Everything New is Old Again -Sunday, February 01, 2004 -4:52 am-
I've noticed a trend sweeping through the industries of America. It started during the 80's in the recording industry with the advent of CDs. Some bright, money-grubbing devil monkey at one of the major labels had an epiphany and said, "Hey, we've go
t all theses old songs and it's easier to re-release them than come up with new stuff!" Soon thereafter, every popular song from the past was coming out on CD. Two decades later, the labels' catalogues are exhausted and the money has stopped flowing. T
he industry's response? Send shock troops into the streets wearing tactical gear with RIAA emblazoned in large, yellow letters on the back to sue families on Welfare.
The RIAA was soon joined in this imperialistic drama by the movie industry. The creation of DVD was a huge boon to the MPAA. For a very low cost, movies could be re-released at bargain prices onto DVDs. At $6.00 a pop, it didn't matter if anyone lik
ed the movie, people would buy it anyway because it was a "good deal". With the production costs long since recouped, the DVDs were all profit. For slightly larger outlay, the studios could release a DVD with "Special Features" and "Director's Commentar
y" for outrageous prices and people would gladly pay for the scenes that were too bad to put into I Know What You Screamed Last Wedding IV. Eventually, the MPAA began to notice that, like the output of the RIAA, their products were increasingly
not being bought. The first round of MPAA court cases followed.
Alarmingly, Ford Motors has started down the path clear-cut by the RIAA and the MPAA. Ford's sales are dropping because everyone is realizing that American cars
suck. The SUV cash cows have gotten caught in a feature-war that requires R&D, thus negat
ing their original economic advantage. The only car in Ford's line turning a profit is the Focus (designed in Europe, by the by). Ford's solution? Re-release popular designs of the past. So far, we have the New Thunderbird, the New Mustang, the New GT
-40 (which, admittedly, makes me drool excessively), and recently, the New Shelby Cobra. I expect that before this decade is out we'll see UAW suing drivers for giving their friends rides and letting their kids borrow the car for a hot date.
Somehow, I don't see the computer industry escaping this pattern. I fully expect Windows 3.11 Programmers Build to appear on shelves before the release of Longhorn. Though since Longhorn is expected slightly after the Second Coming, we may h
ave some time to get our credit cards ready.
Sorry I Didn't Make It To The Club... -Sunday, February 01, 2004 -5:37 am-
...I was off practicing electromancy and becoming... well, tired mainly. Mich and I went to take Mary out for a while tonight before I went off to the club for the second night in a row. While we were being deafened at Scottie's, she mentioned that she needed my to come by and install ZoneAlarm. I remembered doing this recently, and I was a bit confused. Turns out she got a new laptop (the lucky bitch). Her new toy is a Sony Vaio PCG-V505DX (Picture). After finishing our drinks, we went back to Mary's house so I could pop her computer's cherry (it had come out of the box and onto the charger and she never booted it, I don't get it). the thing is god damn tiny. I've never felt like my PBG415" was huge before. On a stupid note, the 60GB HDD in it is formatted into a 5GB recovery partition, a 15GB C: and a 35GB D:. WTF is that shit? That's severely stupid with how quickly the system drive bloats. I'm going to have to ask someone how to get the whole My Documents\ tree onto D: without pissing off Windows. On a stupider note, it came with XP Home. I happened to have ZoneAlarm on my thumb so I got that up and running and then worked her through setup and WindowsUpdate. By the time I was done, it was about 2am, and the club was unappealing. I managed to get Mich and myself up off the couch at the same time and we headed home.
With the new month turning over, I was anxious to see how the stats package I'm running would cope. Thankfully, it's stateful and is perfectly ok with the old log files going away. Nicely, it also stores the results by month (with the option to sum them into year) so that the bad data created by setup and testing are now out of the picture. Now, some of you out there are scaring me.
For one, a lot of you are running old versions of Internet Explorer. This is really, really bad. Not patching and upgrading to the most recent version of Internet Explorer is irresponsible, it's the computer equivalent of walking around with waving a sword. Eventually, someone's arm is going to come off. Second, Internet Explorer of any any version has become unsafe. I'm serious this time, this isn't just the typical MS sucks line you hear out of me. If you don't feel like reading the article, it boils down to any website can get Internet Explorer to run any program it feels like on your computer without ever asking you. This is different than the traditional Spyware and Adware in which you had to be stupid and click yes to get infected. With this newly discovered hole, you get infected merely by loading the webpage. Once you've viewed the page, everything is possible. Anything stored on your computer is vulnerable. Banking history, account numbers, your address and other data people can use to steal your identity, your BuckID number, your drivers license number. Anything you've ever typed on into your computer, any personal data (bank account) you've ever viewed on the computer, could be stolen. Or it could just as easily all be erased. Please, please, switch to another web browser. Any other web browser. This is so important I'll even help you do it. I suggest a browser from the Mozilla Project. I, myself, use Mozilla Firebird because it's small, fast, and works well. Netscape and Opera are also options. Just switch, please.
The other reason the statistical results are scaring me is the search terms some of you are using to arrive here. For god's sake, I don't want to know why you were searching for Sawtooth Lap Dance, Duck Tape Party, and Roxy Hart Naked iSight -rugby. If you are responsible for any of this, please seek professional help immediately.
That Which Has Passed Behind -Tuesday, February 03, 2004 -3:24 am-
Tonight's The West Wing scared me quite a bit. The major premise of the episode is that C.J. Cregg return home for her highschool reunion to find out that her father is afflicted with Alzheimer's. Watching the people on screen made me think a lot about myself. I don't know how much about my memory most of you actually know, it's mostly a joke now, but really, it's a fairly big problem. I don't think any of you were around when it first started happening. I think it must have been Sophomore or the beginning of Junior year that I noticed things becoming different. I was missing meals and not knowing why I was hungry. I was going to classes that had been canceled or moved and wondering where everyone was. I would do things and not remember with whom I had done them. Two years later, I'm not sure where I am compared to that. That bothers me a great deal. I sometimes thing maybe I'm doing better, but that just makes me wonder if I can no longer remember what it's like not to forget. I know I cover better now. I build little pauses into my life to give me time to try to guess at the parts I'm missing. I phrase retellings and remembrances to avoid being specific about when, or where, or whom. More and more, I is start something, or come into a room, only to find out that I have no idea why I'm there, or what I had wanted to do. I rarely know when it is anymore, and can only decide how long ago something was by literally figuring out when it is now and calculating backwards to find out how much time has actually passed. I'm always unnerved to find that what I thought was a matter of day has in fact been many months.
Over the Christmas break, I went with my parents to see my paternal grandparents. My grandfather has had a series of strokes over the last few years. Watching him, I was... I don't know what the word for being bitter and resigned and depressed and scared all at the same time... to see him making the same little breaks I do to try and make the time he needed so that other people wouldn't know that he couldn't remember. I see that, and I see the tv, and I wonder if that's my future. Am I going to forget all of my life, slowly, and wondering all the while if anything is actually changing? Right now, I'm getting along ok, I think. But how long is it until I begin to forget names, or switch them? I look at my future and wonder if I'm going to be there for it, if I'm going to want Mich to be there for it?
I'm Going To Be Moving... Again -Tuesday, February 03, 2004 -7:30 pm-
It looks like I'm going to be moving again, either in June when my lease is up, or after an extension to make my lease end with Mich's. I really don't want to move again because I have a pretty nice place, lots of room, a basement workshop, nice hardwood floors, and low rent. However, we've found out it's not a safe place to live.
Friday night we ordered pizza. When the driver showed up, he told us that they usually won't deliver to our neighborhood after dark. The reason we got it then was that the girls who took our order had just started working at the pizza place and didn't know. Talking with the driver for a moment, it turned out that there was so much gang activity in the area that they were loosing drivers too often. Great. Then, today as I was leaving, two police cruisers came racing up into our parking lot. I was on my way out, so I didn't do anything about it. Later, Mich came home and found them still there. She talked to one of the officers about what was going on, and crime in our area in general. Turns out they were there arresting someone who had been stealing cars out of our parking lot. The officer recommended that if we could, we should move out to at least SR-256. Great.
So I'm in the housing market again. I'm looking for a 2-3 bedroom townhouse with a full basement and a back porch for around $500-$550 a month in an area with low crime. Anyone have any ideas?
I Love the 80's -Thursday, February 05, 2004 -8:16 pm-
So yet another abouse of the meaning of meme. As usual, I've fixed the code so feel free to copy it. Things of which I am guilty are in bold. My commmentary is in italics
- You've ever ended a sentence with the word "PSYCHE"
- You watched the Pound Puppies so comfy until you get their eyes in your face
- You can sing the rap to the "Fresh Prince of Belair" chilling out, maxin, relaxin, shootin some b-ball outside o da school
- You wore biker shorts under your skirts and felt stylish
- You yearned to be a member of the Baby-sitters club and tried to start a club of your own
- You owned those lil Strawberry Shortcake pals scented dolls
- You know that "WOAH" comes from Joey on Blossom I can't believe I thought Blossom was hot (I'm so ashamed)
- Two words: MC Hammer For shame
- If you ever watched "Fraggle Rock" yay for drug induced hippie political commentary with little people making bridges
- You had plastic streamers on your handle bars
- You can sing the entire theme song to "Duck Tales" *Duck Tales wooo oooo D-d-d-danger lurks behind out there's a stranger out to find you* I still want to know how to swim in coins
- When it was actually worth getting up early on a Saturday to watch cartoons I was young, and stupid. Nothing is worth getting up for.
- You wore a ponytail on the side of your head
- You saw the original "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" on the big screen Just shove it through the grate!
- You got super-excited when it was Oregon Trail day in computer class at school The squirrel had it coming
- You made your mom buy one of those clips that would hold your shirt in a knot on the side
- You played the game "MASH" (Mansion, Apartment, Shelter, House)
- You wore Jordache jean jacket and you were proud of it
- LA Gear Stupid, overpriced shoes
- You wanted to change your name to "JEM" in Kindergarten
- You remember reading "Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing" and all the Ramona books Dude, Ramona was soo cool!
- You know the profound meaning of "WAX ON, WAX OFF" K, Disney, a girl Karate Kid? WTF, mate?
- You wanted to be a Goonie
- You ever wore fluorescent clothing I was a cyclist, what did you expect?
- You can remember what Michael Jackson looked like before his nose fell off /me shudders
- You have ever pondered why Smurfette was the only female smurf All your smurf are belong to smurf
- You took Lunch Pails to school
- You remember the CRAZE, then the BANNING of slap bracelets WTF were they banned for?
- You still get the urge to! say "NOT" after every sentence Yup, we abused language a lot in the 80's
- You remember Hypercolor t-shirts Dude! Coolest shirts EVER! I want one now.
- Barbie and the Rockers was your favorite band
- You thought Sheera and He-Man should hook up Incest was such a popular theme in the 80's
- You thought your childhood friends would never leave because you exchanged friendship bracelets
- You ever owned a pair of Jelly-Shoes
- After you saw Pee-Wee's Big Adventure you kept saying "I know you are, but what am I?" Needs to die. All of it.
- You remember "I've fallen and I can't get up" I also remember the jokes that refused to die.
- You remember going to the skating rink before there were in-line skates
- You ever got seriously injured on a Slip and Slide I wonder if that's why I have back problems
- You have ever played with a Skip-It And the very best thing of all is the counter on the ball
- You had or attended a birthday party at McDonalds And we set off the fire alarm
- You've gone through this nodding your head in agreement oops
- You remember Popples worst bastardization of Tang ever!
- "Don't worry, be happy" Suck it, Rasta boy!
- You wore like, EIGHT pairs of socks over tights with high top Reeboks
- You wore socks scrunched down Um, dude, that's where they end up by themselves
- "Miss MARY MACK MACK MACK, all dressed in BLACK BLACK BLACK"
- You remember boom boxes vs cd players And the 42 D-cell batteries
- You remember watching both "Gremlins" movies and being terrified
- You know what it meant to say "Care Bear Stare!!" Gotta kill those happy bastards
- You remember watching Rainbow Bright and My Little Pony Tales" MLPs are such great projectiles
- You thought Doogie Howser was hot
- You remember Alf, the lil furry brown alien from Melmac Ha!
- You remember New Kids on the Block when they were cool They were never cool, I don't know what people were thinking
- You knew all the characters names and their life stories on "Saved By the Bell", the ORIGINAL class Kelly and Jessie are fuckin hotties
- You know all the words to Bon Jovi - SHOT THRU THE HEART I hate you so much
- You just sang those words to yourself Cause now it's stuck in my head
- You remember watching Magic vs Bird I had little green and white pom-poms
- You cut your t-shirts in half and wore it with your homemade Levi shorts(the shorter the better)
- You remember when mullets were cool!
- You had a mullet
- You still sing "We are the World"
- You "pegged" your pants
- You just knew Kevin Arnold and Winnie Cooper would end up together Fugly children though
- You know who Kevin Arnold and Winnie Cooper are What would you do if I sang out of tune
- You know what Dan vs Dave means
- One word, Atari XBox can suck my shiny Atari ass
- "Rock On!" Ahhh... long hair and power ballads
I Am An Impressive Geek -Saturday, February 07, 2004 -6:47 pm-
For oh so many reasons. First of all, because I thought it would be amusing to take the quiz below. Then, because I knew what the answer meant. Finally, because I as I was pasting the html into my post, I noticed it used a table to lay out the answer and re-wrote the answer form to use good HTML4.01Strict/CSS1 code. It's now half as long and will render correctly in any browser I care about.
What Irrational Number Are You?
You are φ
Of all the irrational numbers, you are considered to be the most beautiful. Those who know you well have called you by many names, all golden. However, most people don't know you by name and probably won't even recognize you by sight, but they do like to see you. Despite your pretty face, you are by no means shallow. You are involved it many things: finance, biology, architecture, art, music, and much more.
In some ways you and e are a nearly perfect match. The power and intensity of e excites you.
Your lucky number is approximately 1.61803399
There Is a White Flag Upon My Door -Sunday, February 08, 2004 -3:57 am-
I've been househunting since Wednesday last. So far it has been nothing but heartache and trouble. Every place is either too small, too expensive, too dumb, or in too bad of a neighborhood. In the last three days, I've been to about 20 complexes and have yet to find anything I think is a good move. Stone Ridge Crossing (or something like that... I should write an apartment complex name generator... just a list of geological features and verbs-that-are-also-nouns that get randomly assembled), which I stopped at yesterday and was rather excited about turned out to be rather unimpressive. It was small, or at least all the walls were close in so it felt very claustrophobic. All of the other places, save one, that we visited were too small for our needs. We need to come up with a bedroom, two offices, a kitchen/diningroom, living room, and a basement/workshop. We did, however, find one perfect apartment. It was a two bedroom townhouse built into the side of a hill. It had an awesome kitchen with big bar, a huge dining room, a nicely sized den, two bedrooms, a giant livingroom with wet-bar, a basement, and a garage. The failing of this place was its $1100/mo price tag. God damn it.
In a further display of geekiness, I have KDE 3.1 up and running in Xnest. It's pretty cool, there's this whole other GUI just setting around in a 1024x768 window inside of Aqua. I think I might try GNOME next. Hmm... I see a screenshot showing Aqua, Classic, KDE, GNOME, and Win2k running all at once. My other geekly achievement for today was finally spanning the displays on the server with the display on the laptop. What this means is that I plunk down the laptop on the desk under the server's monitors and if I need to work with something on the server, I just push the mouse up off the top of the laptop's screen and the mouse and keyboard for the laptop magically start controlling the server. Keeps me from grabbing the wrong damn mouse when I'm running both the laptop and server at the same time.
Hit Where I Stand At the Turning of the Years -Sunday, February 08, 2004 -4:52 am-
I'm getting to an age where I'm realizing what good parents I actually have. The downside to this is that I feel like guilty for being such a prick to them for a few years in the middle there. I feel worst about how I was mean to my stepfather because he really is a nice person and he was doing an amazing job considering the difference between how he was raised and how my mom raised me. I'm sure I'll write about this general topic again, but tonight I'm mostly thinking about my dad. There's so much I'm realizing I owe him for. Some of this has been brought on by my own introspection, and some of it by Ann. I few months ago, she commented that one of the reasons she finds me so interesting is that I can actually do things. It took a while for that to actually sink in, but she's right. My dad always had me in the shop with him, or holding the flashlight, or handing him tools as he worked. Heh, there was also this 1940's Popular Mechanics Encyclopaedia of Tools and Uses or something like that that I read through all twelve volumes of while I sat and waited for him to be done with the grinder. While at the time I was mostly glad just to be around him, now, I can't believe what and advantage that has been for me. I watched him do things for himself and watched him figure out the things he'd never done before. Somehow, all of that managed to instill in me a belief that I can learn and do anything. This has be invaluable living on my own. The amount of things that I have fixed, repaired, or replaced in my apartments would keep the maintenance people busy for a month. The other benefit is that I feel... worthwhile when I do something constructive with my hands. Quite a long time ago the little end table I use to put my laptop on broke a leg. It set around for far too long before I fixed it this week. It was really an easy fix, all that was necessary was for it to be taken apart, the mating surfaces on the leg chiseled clean of wood splinters and glue and then it had to be glued and screwed back together. The operation took less than 15 minutes (plus 24 hours curing time for the glue), yet I felt as if I had accomplished more that night than I had in the months previous. I feel the same way about my dining room table, which I made with my dad. I'm often depressed, sometimes severely so, because I don't feel like I'm doing anything, I'm not bringing anything into the world no matter how much I do with the computer or at school. 15 minutes of furniture repair is enough to keep me happy for 2 days. Anyway, I've lost the point of whatever it was I was talking about, so I'm headed to bed.
Let the Wine of Friendship Never Run Dry -Thursday, February 12, 2004 -4:33 am-
Talking to one of my friends tonight reaffirmed my conviction that I am more than a little odd. The specific dimension of my oddness is, tonight, friendship. For most of my life, I didn't have friends, and certainly I didn't associate with anyone less than 2 decades older than myself. This changed, abruptly, at the end of my Sophomore year of High School when I became mired in Theatre. My Theatre troupe at South was my first experience with having people care about me who weren't obligated to. That is to say, it was the first time I encountered people who liked me for some other reason than that they were family. Theses people that came so suddenly crashing into my life cared deeply about their friends. The environment in which I learned to socialize loved each other more strongly than most families. This love was given without hesitation and reciprocated without obligation. Acceptance was instant and persisted until overwhelming reason to retract it was given. Because of this, I had no concept of friendship without unconditional love and no concept of not becoming instant comrades. Eventually, I moved on to college where I found... nothing (Mich is a special case and not counted amongst the ranks of normal friends). This didn't seem odd to me, after all, for the first 16 years of my life, I hadn't had friends. Then, at the end of my Junior year at OSU, Mich introduced me to the Rennies. At first, it seemed I was home again. Everyone acted open, talked the same talk, had the same flamboyant characters that I knew from Theatre. The rules of friendship I had previously learned in high school came back. As time passed, I came to realize that, for the most part, this similarity was totally superficial. The was the impression of openness, the act of caring, but behind the facade, the was nothing. Again, this is for the most part, there are several exceptions. I became confused, here was a social group who were outwardly similar, who professed to be the same as, the people I had known before, but the soul of the thing wasn't there. Adapting to the new rules, I shed my expectance of true familiarity with anyone. I now had a class friends, and a class acquaintances. I was saddened (and still am) at how small the first class is and how large the second. In the time since then, thankfully, a few people have turned out to be as I first thought they should have been.
Tonight, I was talking with one of those few who are as they should be. Today, she went through something I have far too much familiarity with. I told her that I had been through this too and talked a little about how I had felt, and how I had dealt with it. She told me she appreciated the effort, but that it wasn't the same because it was family. My thought was, "You're right, it wouldn't have been so bad if it had been family." It was in that thought that I realized my difference from other people with respect to friendship. I value the family I earn much more than the family I was born too, and I expect others to do the same. When I am teasing my friends and they claim to be fed up with me, I often say "hey, you love me" and actually expect that they do. This caused much confusion on my part when I did this to another one of my friends and her reply was "no, I don't." At first I thought she was joking, then I realized she meant it. I was hurt and very confused at the time. Now, I get it. Not everyone thinks that having many people whom you love, and whom love you in return, is the greatest aspiration in this life. My friends get this from me until... well, I haven't found an until yet.
The Web is a Special Place -Thursday, February 12, 2004 -2:41 pm-
This was linked to on a blog I read. It's funny, but only read it if you're not a prude.
I Had No Idea the Song was About a Drink! -Saturday, February 14, 2004 -11:58 pm-
You're in the Gangster box.
Seductive Vampy: You were made to make a grand entrance, from that revealing ensemble to those come hither eyes. You are the sex scene. It's because of you that Goth girls have reputations as being total sex bombs. Go on, you know you're gorgeous and so does everyone else. This makes it a bit hard for your friends not to backstab you, they're so jealous of you aren't they? Your life revolves around what parties/clubs you are going to attend and which sexy new boi you are going to snare. You can dress yourself well, regardless of how much money you have to spend and you always look glamorous. Most people tend to think you are a shallow slut; however there is more going on then they could ever know. You're certainly not stupid. You've realized that life is too short to be chained to one unappreciative guy. You wear your slinky, sheer dress and skirts so that maximum flesh exposure is guaranteed. Your motto is "Catch me if you can"
What is your style of Gothic Beauty?
Which cocktail are you?
Unfathomable Antipathy -Saturday, February 14, 2004 -11:59 pm-
On Friday night, one of my friends suggested I take a look at Jeff's blog because of some of the things he was saying about me. He's not someone I pay any attention to and it took me a while to track down his blog. The then current entry did, in fact, make reference to me. He was talking about everyone going to Kentucky to see Alana. For some reason, it angers him greatly that we all go to see the people in Lexington. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why that would bother him. His comment was, and I'm paraphrasing because i'm off the net right now, "Kentucky parties may lose some of their lustre after Mike goes to grad school and everyone realizes Ty in an insufferable asshole". This confuses me a great deal. First, what in the name of god does Mike and Grad school have to do with Kentucky? He's not the instigating force, how is he responsible for going? Second, I'm not there, how can I have an effect on people going? His continuing point (both in the current post and his other posts that rant about people going to KY) seems to be that there's nothing of any worth in Kentucky other than alcohol and everyone is a bunch of pathetic alcoholics for driving down there. All in all, it was rather surprising to read.
I am continually surprised that he will no express any antipathy directly to me. I have heard from others that he still tells girls they aren't safe alone with me, which is quite a case of the pot calling the kettle black. As far I as know, I have never done anything to him directly nor, as far as I know, have I ever done anything to any of his loved ones. He is in my presence, at most, two to three times a year. I do not think that can possibly be enough exposure for me to begin to grate on him. I am left with conjecture based on other people's descriptions of his personality. Do I upset him because I refuse to submit to the manipulation he doles out to everyone else? Do I anger him because I am not on his approved list and yet socialize with people he believes belong to him? All in all, I cannot believe I can draw such rancor from someone with whom I have little to no interaction.
Off In the Corner by Myself -Saturday, February 14, 2004 -11:59 pm-
I found a website called The Political Compass. It's an interesting test because it places you on two axes, rather than just Lefr/Right or Liberal/Conservative. For you Americans, Libertarian doesn't mean the Libertarian party in the context of this poll. It simply means someone who is socialy liberal. The questions in this poll are much better than average, some of them are actually difficult to answer. Once you get done with it, take a look at some of the other graphs they show. I find it interesting that all but two of the Democratic party canidates are Right-Authoritarian. No wonder I can't find anyone to vote for. My score was: Economic Left/Right: -7.12, Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.56, meaning that I'm a liberal freak way out there beyond Gandi, Mandela, and the Dalai Lama.
Take the Compass
Philosophy is the Talk on a Cereal Box -Monday, February 16, 2004 -6:05 pm-
Beth and I were, as usual, arguing today. This time it was based on The Political Compass thing I blogged about earlier. As usual, we didn't get anywhere with it and failed to do anything other than, well, nothing. She blogged the text of our IM conversation, so I'm not going to repeat it. It amazes me what the two of us get into. I start taking up astoundingly hard line positions that, while actually reflecting what I do believe in, are more extreme than I am (which is hard to do, mind you). I do believe that your morality and your attempts to follow it are what make you a good or bad person. However, I'm not going to personally condemn someone for having an idea I don't like. If they started enforcing that idea on others, well, then we're gonna have a rumble. I also think I stated my position on charity wrong. I don't think people should feel obligated to give to others, I think that the desire to give should be intrinsic.
I keep flipping back and forth on what the source of morality is. I definitely believe that a moral system stems from something other than a god. A moral system can be derived in the absence of religion and because the god/insert-random-holy-book-foo says so is not a valid basis for a moral system. I also totally disagree with Absolute Moral Relativism because it can be used to justify things such a slavery and genocide. I think this leads me to the conclusion that there is some absolute moral standard. Saying that makes me very uncomfortable because it means there's a possibility for condemning other people and restricting their freedom. At the same time, there has to be something that clearly says, "Bad despot! No biscuit!" when someone starts killing all the people who butter the toast on the top. I'm left with the desire to come down hard on those who infringe upon the rights of others and not knowing if thinking that way make me one of them. This is definitely, for me, an unsettled, and unsettling, issue.
An Amazing Hack -Tuesday, February 17, 2004 -2:22 am-
This is, without a doubt, the most amazing ASCII Art I've ever seen. I've pulled a pic of the hottest person in LotR and placed it here. BE CAREFUL, the file is HUGE and rendering will rain down firey death on your CPU. If you want to see more go here (warning NOT work safe). Wow, just wow.
All Your Uterus Are Belong to Ashcroft -Tuesday, February 17, 2004 -9:09 pm-
Every time I think I've head the most astounding thing yet from our Federal Government, they do something I couldn't even have imagined. A while back, the Fed passed The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, which has the interesting effect of making it a Federal offense for a doctor to perform a partial-birth abortion when it's the only way to save a woman's life. There's been a temporary injunction against the enforcement of the law, and a set of doctors is suing the Fed to have the law revoked. The Justice Department, at the direction of the much reviled John Ashcroft, has subpoenaed the medical records of hundreds of people who have had such abortions to determine whether the procedures were medically necessary "or if it was just the doctor's preference to perform the procedure." Obviously, this is a violation of the Doctor-Patient Privilege. Ashcroft had this to say in reply:
"There is no federal common law protecting physician-patient privilege. In light of modern medical practice... individuals no longer possess a reasonable expectation that their histories will remain completely confidential."
Everyone got their torches and pitchforks ready?
1. Offend the Religious Right ... 3. Profit!!!!! -Thursday, February 19, 2004 -4:12 am-
One of the very few non-infomercials on in the middle of the night is Wild On. I have no idea what the alleged topic was (does it really matter?). The thing that I was struck by is how amazingly rich porn publishers are. It didn't really strike me until I realized that most of these publishers only have one, or at most two, products in the market (i.e. a magazine, or a magazine and a website, or a line of videos). Most of the big time mainstream publishers have dozens of publications in markets all over the world. Yet the porn magnates are still raking in big dollars. This rather implies that A LOT of porn is being sold somewhere. In America, at least, everyone claims not to have bought porn (yes, I know some of you reading this are exceptions). Obviously, a huge percentage of people are buying porn. Or one rich, lonely man is going crazy. Somewhere between our nationally professed morality and our economic reality, there's a huge disparity. Why don't people grow up, join the 21st century, and get the hell over it?
The String Cheese Incident -Friday, February 20, 2004 -5:00 am-
Mich got us a Jumbo-Mega-Pan-Asia-Industrial-Kitchen-sized pack of Meijer brand string cheese. Lacking anything better to eat tonight, I had one. As I opened the damn thing, I was struck by something so funny that I couldn't eat the thing for a while. They're packaged just like surgical instruments. Heat-sealed plastic blister packs that one side peels back from via this little unstuck bit at one end. For some reason, opening cheese like it was a syringe just set me off. I'm better now, I promise.
I spent a lot of time wondering around the web today. Mostly looking at design issues as they relate to the web. There's some pretty stuff out there. I'm trying to decide if I like my layout as it is now or if something more adorned needs to happen. I'm normally much against adornment, but there's some really impressive stuff out there that I know how to do now. One decision I came to is that I'm going to quit supporting Internet Explorer in all its forms. This is a bit of a move because 65% of the hits on my site are from Internet Explorer. The next 34% are from one of the browsers based either on the Gecko engine or on the KHTML engine (means they render correctly and equally). However, Internet Explorer 6 still doesn't support some of the standards in CSS1 and hasn't made any move to support any of the standards in CSS2. The Gecko and KHTML based browsers have full CSS1 support and damned impressive CSS2 support. Internet Explorer is holding back the advancement of the web and that won't (according to Microsoft) change until Longhorn (slightly after the second coming of Christ). I'm moving forward, much of the rest of the web is too. Perhaps people will start to notice that their Internet Explorer isn't doing all the pretty, fancy stuff they see on other computers and get with the program. Probably not, but I don't give a damn. One of the things I came across was this hilarious description of working with Linux. This guy is a programmer for Opera, on the W3C CSS2.1 Working Group, and a member of the Mozilla Foundation and he still stumbles around with package dependencies like I do. I believe there is no hope.
And the Herd Thunders -Friday, February 20, 2004 -8:07 pm-
Dude, WTF is up with the mass exodus of people to LJ? LJ sucks, Xanga sucks, blog-city doesn't want anyone to see your blog, and... well, what's all the shuffling about for? Especially to LJ, which requires you to have an LJ account before you can leave a comment? Grrrrr
More Quizzes -Saturday, February 21, 2004 -3:53 am-
Check out my Morality! 78% liberal, 22% conservative
You're Canada!
People make fun of you a lot, but they're stupid because you've got a much better life than they do. In fact, they're probably just jealous. You believe in crazy things like human rights and health care and not dying in the streets, and you end up securing these rights for yourself and others. If it weren't for your weird affection for ice hockey, you'd be the perfect person.
Take the Country Quiz
You are Schroeder!
Which Peanuts Character are You?
You're Element is Flame.
You have a strong, independent, fiery personality and you obviously don't ley other's push you around. You like being in charge and don't care what other people think. In fact, you like to stand out and be yourself. You're probably shy when people first meet you but your a ball of energy that could explode at any given moment. You like to laugh and whether you admit it or not, you like to fight. You're personality that is wild and untamable. You're beauty is physically fit and a little sexy and you have a very pretty face.
What's Your Element?
Tramp Bear
Which Dysfunctional Care Bear Are You?
Colophon -Saturday, February 21, 2004 -4:13 am-
As I'm sure you've noticed, I've made some changes to the blog. To produce what you see now (and the more radical restyling that moves the columns around that you might see next week), I didn't have to change a single character of HTML (or in this case XHTML cause I'm with the standards an shit). All of the styling is done it a separate CSS stylesheet that doesn't influence the code at all. The typeface used is Times New Roman (it was Verdana, btw) set to 1.0em. If you don't like the font size, change it because it's not under my control. Yes, that's right, it's you, not me, that gets to control the size of the text. The rest of the page is designed to not break regardless of what you do to the text size, so have at. To those unfortunates among you who are running Windows, I'm sorry. This is my first layout that looks VASTLY better on MacOS than on Windows. I was not aware before tonight that there is a big difference in the way MacOS and Windows handle fonts, but there is. The colors are also coming out much muddier on Windows. I have no idea why. Finally, IE draws a fugly looking border around the boxes, whereas Mozilla is doing a nice, clean, double line. Oh, even more finally, MacIE is a bitch and doesn't collapse horizontal margins, so the few of you running MacIE might see some boxes on top of each other. Get a different browser.
At this point, I'm soliciting comments about the styling. Do you like it more or less than the old, gray way? Is there anything you'd like me to change? Anything you'd like to see? Let me know!
Nearly Swallowed the Car Whole -Sunday, February 22, 2004 -5:53 am-
Today was interesting. I had to get up in the middle of the night to go help Heather move. Oiy, that sucked. I was asleep for all of about 2 hours. We got there late, and the truck was in the process of being unloaded at Heather's Parents' house. Quick work of it was made, and then we took the last bit to Aaron's place. Both of the son-to-be-newlyweds were ecstatic. We had a pizza lunch and then Slave Master Mike called them off to Madrigal practice.
Mich and I went home to sleep while everyone was off practicing at merrymaking. We cam back over that evening to meet Heather and Mary at the Caribou Coffee on Lane for First Dinner. It was fun hanging out with them, though I was a bit scared when they both readily agreed they'd sell their soul for mint mocha. The four of us then went to the Glee Club concert. Unlike normal, this time it was the Men's and Women's. The God Squad (Women's) came out first and sang the word "Hallelujah" for twenty minutes, and not well for most of that. Then there was a bit with a drum and random saxophone. Finally, after a fake intermission that had the Men's ready to storm the stage, the girls finished by announcing that they felt sorry for men. The Men's stomped their way down to the stage as usual. It always amazes me how much better the acoustic at Weigel in the house than on stage. They need to give the concert from the aisles. They did the usual stuff and sounded usually good doing it.
After the concert, and more bashing of the God Squad, Mike and Aaron decided to go to Mac's Cafe. Four became eight, became 10, ended at twelve. Mac's was a bit annoyed that we hogged three of their tables, but they seemed ok once we spent more than $200. We sat around for two hours eating and yelling, in which time Michele L left home, drove to Mac's orbited for parking, gave up, and went home. We found this out after she'd gotten back home. After Mac's we moved to Aaron's place, which is a zoo with that many people in his living room. At Aaron's we... well, I don't think we did a damn thing. several people fell asleep. Mich cause Mary to disobey the laws of Physics in an attempt to get away from me (she changed position by about four feet without traveling through the intervening space). Mich now feels bad that she chased Mary away from me because she was trying to tease me, not make Mary move. Once more than half the people were sleeping, or trying to, we finally broke up for the evening. It was a good day.
I've been sucked back in. After getting home, I installed Blender. Modeling always eats up vast quantities of my life. I'm hoping to get through finals week before I get to into it. Eck, speaking of school... This weekend really should have been spent doing nothing other than schoolwork. I have most of the quarter's work left to do and it starts coming sue on Tuesday. Gulp. And we're supposed to have a visitor in tomorrow and possibly Monday. I hope I don't fail more than one of my classes. Well, it's frelling late and I'm not saying anything anyone's going to want to read. Bye.
What the Fuck? -Sunday, February 22, 2004 -10:18 pm-
Mich and I usually get along fairly well, understand each other, communicate, all that bullshit. However, sometimes, she just fucking pisses me off. Griffon was in town tonight and we went with him to HBM's to watch movies. They were showing Underworld first, which Mich and I had seen. While I was watching the movie, I was, as usual, online talking to people. I got ahold of Mary and told her what was going on. I offered to pick her up and bring her over, and she accepted. I put my shoes on and Mich came back into the room. She announced that if I was going out, I had to take her home first. She wanted to hang out with people, not be shushed while a movie was on (which I can understand). I told her there was no way I was taking her home, coming back, hanging out, then driving home again. It was fucking stupid to add an hour and a half to my drive time for the night, not to mention a waste of money. She insisted that I take her home. I call Mary, tell her no one is coming for her (she sounded a little upset about it, which didn't make me feel any better) and then leave with Mich. We get home, and I sit down in the livingroom. She asks me if I'm going back. I told her before we left HBM's that she was ending both our nights, why the fuck does she act surprised when I stay home? She said she wasn't really excited about hanging out with people tonight because she'd had a bad day (she's tutoring my mother in Spanish) and only went because Griffon was here. Why the hell couldn't she have told me before we left so I could have driven my own god damn car?
Gray Tuesday -Tuesday, February 24, 2004 -5:06 pm-
The change in the blog colors is for Gray Tuesday. Fuck EMI, fuck the Beatles, and fuck Eminem.
Well Then -Tuesday, February 24, 2004 -5:26 pm-
Over the past few days, there's been someone IMing me whom I thought I didn't know. I was confused because the addressed me by name. Turns out, it was a friend of mine from high school. AIM had kept her screen name and buddy list through the four years during which she didn't have a computer. Recently, a friend loaned her a laptop. Hence the calling out of the blue. It's so odd to hear from her again. Long unused subroutines are being called back into action. She was someone I cared about greatly but who had to be handled quite carefully. She was, is I suppose, very different from all my other friends and I had to modify my behavior around her. It'll be interesting to see if I can be friends with her now without scarring her. The other thing I had forgotten about her was her body image issues. She's one of those people who is freakin gorgeous and thinks she's ugly. In an interesting twist, this is completely her mom's fault. It still boggles me. She's one of those lucky girls who can play with the boys and look hot when sweaty and dirty and then clean up and look fucking gorgeous in a ball gown. Grrr for people not listening to reason!
I have no idea why the other night got me in such a tiz, it was odd and pointless. Sigh. Oh, well.
The Incestuous Circle Remains Unbroken -Wednesday, February 25, 2004 -6:31 am-
I am scared/amazed/not surprised. I was sucked in to OKCupid tonight. After answering all 928 currently available questions, the first eleven matches are all local rennies. God save us all. I see some of you have pretty poor pictures up. If you want to improve that, let me know.
Yay, I Like This Season -Wednesday, February 25, 2004 -9:55 pm-
Season Three - A lot of people say that you're the best, and who could really argue - you're pretty, witty, and you've got one of Buffy's best adversaries: the Mayor. Pound for pound, you're why so many people love Buffy.
Which Season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer Are You?
sudo rm -rf /Library/WebServer/* -Friday, February 27, 2004 -4:14 am-
Messed up a backup, wiped the drive. Trying to figure out what to do about it. This is sort-of backup from the laptop. Don't expect anything new from me till it's all fixed.
Derf! -Saturday, February 28, 2004 -6:51 pm-
derf'
1. The sound a of a dry, yet still pliable, brain running into a solid concept
I've been fighting with this whole webserver thing for a while, with dramatic results yesterday. UNIX divides, for the purposes of file permissions, the world up into three classes of people. The (u)ser who owns the file, the (g)roup the file is assigned to, and any (o)ther person. To each of these classes or people, you can assign a combination of the three permissions of (w)rite, (r)ead, and e(x)cute. You tell the computer how you'd like this done with cute little statements like ug+rwx (ignore the number method for now). The previous statement would have given the user who owns the file and everyone in his group the ability to read, write, and execute the file. That's just background for the problem I've been having. All of the files for my webserver are supposed to belong to the user www who is a member of group staff. To make things a little more secure, it would be nice if any random user on my system couldn't just root around at will in the webserver, so I set all the files to be ug+rwx o-rwx, which should have allowed the webserver and I to merrily work with the files whilst keeping them safe from the grubby hands of a mere user. Problem was, it locked me out too. Grrr...
Off I go, rooting through the cold and heartless realm of NetInfo. It turns out that even though I'm the owner of the box and an Administrator, am, in fact, not a member of group staff. After serious perusal of man files, I find out how to add myself to staff. Done and done. It didn't make a damn bit of difference. I was still locked out of the files of group staff. WTF, mate?. Three days later, I had an epiphany.
You have to log out and back in for the changes to the NetInfo Database to take effect.
Derf!
Pastime With Good Company -Sunday, February 29, 2004 -5:10 pm-
Yesterday, at the very end of a long day, we went to the Madrigal Cast Party. Er, no, not the Cast Party, cause youngins can't drink at an official Cast Party. It was merely a Party at which the Cast happened to be. And they sung a lot, which was odd. Anyway, we went to a party. It was pretty cool. When we first got there, everyone was sedentary and quiet. Then they managed to get enough booze into themselves to come alive. Eventually, the kitchen got noisy enough that I had to go in to see what was happening.
For some completely unfathomable reason, it has been decided that in the girls' kitchen, everyone's ass is fair game. The ass-fest was kicked off my Heather, He'er, and Mary having a giggly little circle-slap. They are very confusing girls. Later, as I was standing by the end of the counter, I completely broke Mary. Kelly tried to walk by the bench (oi, the bench...) and someone smacked her ass. Her ass happened to be within my field of view and I was rather impressed how sexily it jiggled upon impact. I said, "Kelly, I hope you don't mind me saying so, but your ass jiggles really sexily." Mary screeched and fell to the floor laughing (Mary == VERY tipsy). Then everyone else had to look at Kelly's ass as they smacked it.
The next to fall was Dave. Mike and Aaron were on about something, and someone asked for someone to get them started on another topic. Being a civic minded person, I said, "Hey Mike, what about Dead Babies?" Mike and Aaron promptly launched into the Liturgy of Dead Babies. Actually, I'm not sure if I want liturgy or litany in that case. Four or five psalms in, I hear this odd whining, choking sound from my right. It's Dave, laughing so hard he can neither stand nor speak. His response, "Let's set things on fire!" After the entire party raced out into the back yard, it turned out he was just a tease. He had given away all his fire. Once back inside, the jokes got worse. I was a bit worried because we were all standing so close. I was afraid that when one was struck down by god, we'd all be collateral damage. The joking took an ugly turn with Mike's Pizza/Scream joke (of course, he was to much of a pansy to tell it, so I did it for him, even though he had merrily told it in the past) and then it devolved into an odd sprinkler joke.
There were a lot of people there I didn't know. One of whom was a interesting girl in a black tank top. Speaking of the top, she was in desperate need of not bending over that far in that shirt, cause DAMN. :) Thanks whomever you are! Anyway, I found her instantly appealing for some reason I could not immediately figure out. Much later, it came to me. She's a Thespian. I was recognizing in her a behavior pattern I found comforting. I need more Theatre people in my life. :(
Then, all of a sudden, everyone bailed on the party. It was like rats from a sinking ship. You would have thought the booze had run out (it hadn't). We had to cart Aaron's drunken ass home. As we were driving down Kenny, Aaron says:
"Ohhh!!! I can see the stars!!! Well, ok, one star. It should be the North Star, but that's not very North."
"Ohhhh!! I can see the speedometer!
