The Kimberly Trip

I recently got my hands on the fantastic album Generation Stereotype, and, after one listening I decided it was imperative to see The Kimberly Trip live. I chose their next event, which turned out to be a CD release and benefit show.

The event was a fantastic mix of food, prize drawings, silent auctions, cupcakes, and chocolate fountains. Youngsters to oldsters (rockers and walkers?), tattooed to bow-tied, the crowd was as diverse as it gets. It was touching that so many people put enormous energy into the event -- all ticket sales and other proceeds went to help a friend who is battling cancer.

The Kimberly Tripput on an inspiring show that was a singularity of modesty and the Best Show in the Known Universe. The band’s crisp bite of Rock combined with brilliant lighting, trampolines, bubble machines, and Kimberlina’s distinct voice was tremendously fun.

The Show Must Go On is certainly the cake of The Kimberly Trip, with a rich icing of special effects, and a fine sprinkle of shoot-from-the-hip humor.

I’ll be back for another slice.

OMG

I’m visiting Randy and we decide to get some Coke squishies (what Randy calls a Slushy) -- we know I will need the sugar and caffeine to keep up with our planned late night visit – especially with Randy being Captain Graveyard-up-all-Night. Everything is going fine, the squishy machine dispenses two beautifully textured American-super-sized beverages - I suppose this is when we should have first seen-the-signs. Traditionally, if you look wrong at these machines they give you some sloppy mess instead of what you are looking for, and getting two perfect squishies from the same machine, within the same hour, on the same day, well, it is truly some sort of miracle.

We get to the counter. We ante up our drinks on the counter, and toss in some snacks to raise the bid. I think I tossed one extra thing from an impulse buy rack at the counter - I'm sure that is what started the chain-reaction. The woman behind the counter rings everything up -- I hold out my ten-spot. She just looks at me like some sort of cow with a train barreling down on her and won't reach for the ten.

"You sure you don't want something more?" she says with a chilling tone
of-something-bad-to-come.

Then it was my turn to look like soon to be burger on the grill. I'm not sure what Randy was thinking at this time; maybe he caught on sooner than me. My brain clicked a few more times, made a quick list of replies, did a quick-sort, then sent me the answer:

"Look, Bitch, just give me the squishes and the candy, I don't need a fucking lottery ticket, or what-ever your up-sales-trained-brain is thinking I need to buy".

Of course, instead I said, "Uh, no, this is fine, thanks". Smile.

Her eyes just got bigger, "Are you sure? You could just add in some jerky or something it’s only like-a-dollar", she picked a shriveled stick out of a bucket and waved it like a feable not-so-magical wand.

My brain shattered. The characters “WTF?” scrolled blinking across my cracked monitor. Something triggered my fight or flight system, my blood-pressure rose, my heart-rate elevated, the hair stood up on my neck as blood rushed to my head to feed my brain. Time compressed. My mind calculated the complex math needed to resolve freaky social conditions; it struggled mostly with different reasons why anyone would possibly be pushing jerky tonight. Is this some piss-poor signal that we are standing in the middle of a hold up? Is she making some rude sexual joke by waving around dried meat? Is this some code for buying drugs at 7-11? Is this to make figuring out taxes easier? Are they now paying commission on jerky sales at 7-11? Why is jerky only a dollar in Oregon?

It felt like a minute passed, and then I realized she was pointing at the cash register read-out.

It did read: 666

“Are you sure?” she pleaded.

I told her, as nicely as I could, that I didn’t believe in old myths or some such. She complained, but wiped her hands clean of the event and sold me my devil-treats.  I could almost feel her making some old curse gesture behind our backs as we left, tossing some salt over her shoulder, and then cleaning the register, just to make sure.

Randy and I later agreed that things might have gone differently if she had said, “I’m going to give you one of the squishies free, to avoid the wrath of the beast”. With the prospect of free a squishy, neither of us would have blinked an eye.

Ganoderma applanatum (Artists Conk)

Taken at Sly Park Recreation Area

Licensed!

Finally licensed.

Tomato seedlings!

Mushrooms!

Coprinopsis, possibly Coprinopsis atramentaria. I love how quickly the self digest.

Beyond Ken

I've just about finished the first draft of my resume. Whew!
I'm looking at a few web-based professional nameplate sites. Check out what I've done, let me know if you have a favorite:

http://zerply.com/ken-gribble

http://about.me/ken.gribble

http://re.vu/ken.gribble

The cool thing about re.vu and zerply.com is they can scoop your stuff from linked.in! You can see how that might look by checking out my linked.in

http://www.linkedin.com/in/kengribble

I find resume writing to be a bore. It’s difficult to hold it all back so one can appear to be down-to-earth, and not some half-crazed, kilt-wearing, mushroom-picking, lock-picking, beer-loving, culinary-curious, super-genius, system administrator.

But enough about me.

How do you spread the word about your goals, accomplishments and other accolades? Anyone have any interesting sites or advice?

Something Cold Stirring in the Depths...

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Forty minutes until it is released.

Beer!!!

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Ken, well into the Sacramento Beer festival

Heirloom Tomato Seedlings!

Day 6. 70 potential seeds planted.

Making Liquid Nitrogen Ice Cream

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Right now, in Kemper Hall, UC Davis

Muhahaha!

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G³ goes to Sly Park

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Some of the things we found there.

Poof!

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G³

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Thwip!

Taken at Jo-Ann Fabric and Craft

Heading out for Dinner

Clogged it be!

Clogged it be!

Grandma sent me an AllView car mirror - it's great!

Ken's Wheat Sour - from Rachelle's starter "Doughy"

Taco Time!

Betsy's work at the Weavers and Spinners Guild Open House Show and Sale

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Just some of the work Betsy has at the show and sale.

Simon n Ken

Taken at Partner Park Off-Leash Dog Park

Rampage!

Taken at US Post Office

The Vegetarians used to make this chili are 99% fat free!

Geek, Heal Thyself: Treating Yourself Like a Client

When I run into a banal issue with my own technical device, it can be extremely irritating. The audacity of my own device! How dare it malfunction! Why doesn’t it “just work”? It seems especially bad since I fix these issues as my job. All my work days are filled with helping others to fix these very issues. How can they happen to me?

Today I started down this path when I had an issue printing. Printers and I have a special dysfunctional relationship. I don’t want to believe printing, on stuff made from trees, still exists, and I’m baffled as to how it functions at all, given the huge melange of protocols, drivers, disorderly manuals, installation software, and general crap that surrounds printing. I desperately want computer printing to die a sudden death. I pray that e-paper, e-books, personal devices, or something, soon takes over the universe of printing.

DIE PRINTER DIE!

So, today, a sense of dread settled in when my own Chrome browser reported, many times, "Print is unavailable because the page you were trying to print has crashed". No matter how I tried to print, this message would be the only result. Why did this work before and not now? I knew I didn’t make any printer changes, I so rarely print as it is. Why would Chrome not print?

WHY, MY PRECIOUS CHROME, WHY?

When I get to that special angry-red space, I try to treat myself like I would any other client. I remind Ken that, yes, technology should "just work", but sometimes things break. I settle in to solving the problem for Ken, with the same happy enthusiasm that I would deliver to any client. Often that’s enough to drive away the frustration.

In this case it worked. I dug in, and in spite of not finding a working solution online, I managed to fix Chrome so it would print again. Turns out something was wrong with my default printing, I changed my default printer to another printer, then changed it back. Doing that weird voodoo thing, which should never fix a problem, fixed my problem.

If there’s a lesson here, it is to treat yourself kindly and just as special as you would others. It's a lot less frustrating, and may even help you to focus and fix your issue more quickly.

 

kengribble.com reaches 10 million visitors! #NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement

90% of visitors to kengribble.com appear to be hungover politicians. 

Camp One Mushroom Foray

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As part of a coastal visit by G³, Betsy, Rachelle, and Ken, visited Camp One, in the Jackson State Forest ( http://www.jacksonforest.com ). Our hope was to find and identify many mushrooms. It was quite dry -- for this particular forest that means damp, but not dripping -- so not as many mushrooms were found as times before.

Glass Beach

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Glass Beach is in Fort Bragg. It's a beautiful beach born from the dumping of garbage into the Pacific, decades ago. The sands at Glass Beach are made of bits of wave polished glass. A rainbow of glass colors, from the differing bottles dumped there, can be found. It's a fun place to beach comb.

I found the metal junk, that was left behind, to be fascinating. One could tell the calcified and fused geometric shapes were formed from various thrown away products, but only the imagination could guess what they once were.

What happens when the food is late

Crayons, beer, wine, and the Three Gees!

Still Christmas at the Smog check station!