It’s two and a half into the am and I can’t leave my conscious state. I haven’t been trapped here in a couple of months. My head feels like it’s going to split open right at the top.
For hours, a series of astonishing yet simple realizations pounded my awareness in the most violent of manors. My imagination poured with blood and rage as the most basic and most obviously integrated-bits of information finally formed together into a cohesive perception. The resolution was low and the data loss high, but there was a definite signal lock.
Perhaps it was too faint to know for sure.
This new perception slaughtered what was left of a beautiful feeling stored deep inside my soul. Beautiful, at least, in my attachment to it. A mental room faintly marked with a flicker of hope suddenly has no doors or windows. Not a single spirit remains standing in a space that was once, perhaps, a little crowded. In the center of this room is an alter to trust, resting silently now in pitch black.
And if this is life, if the signal reads clean, then the dream of salvia was not so much a nightmare but rather the reality. In the nightmare, there was nothing beyond I and I was all there is. In this room exists no one now but myself and it has been far too long since I held regular occupancy. Have I ever?
Something about this seems terribly terribly wrong. This gaping hole left in reality where the meaning falls out, into nothing. This can’t be reality? The purity and intensity of the irony would be far too great.
Is the illusion truly that grand? I certainly hope there’s noise in this signal.
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It’s 3:00 in the morning and I can’t sleep. I’m not sure if it’s because of the heat or because I feel like I just woke up. This was a tough year for me thus far. For the first time, perhaps ever, I truly felt disconnected from my parents. Someone who was a heavy influence on my life committed suicide in March. In the beginning of the year, I moved out of my girlfriend’s condo. More recently, we stopped dating altogether. It’s felt like a lot of loss.
The loss of my Nino as my partner in life was my breaking point. I fell deep into self pity for a while. I have amazing people in my life. Some tolerated my pity party while others gave me just the right direction I needed. Tonight I am extremely content with my life. Furthermore, I’m really excited about my future. I haven’t felt this way in some time.
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My first online community effort happened in 1994. I didn’t have a vision or understand what I was doing. It was low tech and attracted a small population, but it filled a need so it sustained for several years. Back then, building an online community was actually rather easy.
In 2007, I was hired by a big name health and fitness company to develop an online community. The effort began well, but was quickly derailed by many of the most common mistakes that big companies seem to make. I departed the venture in 2008 and moved on to social media centric projects. I went back to check on their progress and found that the entire community, one that used to be hundreds of thousands of users strong, was wiped from the face of the Internet entirely.
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Zaskoda Uncategorized Rants
Almost 3 months ago, I posted that I was gutting Polar Bear. The saga continues, and much has come to pass. I ripped out the flooring, headliner, seats and dash. I cleaned, painted, and started rebuilding. I’ve started migrating from brown to gray. I even added a rotating seat mount for the passenger. The new seat and a giant bean bag turned out to be rather useful.
On the outside, I’ve added a roof rack, rear ladder, and spare tire cover. Mechanically, I’ve had the transmission replaced, transfer case and front drive shaft rebuilt, a/c leaks fixed, rear brakes fixed, and other odds and ends. I attempted to have a leaky front windshield fixed and am still fighting that battle. Inside, I’ve installed a new stereo system. I fabricated a few doors panels to mount speakers on. I am replacing lights with leds. I also got some really neat new seat covers. Read more…
Zaskoda Polar Bear Van, Projects
And that’s how some people want to approach the issue of illegal immigrants in the USA. Everything I know and understand about life aligns clearly to say that building a wall between the US and Mexico is a horrible idea. It’s not like Mexico is mounting an attack and we have to defend the castle. They’re sneaking into the country to find jobs. To cover the issue from my own perspective, I’ll offer three planks and then a plan.
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Zaskoda Uncategorized Immigration, Rant
Since my last Polar Bear post (think I might start them all this way) , I haven’t spent much time or money on Polar Bear. I did have an adventure with the radiator blowing up. I wanted to replace it myself but time did not work to my advantage and I had to pay a shop. Otherwise, I’ve just been using Polar Bear as my daily driver. The most significant adventure I took PB on was a trip to Steamboat with Nino for a wedding and some boarding. On the way, we spotted another local 4×4 Ford van along side the road. They waved and I honked as we splashed by. Since then, I spotted the same van perched on top of Loveland pass. If I see them again, I’ll have to stop and say hello.
During the drive, we collected a lot of ice on the van. As the road muck spalshed up on Polar Bear and started to drain off, it froze into interesting patterns. The most interesting, by far, was the sea urchin like spikes on the center caps. I’ve never seen anything like it before and it drew a fair amount of attention when we would stop for gas or coffee along the way.
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Zaskoda Polar Bear Van, Projects
So I see this trending topic going around called, “I need to talk to you about computers.” It didn’t take me long to facepalm. See, Stephenf does a fine job of painting a perspective of technology evolution with a wide scope. He also has a fine point about consumers desiring more specialized and easier to use devices.
Unfortunately, Stephenf missed obvious points. First, the trend isn’t strictly with computers becoming more specialized. There’s also a trend of specialized devices becoming more computerized. Actually, we’ve had specialized devices for a long time. Take a car radio for example. A car radio was once electro-mechanical with no logic circuits. Somewhere along the way car radios became digital devices with lcd displays. Now, folks have full blow media centers inside their automobiles. There exists a giant webbing of technological points and the tendency is for those points to converge – for gaps to be filled in. Netbooks are an example of a gap being filled in. The devices are more powerful than smartphones yet more portable than laptops. Netbooks are popular because they filled a need.
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Zaskoda Technology
Since my last post, I’ve put new tires and fender flares on Polar Bear. I started off with the notion of getting simple black steel rims. I ended up with teflon rims. They were nearly twice as expensive, but it’s something I really just wanted to splurge on. I’ve never purchased rims before, I wanted to get the most out of it.
The new tires are 32″ BFG A/Ts. From the performance of the van, I thought the 33″ tires must have been too large as it was moving rather sluggish. Turns out, that’s just the engine. I probably could go up to 35″ wheels with similar performance. They might be a bit better for offroading as well.
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Zaskoda Polar Bear Van, Projects
After spending piles of money on paint and a rear diff rebuilt, I finally got a chance to re-install the spare tire mount. Before reinstalling, I ground the whole thing down a bit and put about 5 coats of black spray paint on it. I also hung the tire itself, for the first time. The bolts for the tire aren’t going to work very well. They’re a bit too long and fairly rusted out. I suppose I could soak them in WD-40 and cut them down to size. However, a couple of new bolts from the hardware store shouldn’t be terribly expensive. It would also be nice to get a threading that matches the lugnuts so I can have spare lugnuts on the rack.
The tire prevents the door from swinging open as far as it used to. Still, the door opens past 90 degrees so I think I’m alright. I noticed the inside of the spare rim has a ring of rust. I might hit it with a wire brush and then gloss a little paint over it. Next week I should be getting new rubber and rims. Eventually, I might see about getting a spare that matches the size of the new tires (32″). I’m not going to worry about that for a while.
There’s a pile of exterior mods left. The list looks something like: window tint, rock sliders, bumpers, wire mesh behind the grill, roof basket, new antenna, and a ladder. Most everything else will be interior. There are still some drive train and engine repairs I want to make. However, since most of those are not particularly critical, I’ll be postponing them for a little while.
Zaskoda Polar Bear Van, Projects Rack, Spare, Swing, Tire
As part of the whole van vision, I’m wanting to put a dual sport motorcycle on the back like Badgertrek. I’ve never owned a motorcycle nor a license. This weekend, Nino and I attended an Abate motorcycle course. The course was a little slow for my tastes, but very thorough. The part where we actually got on some bikes and took to the course was fun. We logged about 25 extremely slow miles over the course of this weekend. All in all, I would definitely recommend this course both to someone like us – inexperienced – as well as someone who just wants to learn some good safety habits.
Having completed the course, all we need to do is give the DMV a few dollars and we’ll be ready to hit the streets. Well, first I’ll have to actually buy a bike. That will be a whole new adventure.
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