|7:32 PM|
I've already blown the cash I was given today. I had a fine late lunch of shrimp fajitas, at the dinner table of no plates or service. Well, it wasn't that bad, but we had to ask for so many things and Vorpal had to send his food back, that it got to the point where our food being tainted was a palatable fear. So I used my left hand as a plate for the dinner. Not hyper civilized but the place we were in had alternating red and green fluorescent lights so I didn't think I'd offend anyone. At this lunch Vorpal and I met up with an old goon named Spook, who we had met up with previously at E3. Nice guy, works for a big name videogame company and tries to see sunlight every so often.
Now I'm just trying to figure out what the hell I want to do with my evening. I'd rather not spend it here, but judging by a lack of phone calls, I may be stuck.
{Update]
Oh Geez. Taco just ICQ'd me some files he needed mirrored. They are...well, the proper words have been destroyed by the intense psycological damage. Okay, I'll inflict the worst of it right away so you don't have to suffer quite as long. This song is sung by This character. I don't know about you but I'm terrified. I think this is the first thing Taco has sent me in months. I'm going to go curl up into a little ball and shudder violently.
|2:29 PM|
Saw the Doc, Saw my mom, I reacted well. It could have been worse. I didn't even raise my voice, and I didn't leave. Not that I would do such immature things but I had no idea what to expect.
I need a haircut, that's on today's agenda. Laundry is apparently on there is well, since I'm wearing my last shirt and I just spent the morning helping Vorpal move a bunch of stuff. I kind of felt akward, I was tipped pretty well for my time. I wanted to say "Nah, it's okay, he's my friend" but geez, at this point I'm really not going to turn down cash. Even if I might turn around and blow it on something stupid. My friends don't really understand why I'm worried about my finacial situation yet I turn around and blow relatively large sums of cash on weird things. At this point, I can take what money I have, go to the people that need this money, and I toss it down the deep dark well that has been dug for it, and have nothing. The affect on my debts would be negligible. Or I can keep that money and do something that relieves the stress of my situation and the affect on my debts is still negligible. Until things change at work, there's not very much I can do anymore, so I might as well enjoy myself.
Ever do something that in hindsight you realize was ill-advised at best? Even though in the past you've watched other people do the exact same thing and immediately seen the negative side of it all, and wonder why they don't? Well, live and learn I guess. I assume when you're in the thick of poor decision making or what not it sometimes becomes difficult to detach yourself from the situation and judge your actions. Hopefully I can function as a human being a little better. I fear the price of this particular lesson may be incredibly high, though.
Time to defend the donuts.
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|12:37 AM|
At some point I became an unreliable human being. Such a change has angered me, and I'm going to do my best to stop this sort of thing. Vorpal called me over to his place in order to help him put stuff into boxes. I agreed, got home, took an adderall in order to stay focused, and promptly went into hibernation mode. So now I'm on my job's shit list, and my buddy's shit list. This sucks.
I took a long break from listening to the FLCL soundtrack in my car, since I had played it roughly a billion times. I counted. The reason I bring up a subject as boring as what I listen to in my car is that after 3 months of not listening to it, I've forgotten enough of it to enjoy hearing it once again. Also while driving, I noticed that the overcast skies I dig during the day rob me of the starscape I often stare at when I'm stuck at traffic lights. Obviously this is not a recent development, but my staring at the sky must be.
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Friday, January 11, 2002
|4:42 PM|
My old website on Geocities is getting hammered, as it is the home of the famous Pictograms made by JP and Sevencubed. Geocities (for 3 months now) has been sending me an email every couple days to let me know they've turned my page off again. They were happy to explain how I could purchase additional bandwidth or other things, but despite a couple letters I sent, they would not tell me what was so damned popular. I assumed it must be the pictograms, and I was informed by a couple people recently that I Love Bacon (Which I personally have never heard of until now) has mentioned me on their front page. At least, they mentioned the pictograms. I have swooped in and made a much less bandwidth intensive text only page for the pictograms. It is redirecting folks to better places to get their black and white comedy fix.
For those of you visiting this front page because you were hunting pictoz and found your way here, let me invite you to continue reading my incredibly crappy E/N page. Here are some hot chicks. Here is a picture of Me. I will soon have a page that sells used lesbian underwear. I am not making that up. Here is another picture of an attractive woman....dammit, where is it... okay, here's a picture of a Lizard named Smitty. Oh wait, now I remember.
Oh Crap! I have go to switch this front page. DAMMIT ROCK! My poor planning has now made this an emergency! The Trip to E3 is in jeopardy. We must act quickly!
|12:24 PM|
Another day, a full 10 hours of sleep. I slept like the dead. Of Course, there are few things on this planet that can wake you up like really bad music. That is, really bad music played at a volume rivalling the death scream of a God. Okay, maybe that's too over dramatic. It was a nightmare in sound, a sudden ripping from a very restful sleep.
My previous alarm clock, a free model that was given to my father after purchasing a Chrysler K car, has given me 15 years of good service. Other than family, this clock has been the most static part of my life. It is easily the most obnoxious and awful sounding alarm clock I have ever heard. I think the only way that the alarm could be more awful is if it removed one of my limbs to wake me up. The clock and I had a deal, as long as it never failed, I would never punish it for having the world's most awful noise. It has failed. I woke up one morning and it was flashing, despite no overnight loss of power. So, the clock has given me 15 years of good service, but I'm afraid it's going to have to die. I've got a blowtorch and half a set of printer repair tools. I don't think it's going to last very long at all. I might tape it. I need to get my video capture machine back up and running at this point, so I can rip the Rejected DVD which I should soon have, as well as some other interesting video.
I have my office to myself at this point, my boss is having a toe cut apart and put back together, and Mr. Videodrome is on the road in Houston. The day melts away.
Mr. Sathyanarayana is the current winner for longest name in a trouble ticket.
Ms. Carla Bain is today's current leader for coolest sounding name for a villian.
|6:45 PM|
Good thing: I got to work on time
Bad thing: We were strung along on contract related subjects once again, and we found out how little "ownership" of our reporting system we will have. To those who do not do my job, that means I'm going to have an ultra obsessive control freak from Dell breathing down my neck every hour on the hour. Hoo-Fucking-Ray
Good Thing: The weather has turned dark and brooding. It's gone from picnics to dread around here.
Bad thing: The post office opened a majority of my letters for no good reason, probably searching for checks judging by the letters they opened.
Good thing: The garlic sauce from Papa Johns is absolutely flawless, as are the bread sticks today.
Bad thing: I have no other food, no protein, and a pet peeve of no coke is going to have to be suffered.
Good thing: My computer teacher is in fact still alive, and kicking ass.
Bad thing: He's still hounding me for assignments in computer theory, now that I got all hot and bothered over Boolean logic.
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|12:56 PM|
Hey, lampshade, if you see this, I can't add notes to your page, so I'm letting you know here. Your email is rejecting messages, claiming the storage exceeded. So either you're finally rejecting my emails or your inbox is full.
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|10:23 AM|I've been trying to get the sound clip from "Blade Runner" of "I'll tell you about my mother! *GUNSHOT*" for this entry, but I'm having trouble. Every idiot on the web linked to the same collection of sounds which has since stopped existing entirely. Thank you, oh sultans of suck.
My mother wants me to go to the family therapist. She says she wants peace between us and a whole load of other crap. I personally don't want a referee for any sort of discussion because it's just embarrassing. The last time I really had an argument with my mother, I came to the stunning realization of why we cannot be around each other at all without fighting. It's almost the same reason as why I really did not get along with a gentleman named Patrick at E3.
My mother is incredibly stubborn, does not back down an will never, ever ever admit that she is wrong . A long time ago I had to learn to admit when I was wrong, and that I made a mistake or in general was not THE authority on something. My mother apparently never learned that skill, and since she mainly had contact with her offspring she wasn't about to capitulate to a bunch of brats. But at this point, she really should learn to quietly disagree instead of throwing whatever opinion (informed or not) into a discussion as if it is a fact and challenging everyone else to proove themselves Not Wrong. I'm a stubborn asshole sometimes, and my mother's sort of behaviour brings it out as if you had thrown a flare into a puddle of warm gasoline. This meeting with the "therapist" is not going to go well. 50 minutes? 50 minutes of my mother bitching at a stranger about how I never want to talk to her? This meeting is going to last about 5 minutes and I'm really glad I'll have my car.
|1:03 AM|
Well, it's getting worse. Someone from Nasa.gov actually showed up here looking for a terminal program for packet radio. I, suprisingly enough, know a little about the subject but not enough to help anyone on earth. I really need to do something about that. But I also REALLY need to sleep. And pay my electric bill. And you know what? I'm going to bitch about being lonely. That's right. You can't stop me. no one can. Zusty, of the dead diary, got me several samples of Peruvian flute music. It is tremendously soothing. My idea of good date at this point would be to listen to peruvian flute music while baking cookies, followed by watching some movie on a TV while eating Pizza. Followed, of course, by wild, passionate, sleeping. In the same bed, but sharing only body heat. You fuggin' heard me. Not exactly a first date situation, but hey, I'm only dreaming.
A female friend of mine might employ my services as a boyfriend judger. She has a potential boy toy, and I may be giving the guy the once over. I told her that if in the middle of the conversation with him, I clamp my jaws around the back of his neck, drag him to the street, shake him until he is incapacitated, and then finally lay a clutch of eggs in his chest cavity, that he is not a good potential mate. I'm pretty sure combining the practices of both alligators and some species of wasps would be the most effective way to convey my message. However, if I lie down on the ground and roll over to show my neck, I am showing trust towards this person. I doubt that will happen. I don't even trust my own pet.
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Wednesday, January 09, 2002
|3:27 PM|
Due to a series of events of the past couple weeks, I seem to have gone from top of the heap here at work to the shit list. This is despite my having cut a swathe of destruction through a ton of Dell bullshit to get several pain-in-ass issues resolved. Of course, I fucked up pretty bad last week. My boss really values being on time for work, and I failed to do that, and so I'm probably lucky to still have my job. It goes almost without mention that all the "brownie points" I had earned have been burned away, that is if any remained after my trip up to Chicago. Blogger is still a bit toasted, so I suppose you folks won't see this entry for a while.
Goddamn, I REALLY need to get to the freakin' Post office. This is just stupid. Some of the stuff I have to send should have been sent almost a month ago, and in the case of Sinclair's box-o-shit, that should have been sent a freakin' year ago. Well, he left it here, I've just been hauling it around for him. As far as the other packages go, the Post Office sucks ass in terms of availability. I mean, really, would it be fucking impossible to have the lobbies of Post Offices open from say, 9-6? It's still an eight hour day, and people who work (gasp!) 8 to 5 would actually able to mail a goddamn package.
Man, I'm in a really critical mood today. I think it's time for a Barbeque. BBQ at Cecil's place. Bring your own meat. And Grill. And bring some friends, as well as booze, soda, chips and whatever the hell else you need for an open flame cook out.
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|1:46 PM|
I really need to do something about all the poor, poor bastards who keep showing up here looking for information on packet loss. I mean, Vorpal has people finding his site by searching for "Vampire Rabbit Porn" and other exciting things. But I've had several hits from poor folks just looking for info on Packet loss and how to diagnose/fix it. So later today I'll write up something and put a link at the top "Hey! Looking for information on packet loss? Well....G.E.A.D.!" And then deny that GEAD means "Go eat a dick". I had to write GEAD on the white board here at work so I could gesture at it when I wanted to curse at Jeff but was unable to due to a variety of concerns.
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|1:51 AM|
If Blogger ever comes back....OH HELL! IT'S BACK!
This Movie is an incredible series of martial arts floor demonstrations. Absolutely stunning, but weighing in at about nine and a half megs. If you're on a modem, I'd say that the 3 year download is worth it, but if you're on broad band you've already downloaded and watched the damn thing while my text has just been sitting here. Hooray.
|11:51 PM|
Ah, the new imac is here at last. I wouldn't have known about it if JP hadn't said something. I'm so far removed from my previous Apple roots that when I sit in front of one, and know perfectly well how to operate the damn thing, I'm shocked. I mean, there are plenty of arguments, I won't go into them too much, they were true when I left, I bet they are still true. Faster proccessor, easier to learn, more stable OS. Fine. That's great. But Apple has now grouped itself in with the technology crowd that makes me sick when I'm worrying about really stupid shit like technology learning curves. That group of people includes AOL, Gateway, and any other group of assholes who are limiting the functionality and stripping away all the risk from computers. The new apple has one access door with a bunch of pictures so an ape could install RAM. That's fine, except that's all a user can do. They damn thing might as well be a magic box. In fact, that's exactly what it is. It has seperated a human from understanding what is involved in the functionality of the computer to the point where it might as well be magic. I don't think that's right. You should at least have some basic understanding of what the heck is going on in there.
My computer often breaks. Sometimes horribly, mostly because I don't know everything about it and I make mistakes when I'm moving stuff around in side of it, but I'm learning. It's like a constant adventure/puzzle game and I feel the same glee and sense of accomplishment when I fix what has gone wrong in my computer and expand it's functionality. I feel the same dissapointment and shame when I have to ask for computer help as when I have to peek at a hint guide for a Lucasarts adventure game.
The computer is not helping these people learn, or grow as people. Not really, since they have to have their hand held through the whole process, why bother? Sure Grampa can jump online and go to encylopedia.com and find out what kind of flowers he just found growing in the yard, but he was helped the whole way. What happens if a link in the chain is broken? What if the internet service provider goes out of bussiness or encyclopedia.com shuts down? Grandpa is utterly helpless. The magic box has failed. Grandpa cannot survive in the goddamn forest overnight because he would be eaten by an animal who still takes things seriously, like beetles or aggressive squirrels. Once it gets to the point where a Goddamn monkey can run our whole civilization, then what is the point of human beings, anyway? Doing things for yourself is the whole damned point as far as I'm concerned.
Okay, I've stopped making sense, I suppose I should go to bed.
|11:20 PM|
Okay, this is ticking me off. Sure, blogger is free for use, but when it's down for 12 hours it gets under my skin. And of course, I've got the ONE damn entry I didn't want to publish and fully intended to destroy just sitting there on the front page, taunting me. Well, I'm hacking the page's .txt again, obviously. This is always so messy since all the tricks that are used to make this page look good are not present when I go barging around in here. I'm writing this entry in Blogger, and so when blogger works again and I publish this will explain everything that has occurred, as well as looking pretty. Artfag says I can update if I wish. I need to find more acceptable images for my post, as it involves dealing with a serious toe related wound. I'll probably use MS-Paint.
Lampshade says she hates non metric'd poets. Well, she likely hates me with stunning passion, since I tend to go with iambic pentameter and then all of a sudden forget about it completely. Sometimes I won't start counting yee olde knuckles until I'm halfway finished working on whatever piece of junk upon which I am wasting my time. You win some, you lose limbs.
And once again, I'd like to say "I'm a lasanga, bang a salami" because I think it's clever and silly.
|2:43 PM|
Update! I'm definitely bleeding in my sinus cavities and the blood I'm coughing up is likely just the stuff dripping down my throat. FanFuckingTastic. Well, if it goes on much longer I can always use my Incredibly Shitty Medical insurance and get no assistance whatsoever. In fact, my insurance provider can go eat a dick. I'll tell them as much today.
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|2:40 PM|
It's about as gorgeous a day here as can be believed. It's right around 74 degrees, sunny, wind is whipping along the ground, and I'm talking about the boring goddamn weather. However, this is merely an excuse for alarmist journalism, in that I may or may not be coughing up blood. It splattered onto my arm, and since I can't find any other wounds on me, I'm assuming the cough did it. More updates on what flies out of my mouth when I cough after these messages. I'm sure I'm fine, there are many good reasons that blood would fly out of my mouth when I cough, it's possible I have a nosebleed in my lungs, or possibly a papercut...in my lungs. Also possible is that my tongue spilled it's glass....of blood.
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|12:42 PM|
My coworker, sometimes called Videodrome, is thinking about starting a website. He keeps claiming that it won't be some "damned E/N bullshit" like all the sites he has seen recently. Sometimes at work starts looking around the little chain of sites we have here and calling Artfag our matriarch. He then starts questioning the motivations of everyone involved and critiquing my page. Sometimes it's amusing, sometimes insightful, sometimes obnoxious to the point of stapler retaliation (Whereby, I use my hand to accelerate a stapler in a vector designed to intersect with his head). He has some interesting concepts he wants to publish out on the web, as well as some pretty damn good humor. I wish him the best and hope he can avoid becoming an E/N site and thus dooming him to hypocrisy for all time.
Speaking of Vid, he left recently to go to Wendys, out of respect for the passing of Dave Thomas. Though I wanted to accompany him, my job prevents me from doing so, and I tried to have him take an Avatar in my stead. I think he ditched it, and so I'm out of luck.
Remember those little sponges that came in a gelatin capsule? It looked like a big pill, but when you put it in hot water the gel would melt away and a dinosaur or some other child-exciting creature would spring forth into fully inflated being. Those were pretty neat, but what were more interesting and harder to define were the creatures that grew in tanks of water. You'd get a rubbery alligator or a dinosaur of some kind, measuring only a couple inches long. When placed in a tank of water it would begin to absorb it, and grow in size.
Though my family never used anything much larger than a bucket, in high school a friend of mine "boosted" a very large trashcan and managed to grow the biggest damn rubber foam animal thing I had ever seen. Touching it's slimy, water soaked flesh was an experience I do not think I could duplicate any other way. Touching the creature gave the impression that if it was removed from it's watery home it would fall apart like a handful of mud. Despite our best efforts at work we cannot find an explanation of how those worked, nor can we even find a name for them. It is frustrating.
I came up with an odd idea, should I happen to find a place that sells the sponge capsules on a wholesale basis. They were per pill fairly cheap, even in museum gift shops. I wonder how long I could get away with selling them to ravers. "It's called sponge...no, not the birth control. No, not the 'midnight at the well of souls' sponge. Oh for God's sakes, it puts the power of the dinosaur into you! Now eat it!"
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Monday, January 07, 2002
|12:21 PM|
At work we went over some of the concepts of boolean logic, and I realized that Nand gates don't do binary addition, they just do something that happens to match what we need in order to perform binary addition. The nand gate just does what it does. By the way, Nand is actually a combination of "Not" and "And" which are two of the more basic concepts in this boolean logic. You put enough of these ands, and nots, and or gates together and you get computers. It was a jump across a great deal of research and development, akin to saying "The caveman picks up the rock, and now we have international banking treaties" but it all made sense. The entire idea of "it just does what it does" and "it doesn't 'know' it's doing addition" was a concept I had a better hold on in high school when I was still learning about programming, but now I have fully embraced this idea and I feel cold. Damned revelations. I sent an email to my old computer teach about all this ranting. I hope he understands.
I got a trouble ticket at work today, and the name field only said "EVA" in all capital letters. I was worried I would have explain to a 200 foot tall robot that his printer wasn't going to be fixed today. Luckily it was merely a 2 foot tall robot, and I stole its batteries. Oh, also on the subject of work, I'm scheduled to be threatened with the loss of my job. They want me to be sick less and call in more when I am ill.
This Penny Arcade news post has a description of one man's experience with Final Fantasy 10, that I found highly amusing (FFX, at E3, was constantly referred to as "Final Fantasy Gheeeey").
|5:59 PM|
So my Grandmother has gone nuts, my parents think it's okay to drop in unexpectedly and I just deafened myself in one ear. It's your standard day at my house.
I was testing out some old speaker equipment that had been on the fritz, and when I replaced one of the cables the whole rig started working again. At full blast. In my left ear. I didn't mean for any of that to happen and I reacted quickly, but my ear is still a little cottony. I now have a hell of a jury rigged sound system, that hopefully I'll be able to appreciate a little later today.
Earlier I was trying to hang a can crusher, with the help of a stud sensor (It was also helping me to avoid A/C wiring). Well, turns out this apartment is a little more poorly put together than I thought and now I have a hole drilled right into the big air gap in the walls. I'll put some tape over it later today.
My Grandmother said she was sending me money, at least, that's what she told my folks. Instead she sent me a heart shaped leather key chain with dangling metal bits. It looks like something with which an S and M enthusiast would keep the handcuff keys organized. I'm giving it to my sisters, if they want it. I don't really have need for a heart shaped key chain right now.
Well, I'm going to go hang some posters up and I'll try to avoid punching any new holes in the wall.
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|3:35 AM|
Vorpal invited me over to his new apartment where his brother was throwing an informal apartment warming. I stayed by the door and tried to look non threatening. I did my best to be friendly. At one point I assisted in the swapping of a drink. One of the people at the party had been drinking 2 shots of everclear and and some cranberry juice, and they were getting smashed. When they wandered off from the living room for a little while, Vorpal and I quickly grabbed the drink, dumped most of it out and replaced the missing volume with plain cranberry juice. I then made sure for the rest of the evening that this particular fellow still thought it was the same drink and that he didn't mix any new ones. His comment after the drink switch "Man! This tastes really good all of a sudden!". That was pretty much the highlight of the evening. My knowledge of literature came in handy when I was the only person in the room who could identify the book "The phantom toll booth" from the bit of information "The Dog...with the clock in his stomach..." given by a drunk person. You should watch me BS my way through a philosophy discussion. "Artists are liars!"
It was a night away from my house. I did do a lot of standing and now I'm all hyped up from caffiene. These things happen. I think I'll go back to organizing cables.
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