Unleashing the Awesome

So it's been awhile since I posted here.  It's not due to a lack of interest -- more a lack of time.

Oh hey -- I totally forgot to mention that my website, Fontosaurus, is back up and running.  Just added the browse-by-style function this morning.

Free fonts for the downloading!

...for not posting here more frequently.  Things have been kinda hectic lately.  Stress about the cats and their consumption of the contaminated food (though both seem to be doing well).  Racing season starts (for me) in about a month, and I'm not in the form I need to be.  Will be re-starting my part-time hours at the bike shop soon.  And I have to migrate all the stuff from my webhosting service over to my new (old) server this weekend.

See, I've got the fontosaurus.com site ready to go.  It's just that my retarded webhosting service cannot figure out how to get Rails up and working.  Thus, I did some talking to dad, and he's loaning me a new server (my own private affair) and some free co-loc in his datacenter for me to run my site on.  This weekend, I suspect that in addition to everything else, I'll be burning the midnight oil to get it all done and rockin'.

So yeah...you can see why I haven't posted here lately.  I suspect that'll change after the weekend's over.

So as you may have heard, there's a huge pet food recall ongoing because something in the food is killing people's pets -- kidney and liver failure.  Turns out that 3oz. foil packs of Eukanuba are among the contaminated foods.

Guess what I've been feeding Mooch and Scout intermittently over the last few months as a treat?

Yeah.  Guess which two cats have had some vomiting problems?  Guess which older cat has been losing weight?

Guess which two cats need to get to the vet for a kidney/liver function check?

I'm shitting bricks.  I swear to god, if there's anything wrong with these two, I'm going to lose my shit.

I got tagged by The Eugene on this one, so I'll go along with it:

01. What is your favourite word? Derailleur.

02. What is your least favourite word? Crash.

03. What turns you on [creatively, spiritually or emotionally]? Words -- well strung-together words.

04. What turns you off? Willful ignorance.

05. What is your favourite curse word? Motherfucker!

06. What sound or noise do you love? The clicking of a mechanically-switched keyboard.

07. What sound or noise do you hate? The ringing of a telephone.

08. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt? Professional bicycle racer.

09. What profession would you not like to do? Lawyer.

10. If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?  "ABANDON HOPE ALL---ahhhh, who am I kidding?  I can't even keep a straight face!  Sure!  We've got room for atheists up here!"

So I got tagged by W. B. Mook on the tell us five things about yourself meme, and I'm complying.  I won't be able to tag anyone else, as I have the woes of a small neighborhood.  So, that said, my five things about me:

1. Once upon a time, I was a soldier.  I left active duty in December of 1993, and shifted to the Reserves (and then the National Guard when my Reserve unit was deactivated).  It's been almost ten years since I last put on a uniform, but it's still a very important part of my life.  It taught me responsibility, discipline, and how to confront my fears.  It also left me with arthritis in my ankles and knees, which was in full swing by age 30.  There were times when I was absolutely miserable, but I still wouldn't trade the experience for anything.
2. One of the things that I came to realize about myself recently concerns my attraction to esoteric art forms.  Back in 1995, when the web was young, I became a web designer -- mostly for fun, but then for a career after I graduated.  When it became clear that everyone and their brother was slinging HTML and Photoshop, I lost interest in it.  Writing is slightly different in that it's a very personalized pursuit, it's done in private, and you don't want to be watched while it's in-progress -- characteristics it shares with masturbation.  I don't see myself completely giving up on writing primarily because while everyone does it, not everyone does it well.  And lastly, of course, is font design -- a very esoteric art form, that I've been getting back to pursuing after a few years off.  I started that in a self-taught manner, and then learned from one of the greats.
3. I sometimes waver between atheism and agnosticism.  For the most part, I don't really believe -- combine a few years as a philosophy minor with a strong degree of incredulity that there's some grey-bearded dude who lives up in the sky and takes a day-to-day interest in what each one of us does and thinks, and quite frankly, I think you have some strong material for mocking the overly-religious types.  Sometimes I waver toward that agnosticism -- the harmless area in which you can say, "oh, I'd believe if you could give me empirical evidence" and not have to declare that you think someone's goofy little delusion is just that.  You save yourself a lot of withering glares.  Those waverings are usually at the sight of some amazing natural display -- aurora, sunsets, the stars moving across the night sky -- and then I realize that as a human being, I wasn't intelligently designed to enjoy this, and it wasn't intelligently designed to please me.  The reason I can take pleasure in the beauty of nature is that all the evolution that led to me here today grew and blossomed in that environment...and I'm part of all that.  So I stay atheist and still enjoy the non-directed, non-deity-oriented miracle of the world around me.
4. At one point, I was an outright, no-social-skills, Dungeons-and-Dragons-playing, sports-fearing, can-barely-dress-himself, geek.  That said, I'm still a geek -- I can configure a webserver in my sleep, I learn new programming languages when the mood strikes me, I love science fiction (but I hate Star Trek -- go fig).  Now I think of myself as more half-geek/half-jock.  I like rock climbing as much as I like reading about alien planets.  I can talk about the pros and cons of the 3-4 defense as easily as I can talk about the philosophical implications of Bladerunner.  I've gotten to the point where I know more about bicycle racing than I do about math.
5. The volume of my reading is measured in metric fuckloads.  It's an odd day when I don't blow through 40-50 pages, and on days when I don't, I feel very off-kilter and confused.  I blame my parents, and Dr. Seuss, for this.  Growing up, I always got books when I asked for them, and always had a library card.  I can't stop reading.  Holy crap.  I really can't stop.
   

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So there's this conversation in a Livejournal community called "bikepirates" -- the original poster is talking about leaving on a cross-country bike trip in two months, and wants to DIY a set of panniers.  I think this is a horrible idea.  If you'd like to follow along with it, the discussion is here.

For a brief moment, I felt a little sad.  Someone I vaguely know on Livejournal is opening their own bike shop.  Most of you in my neighborhood don't know me particularly well, but those that do are well aware that I want a shop of my own.

The process is a tough one -- it's the financing that's going to be a brutal step.  I have a name, I have a plan, I have people who want to work for me.  I just don't have the money to launch the fucker.

The sadness I mentioned?  A brief moment of "I'll never be able to do this" despair.

I'll get over it and move on.

I've got a new post up, but it's at DB.N:
http://www.danbailey.net/?p=51