MindlessCode.net

We’ve been trying to get all our seed in over the past week. Rain threatened (and happened too) earlier this week which made stuff even more exciting.

More random pictures (click to enlarge):

Wow, that’s a lot of lettuce…	…to flip over by hand (it’s very dusty too)…
…and to thresh by hand with sticks.	…Of course, we have fun too. Laurie and Me taking a quick rest on the way over to unload the lettuce seed (in the blue tarp we’re laying on)
The Motley Seed Crew of 2006 at 5:04 PM (we’re actually a lot more tired than we look)	For some reason, you can never have too many dog pictures.

I’m not getting much work done other than seed work because I’m sooo tired when I get home… One more day this week, just 1 more day! Saturday is almost here. Actually, it is fun to “mutilate helpless little plants with clubs like some botanical serial killer”, as someone put it.

Man, this CD is awesome.

I had CYS “Camp” over the past 4 days. CYS is the local school orchestra for high school students…it’s a great program.

I guess I didn’t remember how much fun orchestra could be. Last year I was in a different (younger) orchestra, and I just didn’t seem to have much fun…I donno why. But CYS seems like it’s just going to be a blast. It’s just so much fun to play music with 65 other kids. The music is fun, the people are great, we actually sound fairly OK for only having practiced for 4 days…

Anyway, it was a blast. I can’t wait to start rehearsals in September. I met some new people, but really haven’t made any new friends yet. It seems fairly cliquish, but I just have to insert myself into a clique…or start the “outcasts clique.” Whatever, I’m sure I’ll meet some great people.

Oh, and here’s a question for all ye technical people: What do you do when some one’s email server (actually, and ISPs) won’t talk to you? I’m talking about the good folks over at c-zone. A while ago, I tried to send an email to someone@c-zone.net, and never got a reply. At first, I assumed they were just busy, but after 3 weeks, I began to wonder a bit. So, I sent an email to 14f16244dc0815420b307fce305fd241@c-zone.net to see if I would get a bounce message (14f16244dc0815420b307fce305fd241 is the md5 hash of some string, I forgot what…). The bounce never arrived. I tried from 2 email servers (gmail and wildgardenseed). This intrigued me a bit, so I used telnet to debug:

taj@moria:~$ telnet mail.c-zone.net 25
Trying 63.172.74.216...
Connected to mail.c-zone.net.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 mail.c-zone.net ESMTP
MAIL FROM:<tajmorton@gmail.com>
250 ok
RCPT TO:<email-address@c-zone.net>
553 sorry, that domain isn't in my list of allowed rcpthosts (#5.7.1)
QUIT
221 mail.c-zone.net
Connection closed by foreign host.
taj@moria:~$

Uhh..yeah. Looks like they’re using a mal-configured qmail setup. I think it’s weird that none of the techs have noticed it yet. Huh, we’re not receiving any email…I wonder why?

So, how do you contact these people? They’re support email is @c-zone.net is obviously of no value (since I can’t send email to that domain). I called them a few minutes ago, and got a slightly knowledgeable support person (after navigating a phone system that would hang up if you pressed the option number after the voice had stopped speaking), but they we’re of no help. He said “I’ll open a ticket if I get any more calls.” Ugg… Is there anybody who has c-zone.net as their ISP? If so, PLEASE, PLEASE, get ahold of them somehow… Call them, go to their office, whatever….send them a link to this post, send them the telnet session above, or something. This poor person I tried to email 3 weeks ago probably thinks I’m ignoring then. No, I’m not! Really!

Oh, technology.
Again, I’m up far to late. Night!

I think it’s nice people put pictures in their blogs…sooo…you’ve got to tolerate some photos from me today. Sorry!

Click to enlarge:

(12:30AM) Jamming the last night at Mark O’Connor Camp. I look tired, huh?	(2:13AM) Kayla, Me, and Kit (R-L) at the last night of Mark O’Connor camp
Mary, Bowie, and I rest in the shade of the 40°C (105°F) day.	Mary, Kit, Frank, and I (L-R) harvesting lettuce
Threshing Mustard using our “seed cleaning machines” (Frank, Kit, Mary, Laurie, and Me)

I pretty much dropped off the face of the Earth for 3 weeks. Sorry. I’ve been having way too much fun and now my life is going to suck for a few weeks because I’ll be bored. Oh well.

So, to recap…the week after Mt Shasta Camp I took my GED so I could get my drivers license and take classes at the local community college. I passed. Easily. It really scared me how easy it was. Especially after I read this:

The GED Tests are rigorous. Those who pass the Tests have outperformed 40 percent of traditional high school graduating seniors.

American Council on Education

That’s from the pamphlet I get with my GED certificate. Doesn’t that seem a bit scary to you? Anyway, it was boring, boring, boring, and easy, easy, easy. Anyway, 7½ hours of tests is boring. I think I already said that. Enough.

After that we headed off to San Diego, CA for the Mark O’Connor Strings Conference. The drive down was fairly, um, exciting. Instead of just taking I-5 all the way, we decided it would be a great idea to drive down the coast on 101 and 1. Heh, great idea. It was beautiful, but it was very slow. We also started burning up our brakes on one stretch of road which was fairly exciting. Being in the middle of nowhere, on a road with hairpin turns, with a 9% grade over 1 mile, at 7:30PM is interesting. We survived, though.

The next night we stopped near San Luis Obispo, CA and tried to find a place to stay the night. All the camp grounds where full, as well as most of the hotels/motels. We finally found a place that was charging $200/night. The room was probably worth about $50. I mean, when you pay $200, you don’t exactly expect to wake up and find the police forensic unit a few doors down.

We did made it to San Diego on time. The camp was pretty great! There where tons of great teachers, and lots of great people too…but for some reason it just didn’t have the same feel as the other camps. It felt more…formal. I did of course meet some great people and got to hang out with some people who I kinda knew but now really know.

So yeah, O’Connor camp was fun. On the last day (Friday), after staying up until 2:30 AM jamming and generally having a good time with friends, I went to bed for 3 hours and got up at 5:30 AM to go to the Booher Family Music Camp in Sisters, OR. I was awake until 4:00 PM navigating, then I just kind of fell asleep.

O’Connor Camp Freakin’ Rocked!

Then we got to Booher Camp. I have to say, I just love this camp. There were about 250 people there (vs ~180 at O’Connor camp), but it felt nothing like O’Connor camp. I don’t know why. It just felt a lot more close and friendly. Maybe it was the round tables, I don’t know. There’s something about being crammed around a table eating good food. It was certainly a lot better than the crappy cafeteria food and long rectangular tables at O’Connor camp.

Jamming the First Night at Booher Camp

I took guitar at Booher Camp…this was the first time I had any lessons on the guitar (after faking it for about 2.5 years). It was neat, guitar is a very cool instrument.

What is it that causes the nerds to collect into 1 place? Let me rephrase that: What is it that causes nerds to be driven into 1 place? (Hi Eli, Annie, and Christy! Nerds Rule!). We had our own nerd table where everybody would assemble and have nerdy and geeky conversations. Very fun.

I already went on and on about how great Mt. Shasta Camp was so I’ll spare you… It’s also almost midnight, so I really need to go to bed–and I still need to slog through 96 emails. Read the post right before this and you’ll see how awesome Shasta Camp was–it totally rocked.

I had such a great time at all 3 camps this year. I met lots of great nice people, learned so much I feel like my head is going to explode, had serious sleep deprivation for 2 weeks straight, and generally had a blast. Yay for fiddle camp! And now on to seed field work–somewhat fun, but it just doesn’t have the same feel to it, you know what I mean?

EDIT :: Oh nice, “Listening to” isn’t working. Deal with it.