johnneese.com/blog

Here's a Flickr slideshow of my car being worked on at Rotary Performance in Garland, TX.

If you ever need to wind up and store a lengthy cord or cable, here's a video showing the "over-under" technique.

You simply must do it this way, comma, period. Learn this simple trick once, and you'll use it for the rest of your life. It's like tying your shoes, except easier...and it's that useful.

I may have linked to this in a previous post somewhere, but tonight I felt compelled to post it here (again), just to share one of my minor, yet undoubtedly useful skills.

For decades (literally), I have known this technique existed. I had seen it performed on occasion, usually by some low-ranking sound tech, but never had the need to interrupt someone who was so obviously busy doing their job. (It's not like people do this for fun...right?)

The other night (okay, it was several weeks ago) I was cleaning up the garage, and there they were: twisted and tangled in a poorly-wound mess. What's my first answer to any simple problem: speak with the interwebs.

Alas, the wonderful little 5min.com video we see here. What a great world we live in.

I watched my once-beloved "Smoking Gun" 1980 Mazda RX-7 disappear into the distance today. My longtime friend and fellow rotary enthusiast Shane is taking the torch once again, as we continue our tradition of swapping cars.

For those not familiar with my current situation, a brief summary: the city in which I live has experienced rapid growth in the last 5 years. As a result of the increased vehicle traffic, the street on which I live is being widened from a two-lane asphalt road (30' wide) to a five-lane divided roadway (90' wide). This has made it necessary for the city to purchase a number of houses to make room for "progress." I am one of the lucky homeowners facing the eminent domain acquisition.

By lucky, I mean "Wow, am I glad I don't have to live on this busy street any more." and "Gee, I never would have been able to sell my house in the current real estate market." and finally, "Cool, I get to move back to the city and take back what might pass as a social life amongst like-minded people."

This week I finally began the search for comfortable city-dwellings It has to be comfortable for both me AND my dog. "Comfortable" to me starts with finding good investment value, and for my dog, comfortable means a fenced backyard of fair size.

As with most projects of importance, this one comes with a deadline: I have 30 days after the closing to vacate...meaning there are only 28 days left. And if I don't find a sufficiently comfortable city dwelling in twenty-eight days, I will become a squatter.

Perhaps it would fulfill one of life's golden opportunities: In this case, re-enacting a few scenes from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I may presently be feeling a bit of Arthur Dent-like perspective. This is furthered by the fact that I will be traveling this weekend, exploring unfamiliar territory: Chicago. A night out in the windy city is certain to include one visit to the pub. Who knows who I'll meet. Ford? Zaphod? Trillian?

Photos from the Chicago weekender will follow soon, and stay tuned for tales of house-hunting in Dallas.

this looks like it could be used in useful uses.

Snowboard Dallas from John Neese on Vimeo.

Valentine's Day in 2004 brought unexpected amounts of snowfall in Dallas. For some strange reason, I knew it was going to be big. I think it may have been just high hopes combined with good fortune, but regardless, I was prepared.

Having lived here all my life, I knew a few people who knew a few places to check out. This particular park was on the other side of town, about 20 minutes in regular traffic. At 5:30am I took a few shots of the back yard and then loaded up the dog for our trip to the hill.

I was really stoked to ride my new snowboard. The riding part of an earlier trip to Colorado ended after one day and a torn AC ligament in my shoulder. This was going to be my last chance to check it out and break it in.
 
I only had about an hour before the locals saw me doing what I was doing (and where I was doing it), and I'm not a big fan of doing business with the police. The video is brief, as was my ride. I did, however, have a chance to scrape up a little baby ramp to play on.

Good times, indeed.

I love me some snowboarding...I love me some rally cars...and I love me some Primus.

When Ken Block (owner of DC Shoes, and pro Rally America driver) asks about how much speed he'll need to hit a big jump (in his CAR)...Eddie Wall says,  like a true rider, "Uh, yeah, I dunno, I'd pretty much just say straightline it."

Right on, Eddie. Right on. I'd pretty much stay out of the way.

No snowboarders were injured in the making of this video. However, Ken's Subaru teammate, Travis Pastrana, did have an unfortunate collision of his own a few weeks ago.

After a nasty weeklong battle with the flu, upgrading from MT 4.01a to MT 4.1 was nothing. There, it's done.

In more interesting news, this period of illness gave me more than enough time to rummage around the net in search of goodies: from new music to new underwear, and from purebred propaganda to pure drivel...it's all good, and I'll break it all down in my next post.

Until then, keep your eyes on the screen and both hands where I can see them.

Okay, so I almost had the site redesigned with custom, original CSS templates designed by: yours truly. For some reason, or perhaps several reasons, or possibly what are commonly called "circumstances beyond my control"...the site was never published.

So as of today, I have a new hosting provider, Dreamhost, and a new installation of Movable Type 4.01a...and I have a basic, out-of-the-box design template. Boring.

I've always been fearless when it comes to deconstruction, attentive to detail with regards to structure and function, and very lazy when it comes to production. I love tearing it down and taking it apart, I am fascinated by learning how it works and what it's made of, and I'm never quite finished when it comes to putting it all back together.

Maybe it's because I'm a bit of a perfectionist. If I can't make it work then I'll start over and try again. And again. And so on...

So since I am the only reader of this soon to be deconstructed blogging catastrophe, I'm asking myself, "Self, give yourself a break, okay?"

I think I will.

After all...I did get the thing running today. It took a few hours, but as you (I mean I) can see, it's up, and it's working. So "Yay, me!" and goodnight.