This is just a test to see if I can update posts without duplication on my art site.

This is now the edited version, so this post is different than the first.

As you may know my sister’s wedding was this past Saturday. As the maid of honor, I was to give a toast. So here it is, and if you knew Isaac’s family you’d know why it was rejected:

I was worried about standing up here giving this toast, so I did some research to help start the creative juices flowing. However, the research wasn’t very helpful. All I learned was to never say that I slept with the bride. And, so, I haven’t.

Ok I need to share this with the world… I created my first thunderbird theme, except it’s not my theme because I just updated the theme I always used for TB 0.8. So I’m not claiming that any of this art is mine, or even any of the css, I just combined one old theme and a new theme to make a new old theme. Anyway, here’s a screenshot:

I’ve had way to much time recently. I left my old job last friday and don’t start my new one — yeah for new graphic design, ideal job — until this friday.

So with all this time, I started fixing up the clarinet website because there were some techincal gliches with the photo gallery. Then Brian suggested that I put blog up for news and events type stuff. I started doing that for the clarinet site and realized I really didn’t want to put in all that effort — and then getting my roommate to use it on top of everything. What I really wanted was to have a bolg on my site.

After trying out a few different types of blogs at opensource cms, I ended up going with WordPress. WordPress looked nice as default and setup in 5 seconds flat. But, as always, I couldn’t use the default look, which promted me to redo my whole site with a more stream-lined CSS — I think my pages are about half the lines they used to be because of all those embedded tables. So, here it is!

The following link is a video clip describing The Internet vs. Real Life from Red vs. Blue.

It’s funny.

The concept behind red vs. blue is to create an animated picture show, but without actually doing any of the work of animating, which, as Lauren can tell you, is hard. What they’ve done is esentially move characters around inside the video game Halo and then added their own sound.

At which point hilarity ensues.

Who says programmers don’t have fun. The guy on the right wrote the textbook for CSC 453, introduction to Operating Systems. And one of the other three guys in the picture is a VP at Novell. I’ll let you guess which one.

While playing World Of Warcraft, an online only computer game that is very popular among those in the know, I discovered a bug. Specifically, one of the quests specifies you are supposed to look for a certain character in “Warrior’s Hall” which, as it turns out, doesn’t exist. I finally found the character in “Hunter’s Hall” and dutifully submitted a bug report so that other players would not have to suffer the same indignities that I was subjected to for asking people for the location of a non-existant building.

But then I had to go and end my bug report like this:

“I got flamed many times trying to find “warrior’s” hall and it was not
enjoyable, so if you could fix this type, I’d appreciate it.”

That’s right, I mispelled typo. I’m pretty sure I’m banned from the internet at this point.

When you move out and live on your own, you’re bound to find out that something is completely different than how you previously thought. This realization came to me today. I found out how much a book of stamps cost. It costs WAY too freakin’ much. I am never sending letters to you people again.

P.S. Happy Birthday Jessica!! :-)

I really hate it when my roommate tries to help out by changing the network setup without telling or asking me about it. I tried to ssh from work tonight to get some work done, but was denied because the odd-ball put a second open Wireless access point on our network. He wonders why its slow?

Newflash: wireless is slower than wired. It always has been and always will be with 802.11b networking. Sorry man, your other access point only complicates the matter.

Maybe having two might make things faster, but really? Do we need that much bandwidth? At least let me lock it down a bit so we dont broadcast internet for every fool for a block.

While in line for the best Mediteranian food in SLO (Jaffa Restaurant), I overhead someone mention the name “Du Bois.” Then another person mentioned it. Then, they were talking about how they were both Du Bois’, but from different families. At this point, I chimed in: “My name’s Du Bois too!”

At first, this was met with laughter. But, after about 5 seconds, they could both see I was serious. We had all three just ran into 3 separate, distinct Du Bois families. What are the chances? I need to go buy a Lottery Ticket.

I did something new today, I purchased, wrote and mailed my first sympathy card. You see, a few weeks ago, my paternal grandfather passed away after a lengthy illness. It was suggested to me, rightly so, that I send his wife a condolences card. Olive, my grandfather’s wife, is not my grandmother (my biological grandmother passed away when my dad was young, and my emotional grandmother passed away when I was young), but is still a part of my family. Sympathy cards are something I have never been particularly interested in, understandably. I was at a loss for what to say, and how to express myself without sounding trite. Hell, I was at a loss over which one to purchase for the exact same reason. Finally picked one that wasn’t overly sappy, and sounded mostly sincere, wrote a little bit of what I hope comes across as kindness and signed it "Love, Ellen"

There are parts of adulthood that suck, that make it much less glamorous than what you idealize a kid. Most kids deal with loss, most deal with having to comforting others who have lost, none of them write condolence cards. There are other parts of adulthood suck, but that’s not for this conversation.

Lastly, my Dad has been going through the old family photos recently, scanning them and sending them to us kids. I think I will be posting a few here, but only the extra good ones.

This slide show is the best example of mechanical sexiness I have found to date. I promise you, there are certain things in this world that will make anyone more attractive- owning one of these babies, would do it. (You might have to click on a link to get the slide show up.)

  RECORDING IN KING CITY!!!!!

  there is sexy cam slinking his sexy ass out to record some sexy vocal tracks.

  there is warren reading a book with a giant drum on his lap.  why you ask?  because he is warren.

  the 2 motherfucking p.i.m.p.s kicking back after we finished all out shit.

  this is warren and i trying to decide whether or not i could do a headstand on my drum stool, eventually e decided i couldnt and saved us a trip to the emergency room.

  there is dj, the tricked out fool behind such bands as The Bi-Polar Bears, Body Massage, and yes even A Prankster and A Gangster.  this kid knows his shit, so listen up when my man speaks.  his hair does look kinda silly though, doesnt it.

  time for food. now i didnt put this pic in to show you glenn and warren stuffing their respective mouths, i put it in because in the background there is an awesome dood with an awesome mullet and you cant see it in the pic but he has an awesome hole in is awesome crotch and when he walked around we almost saw his awesome balls.  awesome.

  warren and i had a fight with the bouncy balls in safeway.

  we both won and that little girl and her mom lost.  yay us!

  then i went on a helicopter ride.  there were two buttons in it and it made authentic helicopter sounds. 

  SHALOM TOWN BIATCHES!!!!  for those of you who read my last story, this is the store i talked about.  basically the only clothing store in king city.  it has a jewish name and is run by a korean guy with the same last name as me.  and when i was younger i used to buy straight edge belt buckles and dickes pants there and he would always as if my dad was korean because i have a korean last name.

  back to recording!

after about 11 hours of playing the same songs over and over we slowly started drifting into dementia.

  it seems the only time im not anti dancing is when im in a grocery store or listening to playback.

then i made the 2 greatest discoveries ever.

  1.  THE ACCORDION!!!!  i would not have survived that weekend had i not found this.

  and 2.  A GIANT SANDWICH!  i attacked this sandwich like a badger mother protecting her cubs.

  on last accordion shot. look at the pure joy on my face.

  and finally the obligitory myspace photo.  this was when i was sleeping uner mr. grahams desk.

  ben and i had  2 day long easter celebration with various visitors on the way.  enjoy

EASTER SUNDAY MORNING

  we woke up and ben opened his easter package from his parents.

  then he talked on the phone.

  and talked on the phone.

 and talked on the phone.  ben talks on the phone a lot.

  then we sat down to watch the hip hop bible video i got at the 99 cent store.

  this is our reaction to it. 

then we each went to our respective work places.

EASTER SUNDAY NIGHT

  its easter sunday night and we did what any non christian with a piggy bank full of coins would do, PLAYED BLACKJACK!

  this is our blackjack table we bought from the thrift store.

  this is quite an embarassing situation, you see, i misunderstood the rules of the game and thought we had to take our pants off to play.  luckily ben set me straight before too long.

  this is steve dealing.

  and i collect the winnings.  i think we all basically broke even except for ben who lost a lot of money.

EASTER MONDAY AFTERNOON/NIGHT

you see ben and i are quite poor, so we decided to wait till monday to have an easter celebration/egg hunt.  you see, that way we could get eggs and candy for half price.  so here we go

  its easter monday and ben is so excited!

 very excited!

  this is us doing our holiday tradition of me standing on bens back while he eats peeps and looks like a creep.

  then we hid easter eggs.  instead of candy we decided to hide mystery objects for each other.

  this is ben finding an egg with a wrist band to match mine.  because we rock!

  then i found one with advertisements for gay pornography.  i wasnt as excited.

  this is one of the eggs ben found filled with a mystery liquid.

  then ben found one with nothing.

  then i found one with condoms!

  then ben found another one with nothing.

  then i found one with the cap to bens nasal spray!

  then we did our happy easter dance

  its a long dance.

  and that was our easter.  hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.

  i went to LBC with Kate to have band practice last nite.

  i was rocking my new soccer kicks.

  kate came and sat in the corner and stuck drumsticks down my pants as i played.

  i love how warren is pearing out from behind glenn in this pic.

  i was really tired.  look at my giant adams apple.

  warren looked drunk and angry.

  then he did drunk angry gymnastics.

  we were too loud for kate to make phone calls.

  the end.

steve, casey, ben, david, tom, and i have all been working hard on a short film that we hope to send to many many festivals.  these are some on set photos of the shoot so far.  its a nice little story, we have amazing footage so far, its a skeleton crew of some of the coolest people i know, i couldnt be happier.  the only downside is the amazing amounts of poison oak.

  this is casey showing a local rooster who’s boss.

  this is right above the creek we are filming at.

  this is a homemade dolly we have.  it works great and allows us to get amazing and smooth push in shots.

  this is one of the locations on the creek.  the movie begins and ends here. 

  most of those plants surrounding us is poison oak/ivy.

  this is us trying to wipe all remnants of poison oak off our bodys.

  this is tom taking a little sit down on set.

  this is us trying to plan out one of the more complicated shots.  i think it took about 1.5 hours to get this shot and we did about 11 takes or so.

  this is my favorite picture, but this scene got cut out of the film.

  and finally, this is a picture of me trying to jump over our reclining chair, but instead breaking it and getting my ankle trapped inside it for 5 minutes.

played a show in LA this weekend.  the show didnt go very well but that tuesday night was probably the best tuesday night ever.  thank you matt, karine, laina, blanca, brian, freddy, jessica, haichi, nat, and christina for being so fucking awesome. 

life is pretty damn good right now, i dont know how i could be much happier than this.

these are upcoming shows i will be playing in LA.  all of you that can should go to at least one so i can hang out with you. 

Mar 8 2005 9:00P
Lava Lounge Hollywood, CA

Mar 25 2005 10:00P
Murder Scene Los Angeles (Little Tokyo), CA

Apr 1 2005 8:00P
No Future Cafe Pasadena, CA

Apr 12 2005 9:00P
The Joint Los Angeles, CA

Apr 20 2005 9:00P
Zen Sushi Silverlake, CA

and maybe this will entice you to go.

introduction.

 mike park - drums.

 casey fera - guitar.

 ben begley - vocals.

recording.

vocals.

downtime.

dancing.

fin.

that picture i posted of me doing a handstand was actually taken the day before my birthday.  i bet casey that i could learn how to walk accross the room on my hands in 15 minutes.  i lost.  casey took pics to document my loss.  some of them are neat, some are homo erotic.  some are just superb. 

  casey tried to give me some friendly advice, but it looked weird so i said, "whats wrong with your arm?"  and he said, "im a robot!"  and we laughed.

  this is me starting out.  its difficult to get yourself straight up and down.

  i fell.

  here i go again.  doesnt it look like im hardcore dancing?

  i had success in small doses.  in this picture it almost looks like i have forearm muscles.  almost.

  look at that sexy milky white skin.

  this shot is for the ladies.  the most erotic picture ever.

  FAILURE!!!  this is probably the best picture ever taken.

the end.

  i got a new monitor, so the old one had to go.

  steve taught me how to lift the monitor over my head and smash it on the train tracks.

  right when i was about to smash it we realized how bad of an idea it was to smash it on the train tracks.  this is a really cool picture though. 

  this picture is funny because ben is scratching his balls.

  then we finally threw it!!!

  then ben went to town on it with a baseball bat.

  look at bens face!!!!  thats the face of ultimate intensity!!

  then some crazy dood with a rifle yelled at us and we, like the pussies we are, took off runing.  this picture was taken during the chaos.

the end. 

p.s.  tomorrow is my birthday!!!! 

this is a picture of steve and i playing mario party, he beat me that time, but never again.  last nite i did the unthinkable.  firstly this shows you how completly anti social i am.  i see some people write in their livejournals about how they dont want to go out or claim they are anti social, i am the king.  last nite, friday nite, while people all over the world are getting drunk, puking their guts out, and screwing people, i was home alone playing a 50 turn game of mario party 6.  it is perhaps the greatest friday nite ive ever had.  some people may call me a dork, i prefer to say i have an irational fear of meeting and touching new people.  i remember once there was this film fest and a bunch of my friends and friends family went to it.  now i dont do well in public, especially when there are a lot of people and especially when i know a lot of the people there.  so i basically ignored everyone and they all got pissed off at me, including casey’s mom who thinks im a creep.  ok, story time is over.  back to mario party.

one time when dj, freddy, matt, and jon were visiting me we wanted to go swimming.  i dont have a pool.  we noticed motels have pools.  we went to this ghetto motel to go swimming.  we got out there and started to get in the water when this man comes out and says he is from the motel and we asked if we are registered guests.  jon instantly says, "no, lets go."  but then freddy calmly says, "yes, of course we are, we are in room 314."  i was very impressed by freddy’s answer at first until i noticed what the motel employee noticed immediatly, there is no room 314 and there is no 3rd floor.  this man then asked us again to leave, and we were a bunch of crack ass birds, so of course we werent gonna leave.  he then walked into a room nearby.  a few minutes later he walked out and was accompanied by 5 giant mexican gangster looking fellows who looked rather angry that we were swimming in their motel swimming pool.  the man said, "im gonna ask you one more time to leave."  i thought it was about time to be heading out, and he did ask rather politely, so we left, before we died.  we still had a hankering for some swimming so we went cross town to the holiday inn.  they didnt have very high pool security, so we got to swimming pretty quickly and easily.  the only other people at the pool were two nice little european women accompanied by they incredibly hot mother.  freddy, jon, and i, all thought we actually had a chance with this gorgeous french tickler and were all strutting what god gave us.  dj and matt really couldnt give two shits.  ok, now we get to the best part.  we all got in the spa and the two little children were in there too.  we are sitting back, talking loudly about "cool" things to impress euro mom and she is occasionally looking up, probably to check on her children, but id like to think its because she wanted to sex me up.  anyways, out of nowhere dj and matt decide to have a pec flexing contest.  you know, pec’s (chest muscles).  so they are intensly staring at each other and flexing with all their might back and forth bacn and forth back and forth, it looked like a sweaty hairy grandfather clock.  it was hypnotizing and nausiating.  they are locked on each others chest, both flexing non stop till one flinches, we all gather round to see who will back down first.  as soon as the contest is reaching its peak, euro mom looks up and see’s, well, this disgusting display of pornographic chest flexing.  she instantly jumps up and runs to the spa, grabs her kids, and takes off with a look of terror on her face.  all of our erections for euro mom are instantly gone.  the moral of the story, if you are trying to score with a hot european older lady, never bring dj and matt along, because their tit flexing contest’s will cock block you everytime.

  ben and i had a wrestiling match, it was a hoot!

  ben is a worthy match, he has guts and furry.

  but right as he was getting the upper hand he, for some unknown reason, started skanking, and yelling, "pick it up pick it up!"

  then, mid "oi", i grabbed ben and began my puma like attack.

  we struggled very sexily back and forth.  one man had to get the upper hand and the other would be forever a bottom only.

  then i pulled out my secret weapon, my ass!!!!  while he was distracted by this ripe round thing of beauty i made my move.

  in one swift motion i threw ben to the ground and pounced on him like a very sexy puma pouncing on its half as sexy prey.

  judging by the look of sheer terror on bens face, id say i would be the clear winner. 

ben fought well and i admire his fortitude, but there can be only one puma man, and i is he.

School’s been keepin’ me down for the last couple weeks, I’ve got tons to post about but it doesn’t look like today is going to be the day where I mount an offensive on the heap of good material that has been accumulating in my notebook, as I have yet another program due tomorrow.

On the plus side, Darth Vader has a blog.

What? Hoo-hah!

Sometimes I feel the heat of the flames, the cruel tang of battery acid and rubber tires stinging the inside of my nostrils. Sometimes I feel the hair of two dogs under my arms, trying desperately to leap out of my control to establish their control elsewhere because they’re scared of 65 mph bright lights in darkness, a dusk in Anaheim on fire. Sometimes I feel utterly alone in entropy, staring at the wreckage of my car.

And then I wake up and realize that was months ago.

Last week, I got eaten alive by a mosquito. I had two bites on my lip, one on my side, one on my neck, one on my forehead, one on my thigh. The two on my lip were the worst; my lips were numb and swelled up to a size that made me very much not want to go to school, particularly because it happened the morning of the first day of two that I was going to be high-profile: giving tours of the GrC department and the Screen Printing lab.

Going to the health center on Friday afternoon was nice, particularly with the doctor saying “You just need to learn to not be so delicious!” Ahhhh, taste me, I’m delicious! But they gave me Allegra, which has helped.

Giving tours of the screen printing lab all day during Open House was fun, but tiring. I swear, I must have given the same spiel maybe 30-40 times. My throat was definitely hoarse by the end of it.

The best part about it, though, was when I was showing the light table we image screens on to a seven year old, and he looked at me and said “What if you were to look straight into the lightbulb when it goes off?”

I look at him, and I say in my most menacing voice: “Your eyes would liquifyyyyeeeee. It would be like a science experiment gone wrong.”

I miss telling the youth a bunch of untruth. Particularly teasing my little sister. Definitely miss that.

Hallelujah!!! The car started!!! IT’S ALIVE!!!!

but…

all the problems it used to have are still there, such as not going above 15 mph when I really want it to, which is all the time.

This is my favorite poem right now:

Well,

A new quarter begins. This one will be pretty neat, methinks. I walked into my ES X335 class with wonder: it felt like High School again, but with a filipino Mr. Lunsford. “The Filipino/a American Experience” is a seminar oriented, not lecture oriented class, and boy does it feel like sitting down back at Morse, in a very good way.

I’m only taking 13 units this quarter, so it seems like it’ll be a bit easier than of late. This seems like a good quarter to get into two different internships. I’ve already started my first quarter at UGS, the on-campus printing company run entirely by students, and I’m really excited to get an interview pretty soon with Big Images, a wide format printer on Broad St. run by the guy who used to live in my room. If I get the internship, it’ll make my day. The guy told Jim he’s looking for somebody to learn the ropes so they can eventually be an actual employee. If all goes well, I’ll be able to stay in the area after graduation next year, and that sounds swell!

And it rains again. This time, in the city of angels.

Hanging out with Abe for a couple of days has been definite good times… I really felt like I had to get the heck out of Dodge after finals week finished. I was getting… restless and bored.

I’ll be arriving back on the Central Coast tomorrow, helping Kristen move back from her victory over the UCLA educational system.

Ciao.

Sigh. It’s finally over.

Finals week was a monstrous labyrinth. Fire, ogres, pain sticks, hot MAGMA!!! And I survived. With black hair, no less.

That’s right. Kristen helped dye my hair black. It’s pretty freakin’ cool.

Mom told me about the new Moby album coming out next week, and lo! and behold! Two hours later I have it! Tis pretty decent. Very 80’s new wave.

Now, I’m in that part of the year where it’s the all-of-a-sudden death stop. Going going going in class, and then STOP. I don’t want to do anything with my days, but I feel I should be doing something. Sigh…

It’s not so bad, though. Just rainy.

Shotgun rain

Every day this week I’ve felt
the cool steel of the Winchester.
My knuckles, white,
gripped hard over metal
and envied my innocent eyes.
After all,
on this dark morning
when the clouds cover us like taxpayer dollars,
a steady eye cannot be faulted…

If I fail, it is the trigger finger that should crawl away in shame.

So I walk past cherry blossom trees
and move straight to crimson roses.
I stop where I can get a
straight bead on the sky,
fill a chamber with verse
and let fly.

After a glancing shot, the sky bleeds the ground.
I find no part of my body innocent,
and in me, no remorse.
Consider this poetic justice:

In this world of blossoming black umbrellas
rotating swiftly in clockwork fashion
above the heads of the protected,
when a girl turns to her neighbor in the crowd
and says,
“the rain just kills me inside sometimes.”

I wish I was there to say back
“It seems like you’re always just waiting for it.”

And I carry my Winchester, sans umbrella,
down the street, turning right
and find the second house on the left.
I’ll sit down in my chair, eyes closed,
and just listen to the wounded animal in the sky above.

Today, I purchased a phonograph player from Dave. I figure that everybody else is doing up their music all digital-like, and so the new trend is to go hyper-analog. And that’s just what I’ve done.

I made my first record purchase today since I purchased Paul Simon’s Graceland back in tenth grade. Both of the Ryan Adams’ Love is Hell EPs have been floating circularly around my life these past few hours. These EPs are the new Rush of Blood to the Head, and just as good, if not better. Just listen to the songs “Political Scientists” or his cover of “Wonderwall” or even “World War 24.” My attention is a needle in it’s groove.

Another LP purchase of the day is Crowded House’s self-titled album… you know Crowded House… Don’t Dream it’s Over. The song that Sixpence None the Richer recently covered. It’s a pretty decent album, reminds me a bit of INXS, with a little less flair.

I am so tired.

Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. Sigh. Why Sun Tzu’s The Art of War?

It’s printing right now. No real problems, just a head cold and I’m here at the lab later than I expected.

Many of you probably have already heard the news: Enterprise has been canceled, and the last episode shows sometime in May. It’s sad, especially with how good this season has been, but I think I can say that as long as the new Battlestar Galactica continues, my world will still be complete. It’s tough to put into words just how good that series is. It’s like taking speed. Not that I would know, but I guess it’s like how I’d imagine taking speed. But yeah, BSG starts it’s second season this next summer.

And then the Goblet of Fire comes out this November. I read on SciFi Wire (thanks to my brother’s suggestion that I keep a close eye on that site) that the Weird Sisters, who are the band that play during the Yule Ball, are going to have members of Radiohead in it. This news pleases Kristen to no end, she’s the biggest Radiohead fan I’ve ever met.

Me? I’m fine. Still alive. The stomach flu has gone away, but is being replaced by a pretty killer head cold. I think my body’s ganging up against me.

This is what happens when I write on the whiteboard that I’m “the life of the afterlife” and that “it’s time to love myself all over again.” I just thought it was funny. Seriously.

Now I’m rambling.

Somebody smack me.

If you take the “el” out of “People,” you get “Pope.” This is due to the fact that el Pope is much like “people,” except that there’s just one of him.

Thus, “El Pope.” A man of the people; so much so that his name is an anagram for people.

There’s a new manager at staples, and we had a lovely conversation!:

TheMan: What are you going to graduate with?

Me: Debt.

Only the facebook can make it official.

This means that the only remaining scholarly person I know who is not on the facebook is my sister. Alex Reed, the one man I thought would withstand the gusty winds of change, caved like an anorexic in a hot dog eating contest.

Stopped by Barnes & Noble today for a coffee and some free reading, when I discovered the book Liberalism is a Mental Disorder by Michael Savage.

First off, excellent title. It’s what drew me to the book. I’m sure he considered many other reasonable titles before he settled on it and he definitely went in the right direction. Other titles he rejected include Liberalism, the new commy-terrorism and Liberals: They WILL eat your baby; but it got my attention and that’s what matters.

When I initially went to see Fahrenheit 911, some conservative minded friends went with me and so, in a reflexive post-movie state, I asked them what they thought of the film. After they expressed an inclination to burn down his house and kill his children (see: terrorism), they pined for a movie of similar caliber from their point of view. I think Michael Savage is the man for such a movie. I would probably enjoy a movie like this so long as it was truly funny. While a great many friends take politics very seriously, I really believe that comedy is much more important in my day to day life. I propose instead of having “debates” (I’ll get back to Savage’s use of quotations later), we have each candidate do 30 minutes of stand-up and choose the next leader of the free world with a device that can only be called the laugh-o-meter. Their performances wouldn’t be any more scripted than they are now.

Incidentally, if this system had been in place in 2004, the election wouldn’t have even been close. The Great Reverend Al Sharpton would have annihilated the whole crowd. Bush’s frat boy humor just isn’t appealing, Kerry could bore a guy on laughing gas to tears, Howard Dean has that mad look in his eyes that makes you question whether or not he’s kidding. Only Sharpton could say, “George Bush giving tax cuts is like Jim Jones giving Kool-Aid. It tastes good but it’ll kill you,” and get away with it.

Getting back to the book, what makes Michael Savage great is his fanaticism, he put “United Nations” in quotes, apparently Mr. Savage believes the UN is a fictional body of world leaders, much like Super Friends (Come to think of it, calling Korea, Iraq, and Iran the “Legion of Doom” wouldn’t be any more ridiculous than “Axis of Evil”). Now, I’m not saying the UN is in any way efficient or effective, but to put quotes around an international diplomatic organization calls your grip on the bike handle that is reality into question. At a later point, Big Mike inventated the word islamofascist, which to me sounds like a game where you run around hitting fascists on the head with a laughably over-sized mallet; the point being that this was a situation which necessitated a hyphen, to indicate your intention is humor and not a failed attempt at english. I suppose it is possible that it comes up so often in his daily vocabulary that he has actually started to believe that this word is, in fact, in Webster’s, under i.

My favorite quote from 15 minutes of reading has to be:

“Ultimately, the legions of leftist revolutionaries are laughable. Their ideology has been a complete failure wherever it has been tried… …Which is why I invite you to sneer at their Big Lie. I invite you to remain vigilant before a bomb goes off in your mother’s house.”

Did… …did Michael Savage just threaten to level my mother’s home if I refuse to sneer?

Happy twelfth birthday, Jean Marie!

As John Mason once said, “You were born an original. Don’t die a copy.”

Gosh, that’s a little morbid. Think of it this way: birthdays are healthy things. The more you have, the longer you’ll live.

I recently downloaded The End is Here which is a recording of Five Iron Frenzy’s final show in Colorado back in late 2003. The download came in at an average of 350 kbps, which is freakin’ unbelievable. This meant that the 100 mg file came in at about six and a half minutes. My hair stood straight back and my eyebrows were singed. It was that amazing.

But what’s truly incredible is the show itself. Just listening to it, particularly around the end, as they start to sing “Every New Day” and you know it’s the last time they ever were to sing that song… I almost started crying. Not to mention when they broke out into Amazing Grace at the end…

Wow.

So, Red alerted me to Darth Vader’s blog and I’m definitely geeking out over it. My favorite part about it is the comments left by readers. Here’s my favorite from the last post:

Mr. Vader,
We at the Internal Revenue Service have had our eyes on you for quite some time. We have watched you crush people with a lack of mercy that would stun a cold fish, we have watched you destroy entire fleets on a whim, we have watched you pay less than acceptable taxes…

We in the I.R.S. firmly believe in intimidation, destructive whims, and the execution of lesser officers round the clock.

And so we have decided that you are more than qualified to accept a position in our administration. The job would be management, with several people under you whose tracheas you could crush. It would require almost no real work and frightening other people to give you their lifes’ savings.
Like we said, you’re over qualified, our one question is, will you take the job, or do we have to send some people over there to, “convince you”?

The Internal Revenue Service: we want your money!

To which Darth Vader responds:

Dear IRS,

I understand that your offices are located in the distant Sol System, which I believe has been scheduled for demolition.

I’ll see you in Hell.

Sincerely,

D. Vader

C’mon. Isn’t that awesome?!?!

From a random turn of events I got to go to Sacramento tonight and see Finesse Mitchell do stand-up. He did a really good set too, and yes, he did some Starkisha, along with a dry cereal joke that was really funny, but that I don’t care to repeat online, maybe if you ask me in person. Anywoo, this is basically me bragging, and I know most of you are like "Wha? Who? Stakishawhatsitwhoosy?" so I’ll just put up the pic and leave it at that.

About $400 away from a new camera. Anyone wanna donate?

Damn! Tonights dinner was as good as sex. And what followed was better than dinner!

Chicken, marinated in:
Chicken Broth, ginger, basil, rosemary, garlic. BBQed.

Couscous with: Tomato, cilantro, broth, garlic, salt, and avocado.

Spinach, sauteed in garlic and salt.

Man, that was excellent food.

Why am I always so tired lately? Must be the fact that this is keeping me from eating. Damn you, Canon!

“I’ve learned to take my pants with me…” — Linz, while getting out of bed.

I recently received this email:
[quote]
Hi Ryan,

Thanks for the resume. Yes, we are currently looking for people.
We have a multitude of roles we are filling as we find the right
people. Presently we’re looking for junior and senior additions
to our technical staff as well as coverage for NOC shifts (24x7).
We’re a small company: most roles here are pretty broad regardless
of what it may say on your business card.

Things are a bit crazy this week and next — we’re about half way
through the build-out of a ~60 rack data-center addition. I’d like
to see when I can get time from some other members of the team here
before scheduling an in-person interview.

What’s your schedule like as far as scheduling an interview goes?

Here’s some questions to maybe get us started via e-mail and
determine which of us you should be talking with first. I’ve looked
through your resume so these are partially drawn from that.
[/quote]

Please review the following Email and post critiques:

Josh,

I’m available for interviews M/W/F, after 2pm, before 5pm.

As for your questions, I’ll get a quick start on them:

Hardware or software?

Both.

What do you think of Microsoft Windows?

I don’t hate it, but I spend most of my time running Linux/OS X. I try to avoid Windows mainly because of virus/worm problems and the amount of spyware and things that can automatically install without user intervention, especially when browsing with IE and ActiveX. Using Linux, or firefox in Windows greatly mitigates these problems. Also, Linux allows me more freedom to experiment and learn about the inner workings of an operating system.

Which do you prefer: Debian or GenToo? Why?

That depends on the application. On my box, I like gentoo. It builds all applications from the latest sourcecode, using highly optimized compilation flags. However, on my senior project, I am using debian because the servers do not have enough processor power to constantly compile source packages. Debian is great for staying current on packages where you do not necessarily need or want to spend the time to compile highly optimized packages.

How/why did you end up in SLO and at Cal Poly?

I applied to quite a few high end schools (MIT, Cal Tech, UCLA, UC Davis, and Cal Poly), and only got into two: UCD and Cal Poly. I came down to visit SLO in the spring of my senior year, and immediately fell in love with the area. Having just gotten into rock climbing, seeing Bishop’s Peak so close to campus really drew me in to the idea of going to Cal Poly. Additionally, I researched the ratings of the College of Engineering as compared to Davis; Cal Poly had a much better rated program.

Please tell me a bit more about your Senior Project?

My Senior Project is building a high-speed, networked storage array for mirroring popular open source projects, such as Gentoo, Debian, Ubuntu, and Fedora Core. Eventually, we are pitching for local and corporate sponsorship to purchase up to 2 TB of storage in order to mirror Sourceforge.net. We are using hardware donated by Brocade, 160GB of high-speed SCSI over Fibre Channel storage at the moment. You can access it while we work on it at http://san.csc.calpoly.edu

What has been your favorite Cal Poly course thus far? Why?

Software Engineering was probably my favorite Cal Poly course. It taught me a great deal about real world software engineering and the requirements process. It was my first real experience coding under serious time and management constraints.

Who is your favorite professor? Why?

Michael Haungs, he’s my Senior Project Advisor. I like him as a professor because he is so approachable and understanding. He has a real appreciation for his students, and has a real knack for teaching and making dry subject matter interesting.

When did you first get into computers/networks/software/electronics/etc? Why?

I started getting into computers in grade school, around 5th grade. My parents had just bought a PC, and I was immediately hooked. I had always been interested in electronics, and the computer, especially with the emerging internet, seemed like a great hobby, and a ready way to spend my free time. In about 7th grade, I took two C programming course which greatly affected the way I used computers. Before those classes, I used our home computer for email, news, et-cetera, and after the course, I was able to create my own programs to use the computer in new and exciting ways. I’ve used principles that I learned in that Data Structures and Algorithms class in absolutely every programming project I’ve ever written since then; I feel I have a great advantage over all other students in my grade level because I am very familiar with the more technical usage of pointers, structures, and other classic C data structures and algorithms; I learned it all at a very young age, and its stuck with me ever since.

What do you think when you hear the word “marketing”?

Its a necessity. You could have the greatest product in the world, but if no one knows about it, its going to fail. I’ve noticed this first hand in some of my personal coding projects. While my projects are open-source, and not-for-profit, I can still see an positive impact with good marketing. Even open source projects need marketing; there are developers out there that can help with all sorts of projects, but only if they’ve heard of them.

What would be required of a potential employer for you to want to work
there for a long time?

I look for the following in long term employers:

1) Flexibility: I like to work with companies that can change with the times and practices of modern computing.

2) Employee Input: If one of Company X’s employees has a valid idea on how to fix/improve/adjust a process for the good of the company, I expect that idea to be given due process and merit, and not just filed with all the other memos. New employees bring fresh ideas and differing experiences that allow a company to tackle new problems from many different directions. Its a great asset.

3) Accountability.

4)

What do you feel is the most important thing in business?

Enjoying what you do.

How was Italy?

Great. That Europe trip was one of my most enjoyable memories to date. Venice was especially cool!

-jr

———————-
)’(
Ryan Du Bois
www.ryandubois.net
“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety
deserve neither liberty nor safety.” - Benjamin Franklin

I absolutely hate my roommates. Party until 5am, I haven’t got a wink of sleep, and I am extremely pissed off. I should have slept at Linz’s house last night, but I went home to get some sleep. sleep…. yea,, right..

Fuck you andrew,
Fuck you andy.

You guys suck fat donkey cock.

See those burgers?  Those burgers are not photo-shopped to hugeness, they are actually that size.  Fifteen (yes, 15) pounds each they are being served at Denny’s Beer Barrel Pub in Clearfield, Pa.  I am never moving to Pennsylvania, ever ever ever.  The damn thing costs $30 and comes with 10.5 pounds of ground beef, 25 slices of cheese, an entire head of lettuce, three tomatoes, two onions, and a cup and a half each of mayonnaise, ketchup, relish, mustard, and banana peppers.  It is called the Belly Buster, and if you can eat it all, without help, it is free.  Wow, yuck.

And so, I’ve been walking around the last couple of days thinking that today was Mother’s Day.

So, I called my Grandma in Arkansas today, wished her a happy Mother’s Day, and she was a little confused.

“You’re a little early,” she said.

“Nope. It’s today. A special day. Happy Mother’s Day!!! I remembered!”

“Dear, it’s not until Sunday.”

“Oh.”

So, there you have it. Better early than never, I suppose…

Wow, crazy night.

Lemme tell you about a little experience I had with my good buddy Jaeger: I was over at my friends’ house — I won’t name names to protect the innocent — having a good time drinking. We both just had the same brutal, interminable networking midterm and were damned ready to forget it. After two shots, and a surfer on acid, we decided a little customary foos-ball was in order; I beat the pants off him, big time. Afterwards, I shared my Cuban cigars with my friends, and we hit up the neighbors for something a little more wacky.

This is where things start to get fuzzy.

We passed the controller to San Andreas, amoung other things — I’m not totally sure how long we were at it — until my body was so dry, my contact fell out of my face. After rescuing that situation with some borrowed solution, I decided it was time to make my exit, as my friends had done so before me. Having, by now, gone through a wide range of feelings and lingering random funny-thoughts — which is what I’m calling a random half-thought that you only really think of long enough to think that it’s mildy funny that you are thinking of it, and then presently forget and move on to another — I was sufficiently tired for a nap.

Cue funky trance-like state.

There I am, on the couch — only remembering to breathe in 5 breathe bursts, with a time delay of 25 seconds between each (bonus points if you can solve that pattern of pulses for a Fourier Series) — dreaming the aforementioned funny-thoughts, and hallucinating mildy.

I hear the bone-sawing sound of an automatic weapon from the video game next door, and suddenly realize: I haven’t really lived the past year and a half of my life, and am still desperately trying to wake up in the recovery room. I open my eyes and realize: my entire family is still there, encouraging my failing attempts at breathing, as I turgidly attempt to effect some proper form of gas exchange — one involving O2 and CO2. Then, in an instant, the glimpse that I have of that altered reality — that feeling of not having lived the past 18 months — is blown away as I recover my senses, and fill my lungs with oxygen.

A little background for those of you who are not so familiar with the story of my life: I had an incredibly invasive jaw surgery 18 months ago, which wired my jaw shut for 3 weeks, and left me 15 pounds lighter. Needless to say, the time between when I was put under — which, as it occured, happened right after one of my surgeons told me that the other surgeon likes to operate naked (I looked over to verify, and sure enough, he was taking his shoes off) — and the time that I got unwired, and felt more myself was less of the predicted 18 days, and more like 18 months. Hell, I still feel the pain — or lack thereof — in most of my upper jaw; I have not fullly regained the feeling in my gums. Having this sort of dream really trips me out after such an ordeal. Really, I don’t want to go through that again.

But probably only to me or maybe other diehard Harry Potter fans. I’ve been reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix because I’m bored:

They may not look dangerous, but if angered they will gouge out human eyes with their fingers, which as you can see, are very sharp and not at all desirable near the eyeballs (p 259).

Hagrid, who had never heard Umbridge’s fake cough beofre, was gazing in some concern at the closest thestral [magical flying reptilian horse], evidently under the impression that it had made the sound (p 446).

Paul Winchell died this past weekend, and with him goes the original voice of Tigger from Winnie the Pooh.

Initial autopsy results show his top was made of rubber and his bottom made of springs.

Last night, I had a dream that I went to an open mic night to do a stand-up routine…

…and only thought up a single joke ahead of time. It did not go as well as I might have hoped.

While walking into work I read the headline “Tsunami Warning Fizzles.”

For those who don’t know, there was a HUGE earthquake off the cost of Eureka California ( magnitude seven point OH ) on Tuesday evening that set off a Tsunami warning along the west coast. While those of us who found out were convinced of our imminent death, the news channels wouldn’t have been more excited if Michael Jackson was caught molesting Scott Peterson’s son at Robert Blake’s house.

They were salivating at the death and destruction the Tsunami would bring; there would be countless wrecked houses to stand in front of, cute orphaned children to exploit, and of course the freak house that had been moved 400,000 miles and remained completely intact.

Which brings us to the word ?Fizzle.?

Dictionary.com defines Fizzle as ?To fail or end weakly, especially after a hopeful beginning.?

The writers for the San Francisco Chronicle had already booked flights to Tahiti for lengthy vacations. With this kind of abundant material they could have brought Ann Killion ( sportswriter for the SJ Mercury ) on and had her write the entire newspaper. With a disaster of Tsunamic proportions, the news really writes itself. All you have to do is report the number of bodies found today, and the new inspiring story of the dog who carried an entire school bus full of unconscious nuns/orphans/puppies back to their church/happy family/pile of dog biscuits.

But then it all fell apart. It was a huge earthquake, but it was the wrong kind of huge earthquake. What all started out so swimmingly ended up fizzling like Woody Allen’s career.

Bonus: Where did the title of this entry come from?

Upon meeting my new boss:

BossMan: So, what time would you like to start working in the morning?

Me: It doesn’t really matter, I can come in any time you need me to be here.

BossMan: Well, me and Bob normally get here at six in the morning.

Me: I’ll see you at eight.

First day of a real job tomorrow.

Not a job that involves the transportation of individually packaged cheese packets or explaining that despite the persistent rumor to the contrary, buying a service plan for a laptop does not immediately qualify you as mentally deficient; instead, this job will be the culmination of my schooling up to this point, the ultimate pointer as to whether or not I’ve been wasting my life in front of a text editor when I should really be up to my knees in my own feces with the Peace Core or working at starting my own public access show in Aurora, Illinois with my best friend Garth.

I don’t know where to go from here, there are many directions and I’d like to go to sleep soon, so I’ll just do some bullet points:

• I can’t sleep. Ryan compared it to the night before Christmas, but I’m thinking it’s more like Judgment Day Eve.
• You wouldn’t believe the amount of documentation they sent me, I am convinced that the “new hire” packet this place hands out is solely responsible for the destruction of the rain forests.
• Some of the perks my new employer has border on obscenity. They have a service called dock3, where essentially they hired a group of people to be enlisted as indentured servants. The full list of services can be found here, but the one that sticks out for me is that they will take my car to get it’s oil changed while I am working. I thought that’s what interns were for.

Man, that’s a hard life.

The things that were done to myself and others in the Networking final that was administered yesterday surely violates several stipulations of the Geneva convention.

I’ve discussed the actions with my state senator and he has assured me that those responsible for this injustice will be prosecuted as nothing less than terrorists.

Dr. “Smith,” pack your bags, you’re off to sunny Guantanamo Bay.

Did You Know?: This same professor just offered me no less than two jobs in the fall, one of them as a grader for a class I’m not entirely sure I’ll pass.

Written in the grime on the back of a Semi:

“I wish my wife was this dirty.”

I only have one mind. It can only maintain momentum in one direction as it is one single thing. If my head contained multiple instances of intelligent entities I would be capable of doing much more, for example as I write this I could be studying for my biology quiz later today or even work on my programming project whose description is so vague it would have been better communicated through a series of shrugs and facial contortions.

But that is not the case. And so I’ve failed out of my first class ever. Two programming classes is too much for my feeble mind. I thought I might be able to pull off a C after not completing two programming assignments in a row, but one blank midterm later, I realized it’s not possible and endeavored to save my other classes from the same fate instead of continuing the futile grind which consisted mostly of a staring contest with my computer monitor punctuated by restroom breaks and spontaneous fits of cursing.

but all is not lost

I’ve been offered a summer job actually writing code with quite a respectable company. I’m still waiting on the background check to go through, but pending that speed bump, I shall be starting June 13th at a certain company whose name rhymes almost precisely with Lockheed Martin. I’m thoroughly excited, though intimidated by the task I’ve been assigned.

congratulations

Lauren graduated from USC, which is hard for me to comprehend. Right now, she’s just looking for a job, and once she has that I’ll still deal with it mentally by telling myself it’s an internship, but once she doesn’t go back to school in the fall and refuses to go to class despite my urgings, I’ll have to come to terms with the situation.

At least by then USC football will be back and I’ll be able to go to a game with the free ticket that Lauren gets….. Wait a minute! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

“I tend to become a bit condescending when people say stupid shit.”
-Anon

Did you know if you added Orange Juice to Champagne you can have it for breakfast?

Man, alcoholics are creative

Days til...
finals-10 :-(
moving home-16 :-)
getting wisdom teeth pulled-17 :-(
on call for jury duty-20 :-(
Scott and Becky’s wedding-25 :-)
recital-26 :-)
Brother’s B-day-32 :-)
HP midnight party-46 :-)
release of Dane Cook CDx2 & DVD-56 :-)
Wicked-72 :-)

Staying up til four am to finish an essay about the social reprocusions of the character Mango...they never let me write about this stuff in high school.

I slept sweetly unpretending
that the night was always ending
she breathes lightly right next to me
and I dreamed of her inside of me

and in my dream she sang so sweetly
a melody I hope to sing
so enslaved by her sweet wonder
it cut my legs and pangs of hunger

she sang my name and so engulfed
and I cried and felt my legs fail
in her arms I trembled electric
and she led me and she held me

then waking she was older still
and holds my love against it’s will
in spell cast with her palms extended
cursed love is never ended

cursed eyes are never closing
cursed arms are never closing
cursed children never rising
cursed me never despising

oh I am loving always holding
while she sleeps her song unfolding
epic song it tells of how
of she and I are living now

cursed love.