The print on the page...

Yesterday we visited the Guttenburg museum. We had to endure a truly awful walking tour with a Fin who didn't speak very good English to get there. The cool part was that I got to take part in a demo of a Guttenburg screw press. She was a beauty. Printed out a page from a Guttenburg bible in 3 colors on good quality Amalfi paper.

Upstairs in their treasury they had several amazing books including 2 original Guttenburg Bibles. Each was slightly different as their owners had requested extra illumination to decorate some of the pages. They said it was hard to estimate their value but it was certainly in the millions. Depite being such an important figure a lot about his life is unknown. Although it does seem he was a terrible businessman. Several lawsuits and a few unpaid loans. He did gain some status later in life but didnt live long enough to enjoy it. The museum also has a wing dedicated to the Chinese, who, contrary to what I had learned, also developed some movable type (although impractical due to Chinese being a pictographic language requiring thousands of blocks). I knew they had done block printing, but movable type was a surprise.

We dumped the latter half of our walking tour to go back and just gawk at the amazing presses and books (both hand written and printed). When we left I noticed a print shop next-door to the musuem that appeared to be associated with it, but there was no time to find out for sure.

Although there is no evidence to supporso such a thing, I sometimes get a strong feeling that I was somehow associated with printing and books in some previous life. It's uncanny.

The bonds of the sea

Last night we officially began cruising on the Main river. The ship is almost silent and very little disturbs it. We are travelling down river and this requires passing through a number of locks. After dinner I went up on deck as night fell and witnessed this process first hand. The First and Second captain (there are three) were sipping drinks which alarmed me at first.I mean this IS Germany and they do drink a lot, but apparently their shift was over and they were just relaxing before going below. The third Captain wasnt actually in the pilot house. He was posted at a set of controls port side. There is a matching set starboard. Although the ship is fairly narrow there is no room for error in entering the locks.

As the ship moved forward the captain made dozens of small adjustments using bow thrusters. Inside the pilot house a mate and a sailor watch the radar and use binoculars to keep an eye out for obstructions and other craft. Not only is the ship a tight squeeze side to side but top to bottom. Some of the locks and bridges are so low that the pilot house and a sun screen must be lowered in order to make it underneath them. This was done as we entered the lock. The pilot house lowered about three feet into the body of the ship.

About five of us male passengers stood on deck for this, despite the cold. A woman popped up top and asked what we were doing looking so intense.

" We are sharing the bond to our seagoing ancestors" I said.

"What?"

"We're ready, at a moments notice, to unfurl sails, or heave to on the mainbrace. Should there be call, we will waltz the capstain and climb the mizzen."

The woman looked at us like we were mad, shivered, and went below.

The man folk kept our vigil.

"Does this ship have any of those things?" asked the man next to me, as we narrowly passed below a gangway on the lock.

"No. But but thats not the point, is it? We could."

All aboard.

We have left Prague behind. I wish we could have had at least 1 more day to explore. We boarded a bus and drove to Nurenburg, a walled city we have visited before. It being Sunday most of the shops were closed but there was a market day in the town square. Sausages and kraut!

We had an all too short walking tour of part ofnthe walls before rebounding the bus and driving past the buildings were the post war Nazi trials were held. Then we visited the massive parade grounds were the glory of Nazi Germany marched by their Messiah. These must have been awesome and terrible sights to behold. Today, the stands where Hitler stood are crumbling away and the encircling spectator stands are mostly overgrown except for one corset which is apparently a soccer field. The area around and in front of the stands is a park where people rollerblade, play with RC cars and show off their motorcycles and pimped out rides.


We left Nuremburg and finally arrived in Wurtzburg to board our ship. Our cabin is a small and efficient affair. Two single beds. A bathroom that doubles as a shower. We are right above the water line which is freaking Rossana out a little bit. Our fellow travelers are, for the most part, an older lot. But interesting. There's a couple from Cuban I'm keen to speak to.

Today we will visit the Residence palace and then take an excursion to Rothenburg, one of my favorite cities. Last time we were here, we abandoned our group and spent the day enjoying the city and the medieval market. Alas, we can't do that today as we need to get back to out boat before it leaves without us.

Prague

We arrived if fairly good shape thanks to
Air Canada. From Frankfurt we had a short flight to Prague. Lufthansa does not fuck around when they fly. I swear we tAxied at 30 mph. As soon as we hit the main runway Bam we were off like a damn shot.

By the time we made it to the hotel I was getting shaky. I never sleep on planes so I'd been up quite a while. Crashed for a few hours before going out and
Exploring.

Prague is a lovely city I wish we had at least another day. The Old Toen is very picturesque. Everything is decorated for Easter. Lots of temporary food stalls serving all kinds of tasty dishes. Visited the old Jewish quarter but being Saturday everything was closed. Many of the synagogues here are now museums. After the war only 3% of the Jews returned.

Up up and awaaaaaay.

We head out soon and the first issue I'm going to have to deal with are the new scanners at the airport. This is our first trip since their installation and since the entire project has been a fiasco that has proven to be unreliable (and potentially less safe than claimed) I have decided that if possible, I will opt out.

I've been patted down in several countries. But only in America do people tell of having TSA agents shove their hand down your pants. I'm not cool with that. But rather than complain without any experience I'm going to see how things are run in Cleveland. It's not a good statistical sample but hey.

The interesting question is whether I'll actually do it. There's something called Implied Authority Syndrome. It states that most people will do something if they think someone in authority is telling them to do it. So when a person in a semi-police looking uniform tells me to step into the scanner will I say no, or chicken out?

Wow

I posted this earlier but its worth watching actual video of this amazing tool chest.

Wrecked

I just started to read this thread over at Reddit.com  I couldn't get all the way through it. Couldn't see the screen through the tears.

It was nice to see people giving well wishes from all over the world to a person who could no longer travel the road. I'm gonna go tell my wife I love her now.

Good.

Shawna Ford was found guilty of murder. Good.  She is a crazy and evil person. She shot several people she thought were illegals so that she and her crazy Minute Man friends could take jewelry and hopefully drugs to finance MORE killing.

So what separates her from the other mouth breathing brown-people hating Neanderthals out there screaming about the evil Gub'mint, socialist Muslins, takin away tar gunz and the rest of the lexicon of crazy?

Not much really.

Wikipedia, is there anything it can't do?

Today I was reading an interesting discussion about the few facts relating to Jesus existence.  In it I learned about Apollonius of Tyna, who shared many features with Jesus (including miracles) but who said God didn't give a shit about prayers, only reason.

Fascinating stuff.

Not a good move...

Egypt turned off the Internet today. That's some serious shit to be doing in the 21st century. I understand the thinking. The government wants to stop the protesters from using Twitter and Facebook to organize. But at this point, the cat is out of the bag guys. And while Cairo is a huge city, people generally know where the protests are being held now.

What isn't being reported, is that when Monday comes, they better be back online because banks, the stock market and many businesses will be unable to operate without net access. The stock market has already taken a 15% hit and dropping tourism is going to hurt even more in a country that gets 12% of its GDP from it.

It's the story...

There's an old saying in the newspaper business, its the story people remember, never the retraction, or correction. Last week some nutjob went on the radio and said "I've spoken to the Governor of Hawaii, and he said there is no birth certificate for Obama".

Except he didn't. 

He's sorry he misspoke. But that's not the important thing here. This is the kind of shit we are seeing more and more of from the Right. They will say outright lies with conviction. They will ignore facts, twist statistics make insane connections and suppositions. And when someone calls them on their bullshit they might MIGHT mumble something about "maybe you misunderstood what we were saying".  It's tiresome.

Back at it.

I've done relatively little web development over the past year or so. There are a number of reasons. One is the stress. For every new client I take on I take on a lot of responsibility and a lot of potential headaches. When something goes wrong (and something always goes wrong) I'm on the hook for it. A few years ago my little webhost was bought by a company that managed to fuck up half of my clients websites. This happened while I was in Oklahoma during a windstorm. It was so bad I was screaming at a low level technician in India from inside a porta-john. It was the only place out of the weather that I could hear anything. I got physically ill from that experience.

Another annoyance is the failure of some of my clients to pay their hosting bills. I don't change much, but getting it is like pulling teeth. From a Woolly Mammoth. Buried in the Siberian tundra.

But the software I've been using is getting out of date. Hackers are finding weaknesses and clients want new features. So I'm downloading the latest version and will have to familiar with it's new features. I'm going to have to be the Guinea pig and test it out with my own store. I also need to look for a new webhost since the last one let a site sit broken for 5 days, which in internet time is like a million years.

I don't want to do this, I have several big projects I'm elbow deep in. We wanted to get out to the West coast and do some shows, get our product seen but that isn't going to happen. I wish I could fob this off on someone else but we're mostly a two person operation here.  Oh well.

Back at it.

The results are terrifying...

Less than 6 hours ago Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was assassinated at a small gathering outside of a supermarket by a young man named Jared Lee Loughner.  She is alive but in critical condition. A Federal judge and a child are dead. 11 or so are badly wounded.

 The man was arrested on the scene and now the All Seeing Eye of the Internet has begun its search. But despite the absence of any kind of facts or credible information the mouth of the internet has opened wide and started screaming. The mouth of the Internet is a shrill unthinking scream. Blog posts and twitter comments fly fast and hard, fingers are pointed and blame quickly placed. Gifford's district was one that Sarah Palin "targeted" with words and cross hair images during the last election. People have somehow taken this term to mean that Palin was inciting people to violence with irresponsible rhetoric. This, in my opinion is pretty goddamn stupid. I hate Palin but I cannot pin this act on her.

The Left called him a Rightwing Nutjob and The Right calls him a Leftwing communist/athiest. He posted an obtuse youtube video which makes no sense. Why? Because this man is crazy.

Let me clarify this. He isn't in the Democratic Party, or the Republican Part or the Tea Party. He is a card carrying member of the CRAZY PARTY.  A SANE person doesn't walk up and shoot someone in the head at almost point blank range then fire off 15 more rounds randomly. When tackled and restrained he did not scream out his political ideology. He wasn't wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt.  I'm sure he had some political leanings. They don't really matter. Because he is crazy. 

Of course, politics does play a part in this tragedy. Apparently a few months ago Arizona passed a law that said you didn't need a background check or have to take a class to carry a concealed weapon. I respect my gun owning friends and their constitutional rights but I cannot see how something like a background check for mental illness or a criminal record and a safety class is in some way seriously impinging on your rights. I know that criminals can get guns easy enough, those precautions aren't for them. 

This is a tragedy all the way around. I'm gonna go look at some pictures of bunnies and hope it helps. 

I hope this doesn't sound racist

I just watched 16 Blocks with Bruce Willis and Mos Def. It was a surprisingly good movie. It wasn't the action or story. It was the fact that the director actually had the actors playing real characters and not cardboard cut outs. Bruce Willis plays a NYC cop. He is also a depressed alcoholic. This is not the one liner spewing guy from Die hard. He look old, he looks tired. He walks with a limp.

What made the movie for me was something a lot of people must have thought was annoying. Mos Def's character of Eddie Bunker. This is not a street wise thug, funny sidekick or an innocent bystander. he is a kid who had done bad things. He looks out for himself. Mos plays him with a nasal whine and he is constantly talking. Constantly.

And while it was annoying it was also a breath of fresh air. Because I have met that person.  When I lived in Ohio City near W. 25th I had three black neighbors and what amazed me was that they were constantly talking like this. The woman upstairs used to get into fights with her husband and would physically toss him down the stairs and throw things at him. One time I managed to find a parking space right in front of the building and wouldn't you know it. She starts yelling and throwing things down the stairs onto the street.

 We used to keep goalie stick in the apartment for defense so I casually stepped outside and leaned against my car with the stick to defend my property. Everyone was tired of this woman and her fights and I wasn't going to let her throw crap that might hit my car and I sure as hell wasn't going to move.  I was going to tell her that in a calm, cool badass way.

Never happened. When she came down to throw more things at her husband she noticed me and started screaming all manner of obscenities. She asked me what the fuck I was doing and I would have told her but she just kept on yelling and threatening. If I wanted her to hear me I would have had to start yelling at her. I really wanted to. I mean, I had a badass line and everything. But she just kept up a constant stream of blather.

That is real life. That is what some black people sound like. That may not be a particularly PC thing to say but listening to Mos speak brought me back to that time and place.

There is no lack of annoying characters in movies but they never seem to convey that actual annoying blabbering. The annoying character starts out annoying and the cop starts out all hard nosed but by the third act the annoying character has stopped being annoying and the cop had revealed he actually has a heart of gold. Not so in this movie. It was refreshing to see the actors portraying people in a realistic way.  And it gave it a very real feel. I recommend you Netflix it.

And in the end...

The year has almost drawn to a close. It's been quite a ride. Some ups, some downs. The last few weeks I managed to let the news really get to me. It was like a train wreck. I knew I shouldn't look but I couldn't stop myself from checking blogs and news sites. So much bad news.

But this week the damn has broken. Shit got done. Amen and hallelujah. It's gonna be brutal next year but for just a little while we can relax and take a deep breath. Try to enjoy the Holidays...

So why am I not enjoying the Holidays? Ah yes, because I'm pissed off.

I've been getting emails from customers wanting to know where their corset orders are. I have nothing to do with that. My partner handles it and its been one fuckup or delay after another this year. And yesterday I actually lost my shit. I'm not talking about reaching the "fuck it" stage. I sailed right past that.

I was just going to leave a voice mail discussing another customer demanding their order or a refund and how we needed to figure out where all their orders were and it just kind of went off the deep end. I can't recall my exact words but "Bullshit" "Fuck you" and "Burn my fucking number" entered into my rant. I honestly cannot recall a time when I lost it like that. In an instant. I decided I would end my 10+ year partnership and friendship. And I meant it.

 Do I still mean it 24 hours later? I don't know. I'm still pissed. The logical part of my brain says I should chill out and act like an adult. But another part of me thinks I've been lied to and shit on. And that part of me will not take this shit any more. Even if it means a MAJOR change in my business. And rather than being able to deal with it NOW I have to wait for Christmas to pass. Such are the joys of owning your own business.