Weekend of the Great: chronicling a weekend's events with vague twitter posts

I like to keep track of my weekend happening whenever I head down to SoCal to visit my son. Also, I love me some twitter. So this past weekend I decided to have a little fun with the way I usually do things.

This time I tweeted much more often, and imagined each post as describing a scene in a movie, thus explaining the soundtrack accompanying many of the posts. Also, as this blog post isn't limited to 140 characters, I can afford to give each post a little more details, thereby hopefully cutting back on the vague.

So without further ado, submitted for you approval, my little literary experiment in it's entirety: The Weekend of the Great

* Weekend of the Great: intro; opening song: "bring the ___kin' ruckus" (@ San Francisco International Airport (SFO) w/ 33 others) 8:34 PM Mar 26th via foursquare from San Francisco International Airport
- Waiting in the security line, nothing exciting.
- song: Wu Tang Clang "Bring the Ruckus"; there's few things better than being gangsta but only in your own head.

* Weekend of the Great: slight delay; song: "never caught my breath, every second I'm without you . . ." 9:04 PM Mar 26th via UberTwitter
- Flight got delayed about 30 minutes.
- song: The Used "I Caught Fire (In Your Eyes)"; a sappy love song disguised as a punk song, because at the end of the day I'm a poor hopeless romantic.

* Weekend of the Great: minimonster and a flying greyhound; song: "walking down on memory lane, and all together we're alone" 11:29 PM Mar 26th via UberTwitter
- On the flight from SFO to LAX, nothing to see here.
- song: Fall Out Boy "Dont You Know Who I Think I Am?"; no reason here, just a singable catchy tune.

* Weekend of the Great: drive with the young Jankes (and a possible high-speed chase); dialog: c and fpga talk with ed http://4sq.com/qm5av 11:45 PM Mar 26th via foursquare from Westchester, Los Angeles
- Ed and Christine graciously picked me up from LAX.
- The nerds that we are, me and Ed subjected Christine to a discussion involving (among other things) computer and hardware programming.

* Weekend of the Great: so ends the prelude; surprise cast member: the shedding arbor (@ Ed) 1:57 AM Mar 27th via foursquare
- Closing the night out on Ed and Christine's couch.
- Their dog Arbor (whom I met for the first time that night) a skype kept me company as I stayed up late.

* Weekend of the Great: hourglass alarm and cheap coffee; dialog: hacking the the iphone (@ 7-Eleven) http://4sq.com/cT87Jv 7:33 AM Mar 27th via foursquare from Pomona, Pomona
- A cheap coffee to jump-start the morning, with more nerd talk happening on the drive to pick up the tyke.

* Weekend of the Great: car, dilly, caravan; song: "I'm not going, cuz I've been waiting for a miracle" 10:10 AM Mar 27th via UberTwitter
- After driving me and Dylan to my parents' place to pick up my car, End and I caravaned back over to his place.
- song: Paramore "Miracle"; I love an anthem.

* Weekend of the Great: wiis, miis, and breakfast at the Js; sorely missing: super mario 10:39 AM Mar 27th via Echofon
- Once we got to Ed and Christine's the Wii was quickly hooked up. Wii Play, then updating Miis, followed by a late morning (and delicious) breakfast graciously cooked up by Christine.
- Unfortunately, Super Mario Wii didn't make it with us.

* Weekend of the Great: post breakfast wii plus SlugOS setup; crucial prop: 5-hour energy 1:36 PM Mar 27th via Echofon
- Right back to the Wii after breakfast, this time WarioWare: Smooth Moves.
- With little sleep and fading fast, I needed a energy drink pick-me-up.

* Weekend of the Great: peanut butter / nutella / jelly sandwiches in preparation for Sycamore Park; lunch entertainment: Check Mii Out 3:03 PM Mar 27th via Echofon
- Lunchtime soon approached. Christine made a round of sandwiches: pj&j for Dylan, n&j for Ed, and pb&n for me.
- Plans are made for me and the tyke check out the nearby Sycamore Park after lunch, to get us some outside time.
- Catching the "Check Mii Out" channel we saw Chewbaca, Steve Urkle, Einstein, Darth Vader and a Storm Trooper, and a dude with and upside-down face, amongst a multitude of uniquely constructed Miis. Unibrows for eyes, eyes for antenna, beards as hair, and many other tricks were employed, it's quite impressive.

* Weekend of the Great: the Sycamore upset to The Orange Show; song: "you were the last good thing about this part of town" 4:32 PM Mar 27th via UberTwitter
- Sycamore Park turned out to be a bust: extremely small, and with a birthday party going on there was zero parking Too bad, Dylan was eying the playground set
- Even better than the park, Uncle Kevin got his hands on free tickets to the local motor race track (courtesy of Craig and Son's Termite and Pest Control). Off to San Bernardino we go.
- Fall Out Boy "Grand Theft Autumn - Where Is Your Boy"; what can I say, anthems make for an hour drive shorter. I'm glad the tyke can sleep through just about anything.

* Weekend of the Great: impromptu family meetup; background sound: the gurgle of unfiltered engine noise (@ National Orange Show Events Center) 5:29 PM Mar 27th via foursquare from Show Place, San Bernardino
- Me and Dilly got to Orange show early, just in time to hear the racers warming up their cars.
- Kevin and family are on their way, so in the meantime . . .

* Weekend of the Great: . . . but first, an early evening snack; not present: bottle of pepto (@ Arby's) http://4sq.com/aqCrc9 5:54 PM Mar 27th via foursquare from Show Place, San Bernardino
- Arby's Roast Beef Sandwich: such tastey broke food, and so bad with the heartburn.

* Weekend of the Great: short drive and donuts with the grents; song: "wasting time! and all along you were just wasting mine" 9:27 AM Mar 28th via UberTwitter
- A much shorter drive to pick up Dylan this morning, and we're off to Grandma and Grandpa's for a quick donut and coffee (milk for the tyke).
- song: Four Year Strong "Wasting Time (Eternal Summer)"; these guys are a pop-punk band recommended by my friend ML, they're starting to grow on me.

* Weekend of the Great: along victoria; song: "baby baby baby oh, thought you'd always be mine" 10:11 AM Mar 28th via UberTwitter
- Off to Grandpa's gig at the local air force base, we follow we him down Victoria Avenue in Riverside; spring smells are in the air (see some pics on my flickr).
- song: Justin Beiber ft. Ludachris "Baby"; apparently Beiber "debuted" this on last night's Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards; the tyke and I, we've already been singing it for a month-and-a-half now

* Weekend of the Great: Replay Rocks at March Field Air Museum; notables in the set list: "Brown Eyed Girl", "Sweet Home Alabama" 10:52 AM Mar 28th via UberTwitter
- Replay classic rock plays in honor of our Vietnam Veterans. They were a big hit, everyone was asking for a card, and Dilly got to show off his drumming skills to the band

* Weekend of the Great: after set one and honoring our vets, we need some eats (@ Subway) http://4sq.com/9Om94Q 2:09 PM Mar 28th via foursquare from Orangecrest, Riverside
- My and the tyke had to cut out of the Veteran's Ceremony for lunch, we were both starving
- We stayed long enough to hear touching stories of our boys' losses overseas and the difficulty of coming home. We are forever grateful and in your debt.

* Weekend of the Great: winding down with small robots and home cooking (@ Nowhere) 5:06 PM Mar 28th via foursquare
- After a long day, we head back home for an early dinner made by Grandma
- Dylna fired up Chibi-Robo for the Gamecube to pass the time while we wait for his mom to pick him up.

* Weekend of the Great: Father-Son time shifts a generation, plus a long over-due bicycle ride; uploading: "Ride, Sally, Ride!' 8:00 AM Mar 29th via web
- With they tyke back to school today, father-son time translated to quality time between me and my old man, which thus translates to a bicycle ride.
- While we're away I start uploading some videos I took of yesterday's gig, check 'em out on my facebook page (ask me how).

* Weekend of the Great: down victoria, the scenic route; sights and smells: spring flowers and orange groves (@ Washington park) 9:14 AM Mar 29th via foursquare from Arlington Heights, Riverside
- We find ourselves on Victoria Ave. again, this time on bicycle which affords us time to really appreciate the surroundings.
- Again, such a beautiful day with beautiful nature (see pics on my flickr).

* Weekend of the Great: errands, cheap gas, and a two-dollar hot dog; song: "this is not my beautiful house, this is not my beautiful wife" 11:39 AM Mar 29th via foursquare from Corona, CA
- Dad gets called into work, so I volunterr to run a few errands: off to Costco for cheap gas and an even cheaper lunch (delicious!)
- song: The Talking Heads "Once In a Lifetime", just sampling what the radio give me.

* Weekend of the Great: surprisingly good convo with surprisingly good friends; surprise discussion topic: miley cyrus vs. hannah montana 7:03 PM Mar 29th via foursquare
- I know it shouldn't surprise me, but having good friends with good heads on their shoulders is always a blessing
- Seeing as there's kids in all our lives, the likes of Miley Cyrus can't help but come up in conversation

* Weekend of of the Great: house beers in preparation for an LAX morning; song: "stay alert, stay alert" (@ Nowhere) 10:15 PM Mar 29th via foursquare
- I'm back at Ed's house for the evening, where I am graciously offered beers from the mini-fridge as we sample Rez on the Dreamcast.
- Plans are made for the ride to LAX in the early morning.
- song: Rez level 5

* Weekend of the Great: short drive and long lines; on the radio: kevin and bean in the morning (@ Los Angeles International Airport (LAX)) 7:09 AM Mar 30th via foursquare from Westchester, Los Angeles
- Here comes the early morning drive with Christine to LAX; thankfully it's on her way to work.
- Ah, Kevin and Bean on the World Famous KROQ, always a good choice.

* Weekend of the Great: and so it must end (@ San Francisco International Airport (SFO) w/ 30 others) http://4sq.com/MTivk 10:12 AM Mar 30th via foursquare from San Francisco International Airport
- And as I land in SFO, the Weekend of the Great comes to a close.

i've found my funeral song

no, i'm not morbid, or emo, or obsessed with death. just figured i need to tell someone what song to play at my funeral. waiting for the day of will be a little too late. (this post inspired by my sis, who picked her song a long time ago).

"Please don't cry, just know that I have made these songs for you"

[Kid Cudi - "The Prayer"]

Twitter's just not scratching this itch

Last time I went on and on of how Twitter's hundred-forty character limit can actually be freeing. I've found lately that there's just some itches Twitter can't reach.

Short-format micro-blogging serves me well when all in want to post is a single thought, some witty comment, or some line of whatever song i'm stuck on at the moment. More and more, however, I've been getting the urge to go past the usual solitary thought. Perhaps I want to explain myself further. Perhaps I feel like I have more to say these days. Perhaps I just want to exercise all that crap I studied in high school English class. Or it could be that I need some excuse to write that isn't a mess of curly-braces, dot, and square brackets (Objective-C, for the uninitiated).

Whatever my motives, the micro room I started in just ain't big enough for everything. Time for a big-boy blog, dick.

Which reminds me of a song . . . (White Stripes, "Little Room")

rhyme 2010-03-04 15:45

when the motion of the ocean has an inverse proportion / to this silly little notion i mistaken for devotion / these feet try to run but they move slow motion / in and out of the spell of untrusted emotion

Twitter's why I don't blog

I never could keep up a blog. Blogging takes at least enough commitment to post new entries on a regular basis, and well, I just never seemed to have enough to write about to warrant more than the occasional blurb. Plus there's the burden of trying to keep things fresh and new and flowing and, well, not boring. It all just felt like too much effort.

Then along came a twitter.

"Micro-blogging" they called it, which didn't mean to much to me at first. Honestly it took me a solid two weeks just to figure out what to make of twitter, what the hell it was good for. Then it struck me: the magic is in the hundred-and-forty character limit. With such a restriction my tweets could never stray past a sentence and a half; an unnecessary boundary some may say, but I found the limit to be freeing in a way. No longer did I have to worry about silly things like paragraph structure and whatnot. I could focus on making each entry short, clear, concise ideas: "I'm taking a poop", "check out this link", "I like this quote", "I can be witty in less than a sentence", "here's a random picture", "I found a cool new coffee joint", et cetera et cetera. I was an instant tweeting fool.

tbc