eateggs

Christmas only comes once a year. And for those of us who are incorrigible Mac fanboys, Christmas this year will arrive on January 14th. That’s right … tomorrow is the first day of MacWorld, which means new Apple devices, another scintillating keynote from Steve, and generally just lots of Mac hysteria.

Rather than state my own predictions, I’ll just paste a few of the more likely ones from a MacWorld article.
NBC finds allies: More entertainment companies will attempt to strong-arm Apple into raising prices at the iTunes Store. Apple will then be forced to create its own content, and Jobs will form “Stevie and the Apple Execs,” a hip new boy band.

iPhone: The sequel: The next-generation iPhone will be released in the second quarter of the year. AT&T will prompt customers to upgrade by sending them frequent text messages informing them that their original iPhones are no longer cool.

And one more thing…: Apple will introduce another line of consumer products, this time in the realm of dental care. The Apple Toothbrush will include the first user-friendly application of DRM—dental rights management. Using its patented FairBrush technology, each Apple Toothbrush will be locked to a single Apple ID. The device will be wildly popular because nobody likes it when someone else uses their toothbrush. Even John Dvorak will hail Apple’s move.

Given Apple’s long track record for innovation and revolutionary devices, I fully expect to be brushing my teeth very soon without fear of my roommates’ drunken toothbrush philandering. I just hope that Apple doesn’t lock in to a long-term and exclusive deal with Crest; I use Colgate.

…

On another note, I was somewhat distressed (by many things, this week, but specifically…) to turn on the radio in my sister’s car this morning and find a “90’s Alternative Rock” radio station. “My God!”, I realized, “it’s happened already. The music that I grew up listening to, that I know and love and identify with, has been reduced to a dead genre. It’s passé. It’s the new oldies.”

Yeah. I’ll admit. I knew every song the station played. And yeah, I’ll admit: I loved every song the station played. But I’m just not ready for my generation’s music to be canonized and written a certificate of death. I’m … too young. The music was too good…

I remember the laughing conversations we used to have in high school. “Imagine what it’ll be like when we’re old… and we’re still listening to Ludacris and Sublime, and our kids will think that our music is so tame and old sounding.”

Well, I imagine it. Only, I’m twenty-one years old. Not fifty. I don’t have one foot in the grave. I’m just entering my prime…

If there’s one thing in life to be desired, that thing is quality. If there’s a second thing to be desired, I would suggest irony–something for the soul, and something for the cynic.

Quality … has become something of an obsession. A lifestyle, and a mindset. Something to be sought after (and, on occasion, obtained). Not a mere descriptor (a descriptor that defies definition), but something of an object of its own. And object that surrounds and bathes in light something possessing it.

Quality of experience. Like getting pulled out of my comfort zone at the Yonder Mountain concert, New Year’s Eve. Pulled out of my comfort zone by a short brunette in a metallic-blue tank top. From by bubble into a circle–now of four–to dance. I don’t, mind you. Dance that is. At least not when sober, or when people might be watching. But, like jumping off a cliff, roof, swing–taking a plunge–once you’ve jumped, there’s no turning back. Sometimes, you’re pushed or pulled. But you’re nevertheless committed, and there’s no sense in struggling.

So she yanked me, from my comfort zone. Into her circle. To dance. Honestly, it was poignantly awkward. I imagine I looked utterly foolish, or worse. Who’s to say? But, then, it was too late, and I just had to enjoy it. And … I did. Enjoyed being completely out of character. Being embarrassed, but committed. So, instead of running, I danced. To the intermission music. One, two, maybe three songs. I felt like an utter square–but at the same time thoroughly elated. Then the band came back on, and we continued our count down until 2008.

I didn’t learn her name, or even where she was from. But she has my gratitude.

And so: quality of experience, by being out of character. By being uncomfortable. But, uncomfortable in a good way.

Uncomfortable, as in the driving gusts of a high-plains wind, just before dawn on New Year’s morning. The bitter cold of early morning–my mom tells me it was four degrees–chopping blocks from the brittle crust of a snow drift by headlamp. The eastern horizon glowed with all the hues of pink and yellow of a beckoning sunrise, as I dug around my car, buried in to its running boards. (I’d backed up, backed way up, to get a good running start at the hundred feet of snow drift. I’d made it forty, maybe forty five, like St. Peter walking on the water, we stuttered, stopped and sank.)

Abandoned, the car sat sunk and lifeless. In the absence of man-made noise rang the scratching, whistling stillness of dark plains. The whisk of low blowing snow. There stood a sole moving figure, standing, face in to the wind. His headlamp, from a distance, was no brighter than the stars, dotting the horizon, of which he became a part. Insignificant, diminished. Utterly obscured by the infinity and eternity of darkened undulating hills–pink and white, speckled with bursting tufts of brown in dawn’s nascent glow.

The figure, dark, buffeted, chopping blocks from the wind-crusted snow. Hewing and squaring them, stacking them to build an altar: to the great plains, or, to dark figures toiling on those plains.

…

Quality of workmanship. Quality of design, of materials, of construction. Quality of thought, of intent, of result.

Quality of speech. Well-measured words. Words that encourage. That open-up. That open up the world a little wider. “Oh God, open the world a little wider.”

Quality of action. Of intent. Of intention.

To these things I dedicate myself. I betroth myself to. I claim for my own. I claim for myself. I set my sights on.

These things, and nothing less.

This afternoon, Sagar and I drove down to Loveland to see Juno. The movie was quite good (despite a criminally scratched scratched 6th reel–the sort scratched that, running a second-run theater (like I do) makes one mutter angry things under one’s breath about “that projectionist” and “if I ever…” and “a dark and otherwise deserted alley-way”…), but not the point of this post. (If you want a review, go to filmthreat.com. Not here.)

The point of this post is that there was a P.F. Chang’s next to the movie theater, and Sagar and I couldn’t help ourselves but to help ourselves to some delicious Chinese food. (If you’ve ever been to a P.F. Chang’s, you know what I’m talking about. And if you haven’t … you KNOW it must be good because P.F. Chang’s is a national chain and I, Mark Egge, not only choose to eat there when-ever the opportunity presents itself (even when there is potentially delicious local food to be had), but even encourage OTHER people to eat there!). But that’s not the point of this post, either. (If you want a review of my mean, go to zagat.com. Not here.)

The point of this post is that when the food was brought out, there was one vegetarian dish–coconut curry vegetables–and one dish with chicken–Chang’s Spicy Chicken. The person who brought out our food was not our waiter. He looked at me, and then looked at Sagar (who is, despite the goatee and Prana clothing, the son of two Indian–dots, not feathers–parents). Then, he put the vegetarian dish in front of Sagar, and the chicken dish in front of me. When he’d gone, I laughed, and observed what he had done.

“True,” responded Sagar, “but you can’t fault the guy. At least he’s a little culturally literate. I’ll give him props for that.” And, of course, I had to agree. But, at the same time, I enjoyed that little moment of role-reversal. The Indian, ordering the dish with chicken, and the Scandimerican (I just made up a new word! [even though Firefox doesn’t think it’s a word!]) ordering the vegetarian dinner. Ah.

Oh. And, after driving across several parking lots (from the theater to Chang’s) with my door open and head poking out the side (because I was too lazy to scrape my window, just to drive a few blocks), some yuppy had the audacity to yell at me, “are you CRAZY?!” At the time, all I could yell back was, “HALF!” But what I meant to yell back was, “you’re the crass, upper middle-class American, buying overpriced consumer shit, with 2.3 kids, an attached garage, an Audi, and no sense of self, purpose or the world around you! Are YOU crazy?!” But, alas. Perhaps you, dear reader, are the one who yelled at me tonight. Well, now you know what I think–or wonder, rather. No hard feelings.

Which gives me a wonderful idea. Perhaps, to improve readership, I should go to Cafepress.com (not here!) and print an EATEGGS.COM bumper-sticker. I bet people would show up here … and be confused. Mmm.

I spent some time on a gorgeous, sun-yellow, swing tonight. It was snowing: thick, heavy, flakes–swirling white in the ambicked my legs, swinging higher, and higher. Then, in that downward whoosh that follows, I found myself recounting, out loud, an afternoon experience only a few hours old, set in the same swirling snow.

…

“I was walking from the SUB to the SOB Barn. Two hours ago, I had walked across campus in my t-shirt. Now, I pulled my coat’s zipper tight, setting my shoulder against the miserable, blustering snow. My eyes squinted, instinctively, trying to see ahead without being blinded by the blizzard’s gales. I hadn’t brought my gloves with me [which is why, incidentally, I had two pairs with me tonight]; I trudged along: head down, eyes squinting and averted, my hands jammed in my pockets.

And then–perhaps a glittering snowflake caught my eye–I lakes settled on my jacket and beanie. My eyes focused. All at once, no!—I wasn’t cold. I was flushed with life. The wind wasn’t driving. It was correspondent–vivacious, tempestuous and strong.

I paused for a moment, stunned I had overlooked something so wonderful. Something so arrestingly tranquil. “I must … have been caught off guard by the snow,” I thought. Too caught off guard to comprehend or appreciate the forceful beauty of it all–pouring down all around me. Snow, falling in a tremendous deluge–white, gray, silent, soft. Water turned crystallized solace. How could I be trudging, cold and off-put?

So I looked up. And, in a moment, I walked on–my head up, hands out, eyes open. Yes–the snowflakes stung my eyes, causing momentary blindness. Yes–snowflakes settled on my cheeks, my hands. They must have been cold. By the time I reached the Barn, I looked of a snowman. But I enjoyed every step of the way. I enjoyed the cold and gusts and blindness–a small price to pay, rather than take for granted being alive and well–walking and laughing–amongst so much white and wonderful beauty.”

…

There I was, on the swing, swinging forward, faster, higher! Suspended–instantly but infinitely–in the swing’s apogee. That moment–motionless, floating, and flawless in mid-air. The swing’s chains go slack in your clutched fists; you’re weightless, unrestrained and free.

Then, even before awareness of its absence, gravity, jealous gravity, finds you. Pulls you back down. You fall, but the swing catches you, carries you down in its swinging arc. Down and back. You tuck your legs, go up, reach apogee, then whoosh. You’re down again, but screaming up and forward–up into that moment of being infinite, invincible and unrestrained.

Suddenly a god, I became aware that I had said something beautiful. And then, knowing full and well what I was about to do, I ruined it. Soiled it, made it worthless, black and bitter. I became moralizing–forcing meaning (hate, rancor) on something that, if I had just shut the fuck up, would have been meaningful and true.

“And I guess this is the part where I would say something profound,” I blustered, insipidly. “Something like, … ‘That moment of realization was just like life. Sometimes we’re not ready for change, so we miss the beauty in it. We suffer needlessly because we adjust our expectations too slowly–and all the while missing what’s wonderful and life-giving about change.'”

…

Tuck. Back. Up. Fall. Down. Kick. Forward.

Then–disgusted–I screamed. “But, bull SHIT.”

UP. With the last “T”, the swing’s chains went limp. But instead of grasping tighter–in that moment, suspended and weightless–I finally did what I’ve been trying to do for months: releasing the chains, I jumped.

…

And, in that moment–I didn’t know it–but I was free. Weightless, chainless (unbound!), and flying. The world before me beckoned, clawed, but I was in absentia. And–in that moment–in assumptio.

For some reason, the amount of spam I receive spiked precipitously about three weeks ago. Can’t explain it. After five years of having an email address on my own domain, with limited, if any, spam control, it’s something I’ve grown used to: watching the ebb and wane of spam saturation in my Inbox.

This last spike was particularly bad, however. So, three days ago, I turned … to Gmail. No, I didn’t switch to Gmail. Rather, I’m using Gmail to filter out the spam from my Eateggs email address.

The setup was fairly simple. Under the “Accounts” tab (in Settings, when logged in to my Gmail account), I added my eateggs account under “Get Mail from other accounts:”

Then I went to the “Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab,” and, under “POP Download,” enabled POP for all mail. I then set the option, “When messages are accessed with POP,” to “archive Gmail’s copy.”

I then followed Google’s straight-forward instructions to configure my copy of Outlook Express to work with Gmail’s server–which has the added advantage of working regardless of if I’m at home, with my Bresnan connection, or at school. I sent a couple test emails. I noticed about a three minute delay or so between when I sent the email and when it arrived in my Outlook Express Inbox–at little slower than normal but, strangely, the only thing that actually arrived in my Inbox was bona-fide mail.

Additionally, every email sent or received, proxied through Gmail, is archived in Gmail. Not only can I now access any email I’ve sent or received through my Eateggs account via Gmail from any computer at any time, but it’s also reassuring to know that Gmail is keeping a copy of my email (–in case my computer should catch fire, explode, or annoy me enough to get thrown out a window or smashed by my car. Gee… I rather with Gmail could keep a back up of my cell phone contacts and text messages!)

In the three days since setting up the Gmail proxy, I have received ZERO–count them: one, two … none!–pieces of spam in my Eateggs Inbox. I logged in to my Gmail account tonight, for the sake of curiosity, and there, in my Spam folder, were 291 fresh new spam messages. Quickly browsing through them, I realized that Gmail hadn’t missed a beat–every message was spam–spam like the spam that, a week ago, was slowly driving me crazy. Er. I clicked “select all”, and then “delete permanently.” And it was gone. All of it. Ejected into the abysmal refuse heap of dark and murky cyberspace. Forever. It’s not even in my “deleted items.” Which means I’ll never have to see it again.

TLDR Summary: 1) too much spam on personal domain email address. 2) routed personal email address through Gmail. 3) no more spam. 4) Thank you, Google!