nyf luck

ok, everybody wish me luck at the new years fest ultimate tournament. i want to be able to physically feel the karma flowing from ya'll to me. if i don't, i will be very upset, and probably deny you good karma next time you need it. so there.

sushi and the magic smoke

i had sushi for the first time last night, and it was good. i know, eating raw fish, ugh, but it was good really. the only thing i had a problem with was the tuna in the elvis roll. for some reason it was just a cold slimey mass, and that wasn't good. i liked the tuna in other rolls, just not the elvis roll. maybe it was the cream cheese around it that made it taste bland.

also yesterday i fried the second usb controller on my motherboard. i had bought a usb faceplate, but when i hooked it up, and powered on, all i got was magic smoke and that lovely burned electronics smell. i quickly shut it off, disconnected the faceplate, and turned it back on with a sinking feeling in my chest, but to my suprise, it booted up and doesn't seem to be an worse for wear, despite the big black charred area on my mb.

full frame hoax

why do they even make dvds in pan-and-scan? especially art films like "the pillow book"? i just bought this at fry's electronics, and got it home to find(after i opened it) in very small print "this movie, while filmed in multi-aspect ratios, has been re-formatted to fit your t.v." fuck fuck and fuck. anyone want a "full frame" version of the pillow book? it has many shots of ewan mcgregor's penis. plus it's a really good movie, but i don't want a pan-and-scan version. it's like buying a used cd only to discover that it is an edited walmart version when you get it home(this happened to me when i was trying to replace my beck mellow gold cd that was stolen. somehow shhh kickin' doesn't work as well as shit kickin'). if a company is putting out an altered version, it should have to be in huge fucking letters on the front. not in mouse print on the back. better yet, don't put out movies in pan-and-scan. every critic hates it, and most regular people hate it, and the rest would learn to hate it once they saw enough of the letterboxed movies and realized that they were missing out with pan-and-scan. fuck fuck fuck.

Guns don’t kill people, Doctors kill people!

Number of physicians in the US: 700,000.

Number of gun owners in the US: 80,000,000.

Accidental deaths caused by physicians per year: 120,000.

Number of accidental gun deaths per year (all age groups): 1,500.

Accidental deaths per physician... 0.171 (U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services)

Accidental deaths per gun owner: 0.0000188

Statistically, doctors are approximately 9,000 times more dangerous than gun owners.

Please alert your friends to this alarming threat.

We must ban doctors before this gets out of hand!

As a public health measure, we have withheld the statistics on lawyers; for fear that the shock could cause people to seek medical aid.

However, you may want to encourage everyone to also get a gun... just in case you see a doctor approaching.

late nite tv

every so ofter i wake up in the middle of the night, after having fallen asleep watching tv to discover that sports night is on comedy central, and it makes me realize how good tv can be, and how much i miss it when it's not.

nevada stabbing

i don't know if people outside of nevada have been seeing all the stuff about the stabbing of 2 girls(age 3 and 10) in mesquite, but i'll fill you in on the current details.

the two girls were stabbed repeatedly in their mobile home, the 10 year old is a paralized, while the younger one died. where were their parents you might ask? at the casino gambling. suspicion immediately fell to a person they had a fight with at the casino over $125. it now turns out that the parents had sold the killers a bag of salt, while telling them that it was meth. when the killers found this out, they went and tried to get their money back, and ended up fighting with the parents in the casino, and getting kicked out by security. the parents then went back to gambling for 10 minutes before going home to find their daughters stabbed. the police later catch the killers(brother and sister) in utah, where they confess.

now this is a horrible killing, and i feel truly bad for the two girls, but i have little sympathy for the parents, who were dealing meth(salt), leaving their kids alone so they could gamble, stayed at the casino after a fight with someone they screwed over, someone who knew where they lived, and now are putting a huge show of how horrified they are that this happened. first, don't sell meth, especially if you have kids. second, don't screw your meth customers, especially since they do stimulants, which promote violence. third, don't leave your kids alone and go gambling, especially if you sell meth. fourth, if you screw someone over in a drug deal, and they come back for their money, give it to them. fifth, if you get in a fight with people that you screwed over in a meth deal, and they know where you live, and your kids are all alone, don't keep gambling, get back to the house immediately and take the kids and get the fuck out of there.

now none of this excuses the killers, and they should get life in prison with no parole, but the parents should also be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, as they are certainly responsible in some part for their childrens suffering and death. i see many counts of child endangerment here, for drug dealing, and leaving them alone. plus their actions in their drug dealing made an already dangerous situation even more dangerous. of course if drugs were legal this wouldn't have happened, since the killers would have gotten what they paid for, and not been so enraged.

google politics

go to google and check out the bottom ad on the right. just a little search engine political sniping.

ok, i swear it was there before, google changed it.

fancy joe's computers

So I met a guy today named Joe.... He said, by allowing businesses to expense up to $75,000, it means somebody is more likely to buy a copying machine, or in this case, an architectural fancy machine.
-- I'm thinking this statement is a lot more Dubya than it is Joe, St. Louis, Missouri, Jan. 22, 2003

where can i get one of those architectural fancy machines? god is bush dumb. people who talk about patriotism should want bush out of office just so he stops making america seem so fucking stupid.

need a new liver

well, salvation may just be a mouse click away for those of use with drinking disorders, a company has shown that they can print living tissue in 3d using a modified injet printer. imagine being able to use 3dstudio to design yourself a new penis(were these wide carriage printers? :) )

human shields and less freedom

israel supreme court has decided that if palistinians choose to that israeli armed forces can use them as human shields, now what kind of decision is that? who would volunteer for human shield duty? why would the court even make that ruling? besides, what good is a human shield if they are cooperating with the people they are shielding? wouldn't that make them traitors? and doesn't the us punish traitors with death? so how would that create any protection? if anything, it should make them bigger targets. and when reporters take pictures of human shields, israelis beat them

i find it interesting that blogs are mostly read by bloggers. it's just a great big community of people writting for people who write for them. it seems kind of recursive to me(not that that is a bad thing).

and kevin mitnik is back on the internet

us patriot act helps to drag the us back to the 60's. more eroding of our freedoms, and the system of checks and balances. and if echelon is reading this: 2600 bomb blackops terrorist militia Spyderco squib spook words warfare electronic warfare george bush kill assasinate subvert covert nuke

taxes and riches

well bush just doesn't seem to get that he was a privileged white boy. i guess being the son of a president millionaire just doesn't mean what it used to.

now just to be clear, i don't support affirmative action, and i also don't support giving advantages to alumini's children, or to rich people just because they are rich. have you ever noticed that hollywood's child stars always go to impressive schools? do you really think that's because they are capable, or could the fact that they are famous, and rich have something to do it. anyhow, that's my class warfare for today.

oh and this is lovely:

"He resubmitted the nomination of a federal judge with a soft spot for cross-burners. And, as Time notes this week, he quietly reinstituted the practice — which lapsed under his father in 1990 — of sending a floral wreath on Memorial Day from the White House to the Confederate Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery, where those nostalgic for the Old South celebrate Jefferson Davis. Why on earth would the president of the U.S. in the year 2003 take the trouble to do that?" - nytimes.com

things i hate

i truly hate that when they show a movie on tv they save all the commercials for the end. they hook you, and then put you through 5 minutes of movie, 2 minutes of commercial. i think they learned it from oprah. maybe she is the root of all things evil.

reality shows. fucking pay the writers, and the actors, and create something worthwhile. is america really this fucking stupid that they like these things?

99% of politicians(and this includes judges, and sheriffs).

censorship. come one, like we all haven't heard shit fuck sex drugs satan death rape by the time we are 8. why do we edit movies on tv? fuck i saw my first porno at the age of 9 or 10, and it had john holmes in it, talk about an ego hit. there is a reason why artists choose to do things the way they do(ok, some people do it to shock, but that's a valid reason in my eyes), if you don't want your kid, or yourself to see it, turn it off. don't make the rest of us have to see your shitty edited version of it, let us see the whole thing.

oh and i want to start a cable tv station that shows nothing but commercials. i think americans would watch it.

mlk day

well, it's martin luther king day, and the unemployment agency is closed. i still have about 6 resumes to send in though. but in keeping with my procrastination tendencies, i'm gonna write stuff here, while watching highlander on tv, before i send them in.

so mlk day. i find it amazing that race relations are so slow to change. although race isn't solely an american problem(look at the middle east, or germany and greece when you talk about turks) it seems that we are especially bad at dealing with it. we have tried lots of things to combat it, but in my view they have mostly been failures. afirmative action: i'm not very fond of afirmative action as i don't know that it does much more than promote distrust and dislike between the races. i have heard many stories of whites being passed over in favor of minorities, and while many of them probably aren't true, or are sour grapes, the fact that these stories are so prevelant shows to me that the system isn't being beneficial. i personally would have no problem with it if there were an overhaul of the system that would truly remove quotas, and prevent it from being a reverse discrimination law, but right now, i think there is too much distrust on both side of the issue to allow it to function. while it is true that minorities have a harder time in life, i don't know that aa is removing the stumbling blocks for them. or more to the point, i think that aa while removing some of the stumbling blocks, it provides an excuse for some people to put additional ones in front of minorities. i'd like to say that we have come far enough that aa isn't needed anymore, but i don't think that is true, but i do feel that it needs a complete overhauling to allow it to achieve it's desired result.

black history month(and other minority history months): i am completely opposed to these, if we really want to make a change we should fix the history that is taught in schools to reflect true history, and give credit and blame where it is due. to me history months are like when i was in high school and i had 2 friends who were jewish, and one of their favorite pastimes was telling everyone which celebrities were jewish. it may have raised awareness, but it also raised resentment(not the right word, but i can't think of the right way to say it) towards them. basically nobody likes to get told that their race is not as good as someone elses, and by stating how great people of their race were, they were stating(perhaps unintendedly) that other races were worse. i don't think you can ever advance one race by putting another down, what you end up doing is driving a wedge between them, and enhance the perceived separation of them. what needs to happen is an honest representation of the achievements of all the races, and emphasize the similarities, and sameness of all people.

getting back to mlk day, i think that we have lost sight of the philosophy of mlk. he fought for equality, true equality, not special benefits, but equal benefits. that is what we should be celebrating, and remembering today. in conclusion, i think it is necessary to struggle for equality without implementing reverse discrimination, as discrimination is wrong no matter what the intention behind it. it comes back to the old saying, two wrongs don't make a right. cliche but true.

snood and unemployment

so I've been playing snood during my unemployment, and i just want to say to all those people who haven't commented about it, that snood is a copy of puzzle bobble. i guess i don't really know which came first, but i think puzzle bobble did. anyhow, it's fun but the muzak is much better in the arcade game. i really should play it on mame instead.

i am still unemployed, and trying to see if i qualify for unemployment benefits. i have been calling the unemployment office, and all of their lines are busy. that doesn't bode well for the economy. maybe they have always been understaffed, but i believe that so many people are out of work that they are overloaded. glad we have a republican in the office, since they are sooooo good with the economy. uh... wait a minute, 80's bad unemployment, 92-99 low unemployment, 2000+ increasingly bad unemployment. seems that the dems are better with the economy than the republicans. the only thing that is consistant no matter who is in control? corporate greed, of course that is what being responsible to the shareholders is all about after all.

anyhow, i have been playing a lot of ultimate since i lost my job, and i'm starting to get into better shape. part of that is the fact that i haven't had a cigarette in 5 weeks. one of the downsides of not smoking is that i am much more sore after practice and pickup because i am running harder and more. i have been informed by the captain that i have to go to new years fest(a tournament in tempe arizona) because i have been the hardest working member of the team. i sort of plan to go, but i haven't been too sure how much i would play, because i still feel way out of shape, but we'll see. i don't really have the money to go, but maybe i will be able to get my federal tax refund through h&r block by then.

so, that is the story of my life since christmas. unless i get a job soon, it seems like i will be moving back with my parents. god, i never thought i would say that.

on to net-x things, i have switched over to zoneedit for my dns servers, and am using dynamic dns to update the entry. this will allow me to keep net-x and my other websites up and running once i take my computer back from work. let me know if it seems to be working. of course if it isn't, you wouldn't be able to read this anyhow. it's working for me though, and that's what really matters isn't it?

i've been checking the site statistics recently, and about the only things i check are the referer logs, and the monthly hit counter. the referers are really interesting(todd is my number one real referer, with google being the actual number one(there are some really interesting searches that find me, one of the weirdest was oceanside blowjobs)). and my hits per month have been going up exponentally which is nice, but a lot of those hits are spider/crawlers. one other point of interest is that the most common browser is mozilla, which is nice.

yatta madness

yatta in asf format.

part 2 in flash

read this to download mpeg version(very large)

or just go here and get the links your damn self

quick to forget

racists are doing it for themselves. the bush administration and this republican congress are poised to draw american back into the 80s, and not the good retro punk/new wave 80s, but the bad leg warmer, nuclear fear, cold war, none-employment, exploding deficit, corporate greed(ok so this never went away, we just had such a boom in the 90s that it went unnoticed) 80s.

just when you thought capitalism had won the war, the republicans make "workers of the world unite" seem viable again. it becomes obvious that unchecked capitalism is only about 1 degree away from unchecked communism. the few(read corporations and the already wealthy) at the top benefit, but the average person gets shit on daily, just in capitalism apparently we can't smell that it is shit.

popouri

this will probably be very disjointed, so consider yourself forewarned.

i've been wondering about god and religion recently, most specifically whether there is an afterlife or not. i find myself desiring an afterlife, but my rational mind keeps telling me that this life is it. i find no evidence of a higher power, or an afterlife except the prevalent belief in one by true believers(or even partial believers), and i can't help but think that they are just deluding themselves. i yearn to be able to believe like i think they do, but seem unable to accomplish it. i wish i could be like i was as a child, when i accepted things without questioning them, but i know that it is impossible, as experience gets in the way. i also know i don't really want that, i just want the peace that comes with it. i think that this whole things comes from not doing exactly what i want in life, and therefore feeling unsatisfied. i suppose that somehow i think that being able to believe in god, and an afterlife would give me some sort of satisfaction.

i truly desire to live in a different way than i am, but my problem is that what i want to do doesn't provide me with the finances to buy the things i want. i don't think of myself as materialistic, but when i think what i would like to do, i realise that i would not be able to afford most of the diversions that i like. maybe i'm just lazy, but the things i find truly enjoyable are not ones that i've found a good way to make money at. here is a brief list of things i enjoy: camping, music(recording, and listening), computers, pottery, cooking, html. part of my problem is that i'm not great at any one thing, but instead am good at many things. my greatest desire would be to find one thing that i was outstanding at, and devote my life to it, but as of now, i have not found that "calling."

i feel now at 32 how i imagine that other people felt at 18. i've always been a little behind in terms of where my life is. when i graduated from high school, i went to college not because i wanted to, but because i thought i was supposed to. i now realise that i should have gone to work for a couple of years, and then i think my college experience would have been better(ie graduating instead of attending for 7 years and ending up without a degree). even now i feel underdeveloped both socially, and professionally.

creativity has always been a goal of mine, but i don't seem to be able to find an outlet. i imagine that most people feel this way, but i don't really know. i tend to know people who have found a way to express themselves creatively, so maybe i'm the only one.

my main joy comes from playing(i assume most people are this way), but somehow i feel that in this day and age i should be able to find a job that feels like playing. i've always believed that everyone should find something that really interests them and make that into a career. i just haven't been able to make it happen. i would love a job that involved music, video and computers, but i haven't found one yet. the problem is that many of those jobs would require me to start at an entry level, something that i'm not in a financial state to do right now. i know it's not much, but my current expenses, before food and entertainment, are around $1000 per month. that means that i need to make at least $10 and hour to even live. my expenses would be even more if i was living in my own apartment, as i'm only paying $300 per month in rent to my friends(thank you craig and carmen), and a one room apartment in vegas starts around $700 per month. in a year, my monthly expenses will go down by $310 per month as i get my car paid off, but a year seems like a long time away. of course right now i would take just about any job as i need to be able to pay next months bills when they come due. i'm seriously considering moving back to my parents and working for their radio shack/computer repair store/bookstore, as i know that would make me enough money to pay my bills, the problem is that i've really grown to love las vegas, and would like to continue to live here, and to do that i need a job, and to do that i need to be living here. i suppose i could go work for my parents for a couple of months, save some money, and then come back to vegas to look for work.

anyhow, this all comes from being depressed because i have no job, and a pretty immediate need for money. so if anyone wants to contribute to my needs, just click on the paypal link on the right(please lol at this, as i'm not serious).

nfl refs

it doesn't seem possible but nfl refs continue to get worse season after season. when will it end? at least the olympic officials had the guts to award the gold medal to the real winners. i feel bad for the giants. and why wasn't terrible owens ejected from the game as well as the giants player? he was the instigator of both altercations, as well as hitting a player after the whistle, out of bounds, with a blow to the head. obviously his ejection wouldn't have had an effect on the game, but he's such a jerk that it would have made me feel better. :)

choice of music

i wasn't officially laid off, but i haven't worked in a week, and am planning to see if i qualify for unemployment. i also have sent out about 12 resumes in the last 2 days. fun. as a result of this my choice of music has leaned towards the smiths, and the cure.

on a happier music note, i have started ripping my entire cd collection and encoding it into ogg(thank you cd-da x-tractor"). i will need to get a bigger hard drive before too long if i plan to continue on this mission. i can't wait until i have 30 gig of music on my server to listen to when ever i want(ok it's really only 24, but 30 sounds way better). i haven't decided what i'm going to use to stream them, but i'm leaning towards kplaylist, although i have some problems with it, mainly not having an upload feature(for some reason i always try to spell feature with a v). if anyone has any suggestions please give them to me.

i may have already talked about this, but the cd project is to compliment my linux entertainment center that i hope to start building once i have steady income again. i plan to use one of the shuttle cube type cases, with linux running freevo, with some sort of ati all-in-wonder, mame and mess(there is a link from the mame.dk site) for games, a dvd player, and a 160+ gig hard drive. one of the nice things about the shuttle case/motherboard is that it has an optical dolby digital output on it. of course they are still working on the linux drivers to make it work, but that's still fucking cool.

16 clumsy and shy, that's the story of my life.