Fairweather Zealot

Marty July 22nd, 2008

Well, HOlympics V is over. This past Saturday, our annual celebration of sports athletic-like endeavors occurred, with 11 of us getting all-too-close to the top of that hill guys congregated at Bloser Arena (that is, my buddy Jim’s place) to compete, drink and talk a LOT of shit to and about each other. Like the four previous events, this one was full of more mouth than prowess, more beer than common sense and some truly spectacular displays of ‘recreational activities’ (c’mon … you can’t call darts a ’sport’, can you?). Continue Reading »

• Beer , Friends , Play , sports
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Marty February 26th, 2008

This weekend started off on a bit of a down note when I found that I could get to sleep Friday night (I didn’t get to sleep until 4 a.m. Friday night). Finally, begrudginly, I got out of bed and went downstairs to do some work, check out Flickr, work – anything that one can do in the middle of the night. But it was a message I got just after 2 a.m. that really put the weekend into perspective. Continue Reading »

• Flickr , Friends
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Marty August 3rd, 2007

I barely know you, so I wouldn’t think of rushing to judgments. I don’t know what happened – it isn’t relevant and is none of my business. What’s done is done. But I had to say, that regardless of everything else in this loopy world we live in, Van is probably the most devoted father I have ever known. Continue Reading »

• Friends
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Marty May 24th, 2007

*this is a somewhat NSFW post*. You may want to skip it if you’re faint of heart or easily offended. Continue Reading »

• Friends
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Marty April 16th, 2007

Van passed on the Five Questions Meme started by Snackie. Here they are:

1. What are you listening today?Mostly Keri Noble – I’m really digging her new stuff, a mixture of pop, folk and blues – but with some Brandi Carlile and 90’s rock (U2, Widespread Panic, Green Day) mixed in.
2. Name two things that you wish were different right now and why?The current administration and the Phillies bullpen.
3. How did you select the name Fairweather Zealot?My wife and I were talking about some issue that I was getting all fired up about, and she told me that I should just do something about it. I said that I would, but that by the time I could, I wouldn’t be fired up and less likely to go through with it. I was a zealot – but I was a fairweather zealot. I liked the name, and it stuck.
4. What got you interested in photography?Originally, I was a yearbook photographer in high school, but that didn’t really go anywhere and I became a snapshot photographer throughout most of college. When I moved to Colorado after college, I got REALLY into taking nature pictures, and bought some new equipment.Unfortunately, when I came back to the east coast, my roommate’s heroin-addict boyfriend stole all of my equipment, which put a damper on my shooting until my wife and I got back into it shortly after we got married. We started with birds, and have been expanding our repertoires (her more than me) since.
5. If you could be any type of bird, what would it be and why?Somehow, I knew that a bird question would come out of this. Any bird? I would have to say a Golden Eagle – massive, powerful and regal in a way that matches the bald eagle, but more of a hunter. Although there’s something to be said for the carefree nature of a chickadee, too.If you would like to participate in this meme:

1. Leave me a comment saying, “Interview me.”
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

• Friends , Play
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Marty February 23rd, 2007

Last night, I got to go out and meet up with some friends from GSI. It’s been a while since I’ve seen the folks from there (with the exception of running into Doug at the Happy Cog open House), so it was good to catch up. Teil, Mike and his girlfriend Katie all came by for some brews and beef (or beets, in Katie’s case).

We had originally made plans to do this the week after Christmas but work schedules, the occasional office fire and other circumstances conspired against us (I blame Bush, as usual). But, finally, we arranged to meet at the The Standard Tap on 2nd and Poplar Streets. Teil had been talking the place up for months, so I was glad to finally get to try it out. To be honest, I liked it.

A Higher Standard

It’s a great cross between a neighborhood bar and an upscale Center City hang-out. Dark and without pretention, but clean and well-kept. A chalkboard above the medium-sized bar announces what beers are available and provides the menu. A kegerator dominates the backbar, while two hand-pumps are front and center in the bar itself (each offering nice beers: the Troegs Nugget Nectar and a nice ESA that was mighty tasty. The service was pleasingly surly, although they lightened up in later conversations – no small talk to be found at this place. And no TVs either – the whole place is devoid of the ubiquitious bar television scene, forcing people to actually talk to each other, albeit over the widely varying volumes of the eclectic jukebox. And to add another touch, in the main bar room is a wonderful painting of the leaves changing in the fall … over a concrete drainage ditch culvert. You have to like that touch.

I got to try a good number of different beers, too – always a good night in my book. I started with a Sly Fox Dark Lager which was a tasty beer, a little bitter on the initial sip and definitely an American-style dark lager more than a German one. I followed that up with the Appalachian Ale, which was a refreshing German Lager-style that the bartender was reminiscent of a German Pilsner. Despite the odd description, it was a good, tasty and easy-drinking beer. When we had dinner, I enjoyed that previously mentioned ESA who I can’t remember the brewer for the life of me – but it was mighty tasty.

I was a bit surprised by the prices for this place, but the food was fantastic – hanger steaks, tuna steaks ($22), calamari ($8), octopus ($9), bratwurst and sauerkraut ($20), mussels and smelts … not your normal pub fare by any stretch, but all delicious.

Among Friends

Anyway, it was good to see all of the folks from ‘the day’ again and catch up on what was going on at GSI and in general. I won’t share their comments, but it was interesting to hear that the more things change, the more they stay the same. It sounds like some good things are happening over there, which is good to hear – I still wish them well and think that they are really going to make quite a splash.

Teil was telling me about his latest work, on the new Ace Hardware site that they’ve been working on for a while. I had done a lot of the original IA work on it, but when the project lagged for a while, I went on to other things and someone else took over. Visually, I think it’s a great site and definitely incorporates a lot of the things that myself and others in the department were stridently pushing for in terms of usability and accessibility. Be sure to check out the store locater – good stuff.

And Mike and Kate seem to be doing well, too. Mike’s always been a good guy, and it’s great to seem him enjoying the stuff he’s doing there. Now he just needs to get himself either a Nikon D80 or Nikon D200 so that he can become a photography nerd like me and we can talk more photography when we get together.

I need to do this more

This is the second time I’ve been able to get out in recent weeks for some beers with friends – it’s seemed like forever since I’ve done so, and now I’ve been able to do it twice in two weeks. Last week, I checked out National Mechanics – my friend Jody helped create the site – which is another bar that has some cool charm to it. Now, I just need to convince my wife she wants to come into the city more often to join me … or at least understand when I’m always later than I say I’ll be.

More good stuff

• HTML Tags Illustrated
• Teacher wrongly convicted of showing students porn

• Friends , Philly
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Marty January 22nd, 2007

This was an interesting weekend – nothing spectacular or wretched, just interesting, in both positive and negative ways.

Poker Tournament

The weekend started off with an annual poker tournament I play in. It was started by my buddy Jim’s father’s poker club to honor one of their fallen members who died on the way home from their monthly game. Despite them being the originators of the tourney, I’d say more than half of the players came from either Jim’s family or friends, including myself, Joe and Bake. This was the 4th annual tournament, and I finished 9th, 1st and 6th in the last 3 years, but THIS year was not my year to repeat. I played it technically well, but the odds were a real bitch – twice I lost on good hands to someone who just had a better hand that the odds said was unlikely. Between those two losses (to the same guy), I was crippled, and didn’t last long – I finished 34th out of 44. Jim and Joe were on either side of me (33rd and 35th, respectively), although Bake did much better finishing in the 20’s somewhere. Still, none of us get back our stake, and I handed over another $30 later in a cash game – which I did play poorly.

Rating: -1

Lightroom

Based on my wife’s accounting of using the newest beta of Lightroom (Beta 4.1), I decided to give it another try. And I have to say that I am very impressed. Adobe deserves kudos for listening to those who gave feedback and truly addressing it (they also did so with Adobe Bridge CS3’s problems). The interface is better, cleaner and easier to use. And the processing tools are fantastic, particularly the color management. Not perfect, but it is still a beta and I’m sure that they will fix more stuff later. I could write a user review of that, but that will have to wait. Suffice it to say, it was a nice piece of software to open and play with.

Sidenote: Adobe Bridge CS3

Although Adobe initially said that they wouldn’t release another beta version of Bridge – giving the ‘we’ll fix it before final release’ excuse – they actually surprised people with a second beta version. I have to assume that a) feedback was bad enough; b) they turned enough people off with that response; c) felt that it needed more testing after major fixes; d) all of the above, but regardless, they released it and I like the improvements. Particularly having the Batch Rename back at my fingertips in the right-click menu.

Rating: +1.5

NFL Championship Games

I have to admit, with all of my teams out of contention (Dallas, Philly and Denver), I went into rooting for the underdog mode. New England has been there a few times and … well, I just don’t like the Bears. In the NFC, it would have been a boon to New Orleans to have made it – both because of Katrina and because that team has heart (and has never made it to the Super Bowl). But they didn’t win – in fact, it was a hard game to watch- so it was the Bears. Then came the AFC game came on – and it was a great game. Finally, Peyton Manning has made it to the big game, an honor he richly deserved. He was quickly becoming this generation’s version of Dan Marino and John Elway, both of whom made it to the big game but could never win it. Now that Manning has made it, he needs to prove he can win the big one, like Elway did late in his career (After 2 thrashings earlier in his career, he finally won back-to-back Super Bowls) and not be the next Marino (0-2, both drubbings, in his 2 Bowl appearances).
So, I’ll be rooting for Manning and the Colts – because I’d like to see him win, and well … because I really do hate the Bears.

Rating: +1

Play

The weather wasn’t cooperating again this weekend, so I didn’t get to go out and do anything fun outdoors. Instead, I got the joy of picking up the trash that blew out of the squirrel’s nests all week. Frickin’ tree rats.

Rating: -1

Sci-Fi Channel (Geek Alert!)

Finally, Battlestar Galactica is back on the air! The first episode was pretty good, with a lot of good events that are sure to make the ’second season’ very interesting. If you aren’t watching, you’re really missing out. We also checked out the new show, The Dresden Files, which is basically Harry Potter meets Law and Order. It was interesting, but it will take a couple of episodes to see if it’s worth it. On the flip side, neither of the Stargate series will be back until April. *sigh*

Rating: +0.5

Flickr

I got some great responses on recent shots, which is nice. I just wish I had a little more time to catch up with all of the friends that I’ve made on there.

Rating: even
Overall Weekend Rating: +1

And here’s some other fun stuff to check out

• MS Firefox – Scary thought.
• Girl is Human Slingshot – via Van

• Friends , Play , sports
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Marty December 10th, 2006

Silly Van, sending me these silly things when he should know that they can only scare the childrens… especially since like me, I can’t think of six to narrow it down to. But here goes… Continue Reading »

• Friends , Play , blogs
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Marty October 11th, 2006

A lot of things going on in my life and the world at large. Some are only ripples in a global sense, but tsunami in personal terms. Others are globally-explicit rogue waves that could dissipate harmlessly or end up crashing against our shores. And then there are the waves being generated nationally from the inside by the derelicts running the wave pool in Washington. Ebbing and waning, low and high tides across the board. Continue Reading »

• Family , Friends , Pets , Politics , Rants
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Marty July 24th, 2006

This morning, I received a phone call from one of my pledge brothers. It’s always good to talk to Gil, but there’s never a good time to get this type of call. “Marty, I don’t know if you’ve heard yet, but I got an email from Earl Adamy. Mark Brooks died this weekend.” I sat in silence for a second before I asked the obligatory, “How?” “I’m not sure yet, but I wanted to let you know. When I hear something, I’ll give you a call.”

It was just after 8 in the morning – the start of the day, the end of a life all in the span of a phone call. We chit-chatted for a bit, but you could tell that neither of us knew really how to grasp the news. Mark was a fraternity brother of ours, a few classes older but close enough that we were in the house with him for a bit. He was my roommates big brother and so I got to know him pretty well during the whole pledging thing. He was a quiet guy, with a soft, dry humor that came out of nowhere when you least expected it.

I’d only seen him once in the last few years, and for the life of me I can’t remember if it was at a party someone through, or at the house for Homecoming or even at last year’s poker tournament. Strange that you never think those moments might be the last time you see someone. There’s never any reason to think that it is – and even if you stopped to consider, and thought that you’d never see that person again, it was happenstance, that you just never connected over time and distance and family obligations and such. Never that one of you would die before the opportunity passed.

I still don’t know what happened, but in many ways it doesn’t matter. It’s a brother who’s passed far before his time, and the circumstances may add a touch of tragedy or solemnity or a shake of the head, but in the end it’s the fact that he has gone that really matters. His family is probably in shock; his pledge brothers likewise in their own ways; even the rest of us are surely wondering about our own mortality even as we try to remember the moments we shared with this man in and after college. For some, those memories will be painful to bear, while others will remember them as hallmarks of a good life. Either way, it’s the memories that remain in stories told over a cold beer, anecdotes at a summer barbecue and toasts given at the next home football game.

Until then, godspeed Mark. We’ll toast the old lady when next we meet.

• Friends , Penn State , TDX
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