Have some stories, you jerks
I was supposed to go clubbing with one of my boys I haven't seen in like about a year. It didn't happen, though. *sigh* I could use a night of inebriation. Oh well. Maybe later.

* Teachers beware: not letting your students cheat on an exam may cause you to be attacked by students armed with hockey sticks, revolvers, and explosive bombs. I guess some people drank the wrong cup of goat's milk in the morning... Get it? It's a play on the "got up from the wrong side of the bed" phrase, but it's India, and they must drink goat's milk... but they do have beds, so I'm not saying they don't have beds... I think... It's official! I'm a rambling idiot.

* My night with an HTML-coding stripper. It's a great short story by this guy named Matt and... well, he goes to a strip club and... uh... find out for yourself. It's funny.

* Looks like if you went to buy a copy of the movie Pearl Harbor in Malaysia, you got a little more than you bargained for.

* Time for me to have flashbacks of Minds and Machines discussions. Some science guy says that consciousness can persist even though the mind is dead. That's freaky. I guess this means the "Is there a soul?" debate will be ressurected once again. Web design prices are out of control.
Me and my homeboy Ghal / Merik / WrestGalen / my peep from AC were talking about how he wants to make a corporate website for one of his acquaintances' personal business. He asked me how much he should charge his "friend." Since rates for web site creation ranges greatly, and since so many variables are involved, we searched the net to get an idea of pricing.

What a scam web creation is. We found some interesting pricing. Here are a pair of them:

7 page web site, 7 internal hyperlinks, 7 external hyperlinks,12 graphics (scanned or stock), custom background or border, 4 stock animations, CGI statistical data (from host), Meta tags - $1100

Additional Form: $50.00
Additional Page: $50.00
Additional Header/Logo Graphic to match existing set: $25.00
MS Outlook stationery: $25.00
MS IE Favorites Icon: $15.00
Custom Button Set (11): $10.00
Additional Buttons to match existing set (5): $5.00
Scanning of items: $2.00

What the hell? As I look through a bunch of sites that claim to have "ultra web site experience," not only can I not help laughing at their prices, their own web sites have broken links, large text, default link colors, and meaningless animations. That's just what I want to convey to a potential customer: a site that looks like it was made using Geocities Page Builder or whatever the hell it's called.

me: heh, if making other people's sites was a full time job...
i would so be there
Merik: lol
me: and i look at these sites that offer web site creation services.
most of them look like ass. :p
me: heh, to each his own, I guess
Merik: I know heh? And they probably all say "I just work on my customers, I don't have time for my own site"
me: or perhaps their site is out of date. no one in their right mind would shell out $1100 for a 7-page site with some links and pictures.
maybe 5 years ago, sure...

And watermelon kicks ass. Bonus points if it's seedless, too. Yum! Like wildfire
Eonium is the source of spaceship fuel in Planetarion:

Jake: i am down to 3 eonium roids
me: i've been going through eonium like wildfire now
me: well, you can't really go through wildfire
me: but you get a general idea
Jake: what idea is that?
Jake: any specific idea?
me: well, you see
Jake: or just a general idea
me: no, it's general
Jake: ahh
Jake: like
[there's a pause]
me: yup.
Jake: ahh
me: hehehe
Jake: me and a friend are making and selling jewish bacon
me: is it like canadian bacon?
Jake: no
Jake: it all comes from this pig
me: mmmmm
me: pig
[...]
Jake: [click here]
me: hehe
Jake: heehee
Jake: and here is the text that goes along with the product:
<hr> To: Jews.
From: Rabbinical Council
CC: Other People

Hey, listen. Everyone makes mistakes. We fucked up. Turns out this shit is kosher after all. Sorry.
Jake: fucking <hr>
me: there's just a random "fucking" at the end?
Jake: =P
me: or is that where the first <hr> is?
Jake: no, i was upset at hr for not working
me: hehehe
me: it would have been cooler if it was just there for no reason
Jake: hehe.
Jake: <!-- fucking hr>
Jake: or whatever
me: nah
me: just the word "fucking" at the end
me: totally out of context
me: or something
me: i'll shut up now

MediaOne to be in a house near me!
The house is so close to me, in fact, that my bedroom has been engulfed in it, so it is essentially "my" house. Woo!

My mother called or was called by MediaOne tonight and I guess they had some sort of offer she could refuse. The folks of MediaOne are gonna come to the house, install everything, and give us 2 months of usage for free. Tight. Afterwards, it's $45 a month (I hope this included our basic cable). I have a feeling my mother will go back to the shoddy phone modem once she realizes that $45 a month for something she may use about 3 hours a day probably won't be worth it. Of course, while I'm home, I'm essentially not logging off. Heh. And in theory, I guess I won't have to. Chances are, MediaOne will supply a network card for my mom's computer. If that's the case, then I can toss all of my crap onto her hard drive, format my Dell, and hope that Win2k will stop being such a dirty bitch to me. But I guess we'll have to wait and see. It will be a couple weeks until broadband actually gets installed into the house.

But either way, wh00p wh00p! Microsoft won't be broken up.
What the hell? Search report for Against the Grain

We are pleased to present this report about your Atomz Search
account and tips for customizing Atomz Search.
[...]
YOUR SEARCH STATISTICS

Your Top Searches:

There were 10 searches for the week ending 6/23/2001 for
Against the Grain at http://www.rpi.edu/~grondj/.

Here are the top phrases searched:

- 2 for "alaph centari"
- 2 for "free and incest and stories"

Whoa! Stop right there! What the hell? Which one of you sick bastards thought you'd find what you wanted by searching for "free incest stories?" That's so uncool. I may live in New Hampshire, but you still won't find anything regarding "the fun game the whole family can play." If that's your thing, uh, try one of the more popular search engines, not mine! God damn... On the next... Sally

Eminem: Love Him Or Hate Him? In a Sally talk show exclusive interview, Debbie Mathers, the mother of controversial rapper Marshall Mathers (AKA EMINEM), discusses what went wrong with their once solid relationship. She also explains why she slapped her son with a $10 million dollar defamation suit. EMINEM's 15-year-old half-brother, Nathan, is also here, reaching out to his estranged brother in hopes of reconnecting. Sally explores why so many people and organizations are angry with the rapper. His critics say his music, that is targeted to young people, invokes violence and discriminates against women and gays. It's a heated and highly-charged hour you won't want to miss! (R)

Rating: TV14

Upcoming Sally Shows
6/28/01: "Scams, Cons & Revenge!"
6/29/01: "Hairstylists To The Stars!"
7/02/01: "I Married A Criminal!"
7/03/01: "Stop Pressuring Me To Get Married!"

Yeah. I was minding my own business, flipping through the channels to find something that didn't suck (I did not succeed), and I heard a bunch of angry women yelling at Sally that Eminem is anti-this and anti-that, and that he's an asshole and he is hated by everyone. Then, like... those angry women's teenage sons would say stuff like "He's just trying to start controversy" and "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me" (I'm serious. That quote was said a couple times.). Sally didn't have to say anything. Chaos just ran its course. Then I blew a ventricle in my brain because of the sheer idiocy of it all. Eminem is so last year! ;p Hell, I forgot the guy existed for the last few months until I came across this show.

Daytime talk shows are even worse than soap operas. And soap operas are... well, pretty damn heinous. What a waste of valuable airtime. Also, I really want to kick Rikki Lake's ass. I think my sister still watches her show. I'd rather be an unwilling victim of a colonoscopy than watch a week's worth of Rikki's filth. Somewhat nerdy stories
My mother wants a faster computer. She was wondering what she could do to make it "faster," and since the HP site is a hunk of crap and the owner's manual that came with the computer doesn't say anything about upgrading besides how to add memory, I ripped open my mother's computer. It was kinda neat to try and figure out how the hell Hewlett-Packard managed to squeeze so much junk into such a small case. It also turns out that the motherboard is an ASUS P2B-VE. Searching for info on this board turned up nothing. Not even the ASUS website had anything on it! Heh.

After doing a little internet window shopping and trying to find out some of the required specifications of my mother's system, I decided to settle on getting some PC66 SDRAM ($37 with shipping, 128 MB) (her computer can only hold 256 MB of RAM. Hehe!), a network card ($10, this won't make her computer faster, but I want to format my computer and I need a place to store my shit, heh), and since her CPU is a Slot-1 Celeron (which I didn't know they made), I'm gonna pick her up a "slocket" ($16, includes shipping and the network card's shipping fee), and a nifty FCPGA 700Mhz Celeron ($59 with shipping). All in all, that comes out to be $122. Not bad. I don't know how much of an improvement she will get out of this, since I don't really know what she does on the computer. I think her main bottleneck comes from our crumby 56k phone modem connection; I'm under the impression that most of the tasks she does involve the internet in some way. If that is the case, the best bet would be to get a net connection that doesn't suck so hard. But I don't think getting a cable modem or DSL would be worth it at the moment. She doesn't surf the web that often and once I get a real job, I won't be living at home. I hope.

I haven't bought any of this stuff yet. Mother needs to give me her credit card information. Mwahaha...

I think I'm done talking now, and if you've managed to stay awake during my little nerd speak, go ahead and check out some nerdy stories below:

* IBM is going silly with their silicon-germainium chips. Heh, let make sure Moore's Law remain intact, I guess.
* I get first dibs on a house on Europa, assuming we are able to populate the moon before I die. It looks like this moon and the other Galileans around Jupiter have lots of life-supporting potential. Too bad Jupiter is really far away.
* It looks like the Loch Ness monster could actually be a series of tectonic shifts. There's a fault line right through the center of the lake. How long have people known there was a fault line there? If I knew that, I would have probably drawn a similar conclusion. Kudos to Jon for the story.
* You better return your books to the public library. Otherwise, four or more cops will come and hunt you down. One wouldn't want to go to jail for not returning a book like... hmmm... The Viagra Alternative: The Complete Guide to Overcoming Erectile Dysfunction Naturally, for instance. Heh. This story was stolen from ShackNews.

Also, someone emailed me today saying that my site is informative and he was wondering how to overclock a Dell. That means he must have sifted through the archives and found the relevant information. Or maybe the search box thing works? Chances are he found the site be accident using Google or something. Heh. As witnessed in a Wendy's Drive-Thru
Need I say more?

Anarchy Online: first contestant of the next-generation ORPG's
Anarchy Online should be on store shelves tomorrow. I have mentioned in the past that I'm probably going to bypass this game in favor of the oh-so-wonderful game of Shadowbane. AO is supposed to be "revolutionary" according to a lot of critics, but I don't see how this game differs from the "Big Three" (Ultima Online, Everquest, and Asheron's Call). This is a list of things I found on the official site that they are considering the game's features and strong points:

Anarchy Online has an ongoing story that will last for approximately four years. Funcom will employ a live team that follows the conflict on a weekly basis, and makes sure the game is always exciting to play and in constant progression.

Not bad. Kinda standard nowadays, though. UO and AC both have storylines. AC's story arcs are about one year long. A four-year arc seems like the story would be dragging ass. When I was playing AC during the shadow invasion story line, I was getting perturbed that the story was not advancing fast enough! With a four-year arc, I'd most definitely get pissed off, especially since I don't play any game for that many years.

The game's strongest features, and what makes it so unique compared to other online games on the market:

* Rubi-Ka is a science fiction world.

This is novel. The Big Three and several of the second-generation titles are in the fantasy/medieval genre.

* We have a strong, original storyline that will tie the actions and choices of the characters into the game world.

Consider it a MMORPG standard. Nothing revolutionary here.

* Anarchy Online will have game mechanics that makes it interesting to work together in groups.

I'm starting to have flashbacks of Everquest horror stories, a game where you have to group with three different classes in order to make it anywhere in the game. Solo play is not encouraged.

* There are several types of quests or missions in the game, pre- defined, auto- generated, player- generated and GM- generated. All this adds up to a very flexible and interesting quest- system.

Now this is neat. Do you want to gain levels in privacy or with just your friends? Randomly generate a dungeon, choose which creatures to populate the dungeon with, and choose who can enter the dungeon and who can't. This spares you of having to deal with the assholes and grief players that can make your quest to gain levels a nightmare.

* The graphical world looks beautiful, both due to the technology and the hard work of our graphical artists.

Whatever. The graphics can't be any better than Tribes 2. :)

So, those are the games selling points. Not bad, but I still see the game as "evolutionary" rather than "revolutionary." It may turn out to be a great game. I'm just looking for something more from a game. Like a game that will have an on-going story line, without a player killer / non-player killer "switch," allow me to build towns and armies, and allow me to use diplomacy to deal with other player-controlled nations, using siege equipment to take out their capital if I can't reach an agreement with their guild. Oh wait, I'm describing Shadowbane. Silly me! Thongs + Squash = OK
Remember a while pack when I put up this post about the pro squash player that wanted to be allowed to wear a thong and a sports bra while on the court? Well, Vicky got her wish. And it looks like others are wanting to follow her lead; England's men and women hockey "squads" may try and break their respective molds, too.

In quasi-comparable news, Anna Kournikova didn't make it to Wimbledon. What a shame. Looks like Bourque is done.
NHL enthusiasts saw this coming a mile away. Bourque came, he got his Cup, and now he's calling it quits. Hell, after 22 years in pro hockey, I probably would, too. Except I can't skate. Since I can't skate, I can't play hockey. And even if I could skate and play hockey, I would have never been a pro, anyways. My high school doesn't have a hockey team. Or a football team. Or students that won't drop out within two years. But I digress.

The Colorado Avalanche have some serious salary cap issues to worry about. With the retiring of Borque, it saves the club $5.5 million.

On a pseudo-similar note, I'm still waiting for the Pittsburgh Penguins to trade Jaromir Jagr. The guy is expected to make about $10 million next season. You can sign a number of good players with that kind of money. Like Martin Straka! That guy can fly down the ice. He's up for a new contract, too. And how about Ray Bourque! Oh wait, he retired. Damn, I should stay on top of things more often. I need a font that looks good in italics.
I'm sure there are easier-to-read italcized fonts than Arial, which is this site's default font.
So, tell me some. Man on Way to Brothel Finds Wife Working

BERLIN (Reuters) - A man seeking gratification in the red-light district in the German town of Aachen was surprised to run into his wife, who was secretly working as a prostitute, police said on Monday.

Prostitution is not illegal in Germany but police were required to calm an argument between the couple that broke out after the chance encounter in the small hours of Saturday morning.

Sorry, I don't have the story link. I just stole this exerpt from an ultra-secret location. ilovebacon.com and tips for women
I Love Bacon is kind of an intersting site. People send the webmaster odd pics like this one and he posts them on his site. Go figure. It's kinda neat, and Jon was bored enough to find it, and... yup. That's pretty much sums it up.

And here are some tips for women I found at that site. I copied the list here and corrected the spelling mistakes because, eh, I don't like spelling errors.

1) Nothing says "I love you" like oral sex in the morning.
2) Learn to work the toilet seat: if it's up put it down.
3) Don't cut your hair. Ever.
4) Don't make us guess.
5) If you ask a question you don't want an answer to, expect an answer you don't want to hear.
6) Sometimes, he's not thinking about you. Live with it.
7) He's never thinking about "The Relationship."
8) Get rid of your cat. And no, it's not different; it's just like every other cat.
9) Dogs are better than ANY cats. Period.
10) Sunday equals Sports. It's like the full moon or the changing of the tides. Let it be.
11) Shopping is not everybody's idea of a good time.
12) Anything you wear is fine. Really.
13) You have enough clothes.
14) You have too many shoes.
15) Crying is blackmail. Use it if you must, but don't expect us to like it.
16) Your brother is an idiot, your ex-boyfriend is an idiot and your dad probably is, too.
17) Ask for what you want. Subtle hints don't work.
18) No, he doesn't know what day it is. He never will. Mark anniversaries on a calendar.
19) Share he bathroom.
20) Share the closet.
21) "Yes" and "No" are perfectly acceptable answers.
22) A headache that lasts for 17 months is a problem. See a doctor.
23) Nothing says "I love you" like oral sex in the morning.
24) Foreign films are best left to foreigners.
25) Check your oil.
26) Don't give us 50 rules when 25 will do.
27) Don't fake it. We'd rather be ineffective than deceived.
28) Anything we said 6 or 8 months ago is inadmissible in an argument. All comments become null and void after 7 days.
29) If you don't dress like the Victoria's Secret girls, don't expect us to act like soap opera guys.
30) If something we said could be interpreted two ways, and one of the ways makes you sad and angry, we meant the other one.
31) Let us ogle. If we don't look at other women, how can we know how pretty you are?
32) Don't rub the lamp if you don't want the genie to come out.
33) You can either ask us to do something OR tell us how you want it done - not both.
34) Whenever possible, please say what ever you have to say during commercials.
35) Christopher Columbus didn't need directions, and neither do we.
36) Women wearing wonder-bras and low-cut blouses lose their right to complain about having their boobs stared at.
37) When we're turning the wheel and the car is nosing onto the off-ramp, you saying "This is our exit" isn't necessary.
38) Nothing says "I love you" quite like oral sex in the morning.

Hehe! Army of Me by Björk

Stand up
You've got to manage
I won't sympathize
Anymore.

And if you complain once more
You'll meet an army of me
And if you complain once more
You'll meet an army of me

You're alright
There's nothing wrong
Self-sufficience please!
And get to work.

And if you complain once more
You'll meet an army of me
And if you complain once more
You'll meet an army of me
Army of me

You're on your own now
We won't save you
Your rescue-squad
Is too exhausted

And if you complain once more
You'll meet an army of me
And if you complain once more
You'll meet an army of me
And if you complain once more
You'll meet an army of me
And if you complain once more
You'll meet an army of me
Army of me

This song sounds so cool. I have a thing for songs that sound like no other songs out there. I never knew any of the lyrics, and now that I do, I think the song is... eh... pretty sinister.

Someone needs to hook me up with a compressed version of this song. Preferably in the 3-5 MB range. ;) Physical abuse through stunts is still funny.
Whereas Tom Green seemed to have gotten old really quickly, the people that help make Jackass what it is still crack me up. I really should watch that show a lot more often than I do. "Vexillology" is an interesting word.
All of these links are courtesy of MeFi.

* Ban Minesweeper! I guess some miners are under serious emotional distress, since they believe that Minesweeper is disrespectful toward their work. They even formed a damn protest group focused on removing the game from the next version of Windows. How queer.

* People get killed by sky shelves all the time, usually while their family witnesses the event. Be it by lumber, ceramics, or fabric softner, you should... uh... use caution when removing things from high places. Especially if you're under the age of 3 or over the age of 80.

* What a cute little puppy! Too bad someone (the person that hit the vehicle of the dog's owner) threw the dog into incoming traffic. Ooph. I don't think Progressive or Geico will cover the costs of that.

* Is your state or provincial flag cool? It is if you live in New Mexico, Texas, or Quebec. If your flag has a seal or writing on it, prepare to see your state near the end of the list. "Here's $38 for a small popcorn."
Movies are so short this summer. I was taking a look at movies that are currently out and ones that will be coming out, and almost all of them are 90-100 minutes long. What the heck? Swordfish: 99 minutes. Final Fantasy: Rumored to be 91 minutes long. AI: I have conflicting reports ranging from 80+ minutes to 143 minutes. There's also a bunch of average (read: crappy) movies that fall around the 90-minute mark, too. It's crazy. By the time I perfect my seating position and prepare for some really intense action, the movie's over. One would think that the trailers and previews would be at least a little shorter than the movie itself. :p I think the people who made Pearl Harbor made their movie really long to make up for the lack of reel time of all of the other flicks.

As a side note, sites made entirely in Flash are not that good. I'm on a frickin' phone line connection, as is 89% of the internet surfers out there. Stop trying to design for what looks cool and design for making the common case fast. If I want a particular chunk of information, spare me of your silly roll-overs and moving menus.

Woo, I feel like I'm back in CANOS. I don't know what's going on.
My AIM buddy icon is a Monopoly top hat token, fyi.

Jon: punk ass bitch
me: i will fucking end you
Jon: you cut me with your words
me: i'll slash your ass with a chainsaw, too
Jon: this one's for you Jerome Grondin.... you are my favorite motehrfucker... I told you
Jon: nice icon!
me: hehe
me: it's big pimpin
Jon: hells yeah
me: i was hoping i could find a pic with that token on like park place or some shit
me: but the shitty green background will have to do, heh
Jon: we could take a pic
Jon: fuck
Jon: I don't have a real monopoly board
me: wtf
Jon: just start wars monopoly
me: are you some kind of fascist
Jon: I don't know... I'm gay?
me: YES
Jon: my sister broke the old board
me: tisk tisk
Jon: alright, I'm going in the shower
me: good idea
me: cause you smell
me: i can tell from over here
me: or something
me: did you just wake up?
Jon: ih, just woke up?
me: uh
me: in english please?
Jon: uh, just woke up?
me: seems kinda late in teh day for a shower :)
Jon: well, its also kind late in teh dat to have just woken up
Jon: so I guess that makes me gay
me: so you did wake up recently
me: cool
Jon: yes
me: ok, that's what i was trying to get at
Jon: yes

I think I need some alcohol now. Heh. "Who is the least likely candidate for cloning?"
Hehe. The Weakest Link is a pretty cool show. Lots of backstabbing, "I think I'm better than you" attitudes, and the British host can be such a bitch. It's so hardcore in this all-or-nothing game. Too bad I can never remember when and where it's on. When one thinks of TV stations, who thinks of PAX?

Anyways, what has been going in the world we live in?

* Well, there was a guy who beat up the Cookie Monster. Dude, you can't do that to the Cookie Monster! He's one of the more awesome puppets on Sesame Street.

* The Big "O" Day is coming at the end of July (no pun intended), according to some leather-toting, love-oil-selling sex shop franchise in England.

* It's amazing that this 48-year-old guy is single. I mean, how could he be after remodelling his apartment to look like the Starship Enterprise? It confounds my mind.

* Stealth bombers may not be so stealthy anymore. Passive radar, which is used by cell phones, is making the developers of the $2 billion bombers go back to the drawing board. Asian Bastard links
The folks over at Blogger have a little section of their site called "Blogs of Note." This is sort of like a "Blog of the Day" type of deal, but instead of going through the arduous task of finding one good weblog per day, they just list the good ones as they find them. AsianBastard.com was one such site.

I clicked on the link to the site, and those wily Blogger people actually found a good weblog (sometimes the "blog of note" is a site that just had its second post. Dumb.). The author has some neat features such as "fanky superstar pops" and... eh... well, he finds some pretty cool pictures every now and then.

But while you wait for the day that this site becomes a "Blog of Note" or the day in which I actually get hits, check out some of these stories and links I found over at Asian Bastard:

* I guess a lot of people have a problem with the Olive Garden. This weblog author's cousin is no exception. It's funny as hell.

* Let's get it on. Supposedly, heavyset people are happier and enjoy more satisfying sex than the thin peeps. But I don't care too much for this statement late in the article: "The people who are the hottest sexually are fat white people who are burning in the sun," he said. What a lovely image.

* How to make love to a single girl. People who have issues with nudity should not click on that link. But since I mentioned that, you're going to look at where that URL takes you regardless of age or beliefs. *sigh* But I guess that's ok, because this is also funny as hell.

* "Daddy needs a new sword of wounding!" Find out what your alignment is in Dungeons and Dragons terms. I came out as true neutral. I'd say the first couple sentences in the description of my alignment apply to me rather well.

That's all for now. I think I'll lighten the text color a bit. Just what I need first thing in the morning.

[GARBAGEman]: HEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
MY PAGE WAS UPDATED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
OHMYGOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!
CAN YOU BELIEVE IT!!!!!!!!??????????
I CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN'T!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
AAAAAAAAARGHHHH!!!!!!!!
ok how you doin?
me: hahaha.
i'm doing ok. there isn't too much going on where I am, so I'm turning to the internet to entertain me for a while.
[GARBAGEman]: ow.....really really
boooooooooooooooooooooooooored
you're sooooooo ............
pooooooooooooooooor!!!!!!!!!!!
HAHAHA
me: heh. I think I'll live.
[GARBAGEman]: hehe.........this "much caracter thing" looks cool........hehe
coooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool
me: "much character thing?"
[GARBAGEman]: I mean this:
muuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuch

I hope he stops doing this right about... now.
He's a cool guy and all, but... my head is going to break. Geocaching pics
[Note: this entry never existed, but was later added here because it was placed on another page on one of my old sites]

There's even more pics at Jake's site:

Jake's car - Where we had to get out and walk in order to reach our first geocache. Also pictured is my canteen, Jake's backpack, and a pair of hubcaps that don't belong to either of us. *shrug*
Cache #1 - We reached the cache we were looking for about an hour later. It was very well hidden; easy to miss, especially since the forest was getting too dense for the GPS to work.
Jake - standing in front of the cache.
Our path - Yeah, we walked all around that cache and never saw it. We win.
Jerome - writing in the log saying that we have arrived.
The congrats message - found in the cache.
The item we took - Dropped off a deck of cards, picked up an "Any" jey. Woo!
Gee, is this forest manmade? - On our way to the second geocache in the same area.
Jerome tweaking out - like the scientists in Half-Life after we passed a piece-of-crap shack that gave us Blair Witch Project flashbacks. It was freaky.
Jerome's house - Or the side of it anyways. Built in 1812. Home of Franklin Pierce, the 14th U.S. president. Yeah, you're so jealous.
Jerome's dog - A dumb brown poodle that likes to bark a lot. Woof.
Onwards to the third geocache - Located somewhere in Hooksett, NH.
Mmm... marshy... - still a cool pic, though.
Jarrod - Being a tubesteak after we failed to find the third cache. Writing for the WWW - Assignment #5

Attached is a general description of the survey I managed to get some people to fill out in regards to my website.
My future plans for the site given the comments are also included.

Let me know if there's anything else you're looking for, either in regard to this or other assignments, or any other end-of-the-summer-session type of things. I don't think I would be able to fill out a teacher performance evaluation since I'm about 120 miles away. :) But if there was a change in the syllabus or if another little project / assignment was added, I'll see what I can do about it. :)

Thanks for letting me take this course under these circumstances.

Jerome Grondin

That was an email I sent at about 2:30 this morning. This one I sent at about 2:32:

Maybe I should include the attachment, huh?

Woo...

And a reply I got today:

Yeah, attachments help.

Good job on the survey--looks like you found out about
as much as the on-campus students did.

You did good work on all the assignments and a very
good job of keeping in touch with the course, so you
get an A. Congrats. And BIG CONGRATS on now being an
RPI grad.

(There are no course evaluations for summer courses--I
get to be mean if I want to.) :-)

Roger

So what does this all mean? In case you haven't figured it out, I AM DONE WITH COLLEGE. CONSIDER ME AN RPI GRADUATE. WOO FUCKING HOO! Now I have to pay for taking the course and then wait for my diploma to come in the mail. I'm guessing that they won't mail it until the summer semester ends, which will be in late August.

Hooray! I am pretty psyched now.

Now I need to update my resumé again and continue "looking hard" for a job. I think I may get some part-time temp job in town until I find a "real" job elsewhere. I could use some cash. But since my town is small and since I don't really want people noticing me at work, that may take some time as well. Most of the places in the area are various supermarket or gas station chains and restaurants. And I've already made a vow with my best work friend two years ago not to return to the fish and ice cream place. Heh. I'm back.
Jerome, that is.

First I kinda want to thank Jon for sparing the effort of doing work for a day, although in a way, I kinda had more work to do than he did when it came to posting since he wasn't sure of how I format my text and what nifty CSS class tags I use for different things. But that's ok. I didn't have to think too much.

Today was a pretty cool day. My former roommate Jake (the same Jake that appears in a number of IM conversations) came from Cambridge, Mass to visit me. Unfortunately, no more than ten minutes after he showed up, it started raining heavily. So we had nothing exciting to do for a while. Then the rain stopped only to hail about 30 minutes later. Heh. Oh well. Not too much frisbee throwing happened, but we did get some before the first storm.

Today was great. Jake and I went geocaching. I don't want to get into detail about that right now, since Jake has a lot of pictures on his digital camera and I will have to wait until at least midnight tonight to get them. So maybe that will be tomorrow's treat. Another former roommate, Jarrod, came up this afternoon. After dinner, he and Jake and I went on another geocaching trip. That didn't turn out as well as the first cache hunt. More details about it later. The Continuing Adventures of Jerkbutt and Dicko
I know this is my third post, but its not my last... I have another one planned for later, since I am chill like that. This one is just another IM conversation anyway. Here is the buildup. We were still talking about viruses, and the Microsft fix to prevent the security loophole that gave me the virus in the first place, and well, here you go: (anything that is indented is where I pasted my conversation with Jake into my conversation with Jerome)

me: ok, I installed the fix, and this is what I got for a message: Windows 2000 has been updated. If you change or add any components to your system, you will need to reapply the Hotfix.
me: Jake says you need to lighten or brighten your font
Jerome: yes he does
Jerome: but i'm on vacation for the day :)
me: he actually told me I should do it for you
Jerome: that's nice
me: since its my day
Jerome: i should leave it "as is" until i email the prof anyway, to tell him of what people thought of the site. like the font is too dark. then i can act upon the changes if i want to
me: did he fill out your survey?
Jerome: who?
me: Jake
Jerome: no
me: how about the professor?
Jerome: no
me:
   Jake: wow. i'm convinced.
   me: he says you can't complain until you fill out the survey
   me: http://www.rpi.edu/~grondj/survey/index.html
   Jake: tell him to shut his piehole
   Jake: he needs to remember the three i's
   Jake: does he have a gold medal?
   Jake: i don't think so
me:
   me: wow, I feel like Mercury
   me: the messenger god
   me: relaying messages between Zeus and Poseidon
Jerome: and my butt
me:
   me: or Jupiter and Neptune, as the case would be
   Jake: or dicko and jerkbutt
   me: yes, that is very close
   me: which one are you?
   Jake: i'm neither, jerome has duality issues
Jerome: go here
Jerome: www.hasanyoneseenmypants.com
me: whoa, sweet
Jerome: shit yeah
me: how'd you do that?
me: do you own that domain?
Jerome: jake and i bought it for like 10 bucks a few weeks ago
me: nice
me: thanks for including me, jerkbutt
Jerome: i don't think it's too late
me: or shall I call you dicko, today?
Jerome: just pay jake $3.3333333333
me: I heard that's the price of your mom, too.

"next post"
Jon here. Well, here it is, ladies and gentlemen, my second post of three. This one has pictures! From my vacation! To Orlando! Two weeks ago! With my dad and sister! Too many exclamation points! As you can see, I have the same kind of stupid humor as Jerome!

1. Here's me and my sister at NASA, with a shuttle launch pad in the background. This was an awesome day, and I took more pictures here than any other day of my vacation.

2. This is actually a pic of the inside of a space shuttle thruster. This particular one was used in several missions including the first shuttle flight and the Hubble Telescope placement. It is about 8 feet in diameter.

3. You are the weakest link! Goodbye. Doesn't my sister look like the host of that show? She's single by the way, fellas.

4. Here's me on the beach in Sarasota. This was the most beautiful beach I have ever seen in my life. The best part is, I didn't even get any sand in my crotch! (Or my wallet... funny story, when I went on Spring Break with Jerome (and Jarrod, Mike and Derek) I got sand in my wallet somehow (I think playing beach volleyball. Long story short, despite me trying to blow it out, and wash it out (in the washing maching and dishwasher), my wallet still has sand in it.))

5. Here's my sister (second from left) playing Abdullah Sheik Mohammad Ahzhul Izrahim in Disney-MGM Studios' The Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular. She was chosen as an extra before the show because she jumped up and down and yelled really loud to call attention to herself. (As I mentioned before, she is available.)

Thanks for putting up with me. I'm pretty sure I will have only one more post before my 24 hours is up, so look for it later on today, and every third Wednesday of the given month, right here at Against the Grain. I'm KING of the world now
Hi all. Jon here. Since Jerome has relinquished control to me for the day (see prior post below) I am going to post with reckless abandon. First off, a conversation with Jake celebrating my victory:

me: check out Jerome's site
Jake: his font is too damn dark
me: I'm on the web!
me: that makes me famous!
Jake: heehee
Jake: dammit, that was my line

Next up, a little background: Jerome, Jake, and I were all discussing viruses last night, since my computer was infected with one. Most of it was pretty silly. Here's me and Jerome:

me: I am wondering who gives viruses and stuff such funky names as W97M.Groov, and Happy99.W32.Ska
Jerome: that would be me
Jerome: i also name hurricanes
Jerome: the folks at Norton and the Weather Channel have to talk to me before finalizing anything

And here's me and Jake:

me: whoa... I didn't know this... apparently NAV send information back to Symantec about what it did on your computer when you do a live update
Jake: neither did i. you mean like
Jake: if it found a virus or cured a virus or what have you?
me: all of the above
me: sends them statistics
Jake: hmm. let's go to their house and teach them a thing or two =)
me: Instead, I wanna beat up the people who make Trojans
me: uhmm... cuz I like Durex better, or something
Jake: HEEHEE
Jake: nice work =)

Finally, because I was doing so much copying and pasting between my two conversations with Jerome and Jake, we get this little gem:

me: damnit, I hate when my mouse runs out of batteris
me: the keyboard batteries, I've never had to change. the mouse batteries I've changed twice so far, and looks like its gonna be a third time in a day or two
Jake: heehee
Jerome: I feel like I'm wiretapping :)
me: you should feel lucky I'm letting you do that
me: FUCK!
me: I stole Jake's font!
Jerome: HAHAHHAHA
Jerome: you lose
me: give me back my font, you goat bastard!
Jerome: welcome to narnia

A change in site ownership
I have relinquished control of the site for the next 23 1/4 hours.

Jon: thanks for the compliments on the site :-)
me: hehe
me: I should have just titled it "Jon's post"
Jon: yeah, you should
me: and put your name as the author, hehe
Jon: yep
Jon: do it to it, my friend :-)
Jon: in fact, you should just say I'm the owner of the site, too
Jon: since I'm the only one who seems to care :-)
me: lol
me: ok
Jon: obviously besides you
me: nah
me: just you
me: it's your site on the 3rd wednesday of every month
Jon: sweet.
Jon: that would be today!
me: exactly

So there you go. Today is Jon's day to post. Hehe.

But before I go (and since you are here for some damn reason), fill out my freakin' survey! What the hell, are you too good to fill it out? Do you think you're better than me? It could mean the difference between me getting my diploma or not. Jerk.

And moths piss me off. Especially when they get through my screen window and just fly around my desk lamp until I introduce them to Mr. Flyswatter. Bah. Jon's a busy guy
Yet despite being such a busy guy (he's particularly busy when it comes to trying to recruit someone into his "Let's move to Connecticut" cult), he has the time to send me neato links. This in turn spares me the effort of having to look around a lot to find good stories. So, the first stories came from Jonny while others came from... eh... probably one of the sites I have listed under "Noteworthy Links." ShackNews, most likely.

* The Chinese drought must be brutal. The people that run the country of China have ordered soldiers to fire at clouds in hopes that they would bring rain. Is this really an effective strategy?

* I didn't know that "bad human gas" is called "malodorous flatus." That's sounds like the genus and species of some living organism. Are they saying that human gas is actually alive? Oh help us all. But at least you can combat this... uh... "possible living thing" with Under-Ease.

* Pay very close attention to the second-to-the-last paragraph in this article. Now tell me how it is possible to not know which kid's birthday it is.

* If you have an addiction that you just can't break, you may want to turn to the Russians for help. Now this is extreme.

* You may want to lay off of the Fritos for a while. They aren't looking so good. I guess someone was trying to invent new flavors or include prizes in each bag, but it didn't bode to well with some of the consumers. Heh. Re: Writing for the WWW - Assignment #4

uhhhhh . . . . interesting . . . .site, Jerome. I even made some sense out of some of the postings.

But, it's a nice design--clean and attractive, and you
have a lot of useful-seeming features for what you
want your site to be.

Nice job!

Good luck getting people to respond to a survey.

I'm off to class!

Roger

Hehe. Roger's a pretty cool professor. Especially since he's letting me take this course from home instead of in Troy. I kinda want to know what makes my site... "interesting," though. :) Maybe it's not what he expects to see from most people enrolled in the course. Or maybe it's the amount of "dynamicity" without actually using my own server. Or maybe I should have saved my conversation with Jake for later... oh well. What's done is done.

And while you're reading this, fill this thing out! Like you have anything better to do for the next two minutes... you're at my site, for crying out loud. Think about it. Hello World!
In accordance with the requirements for passing my summer course, here is my revamped personal website. Aren't you excited? I know I am.

My old site looked similar to this one. It had a light green background while headings and borders were dark green and the text was white. It had some CSS elements to it as well. It was all right, but I think it was time for that color scheme to go away.

This new design has a more of a... hmmm... it has a different feel to it, and I like it a lot more. The text is easier to read, I really like my new title logo (it's amazing what you can do by messing around with different Photoshop tools!), and I added even more CSS to my external style sheet, making future site palette changes a less tedious process.

The site itself is a cross between a news site and my very own personal journal / diary type of thing. Whatever I feel like writing about gets posted when I have the chance to do so. The last seven days in which I have posted something show up on the front page, while older entries (and even current ones) are automatically archived on a week-by-week basis. Since RPI does not allow the use of dynamic content-generating programs being run from a student's allotted personal web space (and since I don't have a server of my own), I use Blogger to get around that limitation. Blogger is a free web-based tool for publishing new content instantly whenever one has the urge to do so. Blogger maintains a database of your posts, so if you want to manipulate your archive or template settings, you can do so without losing any content. It's a pretty nifty thing.

Unfortunately, Blogger doesn't have a feature where site visitors can search through one's old posts, so I had to use Atomz for that purpose. I don't like the Atomz search engine at all (it doesn't seem to do its job too well... maybe I'm just not searching "right"), but it is good enough until I have my own server to create dynamic pages to my heart's content.

Noteworthy links are shown only on the news pages and the archived pages. When I feel the need to change these links around, it is significantly less of a hassle to make these changes on these pages than all of the pages.

The random quote only shows up on the news pages. The original idea of the random quote generator was that the script would pick a quote at random and it would use that quote for the next 24 hours for every visitor that comes that day. Then, it would put that quote in "the used pile" and take pick a new random quote from the remaining "unused" quotes. Once there were no more unused quotes, all quotes would be set to "unused" again. I don't think I can do this solely using Javascript, so I decided to stick with a boring old random quote generator for now.

All of the remaining left-hand links merely lead to pages with static content. The survey page uses an external Perl script to send the results to me via email. My link to The G Spot leads to a Garbage fan page with extensive CSS and Javascript usage as well.

This site was optimally designed for a 1024x768 24-bit resolution and Internet Explorer 5.5. The site looks perfectly fine at 800x600 and 640x480, but don't be surprised if the centered background image gets "cut" a bit from the title image. The effect goes away if you scroll down the page slightly. The site also looks fine in 16-bit color, but I do not think this site will look incredible marvelous in an 8-bit color scheme or anything worse. The CSS code is CSS1 W3C standard compliant, which means it should work fine in Netscape 6.x and IE 4.x. The site won't cataclysmically fail if you use a more outdated version of these browsers, but don't come crying to me if the site looks like crap.

I think that sums everything up. This site was meant to be for my own personal amusement, and for the amusement of those who find what I have to post somewhat interesting. :) Also, everything was coded by hand (no WYSIWYG editors), so give me some bonus points for that. Heh.

So, take a look around, make sure everything works, and then fill out the survey and give me your input. Let me remind you that I'm getting graded for this, so don't try distorting the results by giving this site the worse or best possible score on everything. For once in your life, what you say matters. :) And I wanted to be "nice" for a week... :p
Who didn't see this coming?

Jake: what's your phone #?
me: 555-STFU
Jake: that's funny cause uh
me: your mom
me: so there
Jake: 1-800-EAT-SHIT is my toll free number
me: [my number]
Jake: quiet, i am calling 1800 eat shit
me: NICE
Jake: ohmygod
Jake: totally phone sex
Jake: it is scary
me: nice
me: well, not really
Jake: welcome to intimate connections where you will hear sexy *click*
Jake: heehee
Jake: it rocked
Jake: ok, boom beddy bye bye
me: cya

IM of the future

Jake: ok, that's just unacceptable
Jake: my 2nd grade teacher was from maine. he was old and grumpy, although i got along with him ok.
Jake: then the guy who replaced him for third grade was a weirdo, and didn't make us do any work. he only lasted one year.
Jon: I see
Jon: but uhm
Jon: third grade?
Jake: you know how you don't do much work in elementary school?
Jon: were you able to learn multiplication and shit?
Jake: but you do learn stuff?
Jon: yeah
Jake: well, he didn't teach us shit
Jake: like i learned all right cause i was fast etc. etc.
Jon: what a fuck up
Jake: but the one thing i wasn't good at
Jake: cursive
Jake: and which i clearly needed some prodding and help on
Jake: partly cause i was left-handed and the instructions were for right-handed kids, maybe
Jon: we started learning cursive at the end of first grade, so we had to have it all mastered by the middle of second grade
Jake: so he gave me and my best friend (also left-handed) this ridiculous book
Jake: yeah, i was way behind on that. i just didn't want to do it.
Jake: "cursive for left-handers" or something
Jon: I stopped using cursive about that time
Jake: and he didn't even check to see that we were doing the exercises
Jake: yeah, cursive is ridiculous
Jon: jeesus
Jon: were you the only 2 lefthanders?
Jon: I want to get to the point where I don't even have to type anymore
Jon: just think
Jake: well there were 24 kids in the class
Jon: think my thoughts to you
Jake: ok, i'll work on that and tell you when it's ready
Jon: cool
Jake: and so
Jake: there must have been 2-3 other kids, at least
Jon: are you trying to tell me its ready? cuz if you were, I still wasn't receiving the signals
Jon: in my head
Jake: well it must be at least partially working
Jake: since you seemed to know i was trying to tell you.
Jon: women's intuition
Jon: or something
Jake: exactly
Jake: that's the mechanism i'm trying to use. women's intuition IM
Jon: WIIM
Jake: nice.
Jake: that's a damn good acronym.
Jake: we should make it a program and post it on download.com
Jon: ok
Jake: java.
Jon: we'll post some reviews
Jake: nice. i'll see what i can do to get it started.
Jon: hey, and it doesn't even have to work
Jake: no, all it has to be is a stupid gui

More dumb stories
Yep. That pretty much sums it up.

* Shoot me. Now. This is the queerest thing I have seen in quite a while. "Celebrity" lawn ornaments.
* Anyone out there want to buy this guy's virginity? He considers himself to be quite a looker. That's why he's selling for less than $11 dollars right now. Check out his picture. I think his neck is talking. AND WHERE THE HELL IS HIS LEFT ARM? <insert Jon's credit for noticing the lack of an arm thing here>
* Gah! People have learned about Audiogalaxy. This was one of my common ways of getting mp3's when I wasn't on the RPI campus. Now it's flooded with people. Oh well. But that's ok, actually, because most of the FTP servers out there have horrible upload/download ratios and/or require you to sift through porn sites and banner ads to get "full leech access." I'll look elsewhere, thank you.
* I found this at a few places: Congrats to Homer Simpson for making "Doh" one of the most common words of the English language.

Anyone have an idea if Depeche Mode is any good? Kind of a random question, huh? :) You have to check this out
Being incredibly lazy, I searched for "rate my website" on Google so I could take a look at the questions I should be asking when I finalize v5.1 or v6.1 of this site. After going through a few pages of links, I came across ratemymullet.com. You need to take a look at their "top mullets" section. Very disturbing. The #1 senior mullet is on a 35-year-old woman! *shudder* I got a $10 check in the mail.
And it's not a scam, either! w00t!

A few months ago, Lieberman Research Worldwide called me to find out what I thought of certain tech companies, what my skills are, and where I thought the high tech industry is going. It was a long freakin' survey; I was on the phone with the questionnaire guy for about 45 minutes. I remember one of the questions I was asked was "When someone mentions operating systems, what operating systems comes to mind first?" I mentioned both Windows Millennium Edition and Windows 2000, and I remember arguing with the survey guy (who is obviously not a computer user. He recently bought a Packard Bell. Hehehe!) that WinME and Win2k were not the same operating system. *sigh* Good times.

But anyways, they called me again about a month later asking for my mailing address. They wanted to send me a gift. I decided to be a nice guy and give them my actual address instead of saying I was from Cambodia or something.

And today, I got a letter from them. When I saw the envelope, I was pretty sure it was a credit card company trying to convince me to cash in their $10 check so they can charge me $200 over the next 18 months. But it looks like that is not the case. Yay! I'm pretty psyched. This $10 can give me about two-thirds of a tank of gas. Woo!

Yeah. You're jealous. Fire and death stories
I guess the title says it all:

* A goldfish bowl may be the reason for causing 26 people to end up in the hospital. There was one casualty in the incident: the goldfish.
* Doctors + laser + breathing tube = internal burning.
* And you may want to back off from your alternative medicine lifestyle. Well, you might want to stop taking so many damn Vitamin C pills. They could be killing you. *looks at his Betafood supplement* Phew! Not a good source of Vitamin C.

And on an unrelated note, don't expect your $350 video card to make web-based games run faster. A game like Planetarion isn't remotely similar to CounterStrike, Silly.

I need to finish my new design by tomorrow. I'll probably be gone for most of Sunday, since it's Father's Day. Oh crap, I still need to get the old man a gift. *sigh* The only room in the house with air conditioning is my mom's room.
And it sucks.

Not the air conditioner. Just the fact that I'm in a continual state of sweating while at home, except when I make a trip to steal the extra phone line from my mother's computer. Bah! Links
Today was a pretty hot day, was it not? If there was a day so far this year where getting nekkid to cool off was the only choice, today was the day. The thermometer clock outside one of the local banks claimed it was 94 degrees outside. I don't know if it was that hot out, but it was pretty damn hot.

* Note to self: Do not go to Cambodia!

* Supposedly there's this MMORPG over in South Korea that is even more popular than Everquest and all of those types of games combined. It's called Lineage. It is so popular, that if you aren't playing it, you're probably some sort of little beady-eyed freak. And they take this game seriously. A little too seriously.

* Hooray! A song about IM! Little do they know, I've had a song about ICQ on my computer for quite a number of months (made by Nina, Goddess of Dance. You used to be able to download it from mp3.com...). It freaks me out. I'm not sure why I still have it, in fact. Also, since when has "POS" been used to mean "Parent Over Shoulder" (read the article)? Nyah. I'll give you a definition for POS. My laptop is a POS. Jamie Lee Curtis is a POS. Worcester is a POS.

* Here is a dated article about Windows XP. In it, they brag a lot about how Windows Messager is like the Second Coming and how you can do more than send text messages. You can chat, too! Wow! Tell me something that it does that ICQ doesn't already do. After all, ICQ is essentially bloatware and can do everything. Even make you chocolate chip cookies. Seriously. Yeah... Randomness
The more I work on my new design, the more I like it and the more I wonder why I haven't done this sooner. It's sweet. All I really have left to do is to come up with some sort of centered background image, make the "Does this site look like ass?" questionnaire, and maybe create a page stating what I did and how I did it. Then, I gotta upload everything Sunday and bask in my fine workmanship. And I should make sure that my last posts by the time I submit my site for grading are posts about... um... *shrug* I don't know. Maybe some sort of intro posts or something.

I hope I'm not hyping my new design too much. Otherwise, it may flop like that Batman and Robin film no one saw. Speaking of films that might flop, is Tomb Raider actually going to be good? As hot as Angelina Jolie is, past history shows that movies based on video games never turn a profit (well, except Mortal Kombat). Regardless of how well Final Fantasy does this summer, it's probably going to be considered a flop because it cost way too much money to make.

And while I'm giving myself a little break, here are a few links for you to enjoy in their full splendor:

* Stolen from Memepool, take a look at the Chess glossary. Who knew so many English words also had a different definition in Chess?

* Stolen from Jake who stole it from Memepool, take a look at some young women who read Urantia. I didn't really read their little comments to the right of their pictures, but once I found out what Urantia is, I had to close some browser windows. As Poe has said, "Can't talk to a psycho like a normal human being."

* And Metafilter works again. Wahoo! I'm pretty happy now. And to celebrate its return, I bring you this wonderful story: No diploma for you! A high school senior wasn't given her diploma at her graduation because the audience was "too noisy." Wtf? If I was that senior, there would be no friggin' way I'd sit down without getting my piece of paper.

And Sum 41 sucks. But not as much as Alien Ant Farm or whatever the hell their name is. Saliva sucks too, not so much for their music, but for their name. And any band that is trying to be successful by recycling the music that was mainstream about 5-10 years ago sucks. Blogger needs to stop eating my archives
While Blogger does run a lot faster than it used to, I wish it would stop destroying my archive index. That's hella dumb.

I've been diligently working on the next layout for this site. It's coming out pretty well, but I have a feeling some people may find the text hard to read. I don't think I will move anything around, though. Having everything ordered like it is on the left-hand side of the page seems to work just fine.

Well, back to "work." Spamarific
This is a somewhat dated conversation (last weekish), but it had to be saved for when I found more cool spam again. :)

me: I'm gettign spam in my hotmail account with subjects like "Are you coming over?," "LEADING US COMAPANY SEEKS," and "Is 10pm good for you?"
me: wtf
Jake: heehee
me: I want to work for a LEADING US COMAPANY
Jake: i get uh
Jake: ӵ�а���ʹ��ӵ������
Jake: and
Jake: lots of ones about det
Jake: and
Jake: Re: Your FREE XXX Membership
Jake: "HEREUGO:-)"
Jake: dammit
me: I got one titled "Here's those pictures! 11548"
Jake: also
Jake: this one is my favorite
me: *scratches head*
Jake: "Diane Thought You Might Have Erectile Dysfunction"
me: HAHAHHAHA
Jake: my answer is: no, i was just drunk
Jake: heehee

With that in mind, I present to you the last sentences of this "half-priced viagra" spam message I received today:

ISN'T IT TIME YOU PLEASED HER? DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER, LET YOUR BONER BE TOO.

Spam rules. What do I get my dad for Father's Day?
I have no clue, and I'm need of suggestions.
I don't buy "typical" gifts, like ties and mugs and stuff. I also don't buy clothes for other people.
He retired this past Christmas at the age of 55. Needless to say, if he can retire at 55, he can go out and buy whatever it is that he wants, whenever he wants.
Last year, I think I got him one of those neat electric shaving can warmers and a gift certificate to Home Depot.
Feel free to use this novel gift idea for your own father, but you owe me one. ;p My gall bladder is broken.
Seriously. It is. No joke.

For the last few weeks, I've been seeing my mom and her estethician friends because hey, it sure beats paying rent. :p And while my skin has probably improved since I started going to the place, there's always this slight redness that always stays on my face. My face has always had this slight redness probably since high school. I never thought anything of it, dismissing the redness as something normal for people in their pubescent and post-pubescent years. And it is. But then today, Mother made me see some wacky "alternative medicine" doctor guy. He kinda looked at me for a bit and then he did these weird reflex tests (his primary study is as a chiropractor), and he told me gall bladder is not digesting food properly. So since my gall bladder couldn't... eh... "dispose" of stuff through the route it should, it gets rid of it by traveling in the other direction, towards the pores on my face. Now I have to take five tablets of this weird Betafood stuff three times a day, and see him again in a month. I was out of there in under five minutes.

Personally, I think the guy is a loon, and taking these pills is completely b.s., but I guess I'm regrettably willing to take this "dietary supplement" for a month to make Mommy happy. Maybe I'll be proven wrong. Heh. But in the mean time, you have to check out that Betafood link above just to see what kind of goodness is in these pills.

Alternative medicine. Ha! Right. And dietary supplements... is this the wave of the future or something? First, everyone used to be "stressed out" all the time, and now everyone has some sort of dietary supplement to take. Nyah. Whatever. People can be quite amusing
Yesterday, on my way back from a suburb near Springfield, MA, there was a car in front of me with a "University of Connecticut" decal sticker across his back window. So I said, "UConn, eh?" The guy in the car with me said something to the gist of, "Hey, someone who went to a real college." Ha! Yeah, maybe if you want to go to college to play sports. I'll take my significantly more prestigious degree from Rensselaer, thank you very much.

* This brings new meaning to the term "gift wrapping."
* Variety is the spice of life. And pimpin' ain't easy. Combine the two, and you might get something like this.
* I hate people. Especially people who think that this kid may be the next Eric Harris. What the heck, my homie Jon was drawing tanks and planes blowing up all over the IT lounge's whiteboard this past school year! :)
* I'd care more for the sport of squash if Vicky Botwright gets her way. Huzzah!

Also, if your local newspaper has the comic strip Zits in it, you better read today's strip. Hehehe! I'm having flashbacks of Experimental Methods and Statistics class. :) The official Zits site is always a month behind in its release of comics, but I'll try and post the comic up when it becomes available... and if I remember to do it. Site changes are a-comin'
Although I have recently changed this site to the way you're viewing it now, it looks like I'll be tweaking it a bit for my summer course's last assignments. I'll probably change some colors, maybe replace the background image, move the links around or something, things like that. Plus, I'll have a little survey up for a limited time where you can state how sexy you find my site, tell me how easy it is to find things, etc. Keep in mind, I'm getting graded on this, so don't pull anything funny like giving me the worst possible score on everything I ask. :p Or I'll break your little sausage-like fingers, then put a trash can over your head and hit it repatedly with a 1-quart saucepan.

How do you like me now?

I guess that also means that I may want to be "nice" for the next two weeks' worth of updates.

Nah...

Oh, by the way, how bad does this look in Netscape? Studies show that Bush is an idiot
Out of a study of one person (me), 100% of those surveyed said that this guy shouldn't be running the country.

At least he's going to Europe. That should be quite interesting:

It is not just that Bush must persuade Europe of the virtues of his foreign policy, they say. First, they acknowledge, he must persuade Europe's leaders that he is not a buffoon.
[...]
Although he will take few specific proposals with him, Bush has made clear that his visit to five countries, including a meeting with Russia's President, Vladimir Putin, in Slovenia - a country that Bush once famously confused with Slovakia - is about winning over the hearts and minds of Europe's sceptical leaders who regard him as a lightweight on the international stage.

And instead of letting the Untied States lead by example, let's bitch about China and India being responsible for killing the atmosphere, too. But at least Bush has a great plan:

The president proposed an effort to study global warming and bolster coordination among research institutions throughout the world.

Yes. Because we still haven't figured out why this planet will look like the Sahara in x number of years. And that little convention in Kyoto four years ago was just to swap holiday recipies, right? Anyone want to place a bet saying he'll be president for eight years? Comics!
These are all fairly dated, so please bare with me:

* FoxTrot is always good. Jason Fox is the man.
* This strip of Dilbert isn't too good; I just love Dogbert's first two slogans.
* Pokey the Penguin is pretty dumb, but sometimes it's so dumb it's funny! See this guy?


This guy has been waiting to pick up the Stanley Cup for 22 years. 22 YEARS! With the Avs beating the Devils 3-1 in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals, Ray Bourque has ended the record streak of playing 1,825 games(!) without ever hoisting hockey's greatest prize. He deserves it. He is the #6 all-time point scorer and he spans four decades of hockey, for crying out loud.

Congrats to Bourque.

Congrats to Colorado. My counter ain't working.
You guys are lucky. I can't tell how few hits I've been getting for the past week. I guess I shouldn't have played around with the code they wanted me to include on this main page. Hehe, oops.

Oh well. I don't really care, anyways. :p Bye bye, broken code. Hi. Me again.
I think I'm done with my posting embargo for now. It will probably come back every now and then whenever I realize that what I'm doing is fruitless.

Lots of stuff has happened in the past week. I don't really want to get into any of it right now. You'll learn about it later.

I'm pretty bored. I don't have shit to do. It's a beautiful day and I have no frisbee. Or a playing field. And I don't know where the hell anyone is. *sigh* I really need to get out of my house.

And my facial skin is really dry. I'm not sure why. Being a guy, I could care less about the condition of my skin, but I don't know. I'm not digging it. Mother says I should drink water more often. While this may or may not help, I don't really want to make a trip to the bathroom ever 15 seconds in exchange for not-so-dry skin. Dilemmas, dilemmas.

There are smudges all over my monitor. wtf? I have a friend that comes over every now and then and he always touches my damn monitor screen. I keep telling him to leave the friggin' monitor alone. That doesn't seem to help. Hmmph. Well, I do have a 3-foot beating stick... it may have to be utilized on the next monitor-touching infraction. I'm the one who has to clean the damn thing. I don't want to do it about three times a week. :p

I kinda need a job. Mom wants me to work in Concord or Keene, that way I could just commute from home. Too bad the people in my house are driving me nuts. Even if I do end up working in Concord, I'd like to have my own place so I don't have to deal with the insanity that goes on in my house. Heh. While there may be a lot of money involved in taking care of the people my mother takes care of... I don't see how she does it.

And my dad wants me to apply for a job in Nashua. This may not be a bad thing. Nashua is roughly the midpoint between my house and Boston (1 hour drive either way). But I don't know if I want to live in the city. I kinda like the peacefulness of living out in the sticks. But there's nothing to see in the sticks. Heh. Perhaps a suburb would suffice. Sort of like the slew of towns north of Boston. I guess we'll have to wait and see.

I think I'll shut up now, since I've rambled on long enough.

Game 7 tonight. One team is walking out with the cup tonight. 8:00 pm EST. ABC. Watch it. Time off
I ain't going to update (or as the cool kids say, "blog") for a while. I deviously slapped an ultra-secret counter to this site a while back, and it turns out that my target audience is more-or-less nonexistant. :( At least my G site is still getting several visitors a day. I may have to put a news page up on that site to feed my bizarre desire to post something quasi-neat in the world on a daily basis. And since Garbage is frequently in court and a new album is on the horizon...

And if I was really daring, I could expand that site to cover even more bands (if I had the web space), and before you know it, I'll be the next MTV News or something.

So, uh, let me know if you're visiting this site. I'd appreciate it. :p No one visits this site
Hence, I don't feel like saying anything today. Except Win2k and I don't get along, apparently. And I can't play Diablo II anymore. Bah. Guess I'll play some Deus Ex instead. Fear. A second chance
I think I might know why Win2k is locking up on me... Software sucks
Bah. Whoever said Windows 2000 is the most stable Windows OS out there is full of shit. The bastard locked up on me frequently last night. I dismissed those lock-ups because I still had all of those Windows patches and updates and stuff to download; maybe those would make the lock-ups stop happening. Guess what? They don't. I don't get it. Apparently, I must be doing something wrong or my computer is "special." Right now, I'm working on getting Win98 working properly again. I'd rather work with this OS and its poor use of system resources and random illegal operations than Win2k's unparallelled ability to piss me off by locking up threefold in 20 minutes. That's horse shit. Maybe I'll try Windows 2000 again whenever I get a new hard drive (which is a very low priority), I'll slap their NTFS file system on it and see if that makes any difference. I don't see why that would... but whatever. Computers work in funny ways.

Update: My computer performs 3 or 4 illegal operations at start-up. The error occurs with msdrv.exe. This error has been happening since the day I left college. I just looked for some info on this executable, and it turns out msdrv.exe is part of a trojan horse called Backdoor.Asylum. Damnit. At least the errors were occuring because my good ol' antivirus software had the file "in quarantine." Heh. I still wish it told me about the trojan the day I got it, though. :p

Another Update: Egads. There's this other wussy trojan that found its way onto my computer disguised as an HTML document stored in my "Temporary Internet Files" directory. This wussy trojan was used to set up that other trojan in the other update. That just goes to show that you should:

SCAN YOUR COMPUTER FOR VIRUSES REGULARLY!

Don't say I didn't warn ya. Late stories
Win2k has locked up on me on three occasions tonight. I'm not sure why it's doing this. Nor am I sure there's a correlation between each lock-up. Whatever.

* Urban warfare has reached a new level. Armed with EMP's, percussion grenades, and really bright lights, this armored SUV could be the Army's new toy.
* A 9-year-old in college? She's considered to be really smart for coming up with a great new idea: a backpack-like thing that you put around your waist and thigh. Great, sign me up for ten of these. I want an unconfortable version of a fanny pack.
* Hey! The Bush girls are at it again! Don't they have any friends that are over 21? I'm sure those secret service people that watch the girls can hook 'em up. Or, since they're in college, why not go to any frat party?

Blogger is slower than monkey feces rolling uphill as of late. Not cool.