Keeping Score

Hulk Smash!

Sorry about the utter lack of updates. I've been busy destroying our main bathroom today, and yesterday we planned said destruction. Tomorrow I'll be trying to restore it with new things that we bought at the store with money.

Photos forthcoming of the radical and life-changing transformation.

My hands hurt.

The Olsenborns

I was talking to my sister (who we will call Katie) this weekend on the phone. She was lamenting a bit about how our even younger sister (who we will call Jamie) "gets away with everything." I laughed, of course, because I'm the oldest. I was the kid who got slapped and had my mouth washed out with soap for asking the question "Mommie, what does 'fuck' mean?" Granted, I thought this would get a huge laugh because I had just got done asking "What does 'fart' mean?" and that got a pretty big laugh. Surely "fuck" was worth at least as big of a laugh.

So I described to Katie how she in fact got away with shit that if it were me I would have had both hands and my tongue cut off. The oldest kid always has it the hardest, because the parents are new at the game, and they don't know what they should and should not flip out over. For instance, if I had "borrowed" one of my parents cars when I was fourteen much like my sister Katie did and went out for a joyride, I think they might have locked me in the basement. Forever. Katie would get grounded for a month. In which time she'd wait until Mom and Dad would leave the house on errands/shopping/whathaveyou and she'd take the other car. This happened even after she got her license and was grounded from her own car. Needless to say, she's actually an excellent driver from all of the experience.

So anyway, we're on the phone having a good laugh about all of this, when I hear Katie say "ass" on the phone. No big deal. She's an adult now. But I hear my Dad yell something in the background. What's this I ask?

"Oh, Dad's just 'mad' because I'm using his word again."

Huh? His word?

"Yeah, we all have assigned swear words."

This is just beyond outrageously unfair at this point. Just until last year or so, my Mom didn't even like it when I, a grown man of thirty, would swear on the phone.

"We all have our own swear words. Mine is 'fuck.' Mom's is 'shit.' And Dad's is 'ass.'"

What about Jamie?

"She's not old enough to have a word yet."

Of course Katie stole my word. Actually, my word right now tends to be "horseshit" or "cocksmoker." The funny thing is that this all sounds very white trash, which my family is anything but. They actually live in a house almost as big as the Osborn's (not quite as lavish, anyway). Dad drives a Beemer, Mom drives a Beemer. (I drive a Honda Civic, so don't start with the "you poor baby" bit!).

At any rate, it all seemed so Osbornian to me (if "Osbornian" indeed qualifies as a word), and I never saw The Osbornes (sp?) as even anything remotely like my family.

I guess there's a little dysfunctional in all of us. Or at least just me, anyway.

On the Off Road Again

Hit the trail again today. I mean literally hit it. I was flying down through the endor section (the one where the trees are tight and and the trail winds around a lot), when I second guessed myself at a tight turn through two small trees, and caught my bar-end on one of the trees. Fortunately, I managed to see that coming, and was able to jam on the brakes hard enough to slow it down so that I didn't get thrown over the handlebars. I still slammed into the tree, though.

To be honest, I'm glad it happened so early. Then I got the whole "oh god I'm so worried I hope I don'e wipe out today please don't let me wipe out I don't want to hurt myself" thing out of the way. Hit the tree. Scrape up arm. Realize it doesn't really hurt. Get on with riding trail like bat out of hell.

Or at least a very tired bat out of an extremely hot oven.

Because that's what it feels like today outside. I can only describe it as if you were standing in front of an open oven that was set at about 250 degrees, and there's a pot of steaming water in there. Then put a fan between you and the stove, and turn it on low. The breeze that cooks. It's like the world's largest damn convection oven out there today.

So we did an entire lap this time (I guess it's somewhere between 2 and 3 miles?). I still had to stop for some breaks now and then, but I managed to purchase a camelback system earlier in the week, so I stayed hydrated and didn't feel like puking. I'm hoping that in two weeks I won't need to stop hardly at all. I even hit bigger and more obstacles this time (with photos to prove it!--coming soon, or whenever Phil develops the film). I'm still not taking on The Log though. It's somewhere between two to three feet high, with smaller logs piled in front and behind it to help you "ride" over it. I got a picture of Phil going over it, so I'll post that one too when I can get a copy of it.

Oh! And how can I forget?!? We saw a deer. How cool is that? Riding a trail just minutes from my house in suburbia, and we got to see a deer. It ran when I tried to get Phil's attention to take a photo of it, so no proof, sorry.

Who are you?

Now that the Wil Wheaton multi-thousand hit parade that happened over a week ago is over, I've noticed that there's roughly twenty or so readers of this page a day. Which is a lot if you ask me. I'm constantly amazed anyone wants to check back and see if I've written any new drivel.

So I'm wondering...who are you twenty or so people?

I'd love for you to take a couple seconds out of your day and email me and tell me how you found your way to this place. Even if I already know who you are!

The Wrath of Kahn

I can't believe we lost to Germany. If I hadn't watched the game, like just about everyone in the U.S., I could have easily believed we lost to Germany. But I got up at 6:20 am this morning to watch the live broadcast of the game, because I was tired of watching the rebroadcasts already knowing what the score was, and I don't have to be at work until 2:30pm since I'm observing a Chicago Fire practice session today. This was the first time in U.S. history since the first World Cup in 1930 that the U.S. had survived an elimination round (when we beat Mexico a few days back 2-0).

Our guys played thier hearts and guts out. We literally outplayed Germany. The U.S. had somewhere around 10 or more shots on goal. Germany only had 2. One of them went in.

A dozen players from each side collapsed after the final whistle was blown. German players did not celebrate. They were relieved to have beaten us.

We should have won the game. We should be in the semi-finals right now. At one point we were within inches of a tying goal when four minutes into the second half Lewis's shot bounced off of German keeper Kahn and bounced off the hand of Germand defender Frings. The ball was about 3/4 of the way across the line of the goalmouth when it bounced back out. I have to give credit to the ref (who normally I would like to call an ass) since the ball played the hand, and therefore was not considered a handball. We're talking inches though. If his hand hadn't been there, or was just two inches back, the ball would have completely crossed the line for the tying goal.

With minutes left in the game, we had another great chance off of a crossed header from Sanneh which came within a foot and a half from going in.

And I'm not even counting Donovan's first half heroics. He single-handedly embarassed German defenders with his dribbling skills as he passed the ball between a running German defender's legs as he lined up his first shot on Kahn. Kahn narrowly saved the then leading goal attempt with his fingertips on a diving three-fingered save. Donovan later attempted the same from the other side of the net and was again defeated by the evil Kahn. Where the hell is Kirk when you need him?!? We were so close.

But close only counts in horseshoes, handgrenades, and global thermo-nuclear warfare.

Oh well. There's always the next...four years. ::sigh:: At least the world cant' laugh at us anymore. We got as far as England did. Ph34r U.5.

As an aside, I guess interest in soccer in the U.S. is growing. Good Morning America cut away from their broadcast a few times to show footage of the game, evidently.

Stats obtained from ESPN

Cubs Lose, I Lose

The Cubs just had to go into extra innings today. I think they planned it, so rush hour would be extra-clogged with beer-soaked clods leaving the game. 90/94 was extra jammed today on the way home because of it. Two hours it took me to drive home. Two of them. TWO. And it's not even snowing.

To make matters worse, I get on the gridlocked road and the humidity is so thick I kept checking my floorboards because it felt like I might be taking on water. So I turn the air conditioning on, but with the windows open. Bad Idea. I've just created my own little storm-front in my car, where the cold, humidity-free air impacts the hot, muggy air. That storm front is pretty much right where my face was. The body decided it had had enough, so it sent a message my brain couldn't ignore, in the form of a migraine. Whee!

That's what I get for leaving work early, I guess. What else could I have done? I had nothing to do at work today. Literally nothing. It was leave early and sit in traffic for two hours, or sit at my desk trying to find something to do for two hours, and then driving home for another hour. Want to know what I did today? I cleaned off the desk that I am going to be moving to tomorrow, and I decided to finally organize my bookmarks folder, which I haven't done in the year and a half I've been working there. Imagine stretching those two activities over seven hours. I could have moved myself into my new desk space today, but then I wouldn't have anything to do tomorrow. I'm trying to space these things out, y'know. Can't do everything at once. Then there won't be any reason for me to be at the office tomorrow.

I tried watching some demo videos on how to use Maya (the new 3D software package we're going to be using for our next game), but I think they're narrated by the teacher from Ferris Bueller's Day Off. You know the one. Only this time he's saying "Bowler......Bowler....anyone?....Bowler...". These things are a more effective sleep-aid than a Bob Ross Magic of Oil Painting marathon after downing a cocktail of Nite-All and Thunderbird. They're showing everything I don't need to know to do my job effectively, and nothing I do need to know. It's like attending an advanced mechanic's class where they first teach you how to drive the fucking car. Chapter Two: How to Roll Down the Window.

Autobots Wage the Battle to Defeat the Evil Forces of...The Deceptacons

Sorry I haven't been posting much lately.

To make up for it, here's an awesome link. Sing it with me! Transformers!...more than meets the eye.

It's a movie, so download at your own bandwidth risk.

This Isn't Germany Folks

I was reading Wil Wheaton's entry today, and he posted a link to this first hand account of a student who was arrested for turning his back on Bush as he gave a commencement ceremony speech at an Ohio University.

I went and read the entire post, which is no small feat seeing as I have a slow reading comprehension level (I read about as fast as a person can talk out loud, which is about half to a third of the speed most normal people can read). What the article reads like, and what Wil posted, seem to be blowing things very much out of proportion.

First off, before I begin, I need to make one quick statement: I support The President of the United States. I do not, however, like the President. I did not vote for the President. I will not in any way say that I am comfortable with the idea of a Cabinet appointment for a head of Homeland Security. It definitely reeks of Orwellian tones. I'm not a big fan of his recent policies. But he's the Pres. I'd take a bullet for him. I don't care if it's Bush, Clinton, Ford, Nixon, Carter. It's my country's elected leader, and I will defend the title.

That being said, I need to pick a few bones with what Wil mentioned, and the article. I've posted the major points of Wil's blog here in italics. Please check out Wil's site for the rest.

Metafilter was the first to share this story from the democratic underground. It seems that Bush was speaking at Ohio State University's graduation. The students were told that they were expected to provide a "thunderous" ovation and if they disrupted the ceremonies in any way, they'd be arrested.

At first read, this sounded scary to me, too, so I read the kid's first hand account. The account starts out with a quick explanation that some students who were graduating were going to take part in an organized protest called Turn Your Back on Bush. Who organized it, and why, is undefined. So now this whole thing is thrown into an entirely different light. At first I thought maybe the faculty said that everyone will clap loudly, and everyone who disrupts the ceremony will be arrested because they were dictating an authoritarian tone from the onset. But as it turns out, they were reacting to the fact that they knew that the very students they were addressing were already planning to disrupt the ceremony. While what the faculty said was undeniably wrong, I'm already leaning to their side.

That's right. At a public college, the students would be arrested and expelled if they expressed their unhappiness with George W. Bush.

Actually, they were told they'd be arrested and expelled. Probably just a scare tactic to try and get them to not actually do it. And if you read the first hand account, you'll see at the end that the person in question was neither arrested nor expelled. Besides, the kids should have known that the ceremony was merely a ceremony. They had actually graduated the minute their teachers turned in their final grades.

Let's get something straight, because I'm really tired of being told to "move to Afghanistan" because I'm "anti-American": If we allow the Bush Administration to goose-step all over our civil rights, and we sit back quietly while Ashcroft dances all over the constitution, we no longer have a country worth fighting for. Things like this transcend political ideology, IMHO. It doesn't matter if it's the Democrats or the Republicans who are currently in charge.

I have to agree with just about everything here. Disagreeing is what makes America America. We need people to keep an eye on management, and I'm glad there's people willing to do it. I for one am too tired and too weary. I'm also not really all that against what's being proposed, though. Granted, I don't really know what's being proposed. But I'm pretty sure it's nothing like Nazi-ism. I don't think Bush is advocating a white-only race which will consume all of Europe and hatefully eradicate the Jews. Once you throw "goose-step" out there, it starts to invalidate any arguments you might have that someone's being too conservative. Because Bush is nothing like Hitler. I mean, first off, he can't even paint. But seriously, let's not do the Hitler comparison. It's tired and played out, and not at all even remotely factual.

The thing that is so amazing about the USA is that I can (as of June 15, 2002) stand here, and loudly proclaim, "I DO NOT SUPPORT GEORGE W. BUSH, OR HIS POLICIES!!," without fear of reprisal. When graduating students are subject to ARREST for an action like turning their backs on a person who they don't respect, we have a very serious problem.

Actually, let's clarify some things here.

First off, this "person who they don't respect" isn't just any person. This isn't some faceless instance where we can throw anyone into the variable of the "person" in this equation. It's the President of the United States of America. This is very very important to note. Not because the Prez should be worshiped like a king, or because he has more rights than thou, or because he's the son of the former Director of the CIA. This is important because of one reason: the Secret Service doesn't allow anyone to fuck with the President. Let's take respect for the title off the table. I don't care if you respect him. Let's just say you're walking somewhere near 1600 Pensyllvania Ave and you happen to think aloud to yourself, "I hate the President. I wish he were dead!" chances are you'd be tailed, and before you got home, someone at the Secret Service would have a 200 page dossier on you which covered everything from who you voted for last election to what you like to read at night before you go to bed. It's a dumb thing to do when you're near the Pres. Let's say you said the same thing, only this time you were within eyesight of the Pres. You would probably be led off by a Secret Service agent, and then there'd be the whole lengthy interrogation process, etc.

Now think of what turning your back on the President says to the Secret Service: "I hate the President....." Now pretend that it's your sworn oath to the President of the United States of America to protect him from bodily harm, and you see a sea of dumb, stupid college students turn their back on the President. What would you do? This isn't about free speech. This isn't about the First Amendment. This has nothing to do with the right to peacefully protest. It's about the physical protection of the President. Say what you want when you're at your rallies. You fuck with the Pres in person, you get what you deserved.

Which brings me to my second point about this nonsense. Why would anyone go to college for four years and spend $80,000 just to end it all with a foolish display? Is that what they studied for all those years? Is that what they paid all of that money for? To turn their backs on their commencement speaker? Did they stand at the doors of that institution of higher learning four years ago and say to themselves, "When this is all said and done, I'm going to turn my back on the President!" Is this the kind of intellect our Universities are supplying? Commencement is about closure. It's about celebrating your personal education accomplishment. Commencement is not a political activist forum. There's a time and a place for political dissidance. This was not either of them. I don't feel very sorry for any of them, honestly. They elected to ruin their graduation ceremony, and they got exactly what they bargained for. Why should I feel any sympathy for them?

I hope that everyone can take off their various political mantles for a moment, and see this for what it is: the unconstitutional silencing of dissidents.

Hang on just one quick second here. This wasn't an unconstitutional silencing of dissidents. This was the Secret Service protecting their guy. Quick quiz. At what point does peaceful protest become dangerous to the President? Where do you want the line drawn? If they shouldn't be arrested for turning their backs on the Pres, should they be arrested for raising their middle finger? For carrying signs that say "Bush sucks!"? How about when they start lighting bonfires? When they form a blockade on the Presidential motorcade? Maybe when someone starts waving fake guns? Sure, those are rediculous, but if no one's going to bother to stop the protesters at any given level, who's to say how far it would go? The point is, you draw the line at the first sign of dissidence because as a Secret Service officer, it's your job to make sure it doesn't ever escalate any higher. Let the kids say and do what they want when the Pres isn't around in person. I'm sure no one would arrest them.

McCarthy would be so proud.

The hell?

Oh well. Enough about politics. I promise to be funnier and pithier tomorrow.

Argh I Was on a Roll

It seemed like I was going to be able to post daily, but then life jumped in the way and demanded it be entertained. So I attempted to entertain it with video games, and it was not satisfied. Then I tried even more videogames, and even that didn't do the trick.

So last night I tried the video game thing one more time, and almost had the trifecta of dissappointment.

First, my work computer died on me, which is the normally the stable one, seeing as an IT department built it, and not my cursed feeble hands. I shut it off the night before a bit forcibly. That is to say, I thought it was hung up in a shutdown operation, so I just manually adjusted the power via the button on the front. Well, long story short, I evidently corrupted one of those "saving your settings" files that it writes to while it's shutting down. Now it won't boot. Ugh.

Then, I installed the WWIIOnline 1.64 patch on my home computer, which is the hotrod of the family. Scratch built by yours truly, it runs like a freaking rocket, and then crashes like one. The crashing probably has a hella lot more to do with the fact that I'm running WinXP Pro edition on it, which is quite possibly the most unstable and buggy piece of OS since Win95. Even with 9M worth of patches downloades straight from Willie's Corp, WWIIOnline still crashed on me. Once was a crash bug (which never happens on the Win2000 work machine), and the other one was when freaking sticky keys came on and bumped me out of the game when I accidentally hit Right Shift five times in a row. Why in god's name is there a god damned shortcut for stickey keys that activates it when I've already gone into the control panel and manually selected it to not be on?!?!

So, enough of the WWIIOnline frustration. My buddy Little John informed me of some new cheat codes you can find at GameFaqs for Jedi Knight 2. Basically, this cheat opens up a developer code that Ravensoft buried in the game. Evidently, they originally intended you to be able to chop people in half, or quarters, or limbless, or headless, or whatever suits you. It would seem that LucasArts thought that was a bit too much, even though it happens in the freaking movies, so they had RavenSoft tone it down.

But the code. Good god the code. I was just wading through hoards of Stormtroopers. Limbs flying. Heads rolling. Bodies everywhere. I'd even take the time to do further pruning on the Stormtroopers who only had their hands lopped off. How unbecoming! Here, let me help you with that unecessary appendage baggage while you writhe in pain. Lop. Off goes your arm. Vrrrmmm. Off goes the other arm. Whoops! That was your head! "It's only a flesh wound!" I was giddy like a kid in a candy store. I think the only way they could have possibly improved on the fun-factor was if they allowed you to pick up body parts using Force Pull/Push and throw them at other bad guys.

Best move ever: throwing the lightsaber and removing heads.

Oh, and Jack? You can make your lightsaber PURPLE. My personal preference is Orange, but hey, not everyone can be perfect ;)

Significant Animal Companion Peeves

I forgot to bring my yogurt to work today. Again. I swear, I'd leave my head at home most mornings if it wasn't firmly attached to my shoulders. My neighbors must have the hugest laughs to see me turn around at the end of the block and come back, pull up in the driveway, get out, go in the house, get back in the car, drive off, return a few minutes later just to check and see if I remembered to close the damn garage door or not.

I'm always forgetting stuff. Today it happened to be yogurt. I must have yogurt in the morning at work because I can't eat breakfast before leaving the house (for reasons I won't discuss with you folks) and if I eat what's in the vending machines at work, it's either some 85g of fat doughnut that's been dipped in wax, or a slightly less fattening 75g muffin. The muffins are evil because you think they're healthy, what, with their names like "homemade blueberry" or "raspberry crunch." Anything that has fruit in it must be healthy, right? It's like eating Crisco with berries in it. Very heart smart.

So, the yogurt. I stop at the Jewel down the street from the office, and run in to pick up some yogurts. I'm actually ahead of schedule today, which is rare, seeing as an hour's drive finds any way possible to throw wrenches into your schedule. So I'm excited that I'm going to get into work a couple of minutes early, even with the yogurt errand.

I run up to the first counter, fifteen items or less, and the guy's obviously having one of those price-check debacles that requires a manager who's just over that "privacy" wall two feet away but isn't paying attention to the clerk who's calling his name over the effing intercom, rather than just walking two feet and knocking on the damn door.

So I run over to register two. Still fifteen items or less. Sweet. She's got somewhere close to fifteen items, but things are moving along swimmingly. The clerk's scanning those items just as fast as her little hands can grab them. And then...the customer does the unthinkable:

"Oh, and a pack of Marlboro Lights."

The clerk turns to the bagboy, and repeats the item as a command, "Marlboro Lights."

Then it hits me. The bagboy's one of the special people. Now, I love special people. Honest to god. Those people bring tears of joy to my eyes when I see them being contributing members of society, and they're happy to do it. But when the trip from one side of the store to the other and back just to pick up a pack of smokes takes ten god damned minutes, it's time to re-think your errand strategy as a clerk or better still, as a store manager.

The girl behind the register could have sent him off to go pick up the smokes, knowing damn well it was going to take forever, and while he was away on his errand, finished checking the woman out who wanted the cigarettes. Then the clerk could have continued checking out people's groceries until such a time when the bagboy returned with the smokes, placed said smokes in woman's bag, and sent her on her merry smoking way.

But no. We all sat there. The clerk sat there, and watched this guy shuffle all the way across the store. And back. It was cruel and inhumane punishment. For everyone. We had to sit there and watch the guy, and he knew all eyes were on him on his return trip. I don't even feel bad for being upset, because I'm not upset at the bagboy. He was going as fast as his legs would take him. I'm pissed at the clerk or the manager for sending that guy on the errand. He should be bagging groceries. It's what he's good at. It's what they hired him to do. I'm sure when they hired him, they didn't say "hey, we need a really slow walker for the runs to the cigarette case." I'm on his side. I'm embarrassed for him.

Picking Cotton Out of My Teeth

Not a whole lot going on today, other than the torrential downpouring of rain I saw at work and on the way home. You know you live far from work (over an hour's drive) when you get hit with two major tsunami's on the way, you get home and your driveway is still dry. And then you get nailed with another bucket of rain.

At least this rain should put an end to the damn cottonwood trees or dogwood or ragweed or whatever the hell the name is for the tree that spits cotton into the air. It's been snowing this shit for a week now. And I mean snowing. It even piles up on the edges of stuff. Grass. Parking lots. Wherever. You'll be walking along, and it will just start snowing this crap. You don't even need to see the tree, because evidently they're invisible, or they live 20,000 feet in the air on some floating Laputa island, or exist just on the other side of a very windy interdimensional gate or something. I have yet to actually witness a tree shedding these cotton seeds. You'll just be walking to lunch, minding your own business, talking to your friends, and whammo. Mouth full of cotton.

::ptui::

After sitting here staring at the flashing prompt for fifteen minutes, I realzied that I need to start taking notes at work. I'm constantly thinking to myself "oh, hey, now would be a good time to write about that really cool connection you made between those two other things," or other less vague topics. And I have to tell myself, "no, we're at work now, which is for working. We'll blog when we get home." And then we forget what it was we were going to say. Which is unfortunate, because this whole "we" thing implies that there's more than one person upstairs in my attic, and neither one of them seems to be able to keep track of things very well.

Maybe I should hire an assistant for them or something.

Much pain and suffering, I sense

No, I'm not talking about Ep II, which I liked, incidentally. I hit that trail I was talking about earlier today on the mountain bike with my buddy Phil. It handed me my ass. I didn't bail or anything, but the technical stuff (log hopping, stump hopping, and uh...fallen tree hopping) really killed me. I haven't had that much exercise in quite awhile, and I actually had to stop in front of a huge logpile that I wanted to jump/hop over and just rest lest I keel over and vomit from exhaustion. My problem is that I don't eat breakfast when I'm in a hurry, and I was dehydrating because I wasn't drinking enough water, since I didn't have a camelback (a backpack thing with a waterbottle in it that has a hose running to your mouth) or my bottle cages hooked up on my bike yet.

I tried to stop and get bottle cages before I went riding, but I needed to be at the trail by 10:30, and at 10:10 I was at the bike shop, pulling on the door (which is always so sticky/stuck that it feels like it's locked). This time, it was way stuck. So stuck, that I couldn't open it. I checked the sign, and sure enough, all week long they open at 10am. But on Sunday, you know, that day that everyone who owns bikes and likes riding them is out riding them...they open at 11am. Jerkholes. I could have saved me some near-pukage if they had opened at a decent hour.

But it was a lot of fun to get out riding again, and I really enjoy the technical parts of the ride. I'm looking forward to doing it again next weekend, but the really awesome/rugged parts of the trail I can't take poor Liz on, because she'll wind up catching her handlebars on a tree. Or doing a header over the handlebars as she plants her front wheel in a log. Or bail over because she hit a treeroot at the wrong angle. Which is unfortunate, because I like riding that trail a lot, but the whole point we bought bikes is so that we can ride them together.

It's kinda scary there. There was this one section of trail nicknamed "Endor" because if you're really good (which I'm not) you can take it really really fast and it's all windy and narrow. Like about a foot wide narrow. At some points, you're just barely avoiding trees on either side of your handlebars by inches. Needless to say, I took it sloooooowwwwly. Well, not that slowly. I took it just fast enough for it to be exhilarating and terrifying, and Phil took it fast enough that when I finally exited the trail after him, he was just sitting there waiting for me.

Much to learn, I have.

Actually, much to train, I have. I suppose this was karmic revenge for me wearing Liz out on the bikes two weeks ago. We went out riding on a local paved park trail (that runs for miles behind people's nice houses and along lakes and prairies and pretty things. I was riding at a comfortable pace, and just assumed that would be comfortable for everyone involved (Liz and myself). Well, even though I felt like I was riding slowly, it turns out I was riding at Liz's top speed. She was mad and exhausted, I felt bad, and now I know what her stamina level is at. The same thing happend to me this weekend. Phil was riding way slow for his speed (he's practically a Pro bike rider, if there is such a thing), and I was at the edge of my envelope for bike handling on offroad surfaces, and at the edge of my envelope for stamina. Hence, the near puking.

Ugh. Karma is a beyotch.

I wanted to write some about this whole Kuwait thing that's reared its ugly head in the news, but I don't want to be labelled a warblogger, and I really don't need to get all wound up over stupid people saying stupid things regarding politics. All I have to say is: Kuwait, if you don't like our foreign policy, then maybe we'll just take our ball and go home, and you can handle Sadam on your own. Sound good to you guys?

Huh. Didn't think so.

I'm so embarrassed

Someone famous (in both the Blogger and real world) links to me from their site on a day when my front page is entirely broken. My buddy Jack calls me about an hour ago in a good-friendly-healthy-jealous rage to inform me that I was linked by Wil Wheaton in his Blog regarding the South Park thingie below.

So my completely demolished front page was viewed by roughly 300 people. Wonderful. ;)

Hopefully the rest of you folks will see it correctly now. You know, if you want to go see some fairly cool artwork and stuff.

I have to give out one more "shout out" for Jack being my beta-tester so that I could tell if my front-page was fixed right or not. Thanks again, bud!

Sweet Christ I'm Retarded

In one fell swoop last night, I managed to break, entirely, my front index page to my website.

Here, go check out the carnage.

In using an old file on my home machine, I managed to have it link to files on my computer, not on my website. Viewing the page from home worked, because my machine simply looked for those images resident on my machine. Good GOD I'm dumb. At least all of the links still work.

I'll fix it tonight. Sorry for the retardedness.

Right now you're reading my mind

Jebus H. Christu on a stick, I hate doing HTML. I just fought with my own idiocy for the better part of an hour trying to add the "Blog" icon to my index page to route people who go there to here. You'd think any normal Joe could have gotten it done in no time flat. But me? No. I have to do things the hard way. Learn tables? That's for smart folks! I like to line up tons and tons of tiny pikchurs to keep mah formattin'!

I'm installing Dreamweaver this weekend. This is nuts.

I was in a panic for at least a half an hour, because my stupid lousy wee hitcounter got bombed when I mistakenly saved over my index.html page with the wrong page. Me = Stupid. In Geek terms, I'm Stupid++. I think I need Visual Sourcesafe on my home computer so I stop saving over important files like a complete MORON. Fortunately, Earthlink saved my massive 632 hits on the server, so all is well. I also got all excited because they now offer free Urchin service for all of us dial-up 10M free hosting folks. I really want to upgrade now so I can see where my hits are coming from, or if there's any referrals at all. Well, actually, about 300 referrals came from that nice guy's site that I've forgotten about now (if you're reading this, Curtis, I can find you again, and I will this weekend hopefully), when he linked to me and his 300+hits/day readership came and withered my Azaleas as they stampeeded all over my site in one day. It was quite the day for the hit counter. I don't think it's recovered yet. And I guess it wasn't good enough for them to come back for a peek. Oh well. No biggy. It's my own fault for not updating more.

But to update more, I'd need to be drawing more, which I haven't been. I haven't been doing much of anything lately, other than vegging out, which is nice. I kinda like getting away from the TV, or the computer, or games, or editing, or even drawing every once in awhile. Helps me to recalibrate and figure out just which direciton my life is going in. I would like to get back on the bike a bit more, since I haven't been riding since last weekend, and I didn't even get to ride for a long time. I think I'm going to go try a trail out in Naperville. Since there aren't any, you know, Mountains here in Illinois to go riding the ol' Mountain Bikes on.

Hot Links

Since I don't have a fat lot to say right now, I figured I'd supply everyone who's currently not reading this with some fun linkages.

Make your own South Park Character

Here's my self portrait:

And my favorite piece of the day is this one: How to Drive. It's nice to know that even Russians drive like ass-holes sometimes, and not just the people you see in your particular neck of the woods.

A more interesting opening sentance was ever written.

Look, this is really just a test, because I'm tired of posting my rants and long drawn out examinations of daily life on the amv.org site, so I've decided to start trying the Blog thang.

It will be more interesting later. And longer. With more wind and vigor. I promise. Just not right this segundo.

[Edit]I just fought long and hard with the Blogger web interface, and finally figured out just what the hell it was trying to ask me. Hopefully this is posted correctly now...