A Blog Worth Reading

Rich Pav 3 Comments

Miles Levin was 19 years old when he died of a rare form of pediatric cancer a few days ago. He kept a blog at hospital sponsored web site for people receiving medical treatment and their families. There’s a write up about him on CNN that I just came across, so I hunted down his blog, which is buried rather deep and can’t be linked to because you have to register as a user to access it. But here’s one of his posts from two years ago:

July 7th, 2005.

I went to the driving range the other day and I was thinking…
I was thinking how you start out with a big bucket full of golf balls, and you just start hitting away carelessly. You have dozens of them, each individual ball means nothing so you just hit, hit, hit. One ball gone is practically inconsequential when subtracted from your bottomless bucket. There are no practice swings or technique re-evaluations after a bad shot, because so many more tries remain. Yet eventually you start to have to reach down towards the bottom of the bucket to scavenge for another shot and you realize that tries are running out. Now with just a handful left, each swing becomes more meaningful. The right technique becomes more crucial, so between each shot you take a couple practice swings and a few deep breaths. There is a very strong need to end on a good note, even if every preceeding shot was horrible, getting it right at the end means a lot. You know as you tee up your last ball, “This is my final shot, I want to crush this with perfection; I must make this count.” Limited quantities or limited time brings a new, precious value and signficance to anything you do. Live every day shooting as if its your last shot, I know I have to.

I found out today 5 year survival rates are just 20%.

[tags]recommendation[/tags]

Dinner with Oliver

Rich Pav

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We’re at an izakaya ordering all the bizarre foods: sliced pig snout, raw horse meat, fried chicken skin, grilled bait, and potatoes with fish egg sauce.
And, of course, we’re giving our livers a workout: beer, shochu and now sake.

Sleeping Tony

Rich Pav

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【GPS情報】 http://walk.eznavi.jp/map/?datum=0&unit=0&lat=+36.10.21.32&lon=+139.42.37.22&fm=0
Just testing to see what happens if I send this to the blog.
Look at the legs on that kid. He’s going to be tall like his old man.

At the dentist

Rich Pav 7 Comments

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Tony unfortunately inhereted his mother’s teeth and gets cavities all the time. I, on the other hand, have never had one.
Our dentist is high-tech. X-rays show up instantly on a laptop and get stored on a server instead of a file cabinet.
[tags]moblog, photo, Tony[/tags]

Regaining my youth is killing me.

Rich Pav 2 Comments

There’s a definite pattern to events when Oliver and I meet up.

  1. We eat till it hurts.
  2. We drink till we’re about to burst at the seams.
  3. I fall asleep outside of Koga station.

Oliver has a superpower I wish I had: the ability to strike up a conversation with anyone, and optionally get them to buy him free drinks if he’s thirsty. Perhaps you can guess by the fact that I haven’t put out a podcast since it was -10 degrees outside, but in real life I’m a very quiet person; the diametrical opposite of gregarious when there’s more than two other people around. It’s been almost 40 years and I still can’t decide whether to embrace my neuroses or take up some kind of heavy addiction to counterbalance them. (It would have to be something inexpensive. That’s what makes choosing one so difficult.)

We ended last night in a crowded basement bar that had a touch screen MP3 jukebox, on which we took turns trying to play the worst song ever. I actually broke the machine with my selection. It would play Barry Manilow’s Copacabana all the way through, crash, reboot and play it again. And again. And again. It was the sound of victory.

Obon and other stuff

Rich Pav 4 Comments

This week is Obon, the yearly holiday season similar to Dia de los muertos in Mexico, when people go back to their hometowns to visit living relatives and spruce up the graves of dead ones. It’s believed that the spirits of your dead relatives come back to visit, which is a nice thing to believe–you never feel too distant from the ones you’ve lost. There are many local “bon odori” festivals that involve dancing, taiko drumming, eating, drinking, etc. People take off work en masse, and many banks, city halls, supermarkets and small stores are closed. This is also the time of year when traffic jams miles and miles long make the news.

I don’t have off today, but my wife does, and she’s is taking our kids to see the new Harry Potter movie, which means I’ll have to download watch it by myself later.

Last Friday Oliver dragged took me to a live house to listen to a singer/songwriter he met during his travels. Let me say this–although I do like some music loud, to which my father will attest, there’s a point where “loud” becomes “way too loud.” When the venue is in the basement of a building behind two sets of vacuum-sealed soundproof doors, it’s a good sign that your eardrums are in for some serious punishment. I used my sound isolating earbuds for earplugs and it was still too loud. It was sparking my “fight or flight” response, and I spent half the time in retreat on the opposite, quiet side of the double doors and the other half wanting to pick a fight with an innocent bystander. On the bright side, I took full advantage of the “all you can drink” deal that was included in the entrance fee and spend the night curled up in a dumpster outside Koga station. (I nicknamed one rat “Fifi” and the other one “Cuddles.”)

So here I am at work today, having no luck finding a function in JavaScript for converting HTML entities like & and ” back into their proper characters. It looks like you have to roll your own. Stupid language.

Oliver and I almost recorded a podcast, but I was too inebriated and in a pretty foul mood. We started one before the gig, but it wasn’t turning out all that well so I’ll throw it in the chumbucket later.

[tags]music, Oliver, anecdote, podcasting, geek stuff, work, family, holidays[/tags]