The weather begins to warm up and that means yard work. Â Last year we plowed up a large chunk of the back yard and planted grass since previous actions had ruined most of it. Â (Pro tip: putting a large tarp on a section of your yard for a couple of weeks actually kills all the grass under it.) Â The grass has done very well and I look forward to doing a bit of reseeding to fill in the few patches here and there that exist. Â With the chunk of grass out of the way, the next phase begins, which is tree removal.
Now, I like trees. Â I hate pine trees and sweetgum trees. Â The reasons I hate those two sorts of trees is as follows. Â Pine trees are very tall, provide no useful shade, and shed pine straw and pine cones, neither of which I want in my yard. Â Leaves are fairly easy to clean up with a rake or a blower. Â Pine straw is a pain in the ass to clean up, which is probably why people use it for ground cover, since it sticks to the ground so well. Â Sweetgums, on the other hand, have these little tiny smaller-than-a-golf-ball sized pine cones which I prefer to think of as booby traps. Â They drop off the tree, hide in the grass, waiting for you to come along barefoot and cripple you. Â These nefarious trees bring us to our topic: chainsaws.
Cutting down trees with a chainsaw is awesome… as long as you judge the height of the tree properly and you don’t destroy your fence. Â I haven’t destroyed my fence yet, and don’t plan to, but I am fully aware that it could happen. Â Eventually I’ll have to pay someone to come get the big pines because I’m not about to scale a hundred foot or taller tree and begin taking it down in sections. Â For now though, I’m taking down all the little ones. Â But I’ve come to realize that despite being in decent shape and actually working out daily, managing a chainsaw requires a completely different set of muscles than pretty much everything else in my live. Â After a short period of cutting, my arms feel like jello from the strain and vibration. Â The yard is getting clear, however, so the price is worth it.
I can’t wait to borrow the neighbor’s chipper to cut up all these branches. Â Also, since we’ll have so much wood we can’t chip, I’m thinking we’ll need to have a whole bunch of bonfire parties.
This is my one-thousand three-hundred thirteenth post on this blog. Â My name is Jason, also the name of the star of the Friday the 13th series of movies. Â My wife was born on the 13th of March. Â Back in the days when I managed a video store, my own personal account listed my address as “1313 Mockingbird Lane”, an address made famous by the Munsters. Â My favorite holiday is Halloween, which is on the 31st, which is 13 in reverse. Â And if you are into that sort of thing, you might know that we are currently living in the 13th b’ak’tun, which will draw to a close toward the end of 2012, which may or may not be a significant thing. Â Thirteen has always been a good and lucky number for me.
I don’t believe in signs, though I see them everywhere. Â The fact is, you can do it with any number. Â If you decide that 27 is your lucky number, you’ll suddenly begin noticing all the 27s that appear in your life. Â You’ll even being doing things that force 27s into your life. Â I know a person whose lucky number is 14, and while 14s do randomly appear in her life she also makes a number of decisions based on 14s. Â If offered two options, one that contains a 14 and one that does not, she’ll choose the 14 and see it as being a sign when she could easily have chosen the other. Â Personally, I try not to make decisions based on 13s, and yet, here I am, rambling about 13s in post 1313 on my blog.
3" by 3" by 3" of literal inspiration
Borders is closing a bunch of book stores. Â (Yeah, I’m done with 13s and moving along with no segue at all.) Â Of all the brick and mortar stores around they’ve been my favorite because of their finer separation of categories, specifically in having a horror section as opposed to splitting up horror between mystery, sci-fi/fantasy and general fiction. Â They also have a location that shares a building with a movie theater I frequent. Â When we go to a movie, we always end up browsing before and sometimes after, and often end up buying a book or two (or five or ten). Â The only good thing about the store closings are the discounts. Â Lately, paperback books haven’t been seeing much of a discount on Amazon. Â A $6.99 mass market paperback will be $6.99 on Amazon, so picking them up in a store can actually be better, especially if you have the store discount card and get 10% off everything. Â With the store closings, most stuff is 25% off already, and they are still honoring the store discount card, so it makes picking up a few paperbacks a good deal. Â And of course, a sale means more serious browsing, looking for books you might not normally buy at all but will if it’s 50% off. Â I bought The Writer’s Block (pictured). Â I promise to use it and post the results. Â Despite my good fortune with the sale, the closing Borders locations will be missed, and since the only remaining Atlanta locations are the ones that are too far away for a casual visit, Borders may have lost me as a customer for good, and that is a shame.
A few weeks ago I went to a place called Hemingway’s down at the Marietta Square to see a band called 7 sharp 9. Â With no expectations at all, I was fairly well blown away by their performance. Â Being a band playing in a bar, they primarily stuck to playing great bar band music, rock favorites from various decades. Â They played well and even threw in a few twists, the biggest surprise being a mash up of Prince’s Kiss and Sir Mix-a-lot’s Baby Got Back. Â Even the smattering of original tunes they played (just one per set) were good enough that we picked up copies of all three of their albums. Â They made a fan out of me in just one night. Â It looks like they’ll be back at Hemingway’s in April and I plan to be there to see them again. Â To the right is a very short video of them playing a cover of Blister in the Sun at a bar in Destin, FL.
I’ve been writing for Shakefire for a bit over a month now and I’m enjoying it. Â Links to what I’ve written can be found each week in my A Week of Tweets posts on Sundays. Â So far I’ve had the good fortune of enjoying everything I’ve reviewed for one reason or another, but I fear that is going to end this week as the next two CDs I’ve been listening to for review have been uninspiring and borderline awful. Â I don’t like giving bad reviews but I like being dishonest less, so I’ll probably be lambasting a couple of artists and then maybe I can get back to stuff I enjoy.
And finally, is you have a few dollars you can spare, or even if you have a few dollars you think you can’t spare, consider tossing them toward the Red Cross for their efforts in Japan. Â Every dollar helps, and with the earthquake, the tsunami, the nuclear power plant, the aftershocks, the volcano… they can use all the help they can get right now.
I don’t maintain a blogroll here, or even links of any kind to other sites unless they are within posts. Â However, in a fit of narcissism I decided that I would post a list of links to all the sites that are contained within my Google Reader. Â So without further ado, presented here in alphabetical order, and in one giant ugly paragraph, is what I read:
I once received an F on a creative writing assignment because my “scary Halloween story” about kids being killed by the ghosts of fallen soldiers as they crossed an ancient battle field after dark “missed the point of the assignment and the spirit of the subject.” Â Sometimes I think I would have done better in school if my school had been better for me.
These are the things I think about when I consider having a child…
The animation is cool, but this is only part of the talk. Â The full thing is here.
Design in business tends to be a collaborative effort. Â Mainly this is because nine times out of ten the person with the idea doesn’t have the ability, and the people with the ability aren’t often focused enough to have the ideas. Â Not to offend either set, but creativity and business sense appear to be, in most people, diametrically opposed. Â That means the more of one you have the less of the other you have.
So, if you are the idea guy, you take your thoughts to someone else.  You’ve laid out the parameters and explained what you wanted.  The designer has gone off and done what you asked and is showing it to you.
The first thing to remember when entering a design process is that until you’ve actually released, you can change anything. Â Even after you release you can probably still change things. Â So when your designer brings you the first pass at implementing your idea, the first thing out of your mouth shouldn’t be pointing out how they totally screwed it up. Â This is a first draft, this is the collaboration part where the designer is trying to understand what you want, in his medium, and you help him. Â Until you learn to literally project your thoughts into someone else’s head, you have to realize that what you dreamed up and what you put on paper as specifications are not remotely identical, and the translation from your brain to paper and then from paper to the designer’s brain is going to cause variation. Â That’s why the two of you need to work together.
Don’t put your designer on the defensive and lead with criticism. Â Look at the work and begin by talking about what you like. Â What elements appear to be going in the right direction. Â And then, when you are done, begin being critical, however, remain constructive. Â If you don’t like the format of something, don’t just say, “I hate that. It’s ugly.” Â Try instead something like, “The words are right like I specified, but I’m not loving the font you chose. Can you show me a few others?” Â If you don’t understand something, ask — the designer is likely happy to explain where he started and how he got there, and if he’s off the mark you should correct the error in his path and help him get to where you want. Â Of course, that doesn’t mean you sit in the designer’s work space and tell him how to do his job.
Just keep in mind how you would react if someone came along and told you how stupid your idea was versus them telling you it’s a good idea, promising, but there are these one or two details you might want to reconsider before you get in too deep. Â In other words, the Golden Rule.
I’ve been a big fan of No More Kings from the moment I heard Sweep the Leg. Â Even bigger once I’d seen them live and listened to the entire first album. Â Then bigger still after getting my copy of their second album and listening through that. Â Both albums are always on my MP3 player and I love every song. Â That’s pretty rare, to love every song by a band. Â Even some of the “best bands in the world” like U2 or The Rolling Stones have a few songs I can’t tolerate. Â But No More Kings has joined Better Than Ezra and Seven Mary Three in the short list of “can do no wrong” for me.
They don’t have a new album out (though I’m hoping for one), I haven’t seen them live recently, nor do they appear to be coming to town anytime soon. Â So why am I talking about them?
Because it’s Zombie Wednesday here at Aim for the Head, I didn’t have any other zombie news to post, and I love this song (not the video so much, it’s not done by the band, but it lets me hear the song, so it has that going for it):
All of their stuff, in my opinion, is worth a listen. Â Many of his songs are just awesome as I’ve written about before. Â And for just $16 you can get bothalbums.
