Entry... 5/1/2000 4:30pm

Well, here we are. May is finally upon us. I will celebrate this first week of the month with a boat launch this Friday. The weather all week looks to be sunny and warm, with the exception of today. Tomorrow is the first outdoor volleyball game, and Wednesday is our first softball game. Both days look to be sunny and clear. With temperatures approaching 70 for the end of the week, I'm going to have a very nice boat ride.

My Dad has completed the repairs on my sunfish, so I'll have to drag that up to the club sometime soon. I picked up the club newsletter today, and am reminded to send in my money for the opening day party and dinner. They plan to have a new DJ there this year, it appears. I'll have to call someone and let them know that I will volunteer once again to drive the committee boat, and operate the cannon during the opening day ceremonies and pass-by's.

I got outside and pushed the lawn mower around for the first time this year. I had to clean the spark plug, but it started right up and behaved accordingly. The grass in the front lawn was thick and choked with weeds (dandelions). If I had waited any longer, I would have needed a scythe.

Entry... 5/2/2000 3:09pm

I stopped by my parents house last night on my way home to pick up some mail and had a late night dinner. I got a statement from the Social Security Administration. They tell me that if I continue to work and earn my current level, that I can retire at age 65 for X amount of dollars. I was surprised at how low the monthly amount was. If I hang on till I am 70 I can make almost 50% more per month - but if I work till I am 72 years old I could *double* the amount. Because my longevitiy was recently calculated at 80 years of age, I highly doubt that Grandpa is going to work, baby! I'm going to want those waning years to myself. Maybe a trip. Ah, who am I kidding. I'll be a senile old fart by then.

I taped "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" last night because they are having one of those stupid celebrity guest deals. I watched it when I got home from band practice. On last night's show, David Duchovny started it off and Kathy Lee Gifford followed. Dana Carvey opened the show with his Regis Philbin imitation, and he is the current contestant. These shows will be on all week long (well, except in NYC, Cleveland, etc. where ABC will be dark thanks to pettiness at Disney.) Both David and Kathy Lee got $32,000 and David called his wife for help. I ended up watching TV and reading the paper till 4am before I called it a night.

Vera Little is an amputee, and this is her site, webcam, and her story.

Took a drive at lunch time today, and was lulled into thinking it was really warm out by a brief bit of sunshine that got out from behind a cloud. I bought my lunch "to go" and bought a newspaper, thinking I would sit outside in blissful comfort and eat. Turned out to be cold and a little windy. I quickly ate my food, and brought the paper inside to finish. I didn't get the chance. Once they smelled that I was back inside the building, the requests came in fast and furious. Oh well. I learned that yet another coworker is leaving the company early. So it goes.

I'm playing with a new toy at work today. It's a 750MHz Compaq machine. It already had one 9GB 10K RPM SCSI drive in it, and I installed a second one. I also installed a new kind of memory called a RIMM. The thing is actually sealed inside its own heat sync. The CPU itself is gigantic. The motherboard can accept two CPU's in it simultaneously, and it can have up to 8 256MB RIMMS at once. That's some power.

Need some help with that break up letter? The Dump-O-Matic can help!

Entry... 5/10/2000 11:36pm

Tally Ho! Well, gosh has it been a busy week. I get my head barely above water and some other tidal wave comes sweeping by to put me under again. You've probably guessed that I've been busy dealing with crashed hard drives, bad SCSI boards, E-Mail servers, Virus scanning, Virus updating, a few 5am bedtimes and many more miscellaneous miscarriages and mired mayhem in my MIS world. What sticks in my craw the most is those certain users who knew full well not to run any attachments, but did anyway. At least with the ILOVEYOU virus everyone in the company got to learn who the biggest idiots are.

Department of Waterlogged Toys, Deparmental Update: THE BOAT IS IN THE WATER! (And it works, even) I couldn't find any of my paperwork (trailer registration, etc) or my dock lines, but that didn't stop me from driving North to give the repair shop $1600. I hitched up the boat and towed it to the lake. The launch went easy enough. There was a funny moment when I thought my car would also float away. The water in the lake is so high that you have to drive quite a ways down the water-covered driveway just to get to the ramp. There was a good 20 feet of water in front of the car, and the water was a good 5 inches deep. Almost deep enough to pour inside the car, but not quite. I took the boat for a nice ride and verified top speed is again where the factory rates it, about 40MPH. Around Monday night, I was able to find all my papers again and discovered that my trailer registration had expired over the winter. I took a chance during a very late lunchtime (see aforementioned server problems) and drove down to the big DMV downtown. It's typically wise to avoid this one. When I got there, there was no line for the information booth (where you get a number and the correct forms.) I was buzzed right in to see a clerk, who I found most helpful and friendly. (Wait a minute... was I really in a DMV? Maybe I was at a Deli.) I traded 8 bucks for a sticker and a Ham on Rye and everything is a go.

The rest of the weekend was really fun. Saturday was a gorgeous hot day, and what better way to spend it but outside at a barbecue, with beers and margaritas, good friends, and great music. We all sat outside in the advancing quiet as the party dwindled down, and star watched. Even though I thought it was too early for them, I saw at least 3 shooting stars. (Of course I wished for a bigger boat. Geez.) On Sunday, I attended my very first White Water Derby. Canoes and Kayaks take to the waters of the Hudson River between North Creek and Weaverton, and race down the 6 mile stretch. The waters can get to about a class 2 rapid in these parts. I ended up volunteering to work the finish line spotting boats coming down and reading out the racers numbers. Not a tough job, but tricky when the bibs are all wet and torn. For volunteering I was paid with a T-Shirt, but it was so hot out I would have taken a beer.

A coworker of mine bought a convertible MG last week. He is still unsure that he really wants it. I am trying to talk him into selling to me. I wonder if my ploy will work? I think he is leaning towards keeping it. Curses!

Anyone out there get any piece of that 325 million dollar intrastate lottery drawing? My housemate actually did make it out to Massachusetts in time to buy some chances. He put the ticket he bought in a sealed envelope so that we could open it together and be surprised. We got around to opening it today. We knew that we didn't win the big money, but we would have been glad to get a runner up prize. Nothing doing. We matched 2 numbers in one game, and that was the most we got. So it's back to work for us, I guess.

I am a big step closer to a digital camera tonight. I finished up the layout for a 44 page program I was contracted to produce. A local organization is having a dinner to raise money for some scholarships. They sell advertisement space to local businesses, so there are many pages of ads. There are also letters and pictures from big mucky mucks (Pataki, McCall) in State government. So the short of it is that I plan to use these proceeds towards a camera. Look out - more pictures for the website. Speaking of the website, it was down for a few hours today. Seems to be back now.

Desktop Pop Can Count up by 2 and now stands at 192

Linkfest! You know what happens when I can't update often... I just save them up. Have fun.

The Hot Dog Rolls at Z End Zine.
Laurie Kilmartin's page and her infamous hoaxes.
Loring Holding's home page. Features the Female Celebrity Smoking List, which asks the ridiculous question "Does she really smoke, or is it just for the camera?"
Photographers of the Komi Republic in Russia. There is some great work here.
Lazy Tiger's list of nudity in movies. Not all movies are there, and their list is sometimes hard to find, so here's a direct link.
Wow. There are guys who like girls who wear tight skirts. The internet truly is amazing. Why do you need go outside at all?

Entry... 5/11/2000 9:10am

Eggplant. Yes, I'm sure of it. Eggplant gives me really wacky dreams. I had both last night, the Eggplant and the Wacky Dreams. At the very least, the eggplant helps me remember dreams, period. Maybe they are all that crazy.

Last night, I forgot to mention that so far this season I have had 2 sessions of volleyball, and 2 cancelled softball games. The first softball game was cancelled because the field lights were broken. We actually got onto the field last night to play in the wet, miserable weather, warmed up and got one inning in before the umpire blew the whistle. I am reminded of some yearbook copy I wrote back in high school when I was the activities editor: "The girl's softball team didn't perform to their expectations this year, despite the fact that they had new uniforms." The volleyball team has no new uniform yet (still working on it) and has so far split the sessions. We got shut out on the first night (it was pathetic) and swept (yes - swept!) the second night. Winning a few games would have been a great shot in the arm, and this was unexpected.

Were you watching NYPD Blue? Baldwin Jones got naked with that oversexed female reporter. He was romantic about it - chinese food at 10 paces. You could pick up the sexual tension with chopsticks.

Eddie's home page features some Funny Pictures and some Wild Sex.

"Rural Americans are real Americans. There's no doubt about that. You can't always be sure with other Americans. Not all of them are real."
- Senator Dan Quayle

J. Eric Smith is a local music scene writer for a local weekly. They like to call themselves "An Alternative Magazine," but I'd rather watch CNN.

Entry... 5/11/2000 9:10am

Visit Chaos Manor in Perspective by BYTE columnist Jerry Pournelle. You'll like this guy. He speaks of FrontPage documentation, saying "it sucks dead bunnies."

My friend, local artist Mitch Elrod got a big write up in this week's "Alternative" magazine. Visit his site here.

You might get a kick out of this one. Go visit Thomas, the site used by the Legislation to post pending laws, and look up HR 3548. I'm not kidding. It's a real proposed law.

Thanks to a coworker, I have the song "New Beginning" by Stir stuck firmly in my head. Ok, so it's a catchy song. Their web site is big into Flash and worth a look.

Sadly, Richard Petty's 19 year old grandson Adam Petty was killed in a crash during practice in New Hampshire. Just a little over a month ago, Adam was doing a guest column for CNN/Sports Illustrated. He detailed the events of a press day that was curtailed by a Thunderstorm. It was odd reading the words of this poor kid, and hearing the excitement behind them. In his article, he wrote "Keep your fingers crossed that nothing crazy happens again."

I was invited to go on a Hound and Hare run tomorrow. This race is not to be confused with the popular Motorcycle Hound and Hare races, and the Hot Air Balloon Hound and Hare events, this entails a person dubbed "The Hare" (aka Wiley Wabbit) and a group of runners called "The Hounds." The Hare takes off into the bramble, and the Hounds attempt to follow. The sport is aptly described on this page written by friend and Hound, Helen Wheels Sounds like a lot of fun. Maybe if the weather isn't so good, I'll go..

I think I heard the funniest one liner in history on television this week. On the Drew Carey show, he is driving his secretary to a fertility clinic. He is looking out the window of his car while she is talking, and softly says "I wish I were that dead cat in the middle of the road."

Desktop Pop Can Count is now 194

Entry... 5/16/2000 12:53am

Went to the lake on Saturday and got a quick boat ride in. The water is so high that it now the spillway can't hold the water back. Members at the club built a temporary ramp over all the water in the parking lot so that you can get on the docks without getting your feet wet. The rapids downstream must be amazing. I found one of my missing dock lines, so I installed that. Turns out that my ramp space doesn't exist anymore. Fancy that. Luckily, there are several empty slips this year, so I was directed to take one by the dock chairman. I was about to put on my registration stickers when a storm hit. So that will be a job that will wait until next weekend. The storm turned out to be a bigger one than you would imagine. While cooking dinner at the house, a wide-eyed 4 year old came up to me and said "There's a tomato coming." He meant tornado, of course, but it was cute. There was tons of rain, and lots of wind. The thunder claps were amazing as the storm passed to the north of the club. Supposedly, the tornado did touch down in Northville at the other end of the lake. Before I left, I took off my shirt and walked down to the boat in my shorts. I stood in the rain and let the pump bail out all of the water. The boat was fairly full for such a short period of time. I asked a club member who was staying for the weekend to check the boat on Sunday. He called and let me know that he did, and bailed it out further.

Did everyone have a good Mother's Day? I had a great, but busy day. I spent the morning shopping and cooking dinner with my housemate. My Mom and Dad came over for dinner, and brought the dog and ferret along. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves with the personal touch, and I am glad that we didn't go out to a restaurant. My housemate and I made the dessert while everyone watched, and put on a little floor show. I think it was akin to the Three Stooges meet the Odd Couple.

While I was cleaning out my car in the morning, I found my other missing dock line wedged under the back seat. So now I think I finally have all of my missing bits and pieces for this boat. It sure is easy to lose this stuff when you don't use the boat for a season.

I added a page with some roadside Billboards We'd Love to See. When I was cleaning the garage (trying to find those *$&@*#$ docklines), I did come across some old poems written on placemats. I have no idea how far back these go, but I added them to the Random section. You can read Someone Else, Somewhere Else and Smog Dog.

Desktop Pop Can Count: 196

Entry... 5/17/2000 10:52am

Yesterday, a coworker brought in his digital camera so that I could see it. He also showed me some photographs that he had made from Ofoto. Ofoto is an online film processing house that takes your digital picture uploads and prints them on paper. I was so impressed with the camera, an Olympus 360L, that I went out at lunchtime and bought one. I had been hemming and hawing about it, unsure as to what to get, but seeing it and working with it made up my mind. I was also able to get quite a deal on it, since Staples will meet any recognized internet price. So I printed out a couple web site screen shots showing the lower prices for the camera and the memory and got it. I bought a floppy drive adaptor, so all I have to do to load the pictures on the computer is copy them from the "disk." Very sweet.

I took the camera to volleyball last night and experimented. We took around 38 shots (The camera holds 120 pictures on an 8MB flash card) of us jumping around. After losing the first week and sweeping the second week, I figured that we would split our games last night. And that is exactly what we did. Every week we play two other teams, and the team that isn't playing referees. We couldn't beat one team, and didn't lose to the other. We got very close to winning once, but we just couldn't pull it out. Go figure - the team we consistenly beat won against the team we consistently lost to. That always seems to happen.

Desktop Pop Can Count: 197. Ever wonder what that pile of cans on my desk actually looks like?

One step closer to hell. President Clinton visited my area last night in order to be on hand to see Hilary accept the democratic nomination for the New York State Senate. Lots of new to be found at CNS News. You can also visit the Media Research Center which claims to be "Bringing Polital Balance and Responsibility to the Media." In the "they'll let anyone have a website" category, there's ParentsTV and The Sex Reporter.

Today's shower: Chilly.

Entry... 5/22/2000 9:49am

Ack. Bleah. What a lousy string of weather. I think I am coming down with something, too. They say it'll rain until Thursday. It makes me almost glad to be stuck at work. Almost.

I finally saw the movie Office Space last week. It's a worthy rental. Mike Judge (of Beavis and Butthead fame) put this Corporate farce together a few years ago based on an animated short he did called "Milton." Deidrich Bader from the Drew Carey Show played a big, burly construction worker in the movie - I barely recognized him. I didn't recognize Stephen Root (Jimmy James from news Radio) at all. He played Milton and did a wonderful job. Gary Cole played the slow-speaking, clueless boss, and somehow managed to look and sound exactly like the previous CEO at my company. Gary Cole was in a made for TV movie that aired last night. He played a guy who got addicted to internet porn sites.

I spent a lot of of Saturday and Sunday visiting garage sales and driving around. In my neighborhood alone there were 6 or 7. I added to my coke glass collection, and bought a nice leather Wilson golf bag and a putter. I saw my Mom on Saturday morning and she bought breakfast. I ended up in Ravena and visited the marina there. I got an ice cream cone and walked around the yard. Some of those boats were just too big. There's a nice 35 foot Island Packet there for just $96,000. Ring it up, James, if you would. Capped off Saturday night with a visit to a local bar, and did a little dancing to the Franklin Micare trio. On Sunday, I went to the lake and checked on the boat. There's still too much water in the lake, and you have to get wet just to get to the docks. Everyone who was up there was gathered around the fire complaining about this or that. Dropped in on my Dad on the way south, and got caught up on his progress with leaks. Both his house and his boat were leaking this week. He's fixed the boat leak, and finally found (after all these years) the bad seal on a pipe inside his kitchen wall. He has a big holes cut in the wall and the ceiling. I'm glad that he found the leak.

As you may know, I did miss that Hound and Hare run this month, and when I read this month's edition of the aptly titled Hound and Mud, I don't feel so bad at all. I'm going to try to make the next one.

Desktop Pop Can Count: 199. Just one to go...

Entry... 5/23/2000 4:50pm

Tonight is the season finale of NYPD Blue. I, of course, will be outside playing volleyball in the rain. Have no fear, the VCR stand at the ready; ensuring that I will not miss it, and if I do watch it another night I won't have to sit through all the commercials.

Last night at softball, I suggested that we change our team name to "The Raindrops." Sure, the evening started out nice and dry but that was not to be the case at all. For some reason, the game preceeding ours didn't get started for an hour after they were supposed to. Typically, the umpire is supposed to call for a forfeit but he just didn't for whatever reasons. And, go figure, just as we start the rain comes down. This is doing wonders for my cold. The game turned out to be quite exciting. We managed to keep up with the other team, and entered the final inning down by 1. They scored 2 more runs before we got the 3 outs, and went up for our last ups, now down by three. We scored one run, and it cost us two outs. The two batters in front of me got on base, at first and third, and then I was up. My fielding was a bit rusty last night, but my at bats were good. I took 2 balls and 2 strikes with the tying runs on base (gee, nothing like a little pressure) when I topped the ball hard and it rolled midway into the infield. I dug for first base, while their pitcher hustled for the ball. I was steps away from the bag when I saw the ball sailing over my head. Overthrow. I dug for second, and the girl who was on first now rounded second and went for third. For some reason, the first baseman decided to stop her from going farther and lobbed it at their catcher. Oops. Overthrow. She made it around third and went for home, and I kept running. I stepped on third base, and saw that the catcher and the ball were still making friends behind the dugout, so I dug for home and crossed it before they made it back. We won, 25-24. That absolutely felt good. Through all the ups and downs of the game, I could not have asked for a better ending.

Just when you thought it was safe to come back into the water...Link fest! Check out the Gates of Hell at Dot Comix. You'll need to install custom Pulse player that they provide there, but it's worth it. The Skeleton Closet promises all the dirt on your favorite candidate. Mr. Cranky provides great reviews that cut right to the chase. Goofball.com is full of jokes, pictures, and farce news. And, for the literate, Abika has many full length books in PDF format, free for downloading and reading. Many Classics and Contemporary stories are here.

Entry... 5/24/2000 11:08am

Hey, here's news. I have a new second cousin. My cousin and his wife brought a new baby girl into the world this week. Congratulations!

As expected, we got to play volleyball in the rain last night. We won one game and lost 3, but played hard. Afterward, we got some drinks together. I did make it home in time to have some supper and watch NYPD Blue's finale. Now I'm done with TV for the summer, unless they air a new South Park.

I've done some busy work on the site. Brought a lot of pages on this site up to the new design and redid my photo albums in JavaScript. I have to admit that I decided to eschew cross browser compatibility, and drop Netscape as a supported platform. You can still see the pictures, but Netscape never got rid of the resize bug (all pictures obey the attributes of the first picture), and I figure - screw em if they can't fix that. So like I said, you can see the pictures in Netscape but they will all be the same size. I also added text based descriptions that change with the picture. This could not be done in Netscape at all unless I made each one a graphic. So I wrote that feature using a DHTML (right now it's IE only) trick.