Yesterday, I came across something interesting.

See, Terra and I were friends for a long time before we became fully romantically involved. Our lives intersected in December of 2007 when she and Wesley moved in with my mom and I so we could all help each other
after dad’s death and Terra’s divorce. After a year or so together, we had grown very close. But the best it ever got was when I would refer to her as my “girlish friend” rather than girlfriend, and comment that ours was just a “proximity infatuation”, and that I was really unsure where our relationship was heading.
I remember the incident that caused me to realize how much she meant to me but, until digging around my site yesterday, didn’t have exact dates.

So, firstly, I see on my lifestream for February 4, 2009, that I referred to her as my “statistically significant other”. I doubt that’s the only time I’d publicly said something similar but this one is interesting because of the date. Just a couple days later, there was the incident that made me so fearful she was dead or something almost as bad that I had to concede that she was more to me than the descriptions above. You can read that here (the last three status updates). I called the hospital, police, paced back and forth – the whole bit – then couldn’t stop crying when I found out she was ok.

I remember that it was within the next day or so that I sat down and talked with Terra and acknowledged that I had been in some kind of denial for quite some time but the incident had really opened my eyes. We have been truly a couple ever since that day.
See the difference in my birthday tweet for her in 2010 and 2011, for instance.

And now, of course, we are marrying on January 14, 2012 :)

Related posts:

1. John Hevener from the 3rd St. ministry
2. Lifestream for December 13th, 2011
3. oh. my. god.

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so, here is a copy/paste from the 2004 version of the post, now with archive links… btw, i would now add that, if you just want to get the story without reading every post, scan through the first thread, watching for the posts by user “blueseed” as they contain all the updates… on the second and third thread, the posts by “z167704″ are, of course, the most relevant… ctrl+F on most browsers will let you search the page… of course, all the posts are meaningful, so, i recommend at least scanning… anyway, here’s that copy/paste:

in the Dreamcast Technical Pages message board archives (now known as the AlwaysGame.com SEGA Forum), i found this thread about a regular of their board, Thomas Vazquez, aka “z167704″, with whom they had shared many hours playing PSO, Quake, and other Dreamcast online games, turning up missing right after the september 11th attacks… in fact, they had played Daytona USA with him the night before…

it all makes for a rather long read, but, this is some heart-wrenching, unbelievable stuff and there is not exactly a happy ending here…

i think the whole ordeal is relevant to everyone…

it all starts with this thread

and then, on september 25th

october 12th, aftermath and more of what the future may be like

and you could have a look at this

and this all has to do with a subject i yell about quite a bit…
the people who say that we should all “get off the internet and go out and meet some REAL people” or that you do not have “real” relationships on the internet…

tell THESE people about “real” and how these are not really “real people” they know and how they don’t really have “real relationships” between each other…

i also wanted to add something new that i find quite gripping…

in 2006, a couple released their own home video of the attacks from a breathtaking, but, of course, horrifying perspective… i don’t live in new york, so i don’t know where “41 River Terrace, the tallest building in Battery Park City North, about 500 yards northwest of ground zero” is (the location they give on their site where the video is hosted), but, it is a perfect view to see the entire nightmare unfold – this is unlike any video i have ever seen and odds are you have never seen it, either… most people have not, for some reason…

“What We Saw” By “Bob & Bri”

be sure to check out the FAQ on that page, as well…
(btw, i have a fairly high-quality conversion of this video i made for my psp and it should work on most small media devices – if you are interested in a copy, contact me using the info at the top of the right sidebar of this page…)

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2. My LJ Feeds Link
3. search terms that bring people here

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and here is a video of the actual moment of the hugely controversial event…

this is october of 2008…

and a vanity shot taken in march of 2008…

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first i want to point out that this is on a 42" lcd hdtv in the living room and i use a wireless kb and mouse…

second, pretty much everything you see is Yahoo! Widgets, Rainmeter, ObjectDock, and Stickies… if you want your desktop like mine, just google those names…

on the left is our budget for the month using Stickies, but, if you look, it is a bit transparent and you will see it is actually the top sticky atop a few others, but this is the only open one – they roll up… (i hide windows desktop icons under my sticky notes…) you can see i have another little note in the middle of the screen, at the top…
beneath the budget are a couple icons of stuff i need to do – check out the PlayOn app, put Iron Man on my mom’s psp, etc…. it’s sorta’ my to-do stack… and the bottom left hand corner – that little blue thing – i can drag a file onto that and it will auto-magically upload it to the ‘stuff’ directory on my website…

ok, at the bottom edge is ObjectDock – ya’ know, like the dock on a mac… it is hidden until i hover my mouse at the bottom of the screen and, as my mouse moves, the icons under it enlarge… in this pic, i clicked on ‘APPS’ and it opened the assortment of apps i keep handy… not pictured is the other ObjectDock, which i have set up as the system tray/task bar – it’s hidden on the left… i have used ObjectDock (paid version) for years and can’t live without it… it does many more tricks i won’t get into here…

ok, the news headlines are Rainmeter – which is like a widget engine, but not for the faint-of-heart – it is very complex to customize and you need to have some coding knowledge… as you see, i have rss feeds from home-barista for coffee geek discussions, playstation lifestyle for ps3/psp stuff and google for "real" news…

in the middle, since i love love love photography, a Yahoo Widget showing recent popular photos posted on DeviantArt on the left and another Yahoo Widget on the right with recent popular photos posted to Flickr… they are set to change every few minutes… i leave room since the photos come in all shapes and sizes… both have very impressive customization settings as far as what kind of content to show… for instance, the deviantart widget, of course, has tons more types of art than photography and the flickr widget can show your own stream, favorites, photos from groups and/or contacts, and you can even use it to upload to flickr…

at the top, pretty obvious, Yahoo Widgets for date/time, cpu usage, and upload/download speed…

which brings us to the right edge… i have been a webcam junkie for years and this is a Yahoo Widget called WebImages – several instances of it, of course… i have used several methods for desktop webcam monitoring and this one blows all the others away… the depth of options and customization can be intimidating at first and there is a bit of a learning curve, but it is SOOOO worth it… the radar is the local weather radar, of course… the rest are cams that update once a minute… i have each set up to sort of a theme and each contains more than one cam – when it updates, it switches to the next cam that one monitors… for instance, the top is local – alternating between a cam in cloudcroft and one in las cruces… the next down is home – albuquerque – four different cams and once a minute, it shows a different view… the next three are assorted cool/interesting places – cams in las vegas, italy, california, and others – all three contain a list of all my favorite cams around the world and, once a minute (or whatever i choose to set it to from once a second to once a day) it cycles to the next cam in its list… or, if one of them has something really interesting going on, i stop the cycling and set it to update in near-real-time and each one has a button when you mouse over it to enlarge it as big as you like… you can hit another button to save the current image, even…
but, now i’m gushing ;P
oh, and the very bottom one is NASATV – the widget can stream the video, but, i just have it set to show a still every 15 seconds…

anyway… that’s my desktop…

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but, i say it was for the whole world to see and, in reality that wasn’t the case… i mean, i’ve had a website for years and very low traffic and i like it that way – i’m not selling anything or benefitting in any way from traffic and it also keeps me off the radar of hackers, spammers and other trouble-makers so there are several reasons why i’m happy with a low traffic site… the main traffic i get – and my webcam got – was friends and family… my dad had a widget on his desktop that showed my living room cam and it meant a lot to him be able to see me on a constant basis… the point is it wasn’t “for the whole world to see”, i knew almost nobody was watching but i did it anyway…
i have loved webcams for years and to this day, i have a widget on my desktop that displays four cams – i have three set to the only live cams i know of in albuquerque (ever since the wonderful abqcam.com shut down) and one i change – sometimes to the cam that points at a spot at the pier where i used to hang out in Hermosa Beach, California – sometimes to the cam at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas that pans around casinos i used to spend a lot of time at – or just to a cam i come across that is a place i find interesting…

anyway, i don’t know where my urge comes from to broadcast my life, but i always got a kick out of it… i miss my webcam… i wish i had one now, but it isn’t just my bachelor life on display, i live here with mom and terra and wesley – so, i have to settle for ‘again someday’…

but, see, that’s where twitter comes in… i’m not so unusual anymore – tons of people are “broadcasting their life for the whole world to see”, so to speak…
my webcam was an answer to the question “what are you doing right now?”…
my cam was never off but the software i used had a mode to just take a snap and upload it, rather than have it on all the time… well, twitter is like that snap-not-stream mode…

twitter is one of those things that someone can describe for an hour to you but until you actually have it, you can’t really see the point… as soon as i was on, i took off and haven’t stopped… it was just the next broadcast medium for me… and i dislike a lot of what twitter has become… for instance, it is very rare i go to the site or use a twitter client — twitter is almost purely a cell phone experience for me… i am following maybe a hundred people and for quite a while just kept changing, every few weeks or so, who i got updates from to my phone… now, i have turned off pretty much everyone except people here in alamogordo — i have every single one of them set to sms delivery (i use the indispensible http://twuzzer.com to keep an eye out for new twitterers in my area)… throughout the day, my phone beeps and there is a twitter and every one of them is local, except for my sis-in-law in vegas and one or two other very infrequent posters…
remember in The Dark Knight when he had everyone’s cell phone providing surveillance around Gotham? yeah, that’s kinda’ what i’m doing… if a twitterer posts in the alamogordo area, i get it to my phone… and almost no other tweets…
so, it’s kinda’ like getting webcam snaps from all around alamogordo… that’s why web-only/client-only twitterers are people i can’t relate to… twitter is many things to many people and ok fine, but i would love to see what it would be like if twitter was phone-only… the way they intended it, i suspect… and one reason i like http://zannel.com so much – almost all of the posts are from people’s phones, not the site or a desktop client – and actually delivering answers to the “what are you doing right now?” question… most of the non-local updates i get on my phone are from the handful of people i follow on zannel…

btw, see, this town is tiny and i’m a big city boy having lived in/around L.A., vegas, dallas, orlando (i loved albuquerque – big enough to have everything but small enough that nothing is more than half an hour away) and i go crazy because there is just nothing at all to do here… so, while i’m here i have lately thought hey, there’s only so many twitterers here – maybe 20 active currently – so, why not continually hear from them what they do? and, sure there are a couple that use twitter to advertise (*spits*) and a few that are what i called above “web-only/client-only” but it is the best chance i have of continually seeing into the lives of a truly diverse cross section of locals… where they go, what they do, etc…. i’m curious… i’ve always loved webcams and now i also love twitter, for the same reasons – when people actually use it that way – as a text webcam…

i twitter and formerly webcam’ed for those who were curious about me and i love being able to get, in real time, the ‘text webcam snapshots’ from people i’m curious about…

once my time here is done and i move back to civilization, i’ll change out whose tweets hit my phone to keep my finger on the pulse, as it were, of people in many cities… but, the webcam mentality is my favorite kind of twitterer… tell me where you are right now, what you see and hear, what you’re doing, and i’ll keep doing the same – whether by cam or twitter or whatever comes next…

[posted from my mint metallic green MotoQ 9c]

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(btw, i’m typing this up on my phone, which has no cut/paste… not the best way to write, but it’ll have to do and if you continue to read, you’ll have to be ready for some stream-of-consciousness disorganization…)

i watched this on the recommendation a few months ago of Tara, a good friend whose opinion when it comes to emotional movies i very much trust… she was right about the power of The Notebook so when she said similar things about August Rush, i knew she would be right… and, of course, insisted she not tell me a single thing about it – i just took her word for it…

but, as i watched, i was doubting my trust in her… it took awhile for me to get sucked in… the film is dreamy – not surreal, but fantasy to be sure and not a strictly straightforward narrative and i was a little confused initially… but, after awhile, i began to see it as more like a dream i was having and stopped trying to keep the story straight and just let it move me – carry me…

it is a story of a miracle…
i think that says it best – a miracle happens and this is the telling of the events leading up to it…
what happens is an impossibility or at least a great improbability… this is a fairy tale, a fable – and any objections to what happened i might have were less important to what it meant and how it made me feel… it is a very emotional film… and the last twenty minutes or so, it just kept repeating in my mind: “follow the music follow the music”… music is the spirituality of the film – the religion of the three key characters… music is the meaning in their lives – not simply the only thing that matters to them, but the only thing that CAN matter, the only thing that is real… and each of them has someone who doesn’t have music the way they do and is trying to harness their music for their own ends… the girl’s father, the guy’s brother, and “Wizard” in the boy’s life… the characters “need music more than food” and each has someone who needs food more than music and has – or tries to have – control… only when each follows the music are they free… alive… and neither of those words describe it – their relationship to music transcends human understanding… it is The Cause, pushing their existance forward… without music, they are just humans… and when they follow the music, they can arrive at what they were meant for…

and, the movie ends on just the perfect note… the moment of nirvana – of destiny completed – and the mood was not destroyed by words… the writer/director/whoever made the very wise choice to not have anyone say anything… we already knew the facts they would tell each other, so why ruin this flawless moment? we can imagine what happens next but there isn’t even a need to imagine – when people ride off into the sunset, there is no next day, that’s why it’s a romance… their whole life has been leading up to this moment and the maker(s) of the film doesn’t ruin it – you just wake up from this beautiful dream…

i absolutely must watch this again because i’m not certain how i will feel about it a second time…
i know the kid’s performance is great, the overall pacing is pretty good, the photography is beautiful, the use of music and sound design was superb (i hope this is available in dts), but as i said, it did take me awhile to get truly sucked in… i said to terra as the credits rolled that it is a flawed masterpiece, but a masterpiece just the same…
i have been really wanting to see films by female directors after being so moved by Sophia Coppola’s Lost In Translation – knowing that a female director will convey emotion in a completely different way… and this is certainly the most unique film i have seen in years and i truly mean that…
but i wanted it to make me cry and it didn’t… i wanted it to take my breath away and i had to settle for awe… there were a lot of smiles i had in the third act as i saw it all coming together, but it was undeniably predictable… that is probably the wrong way to say it… the hopes and dreams we share with these three came true! so, no surprise is not a bad thing! but, i knew they would come true and what was amazing was the miraculous ways they did come true… it is a rare film that can make me not only suspend disbelief but put my focus purely on the emotions of the film and this accomplishes it… but i’m almost embarrassed to be so moved when i can think of some of the flaws…

so what i am hoping for above all else is that i will see nothing but greatness on my next viewing…

SEE ALSO:
…Searching For Bobby Fischer for more on people trying to possess someone’s gift
…A.I.:Artificial Intelligence for another character/performance like the boy

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see, back home, i got to the point that i didn’t even leave the house with them… and the only time i REALLY felt like smoking was at the end of the night… but, here, i’m just not busy like i was back home… so, i ended up smoking more and more and then, when i tried to cut back — well, it was unpleasant… that was, what? may?
but, see, this time i am doing the cold turkey thing…
i last smoked friday night, say, around midnight, maybe? and it is 7p on tuesday… and, so far, i have been a jerk to all the important people in my life…

i have refrained from reading up on info about quitting (that’s worse than not smoking) but i did look up a couple things and i have classic symptoms… i am, well, irritable hardly even begins to describe it, more like transmogrified into some sort of werewolf… i have this terrible taste in my mouth and everything smells funny… i think the world stinks too much to not smoke… you say cigarettes stink? i’ll come back to that in a minute… and i am having the damndest time keeping a thought… i lose my train of thought continually and i don’t notice it nearly as much as when i try to talk to someone… i find that words don’t come out the way i was thinking them and that i forget what i was saying…
that’s just weird…
the others are one thing, but, don’t mess with this dude’s ability to cogitate and communicate… anything but that…

i mentioned something about cigarettes stinking…

i agree…

see, i don’t smoke these nasty american things like camels and marlboros, i have, since i was about 21, smoked only kreteks, as they’re known in their home country – their friends here just usually call them “cloves”… you know, the things the goth kids smoke… though, they usually smoke the american variety… see, kreteks are a product of indonesia… i order mine over the internet straight from there… and in indonesia, they do make some just to sell to americans and canadians… they are nowhere near as good as the real thing…
yes, this is one of those many “snob things” with me… kreteks are a sort of gourmet item… the short version of what they are would go something like cigarettes made with very high quality java tobaccos (american tobacco tastes like cardboard) and ground cloves (like your mom put on ham) and frequently a “flavoring sauce” – kind of like what they do with cavendish pipe tobacco…
the bottom line is they have very little in common with what 99% of people in this country think of when they think of cigarettes… they actually taste GOOD and the scent is kind of ‘incensey’ and, most nonsmokers would say, not offensively unpleasant…
i, for a long time, have been devoted to Wismilak Diplomats… the flavor is everything i ever started smoking cloves for… they are very different from every other variety i’ve ever had, but quite reminiscent of the much-loved but long-lost Sampoerna X-Tras…

anyway, what they DO have in common with a run-of-the-mill yankee cancer stick is the stuff that’s bad for you… and therein lies my problems right now… indonesian kreteks have a good double dose of the nicotine – you know, the addictive stuff in there… and more than double, sometimes triple the amount of “tar”… ahem, it is the tar that makes ‘em taste so good… it is a very moist, flavorful smoke… i mentioned the made-for-american varieties that the people who have seen cloves have seen – the Djarum Specials, the Djarum Blacks, etc. – those are made to american specs; e.g. they make the levels of nicotine and tar acceptable by non-indonesian standards…
unfortunately, i gave up the americanized ones long ago because the indonesians are so much more flavorful… so, here i am having REALLY bad withdrawals… i didn’t mention the trembling and depression before, but, yeah, i got those, too…

btw, even the americanized ones are illegal in this state… yup, three states have outlawed the sale of cloves (maryland and utah are the other two)… there are many urban myths-sounding stories why but the most believable is that they are allegedly attractive to kids – flavored cigarettes, “candy cigarettes”… and there has been a rumor for years that people are pushing for this to be a nationwide thing…
anyway, i get mine directly from indonesia… i think i mentioned that…

hey, i said i’m writing this instead of smoking and already made clear i’m not able to concentrate, so, this will be a long-ish, rambly kinda’ post…

i’m sitting here with a glass of water, with a straw in it as per someone’s advice…
do the math… detoxing, water; straw, oral fix; etc….

i don’t like water…

this is when it would be nice to have a 9 to 5 like back home, so i have a routine to just go get in…

and, jeez, what a rotten time to have an espresso bar as my big hobby!!!! the moment i even SMELL coffee, i want to smoke! coffee and cloves – it’s just a given… so, if i go play at my bar to take my mind off of it, it will just make me want to smoke more than i did before…
and, when i do feel like eating, which isn’t often, i have to have it pretty much bland… see, i love everything spicy… i add lots of black pepper to everything, hot sauce, etc…. well, i love eating spicy food, then popping open a (diet) coke and drinking that bubbly, acidic drink with all that spicy, acidic sensation really bringing home the rich, nutty, chocolatey, coffee-ey, taste of the clove… oh, it’s amazing…
sigh…
so, now i don’t want anything spicy!!!

no coffee, no spicy food…

and have i mentioned that i’ve never really done this before? i mean cold turkey… not that i can remember anyway… i started smoking the usual age – you know, sneaking them at like 14 or whatever, moved out in the late teens, had a few months i could have walked away from them but i didn’t and been hooked ever since… well, sort of… most years, i wouldn’t DIE without them… i could make it a long time without one, in fact… erm, long time in smoker time – like half a day… iow, i wasn’t usually one of these smokers who would go nuts if an hour passed and i couldn’t smoke… sure, there were times i was that bad off (my couple of years with amy comes to mind), but, most years i could go a few hours pretty easily…
it all started after my wife left that i started smoking hard… but, after two or three years, even that subsided and the last few months before i moved here – as i said above – i was down to one or two a day and fine with it…

so, what happened here?
well, stress, sure… being a caregiver for your dying father is not a carefree life… and he was a smoke-once-an-hour kinda’ guy (hey, i wonder if he’s got a forgotten pack of smokes around here?) and i would help him go outside and so i would usually smoke with him… so i guess that increased my frequency a bit… then, he died in december and there were a few stressful months… and the last few have been only two gears – either full-speed stressful or sitting here… i think the sitting, boredom part makes me want to smoke more than the stress…

i need to call billy… but talking on the phone makes me want to smoke… anytime i call someone or answer the phone, i always light a clove…
driving, of course, makes me want to smoke… you know – i remember that was my first real test, quite a while back… when i had convinced myself that i was down to minimal smoking, i had to drive down here to visit mom and dad – about a four hour drive – and i made that drive no problem… that’s when i knew i had it under control…

ohhhhh, i can hear some of you now…
the kind who say there IS NO acceptable kind of smoking… that if i REALLY had it under control, i would have quit altogether… that is the american/canadian/whatever concept of smoking… that it is merely a delivery method for nicotine… well, that is a consequence of the trash that passes for cigarettes in this part of the world… you have to LEARN to enjoy the taste of those things… force yourself is more like it… no one every smelled a burning marlboro and said “yum, that smells nice”… well, no non-smoker anyway… (btw, in a move i predicted, there are now marlboro cloves in indonesia…)
many pleasures aren’t particularly good for you – and one who takes pleasures to an extreme are the ones doing true harm to themselves…
more than that later…

and i have heard it all, especially from the church crowd… telling me about defiling the temple and addiction… these are the same ones who drink legal speed all day and openly joke that they have headaches if they go too long without a cup…
no, i’m talking about hypocrisy, i don’t believe in it – “do as i say, not as i do” is perfectly acceptable to me, as long as you are right… my point is they don’t notice that they are equally as guilty with pretty much clear conscience but don’t see how i could be… yes, i have a clear conscience about enjoying a clove…
and that’s part of why i decided to quit… because it is controlling me – i am thoroughly addicted… if i could have one, once a day, after dinner, i would go right on… and i MIGHT be able to bring myself back to that point, but, as i said wayyyyy above, i tried that back in june… and as much as the addiction is screaming in my body and brain right now, i know i’m doing the right thing… same as with a child, if they are so spoiled that they scream when they don’t get their way, you need to take all reward and pleasure from them until they regain perspective…
in fact, one reason i DON’T want to quit is because it will make the wrong people happy… there are people who are going to say that i am getting right with god by giving up cloves and that just irritates the heck out of me… i went through the same thing when i cut my long hair off… people saying i looked so much more godly now… man, i tell ya’, that made me want to invent a time machine and go right back and not do it… and i am likewise preparing for all the comments now in the church… it is one of a few reasons why i am not telling anyone except terra, sarah, and you reading this… (fortunately, almost no one reads my stuff, so, i’m not really running a risk of people i know finding out…) i don’t want them scoring one of their self-righteous, being-more-like-me-is-being-godly points off of me…

yes, i know that’s pride…

on the subject of not telling people and there being more than one reason, it is also a humility thing, as well as a pride thing…
let me explain…
see, god says we are to “be excellent to each other” and i don’t see him make exceptions for people quitting smoking… he says that his grace is sufficient for me and that his strength is made complete in my weakness and that definitely sounds like it applies to trying to quit smoking… so, if i go around telling people they need to cut me some extra slack and expect the worst because on whatever date i am going to quit smoking, i really feel that i am making excuses to be a jerk when god says i should be kind, tender-hearted, forgiving, etc. and again, i don’t see him make exceptions for people quitting smoking…
i know there are other arguments, but, i’ve prayed about this and that’s what i feel god has told me i need to obey…

now, i like to bring a little something to offend everyone and here is one i know will get most people… i refuse to say i will never smoke again! i will someday once again have the pleasure of smoking… same as i have freedom to have a drink now and then and that is coming from a former drug addict… and, before you even think it, i am not just saying this to make myself feel better and cope with the feelings of finality – no, i will have the luxury of smoking a fine indonesian kretek again… perhaps with an espresso or after a particularly excellent meal… and i fantasize that i will smoke less than i have ever smoked in my life… that it won’t even be a daily thing… it will be a special occasion… though, once you open a pack, they go stale in a matter of days…
but, as i have used my one-of-life’s-simple-pleasures argument to myself, it occurs to me that i am NOT here to have a good time… this is supposed to be a missionary-type thing, my being here… i have a job to do and i have gotten way too comfortable and am making way too many excuses for “simple little pleasures”… i think i can live without one that has certainly gotten out of hand and ain’t exactly cheap…
and, all my friends right now are church friends and they complain about it, each in their own little way… so, it will shut them up… and, i usually live right on the fringe of what is “acceptable” in the church with my dislike of xian music (and probably my use of the abbreviation “xian” :P ) and my long hair (now fancy hair) and my painted toenails and my smoking and all this stuff that makes them say all the things about how i’ve “got one foot in the world and one foot in the church” or whatever, which is a refrain i heard ad infinitum in the old baptist church i grew up in but never expected i’d hear so quickly at a calvary chapel… so, anyway, i could certainly use the points…
of course, i’ll lose more points than i gain when they read this post :P

anyway, i have dealt with depression all my life and i have sort of become attuned to feeling those brain chemical tides turn and i predict i will be feeling better about life in general tomorrow…

in fact, i feel better just writing this post…

but…

i still wish i could smoke…

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the flickr description is:

“this is one of my favorite shots i’ve ever taken…
this is a new, slightly improved version of one i posted a few months ago… (i try not to mess with old photos – let it show what i DIDN’T know at the time…)

i got about 3 or 4 snaps in when she started getting a little uncomfortable and started doing the thing with her toes you can see and i loved it so, this is the one i kept…
this one is one of the few framed in my bedroom…”

this newer version is cropped – the vertical framing is just better composition for this one, i think – and i bumped up the gamma and contrast a hair…

UPDATE

i had to try it in soft focus…

i think i like it ALOT better now…

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Yesterday

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an old one, taken on a little piece of junk camera, but, it would have been nearly impossible to screw up these shots…
this is one of many shots i took of a sunrise on a flight from albuquerque to l.a. – if you click on the pic it will take you to where you can see more of them… this shot is one of my favorites – i love the surreal feeling…

meh, i just typed a bunch of stuff, deleted and started over and then again a couple times, so, i think i’ll stop trying and just let the photo do the talking :P

though i will add that, when i first took these photos, i dunno’ maybe three years ago, this was probably the most popular of all of them and no less than five people had this one as the wallpaper on their computer…

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since i brought up dad in the last pic, i wanted to show another that means a lot to me…

that is cheryl, a nurse with hospice… hospice nurses are amazing people – dad didn’t like anyone much but he liked cheryl… she did so much to help him and take care of him in his last days… she and the other nurses (but especially her) did so much to help us…

this pic was taken as discreetly as i could, trying to keep the camera semi-concealed, or at least not calling attention to it so i could get a genuine moment… i am shocked it came out as good as it did, but, focus, etc. is far from perfect… but, the moment is captured and that’s all that matters to me…

i love the accidental composition of mom looking so concerned yet distant – evocative to me of helplessness or powerlessness – we often felt that way… just watching his life drain away and not in a hospital, surrounded by disconcerting devices and ominous terminology where you expect sickness, but here at home where he hangs all his hats, in his living room, in his favorite chair, the place he probably felt safest for many years… while home i’m sure is a more pleasant place to die, my point is one doesn’t associate home with death… i’m not coming up with the words to fully express what i mean, but if i could always SAY what i felt about what i see or experience, i doubt i would have the desire to do photography…

so, just look at the picture again with all i said in mind…
as i said, it’s one that means a lot to me…

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ok, let’s see how this works…

i love this pic and all but it needs some tweaking…
we were in cloudcroft and got in the car and, in front of us was this old guy leaning against a post with his hands behind the post, as you can see… i scrambled for my cam and only got a couple shots before he moved and this one is the most acceptable…
i really wish i’d had time to get better, but at least i got something…
btw, i DID do some gimp work on this, but i seem to have lost that version :(

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so, it got me to thinking about what i WISH i could change them to and i came up with a couple ways of looking at it:

since i have a large movie collection, one way i thought was in terms of what i might say about a film as a collector:
5 = “I own every release ever put out on LaserDisc, DVD, and Blu-Ray”
4 = “I have the Criterion DVD, is there a Blu-Ray release date yet?”
3 = “I’m waiting to come across it on sale”
2 = “I have a badly compressed file i downloaded off BitTorrent sitting on my media server, but that’s good enough”
1 = “It’s been on my NetFlix queue for months…  Near the bottom.”

and, being a home theater enthusiast and loving to watch movies with people, i was also thinking of how i might rate movies as a host, so to speak, if someone were to suggest watching a certain movie:
5 = “Great idea!  Here, have the best seat!”
4 = “Sure, it’s been too long since I saw that one”
3 = “Um, ok, that’s cool, but make sure you’ve looked at everything else first”
2 = “Hmm, well it’s in the sell stack, but, I could dig it out if you really want to see it”
1 = “WHAT???!!!  NO I DON’T OWN THAT!!  WHAT DO YOU TAKE ME FOR?!  GET THE HELL OUTTA MY HOUSE!!”

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    yes, the bible clearly says that homosexuality is a sin…  the bible also lists adultery, fornication, and christ went as far as to say that if you look upon a woman  with lust, you have already committed adultery with her in your mind…  overeating is also listed as a sin, as is disrespect to parents…  the bible makes it clear that “all have sinned and come short of the glory of god” and that no sin is worse than any other but that sin is that which keeps us from a relationship with god…
    while the bible clearly says that sin is not to be taken lightly, it also says that we cannot outright avoid everyone who sins because, again, all have sinned and continue to…  nor do i see the bible commanding me to feel or think a certain way about sinners (except myself, to whom it gives much instruction and wisdom) and certainly not to condemn them…  the bible records that jesus had occasion to eat with prostitutes, tax collectors, and other people whom much of society shunned and, if he had openly condemned them, i don’t think he would have been welcome at their table for long…
    and i said i have had many gay friends and that my best friend in albuquerque was gay…  she and i spent a lot of time together…  and, if it had been a ploy to get her to convert, she would have known it…  and she was not my only gay friend in albuquerque and they were friends – people i valued and shared much with and they with me – not people i was subtly trying to make converts of…  i said that i am firm and outspoken in my faith – well, she knew that i believe what the bible says and that the bible says she commits sin and that i do, too…  i believe the bible and am compelled to live my life according to it…  she does not…  there were times she asked me questions about what the bible says, but, mostly it didn’t come up…  we were both film snobs and art snobs and music snobs and most of our time was spent persuing those things…  i was in leadership in the church back home and i would talk about things going on in my life and she would ask questions about why things were done a certain way and sometimes she might think it was a bit silly to feel compelled to do what the bible said, but, i thought some things she did were silly and we could both talk about it light-heartedly…
    i have never been a “manly man” (i have no interest in football or cars and, right this very moment, my toenails are painted) and rarely fit in well with my peers and spent my youth with those that also didn’t quite fit in with the “normal” people of the world…  so, i may be the wrong christian to address this issue…  i don’t see gay people as a separate category of human…  i have biases and prejudices that i endeavor to work out in my life, like anyone else, this just isn’t one of mine…

    now, i said that no sin affects my relationship with people and i made a caveat and i just want to clarify…  there are people who take part in activities the bible calls sin that i am tempted by…  as a former drug addict, it would probably be a mistake for me to hang out with drug users, as i may very well get weak…

    so, the last question you asked me was if i thought being gay was a sin…
    you already know i will say what i think doesn’t matter, it is what scripture says that matters…  so, do i think it is sin?  i KNOW it is sin, according to the bible, as is many things i have done/do/will do…  and, as i said, the bible doesn’t tell me i have to treat anyone any different because of their sin…  i had no opinion on the gay marriage issue…  when i heard the ruling, i neither smiled nor frowned…  i think christians waste a lot of time and make a bad name for themselves when they get involved in certain issues…
    so, perhaps you meant to ask if i am at all repulsed by gays and i use a religious dogma to justify it and i think i have answered that…

    my view on gays does ruffle some feathers in christian circles…  i am used to “them” while most others still see them as some distorted kind of person that they cannot relate to and are even disgusted by…  i think that is a prejudice or perhaps a distorted attempt at morality… and i take some ribbing or even complete disapproval of my relationships with “them”…  even this post will get me some comments, i’m sure…  i bring this up because you certainly are not getting a fair sample of the popular christian consensus on this issue when asking me…  but, no one has yet to show me scripture that clearly proves me to be in the wrong in my view and scripture is the final court of arbitration…

   i also want to point out that, in another sense, i do represent the current christian worldview…  i pastored the addiction recovery ministry back home for several months, hosted a devotion in my apartment every weekday morning at 6am for a year or so, taught bible studies, did work with the homeless – all under the leadership of and accountability to calvary chapel rio rancho, and the worldwide calvary chapel movement is one that most christians would agree is a solid bible-believing church, and has been since its start in the 1960s…  they believe what c.s. lewis called “mere christianity” – the essentials of which have been believed by most christians, most of the time, since the time of christ and, as he puts it “is what it is and was what it was long before i was born and whether i like it or not”…  there are secondary issues i disagree with them about and they with me, but, my point is they are not renegade or radical and they did not consider me to be… 

    so, anyway, there you have it…  there are many kinds of “christianity” and the wild ones make the news and there is an unfortunate prevalence of what i can only see as unbiblical christianty and that is where the problem is…  my friend did not want me to know she was gay because i was christian and she expected me to judge her…  it gave her a whole new view of christ and the bible and those who follow him and it to know me…
    and perhaps i have similarly put you at some ease that not all christians are the same…

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here is the original word document for those who want it…

“All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.” — NASB95

Theopneustos is the Greek word translated “inspired by God” — literally “God-breathed“. And this sets the Bible apart from any other document. Indeed, an ‘extra-terrestrial message’ sent to us from outside time and space, written by the One who created time and space and all that is in it. Everything else this passage says is because of those first few words; that Scripture is God-breathed. The same breath that He blew into the nostrils of Adam to cause him to have life causes the word of God to be alive (Hebrews 4:12).
However, there are many Scriptures that refer to God’s breath in terms of judgment. In Nave’s Topical Bible alone, I find several passages to this effect. Like 2 Samuel 22:16 (quoted in Psalm 18:15) where David seems to equate the breath of God as “the rebuke of the Lord”. In Job, Eliphaz speaks in 4:9 and 15:30 of people perishing by the breath of God, yet interestingly, in 32:8, Elihu speaks of the breath of God giving man understanding.
So, with the facets of God’s breath I have referred to so far, it is no surprise that we are told that His word is profitable for teaching, reproof and correction. And Elihu was obviously onto something, as in 2 Timothy 3:15, we are told that these sacred writings are able to give “the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus“. As has been well said, we must first know “the bad news” of man’s guilt and the penalty of sin if “the good news” of the Gospel is to mean anything to us.

Now, since the Bible is from The Creator of All Things, it is most certainly the only truly accurate manual for the human condition and the Christian walk. As the summary of divine revelation, it contains everything we need to know to for “training in righteousness” and to be “equipped for every good work” that God will call us to do. As Matthew Henry put it, “whatever duty we have to do, whatever service is required of us, we find enough in the Scriptures to furnish us for it“.

All of this being the case, we as Christians, ought to fill our minds with the Word. Through prayerful reading, devotions, study, and memorization, we “renew our minds” (Romans 12:2) and conform it to His will that we may be “doers of the word and not hearers only” (James 1:22). Ephesians 6:17 speaks of the word of God as the sword of the spirit, the only offensive weapon in the Christian armory, and we need to practice our swordsmanship so that we may battle the enemy the way christ did with “it is written” until the devil flees (Matthew 4:1-11, et. al.).
Since the Bible is how we learn the will of God and equip ourselves for spiritual battle, the Scriptures need to be our obsession, our hobby, spending the rest of our lives searching them, learning them, studying them. There is no pastime more worthy of our attention. As one of my favorite passages on the subject says “…commit yourselves completely to these words of mine. Tie them to your hands as a reminder, and wear them on your forehead. Teach them to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are away on a journey, when you are lying down and when you are getting up again. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates” (Deuteronomy 11:18-20). If we spent every moment of the rest of our lives in the Scriptures, we still would not know all there is to know, so, we should fill as much time as we can with our minds on the Scriptures, “making the most of your time, because the days are evil“, endeavoring to “understand what the will of the Lord is” (excerpted from Ephesians 5:16-17).

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most people know what i have to say on this subject, but, i will point out that it is important to remember that “video games” (i prefer something more like “the current generation of popular interactive entertainment“) are still growing up and the truly great artists are yet to emerge, even if we see a few pioneers… this is much like film was in the 40s and 50s, where many movies out there were trying to capture the stage experience on film, bringing broadway shows to those who could not go to broadway shows, for example… few people yet knew what to do with this “new artform”… but, flash forward to the late 1970s and we enter the age of the blockbuster… and today, there is no shortage of cinematic visionaries…
we will someday be at this point with interactive entertainment… and, even in the present, if one hears the phrase “video game” and think of a joystick, some bleeping, shooting aliens, or maybe munching blinking dots, they are at least twenty years behind in their understanding of the subject…

and i am now going to digress and move onto the links before i start getting into lists of examples :P

04 December 2005 – Next Generation – Why Ebert Was Right

rogerebert.com :: commentary
Dec6,2005 :: Gamers fire flaming posts, e-mails…
Dec8, 2005 :: The Art of the Game 2
Dec14, 2005 :: The Game of Art 3

blog: scanners :: Jim Emerson / January 23, 2006 > Kojima: ‘Games are not art’

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i once again used the BluPlusPlus album skin, i have found a winner and am sticking with it… comments can be left on any pic, videos will play right there in your browser, the slideshow mode is pretty darned good, and i used an autumn theme on this album, just to see what it would look like to try something different…

so, enjoy the pics from The Second Annual Calvary Chapel Rio Rancho Broken Home Thanksgiving…

all right, roll it…

(…and we do it all again for christmas!)

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99% of the readers of this post have no idea what i’m talking about, but, to those of you that do, this is truly the end of an era, even if that era ended for us long ago…
no more Ch@bTalk, URL Chat, and, if i read it right, no more MyRooms… all those things we spent so many late frustrating hours for months trying to figure out… i remember clearly Curtis announcing he had finally figured out how to get it to work, even making a long-distance phone call to japan (jeez, that was almost five years ago)… then, months later, after everyone had given up on it, Vegitto figured out the way to open Ch@bTalk to the masses… the controversy over the selling of ISAO ID’s, people stumbling through the programs to create them for everyone… and, speaking of frustrating, trying to teach people how to use it… they were certainly our most used guides… then came DreamPassport Premier Ch@bTalk and all the amazing features and having to feel around in the dark all over again to work out all the buttons (the definitive exhaustive guide created by the guy at this keyboard)… JavaCh@b and then DPPC and no one believing Danny that he got it to work until he finally posted a screenshot of it running on his machine… hours spent on the URL Chat at ISAO, trying to get someone who could translate for our guides… months of trying to carry on conversations with people who spoke little to no english, but, needing their knowledge so continuing to try… and several times that it was declared that it was now impossible to create new ID’s, yet, someone always found a way… and, of course, several Ch@b directories, just so you could actually find people to chat with…
Drobb was the first person to Ch@b us… minutes after posting our number in the original DCBG Ch@b listing…
when i installed ICQ on my psion, i even switched out all the sound files with Ch@b sounds… and, here a few months ago, i dusted off my old generation 0 dreamcast and logged into Ch@b to check my messages and just see who might be on…
man, i can hear that god-awful music that played on DP3 when the client would open and close when you went in and out of the email client… sometimes blaringly loud because you turned the volume way up to hear the quiet VoiceCh@b someone sent you…
and who can forget “HALLO! HALLO!”, no matter how bad we want to…

those glory days were great while they lasted… and now, one more piece of those days is about to expire…
glad i was there for it… we really did make a bit of history, even if no one knows but us…

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in my links on the sidebar, i have a special section just for random links… click on them to visit a random weblog, a random homepage, a random webcam, even a random page on wikipedia… i love random links and don’t come across them too often, but, now i have a new addition to the list…

do you know FutureMe?
it is a site that lets you send an email to the future… the link at the top of this post and soon to be on my randoms list allows you to see emails people have sent (they have been anonymized), with the date they wrote it and the date it will be sent…
i hit it a few times and there is some fascinating stuff… a parent’s email to their daughter for her 18th birthday, a guy entering medical school sending himself a message to be received after he graduates, someone on their first day quitting smoking, a wife on her 5-year wedding anniversary sending a message to her hubby for their 10-year anniversary, and of course, mundane things like reminders for a doctor’s appointment, and many many many that are not easily described…

they are small pieces of stories of dreams and wishes, hope after regret, breaking of cycles, escapes from the past, beginnings and endings and new beginnings… and you can’t help but imagine these people and their situations, and the more vague the message, the more interesting it is…

so, go check it out, and btw, this is the best kind of random link, the url itself has the command to randomize, so, you can go there and just keep hitting reload…

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or “20 things gamers want from the seventh generation of game consoles” and wow, this guy nails it, even if he spends a lot of time being comical…

(warning, language that some may find offensive…)

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over there on the sidebar, first we have my contact info, then site/blog-related stuff, then the local interest (albuquerque area) stuff, then the chatterbox (which not nearly enough people use), then my most-recommended links on a variety of topics, then the “Looking At” list…
“Looking At” is a candidates links list… things that i am meaning to return to, may add to the main links section, or maybe just intend to have there temporarily… this list is ALWAYS changing… i have a button in my browser that can just quickly add a link to that list… and i use that button A LOT… so much so that the list is usually pretty darned long and there is no real order to the links…
so, i am thinking of cleaning some of them out, but, i am going to post them so i don’t lose them forever… most of them, i still haven’t decided if they are worthy of adding to the main links section… but, if i haven’t added them by now, it won’t hurt to take them off that list… and if i post them, they will permanently be in the blog post archive and i can find them again using the search box…

i am thinking of cleaning it up by category and, as the title of this post suggests, i am starting with all the coffee/espresso links… others will hopefully follow eventually, as i get to them…

i am not going to give full descriptions, just copying them straight from the list, so, whatever it said there is what it will say here…

It’s All About Coffee: Anatomy of American Espresso

crema troubleshooting overview with pics!

Google Search: espresso temperature surfing

CoffeeKid

Espresso! My Espresso! – An Ongoing Internet Novelette

INeedCoffee – Recipes

Virtual Coffee: Judging Expresso Extraction by Crema

Schomer’s Table: The Denver Effect

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it was spectacular, breathtaking, and awesome except for one very major thing…

the wind was very bad and blew the balloons away pretty much as soon as they were off the ground… those who remember my posts from last year recall me talking about how we were totally surrounded by hundreds of balloons and that just wasn’t the case this time… it was still great, but, i am looking forward to hopefully a less windy day next time…

andy and i took about 500 pics (and i took a few vids) and i have them all on my comp, but, they need to be sorted and uploaded, and i seriously doubt i will get to that tonight, unfortunately… if i do, i will post, of course…

next saturday, i load up the lockmans in the van (and anyone else who wants to come) and it will be a group trip… the lockmans have seen aibf once (now twice) from their house (they have a fantastic view from their backyard in rio rancho around northern and 528), but, never from the field… really looking forward to that trip…

Edit:

while waiting for my pics to go up (i am sorting them now, have them down to less than 200), go check out this great, well-written short bit posted today about this morning’s mass ascension on Eucatastrophe (a blog i have been watching as a candidate for my abq links; as you may have noticed it has been on my “looking at” list over there on the right for a little while now) that takes an angle i absolutely love and wish i had thought of first :P
it’s called People Fiesta at the Balloon Fiesta…

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and while i am linking to old 9/11 posts, this post on my old site also had a couple 9/11-related links…

Also, Fark.com is remembering that day, here is this year’s thread…
Today is the fourth anniversary of 9/11. Refresh your memory of that day by reading the farkives threads
They also had a rememberance thread last year…
and, though, i am sure it is included in this year’s thread, i might as well link to the very first fark thread about it…
NEWS FLASH: PLANES CRASH INTO WORLD TRADE CENTER, PENTAGON. Our link to CNN works (thanks Metafilter). We have news and pics in comments section, if you have any post it there-

and, speaking of first threads from that day, thanks to Google Group’s 20 Year Usenet Timeline, i was able to come up with the link to the first Usenet thread after the first plane hit… and the second, and the third, and the fourth…

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you can read all about it here…

we married seven months later, to the day…

btw, since she brings it up in her post, yup, this is what we looked like when we met…

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• September 24, 1999
  Salon Arts & Entertainment | In with the out crowd

  “One of the most promising new series of the fall season.”

• September 28, 1999
  The Eyepiece Network: The Darker Side of Those Not-So-Wonder Years: High School

  “Because of its insistence on aiming for realism, Freaks and Geeks has a thin veneer of bleakness”

• October 8, 1999
  TeeVee Archive – Fall ’99: “Freaks and Geeks”

  “Let’s get this out of the way up front: Freaks and Geeks is [...] a show that has a snowball’s chance in hell of surviving to see its second season. Locked in a brutal Saturday night time slot by an apparently uncaring network, adjecent to series utterly unlike it in tone or substance, and brining a light touch to a TV line-up populated with the crude and the crass. Doomed. Gone.”

• October 29, 1999
  freep.com – Give ‘Freaks’ show a chance to shine

  “We have a homework assignment for the weekend. [...] All you have to do is watch “Freaks and Geeks” [...] Despite rapturous reviews from most TV critics, the low-rated “Freaks and Geeks” (no. 82) is teetering on the brink of trouble.”

Warnings

• February 10, 2000
  IGN FilmForce: Transcripts of FilmForce’s Chat with Paul Feig

  [and be sure to go back later and follow the "Related Articles" link on this page for many many more interesting-looking pages than i felt like counting]

• February 21, 2000
  Marylaine Block – My Word’s Worth – Freaks and Geeks: reminding us what adolescence was like

  “Network execs who haven’t figured out exactly who its natural audience is are letting it die because they don’t know when to run it and how to promote it. They obviously think that because it’s ABOUT adolescents, this show is FOR adolescents, but it’s not.”

• March 6, 2000
  salon :: Give “Freaks” a chance, By Joyce Millman

  “[Y]ou will say “How come nobody told me this was so awesome?” And I will gently remind you that I (and every other TV critic in the country) have been telling you exactly that since September. You could have listened. But, no.”

• March 23, 2000
  TeeVee Archive – Freak Out

  “When it comes to the untimely, undeserved demise of Freaks and Geeks, i will blame you. Because you didn’t watch.”

Cancelled

• May 12, 2000
  LA Weekly – Too Good and Weird – The Happy Life and Inevitable Death of Freaks and Geeks

• July 5, 2000
  CNN.com – Entertainment – ‘Freaks & Geeks’ leaves NBC with three-hour finale

• July 8, 2000
  Final ‘Freaks and Geeks’ will air tonight on NBC

• July 11, 2000
  Geeks win… and lose – Final episodes of cancelled show take their timeslot

  [and keep scrolling the page for earlier stories about the show from may 24th, march 22, and two stories from sept 25, 1999, the premiere...]

2003 – The Petition

• Feb 1 rec.arts.tv: Freaks and Geeks DVD official petition
• Feb 12 17,518 signatures
• Apr 2 17,518 signatures
• Jun 3 24,601 signatures
• Aug 1 27,435 signatures
• Dec 3 35,923 signatures

And It Actually Worked

• January 15, 2004
  tvshowsondvd.com – Official Press Release: April 6 is the day!
• January 27, 2004
  listology – “The Freaks & Geeks Limited Edition 8-DVD Set is now available!”

• Jan 29 39,180 signatures
• Feb 7 39,213 signatures

2004 – Satisfaction

• TVZone – The Freakiest: Henry interviews producer of the new Freaks & Geeks DVD

• DVD Verdict Review – Freaks And Geeks: The Complete Series
• DVD Talk > Reviews > Freaks and Geeks: The Complete Series (8-Disc Fan Edition)
• washingtonpost.com: Bonus Points
• USATODAY.com – DVDs resurrect ‘Freaks and Geeks’ and everyone in between [incl. interview with Paul Feig]
• The Onion A.V. Club | Video Freaks And Geeks: The Complete Series
• RUTHLESS REVIEWS: TV – Freaks & Geeks – Whoa… Good TV?
• dvdmg.com – Freaks And Geeks: The Complete Series [incl. synopsis of every episode]
• selectflicks – “Dodgeball is Kind of a Stupid Game” ["There is a single spot on selectflicks.com reserved for a televison show, and this is the one."]
• eye – Don’t look back
• dvdmg.com – Freaks And Geeks: The Complete Series (Limited Edition Yearbook)
• tvdvdreviews.com — Freaks and Geeks: Deluxe Collector’s Edition DVD Review
• IGN DVD: Freaks and Geeks – The Complete Series

• Freaks and Geeks Panel at ComiCon 2004
• Blogcritics.org: Freaks and Geeks vs My So-Called Life

Today

• Sept 26 40,298 signatures

More Stuff/Info/Links

• Talk to Us [The Official Freaks and Geeks Message Board, home of the revolution]

• imdb.com – “Freaks and Geeks” (1999)
• Freaks and Geeks@Everything2.com
• RetroWeb Classic Television: Freaks and Geeks
• ~welcome to mckinley high: freaks and geeks fan site~
• Yahoo! Directory TV Comedies > Freaks and Geeks
• Google Directory – Arts > Television > Programs > Dramas > Dramedies > Freaks and Geeks
• Open Directory – Arts: Television: Programs: Dramas: Dramedies: Freaks and Geeks

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it is a role-playing-required game, though, and i have not done that sort of thing since i was a teenager, and am not sure i am in any hurry to again, it can get goofy… (you should see some of the rp weirdos on pso… they talk to their mags and everything…)

anyway, so, i have been just sitting in the newbie channel a bit the last few days, watching how things work, and today someone was talking about their internet connection lagging, so, someone says “excuse me, but, it seems you need to read HELP INSANITY”…

so, i had a look and it is kinda’ clever…
btw, i can’t help but hear peter jones reading this…

15.6.1 Insanity

(see HELP ROLEPLAYING)

Adventurers are a special group of people. Sarapis has given to adventurers both strengths and weaknesses that denizens do not have. One of the weaknesses to which an Adventurer may fall prey is insanity.

The first sign of insanity is when the poor victim starts to use words that are meaningless to others, such as talking about "my PC" or "being online" as if everybody else should know what is meant!

If the insanity is allowed to go unchecked, the victim may begin to believe that the imaginary world is the real world and that Achaea does not really exist.

Some fancy that qualities of their own existence, such as their health or life experience are nothing more than numbers!

Chilling, isn’t it?

Most distressing of all is when the insanity appears more akin to a case of possession by some vile, alien creature. Victims in this final stage may call life a game, and imagine that they are nothing more than playing pieces in that game, controlled by some greater being.

If you’ve been asked to read this scroll, consider this: have you been showing signs of insanity?
Are you willing to take the first step and admit that you are ill and in need of a cure?

To those of you who see others suffering: insanity is a disease of the mind. Those afflicted with it should not be ridiculed, as this tends to aggravate the condition. Speak to them privately. Show them concern and understanding. Remind them of their true reality and home here, in Achaea!

Nobody wants to see insanity o’erwhelm us all.

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here is the latest version of it…
for those who have read it before, there is a chronology fix and i added a follow-up thread that i had somehow missed before that has important info…

in the Dreamcast Technical Pages message board archives (now known as the AlwaysGame.com SEGA Forum), i found this thread about a regular of their board, Thomas Vazquez, aka “z167704″, with whom they had shared many hours playing PSO, Quake, and other Dreamcast online games, turning up missing right after the september 11th attacks… in fact, they had played Daytona USA with him the night before…

it all makes for a rather long read, but, this is some heart-wrenching, unbelievable stuff and there is not exactly a happy ending here…

i think the whole ordeal is relevant to everyone…

it all starts with this thread

and then, on september 25th

october 12th, aftermath and more of what the future may be like

and you could have a look at this

and this all has to do with a subject i yell about quite a bit…
the people who say that we should all “get off the internet and go out and meet some REAL people” or that you do not have “real” relationships on the internet…

tell THESE people about “real” and how these are not really “real people” they know and how they don’t really have “real relationships” between each other…

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i am standing at my espresso machine, waiting for it to brew, and i look up out the kitchen window and there is this HUGE blue hot air balloon… i mean, this thing was CLOSE and LOW… MASSIVE…
it looked like maybe the pilot lived here and he was looking for a parking spot…

i picked up my jaw, dashed into the bedroom, “mary! mary! hurry! come look! you gotta’ see this! it’s better than goofy golf!”
poor girl probably got to sleep about 5a, but, she managed to stumble to the window, i look out the living room window and there is another balloon a little ways out, in the place where i usually see a balloon or two in the early mornings (somewhere around here, you can take rides between like 7a and 10a)…
i go look out our bedroom window, and AAAAAAGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!, one very low, floating right above our bedroom! dark dark blue, almost black, HUGE, and just hanging there almost right above my head…

then i come to my senses…

CAMERAAAAAAAAA!!!!

so, i run and grab my camera, run out on the balcony, point at the blue one and beep beep beeeeep…
NOOOO!!!
so, i run inside, and grab her camera, run back out to the balcony, the blue one is seriously getting away and is nowhere near as close, turn the camera on, sight it up, and beep beep beeeeeep…
NOOOOOO!!!! DAMMIT!!!!

run inside, fire up the software, hook up the cam…
EMPTY???!!! other one, also empty!!

BATTERIES!!!!!!!

to the cabinet, stuff falls out, dig up the AAA’s, dump the dead ones on the floor, load up two new ones, run outside and…

gone…

run down the stairs, look west…

nothing…

south…

nothing…

run around the building, look east…

nothing…

look around for an animal or something to kick…

nothing…

(nothing i feel like getting in trouble for, anyway…)

go back upstairs, mary is back in bed, sound asleep, i look out every window, nothing…

like i had only dreamed it…

so now i sit typing this, going and looking out the windows every couple minutes, drinking my espresso, which is cold after all that…

next time, dammit, next time…

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first, there is Invisibles…
fun little thing where a frame from a movie is shown with the actors in the frame removed, but with their clothes still standing, ala the invisible man… name the movie…
new group of them every week…
a nice mix of really easy and really tough…

then there is movie trivia on funtrivia.com…
fun site, user-made trivia quizzes, a huge range of topics and specific movies, and it keeps score of how you do to rank yourself with other players… (nothing to download, btw…)
funtrivia.com has a lot more than movie trivia, but, i have yet to try anything else out, too many good movie quizzes…
i am playing as “i_plots” and i cannot figure out a way to link to my stats page, but, it says:

You have played 74
quizzes and have scored 7470
points.

Your score ranks you as # 43,083 of
300,000+
players

You have answered 747 of 940 questions
correctly.
Your accuracy is therefore 79%

You are a Trivia Rookie

Renton: Well, he’s always been lacking in moral fiber.
Swanney: He knows a lot about Sean Connery.
Renton: That’s hardly a substitute!

/trainspotting

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a great article about things that drive us nuts about the dvd industry/format and why we are not giving up on our laserdisc collection any time soon…

for instance, here he adresses a great example of some of the issues at the very heart of the matter…

Digital technology seems, on the face of it, a preposterously inadequate medium for storing movies, and we should gape in wonder that DVDs yield coherent pictures at all, much less the gloriously sharp, detailed images they churn out under the best of conditions. Consider: A DVD stores only 17 gigabytes of data. A two-hour film, transferred to digital data and otherwise untreated, would take up more than 150 gigabytes.
So the data must first be massively compressed, mainly by digitally sampling a frame, then sampling only the information that changes in subsequent frames.
This is no big deal for a scene of someone standing still against a blank wall. But it’s a major challenge for a scene of someone running through traffic surrounded by dozens of flashing lights and moving objects.

while ld video definitely has its own issues, it is NOT compressed and cav laserdiscs even store actual individual frames of film, something no other format does even today…

If a film is old and damaged, the compression machine will “read” random dirt and scratches in the same way it reads motion. If the machine’s operator doesn’t pay attention and make adjustments, or if the machine is subpar, the digitized image will be full of waves, zigzags and other distracting distortions.
Similar problems can plague color or, if it’s a black-and-white film, the gradations of gray. When transferring film from a negative to a print, someone has to practice the fine art of “color timing.” The same thing has to be done, though electronically, when transferring it to DVD. The job can be done well or it can be done badly.
“The main reason a lot of DVDs are so bad,” says Robert A. Harris, president of the Film Preserve, one of the top film-restoring companies, “is that the people making them don’t know what they’re doing and don’t care what they’re doing.”

well, why should they care??? they are going to price these things to sell to any shlub, so, they will not bother… dvd regularly cheaps out, while makers of ld knew they could not sell them at the prices they were asking unless they threw in GOOD extras… Boogie Nights is a great example… criterion paid for the john holmes documentary the film was based on, but when the dvd came around, new line was not willing to pay for it… the dvd was around $30, the ld was nearly $100… but, you get what you pay for… and, right now, many ld collectors are selling off their discs at insane prices, therefore, now is a great time to buy…

Doing a DVD right takes time and money. A good Telecine machine, which transfers film to an image suited for television, costs about $2 million. Use of an outside lab’s Telecine facilities can cost up to $1,000 an hour.
The Criterion Collection, which produces some of the finest DVDs of classic films, routinely takes months to make a digital transfer. Lee Klein, Criterion’s chief technician, says: “If there’s a scratch, we draw it out frame by frame. When there’s 12 pieces of debris on each frame, it takes a long time.”
Most studios don’t bother.
Some simply take the master that was made for laser disc, or even for VHS videotape, and transfer it to DVD. This was an especially common practice in the infancy of DVD, four to six years ago.

and he gives a few good examples in the article of lousy dvd’s, showing the widespread apathy of dvd makers… their attitude is getting better, so, i hope by the time hd-dvd is the standard, they will have learned and can offer a consistently worthy product…

i am NOT saying that laserdisc is necesarily better in every way to dvd, my point is that laserdisc is still a viable format today, for those willing to pay, and should not have been discontinued so early (the last u.s. laserdisc release was in 2000)… many ld collectors out there are already regretting selling off their collection when they are left with substandard dvd’s, or even no dvd release available, such as the theatrical cuts of close encounters and star wars… and those two are great examples because there will NEVER be a dvd release of them…

laserdisc is a format for the serious film lover, dvd is the next vhs, the format for the masses…
what hd-dvd will be remains to be seen…

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today, Nicole Kidman is 37…
she is, without a doubt, first choice on our list of favorite eye candy girls… (milla and charlize would probably round out the top three…)

nicole is simply perfect… we first fell in love with her in Moulin Rouge, and have since seen her in Eyes Wide Shut, The Others, Far And Away, Malice, and To Die For and thought she was just yummy in all of them…
(oh yeah, and she is a good actress as well :P her best performance i have seen so far is probably To Die For…)
last week we even bought two 8×10 photos of her in moulin rouge costume from that cool movie poster/stuff shop in nob hill and miss mary picked up frames for them today and has them over in her corner… (for the record, we didn’t know her b-day was coming up when we bought them, we aren’t THAT fanatical, we found out because it was on today in sci-fi history this morning… they are also talking about her on fark, btw…)

to borrow a great line i once heard used to describe someone else, she has been the cause of countless gay men and straight women to question their preference for over a decade…

and we try not to think about the whole weirdo tom cruise thing o_O

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Stanley Kubrick’s films were landmark events – majestic, memorable and richly researched. But, as the years went by, the time between films grew longer and longer, and less and less was seen of the director. What on earth was he doing? Two years after his death, Jon Ronson was invited to the Kubrick estate and let loose among the fabled archive. He was looking for a solution to the mystery – this is what he found

and here are some excerpts giving you a hint of the weirdness within…

starting with a bit of background…

nine years had passed since Kubrick’s last film, Full Metal Jacket. All anyone outside his circle knew about him was that he was living in a vast country house somewhere near St Albans – or a “secret lair”, according to a Sunday Times article of that year – behaving presumably like some kind of mad hermit genius. Nobody even knew what he looked like. It had been 16 years since a photograph of him had been published.
He’d gone from making a film a year in the 1950s (including the brilliant, horrific Paths Of Glory), to a film every couple of years in the 1960s (Lolita, Dr Strangelove and 2001: A Space Odyssey all came out within a six-year period), to two films a decade in the 1970s and 1980s (there had been a seven-year gap between The Shining and Full Metal Jacket), and now, in the 1990s, absolutely nothing. What the hell was he doing in there? According to rumours, he was passing his time being terrified of germs and refusing to let his chauffeur drive over 30mph.

and…

“The good news,” wrote Nicholas Wapshott in the Times in 1997, bemoaning the ever-lengthening gaps between his films, “is that Kubrick is a hoarder … There is an extensive archive of material at his home in Childwick Bury. When that is eventually opened, we may get close to understanding the tangled brain which brought to life HAL, the Droogs and Jack Torrance.”

and then, inside kubrick’s world…

There are boxes everywhere – shelves of boxes in the stable block, rooms full of boxes in the main house. In the fields, where racehorses once stood and grazed, are half a dozen portable cabins, each packed with boxes. These are the boxes that contain the legendary Kubrick archive.

Tony takes me into a large room painted blue and filled with books. “This used to be the cinema,” he says.
“Is it the library now?” I ask.
“Look closer at the books,” says Tony.
I do. “Bloody hell,” I say. “Every book in this room is about Napoleon!”
“Look in the drawers,” says Tony.
I do.
“It’s all about Napoleon, too!” I say. “Everything in here is about Napoleon!”

“Somewhere else in this house,” Tony says, “is a cabinet full of 25,000 library cards, three inches by five inches. If you want to know what Napoleon, or Josephine, or anyone within Napoleon’s inner circle was doing on the afternoon of July 23 17-whatever, you go to that card and it’ll tell you.”
“Who made up the cards?” I ask.
“Stanley,” says Tony. “With some assistants.”
“How long did it take?” I ask.
“Years,” says Tony. “The late 1960s.”

In one portable cabin, for example, there are hundreds and hundreds of boxes related to Eyes Wide Shut, marked EWS – Portman Square, EWS – Kensington & Chelsea, etc, etc. I choose the one marked EWS – Islington because that’s where I live. Inside are hundreds of photographs of doorways. The doorway of my local video shop, Century Video, is here, as is the doorway of my dry cleaner’s, Spots Suede Services on Upper Street. Then, as I continue to flick through the photographs, I find, to my astonishment, pictures of the doorways of the houses in my own street. Handwritten at the top of these photographs are the words, “Hooker doorway?”
“Huh,” I think. So somebody within the Kubrick organisation (it was, in fact, his nephew) once walked up my street, on Kubrick’s orders, hoping to find a suitable doorway for a hooker in Eyes Wide Shut. It is both an extremely interesting find and a bit of a kick in the teeth.
It is not, though, as incredible a coincidence as it may at first seem. Judging by the writing on the boxes, probably just about every doorway in London has been captured and placed inside this cabin.

The fan letters are perfectly preserved. They are not in the least bit dusty or crushed. The system used to file them is, in fact, extraordinary. Each fan box contains perhaps 50 orange folders. Each folder has the name of a town or city typed on the front – Agincourt, Ontario; Alhambra, California; Cincinnati, Ohio; Daly City, California, and so on – and they are in alphabetical order inside the boxes. And inside each folder are all the fan letters that came from that particular place in any one year. Kubrick has handwritten “F-P” on the positive ones and “F-N” on the negative ones. The crazy ones have been marked “F-C”.

“Stanley loved typefaces.” Jan pauses. “I tell you what else he loved.”
“What?” I ask.
“Stationery,” says Jan.
I glance over at the boxes full of letters from people who felt about Kubrick the way Kubrick felt about stationery, and then back to Jan. “His great hobby was stationery,” he says. “One time a package arrived with 100 bottles of brown ink. I said to Stanley, ‘What are you going to do with all that ink?’ He said, ‘I was told they were going to discontinue the line, so I bought all the remaining bottles in existence.’ Stanley had a tremendous amount of ink.” Jan pauses. “He loved stationery, pads, everything like that.”

I suppose that the closer you get to an enigma, the more explicable it becomes. Even the somewhat crazy-seeming stuff, like the filing of the fan letters by the town from which they came, begins to make sense after a while.
It turns out that Kubrick ordered this filing in case he ever wanted to have a local cinema checked out. If 2001, say, was being screened in Daly City, California, at a cinema unknown to Kubrick, he would get Tony or one of his secretaries to telephone a fan from that town to ask them to visit the cinema to ensure that, say, the screen wasn’t ripped.

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allow me to explain…

and since i am in no hurry, i will start from when we met…

in 1995, i was living in an apartment on hermosa beach, california… (btw, i hated it, the smell and noise of the ocean were horrible…)
late on november 6th, my best friend, skully, came over with his girlfriend at the time, jade, and her best friend, mary…
mary and i took to each other immediately, and she even wrote in her diary that night, “tonight, i met the man i am going to marry”…

in the following months, the four of us did a lot together and it was not long before mary and i started saying we would get married at our nearest opportunity… being from vegas, i kept us reminded that all we had to do was take the four hour drive and shell out a few bucks…

so, since we were open about this, a pact was made… skully made mary and i swear that if we ever ran off and got married, we would page him with a special code, “77777″, immediately after, no excuses… he introduced us, he demanded to be the first to know and we agreed he deserved it… if we had a normal wedding, the plan was for him to be my best man, but, that never came up…

it was around june 1st that we finally got around to deciding to go to vegas… there was a day or two of preparation and, if i recall correctly, we arrived in vegas, in a rented plymouth breeze, about the 3rd…

on the night of the 6th we were deciding what to do with the evening and one of us said to the other “how about we go get married?” and the other said “well, it IS what we came here for” and off we went, down to get our license… there were an awful lot of people in there, considering it was probably 10 or so at night… vegas is the only truly 24-hour city i have lived in, you can do pretty much anything, anytime… even 24-hour wedding chapels… though, i think the license place was going to close at 11pm…
i remember the clerks did not have the burned-out look i expected, they looked like they were dispensing miracles… somehow, they had not lost the romance of it all, it seemed…
to this day i wonder how many other couples that were in there that night are still together…

after the license, it was time to decide where to get married… skully always said we should do the drive-thru elvis impersonator wedding… and we always said ummmm, no… however, as we looked around, the cheapest and easiest was “the world famous little white chapel” on the strip and they had a drive-thru…

we just wanted to be married (though, elvis need not be involved), so, we went there…

we pull up and the window is on the passenger side (my side, some people are born to drive, some people are born to work the radio, and i am the latter) and there is a bell… so, i ring the bell and eventually a woman came to the window and started us on paperwork… after we filled out a few forms and gave them their money, we had to sit a bit and wait for a minister…

as we sat there, i had a revelation…
“you know what? we are GETTING married! no, i mean, for months we have been INTENDING to get married, and here in a bit we will BE married, but, at this moment we are GETTING married!”
then, suddenly, all the traditions made sense…
“this will only happen once! geez, i kinda’ wish someone was here to see it, maybe take some pictures! in fact, we could have dressed up for it! or maybe even been well-rested and sober!”

i decided i would at least put my cigarette out…

so, as we waited, we noticed it was getting late… see, we met on the 6th, so, we thought it was going to be cool to have been married on the 6th…
the preacher (Pastor Jesse Diaz, the certificate says) showed up a few minutes before midnight… he leaned quite a bit out the window and asked if we had rings… well, in fact we did, but, we had already had a private and special moment of putting them on each other’s finger months before, so, we told him we would not be re-exchanging rings, as it were… he seemed to think this was odd, but, continued anyway…
he told me to look on my bride and repeat after him and i said my vows to mary…
and then it was her turn and then he pronounced us man and wife…

and we noticed the time…
it was a few minutes after midnight…
so, the pastor jesse diaz leaned out and began our wedding some time before midnight, june 6th, and he pronounced us some time after midnight, june 7th, and this dawned on us and we thought it was actually pretty cool…
we decided at that very moment to forever celebrate both days as our anniversary…

(for the record, our marriage certificate says june 6th…)

now, if only we could buy that rental car we were in at the time…

anyway, if you have been paying attention, there is still something left to be done…
yes, we left the little white chapel and went over to the excalibur hotel and casino, my favorite place of employment ever (and the place where my brother married his bride), and went to the payphones just inside the back entrance… i dialled skully’s number, put in a whole bunch of change, and entered 77777…
skully was watching tv with his parents when his pager went off… his voice in the darkness said “oh my god!” and he looked at his mom and dad and declared “zane and mary just got married”…
we were well-liked by his parents, so, there were a total of three people happy for us that night, not counting us…

and no one else in the world knew yet…

so, anyway, yes, we got married eight years ago, in the middle of the night, in a drive thru, in a rented plymouth breeze, on the las vegas strip, and since our wedding spanned midnight, we have two anniversary days…

and we think that is pretty cool…

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so, we have the criterion laserdisc of halloween and a standard laser release of the omen and we watched them both the other night…

first up was halloween, the film credited with starting the “slasher” genre…
and, it was not long until we were wishing it would hurry up and end…
of course, after starman, the thing, escape from new york, and now this, i think we are ready to really and truly give up on john carpenter…

the only good thing i have to say about it is that the music was very good…

one interesting device i noticed was that, as the movie built up to the climax, it seemed to me that the director was intentionally using a lot of shots to show the time of day… no indoor shots without plenty of windows and most shots prominently showed the placement of the sun, like a ticking countdown to nightfall… in fact, at one point, it is suddenly and abruptly night, which gave me a feeling of “it’s night already!? they’re out of time!”…
while this kept me (almost unconsciously) estimating how much time was left, i really could not care less if these people were actually going to survive or not… we were hardly told anything about them, so, they really did not seem like real people, just actors doing what the director told them to…
and, as is always the case, the characters seemed to behave in very unbelievable ways… i know this is a staple of the genre, but, that is one of the things that alienates me from the genre… too much of having to give up reason to follow the story… not that there is usually much of a story… i often hear horror described as a sub-genre of sci-fi, but, to me it seems more a sub-genre of action… any film where you can relate pretty much everything it covers as just “this happened, then that happened, etc.” is an action movie… no concepts to ponder, no characters to get to know better, no reason to care WHY things are happening, most of the time… all of that comes in scarce tidbits, which is why, to be totally coherent, you need a whole series of films… maybe by die hard 3, i might care what happens to john maclaine, maybe by halloween 9 i might know why michael myers killed his sister and all these others…

if they were better movies, i might take that journey…

or maybe i will listen to the commentary on halloween and see if john carpenter can reveal to me the subtle intricacies…

then, with a bad taste in our mouths, we took a chance on the omen…
this one was much better, but, there was very little action, just lots of dialogue and concepts… it was more like a mystery to be solved…
now, i must say i thought the dialogue was very weak… it got the point across, but, there was no personality, no cadence, no art… with good dialogue, you can take a line out of context and, if you know the characters, you can usually deduce who said it… and this is true of life as well… the omen is one of countless movies where you could have mixed and matched the dialogue between characters… the characters were definitely not defined by how they said what they said, they were just telling us what we needed to know to advance the plot… in a movie filled with dialogue, you need more personalized speech to really carry it, or at least to keep it interesting… (cf. david mamet, btw…)
but still, it was a good movie… pacing was good, i was never really bored, the material was great, and the music was superb, even though it was mono… the actors were varied; the kid was great (not that it was a demanding part), the various clergy were good, and the nannies were great, but, too many other parts seemed totally interchangable…

we liked it… it does not go on “the shelf”, but, i will definitely watch it again sometime to look for other nuances… i just don’t expect much from donner in that area…

i just have a hard time calling it “horror”… it was more of a mystery, as i said above… yes, there were horrific IDEAS, but, again, that makes it a movie of IDEAS, not actions…

as far as “horror” goes, we have only really seen a few and disliked most of them… (btw, remember, we pretty much only count what we have seen since we started into the world of dvd and home theater, since we now “see” movies differently than we used to… i have seen literally thousands of movies, but, i know a lot more about movies now and feel i need to give them all another chance…)
i will briefly touch on a few and try to avoid sci-fi horror, like alien, forbidden planet, or event horizon, just to try to prove we are capable of contemplating another genre…

we have seen a nightmare on elm street and wes craven’s new nightmare and only new nightmare was any good to us… i guess because it was likeable even if you scoffed at the genre… hell, it scoffed with you… but, even new nightmare is in “the pile”, not on “the shelf”… it was good once, may be again, but, we are not in any hurry… the next viewing would probably be for the commentary…

poltergeist IS on the shelf… now that is one creepy film… the chair-stacking scene chills me every time… in fact, there is so much good about that movie, i will not even get started lest i go three paragraphs…

then, there is that “m. night” dude or whatever… we have seen both signs and sixth sense and disliked both of them… and there was very little that we found disturbing, creepy, and very very little that was anything like scary… sure, a few disturbing concepts, no action movies here, but, still, they are old concepts and the films really brought very little, if anything, to the genre that we had not seen before…
and, btw, we generally despise surprise endings… in fight club, it explained a lot, in sixth sense, it seemed just a gimmick… (iow, with the former, you want to watch it again more to understand the symptoms better now that you know the cause, in the latter you want to watch again to see if the film is internally consistent with the ending…)
[must've re-written the last two sentences twenty times to ensure it was spoiler free :P]

now, one horror movie we really liked was the others (and, no, not because it had our beloved nicole in it, though that doesn’t hurt it any)…
that was one SCARY frickin’ movie!
i mean, it was disturbing!
and, one of the best uses of surround that we have ever heard…
we were jumping, cringing, hoping that what we knew must happen next would not happen; i think the others, so far, is the only movie to actually put a fright in us…
it was just plain well-directed… the kids, the rules of the house, the cinematography, including the overall look, the time setting, it just starts pulling you in to an alternate reality, so, you already have no idea what to expect and it unhinges your mind from the everyday, emptying it, so it can fill it up with what the director chooses, hopefully freeing you from expectations of normality… like misdirection… and the unfamiliarity
means it will be more unpredictable, which means it has the potential to be scarier… and the director did not disappoint, though, admittedly, the first half of the movie is much much better than the second half…
it is a dvd, not a laserdisc, so there is no “shelf vs. pile” issue (all our dvd’s are in one place), but, if there was a choice to be made, it would go on the shelf…

so, anyway, next in our horror education will probably be clive barker… we have nice laserdiscs of the serpent and the rainbow, hellraiser, and lord of illusions (or is it the frighteners? can’t remember)… i read the great and secret show and loved it (though, more fantasy than horror)… i found it to be very original, creative, and interesting, so i figure i will like more of his stuff… having seen some clive barker long ago, i think it is safe to assume it will be truly horrifying stuff, with more in common with event horizon than the other stuff i have been covering here…
hopefully in a good way…

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here are some excerpts…

The world of massively multiplayer online games is often a dangerous place, what with constant threats from bloodthirsty monsters and murderous non-player characters. But now players have even more peril to contend with: addictive drugs that can incapacitate or kill their characters.

The designers of Achaea, one of the biggest online text-based games, have recently introduced a virtual addictive drug — known as gleam — as part of a story line in which a crime ring has been attempting to infiltrate the game’s cities. And some players can’t take it fast enough.

Achaea characters who take gleam get hooked quickly — suffering typical addiction symptoms: violent vomiting, shivering, irrational sobbing, begging for the drug and even overdoses resulting in death. Some of the game’s players are angry about gleam’s introduction into their world.

and then, there are virtual performance-enhancing virtual drugs…

In A Tale in the Desert, players discovered that by dosing their characters with a potion called Speed of the Serpent, they could gain extra waypoints, a valuable attribute allowing for instant travel across the game’s wide three-dimensional globe.

Speed of the Serpent was poisonous, though, and required the ingestion of an antidote within 30 days, or the character would die. If a player took the potion a second time, the antidote was needed within 29 days; a third use meant 28 days and so on.

Eventually, as players succumbed to their desire for the extra waypoints, the interval between potion and antidote was short enough that even the hard-core couldn’t keep up. According to Andy Tepper, the game’s lead designer, 18 players’ characters have died from addiction to Speed of the Serpent, more than from any other cause in the game’s history. Unlike in many multiplayer online games, where death means little, in A Tale in the Desert, a character’s death is final. It means starting over from the beginning, no small price for dabbling in a little performance-enhancing potion.

meanwhile, elsewhere in the virtual multiverse…

But even the larger games have elements some consider akin to addictive substances. For example, in Galaxies, smuggler-class players traffic in spices, spells that increase characters’ skills.

In an article in RPG Expert called “Life of a Smuggler,” the author wrote that spices can offer terrific benefits, such as increased strength. Yet there are also side effects, like lowered strength and vomiting, that last as long as the high.

Given the side effects, though, one might ask why the risk is worthwhile. [the eternal addict question, eh? -i_p] The author’s answer sounds just like it came from a real-world drug dealer.

“OK, who will buy and use your spices? Almost everyone that tries them a few times gets hooked,” the article read. “Free samples are good for business!!”

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for those not familiar with the concept of feeds, it is a way to gather
content from a site, without going there… this blog of mine has an atom xml
feed, so, you could get my posts in your favorite “feed aggregator” (along
side feeds from other sites), rather than stopping by to see if i’ve posted
anything new or signing up for the email notification…
at livejournal, people set up xml/rss/etc. feeds for various sites, or use
feeds already offered and you can add those feeds to your lj friends page for
a public online aggregator… there are hundreds of choices, everything from
daily comics like garfield and dilbert, to news, weather, movie reviews, all
sorts of stuff…
you just have to see it to appreciate the sheer coolness of it…
since i have few lj friends, i fill it up with these feeds and then i get
stuff from sites i would not otherwise go to everyday, in one convenient
trip… so, you can see the stuff i am interested in and, if you share those
interests, it can make for a good daily visit…

here are the feeds i have on there currently…

some post several items a day, some once a day, some once a week or once a
month, some post rarely, which makes it even handier to have it appear on my
feeds page… and some may be broken, so, i am still waiting for them to post
something…

firstly, i get posts at “syn_promo”, where people publicize cool feeds they
have found or have made…

astronomy photo of the day

ask yahoo
answering trivia and imponderables, using yahoo

blog of death
sort of a big, far-reaching obits page

boingboing blog

coming soon
a movie news site

dictionary.com’s word of the day

engadget
gadget news, reviews, etc.

filmadd
news of movies added to the Internet Archive

filmtease
an unusual movie trailer review site

found magazine’s find of the week
unusual objects people find

aaron swartz’s googleblog
a blog about google

googleblog
the official blog of google.com

penniphile
the writings of penn jillette, mostly new entries to “road penn”

word spy
dealing with new terms, slang, etc. as they enter the language

quote of the day
not as good as refdesk.com’s quotes of the day, but, they have more than one
per day, so it sort of balances out

snopesrecentadd
one of my favorites, posting urban legends as they are added to snopes.com

thinkgeek
various merchandise of interest to those involved in modern technology

and wordsmith’s word of the day

oh, and almost forgot, i also get “ljnifty” where people post various fun
things you can do with livejournal, such as adding feeds to your friends
page…

and i add cool new ones as i find them… and occasionally remove the ones
that get annoying or boring…

anyway, if that sounds interesting to you, as i said, the link is on the menu
on the left side of this page… “My LJ Feeds”
i stop by at least once a day and it is a pretty good collection at this
point, after some tweaking…

now if only i could get scifi.com’s “today in sci-fi history” on there, which
is almost always interesting to sci-fi buffs… (there is a link to this, as
well, over there on the left…)
i would add the fark.com feed, but, it does not have comments links and the
comments threads are at least half the fun of fark…

btw, geez, it seems today is list day on my blog…
admittedly, i am trying to come up with posts to make so i can knock that huge
“april pics” post off the front page…

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ok, so, the story is something like this…

may 25th, 2002, we got a free dvd player… at this time, our tv was mainly
only used for video games and nasatv during shuttle missions, we had a vcr but
didn’t use it for much…
coincidentally, this is also the day we got our first dreameye, so, the dvd
player was ignored…

then, some time in november 2002, someone loaned us three dvd’s (reservoir
dogs, a beautiful mind, zoolander)… we decided to see what all the fuss was
about…
eventually, we bought a couple of our own (fight club, the matrix, wargames,
which is also the first commentary we listened to), later on, we got a
“ht-in-a-box”, then in june of 2003, we started seriously building a home
theater…

just on a whim, back in the first days of all this, we started actually
jotting down each movie we watched… we have continued to add to this list,
every movie we watch, then, at some point, we started dating each entry…
this is all kept in a database that we each have a copy of on our psion…

so, here is the list… there are about 250, a little less or a lot less,
depending on how you choose to count them (different versions of the same
movie, etc.)…

and, btw, i will refrain from adding other comments in the database this list
came from, such as what we thought of the movie, why we saw wanted to see it,
what format and aspect ratio it was in, which ones we own, etc…. you will
also occasionally see one labelled [him] or [her], which means we did not
watch it together… and there are one or two marked with the name of a movie
theater in brackets, which means we actually went out to see it…

the dated entries come first and the rest are alphabetically listed…

2004.05.06 – caddyshack
2004.05.06 – vacation
2004.03.30 – AI
2004.03.29 – the big lebowski
2004.03.29 – mixed nuts
2004.03.26 – better off dead…
2004.02.22 – hard eight (aka Sydney)
2004.02.15 – lost in translation
2004.02.15 – love liza
2004.02.09 – raising arizona
2004.02.09 – star trek 7 – generations
2004.02.09 – time after time
2004.02.08 – back to the future
2004.02.08 – back to the future 2
2004.02.08 – back to the future 3
2004.02.06 – jerry macguire [her]
2004.02.05 – a few good men
2004.02.05 – rush
2004.02.05 – true romance
2004.02.01 – biloxi blues
2004.01.25 – fargo
2004.01.25 – pirates of silicon valley
2004.01.20 – arthur
2004.01.20 – fletch
2004.01.11 – hook
2004.01.08 – the apostle
2004.01.06 – seven
2004.01.05 – the life of david gale
2004.01.04 – alien 3
2003.12.27 – the american president
2003.12.25 – a christmas story
2003.12.23 – it’s a wonderful life
2003.12.21 – lord of the rings 2 – the two towers
2003.12.20 – star trek 10 – nemesis
2003.12.17 – braveheart
2003.12.16 – 28 days later
2003.12.16 – frequency
2003.12.14 – scrooged
2003.11.13 – conspiracy theory
2003.11.09 – alien – director’s cut [amc grand, dallas, theater 8]
2003.11.08 – truman show
2003.11.05 – shanghai knights
2003.11.02 – ed wood
2003.11.01 – matrix reloaded
2003.10.18 – spaceship
2003.10.16 – galaxy quest
2003.10.16 – trekkies
2003.10.13 – Magnolia
2003.10.11 – The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
2003.10.10 – spawn – director’s cut
2003.10.05 – book of shadows – blair witch 2
2003.10.04 – addams family
2003.09.28 – shock treatment
2003.09.27 – event horizon
2003.09.23 – city of lost children
2003.09.12 – the jerk
2003.09.11 – blair witch project
2003.09.11 – stargate – director’s cut
2003.09.10 – 12 monkeys
2003.09.10 – outland
2003.09.10 – psycho
2003.09.08 – from dusk til dawn
2003.09.07 – leviathan
2001: a space odyssey
2010
9/11
the abyss – special edition
Addams Family Values
Akira
alien
aliens – director’s cut
almost famous
almost famous – untitled director’s cut
Amelie
american beauty
apollo 13
as good as it gets
backdraft
basketball diaries
batman
beauty and the beast
being john malkovich
the black hole
blade runner – “director’s cut”
boogie nights
boyz in the hood
brazil
a bronx tale
buckaroo banzai
a bug’s life
the cell
Chicago
chicken run
Citizen Kane
close encounters of the third kind
close encounters of the third kind, collector’s edition
close encounters of the third kind, special edition
clueless
contact
dances with wolves
Dark City
the dark crystal
Darkman
the doors
dr. strangelove
dune
e.t. – the extra terrestrial
escape from new york [him]
eyes wide shut
finding nemo [parks mall amc]
far and away
fear and loathing in las vegas
the fifth element
fight club
final fantasy: the spirits within
a fish called wanda
flatliners
forbidden planet
Forrest Gump
friday
full metal jacket
get shorty
the game
gattaca
ghostbusters
glengarry glenross
the godfather [him]
the godfather – part two [him]
Goodfellas [him]
the grifters
Grosse Pointe Blank [her]
harry potter 1
house
the hudsucker proxy
the hunt for red october
i spit on your grave
independence day – director’s cut
Indiana Jones – Raiders of the Lost Ark
Indiana Jones and the Temple Of Doom
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
The Iron Giant
It
jackie brown
Jacob’s Ladder
Jaws
jfk
k-pax
krull
L.A. Confidential
l.a. story
labyrinth
ladyhawke
the lawnmower man – director’s cut
leap of faith
legend of drunken master
Little Shop of Horrors
Logan’s Run
lolita
lord of the rings – fellowship of the ring
mars attacks!
memento
men in black
minority report
monsters inc
monty python and the holy grail
the mosquito coast
Moulin Rouge
mulholland drive
murder by death
natural born killers
night of the living dead
nightmare before christmas
a nightmare on elm street
the one
oscar
the others
phantasm
pi
pink floyd – the wall
poltergeist
the princess bride
pulp fiction
Punch-Drunk Love
Quiz Show
red dawn
requiem for a dream – director’s cut
reservoir dogs
the rocky horror picture show
Romeo + juliet
the royal tenenbaums
rushmore
say anything
secret of nimh
the seven samurai [him]
Shadowlands
Shanghai Noon
signs
silence of the lambs
Silverado
the sixth sense
Sneakers
south park movie
Spaceballs
the spanish prisoner
Sphere
spiderman
spirited away
The Stand
star trek – the motion picture – director’s cut
star trek 2 – the wrath of khan – director’s cut
star trek 3 – the search for spock
star trek 4 – the voyage home
star trek 5 – the final frontier
star trek 6 – the undiscovered country
star trek 8 – first contact
star wars
star wars 2 – empire strikes back
star wars 2 – empire strikes back – special edition
star wars 3 – return of the jedi
star wars 4 – phantom menace
star wars 5 – attack of the clones
Starman
Strange Days
suicide kings
Taxi Driver
terminator
terminator 2
the thing
this is spinal tap
three colors – white
three colors – red
time bandits
titan a.e.
titanic
Toy Story
Toy Story 2
trainspotting
tron
uhf
unforgiven
wag the dog
the War of the Roses
wargames
Wes Craven’s New Nightmare
what dreams may come
who framed roger rabbit

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i know i am still missing a few off this list, maybe quite a few, but, this is
something i was mentioning to someone the other day and wanted to put this
list up, even if it is not totally compete…
i still know most of these movies by heart, could probably quote most of them
beginning to end, and the images and sounds are an indelible part of my
subconscious to this day… (darth vader is still in my nightmares to this
day!)

growing up in a house of hardcore movie interest is an interesting
experience… in our house, movie quotes were almost non-stop, life was
constantly compared to movies… in fact, the staff noticed this when i was
at the hospital with my parents… mom said to one nurse something to the
effect of “we are a movie family. we use them to teach lessons of life.” by
which she means, for instance, i was talking about how magnolia inspired me,
both phil parma and the change t.j. mackey made in his attitude toward his
father were things going through my mind non-stop in the hospital… they
were the inspiration that helped me to keep a better frame of mind through it
all… so, if i want to explain to my mom how i saw my responsibility in that
situation, she would have to watch magnolia…
in fact, my mom’s online handle, for as long as i can remember, is “Ripley”,
the heroine of Alien… and i am sure she would relate ripley as the
embodiment of a strong woman…

my childhood heros were not historical figures or otherwise “real” people,
they were movie characters…

but now, i am straying way off the topic of this post…
back to the list…

btw, very important…
THIS IS *NOT* A LIST OF MY FAVORITE MOVIES…
more than a few of them are movies i cannot stand today…
these are also in no order, except maybe the order in which i thought of
them…
i would also add that it is best to take most of what i said above as not
relating much to the list… most of the “background movies” around the house
were not the deep ones, those demanded too much attention…

and now, a partial list of movies i saw/heard/overheard COUNTLESS times
growing up…

close encounters of the third kind (special edition)

btw, ce3k reigns supreme TO THIS DAY as the one i have seen/heard/overheard
more than any other…

better off dead
ghostbusters
star trek 1-4
star wars
caddyshack
vacation
2010
aliens
raiders of the lost ark
murder by death
wargames
secret of nimh
spaceballs
time after time
the money pit
spaceship
pete’s dragon
cloak and dagger
romancing the stone
fletch

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SeeMeRot.com

SeeMeRot.com :: Live Coffin Cam :: Now with New image every 10 seconds!

yes, folks, a live webcam inside a coffin, pointed at a dead person…

just want to say first, the pic there is nothing, just looks like someone sleeping…

um, as of this writing, anyway…
(i was going to link to the pic to display here, then decided that might turn out bad in a few months, since i cannot edit these posts…)

and, btw, refreshes every 10 seconds???
wtf?
seems very little is likely to happen…

ok, a few things from the site…

from the source…

<meta name=”keywords” content=”six feet under, coffin cam, dead body, coffincam, webcams, dead, live, pictures of the dead, sick pictures, real pics, true, terror, life after death, is there a god, motorcycle, insurance, six feet under”>
<meta name=”ProgId” content=”Live Coffin Cam – Six Feet Under and Still being seen! Six Feet Under Ground Body Cam”>

and then there is this…

We hope you find SeeMeRot.com a fascinating place to visit over the coming months.

indeed…

and then, as if this needed a punch line…

Should you wish to discuss plans for your own ‘Coffin Cam’ for family and friends, please contact us for pricing details.

you see, the page with the image on it is called “cams.html”, as in they apparently anticipate a gallery…

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heros of mine, they are…
so, i thought of the link in our little orrl thing…

the writings of Penn Jillette
(yes, the big one of Penn & Teller)
Philosopher Warrior Extraordinaire… from his articles for PC-Computing, dating back to 1990, his Excite articles of the late 90′s, plenty of various writings, articles, columns, on a wide variety of subjects, and his wonderful “Road Penn” journal, beginning in april, 2000 and continuing to this day… also has interviews, chat scripts, and more….
jan30,03 – they lost their domain name, so, for now, this link goes to the wayback machine’s archive of the page…

and it still does as their new site seems to no longer have their writings…
(btw, the most recent link there on web archive is to a copy made AFTER a porn site got their domain name, so, go for second most recent or older…)

one of my favorites, of course, is one he did in ’92, i believe, for pc computing, called “We’re All Going to Hell”…

ok, i was wrong…
his writings ARE on the new site…
well, good…

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Current Mood: amused
Current Music: Space Channel 5 Remix Soundtrack

i read this one long, long ago and tought it was perfect, and i was relating it to the folks a little while back, so, just had to get the full text for any and all to see…

stop me if you’ve heard this one…

Ed finally decides to take a vacation. He books himself on a Caribbean cruise and proceeds to have the time of his life –until the boat sank. He found himself swept up on the shore of an island with no other people, no supplies…nothing… only bananas and coconuts.

After about four months, he is lying on the beach one day when the most gorgeous woman he has ever seen rows up to him. In disbelief, he asks her, “Where did you come from? How did you get here?”

“I rowed from the other side of the island,” she says. “I landed here when my cruise ship sank.”

“Amazing,’ he says. “You were really lucky to have a rowboat wash up with you.”

“Oh, this?’ replies the woman. “I made the rowboat out of raw material I found on the island. The oars were whittled from gum tree branches. I wove the bottom from palm branches. And the sides and stern came from a Eucalyptus tree.”

“But, but, that’s impossible,’ stutters Ed. “You had no tools or hardware. How did you manage?”

“Oh, that was no problem,” replies the woman. “On the south side of the island, there is a very unusual strata of alluvial rock exposed. I found if I fired it to a certain temperature in my kiln, it melted into forgeable ductile iron. I used that for tools and used the tools to make the hardware.” Ed is stunned. “Let’s row over to my place,” she says.

After a few minutes of rowing, she docks the boat at a small wharf. As Ed looks onto shore, he nearly falls out of the boat. Before him is a stone walk leading to an exquisite bungalow painted in blue and white. While the woman ties up the rowboat with an expertly woven hemp rope, he could only stare ahead, dumb struck. As they walk into the house, she says casually, “It’s not much, but I call it home. Sit down please. Would you like to have a drink?”

“No, no, thank you.’ he says, still dazed. “Can’t take any more coconut juice.” “It’s not coconut juice,” the woman replies. “How about a Pina Colada?”

Trying to hide his continued amazement, he accepts, and they sit down on her couch to talk. After they have exchanged their stories, the woman announces,
“I’m going to slip into something more comfortable. Would you like to take a shower and shave? There is a razor upstairs in the cabinet in the bathroom.”

No longer questioning anything, Ed goes into the bathroom. There, in the cabinet, is a razor made from a bone handle. Two shells honed to a hollow ground edge are fastened on to its end inside of a swivel mechanism. “Wow! This woman is amazing!” he muses, “What next?”

When he returns, she greets him wearing nothing but vines, strategically positioned, and smelling faintly of gardenias. She beckons for him to sit down next to her.
“Tell me,” she begins suggestively, slithering closer to him, “We’ve been out here for a really long time. You’ve been lonely. There’s something I’m sure you really feel like doing right now, something you’ve been longing for all these months. You know…” She stares into his eyes.

He can’t believe what he’s hearing:
“You mean—”, he swallows excitedly, “I can check my email?!”

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after all that has been going on, my mom, dad, and i had a long talk last night telling him all we did during his hospital time, he does not remember anything but the the last couple days of it all… we have had a bonding experience that i could not begin to explain or describe, so, i will not bother… check miss mary’s lj for some of it… maybe when it is all over, i will post excerpts from emails that i sent and received during it all…
so, anyway, this morning, my dad said it was time to give me something he had planned for years to give me, but, had never told me about it… it is his father’s wedding ring… his father gave it to him and now he is giving it to me… i said i felt bad because it seemed more logical to give it to my brother, jeff, because he has a son to pass it to, since i plan to never to have kids, but, he said he wanted me, the first-born son, to have it…
i am floored… i don’t know yet what i will do with it… obviously, my wedding ring is totalled and i want another, but, it is not the same and, more practically, it does not fit my wedding ring finger anyway… apparently my grandfather had larger hands than me, it only fits on my largest finger, my right middle finger…

not every day you get an heirloom, and i am very thankful he gave it to me… the three of us have been through a lot recently and i am very moved to know that he sees all this that has gone on as so important as to decide this was a time to give me something he was waiting on the right time for for thirty years…

an experience i will never be able to fully relate… reminds me of two lines… tom hanks in ‘saving private ryan’, about how he doesn’t know how he will ever tell his wife “days like today” and the american beauty line, “you have no idea what i am talking about, but don’t worry; you will”…

hopefully, everyone is involved enough in their family, at some point or another, to experience something like this…

i could probably come up with something more meaningful to say, but, i have had two drinks and i don’t drink, so, they went straight to my head, so, i will leave it at that…

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1. the short version bio – who I am today
2. marrying mary
3. How have you been?

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here is the latest version of the same post i have made the last two years on this day…

on this day, three years ago, we went online with our dreamcast and little junky planetweb 2.6 browser on the feb ’01 ODCM demo disk for the first time…

of course now it is 2 online dc’s and japanese browsers and our Psions are also online, of course…

unlike probably most people, we actually have a videotape of our first time logging onto the web… we just let the tape roll… really fascinating to see yourself klutz around the web for the very first time…

for the record, first site we went to… google

we have our first irc chat on tape, our first time in an online game (PSO) and several other firsts, like when we signed up for hotmail and could not use a space in “insidious plots”, which led to the handle being the way it is to this day: insidious underscore plots…

heh, weird little collection… but, interesting to look back on from 3 years later…

sort of like our own little wayback machine…

(when i fast scan forward on the tape it makes me think “so… this is what broadband would look like…” :D !)

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