the doldrums.

ultimate

2009-01-05T20:48:00.000-08:00

okay, one more thing to see.

misteranthropic.com

you should leave now. like, seriously.

penultimate

2005-08-09T10:10:00.000-07:00

behold! insoluble.net. now with extra majesty.

there shall be nothing more to see here.

sunday bloody sunday

2005-08-02T21:19:00.000-07:00

what is the worst day of the week? survey says sunday.

check that link out. it's a really interesting and concise read into why sundays are so consistently awful. it made me consciously think about it for the first time. i particularly liked the bit about why so-and-so likes thursday best: 'because then he can still anticipate the weekend before the clock has started running on it.' for me, the best part about this weekend's manly camping trip will be the car ride up: music, friends, the surety of freedom and charred food and cameraderie.

perhaps this is why i start so many projects but finish so few of them. after all, who wants to go on with something after it loses its luster and gets difficult? i hope this doesn't mean i'm becoming an idealist in my old age.

i am a redundant array of independent dorks

2005-08-01T21:38:00.000-07:00

the new hard drive arrived wednesday. life was good for ten minutes, then everything went downhill.

as usual i'll tell you what i mean. a) serial ata hard drives have a different power adapter from normal ide hard drives, and b) the proper power connection did not ship with the drive. so i had to find my own $4 adapter to make it work. fun fact: no one in town knows what a serial ata power adapter is. no one, that is, except the obscure little store at the edge of the desert. this is like the kinky fetish outlet of computer hardware stores. and it took me two days to find it because i'm not into kinky computer fetishes. fine, super, hard drive has power.

unplug old hard drives; plug in shiny new hard drive. insert operating system cd. 'dear user: you don't have any hard drives attached.' riiight.

kick spouse off the laptop; access internet; google 'maxtor serial ata hard drive windows xp setup'. fine, super, windows doesn't natively recognize serial ata hard drives. google for sata drivers, download sata drivers. realize floppy drives haven't been required since mid-1990s. snatch spouse's external usb floppy drive. remember usb devices are not loaded during bluescreen windows setup. brainstorm; call sister to see if sister has operative floppy drive.

pilfer floppy drive from sister's computer. plug floppy drive in. copy drivers to floppy disk, insert disk. computer cannot locate floppy drive after repeated attempts. telepathically order bill gates to implode.

telephone friend, ask for friend's floppy drive. drive to friend's house; acquire floppy drive; insert floppy drive; connect floppy drive. 'floppy disks fail (40)'. aha! progress (an error message where previously there was just an error). google 'floppy disks fail (40)'. discover idiotic n00b error of connecting floppy drive with upside-down ribbon cable. bare teeth and bite ribbon cable in half; find new ribbon cable; connect pin1 to slot1 in motherboard connection and in floppy drive connection.

reboot for the sixtieth time in two hours. clutch throbbing head.

'cannot find drivers needed to complete installation.' curse. take blood pressure medication.

google, google, google, google, find the drivers actually needed for installation. copy to floppy disk. 'please insert a disk into drive a:'. verify disk is in drive a:. copy drivers to floppy disk. 'please insert a disk into drive a:'. remove failed disk from drive a:; CRUSH WITH FIST. repeat with failed blue floppy disk. repeat with failed yellow floppy disk. weep openly. inquire with wife as to presence of further floppy disks. search with wife for additional floppy disks. locate additional floppy disks. copy to floppy disk. re-reboot. cross fingers. bite very very hard on freeze pop sticks.

GLORY AND TRUMPETS! WINDOWS WORKS! and it only took eighteen hours of my weekend.

now i am the proud new owner of a one-disk raid 0 array! (perhaps the only one in the world)

and now to the other areas of my life:

a close friend introduced me to the gorillaz, and three days later finally located a job that is not awful. karma strikes again.

a close wife has finally located a site containing pictures of a new harry potter movie that is not awful (speculatively).

postsecret remains my source of dark satisfaction. we're all us.

where is:
-my coffee
-where is it

my data is in a better place now

2005-07-20T17:54:00.000-07:00

hard drive 0 failed yesterday.

i
am not
happy.

oh wait: i'm working full time now, so i am happy.

how does a guy reconcile his own accounts? easily. life zeroes itself. for, as always, everything averages out in the end.

my wife read the new harry potter book last weekend, and now she laughs at my feeble attempts to figure out who the half-blood prince is. (hint: it's me)

a pleasant throwback

2005-07-15T18:38:00.000-07:00

today i've been in an a.d.d. mood, so this evening i'm digging into my supply of a.d.d. literature: the fifty-word fiction. [aside: it's a little-known fact (to microsoft word) that when two words are hyphenated, they remain two distinct words. and if there's a grammar nazi out there who dares prove me wrong, i'll just ignore it.]

stretching morning-after football-sore muscles makes me feel good, wholesome, in an earthy sort of way, reminding me that i'm matter, no different from anything else except for my tenuous connection to a strange, frail consciousness. neck, shoulders, triceps, forearms, quadriceps, calves. no one deserves to feel this satisfied.

perchance to

2005-07-10T14:16:00.000-07:00

so i didn't pass. for weeks it's what i have been mentally preparing myself for, so when the news hit it wasn't all that bad. the downside to the whole thing is that i have to study it all over again. in the words of david beckham: 'balls.' i have nothing if not my sense of ____ (t.b.d.)

postsecret is sad, happy, funny and unfunny. if i were king, the internet would consist of nothing else.

the beauty of the library is that, after the $25 after-rebate fee for not technically living in the correct town, we get to listen to all the dandy warhols they have for cheap-as-free. which, of course, i did. and in the process i learned that the song i had previously thought to be titled 'the dope' (incidentally fourth on my highest-played list) is in fact titled 'wonderful you.' rocky is the path to truth is.

and the dvds! oh sweet retinal pleasures. this weekend was an edu-taining mix of the diary of anne frank, the graduate, and the highly disturbing apocalypse now. all of which i can shamelessly recommend but perhaps not all at once. or perhaps.

and i'm off. if anyone finds a way out, let me know.

hey baby come back

2005-07-06T15:34:00.000-07:00

honestly, I wasn't blowing you off. I just ... kind of ... well, never got around to it.

life has been full lately. goings-on include anniversaries, fireworks, job searches, dark towers, high-stake bluffs, hits and near-hits. all of which, one would think, would provide me with a plethora of material from which to draw. one would think.

the kids outside are enjoying summer very loudly. there is a single muscle fiber in my arm that won't stop twitching. I stay awake too late and wish too much to sleep in. all is to say that nothing has changed.

more around the bend.

everything's eventual

2005-06-08T13:22:00.000-07:00

so far this week my paternal grandmother fell and utterly broke her ankle, and my maternal grandmother's appendix ruptured. one of hers fell and (broke? merely injured?) a hip, and another was in a car accident. it makes a guy think. I can't hope to be young forever, but I do hope that when I get old I do so gracefully and without much whining or excessive passive-aggressiveness.

today marks the end of finals week for the school I used to attend (and to which I still live very close), which means that my taunts of 'oh, you're still in school, aren't you?' are completely ineffectual for the next three months, and for some people, never again. lucky you, nerds. summer used to mean happiness and long days of sunshine; now it means work and getting my sunshine through windows. in my dreams I'm not merely immortal but perpetually twenty-two in a world where everything's free. I'm vaguely aware that something in this paragraph contradicts something in the previous one, but only vaguely.

a year ago today (tonight, I suppose) I was watching the transit of venus semi-live on the inter-net. as I recall it was the night before a final I did altogether well on. post hoc, ergo propter hoc? perhaps we'll never know.

sunday night dread

2005-06-05T22:54:00.000-07:00

responsibility. I am beginning to understand the space between friends.

beck says, in a strange falsetto, that he wants to get with me, and for some reason my sister also, whose name he thinks to be debra. the sugababes each say that they are too lost in me and that I ought not get too close lest I make them disappear (for reasons not immediately clear to me). josh groban says that when I say I love him the world grows still, and that when he's with me if he closes his eyes he feels like he could fly. your offers are tempting but I am sorry, professional musical artists. your songs fail to move me; I am happily married and you cannot have me.

the words of anakin skywalker I have twisted to my sinister purpose: 'scenes of love cannot save this trilogy--only my new powers can.' our loud neighbors make me want to embrace the power of the dark side.

iterations

2005-06-01T22:58:00.000-07:00

and back around the sun we go again.

where I work, everyone gets the silly 'happy birthday' banners over their desks when their respective birthdays roll around. instead of this, their present to me was not doing it. I'm relieved; I wouldn't have been able to bear the attention.

the last several years my sister has gotten me something else I haven't been able to bear, and every christmas I just gave it back to her. recently she gave up and opened it herself. she played it with her roommate and I don't know why I'm telling you this.

happy birthday from the bottom of your heart. thankya.

the trick is to keep breathing

2005-05-26T15:54:00.000-07:00

pooh. much as I'd like to be whining about the next-in-sequence test in six months, I'll probably be whining about the same one. pooh. it's like that guy said, in that movie my wife likes. 'oh, **** , ****, ******, ****, *** **** and ****.'

but at any rate it's done, and I don't have to worry about it for a significant amount of time, and this is certainly a Good Thing™.

p.s. happy birthday, pretty lady.

buh bye

2005-05-19T21:39:00.000-07:00

I am just going out now. I may be some time.

being all graduated, I was enjoying the lack of tests. how sad. in a week we'll all know how much of an ignoramus I really am. (how equally sad.)

the force is not with them

2005-05-19T07:19:00.000-07:00

last night I fell asleep with a smile on my face, because all the nerds waiting to see the new star wars movie (opened at midnight) were getting rained on. no little shower, either. I'm talking yoda-sized drops here.

there's hunger in the world, wars, hatred and deceit, a horrible amount of misunderstanding. but last night none of that mattered because all the nerds were getting wet.

NERDS thank you for bringing balance to the force.

whither sanity?

2005-05-13T12:58:00.000-07:00

next time on wifeswap: we swap a wife from a family of terrestrial authoritarian yuppie democrat midget sea-traders with a wife from a family of martian libertarian redneck republican pirates with elephantitis! see the sparks fly as these two families strangle each other in a sixty-minute bloodbath! grab a double bacon cheeseburger and fries and a 64oz coke, turn off rational thought, tune in tomorrow night and decay your brain just a little more, you embarrassing overweight country of sensationalist reality tv-watching sloths!

you foolish, ridiculous people.

and while I'm on the rant about evil television: when and why did the news get so needlessly entertaining? when I take my tea in the morning I want to hear about what's going on with john bolton's nomination, iran, afghanistan, guantanamo, the u.s. overseas military base closures (which, for the record, is just about the only thing I can agree on with the u.s. military), what pope benedict xvi is up to, the local drought, the deficit, and maybe, for a sense of completeness, the price of tea in china. it doesn't have to be a feel-good experience for me. in fact it should be as cold and heartless as possible. I do not want to see pretty pictures of giant balloons and laughing children. I do not want to hear the latest gossip about what some mayor did or did not do with his secretary. I do not want to hear another damned word about michael jackson. (repeat after me: michael jackson has no bearing on our lives. none whatsoever. go on, repeat after me. say it out loud. how happy it makes you feel! how free! now say it every hour on the hour from now on. in this way you shall brighten the world with the light of reason.)

gah. my temper rises, contrary to my every hope and desire and predisposition.

I feel this post has started on the wrong foot. let me fix that:

'now you see that evil will always triumph, because good is dumb.'
-dark helmet, 'spaceballs'

I want a lightsaber.

to the point

2005-05-11T16:51:00.000-07:00

happiness is a comfy chair after putting on well-folded clothes after a pleasant shower after an invigorating jog in the late spring sun. with dido to keep me company the whole time.

WIFE do not worry, I made her turn away whilst I was changing.

sad days

2005-05-09T12:49:00.000-07:00

much as I hate to sing all the old clichés:

who heard the alarm only distantly this morning, and slept past his ideal waking time? who over-brewed the tea this morning, turning it into bitter bitter badness that even his ever-loving and -longsuffering wife couldn't choke down? who has a case of the mondays? the answers is me.

it continues. every paper cut I can remember receiving has arrived on a monday. it is a scientifically verifiable fact that, per unit of area of skin affected, a paper cut is the stupidest type of injury allowable by the laws of physics. it must be a monday. I never could get the hang of mondays.

perhaps on the bright side I have figured out what I want for my birthday.

0. 3,4,5-trimethoxyphenethylamine. no not really.
1. booba? kiki? yes yes really, but hard to find for sale. (a friend of mine experiences this. when she closes her eyes, my voice is blue, and round.) the machinations of the mind are an utter enigma.
2. some bloody answers. yes yes really but not likely on the scale I'm hoping for. do they even exist? it is an open question.

days go by and in the end no one knows where all the when went. yesterday's rain is this morning's fog; perhaps that has something to do with it.

or perhaps it's just a sodding monday.

obsession

2005-05-04T17:21:00.000-07:00

that game that game we used to play and you always won, i can see now why you always beat me i can see the top of your head over the top of the desk shelves again and i don’t know why you hide when i get up. have i told you about my dream? forgive me but i’m

getting the poking tingling feeling again in the point at the back of my head that means either i’m seeing time and space unhindered, e-i-e-i-o, or i’ve forgotten to take my

lithium again. i don’t know how you make the phone ring so that only i can hear it but i wish you wouldn’t, you’re disturbing the

order of things round here, here, here’s tom with the weather the fallout is spreading headed west highs in the mid ten millions and, here, i’m rambling again but i digress, i have

this dream, again and again where you you’re getting into the car and i’m saying stop, stop, i don’t have i told you this before? i

don’t want to be scared anymore, my head is hurting again, i want to wake up and it’s only after i’ve thought about it a while here and only after i see and hear my mom biting her nails by the ekg machine when i realize i have

n’t slept for weeks. i don’t think i’m sleeping
well.

happy days

2005-05-01T22:45:00.000-07:00

the weekend's lan party went off super-successfully. it included such fantastic favorites as unreal tournament 2004, doom 3, and taco bell, with some live demonstrations of half-life 2 and my screensaver.

speaking of the latter, you need to try it. it's called electric sheep (some interesting information about that name awaits the careful reader) and it is a marvel of mathematics and modern networking. oh, and it's freaking gorgeous. one of my coworkers runs it on a computer he rarely uses but keeps on his desk; I'm constantly amazed that he can get any work done. if it were on my desk, I'd be watching it all day. it's almost dangerous in its seductiveness. beware.

highest praise to ian mcewan for his most recent accomplishment. it's far more accessible than the last one I read, atonement, and only slightly less beautiful, likely because it makes overt attempts at philosophy where (I think) the reader should see them between-the-lines like. still, if you can borrow it from a friend or a library or an internet, you should. you must.

my birthday is in a month and I don't know what I want. my birthday and christmas are the only two times during the year when I don't know what I want. strange, that. perhaps I don't like doing something when it's forced, even when it's to my advantage. but let's set introspection aside. the question is, what do I want? the answer is

forty-something years till retirement

2005-04-26T17:51:00.000-07:00

after it sits latent twenty-seven minutes in my fake plastic bottle, after the average size of a condensation drop without shrinks to precisely the size of a growing air bubble within, the drinking fountain water arrives at the ideal temperature for gulping: refreshingly cold but not bitingly so. by stealth, the condensation creeps into a ring on my desk invisible until oblivious I splap important papers in it; I sputter curses and fling paper, ink, water to the ground and swear I've lived this moment already.

yesterday my task was to track down fifteen hundred dollars; I did so in ten minutes that defined efficiency. today a very clever ten dollars evaded me for well nigh three hours, and I'm not yet convinced of the accuracy of my solution (which is bad no matter what your day has been like).

[aside: let me get this straight. an alcoholic is someone addicted to alcohol. a workaholic is someone addicted to workahol? a chocoholic addicted to chocohol? would a car running on gas/ethanol be a gasoholic? words simultaneously illuminate and confusticate, to the great cromulentification of all.]

my snail-mailbox is abuzz with activity, in and out, to the benefit of all. ... er, some.

a.d.d. flare-up

2005-04-21T23:44:00.000-07:00

because there's not much else to talk about, here's a look at what I've been obsessively alt-tabbing between. I am not a link farm.

1. an interesting (that's (5, interesting)) look, on the order of doctoral dissertation, at slashdot's effects on the interweb (warning! pdf-infested link).

2. the beautiful use of light, color, and composition.

3. an office clone that's open-source and better than office. did I mention it's open? information wants to be ~~free~~ anthropomorphized.

4. a slightly autistic personality who has some intriguing insights but difficulty carrying on a conversation with a mirror. thereabouts.

5. dandy.

Chelsey gave blood this afternoon, then slept all evening. lucky. gosh.

logical fallacies and late come-backs

2005-04-18T09:52:00.000-07:00

I got a haircut. she said I need to use some expensive goop to style my hair to make it look messy. so I said she needs to wear expensive clothes to make her look naked.

to revisit the past and other diversions

2005-04-16T00:02:00.000-07:00

I'd like to do that thing I did a while back. that thing where I told you to ask me to post pictures of certain things, and then I did it. that thing.

it was a thing I really enjoyed. so, selfishly, let's do it again, shall we?

now then.

I might be going to a superhero party tomorrow; the difficult part of the whole thing is, obviously, I am not actually a superhero. so I'll have to make something up. it can be anything, and once again I must appeal to my fellow inter-netters for help in identifying any possible latent powers. can I be Captain Obvious, who says things like 'you are wearing a shirt' and 'my glass is made of glass' and 'oh dear I just walked in on you in the toilet'? or can I make super-use of another of my traits and qualities? I could be the supervillain Calculatinator, who can predict to within eight significant digits the weaknesses of his enemies. dressing up for that one would be hard, though. good heavens this could be fun.

I'm not really putting the onus on you though. you don't know me as well as I do. or maybe so.

[much self-censoring]

I have this theory that a person becomes the last thought a person thinks before s/he dies. and when each possible thought is someone's final thought, the universe will attain sentience, and then we're done for. but I don't fret because there are several degrees of infinities of possible thoughts, and no significant portion of them have been final thoughts yet.

[aside: it is possible I'm in a 'mood.' I hate 'moods.']

I have another theory that I have moles on my back (not a theory) and I theorize that they are the manifestation of a code latent in my dna and in order to decrypt it, I of course require huge amounts of bids on my iPod.

my wife has been watching huge amounts of alias and perhaps this has something to do with something.

it occurs to me that bodies are beautiful. this isn't a sexual thing at all, either; it's just so amazing that every atom that constitutes me was once a star, and now a bit cooler and more stable, the chemicals I am have risen to consciousness and can look in and see meaning and can look out and see beauty.

I need not look far. I have the love of the woman I love, who is at this moment asleep with one arm around my waist and is dreaming, eyes and arms and toes all aflutter. in the morning she won't remember but I will. some one I know recently had a dream contrasting me against lenny kravitz. the differences are vast and incisive; after all, who needs to be lenny, when I am me, here, now, stardust with her?

metaphor

2005-04-14T08:07:00.000-07:00

life is hard, but life is harder when

1. you have a dream about a girl named morgan with whom you were once quite taken but have not spoken to in six years and she says to you 'hi, katrina' and you say to her 'hi, steve.'

2. you wake up sitting on the floor downstairs at 4 in the morning without knowing where you are or how you got there.

shameless self-promotion

2005-04-12T15:00:00.000-07:00

you will buy my iPod.
you will buy my iPod.
you will buy my iPod.
you will buy my iPod.
you will buy my iPod.

hey, I'm a nice guy. I mean, you trust me, right? come on baby. you do, right?

copycatting

2005-04-11T19:27:00.000-07:00

I have joined the skype bandwagon.

I fear this will open doors I ought not to pass through but will anyway; I'm shortsighted like that.

you can likely guess my username. if you can't, you don't deserve to hear my voice. if you can, just know that I'm stumbly and awkward on the phone, and you'd better think long and hard about just how much our friendship means and how much hinges on our ability to carry on a one-on-one conversation in real time. you know, should you choose to ring me. should you CHOOOOOOOOOOOSE TO RIIIIIIING MEEEEEEEE.

ruminations on radiometric dating

2005-04-10T13:10:00.000-07:00

today I will question authority.

1. I've thought about it long enough and I can't arrive at an answer with logic alone.

say the world is six billion years old. a big number with a large error value to be sure, but it's a starting point for sake of argument.

a vast, vast majority of all the carbon-14 (the isotope used in radiometric dating) now on the planet has been here since near the beginning. no current natural processes produce it in any substantial quantities. given that its half-life is 5730 years, there have been over a million of them since creation; therefore, of the original amount (call it A) of carbon-14 on the planet there now remains A*(2^-1000000), which is by any account as close to zero as makes no difference.

my first question is: since there is certainly more than zero carbon-14 lying around, where did it come from? solar wind? asteroids? (furthermore, did we get a lump-sum at one point, or like the intelligent lottery winner, did we spread our winnings out? how does this variable accumulation affect dating methods?)

2. a few years ago an object was found touted to be 'the oldest known piece of Earth.' fine, that's no problem.

here's a problem. imagine a roman blacksmith, 5 a.d., making a sword out of iron. the sword will be new at the time of forging, but the iron (specifically the carbon-14 in the iron) is as old as the earth. does that mean when we date the sword in the present day we will find it is 2000 years old, or like the crystal above, many billions of years old?

my second question: things are new, ingredients are not. since radiometric dating looks only at ingredients, how can it tell how old the thing itself is?

on an unrelated note, it occurs to me that we have not completed our tax return. my attention span has a half-life of OOOH we should go on a bike ride!

WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE INTERNET

2005-04-08T00:27:00.000-07:00

here's something creepy. do a google image search for gang-sines (the popular drew drawing), and the first result you will see is nothing unexpected.

that is, until you examine the url or click the link. it is this site, and I don't know why. not at all.

so to repeat the sentiments expressed so loudly in the title of this post, WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE INTERNET? I'm serious here. this is creeping me out. google is supposed to be flawless and infallible, and they're not. in a really strange way.

(speaking of really strange: this is)

DREW only your wisdom can shine through these dark times, we require that you tell us just what in the hell is going on.

the units of happiness

2005-04-07T00:18:00.000-07:00

I was so busy yesterday that it should count for two days.

ONE ha ha
TWO ha ha

the reason I was so busy gets approximately 55 magical miles per gallon and came with about four hours of paperwork. but it is ours and it valiantly protects both the environment and our checkbook from the evil oil companies. what a hero I am.

cheers, tree-huggers. and all the rest.

(this week, saturday arrived on a monday. how disorienting.)

well, I'm back

2005-04-03T17:51:00.000-07:00

I'm messed up, and will be for days. what a difference an hour makes. I'm firmly of the opinion that if you want more daylight in your day, you should simply get up earlier. wouldn't that have been easier than making the rest of us shift our system of measurement twice a year?

fascists.

sin city is visually stunning. it's just a shame I've never read the original(s)--as it was, the necessity of the continual violence was lost on me. but if you can stomach some intense CGI'd blood (now white, now red, now yellow), and if you like the eye candy as I do, it's a good flick. at least rent it. some day, people smarter in these matters than I am will probably say it was an 'important' film.

consumption of ben & jerry's dublin mudslide is my new favorite way of contributing to the heat death of the universe. oh sweet beautiful best of all possible worlds; I defy you to say it is not so whilst your mouth is full of this pure joy.

you sense the presence of monsters! you unstack your rod. ... I know, just simply know, that if I download this my life will certainly fall apart. I'm already reading the book (see the list somewhere to your right) and it's taking all I can give to put it down once in a while to do things like speak to my wife. WIFE you saved me from a rush of blood from the head but can you save me from the radiant beauty of the silmarils?

he's only mostly dead

2005-03-29T08:13:00.000-08:00

no he's not.

so it's been a while, for which I apologize. things have been odd lately for a variety of reasons; I needed some time to myself. for which I do not apologize. I appreciate the concern of everyone who offered it and will reward it with left-brained, factual information as is my wont. some of you have heard this verbatim, most of you have not. either you have or you haven't AND THERE IS NO OTHER OPTION.

here's the skinny: I had a seizure.

here's the thick:

I was going to the bathroom at about 21.00 sunday night (three weeks ago now) when I passed out. I don't remember feeling faint or woozy at all before that, it just happened. Chelsey (wife) was downstairs and heard a big thump. she called my name and I didn't answer, so she ran up to see what was going on. I was on the floor, and I was rigid and wasn't breathing. she did a few rounds of CPR to get me breathing on my own again, and after that she called for an ambulance. when she came back upstairs I had thrown up a bit but was still unconscious, and I aspirated some of it (inhaled it--very nasty). she turned me onto my side to get it out of my mouth and windpipe.

pretty soon the ambulance crew arrived and the EMTs and such took me downstairs. I was marginally reactive at this point, and though I don't remember it, I was pretty combative and confused. in the ambulance I was strapped down because I was fighting them so much. I was thrashing my head around and ended up with a chipped tooth--I probably did it to myself. I don't know why. I'm such a kind-hearted fellow.

we got to the trauma center at the hospital and they hooked me up to all kinds of wires and IVs and meter-o-grams and whatnot. at this point I was just becoming aware of what was happening; I thought Chelsey and I had been in a car accident, or something similar. I saw her in the room so I knew she was okay but didn't know what was happening to me. the doctors/nurses asked me repeatedly whether I had taken drugs (and they asked Chelsey the same questions just to be sure). after they got me stabilized (about 22.00-22.30?) I got to talk with Chelsey and my sister Jen, who were both there.

I don't have clear memories of anything up to this point. I was exhausted from the seizure (I'm told it's basically like trying to run a marathon all at once--your body uses up ALL its energy and ALL your blood sugar, and all you want to do is collapse) and generally a little slow on the uptake, but I couldn't sleep because I had: 1) a neck brace, 2) wires emanating from my every pore, 3) an IV in both arms, and 4) a blood pressure gauge that automatically measured my BP every ninety seconds ON TOP OF one of my IVs, which hurt like hellfire and damnation. it was like this for the next three hours or so while the doctors came in and checked reflexes and things like that, and vampires in white coats stole my blood. and they made me stand up (the hardest thing I've ever done) to pee in a cup. I told them that peeing was how I got myself into this mess, but they didn't listen to me. somewhere in here I got a CT scan, which was normal. all I remember are the spinning lights.

Chelsey's parents came up at about 1:30 that morning after I hadn't slept at all (ref. above paragraph). then Chelsey left to take them back to our house and get some clothes and toothbrush etc. for me. finally at about 4:30, they moved us into a proper room and out of the trauma department. approximately once every half hour until 9.00, someone came in to take some test or to draw some blood or to ask me if I needed anything ("NO! I JUST WANT TO SLEEP YOU VISCIOUS BASTARDS"). then we got breakfast and an EEG test which involved more wires, and (for a change of scenery) some flashing lights. everything turned out normal.

since I aspirated a bit, I've been getting to take two antibiotic pills a day since then to help prevent pneumonia. these pills are the size of soda cans, I kid you not.

I'm doing fine now. for a week I was tired and sore as I ever have been, but I'm really fine. I've been going to work and generally don't fall over or knock anything/anyone over, so the future looks bright. though I did have to pee sitting down for a while.

the diagnosis is that the passing out part was a vasovagal reflex. it happens when blood pressure drops suddenly, as occasionally happens when a human (me) loses a large amount of pee-pee (which I did). the seizure part was either an extension of the vasovagal reflex, or completely seperate, caused by a bonk on the head or spinal column on my way down. perhaps since the reaction is intended to get blood back to one's head and my head was propped up above my body, it didn't work and my brain went to plan b.

so it's not epilepsy, which is good, and it probably won't bother me again for long years, which is good. but from all I've heard it probably will happen again, which is bad. but in the future I'll remember that when I pass out, I shouldn't do so against a door. all shall be well.

work on just about everything in my life (except the boring parts) has come to a complete halt. so now you know my boring situation.

well, not altogether boring.

details will have to wait

2005-03-11T23:49:00.000-08:00

last sunday I received an unwanted, but not unwarranted, reminder (of the medical variety) that the world is bigger than I am. thankfully I'm no worse for wear, other than a fat lip and chipped tooth and a slight fuzziness around the edges.

I'm fine, in all respects. don't worry. really. for a while, though, I'll be walking a bit slower, hugging Chelsey a bit longer, and hopefully laughing a bit quicker.

who knew.

to-do (hold me accountable)

2005-03-05T17:02:00.000-08:00

1. pick a domain name. (status: done)
2. register a domain name (status: done)
3. find hosting (status: done)
4. design brainstorm (keeping css in mind) (status: ongoing)
5. find introductory css resources (status: ongoing)
6. be confused by css (status: ongoing)
7. get/configure phpBB (status: done)
8. get/configure wordpress (status: done)
9. become tired of learning css; find a website using beautiful/amazing css, view source, steal source, customize source (status: done)
10. conscience attack w.r.t. 9 above; scrap source (status: done)
11. continue looking for css reading material (status: slow going)
12. ??? (status: 404 internal oracle failure, cannot read from source "future")
13. website done! profit! (status: I don't want to talk about it)

bugger bugger bugger sod.

I'll keep you updated. till then, this. notify me of bugs, if you happen across any.

trial-and-erroringly,
-matt.

it's the only one I get for another eight years

2005-03-04T13:51:00.000-08:00

ah, today. beautiful today.

03/04/05.

though today is only beautiful in this sense in these united states and perhaps some scattered others I'm unaware of. yet the point remains. and besides, my shameless blatant anglophilia will allow me to relish the day again on 3 April 2005.

cheers, nerds.

a certain forthcoming webpage

2005-03-03T15:25:00.000-08:00

of incredible design prowess, phenomenal genius, and stupefying beauty (just not yet):

I submit for your approval insoluble.net.

genuine and infinite thanks to everyone for their suggestions; infinite-plus-one thanks to neil for a suggestion which the wife neither scorned nor scoffed.

... I almost feel obligated to list all the ones I liked because I'm a nice guy intent on making you all feel good; but because I'm such a nice guy intent on making you all feel so very good, I think I'd just list them all. then again I'm easy to please. don't take any of this as a lack of gratefulness. I worry about such things.

to flog a cliché: stay tuned. learning HTML, java, FTP (not to mention working with a linux-based server remotely), CSS, wordpress, RSS, etc. will inevitably take time.

time, TIME I TELL YOU

visibleman needs your help

2005-02-22T20:40:00.000-08:00

Chelsey and I are going to get our own domain soon. I need your help in picking a name. (hmm. other members of our family are busy naming children instead; lucky us.)

if you think of something that fits, go to whois.net and see if it's available (I'm partial to one-word domains followed by dot-net). I'm extremely open to suggestions, as all my first choices are taken. anyway. drop me a line.

hopefully she and I won't kill each other over something so inane.

my 72-hour nerd binge

2005-02-22T00:04:00.000-08:00

on a lighter note. here are some juicy tidbits that might not be tasty to anyone, but they certainly are to me.

0. I literally wasted my sunday trying to get a) the internet, b) my cable modem, and c) my router to speak the same language. I did everything I knew how to do, and then I did everything I didn't know how to do, and nothing worked for eight hours. in the end I have no idea what I did but now it works, both flawlessly and inexplicably. I hate and love that.

1. you can now play my music! well, you won't be able to hear it, but I'll be able to, and you get to control it through the magic of the webternet.

this will only occasionally work: in your browser of choice type 68 (dot) 185 (dot) 59 (dot) 147 (colon) 1984. if nothing happens it's because I don't have winamp running, which means I'm in bed (which is a rare (and at very least a horribly unpredictable) thing). unadulterated webternet magic by wwwinamp.

2a. WASTE_PUBLIC_KEY 20 2048 antimatt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WASTE_PUBLIC_KEY_END

2b. refer to above spamproof ip address. the one with all the dots.

3. FreeMind is quite probably the neatest piece of software I have ever seen. it is potentially infinite; my fingertips tingle with delight/nerve damage. I hope soon to be able to let you in on some of the things I've done so far. oh what a juicy tidbit. best for last. (java required.)

cheers, luddites.

defining moments

2005-02-17T23:55:00.000-08:00

now:
so far as I know, no one has heard from Tim or Katie (the A student will recall them) in weeks. I haven't heard from them in months. in the past this has meant they're doing fine and history is known for repeating itself, so I'm not certain whether this is discouraging.

Tim, if by some miracle you're reading this, please write. I worry about you on nights like tonight, out there in the big dark (figurative/literal) jungle.

then:
today marks three years since Nathan died.

I miss my friend. his number is still stored in my phone's memory. I kept at least five programs from his funeral, among other things. I have visited the spot on the road many times--many times without letting anyone know where I was going. I cry and drink in cycles (occasionally vicious). I write awful poems that are meaningless to everyone but me. I vent and vent and vent and I want to move on, but how can I when the dreams are so clear and so often?

Nathan, there is so much I never told you. I'm married; you met her and I told you how I felt about her and in my head you gave me a friend's blessing. I'm still borrowing your movie and I can't watch it without thinking of you. I never forgave you for putting the moves on my sister third grade through twelfth, but I have now. I enjoyed the summers driving to town in your filthy stinking truck listening to your awful music more than anything else in all the rest of those years. thank you for all the wonderful barbecuing but next time please clean up after yourself and do laundry while you're at it. I have always been jealous of your ability to grow facial hair. it's because you're a nice guy that she cheated on you.

I'm doing fine but at the same time not. life has been hard since you died, but the introspection you have since lent me has taught me a great many things about myself, happiness and friendship, life in general. it's been tough but it's been worth it.

I believe in alternate universes, so in some ways it hasn't been so hard. unfortunately I'm stuck in this one.

yokwe, Big Nate. amo te.

(for once, I'm genuinely dry-eyed; I think this would make you happy)

you are not your pile of junk

2005-02-15T11:47:00.000-08:00

we've completely moved. (but we have yet to finish moving in.)

every part of me is sore, I can't find anything I need, I didn't sleep well last night and niether did she, I'm not feeling well owing to having eaten only fast food and reconstituted pizza for the last week, my router ist kaput and I haven't yet explored all the ramifications of this, my fingers are rubbed raw from moving sandpaper-covered cardboard boxes from here to there and back again, and there was no room for the old couch in the new place.

but now I get to reorganize my entire collection of needless worldly goods. so it all works out in the end.

THOM YORKE please sing louder, the neighbors are pounding on the wall so clearly they cannot hear you well enough.

an imperial pint of

2005-02-11T08:23:00.000-08:00

jeepers. I finished 'cryptonomicon' last night, at long last.

BEST
BOOK
EVER.

I'm never going to take it off the reading list in the sidebar because I'm never going to quit reading it.

that is all. move along--nothing to see here.

no common thread

2005-02-09T23:37:00.000-08:00

or on formally undecidable propositions of blogger and related systems
or meaningless symbols acquire meaning despite themselves
or I am you and what I see is me
or quining and whining
or open other end
or [alt+255]

again, sorry it's been a while. not that you care. it's healthy that you don't.

it is telling when the emails I write myself to remind me of thus-and-such give me ads for 1) nonlinear regression software, 2) air filtration, 3) cutlery. discuss.

we're moving! (the A student will note that I've just used the exclamation mark; this is the most concise commentary possible on precisely how I feel about the subject.) finally we'll have a place with a room able to hold our massive california king bed, which is currently flying in a holding pattern, fittingly, in california. anyway. it follows that we'll be gradually transplanting our junk over the course of the next week or so. long ago we both arranged to take valentine's day off but now I suppose we'll use it for different reasons, SINGLE SIBLING unread this sentence immediately.

ceci n'est pas une list.
0. 'is a sentence fragment' is a sentence fragment. / ''is a sentence' is a sentence' is a sentence.
1. 'yields falsehood when quined' yields falsehood when quined.
2. 'est une expression qui, quand elle est precedee de sa traduction, mise entre guillemets, dans la langue provenant de l'autre cote te la manche, cree une faussete' is an expression which, when it is preceded by its translation, placed in quotation marks, into the language preceding on the other side of the channel, yields a falsehood.'
3. there do not exist numbers a and a' such that both (1) they form a tnt-proof-pair, and (2) a' is the arithmoquinification of u.
4. the sentence 'the sentence 'the sentence '...' is infinitely long' is infinitely long' is infinitely long.

apologies to douglas hofstadter for his beautiful book. beautiful in the sense that, in a certain doubleplus ungood way, global thermonuclear war would be beautiful.

recently I discovered something about myself. I discovered this thing last friday as I sat in the passenger seat speaking (cellularly) to my mum whilst the driver backed onto a relatively crowded street with a parked car trying to turn into the space we were at that moment efforting to occupy. as this occurred, my mother's voice faded into utter gibberish, and I felt the fingers of vertigo squeezing my brain just behind the eyeballs. the thing that I discovered about myself was this: I cannot simultaneously process information of bodily motion and information of sound. there is no good explanation for this but it's consistent with other phenomena I've noticed, i.e. when driving in strong wind I must have all sources of music off. maybe it's a problem of bandwidth, which I hope is the case as I'm planning on someday updating my brain's software to GreyMatter 2.0 (Executive Limited Platinum Professional Edition) in which the bandwidth and other embarrassing problems (pointless efficiency-killing headaches, selective memory, ocd, social awkwardness, need for computer games) are solved.

someone had better tell my pineal gland that he better start showing up to work on time or he'll get sacked, and soon. well I probably shouldn't sack him but he isn't exactly up for any sort of promotion. if you know what I mean.

the simultaneous robustness and fragility of life astounds me. check that: life astounds me. there is, quite honestly, nothing like it anywhere on earth.

p.s. does not contain an implementation of the lzw algorithm.

second thoughts

2005-01-31T01:59:00.000-08:00

the saddest thing in the world is driving past a crematory at night and seeing chimney smoke. maybe it's the lateness of the hour. no it's not.

hopes and dreams include, exclusively, las vegas and april and you. okay fine, those top the list but it's not exclusive. yes it is.

we don't have milk for cereal or coffee or tea in the morning and guess who gets stuck with milk run duty. one guess. go on, guess; you'll never guess. yes you will.

I'm not usually emotional for no reason but I think I might cry tonight. I take it back; I have my (many and varied) reasons. ~~no I don't.~~

the pattern it's in the

2005-01-28T23:37:00.000-08:00

23:03. restate my assumptions.

for most people, the emotional centers are in the right hemisphere of the brain. this explains to some degree why music has such an effect on one's emotions--because the parts of the brain that make you love music are also in the right hemisphere, and there's a lot of bandwidth between the two.

for me the emotional center is in the left hemisphere and this is why MATH STUFF GETS ME ALL WEEPY. there is no other explanation, as I have no corpus callosum. as is ideal for a guy like me.

a cryptic suggestion of possible advancement from the boss man has me all hot and bothered; thanks boss--I have trouble sleeping already, without your help. I can't meet anyone's eye anymore. it's like some horrible real-life actual reality amalgam of 'survivor' and 'the weakest link' that I can't turn off.

recently I found out, to my great pleasure, that I'm not the only one who has seen and/or enjoys the movie π.

which reminds me. 'when your mind becomes obsessed with anything, you will filter everything else out and find the thing everywhere.'

assumptions: every time I look at the clock it seems to be 11:37. every check is number 1137. 1137 visible stars in the sky. 1137 steps to the store. verily, 1137 characters in this entry. conclusion: I NEED TO PICK A DIFFERENT NUMBER (or no number).

p.s.
23:37. personal note.
I see you counting. (yes, you.)

vividness. fear.

2005-01-27T01:54:00.000-08:00

this is fun, in small doses. except for the annoying side effect that I'm now wide awake and buzzing with excitement when I ought not to be.

I vividly fear it'll be some time before I fall asleep again (that's no hallucination).

all things equal, a hallucination is better than reality because it isn't participatory. what a fine line I walk.

dirty pretty things

2005-01-24T23:13:00.000-08:00

my sister's boyfriend groks drew. he's even an avid reader. this is a Bad Thing and I'll tell you why: he could be a horrible person, a murderous boy band-listening drug-dealing baby-eating paris hilton-loving nazi, or a dentist, yet I would still like him solely because he likes drew.

all right he's none of those awful things. the point I'm trying to get across is that JEN you must marry him, it is now your highest calling in life to make sure his genes get carried on.

seriously now. on the day I met him, I also saw him--through the magic of 1980s-era video recording equipment--in a diaper. he could laugh at himself and that's a good sign. also jen we have it on tape that you are not the angelic angel that you (for some reason) remember yourself to be. here it occurs to me that you are the reason I have never enjoyed christmas.

anyway. conclusion: from the little I've seen he's a good person and funny, so whatever makes you happy makes me happy. and I think he makes you happy. but I ceased having to be your big brother a long long time ago, when I realized you could beat up any boy in school (myself excluded).

audrey tautou is going to be in the movie'd da vinci code. think of the implications: very soon there will be more audrey tautou posters in the world. it is cold outside but my heart is profoundly warm.

POP QUIZ
donald rumsfeld consistently looks

a. utterly confused
b. ridiculously squinty
c. drunk/hung over
d. jet lagged
e. all of the above.

(the answer is the one you might expect.)

it recently came to my attention that to my transatlantic cohorts, the word 'wanker' is far more offensive than I had been led to believe. having previously called a few of them wankers (though without malice and honestly in good humor), I feel the need to apologize.

I apologize.

...

at night I lie awake in bed never less than an hour. never.

if I could change one thing about myself, would this be it?

tonight, I can't think of anything else.

brighter news

2005-01-22T17:17:00.000-08:00

in less than ten minutes, wife is going to cut my hair. it hasn't been cut since october. this on the heels of my recent goatee purge. it will be a miracle if my head doesn't freeze, break off, and roll away.

tributary

2005-01-19T18:57:00.000-08:00

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1ED319C198D43856833886282164F3C97D5F4178C82DE70B4439542CCD7827ABE2C133C524BCBF4B4A996DBEE80AB8B93E1D
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0i44226AFF2F96D04148B457E57ED78E34BE4E96268171D118D11D3D19C55357AF9EA3B82B71FDE3B47719B7E0EC9CAAE249
BamA76EC70B4136E39983723212974773279919E1BB3A6E9204BCCB4E2B7985B5C54E1DB94662256131319B99F54DCAC2885
1theB11E98EC22D68B8C5DB4EB7AEC378683641B77B040B856D5461AB330D1C9858ABB02826212C3537D6D235F39D4C9A34C
0code6B87A6D0098D9E95E42F9A86A673946587CA8547E1C3671498541D6D39D77AEB23ACA992E74C4D608ECCEE9D332FD6D
8poet.5AD90A097EEFC87A9559446AE5AAB73BDDE78A1DC7AF6211C2C67A81CEACCD34A1FB7D1065857952832236DABCA773

here's to nullsoft, whose quasi-random hexadecimal background text has confounded me until only very recently.

special thanks to open office, =concatenate(), and (appropriately) random access memory.

good heavens this was fun. why can't my job consist of doing stuff like this?

oh one more thing:

2005-01-18T14:57:00.000-08:00

in theory, practice matches theory. but never in practice. and as usual I'll tell you what I mean.

why-oh-why has my profile gone changeless for months? it's supposed to be some sort of auto-thingy. but recently not.

29 posts? demonstrably wrong.
6,517 words written? demonstrably wrong.
35 outbound links? demonstrably wrong.
157 profile views? insufficient data for a meaningful response, but unchanged since 4th november and therefore probably wrong.

don't get the wrong idea here: change is still in principle a Bad Thing™, but this specific lack of change annoys me. I want to know things, certain things, everything. visibleman is nothing if not an incurable infophile.

(carry on, citizens)

prove that I exist

2005-01-18T11:05:00.000-08:00

neither can I.

since last we spoke (and it's been a while I'll admit): another migraine. TWELVE POINT FIVE GIGAHURTS. and an interesting after-effect: for a while, every time I a) stood up, b) stretched, c) held my breath (a nervous habit), or d) yawned, the blood was completely gravity'd from my head; to compensate for it, my heart loosened the pressure valve a bit and the sudden change was like BAM and I had to sit down lest I pass out.

also there's a bit about a failed lan party, and some x-treme snow tubing, and some cynical 'return of the king' watching, but all pales in comparison. oh yes, I also did some painful out-of-shape skiing. wrt skiing: was the fog getting worse, or was I?

the presidential inauguration will cost $40 million. for what? a microphone and a bible? come on, prez. spend the money on someone who is not you.

on the other hand: opinions are like the football game I taped and wanted to watch before learning the score somewhere else but then my friend called and was like 'omg lol!!! did u see teh game!!! a totaly blowout!!!!!1'

I'm addicted to making things pretty and logical, except in the rare sets of circumstances where it might actually matter to someone (let alone someone real (let alone me)). that said, I have to be honest: the kitchen is sparkling this morning and it's my fault. a person might think june cleaver herself had spent an afternoon here.

in the thread of my recent ruminations about the relationship between my matriculatorial status and the volume of words issuing forth from my upper brain: again I find myself missing school. the schedule and style fit me. I have never liked the idea of a real world, and now that I'm in it it's even worse. I have always known I'm easily disillusioned but I never realised just how easily.

when I die (assume with me for a minute that I'm mortal), here is what I want: I want everyone to show up and be absolutely quiet for ten minutes, then I want to be carried/wheeled/rolled in ten minutes late. if this happens the way I foresee, I will be one of the very very few people in the afterlife--or whatever else comes after life--who can honestly say s/he was late to her/his own funeral. in the end it all comes down to bragging rights, but that's just who I am.

good:showering.
bad:showering with a growing lack of sufficiently hot water.

good:kissing.
bad:receiving an immediate and inevitable post-kiss reaction of 'YOU NEED TO SHAVE'

good:lather/hot water/razor shave (and missing the chin area completely).
bad:shaving around my adam's apple.

good:having a goatee.
bad:having to shave a goatee off at wife's longsuffering insistence.

good:lists.
bad:bad lists.

I spend too much time at a computer screen. how do I know this? yesterday I left work and the sun was setting, and I thought 'man, that's really high resolution.'

...

[aside:
R.I.P.
goatee
nov. '04-jan.'05
]

infor-needless-mation

2005-01-06T23:06:00.000-08:00

no matter the mood, röyksopp sets it.

like many people I know, I've become somewhat obsessed with page view stats. of course I won't let you in on all the secrets of my hits and such because they remain my secrets, and I can do nothing if not keep a secret.

reason number thirteen billion to use firefox:

by default, Blogger* publishes your words rss-wise. firefox has a terrifically easy way to read someone's rss feed, on the assumption it exists:

bookmarks >> manage bookmarks
then
file >> new live bookmark

enter the address (for example mine is http://visibleman.blogspot.com/atom.xml and all Blogger pages use the same format) and you're done. the bookmark will be displayed as a sort of drop-down menu, with each post as an entry in the menu. it allows you to instantly see the past xx entries by each author. pretty pretty.

NO NO NO internetters I have given you faulty information, the more better way to do it is this: find the icon down at the bottom right of your screen that looks like a dot emitting some waves of some sort. click-hold, select 'subscribe to thus-and-such,' enter info. done. ONE CLICK. beauty.

and that's aside from all the security, simplicity, extensibility, non-system- hoggability, and the rest of the beauty of it. stop hurting the internet with explorer and use firefox.

desktop art has a new low:

not so much 'art' as 'arnt.'

WIFE do not think of it as your hair is too long and the goatee has to go, think of it as I'm glad you wear your free hat and chin-scarf all the time.

*blogger also has a capitalization fetish, viz.: 'Allow New Comments on This Post.' it makes me think of people who emphasize words by putting them in quotation marks. they "must" stop doing this.

a repeated theme.

2005-01-04T23:14:00.000-08:00

like everyone else, I'm just like everyone else. except I can admit it.

it's odd to think that when a person dies, life goes on for everyone else. it's worse to think it goes on at all when so many die.

I find that as a student I had things to say. now, as a guy with a job and a wallet slowly filling up, I don't. what do I say? 'gosh I had a good/bad day; look at how much/little I got done. the television is dull. I had thus and such to eat and I bought some very pleasant pens.'

NO NO NO
it
is
BORING.

stuck in a rut
stuck in a rut
stuck in a rut.

given my shrinking attention span I have to resort to very small sentences. very small words. mostly nouns. soon I shall phase out useless vowels completely nd jst wrt n cnsnnts.

what has happened to my life?

no no no don't take this the wrong way. I'm still massively happy. consider this another of my illimitable breakdowns. this one's bad: I've split up with myself.

fatal attraction

2004-12-31T10:11:00.000-08:00

in a word, I'm a sucker. for so many things.

a pretty face, shiny hair, a well-shaped neck*. any combination of these will surely stop me in my tracks. there is nothing like a girl and I have no trouble admitting it.

speaking of which. I believe I was flirted with yesterday whilst driving on the highway. I passed a car containing two young ladies. my cruise control was on, so I was going a constant speed. very soon after, this same car passed me and the young lady in the passenger seat looked in my direction with a slight smile on her face. very soon after, the car slowed down dramatically. so I did the logical thing and passed them again. very soon after, they passed me again, and again I got the same sort of corner-of-the-eye-smiley-look. it was all very confusing and I don't know what to make of it. surely they couldn't have been interested in me?--and if they were, what did they expect me to do about it? jump to their vehicle from mine, travelling at over 70 mph? silly girls, I'm no secret agent man.

dreams of late have been disturbing. last night's involved three pals I have who currently reside in thailand. I know the tsunami didn't threaten them; they've contacted me since. but still the troubling dream. I wish I knew whether dreams were based on reality, or pseudo-random (as I tend to think). that's all I'd like to know. it would make waking up a bit easier, sometimes.

this post so far has been brought to you by my desire to come clean. why, and with whom, perhaps I shall never know.

a year ago today I saw a car commercial. it said: 'make no payments till 2004!' (you can't make this stuff up.)

p.s. drew is the world's last bastion of sanity

*or one of the beauties in the victoria's secret catalogue which of course I've never even looked at not even once

I meh the title

2004-12-29T20:15:00.000-08:00

dear self (in care of two hours ago),

DO NOT DRINK THAT MILK it is a bit past its prime and you will regret it.

ugh.

so. hope you all had a lucrative holiday. merry rotmas to all and to all a good night.

I'm having trouble focusing so this will be all you get for a while.

(who do I know in wisconsin?)

'tis the season to be easily offended

2004-12-23T08:32:00.000-08:00

it's never the majority; it's always the vocal minority.
(no) more on that later.

the really truly hard-liners of the denomination I nominally belong to think catholics are the beast that will devour the earth in the end times and that we shouldn't have anything to do with them--as in, we shouldn't speak to them, look at them, shouldn't use words that they use, and on and sodding on. in this xenophobic spirit, therefore, I want to wish you all a merry Christ-x.

if I wanted to be simultaneously politically correct and remain neutral with respect to tradition and culture and belief I'd wish you all a merry x-x.

but that's just lame. so: happy second day after solstice, everyone, and good luck in the arbitrarily-begun new year. unless you're chinese, in which case happy, uh, shiny, lucky ... golden ... dragon? SOMEONE POLITICALLY CORRECT ME PLEASE

happy whatever, weenies.

sic

2004-12-18T22:01:00.000-08:00

CRAPE DIEM

10 snapshots20 of30 GOTO 10

2004-12-14T23:48:00.000-08:00

JARNYAR through my so-phisticated inter-net know-how I saw you reading this. you, you who know the flesh-me, were not supposed to have clicked that link.

tea and iPod get me through the day. or rather, they would if I didn't have a healthy imagination. tea and iPod and imagination get me through the day. and corporate-sponsored sugar and cream and hot water. and vodka martinis that are not properly made because a) we don't have anything to shake them in, and b) we can't afford vodka. money is lame: I want it, just don't want to have to get it.

work philosophy that is sure to annoy my wife (if she reads this): go on break early, go on break often.

today I deposited our first paychecks. ordinarily this would make me feel rich, but on the same day all our bills arrived. how beautifully perfect. how perfectly beautiful.

current total number of hangnails = 3. current number of hangnails on left hand = 3. my left shoulder still hurts from when I slept on it wrong last week. I feel like neil. (who is feeling whose pain?)

today I also feel like an order post. in many ways.

[complaint]please, world: wherefore ≠ where. whence ≠ when.[/complaint]

thanks to arnoud, I now want to try spacecake. curiosity will inevitably kill the matt.

confession(s)

2004-12-13T01:13:00.000-08:00

my name is matt, and I'm an anglophile.

I'll tell you what I mean.

the realization has been creeping up on me for a long long really long time. it started, I think, with monty python. I don't remember how old I was at the time, but it couldn't have been more than seven. I was on vacation with family in a hotel room with some uncles and cousins, flipping through the stations. I remember the black knight saying to king arthur that 'none shall pass' and the hilarity that crassly ensued, the knights who say 'ni' and (later) ecky-ecky-patang-patang-yip-boing-rowr,' the knight-murdering rabbit of doom, 'one, two, five!' and so on.

o fateful day.

ever since, I've been hooked on it all: monty python, radiohead, fish and chips and a pint o' guinness, cheers, fog and rain, cricket, parliamentary democracy, '-shire' pronounced 'sher,' douglas adams, mornington crescent, bbc radio ninety-four, future sound of london, words that end in -re instead of -er (and are spelled with s instead of z, and a 'u' thrown in here and there seemingly at random).

throughout my life, most of the girls with whom I've been infatuated have had something to do with england. examples: the one who is very english. the one whose parents are very english. the one who likes pink floyd, who are themselves english. most of the ones I saw whilst in england. the one who likes english muffins. the one who went to oxford and drinks tea and makes scones (and married me).

someday we're going to live there, see if we don't. I want gmt to be my local time. I want to call wankers and mates by their rightful names. I want to go pubbing and listen to dumb hip-hop music and see flashing lights. I want to have a royal family that I don't have to vote for. I want to have high tea at harrod's. I want to drive on the left, through a roundabout.

I want to mind the sodding gap.

...

that's that. you might recall my little run-in with the headache of total annihilation recently. this one was particularly doomful: it was the first migraine I've ever had that actually gave me hallucinations. waking dreams. the things that make one question one's sanity.

since I'm such a forward-thinking guy, I wrote down the visions I can remember.

1. I'm flying an airplane. my bed is somehow crammed into the cockpit and I pilot the thing with my head on the pillow.

2. I'm watching 'I love lucy' from inside lucy's house.

3. I'm in my grandma's kitchen (at her table) watching her make cookies. she talked to me but I don't remember what about.

4. I meet Arnold Schwarzenegger, who shows me his hummer and calls it his pride and joy.

5. I'm in the white house. I don't see anyone important or do anything significant; I'm just happy to be in the white house.

6. (this one isn't a hallucination; it's a recurring dream that I have when I'm headache'd.) inside my head I have a small number. it's not an integer or anything definite, it's just a quantity, like a stack of generic objects. the amount/stack/quantity suddenly doubles in size, then redoubles, and so on. very soon, the number is tremendously huge, to the point where it exerts pressure on the inside of my head. it is violently, painfully large. I realize this is my pain receptors incorporating their nerve signals into my dream. I just wish they wouldn't.

dreams are dumb; pain-dreams doubly so.

(to all you out there who felt my pain: I'm sorry.)

every day today is painful day

2004-12-09T11:45:00.000-08:00

what I want more than anything is a cure for the common migraine. if a cure is unavailable, then I'd please like a drill to let some happy back into my head.

dear world,

please keep it down for the next six to twelve hours.

love, matt.

I didn't deserve this one.

non-deterministic

2004-12-07T19:06:00.000-08:00

e6 3e c1 b0 dd 39 e0 e5 c1 dc 16 15 ff 7a 59 a1 8e cd ff cc 2a 5f b4 b3 1d 97 2c 62 7e 59 4b 8e
10 3e 5c 41 ce de 68 bf af 12 27 c2 85 81 ce fe ac 51 c0 87 91 74 11 ae 3b cf df 42 29 1a bc 55
8e 08 52 2c ea ad 5a c4 0a 51 2f d9 12 8c a0 0f ea a9 54 65 50 61 f9 7f b7 9c ad 3f 49 28 a5 ad
89 a8 52 d8 72 13 a9 e8 f6 49 f6 0b 8f bc 72 ad 19 9d 2e 31 48 b4 3f 9b 09 ca dd 60 6e 06 f0 5a
7f 87 6c 14 f1 cc f0 d5 19 fd 5a 6c 51 fa 33 d6 1e 4a 4f 93 0d b8 8e 77 c3 9e ac 38 40 09 a4 7f
93 a6 1f 82 b6 25 81 b2 aa d3 4e ed 3e e4 1b 59 94 2d 29 32 7f d7 77 5a 15 cb ea 2d 0c 7e e3 b4
b7 c6 4b 8d 77 c9 b4 bf fe 1c b0 23 07 0f 3e 23 5e 86 11 ba c7 4a 5b 33 eb 9e f5 68 ad 9a d8 cc
d2 38 e4 0b 99 87 35 30 16 1b 5c 33 90 54 b4 79 e5 45 60 22 e3 cf d7 8c 89 2f 63 8b 3c 07 15 4d
a7 9d 44 3b fc d0 82 1a 09 67 a0 3a d2 69 2d 74 fc 15 54 6e be d5 18 4e 40 5e 6a 79 cb 4e e2 65
b6 8d 9f 74 c9 3e b6 a6 81 a5 ed a4 53 e7 ad a9 52 dd 91 49 e0 93 1f ab f9 a0 63 1b 88 2a 7b d3
76 24 cf 8e 4b 12 f3 ff 32 26 4d af 9d 92 f4 c6 e8 ee 54 7f 8d 5a 5f 53 0e ee 9e e5 16 4c 34 a2
05 6f 9c f1 cb 04 06 6d 5f 27 61 0a 53 3e 63 08 0a e5 49 48 2c e9 59 03 11 9b 2f c4 92 1d 01 df
22 a4 24 f8 61 ca ec 86 81 78 08 a1 10 1e df b8 3a 7c 1a 39 1e 79 a3 c1 a5 c9 a1 54 5b 19 7f 68
e1 df 05 db 4b 24 b2 59 b9 85 ae 29 b5 18 45 da 41 63 86 af cd 03 d7 53 d6 23 b4 92 6c f7 c3 7c
9c e6 3c 9a eb 09 42 2a 1e 0c 72 3e 1a 60 45 03 0f 15 71 dc 5e 73 fb 3e 11 2b 42 5c 17 8e 87 ca
9b c9 c4 8e c2 61 22 d1 05 25 7c 9a 8e 23 31 2a d9 d4 40 98 d4 62 11 d4 14 26 bc 7f 3e 4a 64 1d
21 29 ec 92 ba ca e9 ab e4 24 c5 19 e7 ed 92 00 42 1f 2b 08 c7 eb 13 6a 6f 19 75 10 93 0d a1 fb
4a 1b 10 69 76 14 c5 b5 bd 38 26 fb a9 dc 1a e5 1f 55 79 37 ab 9b 0d d8 87 04 07 36 49 db ac bd
08 6b 30 f6 87 e2 b4 d5 64 9b c5 65 37 72 13 39 76 b9 b0 4e d7 be fc 48 e7 ec a5 52 ee c3 4e 81
f3 ab 60 9e eb cb c9 85 a6 87 c2 6b 0d c8 ed 6f 58 31 0c 6e b6 1b 76 52 49 c6 58 85 3b 38 bc af
26 6b e6 12 a5 b7 87 eb 8b 0f 79 5e ea a1 3d f7 7e 42 df d3 74 b2 fa bf 20 58 fc 7d ba e3 55 7d
06 af 7e 25 cf 8f ed 06 7a 03 90 a6 3c ff bd 2b b7 b8 b4 5b 52 ec 81 8a 74 28 3e cc bd 2c 5c b4
7d 6b 4e 41 02 04 3c 3b 08 6a 25 80 04 13 8b c9 2d fc cb 18 d9 f8 f9 25 c3 17 6e 3d 1a e3 0e bb
a2 a0 6a e4 e0 a0 0b fb 71 17 12 8d 30 69 32 97 6f c5 4d 2d 5b 6f d0 2d 47 93 83 5c 73 d8 a2 32
aa bc c1 12 c9 1d 87 a9 3c 87 52 a2 b8 ea 44 bc 26 b7 19 2c c0 22 8a 19 fb 22 1b 70 56 e7 c2 4a
d8 43 93 12 84 c8 7d cd 46 17 d6 20 db 31 0d 14 44 38 71 ad 64 c9 39 48 5c 6d 29 82 1d 12 52 86
d9 43 e3 89 4b 46 c0 db 11 58 62 31 62 04 b5 d9 f2 84 79 0d 8c 2b 44 b1 87 c3 b3 90 ec d3 9f db
8f b2 c8 49 4a 32 e4 d6 4a 0a 24 09 fb 76 5d cd 54 bc 7c 90 bd 47 6a c3 30 f3 75 80 d8 55 17 35
1a 86 20 21 bd 8c 4a 71 b1 2a 5f dd 7c a8 4f 2b e8 e5 32 ac 94 f2 fe f8 53 49 a0 c2 c4 14 68 cc
c3 d7 79 4f 64 ed 50 69 fa b4 03 d6 80 f1 79 e1 aa bd 89 a8 30 8b 38 4c cb f6 1d d4 c4 1b 33 66
ba 5a c7 45 91 e0 76 49 90 9b d4 a8 50 d1 66 7a 71 51 dc 32 be f6 1d 53 a2 ca 33 8f cd f2 dd f8
93 cf 0a a0 8e eb bb 1e 23 ab ae 25 3a 82 ae b9 71 e3 b4 59 6d 71 e2 a2 51 90 94 44 c4 b2 59 68

and on and on and on.

finally, I have found that on which all emotion is based:

a radio is tuned into a frequency where nobody is broadcasting. the atmospheric noise picked up by the receiver is fed into a workstation through the microphone port where it is sampled by a program as an eight bit mono signal at a frequency of 8khz. the upper seven bits of each sample are discarded immediately and the remaining bits are gathered and turned into a stream of bits with a high content of entropy. skew correction is performed on the bit stream, in order to ensure that there is an approximately even distribution of 0s and 1s.

the bit stream is converted into hexadecimal format and fed via VLF radio waves through the ether into the very lowest of brain centers, where it is interpreted by a process that doesn't understand either the input or what to do with it, as (due to an evolutionary oversight) it can only read binary. so it reverts to its error-handling code, which tells it simply to pass on the raw, unfiltered data to its supervising brain function.

this supervising brain function expects to get nicely filtered binary data with helpful multimedia metadata (such as the brain-equivalent of a powerpoint presentation with screeching tire noises and animated bullet icons)--when it gets raw numbers in .txt format, its central processor puzzles over the problem until it overheats and restarts.

upon rebooting, the same data is sitting in its little organic inbox. the first thing the supervising function does is to tackle the same workload again, only to hit the same problem of raw vs. filtered data. after encountering ongoing critical errors and rebooting repeatedly for a few minutes, the supervisor's hardware shorts out and fails completely.

with no central system to interpret and govern the incoming data, it streams in without guidance, passing and bouncing through the brain at random, messing everything up and knocking everything over.

this happens at a very young age; in fact it is not long after the formation of the emotion center that the emotion center unhappily dies. the sad truth of it all is that emotion is completely random and possibly even dangerous! your brainwaves, yea verily the very stuff of thought is threatened! sanity's only hope is the tinfoil hat.

in many ways it still has its place

2004-12-05T22:57:00.000-08:00

hatelife is headphones that randomly emit very high frequency 120 dB noise into one's ears. (this noise is so loud that, even though it is emitted through headphone speakers, it causes one's wife to turn down the television and inquire what that horrible noise was.) hatelife is subsequent specific-frequency hearing loss.

hatelife is the second helping of excellent food that is served approximately two minutes before the first helping hits the gut. hatelife is needing to ask for a to-go box for a homemade meal at a friend's house.

hatelife is being immediately pegged as 'the guy to beat' in a friendly game of speed-scrabble. hatelife is having to use lower-scoring words to prevent one's friends (and spouse) from being mad.

hatelife is being not mentally aware enough to focus on a conversation with: 1) sister; 2) friends (in person); 3) friends (on phone); 4) nearly everyone else.

however.

hatelife is not a lazy sunday at home.

hatelife is not sweet earl gray tea and toasted english muffin. with honey. with a blanket and a good book.

hatelife is not a four-month-old quarter-bobcat kitten (though it might be the manifold scratches on fingers received as a result of playing with the beast).

hatelife is not a newly employed spouse.

hatelife is not recent hatelife activity.

but hatelife is still hatelife.

blast from the past

2004-12-05T01:42:00.000-08:00

because I'm lazy and TUI (typing under the influence) and I really really felt it was necessary. avid readers will remember the following.

QUOTE:

freedom, I got here too late.

this won't match the standard I've set for myself because simply I'm just too tired now. I'm sorry for getting your hopes up and everything. I know I did. I'm intuitive like that. if I were a superhero I'd walk around with a big N on my chest and I'd be called N-tuitive boy.

but that's not why I'm here.

RUM & COKE is why I'm here.

I think I put too much RUM in the glass. I don't remember how much was in the glass when I stopped pouring. it couldn't have been too much, otherwise my mates would have said 'whoa there matt you'd better watch it' but I don't remember them saying that and now they're gone so I can't ask them. at any rate I filled the rest of the glass with COKE so the RUM was probably pretty diluted when all was said and done and poured.

I can't find my nice fuzzy warm sweatshirt and it's the time of night when evertyhing starts getting cold.

[liver] DAMN IT matt you've got to stop, give me a freaking vacation
[matt] YOU'LL TAKE WHAT I GIVE YOU AND YOU'LL PROCESS IT TO THE BEST OF YOUR ABILITY
[liver] you're the boss
[brain] matt, he has a point; I mean, even I find it hard to work in this low-oxygen environment. in fact all I can do is this:
[matt] qasoinfg;j WHOA BRAIN WHY IS THE ROOM SPINNING
[brain] lack of oxygen, man. it's all I'm capable of
[kidneys] WE NEED OVERTIME PAY OR WE'RE GOING TO GO ON STRIKE
[matt] OKAY OKAY you organs everything will be okay, I'll just drink this magic elixir and everything will return to normal, like it was yesterday
* matt drinks magic elixir
[brain] THAT'S THE STUFF
[liver] AAAAHH FAILURE IS IMMINENT
[kidneys] UNABLE TO KEEP UP WITH INPUT
[spleen] for chrissakes will you all keep it down? I'm trying to sleep and OH GOOD HEAVENS, WHAT AN INTERESTING SENSATION, I FEEL FUZZY
[matt] thank you magic elixir a.k.a. RUM AND COKE, you have ruined my evening but it feels so nice
[RUM AND COKE] BEHOLD MY MAGIC, I AM SIMULTANEOUSLY WARM AND COLD AND BUBBLY
[matt] in the best possible way.
[brain] this isn't so bad I suppose, HEY I'VE GOT AN IDEA, LET'S POST TO HATELIFE!

:UNQUOTE

being subjected to bridget jones leaves me only so many options. (perhaps more vermouth would have helped.)

-matt.

p.s. jen sister jen, you are not allowed to know what any of it means.

more of the depressingly same

2004-11-30T17:56:00.000-08:00

dear fellow intertron nodes,

this is to follow up on my previous post regarding the un-beauty of airports.

they are still un-beautiful. still expensive. still full of whiny angry hurried people who are not satisfied with where they are and infinitely anxious to get somewhere else.

[matt's wife's litany of complaints]

matt's wife sez: I hate flying I hate flying I hate flying. etc. moreover, I hate airport people. you know them too well and yet not well enough to say, 'shut the ---- up' or, "shut your phone the ---- up." *also is weird to be known as matt's "wife," or anyone's wife for that matter.

[/matt's wife's litany of complaints]

(yes, she wrote that.)

shoutz out 2 mah wiggaz:

UNITED AIRPLANES PILOT we the passengers demand that you stop injecting narcotics into your blood before you start flying aircraft, especially ours.

PARENTS please accept my apologies for mentally yelling at you. you see I thought the car was mine when I told you to go ahead and sell it and therefore thought that money was mine. keep every dime and I will stop cursing your good names.

GUY ACROSS FROM ME stop yelling at your cell phone, it has done nothing wrong.

GIRL WHO LOOKS JUST LIKE MY WIFE i don't know how you did that but it is really creepy.

BECK thank you for coming with me in my portable electronic devices, without you I would never have survived so long. it is perfectly clear you wrote this song for me, here, now.

many words accumulated

2004-11-28T21:28:00.000-08:00

airports are not beautiful places. they are not places where beautiful things happen; they are places where people sweat and swear and shout and get advertised at. one could easily liken it to a large cattle ranch, with cattle arriving and departing daily at a furious pace--though not so much a furious pace today, since it's our thanksgiving, and most sane people have already gotten where they ought to have got. but the point remains, I do not like airports. I compulsively want to get there two hours early for the vaguest of vague reason 'just in case,' and subsequently end up sitting for at least an hour and three quarters. silly matt. but this one does have free wireless internet service, so I can't complain ... as much. but I did have to remove my shoes so yes I certainly am going to complain.

since I've been here I've heard many interesting things:

1. the word 'fuck,' twice; didn't hear the context either time
2. 'this is the first time I've flown since 9/11; I'm scared to death'
3. 'I could think of better ways to spend thanksgiving'
4. 'who are you emailing, your other wife?' (quoth my current wife just now as I'm writing this)

the world should listen to itself more. discuss.

(transition)

I am now in seat 8D in a united airlines b-52 or somesuch flying machine. more excitement was had whilst boarding (as most travelers suffer from either brain damage or mad cow disease (refer to paragraph 1)). a lady wanted to put her four-ton luggage device in a space the size of, roughly, a shoebox, above her seat. much shouting and whining and finger-pointing and finger-raising and throwing of punches, culminating in the bag's ejection from the aircraft and escort to the baggage check area. in this post-9/11 world, we can only assume that 'baggage check area' means a holding cell in guantanamo where it will be regarded as an enemy combatant and where it will be given a half-hour's worth of air and sunlight a day and no legal counsel other than a retarded orangutan and an uneducated roll of industrial carpet. it seems this is where all my bags end up.

here I see a cross section of the entire human race: the two men across the aisle from me who discuss venture capital and non-recoverable assets like geeks talk about linux. the polite but socially backward japanese couple who utterly stopped the boarding process so they could (with smile-laden faces) put their bags in the storage compartments. the satisfied coy newly married people. the parents with their equally tired children. the pretty teenagers with their smug mobile phones. cattle all.

(transition)

I'm now in my parents' house in the general vicinity of los angeles. [aside: I used to be particular about specifying that no, indeed they do not live in los angeles proper; I no longer care.] on the very short flight from los angeles to the airport closer to their house (on a 30-seated propeller plane) we saw l.a.'s protective layer of smog. from the air, the firmament here between clean air above and dirty air below is as clear as though cut with God's own straightedge. it occurs to me that if anyone ever tried to detonate a nuclear weapon above the smog layer, the city would be completely untouched: no force in nature, pressure waves and gamma radiation included, could penetrate that disgusting armor. and this filth is repeated in a thousand, ten thousand cities worldwide. it's amazing how thoroughly we can bollocks up a planet.

but back to me. I've once again sorted through all my old things, my dad's old things some of which are now my things but all of which are just things. back-story: he died when I was three. I remember him but not much of him, and as time grows on I find it hard to distinguish between real and false memories, between mental images and photographs. I'd swear I can remember his voice.

I've fixed my parents' computer; I have set the table for dinner; I have made and consumed some better-than-mediocre tea; I have lost to my wife at poker; I have played with the legos of my childhood. I have a family who loves me and for whom I have great affection. there are many and varied things I am thankful for.

(transition)

I have been at the house for quite a long time and cannot get my computer to speak to the existing wireless network here and have no time- and/or effort-efficient way of transferring this text to an interweb-connected computer, so it is possible that you will not receive it for a very long time. you have my apologies.

so now it is after midnight, friday-saturday night. my sister is staying in the room next to ours, and she is speaking loudly on the phone and playing some sort of music through her computer. why I am telling you this is beyond me.

it is now after midnight, saturday-sunday morning. I've said goodbye to my sister. I've played poker again with my family, this time winning. I've played pool and won. I've played a brainless dice game and won. I've hemmed and hawed about fixing my internet connection and have finally succeeded, albeit only after employing all my tricks and pushing my computer's (and wife's) patience to the limit--and in the end I must consider this a win as well. I really need to get to las vegas.

(transition)

please forgive some things:

0. the time elapsed between starting and completing this entry
1. its inevitable incoherence and failure to follow any single thought to a logical conclusion, which I am, right now, too tired to consider
2. its general illusion of substance. I promise it is a fluke
3. (t.b.d.)

crap deleted

2004-11-22T11:59:00.000-08:00

summarily.

the end.

an email of sufficiently large mass

2004-11-20T17:51:00.001-08:00

this entry was CRAP that somehow made it through my mind's usually effective filter.

inside joke

2004-11-20T13:58:00.000-08:00

when talking in real time to silly girls in australia, don't be sick. sick means slow, slow means inarticulate, and inarticulate means disillusionment.

I enjoyed myself, I really did. but I think they were straining to.

we needed more people on the line. (where were you guys, anyway?)

swear words: not just for grandma anymore

2004-11-19T01:58:00.000-08:00

a list of minor goings-wrong, which in their entirety make up a very bad day.

we had to (read: volunteered to) drive friends to the airport at 3:00 in the morning yesterday/this morning. got back at five. slept not-at-all well and not nearly long enough.

my ipod's battery died with hours of work ahead of me.

the network hiccupped at a crucial moment (right as I saved all my work and was logging off), choosing that exact time to disconnect my computer and somehow in the process delete all the updates and entries I had made during the day. that's right, I worked all day and at the end have nothing to show for it. nothing. it is gone. all gone. unceremoniously deleted.

the cute co-workin' girl at work had her last day today. she leaves for ireland soon.

my throat hurts, and relatedly, my voice is on the outs. I am short-sighted: the tea I took to soothe it was very probably caffeinated which is why I can't sleep even though I'd quite like to.

the ctrl button on my keyboard is currently finnicky. unresponsive. in a 'phase.'

I can't get quicken's online update features to work properly.

I can't find a certain power adapter I need to find. I can't find my new online banking pin number that I swore I wrote down right here two minutes ago. I can't find my keys, my coat, my wallet, my shoes. oh I found my keys but set them down to look for my shoes and found my shoes but forgot where I put my keys. I can't find my sanity.

we're out of clean spoons. it's my turn to do the dishes and I have no one to blame but me.

we're nearly out of comfort-flavor ice cream. ... moot'd! no spoons.

it feels like today should have been a friday, but no. I still have that to look forward to.

as the venerable douglas adams might say in such a situation:
'this must be thursday. I never could get the hang of thursdays.'

thank you, mr adams. you left me just when I needed you most.

the wheel is spinning but I can't see the hamster

2004-11-18T02:52:00.000-08:00

I tried to mail a boomerang a few days ago but it keeps coming back.

seriously, though.

it's been a serious while since our last time together, mostly because I've been distracted, and because I've decided to spend my time on tweaking the template again. that's not what you want; I should know better.

but since you're here and since I'm needy, tell me what you think about the link hovering thing. we (I) aim to please.

the job dillemma remains so. the one that would require us to move is looking brighter every day, while at the same time I quite enjoy what I'm currently doing. it's going to be a tough decision either way. tears will be shed. names may or may not be called. I do not like making decisions. it is my most annoying feature, something I really wish I could just iron out. to my infinite discredit, I'm a sucker for the easy road.

I might be setting myself up for disillusionment with a certain future conference call, but I remain an eternal optimist. at least I'll be able to more-or-less keep the voices straight (having heard half of them already).

aivapot leaves me speechless and helpless. and even though it's none of my business I wish it could be. I've always always been on your side.

my nanowrimo word count remains steady at an unimpressive 41,942 (bugger); I thought I could make it but I'm impasse'd. I'm thinking about running it through a web translator and back a few times to generate some extra words, but I fear something might be lost.

winter is just another way of saying 'I'll be constantly cold for five months and no number of blankets and/or heaters can remedy it. in many ways I despise this town, these environs, these doldrums-but-not-technical-doldrums ... but I'm to love the one I'm with, right?

bleh. it's late, and I'm still insubstantial.

to obscurely steal style from a guy I miss:

matt_'you may already be a winner.' thanks, but I already knew. I don't need junk mail to tell me.

where oh where have you got to.

*title used by wife's kind permission

bandwaggin'

2004-11-10T02:15:00.000-08:00

so apparently (some of) you have head-pictures of me, without having any useful frame of reference against which you can compare them. you might have seen pictures of me a long long time ago but even I've forgotten where I put them. I probably should have pre-emptively fixed this long ago, but since that's no longer an option, I'll just fix it, uh, emptively.

will I re-regret this? internal oracle again says yes.

firstly, pictures of a boy in front of big awesome water. clicky linkies.

clicky linky for to see the first one with added bonus detail. one free in every click.

secondly, pictures more clearly of my facial region, though in neither picture can you easily see my eyes. this is because I do not have eyes.

left is circa bachelor party. right is circa barely-pre-engagement. in both I am wearing my prized Che shirt.

okay, fine, you can kind of see my eyes. I guess I kind of fibbed that bit up; it's just that it's always been a recurring nightmare of mine, not having eyes, and I occasionally accidentally think it's true. (unless I photoshop'd them in. I'm keen on computers like that.)

if you came here wanting to hear about my job, then, sorry. [in the immortal words of the mortal jen, 'weenies.'] I'm avoiding writing about my job because I don't want to turn into a guy who writes on the interweb about his job. I couldn't bear it.

neil, I want to write you something but now is not the time. this is not a time for substance, because of late I find I am insubstantial.

re-update

2004-11-06T22:24:00.000-08:00

and we're job'd, the two of us.

finally! I can instead whine about something substantial. stay tuned. (for now I'm tired.)

everything happens at once, reprise

2004-11-04T19:04:00.000-08:00

unfortunately, everything happens in almost precisely the wrong order.

update: second interview has turned into a definite offer of immediate employment. I could be well and truly job'd next monday morning.

ordinarily, under other circumstances, this would be known as an Absolutely Good Thing™. the reasons it is not an Absolutely Good Thing™:

1. it is not full-time. it is 20 hrs/week.
2. being something I very much enjoy doing, it is not the One Thing™ I really want to be doing.
3. I have another possibility on the line, which would be the One Thing™ I really want to be doing. however, this won't even turn into an interview for at least three weeks, possibly longer. possibly much longer. everything is up in the air and refuses to come down.

also in the air is Chelsey's (where Chelsey = wife) employment situation. she has a semi-ideal possibility that will (with 75% certainty) turn into an offer, but we haven't heard from the would-be workplace. tomorrow we might, and if that were the case, then--regardless of the answer--that would simplify things a bit. by 'a bit,' I of course mean 'a ton.'

tonight I received tea and ~~sympathy~~ tough love. sometimes that's the best a situation allows.

will I sleep tonight? the answer is no. as usual.

moving on to something less meaningful.

you'll notice that the sidebar is in a state of ever-changingness. consider it my silly gift to you. and it keeps on giving (?).

change is a Good Thing™. (well, at any rate anyway, it's a Thing™.)

(positive) reinforcement needed

2004-11-04T01:30:00.000-08:00

in the original draft of kerry's concession speech was the line 'I want to thank my wife, teresa, without whose billions of dollars this hair would not have been possible.'

har.

someone (not me) said to someone (me) recently, regarding the election: 'we are watching it with the distracted attention that one might watch a car-crash in progress. i myself have little hope for a happy ending.' you and the rest of the world, that is. was. whatever.

it's getting to be that time of year again. that really, really expensive time of year. so: does anyone know what women want for christmas? ... specifically, does anyone know what my wife wants for christmas? I mean, something that I can put on my current credit card, not something that requires me to go see vinny the loan shark or to get a mortgage. or both; vinny doesn't offer very competitive rates on mortages.

a recent interview turned into a skills test turned into tomorrow's second interview. government job is still up in the air. wife's second interview has been and gone and we still await the result. wife also turned down the pseudo-volunteer position, which would have paid her $850/month (crap) for the next eight months (crap) with very very few days off (very crap). it's a trying time for us. SISTER if you're reading this don't tell mom, we think that telling people the last time bollocksed it up for us last time. can I work for you?

everyone please join me in my hatelife disillusionment.

I'm tempted to begin writing stories en masse again, something I basically haven't done since I started jobbin'. it was always therapeutic for me, and I wonder if that added stress reliever would be worth its time. and there was a lot of time involved. why am I telling you this? there is insufficient data for a meaningul answer.

things get mixed up in my head. when I do something for an extended (or short but intense) period of time, any sort of stimulus I'm getting at the time is tied to that action. then, whenever I experience that stimulus again later, I'm reminded of whatever it was I was doing. I just thought you all should know because the stove light keeps randomly turning itself on, and the last time that kept happening was the last time I did some serious writing.

part 2: midnight

2004-11-02T23:59:00.000-08:00

OHIO

MAKE UP YOUR MIND

I approved this tripe

2004-11-02T16:58:00.000-08:00

I should keep a tally of the number of ads I see or hear between april and november of an election year. it would be in the thousands. if yard signs and bumper stickers are included, the number jumps to the tens of trillions.

BUT today marks the end of the dreaded election ad season! this one was particularly nasty, so tomorrow the sun should shine particularly brightly.

some of the polls are in, badnarik seems not to be doing so well ... perhaps the sun will not be shining so brightly tomorrow? MICHAEL BADNARIK you've had my vote since last friday, I hope it's the one that breaks the duopoly's back and crowns you president.

the results page refreshes unbearably slowly. it is unbearably slow. we want the answer now, dammit.

the electoral college system currently in place in america allows for some interesting results, e.g. in the last election when al gore won the popular vote but not the election. so that got me thinking about just how few votes it would take to win an election, assuming every american citizen can and does vote. I've been working some figures, and here are the results:

say Candidate A won the states (North Carolina, Virginia, Massachusetts, Indiana, Washington, Tennessee, Missouri, Wisconsin, Maryland, Arizona, Minnesota, Louisiana, Alabama, Colorado, Kentucky, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Connecticut, Iowa, Mississippi, Kansas, Arkansas, Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, West Virginia, Nebraska, Idaho, Maine, New Hampshire, Hawaii, Rhode Island, Montana, Delaware, South Dakota, North Dakota, Alaska, Vermont, DC, and Wyoming) with half-the-votes-plus-one in each (so it's the barest of majorities). because Candidate A won the popular vote in these states, Candidate A would get 270 electoral votes and would win the election. in all other states, Candidate A does not receive a single vote, and the electoral votes from the other states go to Candidate B. Candidate B receives 268 electoral votes and loses the election.

in the states listed above, there is a rough total of 122800000 voters, and the same number of votes for Candidate A (by assumption). half of this number is 61400000.

according to a july 2003 count, there are roughly 281420000 people in the u.s.

what percent voted for Candidate A? the number is less than 22%. fewer than one in four people in the country voted for Candidate A, who still wins the election. talk about a supramajority.

glued to the screen,

-matt.

countdown to the recount

2004-11-01T19:03:00.000-08:00

political drivel lies ahead! ye be warned.

well huh. osama bin laden wasn't captured today. kerry might just pull it out.

but really: whomever wins, we lose.

I do not want george bush be reelected. if george bush were running against 'not george bush,' I think not george bush would win. the problem is I don't want kerry in.

a vote for the lesser of two evils is still a vote for evil, and americans everywhere don't seem to realize this.

I voted (absentee-like) for badnarik, a libertarian. he's a smart guy, as evidenced in many many many recent interviews. if you're sick of the system (and even if you're not), please check him out.

the end (of that).

...

dear coors beer corporation incorporated,

you stated in a recent television advert that your beer was the 'coldest tasting beer' in the world. we beg you to tell us: how can beer taste cold? come to that, can beer taste red? can beer taste loud? we're all very confused.

love,

a billion drunk people

...

tomorrow night I'll be drinking not to remember, but to forget.

remember: that's badnarik. no no, bahd-nah-rik. yes, that's right, less nasally. baaahd-naaah-rik. you've got it.

like a whiny phoenix from the angsty ashes

2004-10-25T20:43:00.000-07:00

hatelife is back. (more or less.)

but enough about me

2004-10-24T22:55:00.000-07:00

the most dreaded (and simultaneously the most important) interview 'question':

tell me about yourself.

so here it is. tell me about yourself. ... seriously. I deal in specifics, so here's what I'm looking for, specifically: everyone has some feature or quirk that s/he has never been able to tell another person simply because it has never been easily insertable into the conversation at hand. here is your excuse to say it.

mine is that I've always wanted to write, film, and edit my own movie. actually, I've already written one (it's rubbish, don't bother inquiring), so I guess I want to get to the business of filming and editing my own rubbish movie.

someone I know (not me) has a more interesting one. once when he was 15ish he watched a pseudonews show's exposé on landlords who install hidden cameras to spy on their tenants. since then, in every dorm room/apartment he's lived in, he regularly checks the eaves and behind the mirrors for cameras, and checks the floors for suspicious sawdust. true story.

PREMISE we are very normal, well-functioning humans.
PREMISE we have one.
PREMISE you are very normal, well-functioning humans.
CONCLUSION you have one.

it will be easy for you to tell me because I'm not hiring you.

punny punny

2004-10-23T23:09:00.000-07:00

this weekend my sister and my wife simultaneously took up crocheting.

today they were very crochety.

nothing ever makes sense

2004-10-23T13:09:00.000-07:00

query: why is it called fasting if it goes so slowly?

har. I really just needed an excuse to tell you I'm fasting. here's why: a week ago I was at the beach working on becoming a fat hippo, and I nearly succeeded. I've worked a few figures and have determined that between friday lunch and sunday breakfast I consumed the recommended weekly caloric intake of, roughly, asia. and so to bring balance and confusion to my stomach, I am making it pay.

[stomach] I NEED OVERTIME PAY OR I'M GOING TO GO ON STRIKE
[matt] I'll show you 'overtime'
* matt starves self
[stomach] SUCK IT, FATTY! QUIT STALLING AND GIVE ME THE 'SPOOKY' LUCKY CHARMS
[matt] you be quiet and stop rumbling or I'll cut you in half like evil jared
* stomach falls silent

explanation: it has been brought to my attention (by her) that evil jared--from the subway commercials--had gastric bypass surgery. it wasn't that he ate nice healthy subway sandwiches and went on an exercise regimen, NO NO, it's that his stomach couldn't hold anything so it didn't bloody well matter what he ate. you disgust me, fraudulent corporate whore evil jared. you are my new swear word. (along with dentist)

in my dreams I write as well as neil, but in the morning I can never remember how.

amends: I apologize for what I wrote below. much as it pains me to admit, it was a moment of angst. hopefully a rare moment of angst. we generally try to do better than that.

everything happens at once.

2004-10-20T21:39:00.000-07:00

we have explosive.

you'll find that I've included my amazon wish list on the sidebar to your right. not that I'd expect anything of you. not really. only in my dreams.

I find myself at the beginning: the oh-so-handy referral counter has, inexplicably, reset itself. how odd.

I find myself still unemployed and still borderline unmotivated. having been jobbin' for three months, what do I have to show for it? one bollocks'd interview and a host of ignored résumés. I know that a job is just around the corner. I just have to look hard enough to find the right corner. and if I keep telling myself that, that's all it will take.

I find myself cleaning a house I don't really want to be in. I want to be out. gone. done with it. moved on.

I find myself. (no, I really don't.) recently I told a friend of mine that if humans can't find meaning in their lives, then they're pretty good at creating meaning instead. I fail it on both accounts.

blah blah blah, boo hoo. introspection is lame. why didn't I stop me?

I find myself leaving it up to chance:
heads=delete.
tails=publish.

even though either way, I know I'm going to hit 'publish post' and be done with it.

whatever.

be ye manipulated

2004-10-20T01:36:00.000-07:00

just watched 'super size me.' as wife is my witness, I am never eating at mcdonald's again. ever.

also, my niece is cute.

check that, my niece is THE CUTEST MAMMAL IN THE UNIVERSE.

cuter even than baby doom.

in my defense, I have been busy

2004-10-18T21:28:00.000-07:00

ugh. you ridiculous demanding people, being all ridiculous and demanding things and such.

since last we spoke, I have: gone on a camping trip, run the batteries of the camera down in three pictures, built fires, put out fires, slept in a freezing tent with a too-small sleeping bag and no proper pillow, caught a three-inch fish, washed my hair in a river, driven through a town with its own logo, seen mountains and valleys aplenty, been sick, had headaches, rearranged the contents of my living room, done the dishes, been kissed by a dog, visited old friends, sat down in a bookstore, purchased a future sound of london (link warning: evil flash and less-than-evil noise and lights lie ahead) album, written some conspicuously overdue emails and procrastinat'd many others, sold a laptop computer on ebay whilst simultaneously avoiding internet fraud, watched football (american), watched football (unamerican), been visited by a canadian cousin, eaten ice cream and more ice cream, touched the pacific ocean, thrown a frisbee, watched movies with many friends, eaten homemade quesadillas after midnight, eaten and eaten and eaten, played games and games and games, read books and books and books, not gotten a job, and stayed mostly out of trouble throughout. so I can see that it has indeed been a while, for which you have my apologies.

I have also been thinking of what to give you in the way of photos. since I cannot in good conscience delay this any longer, I might as well get right into it.

well, let's see. in the order they were received:

1 (requested by dan) - dinner (or the aftermath thereof):

stir-fry and ex-brownies.

2 (requested by nmrboy) - something around my house that strikes me as being decidedly out of place:

note the products of intelligentsia on the right side and the products of literati on the left. har.

3 (requested by lou ise) -
a. my bookshelves:

I have too many of these. they also qualify for part 3c below.

b. my favourite (local) place that makes me feel like getting back to nature:

the wallowa mountains.

is that water clear? the answer is yes.

c. the item(s) I cherish most (wife excluded):

ash nazg durbatuluk.

the future of muzak.

cromulent.

cromulent, with majesty.

d. my wife:

sadly, according to my wife, this is not allowed. this is the best I am allowed do:

4 (requested by lisa to whom I've unfortunately never been introduced) - a girl driving an unbroken black pontiac bonneville, or any other fortunate event I might witness:

this was a toughie. it rather required my carrying the camera about from place to place, and also required lightning-fast reflexes, which I'm told I do not have. the specific item mentioned does not exist in my town, so again, I had to settle for 'the best I could do.' here:

this arrived in the mail today, from my mum. even though it isn't an event per se, you can't ask for more fortunate than this.

this was fun. for me.

p.s. the new recommended daily allowance of future sound of london is now 'yes.'

mostly completely speechless

2004-10-05T14:04:00.000-07:00

emails are better when they're happy.

I'll post the requested pictures in a (long) while. for now, I'm leaving for a camping trip with the wife and there's nothing you can do to stop me. except offer me a job, preferably a sinecure, that pays $70k/year plus full benefits and casual monday-through-fridays plus I get mondays off.

to summarise/ize: emails are better when they're happy.

perfectly logical to-do list

2004-10-03T17:39:00.001-07:00

FIRST
since you're here
you probably know me at least reasonably well (and if you don't, hi, my name is matt and I'm a great guy). so why not buy my laptop? (yes, this is the one that mysteriously returned from the nether regions of intercontinental postal fraudville. if you love me, you'll at least bid on it. if you really love me, you'll buy-it-now.) forgive me if I say 'no' to escrows.

SECOND
since you're done with that
there's a 'popular idea' currently floating around the interweb. readers ask the author (in my case, me) to take pictures of things and whatnot and then post them to the author's (my) web-o-log. though I'm not generally fond of 'popular ideas,' I think this one is particularly fascinating: you get to see the current state of my life, and I get to find out what really interests you. I'm 'gung-ho' to do this, as the kids say these days. if you love me, you'll post requests. if you really love me, you'll let me do the same.

what fun!
what fun.
what fun?

something tells me I'm going to have to make dinner tonight (my wife is something).

debate #1: utter tripe

2004-09-30T21:52:00.000-07:00

moderator: mr. bush, what is your favorite color?

george bush: let me preface my answer in this way: I'm the best man for the job of president of the united states. in four years I've spectacularly done blah blah blah blah blah pin-a-rose-on-my-nose and look at how shiny and new the world is now.

moderator: mr. kerry, your response, please.

john kerry: you incompetent clod, you're the least best man for the job. in four years you've tried to blah blah blah blah blah but you've bollocksed it up and now look at the world! the world sucks! kim jong il is going to kill us all and it's your fault!

bush: nuh-uh!

kerry: yes-huh!

bush: nuh-uh, you snobby elitist billionaire yale frat-boy!

kerry: I know you are but what am I?

and on and on and on and on and

neither candidate answered the questions; they answered the questions they wished the moderator had asked. and where were the third-party candidates? not invited. and you ridiculous politicians dare to call this a democracy. come on.

my favorite part was when the moderator asked each candidate to 'say something mean and bad about the other guy.' each tried oh-so-hard not to, tried oh-so-hard to come off as a compassionate sensible human being, and only after that formality had been done away with would they launch into what they really, really wanted: blatant partisan negativity! it's like when your mum says you have to eat your broccoli before you can have dessert.

if a streaker had squeaked past security and had gotten onto the debate floor, I would have voted for him (her, it, whatever) instead.

seriously, though. I didn't learn anything about either man, other than they must have practiced a long long long time for tonight's little charade. nothing else.

another needless distraction

2004-09-30T01:32:00.000-07:00

whew! almost slipped back into the v. bad habit of not updating for a week! but disaster has been diverted. I have some news. some v. important news, though I'm certain not everyone will think so. I do, anyway. the point is:

antimatt has successfully installed and implemented linux. repeat, I AM RUNNING LINUX.

for the intrigued: redhat 9.0, but beyond that I don't know any important details. my nerdy friend got me hooked up and now I AM RUNNING LINUX. on the prodigal ex-stolen laptop, no less.

man. and I thought having a gmail account made me a nerd. oh no no no no no. I am now part of that great rarified air of self-important self-proclaimed techno-literati, the members of which (on the whole) are failed IT/tech support jerkos. this is one of the silliest, grandest nights of my silly little life. [aside: it's very likely that I need to find something to do with my time.]

as usual, you lot, my imaginary friends, are the first to know. my wife is annoyed because tonight I spent more time with my computer than usual. I explained to her the importance of the open-source movement, a brief history of linus torvalds and the gang, the subtleties of all those layers of computational abstraction and blah blah blah. she wasn't impressed.

but I know you will be.

now if only I knew exactly just what in the hell I was doing, and exactly just what in the hell /dev/null (and the like) means, and exactly just how in the hell I can copy and paste more intuitively, I might be able to do something useful. as it is, I can only use linux to shout-type I AM RUNNING LINUX over and over on the internet, and while admirably nerd-like, that's not exactly something to be proud of. but at least I AM RUNNING LINUX ... I'll take what I can get.

why does my wife find her way into almost every post?

from bad to still bad

2004-09-25T01:19:00.000-07:00

phone call, circa noon:

bugger, didn't get the dream job. the one that was tailor-made for me. the one that had my name on it, the one for which I gave a smashing interview, the one into which I poured an exhorbitant amount of emotion. which means that the future is still hovering in a state of quantum indecision above my head, waiting to fall. [aside: apparently I don't have enough 'experience in an office environment.' listen, boss, it's not that hard to learn to use a stapler. seriously. I'm a very capable intelligent boy.]

I suppose this means I'm sad. ... am I? ... no, not really. my subconscious (but effective) way of dealing with things is to expect the best but prepare for the worst, which keeps me optimistic whilst waiting and keeps my spirits up when I fail. it cushions the blow, anyway; I take what I can get.

there are approximately 15 humans in my email queue. communication is not my strong point. very many things are not my strong point.

oh, I have decided that douglas adams died too soon.

so sad.

unrelated post script: if I weren't so married I'd be a quirkyalone. perhaps you are too.

self-reference gets me every time

2004-09-23T17:29:00.000-07:00

I'll offer to buy you a beer, but only if you refuse the terms of this offer.

(and, apparently, only if you live in the general vicinity of london. pooh.)