hobbies

Junk Mail and Me

I get junk mail. You get junk mail. We all get junk mail. But lately, I’ve noticed a pattern. It’s hard not to notice when you’re getting the amount I’m getting, actually. But I’ve taken a new tactic here. I’d like to tell you about it.

So WAMU has been sending me shit, I guess to sign up for their credit card, or open a bank account with them. They have two separate mailers they send out. I get both of them. Two or three a week. Let me repeat that so you’ll understand better. I get both of their mailers, two or three times a week. That’s four to six pieces of mail from them, per week. I am not exaggerating here, dudes. It’s insane! I also get an envelop from Overland Mortgage at least once every two weeks. Clearly not as frequent as the wamu shit, but still enough to notice.

(more…)

  • Post author:
  • Post category:diary
  • Reading time:3 mins read

Expensive Hobbies

I’ve kind of gotten into this photography thing. I have always had an eye for it, and a desire to get passionate about it, but just never had the equipment. Well, now I do. Anyway, I’ve been taking pictures of everything lately. You know, you have to take a hundred shots to get ten good ones. If you’re lucky. Sometimes it just doesn’t work. Well, I haven’t gotten to a level yet where I can make an exposure work no matter what. But I almost always can see when there’s potential for a good one.

A picture I took with the D40So I went to the dive shop the other day to get some equipment. This – uh, by the way, is a subject change here. Now I’m talking about SCUBA. A buddy of mine from work is a PADI instructor and runs classes at this dive shop. So he got me a discount on the SCUBA gear I needed, because I’m taking a dive trip here next month. I’ll be diving for sharks and buried treasure down in Key West. That’s okay, you don’t need to be jealous.

(more…)

  • Post author:
  • Post category:diary
  • Reading time:3 mins read

Join the Alliance

Some time last year, Kimbre and I inadvertantly formed the Huge Shades Alliance. Bring back beauty with offensively large shades™. Or some such. Well, her legacy lives on, and I’m on a mission to find the largest, most ridiculous – yet still stylish and somehow not gay – shades I can find. It has become a hobby of mine. Looking at and trying on the largest shades I can find in an effort to bring back the beauty.

How, you say? Well it’s really simple. The larger they are, the more space they reflect. And in those reflections you can’t see the ugly and inhumane scum we as humans have become. That’s probably kind of a lame (if not hippy) answer, but work with me. It’s all I got.

(more…)

  • Post author:
  • Post category:diary
  • Reading time:4 mins read

The Fall of a Masterful Empire

When I was young, I collected Hot Wheels cars. Matchbox too. I remember those John Cleese commercials where he’d slip one into his shirt pocket, and that always made me feel so good. I made my mother buy me a white dress shirt with two breast pockets just so I could stand in front of the mirror and slip into my pockets my two favorite Matchbox/Hot Wheels cars again and again.

I collected them. Like I do guitars, books, Elvis Costello albums, tattoos and Evan bottles, I collected every one of them I could find. They had realistic die-cast metal miniature automobiles with vibrant colors and awesome chrome wheels (and sometimes flake paint). It was magical when my mom would take me to the Wal-Mart and I had a five-dollar bill in my pocket. I could buy five new cars. They were 89 cents apiece. The only problems I ran into back then was which five or six to get. There were so many to choose from, and I knew that at any minute, Matel could go out of business and the Wal-Mart could burn down, and I’d be forever kept from completing my collection. So I had to select the best five.

(more…)

  • Post author:
  • Post category:diary
  • Reading time:4 mins read

The Great Dove Hunt of 2007

My Pop and I packed up and headed out early Friday morning, the last day of August, heading west. We followed my buddy Stout and his brother David out to the deer lease for opening day of dove season. Wait, that should be capitalized. Opening Day of Dove Season.

So we got out there Friday night and got everything unpacked and settled in at the lake house. We then sat out on the patio and tossed washers for about two hours while drinking beers like we were in a contest. The point of all this was to do as little as possible. To get away for a weekend out into the country – to do as little as possible… To disconnect. To unwind. It was so nice to be able to become one with nature. And the birds. The boids.

(more…)

  • Post author:
  • Post category:event
  • Reading time:3 mins read

Wrestlemania!

I went to my first wrestling match Saturday night! Well, that is to say I went to see a match for the first time. I didn’t participate in one. I’m not a wrestler. I mean – I wrestle with my four sisters and whatnot, but that’s not the point.

I live next door to this guy. We spend a lot of time sitting in his garage or by his pool, drinking and shooting the shoot. I’ve been wanting to go see him wrestle for a while, but our nights usually end up canceling out, as my band is usually playing somewhere. But I finally got to go check it out. I have to go through the entire night with you so you’ll get a feel of the atmosphere.

(more…)

  • Post author:
  • Post category:diary
  • Reading time:4 mins read

Goodbye Crater

Greetings friends and family of the Crater…

The Moon’s Crater Network has been alive and prosperous on the web for ten years now. It started as a single page on an AOL account and graduated to a tilde account at a dialup company in Abilene. Upon my discharge from the Air Force, I slid into a position at a web hosting company where I was given a dedicated Proliant 1850 Server with a RAID 5 and a meg pipe to the Internet. All for my own site. I thereby registered spacebrew.com for my humble online home. It’s gone through many changes and has seen many faces over the years. I once even turned it into a Star Wars fan site, though I’ll never publicly admit that. Many writers have come and gone, many columns have been posted and stolen and posted elsewhere. Many visitors came to visit and many memories were made here. During the Crater23 days, the site took more than 2000 unique visitor hits per week. Okay, I’m exaggerating a little bit. But not much.

The site(s) have seen many colors, have spawned many ideas, and have brought about inspiration in many other people to do the same thing. Some of these sites went on to become well known hard-hitters in the industry. Microsoft, Google, Amazon and FatXXX.com come to mind. Some of the writers here went on to pursue their own projects, never to be heard from again. For instance, none of you remember the catastrophe that was stellasite.com. I think I even paid for that domain name.

(more…)

  • Post author:
  • Post category:diary
  • Reading time:7 mins read