I was cruising one of my blogmarks — Every Tomorrow — and I came across this entry. It got me thinking about my own reluctance to have kids for all of those very compelling-sounding reasons I had, and my complete transformation into a ga-ga daddy zombie over the last four months. Here’s the (rather long-winded) comment I left:

My wife and I called ourselves “baby agnostic” — we didn’t know if we believed in having kids or not. We debated the issue here and there for 10 years. We’re best friends, and have been since college, so we didn’t want anything to ruin that vibe. We liked the DINK lifestyle — bopping out to a movie at 11:30pm on a whim, etc — and we somewhat pitied our friends who had kids for being burdened, tied down, and ground under by child responsibilities. We also secretly feared our own capability to raise a kid. We have a ton of pets, and love them, but a kid’s another whole ballpark. Screwing them up means a world of hurt down the road. So, we just kind of let inertia take over and avoided kids altogether — making our decision by proxy.

And then we found out we were unexpectedly pregnant in Jan 2004.
(Read the rest of this entry…)

This made me laugh. The latest Wired Magazine has a review of a book called “Do It”, 180 do-it-yourself projects that were submitted by artists, architects, writers and scientists. It includes everything from a purposefully impractical entry by Douglas Copeland on “How To Create A Blog”, a 20-step recipe for cocaine, and, of course, this little gem about how to dress for success.

I’m busy again. Got a whole bunch of different seperate design jobs that I’m knee-deep in right now, and music project that I really want to be making more progress in. So, the playing on my blog time has to take a hit for the time being. I have a lot to say, but I’m going to have to fit it in around my more pressing engagements for the time being.

But, feel free to keep stopping by! And I have plenty of archives to choose from, like browsing through my photo collection or taking a walk down memory lane to relive the horror of the ’04 election (although on that last one, I’d recommend just stabbing yourself in the hand with a fork — probably just as fun…).

Just read this article off of a design blog I visit: Land Grab — What If Wal-Mart Got In The WiMax Business?

I’m not real hip on the WalMart angle, but 70-megabit-per-second wireless access with a range of 50km? Count me in! I might just have to actually buy a laptop. Or maybe an Apple iPhone…

I swear that some kind of sinister Spirit Of Business Strife has been set loose on the unsuspecting workers of America. In the past week, I’ve not only left a long-time friend of 8 years because he finally flipped out one too many times, but I’m as of this evening sitting on several volatile conversations with two other businesses I’m involved with.

In the one corner, there are hardcore incendiary accusations and counter-accusations flying around — all of which came as a surprise to me since I sit just outside the circle of responsibility in a more detached role. (Which is just fine — it looks like the circle of flying knives in the core group right now.)

And in the other corner, a partner and I just got bawled out by a woman completely out of the blue for some very minor stumbles in how we have delivered our service to her company — a company that we’ve done a number of projects for with great success. In this particular situation, she’s not anywhere near a major decision maker so it’s fine, but it’s not pleasant taking 40 mins to respond to her trying to pour some oil on the situation and smooth things out, and then a couple of hours later be reading a string of emails chock full of As The Corporation Turns soap opera drama.

I mean, what the hell?! Whatever happened to people just working hard as a team, making money, and whistling while they work? All this extra drama is aggravating, mostly because there’s a lot of cool things that could be accomplished while everyone’s busy dragging out the knives and cutting chunks out of each other.

Humans… Sheesh. Definitely time to cleanse the palate.

Sure, it’s that magazine with the sexy/sultry movie babes on the cover and wink-wink-nudge-nudge article titles like Everybody Get Naked: The thinking’s man’s argument for more onscreen nudity. Tastefully done, of course. But what astounds me about the magazine in almost every issue is the insightful, smart, bold writing, the insightful dissection of culture and life and political power, funny and compelling documentary pieces, and the often frank revelations by public figures about their lives and the culture they see every day.

Take the latest issue for instance (starring the lovely Scarlett Johansson!). In an article called 52 True Things About The Future Of American Culture, Tom Junod disects the struggle of conservatives against culture, and the whoring of liberals for culture in these provocative assertions:

• 21. If conservatives see redress for their cultural estrangement in political partisanship and liberals seek redress for their electoral estrangement in cultural sophistication, who are the dupes?
• 22. America is being divided by its extremes. Conservatives are moving toward religious nationalism. The culture is moving toward a kind of pornography. Liberals have been kidding themselves, thinking that the culture is on their side. The truth is, they don’t have a side.
• 23. The kind of pornography that the culture is moving toward is not necessarily sexual. It’s omnivorous. It’s a culture in which human beings are defined by their sheer utility — sexual, economic, or otherwise.
• 24. The humanism that is the beating heart of liberalism — the humanism that exalts the power of the individual human conscience — is threatened not just by the rise of religious nationalism. It’s equally threatened by the pornographication of the culture.
• 36. And yet… The culture does in fact teach values. It is extremely effective at teaching values, even if the values being taught are not overtly moral.
• 44. The question is whether a liberal culture can also be a decent culture, a generous culture, an optomistic culture, an idealistic culture, a humanistic culture. The answer will come only when liberals do what they have been loath to do:
• 45. Learn to engage the culture as conservatives have — politically and morally, instead of merely as consumers.
• 46. Liberals have to find something to root for in the culture, values to champion. They have to be willing to go beyond tolerance.

Hmmm. Not bad for a “girlie mag”, eh? Of course, as a liberal-leaning Christian, I would say those values are inherent in the Christian faith and that they’ve been hijacked by fundamentalism and opportunism. Is it any wonder that I feel like dropping out of politics altogether if both the left and the right, who currently dominate the public space with their incessant arguing, have both lost track of those values?

Anyway… Esquire Magazine. Highly recommended.

…, is what my friend Sky asked in email. My reply — “I’ve been completely avoiding it. And shall mention such on my blog. Thx for the inspiration.”

I think it’s massively lame that the lavish celebration is costing $40 million plus, and that people have been paying hundreds of thousands — literally — to rub shoulders with the Little Emperor. I think the Bush administration sucks and that it’s full of syncophants and loyalists with one allegiance — Bush, not the American people.

Blah blah blah. Who cares what I think? They’re in power now — the majority of the country, for better or for worse, cast their lot behind the Bush team. There is no opposition party for all intents and purposes. If there’s any opposition, it’s going to come in the form of contentious Republicans, willing to take their gloves off now that their man’s in office. Us, the other half of America? We’re irrelevant. No matter what he says in this inauguration, Bush couldn’t give a rat’s ass about our concerns, especially now that he’s had a solid enough majority vote to proclaim his “mandate”.

So, I’m shutting off politics for a while. It’s too painful to watch Condoleeza Rice angrily hold forth about her “integrity” and know that she’s the next First Diplomat of America to the rest of the world. It’s too painful to watch Rumsfeld still waltzing around the Pentagon while Iraq sinks further into chaos. And it’s too painful to watch Bush chastising the press for asking more than one question.

I’ll check back in if the Dem party decides to get itself some cajones, or if Bush just happens to get impeached, or whatever. Until then, have a great party, America. And don’t expect sympathy from me if that hangover’s a doozy.

Just got back from the pediatrician this morning. Amira had her four month checkup today, and she’s in great shape. In fact, she was really fun — kicking her legs like a rabbit that’s being held in the air and laughing/smiling. Well, except for the shots, which she took like a trooper but still cried at. She’s 13lbs 7oz, and 24.5″ tall — just over two feet of warm yummy baby. You can get the rest of my thoughts about the visit on Amira’s site.

We currently use Comcast’s cable broadband service for our access — a 3Mb/256Kb plan. We’ve not quite gotten the full 3Mb speed since around the time of the install, but it’s still plenty fast. I just found out the great news today that Comcast is planning to upgrade it’s download/upload speeds to 4Mb/384Kb for all current plan users, and if you want to pay $10 more, it goes up to 6Mb/512Kb. Apparently they put about $100 million into updating their fiber backbone. The story is here.

Small catch, tho. Apparently some Comcast users have gotten calls saying their service would be suspended if they didn’t stop downloading so much material. There is apparently a hidden cap in how much you can download — a cap that they don’t specify and that you don’t know about until you get slapped. I don’t usually download movies or massive amounts of audio and such, so I don’t think I’d ever get hit with the cap, but I don’t get why Comcast would cap the data transfer amount. Are they just trying to manage for network traffic and such?

I remember how excited we were 9 years ago to be in a neighborhood that had the first rollout of cable internet access. It was through TCI Cable (a super lame company that finally folded, thank goodness), it was a blazing 1.5Mb, and it’s the reason I’m a freelance web designer today. If I had to work in those early days using just a modem, I would have quit and gone back to working for Microsoft again where I could get fast internet access. I’ve never had the patience for modems, and I don’t understand how people can use them to browse the web — especially now with web sites getting more and more multimedia-heavy. It’s as aggravating to me as sitting in heavy traffic, only you’re having to endure it at home in your free time.

In any case, broadband is finally on the scene in a big way, and here to stay. I know it’s still an issue for more out-of-the-way locations to get some kind of broadband internet access without costing an arm and a leg. I’ve heard of an initiative called “broadband over power lines (BPL)” that would deliver digital signal over regular power lines directly into the wall sockets of the home at possible speeds up to a gigabit per second (although amateur radio operators and some public sector workers like police and emergency workers are worried about it polluting the radio wave spectrum). Whatever it’s final form, technology like that will finally solve the last-mile problem and get the U.S. up to speed in having broadband available to all the population.

And none too soon, I say. We need more 10MB Flash intros on the web, right?

This quickie template I came up with for my blog is pretty customizable and takes on a totally different feel just by generating a new header. A frequent visitor to this blog has probably seen Janece’s new look, but here’s another couple of headers I did for some sites for my family. (Note: Both sites have private info, so I’m showing the headers only.)

The first one is for my parents’ blog. They wanted to have a place to post pics, write down their memoirs and discuss their travels. Dad sent me a funny pic and I turned it into a kind of retro-traveling vibe. The other one is for a site where we’re discussing the details of how to create a family financial trust for everyone’s mutual benefit. Just changing the shape of the header block can create enough of a subtle flow to alter the vibe. On Janece’s blog, I used a wave shape match the screened back seahorse. On my parents’ site, the shape is more of a decal shape, and there’s a simple curve for the family trust header.

And, of course, if you don’t want to mess with the block at all, you could remove it without too much hassle and put free floating pic shapes in instead…

Tsunamis, Indonesian corruption, friendships ending, probing the Christian response to betrayal… Not the most cheery series. Frankly, this kind of thing does roam around my head a lot during the course of the average day (along with HTML code fragments, snippets of annoying pop songs, stream of conciousness word play, and all kinds of other random flotsam and jetsam). But even though I’m ready to break out into a theological treatise at the drop of a hat, I’m still mainly a fairly silly person who likes to make his wife laugh and make babbling noises at his baby daughter. And over the last couple of weeks, my favorite method for clearing my mental palate has been to just look at this picture and giggle to myself:

I mean, come on… Those delicious little squishy cheeks, that delightfully round Buddha belly, the little pug nose, that nummy little foot and the crown topper of a little “Alfalfa” hair sprout. She’s the perfect zest of refreshing flavor after a long slog through the Deep And Meaningful.

Punny Punkins, you RAWK. I can’t believe that yesterday was your four-month milestone already…

When my ex-friend pulled his little stunt that finally ended our relationship (see my last post), I was really angry. Angry in that “I’m going to reveal this guy’s hypocrisy and selfishness to the world!” kind of way. I was plotting thoughts run through my head of contacting mutual friends and clients and whoever else and making it very clear how little integrity he has and how he tried to rip me off…

And then, my better brain took over — the one that says, “Before you do anything stupid, run this by Janece — get a second opinion”. (I love my better brain. It’s so much smarter than me.) So, I did run my intentions by Janece, and she dropped these zingers in my lap: “He’s being vindictive, but don’t sink to that level in return. You’re being motivated out of malice to get back at him, and it’s a wrong motivation. As believers in God and followers of Jesus, that’s not how we’re called to act in situations like this.” And of course she’s dead right.

More on this thought here: (Read the rest of this entry…)

Friday saw the messy end of a 9-10 year friendship, someone I met while I was working at Microsoft before going freelance. The friendship started as a business relationship and grew from there into a personal connection — one that’s been slowly disintegrating over the last year. This post is a requiem and farewell of sorts to our shared history — one that is somewhat sad, but mostly relieved and thankful.

To read the full “obituary”, there’s more after the fold… (Read the rest of this entry…)

As I mentioned in a previous post, being on vacation during the time of the main tsunami crisis, being ill, and getting back into my life left me feeling a general sense of disconnection from the events in south Asia — like someone reading National Geographic about an historical event. It finally landed for me today in two ways:

First, an acquaintance of mine and a mutual friend of Sky’s happened to be in Bali working at an orphanage with a couple of friends when the tsunami struck. They took a water purifier and medicine to the hardest hit area, Banda Aceh, and were some of the first Westerners to arrive. The full story and some great photos are here. (Ira just happens to be a great photographer as well.) His vivid account of the conditions, the work they did and the corruption they encountered is very educating and gives a real sense of what it was like to be first on the scene in the middle of such massive destruction. His account of the corruption is scandalous — the level of the callousness on the part of the Indonesian officials is astounding.

I also recieved a number of links from my coach and friend Dana Roc to images and video of the tsunami close up. The video is intense, especially the last one taken by a person literally caught in the water on the second floor of an ocean-front restaurant. (Note: Be warned that some of the images are fairly graphic.)

Pic / Pic / Pic / Pic / Pic / Pic / Pic / Pic / Pic / Pic / Pic / Pic / Pic / Pic / Pic / Pic / Pic / Pic / Pic / Pic / Pic / Pic / Pic / Pic / Pic / Pic / Pic / Pic / Pic / Pic

Video / Video / Video / Video / Video / Video / Video

(Note that all video is in Windows Media Player format.)

The casual power of the ocean and so much devastation caused by a tiny extra shrug of the earth’s movement. The unprepared panic of those caught up in a frighteningly fast torrent of water. The surreal and massive swath of destruction. The thousands of lives ended in seconds/minutes, and the bloated and wrecked remains of those lives left scattered amid the floating wreckage. The callous and cynical treatment of it’s own people by the govt officials and the light of help and dignity and outrage brought by Westerners looking to ease the suffering.

It finally all sank in today. Lord, have mercy.

I don’t really need any more evidence, but if I did, surely getting gifts like this for my birthday would be more than enough to tag my wife as a Grade A Kool Kid And All Around Good Egg:

The pics definitely don’t do it justice, mostly because I don’t know how to take photos (yet). But, for those who are not Lord Of The Rings junkies like me, it’s a statuette, about 15” tall, of the demon Balrog creature from the Fellowship Of The Rings movie. Check out some much better pics. It’s apparently the last piece of an order Janece put in this time last year of a whole bunch of cool statuettes from LOTR, many of which were numbered/limited editions. And there’s even one more still on it’s way. Unbelievable. I’m planning to build a cabinet/display area for all of the statuettes when we set up our entertainment room so that we can enjoy them all the time instead of having them stashed in boxes.

It’s a rare gift to be with someone that shares my geeky pleasures for fantasy movies, graphic novels, computers, etc etc. — not just tolerates or indulges, but shares.

<contented sigh />

I have a great life.

I got blogmarked by TangerineSpeedo (aka. The Squatch) sometime in the last couple of days. (Thanks, by the way!) The name put me in mind of a few band names that my first band kicked around when we were forming in the early 90′s here in Seattle:

• Tweed Speedo
• Fuzzduck
• Apple Maggot Quarantine Violators
• Supermoist (named after the Betty Crocker product, with our first album being named, of course, Pudding In The Mix)
• Rosechamber

Thankfully, we ended up choosing Springchamber. (The link leads to the very first web site I ever did, btw.) As you can tell, we spent more time shooting the shit and being clever than we did writing songs, but it was fun nonetheless. I have that band to thank for four of the coolest men I know, their cool wives, and all of the associated crazy strange absurd times we had together over the 6 years we were together. Think about them makes me want to play in a band again.

As for Tweed Speedo, it never made it past the “guys, what do you think about this name?” round, but we did end up naming the horrific and sinister band van “Fuzzduck” because we knew a good thing when we saw it…

Good topic. I’ll do more on my bands later… Meanwhile, here’s a link to a Springchamber tune I wrote.

I’m 34 today. What this means in cold hard facts is a certain amount of cellular deterioration and change, and another collection of 365 days worth of experience stored away in my notoriously spotty memory pathways. What this means subjectively to me is a little more unclear.

I’ve always measured my relative accomplishments vs. age by the life of Jesus. He began his public ministry at age 33. At this point in his life, he had already driven the money changers from the temple, turned water into wine, gotten the blessing of John the Baptist, talked to the woman by the well, pulled off the miracle of the loaves and fishes, was well on his way to pulling together his crew of disciples, etc. etc. Get the full list here. Me? I’ve been in four bands, bought a couple of houses, moved a bazillion times, written most of a worship album, led worship, decided I wanted to back away from the faith, and decided that I wanted to come back. Let’s say I’ve been a little less focused that Christ by this point in his life. Which depressed me until I read this: Life expectancy in the city of Rome in the first century B.C. was about 20 years at birth. If the perilous years of infancy were survived, it rose to near 40, one-half our present expectations. (BTW, check out the rest of the slides. There’s some fascinating info about the change from agrarian societies to city-based societies.) I figure that means that Christ was actually more like 60 years old in our equivalent terms.

What does that all mean? Well, it could mean that I should probably stop comparing myself to the Son Of God unless I’m planning on a bunch of miraculous healings in the near future — you know, compare myself to someone a bit more on a level playing field. Or it could mean that I still have 30 years to futz around before I get serious about doing something important with my life…

All silliness aside, here’s my take-away freebie lesson today: I had a long walk this morning in the crisp, 27-degree weather with ice and snow crunching satisfyingly under my feet and my awesome dog Tova trotting along beside me. I knew that I had a warm comfortable bed waiting at home for me, occupied by my amazing wife and my beautiful little baby girl. I live with great in-laws and great pets in a comfortable house with a creek in the backyard that has grown quite a bit in value since we bought it three years. I can design. I can sing. I can write music. I can create art of various kinds. I have an incredible group of friends and acquaintances. I live in a country that is so free and open that I can reinvent myself and my work and life as many times as I want with no one to tell me otherwise. I’m relatively healthy and young. My life is good, and I can taste it’s goodness and I can thank the One who is the source of all goodness. This year, I will continually strive to not let selfishness or fear rob me of that taste, that sense of understanding how I’ve been graced with good things and how I am free to grace others in return.

For I have taken all this to my heart and explain it that righteous men, wise men, and their deeds are in the hand of God. Man does not know whether it will be love or hatred; anything awaits him. It is the same for all. There is one fate for the righteous and for the wicked; for the good, for the clean and for the unclean; for the man who offers a sacrifice and for the one who does not sacrifice. As the good man is, so is the sinner; as the swearer is, so is the one who is afraid to swear. This is an evil in all that is done under the sun, that there is one fate for all men. Furthermore, the hearts of the sons of men are full of evil and insanity is in their hearts throughout their lives. Afterwards they go to the dead. For whoever is joined with all the living, there is hope; surely a live dog is better than a dead lion. For the living know they will die; but the dead do not know anything, nor have they any longer a reward, for their memory is forgotten. Indeed their love, their hate and their zeal have already perished, and they will no longer have a share in all that is done under the sun.

Go then, eat your bread in happiness and drink your wine with a cheerful heart; for God has already approved your works. Let your clothes be white all the time, and let not oil be lacking on your head. Enjoy life with the woman whom you love all the days of your fleeting life which He has given to you under the sun; for this is your reward in life and in your toil in which you have labored under the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might; for there is no activity or planning or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol where you are going. I again saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift and the battle is not to the warriors, and neither is bread to the wise nor wealth to the discerning nor favor to men of ability; for time and chance overtake them all.

~ Ecclesiastes 9:1-11

Here ends the lesson.

Epilogue: I just found this site today via The Least Of My Worries at BlogExplosion (thanks much for the blogmark!). It’s called California Hammonds, and the wife of the couple died of cancer April 2004. (On the left side of the blog, click on “Cheryl Links” and then “Cheryl’s Farewell Letter”.) It’s an email she sent that the husband found after she died. It’s mostly personal notes to her family and friends, but these phrases stuck out: “Take care of each other; take care of each other; take care of each other”, and “Remember everyone: live, love, laugh.” OK, Cheryl — I’m listening. Thanks for the reminder.

I’m a word nerd. How do I know I’m a word nerd? Because not only do I let my mind wander around and make stuff like this up, but because when I do it makes me giggle:

• Obligheddon: The sudden and spontaneous act of blowing off all your responsibilities in one catalclysmic reaction to having overscheduled yourself.
• Q: Why did the dragon stop eating ultra-Orthodox Jewish villagers?
  A: Because they made his stomach feel too Hasidic.

That’s what you’re in for if you frequent this site. Don’t say I didn’t warn you…

Janece is one of those people that seems to have really symbolic, rich dreams that reveal her inner state in creative and metaphorically interesting ways. Me, I have action-adventure dreams. I’m talking chases, shoot-outs, spy games, battle scenes — basically, the kind of thing that could easily star Matt Damon as the well-meaning but very lethal lead hunk, and Vin Diesel as his kick-ass wise-cracking sidekick.

I don’t know why this is the case, but it’s been that way all my life. In my daytime life, I’m the mild-mannered, theology-reading, loves-to-cook pudgy web designer Paul Moment. At night, I’m John Woo directing heists, thrillers, multiple explosions and an arsenal that would put the Navy Seals to shame. It probably helps that I like watching action-adventure movies, but it’s not like I saturate myself with pseudo-macho imagery or music all day long. Even the graphic novels (“comic books”, in the common vernacular) I read are all pretty heady, well-crafted, mystical and pretty much devoid of machismo.

It’s all pretty fun and entertaining, except for the occasional bad dream. Like two nights ago, when I dreamt that Val Kilmer (yes, it actually “starred” Val Kilmer) was a super spy under deep cover in an apartment next to a nice lesbian couple who he’d made friends with. That all changed when one of the women saw him doing some secret spy thing. He tortured her in a very nasty, glad-I’ve-forgotten-the-details scene, and was about to start in on Ben Affleck (yes, that Ben Affleck) when I was thankfully awakened by my daughter having her very first 15 minute conversation with herself.

That’s not to say I always dream action-adventure. Apparently my brain likes to spice it up a bit with zombie dreams, a few flashbacks to younger years, a couple where I’ve written an unbelievably good song that I can’t remember when I wake up, and the very occasional dream that actually is memorable and has some bearing on my waking world. (Maybe I’ll spill a couple of those later if you’re good little boys and girls…) But on the whole, my nights are filled with shamelessly shallow and forgetable popcorn flicks. Sign of maturity? I don’t know…

…of the blog variety. I took my template and customized it for her. The layout’s pretty portable, and with a few tweaks takes on a pretty different feel. She has a great blog, and it’s fun to keep up with her inquiring mind. Feel free to visit her frequently.

http://www.janecemoment.com