day) does not fuck around with terror suspects. Like Israel and Syria they can and will do all the things the Geneva convention forbids. Beating the feet with steel rods, electrical shocks to the genitals, drilling into flesh or worse.

The man was in a catch 22. Confess to something he did not do and his life would be over, but his family might be safe, or insist is his innocence and risk his families torture. He confesses. The radio is his. "Where did you get it?" asks the FBI agent. But the man can't tell his because it wasn't his. He makes up several stories, which only makes him look more guilty.

Then the real owner of the radio showed up. There was no plot. There was no evidence. There was no terrorist. The man was released.

This was the first misstep. But it would be followed by many more. In our zeal to find and punish those we felt were responsible we threw out the investigation play book and started cutting corners. Taking shortcuts to get justice. The War or Terror looks like and episode of "24" where he will break our own laws, ignore treaties, even torture in pursuit of the 'enemy'.

A lot of people talk tough about fighting terrorism. They take that anguish from 9/11 and channel it into a focussed beam of hate and grim determination to do "whatever it takes" to stop it from ever happening again. Give these people a gun and tell them that "that guy over there is a terrorist" and they might well shoot the guy themselves.

"So we made a mistake with this Egyptian guy, it was all sorted out, no harm no foul" you say.

But if the owner of the radio had not come back for it the Egyptian would very likely have been sent to Gitmo , or worse. We would have put an innocent guy and likely his family as well, into the meat grinder we have created and we would have destroyed them.

Only a short time ago almost half the detainees at Gitmo were released. We simply didn't have ANY evidence they were Al Qaida. "Horay! The system works!". But we had imprisoned them in closet sized cells there for YEARS. If they didn't hate America before, they sure as hell do now.

Look, I want to stop terrorist plots just like everyone else. I just don't want to destroy the country I love to do it. I want us to THINK before we act. Political candidates these days are trying to make themselves out as "Men of Action". You know what, we have those guys. They're called Marines. What I want are thinking men. Because action without thought is folly. And when we act like animals we all loose.

What's your opinion?

Hitting the Big Red Button

When not tying women up in corsets I do website development. It has its ups and downs. Last month I caught someone trying to hack a clients website. It wasn't a clever attack. But it puts you into full on combat mode. It gets you going 900 miles an hour. Because things happen very quickly online. A lot of damage can be done in a very short time and it can take a LONG time to fix it.

An hour ago I sat down to check my email and noticed that godaddy said I changed a domain name server for a client. I've been offline all day. Alarm bells start going off. No other domain names seem to have been touched, but that might just mean that someone is right in the middle of fucking with my life and the livelihood of my clients.

I fire up my godaddy admin. If they made a change, they might have my password. Change it. I bring up an online chat with my webhosts. Do they know who this new nameserver is? Have they changed hosting providers? No. That's bad. That leaves the client making changes but he doesn't have access. Is he pissed off? Did he contact godaddy directly? I fire up Outlook and get ready to bite the bullet. Once I contact him and let him know there's a problem, it will likely make him nervous. I look like a moron and at best he looses confidence in me.

Then I take a closer look at the email. The domain name is CLOSE but isn't exact. It's the plural version of my clients site. I check godaddy. I never registered that name. A quick whois check shows someone I don't know and he got the name years ago.

I sit back and think. Then I close the email I was going to write to the client. Godaddy fucked up. This email was supposed to go to someone else. How did that happen? Isn't this process automated? I call godaddy just to double check and they have me forward them the email. They say everything is fine.

There is no crisis. No one is messing with anything. I take my hand off the Big Red Button and take a deep breath. Technology. Ain't is grand?

My nerdiness is showing...

The History channel is playing the Young Indiana Jones Adventures, a show I really liked back when it first came out. The show follows a 9 year old and a teenage version of Indy in his adventures around the globe. The ones with the younger Indy I never really liked as much, the child actor isn't that good and the pacing of the shows is bad. I do give them points for actually filming on location. The Moroccan episode is pretty good but an Egyptian segment left me scratching my head. In it, the young Indy and his tutor are left high and dry by their camel driver when they decide to climb one of the small Pyramids on the Giza plateau. Aside from the unlikeliness of a guide abandoning the balance of his pay, there are NO other tourists in the area??? By the time they get down the sun is setting. A young T.E. Lawrence arrives on a bike and they decide to make a camp for the night using camel dung for fuel.

But having been to the Giza plateau I know that its actually a very short walk from the Pyramids to the edge of Cairo. In fact, we could see the Pyramids from our hotel room at the Mena house Hotel (which was a hotel at the turn of the century as well). They could have walked a few hundred yards, sat down for tea and gotten a cab. Hardly an epic journey.

I know they had to raise the tension but I hate when basic facts are messed with. I won't even go into the Egyptology parts where they meet up with Howard Carter in the Valley of the Kings. They show a man blasting the area with dynamite, which I don't believe Carter ever did since the area is unstable limestone, (although the Italian Egyptologist Caviglia did use Dynamite on one of the pyramids).

I know, I know. It's just a show. But it bugs me.

Off to Spain! or maybe not...

For months I've been thinking that we are going to go to Spain this Winter or early Spring if money is available. It's a country that I heard some wonderful things about and I literally promised a dying man I would visit it some day. But finding a tour company with an itinerary we like has not worked out so well. I don't care about discos, or modern cities or shoe shopping. I know there is a lot to see there, it's just been hard to find a company that focuses on it. So today we're in Oberlin and on a whim we go into AAA to see if they can help. In short, nothing they showed us was super amazing. But as I was leafing through the Winter tour brochure of Europe my eye fell on a Danube River cruise. And unlike the Spain tours, this one promises to be dripping with Medieval castles, markets, monasteries and palaces.

Germany knows what appeals to it's visitors and is all too happy to oblige them. The travel is by boat so only one unpacking. More time to see and do.

Of course, doing Spain by ourselves is a real option. Get our own car. It's left hand drive (we've driven in the UK but it's always nice to be in ones comfort zone when driving public roads with crazy people). We could set our own itinerary, see some really obscure sites. On the other hand we're talking Germany and Austria here and that means pastries. And I like pastries.

Timing is the other concern. The German tour is in December, a time of the year when Rossana and I both get itchy. It's weird. We don't like Xmas here, but we're thinking about visiting Germany at the same time of year. Maybe their Xmas doesn't feel like an loud consumer buybuybuy whorefest.

It's time to go, man. Go go go.

The world is vast and beautiful and while it looks great on TV, you can't experience it that way.

Super Awesome

If you are a fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (and who amongst us isn't?) You will be delighted to know that the guys behind this great show are back at it. Rifftrax.com sells downloadable audio tracks that you can play along with your favorite new DVD movie release. Of course, newer movies tend to not such as much as the gems on MST3K but not by much. At $3 -$4 it's a cheap way to liven up your next movie night.

Monday morning chuckle

Wow, another weekend working in an oven at O-Ren. Checking the calender I see that it is FUCKING OCTOBER. What the hell gives? We should be shoveling snow out of the front of our booth by now. At least this weekend we kicked mighty ass. Any way, for your Monday morning pleasure I give you the List of the 9 Most Manly Names.

One name not on the list is Magnus Pyke. Don't recognize the name? It the old scientist looking guy who appears in Thomas Dolby's "She blinded me with science". He just happens to have been an actual scientist. That's pretty freakin' cool.

Technology!

Sure, it's the 21st century and I don't have a !@#$% flying car. I can deal with it. I'm not happy, but I can handle it. What does that leave? Talking computers, moon base, giant walking robots. There are still a lot of cool things I was promised that haven't materialized yet.

But wait, what is this? A super hi tech material thats soft and flexible but when exposed to sudden shock instantly becomes rock hard? Sweeeeeeeet The material d30 (which even sounds like a D&DE armor class) works a little like corn starch in water. Expose it to shock, and some molecular/structural/magic transformation happens turning the rubber-like material solid. Very very cool.

So my question is, could it work for SCA combat? Better yet, when can I get underwear made out of this?

More video of one chick hitting another in the kneecap with a shovel here.

Strange on many levels...

I kid you not. Here is a link to a flickr photo set of the annual Furries vs. Trekkers bowling match.

Better than Disneyland

I've been camped out as it were at ORF (Ohio Ren Fair) this week as we have two mandatory kids days. These are about as fun as a root canal. Add to this that is ALWAYS rains these two days and that my booth leaks... Well what can I say?
Last weekend here was tolerable, but pretty freakin hot. I hoped to put the two off days to good use but building a new sales desk but the temp shot into the 90's and I had to get into some AC. We did get some shoping done and had movie night at the booth.(more about that later).
Meanwhile in Michigan my understaffed crew pulled in two FAT sales days. They even managed to sell the $1200 leather Demonatrix outfit for CASH. I drive back up there tomorrow to finish up the show.
It's been odd being back at ORF. While the site is not as well laid out as other shows (and the food is the worst of any show) the place has got some charm. We have a nice chapel, a pond, the coolest pirate ship stage, a great glass blower and some of the trees planted years ago are now looking like real trees instead of shrubs. ORF also has the feel of an actual town in that we can stay in our booths. There's thursday night music jams and Monday morning breakfasts over at Parkers shop. I'll often just walk the grounds at night for the pleasure of it. Ohio has its charms I guess.