The Jack Noodle Journal

I’m suffering from a bit of a disaster here at the office.

My headphones are going out!
SUCKS! Hold on one second… If I just wiggle the cord a certain way they come back on.
There must be a short in the wires. ARGH! I can’t work without functioning headphones.
Sound is only coming out of the left earphone. Oh wait… There. If I just sit perfectly still in this position the headphones work.
I’m going to need new headphones. I have had these pair for like 13 years! They were such good headphones. Now they are dead.
Gosh, you know, nothing beats a good pair of headphones.

I have been uneasy this whole week for some reason. I’m feeling off kilter. It’s not just the headphones. Something’s up. I feel restless. Maybe too much caffeine in my diet.
I am uncomfortable.

I called my old friend Travis like I said I was going to the other day. I got a hold of him. He’s still alive. It sounded like he was doing alright.
It was a weird conversation. I’m not sure what I was expecting or after. I have only seen the guy once in 15 or so years. Maybe talked to him on the phone 4 or 5 times during that period. I think I was on a search for the younger Noodle. I’m 15 years older than that kid. Maybe more like 18 years older. The young Noodle is no more. I was looking for the younger Travis and the younger Travis no longer exists either.

That’s just how it works doesn’t it?

So the time period that we were really good friends during was like from 8th grade to maybe the middle of our senior year. No, I think we were buds up until graduation. Anyways, that was only 4 or 5 years really. I’ve known a couple of you almost 3 times longer already since then. I barely know this Travis guy now that I think about it! I’m sure not the same person that I was 15 – 18 years ago. I am a stranger to Travis.
He was probably like, “Who the Hell is this stranger calling me at home?”

I guess I was bored and got stuck thinking back to my childhood. Which is kind of funny because it wasn’t really that wonderful or horrible to begin with.

Is it just me, or was it darker out this morning? I don’t mean cloud-wise I mean time-wise. Is the fall coming? Should we be planning on turning our clocks back pretty soon here?
I hear that this cool cloudy morning is once again just a brief pause for the boiling temperatures that are going to kick back up in a day or two.

Enough with the weather reports, Noodle. Yikes!

Probably my favorite podcast so far has been Design Matters with Debbie Millman (neck and neck with Harry Shearer’s Le Show and Ebert and Roeper). I am quite upset that there aren’t going to be any new Design Matters episodes until January. So, I didn’t think too much about the theme song to Design Matters until I heard it on a Bank of America ad. “Hey where do I recognize that song from? Oh yeah, it’s the the bumper music on Design Matters.” I didn’t think about it after that until the next time I saw the Bank of America ad again.

Yesterday I am sampling music over the office network and I decide to listen to a couple of RJD2 albums. Low and behold, the Design Matters song pops into my headphones! That doesn’t happen to me very often. Songs don’t usually plop themselves down in my lap. I have to hunt and investigate these tunes that cause curiosity. So the song that is used as Design Matters bumper music and in that Bank of America ad is called “Ghostwriter” and it’s by RJD2. RJD2 is pretty alright. He’s a DJ, electronica guy.

Also in music listening news, I took a fun walk down memory lane and listened to a CD from back in the day. I had forgotten how amazing Nitzer Ebb’s album “Showtime” is. Oh my goodness! The song “My Heart” got me bouncing up and down in my chair. Ah yes, those were the days. I miss my pointy waver elf shoes. I’m telling you kids, the next band to come out with an industrial album circa 1989 – 1990, has a hit on their hands. The key is to lose the guitars.

Maybe it’s the Nitzer Ebb talking, but I think I am going to call my old best friend Travis tonight. I have been wondering about him and his family for a couple of weeks now. I am sensing that I need to check in with him. According to this here journal last time I phoned Travis was in February of 2004. I was thinking of filming a skateboarding movie starring him. Gosh if I didn’t have this Noodle Journal, I would have to keep info like that in my head and actually remember it. Yeah, I’ll phone Travis tonight. It would be interesting hanging with Travis again to see if we could ever get over that “remember when” hump that old friends who haven’t hung for at least 10 to 15 years have.

Hey, and what about Joe?

There are a lot of people whom I owe a phone call. I am so bad at keeping in touch. Argh…

Another lazy Sunday. How goes it?
The heat is already starting to kick in. It was pretty toasty yesterday, but it didn’t seem to be too bad.
We haven’t done much of anything this weekend.

We went to the downtown library yesterday. That was pretty fun. Every time I visit the library I can’t figure out why I don’t go there more often. They let you check out books for free there! You don’t have to buy the books that you may only have a passing fancy in. I found a printout of my Amazon wish list that I was lamenting losing in the pocket of my winter coat. Armed with that book list I was able to find some books at the library. Only a few weren’t available. I think it helps that my wish list was a year old. The library still doesn’t have week old, brand new, cutting edge selections yet (I’m finding). Most of the books from my wish list were checked out though. I did manage to get 5 books.

One of the books I checked out from my list was “The Substance of Style: How the Rise of Aesthetic Value is Remaking Commerce, Culture, and Consciousness” by Virginia Postrel. It’s been a pretty good read so far. She talks about the current (2003) state of our consumerist society, how customers are putting more of an importance on well designed, beautiful objects and how that’s a good thing. I’m finding it pretty interesting. I think my interest in the subject comes from the fact that I have been making my living from these customers demanding of my bosses retouched models and photographs of well designed apparel goods. It’s funny but the current poster child for well designed products the iPod, hasn’t been mentioned yet in her book. I don’t think that the major iPod explosion had happened yet in 2002 – 2003. Is that right?

After an overheated dog walk, and after the library we spent the rest of our day watching DVDs. Have you guys seen the “Dog Whisperer” yet? K put the series on our queue and we watched 5 episodes already. 5 episodes in a row is quite a dose. I had to tell K that we needed to watch something else and save the rest of the episodes on the disk for later. The Dog Whisperer is pretty awesome though. The Dog Whisperer Cesar Millan goes and helps people with their insane dogs. He helps the dog owners get control of the dogs and stops the bad behavior. Cesar is pretty amazing. He gets those dogs into shape. It’s kind of like “Super Nanny” only with dogs. We already saw an episode that covered one of Abby’s problems, mantically chasing light reflections and shadows. We’re going to follow Cesar’s instruction but I don’t know, he made it look so easy.

I’ve got to go wash the dishes now. We might go see a movie with Lianne and Martin this afternoon.

Yep, that’s how we roll here at the Noodle compound. Never a dull moment.

The weekend is only a few hours away! Woo hoo!
This week actually went pretty fast didn’t it? It seems like only yesterday it was Monday.

Are there any big events planned for the weekend? Nothing going on here. I think we will sit around and wait for my paycheck to be direct deposited. Yep, we ran out of money before running out of month. I guess that is the price of living large.

They are saying that it is going to get hot again today. Today is the start of a warm weekend. I didn’t dress very well for it this morning. I’m wearing a long sleeve, black, v-neck shirt. It was sort of cool out this morning at the bus stop. I was very comfortable. I don’t think I’ll be comfortable if it gets into the upper 80s like they are saying. I’ll just stay indoors all day and change into something more comfortable when I get home. Actually wearing a long sleeve shirt here at the office helps combat the sometimes too cold air conditioning.

Speaking of the office. Our computers are all connected through a network here of course. We have our iTunes set up so that we can listen to anyones music that is connected to the network. This is a pretty cool way to share music with the folks in the cube next to you. There are two buildings here and that’s how we rummage through the music next door. It’s a great way to find new music and sample stuff that you may have been curious about. The kids I work with are into some good stuff. I forget to look at who’s connected because I am often listening to NPR over the internet instead.

Well this week I noticed a new person on our iTunes network. The person’s connection has the handle “Bitey Lives”. Who is this Bitey and where did he or she come from? Where is he or she sitting? Maybe it’s a photographer in the other building? I guess I could take my headphones off, get up from my desk and actually talk to some people to discover who this Bitey is.
Anyways, Bitey has some really great music in his or her collection. Stuff I have been curious about or have been wanting to listen to for a while. Cannibal Ox, the newer Thermals albums, the Decemberists, Band of Horses, and the new TV and the Radio are just a few of the selections I went “OH!” to before listening.

With the iTunes networked, shared music feature you can listen to other people’s music but you just aren’t able to drag and drop songs to your computer that you want to take home with you. So yes, I do need to meet this Bitey person.

I have been playing around in Second Life this week. It’s kind of cool. I can see how it could become addictive. I have been trying not to spend too much time with it.
Second Life is an online, 3D, multiplayer game. It’s a big virtual word.
You can sign up for free. I don’t think they let you buy land with a free account.

My name in Second Life is Donavan Dooley.
If you do want to sign up, let me know, or tell them that Donavan Dooley sent you. I think I get Linden dollars (virtual money) for people that Mr. Dooley brings to Second Life.
Look me up when you get there and we’ll hook up.

I have been trying to just learn how to navigate around. I’m starting to get the hang of it. I’m not sure where I should visit now. I was flying around the other day and I think the wind caught me and blew me away. I couldn’t stop.

The graphics are pretty nice. It seems to run alright with the internet connection that I have. I could see how it would be more fun with a faster connection.
It’s pretty crazy just hanging out and watching the people walk past you. They are starting to have events like live concerts that you can go to there.

The world kind of reminds me of the Island in the Prisoner.
I need to go and find a striped turtle neck shirt and a fisherman’s cap.

“Good day Governor”
“Be seeing you”
“and you”

Maybe the developers got some of their inspiration from that show?

I might start playing it again when I can relax and not worry about how much time in the “real” world is whittling away.
It’s kind of fun thinking about what sort of applications these online games are going to have in the future.

Looks like I almost got my wish. It looked like it was trying to rain. I felt a few sprinkles on the way to the bus stop. It was cool and gray this morning.
I heard that it’s supposed to warm up again for the weekend.

Not too much going on around these parts so far this week.

Yeah, I rode the bus for the first time in a while. K has been taking me to work for most of the summer. She had to go in to work today.
The bus was fine. Nothing crazy happened. I got to work a few minutes earlier actually.

I am a little behind on a couple of projects I have been threatening to work on at home.

I must, I must, finish up my layout of the CD packaging for the We’re From Japan boys tonight. I told those kids I would have it done by Wednesday.
Maybe Thursday now. No, I’ll still shoot for Wednesday.

I was hoping to do some work last night but I was just so sleepy. I felt like I was getting sick last night.
I still feel a little groggy this morning.

Good Sunday morning to you. How’s your weekend going? Mine has been alright.
I have been pretty much just cleaning out the laboratory these last two days.

I know this is a horrible thing for an Oregonian to say, but I am starting to get tired of this sunshine filled weather. I’ll be kicking myself for sure in one or two months (if not sooner) when we have nothing but rain and gray again.
I don’t know. It got to around 90 something yesterday and I was like “alright already, enough is enough”. I was inside trying to work and it was hot, muggy and sweaty.
The lawn is totally brown with barely any grass covering the dusty dirt. We need like a week of heavy rain so things get back to being green.

Yeah, how about a week of heavy rain and then back to this hot weather?
Sorry guys.

Gosh, I hate being one of those people that complains about the weather.
Alright I’ll stop.
All I’m saying is I don’t remember the last time we had a good rain.

I have been straightening up the laboratory. I’m getting to a good spot now.
There is just so much stuff packed in here!
I have a few groups of challenges to this room. I have the stacks of books/magazines challenge. I have the school notes, folders and papers challenge. I have the major challenge of recycled paper, bills and junk mail stacks that K and I have been piling up in here. I have the computer parts, cords, disks, and other electronic devices challenge. The final challenge that is resting out in the dining room now is the pile of clothes challenge. Where am I going to fit all of those clothes?

I found quite a few gems while going through my notes and papers. That’s why this laboratory cleaning business takes so long. I get sidetracked reading notes and papers I find. I am so glad that I am a note taker and pack rat. Every few years or so I find good ideas from past notes and add to them. For instance, I just found a stack of papers containing my research notes from when I wanted to start a cult back in 1997. That cult idea is just begging for some airtime I tells you!

I found some old bills and found a check I had written in ‘97 for rent. 438 dollars! Man oh man. If only we were still paying that where we are now. That would be sweet.

Yes, so it is easy to get distracted in here. Like stopping work to write a blog entry.
I’ve got to get this stuff done so I can work on the couple of design projects I have to complete for you kids.

K and I watched a real doozy last night.
We watched “Even Dwarfs Started Small” by Werner Herzog. It’s crazy. After we watched it and the credits started rolling, K and I were like, “Okay, what the hell just happened?”. We started listening to the special features commentary afterwards for a few minutes and got some hints as to what was going on. It’s the strangest movie I have seen in a while.
I try to keep my use of the word “surreal” to a minimum, and this film definitely falls under the surreal category.

Some of the shots were really uncomfortable. I was wondering if I should be watching some of it. Not in a “this is really gory and disturbing” way, but in a “this is strange and I don’t know if I should be laughing or be grossed out” way. There is quite a bit of social commentary that we were able to pick up.
My favorite character was Hombre.

Some of you know we’ve been on a Herzog movie marathon over the last few months. K loaded up our Netflix queue with his movies. It’s been fun. We like his work.
Yeah, Werner Herzog is the guy that did the movie “Fitzcarraldo” that I went on and on about here a few months ago. His most recent movie was “Grizzly Man”.

Even Dwarfs Started Small gets the Noodle seal of approval. Go out and rent this awesome film today.
I want to watch it again now after writing this post.

We watched a good movie last night.
The movie “Brick” came in the mail. We had been seeing ads and previews for this puppy for over a year now and finally saw it. It’s pretty cool. It’s an old time, hard-boiled, detective drama set in a present day high school. It’s got some excellent elements and some Lynchian moments. The actors really did a good job sticking to the noir feel and lingo. This is director Rian Johnson’s first feature film. Nice work. I heard him interviewed about it several months ago. He’s a youngster.

Brick goes about the postmodern business of mixing two already existing elements (noir detective drama, and high school, teen angst movie) and creates something new. See now, I am into that when it works well. One just has to pick good, sturdy, interesting ingredients when mixing. Brick got me thinking some more about my Wicker Man, Prisoner, Dr. Who script that I am threatening to create. Maybe I should add Breakfast Club to the mix? No, how about A-Team?

It has been a while since I have been reminded about the importance of saving your files and backing stuff up.
If you are working on a file now while reading this, hit save now please.

It seems that saving and backing up your files is becoming more of an action that happens in the background. Back in the day it seems like people were more paranoid about saving. “Make sure you hit save”, “Make multiple backups”, “Make sure you save”, “Burn all of your files to tape storage”.
Maybe now that massive amounts of memory is totally cheap, we don’t have to be as diligent about worrying where stuff is going. There is more than enough space for everything why bother saving it to a different spot?

This week I had a couple of save often reminders.

The first one came when I went to my Amazon wish list and found that it had been deleted. Looks like they did some remodeling and retooling of the wish list feature over there and cleaned my stuff out for me. Stinks! I had been using that list as a kind of note keeper and every time I would hear about a book or CD I would add it to my wish list so that I would remember to check it out in the future. I think I had like 3 pages going. Oh well. I guess now I can restart the list and be surprised when I rediscover the books and CDs that I have forgotten from the original list.

Did Amazon send me an email saying that I should print out my wish list before they remodeled? Maybe I didn’t read it.

The second reminder that information technology isn’t immortal, came to me after I deleted this older post on accident.
I was battling spambots early in the morning and hit the wrong button in WordPress. Man, I was bummed. Instantly gone. I was really mad at myself because that was K’s birthday post!

I tried to be fine with accepting that the post was gone but I couldn’t let it go! Finally it came to me that I could Google the post and get the text from the search engine’s cache file.
That took a little bit longer than I thought it would. I was trying to use the search terms “jacknoodle” and “raab campground” to get near the cache of the “K’s day of birth” post.
I couldn’t get it on Google. Finally after a couple of other search engines, I got it off of MSN using the search terms “jack noodle journal” and “June 28th, 2006″.
Oh yeah, the date. There’s an interesting search term that might work.

So the moral of the story is continue to make an effort to backup your stuff. You never know when you’ll accidently delete that video of baby Tommy’s first steps that’s on your hard drive.

It’s hump day.
The work week is half over!
It’s been going slow. The week is kind of dragging for me. Argh! When will the weekend save us? I have been working on a hard project this week at work. The majority of it’s difficulty comes from it’s annoyance. Come on client, just give us the right product to photograph from the beginning. Don’t make us recreate it into the correct product!
Ah, enough of that talk already.

I know I need to reply to some emails. Sorry about that. I was trying to stay away from the internets the last few days. Have you noticed how hard it is getting to force yourself to not look at the interweb? It’s turning into some sort of strange tic for me. I’m always clicking the browser window open. That makes it hard to focus on work sometimes.

Did I hear that it was supposed to be 90 today? It doesn’t seem like it will get to that with the morning being as cool as it is. It was overcast and chilly on my way to work. Maybe it will warm up this afternoon.

Does this ever happen to you?
You’re sitting around minding your own business, maybe at work, maybe at home, and suddenly a word or phrase pops into your head that you know you’ve heard before but can’t figure out where you heard it, what it means or what it is in reference to.
That happened to me yesterday. My head popper was “fibonacci sequence”.

What the heck is a fibonacci sequence? Where have I heard that term? What does it mean? Why did it pop into my head?
Our friends at Wikipedia have a good definition of fibonacci numbers.
So they are saying that after two starting values, each number is the sum of the two preceding numbers.
That would be: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34 …
Got it?

Why did this pop into my head? What is the universe trying to tell me? I should be paying attention to this. The answer to one of my problems or a key direction for my life is somehow tied up in these fibonacci numbers. Perhaps there is some great creative obstacle that my subconscious is working on overcoming. Maybe it’s lottery numbers that I should be picking. How does this all connect to the golden ratio and what secrets does the golden ratio hold for my life?

Yes, stuff like that clogs up my brain now and then. That and the voices telling me to burn things.

One of the other terms that sneaks in is Horror Vacui. Fear of empty spaces. I’ll save that analysis for a later date.