I’ve pretty much recovered from my illness - which lasted longer than most that I’ve had in the past year or so. I’m still a little nasal, and didn’t sleep at all (again) due to the evil decongestants.

But at least I made it into work. If all goes well, I should be spending a short stint helping out Amy with her new computer (unfortunately, the poor soul was given a Hewlett Packard), and then going home to pass out. Hopefully that puts me in OK shape for my trip back to the City to see David (again) on Friday evening.

I find that I am better able to communicate in written form since I started this site. I think it gives me the capacity to write and edit and critique and thus improve my writing that even the keeping of journals has not helped as well with over the years. Now if I could only make it interesting enough to get more than 5 people to read it…

Spent most of last night e-window-shopping, except for a few choice purchases. Including two new domains. No immediate plans to put them to use, but I at least wanted to grab ‘em up. I’ll prolly be doing little more today.

I’m actually quite proud that I avoided doing anything even marginally social last night. I like being anti-social. Anti-social behavior is good for Hyaena’s health…

I’m going to try to put up a new trip journal, before the trip itself gets too old to be report-worthy. No promises, though. I miss David. Luckily the stomach problems are officially over.

…To Amy. It’s foggy and chilly and I’m in good health. A rare combination, and I’m in a good mood today. All in all, I think this will be an exceedingly pleasant weekend…

I’m spending entirely too much time on the 2000 Census site today, which surely isn’t helping me lighten the load of work since I took over the job of two people last week. Luckily, we should be hiring a new phone and typing person next week, which will honestly reduce my workload by about 40%. I’m amazed at how much time I waste answering phones and typing insignificant piddly shit. If that’s off my back, I can actually devote my time to stuff that matters, like making sure the company isn’t going broke.

It will also mean that I can get around to scheduling my vacation for this coming spring. My goal is to actually come through on my revolving promise to visit Andrea and Cho (among others) in Seattle, and schedule stops in Portland and Vancouver/Victoria at the same time… I have a scary feeling that I might decide on relocating to the northwest once I’ve visited it…

Anyway, David is coming today. This is such a good thing, I won’t even say how much I’m anticipating it. Maybe more Fresno updates next week.

From my search report, it looks like some of you have forgotten where I hid my dirty stories. If you really want to see them, I might reveal their location to you if you ask nicely.

I was glad to have something to replace the defunct Goth.Code. Enter The Blogger Code. Not quite so all-encompassing, but still manages to tell quite a bit about someone. So here I go:

B2 d+ t++ k- s u– f i o+ x+ e+ l+ c-

Enjoy.

David is gone, and I’m contemplating how to change the way calendars function so that I can spend more than 2 nights at a time with him… O well, impractical thoughts, I’m sure. Besides, the immense amount of sex is becoming somewhat detrimental to my sensitive winter skin…

At least I managed to make it to Tower Records, where I dropped a small chunk of my forthcoming Federal tax refund for a stack of CDs. I feel I must repeat this next week, when David hopefully will be taking me to Fry’s for printer shopping and to Berkeley for record shopping.

Now I’m busily absorbing a nice long Simpson-a-thon on KMPH. Not sure whether or not I’ll have time to do the updates I was planning tonight. But I’m finally getting the hang of my new toy. Music videos for local bands shouldn’t be too far away…

In case you haven’t noticed, I made my search utility a little artier and less obvious, since its use wasn’t exactly optimal anyway. Most people were using it to search for my dirty stories, not realizing that pages which aren’t linked within the site aren’t crawled by the search engine… So anyway, if you want to search now, just type it in the field in the navigation column and hit enter. Nothin’ special… And for some reason it still isn’t very efficient. I’ll have to look for a new provider soon if this keeps up.

Luckily, I’m pretty at home with my email now. Goodbye FadeToBlack/ EveryoneNet. Hello Yahoo! free email. Hey, sometimes the best things are also the cheap and easy things.

And you may go ahead with the SBC attack, as I called to check into getting my DSL today, only to find that they have yet to install it in two neighborhoods in Fresno, mine being one of those two…

Not sure if there’ll be any news until Monday. I’m off to the City to spend another weekend snogging with David, and pretty much being far happier than I have been this week. Which is saying a lot, considering that this week hasn’t been all that bad.

Why is it that I have yet to find a web editing program that actually makes managing my site EASIER?!

I’ve now spent a whole day on each of FrontPage, GoLive!, and DreamWeaver, over the past few months. All of them are both way too complicated and way too difficult to use to make it worth my time. I guess I’m just destined to stick with the trusty old world of raw HTML. I knew I was better at that, anyway…

Now to turn off my computer before my frustration at failing at yet another task prompts me to throw the iBook against the wall… Ugh…

I’m still happy and loving the weather, but I need to get a rant in anyway. My latest tiff is with SBC and UPS. I signed up for DSL a couple weeks ago, which was supposed to be set up and ready to go today. Unfortunately, the equipment never arrived. So I call SBC, who tells me it’s been delivered. I have a real problem that UPS just dumps packages on front porches without obtaining signatures. So I never saw the package after it was dropped off days ago, and apparently went missing thereafter. Now I have to wait for them to redeliver the equipment while I have already paid for my set-up fee and first month. Ugh. Some companies really need to get their acts together. I knew I should have gone with Earthlink…

I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s had problems with SBC DSL . Luckily, I got most of it resolved much quicker and with less than 100 hours on the phone, and it was working by midnight last night.

The weather is no longer quite so gorgeous, but it’s still prettier than Fresno should be allowed to be, and I just wish I could enjoy it with that specialsomeone. Unfortunately, it appears he’s having a near-death experience due to a few especially malignant human pathogens.

I’m thinking of making a pot of coffee. Good thing I have decaf.

I wish Yahoo! Messenger had an OSX version… For that matter, I wish a lot of things had OSX versions. I’d be far more likely to buy and learn and use them, if so. OX9 stuff just bugs me, mainly because OSX environment is so much prettier and I either have to work in ultra-slow virtual memory or restart whenever I use OS9 programs… Filemaker and Dreamweaver come to mind here…

So… One more excrutiatingly long week until I see David again. The weekend after that, we embark on our roadtrip. I have t o get in touch with Cho soon here…

I’m liking System of a Down today, although they are a little bit on the pretentious side… I think it’s just coz the drummer and singer are really cute.

The weekend was fun. I spent loads of time with my favorite boy, got some exercise (in more ways than one), and as always, ate well. The family drama has managed to be tamed for the moment, and the replacement DSL modem is still at least two days away from arriving. Until then, I will occupy myself trying to finish up the Music Database. Once everything is finally entered, I’ll post the file for the rest of you FileMaker junkies to peruse.

Finally got my region-free-multi-format DVD player. I can now watch all manner of illicit European and Brazilian DVDs in all their glory. Still in search of a high-quality reasonably-priced 8mm VCR and portable DAT recorder, both of which are disappointing me on Ebay lately. Soon, hopefully… Then there’s the job hunt. Good god, it’s starting to get on my nerves.

Our third Dish DVR 510 receiver in two weeks failed on us sometime last night. The first receiver and the current one both died the same death, so this is a plea to anyone who might be able to help diagnose.

We awake and notice, before touching anything, that the receiver’s green power light is going off, then coming on, then going off again and again. We turn on the TV. It is in some state of the following repeated scenario:

1. Power comes on
2. Acquires signal from satellite (Progress 1-5 of 5)
3. Tunes successfully to it’s current channel
4. Displays perfect signal for 10-20 seconds
5. Spontaneously powers down

This is all before we touch anything. In all cases, we’ve tried all the usual trouble-shooting: different outlet, cycling the power button, removing and reinserting the SmartCard, different room, different TV, different satellite input, different wiring, different color pixie dust. In all cases, the symptoms remain the same.

The current receiver is still in its early stages, but by Day 3, the first receiver was degenerating and was no longer even transmitting a signal for the 10-20 seconds, but just randomly power cycling to no avail. I would be ready to call the BBB, the PUC, the FCC and the WTO right now had I not had a less than aggrivating tech support experience this morning by a very nice gal in North Carolina (as opposed to those (mostly) horrible excuses for native English speakers in India that I’m usually connected to). She gave us a 3-week service credit and promised more if the technician could not remedy the problem next week.

As it is now, us Po Waht Traysh can’t afford the real deal, so we had to sell our souls to DISH in order to get the service. Thus, we have to follow Their orders when it comes to remedies, lest we have to pay for our release from eternal servitude. The current one is that a technician from DumbFuck-MomAndPop-CableCompany-OnBehalfOf-DishNetwork will be visiting us a week from now to see if they know anything (which I doubt). Then begins the arduous task of making it up the acronymous chain of command for assistance.

Any tips, tricks or guesses should be sent to us.

Some thoughts surfacing from the current joust I’m having with a fellow cartoon fan:

I find South Park funny. I like poking fun at easy targets (as well as socially taboo targets). But I don’t really hold any high intellectual or social esteem for the show’s creators. They’re a cute queer couple, even if they’re totally closeted. I will defend my habit of watching South Park, too. I don’t even consider it a guilty pleasure. I have, however, been given some very good stimulation lately which has led me to make my first real objective analysis of South Park and its creators.

Offensive humour which is well-thought and properly directed (even if the source or direction is at odds with ones’ personal views) can be appreciated. In fact, it’s my favorite. My own brand of social commentary is, in most cases, confrontational and deconstructionist. The word for Parker-Stones’ methodology here, however, is “reactive” (which I would say is different from “reactionary”).

South Park/Parker-Stone don’t obviously portray any identifiable set of agendas. Even I, who remain a rather big fan of South Park and their other projects, would never be able to capsulize what “Point of View” these pieces necessarily offer. It seems that the main agenda, if one can possibly be assigned, is what I’ll call “deconstruction”. Maybe even just “destruction”.

These pieces seem set on annihilating anything which seems to portray principle, without necessarily offering any principles to fill the consequent vaccuum. I think that the majority of the masses, when demonstrating their principles, are totally wrong-headed and embarrassing about it (such as Sean Penn in Baghdad, idiots shutting down downtown SF to protest the War, etc.), and deserve to have a piss taken on them.

Read more »

Well, at least I know that in the event of armageddon, I should still be able to keep up on my freinds’ survival stories. Dang that internetz sure is a durable sucker. I should know, I worked with an ISP for several years that went through some pretty major (albeit self-induced) environmental crises in our time (on a much smaller scale, of course). Ah, memories…

Alas, due to all the dimwits here in Charlotte (and Atlanta, from what I hear), I moved from the city with the highest fuel prices in the country to another city with some of the highest fuel prices… They followed me, damn them. I hear there are lines of people who go to gas stations and top off their tanks with like 2 bucks of gas. Achingly, horribly dispicable dumbfucks, all of them.