New Moon Confession - 01

Today at 7:32pm EST the new moon began. In keeping with my goal to confess at each new and full moon, here we go.

Meat. Yep. Sorry chickens, that your fate ended up diced and orange-flavored at Panda Express. And that I broke down and ate you. Sorry cows, that you ended up in the soup I ate today. I did good besides Saturday and today since my last post. Oops, I almost forgot. Sorry eels, that you ended up in sushi that I love and that I couldn't resist you.

I'm going to make an effort to sit and really look at meat before I eat it. Bring up all those things I know but my belly pushes aside. I think I just need to remember to give myself a second and in that space I can change. I think that's all it really takes in a lot of situations where we do things we don't want to out of habit: Just a little space to make a different choice.

I yelled at my dogs a lot since my last post. For some reason they can annoy me so fast! And not even cuz they lick (which is gross in a cute kind of way) or make a mess. But because they don't listen to me! I say "Stop!" in a voice they should totally understand, but nooooo. Stupid dogs. I didn't control my anger at them until it was too late. I got to where I felt like strangling them for just a little bit. I'm a bad man. I didn't do it, but I felt the edge.

For the past two weeks I've been going to a meditation group with a Zen monk. Sitting in a group is a lot easier it seems than sitting alone and I like the sense of structure and community. At the end of every session is a Q&A with the monk and this Sunday I asked, "A situation comes up a lot in my life where I can't control my annoyance and anger. Its when my wife gets upset over things I consider to be trivial. What can I do to get a better handle on these emotions?"

He said that even though it sounds childish, try holding my breath. When I get mad, take a deep breath and hold it for five seconds. That will give me some space to choose not to say anything. I'll still be mad, but I won't let it get me. He also recommended sitting with the anger in meditation and choosing a posture that is more difficult to take the energy out of my anger. I'm going to try both of these soon, I'm sure!

I got mad at The Misses a couple times too, for the reason stated above. I get upset when she gets upset. Its the toughest thing for me. I don't want her to be angry or upset, and I think she shouldn't be. To me the causes seem stupid, why not to her? But everyone sees the world differently and getting angry when she's angry certainly doesn't help. I will pause before each thing I say and do in these situations to try and give myself that necessary space for change. Hopefully I can stop being such an ass.

And as my last post stated, I let my unconscious expectation that meditation will buy peace and a lovely day get way out of control and ruin my mood. Thankfully I was in my cube all day long, away from most people and filtered through twenty second phone calls and business e-mail. But that mood isn't good for anyone around me. Its infectious and I probably wasn't the most helpful and happy today, try as I may.

I guess my main unskillful fault is being so horribly unmindful lately. Unmindful of my thoughts. Unmindful of my feelings. Unmindful of my actions. I could be compared with a blindfolded man driving down a school zone at 68 MPH. Dangerous and... not the brightest crayon in the box. Lazy and unmindful, yep. That's it.

Hopefully I can use this day to get back on track. Maybe with a new moon there can come a new Dave. Not completely different, but by contrast fresh and bright and clean. I will try. If you see my walking down the straight shout, "Wake up!". I'll appreciate it.

- BuddhaDave

Hopefully This Helps

<i>E-mailed Submission</i>

I am in a foul mood. A very foul mood. The kind that makes you tired
after a couple hours of being in it. I can't get out. So now I'm
drained and generally upset.

Why? Because of dogs. And no orange juice. And uncomfortable
meditation cushions. And a crappy session. But mostly because of
dogs. Why can't they just sit still and shut up! Why don't they know
what I want and do it? Don't they know English!

But all that is a lie. Its not because of dogs or OJ. Its because of
me. I've discovered I am more easily irritated when I meditate at home
than if I don't. Why? I think its because I expect something to
magically change into Perfect House with Perfect Pets and Perfect
Everything. Somewhere in my head I have it that meditating fixes my
day for me. Like getting my butt on that mat is all it takes.

But it doesn't. In my head that buys me a good day, and when the first
thing goes wrong I'm upset. What the fuck, I paid for a good day.
Where is it? The service in this place is shitty. I'm going to
complain.

And boy do I. Mostly in my head, bu its going on alllll the time. Its
tiring. I need to stop. But today I can't.

I'm pretty crappy at this game. Its sad to see but also good to know.
I think once I have some energy I'll feel better about it. But right
now I'm just blech and blugh and blah.

- BuddhaDave

Can't... crawl... out... of... pit... or... form... full... sentence...

For Jon

Long lost pic! I totally forgot it was even in existance. I love it.




Want the full size? Click here.

- Buddhadave

I Think This Will Work

So apparently I can e-mail in posts to Blogger and it will publish for
me. Lets see!

It is so god damned nice outside today. That's the only way I can
explain it. So god damned nice. Why do I have to be inside today?
Why didn't I go into Park Rangery or Hobo-ery or something so I could
be outside more? *sigh* Hopefully its still nice when I get off of
work. Maybe I'll go to the park and sit in some grass.

Well, I better get back to work. Hopefully this comes out okay!

- BuddhaDave

Full Moon Confession - 00

Click the title of this post for a list of the Buddhist precepts

A part of my path down this Road of Whatever I've taken it to be true that the first precept of not killing includes not eating anything that was basically killed for you. I also believe that there isn't as much difference between myself and other living things as most people believe. Just tiny details. And I wouldn't want to be killed for food, so I bet they don't either.

If I sit in the meat isle of my local grocer and look at all that packaged meat for what it really is (raw chunks of dead animals that were once alive and killed in a probably not-so-nice way) I get down and don't see brightly packaged blocks of mmmm mmmm good any more. I see dead animals in tiny plastic shapes and I stop being hungry. The square of white and read meat in front of me was once an animal that liked the sun and food and didn't like pain just like me.

But I don't always sit and look like that. Or care to. Its laziness and greed. Steak tastes good. Bacon tastes good. I push the thoughts of jumping pigs and happy heffers away so I can eat things I like. Then I tell myself next week I'll really start being a vegetarian.

So there's the first one: I eat meat even though I know I don't want to and say I won't. I do it when its convenient.

I lecture The Misses a lot on her temper and being mindful of when she's annoyed. She isn't a raving mad woman or anything, but its one of the few things I feel she does need to work on. Well, I'm not really that much better. The list of things that sets me off has been whittled down, but I'm no Jesus. I've yelled at The Misses and been an ass for no reason just because I'm annoyed.

So there's two: Watch my emotions, especially when I feel the need to tell others to do the same. I guess that means I didn't watch my speech close enough.

I've been having Ben and Jerry's ice cream like everyday after lunch. That isn't necessary or in line with my goal to be on a good, animal-product free diet. I'll go out of my way to get this ice cream. I've been really snacky.

Number three: I've overindulged in food.

I think that's good. I know its not the murder or rape you expected, but its like an everyday thing and I really want to live by the precepts and it bugs me constantly. Like background static that never stops. I'm just lazy. Hopefully this helps me see how lazy I am and fix it.

Next time I'll post more specific examples, I just wanted to get this out and started today. Like a warm up.

Be good!

- BuddhaDave

"Hey Dave, you want to go get a big steak and then get some Half Baked ice cream?"
*whimper*

New Feature

Ahoy, fellow Interweb sailors and surfers. How be ye? On this side of the ship I be good, yarr.

So today I learned that some Buddhist traditions treat the new and full moons as holy days and partake in confession if they have broken one of the five precepts. Just for kicks I'll list the precepts here:

• Not to take the life of or harm anything that breathes


• Not to take things not intended for you


• Not to engage in harmful/false speech


• Not to overindulge in sensual pleasure


• Not to take intoxicants

I made a pic one day (I'm quite proud of it) to depict these:



Some of you may be thinking, "That's a lot of don'ts!" But really you can look at them the other way too. DO respect life. DO speak kindly. DO respect others.

So anyway, on the full and new moon they confess if they've done anything against these five trainings. Oop, I guess I'm not done talking about them yet. They are "trainings" not commandments. They confess so that they have more motivation to stay on the path in the future. Its easy to not feel bad about something you did if its hidden.

So back to the point of this post. Every full moon and new moon I'll make a confession post about my breakings of the precepts, which by the way, I do try to keep. Sound like fun? Well it should be! You can know what a baaaaaad man I am.

I missed one already, so I'll make it up in a sec in its own post.

- BuddhaDave

And All It Wants

"...A tangible wave of longing hit him, lust and loneliness riding in on the wavelength of amphetamine.

All the meat, he thought, and all it wants."

- BuddhaDave

Turn Thee Leg Fat, And Look Upon Thy Sexy Death

I got a bike! And not just any bike, a sexy retro bike. Oh yes. Look!






The Misses got one two!




Its our Valentine's Day gift to us! We were driving around after lunch and The Misses noticed this sports shop had an old school bike with Hello Kitty all over it. Even the tread was Hello Kitty. After looking around a bit after work she decided on the one shown above and I picked mine.

We rode around in the parking lot directly out of the store for about thirty minutes before finally heading home. We've been on a bike ride since then to Old Navy from out house and it was so fun. I had forgotten how enjoyable a bike ride is. No noisy engine, no quick speeds. Just the wind in your ears and the ground beneath your pedals. So nice.

Hopefully I'll get some riding in this weekend. I'm planning a route from our house, to the book store (The Misses needs the next Eragon book) to the Apple store (a pixel on my video iPod died) and back home. Maybe a movie, who knows?

Have a great weekend!

- BuddhaDave

Weeeee!

Love Day and Kindness Week

So today is Valentine's Day. Also, my calendar says this whole week is Random Acts of Kindness Week. And you can't argue with the calendar.

I know a lot of people who are bitter towards holidays, and most especially Valentine's, as just another reason to buy useless crap. To them, the big V-Day is just a commercialized block of crap.

Well, it is if you let it be. I agree that a lot of holidays are commercialized beyond all recognition but its only that way for me if I choose it to be. Any day that prompts even the tiniest bit more of kindness towards others is good in my eyes.

So what if there's a million sales for this or that? So what if people expect others to buy them presents and be sweeter just because its February 14th? Is that good enough reason to not be nicer? There's never a good reason to not be nicer.

You don't have to be all cliche and get chocolates and spread heart-shaped confetti everywhere. But it would be nice for all those around you if this day was used to be a little bit nicer. To do something considerate just because. To be sweet for sweetness sake and because it makes people happy. Attitudes are contagious. If you start doing it, chances are others will as well.

So use today to be kinder. Use this week to be kinder. And from there, just keep doing it. It makes you happy, it makes others happy and they'll be more prone to make you happy which will, you know, make you happy. So you can't loose.

- BuddhaDave

If my post seems a little crappy today, its because I'm trying to post before my boss gets in!

Airport...EXTREME!!

Something lit a fire under my ISP's ass and they're being a pain in mine. I don't know if my account if flagged or something but they seem to have it out for me. For instance, on Monday I received an e-mail saying they were faxing the new service agreement to my apparment's front office and asking me to please sign it and fax it back as soon as possible.

Then on Friday I get another e-mail saying if I hadn't sent it back before 4:00pm that day my Internet would be turned off and it'd take $45 to get it back on. wtf is that? So I had to run around and call them four of five times to get it faxed to my work and confirm they got it. Their customer service sucks. I swear, its like three people in a dank basement office. Pangeatech, I loathe thee.

One of the things I had to do to get my service back was to shutdown my server. I had a FreeBSD server acting as a router. I wasn't even hosting any websites anymore. It wasn't doing anything a network device wouldn't be doing. But it had to come down. Okay fine.

'Cept my then current router is like 6 years old and hadn't had a firmware update put out for it since 2002. Also, I'm pretty sure it shocks you when you try to unplug it. And if the power goes it, it freaks out.

So I do a little research and a little asking around (read: asking iJon) and decided to get an Apple Airport. But which one? The tiny and awesome Airport Express or the full sized and powerful Airport Extreme? Well, since I needed the routing portion along with the wireless, I went with the Extreme. Everytime I say that I hear those guys from Harold and Kumar in my head, "EXTREEEEEEEME!"

This thing is slick. The setup utility that's built into Max OS X makes it really easy to get it running. I didn't bother with the setup assistant, so I don't know how it is. I'm too l33t for assistants. I'm so l33t, I even read through the whole manual, haha.

Besides having multiple nice security features (not including WEP, although it does have it) it shares USB printers and is very customizable. It even comes with a wall mounting bracket, which I used in a fun way:





If somehow the bracket falls off the wall I'm pretty sure the network cables will keep it from hitting the floor, heh.

I'm loving this thing, its very, very nice. I hightly recommend one, even if you don't have any Macs. They CD does have the management software for Windows.

Well, I'm off to have my lazy sunday. Have a good one!

- BuddhaDave

Grammys Shmammys

Here's my dynamic thoughts on the Grammys as they happen.

w00ts! Gorrilaz! That was so cool, Madonna walked behind Murdoc like he was real! I'm skipping Lost for you!

Oh shit, its Madonna. God she's old. Put on some pants, grandma.

"Ordinary People" is a pretty good song, fair play.

Ugh. Country. Her drawl is like nails on a chalkboard. w00ts! Short song.

U2! Two thumbs up! Oh wait, those aren't thumbs. Those are middle fingers. Waaaay up. I hope Bono trips and shards of those gay glasses get embedded in his eyes. For ever.

Wow, good job David Bowie. Lifetime achievement award. I loved you in Labyrinth and I know some of your older songs from Life Aquatic. Kinda crazy, but catchy.

Kelly Clarkson talks like she's 17 and from Fresno. But she's cute. And rich. I'd let her be my sugah mamma. Not a bad song, for 17 year old Fresnoians.

I wish I could wear as much eye makeup as Billy from Green Day!

Fuck. U2 won something.

Sweet, its Ellen! She was so cute as Dory. haha, best intro ever.

Paul McCartney can still sing? Cool piano. What is it tonight with old English people and the Grammys?

Nice, the "Ordinary People" guy (John Legend) won. He seems like a nice guy. Congrats!

I remember when Mariah Carey was new. And not crazy. Can a hot, rich, big-chested-and-bootied woman really be so into religion? With a rhinestone microphone? I don't know...

Go Fiona Apple! Win win win! Shit! Kelly Clarkson already won one! Bastages. Enough with the thanking Jesus already. Jesus.

Oooh, Jenna Elfman. She's dreeeaaaaammmmy. *swoon*

Poo, more country.

Hee hee, Dave Chappelle. He's funny. I love his white-guy voice. Even his regular voice is awesome.

*sigh* I'm getting sick of this show. Tom Hanks looks kinda crazy with longer hair. Wow Bruce, that harmonica sounds pretty sweet.

Fuck, again? Man I hate U2.

Here it goes! Goooorrriiilllaaazzzz for teh win! FUCK. Its official. The Grammys are ass. And U2 wins again. omg i hate.

Shit, I boycott the Grammys. Forevermore.

- JustDave

Its tough being so negative. I'm sleepy, its bedtime.

Yay! Slow-Ass Internets!

Grrr. After being told to take down my server (that really wasn't doing anything) and paying my outstanding balance (yeah yeah) my Internet connection is finally back up. I dug out the old router, configured it, plugged it in and yay! We have Internets.

Then I started surfing. omg slow. So slow that dial-up laughs at it. I do some geeky-like testing and discover that anywhere between twenty and sixty percent of my traffic isn't even making it out to the Internet at all! wtf!

I don't know if its the old router or what. I think tomorrow I'll just grab a new one anyway. I've had this one since forever and even then it was a hand-me-down. I'm sure the new ones have cool features I don't even know about. Plus, I think this one shocks you on purpose when you try to unplug it.

Tonight The Misses and I got all caught up on Lost. Had I mentioned I was watching it? I can't remember. Been too busy watching Lost. So, yeah, Lost. Awesome show. I'm partial to Jack myself. For one, Jack is the best name in creation. Two, he's hot. Three, he has really short hair. He's just like me! 'Cept I'm not hot or named Jack.

Wow, I just got an error that my iPod is too full. That is a first. 30 GB gone like that! I think it was the 1,000 4.5 megapixel images I had on there. They are now baleeted and Emily 486 (that's her name) is happy. She's my baby.

Well, I'm being called upstairs by El Wife-o. Adios!

- BuddhaDave

Fix my Interweb! I cry!

Where Did You Come From?

I'm outside of a Starbucks in central Phoenix on a Saturday night. Its not because I'm trendy or because I'm trying to impress a girl. Its because my Internet is down at my house until Monday and work needs the Fabulous Dave Buchta.

I just finished an entire anime series, Samurai Champloo. It was very good, I enjoyed it a lot. Now I can wear this sweatshirt without fear of being a poser because I've never seen all the episodes. Mugen is the best. I dig his fast and loose style and those wooden sandals. I want some.

I realize now there has been a new me growing inside and underneath the old/current me. He's a lot different than the me that you know. He's quiet and barely speaks. He looks people in the eyes a lot. He lets them see a small, kind smile. His words are soft and he moves quiet and slow.

You've never seen this me. Nobody does but strangers. I guess the current me will remain active until the new me is done. Just so there isn't any loss of service, haha. The old me is there for you because you know him. If you got the new me so suddenly you'd ask what was wrong and think he was sad. The old me is there for you because he knows you and you know him. The new me has a whole different interface but the backend is the same. The old me is propped up in many places and is solid. The new me is pink and soft like a baby. The old me loves you, and so does the new one.

I like this Quiet Dave. For a long secret time its the way I've wanted to be. Quiet and nice. A benevolent face and a soft voice. The Old Dave is loud and silly. He's always cracking jokes and doing some kind of song and dance. Quiet Dave is more quality and less quantity. He saves his energy for other things. He still knows a good joke and likes to curse.

I'm waiting for The Misses to get back with a credit card sized object that divulges secret codes so I can get into work. I left it at home and...oh. Here she is.

Sleep well, my friends and loved ones. Sleep well.

- BuddhaDave