May 2002 Archives

this is somewhat ... shockingly unsightly, and not really work-safe. but at least he shaves. also do not consume any food or beverages while viewing.

[via I'll think about that tomorrow ... ]

it was almost an accident. i thought i would have to fdisk the system and i got to the prompt and could not do it. just couldn't. too scared. but i had the Lycoris disk in the dvd drive when i rebooted, and, well, it started.

i considered it a sign. i'd been on the boards over at the Lycoris site and basically got all the encouragement i wanted to hear, so, i did it.

and here i am, mozilla/linux, surfing the internet. there are some strange issues with the monitor but i may solve them by giving up a little resolution or ... you know, tweaking with it some more.

Lycoris is very lovely. and if i can do it, you probably can too. break FREE of the chains of M$.

i'm going to need netscape 7 and i'll set up my email and then i'll probably go get opera for fun.

no more IE for me, not on my main computer here at home. no, i am FREE.

because you know, linux is FREE. doesn't cost any money. bandwidth and a CD-R. yeppers. bill gates can kiss my fat white ass. ooh, that would be fun - i still think he's kinda hot you know. but at least i haven't been having those, those dreams about him anymore. *sigh* actually i rather miss them.

tomorrow's my little guy's birthday -- finally. oy. we have been going through this build-up to the birthday for what seems like forever. the whining really got outta hand for awhile there (he's not spoiled or anything though). and i'm really looking forward to this -- we he's is getting a playstation. a used one, yes, and not a lot of fancy games, just those nice crash bandicoot games. mommy likes those kinda games. there are even two controllers.

in other, completely unrelated news, i really think it's time to shave my legs. every night this week i've had a different variation on the "out in public with nothing to cover my legs" nightmare theme. terrifying. all this other interesting dream adventure stuff going on (catching david spade in the bathroom doing coke! no wonder he's so twitchy!), and all i can think about is leg hair. oy.

oy is like my new favorite word.

didja know there are two new blogs on surreally space?

bite me: a cranky rat with teenagers (that's ratty, you know)

and bedside manner, moved over from diaryland and now fully commentable.

both looking mighty awesome, though ratty's still a'tweakin on hers. still, looking great. go give them a nice welcome? sure, there you go.

i do this on purpose. sort of. i mean, one of the greatest benefits of procrastination is that it saves you from having to do stuff at all -- 'too late' being one of the best excuses for not doing a thing, you know?

and i do this every time. every time, i'll peruse the potluck sign up list and vow to think of something original, and then forget, and then all of a sudden there in the kitchen, tons of food.

me: oh no! i forgot!
coworker: what were you going to bring?
me: i forgot to even sign up! i thought it wasn't today! i was still thinking about it!
coworker: oh, we always have too much food anyway

(yes, i know. it's why i keep getting away with forgetting.) also i'm a hermit that has a spotlessly unbroken record of failing to attend company functions that take place outside of the office. however, they're harder to avoid when they're right here.

so i'll sit here, smelling the food, and wait for someone to pop by my office and insist that i come eat. which i will do, protesting mildly all the way.

so let me ask you this: do you take your self and its image, and hold it in your warm hands, hold it close to your chest &/or heart until it is soft and malleable, and then carefully mold it into what you want to see, in the mirror? whatever mirror applies, from the glass ones to the internal ones, oh and of course, the world?

it turns out that an evaluation version of partition magic does not actually change partitions. therefore there's eighty bucks between me and a dual boot machine. (oh, we have a copy at work, somewhere, maybe. but ... that doesn't help me now, does it?)

so if i go linux, i go all the way, all at once, and lose everything but the documents i just backed up and the emails that i just forwarded to myself.

i don't know. and i'm feeling very impatient right now, but then again this is my computer we're talking about here. i live on this thing. i don't know if i'm entirely ready to give up all that it is now, right now. i would have given it up gladly had there been a screw up on the partitioning. but it's different this way.

it just comes out of the generator, just like this:

kd blog here kd
search me: away. the judge takes the
coolest part. it is the earth, consumed all its course
they stood up a few years back.
from technoerotica.subscribe to dsl.

sometimes i edit it for clarity, but this one... perfect.

this is good.

and i also found this quite comforting:

" Just come over here with me and watch in awe and amazement as the healing begins. It's an amazing process of tearing down the bad, tossing out the rubbish and building something stronger out of what's left over. " (file that under things i wish i'd written, ok?)

and of course my strong avoidance mechanism was running full force. and i burned a lovely ISO of Lycoris Linux at work, came home, contemplated the trashing of all things windows here, and decided to go conservative: i downloaded partition magic and am currently preparing to back up the files i would miss most.

tomorrow i partition this beast and attempt a dual boot configuration. failing that, i'll have lost nothing critical, and have this lovely copy of Linux that installs with amazing ease (tried it at work on an old junk machine, just for fun) to go in over the ruins of anything i mess up.

i may just babble about weight and smoking and so forth, but the geeky resolutions, i actually keep. these Linuxy thoughts distracted me better than anything else i could come up with.

also, i am more than happy to see the whole mess headed for a more peaceful, if uneasy resolution. things will be generally happier and better tomorrow, i believe that. and if not, well, i plan on breaking my computer anyway, so, there.

melly has a squirrel problem. Jessica gets the coolest spiders. Dan even takes the spiders for rides. me? i like the lady bugs.

in other news, go say happy birthday to BobtheCorgi.

i would like to take a moment to acknowledge all the stuff that's going on. it's a mess. it really is. my opinion? i'd very much like to go back to bed.

ok, i have to say more than 'it's** a mess'. it would be irresponsible of me not to. now, it's very widely known that i don't do conflict well and as such inhabit my own private switzerland. kind of like having my own private idaho, but with lots of nice watches and chocolate.

uh, where was i? ok, the thing that's most upsetting to me right now is that people are expressing heated opinions one way or another without knowing the facts, or without even bothering to look at the different perspecives on the issues. what i would say to those people is, please realize if you come out heavily in favor of one aspect or another, you may later find yourself sheepishly having to retract your statements or even worse, just closing your mind and defending whatever position you took.

and you know, batgrl has stepped back from this and done her research, and yours and mine too - i often look to her for the comprehensive linking, and she has indeed linked to all the folks currently posting about it all, pro and con.

so before you go off in one direction or another, please do a little reading with an open mind. or, you can join me here in switzerland, where we are feeling a little sad about the whole thing in general.

**umm, and if for some reason this doesn't ring a bell to you, then you are quite fortunate. ignore the whole thing and proceed on to look at fuzzy bug pictures:

and here we have a monday that's really a tuesday, or visa versa, and over here we have -- what a mess. usually i at least do the damn dishes, but not this weekend.

and no, it wasn't that wild really, it just didn't involve doing anything but hanging out on the computer, or watching nicktoons with the kid, or reading douglas adams, and of course, staying up too late and waking up a grumpy person -- whatever.

so, remember when we (he) used to have taxis? it was a while back, predating this blog here (surreally days). well anyway, like several business transactions we've been involved in lately, it's ended with us hauling someone to court. *sigh* i hate small claims court. just hate it. there's nothing like the feeling of listening to someone tell complete and utter bullshit stories, with the utmost of sincerity. knowing that the worst thing you could do is react to the way that feels, and instead, you have to think logically and act calmly. and listening to this lying, not little fibs but big old bald faced whoppers, complete and utter fictions invented in their own minds, and do it well, is one of the ugliest feelings i know.

well i'm glad i didn't have to go, then again, wating here to hear what went on isn't that easy either. and most of the time there's no closure right then and there anyway -- many times the judge takes everything 'under advisement' and mails out the rulings later. and then the appeals.

oy.

so the whole taxi business and all the different transactions (who owes whom) is split up between like five or seven different individuals and holding companies. any balance in our favor would be all the numbers taken as an aggregate.

so the judge told him we didn't sue the right people.

and the one person he did sue served us (just now) with two lawsuits totalling roughly three times what we sued him for.

it's for repair bills. on taxis that were handed back to the taxi company -- but those two assets are with two other individuals. and the medallions? yet another holding company.

that's as far as i'll go with this, it's too frustrating and depressing, not what i consider good blogging material at all - i just felt i should post an update.

anybody know any good jokes?

umm... oops. didn't mean to drag it all out here. usually i don't do that, and i do assure you that last night was an isolated incident. however, it brought back days when that happened more often, and brought them back hard.

i woke up not wanting to even confront it, then i decided what the hell. it's ok. a consequence of living life out in the open, is that you will tend on occasion to be too open.

moving right along. being that it's a holiday, i get to hear lotsa helicopters today - i'm within, oh, roughly 500 yards of the local trauma center (i can see the helipad from my front yard) and the flight path includes going right over my house at about 100 feet altitude. so i'm never short of sobering reminders of how good it is i get drunk and stay nice and safe in my house.

speaking of drunk... he apologized for the 4:30am namecalling and i bit his finger (he was pointing it at me) and i told him i had a beer for breakfast before coffee, then i'm having another beer then the rest of the coffee, and i made it clear there would be no housecleaning today. oh, i also apologized for waking him up by being loud at that hour. he didn't believe that this is the first time in my life i've ever had beer for breakfast. i told him i posted what he said and he said without him i'd have nothing to write about. hello? oh whatever. i'm happy that i didn't have any beer or coffee in my mouth, so nothing came out of my nose but a snort.

and then he gave me ten bucks for when he knows i'll walk to the gas station for more beer. so, you know, this is life, as it is lived here in the open, is not a bad life afterall. it just has its moments.

when your cheeks are cold with tears and it seems hopeless. don't start on me with my shortcomings. this is what it is.

i work hard. it's not manly work, or womanly. it's different, but it matters, but the house is not clean, ... i do what i do and dammit it's all about work. it's all learning and i'm not wasting my time. i know what i know, it's not worthless. whatever, i drink, use that against me.

i'm not a hole.

i'm not. a hole.

but that's what i'm called, if i stay up this late, for whatever reason.

a song about knowing your limits. i love this. and after this, i'm going to bed, k? k.

now it's really really late. and the nature of a little tequila has taken its course and i've now installed kazaa lite (the spyware free version). i'm fully running my AV software on all i'm doing, i swear, this is is the best you can expect of me.

because i needed some meat puppets. and now i have some.

and you know what? ok. meat puppets = mostly chris and curt kirkwood. they were kurt cobain's favorite band.

my son's name is kurtwood. it was entirely subliminal, i didn't even realize, until after we'd decided on the name, when i was perusing a meat puppets cd cover, where that very unique name (may have) come from. i do believe their music, and their names, influenced our choice.

i'll leave you with the lyrics to one of my favorite (though there are so many) meat puppets songs, evil love:

it's not even that late, and a(n amercian) holiday anyway. a solemn holiday on which we would do well to remember what our armed forces have done for us, for better or worse, they stood up for, and died for, this country. my country.

and i'm not going to write about current events or invoke the 't' word.

i'm going to reflect on the goodness that is this life now, here, as it stands. i never pass a single day these days without looking around me and considering the beauty of the town i live in, here on the western edge of the states. right now life is good, it's very good in spite of whatever, and i just want to go on record as not taking it for granted, just in case it gets ...

never mind that. vague fears are not a part of appreciation, and should be cast aside for the sake of the purity of the moment.

i will cast them aside now. and for the record, patr�n is fine tequila.

i've been having serious inner struggles with my lamentable dependence on the operating system of evil. for one, i work in an environment where microsoft is trashed often and at great length, yet accepted with 'well, we have to use it, we're a business, all our clients use this'.

and this is not the way i want to live, the handwringing and teethgnashing and whining 'this is the way we do it because it's what we've been doing, we can't change now, o woe is us'.

that's why bill gates owns so many of our sorry asses. because we feel helpless, and this is the way we've been doing it. and so friday i had a bit of an epiphany, and realized, it's not going to change unless i make some sacrifices, including my comfort levels with all things microsoft. even though, looking at it now, those have always been dubious; although microsoftyness is intuitive to me, i also feel a constant, low-level sense of ickyness.

now, this isn't like those diet and exercise and quitting smoking best laid plans i used to spout. this i can actually do, for one thing, it involves working with the open source folks, a zealous and helpful bunch, with Dan being my first contact in this and the person who will most be holding my hand as i work my way through this.

i'm going Linux. sometime very soon, depending on how brave i feel. it's a little scary, but it's the principle of the thing (and Dan) that will get me over these fears.

back in the old days, we didn't have microwaves. ok, i'm talking about a long, long time ago here, my parents were early adopters of the technology, and we had one in the house (an amana radarrange) by about 1970. of course, they were slower back then, and for a long time not much was microwavable, so all the while there was progress, increases in speed and usefulness, until it plateaued out a few years back.

now, i do remember when you had to bake tv dinners in the oven (and they sucked anyway). i remember things taking a long time. yet these days, when i pop a budget gourmet in this little 900 watt number and punch in three minutes, i feel impatient, waiting. i find myself thinking, isn't it done yet?

but this isn't all. now, i remember dial-up. that was really recent, not even a year ago i made the switch to dsl. and for a good chunk of time, i would marvel each time a page would load, each time i downloaded a big file -- ooh! it's so fast!

and that's worn off. and now, i'll click a link and in the ensuing (not very many) seconds, find myself thinking, sheesh, what's taking so damn long!

i hate sounding so spoiled and whiny, especially to anyone still on dialup, suffering those horrible wait times that i can't even imagine now, but honestly, it's some sort of disorder i have, this absolute absence of patience. it's not that i don't wanna wait, it's that i can't, not without feeling extreme frustration. even anger.

i think i need T1 or T3 or something. and one of those replicator thingys like on the newer star treks.

space's new layout just rocks. as does miguel's, which i believe was done by a certain tart.

i tried making my own skin but it turned out ... not great, and i was overcome with waves of lethargy. or apathy. you know, whatever.

note to self: cheer the hell up dammit! it's a holiday weekend! i was looking forward to this with all manner of happy geeky plans, and now i'm just. sitting. here.

this is not really a friday morning type of entry. then again, it's friday morning, and here it is, so there you go.

yesterday, i was waiting at the intersection of rose and gonzales to make a u-turn to get to krispy kreme, and i had a moment.

i looked around me at this intersection, with some twenty traffic lanes, including turn lanes, filled with cars, surrounded by expensive commercial real estate. i looked at the cars, and the conspicuous consumption. i tried to estimate the dollar value of just the automobiles within, say, a 500' radius of me, and i couldn't bear the thought. a brand new lincoln navigator swept past in the nearest turn lane and my mind shifted to thoughts of the surrounding land. paved, landscaped, prime real estate, meticulously planned and designed and laid out just so.

it's too much. it is really too much. i tried to imagine in my mind fifty, a hundred, two hundred years before we got here, when it would have been wilderness, early settlers farming on the fertile soil, dirt roads being established, slowly overtaken by pavement and progress. and i thought, what have we done. what are we thinking? how can this be sustainable?

i tried to envision some pleasant science fiction, perhaps a utopian heinlein future, arising out of this. a world where technology had not ruined the earth, consumed all its resources and left it barren and spent.

i could not imagine.

by the time the light changed my eyes were damp and my throat was tight. but i drove through the donut drive-through, ordered a dozen assorted, and went on my way, pushing this out of my mind.

i don't know what else to say about this right now, it tends to stall my thought process with an overwhelming sense of distant consequence.

because i'm not quite done. but it works, it so works. and it's so cool.

i'm skinnable. it's only two skins, but i have more stuff and more ideas and...

(excuse me)

WOOOOOOO HOOOOOOOOO

thank you.

my boss has found this pop-up killer, from analogx.com, called POW!. he recommends it highly and says that now, he rarely if ever sees a popup (or under) advertisement.

and Rick from technoerotica.net has expanded his list of popup opt-out resources, cool stuff there.

it's a never ending battle, isn't it?

so the other night during my beery adventures, i again got to wanting some mp3s, and my google trick didn't pan out. so a friend recommended kazaa, and you know i'll install anything if i'm tipsy enough. well not anything (i sure won't be clicking that convenient bonzi buddy icon in the kazaa interface *shudder*).

and so far i'm liking this. i found some neato mp3s, but that's not the coolest part. it also shows me who's downloaded what from me, and it makes me happy that people are getting good use of the 300 megs of music i've collected on this computer.

so far, i'm enjoying it. i don't even want to run adaware, i'd rather not know about the consequences of this particular bit of fun.

anything that happens, happens.

anything that, in happening, causes something else to happen, causes something else to happen.

anything that, in happening, causes itself to happen again, happens again.

It doesn't necessarily do it in chronological order though.

~douglas adams

· · ·

i'm going to skin the site. like, now. so if, you know, strange things happen, well, you'll know why, and i apologize for the inconvenience.

in times of stress do not buy large quantities of beer just because it is on sale. on the bright side, i had a lovely, solid night's sleep and feel refreshed. on the not so bright side, i don't even want to check my email and that whole thing about bursting into song and commentary last night? has me feeling a little ... weird? yeah. weird's the word.

*sigh*

though i almost did, this morning. it was sitting hooked up to the old puter with the intent of uploading this picture of the perpetual party on the top of my monitor at work.

and had i forgotten it, i would have been absolutely kicking myself when, as i waited at a stoplight on my way home, a big truck knocked over a fire hydrant. not so great for the truck driver, or the people who have to fix it, but thrilling for me. the water went up so high. it drenched cars and made rainbows. i was going to drive under it for fun when a cop pulled up and blocked that off.

i'm still grinning from how much fun it was to take those pictures.

remember?

Sprawling on the fringes of the city
In geometric order
An insulated border
In between the bright lights
And the far unlit unknown

Growing up it all seems so one-sided
Opinions all provided
The future pre-decided
Detached and subdivided
In the mass production zone

this is and ever shall be a song about alienation, about being young and cast out. i was there. were you? and here we are now.

Nowhere is the dreamer
Or the misfit so alone

it happened, didn't it? it did.

(subdivisions)
In the high school halls
In the shopping malls
Conform or be cast out

(subdivisions)
In the basement bars
In the backs of cars
Be cool or be cast out

at this point we pause and pledge not to cast anyone out. please. inclusion.

Any escape might help to smooth
The unattractive truth
But the suburbs have no charms to soothe
The restless dreams of youth

these things happen. and hurt when they do. this song takes me back many decades, and also brings to mind things things happening now, not necessarily to me. onward:

Drawn like moths we drift into the city
The timeless old attraction
Cruising for the action
Lit up like a firefly
Just to feel the living night

yes. drawn, into the night, searching.

Some will sell their dreams for small desires
Or lose the race to rats
Get caught in ticking traps
And start to dream of somewhere
To relax their restless flight

not selling my dreams for anything. but not to say they've never been sold. they have.

Somewhere out of a memory
Of lighted streets on quiet nights...

i'll go for a small walk on those streets tonight, here in the suburbs. and i'll remember younger days and be glad for what is.

good night.

(remember)

longwhorn mascot = uterus? you be the judge.

"From space, astronauts can see people making love as a tiny speck of light. Not light, exactly, but a glow that could be mistaken for light -- a coital radiance that takes generations to pour like honey through the darkness to the astronaut's eyes."

It's kind of like walking around in the supermarket on a weekday with nothing on but your under shorts and a clear plastic raincoat. And running into your mother and/or loan officer while making out with a high school guidance counselor in front of the frozen waffle cooler.

and at this point i'll observe i need to go to bed. actual content tomorrow, really.

if i seem mainly absent from my usual internet haunts, it's becuase i'm actively involved in losing my mind. no not really. and it's not my personal life that's doing this, my personal life is laying peacefully in other rooms watching rented movies (the kid has the original ET, the old man has vanilla sky), and me here in the kitchen with the internet and the stress that sometimes ensues from having rather an obsessive web presence.

i miss just surfing and having fun. i'll be back to that, and to skinning this site which is my latest obsession, soon. i may post a few pictures in a while.

please be patient with me.

there is now officially a webring for folks going to blogcon, or even just thinking of going. i'm actually going to join a webring! this is so unusual for me, i have kind of a no-ring-thing going on ...

but anyway, i am also going to put a more prominent link up, real soon, because as we get closer to August 23-25, the blogcon site will be updated much more frequently as our plans take shape.

he knows what he's talking about. and why not listen to a racecar driver that's survived this long doing what he does?

and his suggestions are the same ones i am constantly having to scream at idiots on the road: 1. move over! that's right, slow drivers are dangerous when they are in the way. speeders are going to speed (mr. andretti pauses at this point to say speeding is bad. this from a man with a corvette, a lamborghini, and a mercedes. uh-huh.) 2. pay attention! how simple is that? duh! and drive smoothly. that's number 3, drive smoothly.

it's more than a skill, good driving. it's almost an art form. there's a rhythm to it, a heightened awareness (especially when you're going really fast. and i'm pretty sure mario goes fast on the freeway too, no matter what he said).

so you have it, from mario and me: get out of the way, pay attention, and don't be a jerk. simple. ok, now, i want to see some better driving out there, 'k now?

here's the article

more bitches! this is exactly the sort of thing one needs to see on a monday. oh, and it's so monday.

so i was wanting to be searchable. and i didn't want to go with the atomz.com because of their 500 page limit on free. i wanted free free. so i hit the MT boards and found MT-Search. and i fought with it, mainly because i didn't get it at first -- the part about it having its own MT template built in. i was trying to make my own. (sorry 'bout the rebuild error, Dan)

in any case, the new search facility is in the sidebar. i may put it further down after i stop being so damn happy with myself for installing it. and i am. happy. and i so needed this tonight.

oh, if you click go and go to the search thingamawhatsit, it will give you MUCH more advanced search options. wait. i should go put a link below that says, 'advanced search'. yeah. because this thing rocks.
· · ·
edited: it turns out something in my implementation of MT does not get along with the advanced search features, so, it's all about waiting for the next release of MT (this code has been turned over to Ben and Mena for integration into future versions of MT -- does that rock or what?)

it's just the first page. now the rest of the pages will just fall into place. they will. really.

and thanks ever so much to Shiela, aka the tart, for the use of her old stylesheet and layout.

things might get a mite different around here in a little while.

last night i got this email, which my email filtering software did not identify as a virus because it had no attachment. it was called 'a nice game' which just screams virus, and it was a good, big email, 127k... is it possible the mail washer didn't detect the attachment, but it was there? doubtful.

i have no way of knowing for sure if it was a virus since the source was something compiled, but this is something i've theorized for some time -- email virii that are self-contained and not in attachments.

also, have you patched your IE yet? (thanks, Christine).

and Mike, aka cooties, has a good suggestion to stop the spambots in their tracks.

in other news, Eric has some questions he'd like to ask you. also Faith would like you to look at her penis collection. it's, umm, big.

the internet: a strange and wonderful place.

i'm one of those daughters that never calls, oh, occasionally i do call, but i'm bad about it. so anyway, my parents just called, my dad has the clean bill of health as far as his cancer, and my mom's hanging in there -- and they're taking a three month trailer trip this summer (i'll see them for awhile, and they'll get to meet kurtwood for the first time).

they said, this might be their last trip... that sort of thought always makes me pause a moment. i've heard it before -- this will be our last this, or that, from people getting up there in years. what a thought, eh?

so i mailed them and gave them the URL of this blog. what the heck?

· there's a mariachi marching band or some shit playing right over my back fence.
· that would be in the parking lot of that huge catholic church.
· there used to be nuns living next door to me.
· they were all from the dominican republic.
· they were all under five feet tall. well under.
· there will be more nuns moving in soon. probably bigger ones.
· here is a visual of my house to give you and idea of my proximity to all this catholicism
· i have long, thick, luxuriant hair. on my legs.
· there will be no visual for that.
· you're welcome

SAGITTARIUS (Nov 22-Dec 21)

Week of May 16, 2002

"I took a hike into the hills in quest of an oracle for you. Just before I reached a lightning-struck tree at a sharp crook in the trail, I found an omen: a dog-eared Tarot card, the 8 of Cups, lying in the dirt. Back at home, I consulted a book by Angeles Arrien, my favorite Tarot interpreter. She said the card means you're feeling drained or emotionally stagnant as a result of overextending yourself or not honoring your own limits and boundaries. I conclude, dear Sagittarius, that you should cut back on giving to others and take care of yourself better. "

from free will astrology via miss b

i am about sick and tired of looking at this site. i spent the last few hours surfing blogplates and every other possible place i could think of for something i could use as-is, or at least, some ideas. and just nothing was me. because, you know, for it to be me, it would have to be made by -- you guessed it -- me. ack.

so i surfed some css resources. popped those puppies up in ns4 and ... ack.

and i'm fixated on the way this thing works. it's so practical.

i let my determination fall by the wayside and will spend the rest of my waking hours surfing and reading and not thinking how much i don't want to look at this site anymore. that, i'll save for morning.

in the meantime, i had a little adventure this morning. i spotted this from a distance -- it was right in front of me but i had to navigate a maze of industrial alleyways to get this close. know what it is? a cell tower. people want their phones everywhere but nobody wants to look at the antennas, so, we have metal palm trees here and there in ventura.

so right now i'm about fed up with allergy season. as i posted monday, i'm surrounded by the enemy here. it's a pretty enemy, but i'm tired of always feeling under attack. so i sat here racking my brains for a place to escape, to hide out. and i have a theory:

now, assuming phytoplankton don't pollinate, i'm thinking the ocean would be a wonderful place to go. i mean, when you have asthma and they give you breathing treatments, you know what they put in there? saline solution, that's right. so, moist, salty air would be good. and since i don't have a boat handy, i suppose i'd have to settle for just being on the edge of the ocean, but all in all i think it would be very theraputic if i skipped work and went to the beach today.

there should be paid days off for people with this good of an excuse.

and in the 'new and improved' department, there are now permalinks for the comments. so, if you ever wanted to reference a specific comment, well, now you can.

i'm also working on the recent referrers thing but i kinda messed that up. i'll see to it when i get home from the beach work.

i am at work. my son is here with me (no babysitter). my boss brought cadbury cream eggs back from lunch. i said, you want this child on sugar here? this child? on sugar? here?

so then the kid's messing around in the online pok�dex, and starts singing 'oops i did it again'. because pikachu reminds him of britney spears. or something.

i think i shall go mad.

is it bad that i take such joy in consuming finite fossil fuel resources and polluting the atmosphere? what is it with cars and why do i love them so? i have a ten minute drive to work and i only wish it were longer, because it feels so good. and if the music is particularly stirring, as in this morning with the melissa etheridge, and me singing along, with feeling, it can really improve my outlook, not an easy thing to do before, say, noon. i'm sure there's some lovely deep-breathing benefit to belting out a passionate song, something that raises energy levels. it's bliss, yes it is.

and yeah, i look funny doing this, really, i do. and i used to care, but i'm past that -- whatever anyone (including the coworker who gave me the strange look as i pulled up in the parking lot) thinks is no concern of mine.

i wonder when i stopped worrying about people thinking i'm weird, and started deliberately making sure they had no doubts about it.

this is the best part of the aging process, the eccentricity that comes so naturally. very freeing.

i am really enjoying mailwasher. found this last night at out of the frying pan, downloaded it at home, and now am using on my personal email accounts at work.

what it does, is analyze the messages while they're still on your server. it will give you a list, with things that are suspected spam or viruses highlighted. and, yes, it will miss some spams, but you can view them (while still on the server) to decide yay or nay. then you can choose to delete them from the server AND send back fake 'bounce' messages, which can help get your name deleted from the spammer's rosters. it then blacklists the spammers, and there are more features i'm not quite done playing with.

i'm enjoying the living hell out of bouncing these things back to the senders. delightful fun.

fart.

eight-thirty in the evening, the drive downtown. still a little light in the eastern sky, and the moon flanked by a pair of planets, and the memories this brought - wonder if it's the mind playing tricks or if these planets were in similar attitudes back when i took astronomy as an extra class in late grade school. i remember tracking their progress through the sky by peering through a straw taped to a protractor, measuring the angle with a hanging string weighted by a washer. and i am digressing.

you see, i sometimes respond to stress with a beer run. and like anything in life, the journey is significant, and although the destination in this case does provide a yummy cold beverage, it's the drive downtown where the problem is usually solved.

clarity and focus often happen in the car. this evening, i left before i'd even had half the chance to immerse myself in the stress, and by the time i got home, i was able to absorb the rest with the knowledge of the answer already clear as the moon in the night sky.

peace out.

Self-righteous anger is a killer - Paige

so, last saturday night i broke my computer, have i mentioned that? well, i didn't so much break it, as audiogalaxy did. oh my, it was ugly. froze in the middle of booting. (note: my computer has some issues to begin with, ymmv) anyway, the reason for the audiogalaxy was, well, it was late and me and the beers had us a hankerin' for some mp3s. so there i was, nice and tipsy with a broken computer. lovely.

so i rebooted it a bunch more times just in case, you know? flukes happen. and then i tried to boot in safe mode but i for some reason desired the fancier levels of safe mode, for a few more unsuccessful boot attempts.

finally. had this big ugly resolution, and clicked start, and nothing. hung my head in despair ... minutes later, as if by magic, the start menu pops up. and i'm not exaggerating -- that's minutes, plural. i carefully navigated to audiogalaxy and clicked uninstall. reboot and puter was better.

until today. oh. i forget where i was surfing, but there in the corner of the screen -- look! it's the gator! audiogalaxy left me a little present. i hate the gator. he's just recently gone stealth (i had him once before, he used to be an 'offer companion' in the systray which could be deactivated, but no more). and you have to wrassle the gator to get him off your machine. he's nowhere obvious, you know. not in the start menu, or in program files. deep in the registry. executables hidden with the 'common files' and such. sneaky. almost viral.

so i went and got adaware, which sniffed out some 40 instances of gator-related chicanery going on here and there. click remove and about half go -- have to reboot for the rest (cannot delete, process is running). reboot, rescan, reclean.

relief.

i'm really nervous about admitting this to the blogging public, but here goes: i am indifferent about star wars. i was also indifferent about spider man, and this indifference extends to pretty much every geeky movie that's been oohed and aahed all over blogland. lotr? sorry. haven't seen it. is it out on video yet? may not watch it then either.

i am not a big moviegoer. i went to jimmy neutron. i went to shrek. i saw the rugrats in paris. all those were parental duty, more or less, but i did really enjoy them. before that? hmm. jurassic park i think. four movies in what, a decade? yeah.

i'm a freak, i know it. you may not understand, but, well, at least now you know.

i'm going to hate myself in the afternoon. sure, right now i'm all tingly, but when this wears off, and it will (i can't keep eating cake all day -- or can i?) hmm, that may be the answer. eschew normal food and just keep visiting the breakroom cake all day long. so i was looking over at that fluffy white frosting and suddenly it occurred to me to stick my finger in it and rub a little on my gums and then i remembered, the 80's are over. *sigh* damn good thing, too.

"how can i tell that the past isn't a fiction designed to account for the discrepancy between my immediate physical sensations and my state of mind?" ~~ douglas adams.

some time ago, i took a picture of this ... this thing at the mall. i didn't know what it was at the time, but it looked interesting enough, a framework on which any number of things might happen.

well. here's the thing today. called 'bus to home', and if you look closely, you see that it is indeed a bus turning into a home.

now, the colors aren't the artist's fault -- this is the color scheme of buses around here, and there's a reason for that -- i think safety. if they're big and ugly, they're more visible, right? but i dislike the entirely too literal imagery, and the fact that what it most resembles to me, at first glance, is a train wreck.

much as i'd like to like art that took heavy equipment and engineers and months of long man-hours to put together, i just think it's ugly.

and good thing too, i was at least mildly hungover for most of it. the worst part was my feet -- did a lot of walking, much of it without shoes. eh -- the ground felt really good under my toes at the time.

and you know, i try not to be ill-tempered, but my boss sometimes drives me right over the edge. worst thing: monday morning, nine-ish, i come hobbling in the door and he beams 'another beautiful day in paradise' for like the seven hundredth time. i've gone past eye-rolling and groaning and now my response is an outright snarl. next step: throwing things. it's just a little thing, but it actually causes me to dread walking through the door. i know it shouldn't drive me to thoughts of violently hurling my little rubber squeezy ball at him, but i'm afraid it might come to that.

am i overreacting?

ahhh ... ahhhhh ... ahhhh-CHOOO.

mothers day is not about cards and flowers and silly crap like that. it's about all you can eat/drink buffets, shrimp and salsa and enchiladas and flan and whipped cream and champagne. that's, all you can drink. we're talking fun.

and when this consumption happens in downtown ventura in the midafternoon on the outdoor patio with old friends and our kids? let me tell you the air, it was so much more intoxicating than the sparkling wine the resturant purchased by the case for this event. seventy five degree ocean breezes alter your consciousness so thoroughly, so sweetly.

and then you figure these are teenagers taking you out. and there is not enough room in their car for everyone, so... improvise, right? we took the bus (don't pics taken out of a bus window rock?)

seriously we could have had a ride, but we chose the adventure. we walked up the street, further than we needed to, because it was a beautiful afternoon.

i'd write better but i'm extremely drunk.

summary: mothers day = free champagne. the reward for all those hours of labor, when the kids take us out for a drunken brunch. i'm way to drunk to really express myself about this, but trust me, it's all good.

the invitation said something about fun, but what they meant was fund - as in raiser. i was hoping there would be tours of the school and opportunities to meet teachers, but what there was, was, a lot of people, a lot of game booths, some overpriced barbecue, and, well, a lot of people. most of them seemed to know each other, from somewhere, neighbors probably -- we're reclusive, so, we were on our own.

so we played, well, kurtwood played, i hung around watching him anxiously as he played on the rather impressive jungle gym. there were children of many ages playing there, as there will be when he starts school there. he'll be in the new class, amidst a wide variety of ages. elementary school. when he starts, in a few months, he will still be my little guy. but by the time he's done there, he'll be ... i looked at the older boys, and into my own near future.

and i wanted to take time, and bring it gently to a full stop, and slide the lever into reverse. i was stricken with sudden fierce nostalgia for my own youth, to once again be flipping over the parallel bars and climbing carelessly up high, to have it all in front of me, to begin again. and if not that then to keep my little boy, very likely my last child, young a while longer. not to lose the little boy as he fades away into a potentially sullen and troubled almost-adolescent like those older boys, the age he will be when he finishes up with this school.

intently, i observed the politics of childhood, from the perspective of my own memories, projecting my son's path through the same changes. the intricacy of the social heirarchy of school, as evidenced by the way he hesitated to play on the school equipment because 'that's for five year olds'. he's quite fixated on five. five is so much more than four. five is school. five is the beginning of no longer being my little guy.

underneath the plastic rock climbing wall, there is the imprint of a dinosaur skeleton, complete with graffiti because it is no doubt a great sheltered place for afterhours mischief. my son spent some time under there, tossing tanbark in the air.

and time moves on, and takes our children to school with it, into a different world. however, he's still four, and i'm going to appreciate every day of four we have left. and every day after that of course. but things, well, they are changing fast now.

still working on this. much of it points back at the old homestead, but i'm going to work on it till i drop tonight.

it feels so roomy here -- 450 megs of my own. two subdomains (haven't figured out what yet but i have mass stuff to put here). i can have a message board too -- but what to do with it? my database was the easiest thing to import. i'm still using the old one because i need to change PHP files and... *breathe* one thing at a time.

importing the archives? oh god. oh god. that's a story in itself. put it this way -- there was too much text. you'll notice the post numbers are quite high -- because this is the fourth, fifth, and sixth batch of imports, collectively, you're looking at here now. i'm missing about 200 comments from somewhere in the middle but i gained an entry. that's spooky. something i never meant to publish is up here somewhere.

NOTE: there is no more notify list on this copy of MT. if you would like to receive the very occasional notification from me, well, drop your email addy in the box in the sidebar. i only send them when i feel a particularly deep need for attention.

so my son's here at work with me today, using a rather old and clunky computer cobbled together by my boss. and, it's been slow and funky, crashing and all.

so he was waiting for a nick.com game to load, and you know those loading bars that creep across the screen? how sometimes, as you sit and stare at it, you can't really tell if it's moving or not?

so i asked him, is it moving or is it froze? and he said i don't know -- and he moved the mousecursor to exactly the edge of the loading bar, sat back a few seconds, during which it became apparent that the bar wasn't moving, and then reported: no, it's not moving.

why didn't i ever think of that?

if you go to scriptygoddess.com, you will see a disclaimer, something about they're not really goddesses or something. that's simply not true.

i have just installed a subscribe to this topic feature. if you are particularly interested in a topic, you can subscribe to receive comments on that post. you can unsubscribe on the page without commenting, or via email, and also manage all subscriptions from one handy page.

the installation went so well, and it worked so beautifully, well, i was moved maybe not all the way to tears, but i did get a little misty. beautiful code moves me that way.

thanks, goddesses!

why is it, with literally hundreds of comfortable places in a house, a cat will pick the most inhospitable spot, someplace where there is no room for him? why would a cat jump up on a kitchen counter, where he would have to displace any number of objects just to curl up on a hard counter? makes no sense.

and one of the objects he displaced was my digital camera. [thunk. bounce-bounce-bounce] i looked down under my chair (it bounced all the way across the kitchen) and felt this horrible sensation in the pit of my stomach. i picked up the camera and glared and the cat. i mean, glared. humans subjected to such a gaze would have fled the room, and possibly even the state. kitty was completely oblivious.

and the camera is apparently unharmed, o miracle of miracles. here'a a picture of the mother's day card my son made at his babysitter's.

i will test it out more later, to make sure, but right now i'm really impressed with the sturdiness of the Olympus Camedia D340R. i mean, i got it used, it's an older model, and it's still a great little camera.

i love her.

first of all, to Dan for giving me hope by pointing out that 0-->127 is 2^7, while i waited for the email from Mad Bull pointing out that tinyint only goes up to 127, and mediumint was what my clueless ass should have set the id# column to in the first place.

it's a learning journey. i love that i have friends that help.

so last night i was working on this. now that is no ordinary linklist. instead of typing line after line into some text list, i was inputting them in this cute little entry screen i made. if i hadn't been so racked with allergies and tired, it might have been fun.

the beauty of this is that when you all go moving and changing as you tend to do, all i have to do is open a browser window (to my editing screen), select your name, make changes, save, and bing! all done.

it's only like 2/3 done, nowhere near finished, but i'll be finishing up today.

so i went through both my lists, site by site. i started out with 'daily' and 'often' categories like before, and when i was integrating some of the 'new' and re-evaluating this and that and -- i don't know how people do it who have different 'tiers' of surfing. too many decisions. and my head was so stuffed up, so i said the hell with it. went back and made everything that wasn't new to the list, a group, a resource, or a site on surreally, into 'blogs'. that's it. blogs.

it's going to be one long-ass list. can anyone suggest a way of further categorizing the 'blogs' list? 'cause i can't.

it's confusing me even now, just thinking about it. but at least it's PHP/MySQL powered, so when i change my mind again and again, i have the cool editing screen to make it easy.

as i click on each link to verify, i am of course tempted to check things out. and so here's this: Hogan's Heroes: How to win friends and influence Nazis - (this ain't just another Hogan's Heroes page -- it's the most obsessively psychotic page.) cool. via riley dog.

and in other geekly rejoicing type news, today there was a wired article about corporate blogging which i forwarded to the boss. and i talked of the wonders of b2 and mt. and it turns out we have a new system we're selling called go-beam, which is the killer VOIP technology for the cutting edge folks that like to tweak their own, and ooh! wouldn't it be cool if we had a blog/knowledge base to interact with our customers, just like macromedia?

turns out all the blogstuff i ever did at work really wasn't goofing off, it really was research! oh yeah. i knew i was onto something.

oh and i must add that steve from blue's clues rocks. via batgrl.

now, back to the link entry page.

sometimes, one will just jump right out and break your heart. Does wearing size 12 make me fat? did you ever want to reach right back through google and say, oh, honey, now, now, it's ok. you're beautiful. please don't hate yourself.

in the same results were these great quotes, i hope the searcher clicked there and felt a little better about things.

(more road-related bitchiness)

so at lunch today i discovered a fun new hobby. you know those bumper stickers on the back of commercial vehicles, with the phone number and the vehicle number? mmhmm. yes, i called one today. and it was good, and i'm going to do it some more.

so the bitch cuts me off (one of those, i'm going to go first because i can make a left turn faster than you can make a right) -- this is wrong, ok? and then she speeds up so bad it was tough for me to catch her, even with a nice little v6 under my hood. as i did this, i held my cell phone up prominently just in case she looked in her rearview mirror as she barely slowed down making a right on the next red light. i gave up following her at this point even though it was almost too many numbers for my pissed off brain to remember, and made the call.

"hello, i'm calling about your truck number 96, that just cut me off and then went so fast it was hard to even get this number to call you. i hope the number was 96, i only had a short time before she disappeared from view, and i wasn't going to go fast enough to catch up. blonde girl in a white pickup. if i can give you anymore info, call me..."

it was very satisfying. very satisfying indeed.

to the lady in the older burgundy buick: i'm sorry. i'm usually much nicer than that. i think it was the little bob-and-weave you did into my lane before you looked and saw me coming and kinda overcorrected the other way. it freaked me out, so instead of my usual behavior towards lane changers (give them space, wave them over), well, i chose the more aggressive response of punching it to get out of your way. and i felt bad, because being polite always feels good. i mean, you were using your turn signal, you just weren't looking. or going with the flow of traffic.

hint for those wanting to merge into another lane: slowing down to contemplate your options is not the safest or most efficient way. if you are going two thirds the speed of other traffic, it's damn hard to assimilate into it. just a thought.