I’m chatting with a naked senior citizen shortly after 7am.

No, really. I’m in the locker room at the gym (a bit of masochism that I have been avoiding for years due to sheer laziness) and I’ve just gotten out of the shower. As usual (can you consider a pattern that’s precisely 11 days old a "usual" thing?) I got there when they opened at 6, did my 50 minutes on a painfully inclined treadmill, then stumbled toward the showers. One thing I’ve discovered in the past couple weeks is that the people most comfortable with their bodies are old men. And you know, that’s a good thing. Most of us could learn a lesson from these guys.

That said, I wouldn’t mind if this particular gentleman didn’t make a habit of hovering about a foot from me when there’s MORE than enough space to have a bit of privacy, but that’s a story for another day.

We cross paths most mornings – he comes in about 20 minutes after me to do his maintenance workout while I endeavor to change my shape to something less round. We wrap up within 5 minutes of one another, both of us focused on our respective morning routines. Our conversations to this point have been limited to talking idly about the weather or one of the local baseball teams, then wishing each other a good day.

Today, I’m combing my hair when he comes out of the shower and starts talking about his neighbor. Apparently the guy in question is a real grump, always in a lousy mood no matter what happens. Old Man trims the guy’s yard in the summer and clears snow from his sidewalk in the winter, and the neighbor even complains about THAT. He goes out of his way to find things to complain about, bitches about the volume of televisions across the street that noone else can seem to hear, threatens to call the cops at a moment’s notice.

"Geez," I say, a little distractedly, "what a jackass."

There’s a moment’s pause, and I glance over at Old Man. He’s looking at me quizzically and perhaps a little sadly. "No," he says slowly, "he’s just lonely. His wife died a year or so back, and he’s not the sort to get past it."

I blink for a moment, no intelligent words coming to mind. "Yeah," I say quietly.

I’m thinking suddenly about my grandfather. My mom’s mother died of cancer when I was about 10, and was followed by my grandfather almost exactly a year later. He, too, wasn’t the sort to get past it. I suspect the obituary when grandma died said that she was survived by her husband, Dan, but she wasn’t. He existed for another year, but he didn’t survive.

My eyes sting for a moment, and I clear my throat. "Yeah," I repeat, and both of us stand there in silence for a few seconds.

The door opens, another old guy in far better shape than I walking in after his morning constitutional around the track above the basketball courts. Old Man smiles and says, "Have a good day, son," and walks out ahead of me.

"You too, sir," I call out, then return my attention to buttoning my shirt.

"You too."

 Another item for the Christmas list.  My very own Enigma machine.  What do you get the geek who has it all?  Now you know.

Enigma 3 Machine On eBay –

Too lazy to build yourself an Enigma machine from a DIY kit? If you’ve got enough money, say, fifteen thousand dollars or so, why not just buy this original Enigma 3 machine off of eBay? The seller is in Germany and the auction ends on April 3rd. Frankly, we don’t know how anyone is expected to resist this item when the owner makes sweet, sweet promises like: "ORIGINAL!!! KEIN NACHBAU!!! VOLL FUNKTIONSTUCHTIG!!!!".

Enigma 3 Walzen Chiffriermaschine Chiper Weltkrieg 1941 [eBay, via Boing Boing]

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(Via Gizmodo)

 Future, thy name is BORG!  My day is coming.  Soon I shall be a computationaly enhanced street ninja with the world’s information resources closer than even my fingertips.

singularity gets just slightly closer – Italian & German researchers have created a "neuro-chip" for linking computers with mammalian neurons (A NewScientist, LiveScience, MSN). They added neuron gluing proteins to the chip to attract the sodium pores, and genetically modified the neurons to add more sodium pores.

In the short term, the work is expected to aid the pharmaceutical industry in testing the effects of drugs on neurons, assist basic research into the workings of the brain, and perhaps help treat neurological disorders. In the long term, numerous sci-fi technologies are slightly closers, such as computers with living components, useful brain implants, and Beowulf clusters of humans.

(Via Metafilter)

 Geek activism takes hold.  I will describe this little slogan as "pithy"

Protest tshirt for graphix nerds: Drop Shadows Not Bombs – Xeni Jardin: Link (Thanks, Chris)

(Via Boing Boing)

 This sounds suspiciously like what we saw in "Demolition Man" but it is yet another step toward my goal of becoming a cyborg.  Now I need some killer headphones.

Jack Into Your Brain with a Free Download –

We are remaining firmly skeptical about this, but there are some binaural sounds you can play through earphones that supposedly hack your brain, making you feel like you’ve had too much coffee, feel relaxed, or can even allegedly simulate sex. These downloadable sounds feed you a different tone in each ear, and the combination of the two delivers a frequency overtone that is said to alter your brain waves.

Now we’ve seen low-frequency sounds send someone into convulsions, but are also aware that 50% of the time, the placebo effect is responsible for the effects of any drug or technique. Now if you’ll excuse us, we’re going off to try a few of these.

Hack Your Brain with an iPod [forevergeek via digg]

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(Via Gizmodo)

 Another good mix.  Sting sounds good against any backdrop and this one has teeth. 

Roxanned to Death – More magic from Aggro1. His range continues to amaze. This guy’s knowledge of pop music is mind boggling – and his talent to combine it all together from opposite spectrums of the music scene God like. Roxanned to Death…

(Via Mash Up Town)

 While I would normally chalk this up to silly tripe I can’t ignore the last comments.  With a whole new meaning to the words "War Driving" I would love to cruise around town with my laptop adding some truly embarassing messages onto the wheels of people’s pimped out rides.

Pimpstar LED Car Rims –

These Pimpstar rims are programmable using a Wi-Fi equipped laptop and can display images as you roll down the street. The LEDs are full color so there is no limit to what you can display on them, and the software allows you to rotate through a series of six different images per wheel. The wheels are carwash-safe and run from the car’s power to spare you the embarrassment of running out of battery in the middle of your flashing light display. The wireless technology begs to be hacked and since these are destined to go on the uber-SUVs, we recommend replacing "Low Ridah" with images that say "Losah."

LED Rims [RideRoom]
Pimstar Wheel Rims [Custom Wheels]

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(Via Gizmodo)

Stuart Davis just played at Schuba’s on Saturday night, and damn was it a great show. A little shorter than most of the times I’ve seen him, since he was on at 7:30 and there was a guy coming on at 10, but it was still a solid 90 minutes with a great mix of new stuff that I hadn’t heard, somewhat older songs that many people knew, and a few that were quite a bit older that only a few of us knew. Schuba’s is really a great venue. The sound was fantastic – enough so, in fact, that Stu asked the crowd to applaud the sound guy (whose name escapes me at the moment) near the end of the show. He said something to the effect of, "I’ve never had bad sound when I’ve played here. And the sound usually sucks everywhere else I play, so this is a perfect inversion." I’m not going to remember all the songs, but the show in my mind was anchored by the following:

1. Opening with Doppelganger Body Donor. Hearing a good number of people in a packed house practically shouting, "It’s my word against that whore’s!" was fabulous.

2. Ending with Swim, which Stuart described simply as, "A song about being human." This is the song that made me fall in love with his music six years ago, and it hits me in the gut every time I hear it live.

3. About 1/3 of the way in, he said, "Now it’s time for one of the hits! Wait, do I have a hit?" As the crowd laughed and several of us shouted, "No!" he shrugged and continued, "But if I DID have one…" and launched into Rock Stars & Models, which is just fabulous cheese. My favorite lines in this one include, "You put snowballs up your nose/And fingers down your throat/That’s why your skin glows/And you weigh less than your coat." Hee!

4. "Are there any drummers in the room? I could use a drummer." Naturally, some dude in the back volunteered and started coming up to the stage. Stu stopped for a minute and said, "I should have been more clear. Are there any good drummers in the room?" Once the guy assured him that he knew what he was doing, Stuart shouted, "Yes! The band is back together for the first time years!" "What’s your name, again?" Heh. Anyway, the dude found himself on stage playing the bongos along with Universe Communion. He was pretty damn good, too.

5. Some new song about Parker Posey that’s just…man, it’s weird. This was one of probably 5 songs I didn’t know at ALL, which just illustrates that Stu needs to come to Chicago (or the midwest in general) more often. Even in the absence of a new album, I’ve usually seen him recently enough that I’ve at least heard everything at some point. It was cool to hear some of them for the first time, though.

6. Atavistic Viking, from his album Nomen Est Numen. This was very cool, because while it’s from the same album Universe Communion is on, he very rarely plays it in concert. In fact, at the dozen or so times I’ve seen him, this is one I’ve often heard shouted out as a request (or shouted out myself), only to see it completely ignored. It’s a highly funny song, and you could tell that about 95% of the crowd was hearing it for the first time. So while a few of us looked around at each other and mouthed the words along with the song, the rest of the room was reacting to hearing it for the first time, laughing at the appropriate bits and cheering wildly when it was over. It was kind of like hearing it for the first time myself – I’ve always really liked the song, but seeing other people first get into it is a lot of fun.

He really brought the funny this time, particularly when he was pimping his new two-volume DVD. Someone asked what songs were on it, and he replied, "All the ones you like. Those shitty ones you don’t like? I left those off, man. They’re nowhere to be found." He also cracked the room up when he said, "My wife is at home in the fetal position over the complete narcissism that has taken over there. There are 3,000 copies of a DVD all about ME in our garage and I’ve…I’ve never been happier. I almost don’t want to sell them!"

One other thing that stood out was how CROWDED the place was. The last time I saw him at Schuba’s, there were maybe three people who had to stand at the back, but last night the whole room was absolutely packed to the gills – all the seats were filled, obviously, and it was shoulder-to-shoulder standing in the back. The guy at the door seemed a bit baffled by the whole thing, and apparently had asked Stuart just before the show, "Who are all these people?" Excellent. It’s also fun to see the kind of crowd he attracts. A bunch of college-aged kids, certainly, a whole chunk of us in the "I’m not yet ready to admit that I’m that much older than the college-aged kids" category, and a surprising number of middle-aged fans interspersed in the crowd, singing along and cheering just as loudly for their favorites as everyone else.

Stu remains the most sincere musician I’ve seen in concert. When he was wrapping up, he thanked everyone for coming by saying, "Thanks for making this a night that reminds me why I do this." There aren’t many people who could say that without irony, but he does it. His concerts are always entertaining, but the energy in the room last night was so overwhelmingly positive and open that it outpaced most of the other times I’ve seen him. Chatting with him for a few minutes back at the merchandise table afterward and collecting one of the hugs he was distributing to everyone who came up to talk to him was most excellent.

 In a recent post, Wil Wheaton talks about finding your Work and finding your Road. Here’s a snippet that really grabbed me.
 

My Road is paved with d20s and TRON DVDs and Atari 2600 games. It’s lit by the glow of TNG and BSG episodes and the soundtrack is by Vangelis. It’s patrolled by Rover and they sell Soylent Green in the rest stop vending machines. The speed limit is 42, but if you flash your Bavarian Illuminati card, you can use the FTL drive to make it to Milliways in time for dinner.

My Road isn’t quite the same as Wil’s (I prefer D10s, for instance), but there are some definite similarities. His post makes me think about where I’ve gone off of my Road and whether that’s a good or a bad thing. Going across the wilderness allows me to make a new path, after all, but there’s a reason that I’ve chosen the Road I’m on. It will be interesting to see where mine meanders in the future.

(Via Will Wheaton)

 More on this tomorrow. Needless to say I am aglow with anticipation.

AjaxWrite to "Compete" with MS Word – prostoalex writes "Michael Robertson (of MP3.com, Linspire, SIPPhone, GizmoProject and MP3Tunes.com fame) is launching a Web-only competitor to Microsoft Office by creating a suite of applications replicating Microsoft Office look and feel. From the posting: "But ajaxWrite is just the start. We have a library of applications we have been working on to replace most of the standard PC software titles. Every week we will launch a new sophisticated program on Wednesday at 12:00 PST on ajaxlaunch.com. These programs will push the boundaries of what people believe is possible today with web-delivered software. These programs look and operate much like their traditional software cousins, but are cross-platform, loaded dynamically, and are available to users at no charge. I’m convinced if you try a few of these products you will understand how the software business will fundamentally change." ajaxWrite is the first launched product."

(Via Slashdot)