Gism Butter

Thu, 29 Apr 2004

Car and Laundry

So I managed yet again to fuck up Veronicas laundry. i don't know why she even lets me touch her clothing any more. So far, over the course of our four year relationship, I have managed to shrink her grandfather's bathrobe (He's dead and this was one of the only keepsakes she had of his), her favorite skirt, and to supposedly lose a skirt to which she was extremely atatched.

I don't know why I am so horrible with laundry. it's not as if this is a terribly difficult thing to understand. Wash everything on cold, don't put wool in the dryer. But if there is something in the laundry pile that can be lost, shrunk, or shredded, I will somehow find a way to bring about the worst case senario. Seriously, every time I wash her clothes, I ruin something. I don't think that I have ever ruined anything of my own, except for a pair of tighty whities I washed with a red shirt. I don't consider pink underware to be ruined. I still wore it. Just didn't take off my pants in public, which was actually quite an accomplishment, and rather difficult.

So this is my first blog entry from outside of my house. An accomplishment for me, who has always avoided remote logins for their incredible ability to get you rooted. And I'm sure I will be rooted anyway, despite this remote login. But that's the facts of life. Nothing is for sure except death, taxes, and the inexhaustible supply of 0-day exploits in the hands of obsessive bastards with nothing better to do.

On the more pleasent front, the car is in the shop, and I have a job interview today at 3. The position is that of an office manager and IT guy in a temp agency. This is working FOR the temp agency, not working somewhere else for the temp agency. I dunno, could very easily turn sour, but it pays relatively well, and it's in San Francisco. I hope I get it, because V is very tired of her own job and would like to find something new. I can't say I blame her. Her job is incredibly boring, and she has to deal with a lot of slackers and assholes all day long.

So, I will spend this morning at the ACCRC bothering Chris and generally being a bother to all involved. Hopefully someone will drive me back to the mechanics to pick up my car at 12, because it took me over an hour and a half to walk to the ACCRC from the mechanics at Clairemont and Ashby. A pleasent walk, all together. A good chance to think and get the laundering guilt out of my head.

There should be a UN resolution against me ever doing anyone else's laundry.

Tue, 27 Apr 2004

Keep on Truckin'

Life putters on at a breakneck pace for many folks, but for me, it's still crawling. I have a couple stories in my pipe at the moment, and some checks came through, finally. But mostly I'm being ignored by my editors, by the folks I've sent resumes to, and by my cat.

Kyle is still a bastard. but he's at least capable of showing some forms of affection. Currently, he has taken up residence on a Villains bag that lies on the floor next to the television.

And speaking of television, V and I went up to Lori and Paul's on Sunday and sipped Margurittas and watched the Simpsons. It was the first televisual feast we've had in months.

No matter what company you're in, people always respond the same way when you tell them you don't watch TV. They always say, "Oh, well, that's great. Awesome." Then they look down at the ground and pause for a moment before they pick up their conversation and tell you about whatever show it is that they're telling you about.

The ratties are still very stinky. I cleaned their cage yesterday. . See, this is how exciting my life is right now. yippy Kayay!

I have two jobs that I feel very qualified for at the moment, but I have not heard squat from either since I applied. I guess I didn't get either, as usual. THere's something seriously wrong with my resume, or with these HR people. Same shit, different week.

Fri, 23 Apr 2004

The Photos Return

I had forgotten just how many pictures I'd taken over the past week or so. They're all up now, just go to the bottom links of Things.

We are having a yard sale at my house on Saturday. 10 AM till whenever. Everything 1$. 514 28th St. Oakland, 94609

Great, now you people have my address.

I'm not done with you yet! There's more floating around up in my brain that needs to come out, but I'm just not quite sure of what it is yet.

I guess I'm greasing the wheels for a Mac genius position at the Palo Alto store. Again. But who knows. I probably won't get that either, as fucking usual.

I need to get an archiver running on this page. This is getting out of hand. SOme of you may have noticed that the comics are back. Well rock yer socks with a block of cock! And guess what folks, they still suck balls! But I'll keep putting them out there, just to keep my sanity as I sit at home all day cleaning and doing laundry.

Back in the Saddle Again

I'll tell you one thing that scares me: Operation Fastlink. After the grilling Ashcorft got on the terrorist attacks of 9/11, what in gods name is the FBI doing running around busting pirates? Honestly, this is purely created by the software lobbiests in Washington. Most of the folks they busted were probably teenagers that will now have a criminal record.

But then again, these douche bags should have used Waste. There's not much teh FBI can do against 1024 bit encryption, and that's the lowest form available to wastoids. In fact, I think I shalls set up a Waste site. Just for spite.

So Travis' birthday is today. he won't read this, so I won't wish him a happy happy. I think this makes him 28. And in the Army. he also found out that he'll be shipping out to Korea for the rest of his tour. He was depressed, but I'm absolutely extatic. This means he will not be going to Iraq, nor to Afghanistan. He's probably not going to get shot by some Muslim fundie, nor will he be blown up by stupid Air Force goons missing their targets.

I will bet you 5,000 Yen that he comes back with a wife. I know how these things work, and I know that Travis would gism all over a little Korean thang.

Wed, 21 Apr 2004

The Return

Yes, not paying your DSL bill can be quite a problem. In fact, it can be such a problem that you end up havin the whole thing turned off, thus you come out of the whole affair looking like an asshat.

Esspecially if you've just printed out a whole bunch of shamelessly propagandistic stickers and stuck them all over the place. See, I did that. And now, all these people who think my sayings are cute/stupid/rad/assholic have spent the past week trying desperately to get to gism and have had no luck. They probably figure it's been hacked, taken down by the RIAA, or worse. But in fact, it was simply my own foolishness that fucked it up.

So life was pretty bad last week. But then stuff started happening slowly. For one thing, Tuesday was the return of the son of the spawn of PC Baangs. My story on Counter-Strike clans was nominated for a PEN award, and then the photographer from that story contacted me about possible future colaboration. Sign, perhaps? I dunno. It sounds great, but I have no idea where to go with it. The original piece was over 9 pages, 6000+ words. I was lucky to get such a long piece published. I don't know where to go to find an outlet that would want an even longer version.

Thu, 15 Apr 2004

I didn't pay my bill

Mainly because I can't afford to. Obviously, if you're reading this, it's been paid. My bills are becoming rediculous, and I need to find myself a steady job. at least something I can do part time to pay all these awful collections agencies. Well, they're not really at collections yet. But if I don't find something to pay the bills soon, I will be receiving those heavy-breathing phone calls that everyone dreads.

I don't know if I have mentioned all the horrors of being a freelance journalist. I know I speak of them constantly on IRC, and other outlets for my constant bitching. One of these aforementioned troubles is that many of my editors tend to go out of town rather frequently. When they are out of the office, I am usually floating free in the open abyss. Robert Strohmeyer is one of those. This week, he's in China. I was as shocked as you are.

So, here I sit, writing a blog entry no one will read because my DSL provider rightly turned off my signal.

When suddenly, there's a ring from the doorbell. I go out and find to Latinos in work shirts with "AKR" just above their left nipples. Come to find out that this is Ader, who's interested in buying my motorcycle. The old XT350 has been sitting on the sidewalk since I moved in, and now, out of the blue, in my time of need, this man shows up and offers me $200 for it. I told him $350. But we eventually met at $250. I suppose it should have been $275, but c'est la vie. It's $250 I didn't have when I woke up!

I somewhat miss the bike already, but it wasn't registered, had no turn signals, and would have gottne towed if I'd been caught riding it on the open road. Besides, Ader has three little girls, whom he wants to teach to ride this thing.

If I can come up with a little more scratch I can get the DSL back on. Then maybe I can find a job.

Tue, 13 Apr 2004

9/11 Hearings

Who is this customs officer that they keep talking about? Condoleezza and Janet both pointed her out. I hope this chick got a major promotion.

My take on the whole affair is that they are getting ready to roast John Ashcroft. Which is what Bush and Rove intended all along. He was the lightning rod all along. James was the first one to say this in a forum in which I heard it. I think he's very correct, and that this Nazi zealot with a hard-on to attack porn. This may have something to do with our beloved Atorney General's intense desire to heavily and intensively study pr0n.... during office hours.... with his door closed. Lesbian necropheliac bestiality pr0n. Yeah. That would be best. LET THE EAGLE SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRR!

So Ashcroft's gonna get the boot. I always figured Cheney would have gone, with heart problems. But it would appear that the normal, expected corse of thingerings will prevail.

posted at: 07:19 | path: | 250 Comments

Mon, 12 Apr 2004

Sweet Merciful Crap

OK, as I predicted: I am still unemployed. I know, I said that I had a job at NASA AMES that would start today, but as it turns out, the temp agency that I was working through is run by retarded goats with prolapsed assholes.

So, I got up this morning, showered, packed a lunch, put most of my remaining money into my gas tank, and headed south on 880, then paid two dollars, a rather sizable chunk of my remaining funds, to go across the Dumbarton Bridge. I arrived at Moffett airbase at about 7:30, half an hour before I figured I was supposed to be there. Why didn't I know what time to arrive? Because after my interview on Thursday I had spoken to Michael Schofield, fuckwad extrordinaire, who told me that "You're good to go, they want you to start tomorrow (Friday). All I need to do is find out what time they want you to show up, either 8 or 9." Well, I begged out of Friday, said I couldn't begin till Monday. Schofield said that was cool, and he would get back to me about where to go to fill out the paperwork, and what time to arrive.

Well, I ran around like a maniac on Friday trying to tie up all the lose ends I had, and finish all the stories I was working on. It all worked out fine and I was ready to go. V took care of the monies needed for the Easter brunch under the assumtion that I would write her a check at the end of this week to cover my half. She dipped into her savings here. I needed all my remaining dough to pay for tolls, and gas after all.

Well, I never heard back from Schofield. I guess he was too busy masturbating to Goatse mirrors. At Moffett, I tried to get a visitors badge, then called Judy Hover, the woman who I was supposedly working for. I left a message. Then I called Apex. Michael wasn't in, as usual. I mean, it was early, so I guess it's excusable. But then, the 500 other times I'd called him in previous weeks, he'd been off on vacation, out sick, or at home rodgering his dog with no lube.

So here I sit, at home. Broke. Jobless. Pissed. And all this cock gobbling wheeler dealer can do is say he's sorry. He called me twice to appologize, and emailed me too. He sounded like a fucking ex-SO, trying desperately to get back in my pants. All because he couldn't be bothered to make one god dammed phone call on Friday. I called his ass that day, and he'd left early. Obviously the toddlers he keeps in his basement to satisfy his sick pedophiliac tendencies were in need of extra attention that day.

Didn't I say that I wouldn't get either job? Gplay gave me the brush off on Sunday. This is the third time in a row I have been up for two jobs and gotten neither. It's the second time this stupid NASA thing has fallen through.

I should have realized that this would explode in my face right from the start. I got the fucking lead off of Tribe, so I'll just chalk it up to the glitches inherent in the fledgeling system. *Sigh*. Craigslist has fucked me before too, and I still love them. Too bad social network sites kinda suck inherently.

So, back to the writing I go. I have some irons in the fire, so I'm not destitute. But the fact that I have somewhere around two grand in the mail.... that hurts. I wish magazines paid faster. It's not easy to make ends meet when you have no idea where your pay checks are.

Also... dork wizard needs health care badly

Sat, 10 Apr 2004

Eastering

Well, we've been getting ready all day for the Easter Brunch tomorrow. We went to Dollar Tree, Rainbow Gross Out, and Safeway. Gross Out is a god send. Go there. It's the best. Saved us SOOOOO much money going there. Safeway sucked out a shitload of money from V's account, and we only got a small amount of stuff. But Gross Out came through like a champ. For the same amount of money, we got about 3 times as much food.

Last night, Chris, Leif, Macki, and I went to the SRL 25th anniversary party. It was interesting to see the videos they played, but mostly it was a big room filled wall-to-wall with people who all thought they were more leet than everyone else. Chris put it best: SRL is a scene. He's very correct. There must be a ton of blogs out there that explain the happenings, the cops arriving when the Shockwave Cannon went off, the after party, etc. I won't bore you by saying it all again. I'll just say that it was a fun time, despite the absolutely retarded MC. Since when does being Asian make you a "Person of Color?"

We expect a whole lot of people tomorrow, and if you're planning on coming, you should arrive around 11 AM. But then, no one reads this blog anyway, so this is falling upon deaf ears.

I have not heard back from the temp agency idiot. I suppose he is simply being lazy. I hope this doesn't mean that I don't actually have a job.

Thu, 08 Apr 2004

New Job

Well, I got a new job. Starting Monday, I am working at NASA Ames research facilities as a contract Macintosh technician. I will be rolling Mac OS X out onto Mac OS 9 boxes. Then, after three weeks, I get to start swapping out old machines for new ones. This means that lots of Cubes will be going to their graves under my watch. I'm imagining that I will have to carpool for this affair. It's a long commute.

I certainly don't want to have to drive those long miles every damn morning.

Wile E. is dead. My parents put him down yesterday and burried him in the back yard. I feel sad, but I'm sure they're doing much worse. We originally got him for me: never take a 10 year old to see a litter of puppies and expect not to go home with one.

I don't know that I can say much more about Wile E., Wiley, (we spelled it both ways). Wiley was a unique animal, and never shall there be another like him on this Earth.

Wed, 07 Apr 2004

Working

Well, I've continued to work on the Best of the Bay awards today. I got about five more to do from Stephen BUel. Kinda irritated that I don't get extra time on this second batch, but mostly that's my fault. They're all due next week, Wednesday.

Anyway, I interviewed at GPlay today. It's a customer service position, with a smattering of IT work. Not the best paying position in the world, but it certainly has the potential to become something much larger. They are currently profitable, and unfunded, so that's certainly a good sign. THis is my chance to get in on the ground floor too. They have a trouble-ticketing system that I could probably use from home, too, which makes the 7 block commute seem pointless.

But then again, I have the interview with Lockheed tomorrow for the Ames research center project. Supposedly this is a three week position, and it's at $20 an hour. I think, if I get both jobs, I'll do the three weeks, then opt out of the reupping to go to GPlay. If I can.

But I've been through all of this before. It's not likely that I'll get either. This is the third time in as many months that I've interviewed at two places, both of which I was over qualified for. And both of which I didn't get. I suppose I should be happy that I didn't just fuck those other opportunites up through greed, or through playing them off against one another. But it's not much a of a consolation. If I had lost those jobs through my own screw-up, at least my fate would have been in my own hands.

Mon, 05 Apr 2004

WHen did you have Fried Catfish?!

Every so often I become embroiled in a sea of possible temp jobs. One such job that has been flitting around my head of late has been a Macintosh OS 9 to OS X conversion job down at Lockheed Martin on Mofitt Airbase. V's dad works there, in case you didn't know that already. He has nothing, however, to do with the position or offices I would be working in.

So this temp agent has been jerking me around over this thing for three weeks. He keeps telling me to modify my resume this way or that and I do it. Then I don't hear from him for a week, or he goes out of town, or he's sick, or he's dead, or who fucking knows what.

But now he tells me that I'll be having an interview shortly. Who knows. WOuld be nice to have enough money to pay the bills for a change. But it's also going to be a nasty commute.

This weekend was actually a lot of fun. Chris and Jen were around for most of it. On Friday night, we went to Rons and played Illuminati. At one point, the cult of Cthulhu, working through Opec to control Cable TV managed to destroy the UN. Gotta love it!

Or wait... Wait.... brain fart. The interesting stuff happened on Wednesday when our trip to Haight street to get Jen's tongue pierced fell apart. Frankly, I'm glad because I think piercing one's tongue is completely retarded, even if it does enhance oral sex. Get a clip-on! Christ!

So, instead of SF, we walked down to the end of the Berkeley peir, which is really fucking long! At the end there was some excellent grafitti and the tag off of a canister from a crematorium. Obviously someone who was scattered there. We then ate excellent Turkish buffet on University. That's where the below photo fo Chris holding the egg came from.

Saturday, we had a BugScan party at the ACCRC. It was fun, but very little actual bug scanning took place. Mostly we watched videos and ate Chris' excellent curry.

But I can at least show off some of the shots here:

Fri, 02 Apr 2004

Roller Coaster

Living the freelance lifestyle is a bit like living on an ever undulating roller coaster. One day, I wake up at 6, take V to work, and return to find an in-box filled with stories, fresh work, and new contacts. Other days, I take her in, then return to go to bed until noon.

This week has been a noon week. My editor at Cox is out of town, and it seems that my contacts at Wired, MobilePC, and CGW are all out of town. This means that all I can do is sit at home and follow up some leads, and work on the ever present East Bay Express stuff that is habitually arriving on my doorstep.

The winners for the Best of the Bay awards that I have to do are right now at 11 and holding. I bet I get some more on Monday, or possibly by the end of today. Though, I wouldn't expect Steven to be working that hard on a Friday.

But all these vacations and this lack of contact means that next week will be very busy for me. I envision Wednesday being a crazy day all around, and the subsequent week and a half being nothing but endless excitement. I should really write my collumn for Dig News today, since I probably won't get a chance next week. I don't really know what to do with it exactly. So far it's been a big ol' dance with the wonders of retro, further enforcing my absolute disolussionment with any game made after 1996. But it's got the potential to be so much more. I really like the idea of having a collumn, even if it is a free thing I'm writing for my own whistle tooting.

Anyway, this weekend, we are having an extended session of binary scanning at the ACCRC with the help of some other local geekwads. Hopefully it will be a blast. Ta Ta for now.

Thu, 01 Apr 2004

CSS n'at

Well, I almost flipped the fuck out today trying to deal with all the complicated ins and outs of modern web design. Whatever happened to just presenting the data, having no real form to it, and letting the public sort that shit out on their own when they had time? To just putting up a giant list, unorganized and un categorized. The point was to just get it onto the net, not to make it look nice.

It's is not to be any longer. These days, people associate the look of your site with its validity as an information source. This is particularly disturbing because there is one singluar force out there attempting to screw with the lives and minds of simple web designers the world over. If you've spent any time playing with nested tables and css recently, then you know exactly what force I am talking about: Microsoft.

It is unconscionable the extent to which Microsoft Internet Explorer is willing to destroy a design. Many times, I feel as though my pages should just be viewed with Links (Lynx) and be done with it, since IE is just going to fuck them up beyond recognition anyway.

Another irritant in the world of current web design is the fact that across multiple sets of languages, like HTML, CSS, Javascript, and so forth, there is no standard way to mark items. I have to remember to use = signs and put quotes around ever thing in html, then remember to use semi-colons, colons, and no quotes in CSS.

Adding to this particular annoyance are the endless streams of sites out there, like Edge and the CSS Zen Garden which people keep pointing me to. These sites look great. They have many interesting tricks done with CSS. Now how does this help me in any way shape or form? It's all way over my head, way complicated, never works for me, and does nothing to explain exactly how relative positioning or floats really work. These sites, and a ton of others like them linked on Del.Icio.Us taunt me as if to say: You'll never figure this out, loser! And this is what your site will NEVER look like! Ahahahahahahahahhahahahahaha.

Personally, I am in favor of throwing out HTML, CSS, and everything else associated with webdesign, then starting the fuck over. It's become snarled and complex, and everyone has their own way of doing the same things.