"Boobies never hurt anyone"
Uh oh. "A dozen antiwar activists from Mendocino County took their tops off in San Francisco's Union Square shopping district Thursday..."?
Hmm... Mary Bull strikes again?
» SF Chronicle article...
Cool story by Paco
I had no idea
Paco wrote
short stories. He used to work here, as a designer, much like me (although for News.com, not Download.com, so we rarely talked). But I passed him in the hall two days ago and he said he's leaving this week and asked me if I ever take on freelance work, as he might want to pass along work to me. When he later emailed his post-CNET contact info, I checked out his personal website. He's pretty damn talented. Darn it, why do I have to find out these things
after people leave?
Acterra closes Schools Group
Dear friends,
I was extremely disappointed but not at all surprised to learn today that the board of directors of Acterra has voted to end the High Schools Group program.
The environmental movement is faltering and the problems we face won't be resolved tomorrow, or next year, or even ten years from now. Today we must take a long view. The future depends on our youth. We have to invest now in programs that will make future environmental leaders out of today's ten- and fifteen-year-olds.
Bay Area Action once had one of the country's most
innovative and effective programs for teens, an age group for which there's almost no environmental education.
In 15 years the Schools Group helped enact legislation, brought public pressure to bear on polluters, educated the public on myriad issues, and -- most important of all -- provided hundreds of teens with
invaluable leadership training of a sort that they couldn't receive anywhere else.
During the time when Bay Area Action (BAA) and the Peninsula Conservation Center Foundation (PCCF) were
discussing the possibility of merging in 1999 and 2000, the board and members identified the Schools Group as a "core competency" and the program was retained because it was something the organization did well and that no one else did at all. We filled a void.
Now, sadly, Acterra's board has turned its back on youth. No one fills the void anymore.
Acterra has consistently moved away from nearly all the goals that were identified as important by the members and stakeholders during the time of the 1999-2000 merger talks. During that time, several surveys and meetings of members and stakeholders identified several core characteristics in BAA that were lacking in the (I shall be blunt) aging PCCF. People described BAA with terms such as "action-oriented," "effective," "youthful energy," and "hands-on involvement." Indeed, it was the PCCF's board of directors that approached BAA with the merger idea; it was a "friendly takeover."
At the time, those in the know sometimes described the PCC as the Peninsula Conversation Center; a place where a lot of issues got talked about but not much got done. As the merger talks between BAA and PCCF grew serious, many people expressed fear that BAA would lose its action-oriented edge and be in danger of taking on some of the less flattering characteristics of the older organization (not that BAA was perfect either).
Today, five years after the merger, it is with a heavy heart that I must confess that Acterra has become the thing that we feared most.
Over time, Acterra has shut down many of the programs that were considered the most vital and impactful (Urban Agriculture, Schools Group, Youth Environmental Action, and Bay Area Earth Day, to name a few).
Since Acterra is not an organization of the type that affords its members a vote in its direction, I have elected to vote in the only way I can: I will not renew my membership and choose to no longer support the organization I once loved dearly.
with deepest regret,
Mark Bult
PS> As some of you undoubtedly know, I left Acterra a year ago. Even then I saw the early signs that the Schools Group would probably not last much longer. Unfortunately, the forces aligned in this direction were more powerful than myself and the few remaining board members who still believed strongly in the Schools Group (yes, there were still one or two).
Saturday, June 18 -- St. Louis
South GrandVelma started my tour of St. Louis in
South Grand, which happens to be the gay neighborhood (no wisecracks), where we walked around and I marveled at all the brick buildings. So much brick everywhere! I was in heaven. I love old brick buildings, and so far this place was putting even
Boston to shame.
We had Thai at a pretty good place for lunch; the food was too hot for the redhead, however. I browsed the
Riverfront Times, which is the equivalent of the
SF Weekly.
Cherokee StreetWe headed over to Cherokee Street, which is an old neighborhood (they're all old!) with a lot of antique shops, and we took pictures of cool old stuff, and kittens. There were puppies and kittens. Yes. Puppies and kittens.
As we walked along, protruding high above all the buildings in the not-too-far-off distance was this high brick tower with "LEMP" pained on it in letters that must've been at least a story tall. We kept musing about what it might be, especially because we kept passing streets and buildings and businesses with the word (?) lemp in their names.
Turns out it was the site of the Lemp Brewery (long closed, sadly). Pretty cool lookin' old factory, though. The Busch brewery (still open, sadly) happens to be about three blocks away, which we discovered when we kept walking.
Layfayette SquareWe needed some fuel (read: caffeine and sugar) by this time, so we found a new and quite deserted caf� in Layfayette Square, an area Velma wanted to show me.
The ArchYou can't do St. Louis without going up in
the Arch. Well, you can actually. And I was quite prepared to, since I'm not usually one who has a burning desire to stand in long lines amongst the great throngs of those rather strange life forms known as tourists. But my dad had told me he'd seen some snazzy documentaries on TV about the
building and engineering of the big upside-down U, plus Velma had told me that it was actually pretty cool to go up in, so we decided what the heck.
It really was pretty cool. Once I got past the security, that is. Since it's part of a federal park, and, I suppose, a tasty target for terrorists, there are now queues and metal detectors. As luck would have it, we ran into the guard with the inferiority complex at being the equivalent of a park ranger when he most assuredly would've preferred to have passed the police academy entrance exam on the third attempt.
So, after the slight delay and mild frustration imposed by the small man with the big arms, we paid our $20 and killed a little time in the underground museum before our tour's time, and then crowded into the little white pods to head 630 into the air in the huge metal Arch, or, as I like to refer to it, the half-a-McDonalds-logo.
The view is pretty cool (those little white specks in the photo above are people). On one side you're looking out over all of St. Louis, and on the other side's the river and Illinois on the other side. We actually spent something like 45 minutes up there. At one point a group of people laid down on the grass way down below, spelling out "Hi" to the people up in the Arch.
The LandingAfterward we walked over to
the Landing, which is a small district across the street from the park where the Arch is located, and had dinner and rested our feet. It'd been a long day so far, and I wasn't even sure if I was going to be up for the City Museum, which I'd been looking forward to.
[More tomorrow...]
Head like a rainbow
Ynnej's friends demanded photoze of the slackstress-of-many-hair-colors, and here they are.
May 2000: Everyone agreed that the red looked pretty cool. Four seconds after this photo she flashed everyone. That's our (crazy) Jenny.
December 2000: Green! Just in time for xmas shopping. Or xmas protesting. Whatev.
December 2000: Heh. I just threw this one in cuz she looks funny. Ain't I sweet? The green started washing out pretty quick.
March 2001: Is it blonde or purple? Ynnej in the middle of dyeing her hair.
May 2001: Awww. Ain't she cuuute? The purple actually came out pretty decent.
May 2001: wtf? Is she checking her breath?
June 2001: Dreads (sorta). You think this pic's embarassing? You should see some of the other ones.
Feelin' good
Feelin' good tonight because I gots a nice raise today. It'll make living in the Bay Area a little easier. Maybe I'll even be able to pay my dad back the small loan I had to take earlier this year. 'Course, knowing my luck it'll bump me into another tax bracket and my pals at the IRS will take most of it away to spend on bombs and pensions for Halliburton executives.
Best part (other than the actual money, of course) was the fact that my boss said I was getting the raise due to my "radness." :D
This is why I like the people I work with.
[Has a beer to celebrate. Actually, a "premium malt beverage" `,: ' Go figger.]
Chromasia
This guy's good. Really good.
On MO coffee
Jen E. asked how the coffee was in Missouri, so here are my impressions.
Long-haired Ynnej
Photo post for
Ynnej, whose
friends wanted to see more photoze. Sorry, but I don't have any other hair colors on my laptop. But maybe later this week I'll have a chance to go through the archives at home and post a shot of the purple-headed Ynnej.
Blast from the future
"...The Middle West region, previously known for its scenic beauty and quaint small-city life, is in a state of anarchy," Rothman said. "Citizens suffer under the thumb of regional warlords, many of whom use mass slaughter and starvation as a means of controlling the population and suppressing nomadic tribes of Presbyterian extremists..."
From
the Onion, June 2056.
And they say everything in Texas is big!
Photo of the Day | Big Bottle, Little Arch | June 25, 2005 | St. Louis, MO
This monstrous bottle of
Vess Lemon Lime soda was spotted in downtown St. Louis next to the highway. It made even the Arch look small ;)
Now I kinda wish I had made
Velmer stop the car earlier that day so I could've snapped the huge Conoco sign that was as big as a hot air balloon, but oh well.
Mr. Rogers is dirty
"...Just move your body slowly like that. Like there's a wave going the whole way through your body? Yeah. Then make it come back, huh? Yeah. See? That's really nice..."
Mr. Rogers is dirty.
Privacy: Know your browser or get phished
A newly reported JavaScript vulnerability in nearly all browsers could allow
Black Hats to redirect you to a trusted site, then pop up a look-alike window over it where they could purloin your personal info.
"...the latest versions of
Internet Explorer,
Internet Explorer for Mac,
Safari,
iCab,
Mozilla,
Mozilla Firefox and
Camino are all vulnerable.
Opera 7 and 8 are affected, but not 8.01, according to Opera... To take advantage of the flaw, a cybercriminal would have to direct a Web user from a malicious site to a genuine, trusted site such as an online bank, in a new browser window. The malicious site would then open a JavaScript dialog box in front of the trusted Web site, and a user might then be fooled into sending personal information back to the malicious site."
A few tips:1) Always make sure the location or address bar (the thing at the top with the "https://www.whatever..." web address in it) has a web address (URL) you are
positive you recognize. For example,
https://www.ebay.com/myaccount/ is probably the correct website for accessing your eBay account, but the address
https://www.ebay.ws/myaccount/ looks deceptively similar, but could be a scammer.
2) Make sure that the above begins with "
https://" -- it's the '
s' that's important; it stands for secure.
3) Always make sure you see
your browser's lock icon (or whatever icon yours uses) somewhere in the browser chrome; usually down at the bottom somewhere. That also means it's a secure connection.
These alone will not protect you from scammers and phishers. You have to learn how to use your browser and learns its vulnerabilities, and be ever vigilant on the Net, whether clicking on a link in your email or typing in an address blind in your browser.
� Read the CNET News.com article...
Big Boy says hi
Photo of the Day | Mark and the Boy | June 19, 2005 | St. Louis, MO
I came across Bob's Big Boy here in the
City Museum, which is The Awesomese Place Evah. Period. I mean, like Dr. Suess cool. More photos later.
Soooo much to do before I leave town
I had this week-long vacation planned for months, and it was going to happen after we launched the redesign of Download.com. However, several things at work meant that the planned launch date for the redesign got moved back. Now my vacation falls right smack in the middle of production.
So, I've been stressed for the past two weeks and cranking out tons of page designs, not to mention tons of changes to said designs. I think I've designed as many web pages in the past two months as I did in the previous two years. And they're not simple ones. They're very complicated!
When I'll be goneI'm flying out to Missouri on Friday afternoon, June 17, and I'll be back Sunday, June 26. If you need to reach me while I'm away, email me. I won't be checking my home voicemail while I'm on vacation. My mobile may or may not be working while I'm away (having problems).
I'll be away on my birthday (thanks for the card,
Holly!), but if you insist on sharing how much you treasure our friendship, I'll gladly accept large sums of cash in the mail, or any item on my
Amazon Wish List, or, y'know, just a hello in the comments of my blog ; )
If anyone desires a postcard from middle-America, let me know and I'll send you one. Even if I don't know you. Just send me your address if I don't have it...
The many faces of Velma
My latest little web project is a fairly simple, one-page photo gallery which I created as a surprise for
Velma's birthday, which is today (happy birthday, V!).
She's very hard to buy gifts for. She eschews material things, so I have to be creative when it comes to gifts. To top it off, she's about 1,000 miles that-a-way right now, which makes celebrating her birthday in person out of the question. At least until Friday night when I arrive in Missourri.
So I came up with this little gallery idea. Interestingly, it's almost becoming a tradition for me to do something for her website. Last year I turned her static website -- which I never had time to update for her -- into a
Blogger-powered site, so she can update it herself whenever she wants.
Velma's been taking self-portraits for years, so it makes for a wonderfully interesting album of pictures over time. It really shows a lot of faces of that cute redhead Ilike to hang out with.
"She's very chameleon-like," said
Jason when I showed it to him.
I want to start doing a better job of keeping notes on how much time it takes to make these sorts of side projects (I rarely bother to keep track when it's not a paid job and I'm therefore not billing someone), and I thought aspiring web designers might find my description of the process useful, so here's a brief synopsis of how I put it together.
Scanning: 2.5 hours
On Monday night, after work, I slid my portable Canon scanner, which I like a lot, into my backpack with my laptop and headed over to a nearby caf�, and sat down with a large mocha to scan 36 photos. I had borrowed the pictures several months ago from Velma, telling her I'd like to scan them at some point when I had time. Since she knows me so well, she probably thought it would happen about the time hell froze over. Placing 4 pictures on the scanner at a time, careful to keep them in order, I scanned them all at high resolution (600 dpi at 1:1), knowing that I might want to use them in larger versions at some future point. However, the versions for this project would be sampled down to 400 x 300 pixels.
Design & imaging: �6 hours
I spent Tuesday, Wednesday, and a part of Thursday night designing the template in Photoshop, then imaging all the scans. The design is based on Velma's blog template, which is a variation on a standard Blogger template that I had tweaked the colors and spacing on until I liked it better. The high res photos had to be separated (from 4 to 1), cropped, and then laboriously color-corrected (some of the prints had horrible color casts). Then there was retouching, sharpening, and placing all 36 images into the template I'd designed. Then I had to make smaller versions for the tiny thumbnails.
HTML & CSS: �4 hours
I built the page and the CSS in Dreamweaver on Thursday and Friday nights. I decided to do most of the HTML without nesting lots of tables, although I did use one table to contain everything. But CSS positioning is used to place all the images and the text. The paper background and the white photo border and black photo corners are actually one image, and the 300 x 400 pixel photo in the middle actually floats on top. When you click the thumbnails, a JavaScript loads a new image (pre-loading all 36 photos would have made a slow-loading page). All the photos are JPEGs (naturally) saved at 55% quality using Photoshop CS's standard Save for Web function. Each is about 35KB on average, although they vary from 24KB to 44KB or so.
Fixes for Internet Explorer XP Professional: 2.5 hours
Of course, even after Jason used his PC to preview the page for me and confirmed that it looked fine in IE, Firefox, and even Opera, I checked it at work on XP Professional and all the spacing was off. So I had to redo all the CSS, which then somehow inexplicably broke the JavaScript (which I hadn't actually touched, go figure). So I fixed it best I can... Of course, it works fine in everything else. Bloody Microsoft. Seems the JavaScript doesn't want to reliably load the new photos every time. It works sporadically, which is infuriating. I'd be willing to bet good money that it's related to Microshite's unreliable implementation of JavaScript and its use of the competing Jscript language.
Overall time spent: approx. 15 hours
» Check out the gallery...
"Cleaner coal." Um, yeah.
Here's some greenwashing -- sorry, I mean "commercials" -- from the company that brings us dirty energy and weapons contracts. And, um, NBC.
All I have to say is, what brilliant ad agency came up with the idea of selling coal-powered energy using classic "sex sells" imagery?
I'd like the double meat pizza, please
Believe it. The world portrayed in
this video is not far off.
Update on the Apple iWaste campaign
From the
Computer TakeBack Campaign:
"Last Friday, Steve Jobs took a positive step by deciding to offer free recycling for iPods at the Apple stores. Finally, after calling the Computer TakeBack Campaign's concerns 'bullshit,' Jobs has moved one step closer to the Campaign's call for Apple to accept responsibility for its iWaste. Recycling iPods at Apple stores is a great thing -- but Jobs should go further than just the iPods. Apple's obsolete computers like Mac Classics contain lead and other highly toxic materials that will be dumped into our air, land and water. Apple should accept all Apple products at its retail stores. Jobs should also offer free recycling to the hundreds of thousands of Apple users who don't live near Apple stores. We want Jobs to be the hero he can be -- and offer free and convenient recycling for all of Apple's obsolete products."
» Tell Steve Jobs: Don't Be A Mini-Player, Take Back All Your Toxic Trash
Mission Lights
Photo of the Day | Mission Lights | December 8, 2004
What did I do to deserve this?
It's only 10am and already Microsoft Entourage has frozen my entire system and Firefox has completely fucked itself on not one but
both computers on my desk. To top it off, Force Quit has hung. How do you force quit Force Quit?!
By using Terminal, of course. How do you find out what the command is to force quit using Terminal? Look to the Internet. How do you do that? With Firefox.
What do you do when Firefox is hung on both computers?
Suicide by
Mobius strip!
Things I don't miss one damn bit about working in the nonprofit sector
Okay, at the risk of sounding like I still have sour grapes (well, maybe I do, whattya gonna do about it?), I was thinking last night about my job today in relation to my job a year ago, and this list started coming to me.
So, in no paricular order, things I don't miss one damn bit about working in the nonprofit sector:
- Coworkers who have no idea how to use their computers.
- So-called environmentalists who don't even know the basics of office recycling.
- Aged receptionists who fall asleep at the front desk.
- People making requests for design services by using such laughably antiquated terminology that it's obvious they have absolutely no clue what they're talking about.
- Having to be the in-house tech when it certainly wasn't my job, I wasn't being paid for it, and I had other important work to do.
- Having to use computers that make 386 machines look fast.
- Having to buy my own software and hardware just to get my job done. To the tune of hundreds of dollars a year, usually.
- Having people say thank you but never actually showing you that they meant it. You value what I do? Prove it. Pay me enough to live on.
- Board meetings.
- Constant moaning from certain individuals who dragged everyone around them into a downward spiral of inertia.
- Coworkers who don't listen or remember what you say, no matter how many times you say it.
- Tex's singing.
- Working with an overwhelming majority of people who have absolutely no concept of what you do and its value to the organization.
- Always having 190% more to do than is possible to do in the time and salary alloted for your job. In other words, working at a place that has no idea what it takes to do your job, why it's important, how complicated it is, what sort of resources it takes, etc. ad nauseum.
- Staff meetings.
- Never having a budget for your project. Ever.
- Having to raise your own salary.
- Having to do 17 different jobs.
- Having to update the EcoCalendar every week.
- Having to fix other people's mistakes, even though you've shown them how to do it right about a million times, written an extensive manual, and constantly remind them how to do it the right way.
- Working in a place where it seems any sense of fashion or aesthetic fell into a black hole sometime around 1996.
- Having to try to keep a straight face when someone uses phrases like "You're putting out a real negative energy."
- Equally, trying not to roll my eyes when we sponsored events like sunrise ceremonies.
- The PCC building. Which is an ugly concrete hunk of shit.
Very cool DVD featuring Chris Ware animation
Update: You can still get this DVD (as of Nov 2007)! I found it in
"This American Life"'s online store when I went to donate money to the show. I got it and it's really cool.
Visit their site and scroll down to the
While I'm on the subject, am I the only one who regrets not having put up the $100 or so needed to get a copy of
this awesome collaboration between
"This American Life" and artist
Chris Ware, as a public radio pledge gift?
Labels: art, comics, illustrators, radio, videos
Godless America
I always hated
Julia Sweeney. That's a little strong, I suppose. Maybe I just hated the characters she played on
SNL, which I thought were always terribly unfunny. They included the ambiguously-gendered Pat, who, if the box office take from the movie is any indication, was apparently hated by most people.
I haven't watched SNL in years, in part because of cast members like Sweeney. I guess I blame her a little bit because I lost interest in a show I used to watch every Saturday for years.
I hadn't heard anything about Sweeney in more years than I can remember, and I probably wouldn't have heard anything about her for many more happy years to come if it hadn't been for today's episode of
"This American Life."Now, "This American Life" is my favorite radio program and has been for years. I mentioned it in
a post here back in May of last year, calling it the best show on radio. Which I still believe it is.
But even I must admit that I groaned a little bit when host
Ira Glass said that Julia Sweeney would be doing an excerpt from her one woman show as part of this week's radio program.
But then I perked up when I heard what the episode, titled "Godless America," was about. Ooh, I thought, this should be interesting. From their website:
"At a time when House Majority Leader
Tom Delay calls for enacting a 'Biblical worldview' in government, when Christians are asserting their ideals in the selection of judges, in public school science classes and elsewhere, This American Life spends an hour trying to remember why anyone liked the separation of church and state in the first place. Julia Sweeney, among others, gives a full-throated defense of godlessness. Julia's faith began to crack after reading Biblical passages like the one pictured here, of Abraham about to cut the throat of his beloved son, Isaac..."
Now, the entire program was excellent, as usual, and it got me fired up about the christian (I think I'm going to start de-capitalizing the word from now on, when used in reference to evil factions of the religion) right that wants to do things like amend the Constitution to include wording that proclaims the United States a christian nation.
But I was most surprised by the vignette by Sweeney at the end of the show. It's excerpted from her one-woman show,
"Letting Go of God," which just closed last month in Los Angeles and apparently was getting rave reviews. And from this excerpt, I can see why. She proved thoughtful (and funny in a way that none of her characters on SNL ever were) about an episode of her life in which she began to question her Catholicism. And as she admits, she was truly a believer, practically a poster child for the church.
It's truly an excellent piece of writing, and I hope at some point she publishes it as a book.
You can hear it, and the entire "Godless America" episode, which I highly recommend, on RealAudio in a day or three when "This American Life" puts it on
their website.
One of the president's men
There's been a fair amount of vitriol from conservative talk show hosts and Republican legislators this week defaming
Mark Felt for his "un-American" act of feeding information to
Bob Woodward about the
Watergate break-in. These proclamations are ridiculously ironic coming from the likes of comentator
G. Gordon Liddy, who went to jail for his part in the scandal.
I first saw the film
All the President's Men in 12th grade journalism class, and it made me proud, and it made me want to be a newspaperman. I highly recommend the book as well. My copy is so worn it's held together with rubberbands.
If you don't know much about this tide-turning point in United Sates history, you may want to pick up a copy of
the book or
the movie for yourself. It's a truly fascinating story of intrigue.
Meantime, here's
this week's Washington Post story in which Woodward remembers first meeting Mark Felt, and how their relationship grew over the years.
Barricades
For Willhelm Von Monocleman, who demanded more photos and salve. I'm working on the salve.
Photo of the Day | barricades, Yerba Buena Gardens | February 14, 2005
What are you doing on Labor Day weekend?
Pretty good article in the
Chronicle on Sunday:
"Think Burning Man, and you think of naked revelers, a sprawling impromptu tent city layered with dust, eye-popping art in the middle of the desert, and the torching of a four-story wooden man.
You're right. And wrong.
» Read the rest...
Goblet of Fire
Trailer is out! [WMV or QuickTime]
Donut Day
Dammit. Wouldn't ya know it. Today's
Donut Day, and there's not a single Krispy Kreme in San Francisco.
This one goes to 11
Barrester rawks [QuickTime].
Fun with web stats
Using my stats package I can see the search terms people used on
Google, et al, that resulted in one or more links to my site(s) ending up in their search results. They're pretty interesting. Here's the last week's top 100.
Apparently 2 people were searching for "
hobbit porn" and 2 for "
ynnej". Are these related?
Two people were looking for a "
velma". Two people searched for "
pictures of velma," which of course could be people innocently looking for pictures of the chick from
Scooby Doo. But then 1 person searched for "
velma having sex." Um...yeah... And I don't even want to guess about "
velma space trip".
Also, what's up with "
peeking ass", and "
pictures of salami"?
rank | search term(s) | no. of searches
1. morrissey 10
2. google craigslist 8
3. kurt cobain 8
4. jock sturges 6
5. bodyscapes 5
6. lace curtains 4
7. beauty gallery 4
8. air america itunes 4
9. pearl jam 4
10. enews 3
11. teengirl 2
12. inbed 2
13. velma 2
14. hobbit porn 2
15. ynnej 2
16. eddie vedder 2
17. raining hard 2
18. pantsed 2
19. jeffrey archer+the fourth estate 2
20. pictures of velma 2
21. 1984 rage at badlands 2
22. flying cats 1
23. ????? ??????? 1 (this one was in Japanese or something)
24. catholic schoolgirls 1
25. awesome babe 1
26. sonic youth 1
27. air america radio itunes 1
28. interactive planet 1
29. l33tspeak lotr 1
30. conversation starter 1
31. lennon the musical 1
32. stop frame animation 1
33. most amazing videos ever 1
34. ryan buckley 1
35. monologues cell block tango 1
36. waffle house all star breakfast 1
37. anton newcombe does not support dig 1
38. library fire 1
39. bodyscape 1
40. bob cock 1
41. jock sturges pictures 1
42. velma having sex 1
43. baycon blog 1
44. acid cube 1
45. the fourth estate jeffrey archer 1
46. herb ritts 1
47. espouse 1
48. air america itunes radio 1
49. love theme romeo juliet 1
50. www.enews.org 1
51. effective conversation starter 1
52. menu cicero pizza san jose 1
53. jeff ament: b 1
54. www.olya.net 1
55. +beauty+gallery 1
56. waffle house margarine 1
57. listen `air america` itunes 1
58. love theme from romeo and juliet 1
59. jeffrey archer `the fourth estate` murdoch 1
60. customer bult 1
61. peace love and understanding` images 1
62. mashups` `cat power` `bjork 1
63. morrissey pictures 1
64. romeo juliet henry mancini 1
65. whine 1
66. downloadable novels by jeffrey archer 1
67. mike kahn photographer 1
69. i`ve got something to tell you hey now you want to say now new your sanfrancisco if you like to p 1
70. craigslist rant 1
71. cobain 1
72. t-shirt band slogans 1
73. changing room pictures 1
74. redwood forest photos 1
75. love themes in `romeo & juliet 1
76. alternative alphabet poster 1
77. lesbian porno 1
78. peeking ass 1
79. things people say while on a road trip 1
80. pictures of salami 1
81. +berries +picking +san francisco bay area 1
82. real women have curves` torrent 1
83. theme song from romeo and juliet by henry mancini 1
84. ozark handspun 1
85. robert bechtle posters 1
86. rupert murdoch robert maxwell fourth estate 1
87. wool picker 1
88. zia mc cabe performing tits out 1
89. kate moss+boogaloo 1
90. johnny rotten 1
91. automobile body repair shops tiajuana, mexico 1
92. bumpercars.com 1
93. beauty contents 1
94. charlie trotter george bush 1
95. os x icons 1
96. velma space trip 1
97. heinlein 1
98. jock sturges photos 1
99. mashups cheney 1
100. cute girls feet cgf 1
Bogbumper
I found
this blog with lots of bird photos today quite by accident on the same day I talked with
Olya on the phone, who called to harass me about not having worked on her website for a long time. And to cough at me. Because she has the flu.
Learn to dance like a white guy
Act now! While supplies last! [WMV]
Will modern raiders find the lost Ark?
A few days ago
Ynnej passed on the news that there will indeed be
a fourth Indiana Jones movie (yes, with
Harrison Ford). According to
this amazing fan site, it'll be set in the 1950s, so as to coincide with Ford's...erm, advancing age. My only question is, who will take the place of the Nazis as the bad guys? The commies?
On a related note, apparently archeologist
Vendyl Jones has received the blessings from Jewish spiritual leaders to finally excavate the location he believes is the secret resting place of the actual
Ark of the Covenant. No, seriously.
This article in the
Israel National News calls him "the inspiration for the 'Indiana Jones' movie series," but
Jones' own website's FAQ casts some doubt on this, as does an interview from the films' DVD box set, where it's pointed out that Indiana was named after
Spielberg's dog. But I guess the two explanations are not mutually exclusive.
However, the
Israel National News article quotes Vendyl Jones as saying he helped the screenwriter:
"...Jones' escapades and explorations were the inspiration for the blockbuster movie 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' of the 'Indiana Jones' trilogy. The man who wrote the first draft of the film,
Randolph Fillmore, was one of the volunteers who worked with Jones in 1977.
'I agreed to help him write the movie,' Jones said, 'as long as -- number one -- he wouldn't set it here (in Israel). Some people believe the ark is in Ethiopia or Egypt, some believe its in Constantinople or Rome. I just didn't want it to be portrayed as being here. The second thing was, "Don't use my name." So he didn't. My name is Vendyl -- V-E-N-D-Y-L. So he just dropped the first and last letters and it ended up Endy Jones.'..."
Whatever. All I know is this: The
End of Days is here. Abandon hope all ye who are not Saved. Repent now, sinners! Or burn in everlasting hellfire ye shall!
Totally. Shitty. Day.
My computer at home had been defragmenting for 36 hours straight. I got fed up and stopped it. Then my main hard drive went missing. Then another one went missing.
That's only my
main drive. My startup disk, with all my music, many months of photos, not to mention a year's worth of bookmarks, tons of work, all my applications, etc.
I got the main drive back, although I don't know what sort of trouble it'll give me when I try to back it up and reinstalling the system. Which means buying Tiger and a new hard drive to put in the box. A cost I didn't want to have to incur right now.
The other drive that went south was still trying to fix itself when I left for work this morning. I have a feeling that one's going to be a problem. The drive utility failed four times before I decided to try a different tactic, started running the routine, and ran out of time and patience and left for work.
It has all my email backups and lots and lots of personal work on it, not to mention all the files for a website I've been working on for about three years.
I got to work and my laptop kernel panicked on wake again, which is an intermittent problem that lots of people have been having with PowerBooks for the last couple years, and no one seems to be able to figure out how to fix it. I've been searching for an answer for six months. This is the second time it happened in two days. It means I have to force shut down and restart. Sometimes this results in corrupted files. Twice so far it has corrupted my email database, since that application is up when the kernel panic occurs.
Then my computer at work, which is practically brand new, started acting weird, which it occasionally does when app-switching between Entourage and Photoshop. Luckily, the crash I feared as I stared at the spinning ball (which I should practically never see on a dual G5, let alone for a solid 40 seconds) went away and nothing happened. But I saved right away.
Then Photoshop decided to repeatedly quit when I was trying to paste text into it. Text. Just
text, fercryinoutloud.
Then a little man from the mail room brought me two roses. I had no idea he liked me. He never said a word.
Oh, there's a card. "Hugs, V." I wonder if his name is Victor...?
Turns out the V. was probably for Velma. She knew I was having a bad day, since she'd called me from Georgia and could instantly tell I was having one of the worst days in memory. Actually, it's a wonder the phone receiver didn't shock me when I picked it up, considering how electronic equipment's been reacting to me today.
But how she was able to send me roses from practically the other side of the country in a matter of about two hours, I do not know.
Unless they really were from Victor.
Anyway, I had to work late (second day in a row), but I'm in such a lousy mood by now that I decided it was high time I treat myself to finally seeing
Episode III, since I've been delaying it for a week, telling myself I wouldn't go see it until I had all of the Ozark Handspun stuff to the various printers. Which they are, as of yesterday.
So I'm sitting in the theater, right in the middle (I actually got a good seat because there were only three other people here when I arrived), typing this because I have nothing better to do for the next 25 minutes until the movie begins.
After a day like this, I need this film to pick me up.
It better be good.
TV.com
Ynnej will be interested to know that there are currently 247 photos of the
"Lost" cast on the new
TV.com, which launches tomorrow. I've just been looking at the sneak preview on our internal staging server, and it looks pretty cool. It's an all-new site.
This is just one of dozens of domains
CNET owns, which I'm constantly finding new ones of. Yesterday I learned we apparently own
WebFerret, a desktop metasearch utility for Windows. Who knew?
Aaron
Alexis
Anne
Anya
April & Matt
Ari
Bo
Brian
Bryan
Chris
Cousin Carol
Dave & Terri
Dave H.
Debby
Drue
Fibu
Four Waters
Fwegan (aka Ynnej)
Gary
Holly
Hilary
Internet Rockstar
James & Eric
Jason
Jen
Jesse
Jessica
Joey
Kansinee
Karl
Kelly
Laura
Leah
Marc
Martin
Matt
Mike
Morgan
OkayDave
Olya
Paco
Peter
Rick
Rocky
Ryan
Stellah
Tatum 
Trent
Velma
Veronica
Whiskey Media
Yuliya
Yu-Po