Piano moving

Yesterday afternoon the lady from the upstairs cafe next door (the name escapes me, as usual -- It's the one I call the hippie cafe) timidly asked if we could help her move a piano. Having nothing better to do than to complete my journey to complete inebriation we obliged. She needed an upright piano lifted about 6-8" on to their already diminuitive stage. Jeff and I just grabbed it, Mike was acting like a third wheel and we set it where they wanted it. They were enormously grateful and asked if we wanted paid in cash, beer or coffee. Jeff said he'd take a raincheck on the beer and I said I was fine. They thanked us again.

I asked when they'd be doing their first show because I really am looking forward to checking it out. They told me their schedule, broken down by days. Thursday and Saturdays will be performances of plays and the like, Mondays will be oral arts like poetry and the like, Tuesdays are auditions, Friday is dancing. The first performance will be the 1st week in June. Hopefully we'll be able to go to that.

I told them if they ever have anything they need done just let us know because we're usually just hanging out next door with little really going on. This was when I realized the proprietor was completely stoned. She asked me again if she could pay me in coffee and I declined. She then said, "No, it's real coffee." Mmm kay.

Ah, I remember the days fondly.

Tybee Island, from the inside looking around

There are pros and cons to living on an island. As one might be able to ascertain from my profile, I live on the lovely Tybee Island, Georgia. The beaches are nice, the food is excellent, and the atmosphere (except on holiday weekends) really cannot be beat. I've never lived near the ocean and had only seen it a few times before we moved here. I am not water people. I've never owned a boat and have no raging desire to do so. When I lived in Dreary Erie I liked to go down to the pier when nobody else was around (typically around 3 AM since I worked nights) and I'd sit on a bench and play my acousic guitar or just listen to the waves lap. It is a calming noise, as any "nature sounds" alarm clock will attest.

I thoroughly enjoy riding my bike on the island. Quite a lot of the island is set up with 2 lanes going both directions and I often take one of these for myself. There are plenty of side streets to ride that have low speed limits and people that are more likely than not to wave or at least smile. I've not eaten a single bad meal yet on the island. I'm a big fan of food so this point is a weighted one. I've eaten meals in just about every price range and enjoyed them all (well, I'm not counting the Arby's on the island, I never did really care for them.) The bars are decent and the drinks are plenty stiff and cold. The bars get crowded on the weekends but I'm not one for galavanting on the weekends with the tourists anyway so that's not a really big problem with me. There is a quaint grocery store on the island that reminds me of an A&P from the late 70's that was in my home town. Their prices are reasonable for a small town grocery store (Tybee's population is only about 3,500) and there are even multiple liquor stores to choose from.

There are some things I do not like about "Island living" moreso than Tybee itself. First of all, anywhere you have oceanfront property you are going to have overpriced housing when they get a view of the ocean. Overpriced housing begs for millionaires, of which we have quite a lot. Probably percentage-wise we have far more than our share. Sure, I get to see the new cars on the island before I can see them on the showroom floor, and I see more classics than Jay Leno. I get to see Vespa scooters and more $5,000+ bikes than you can shake a stick at. I get to talk to people who spend their weekends in real island locations, like Jamaica and the virgin islands. But with all this comes the millionaires. If you've ever met a millionaire you know one thing about them. They are assholes. It doesn't matter if they are in their house, in a restaurant, or stuck in traffic -- They are an asshole. They're quite certain the world revolves around them and their money and they think their millionare clout and money can buy them anything (although getting them to part with any fraction of a percentage of that stash is like taking cookies from the cookie monster ... oh wait they already did that, bad analogy....) Anyway, ask any restaurant server or bartender. I'm sure they'll back me up. Sometimes I'll be having a conversation and there's one of these types in the vicinity and they'll seem interested until someone directly looks at them or engages them in the conversation. At that point they will create an air of aloofness with an expression that clearly states our conversation isn't worthy of their time or consideration, even if you know they have been interested and engaged in it from the onset.

I'm not rich people. I make a very good wage and am proud to earn it. But I drive an older car that is [gasp] a 3 cylinder-gas saving-economy over luxury- metro. That's right, I said metro. I guess I just don't fit in with Land Rover/BMW/Mercedes people.

All I can say is that at least it isn't Hilton Head Island.

Sometimes a guy like me...

I don't know if this is normal or not.

Sometimes I like to write with a pencil. Typically I use a blue or black pen, although for my faxed stamp that is red and blue I use a green pen exclusively. I enjoy office supplies to a degree that can only be equated with Imelda Marcos' love of shoes. Yes, I've taken it to some sort of 8th deadly sin or something. I have sharpies in multiple colors, sizes, and styles, ball point pens, gel pens, highlighting pens, thick pens, thin pens, mechanical pencils, wooden pencils, rubber pencils -- you name it, I likely have at least one.

Today I felt like writing with a wooden "American" pencil.

Now I just need a really good pencil sharpener, like the kind we had in high school. I have one that is similar but it is suction mounted instead of bolted down. I find that makes a difference for some reason. I simply can't get used to electric sharpeners. They never seem to provide the tip I'm looking to get.

Office Depot is like a candy store to me. Well, let me amend that -- Office Depot (and any other office supply store) is to me like a candy store would be to a child that likes candy. [I'm not really fond of that candy stuff.] Even in grocery stores I stop to look at their pens, notebooks, and general office supply stuff for longer than I look at most anything else except perhaps the cuts of beef.

Beef and office supplies. Yeah, I could live on that.

GoDaddy can go away

The thing about GoDaddy is that anyone can buy a domain for whatever length of time for little or nothing. I recently read they surpassed network solutions as the top seller of domains. This is a first since network solutions has had the market cornered since the onset of the internet. Well, at the current rate of $8.95 per year (and less) people are scarfing up domains like they are candy after the breaking of a pinata. The problem with this is that most people aren't doing anything with these domains. They are parked and are offering the internet community absolutely nothing except the typical fake search page.

I came up with an idea on the way into work today to register a domain and build it to be a community for a community. I entered my desired domain name into my browser of choice this morning and came up with a connection timeout error. I was hoping for a "This website cannot be found" error but as such was not the case. My domain is owned by GoDaddy and is parked at one of their park servers. Thusly there is no content, only a contact at the whois database, which I'm certain is someone waiting for a monetary offer on this unused domain. I think this should be completely illegal. There is a limited quantity of names to go around on the internet, especially ones that make any sense at all. I feel if you are not actively developing or using a domain name you should not be allowed to own it.

So much for my big plans unless I can come up with another appropriate name.

Sick and Tired

I caught a chest cold last week and have had a lot of congestion and whatnot. As a result I have not been riding my bike at all, not even the commute to work. I can feel a difference in my body without the exercise and for some reason my muscles feel more tense than they do when I get my exercise in. My back even started hurting yesterday which is something that almost never happens. I'm planning on getting back into the bike commuting as early as tomorrow if all goes well. I'm still not completely over my cold but I have to get some activity going again.