Conveniently Misplaced

I’m going to take this post to explain a little bit about myself. Mostly, I’m a rational human being. I tend to rely on facts and reasoning to make my decisions, not really accepting something because “that’s the way it is”. This is something that lead to a powerful internal struggle with my faith some years back, before I ended up on the path that I did. But during that quest of mine I explored many different options as far as what was out there.

Among them was astrology. Now, I know what you’re probably thinking: this is just some bullshit superstition mumbo-jumbo. And to a point, you’d be right. The horoscopes on your Facebook profile or in the newspaper are bullshit. Those creepy gypsy fortune tellers are probably bullshit as well. But when I talk about astrology, I’m talking primarily zodiac charts. I was a heavy skeptic at first, then the more time went by, the more I saw more and more coincidences in what people are like in correlation to when they were born. It sounds stupid and ridiculous. It doesn’t make sense, and I can’t explain it. 

I’ve found more and more symptoms of astrological compatibility as time goes by. From being able to gage how people will react based on their birthday to the people I’ve found myself attracted to. I know I’m not going to make any believers out of this post, but for those curios go pick up this book, it’s like a manual for people and has been most helpful in my journeys. Check it out.

So anyways, with this in mind, I happened to have a conversation struck up with my last night with one of my brother’s comrades from work. Me and this girl get to talking, and the more the conversation goes the more I feel like I’m having a conversation with myself. It wasn’t simply one of those instances where we have a lot in common as far as liking a lot of the same things, but this was an instance of almost everything we said to each other, be it our likes or dislikes, personalities, character flaws, wants, outlooks on life, etc. It was starting to weird me out so I cut her off mid-sentence and asked her what her birthday was, sure enough we had the same one. 

I found myself talking to my astrological doppleganger. It was strange, talking to someone who feels the same way on most things that I do. Its as though you can’t ask “How do you feel about ____”, because you already know.

I’m a bit curious how to handle someone exactly like myself. It’ll be interesting.

I don’t do a lot of personal posts any more. I don’t know why per-say, but I don’t. It’s weird because when you look at my earlier posts, they’re almost all personal. Now, they’re hardly ever personal. But I have a lot on my mind, so I’m doing one now.

It’s funny how much changes in a year and how much doesn’t. I was going over my postings from around this time last year. Much of my life personally is different. I’m not working right now. Im almost out of school, I’m working on what to do with my life, and I can’t make up my mind about how I feel about a lot.

No matter how hard I try, some things that I still felt a year ago I still feel even though I know that I shouldn’t. It’s not good for me. But I can’t help it. I wish there was something I cold do about it, but I can’t. Some old feelings just don’t go away. It sucks, and I wish there was something I could do about it. I find myself wondering “what if” a lot about decisions I made last year and how my life might be different because of it. I don’t have a lot of regrets about anything that I did. But I do question some of the decisions I made because looking back. In retrospect I wonder if I would be happier now. I wonder if I had taken more chances in some aspects in some instances or less chances in others that my life would be better.

I am fortunate to have so many people that I care about and that care about me. In many ways, I’m glad that things are the way they are. But in other ways it tares me up inside to think about it. To think about how some things could be different really makes me think. While a lot of people have gotten hurt in the path of events that have evolved over the past year and a half or so, I question weather or not I have been my biggest casualty. I have set myself up for disappointment too many times. I have been the bad guy too many times. I have put other people at risk for my own selfish good too many times. Looking back, I don’t really know what to say about it all.

For those, interested, this is the post that really got me thinking about everything again. I look at my hits and see where people are coming from, and one of them pointed at this post. So I read over it again. Reading up on related posts such as this one didn’t make me feel any better either. 

Least year my entire summer was about concerts, parties, and girls. This summer is shaping up to be about making difficult decisions, getting my life together, and seriously finding myself. 

Thus far, not a lot of luck. On top of getting my own shit straight I still have to deal with all thee feelings that continue to stare me in the face, and still, I can’t do shit about it. Then I have people who feel a way about me that I don’t feel the same about. Life never, ever gets any easier.

*sigh*

So I got the pictures up from the Red Wings victory parade yesterday, it was unnceccessarily hot out, luckily there was cheap water and free drinks (reps from Monster, Red Bull, Nestea, and Absopure were there) all over the place so it was all good.

The only real problems were that parking was a nightmare, so I ended up parking at the MGM Grand. Cool because it was free. Awful though as the walk back was about a mile and a half. Not cool after spending 4 hours in the sun and not having eaten breakfast.

Aside from my long walk the only issue was the news media who was getting in everyone’s faces as they were trying to walk by, so there were a few people that we couldn’t even see. So if you were watching some annoying girl on Channel 4 with a bunch of angry people booing in the background, that’s why.

Overall it was good though. If you watched the news you saw Kwame getting his ass handed to him by the people. That didn’t truly capture the spirit of the fans, but my video does. It’ll be up some time in the next few days after I edit and polish it up a bit.

For now, here’s some teaser pictures. You can see the rest of them from Campus Martias and Heart Plaza here.

It was a good time, if you couldn’t make it, sorry for ya.

Behold, the most expensive gas in Metro Detroit today:

Behold, my 1988 Chevy Caprice.

With this not being the most fuel-efficient car on the planet and gas getting more and more disgusting, I started looking into ways to increase gas mileage. I did all the standard stuff:

• Lighten your load.
• Inflate your tires.
• Clean up the air filter (this sucker is carbureted after all).
• Drive properly.
• Avoid rush hour, etc.

I tried all of this with a few more things and saw no results. Here’s a few facts about my 1988 Caprice:

Style: 4-Door full-size sedan
Seating: 6 (max)
Drive: Rear wheel
Engine Size: 5.0L V8
Engine Type: 305 small block with feedback fuel system
Tank Size: 20g
Carbon Footprint: 10.8 tons of C02 / year
Petrol Consumption: 20.1 barrels / year

It’s not a small car by any stretch, but on gas it’s not too bad. On average, I can pull 350 miles out of a single tank. That’s 17.5mpg, which still sucks but considering my last 2 cars got 12.5 mpg, only 250 miles out a of a single tank.

Behold those gas-guzzling beasts of burden:

And in the same breath, shitty gas mileage was never so ugly, or pretty (save for the 700 series BMWs of the same era).

So with gasoline getting disgustingly expensive, I decided to test out something that seemed shaky at best and engine devastating at worst: Acetone.

Acetone, for those who don’t know, is the active ingredient in nail polish. It is also said to be an octane booster for gasoline and, in something that’s probably been on Myth Busters that I failed to watch may increase gas mileage.

The idea works like this: pour the right amount of acetone into your tank after fill up. It works its magic, gives the car a little octane boost, should clean out parts of the fuel system, and in theory, increase your mpg.

But there’s 1 catch: the use of good gasoline. What is “good” and “bad” gas? The difference in what kind of Oil, how it’s refined, and who sells it. A lot of the best oil comes from Nigeria and who drills in Nigeria? 3 big players, Dutch Royal Shell, ExxonMobil, and Chevron.

Lets go down the list here. There are some Mobil stations in Michigan, and even fewer ExxonMobil stations. Their gas isn’t considered any better than anyone else’s by performance standards. Chevron many gearheads will swear by. GM does all their testing with it. Except, there are 0 Chevron stations in Michigan. So that’s out of the question. Then there’s Shell. The countryside of Detroit is littered with Shell stations, except they’re usually 10-15 cents more than every other gas station. Which means that the cost of the extra gas would cancel out any gains I made in MPG unless they were substantial gains. Since if I got any gain, with my car I would expect at most 10-15% increase, it would not be worth it. Any money I’d save on MPGs would instead to to Shell instead of my pocket.

So I had to make do and used random gas stations from around the area. I picked up a jug of acetone from Meijer along with a funnel and a measuring cup (2-3 oz / 10 g recommended dose) and I was off on my way.

I first recorded my data with how well I did during my fill-up:

343 Miles / 19.089g = 18mpg using crappy Speedway gasoline.

However, I was unable to find even a decent gas station to gas up with my acetone, so I had to use Valero, which is equally as crappy. These were my results:

355.3 miles @ 20.4 gallons = 17.41mpg. That was a mix of 5oz of Acetone in my 20g tank.

Next I tried BPAmoco. Then Mobil. Then Sunoco, costco, etc. I’m not going to post the results because I stopped recording them. It was all the same stuff. 20g ~= 350m depending on how much of it was freeway and how much was highway. With or without the acetone, my car fits the bill doing just as well a the EPA estimates on it are: 15mpg city, and 22mpg highway, for an estimated overall figure of 17mpg (according to FuelEconomy.gov), although I can usually to 1-2mph better than that.

Let me say this again: Acetone didn’t do a damn thing for your gas mileage. Of course YMMV on this one, and maybe it’s that my car has been running at peak performance because it’s been well maintained (mostly in thanks to the previous owners). However, it may be different for you. The web is littered with people who swear by Acetone for their fill-ups. I don’t share that sentiment, and am not willing to offset the cost with criminally expensive gasoline.

If you are under a different circumstance and want to try it for yourself, you have nothing to lose. My total materials cost was about $9 for everything, so you don’t have a lot to lose. Just don’t go expecting a great leap in mpg, any increase is good, and be smart about it, and do your research first.

Just be a realist about it.

So apparently there’s a new wannabe paypal on the block, called Revolution Money Exchange. It was started by one of the dudes from AOL and if you have a problem with paypal (which a lot of you do I guess) it could be well worth the effort to sign up. So if you do, please use the link below.

I get $10 for the referral and you get $25 for signing up. Don’t want to use it? Sign up anyways then just send the money to john@cruzweb.net, I get some cash for about 2 minutes of your time and I will love you unconditionally forever.

So yesterday I got myself up early in the morning to make it to Oakland University for John McCain’s town hall meeting. I got up specifically just so I could ask some questions, I’ve seen enough of him on the news to know how he stands on most things. Some of it I like, and some of it I don’t. I’m not going into specifics, but I’m not exactly a support of his (and you all know how I stand on people like Obama). Anyways, I had 2 questions I wanted to ask regarding:

1. The value of the dollar
   and
2. If his temper would be an issue as president

Apparently the rest of the meeting was so boring that my temper question raised a few eyebrows over at places like MSNBC, FOX, CBS and was even a featured story on CNN. Google news even gave it it’s own section. City newspapers such as the LA Times and the New York Times also had their say.

The Libby Quaid of the Associated press picked it up as well, so it’s been popping upon all sorts of places from Yahoo! News to every other news palce you can think of. The blogosphere also started reacting, placed including the Pensito Review, Hot Air, and Weasel Zippers (although I’m sure there’s others).

I’m working right now on getting the full question(s) up on here so I can respond with my reasoning in a better fashion, but for now we’ll have to do with the CNN / WDIV video (which is better than the youtube one), which they don’t let you hotlink so you have to go HERE to view it.

Now, I don’t like the video at all. It completely cuts off the first part of my second question, initially adressing the issue, and hearing a response from him. However it starts with my response from what he said which was something along the lines of “I get angry because I have passion”. It makes me look like I opened my statement praising his passion, which I didn’t do. That was not my intent.

I do however, respect the fact that he is passionate about what he does. I feel if you’re going to be one of 2 people representing a state, you damn well better be passionate about it.

I also highly respect the fact that he is actually taking audience questions, which has monumental potential for catastrophe. But I think it’s something that every politician should do, and the audience should not discourage that. Which is why I asked the question I did in the manner that I asked it. He’s giving us the chance to talk to him one on one, no reason why we can’t do it like civilized people. (That, Trish at the Pensito Review is why I asked the question nicely. And for the record, no, I didn’t lose a bet).

Besides, I did a good job of seperating myself from the protesters who I hung out with before we all went over in a group to the meeting. I didn’t want to spoil my assimilation by attempting to make an ass out of McCain and instead make an ass out of myself (which I’m sure some will argue I did anyways).

There were tougher questions I could have thrown at him. About the war, the economy, how he always votes party line when things matter. I could have gotten into an argument with him about his response, as it wasn’t exactly what I was referring to. I don’t care that he gets angry about a bridge to nowhere. That’s not special, so do I. But I don’t get into it and scream “fuck you” to show how angry I am with other senators of the same party. That’s just rediculous, and he knew damn well what I was talking about and chose to ignore the basis of it and talk about how he’s angry with the status quo.

The more I sat there contemplating asking this question, the more I thought it would end like this. His straight talk is more of a straight and narrow line for what he wants to address, which I think he proved very well yesterday if you listen to his responses on a lot of these questions. But that’s neither here nor there.

It also identified me in the papers as a “concerned republican voter”, which I did say. Which was more of my way of identifying myself as someone who does not support Clinton or Obama, as with a question like that you can almost hear the crowd under their breath go “here’s more liberal hippie bullshit”, so I had to put that to rest quickly.

So in all, I felt the answer was unsatisfactory, and of course he played politics with it. If your essential response to “Will you temper be a problem” is “I’m an angry guy”, then you’ve raised more questions than you’ve answered.

OK So I haven’t been posting much lately. I’ve been super busy with a million things and had to take a few weeks off. My sidekick is in the shop. My Macbook Logic board died and had to get replaced. I renewed my NAPP membership. I renewed my LP membership. I got an xbox 360 so I could play GTA4 (now you know where my time has gone).

My loft looks like shit. There is garbage and clothes all over the place. I need to clean it. And I will soon, but things have been going back and fourth from GTA, Homework, School, and hanging out. Not neccessarily in that order. But I have found time for some other random stuff that will work it’s way over into the Photoshop section of this website at some point. I’ve been posting up in the NAPP battleground, here’s some of my stuff

This is a CD cover, we had to make the band name a random wikipedia entry, the album name the last 4 words of a random quote generator, and the cover had to be a random SXC.HU image.

Here someone posted an eyeball and we were supposed to do whatever we could with it. This is what I got:

And this sucker is the result of battle for week 114. The image was a shield with crossed swords, and we had to make what we wanted out of that. I was a little unorthodox in my methods.

More posts and ramblings coming soon.

I had originally written off the prospects of going to Washington DC for tax day, just because I thought it would end up being too expensive or not work within my schedule.

Funny how things change.

After finding out that there were still spots on a convoy from South Dakota to Washington DC passing through Ohio I decided that it would be worth it to hop onm board. It’ll only be one day, we’re just going for the rally/protest then taking off right afterwards.

It should be interesting. I’ll make sure to grab my extra camera batteries.

Some things I really, truly love about Mount Clemens. But there is something that I miss about Clinton Township. It sounds trivial, but I miss the ability to put my trash on my curb when I want.

I just recently cleaned out my upstairs loft, just because a lot of crap had accumulated from regular living, parties, etc. It had to go. So I threw out five bags of garbage and went on my merry way. The next day there was a nice note left for me by the city, a “newsletter” that gives you all the answers ‘you’ needed regarding refuse, compost, and recycling.

How nice of them to take time out of their busy day to give a shit.

I knew we were not allowed to use trash cans, but the fact that NO trash can be placed on the curb until the night before is just ridiculous. Especially since it includes “bulk items”, such as furniture or washing machines. What are we supposed to do with said old washing machine until trash day? Leave it on the lawn somewhere? Put it outside, in the way only to have to move it later?

Here’s my biggest problem with this. Lets say trash day is on Monday (my trash day might very well be Monday. To be honest, I really don’t know.). The newsletter states (and they even highlighted it) that: under no circumstance is any type of refuse to be placed at the curb before 6:00 p.m. the day before the scheduled collection day. That means every Sunday night is open season for garbage pickers.

They come out like vampires at nightfall, with their bikes, beat up pick up trucks, or vans that look more like a permanent residence than they do transportation. Picking up not just the old chairs and hot water heaters but going through anything that is out on the curb.

I’m fortunate enough to be able to put my trash on North Avenue, at a fairly busy intersection. So vans stopping by the side of the road is not a common occurrence. However, for many of my neighbors on streets close by, it is. Government policies like this set a small time table that creates an open season for this kind of stuff. In reality, all this does is inconvenience residents.

My favorite part is the last little bit that’s highlighted: If I do it again, they’re going to come pick it up and charge me for it. No way around it, that’s just bullshit.

The letter they sent me is below, click on it to download a PDF version.

The City of Mount Clemens Refuse Policy:

So every once in a while I get really inspired to do something creative. Its usually either some kind of computer creative thingy or a music creative thingy. Yesterday, it was music creative. I try hard not to listen to any kind of top40 music because they overplay it to the point where I can’t stand it, however Love Song by Sara Bareilles has trickled down into my ears recently. It’s an amazing song, but it sounds like it was written 40 years too late, it sounds like a 60s soul song, only without all the horns.

So I woke up this morning and decided to remix it a bit with some sax recordings. It’s pretty rough, but I like the way it came out and really didn’t want to make a big production about it all. So here it is, complete with the video so you have something to amuse you while listening. Please send me your thoughts, I want to know what you guys think of it all.

 

The recording session turned out to be a pain. Apparently there’s something in the latest version of MacOS Leopard that screwed up my USB audio interface driver, so it would randomly turn to static and I’d have to re-launch garage band. I tried logic too and thought my interface was blown till I googled and found the driver issue. The mix could have come out better but overall I don’t think it’s too bad. Also, I’ll update the h.264 version soon, but blip.tv was giving me crap about it so I just let Premiere do the Flash conversion. Enjoy

Let me know what you think.