Clovis Chitwood Heavy Industries

Well you may have noticed a change. I Installed WordPress. So far it’s really cool. I got all the old content moved over and now I’m going to spiff the place up a bit.

Had fun seeing the Nashville Rollergirls. It was an interleauge match. The Nashville Rollergirls are a league. There are three Nashville teams, the best of which get together to play other the leagues from other cities which is what we had seen at all of the other matches. I had a little trepidation about seeing an interleauge match, would the play be as good, would they be playing as hard. Well that was just silly, they played hard! There were twice the number of pileups as usual. I’m not an experienced enough observer to know whether this was due to sloppy play or the play was just more aggressive. It seemed to me they were more aggressive. Like they were more comfortable going at it with each other than with teams that come n from out of town.

It was a little awkward at first figuring out who to cheer on. I had favorite skaters on both teams. So I just ended up cheering both teams on. The two teams were Damsels of Distress, and the Assault Rivals. Rambo Sambo played for the Damsels and Slammy Lou Harris, playing last night as Salty Salami, played for the Rivals. It was a squeaker. the Rivals stopping a last period charge by the Damsels by one point.

Wimped out on Belcourt’s midnight showing of Fight Club, but I’m going to be there for Repo Man come hell or high water or extreme fatigue.

Okay the Nurburgring will have to wait. There was one more little thing I wanted to share. You know how you do stupid stuff that ends up freaking you out. Well I pulled a dandy tonight.

I left Opry Mills a bit spiritedly. I can’t help it I love corners, especially big sweepers. Just as I floated out onto Briley the Battery light didn’t just flicker like it will under heavy acceleration, it came on and stayed on so I backed off to about sixty and it went off.  Now this was odd because I had not really been accelerating as heavily as I would usually have to get the light to just flicker and every time I tried to speed up to just seventy the light would come on nice and bright. At this point I’m hoping I’ve cooked the alternator, at least one fifty maybe two hindered to replace, I actually checked on that kind of stuff before I bought the car, and not that the belt is frayed or about to come off. The belt is only a couple of months old so shouldn’t be a problem unless something else was busted and causing problems, plus if it came off that would mean no water pump so that would mean waiting on the side of the road for a tow then having to figure out how to get a belt tomorrow with out a running vehicle. Of course if the alternator froze up it would likely throw the belt and I’d be in the same predicament anyway and still have to buy a new alternator.

Anyway so I’m cruising down Briley at sixty cars whizzing by me. When I get to I-65 I have to slow down even more to keep the light off. My the time I’m headed up Old Hickory I’ve got to keep her below 45 to keep the light off. I cruise by Auto Zone on the off chance they are still open. It’s right before eleven at this point and they stay open till midnight at some locations during the summer, I can’t remember specifically why I know that but it involves DeMartini. No dice, they are as dark as a, as a, hmm, as a closed AutoZone. So I cruise back toward the house. I’m sitting at the light waiting to turn back onto Old Hickory and I happen to look down at the gear indicator. It’s on “2″. I had been driving around in second gear. Which meant the alternator was turning speeds it was intended to only turn for short periods of time, it got hot. When it gets hot enough it stops charging. So I put the gear selector into “D” and everything went  back to normal. I’ll try and get it checked tomorrow anyway just to be safe. I’ve been meaning to do that, I want to be able to hold the throttle down through all the gears. I’ve not been able to do that since I bought the car. The Battery light will flicker and I back out of it, it’s instinct, too many years of driving around with thirty five dollar alternators that got replaced every three months.

I have the most entertaining dreams, except for the ones where I dream I’m getting up and getting ready for work like I should when in the slightly more real world I’m managing to ignore the alarm clock and sleep late, those just suck. I can’t remember the last nightmare I had, unless you count the one where my dream house, when I say dream house I mean the house that I live in in my dreams not a “dream house”, slid into the street.  Maybe that requires some clarification. I don’t remember much of my dreams but the ones I do remember take place in a relatively consistent world. My house for example, it’s kind of like my house but not really, there are more rooms and they’re smaller, less square. And there is a large screened in porch on the back that is literally filled floor to ceiling with even for me not really all that interesting junk left by the previous owners. The floor creak, there is a blue hallway and it’s a whole lot less stable than my real house, hence the sliding into the street in that one dream. The backyard is bigger and occasionally has cars that I am pretty sure I bought some time in the past. Sometimes they even run. In last nights dream there was this rather crude but spectacular multi level water feature. It even had some squatters on one level that I think were Hispanic but I’m not sure. We got along so i let them be. At one point Dad showed up and helped me turn this huge valve to turn it on. Then we stood n the driveway and chatted for awhile. About what I can’t remember. Anyway I didn’t even remember the dream until halfway through the morning when Jay IM’ed me about something and it jostled the memory into mt conscience. Sometimes it’s days before I remember a dream. I’ve tried to keep a dream journal but I remember them so infrequently that the desire has waned by the time I actually remember one upon waking. When I started this there was a point but like most of my dreams I can’t remember it now.

It’s been an interesting week. Work kind of sucked. Found out were losing someone next week. She’s moving to Mississippi. On one hand I’m kind of envious that she’s able to just up and move on such short notice. Were not really close at all but I’m happy for her that she’s doing something exciting. I’ve not really talked to her about it I’m just assuming she’s excited about it, but I think that’s a pretty safe assumption. It stinks for us that she’s leaving behind though. We really need the bodies and it takes at least six months before a new hire is able to really carry his or her weight. Just training her replacement is going to take away from time that could be spent on other stuff assuming they can even find someone in a reasonable amount of time. It took forever for them to find the last person they hired. Thankfully she seems to be coming along rather well.

Outside of work it’s been a great week. Deb had a birthday dinner for Stephania Wednesday night. That was fun. Thursday was Blue Sky with Stephen and Suzie and Alan, then tonight was Macaroni Grill and then Kung Fu Panda. It was alright story wise. Really just an animated Jackie Chan movie. Some of the stuff was lifted straight from Jackie Chan movies. I guess that’s not really a bad thing. The wisdom imparted by the wise old guru, a turtle, which explains why Suzie loved the movie so much, was a little bit on the fortune cookie or inspirational poster type. The moral of the story was “your special just the way you are.” Which in this instance translates to the fact that even a fat out of shape panda can become a Kung Fu master in a few days, just my being himself. Of course everyone is special and it’s important to know yourself and to be true to yourself, but does that translate to it being okay to being fat and out of shape? I’m not saying it’s immoral or bad to be fat. Hell I’m fat. Not chunky, not a little heavy, but fat and I know it. I’m not exactly happy about it though and I don’t really think I should be complacent about it. I know I would certainly be healthier and feel better and I imagine be happier if I lost weight. I can’t think of one thing that would be bad about waking up tomorrow less a hundred pounds, assuming I didn’t just wake up without a leg or some shit like that. Okay I wouldn’t have any clothes that would fit, but it would be a hell of a lot easier and cheaper to buy a whole new wardrobe if I was more conventionally shaped. I don’t think it’s a good idea to identify who you are with your body shape anyway. I can see that being a bad thing at both extremes. I think it would be just as pathetic if I thought of myself as a fat person and used that as a reason to stay fat. Not that it usually takes a reason to stay fat. I’ve not managed to be not fat in close to twenty years. But that would be just as pathetic as becoming an anorexic because to be happy I thought I had to be thin. Wouldn’t it be a whole lot healthier to think of who you are as what you think and do rather than what your body shape is? But even there my argument kind of falls down, I’ve never heard of a ninety eight pound sumo wrestler or a four hundred pound ballerina. Seems like somebody could go out on a limb and make an inspiring movie about a young person who through hard work and dedication, for longer than your typical movie training montage, ends up triumphing over mediocrity.

Damn, that was a little harsh, I didn’t start out to write a rant that just kind of came out. Just to play devil’s advocate, strange position for a non believer but I’m quite flexible for my size, it’s a sweet movie and the animation is top notch. The characters are all anthropomorphs of course but there are scenes that just look so real. Like somebody was out there in this strange world of talking pigs and ducks, China it seems is peopled mostly by pigs and ducks by the way, with a camera filming this movie. Some of the more stylised animation reminded me a lot of Samurai Jack which is not a bad thing at all.

Well this is turning into a long post but I want to mention something else I started this week. FOoSHNARG, Fraternal Order of Secret Human Nashville Area Resident Geeks. It’s basically a Google calendar that I made public, so if your using Google calendar you can see it and add things to it. Go wild. There is also a website fooshnarg.org where you can view the calendar. Hopefully we can keep everything on there and there will be less confusion about what’s going on. If you want to add something but are having troubles just email it to clovis@fooshnarg.org and I will try to get it up.

Oh boy, it’s late and I want to take a lap or two around Nurburgring before I go to bed.

“The first rule of FOoSHNARG is don’t talk about FOoSHNARG…”

Okay, this is just going to be a short post. I created a Google calendar for FOoSHNARG. I know your thinking, how long has Clovis been up. Not as long as you think. FOoSHNARG or Fraternal Order of Secret Human Nashville Area Resident Geeks. If you can think of something better than “Human” I’m open to suggestions, the rest of it your stuck with. Seems like it’s always an effort to keep everyone up to date on what’s going on so maybe this will help. There is a link to the right and right here. Bookmark it Baby! I think anyone should be able to see it even if you aren’t using Google’s other services. If you do already have a Google calendar you should be able to edit it. I just set it up to day and everytime I try to look at it I end up signed in so I’m not sure how it looks to someone who doesn’t already have a Google calendar setup.

If there’s something going on and it will let you, stick it on there. (If it won’t let you email me and we will figure out what’s going on) Put your birthday up there, I put the one’s I had in my other calendar up already (If I got it wrong, fix it. If it won’t let you, again, let me know).

Oh, I got ahead of myself, who is FOoSHNARG? If your reading this your FOoSHNARG. Hold on, the perfect way to start this post just occured to me.

Remember wherever you go there you are.

Has it been a week? Yes it has. A short week at that. Monday being Memorial Day. Can’t say I celebrated it properly. I worked, but I guess that’s as an American tribute as any. There were some things I needed to do at Dad’s office anyway so I thought I would go around and make sure all the computers were updated. XP’s SP3 hosed one of them good. It would not even boot. Reinstalled XP and the .NET framework was hosed, so nothing worked, but at least it would boot now. By then it was too late to do anything else, so I reluctantly packed it in knowing that that machine wouldn’t be doing anything useful the next day, but you do what you gotta do. Now it just happened that My Aunt Peggy had come down to visit Mom, so Tuesday night Peggy, Mom, Amy and I were getting together for dinner, which we did, J Alexander’s, had the French Dip, it was great. So then I went back to Dad’s office and after more hours than I wanted to spend got everything working that needed to be working. I guess I shouldn’t complain, if it was easy I wouldn’t get paid to do it. Of course I wasn’t as philosophical about it Monday and Tuesday night. If you were around 18^th Ave. either of those nights you may have heard me expressing my feelings.

I remember sitting there watching Windows boot for the umpteenth time thinking that a big portion of my income if not most of it is derived from troubleshooting, most of the time with very little information. A big part of the time I’m just taking shots in the dark. I do know enough to keep from unnecessarily digging a bigger hole, but sometimes that hole has to get bigger before it can get smaller. Is what most people see as expertise just a willingness to hang in there till you find a solution, well that and an ability to not just blow everything up? Even training has that component. True I’m just regurgitating facts, but if somebody doesn’t get it you have to come up with another way to explain the facts, and sometimes another way again. I’ve dug some pretty deep holes standing in front of a class and trying to explain Revenue Posting Codes or Work In Progress, at least one of those holes I’m still filing in because they call into tech support four or five times a week.

Sometimes it’s amusing, sometimes it’s frustrating, people call tech support and expect you to just know the answer to their problem. Often you do, if somebody calls in wanting to know how to reverse a journal or void a check you tell them. If they want to know how to run a report that will show them the total amount paid broken down by proposal, I don’t know. I break out the Report Handbook and poke around in the system till I can get a report that hopefully gives them the information they need. I’m not doing anything they couldn’t do. Of course since that’s what I’m paid to do so I do it and can usually keep a good attitude about it, paychecks make great attitude adjusters. It gets even more interesting if somebody calls in with an error that I’m unfamiliar with. It’s not like I can open up the hood and see what’s gong on in there. I can’t even talk to the developers unless it’s something huge. I just have to keep poking around at this black box, first trying to get the same output from the same input the customer is using and then if I can do that trying to figure out what’s happening. Of course I’ve got Jay and Jamie and Sam to go to, often they’ve seen the same thing or remember something similar, but what it all comes down to is piddling around in the dark.

Okay that went on a little longer than expected. Wednesday night I relaxed. I couldn’t stop thinking about a conversation I had with Jay earlier in the day so I had to put this together.

Of course I couldn’t stop there:

And one more for now:

I can’t believe it sombody actually rated commies still suck with one star. Not that I’m suprised they gave it a rating of one star it’s that they bothered to vote on it at all. Wow, that means somebody actually looked at it. Neat. I’m actually rather pleased with the drive carefully narcissist on board and ass gas or brass.

I’ve got them up on Zazzle. It’s supperior to CafePress in that You can put up multiples of one item without having to pay for a premium package. Uploading images has been a pain for me though. I’ve still not bought any of the stuff I set up though I am looking hard at the messenger bag on CafePress.

Thursday was my birthday. I don’t know how but I had managed to forget it until Jay walked into my office and started pointing at the date on the calendar. My mind was on something else and I blurted out something about a conference call I had after lunch. He just rolled his eyes and kept pointing at the date. It finally hit me Oh yeah, it’s my birthday. I am 37, or 36 and 366 days, well actually 365 because this was a leap year wasn’t it? We even had cake and ice cream.

Oh and thanks for dinner.

I actually got a birthday card from Charlie and Evelyn. It even had a little something inside. I have never not (it’s okay to use a double negative for emphasis ain’t it?) gotten a card from Charlie and Evelyn on my birthday. I don’t deserve it. I have never personally mailed a card in my life. I’ve given them out in person but I’ve never taken the time to stick a stamp on one and chuck it in the mail. So every time I get a birthday card or Christmas card a little part of me twinges in guilt, but all the rest of my parts smile cause it’s nice to know people out there love you and are thinking of you.

I going to get schmaltzy here for a minute and thank all my friends and family. For some reason I like to picture myself as a loner, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth, of course in my mind’s eye I’m thin and handsome too so maybe I’m just delusional. So if your reading this thanks. I don’t always show it but I do appreciate it.

Well it’s getting late and I want to capture the video I took at Granville last Saturday before I go to bed so I will wrap it up here.

Hang in there baby,

It was a very good night! Plan 10 was the runner up, and My Dinner with K’zon won the Son of Rambow trailer competition. Just don’t tell anyone that their were only two entries Son of Rambow was amazing, funny as hell and full of heart.

Now I’m going through DV tapes and charging up batteries for Granville tommorow. I will only be able to take video. My still camera charger burned up on my and I’ve not replaced it yet. Oh well.

Egad, I’ve got a ton of video I need to go through. Leave it to me to shoot it and just let it sit.

Here’s a link to the Strange Wilderness review from last week.

I don’t know why the embeds weren’t working but hopefully they are now.

Whoa boy,  Indy IV. All I can say is; go see this movie!!!

I was really afraid. We are talking about the guys who brought us midiclordian and magically turn guns into radios, but the buzz from late last week was positive so my expectations were rising. And they were met. This is easily the best since Raiders and in many ways it’s equal. If you’ve had fear of whether Harrison Ford can pull it off, don’t worry he’s still got it. This is the third time already this summer I’ve been blown away by a movie. Iron Man, Shotgun Stories and now this. Oh yeah, I you are a Raiders fan you have to come out to the Belcourt to see The Raiders of the Lost Ark The Adaptation on June 5th. A bunch of kids in the eighties decieded that they were going to reshoot Raiders shoot for shoot. It took them a decade, you see them all grow up through the movie, but they did it. It is amazing. I know it’s a Thursday but because of licensing, at least until Raiders is in the public domain (and if you believe anything copyrighted in the last fiftey years will ever end up in the public domain you’ve got more faith in the process than me,  you are never going to see this anywhere but a theatre and it very rarely screens. I lucked out and got to see it at a film festival a couple of years ago.

Speaking of the Belcourt you’ve got to come out Friday as well and see the trailers in front of  Son of Rambow. Should be fun.

Oh boy, well it’s the beginning of another week. This one will flash by as fast as the last. Friday night is Son of Rambow then Saturday is the Granville Car Show. Who knows whats going on Sunday and Monday. Probably go see Grandma one of those days. Anyway, here’s something to look at till next time.

Just some quick notes before I go see Indy IV, thank you Stephen and Suzie.

The Nashville Rollergirls WonThey clobbered the Atlanta Rollergirls last night. If you’ve not seen a match you really need to come out on June 7th and see them.

I finished The Pillars of the Earth last week. Turns out me and my sister were reading it at the same time. I think that’s a first. Also finished The Alexandria Link by Steve Berry last night as well. It reminded me a lot of Dan Brown’s stuff, great story but a lot of little annoying things.

Anyway I gotta go get ready by before I go here’s some more proof, as if any is needed that I need to learn to just go to bed.

The Clovis Chitwood Store

I’ll be back tonight to tell you how Indy IV was.

You’ve seen it. Watch it again.

The Visit

Pistoleros review on Cinegeek

Well another week dead and gone. No Speed Racer Friday night just Cracker Barrel with Art and Kate and Stephen and Suzie. I’m itching to see it though I’m prepared for it to be a monumental stinker.

I actually got home early Friday night and watched Mom and Dad’s trip video render for threee or four hours, it’s more exiting than watching paint dry, but not quite as much fun as watching paint grow. Actually it got paintfully exiting at one point. The background image popped up with solitary dialog box open informing that I should “switch batteries or plug the computer in or I will lose all my work.” I let out ”eek” that sounded like the mouse that I caught in the live trap a couple of weeks ago and looked down at the power brick for the laptop. Sure enough the light was not green. I hasitly plugged the cord back in and muttered a short prayer to God’s I don’t believe in, on a complete asie that reminds me of one undiscussed problems with aethism, your curses are doomed to be completely ineffectual, and  hastily plugged it back up. This is where I was slowly and thankfully quite figuratively hoist on my own petard.

You see, wisely or not when I am doing a big render like that I bump of the prioity of that process. I don’t know if it speeds the render up but it sure as hell slows everything else down. So I sit watching the computer for fifteen minutes waiting for it to return to the render. Which it doesn’t. Eventually the screen just goes black. With no other choice I hit the power button and expect the machine to just reboot but wonder of wonders it had actually gone into sleep mode and comes back up and resumes the render. At this point I decide to call it a day and just go to bed.

I actually told a little white lie. I didn’t just watch the computer render the video for a couple of hours i was actually reading a book a co-worker got me for Christmas. The Pillars of the Earth it’s definetly interesting, but I haven’t decieded if I like it or not yet.

Saturday morning I woke up with a tremendous headache, It took nearly all day to shake it. I ended up being late to the TOP SECRET project I have been working on with the Mysterious Lackeys. Despite me being late and forgetting some of the materail I was supposed to bring it went very well.

Originally we were supposed to all go see the midnight showing of The Wrath of Kahn Saturday night, but everybody evetually realized we were all had family stuff to do Sunday, it being Mother’s day and all. So we just grabbed a bite to eat and drove to Smyrna for no good reason, then drove back to Nashville to hang out at Fido’s with Fred and Steph and eventaully called it a night.

Okay i know your starting to lose interest, there’s just a little more. I got home and found that the render had finished so I started to try to setup chapters and burn it to DVD, but I kept falling asleep. I eventually got the DVD burned, without the chapters, tested it and got cleaned up to go and meet my parents and siblings. This was the first time we had all been together since we had our Easter dinner a week after Easter. We drove up to Livingston and spent a couple of hours with Grandma which was nice. Evelyn and Jim were there and shortly after we showed up Loretta, Susan, Alan, Brooke, Riley and Colton showed up. Mandy and Dusty came up a little while later. It was quite a crowd in room 88. Grandma seemed stronger and more alert but she still seems to be somewhere else much of the time and when she does seem to be in the room with you your not really sure she recognizes who you are. There was one moment when Riley ran up to her and proclaimed “Hi Grandma”. Grandma laughed like her old self and replied “Well hello there”. The staff call her Houdini cause she has figured out how to diable these alarms they hook up to here to detect if she tries to get out of her chair or bed. Everynow and then she decides she is leaving and forgets that her legs won’t hold her up anymore. She’s fell at least a couple of times since she’s been there.

No sense in railing against shit you can’t change. On thing I can do is get up there to see her more often, I just wish I knew if it made any difference or not. I guess it doesn’t really matter though, I’ll never regret time I spent with her and I already regret time not spent with her.

I got The Visit rendered for YouTube and I’m trying to up load it now. I’ll embed it here when I get it done.

Well I should be getting my Noodler’s ink and new converter to get my Vanshing Point back in action. I never knew I could miss a pen so much. I’ve also got to get the Plan 10 trailer submitted to The Belcourt. Next weekend Nashville RollerGirls and then on Sunday, Indy IV!