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Dan and I had a great night Friday night riding with Critical Mass all over the place. This was 2.5 times (we joined up with them randomly one evening on the way to somewhere else).One of these times I am going to hang with it until 'the end' - we gave up about 8:30 after two hours. My wrists are so sore!
We didn't have any beer or other things but perhaps its challenging enough without that. :-)Current Mood:  sleepy Current Music: In My Head- Love is a Battlefiels Pat Benetar
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Had a lovely dinner with Marc and Alan and Brian from NYC and their friend David. They had all returned from the Alaska cruise full of gay men.
It is now pretty late and we are NOT ready to leave in the morning. I suppose that is one downside of not having people depending on you - you don't have to get there at a certain time.
We still have to iron the clothes we painted to set them and finish organizing our stuff, and make lists of what is where. We THINK we're ok on space in the car, but I keep wishing I could bring more of my art stuff in case I am inspired while there - t-shirt paints, stamps, brushes, the iron. Not that it would run very long on the battery pack.
The Stamps I made came out well and I have received my first compliments from the NYC boys.
I am working on the illusion stickers now, changing a bike tire, cleaning my sandals, and bleaching my hair. I should get back to it. Dan is sleeping - he is so great. He can be so level headed when I am upset. Which I am concerned is becoming more frequent. :-)
Ow my back is uncomfortable - too much non-ergonomic bending in my day.Current Mood:  frustrated Current Music: in my head - some song with a woman singing of the sea
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We built the bamboo dome today in alamo square. Aside from the wind coming up, catching the parachute covering we were placing and dragging us and the structure a few feet, it was a great success. None of the corners were anchored because we haven't got our rebar yet. A third person would have helped - we may want to be brave and ask for help on the playa if its windy. We plan to post our project on the website as we had trouble finding similar projects to ours online. With our whipping to prevent splitting, we have no addiotional or worse small splits than before the gusts. Now if I could just find cellulose or casein glue as coating to stregnthen it...Current Mood:  sleepy
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Today we bought a solar power system - 250 Watt Hour battery and 22 Watt solar panel. It will runAC or DC items and we can use our existing charger to recharge our AA and AAA and D and 9-Volt Batteries and run our laptop or the Universal Citizen Laminating machine. I also picked up a Hydrogen Powered Rocket kit from Estes which users (rechargeable) D batteries to electrolyze the hydrogen from water and burns it to reach up to 200 feet. And a model car kit which uses a solar panel to power a fuel cell to turn water into hydrogen and oxygen then runs the electric motor on the hydrogen.
We decided to replace the battery and keep the old Sony DSC-S70 camera. It still does a good job and the battery wasn't that expensive. We also got a 256 MB memory stick for it so we can be longer between laptop dumps.
And we joined the Alternate Energy Zone Village - camp # 64 - Universal Citizen. We're excited to be around so many people committed to Alternate Energy.
Woo hoo!
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I am feeling somewhat better after 3 days of Penicillin VK to treat the Strep I got at the end of my vacation last week. I still have a funny taste in my mouth, my head doesn't quite feel right, and my throat feels sore at times.
Vacation was good if hectic - Starting on July 27th in Provincetown for two days, visits with Dan's family and friends in the Boston area (Reading, Melrose, Taunton, Brockton, Chelsea) until Wednesday Aug 3rd when we arrived in NYC to visit with friends there, and travelled to Philadelphia on Aug 4th, visitied with my family and friends and attended my GrandFather's 85th birthday party (Newark and Winmington DE, Rising Sun MD). We stayed in Reading with our friends Peter and Tim in their lovely house, spent the night in NYC at our friends Marc and Alan's amazing condo in Chelsea, and stayed with our friends Erik and Bill in Philadelphia in thier beautiful house. Dan returned in the evening Sunday the 7th as he was running low on vacation time, and I returned in the evening on the 9th.
The 10th I spent mostly in bed wondering why I felt crappy and the 11th I realized it felt and tasted like Strep so I saw someone at Kaiser and began Penicillin. On the 12th my results came back positive and I took it easy. I am supposed to be not contagious after 24 hours of antibiotics.
Saturday I was feeling better and we went to REI to buy a camping stove, propane, an air matress, and roof rack components for the car. We discovered a mistake in our initial assistance and had to swap the clips and add an extender to the roof rack so it would be more usable. Saturday night we went to Jorge's going away party (he leaves the country Thursday) and were there later than expected. Sunday we went to Mike and Shum's housewarming at their cute new place in the Mission.
This morning I am unexplainedly choking on my breakfast cereal - the very first spoonful and right down into my windpipe it goes and I have spent 10 minutes coughing it out teary-eyed. Lovely. I feel much worse now.
Off to Zocalo soon to setup the new stuff in the server room. It should be a hectic couple of weeks until Burning Man with all there is to do there. We have a ton to get ready for Burning Man as well.Current Mood:  drained Current Music: Which Describes How You're Feeling All The Time - TMBG
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| » Ed Koch the Former Mayor of NY, Dr. Richard Krause of NIAID, Ronald Reagan Jr. and the AIDS Crisis |
I am reading Larry Kramer's "The Tragedy of Today's Gays", a speech he gave on November 7, 2004 at NYC's Cooper Union, where apparently Abraham Lincoln also spoke while he was alive. Lincoln also relates in another way, in that Kramer worked hard to get a book on Lincoln's gay life published, entitled "The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln", by C. A. Tripp. He also states that besides Lincoln, George Washington was also gay, as well as Ed Koch, Richard Krause, and possibly Ron Reagan Jr.
The first two in my subject line, Koch and Krause, Kramer considers responsible for the fact that AIDS is an international plague today. These two men did nothing, or as close to it as Kramer sees no difference, about AIDS while it was ramping up, out of fear of being found out to be gay. Their inaction, combined with the Reagan family's refusal to speak about it or deal with it as it might cast their son in a gay light and bring attention unwanted by them or their evangelical base, are the three factors which Kramer seems to think allowed AIDS to blossom into what it is today. 70 Million people are expected to die from this disease, and as he states openly, we cannot save most of those even if everything changed today - its just not physically possible with the resources in existence. 7,000 people in Africa are apparently still becoming infected each day, to put some measurement on it.
One thing so far that Kramer confuses me on is he makes a distinction between Sexual Freedom, which he says he is for, and Promiscuity, which he says is killing us. Personally, I think this is incorrect. It is not inherently promiscuity which is killing or rather infecting people. It is lack of concern on the parts of the people participating in their sexual freedom. ONE time of intercourse with someone without protection can spread it, possibly better or as well as 'promiscuous' behavior where protection is used. While I agree that America may have a "Moral" issue with promiscuity (I SO dislike this word, which has been wielded as a scythe by our enemies to cut down gay men morally), I am not sure this inherently is the cause of the spread of AIDS. To me he also talks about gays sometimes as if he is not one of us, which confuses me, blaming 'them' for something. And he keep saying that gays need to "Grow Up", but that in itself is not meaningful to me, and actually undermines part of what I love about being gay. I think on some level it is important that we not buy into 'growing up' per se, but steadfastly hold onto some ideals or dreams which growing up traditionally crushes.
Still, I agree that we seem to have been losing a battle for many years now in many ways, not the least of which is just the numbers of the AIDS epidemic and the fact that I have had adult friends who seroconverted and who are intelligent and aware of the risks.
One thing I think it clearly shows is that fear of being judged for being gay has driven people to do terrible things, and as a moral argument implies that those throwing the stones and making us wrong are themselves fostering clearly immoral acts, like letting millions die while being righteous. Nothing new there I suppose but it is good to be reminded.
I am only about halfway through the book, and that means I have just begun the speech. I wanted to share about it because I already feel that some of what he says is great, I just don't agree with some of how he is saying it or necessarily agree with some of his positions. I will try to post another update at the end of the book. I am thinking of crewing for the AIDS ride again...
May. 17th, 2005 @ 02:45 pm
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| » Trend Micro Disaster |
I just got home from Zocalo, the furniture company I do work for, where I spent the evening forcing the Trend Micro OfficeScan antivirus client to update on each machine that had been hosed by the bad definition file they released Friday afternoon. The computers which had been left on over the weekend had correctly dealt with the problem as I had hoped, after I rolled back the bad definition on the network Friday afternoon. Unfortunately, this was not guaranteed and most computers, many with the bad definition, were shut off as people left, so there were a lot to check by hand.
Overall it wasn't too bad. Once I realized the client would update the file even before someone logged in, it became a matter of powering on the machine and then waiting until enough time had passed, usually hard resetting it, then logging-on to check it.
The only remaining machines which have the bad file were on the other side of the street in the operations warehouse, which I have neither key or alarm code for, so I wrote instructions as to what needed to happen and sent them to everyone. Hopefully they'll not call me in the morning since I worked late tonight.
I am just so pissed at Trend. They are supposed to rigorously test the patterns, and I have never heard of something like this before, and it equaled hours of work for me to clean it up, and downtime on Friday afternoon as well as a little more time on Monday morning for some of the clients to get fixed.
Apr. 25th, 2005 @ 12:49 am
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| » Jury Duty Averted |
Well after all last week waiting to see if the next day I'd be there, Friday afternoon I was moved into a Jury group and because of the large amounts of elimination by the defense, I had to come back Monday. Luckily they selected all 12 and the 2 alternates without bringing me up front.
I was surprised and disturbed by how many people had assault experience of some kind, either personally or a friend, and at least 3 people shared about relatives or friends who had been murdered. Two of those people said that there were no leads in the murders after 8 months and a year and a half respectively, and one of them said it is common knowledge that in SF homicides are often not solved. Assaults and murders seemed to be the grounds for eliminating jurors, which on some level seems crazy if they report their ability to be fair and impartial. What about all the subtle influences of TV and movies 'experiences' which are not even true? I don't know - I guess I don't know how to make it 'perfect'.
Personally, I was once, in High School (is that where I was supposed to learn to get high?), punched by a guy surrounded by his friends after they zoomed past me in their car on a quiet street in my neighborhood and gave me the finger. I was very angry and gave them the finger back and a chase ensued. They zoomed into the parking lot I pulled into and then piled out of their car and punched me as I got out of mine. My younger brother was there but it all happened so fast. From this I learned that I wasn't willing to fight someone over getting the finger. :-)
Then I was robbed, with some friends, at gunpoint in Baltimore by 5 guys in (as I recall) very nice shoes and clothes. They came up behind me and I thought they were going to ask for money. Which they did, with a gun. I panicked and called to my friends who were slightly ahead of me and they stopped and got robbed too. We had been drinking and dancing at a nearby club which was apparently just into a 'bad neighborhood'. My friend Brian didn't realize what was going on and told them to go away that we were not giving them any money. I was really scared and upset right then and just after but it passed quickly.
I also had a few 'sexual' experiences when I was in 2nd and 3rd grade - one with a boy schoolyard bully which started out upsetting at first but I recall liking it as we progressed. Getting caught by a teacher in the bathroom and having to tell my dad was far more traumatic than the actual experience - plus I lied about the kid threatening my life which he never did, but they made such a big deal about it - it was such a 'terrible' thing - and I was what, 8? The second was with some slightly older girls who I could leave class with to practice piano, UNSUPERVISED in the auditorium or the music room. They spanked me and degraded me and we did things through underwear but no actual contact was had. That ended when the music teacher caught us running around and the girls spanking me - we all got spanked with a ruler and lost our privilege, but I don't think the teacher knew about the rest of what we did. I feel ok with both of these experiences in retrospect - I even feel some interest. I just hope that the bully guy didn't have his life further messed up by the lies I was pressured to tell.
Mar. 22nd, 2005 @ 09:03 am
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| » Winter Party, Men, SoBe |
I had a great time So Being at Winter Party! I got to be a model dresser at the Fashion Show (a generous gift that I had not requested or even dreamed of getting), I met and got to help designer Red Carter who said to e-mail him for one of his Swim Suits, and for this volunteering I got entrance to the main event on the beach on Sunday and to State on Thursday night to dance to the wonderful music of DJ Joe Gauthreaux. I also reconnected more with an old friend who moved there a few years back and is now friends with my other friends who have lived in SoBe for a while, and spend time with friends who live there and who just moved to Ft. Lauderdale last fall from San Francisco.
The main event had 4 sets of lovely words about love and friendship and joy hanging above our heads, and the 4 elements with the sun in the center. There were many cute guys and girls and everyone seemed to have fun. I wish I had spent more time with friends but I had trouble finding them while also trying to dance. :-) I think I may have outgrown traditional circuit music, though. Even with everything that day i only got into it a few times. Of course, it would probably have helped if I had gotten a good night's sleep the night before. :-)
Everyone down there asks when Dan and I are moving to SoBe, but I think that is a long shot. But I would never say never - I thought I wanted to move there a few years back. It seems like the cost of living is higher, the housing prices don't seem very reasonable (thought compared to SF...), and there is smoking out in all the bars which greatly irritated me and seems likely to shorten lives of bystanders. Its really pretty sometimes and I do love the warmth and thunderstorms (which I didn't see any of on this trip or last), though I have not been there in the middle of summer - that I hear from some is very unpleasant. Still, with Steve, Martin, Drew, Winn, Doug, Ken, and his BF Lee, and other new people I met on these trips, there are a lot of friends there.
I saw so little solar or alternative anything really. Not surprising, I guess, from a state with a secretary of state on the Bush / Cheney (B.C.) ticket and his brother as Governor. I still think we were had, but nobody seems, thus far, to have been able to make anyone be held accountable for the dirty tricks or even ANY of the terrible things they have done. Then there's Ohio, Swift Boat liars, and raising the Terror alert to bump up voting. A friend told me the most common argument he heard was "I am voting for Bush. Yeah, he's done a crappy job and continues to do terrible things, but YOU SHOULDN'T CHANGE A HORSE IN MID STREAM" - a pillar of the B.C. campaign and to which my friend added something like "Even if there is a stronger, more capable horse right next to you at the moment who could get you safely across?"
I did meet a guy who said he is one of the few real liberals in SoBe, and he did sound pretty liberal. And he still bought mints from Wal-Mart. :-)
Part of my spiritual practice, The Way and the Art of Peace, involves moving toward letting go of judgement and criticizing. But I keep swinging back to the damage I am witnessing, the money flying out of our social programs to build weapons of mass distruction, and the hate the B.C.-ers are throwing around and stirring up. I seek to find the place to stand for myself, and it may change moment to moment. I just know I have often found it painful to be with the destruction of so much for the profit of so many who already have so much at the expense of others.
But to swing wildly in the other direction, while I was there I had a fantastic time and really enjoyed it - I So Be'd.
Mar. 8th, 2005 @ 12:40 pm
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| » NOD32 Seems Great! |
I have been evaluating NOD32 AntiVirus for the last month and it seems to perform much better than Norton or Panda (which only allows one update in its 30 day trial!). It also has won a lot of awards from VirusBulletin - according to them 7 years of 100% detection have passed. That seems pretty cool. I just wanted to note this because Norton won editor's choice this year from PC Mag but the user reviews said it was very slow and I had never even HEARD of NOD32 when I started looking.
I have also been using MS AntiSpyware for about a month and have no weird problems. Of course, I haven't found a strong infestation to test it against yet. I used to use SpyBot S&D or AdAware but I needed both since they both seemed to miss some things.
Feb. 27th, 2005 @ 04:51 pm
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| » Hydrogen Economy |
I have been learning so much about the supposedly impending Hydrogen economy. The saddest part for me is that the path was clear even in the early 1900s, and it looked like it might actually have happened back in the 1970s during the energy crisis if Reagan and pals (i.e. the fossil fuel lobby) hadn't destroyed US alternative energy in the 1980s while lobbying for more war. How the hell did Carter get blamed for the Iran thingee when really it was the backward-thinking policies of those who came before and after which have caused so much mess, particularly now with Iraq? WTF??!?!
Hydrogen, even in the late 90s, was on par with the cost of gasoline, without any of the crap-ass nastiness which accompanies gas - pollution, war, destruction of parkland and environment for extraction. But here we are again with the biggest asshole ever as 'president' and a GOP-controlled legislative branch working to take over the 3rd branch, the Judicial by stealing the last two elections. The energy policy documents are still sealed by the whitehouse - most likely because they would paint such a clear picture to the average american of how utterly damaged our government is.
How many more people have to die before we wake up? I CAN'T TAKE THIS ANYMORE, again.
Feb. 24th, 2005 @ 12:37 am
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| » Off To Miami |
We're finishing up to head to bed for our 6:58 AM flight to Miami tomorrow. And, because I now have my iPod and this little handheld, there are a lot of things I am bringing with me. :-) I don't have any idea this time what this trip will be like. I just hope it will have lots of warm weather and sun, fun,cute boys, friends and perhas a thunder storm. :-) I am sad to leave my kitty for a week but I hope she has a good time at the kennel - its really her only exposure to other cats.
OK wrapping up and to bed. I am thinking of taking it easy on the political stuff and news to see if I can let go a bit more.
Feb. 4th, 2005 @ 11:32 pm
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| » From the Spaceship Earth Operating Manual |
Spaceship Earth was so extraordinarily well invented and designed that to our knowledge humans have been on board it for two million years not even knowing that they were on board a ship. And our spaceship is so superbly designed as to be able to keep life regenerating on board despite the phenomenon, entropy, by which all local physical systems lose energy. So we have to obtain our biological life-regenerating energy from another spaceship‹the sun. - Buckminster Fuller
Dec. 22nd, 2004 @ 03:54 am
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| » Tribe.net and DorkBot |
I got a random e-mail from Tribe.net today and ended being pretty fascinated. I had signed up back before burning man because some people in camp were using it but I was so preoccupied with my project I didn't really see it.
By following links tonight I have found a tribe named dorkbot which is a real world group which meets and has speakers on neato things. I think I will check them out sometime.
Dec. 15th, 2004 @ 11:54 pm
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| » Nikon Camera Flash Card |
Dan and I were hanging out in Golden Gate park yesterday and I found a compactflash memory card with about 200 pictures on it from the Run to the Far Side the other day. I am trying to get in contact with them since to me the pictures look like they were taken by someone working for the organization - image after image of runner after runner. I am glad I picked it up and I am lucky that I have an old adapter for this type of memory since I don't have any devices that use it.
Nov. 29th, 2004 @ 09:00 am
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| » HomeStar Runner Stuff |
Dan and I just bought some stuff from HomestarRunner.com - a small bright orange t-shirt of Pom Pom, a blue Homestar hooded sweatshirt, some window stickers of characters, and they sent us a bonus of Strong Bad Sings. :-)
I am happy with everything so far though I haven't put the stickers up yet. :-)
Nov. 27th, 2004 @ 11:23 am
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| » Quiet |
I've been quiet recently. Seems so overwhelming sometimes with the state of the world and I have been kind of withdrawn unless there is something specific to do (like Love Parade where I could put on a costume and be someone else sort of). With Decompression Sunday, I get to do that again. :-)
I am loving the 'was Bush being fed his lines' thing going around the internet right now. Supposedly he may have had someone broadcasting his lines during the debate - there is an image from the original video of the debate with a bulge on Bush's back which cuold be the electronics, and there are numerous other clues that he may have been doing this for a while. It is like a book named Interface by Stephen Bury (Neal Stephenson), about a candidate who is electronically controlled, by marketing masterminds with instant voter feedback, to be the right candidate moment to moment to cinch the election. I read it over 5 years ago and even then I didn't think it was that far fetched, much of it.
I have recently been enjoying the very silly humor of www.homestarrunner.com. The voices and situations and characters are so cute and funny. I also really like the amazing design of www.globz.com - the interface control tools are neato and some of the toys and games are fantastic.
What else? I am sort of bored with things while being scared of some of them. :-) There is so much to do here at home - so much unused TAOCtagon stuff to figure out what to do with, taking apart all the wiring around the computer to redo it so it makes more sense, more cleaning and organization, the bathtub. Now I am about to do my invoices so I can get paid. I am not sure but I don't think I am going to work at Zocalo today - I was there late last night and aside from some telephony stuff that can wait...
Oct. 8th, 2004 @ 12:04 pm
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| » Weird Story |
Over the weekend, Dan and I were at a 40th Birthday celebration for our new friend Rob. We left the party very late and were waiting for a bus with a friend, but he had forgotten his cell phone and had to go back the few blocks to get it. We heard a crash and I thought I saw someone up the street a few blocks with what looked like a metal pipe, walking away from a car as if he had broken the window, but I didn't actually see him do it, and then he turned a corner and I didn't think much more of it for a few minutes. Then I heard another crash and a few moments later the same guy came around the corner he had disappeared behind and sat in a doorway and put the 'pipe' down. After a little while he walked further down the street toward us but without the pipe but stopped again in a doorway. A few minutes later, I watched him go back, get the pipe from where he left it, and walk to the first car - then he swung and I saw the pipe rebound off the car and heard a crash. At this point Dan and I were pretty well freaked out and I was not sure what to do. The guy came walking down the street in our direction, pipe in hand. Just then our friend returned and we told him what was going on and he started to look for help. Just then a police car came up to the intersection and our friend spoke with them. As this was happening the guy put the pipe down and walked briskly away from it. The police pulled up to the guy and eventually put him in the back of the police car - our friend said the police indicated they had come looking for this guy or something along those lines. They retrieved the pipe and an officer went up the street to look at the car. Just then the bus came and we rode home.
Sep. 24th, 2004 @ 01:44 am
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| » Project Perspective |
My perspective on my project has slowly been shifting. I have received so much positive feedback about it, and some of the pictures remind me just how well it turned out even with the things I had been disappointed with. Also, other artists have been telling me stories about their artwork being criticized as well, and that has suddenly shifted it to the domain of Bad Neighbor camp, where I understand they played dogs barking and other things to get a reaction from people. I just wanted to give a brief update. Thank you to everyone who has given me feedback about my project.
Sep. 20th, 2004 @ 12:04 pm
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| » Begin Again |
Since I got back from Burning Man I find myself frequently wondering what is next for me. I think I go though this every year - someone at Burning Man said it is their New Year marker and I think that could be cool to adopt. Last Dan and I spoke of it, it seemed Burning Man was a given next year but then I find myself wondering what I will build next and re-evaluating if my effort this year was satisfying and satisfactory to me.
I keep finding myself disappointed with my project and that is frustrating. It is now in the past and as far as I know I cannot undo or correct the things I am labeling as problems with my piece, but still I am unsatisfied at the moment. How did some of these problems come to pass? How did I go from directing everything to mysterious other voices shouting out and to my thinking destroying some of the careful work I had set up from the beginning? How that cordless drill moved from the pile to be loaded on the minivan to being hidden in the kitchen within a few minutes is an infuriating mystery and it reinforces my fear of depending on others. I fear to speak any of this sometimes since I am grateful for the help, but in the end that help also screwed some things up. Ultimately I can hold nobody else accountable for what I built, and that depresses me. The crappiness materialized out of nowhere and is immortalized in photographs and the experiences of those who noticed the easily avoidable flaws which then became uncorrectable once the nails had been driven in so far (or at least I was unsuccessful in correcting it). Dan lists my thumb injury as evidence I needed to let the mistakes go, but I see it as proof of how difficult it became to correct because of the permanence of the nails. I even used double-headed temporary construction nails which should have addressed the ability to remove them and correct things but then people who I guess just were ignorant about what they were pounded them all the way in to the second head and it almost makes me want to cry - my safety net shredded in an instant.
This was offered up to the universe as a gift and I feel it became a poor gift in the final steps and I am sad. I don't want to do it again because that seems boring to redo the same thing, but to know how much better it could have been with just a few things different (which I carefully planned and setup from the start) - well it is driving me crazy. How could I not do it again and get it right? As it was built, I can see why someone wrote "weak". And so far my brain has offered no variations on the theme to reinvent it as something more clever next year. Of course, since I disassembled and burned the whole thing there is nothing to reuse either. How could I not have kept a panel or two? There was plenty of space in the truck and people expressed interest in them. I feel stupid.
I find I am avoiding sharing about it and sharing more photos since every time I look at them I see the mistakes in assembly which skew the whole thing for me. I feel like a good chunk of the time I spent on it was wasted in an instance with the nails making permanent the panels installed upside-down and not centered. That and my lack of skill as a photographer and the problems with my camera which in retrospect it seems obvious were going to occur and I took no action to correct (i.e. the failing battery and lack of storage space - I could have gotten a few more memory sticks for relatively cheap - combined with the limitations I knew the camera had in low light which many new cameras handle better.
Dan says I am dwelling on the negative but of course that is not how it occurs to me. I just feel like I failed and of course I believe I could have done much better and I fear this is all I have in me as an artist.
The way I feel right now - OK well that sucked and sucks in memory.
Sep. 12th, 2004 @ 04:18 pm
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