02.10.00 >> Ah, the inspired poetry of those bards of Sysco. Such beatific words to cross my eyes:

Here is your Moist Towelette -- a strong napkin size towelette, moistened with a pleasently scented cleansing lotion.

Cleans and refreshes when soap and water are not available.

Directions: Tear open packet and use. Dries in seconds, leaving skin soft and smooth.

Hmm... "when soap and water are not available." So apparently you should take a bunch of these to Burning Man.

My roommates are friends with Dirk. Dirk runs dynamanga.net. Among the other titles, there is a piece called Paradigm Shift. PS sits me on the edge of my seat. It takes place in Chicago. I live in Chicago. Dirk lives in Chicago. I will meet Dirk Saturday. I will say, "Dirk, DynaManga is good stuff." Dirk will probably say, "Why, thank you." If I try to write in a blander tone of voice, I will implode.

I don't know if my cousin surfs the web (he's going to Purdue, he's gotta have an account and they have computer labs all over the place), but in case he's found me here: Happy Birthday, Josh!

I don't think "egads" is going to cover this one. It looks like Yahoo! Internet Life's Daily Net Buzz has picked up Weblog Junior High as one of today's features. That could confuse some folks new to the weblogging scene, so... to those folks new to the weblogging scene and coming here through WJH through Daily Net Buzz (BREATHE!), know that WJH is a big ol' parody. Neale, the author, doesn't actually hate any webloggers out there. It was all a labor of love. (To the regular readers: No, that's not sarcasm. It could have been, but it isn't. Right on.)

(Of course, since they found WJH off of The BradLands, Brad is enjoying a healthy boost in traffic, too. Dig that action.)

A Walk Through Time is not your great-aunt Florence showing slides of you when you were two. It's a quick rundown of how people have kept track of time ever since they thought to do so, eventually leading up to why you're always late to sales meetings.

I love it when your weekly work status report gets boiled down into a ten-second blurb of:

Me: There's this thing that's almost done, there's another thing that's almost done, this other thing isn't done because I can't get ahold of a guy in New York, and one other thing popped up but it's done.
Boss: Okay, carry on.
Me: Dig it.

02.09.00 >> Aw, dammit! Doug Henning is dead. I remember two things on television from when I was a wee sproggen: the Muppet Show and Doug Henning magic specials. Like a lot of kids, I was into magic tricks and the like, but fell out of it and instead I grew up to be a gamer and a fringe pagan. He will be missed. (courtesy o' Mermaniac)

Unofficial tribute site to Doug Henning.

Fun with domain names: 3.1415926.com, which is about pi, and 3.1415926.org, which isn't. Unless that guy or his dog is named Pi. (Of course, 1415926.net is available, and now I'm thinking of buying it.)

I couldn't figure out what a kulcher was until I said it outloud. Hee. It's going to be one of those days...

Yikes, it is going to be one of those days. The Sprint suits are here at work. That explains all the haphazard parking in the parking lot this morning.

Tonight's #BlogIRC night. Throw your IRC clients haphazardly at irc.skunkworks.cx, port 6667, and join channel #BlogIRC, starting tonight (or at least, it's "tonight" for Western Hemispherians) at 5:30pm PST (GMT -8) or so. Woohah.

Entries have been sparse the last couple days. That's because life has been tricky, plus I'm working on the stuff on the site that I've already started and need to finish, and I've come up with a couple new ideas altoghether. Whoops.

02.08.00 >> The Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray. [Well, actually, it turns out to be the whole thing, but the Preface is the important part. For me, anyway.]

02.07.00 >> The original wassup (whassuuup). [Ooh. non-Shockwave shortcut.]

Once... twice... three times a lady...

02.06.00 >> Katie tells it like it is. Freshmen, unite. (And I missed her birthday; it was the 1st. Dammit!)

Woo! New stuff in Kein! Woo!

A new weblog that looks like it's focused on Halloween: Boo.

Any work I do on the site today will probably be on the new journal; I know how I want to set it up, but I can't do the front page until I get a photo taken. Ah well. I'm starting to write entries so I have content when I finally get it going.

As he sacked out on the couch, I went upstairs and retreived the stuffed dog that he got me for Christmas. I brought it back down and handed it to him. He asked, "Why are you giving this back?"

"Here. Close your eyes," I told him. He did, and I said, "Feel its ear."

Again, he did what I asked, then opened his eyes and looked at me for an explanation. "I don't ever actually cuddle it, but..." I turned away and started for the stairs as I finished. "That feels like your chest. I don't feel like I should rely on that anymore."

02.05.00 >> Okay, so I was wrong. I thought it was an acid/base thing.

From the GLBT weblog portal (which got a bright new look):

The GLBT Weblog Portal is hosted by hit-or-miss.org and was inspired by Running Tally.

Translation: Matthew took the submissions we had collected and threw them all together in a usable page while I sat on my slacker ass and worked on something else. I owe Matthew a thank you. Thank you, Matthew! :)

Matthew also wants to know how I fixed my VCR. It was nothing major; the ribbon cover on the tape got stuck on a pin inside the case, effectively hooking it in place so it couldn't go forward nor eject. I popped the cover off and wrestled with it until it unhooked. I used to fix things all the time from the age of maybe eleven or twelve, up until I moved out to go to college. My enthusiasm came from the rush of fixing something after a span of time of things not breaking.

Woohah!! Nikolai's site is up for the Best Student Website (pre-college) Award at SXSW! See, Nick? You do rock. :)

Happy Chinese New Year! It is no longer the Year of the Rabbit (damn... see, that's my year). Welcome to the Year of the Dragon.

02.04.00 >> I rule the machine world! Well, no, but I did fix my VCR after a tape got stuck in it, without any help. I am handy with a screwdriver. Take that any way you want.

I am liking Elevenland. Very mellow, ethereal folk music, with other bits thrown in.

This is helpful for when I move in May: getspeed.com will tell you what broadband services are available in your area, and from what provider, given your address, zip and area codes.

New Chicago weblog! Yay! fasthack. Nelson points us to the D&D movie... no kids sucked in from a roller coaster ride and given magic weapons by a short wizard guy in this one, but still looking good. Hell, the cast lists Tom Baker (the 4th Doctor Who) as the king of the elves, and Richard O'Brien (Riff Raff from Rocky Horror Picture Show) as the head of the thieves guild. Even if it sucks, it'll still be cool.

Ohgeez. Ohgeez. T. Radhuis wondered aloud on Bloat! what Neale would do with his 15 days of fame. "Something that pisses everyone off this time, I hope," sie said. Well, yeah. Egads. Of course, since everyone gets cut, you really can't be pissed. I think. What do I know, though? I'm too sexually frustrated to think straight. :)

Thank gods. (courtesy o' MetaFilter)

02.03.00 >> Ev writes:

I predict, the next big thing in weblogging will be actually have a rest of a site -- wherein, the weblog is but a feature. Ah hell, what am I talking about, that sounds like work.

Hmm. Sounds like what I've been working on. Suddenly, I'm ahead of the times. Of course, some people were already out there.

How much would you pay for cleaner nostrils? For only $49.50, fresher nasal passages can be yours. See those models? Those are the nervous smiles that accompany the realization that their modeling careers are over. [Note: Heh. Turns out Cam found it yesterday. He must've gotten the same email that's floating around, ending up in my coworker's box today. :)]

I told you about cr0bar's parody of The Matrix. It's over. Now he's working on Hackers.

Yo. Dennis says wassup.

02.02.00 >> AOL's getting sued over v5.0 crashing many folks' computers. I'm trying not to laugh. And failing. (courtesy o' Metrocake's journal - she has a weblog, too. Note to Metrocake: I'll be starting a separate journal soon; I need to get someone to take a picture of my mouth first. Don't ask.)

Good news: the Senate passed legislation to raise the minimum wage $1 to $6.15. Bad news: the hike will be over three years. Other news: the same legislation makes it harder to declare bankruptcy, as well as increases the penalty of powder cocaine crimes. So I guess that the restaurant I worked at one summer for $5/hour, where all the owners were sniffing cocaine, will have to make some changes.

And why the hell is CNN using Swatch's Internet Time? That's one hell of a marketing strategy: subverting a major news source.

Tracy picks up on a sign of the times:

I wrote a review of the Cafe Che in Los Angeles and on their menu they feature #ffffff clam sauce. My editor was all, "What the hell is that?"

Yeah, man perlfunc is my friend.

Ha ha ha! Photobooth pics from the last Chicago.hellyeah. Yes, one of them is me.

I'm having a hard time believing that this is even happening, but there is indeed cause for alarm in Europe. (courtesy o' Prolific)

02.01.00 >> Those wacky sprites spout off: Zany Video Game Quotes. My favorite, Yang busts a rhyme:

Woman: Hi, Honey!
Yang: It's my wife.
This is Cecil.
He saved my life.

Combining Spam with Haikus? Why not? SPAMkus. (The scary part: they've compiled 14486 of them.)

Nothing says loving like a home-cooked meal. Even if it's a Klingon home-cooked meal. Thank you, K'Tesh.

It's sort of like the famous poem, but more new-agey. "The moon on the breast of the enthusiastic glow, gave the luster of midday to chakras below. When, what to my wondering eyes should appear, but eight beautiful lights - new beginning was clear."

We've been up and down (mostly up) the last few days; our ISDN has been flaky. We were down for two or three hours today because crond died, preventing the script that checks for connectivity, and re-establishes it if it's down, from running. Wheeeeee.

So, obviously, running a weblog, working on a thesis, and holding down a job wasn't enough for John. No, ever the true masochist, he's gone and added a weekly column to his plate. The new column will theoretically be about Linux from the perspective of a relatively new user, but it could also veer into the area of product reviews and a Linux version of Dear Abby. Neat. I don't know whether to say, "Congrats," "Good luck," or "You like to make your own life difficult, don't you, John?"

Damn! Halcyon really fucking outdid himself this time with the Flash version of cockybastard. It's all too much... but the skydivers are my favorite part. Either that, or "Hello."

Chris quoted the Pixies yesterday. Good boy.

Well, it's here. Huzzah. The new design. Thanks to those that offered me suggestions on making it more readable (almost all of you said the same thing: separate the actual log from everything else more, whether by a thin line or a wider margin. I widened it up a bit). Any added suggestions can go to me.

Things that have changed:

1. The font is bigger. To people who were browsing in Linux: um, sorry about before. I didn't know. My roommate showed me when I showed him the proto-redesign. My bad about the damn-near-unreadable text. This should work better for you. If you're still having problems reading this, let me know.
2. Links no longer open a new window. The old archives still will, but from here on out, they won't. I may make that an option that sets a cookie or something... if, uh... I learn how. (Someone want to teach me?)
3. The sidebar of webloggers is arranged differently. Not by much, but still. Someone said that they liked the fact that I showed the names of the individuals behind each log; I'd like to reincorporate that info somewhere else, eventually.
4. Tally Mail. If someone writes in, gets me involved in a conversation, and the whole brouhaha is worth posting, it'll go into Tally Mail. Yay, communication.

So, er... raise a commotion, if you'd like.

Speaking of raising a commotion, Scott writes in re: Super Bowl Ruckuses and why people get into them:

a. because people bet on football. and money is the only thing that gets some people that agitated. and people don't bet on knitting (sorry!).

b. because watching any kind of event with a group of people tends to bring up old wounds. as in, I want the Titans to win, my brother wants the Rams, and he always wins everything. so rooting for the team isn't just sport, it's beating my brother. not exactly rational, but that's irrelevant.

Of course. I should have known. Money and grudges. Just like a war. That's why it sounded like one next door. Thanks, Scott. I have to disagree, though, on the knitting thing. Somewhere, two grandmas are placing their bets...

Beatrice: I got twenty on finishing this afghan before we have to go back to Yarn Barn.
Adelaide: You're on.