Phish sucks ass. Got a problem with that? Tough. Nothing you say will change that undeniable fact.

Date posted: June 14, 2003 | Filed under music | Leave a Comment »

I downloaded a PHP script to run on my Powerbook here which promised to convert my iTunes XML database into an html file. After some sleuthing (and finding out that the 10.2.4 update disabled PHP in Apache) and fixing, I got PHP running on this machine again and tried the script. I guess it’s too much for the parser to handle, because I get timeouts with every attempt to run it. Oh, well.

We also hopefully have a few appointments to see some houses tomorrow; our realtor is getting the legwork taken care of to show us some places west of the city. The market is tough right now, as there’s not a lot of stock out there to buy. Meanwhile I am praying to god that my credit is good and that someone will give me money to buy a house, so that if by some miracle we find the perfect house, we can offer money for it immediately.

Date posted: June 13, 2003 | Filed under geek, music | Leave a Comment »

So I’m doing about seventeen things at once this month, including learning (again) about selling and buying houses, learning more 3Dsmax, putting fence up in the backyard of my house, freelancing, and living life. As if that isn’t enough, I’ve been considering a redesign of my site using CSS and XML. To that end, I’m looking for the best book to use as a guide on this quest (My site is as simple as I can make it, but I’m a holdover from the days of hand-coding with nested tables and invisible pixels.) My two finalists are

Designing with Web Standards, by Jeffrey Zeldman, and

Eric Meyer on CSS: Mastering the Language of Web Design, by Eric Meyer.

From what I’ve read, the Meyer book is better at acually getting you through the guts of the project, while the Zeldman book makes a strong argument to take to your clients before it’s started. I think in my case I’d rather pick up the Meyer book and try the thing out myself, but I’m soliciting opinions: Who has both books, what did you think about them, and what are your opinions? (additionally, did you use them to create a CSS-based site?) I’d like to hear about your experience.

I spent a good portion of my time last night in the basement, where it was cool and dry, waiting for the thunderstorm to blow through town and cool things off. I have a call through to my HVAC guy to come replace the compressor in the backyard (finally) now that I have some cash. Did I mention how much Baltimore sucks without A/C? Bored, I spent some more time learning about my camera, especially the aperture and shutter settings, as well as the time-delay feature (gotta try that out on a sunset in the backyard.)

Somebody is selling the URL www.marthastewartinjail.com on eBay, starting at $500. That’s funny.

Date posted: June 12, 2003 | Filed under art/design, geek, house | Leave a Comment »

I found this informative link on OSX fonts via dominey this afternoon. Actually, I like this whole site—I’m putting it on my links page for daily reading.

I’ve given iBlog a shot this afternoon, attempting to see if it works well at publishing to a mounted volume (i.e., my webserver.) It does, but it writes ugly filenames and does a few things halfway well. I’m underimpressed.

Date posted: June 10, 2003 | Filed under art/design, CMS, geek | Leave a Comment »

flowers at wilderness lodge, orlando, 6.7.03

flowers at wilderness lodge, orlando, 6.7.03

I should know by now that I’m not 18 any more. I can’t go for extended periods of time without food or coffee like I used to do in High School. (I also can’t consume an entire 36-oz coffee anymore without going into caffeine-related seizure either.) Today I figured I could jam until I got into BWI and then load up on some food, but I timed the whole thing wrong and screwed up my system good. This after two days of very odd eating schedules, thirty pounds of sugar, and a midnight Coors Light. I got into the office, after waiting a half-hour for the braniacs in front of me at the lunch counter explain exactly how they wanted their bagel made (“I’d like a plain bagel, and could you toast it lightly, and then spread some cream cheese over the top of it and throw it in a bag?” Like the people working there didn’t realize that bagel is the second word in the title of the restauraunt. Arrggh) I sat down at my desk alternately feeling like I needed to puke, go to the bathroom, pound spikes in my head, and fall asleep. Sorry, Steve, I had to pack it in early.

The weekend was long and tiring, but lots of fun. The Lockard Reunion was a rousing success, and we left Disney the way we found it. Jen’s aunt Jane brought a bin full of old family pictures as well as a current geneaology, and the documents were the source of a lot of conversation and memories. One of the cool things we learned was that at one time her father’s family owned a good portion of the businesses in their hometown. Some of the pictures showed huge advertising signs with the family name that she’d die to have now.

Ty and Lorie are doing very well, and Bonny was just as cute as a button. They have a beautiful house set back by a lake and old trees (a rarity in most of Orando, I’m told.) I think I took more pictures of their baby than of the Lockards, because she was just so photogenic. And to keep the streak alive, Ty showed us Heavy Metal Parking Lot (our last visit in Houston, we screened The Dancing Outlaw) which I’ve heard of but never had the privilege of seeing. And it was as funny as I thought it would be—it brought me right back to high school, and I could laugh at these people without getting the crap kicked out of me (the folks in this video made up about 70% of my high school population, no lie.)

Jen and I spent our Saturday afternoon at MGM Studios, which was not the showcase of gay pride we were expecting, but still fun. We got our pictures taken with Buzz, Woody, and Jesse the Cowgirl from Toy Story; we rode the Aerosmith roller coaster (good ride) and the Tower of Terror (merely alright). We got rained on twice, and ate plenty of fried American foods. In the evening we met up with the fambly at the Wilderness Lodge, then boarded a bus for Epcot, where they had arranged an ice cream social for us after the fireworks at the lake. The family mingled and told stories until 11, when they took us back home. Sunday was spent in one of the side lounges at the lodge, where we looked through pictures and had barbecue.

Date posted: June 9, 2003 | Filed under family, Trip Logs | Leave a Comment »

Salon has an interesting writeup on the SCO-Linux-IBM legal wrangling (ad-sponsored); from my relatively uninformed position, it sounds like a version of those “get legal” software-piracy scams, on a larger scale, or the old Unisys .GIF debate. I remember this not so fondly, as I was in the middle of developing a site when the client requested we switch out all the .GIF files with .JPG’s after watching a report on CNN. That was loads of fun. And the site looked like shite.

Album of the Day: The magnificent Learning to Crawl, by The Pretenders. Time The Avenger has been on repeat all afternoon. Also: The New Pornographers. Rockin’ good stuff.

3:55 pm. Oh, god, I’m crashing. I was up at 6 to pick up Jen to take to the airport, and I had a cup of coffee at the house and then (stupidly) another from Starbuck’s. Plus a cheese danish. Now I’m sliding off the edge of the desk into unconsciousness. Something only…MORE SUGAR will be able to stop! Time for a Three Musketeers bar. Which was made, by the way, across the highway (NJ 517) from my old house in Hackettstown, NJ.

Date posted: June 6, 2003 | Filed under history, music | Leave a Comment »

I’m currently about 30,000 feet above Georgia on my way to Orlando for the Great Gathering of Lockards, where Jen’s father’s people are reuniting together for the first time in years. I volunteered as the Dutiful Boyfriend to accompany her for moral support (and to prevent her from killing any of her family while she’s there.) The occasion is made all the more interesting by the fact that this is indeed Gay Day at Disneyland, so the arch-conservative Waltons from backwoods Pennsylvania will be surrounded by thousands of happily queer folk. I am bringing camera with fully-charged batteries to document the looks of disgust, incredulity, and finally, resigned acceptance from her father, Captain, USN (Retired.) Oh, kids, this is gonna be great.

I’m also coming up with righteous reasons why I shouldn’t have to wear the Lockard T-Shirt, only rumors of which I have heard. (I have mental images of an ultraviolet XXL shirt with a muddy photo surrounded by some huge bubble lettering.) The occasion is also made great by the fact that we are not staying with The Mouse, but with Jen’s good friends Ty and Lorie, who recently added little Bonnie Rose to the world.

Interesting phenomena: I did a Google search this week on french striped grunts and the sixth or seventh hit was from my own site. Sweet!

Observations on flying three times in the past two months:

  • USAir gives you pretzels. I hate pretzels. Southwest gives you Air Crisps and peanuts.
  • USAir’s seats are more cramped. But their planes are cleaner. (and not as ugly as Southwest’s.)
  • The cattle-call method of seating sucks, unless you’re on a 2/3 full flight.
  • You can’t have baggage with all kinds of straps hanging off it or they make you sign a waiver that makes it OK to lose the bag.
  • I’ve gotten better at the preflight security check. I can have the laptop out of the bag and in the tray in five seconds flat.
  • iTunes is a lifesaver. If I didn’t already have enough reason to buy an iPod, I have a good one now.
  • Next flight: more DVD’s.
  • Southwest’s customer service rocks. The phone did not ring once when I called to switch flights; when I was immediately connected, I started to stammer like I got caught passing notes in Chemistry class and the CSR had to wait for me to remember why I called.
  • USAir’s ticketless baggage system is awesome. I’m hooked.

Media check.

The May issue of Scientific American has a very fascinating article on “scale-free” networks. Researchers have done numerous studies on the Internet and found just how similar it works to things like single-celled microorganisms and viruses. Great writing in this article, by the way. Lots of good information.
(Disclaimer: it was sitting on the toilet in the men’s room at work as bathroom reading. I don’t currently subscribe.)

Date posted: June 6, 2003 | Filed under family, humor, list, Trip Logs | Leave a Comment »

U.S. 666 in New Mexico has been renamed U.S. 491 after government officials from three different states agreed to change it.

Hey, to brighten your day, here’s a wonderfully upbeat article about middle-class professionals having a tough time making ends meet, and postponing/avoiding things like weddings. Sound like anybody you know? (warning: Salon makes you sit through a commercial to view the whole story).

Another depressing fact, but something to be happy for: Sourbob has decided to stop writing under his nom de guerre. He wrote a column marking the end of his journal, but promised to continue writing in some other format. Which is a good thing, because in his short stay online, he gathered a devoted following of readers (myself included) who identified with what he said.

I started straightening up the house in an effort to get it ready to show to potential buyers. Stupid stuff like closets and rooms full of clutter need to be straightened up or cleaned out. This means a close working relationship with Rubbermaid products—the bins you put under your bed and in your basement. Basically you shove everything that isn’t bolted to something else into a box or a bin and hide it away so that your house looks like a photo spread from House Beautiful. (Or, as close as you can make it to one.)

Date posted: June 4, 2003 | Filed under humor | Leave a Comment »

comet, 6.2.03

comet, 6.2.03

Huh. I had a boss who bragged that he had done this a few years before September 11. I thought it was an asshole move then and it’s an even bigger asshole move now.

I called my realtor yesterday to begin the process of selling and buying a house. Talking to her was great (She’s the friend of an old friend, and did a fantastic job for me last time) and I’m excited to see what she can do for us now. Hanging up the phone, however, I began to realize just how much work there is left to do to sell my house. I bought an Idiot’s book on buying and selling houses, and I have to read that (I don’t have time to wade through mountains of books on this—just give me the important stuff) as well as get with my bank (not the original bank, but the bank that merged with the bank that bought the bank that bought the loan from my bank, which reminds me, I should be getting another new masthead on my mortgage statements soon) to set up a bridge loan and pre-approval. Big fun!

I realized that I’ve got a backlog of photos featured on the home page stored away, so I set up a quick & dirty page with all of them accompanied by a brief description. You can find it here, if you’re interested.

Date posted: June 3, 2003 | Filed under house, photo, photography | Leave a Comment »

Don’t walk past my desk, stick your head over the divider, and ask me, “Guess how much (guy who left this company to go work in California for lots of money) got for a bonus?” and then immediately tell me, especially when the figure is so ridiculously high. That’s guaranteed to piss me off. And if you weren’t twice my size, I’d probably kick you in the ass for doing that.

So my buddy Nate bought hisself a pretty little Graphite iBook on eBay to watch anime on (it has a DVD player), and he needed some help getting it set up to see our network. He’s used Macs before but hasn’t been in the loop since before OSX. His wife just bought a 17″ iMac from Apple and made me really jealous (as well as an iPod, making me really jealous). He was looking around to see how to fix the one problem with the unit—a vertical line of red pixels in the middle of the screen. I stumbled across this site featuring replacement LCDs, and the old MacOpinion RoadWarrior archive.

Date posted: June 2, 2003 | Filed under apple | Leave a Comment »