It's just been a hell of a summer, really.

And the worst part is, I'm not even sure what I can talk about. Because too many people I know and love read my blog now, which means it's all too fucking exposed.

The short version goes like this:

I have a long family history of madness. My brother's struggles - well, I've talked about it before. My mother suffered life-long battles with anxiety; while she called it 'manic depression', it wasn't that; it was, however, a complex stew of issues. Her mother was certainly bipolar; she spent her last decade in a full time care facility.

My father had learning disabilities; dyslexia and who knows what else (they didn't even have language for these things in the 30's when he was in grade school). His sister, though, had something else, some sort of histrionic-something.

It doesn't get any better on the other side, though we don't know details; adoptions don't come with a mental health history. Without question, though, that inheritance there is just as thick and rich with issues.

This, along with heart disease and cancer, are the inheritance I bring my children.

Oh, there's an up side. My father was a brilliant scholar, overcoming disabilities to earn a PHd in linguistics and logic. My mother - a high school dropout - had still one of the most gifted linguistic minds I know. She was a poet, and incredibly good editor, and I think, if she'd ever tried, a great writer. Intellect, then, is the pearl in the oyster.

The trouble is, far from balancing out the mental health burden, high intelligence seems to add to it. The world's smartest people, in my experience, are also so often it's most troubled.

This summer, the hanging fire of two children with said history finally landed.

The details - are not really mine to tell, not here, not now. No one's lying it a ditch or hanging from a rope or bleeding out. No one's in a hospital, no one's in a straight jacket. The issues are lower grade, and more pervasive.

For me, though, It's the little things (as Bukowski says), that drive a man mad. It's the stress of getting thorough a day without losing my cool.

It's the fact that any trace of anger becomes a spiralling issue that grows out of proportion into a vast hurricane of distress.

My mantra - Must. Keep. Cool.

Only my poker face - my ability to keep the iron-man-hard face on no matter what - gets me through days. Only my ability to endure pain and stress and chaos silently is getting me though days when every single person in my world seems to be coming unglued.

I'm Jack Bauer, i tell myself. I'M FINE.

I could, though, from time to time, use something to hit. Someplace where I can rage, where I can let it out without tearing apart fragile calm.

I need that dark cave to crawl into, every now and then.

WIth great delight, I received a package last week my from friends Mark and Stephen at Deadringer, NZ.

This is the first time I've gotten the full treatment - the custom carved casket.

Mark asked me what I wanted carved in the casket. Just have fun with it, I said. Do whatever you feel inspired to do.

Below is what they came up with, and I could not have been more delighted.

I wish I'd taken pictures of the whole thing as I opened it; the process is so dramatic that it would have made an amazing slide show. The casket is bolted closed with tiny brass screws, and comes with a tiny screw driver. Here, though, is the lid.

...and what was inside after I removed the screws.

The necklace is a thing of beauty. Later I'll have Barb model it for me; it fits beautifully. It's truly elegant. I love women's jewelry that retails the edge, the biker-gothic-rock-n-roll feel, and yet is still beautifully feminine. This is s necklace that requires a lovely feminine neck to display to full effect.

The ring is Deadringer Minima Classic, modified to my request with a 13/spade design (you know how much I'm a sucker for spades). It's sized as a pinky ring, and fits, as always, absolutely perfectly. I've never work a pinky ring for daily wear; this ring is so comfortable I just might manage it.

The thing that sets these guys apart from anyone else in the business is both the incredible detail, and the creativity; the photos below show both.

Below the cut, you'll find a couple more shots; these two are the rings beside my Classic, and my Yorrick, for size reference. This shows the scale side by side, and on the hand

For all shots, click to embiggen.

This isn't me.

I swear though, it could have been.

That there is an example of why I should never date or marry other doms.

I just ran across a great blog by jeweler MT Maloney.

His web site is here - alas all in flash, which I hate, but nevermind, it's a good looking site with some good looking jewelry.

I have not yet seen any of his work first hand, but I'm really enjoying seeing his creative process as it happens in his blog, From the Workbench.

MT has shots of a number of projects in process, from concept to design to final piece; for example the Mako Shark, or the Ace of Spades skull.

    

MT's a pretty talented artist and designer; I'm looking forward to seeing more from him on the future. Meanwhile, I absolutely love seeing his work as it develops.

It should be no surprise that I'm a HUGE fan of Steve Gillespie's Deadringer jewelry. Steve's just a brilliant designer, a jeweler of consummate skill, and a hell of a good guy.

I love everything they've ever made, and would happily own one of each, if I were made of money.

That said, I'm particularly thrilled with this new set of beaded necklaces they call "Mourning Beads". They're elegant in a way nothing Steve's done before is, without loosing that deadringer edge. They're 100% Steve Gillespie, 100% Deadringer, but they're also something I can see with evening wear.

They're just stunning.

Mark describes these necklaces thus:

Some time last year during a workshop argument animated debate on jewelry of the Victorian era, we struck upon the idea of a string of beads. Hardly an original concept, granted, but we wanted to give them a Deadringer twist without loosing the essence of yesteryear. Steve was already well underway carving a small skull and a selection of bones, so after a few months of trialing a variety of beads and bead sizes in various formats, we have settled on the combination of the skull with polished natural black Agate in a traditional necklace format, terminated with a femur & ring clasp based on your customary fob assembly

Pictured below are a couple of variations on the necklace; it's offered in three variants (Alternating, Regulated and Sectional), and in 16 or 18 inch lengths. Ranging from $295 to $655 (depending on length and configuration), these are actually pretty affordable.

Click here to order or to see more details and pix.

I just love these; I want to put them on every beautiful neck I know (for an example of a beautiful neck I don't know, modeling the necklaces, look after the cut).

You may think I'm obsessed.

It's true, I'm obsessed.

It's been a really, really long time since I had fun wrenching on a vehicle. I think the last time I actually had fun working on my car, I mean really working on it, was my first Toyota truck (a 1979 SR5 long bed). I used to do all kinds of crap to it, because it was so easy to work on. More recently, the only car I've really spent any time on was my red Jeep wrangler; mostly minor bolt-ons or removals.

I've never worked on my own motorcycles significantly; never really a been a big customizer. But when I set out to replace my Trophy (a big beast of a bike, all covered in full-body plastic), I had a couple of criteria: light, nimble, and most of all, no fucking plastic. I wanted to be able to work on it, whatever bike I chose.

When I settled, after considerable thought and research, on a Bonneville, I couldn't have picked a much more customization-friendly platform. All the bikes in the bonneville family (The original Bonnie, the Scrambler, and the Thruxton) share a uniform frame, engine, and geometry; so parts are almost completely interchangeable. Being the product of a long history of chopping, bobbing, and café-ing, there's also a huge market out there for parks, kits and gear.

There are literally dozens of vendors making and selling parts, and hundreds of easy bolt-on options. For a beginner, one could spend thousands before getting up into the range of work that's actually difficult, and for experienced wrenchers, there's really no limit to what you can do to these things. Like the original 60s Triumphs, they're made to be re-made.

To say I'm having fun with this is an understatement; I'm having an absolute fucking ball.

My list of things to do is just getting longer and longer, from changes to the air intake (air box removal kit and air injection removal), to the exhaust (black pipes, predator cans), to the rear wheel (fatter tire), to a new tank to replace that tiny teacup of a tank the Thruxton comes with. There are about a hundred other things I could do, ranging from power increases to paint; time and money are my limits.

But here's my next customization.

One of the common objections to the Bonneville family is the ugly-ass tail light and signal cluster, which looks like something off of a '50s scooter or the back of an Edsel. There are many after-market tail-light and turn signal options that are more in line with the bike's sixties/seventies styling.

Alternately, particularly among Café Racer enthusiasts, one of the most common mods is what's called a Fender Removal Kit, or FEK, which removes the rear fender entirely, replacing it with a plate under the seat (to protect wiring), and a minimal tail-light and license bracket.

Every major Triumph parts dealer offers an option for this, each approaching it a bit differently. I wound up with the kit from British Customs, mainly because I liked the 'cats-eye' tail light (though also because the wiring harness they provide is particularly user-friendly).

To go with this, I chose a pair of turn signals from Harrison Specialties, which I just happened to stumble on via a Buell forum. They satisfied my taste for aggressive, bullet-shaped turn signals and super-bright LEDs. I admit it, I'm a whore for LEDs, I've replaced all the turns, all the idiot lights, the gauge illumination, and would replace all the lights on my car too, if I had the time.

Below are some pictures; compare the look of the rear fender here, to the new version, here and here. The difference in terms of a clean, classic, retro appearance is worlds apart, and I couldn't be happier with it.

Other smaller mods are a ignition relocation kit from Joker Machine (who make the coolest shit ever), moving the ignition from next to the headlight (a dumb-ass place for it; it's ugly there, and it's awkward to reach), and small fairing-mount front turn signals, and a billet choke knob, also from Joker.

Below is a slide show; let me know if you can't get to the whole set.

(this seems to be broken at the moment, it's not clear why, but I'll fix it shortly)

There are a whole lot of other parts I installed as part of this, though most of that's only interesting if you own a Triumph you're working on. Read on if you're interested in the hard details

Here's my first significant attempt at customization on my Thruxton.

(I'm trying a MobileMe embed here, it should be a slide show, let me know if it isn't).

After a ton of research and a ton of over-thinking, I finally pulled the trigger and ordered a fairing for my Thruxton.

Sold by Bella Corse as the "Cafe Racer 1/4 "Bikini" Fairing", it's an Emgo "Viper"; your basic, old-school ABS plastic, universal mount fairing.

It's more or less exactly what I had in mind when I first started thinking about fairings; reasonably cheap, really easy to install, and looks as retro as hell.

I'm pretty damned happy with it.

Next on the list to do is new turn signals; I had to remove the stockers to fit this, but I hate the stock signals, so it's a win both ways. I have these beautiful billet LED lights from Joker Machine to install; that's my next project (I need some additional wiring to convert things to LED).

I'm having far to much fun with this project; every little thing I do makes this motorcycle feel like mine.

More pix of the project as it progresses.

God, i hate it when hockey season ends.

Used to be, I was a football guy. BAseball I didn't care about either way; I'd watch it, I liked a good game live, but it didn't matter. Basketball bored me to tears, and soccer more so.

Hockey was one of those games I wanted to like, very much. Back in Gretzky's day, when my brother was glued to the games, I'd try, and try, and never get it.

in 1991 when Hockey came back to the bay area (thanks to George Gund) ,I started thinking I should go to a game. And I said that off and on for years afterwards. I tried, again, to get into in on TV, but it's not an accessible game on a small screen.

It wasn't until my first game, somewhere in the early '00s, that I finally got it. From the first play of that first game live in person, I was a dedicated San Jose Sharks fan.

The Sharks have had some good, great, and not great seasons, but I didn't care; I was hooked.

The first year, I went to several games before I was able to easily track the action on tv. But once I got what was going on, I found i was getting almost as much as I did live.

Football is a game made for TV. Deliberate pacing, setup, play, stop, setup. It's geometric, strategic, reasonably predictable. Live, the game is thrilling, but often difficult to track at stadium distances. On TV, you can see everything you need to see to understand the game completely. Truly, you get far more out of a football game on TV than you do in the stands (aside from the sheer energy of being there).

Hockey is the opposite. A TV screen - no matter how big and how clear - cannot catch all the action on every part of the ice. Hockey's too fast, too frantic, too unpredictable. Also, obviously, a three inch puck becomes about a pixel wide on a TV screen, so it's rarely visible for more than seconds at a time.

Live, though, the incredibly complex interplay, the constant change of strategy, the timing with who's where on the ice at any time. More, you get the changing on and off the ice - an absolutely crucial detail of coaching - that on tv is never visible.

Hockey is an absurdly fast game. The skaters are fast, the puck is fast, the changes in pace and direction are fast. Scoring can happen any time by any member of either team. In football, you know a touchdown is coming - or may come - for a long time as teams march down the field. You know when you go get a beer, when things won't be happening for a while. In hockey, you don't, ever, know when the game changing moment is going to happen. Live, there are moments when one can't even catch breath, when the tension tightens and tightens and tightens until you're ready to explode. You can't get this when you're not there, hearing skate hit skate, stick crack off puck, players crashing into each other or the boards. The SOUND of hockey is an integral part of the experience.

More than any sport I've seen, Hockey is made to see live.

Yet, I've seen enough now that I can assemble what's happening from TV; I can make up the difference now. We're lucky to have one of the best broadcasting teams in any pro sport I can think of in San Jose; Drew Remenda and Randy Hahn, on Comcast SportsNet California. I can't over-state the difference it makes to have top broadcasters calling the game; particularly with Hockey. It makes watching games immensely entertaining. When the games are on other networks (usually Versus), my enjoyment is radically less (though I'll still, always watch).

I'm a committed fan; I've reached that point where I plan around Hockey. I plan my weekday evenings, I plan when I'll leave work early and when I'll leave late, I plan my drinking. I try to catch every game. A hockey season is long. 82 games, plus playoffs. That means 41 home games. This is one of the reasons I don't have season tickets; I simply can't make the commitment of time and money. And of course, I can't realistically even watch that many on TV. But I try. Knowing a hockey game will be on when I get home on weeknights makes me happier.

From the beginning of October 'til the season ends (In April if you're not lucky, or into May or even June, depending on how long one's team survives the playoffs), it's a constant in a hockey fan's life; something that has a significant impact on mood.

The letdown when the season ends is significant. Even when we're having a bad year, when we're not in the playoffs, or when we exit them early and ugly, I look at the calendar and think, how many months until I can buy tickets for another game.

A year like this one - wow.

The last three years, the sharks have played incredibly well all season. They've set records - points, games won. Franchise records, player records, league records. They've been on a major roll; playing absolutely amazing hockey all year. But the previous two, they went out hard and early in the playoffs (in 08, in the most brutal overtime marathon I've ever seen, and in '09, they were smacked down with ridiculous ease in the first round by the hated Anaheim Ducks).

Brutal endings, both, for a team that had 'stanley cup' written all over them. Truly, both years, they looked unbeatable early on.

This year was different. This year we played hard, played well, but we didn't have the look of a team peaking too hard and too early. We had firepower from all over the team, we had discipline, we had a powerful physically game. We had top players like Marleau and Heatly playing at the top of their games and scoring at will. It looked like a cup run.

And when we came into the playoffs, it still looked like a cup run. We stumbled a bit in the first round, making it look harder than it should have been. But it wasn't that hard. The second round, against Detroit, we made look pretty easy.

So coming into the final, against a strong but extremely beatable Chicago Black Hawks, we all sort of felt like this was just the walk up to a Stanley Cups we'd already won.

Turned out, not.

I was at game one of that series, and walked out with a couple of clear impressions. One was that this is some incredibly good hockey; possibly the best hockey I've ever seen live. One was that this Chicago team was fast, strong, and incredibly good. And the third was that we are just about dead even it abilities, so the series would be decided by small details and tiny increments of advantage.

We lost that game, but only just; we were in it til the ending. It was about as good a game as a loss can be.

The second game, they caught us out. They exposed a couple of weaknesses, and lined up their own strengths against them; playing spectacular defense and using speed to disrupt the sharks normal puck movement strategies.

three and four played out more like one; incredibly close games, were two teams stood head to head and measured up; one was a tiny bit better, and dominated.

The Sharks could have one that series; but they couldn't win it right now. They don't have the right game, and maybe they're one or two key players off the right lines. Personally I think it was one of those 'who's hot this week' cases; I think a month ago or a month from now, the series would have been different if the peaks and valleys lined up different. Because Hockey's like that; teams go on amazing streaks where they can't lose, and then they do lose, and have amazing streaks where everything goes wrong for them for a week, or a month, before they put it together.

The Sharks came in off pace; we knew that when they struggled against an infinitely weaker Colorado team. They came in vulnerable, with an awareness of fallibility and a history a failing hard, early. Chicago were on the opposite end of the curve, surging when they needed to surge, and playing up to peak rather than down to valley.

Yes, it was a sweep; but every game was close, and every game was within reach.

The heartbreak last year was that our team let us down. The heartbreak this year was that they didn't; they just were not quite great enough, not as great as they needed to be this week.

The end of the season happens in that one second when a puck goes over the line, and then in that 60 seconds when the time trickles away on the clock, and you know, finally, that hope's over and the season ends. right. here.

Stanley cup? Who cares. The real battle was here, in San Jose, and in Chicago, and it ended wrong. Who gets that big silver mug in a couple weeks time doesn't matter at all, it's an afterthought, for bragging rights between two teams who mean nothing but payback targets next year.

The season's ever when my team get on a plane and fly home.

I look at the calendar - summer beginning, weather warming. I think about bbq and swim parties, about warm vacations and lazy (or busy) weekends, about hot, sweaty nights. But I also look past that to fall, because the only thing that makes it feel better is football season. And this year, for the first time in a decade, I'm seeing the 49ers look like they may be worthy of hope. It's been a long, ugly road for them, and they've made a great show of wildly, obviously bad choices everywhere in the organization, from owner to coach to general manager to drafts to free-agents, all the way to where to build new stadiums. But it's hit a point where the pieces seem to be falling into some sort of line, and where the players we have signed all look like the right players to fit what's been wrong. We have a coach who seems to understand how to lead. MAybe, just maybe, we're finally starting to do it right.

That doesn't mean they're looking to a super bowl; but it means they just might be looking at a winner of a season, and if we're very lucky, more. And that, for a long, long time fan, is a little glow out on the horizon that makes it seem better.

That doesn't stop me from being bummed. When I put my new, personalized "playoffs" hockey jerseys away today, I though "i need more of these, I don't have a Nabokov one yet". And then I remembered how long i'd be before I can wear it to a game.

But this sharks team will be back here, and past here. Of that I'm completely sure. And meanwhile, there's that summer, and that fall of red and gold. And hopefully, there are drunken, sweaty pursuits that will get me out of the house and get sports the hell out of my head; god knows that'll be good for me.

There are way too many sites talking about this, really, and I kind of hate to put sex-toy retailer and all-round bullshit artists Eden Fantasies MORE into the spotlight.

But you know, this shit's just too good.

If you're not following, Bacchus at ErosBlog gives a great summary.

Even better is the post that stirred all this, over at MayMay's blog, Maybe Maimed.

To quote Bacchus, "It's epic. It's detailed. It's devastating. And it's hilarious".

The shortest summary I can come up with is that Eden Fantasies have been building a vast link farm with a 'link exchange' program ("if you link to my blog I'll link to yours"), but has been using technical slight-of-hand to obscure outgoing links. The upshot is that they appear to be networked from everywhere in the sex-bloging universe, while showing absolutely no links of any kind out. The details are brilliant if you can wrap your head around it (see MayMay's post, above).

The bottom line - covered here, there and everywhere by the above two gentlemen-and-scholars, as well by AAG and others - is that Eden have proven themselves to be pretty thorough scumbags numerous times, in numerous ways. If you want to take a stand, I suggest you read and forward some of those links. At very least, it's a good object lesson in how sneaky business practices can't be hidden for long.

I have to suggest, though, that if you have anything to do with Eden, you get the hell out of there. They're a slow-motion train wreck, and everyone I know who's been involved with something there has been burned in one way or another.

One of the funny things that tech corporations do a lot of is shuffle people from bldg to bldg.

I've been in tech since tech was new, so of course, I've done a hell of a lot of this. I've even done the moves myself, when I worked for a startup in this dim and distant past; being the lowest paid guy in the company (one of maybe three without a PHd behind my name), i got all those extra jobs, like building stuff, tearing stuff down, moving heavy things, and driving the company truck (because I had a truck, and no one else did, it became The Company TRuck).

The thing that seems ironic now, though, is that physical proximity to co workers matters almost not at all for most companies now. Most of us in tech - at least the engineers - get more done when we're away from our cubicles than when we're in them. So the push to gather a team together in one room, area or bldg is a loosing battle for a company that's growing.

I'm lucky enough to work for such a company, so we're doing lots of poorly-planned body shuffles.

It's frustrating; putting us together won't help us work, but moving us disrupts work. Our last move was dreadful, costing me vastly in terms of productivity. And it failed the goal of putting a team together, because we tried to shoehorn three teams into room for two, and thus wound up splitting all three teams worse than when we started.

Tomorrow, we go again, and it's the same thing; three teams into one bldg, and by the time we move, space is already too short to fit everyone, even with cubes cut down to 2/3 normal size.

For what? So managers who don't really get it can know where everyone sits.

There's an upside though. My current bldg is absolutely horrible. Oh, it looks great, but as a working environment it's dreadful. Every mistake you can make in terms of lighting and sound has been made. So the new bldg - literally two parking lots down the road - has to be better, if only because it can't be worse. So if we stay there loger than a year, the productivity should be a sum gain only because the environment may be less noisy and unpleasant. BUt that's only a win if we don't move again in six months, because a move like that always costs weeks of disruption.

And again, why? When we could work literally anywhere, in any bldg. Moving one employee is easy; moving a bldg-full is a huge undertaking.

Corporation, I guess we could say, are stupid.

On the other hand, we get friday off. So it's not a complete loss.