03.31.00 >> Fine, Alice doesn't care. And I'm not touching this one. (inspired by log of mutability)

Also from log of mutability: 1st Page 2000, an html editor thinger. But I'm supposed to support a product that writes pages that have images covering up the text when I view them? Um...

Wow, now you can send someone virtual crack. The pinnacle of our modern, technological world is now. (courtesy o' Heidi@hellyeah.moo)

03.30.00 >> More AIM hijinks, when Michelle has to find Chicago-based technological advancements from 1999:

Michelle: Fuck me...I finally found something. Air Trac.
Me: But you're a chick. What's Air Trac?
Michelle: Some wireless tech start-up.
Michelle: Fuckity, fuck, fuck...that Air Trac article is from 2000.
Me: Damn the future for being now, eh?
Michelle: Yeah. Damn it all to hell.

Wow, I'm actually updating my weblog today. That feels different than this last week. I'll post why later.

Stick this in your meme grinder: The Weblog State is the new Usenet. How many webloggers does it take to change a lightbulb? One to change it, fourteen to comment on it, 12 to comment on the commenters, 25 to comment that everyone's commenting, 54 to wonder why it's such a big deal....

Wasabi! (2.5Mb mpg)

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. And our fellow nuns.

Guess who's last in the Linkslut Ratings for the past two weeks? Aw yeah.

<droll> Oh, Nietzsche would be proud. </droll>

Reform Rabbies kick ass.

03.27.00 >> Okay, so IE5/Mac is finally out. Already I've found a problem with rendering. I get no scrollbar to scroll down with when I go to my own FAQ page. Now I have to see if this is because I wrote non-compliant html. Okay, so I open it up in another window, and the scrollbar appears. Great. I check out newest, and the first paragraph stays on a single line, trailing off the right side of the window. After reloading, it fixed itself, but it should have gotten it right the first time. (If this post seemed stream-of-consciousness, it's because it's 3:30am and I should be asleep. It's more like stream-of-unconsciousness. Also, thanks to mathowie@MetaFilter for the heads-up.)

The Gay Museum in Berlin is showing one half of an exhibition about gays persecuted under the Nazi regime, with the other half being shown at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

The Nazi anti-gay law, known as "Paragraph 175," was directly solely against gay men, since the Nazis were mainly concerned with perceived threats to their ideal of Aryan manhood. Lesbians were generally ignored, although some were arrested as "asocials" or "prostitutes."

Few surviving victims ever came forward after World War II because of continuing stigma associated with homosexuality, which remained illegal in West Germany under the same Nazi law until 1969. Tens of thousands of men were prosecuted in those postwar years.

I'm reminded of a radio ad I heard in my car a couple of months back. Some museum in Chicago (one of the smaller ones which I can't remember now) was hosting an exhibit on the Nazi regime and the groups they targeted, which the ad indicated as the Jews, the Gypsies, and the Catholic Polish. I thought, Hello, yes, all them, very important, but who else? Who else? I'm glad to see that folks are remembering to remember. There are those, of course, who had never forgotten, and who gave us the pink triangle icon, taken from the patches gay prisoners in the camps were forced to wear.

03.25.00 >> Wow! I am so late in finding FaT GiRL (the zine for fat dykes and the women who want them), seeing as it's been around for years and hasn't been updated since the end of 1997, but my slowness is your gain! Er... yeah. It may be dead ("but memorialized in html," as FaT GiRL creator Max Airborne puts it), but it's still has incredible articles on self-acceptance and diversity.

03.24.00 >> Oy oy oy, Larry-Bob hits it on the head with what I dislike in the Chicago gay scene. I really need to read his stuff more often, apparently. (courtesy o' Log of Mutability)

For the first time in my life, I now have a credit card. And what do I do right off the bat? Buy a couple of domain names. I'm such a fucking geek. One will eventually become host to my personal site, maybe, so I can keep the more experimental stuff here on nullmeansnull. The other one will be a collaborative thing you can contribute to, once we nail down exactly what it is we're going to do with it ("we," as in: I have co-conspirators).

The resume is coming along. Hopefully I'll have it done by this weekend, because I've already found a place I want to apply, on top of that nameless party that offered me an offer for some work after I placed a plea on here a month ago. It is good to feel somewhat confident again.

03.22.00 >> Here's what you're missing as I type this:

<MikeWOIFM> Puce? is puce a good color? Or how about Barbelith Orange?
<zannah> i though puce was a purpleish
<MikeWOIFM> I was presenting options.
<Anita> puce isn't websafe
<nullJason> puce isn't safe, period.
<Anita> puce is maroonish red -- means "flea"
<zannah> puce is cute.
<nullJason> I thought it was greenish.
<MikeWOIFM> puce is certainly not safe to wash with whites.
<John_metajohn> puce sounds like what I would do after eating one of Mikes roadkill pancakes.

I forgot to mention that tonight is #blogIRC night once again. irc.skunkworks.cx, port 6667.

The next Internet rock star.

A few days ago, I was bored and made a business card. I need to stop by Kinkos.

Not that you can see, since I have no workcam, but the pendant around my neck is the Hindu deity Ganesha, remover of obstacles. He is also known as Ganyapati, "leader of the Ganyas," one of the armies of his father, Shiva. I have some blocks I need to work through this week, and I figured it couldn't hurt to start packing an army.

03.21.00 >> I haven't been up to much websurfing, as I've been working on possible freelancing opportunities, as well as webifying my resumé. The latter is actually starting to come together, but while it seems sharp looking, it still seems... dull. Missing something. I'm still working on it.

While I'm at it, anyone know what efoo or hungryhippo.com are about?

What, you think you can just settle down after Austin? Please. Nope, one of the many Dans of weblogging, Chicago's own Dan Hartung, has stepped forward to organize Chicago by Lake Michigan (CHIxLM) on the evening of April 2nd. Although Chicago is concerned with image (ignore the fact that the unofficial city motto is "vote early, vote often, vote even if you're dead"), we're not going to have any fancy schmancy light show or big hoopla. Just a casual get together of webloggers, weblogreaders, weblogfanciers, weblogstalkers, and weblogfrogsnoggers. Er. Yeah. Anyway, it should be fun, and even if you're an out of towner, feel free to spend exorbitant amounts of money to join us. Dan's also planning another shindig in June, for even more bang, and advises that the out-of-towners that can't afford to hit both shindigs wait until then.

03.20.00 >> I have to pick my dad up from O'Hare later today, and he called to say the flight "might" be delayed, and that I should call United before I leave work to see if it is. Not that he gave me a flight number or anything. So I go to United's page to check on the flight status. They have a very friendly travel support page... unless you don't have the flight number, in which case you're helpless. Not beaten yet, I looked up O'Hare's page -- and you'd really think they'd have a better one -- and found the number for United there. (I could have gotten it from United's page, but I was hoping to get the front counter at the airport. I digress.) I call the number and get an automated message machine (no!) But! This one works by analyzing speech, so you just tell it what you want. It worked fairly well, and the guy on the recording (or the recording of the guy, depending on how you look at it) sounded very natural and conversational, like I was actually having the conversation, instead of that got-Bs-in-Speech-class type of voice you usually get with machines. Very cool.

03.18.00 >> The cats must be reading my weblog and trying to get revenge. Right before I went to bed, I found the trash basket tipped again, plus the toilet paper had been a little shredded, and the bottle of Excederin that was on the counter had been knocked into the toilet. Thanks, guys.

I took down the side link to Ray Needs Email. Everyone who responded (yep, all three of you) will get a Special Treat[tm]. Just as soon as I figure out what it'll be.

Is it wrong for me to think that Babe Winkelman, that fishing guy on the telly, is kinda good looking? Probably.

03.17.00 >> Uh, oops. Having Mom find your web journal or weblog does not compare to this.

So, many many years ago -- somewhere in the 400s, A.D. -- this British teenager guy, the grandson of a presbyter, got kidnapped by Irish pirates and put to work as a sheep herder for six years. During this time, he became really devout in worshipping God, which was kind of unusual considering that most of Ireland at this time was still pagan and non-Christian. While he had time alone with the sheep to think about things, he thought about his folks and their own religion, which he was never serious about up until then. He ended up escaping slavery and entering the missionary, doing... um, missionary... things... and earning his way up to the position of bishop. Around 431 A.D., the Catholic church of Britain picked this guy out for his familiarity with Irish culture and language, and sent him off to convert the people of Ireland. That's what I'm told, anyway.

Now, what happened after this is a point of contention. Before this guy died today in 493 A.D., it's known that he talked to a lot of people about Christianity, and converted a great number of them, including a lot of the kings and chieftans. Whether or not this was a good thing is the contested part. Some people are a little pissed about Ireland's original pagan culture being abandoned for another faith... but that's neither here nor there these days, when some people are pissed off that St. Patrick's Day is a celebration of Ireland when St. Patrick was't even Irish. It just seems that we're celebrating a wildly successful recruiting drive that now leaves an island in civil war to see who was best recruited. A good reason to get drunk if there ever was one. If getting drunk's your thing, go out and enjoy yourselves!

I do not get the cats. Yesterday, on three separate occasions, I found that they had gotten into the trash basket in my bathroom and knocked it over, spilling its contents everywhere. On the third time, I gave up scolding them and just emptied it out so that maybe whatever they found so interesting would no longer tempt them. No, today I get home and find my empty trash basket tipped over. I don't get it (or them) at all.

03.16.00 >> America... You Kill Me: the Matthew Shepard Memorial Lecture, given by Jeffrey Montgomery at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. It touches on the heart of why striving for rights like same-sex unions is so important in the first place. (courtesy o' Grim Amusements)

Lisa writes: "Radio College might be useful when you start your internet radio show (You know it's the inevitable step for a lot of you webloggers)." Read my bloody mind, she did.

Right on... Jesse o'Weblog Nation is interviewed for a radio short on weblogs. RealAudio format. (courtesy o' mathowie@MetaFilter)

I love how the DJ says "uh" in this commercial using para-para dancers. I know he's just saying, "yeah," but still. (courtesy o' gmtPlus9)

A coworker came to my cube just now and asked if there were any html and web design books that I would recommend. He's taking a class on basic web design, and is really starting to get into it. He related how he spends hours at the computer, diving into the web, and how his wife comes into their office when it gets late and asks if he's still up. He had that look in his eye; you know the one, that look of awe and inspiration that comes from really getting what the web is about, and being excited about the possibilities. Man, it was a beautiful, beautiful thing.

On another note, I started watching my access log scroll by on a whim (I don't always keep an eye on it... no, honestly... really, stop laughing), and when I do an nslookup on some of the IPs that scroll by, about 75% aren't able to resolve. What are you guys, ninjas?

Sam wrote a script that lets us play with Babelfish from a shell prompt:

Feel free to tweak my nipple.
Feeling freely to twist my nipple.
Tweak nipples mean feeling free.
Tact liberations for tweak my nozzle.
Free sensation for tweak my nipple.
Sensation freely to tweak my entrerrosca.

I love the third line, "Tweak nipples mean feeling free." I get this image of people going to their windows, throwing them open, and shouting, "I'm mad as hell! and I'm going to tweak my nipples!" Anyway, Sam's logged some of his findings. And please don't actually tweak my nipple. Thank you.

ICQ prank: Jesus vs. NIN.

It's like School House Rock, except it sucks and it's on drugs: Times Tables Rap.

03.15.00 >> It looks like the search for a new apartment has begun. My friend Stef, who is also needing a new place to live, pitched the idea of us renting a house in the Ravenswood area of Chicago, or maybe an apartment further north. Saturday we'll be apartment hunting in Rogers Park, so if that's your stomping grounds, and you see a couple of freaks walking around with the apartment listings from the Reader, and one of them looks like me, say hello. I like being stalked.

Sticking the bot in your Funk & Wagnalls:

<jason> !dictionary meat
<MooCow> Main Entry: meat
<MooCow> Pronunciation: 'mEt
<MooCow> Function: noun
<MooCow> Etymology: Middle English food
<MooCow> 1 a : FOOD; especially : solid food as distinguished from drink b : the edible part of something as distinguished from its covering (as a husk or shell)

And now you know.

The Adventures of Action Item! (courtesy o' Lot 49)