Hahahahahahahahahaha

Oh man, working for Best Buy was a riot. And by riot, I mean a pain in the ass at times. But anyway, check out this news story. I will probably go back to work there in the summer if I can't figure anything else out too.

I feel like science has made great strides and leaps in the last week or so.

Every time I turn round, something cool is happening in the world of science. Theories are being proposed, disproven, reworked, and great new information is surfacing on the composition of our world and our universe. It's almost like science fiction.

CSW Insight:

The Charter School of Wilmington: maybe the only high school where it was a good joke to convert your word document to a PDF and then hand it in on a disk

Or write a paper in webdings.

Is this fucking shit Real?

New dinosaur a turkey

Intelligent Design Doomed. Dude on South College Avenue, stick this in your fucking bible and smoke it.

Missing Link of Evolution Found; Intelligent Design Be Damned

Someone took all the motherfucking MELANGE out of life.

Melange is spice, dumbasses. It's not so hard. When I clap, you sing.

Put that in your Solo cup and drink it.

Great Way to Piss Off People Who Take The Bible Literally:

Jesus maybe walked on ice, scientist suggests

Two Upcoming Sequels That Seems Unnecessary:

Evan Almighty
Ocean's 13

I nearly spit out my milk when I heard about Ocean's 13. It sounds like a joke. This is the kind of thing people make fun of when they talk about way too many sequels being produced.

Gmail added smart replies

More than a MONTH ago. Why didn't I notice this? About time, this was so necessary.

PC Game Developers:

Be smart. Make your games Linux compatible "out of the box." Think about it: there ARE Linux users out there who like playing games (me). There are VERY few games out there that support Linux. The emulation software kind of sucks right now. Wine is free and basically terrible for games. It took me two weeks to get Half Life 2 "working" and even then it was completely unplayable. Cedega appears to be better, but you have to pay for it every month! What the hell is that? Oh, and also, it doesn't work for me at all. What popular game aside from Unreal Tournament 2004 has been released in the last 2 or 3 years that supports Linux? Oh yeah I guess Doom 3 too but that's because id Software is pretty awesome about having all their games playable in Linux. If a developer was smart, they would release a game that would work on Linux, because no one else is doing it. Linux users would pay to buy this game, just as I paid to buy Unreal Tournament 2004 years after it was released, just to have something to play when I'm in Linux.

I just read that Savage 2 is going to have native support for Linux, here. I'm willing to bet that Linux gamers will pick it up just because it actually works on their chosen OS! I think I will too.

Read the news.

There might just actually be life on Mars. Or Saturn. Or aliens raining down in red rain in India.

Just read the fucking news. There's a lot going on right now.

Dumbasses:

Looks like there is a new AIM virus going around. This one is a fake myspace pictures link. Make sure your links are legit before you click on them: ask the people who send it to you to verify that it's legit.

If you use Microsoft Internet Explorer, this stuff installs itself automatically...switch to Firefox. Or quit Windows. Whichever is easier for you.

This is a great new humor site to read every day:

Married To The Sea: a daily comic.

This website comes to the internet courtesy of Natalie Dee, of http://www.nataliedee.com, and her husband who also has a pretty good daily comic site, which can be found here: link.

Game Systems I Miss Dearly:

Sega Dreamcast

America Developing Hot New Ways of Killing

Info here.

People I miss in the media

Billy Crystal

I fully endorse this Vietnamese Public Service Announcement.

Well, here's something you don't see every day. I've always wanted to see signs here like this. We should have stuff near live wire that says DANGER: YOU COULD FUCKING DIE IF YOU TOUCH THIS.

Stickyrice: No Pink Bird Meat

Article about Windows Vista

For those who are skeptics (myself included): an article about Windows Vista, and why it will not suck:

Why Windows Vista Won't Suck

A Fascinating Blog. Real life homeless person has a blog.

Check this out, it's really interesting stuff...

View From the Sidewalk

I don't care about the Olympics. But I did find this interesting:

Here's a news story about a streaker at the Olympics. Big deal, right? Who gives a shit about the Olympics, and who gives a shit about streakers? Heh.


What they don't tell you is that he had "Golden Palace" tattooed on his chest and he was planted there as a marketing gimmick. Clever.

Damon Wayans has finally lost his fucking mind.

Man, that was abrupt. One minute he's Homie The Clown...


then he's doing Hanes Ads:

And now the cycle is complete. He's matured into a fully insane person. Proof here. That's a link, for those of you interested.

You Want To Talk About Some Sick Fucking Shit?

Link. How is that for some sick fucking shit? This guy is disgusting, how does a person get like this? I don't want to describe it, just click the link and read the news story.

Sick fuck.

We should all just take a rocket ship back into the dark ages...

Abortion has been criminalized in South Dakota. Seriously, when the fuck do you hear about South Dakota except for now, when they have regressed into the past like this? Must be a wonderful place to live.

The Mountain Goats. Attempts to find a topic I can educate a class on.

John Darnielle is an extremely cool guy. He came to Philadelphia last year as The Mountain Goats. I missed this show and this makes me sad. I've been listening to The Mountain Goats pretty much non-stop lately. The Mountain Goats are awesome if you read books and / or like acoustic guitars. If you do both, you'll probably enjoy the music that much more. Wikipedia entry to get you started. I'd write more on it, but I'm pretty depressed right now and I have a lot to do in preparation for a speech I have to have outlined by tomorrow.

I have no idea what the speech will be about.

You see, I was prepared for this speech. It's an informative speech, the first graded project in my public speaking class. I was going to do it on the recent issue of Google and censorship in China with the debut of their China-based server that hosts google.cn. I did a lot of research about this topic on Sunday, and learned a fair amount about China's history and human rights in the People's Republic of China. Chinese history / politics are pretty cool. My interest in these topics is piqued. Anyway, today I decided against this topic because I thought it'd end up being a snorefest, and the professor wouldn't like it. So, I thought I'd do my speech on the avian flu which might kill a lot of people. After doing a little bit of research, this is even less likely to work out than the Google speech. What I need is something that has a local scope or that will relate directly to the people in my class. Sadly, none of them are tech-heads so all the stuff that I think about most of my days wouldn't interest them. I know a lot of things. I just need to find one or two that I'd be able to expound upon for about five minutes in front of a group of people without boring them to death.

Math Textbooks and Ugly Folks

Apparently if you're ugly you're more likely to commit a crime. There was a study recently. (link) I'd say this is true, because ugly people are generally treated less favorably than average or "attractive" people. So they get the short end of the stick more often than not, and if this goes on all throughout life, you just might have a social outcast on your hands. But on the other hand, think about the Halo effect. I think that attractive people are less likely to be convicted of crimes. Someone should do a study on that.

Give me your old math textbooks. I want to do some math. I want to learn some math.

Reflection on Television With Emphasis on the Rise of Product Placement

So, I don't watch much TV. I don't really have a TV any more. I went to my friend's house a few nights ago to watch a show that the group likes called One Tree Hill. This show is on the WB network. I actually kind of liked the show. It was cheesy, but it was good, formulaic in a totally benign way, you know? No one was hurt in the viewing of this episode of One Tree Hill. I couldn't help but notice that product placement appears to have taken over television in the time since I stopped watching it. In the show, all of the computers prominently display Dell logos. I can't remember what, but something else was plugged in the script a few times. Sunkist orange soda was blatantly promoted at a concert in the show. This concert featured performances by Fall Out Boy and Jack's Mannequin, who are both real life bands with real agendas that include promoting their recently released albums. Once upon a time it was kind of a special thing when a real-life celebrity appeared on a television show. But this show had two different bands on one episode, and lots of products being sold through the script. I understand that traditional advertising through commercials just isn't cutting it any more, but I had no idea that entire shows were having real-world products spliced into them. Was this an isolated incident, or is this a common practice today? I myself do not know, but after seeing this I kind of think it's the latter. Oh, also there were a few instances of other artists' songs being played during the show, like We Are Scientists. At the end of the show all of the artists' new releases were shown. So let me know, if you watch TV...is this common now?

I almost drew a phallus today.

I was bored in my Linguistics class; shit was just going way too slow. So I started drawing squares. I ended up with a pyramid. A pyramid with testicles. I was scared "oh no I drew a phallus" so I drew some blocks around it to make it look less like a penis. Pictures and more information tomorrow. Writing a paper, loves. Fuck you and good night.

It's (Really) Cold In Delaware. Also, A Great Game.

Like most of the east coast, Delaware was covered in a blanket of snow this weekend. This week sees the aftermath of that snow, and how it will affect shit around here. First thing's first: The University of Delaware isn't closed. It pretty much never closes for weather hazards. I'm not exactly sure what they're waiting for. I understand that it's important that all of our classes are on schedule, because many of them really can't afford to lose even one day. But still, what will it take? Will Gabriel have to come here and toot his horn? Sometimes I wonder.

I woke up this morning and did some driveway shoveling for about an hour. That wasn't so bad. I was just ill prepared for the cold. I had no gloves, and I was newly self-conscious about my shoes because my Mom said they'd be destroyed since they weren't "real" snow boots. I went into the car I was trying to dig out and turned it on to help it thaw more quickly. Neil Young happened to be in the CD player, and working is usually better when listening to Neil Young. I feel like I'm working for Neil himself, and he's watching over me wearing a large, wide-brimmed hat and looking inquisitive, whispering out orders in his ghostly high voice every once in a while. I had to alternate hands at times during the shoveling. I would stick one in my pants by my ass where it was warm, and one would do the shoveling. This was a pretty good system. I can only wonder what people watching may have thought of me touching my ass while I worked.

Gridwars (link) is one of the most awesome games I've ever played. Definitely my favorite game so far this year, and the great thing is that it's free. Supposedly it's a free version of an Xbox Live game called Geometry Wars. I've never played Geometry Wars, so let me compare it to something you may have played in the good old days at your local arcade: basically it's like Smash TV but more fun; you can actually play it more than 10 minutes and not get bored of the concept. Plus, there are really awesome black holes. Here is a link to the developer's homepage where you can see his other games. I have no idea how they are. What I do know is that I'll be playing Gridwars in the coming days.

Peter Benchley is dead.

He wrote Jaws. Respect this dead man.

An Excerpt From An Internet Conversation

(11:33:45 AM) TheZionistDevil: i went into boarders
(11:33:49 AM) TheZionistDevil: and i asked if u were around
(11:33:51 AM) TheZionistDevil: and everyone laughed
(11:33:56 AM) SheerKann: heh
(11:34:01 AM) SheerKann: I quit around august
(11:34:11 AM) TheZionistDevil: after a month evidently
(11:34:19 AM) SheerKann: a couple of months!
(11:34:29 AM) SheerKann: I had a job at the geek squad
(11:34:30 AM) TheZionistDevil: lol
(11:34:34 AM) TheZionistDevil: HAHA
(11:34:41 AM) SheerKann: it pays more
(11:34:52 AM) SheerKann: borders is basically minimum wage
(11:35:25 AM) TheZionistDevil: true
(11:35:43 AM) TheZionistDevil: still better than waitin tables
(11:35:56 AM) SheerKann: well I guess
(11:36:03 AM) SheerKann: I've never been a waiter but I know the money can be good
(11:36:10 AM) SheerKann: I'd probably be an awesome bartender at a gay bar
(11:36:13 AM) SheerKann: the tips would be outrageous
(11:36:45 AM) TheZionistDevil: oh the money is good
(11:36:52 AM) TheZionistDevil: but
(11:37:03 AM) TheZionistDevil: i could be a stripper at a gay bar
(11:37:09 AM) TheZionistDevil: 1500 a client
(11:37:15 AM) SheerKann: whoa
(11:37:24 AM) TheZionistDevil: 2 clients a night
(11:37:30 AM) SheerKann: would you be performing lewd sex acts?
(11:37:35 AM) TheZionistDevil: oh yes
(11:37:40 AM) TheZionistDevil: 1500 for two guys to have sex while u strip
(11:37:49 AM) TheZionistDevil: 800 for the guy to jerk off
(11:37:54 AM) TheZionistDevil: 500 for nothing
(11:37:55 AM) TheZionistDevil: he can't touch u
(11:37:58 AM) SheerKann: HAHAHAHA
(11:38:09 AM) TheZionistDevil: my friend does it in philly
(11:38:23 AM) SheerKann: wait wait, so those are the real going prices?
(11:38:36 AM) SheerKann: I didn't realize a man's ass was worth so much money

Catastrophic Dreams Appear To Be Back

If you remember (you don't have to remember), I have strings of terrible terrible dreams where either I die or everyone in the world dies. I hadn't had one in a while. I just had one, and I will share it. The central event in this dream is a Wu-Tang Clan concert in Ocean City, New Jersey that has yet to happen (this coincides with tonight's Wu concert in Philadephia). Everyone in the dream is just hanging out on the beach, having a great time. A few of my close friends are there, and aside from that I still know tons of people there. It's nice. Sunshine, pretty girls, beach smells, et cetera. I get in the water, and a wave hits us. Then another one. They keep coming. They happen in fast succession and get progressively stronger; it gets to the point where one cannot even get up after the wave because another one is coming in. I manage to get up after one of them (they're still relatively small at this point, nothing to worry about), and ride the crest of the one coming in. This one is pretty huge, and it keeps getting bigger. In a split second it's taller than the hotel that's right on the shore, and I'm still on top of it. As soon as it begins to crash, I wake up. I heard their screams.

Newsflash:

The Chuck Norris shit is OLD. END IT.

Haley Joel Osment: Apparently not the Next Culkin.

If you're like me, you spend a significant amount of time in conversation about the trainwreck that usually is the private lives of child stars. Recently I was talking about Haley Joel Osment, and how we haven't really seen him since, well, since his balls dropped. Kid was born in April of 1988. That makes him less than three years younger than me. That makes him...two months away from being recognized as an adult in this fair country. Yeah. Wow. They grow up so fast, huh? Unlike some of his compatriots (Corey Haim, Gary Coleman, Danny Bonaduce, and the indelible Corey Feldman), he hasn't fallen into a spiral of drug abuse and morbid public fascination. Osment isn't exactly on the fast track to the Academy Awards, but he's doing things. There's a game coming out for the Playstation 2 console in March called Kingdom Hearts 2. I'm a fan of the first game. Many people are. It was quite a fine game. Read up on it. It's an action RPG, and Osment does the voice-acting for the game's main character. If you look up Osment on the IMDB(link), it becomes apparent that he's been doing other cool voicework too.

So, next time a child-star drops off the face of the earth, do not automatically assume that they spent their fortune up their noses, in their arms, or otherwise just fucking wasted their futures. No, only do that if you can't find any recent IMDB entries for them.

Crotchrot is a fungal infection of the groin region. Sadly there are no first hand accounts on Wikipedia.

"Playing To Win" - Highly Interesting Article On Videogame Theory

Link. The author is a game designer named David Sirlin. I found this interesting to be highly interesting because Sirlin breaks down the differences between gaming abnormalities that make the game unfun, and ones that the player just needs to work around in order to become better and develop new strategies. I can think of plenty of times when certain things in games have become "off limits" simply because the players were not willing to use or work around them. Anyhow, just read this article if you're even remotely interested in playing videogames competitively at any level.

The Blockbuster Film is DYING.

I originally saw this (link) at BoingBoing (link). Compelling study. Honestly I cannot say this surprises me. Remember what I wrote about Big Momma's House 2? (Forgetful) Well, I think the days of that kind of stuff are numbered. The question I have is, what will they be replacing this stuff with? Will it be...worse? I feel that there's a true dearth of originality in the movie industry at large, which does not mean that interesting and original movies are not born out of it. The majority are awful though. Soon enough we'll see change. Change will probably be the cloning of whatever has been a recent success. Get ready to see Brokeback To The Future...for real.

Google Update For Google Whores Like Me!

Gmail now has the capability to catalogue all of your conversations that take place through the gtalk (jabber) service. You just have to change a setting in your gmail options. You don't even have to use the gtalk program; I use gaim and it works just fine. The information is sent almost instantaneously to gmail. This is cool. Info. This actually makes Gtalk a lot more useful. It's less of a gimmick now. Remote viewing of your conversation logs is something that no other instant messaging service can claim right "out of the box."

There's a Cold Week Up Ahead.

Well, today's high here in sunny exotic Delaware is 43 degrees Fahrenheit. The rest of the week is going to be in the thirties and shit. That's chilly. That's uncomfortable. That's no way for the city of Newark to welcome me to its heart. I've been here for a few days now and it's been very nice. I enjoy walking everywhere. I enjoy seeing familiar faces around town. I enjoy feeling like I'm a part of this place instead of being some anonymous person who waves to their neighbors from the car but never actually speaks to them.

The news has been interesting this week, hasn't it? That ship that sunk in Egypt. Wow. The first thing I thought of when I read that story was, "Is this going to knock the titanic out of the top spot for Most-Horrific-Maritime-Disaster?" It appears that a thousand souls perished at sea, but it wasn't until after the disaster that things really got heated up. There's rioting in Egypt now. People are unsurprisingly...pissed. Relatives are screaming left and right that someone fucked up big time on this trip. The ship did have lifeboats, afterall.

Ugh, I need to move around. Having this mirror right next to my desk is turning me into some kind of fucking narcissist. I can't stop looking in the goddamn thing. The lookin' ain't even that great, but it's there, you know?

Time to move around.

Brokeback To The Future. I'm moving.

This is a trailer for a fictional film called Brokeback To The Future (link). It's scenes from the Back To The Future films spliced into a trailer to make it vaguely homosexual.


Light update. I'm in the process of a move.

Internet Explorer 7 Beta is out. I got a new monitor

IE7 Beta here. This new monitor is huge; 20.1 inches. The native resolution is 1680x1050. Here's a screen capture of my desktop:

I just culled my music folder

I culled the shit out of it. Too much stuff was going unlistened to. I got rid of everything that I listened to once and didn't like, or even twice, or three times. I got rid of the stuff I didn't like. I was highly impartial. I have freed up gigabytes of space. I recommend that anyone do this because it will make you feel less overwhelmed when you want to listen to some music on your computer.

"Big Momma's House 2" Sells 28 Million; Or, Why My Faith In American Moviegoers Is Rapidly Declining

"Big Momma's House 2" sold 28 million dollars worth of tickets at the box offices this weekend, making it the second-highest grossing January film opener ever. This surprises me. It makes me wary of the future of Hollywood, and I question whether or not I as a consumer will have a place in the current / future film industry. I feel that there are way too many sequels in production in Hollywood and very few original ideas make it to production. It seems like most movies, even movies that were not so good, are getting sequels in the last few years. Also, classic and not-so-classic movies are being remade at a dizzying pace. Sequels and remakes do not equal innovation, and often lack depth. Why does this keep happening? Because the American public spent 28 million on "Big Momma's House 2" in a single fucking weekend, that's why. Some movie theaters here charge more than 10 dollars per ticket to see the film, and I'm sure that's relatively cheap compared to other places in the country. I'm not the kind of person who wants to spend that kind of money so that I may gain the priviledge of watching roughly two hours of some characters I've seen a few years ago doing the same kind of shit, but without the pep of the original. They wouldn't make these shitty movies if people didn't go to see them. These major film production companies are in it for the money, the business end of your entertainment experience. They could care less about the quality, it's just what sells. So if we communicate that we want to see something different on the silver screen by not spending our money on stuff we saw a few years ago, they'll listen. Big Momma's House 2 didn't come out because the people demanded a sequel and Martin Lawrence was only too happy to hop back into an uncomfortable body suit; it came out because the first one did well, and they wanted to see if they could sell it back to us again, with a few new sight gags and not much else.

Oh My God, This Is A Hilarious Video

This video (link) has to be one of the funniest most immature things I've seen on the internet in a long time. I laughed out loud at this, and there isn't a lot on the internet that can make me do that. If nothing else, watch it just for the shock value. Author's home page. I did not get around to watching the A.F.I. video linked below that one.

I found some old gum in the pocket of a vest

I went to put on a vest I purchased about a month ago and I wanted to put a CD I just burned in one of the front pockets. In one of those pockets I found this gum you see here. I have no idea how old it is, but there are a few hairs protruding from the side of the packaging. Fucking ill.

Here's the vest:

Last.fm - I love you. But why are you so wildly inaccurate?

If you scroll down the right side of this blog you'll see that I added my Last.fm weekly artists chart. Last.fm (link) is a website / program that watches your favorite music player in Windows, Linux, or OSX and sends the tracks you play to a website. On this website all of the information is compiled and you get a nice chart that shows you your listening trends and it will even recommend you other stuff to listen to based on what your tastes seem to be. There are other features too...but to me this is the most important. I only wish that it was more accurate. As it stands, it makes no fucking sense most of the time and it tells me all this wrong information. Apparently from Dec. 25 to Jan 1 I only listened to 89 different tracks. I find that hard to believe. It could be possible that I'm not listening to as much music as I think I am. In any case, I recommend this free service highly. Maybe you'll get better results than I have. I've been using this for quite a while. It's been a year and a few months. I had it back when it was called audioscrobbler. Have fun.

Quick Question For Those Bashing Google About google.cn

Do you guys think that somehow Google will be able to have a localized server for China without complying to the country's regulations and laws? Google is not above the law. This doesn't make them criminals, they are not "red on the inside" (lol at that comment), they're just trying to provide a more stable service to the vast potential Chinese userbase. Most of the results that Google has filtered out of its Chinese domain would have been blocked by the powers that be over there, anyway. So why all the fuss?

Excerpt From A Novel.

I'm reading Stephen King's The Stand (1978) right now and it's pretty good. It's been a relatively long time since I've read a King novel (about 10 months I think). Here is a part that I just read that I found interesting. A character is explaining the possible re-emergence of society in the aftermath of a "superflu" which has, apparently, wiped out most of the human race.

Shall I tell you what sociology teaches us about the human race? I'll give it to you in a nutshell. Show me a man or woman alove and I'll show you a saint. Give me two and they'll fall in love. Give me three and they'll invent that charming thing we call "society." Give me four and they'll build a pyramid. Give me five and they'll make one an outcast. Give me six and they'll re-invent prejudice. Give me seven and in seven years they'll re-invent warface. Man may have been made in the image of God, but human society was made in the image of His opposite number, and is always trying to get back home.

Wow, This is like the morlocks or something. Kind of.

Story taken from Boing Boing.

"According to Standart daily newspaper under the Bulgarian capital Sofia there's a thousands of kilometres of tunnels built between Roman times and Communist regime. They shelter about 20,000 people - most of them are criminals and bums."

Link

I need to read more work by Burroughs...

Copied and pasted this from a forum post I was reading. Opiates are interesting and scary at the same time. Imagine not caring about life; being a wraith. Wraiths exist in this world, and they are junkies.

I awoke from The Sickness at the age of forty-five, calm and sane, and in reasonably good health except for a weakened liver and the look of borrowed flesh common to all who survive The Sickness... Most survivors do not remember the deiirium in detail. I apparently took detailed notes on sickness and delirium...

The Sickness is drug addiction and I was an addict for fifteen years. When I say addict I mean addict to junk (generic term for opium and/or derivatives including all synthetics from demerol to palfium). I have used junk in many forms: morphine, heroin, dilaudid, eukodal, pantopon, diocodid, diosane, opium, demerol, dolophine, palfium. I have smoked junk, eaten it, sniffed it, injected it in vein-skin-muscle, inserted it in rectal suppositories. The needle is not important. Whether you sniff it smoke it eat it or shove it up your ass the result is the same: addiction. When I speak of drug addiction I do not refer to keif, marijuana or any preparation of hashish, mescaline, Bannistria caapi, LSD6, Sacred Mushrooms or any other drug of the hallucinogen group... There is no evidence that the use of any hallucinogen results in physical dependence. The action of these drugs is physiologically opposite to the action of junk. A lamentable confusion between the two classes of drugs has arisen owing to the zeal of the U.S. and other narcotic departments.

I have seen the exact manner in which the junk virus operates through fifteen years of addiction. The pyramid of junk, one level eating the level below (it is no accident that junk higher-ups are always fat and the addict in the street is always thin) right up to the top or tops since there are many junk pyramids feeding on peoples of the world and all built on basic principles of monopoly:

* 1--Never give anything away for nothing.
* 2--Never give more than you have to give (always catch the buyer hungry and always make him wait.
* 3--Always take everything back if you possibly can.

The Pusher always gets it all back. The addict needs more and more junk to maintain a human form...buy off the Monkey.

Junk is the mold of monopoly and possession. The addict stands by while his junk legs carry him straight in on the junk beam to relapse. Junk is quantitative and accurately measurable. The more junk you use the less you have and more you have the more you use. All the hallucingen drugs are considered sacred by those who use them--there are Peyote Cults and Bannisteria Cults, Hashish Cults and Mushroom Cults--"the Sacred Mushrooms of Mexico enable a man to see God"--but no one ever suggested that junk is sacred. There are no opium cults. Opium is profane and quantitative like money. I have heard that there was once a beneficent non-habit-forming junk in India. It was called soma and is pictured as a beautiful blue tide. If soma ever existed the Pusher was there to bottle it and monopolize it and sell it and it turned into plain old time JUNK.

Junk is the ideal product...the ultimate merchandize. No sales talk necessary. The client will crawl through a sewer and beg to buy... The junk merchant does not sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to his product. He does not improve and simplify his merchandise. He degrades and simplifies the client. He pays his staff in junk.

Junk yields a basic formula of "evil" virus: The Algebra of Need. The face of "evil" is always the face of total need. A dope fiend is a man in total need of dope. Beyond a certain frequency need knows absolutely no limit or control. In the words of total need: "Wouldn't you?" Yes you would. You would lie, cheat, inform on your friends, steal, do anything to satisfy total need. Because you would be in a state of total sickness, total possession, and not in a position to act in any other way. Dope fiends are sick people who cannot act other than they do. A rabid dog cannot choose but bite. Assuming a self-righteous position is nothing to the the purpose unless your purpose be to keep the junk virus in operation. And junk is a big industry. I recall talking to an American who worked for the Aftosa Commission in Mexico. Six hundred a month plus expense account:

"How long will the epidemic last?" I enquired.

"As long as we can keep it going... And yes...maybe the aftosa will break out in South America," he said dreamily.

If you wish to alter or annihilate a pyramid of numbers in a serial relation, you alter or remove the bottom number. If we wish to annihilate the junk pyramid, we must start with the bottom of the pyramid: the Addict in the Street. And stop tilting quixotically for the "higher ups," so called, all of whom are immediately replaceable. The addict in the street who must have junk to live is the one irreplaceable factor in the junk equation. When there are no more addicts to buy junk there will be no more junk traffic. As long as junk need exists, someone will service it.

Addicts can be cured or quarantined--that is, allowed a morphine ration under minimal supervision like typhoid carriers. When this is done, junk pyramids of the world will collapse. So far as I know, England is the only country to apply this method to the junk problem. They have about five hundred quarantined addicts in the U.K. In another generation when the quaratined addicts often die off and pain killers operating on a non-junk principle are discovered, the junk virus will be like smallpox, a closed chapter--a medical curiosity.

The vaccine that can regelate the junk virus to a land-locked past is in existrence. This vaccine is the Apomorphine Treatment discovered by an English doctor whose name I must withhold pending his permission to use it and to quote from his book covering thirty years of apomorphine treatment of addicts and alcoholics. The compound apomorphine is is formed by boiling morphine with hydrochloric aicd. It was discovered years before it was used to treat addicts. For many years the only use for apomorphine which has no narcotic or pain-killing properties was as an emetic to induce vomiting center in the back brain.

I found this vaccine at the end of the junk line. I lived in One room in the Native Quarter of Tangier. I had not taken a bath in a year nor changed my clothes or removedthem except to stick a needle every hour in the fibrous grey wooden flesh of terminalk addiction . I never cleaned or dusted my room. Empty ampule boxes and garbage piled to the ceiling. Light and water long since turned off for non-payment. I did absolutely nothing. I could look at the end of my shoe for eight hours. I was only roused to action when the hourglass of junk ran out. If a friend came to visit--and rarely did since who or what was left to visit--I sat there not caring that he hads entered my field of vision-- a grey screen always blanker and fainter--and not caring when he walked out of it. If he died on the spot I would have sat there looking at my shoe waiting to go through his pockets. Wouldn't you? Because I never had enough junk--no one ever does. Thirty grains of morphine a day it still was not enough. And long waits in front of the drugstore.Delay is a rule in the junk business. The Man is never on time. This is no accident. There are no accidents in the junk world. The addictis taught again and again exactly what will happen if he does not score for his junk ration. Get up that money or else. And suddenly my habit began to jump and jump. Forty, sixty grains a day. And it still was not enough. And I could not pay.

I stood there with my last check in my hand and realiuzed that it was my last check. I took the next plane for London.

The doctor explained to me that apomorphine acts on the back brain to regulate the metabolism and normalize the blood stream in such a way that the enzyme system of addiction is destroyed over a period of four to five days. Once in the back brain is regulated apomorhine can be discontinued and only used in case of relapse. (No one would take apomorphine for kicks. Not one case of addiction to apomorphine has ever been recorded.) I agreed to unergoe treatment and entered a nursing home. For the first twenty-four hours I was literally insane and paranoid as many addicts are in severe withdrawal. This delirium was dispersed by twenty four hours of intensive apomorphine treatment. The doctor showed me the chart. I had received minute amounts of morphine that could not possibly account for my lack of the more severe withdrawal symptoms such as leg and stomach cramps, fever and my own special symptom, The Cold Burn, like a vast hives covering the body and rubbed with menthol. Every addict has his own special symptom that cracks all control. There was a missing factor in the withdrawal equation--that factor could only be apomorphine.

I saw the apomorphine treatment really work. Eight days later I left the nursing home eating and sleeping normally. I remained completety off junk for two full years--a twelve year record. I did relapse for some months as a result of pain and illness. Another apomorphine cure has kept me off junk through this writing.

The apomorphine cure is qualitatively different from other methods of cure. I have tried them all. Short reduction, slow reduction, cortisone, antihistamines, tanquilizers sleeping cures, tolserol, reserpine. None of these cures lasted beyond the first opportunity to relapse. I can say definitely that I was never metabolically cured until I took the apomorphine cure. The overwhelming relapse statistics from the Lexington Narcotic Hospital have led many doctors to say that addiction is not curable. They used a dolophine reduction cure at Lexington and have never tried apomorphine so far as I know. In fact, this method of treatment has been largerly neglected. No research has been done with variations of the apomorphine formula or with synthetics. No doubt substances fifty times stronger than apomorphine *could be developed and the side effect of vomiting eliminated.

--William S. Burroughs 1955

RIP - The Black Table

I just learned that The Black Table (link), one of my favorite online publications, will cease updating on January 27th, which is just a few days from today. I'm really sorry to see it go. Some of the articles were awesome. Actually most of them were awesome. Everything I read there was awesome.

Gaim 2.0.0 Beta 2 is out!

Tell your AOL Instant Messenger client to go fuck itself!

Gaim website: http://gaim.sourceforge.net/

Link to download Gaim 2.0.0 beta 2 program (Windows): http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/gaim/gaim-2.0.0beta2.exe?download

Holy shit! How did they do this with such old hardware?

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5885351342753379583&q=8088

I think I had a dream about:

Being harrassed by some strange pedophile. This is funny because I am no longer a child.

I got into a show of aggression match with a duck today.

The duck hissed at me a few times and I had never seen a duck hiss before. It was BONKERS.

That's just more evidence that makes me believe that birds really are descended from dinosaurs.

Slept for about 2 hours

I can no longer sleep


(I'll probably fall asleep really hard in about 20 minutes)

Life is like what?

I can now see life as a game. In this game, people play in many different ways. Some, like Dave Chappelle once said, are "always trying to get points." That's not the way I play. I myself find myself like the player who wants to get the most out of life. That is to say, I see myself as the player who wants to experience as much of the game's content as possible before it's game over. There are many perks to this. I feel that this kind of gameplay has the most benefits, and offers the richest experience I could have in the game. The other player types include: the casual-good player, the cheater, the spaz (button mashers are like people who flail their arms lol), the one who doesn't want to put in the time necessary to get good (losers lol), and the game genius-who can figure out exactly how the thing works behind the scenes and therefore can use/exploit all of it's richness and knowing exactly why things happen as they do. In other words, the person who is able to figure out the secrets. This guy though, he may not exist in real life, at least not as powerful as he is in the world of games. It is only since modern times that man has had the tools necessary to even come close to doing this. Never before have we come so close to touching the very fabric of our world. A game. That's all this is. When you think about it that way, it's far easier to take it easy and try to enjoy what you do. Life is not just a game. It's also a dance and a metaphor for the seasons, among other things. But for me, right now, when I can, I like to think of this as a game. I'll play it may way, you play it yours, and maybe I'll see you one day in a dragon's lair.

Hey; Energetic, Bitter, and Optimistic: These things go great together

I'm feeling this stuff lately and really, fuck a customized template; fuck spending a lot of time trying to make something look good; it just has to be readable. This pre-made template is readable. I am glad it is readable.

I'll be back and I won't make any promises I can't keep.

Shitty Dreams

Slept hard dreamt of an airplane amusement park it was a fucking drag by the end of the dream I had gone on like 5 different planes looking for family members all over the world what a drag

First Day of Class, Winter Session 2006.

I started my day today by brushing my teeth and then going back to my room and putting on Necro's song "Burn The Groove To Death (Nail 'Em To The Cross)."

The song goes like this:

Yo, insult the coat you'll fit this casket, imma break a cassette tape and stab you with the plastic, so bleed beautifully, roll up your shirt strap on a belt, start shootin’ me but draw no blood, peep like a water bug, cursing out the mugs, roll with a hord of thugs, necrthe lord of drugs, pay me for death till you got no brains cells left, no fit, rippin' a prison up in your crib, yo you dead kid, no brass or tassel left, i’ll leave my beef bloody, i cook it red, your future is as good as dead, i’ll shove my blade in, so you could fade out, your trapped in a time that’s played out, so check the date out, you’re a pussy that no one ate out, while my brains on fast foward, you’re a victim and you don’t even know it, the evil poet, you got no hands, you can’t catch it when i throw it, depression makes you cut dimes until your brain crashes like the streets without traffic signals and stop-signs, cause everyday, is judgment day for me, cause humans that don’t know me get scared and run away from me, it’s trife hate, let no one control the life, channel your energy cut thru your clothes like a soldier’s knife, while the average front, i’m on a never-ending scavenger hunt, i’d rather be blunt so violate the fact you wanna die is great, watch me annihilate i got insanity inside a jar and i’m dropping it off the empire state, cause you talk like your in justice, so muskets we trust kid, so bust clip, the verbal open, my philosophy is molten, cause my pupils can only see a world unwholesome, insulting, repulsive, revolting, let’s risk it for piles of green, with, sadistic violent schemes, twisted like silent screams, i have a determination and, seeing your termination to extermination, cold like a frozen igloo, your rubber room is closing in on you, the chosen is you, death, is, fucking you insane, you’ll get nothing from my pockets, the only thing you got sewn up is your eye sockets, so play dead as i color you blood red, give up the bread or i’ll put a hole in your fuckin skull large like a huge alien head, incinerate the beat till’ it’s six feet deep, then do a jesus on em, like the crucifix, repeat, now watch me

Better give it up kid, burn the groove to death say yeah yeah
Better give it up kid, burn the groove to death say yeah yeah

The hour glass is filled with blow, sniff your time away, sink into the snow and suffocate your face, the mind decays, string the brains the spine will pay, there’s no burden vermin vaccination, i’m doing your life’s bid and imagination, bitch i don’t gotta answer you, how bout’ i cancel you? bury you with satan, smoke up and do a dance for you, morbid shit, keep me poppin’ on your guts g, watch your step of sinkin’ breed be bloody, i’m bleeding sin, there’s cancer in the air, you’ll breathe it in, my whole scheme is to achieve a win, slice you leave you with un-even skin, it’s apparent your transparent you can’t conceal your lies, your synthetic like women that are really guys you got jeff heely’s eyes, fuck you in your cunt group, i’ll bring murder right to your front stoop, talking like you comatose your correct, i’ll propose a toast to your death, i hope you’ll decompose with one breath, i suppose i’ll infest, i doubt your mine, peep the poison here’s enough for an amount to die , and the holes in your body you ain’t got enough fingers to count that high, after you lose, swallow my chief of rings you’ll be crying, so much your putrid smelling body will be washed clean, rippin the mics allowed to do with pride it’s necessary to bury involuntary like mandatory suicide, government style, there’s nothing more fresh than a skull covered with flesh i’m dressed not to impress i’m cold laughing g, i’m so fly the swat team’s after me cause everywhere i go i bring a blood bath with me, peep the creak creak, yo hemaglobin's cheap, just look for it it’s skin deep, the person next to you got eight accessible pints you can keep, peep the black market, your girl and there ain’t nothin' but a target, i’ll gin start you up fuck you with an exclamation, jig you the jug and i don’t need no explanation, i’m fo exploitation my slang has no expiration, bloodied up you’re a sight for sore eyes, you’ll be screaming for me when your cuts get basted in sodium chloride, i’m pulling your cards kid, i see the ace of spades, death is in your future watch it parade to your face with blades, the reels reviled your face in the jiffy bag is sealed, would it kiss up to disease, i’m on a h.g louis blood feast, i run with the insane type your life is like water floating down the drain pipe, a scream or cries cracked feind demise, open up your eyes and breathe between the lies, a flick, imagine light up a kid a whole drum kit, till there’s no life and no and theres a spike infested with 2 pieces of crooked wood now beat me.
Burn the groove to death kid, gonna burn the groove say yeah yeah
Burn the groove to death kid, gonna burn the groove say yeah yeah

Have a wonderful day. I know I will after listening to this song.

Interesting article on wealth. Read this.

http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMCA

I'm not sure if most of you know what this is. It is a copyright law that was passed in 1998 here in the United States of America. Uh, let me just copy the first paragraph from the wikipedia entry, to give you a feel for it:

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a United States copyright law. The act criminalizes production and dissemination of technology that can circumvent measures taken to protect copyright, not merely infringement of copyright itself, and heightens the penalties for copyright infringement on the Internet. Passed on May 14, 1998 by a unanimous vote in the United States Senate and signed into law by President Bill Clinton on October 28, 1998, the DMCA amended title 17 of the US Code to extend the reach of copyright, while limiting the liability of Online Providers from copyright infringement by their users.

Yeah, so that's about it. It is a huge "fuck you" to those of us who want the freedom necessary to make informed choices in the software-based marketplace. I firmly believe that if something is good enough, I'll buy it, but I'd rather try it first, because there's a lot of shit out there that's being boxed up, wrapped real pretty, and advertised on television as the second coming of whatever-god-you-believe-in. Also, the freedom to do as we please with products we've already purchased would be pretty nice, and I don't know, maybe even something they shouldn't be allowed to arrest us for.

Twenty die as historic seaplane crashes into water

http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=2436252005

For some reason, I really liked the title of this story. It's Something about the release of twenty souls as a historic seaplane crashes into water, I guess.

When I clicked on the link, it became even more awesome because there was a public service announcement on the page done in flash that showed animated balloons made to look like a penis and a pair of testicles, and the penis balloon deflated. The ad then said not to use cocaine because it damages your sex drive.

A Boring Dream

I had a dream that I got three bags of groceries for less than five dollars. Good groceries, too. Actually maybe it was less than six dollars. Either way it was pretty cheap I'll tell you what. Finals are a good time.

Extremely intense French music video

http://www.icidailleurs.com/nonstop/devantmanuque.mov
Very intense indeed.

Coming Soon: Some Damn Good Reasons NOT to invest in Next-Gen Consoles

This means you, Xbox 360. WE COMIN' FOR YOU, NIGGA!

Recording Industry Out of Their Fucking Minds

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/81101/music-giants-bear-down-on-lyric-search-apps.html

Basically a couple of huge record companies are shutting down the programs that search the internet for lyrics you are listening to. How are such programs illegal? Is it wrong to want to know what the artists are saying? Ha. Do such programs facilitate illegal file sharing? Because I really don't think they do. I mean, a lot of albums don't even come with lyrics in the liner notes so you have to get them from outside sources, like the internet anyway. This is truly insane. I hope they can't get away with this shit for long. Freedom of speech lol

This is cool

Cool that is, until you realize it's part of what was used to train people to kill each other. So that takes away from the cool factor for a little while at least. Killing is inherently uncool in real life.



Graciously copied from http://www.cyber-heritage.co.uk/cutaway/
. Tons more of these can be found at that website.

The End Of The World As We Know it: Life-Changing Events Via Digg.com

As if a billion and one meaningless Web 2.0 entries weren't enough, Digg has been reporting on all kinds of bad news lately. The world is basically over, ladies and gentlemen.

Sharpies are bad for DVD and CDs. What the hell do we do now?

Macromedia is now Adobe. Who's going to compete with Adobe now?

Dogs laugh. Has your dog ever laughed at YOU? Check for disobedience.

X-Men 3. Oh great, we get to see Doctor Frasier Crane play as a mutant genius with blue skin and huge muscles. No one is excited about this.

At least we still have Google Calendar to look forward to in a few days.

Note: I'm actually a big fan of Digg. I'm not the biggest fan of every new website popping up promising ajax and ruby on rails based social networking, previews, betas, rounded borders, color gradients, MS Trebuchet font, and just generally looking like a piece of internet candy, though. I'm not a fan of the new X-Men movie (yet. I really liked the second one actually. It just seems like they're going to drag it into the ground). I am a fan of the idea of Dogs laughing. It is hilarious. I am not a fan of software companies buying up all of their competition. Adobe will really have to prove themselves on this one. It makes little difference to me because I don't use Windows right now, but I'd hate to see their new products become garbage and lack innovation just because they basically have a monopoly. I'm not a fan of the sharpie news. And of course, I am always a fan of Google. Except for that Web Accelerator bullshit. That thing needs to quit trying to come back from the grave. Not a great idea.

Hope the sarcasm wasn't too "advanced" for you guys.

Ohhhhhhh Man.

Brick by brick
the night eclipsed
Pricked by cuticle thorns
Dried the sleep
on nursery slits
Into this life I'm born

Heaven's just a scab away
I'd like to see you after just one taste

Q-Unit

http://members.home.nl/visionx/

Horrible mashups. I listened to a few and almost wished I hadn't. The picture is funny though. Very funny. I love Queen. Rest In Peace, Freddie.

Giant Prehistoric Scorpions...In Scotland?!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4486830.stm

Aside: I would be a lot less stressed for time if I started sleeping more normal hours. The semester is almost over...and I may quit the Geek Squad soon, just to try to enjoy free time again.

No Time To Update Today, So:

Here are some MC Paul Barman lyrics. I'm mostly alone in my deep appreciation for Barman's wit, intelligence, and feigned (or is it?) immaturity. Notice the clever usage of all the letters of Barman's name at the beginning of the third verse (MC Paul Nathaniel Barman).

Verse 1:

My brain makes the earth dark but I'm hung like a birthmark

I like to suck toes yours secrete fructose

I make paintings based on grids just like Chuck Close

I'm old school like Aztecs but new in other aspects

If you want sex with me be prepared for bad sex and slapstick

Even Chapstick won't help my chapped dick

When I'm with a naked chick I use a faker dick

A turkey baster laced with Elmer's to make it stick

My ex fled to Reykjavik, we really were trying

Ohhh your so wet, "My pussy's crying"

I need an eye exam and a vagina with no diaphragm

Or condom, I'm pond scum, I'm going to buy a lamb

And when we make love I'll picture titty humping

which looks like a Venn Diagram

Ewww, this isn't dope I feel like I'm pissing Scope

Lamby's a misanthrope

I asked her to stop moving, does she listen? Nope

The sheep was a clone so I was a creep on the phone

Now I'm sleeping alone

With her photo on my nightstand in a sepia tone

Oh yeah and you know that...

"Paul Bar-Bar-Barman"



Chorus:

The joy of your world is Paul Barman!!!

Beautiful, Beautiful Barman

Yes the joy of your wwoorrlldd is Paul Barman!!!

Beautiful, Beautiful Barman



Verse 2:

After this rap I'll be in Napoli, happily

Proposing to my chosen under an apple tree

"Let's get married," I don't walk, I get carried

By a motorcade of voter-age women on rollerblades

In cute sleeveless shirts exposing their shoulder blades

But I'm a lonely guy since my honeypie ran off with Ione Skye

Now I've got nothing whatsoever, ugly-broke-arrogant, but so clever

When I write rhymes on brown bags and in shower steam

Me and Paul are the power team

We'll leave you deflowered with a mouth full of sour cream

Gobble this obelisk

"Paul Bar-Bar-Barman"



Chorus:

The joy of your world is Paul Barman!!!

Beautiful, Beautiful Barman

Yes the joy of your wwoorrlldd is Paul Barman!!!

Beautiful, Beautiful Barman



Verse 3:

My close pals, aunts, uncles, leaders, Nations, and towns

Hamlets and neighboring islands, everyone

Landlords, bosses, and relatives, moms and newborns

Somehow when I act thirteen, I'm a virgin girl's tractor beam

This one was dressed to kill from her head to my testicle

She was from west of Phil-ly and spoke well of it

She said, "Just for the hell of it let's not be celibate."

I got all higgledy piggledy, it's a big relief

When I take off my fig uh leaf

She said that, "Let's get at this" but her cat and an unpotted cactus

Sat on her mattress

that sure made it saturated with sharp thorns and cat piss

I put on a hiphop beat while she whipped off the topsheet

She said, "Come to bed I like my undergrads underfed

They amaze how they stay up days on mayonnaise and Wonderbread."

I dove in her cervix a lot like Sir Mixalot

This interlude is for the women I've interviewed about the clitoris

and how to make it less hit-or-miss

Should we be gentle?, Is it all mental?

I won't use a dental dam 'cause it discurges

my urges to submerge in her jizz

She said, "My goodness you should juss use clues that's nonverbal

You're too vigorous if my clitoris, for example, turns purple"

It was time to copulate but we didn't want to populate

So my bold groin reached for my gold coin proooophylactic

I unwrapped it, you can't know how I felt

It wasn't a gold coin condom, it was chocolate Chanukah gelt

The white part crumbled on her tummy and the rest began to melt

Foiled again.....

My Linux Desktop Is Awesome!

If you are interested in pursuing a Linux Desktop, let me know. I could write up a guide or maybe just talk via email or instant messaging or something.

Linux is exciting.



Full-size screenshot(click again once it loads to enlarge to the full 1280x1024 so you do not lose any detail): http://img499.imageshack.us/my.php?image=linuxdesktop1128055bv.png

This Post Is Powerless

Power is something that's pretty hard to figure out. What is power? How can we get power? What is power? What is power? Let's take man and woman for example. Man has an overt power over woman in most cultures. Even here in western society, where things are supposed to be equal, or at least getting there, you'd be hard pressed to find one person who truly believes that women are more powerful than men. At least as far as show of power goes. As undeniable as this is, it is equally undeniable that any woman can have power over most men. There's a certain kind of hypnosis they are capable of. I've been a victim. I assume most men have. It's a bitch, it's a doozy, you do things you would never expect yourself to do. So really, the power balance between men and women is very well...balanced.

I believe that in all seemingly unequal power struggles, the power balance could be equalized or shifted, were the opressed party to realize that they have something that the oppressor wants. This is the case in all power struggles. Everyone has something to bring to the table. If you find yourself in a situation where you feel powerless, think about what it is that the person who holds power over you wants from you, and deny them that. See how the power shifts.

Christmas:

It's partly about enjoying things you didn't know you needed or wanted, but all of a sudden you do.

A relatively recent picture of me

Glorious.

Google As An Internet-Age Christ Figure?

I was driving to the grocery store to pick up a few last-minute things for Thanksgiving, and I started thinking about the future, and Google's place in it. I thought of the possibility that our age could have a new Christ-figure: this very company. I imagined a world where the resentment that people are beginning to harbor for Google grew bigger, and it was hated, and denounced. In this world people would hate Google simply because they were something that in their minds could not exist: a benevolent corporation. In the end, Google would end up having its servers and power over the internet, or internet usability tools, however you want to look at it, stripped away. People would forever remember what Google tried to do: make the internet a better place, where information was easier to access for everyone.

I don't really believe that Google is this way, necessarily, but I do like them and their services. This is just something that I thought about, absent-mindedly, while driving to the grocery store.

Light On The Updates. Here's A Cool Link!

Updates will be light in the following days because it's Thanksgiving. We're expecting three dozen people here. I have a paper due Monday that I haven't started, too. I work Black Friday. In retail. At Best Buy. Et Cetera.

But anyway, since it is the week of Black Friday and people will no doubt be returning things en masse because they are unhappy with them or something, or maybe just because it's the holiday season and soon or later you might want this as a reference, here is a nifty site that shows you the best way to get in touch with a real live person at those customer support numbers you're supposed to call. I know you probably hate being led in circles on those numbers. I sure do.

http://www.paulenglish.com/ivr/

Have an excellent holiday.

Hard Drive Story, Or, Insights On Fooling Around With Linux And The Future Of Operating Systems

So, I built my new PC about a month ago. This is the story of this PC, up until now.

The first step to building this new PC occurred in September, actually. Back then I purchased the motherboard I would be building the system around. It was MSI's K8N Neo4 Platinum board. It came recommended from the shsc.info website, a wiki that is run by the members of SomethingAwful's "Serious Hardware / Software Crap" forum.

In October I ordered the rest of the parts. Good stuff. I won't bore you with the rest of the system specs, but just know that it runs all current games very, very nicely. What is important for this post, is the hard drive. The brand is Maxtor. It's a SATA drive, which is like the new standard for connecting your hard drive to your motherboard. It's 300GB.

I have had some problems with this drive. When I first installed Windows, I went to the Event Viewer. It's just a common habit for me. I do this to see if everything went smoothly. The Event Viewer tracks hardware / software errors that have been reported to windows. I didn't expect anything to be there, but there was an error. Paging error on this brand new, gigantic, SATA disk. Oh no! I just wrote it off as a first time starting error thing, like maybe my drive was just trying to get used to this system.

This was not the case. For weeks on end when I booted my PC it was very hit-or-miss. Sometimes it would boot in a reasonable time (1 minute or less), sometimes it would take 5-10 minutes to boot, other times it wouldn't boot into windows at all: it would just hang on the splash screen. The event viewer reflected these boot problems.

Eventually I admitted that this wasn't going to get better, so I formatted the drive. This was a pain in the ass, but of course I transferred all important files to another PC in the house while I reinstalled. I did a complete format, hoping that maybe something was just corrupted.

Things were ok...for a while. Then the same thing started again.

Flash forward to the first or second week of November. On a whim, I upgraded my chipset drivers (the chipset is NForce 4). Things seemed to get better. I was happy. The computer was happy, everyone was happy.

Flash forward to last week. I get a hankering to install Linux. My chosen distro? Ubuntu. I liked Ubuntu a lot because they sent me like 10 free install packages, and I had heard from lots of places that theirs was the distribution to go with at this point in time. I had tried the LiveCD from one of my many install CDs too, and it was rock solid. So I go to install, make Linux partitions, etc...no go. My partition will not resize, for some reason. I'm in the Ubuntu installer, trying to resize. No error message, nothing. I try resizing through Partition Magic. This too, does not work. So once again, the second time in less than a month, I am formatting my brand new drive. The drive partitions perfectly with Windows installed all over again. Hmm. Not sure what is going on at this point. Actually, right now I still don't know why it would not partition. But I installed Linux, which I will get into in a little bit, and I was able to easily choose between Windows and Linux. Of course Windows booted slow as hell. I begun to suspect that there was really something wrong with my hard drive.

I ran Maxtor's PowerMax diagnostic software to see if I could get an RMA number to take advantage of my 3-year warranty on the drive. This took a long time, much longer than I was expecting. Three hours long. The program reported absolutely zero errors on the drive. Did I mention Linux booted fast as lightning, every time, without fail? And Windows, of course did not, it was still a crapshoot.

So, this must be a problem with Windows, right? After posting my problem on the SH/SC forum, someone finally replied with a link to this thread on Nvidia's forums. Hey, how about that! It appears that Maxtor SATA drives, of the exact same kind that I have, and maybe even some other vendors' drives too, have problems with the NForce4 chipset! How about that? And what's a remedy? To upgrade the chipset drivers? Oh, of course. No wonder Windows boots so slow sometimes! No wonder this seemed to go away when I upgraded my chipset drivers! No wonder...I didn't make this connection before? Shit. Anyway, I still get a few of these errors in my event log, but far fewer. And Windows has been starting up just fine. I believe in the near future that this problem will be totally rectified.

Now, on to discussion about Ubuntu Linux.

It has been a long time since I seriously fooled around with Linux. It has come a long way in two years. For the average user it is far easier to navigate, operate, and be productive in a Linux environment. If you are such a user, or any user really, Ubuntu is a great distro to try out, to see if you might like Linux.

When I first booted into Linux, all of my essential hardware was detected immediately right off the bat. I loved it. There is an excellent guide here to getting started with Ubuntu 5.10, and it really helped me get things working the way I wanted them to. One of the first things I did was create a partition separate from my Windows and Linux partitions, a FAT32 type partition, to hold all of my documents, games, music, and other files that I might want to have access to from both operating systems. The reason for FAT32? It is a file system that both operating systems can read / write to. Linux cannot write to an NTFS file system (the system that Windows XP uses), and Windows cannot even read from an ext3 file system, which is used by Linux. So I created this FAT32 partition, and it serves this function, and another: If I need to reinstall either OS, my files are relatively safe from destruction here on this separate partition.

Let me reiterate, this guide is awesome for getting started with Ubuntu Linux.

Now, you ask, why would you want to use Ubuntu Linux? This is why: it is free. Completely free. All of the software is free to download. It can do many of the things that Windows can, and some it can't. In my opinion, the music player amaroK is the COOLEST music player out there on any Operating System. Beats the shit out of iTunes. Hell, it is even cooler than foobar2k in my opinion. I still use and love Foobar on windows though. If you get a new computer in the future and don't want to shell out a few hundred dollars for Windows, I highly recommend you look into Linux as an alternative. With very little work, you can be running a completely legally free operating system that is every bit as functional as Windows.

Another reason to try Linux is to broaden your horizons. It is interesting to see that there's more out there than Windows! There's more than one way to do things, more than one way to organize your files, more than one way to start up an operating system, more than one way to do everything you do right now with windows, and these ways are all perfectly good and right in their own respects. You may even learn that you prefer Linux to Windows. Me, I'm kind of stuck. I like both. If Linux had better gaming support I just might switch. If you look at Windows Vista, the new version of Windows that is supposed to be coming next year, you will see a lot of it is influenced by Apple's Mac OSX. If you look closer, you will see that a lot of it is also influenced by features that are found in the various Linux Desktop Environments. When you get right down to it, all 3 major operating systems appear to be converging on many points. They're all starting to look better, following Apple's example. They cater to both power users and the newbie alike. I believe that in a matter of years, unless someone pulls out some drastic new feature, that it will boil down to a matter of choice. Now many would argue that right now it is a matter of choice, but if you want to play all the best games, you really have to use Windows right now. What I mean by a matter of choice is this: You no longer have to have an intimate knowledge of computers to enjoy the Linux experience.

Each OS does something better than the other right now. The great thing is that many things that are supposedly exclusive to one OS can be emulated on different operating systems. Hell, we are even looking at the possibility of installing OSX on regular old PCs now (I have tried this. It was cool!). With all of the OSes adopting similar hardware now, we're really looking at some interesting convergence points in the future.

Hard Drive is Fine. Hard Drive and Chipset Don't Get Along.

http://forums.nvidia.com/lofiversion/index.php?t8171.html

Rock Bottom Slots!

I wrote this at 7:50AM this past Wednesday or Thursday morning. I do not remember which. Probably Wednesday. Let's get started:

I am watching what might be the worst infomercial I have ever seen. I've never seen a person sell a slot machien on television until now. I'm still in a state of disbelief. This is real.

"You're serious? Wow, that's amazing!" (An actor hired to look like a consumer, speaking in regards to the price of this great slot machine.)

The way they have it set up , they have a bunch of attractive, well-dressed people standing around playing slots with these salesmen. Television salesmen.

"Nothing like this has ever been done before!"

"Look at the mesmerizing lightshow! Listen to the riot of electronic sound!" (Real quote)

"A $3500 value for 5 payments of $99, no 4 payments of $99 with 100 tokens (a $50 value!), absolutely free!
Since the new year is coming around, and we want everyone to be able to afford this great offer, we're taking it down to 3 easy payments of $99 and an extra 100 tokens for a total of 200 free tokens. This ridiculous rock bottom offer can't last! So buy now!"

How do they come up with the ideas for the commercials they use to peddle this shit?

Check out the awesome website.

Things Are Going On

Bad hard drive. Sending it in for a warranty. This will take a while. Exam in 1.5 hours. Work tonight, and the next two nights.

None of these things will stop me from keeping the updates coming, though.

Computers

I'm formatting my hard drive, making a few partitions, installing Ubuntu, and reinstalling Windows.

Hope this helps with the fucking shenanigans my computer keeps pulling.

Salmon update soon. Wanted to do it today, but I did not have as much time as I thought I did.
Also there was Chinese food.

An Idea: Task Elimination Solutions

Today I had an interesting idea. This idea, will allow myself and others to serve our community actively, fight boredom, and win friends. This idea, is errand running; a task elimination solution. I propose to stand somewhere in a heavily trafficked area, like on the sidewalk of South College Avenue, with a large sign which will say "We Will Run Your Errands For Free." We will have at least two people here, one to manage the errands in queue, and another to actually run the errands. Real running will be involved: sorry, non-runners. You are not invited. Until we implement large-scale service using cars and / or dune buggies. The idea is that we fight our boredom by doing these menial tasks, like getting groceries, running books to the library, getting books from homes for classes (of course these patrons will trust us, because we're just good people), and assisting with other small, odd tasks. These people are freed of the burden of doing these tasks, and they get the pleasure of seeing us do them at top speed, and total devotion to the task at hand. I am seriously thinking about doing this. It's getting cold though. Maybe when the weather starts to get warm again. We would gain a lot of social wealth by doing this. We'd be kings. Kings without material riches.

Fuck! Whoa! Hello!

Hi there. It's been a long time since I posted like this. I've been keeping pretty busy with classes and work, and Everquest, of all things. Oh, Everquest. I guess I had too much free time on my hands one day a week ago and decided to reinstall it. It has been fun, and I haven't become a slave to it. I'm not sure if I can keep this up though, or if I even want to. I mean Everquest caused me some trouble in the past. Actually it caused me about four years of trouble, took away four years of productivity that I can never get back, and basically devoured my high school social life. But hey, sometimes you have to give up your high school social life for a silly fucking massively multiplayer online role playing game where you are a bard who runs around with a lot of losers and slays dragons, right? Right?

Right?

Oh. Well anyhow I started playing again. The game is a lot more beautiful than it was in the past. Enough about that fucking game, let me speak on things that matter.

What matters is matter, folks. We are all made up of matter, presumably. I'd hate to see some weird non-matter based being browsing the internet and finding my website because frankly I'm racist against those kinds of motherfuckers. They need to stay the hell away from my family. They need to keep to their own kind. It's just not natural, otherwise.

A quick word or two about The Facebook: ok cool (see that was two words pretty concise huh).
Seriously, The Facebook is kind of cool. I used to hate on it pretty indiscriminately, but I'm finding a use for it now. I have fun being "internet sociable" and posting things on other people's walls, even if I am not exactly tight with these people, because hey, it's the internet, and it shouldn't be taken seriously. I have come into contact with people from my past who I am so glad still exist, and seem to be doing well, just older, hairier versions of themselves. In the end, becoming hairier is a crucial part of aging, up until you get old. Some people also become more mature and learn more about the world, but certainly not everyone. Mostly, people just get hairier with age. Not wiser. But then, I wonder, when you get really old, do you still continue to get hairier? Some would argue that no you don't, you start to lose hair. But some people start to grow hair out of their ears, and I don't know what the fuck that's about. I've heard people say that the hair is sucked from the top of your head and it comes out of your ears. That is a cute idea in my opinion. The Facebook is largely a bunch of self-serving, ego boosting, masturbatory bullshit, but it does have it's uses. Thanks for existing on the internet, Facebook.

I'd like to get back into programming and study it independently but I wouldn't know where to start. See, I'd like to make programs for myself and others that are useful, but it seems like most of that shit has already been done. I cannot think of anything I need done that I cannot find a use for. It's kind of a bummer, because I want to do programming, because I've found it fun in the past. Automation of a process is always fun. I guess I'll just wait until I find something I want to automate and then fool around with it. For now, I'll just learn more about web design and be more attentive to this blog so I can flesh this site out and make it useful and interesting, or should I say, internesting. I realize that if I ever want to really make this website into something respectable, I will have to get off of Blogger, get my own domain, and use one of the blog publishing programs available. For now though, I'm just content and happy with the fact that I designed this web page myself, and will continue to add design elements to it until it's "done" (you can never really be done). As for the programming thing, it will undoubtedly lead to me doing something with a service that is provided on the web, like linking up two things or downloading some content to my desktop in an attractive way. There are a lot of APIs out there for services available on the web. I'd love to interact with one or more of them in an important and useful way.

Let us talk about internesting, the word I created above. What a word, huh? Internesting. It makes me think of a nest on the internet. Which would of course mean there is some kind of internet animal, like a bird, or an insect. God, insect nests are a bothersome idea for my mind. Nests. Headnests! Rat nests! Nests! Nest is a weird word. The internet is weird too. I kind of wish there were animals that lived on the internet. Please do not say that a software virus is kind of like an animal, because this is not what I am talking about.

OkCupid: Kind of a hilarious site. I joined it a month ago or something. Totally worthless so far. But hey, look at this girl!



Hey, this is what my desktop looks like. I originally took this image to fix a problem with Blogger I Was having getting it to show images correctly but now I see that the problem was the option I was selecting, not my template. Holla.

Swords And Robes

Swords and robes are cool so fucking cooooooooooooooooool hey yeah what is cooler than a sword and / or a robe blish blash fag fucking bullshit can't do what needs to be done just add more weight pull the trigger man just get off this planet without any kind of ballast you need to check yourself

Next on To-do List:

Rounded borders.

Because really, I have to make this site identical to every bullshit web 2.0 style website out there, I already have one of the most used fonts.

So now I need to implement AJAX, add some rounded borders, a few color gradient banners, and provide some retarded fucking social networking service that is "new" and "exciting" and in beta, or some shit.

Web 2.0 here we come!

I HAVE A LOT TO PROVE

People are ridiculous

Everyone makes mistakes.

I make mistakes.

I waste time and money on things.

Sometimes we get ahead of ourselves and we act without thinking.

These things happen.

I Fixed Some Long-Standing Gripes

Except for that minor positioning blemish in IE, this design is now functional, in my opinion.

Glad to be here, folks. Just glad to be here.

Bear vs. Shark

Bear vs. Shark is a fucking awesome band.

Thank you for being awesome, Bear vs. Shark!

The Doors - The Wasp

I wanna tell you 'bout Texas Radio and the Big Beat
Comes out of the Virginia swamps
Cool and slow with plenty of precision
With a back beat narrow and hard to master

Some call it heavenly in it's brilliance
Others, mean and rueful of the Western dream
I love the friends I have gathered together on this thin raft
We have constructed pyramids in honor of our escaping
This is the land where the Pharaoh died

The Negroes in the forest brightly feathered
They are saying, "Forget the night.
Live with us in forests of azure.
Out here on the perimeter there are no stars
Out here we is stoned - immaculate."

Listen to this, and I'll tell you 'bout the heartache
I'll tell you 'bout the heartache and the lose of God
I'll tell you 'bout the hopeless night
The meager food for souls forgot
I'll tell you 'bout the maiden with wrought iron soul

I'll tell you this
No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn

I'll tell you 'bout Texas Radio and the Big Beat
Soft drivin', slow and mad, like some new language

Now, listen to this, and I'll tell you 'bout the Texas
I'll tell you 'bout the Texas Radio
I'll tell you 'bout the hopeless night
Wandering the Western dream
Tell you 'bout the maiden with wrought iron soul

Exam Week

Give me time.

I won't let you down, folks.

Flock is pretty cool

It's a new browser. www.flock.com

I am going to eat that salmon sometime soon too

Finished

Sometimes we laugh

Inappropriately

Sometimes we smile

When we cry

Another Nightmare Last Night

In this "episode," America was taken over by some fascist religious regime, and Useff and I are not really going for it. We're too free. The leader of said regime also agrees that we are too free, and decides to have us killed. We are hunted down. Along the way, we meet some men and women who believe in our cause and decide to run with us, and be with us. Eventually, we are all caught, and we are executed while holding hands after writing letters to the people we always loved and never told how we realy felt.

A Brand New Interview With Matthew Lesko!

http://www.blacktable.com/going050929.htm

Question marks obviously symbolize inquiry, but why did you choose them over dollar signs?

Never even thought about money signs. It's all philosophical. I'd wear this outfit if I were an accountant. It has nothing to do with my business. I wear it on a regular basis.

What's up with blasts rocking Bali?

It seems like whenever there are explosives detonated in Bali, journalists describe Bali as being rocked. Being rocked by explosives can be taken a number of ways. Personally, I like the idea of Bali being rocked to sleep by a series of gentle explosions that made the landscape sway gently.

Statue

IMG_0674, originally uploaded by nchase.

Outside of the house

And the snake is drowned and
As I look in his eyes,
My fear begins to fade
Recalling all of those times.

I could have cried then.
I should have cried then.

And as the walls come down and
As I look in your eyes
My fear begins to fade
Recalling all of the times
I have died
and will die.
It's all right.
I don't mind.