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Let's talk holes. I seem to be finding a lot of them these days. There's holes in my sneakers, holes in my boat shoes, holes in my logic, and holes in my time. I ripped a nice big hole in my bathing suit when I was climbing Mt. Champlain this weekend. I can't wait to see what an idiot I looked like with my Internet all hanging out through the gaping crotch rip.

I just picked up a new pair of hybrid hiking boots, which will become my new sneakers. They were cheap, and made by that Columbia fashionable outdoors company. I don't really like the idea of using outdoor gear as everyday fashion, but I need something and vans just aren't cutting it. The inexpensive designs look terrible,. I also need to face the fact that I'm not a punk skater from Rhode Island. I'm a scruffy, lazy, outdoors person from New Hampshire (with roots in Maine).

Perhaps the peak experience of my soggy trip to Acadia was a few hurried moments spent at the Atlantic Brewing Company. The people were so nice - so Acadia - highly educated and relaxed. One dude, a self-proclaimed neo-luddite, recognized the case on JC's Case XC sweatshirt as CWRU. I wouldn't be certain that could be said for people some 25 miles away from Cleveland.

I really appreciated how these folks could seem relaxed and enjoy working on a Sunday. I get frustrated and sick of my 40 hours during the weekdays. I can't imagine how satisfying it would be to work at a job where I wasn't bothered by off hours. I'm sure part of it is the setting, and the fact that profitability isn't necessarily the premier goal. At least, I can't imagine that they make too much money running one of three breweries on the island. Admittedly, they have the best distribution and a brewery that looked to have a similar capacity to the Sam Adams pilot facility that can't supply all of Boston.

Regardless. The harsh comparison between the relaxed, joyous work - and my stressful, frustrating, and ill managed job has me wondering. How much longer will I let other people set my clocks? When will I just tell the real world to screw it, head to Maine and start my own small business?

I don't really mind my job. I'm just working on the least interesting project in applications R&D. It's just a money pit that keeps our largest customer happy. I'll be developing experience and become an expert on a rather boring product and its next generation replacement. I might be psyched about the Pellicon 3, but the real advancements are in the device design and manufacturing process. There's no new separations technology at work or play. I am simply a supporting player with no real ownership of the product or project.

Why is it that every others entrance in this journal begins with I? Miss Lavoie would kill me for this inarticulate self-referential writing. Pride in workmanship, and in ones craft is a seemingly lost concept. The industrial revolution disenfranchised many a worker, but the common historical analysis has been suggested that this is a working class problem. Unfortunately, it’s not so limited.
posted by Ben at (0) comments 8:06 PM

 
Here are my two points of frustration for the day

1) During a teleconference with our largest customer my boss joked that I almost quit over the work required to set up a co-flow system. This did not seem professional, or reflect my actual feelings. Setting up the system wasn't an issue. It was squeezing a test into the time-table (there were set-backs). There still are. The system can't turn off two of the pumps.

2) I had forgotten that I shouldn't plan trips with runners without providing dual modes of transport, because runners don't take vacation from their running and it always feels awkward entertaining myself while they take hours to train. Who wants to drive six hours to spend half a day running?
posted by Ben at (0) comments 8:53 PM

 
"Everyday that you see me is the worst day of my life" - Dan on life at Millipore
posted by Ben at (0) comments 8:32 PM

 
11 hours of straight experimentation = one long day. Unfortunately, I'll be looking at another similar experiment next week. My boss seems to be realizing that he's working me too hard and offered the comp day off. I'll take him up on it sooner or later, but I want to use that day to my advantage. I don’t need a day off to chill, ill and the like. I want to kick it, to travel, to hike. Something.

UM 6/5/04 from Bell's Brewery is a most excellent show. Pick your nose!!!!!!

In other news, I received my check from Burlington.


Still, I would rather have seen the show but I can use this money for some osrt of evil (I'll probably end up ending it all back to Burlington eventually).

Holly crap. My check came from Townsend, MA. Sneaky Phish, headquartering their production company in MA so that I'll never receive a check from Burlington.
posted by Ben at (0) comments 8:07 PM

 
Current Music: Umphrey's McGee 12/6/04 - Jimmy Stewart

I'm typing away idle moments waiting to hear Kate's PQE news and listening to an old, unlabeled show that I burnt some time ago. This Stewart is superb. Like all Stewarts the focus of the improv is on generating meaningful and moving composition. This Stewart contains sections that would become Bridgeless. They're slower, spicier, and transcendent - especially as they shift into some jam that's a space techno Eleanor rigby. We'll it's not so much Eleanor righb - Pony's just teasing the bass line.

The new test system that I'm using at work has a terrible process control system. It took over an hour to stabilize for one stupid data point. I was pulling my hair out. Tomorrow's dextran experiment will be infinite in length. I hate unpaid and underappreciated overtime.
posted by Ben at (0) comments 6:13 PM

 
Kate is in the living room learning, reviewing, preparing and I'm scrounging for food, reflecting, and pondering the nature of time. Even with long days, and a busy work schedule. I have time to write. Why don't I take that opportunity? It seems as though I squander my evenings with idle pursuits. I don’t even watch that much television. Where does the time go?

I know where yesterday went. It was a high speed burn up the Ammunusuc Ravine trail, over Mt. Washington and down the Jewell. It was excellent. Ben was in town for his fantasy football draft, and I enjoyed the opportunity to spend time with my distant, disconnected friend. All of my friends seem separated by geography, scheduling and routine. These are moments of division, indeed.

The weather was quite cooperative yesterday supporting our high speed approach, ascent, and departure. The whole adventure took much less time than I had anticipated. I can not complain. The waterfalls were filled with post hurricane rain water - they were spectacular. I took some photos. Of course the sublime beauty will be lost; obscured by poor camera work and inadequate film/equipment. C'est la vie. Mountains and moments are intangible, ephemeral things. The heart of the experience can't be captured and transmitted any better than a phish show.

We live in a culture of vague approximations and virtual realities. Concert dvds home videos; frozen moments - not quite as good as the real thing but better at supporting nostalgia than fading, jaded memory. It's probably a good thing, provided that we don't get lost in recollection and loose time for reflection and the vital, new experiences.

Pumpkin ice cream and micro-brewed root beer must be combined. I concluded that last night at Emack and Bolio's as I fumbled through a list of a million flavors to find some exciting soda pairing. Who would have thought? It certainly seemed weird, and potentially disastrous. Fortunately, the spices in the pumpkin ice cream and the woodiness of the root beer were incredibly complimentary. It was most excellent.
posted by Ben at (1) comments 11:29 AM

 
"It's the music that elephants make, that's elephant jazz" - My reaction to and review of Critter's Buggin's Guest.

Yes, I received a ton of interesting cds and a dvd for my birthday but the only new addition to my collection that I see fit to review is a used, out of print cd, from some sort of Seattle jazz band. It doesn't really make sense. I suppose I could pontificate upon the virtues of Leo Kotke's 16 and 12 String guitar or any number of jazz cds - but I won't.

I'm more interested in writing about how I didn't spend enough time at the lake this year. yes there was Phish and other fun - but I really missed out on the most relaxing part of my year. The nothingness on Golden pond is sublime. But now it's cold and the docks are all ashore. It's over. The opportunity has settles for a seasonal slumber. It’s not quite hibernating, but isn't really fully functional.
posted by Ben at (0) comments 9:20 PM

 
In an effort to provide fair and balanced coverage ....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3621608.stm

It's not to surprising.

What is shocking is that I'm more interested in writing about the 6/5/04 Umph show than attempting to follow the republican convention.

This particular UM show is noteworthy because it's from bell's Brewery in Kalamazoo. I've never been, but I've sampled the product. It's top notch. Now, given my experience seeing the boys at the Colorado Brewing Company in Danbury, I'd expect a high energy - but not exactly stupendous show as the band becomes increasingly intoxicated.... well that isn't what happens at least not yet. The open with a Kitchen that just breaks open into an awesome, rocking jam. Then they find their way into Tinkles – which shifts from the triumphant metal to some sick funk jam before wrapping up. It's just unreal. Top notch show.

On the convention front, I'm not following because I don’t think anything will happen that's too interesting. Maybe Bush' speech will be worthwhile... other than that, I expect very little that's interesting. It's unfortunate that Bush can't revise his stance on stem cells but he needs to be able to call Kerry a flip flopper without giving him an easy retort. Two years ago, Bush's stem cell policy was a tremendous compromise between science and fears of technology going too far. We haven't started farming human embryo's yet. Now it's time to take the next logical step and open more lines of cells.

Of course, I'm not voting for Kerry over a tidily bit of science. I just don't trust Kerry on issues of national defense. Europe has no balls. They haven't solved terrorist problems. They just keep terrorism to "acceptable" levels. the only tolerable number of lives that we can loose to terrorism is 0. Bush gets it. Kerry doesn't. End of story. We need a Texan with two pistols pointed to the sky to handle the bull headed Islamic fundamentalists.
posted by Ben at (0) comments 8:47 PM

 
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/09/02/space.signals.reut/index.html

Great googly moogly!

Maybe it's a bit too premature, but I'm getting excited about the notion that we might have a hint that there is an extraterrestrial civilization. It certainly beats complaining about work. Summing up the nothing I did over my weekend (nothing = good).

The key things in life are people and time. It's the way we shape our lives around time - the holes - the way things get busy and ebb. Pacing things like music, constructing space in our temporal lives the way musicians construct space between flurries of notes and quiet periods. It's that intangible magic...
posted by Ben at (0) comments 1:05 PM