Hmm... and due to xmas shopping I'm broke again. Wonderful. Just more confirmation that my life is indeed hell :-)

Merry smegging Christmas folks

12/19/97

Yes, my last paper is in and now I'm FREE!!! Now what? I guess I can work on all the stuff that I didn't have time to work on while I was in school. Oh yea, and start my xmas shopping too.

Awk!

Happy holidays and all that crap!

12/17/97

First of all:

(like I said, exactly one month younger than me :-)

Secondly, I finished Quake2 on medium level. Now what?

12/13/97

12:29am

A couple of deep thoughts on this cold December morning...

I don't think you can write poetry for anyone but yourself. If poetry is the expression of images or feelings, then they are your feelings, and it is quite hard to get them across to others. I am reminded of an incident in a 100 level English class I had to take. In the poety section, we were asked to analyze a poem by a "local author." It was a simple poem about the rain or something, and of course the class (full of overly eager 18-19 year olds fresh out of high school) picked it apart as much as they could. In the end, it turned out to be a member of the class, and there was no deep meaning or what-have-you behind the poem.

I got to thinking, what would happen if one of my poems (I had The Cape in mind), was analyzed. I have a feeling that anyone, or any group of people would tear it apart (both for it's merit as a poem and the content :-) ) and make something out of it that it wasn't... like Stairway to Heaven and all those that have tried to pick it apart.

When I wrote that poem it was the desire, the need to get the images and feelings out of me. Letting others read it is fine, but they will not, nor ever most likely, get the same thing from it that I do.

Ok, enough for the deep thoughts, now for a movie review.

So I went to see Anastasia with some friends tonight. Yes, I wanted to see the cartoon. But I wanted to see it for the graphics, not the cartoon or the singing or the story. No, really. Anyway, the story was actually kinda good, the characters were great, and though the story is predictable, it is lots of fun. There is the tocken good guy, good girl, love development, bad guy, bad guy's cohorts, etc. The best character of the movie I think was Rasputan's cohort, Bartok. This little bat is so good (IMHO) I think because he is so... not laid back but soft spoken. Just his voice is enough to make you laugh, it is.... hell I can't describe it, it's just funny, but because he is so monotone. I guess you could say it is because no matter what he is saying or describing he says it in a mostly monotone, and... well, it's funny. Christopher Lloyd (Doc Brown from Back to the Future), is pretty funny as Rasputan as well.

Too much singing. I don't go to movies to hear singing, I go to movies to watch a movie. I guess in animated movies it's normal though.

The Graphics!!!! Oh my god they were incredible! I can't compliment whoever or whatever did them. Yes, there were normal looking animations, but there was also a whole lot of computer generated stuff too. Watch the vertical-upsidedown-U pan when Anya walks up teh stairs in the abandoned palace. It looks so cool! And any BIG piece of machinery (except the boat at the very end) was fantastic. The train scene had me breathless, and the boat was amazing also. The clock tower where Rasputan made plans was great, and the Pegasus was pretty 10/10 as well. A lot of the background seemed to be computer done too, and all the shadows, reflections and so forth were done to a T. Very computer-3d-graphics like. More info can be found here.

If you're into computer graphics, go see this movie. If you are into cool movies, take a girl to see it and she'll think you are a sensitive guy or something while you'll sit there marvelling at the cool computer stuff :-)

12/12/97

Ok, maybe not that exciting, but all my exams are done. Just one term paper left....

Some things to mention, the DOJ has ruled that Microsoft has to stop forcing OEMs to install IE on thier computers. I'd like to think that this will force MS to get their business through technical innovation, and not through heavy handed business tactics, but I'm sure it won't. Linux is still here and still free, so I don't really care :-) Speaking of linux, I've installed it on my computer at work, unbeknownst to the manager of course, and there a few things to still get working:

• the mouse (a logitech busmouse)
• X (cirrus5446, freezes up when I run X)

A few signs you know that the world is just fscked...

In Seattle (I think), a couple was taken into custody for the deaths (murder) of their 5(?) children in a house fire. They told police that the children were playing with matches, but police found that the fire had been set with gasoline. They had burned down the house to collect the insurance. Oh, and murdered their own children as well. Gads, it's horrible.

So this is what I get for watching the news.... I think I'll go back to being blissfully ignorant :-)

On a totally unrelated note on violence.... Quake2 multiplayer is just awsome! I was playing last night with some guys (Action, BAWD, Spawn, Hemlock, Heml0ck and some others). We decided after a bit to go teams, guys against girls. So I assumed the persona of the amazingly designed female quakeplayer, wearing stylish jungle fatigues. After a dissapointing start (I sucked), us girls started kicking some serious male ass. After a couple maps, we were fully in our grove, and in a 4/5 or 5/4 team, we were in at least the first 2 spots, a quite a bit of the time we were all on top. Shit... should have taken a screen shot :)

Quake 2 Weapons Balance

Now, each weapon has it's advantages and disadvantages in a DM.

Pistol

Advantages: never runs out of ammo, and you always have it.
Disadvantages: not much damage, slow (but not horrible) firing rate

Shotgun

Advantages: from close up can cause some damage
Disadvantages: pretty useless from a distance, slow reload rate

Super Shotgun

Advantages: longer range of damage than the shotgun, lots of damage from short range
Disadvantages: Takes a while to reload, eats up the ammo, still pretty useless for long range

Uzi

Advantages: high rate of fire, adequate damage, works over long range. Many a time last night I'd circle strafe around someone with the railgun, just popping them with the uzi and not taking a hit myself
Disadvantages: Medium damage, you take a while to waste someone with a lot of health or armour.
Note: this is the gun I carry around while I'm prowling around a level. It's very fast to fire (no spin up like the chaingun or hyperblaster), and does enough damage to be a sensible one to carry around all the time

Chaingun

Ahh... memories of Doom/Doom2....
Advantages: Destruction of amazing proportions. Just blast someone with this, let it spin up to full speed and watch them gib. To say that the rate of fire with this weapon is high is an understatement. You can also fire in short bursts, but in a DM I tend to prefer to just keep the trigger down and keep a bead on the other guy.
Disadvantages: Well, at such a high rate of fire your ammo supply dwindles rapidly. Also, if you fire a long burst, it takes time to get up to the full rate of fire, and then it will spin-down when you stop firing or run out of ammo (the latter being the more common problem :-)

Grenade Launcher

Advantages: A little slower rate of fire than I would have liked. It seems that it's not as easy to fill a hallway with grenades while running backwards away from someone like you could in Quake. Still a good weapon though. Grenades will explode on impact if they meet with another player, so getting one in the face when you open a door will definately do bad things. These have a lot of power behind them, and if you are not armoured up it'll most likely send you down to the mat.
Disadvantages: This is bad for a close encounter-type-circle-strafing-fight. The medium rate of fire and fact that grenades bounce and roll make it more likely that you'll miss, waste a grenade, or walk on the grenade yourself. Sniping with the grenade launcher is not a good idea because unless you can hit them first time (square on the top of the head hehehehe).

Rocket Launcher

The old king of quake weapons...
Advantages: Destructive, explosive, deadly. 'nuff said :-)
Disadvantages: id has slowed down the rate of fire and the damage this weapon causes, making it not the most desirable weapon. If you have time to set up for a shot, then it's great, but because of the slow reload rate, getting into a close corners fight with this is not recommended.

Hyper Blaster

Advantages: Like the chain gun, this delivers a high rate of fire, lots of destruction (especially to those without armour), and some really cool graphics when it's shots hit the floor/walls. If you don't fire long bursts, there is no spin-up/spin-down to worry about.
Disadvantages: There is no spin-up time, but after you've stopped firing, the gun will spin-down, causing a possibly deadly pause in your firing. Also, I have a feeling that the hyper blaster's damage is more due to it's rate of fire than actual damage per shot. But if you don't have armour, you'll see nothing more than some cool yellow/orange/red streaks and then a sideways view of the floor.

Rail Gun

Advantages: Power. Hit someone with this and they are dead. Period. Gibs. Clip them and their health is down so low that they will not want to jump any distance for fear of losing that last bit of health.
Disadvantages: Slooooow rate of fire. This is not a "blast around the room" weapon like the rocket launcher was. If you miss someone, there is no explosion, so you have to be presise. This works over long distances though, so it is a great sniper weapon (as was shown to me in the warehouse level last night).
I'd almost say that this will be the "new rocket launcher," except that all you really have to do is circle-strafe an opponent and blast at them with the uzi or hyper-blaster and they'll go down fast.

BFG10K

Advantages: clear the room, fast, gooily, and greenly. Also a very cool firing animation.
Disadvantages: Slow rate of fire. It takes something like ten seconds to fire. If you can sneak in though.... :-)

Comments can be addressed to me (BOFH will deathmatching).

12/10/97

Well, Quake2 is out. What the hell did id think? This is the middle of exams!?!? If I fail anything I put the blame squarely on them!

Uhmm....

Erhm.....

Well, back to exam hell.

12/06/97

2:21am

Just got back in, and since it's so late, and tomorrow is Saturday, why the heck can't I stay up a little longer? The Christmas party at work was pretty fun, there was a casino thing happening, with blackjack, roulette and some other games, food, drinks, hell we even danced a little at the end. After I went over to esoBOFH's place and was drooling over his cable modem, and the amount of space he has...

Learnt a valuble lesson while doing work on my new homepage, regarding Netscape and putting images right togeather. You have to use tables, or else there are gaps in between the images. And, as I found out after much time banging my head against a wall, this:

<TR>

<TD><IMG SRC="left.jpg">
</TD>
<TD><IMG SRC="right.jpg">
</TD>

Will, in netscape leave spaces between the left and right images. This won't however:

<TR>

<TD><IMG SRC="left.jpg"></TD>
<TD><IMG SRC="right.jpg"></TD>

The only difference being of course, that the closing </TD> tag is on the same line as the <IMG> tag. I guess Netscape interpretes the return at the end of the line as a space, and displays it accordingly. IE doesn't have this problem. Anyway, there's an HTML lesson for today.

Some cool links I found today at work:

http://www.empirenet.com/~dljones/index.html - A site dedicated to the number 42, what could be better?

http://www.nicom.com/~jdempsey/funnystuff/index.html - Some funny links from a homepage linked from the #linuxos page. Go to http://www.nicom.com/~jdempsey for his "base" homepage.

My kitten fell into the bath today. After working his way from the side, over the faucet, to the corner, then from the corner working the front half of his body over toward the soap dish thingy.... well, halfway through this delicate manouver, his rear right paw, being used to support and balance off the faucet, came off. He almost stuck it, but ended up with the back end of him in the water, quite surprised, and tearing out of the tub. Very funny to watch :-) but I didn't get the impression he was to amused.

1 exam done, 3 to go, and 2 projects to go. So much for time or those "weekend" things for the next couple weeks....

Countdown to Quake2 supposed to be in stores: 3 days.

Hours of sleep I'd like to get, starting now: lots.

Night all, see you in:

• 5 hours if my kitten is indeed hellspawn
• 12 hours if he's nice and lets me sleep in

12/03/97

Awk! Classes are over, but exams begin right away! Wish me luck...

Random cool Linux site:

The #LinuxOS Homepage

Very cool page, I like the Leading the Resistance title. Good propaganda, and some interesting things, like that MS's NT for the alpha is only 32bit, while Linux is (of course) full 64bit code. Take a gander anyway.

12/02/97

Quake2 went gold yesturday... oh god I'm all hot and bothered now...

Well, it's down to a term paper (due on the 19th) and an AI project (due next week). Oh, and those pesky little "final" things, who who cares about those????

God help me I feel slightly relaxed today... I wonder what is wrong with me!?

Later...

Just got back from seeing Starship Troopers (again). I like it! And since seeing it, and the movie Dragonheart, I'm now also obsessed with Dina Meyer, the fiery redhead from both movies...

Pause for a moment of contemplation...

Ok, I'm back now :-) Anyway, a studying I will be....

12/01/97

Merry... uhmm.... December. I hate stores that advertise Christmas starting in October... or even November.

Anyway, an amazing thing has happened... my Productions Operations Management (snooze) class's HW is done). This is the stuff I normally am up till 1 or 2 am doing the night before it was due, but amazingly enough it's done! Normally at this time I'd be sitting down and relaxing by doing my...

• Term paper
• AI final project
• POM homework
• ... oh yea, and studying for the 4 finals I have

BUT! The homework is done! Amazing, yes, I know. So I'll be celebrating by going out for guiness with some geek friends. Well, until I have to come back and work more on my Network Security term paper.

Finally got an idea in my head for a HP design that is feasable with my limited graphics talent. Just wish I had time to boot into Linux to play with the GIMP.

The #CGFH web page is up BTW, have a look...

Ah well, off to do dishes and play with my phycho kitten.

11/28/97

Ok, lotsa stuff for my avid readers. My term paper is going slowly, but at least the draft that is due at the end of the month is going to be done enough to pass as a draft. That and calculus.... and my AI project. Bleah!

Got a call back re my job application at BCTel tech support, asking for my SIN. That is a good sign I think, but still no definite word. Ah well... the place is so unionized (outside the tech support department), that there is now a grievance filed by the union because someone moved a modem from one computer to another without calling a hardware tech/union person!!! My god, I mean that is so stupid it's not funny. Course, for 2x the $ I'll deal with it :-)

#CGFH

[17:59] *** W (cservice@undernet.org) has joined #cgfh
[18:00] *** Uworld.undernet.org sets mode: +o W
-> *w* access #cgfh
[18:01] -W- USER: Arcterex (*!*blah@*.blah.ca) ACCESS: 500 LMPU

I also was working on a #cgfh web page and logo... take a look at my 3dsmax work at http://www.northco.net/alan/cgfh

A full page will be up (maybe) later tonight.

Garth

12:45am Ok, so it's technically tomorrow, but who cares. My review of Sevens is done. Please read, enjoy, take advice, or ignore me. I worked for a while on this so I hope you get something out of it. Of course, none of the people I know who actually read this listen to country, but *shrug*.

Oh, got my car back too, with the door, window and lock fixed. My trunk release was also disconnected, so you now need either a key to get to my cd-changer or to bash the shit out of my trunk. Hell, living here both are plausable :-)

Last thing before I turn in, a very cool (3dfx) game demo was released. Here is the demo, Graphic Simulations put it out and PCME has a review of it (somewhere).

11/27/97

Dilbert fans rejoice! The Real Life&tm; suits are just as real as those in the strip: http://www.sjmercury.com/dilbert

Things I'm proud to say I've learned in the last little while:

• The ability to drink coffee black
• I can live quite comfortably on 4 hours of sleep a night
• Breakfasts that consist of a peice of toast work just fine
• McDonalds lunchs 4 days a week
• Weekend breakfast at 11am, supper at 4 and still not a rack of bones!
• School has taught me to BS with the best of them.
• Term papers done a day before, and still getting good marks
• Assignments started at 10pm the night before they are due and still getting good marks (and an hour or so of sleep too!)

I still have to get my new HP up and done. Well, I have what it should look like in my head, it's just a matter of my ability to create the graphics that will fullfil my vision....

11/25/97

5:30pm

Got my new changer today, luckily it only cost me the deductable :-( Got the new Garth Brooks CD too, it's great. The Hackers soundtrack that I picked up, however, was not. Maybe I just don't remember the movie enough, but it seems that none of the music that was in the movie is there, and the songs (if you can call them that) are horrid! Maybe it's just me, but it sounds (and I'm being nice here), like techno-acid-funk-metal, but far worse. Oh well, it was basically a free CD, so I'll maybe use it as a birthday present to someone I don't like.

Tips to protect your car from break-ins

1. If your radio has a faceplace, always take it with you
2. Leave nothing of value inside the car
3. Leave the glovebox open, so they can see that you didn't just put the faceplace in there
4. If you have an trunk release button in the cab, lock it.
5. If you can't lock the trunk release, find some way to disable it, so they can't get into the trunk (where my CD-Changer at least is). Yes, I'll be doing this soon. I hate to lose the convenience, but I also hate to lose the changer (again).

That's all I can think of for now.

I had a ponderance regarding the break in. Last time, they got into the trunk, but left the changer. This time, they had a screwdriver and nicely unscrewed it. Coincidence? I think not. I think I'll weld the smegging thing to the side of the inside of the trunk, or at least mount some deadly device near it. Maybe a shotgun mounted inside the trunk, that'll go off if you don't hit a secret switch. Oh well, I can dream can't I?

1:20am

Whohooooo! Finished another assignment 7 hours before it was due! And since I have no breakfast stuff I get to sleep in a little later :-) Not that I could of course, as I've been sucking down the coke for the last few hours, and furiously slashing away at this stupid "Production Operations Management" BS. To those of you who are POM, I appolagize, but I'm a coder, a hacker, a geek, not a business person.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to bed...

11/24/97

Later

Apparently ICBC (scum sucking pigs) don't cover CDs. They are considered "Personal Property," and this makes them somehow different from the other things that were stolen. So now I'm looking for a small island with no people or cars to move to. :-)

Warning, Rant ahead.

(Those of you who frequent these pages know what that means....)

Had a party last night, had a lot of people over, drank much Guiness (nector of the gods!), etc. Was out till 2am because I had to take people home to Vancouver, so that 4 hours of sleep I got was at least solid :-)

But! 1:30pm, just sitting around waiting to go out and pick people up for the party, I get a knock on my door. "Are you in stall 145? Did you get broken into last night?" I ran down to check, and sure enough.... They (the sniveling bastards who deserve to be raped and then beated with a baseball bat and no lubricant), popped the passenger side lock, rifled through the car, took my lighter-plugging-in flashlight, a mix tape that was sitting on the floor (leaving the box of tapes that was next to it). They then popped the trunk and removed my nice, almost new 6 CD changer.

And the 6 CD's in it (including a birthday present).

The missed the two network cards and brand new CD sitting in the trunk too, but I think that was because it was hidden a bit. And I can't seem to find the receipt for the changer now, so ICBC will screw me with the baseball bat, I'm sure.

11/21/97

Ok, this is a rough draft of an assignment I had to do for my Information Technology class. The assignment was to

"In no more than one page, explain to this “client” the need for the implementation of an IT charge back system....If you want, set it up like a movie script, commercial, dialog from a novel....."

So I set it up like a novel :-) Just ignore the BS regarding a charge-back system (whatever that is), and the whole IT thing. Anyway, here it is.

While preparing supper tonight I learned another truth to life:

1. If you buy spahgetti sauce (not because you want to, but because you run out of mom's good stuff), and you don't like it (Ragu, ick), either:

   a) eat it or
   b) throw it out

11/20/97

Hmmm.... mastercard bill due tomorrow. Gotta remember to pay that. Hmmm.... Calculus midterm tomorrow, gotta remember to make sacrafices to the saint of lost causes.

Was playing with 3dstudio-max 2 today. I think I need more RAM....

I had my interview at BCTel a couple of days ago, and it went well. The fact I'm part of Mediasolas got them worried about conflict of interest, but when I explained it's 3 friends who made a company, and we have no work, clients, client base or business sense, they relaxed. I'm quite excited to see if I get this. In fact, I'll be kind of insulted if they don't offer it to me. That 2x pay raise is looking very nice, seeing as I've watched my bank account steadily go down since I moved out a year ago. Bad money management on my part or not enough pay? A little of both I think.

11/17/97

11:19pm

OK, I'm now 22. <pause> what now? :-)

My day went something like this:

• Go to work
• Come home, go to school
• Come home, do homework
• Break for some re-heated lasagna for supper
• Continue doing homework... until now

Pretty sad eh? Well, in between all of that were calls from my parents and friends. Mom also dropped off a cupcake with a candle in it for me in my car at work, which was really cool. Just wish I had noticed it before I sat down (just kidding).

Finally (just now) finished my Operations and Production Management homework. It's a course of absolutely no good to me, with a over-enthusiastic teacher to say the least. It's a 3 hour lecture first thing in the morning, which helps not one bit! Now don't think I've been slacking off, I've been working on it (in 15 min chunks) for about a week now, but the last couple questions had me stumped. Luckily a friend Creations and I worked it out tonight. Got all sorts of other stuff to do too, awk!

Here's to stress at the end of the semester....

Ok, a couple links:

http://www.bluesnews.com, http://www.quake2.com, and http://quake2.stomped.com are my favorite Quake/Quake2 sites.

Homesite 3.0 beta - Allaire is the company that aquired Homesite, my favorite HTML editor. The new version (3.0) is out in a time expiry form. Looks good though (using it now). Why why why did you change the F3 key to the F4 ????? It's got some really cool new features though, even though you have to jump through all sorts of hoops to download it. Maybe the allaire homepage would be a better link to follow.

A couple of comments. HS3 seems to have a problem with me ALT-TABbing back to another window. It puts that window in the foreground, then sticks itself back in the foreground and then takes focus away from all windows, making it hard to switch by keyboard to anything. The editor has slowed down (a tiny bit) with a couple of (IMHO) useless features. You can now click on a tag, and after a predetermined amount of time, a hint will pop up with all options for that tag. Maybe some people use it though. The remote access rocks though. It used to be "open from web" but now you just choose from a list of ftp servers (you put them in), and a listing of files shows up and you can use them just like local files, seamlessly. Very nice. Makes doing this a lot easier, no more need to open up an ftp client after I'm finished writing to upload it, now I just hit CTRL-S.

These links are all interconnected:
http://www.ritual.com/news.shtml - sCary's shuga shack, a Quake site. The news is the same as you get on any of the above Quake sites, but the good stuff is all in the left hand frame under the old news link.
The funniest is (IMHO, as an IRC-type person), quotes and stories, the quotes in particular. However, following closely behind is Stuff that sucks, Words of Wisdom, and Reasons to live.
3 cheers for sCary.

Last but not least is this hilarious story writen by Rob Malda of http://slashdot.org. It's called Nerds, Unix and Virtual Parenting.

*yawn*

Class first thing, and in 4 minutes the day commemorating my birth 22 years ago will be over. Night folks!

1:35am

Happy Birthday to me....

Just got back from UBC. Went to see the movie Men in Black (4th time), and then we watched X-Files (taped, as it was on the same time as the movie). What a night for conspiricy! The X-Files was all about the forming of "The Lone Gunmen". Seems they were the ones who turned Mulder into the weirdo he is today.

On a more somber note.... The drive to UBC is an hour and a bit, and it leaves a lot of time to think. I came up with these ponderances. In a relationship, there are three very important points. When you meet your Significant Other (SO), when you fall in love (first kiss, or whenever the relationship goes from friends to something more), and when the relationship ends. In all three of my serious relationships, I remember each of these three moments crystal-clear. Should I? Should you? I think that each and every relationship we have makes us, helps us grow in someway. Is remembering old loves a good thing, something to hold onto and smile about sometime, or is it emotional baggage that will screw up your next relationship? Maybe a little of both? a compramise so to speak. Some happy median between totally forgetting your past and holding it in the foreground.

Another ponderance: Fate. Scary word huh? Who knows if fate rules our relationships, or god, or God, or ka or whatever. But if you subscribe to the "one person for me," theory, ever think that maybe, just maybe, your meeting with that person never happened because s/he looked over to your table and you were picking your nose? or scratching, or blowing bubbles in your pop?

Kinda scary huh?

On that note, I leave you faithful reader, as I go for my 4 hours sleep...

11/14/97

Well, I just got back from seeing The Devil's Advocate, starring Keanu Reeves and Al Pachino. This is my review of the movie.

Now don't get me wrong, it is an excellent movie, with a good plot, and well played characters, and all that shit, but it's just... well, disturbing. I can't say exactly why it is disturbing without giving away the plot, but I'll do what I can.

The movie starts off normally enough, with a happy happy joy joy couple, and Keanu is Kevin Lomax, a lawer with less than a totally clean moral slate. About halfway through the movie things start go go bad... his wife starts seeing things, he starts seeing things, the family starts to be torn apart, things start going strange at the office, his wife needs him and he doesn't help her, the big boss (Al Pachino) starts... well not lying, but you know he knows more than he's telling. There is a total lack of violence in the movie, sort of, except when it does come, it comes FULL BORE. It slaps you in the side of the head... with a baseball bat. The violence is well timed and impactfull.

There is not much nudity/sex, but a little, and some revealing shots (and yes ladies, you do get to see keanu's butt). Not the kind of nudity to enjoy though, as again, a hint of supernaturalness, and some weirdness that just leaves you going "what the hell just happened!?!?!?!?!"

So now things are starting to fall apart. Things get wierder and weirder, until the confrontation between Kevin and the devil (played by Al). The climax of the confrontation is the kind that makes you say "whoh! what just happened?" And you are sad in a way that things endded up the way they did, but still happy.

Then something happens.

And you are happy again, like the movie just turned into The Sound of Music, or a similar feel good movie. And then the final scene, the one that dissolves into the credits just freaks you right the hell out.

Ok, now I need a stiff drink. No seriously, I don't get freaked out at movies, not at all. I can easily see a gory/scary/dramatic movie and not have a hair out of place, and my heart is beating the same speed on the way out as on the way in. This movie.... this movie disturbed me.

Again, it's an excellent movie, and I recommend it, but only to the strong of heart, and those who enjoy getting their mind dragged left then right then left again, then suddenly straight up. Not a great review I guess, but it's something to pass the time, as I won't be getting to bed anytime soon :-)

In other news.... started redoing the homepage today, or at least drafting it out. I think it'll be good :-)

11/11/97

Happy remembrance day folks, take a sec to think about all that we have, and the reasons we have that, and honor those who died for what we have today. Kinda puts things in perspective no?

I was over at a friends and she asked me to fix her computer. I did some things on it and then (to test the wordprocesser), wrote whatever came to my head. The results are below.

11/07/97

Something I like, from Microserfs by Douglas Coupland:

"It starts out young - you try not to be different just to survive - you try to be just like everyone else - anonymity becomes reflexive - and then one day you wake up and you've become all those other people - the others - the something you arne't. And you wonder if you can ever be what it is you really are. Or you wonder if it's too late to find out."

Well, every once and a while you feel like life has beaten you down. Then sometimes, just sometimes, it lets you up, wipes you off and says "you done good, now go have some fun!"

This is not one of those times.

So here is my last bit of life:

• The guy who I am renting a parking space from gave it to someone else without telling me, as I "wasn't paying." He never complained to me. When I said I had been paying his wife when we met in the garage or hall he informed me they had been broken up for 4 months or so... then apologized profusely.
• Calculus quiz. I'll say no more on that.
• New clutch needed. So much for financial stability.
• Much homework/assignments coming up. Finals not far away eeeeeeeek!
• Broke up with my girlfriend. This is not a big surprise really, I saw it coming. She has things to deal with, and I suppose I'm moving on with my life. Want to see an irony? Look here and look for the last entry (11/3/96). Ironic in a "oh look I chopped of my other finger!" type way.

Ah well, such is life. I suppose that my birthday is coming up is something good. 22 huh? Well I feel older you know. But I'm glad I maintain a maturity level of < 17 or so :-)

10/23/97

I learned 2 cosmic truths this morning:

• There is nothing cuter than a kitten waking up snuggled in a sock drawer
• There is nothing uglier than a man in the process of removing a goatee

10/22/97

Well, I had my last midterm today. It went... ok. It was in Information Technology (ZZzzzz....). But it went ok. After the test was over a bunch of people just hung out and chatted, and we actually spent more time doing that then writing the test.

The important part of this is that it was the last midterm. The goat is going tomorrow morning (if I have the strength for it). I'm sure one undisclosed person (who, when asked if she liked it said, "Well, I don't hate it..."):-)

An undisclosed friend of mine, working at an undisclosed climbing gym has been letting me climb for free when she is working (the last 2 nights).... Road to fitness here I come! It's kind of depressing actually. I could at one time climb 5.11c (TR), now I get pumped just going around the gym. But I suppose you have to expect that the first time back. Ah well, soon I'll get a membership there, and not have to go at 8pm or later tuesday to friday. Course, I need money first, I had to cash in a bond to pay off my M/C. But not it's all uphill (assuming no more terrible things happen money-wise).

End Alan's financial situation :)

What else... well, I'm working on a new poem and web page to go with it, and am actually thinking about the design for the new page. And a Milla page! Yay! She's a babe, my new obsession, and exactly one month younger than me. Cosmic or what? I have a couple of backgrounds made up with the various women of my sad and pathetic obsessions.

Oh yea, Chips & Dips has moved to http://slashdot.org.

My parents are in Hawaii (lucky buggers), so if they see this, I hope you're having fun. Other that that... oh yea, the new guy at work is a Pepsi drinking, Netscape loving guy. We'll get him onto Coke (liquid happiness).