Do it yourself, with shredded foam!
| 10.31.2000 |
It's Halloween. I'm going to bed early. I bought a bunch of candy
on the off chance that we get trick-or-treaters in my remote secluded
apartment complex, but I think this place is mostly college students.
Guess I'll just have to eat a lot of candy. Today on Fresh Air, Al Franken and Bill Maher were interviewed. It was a pretty good show. Coincidentally, Bill Maher and Al Franken are interviewed in this weeks Onion. I personally think that Al Franken is a smarmy bastard. Maybe I just still have a visceral reaction to democrats. He gets on my nerves. I like Bill Maher, though. He's a bit more liberal than I, but he does dish it out to both sides on his show. Plus, I loved this quote from the Onion interview: "[Being a] conservative also used to involve the concept of people being free to do whatever they want to do, as long as it doesn't hurt somebody else. Conservatives used to be very libertarian. Reagan was all about getting the government out of people's lives. Well, does that include when I'm twisting up a fatty to watch Nick At Night? Is that really a threat to our way of life?" Just to be the 256,433rd person to point this out, Dubya used cocaine. Al Gore smoked pot. A lot of people are in prison. An increasing percentage of those who are imprisoned are there on drug offenses. We're paying for this, at an average cost of $28,000 per prisoner per year. And neither Gore nor Bush are willing to admit that our current strategy of focusing solely on law enforcement (and foreign military intervention) is just not working. But I get tired of talking about that. In TV News, this coming Sunday, NBC is going to be running the SNL Presidential Bash 2000. It's during the X-Files season premiere, and I'm not particularly excited about watching a lot of reruns of old skits that I've probably already seen, but apparently they did actually get George W. and Al Gore to come on and do a debate skit. They taped their segments separately, but I guess it might be interesting to watch. Probably not though. Make sure you turn my TV off during that... I'll probably be watching it against all better judgement. And in the "yet more stuff stolen from memepool" department, I love this picture. Drew Barrymore is just unbearably cute. Listen, darling... If things don't work out with Tom, send me an email. |
| 10.30.2000 |
Gimpysoft.com got over six unique non-me hits today! Guess I've finally
made the big time. We go public on the 12th of December, only three
days after the start of the second great depression. I have decided that I prefer Daylight Savings Time. I don't like it being pitch black when I drive home from work. Speaking of work, today I was reading Memepool and they highly encouraged everybody to read Survivor, the new book by the guy who wrote Fight Club. I certainly didn't read Fight Club, but the movie kicked ass, so I figured that anything by the guy who wrote that can't be too bad. So I clicked the link to check out the book. I happened to notice that this book was popular in the Wired Ventures, Inc. buying circle... So I decided to check out what the folks at Wired are reading. While doing that, I noticed that Wired is classified as an ISP in Amazon.com's hierarchy of businesses. "Hey, I work for an ISP!", I thought to myself. So I decided to bring up the list of ISP's. And what do you know, we're listed right there... I did notice that our chief competitor in the area is not listed... apparently they're not too big on reading over there. Moral of the story: I'm going to buy myself a copy of that Survivor book. Right now, I'm reading Non-Zero: The Logic of Human Destiny by Robert Wright. I borrowed it from a friend of mine, and it's pretty good so far. I'll post a full review as soon as I finish it. I just got done watching Episode 4, and I guess it turned out OK. As I thought, the Smashing Pumpkins video looks terrible... just too much motion. I'll try to encode a better quality version of that at least this weekend. But other than that, the show looks all right. I'll be in another city before too much longer, and the high speed connection that I will get in that new city will enable me to make some higher bit-rate real video files of the shows that I'm sure will look a lot better. Man, when you watch these shows over the internet, you really gain an appreciation for third generation video tape. And I really liked today's article in Suck.com. |
| 10.29.2000 |
Well, at a Haloween party last night I came into contact with someone
who actually watched Young
Pups Episode 3 and he appeared to enjoy it. So, by popular demand,
I've posted another show... You can find Episode
4 over on the left margin. Actually, the video doesn't look too
bad from what I've watched so far. I'm sure the music video at the
end won't look too good... a bit too much motion to work well as low
bandwidth video. If I can get my video card working properly, I'd
like to capture a nice MPEG or AVI file of that to put up for download.
That video definitely deserves better quality. Plus, if I could cature
these whole shows as a nice high quality file, I think I could make
better quality Real Video files... But unfortunately when I capture
with the software that came with my video card the video has these
neat green bars all over it. (Does anybody have a spare Avid for me?)
I'll get the first two shows up before too much longer. And if I don't,
bitch me out so I get off my ass and do it. But it is time to tutor now. Further updates to come... I still haven't re-read my rant, so I would be hard pressed to post any insightful followups to it. But I did spend part of last night dressed up as a Green Bay Packer in Fayetteville's local alternative lifestyle establishment. But that's another story entirely. Perhaps I'll have more to post later. In the meantime, be sure to check out the home page of your favorite Troubador Warrior and mine, Gurney Halleck. |
| 10.26.2000 |
In High School, we used to play a lot of Hearts. I took AP Calculus,
so we learned all our calculus before the AP test at the end of the
year. After we had taken the test, I guess there wasn't a whole lot
of point to learning any more, so calculus class pretty much turned
into a month long Hearts tournament. I remember playing some games
with as many as four decks and fifteen people playing. The scoreboard
took up most of the chalkboard, and we were lucky to finish up two
hands per period. I just finished reading Stephen King's Hearts in Atlantis. I more or less stopped reading King around the time of Dolores Claiborne, choosing instead to read more pretentious works. But I read on his website that this book was tied in with his Dark Tower series, so I figured I really didn't have any choice but to read it. Particularly because he only manages to release proper updates to the story every four years or so. Anyway, I would recommend it. It is actually quite good. Hell, if anyone wants my copy, feel free to email me and I'll send it to you. One of the stories in the book revolves around a group of college students throwing their educations away playing hearts. I did plenty of messing around in college, but overall I'm happy with what I did in colege my first time around. And I did manage to graduate... Where was I, anyway... Oh yeah... So reading this book about Hearts made me remember a couple things. Around graduation time, I bought a deck of cards that I had all my friends and acquaintances sign. I kept track of that deck of cards for a long time. As a matter of fact I thought it was still in the little box full of momentos and sentimental crap I still keep around, and even add to occasionally when I have something I think I ought to hang on to. Not in there, though. But I was going to bed early anyway (I think I'm getting this year's flu already...) so I decided to take a look through the rest of the stuff. I found some notes from the one girlfriend I had in High School... There were a couple of little "cheer up" notes, and most significantly one long letter where she asks why I am treating her so shabbily. I believe I had been... If I remember right, I was madly in love with a girl I had known since Junior High, but who was not interested in me as anything more than a close friend. I also believe I broke up with the girlfriend the next time I saw her after reading the letter. I kept in touch with the girl I was madly in love with until after I had been away at college a couple of years. We had been writing letters back and forth and it seemed like a good idea to come clean and let her know that I had had feelings for her. She took this badly... Apparently after we all went off to college she had been deluged with confessions from all her close friends that they always secretly loved her, and many of them told her that they just didn't want to have anything to do with her any more. Or maybe I don't remember correctly... We didn't communicate much after that. I think we exchanged emails about a year after that, but people go their separate ways. I also found in the box a bunch of "away from college for the summer" letters from friends of mine from school at UH. Some of them I still keep in touch with, some of them I have unfortunately lost contact with. One common thread seems to run through all the letters and notes, high school right up through college. Apparently, I'm a deeply miserable person. Maybe I ought to look into Prozac. I'm starting to see some patterns in my life. Firstly, I never seem to be particularly happy. I mainly attribute this to my lack of female companionship, but even when I am dating I don't seem to be satisfied. I've never been too interested in simply finding myself a mate and settling down. Blah blah blah, look at mister sentimental. Look at me! I'm the only person left in the world holding out for True Love! That's a bunch of crap. As a matter of fact, the majority of my friends in long term relationships (married or otherwise) seem to have actually found that. I guess that's what has been driving me nuts about living down here. The few women who have seemed to be interested in me out here are looking for nothing more than someone to help them get pregnant so they can be housewives. As a matter of fact, there's a girl out here right now who I believe is interested in me. And I don't go out of my way to discourage her by any stretch of the imagination. She's an Electrical Engineering student, and I believe smart enough to actually graduate. What are her aspirations? To be a housewife. She just wants to get her degree so she can feel good about the fact that she could have had a career if she wanted to. She is incessantly complaining about how her biological clock is ticking. She's 22 for god's sake! So I write off Arkansas... Which brings me to the second pattern I seem to have noticed. Every 3-5 years, I seem to freak out and decide that my life would be a whole lot better over there. I guess this rant has gone on long enough that I might as well not chicken out when it comes to a little self-psychoanalysis. When I was young we moved around a lot. I never really lived in one place long enough to make any close friends until junior high and high school. I guess that's why it doesn't seem to be that big a deal to just pick up and move to another part of the country every so often. When I told my friends in Texas that I was moving to Arkansas, they all told me I was nuts. I think I told one of the guys that "without change, something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens." And I guess I honestly do believe that. But at the time, I was dissatisfied with how things were going where I was. I had just signed on to my first real post-college job, after a negligible job search. It sucked ass. I spent four months in mind numbing training and was assigned to a group processing Geophysical data coming in from boats in the Gulf of Mexico. Once I was assigned to the group, I was assigned a nice X station and eagerly awaited actually being a productive member of the team. But the team I was on was in the process of finishing up a survey they had been working on for the last 9 months. And basically they didn't have much work for me to do. I taught myself C so I could automate the few menial tasks they did give me to do, but then I just finished those even faster and had even more time to sit on my ass and do nothing. I finally decided to get out of there when one day I was called into my supervisor's supervisor's office. He handed me a printout of an email I had sent to a friend and explained to me that my company email was to be used for company business only. Now this was not a dirty joke, or anything distasteful... Just an email conversation I was having in the large portion of the time I spent on the clock at that company where I honestly had nothing to do. Since then, I've kept myself at small companies where my work really does have an impact on the success or failure of the business as a whole. It's a lot more stressful, but more rewarding. Oh wait... did I say rewarding? I guess not, since it appears that it's come down to moving time again. I actually enjoy my job, but now I'm telling myself that it's this area I'm moving away from. I need to meet some people that I can actually feel a bond with. And after living here for 2.557377049180327868852459016393443 years I've met one person who I would rank up with my top friends. And he doesn't like it here either. Mostly, I hang out with myself, with old college friends, and with people who are sometimes fun to be around and who I hope might have cooler friends. Hasn't been the case so far. Honestly, when I started this rant, I meant to be a lot more self-critical than I seem to have been. I'm sure a lot of my lack of success on the dating front has been due to my lack of self confidence that springs from my fully justified self-image problem. I've always been overweight, and lack the willpower to either eat less or exercise more. I do what I can when I can, but mostly I just sit around and watch TV ( turn it off for me, will you?), read or screw around on the computer when I should be in the free gym in this apartment complex or out riding my bike. And I sometimes wonder if they didn't give me any work at the geophysical company in Texas because they didn't think I could or I actually couldn't do it. Someone who was into the whole Alcoholics Anonymous thing would say that my constant moving about was called a "geographic solution". Constantly blaming your situation in life on your surroundings, rather than yourself (or your substance abuse problems, which I of course do not have. Isn't denial one of the first signs of a problem? I personally think that drugs are a phase that most people just outgrow. I've done plenty of things in my time, but right now I couldn't hook myself up a dime bag even if I was so inclined...) Ummm... where was I going with this? I don't think I remember any more. I think that I thought that if I started writing something I would eventually start to come to some conclusions about what it is I want to do with my life. It's getting to be decision time now. I'm inclined to move to New York. If you're going to move to the big city, you might as well go all the way. I'm still looking for True Love. I basically define that as your best friend who you also get to fuck. And someone who won't be offended by that definition. I guess that's all I have to say about that. Have a nice day. On a quick side note, I normally will write an update to the site then re-read it a couple of times to fix all the typos and rambling sentences that just never seem to get to any sort of point. However, it's late, and I'm tired. Hopefully I'll spell and grammar check this tomorrow and perhaps post something insightful rather than just pointless bitching. But for now, I'll leave that for another day. |
| 10.25.2000 | I still haven't fixed the layout. Maybe I'll do it soon. |
| 10.24.2000 |
DEAR GOD! Reflex
is gone!
I was reading the few web pages I read on a regular basis a couple days ago when I occurred to me that I've flat out stolen the "layout" of my web page, such as it is, from memepool.com. I assure you that this was fully unintentional, and besides there is no controlling legal authority. I was drinking too much iced tea while I was working on my web page. And I have not done any illegal drugs since the age of 26. I figure the least I can do is link to them for now and commence work on something original for once in my life. Hopefully I'll get something going before the beginning of November. I'm messing with the layout of the site right now. This should be fun. |
| 10.22.2000 |
I can't stop playing Reflex.
Last night, I went up to Joplin, MO to see Big Smith again. Man, they rule. It was a smaller place, and a lot less packed than when they come play Chester's in Fayetteville. But they played all the good stuff. But I'm tired, and I think I'm going to take another nap. |
| 10.20.2000 |
Honestly, I'm a libertarian at heart, but for a while I was excited about Nader being able to build up a viable Green party. I still think that would be a good thing. More voices in politics can't be a bad thing, even if I don't always agree with what they're saying. I think the only reason I was deciding to not vote Libertarian is the fact that I really don't like Browne too much. His people have taken over the LP, and I really don't like what they've done with it. I know they don't have much money, but what they do with what they have is just embarrassing sometimes. They issue ridiculous press releases where they're on the right side of an issue, but they fill them with so much inane, idiotic, "humor" that it's difficult if not impossible to take them seriously. But the fact is, the party actually is doing pretty well. They have over 300 people in local and state offices and they're on the right side of all the issues. What finally helped me make my mind up and decide to vote for Browne was an article written by the Misanthropic Bitch. In her Election Guide 2000 she profiles Nader, Browne, Gore and Bush and their vice presidential friends. Though the article is more funny than anything else, it at least did remind me that at heart, I'm an anarchist, not a socialist. Hopefully, four years from now, Jesse will run for president as a Libertarian and stomp the hell out of Dubya's re-election campaign. But in the meantime, vote for Harry Browne... And note to the Bitch: The Libertarians actually qualified for federal matching funds in both the 1996 and 2000 elections, but Harry turned them down on principle. I'm guessing he was trying to generate some publicity with the decision, and I guess I can sort of admire the stand he took in refusing the money from Washington. Unfortunately, that money really could have been used to support local elections, or even national elections with a viable Libertarian candidate. Hopefully, this all-or-nothing wing can be thrown the fuck out of the party, and we can concentrate on just getting one Libertarian in congress. I think that would do more for the party than anything Browne has done over the last 8 years. |
| 10.19.2000 | I hate Pledge Week on NPR. I want everything for free, and our local NPR station doesn't play much other than Morning Edition and All Things Considered. |
| 10.18.2000 |
Gimp Gimpson's tips for Web Site Developers #23: Don't update your
website when you're
drunk. I've always wanted to work for a .com (Right now, I just work for a .net). I think I've found the one I want to work for. Oh, to be a member of this crack team of professionals. There is a guy walking through my building right now with a backpack-mounted Smoothie machine. For some reason, this scares me. |
| 10.17.2000 |
Well, I watched two out of the three debates. I think the one thing
I've learned through them is that it's a lot easier to tolerate politicians
when you're
drunk. Four years from now Jesse
will be running for president, and he'll get my vote. For now, I think
I'm voting for
Nader. Or maybe Harry.
The New Yorker had a short article on MP3.com's decision to pull Descramble. For those of you not familiar, Descramble is a song written by Joseph Wecker. The lyrics are a musical rendition of a portion of the source code for DeCSS, a program which allows a computer to decrypt the data stored on a standard video DVD. (You know, like a DVD player decrypts it to allow you to view it on your TV.) The Motion Picture Association of America couldn't sue the Norwegian who wrote DeCSS, so they sued websites which distributed the source, most notably hacker newsletter 2600. So people decided to distribute the source in as many ways as possible, trying to make the argument that source code is protected as free speech (Which is a bit of a stretch if you ask me). However, this tactic did lead to an inordinate amount of hilarity, my personal favorite being when CopyLeft was sued for printing the DeCSS source code on a T-Shirt. In MP3.com's defense, I guess I can't argue too much with their response; "We're sorta being sued by enough people right now. I guess we'd like to keep out of court for a while if that's O.K." Enough babbling about geek shit, anyway... Go Pack Go! About time you guys won a game... It's good to see after watching the poor bastards lose to the Bears (The Bears, for god's sake!) at Lambeau. |
| 10.13.2000 | Big Smith is in Eureka Springs, AR tonight and Saturday night. They're playing from 9:30pm - 1:00am in the Basin Park Hotel Ballroom as part of the 54th Original Ozark Folk Festival. Tickets are $10. Arlo Guthrie's in town too... Details here. See you there! |
| 10.12.2000 |
Mindlessness on the web. A friend of mine told me about eCrush.com.
You register at the site, and submit the name and email address of
the person you have a crush on. The site then (if you want it to)
sends an anonymous email to that person, and they can register. If
they register their crush on you, it will send an email to both of
you. Otherwise you don't have to go through the pain and heartache
of yet another soul-crushing rejection. Sweet! Now I can finally find
out if Sherilyn
Fenn and I have a future together... In other mindlessness, the Best Band in the Midwest, Big Smith, have put out another album. If you like Bluegrass (or if you don't for that matter), you'll love these guys. They have some mp3 samples on their site, and I would definitely recommend checking them out. I hope I can be as cool as the Bass player someday. Radiohead's new album, "Kid A", came out last week, and the first Billboard charts have been released. The album went straight to #1 in just about every country on their list. Now I'm not just mentioning this because Radiohead kicks ass (not that they don't...) but to point something out. On the 12th of September somebody leaked the album, and anyone who was interested had the entire album downloaded by noon. If the album had sucked, I may not have purchased it. However, it was actually quite good, and I bought myself a copy the day it came out. Apparently I wasn't the only one. Now I don't think I've looked forward to a new album coming out in quite a while, so I'm not sure how often an entire album is available for download before it's official release date. I suppose it probably happens with other artists, but I really don't know. This is the first time I've seen it occur. But a point needs to be made; Anyone with the inclination could obtain a free copy of this album, but enough people bought it to make it the most successful album right now. Maybe the RIAA ought to back off Napster a bit. I really don't think any case can be made that free downloads hurt CD sales. OK, I have nothing more to say. Hey, could you turn my TV off for me? |
| 10.08.2000 |
Well, the site is back up, sort of. I'm just not cool enough to run
Linux exclusively. I need a windows box so I can view all my porn.
So we're back on my old 486 until I shell out the bucks for a new
machine. In the meantime, some new toys for you. I really shouldn't be watching TV, so if you happen to be here, would you mind turning my TV off? TV Off Lamp Off Lamp On |