Gism Butter

Mon, 31 May 2004

One Way

The weekend was spent in the sun. Saturday at the beach on a lake, getting burnt to a crisp. Sunday at the air show at Moffett feild. Monday in the garden, killing.

We killed the Lavender, we killed the grass. We killed the small furry mammals that frollicked in the greenery of our horticultural experiment.

First, V held the little buggers attention by waving a large sponge soaked in boula base. As the fuzzy little buggers ran to meet her, I leapt upon them with a steaming hot iron.

After a few minutes of pressing these guys into a stiffened cardboard-like state, V walked to the other end of the yard, then charged towards them and slammed her foot into the anus of each.

And now, we both have neatly pressed slippers.

Thu, 27 May 2004

Climber

SO, Benson is on the bed, asleep. Rain is sleeping somwhere dark and quiet, hiding from all of us, and I am sitting here with loud electronic music playing as I stare into my three computer screens. I am about to head out to Concord to do preliminary interviews with Scott Cory.

Now Mike is on me about whether or not there's really a story here. By god, I will have a story on this if it kills me. Besides, I need the money. I can see why Mike wants to reel me in a little. I've been chasing this little kid for months, and only recently, aka tonight, will I be able to meet up with him as he climbs away at the gym.

But then the slowly dissolving putty liner in my head began to wear, and I found myself standing in a long pink hallway that could easily have been someone'sunmentionables. But as I could not place the place, I felt compelled to sit and wait for my muffled screams to reach the ears of someone on the outside world.

Wed, 26 May 2004

Internet Relay Chat

So, I spend an inordinate amount of time on IRC. I am typically idling across four networks, and 12 rooms and any given time. This number varies greatly across any significant amount of time. This is very much due to the fact that I have, as of yet, found no suitable IRC client. In the eight years of my life since I first entered an IRC chat room, I have never once found a single usable IRC client. Not a sausage.

At this point, many people would write something highly technical about what problems they had found in the various UI's, the integrated DCC support, the ability to fax finger nail clippings through the disk drive of your machine via IRC service tunneling.

But instead, I am going to talk about that sausage. It was most assuredly a functional and derisive sausage. In the end, we all found ourselves at gun-point, forced to acknowledge this fact. With that, the team of highly skilled Saags delivery men retracted their firearms, calmly walked backwards to their entry windows, and climbed back up the helicoptor supported ropes they had used to rapell down into our house.

As the swirling blades wooshed away into the night sky, we were once again left staring down at the sausage, thouroughly convinced that it was, in fact, non-functional.

However, there was no amount of money that could make us utter this particular thought once more, for the black clad, jack-booted, curb stomping proletariate adver-ninjas were listening. We knew that now.

The sausage was bugged.

Politics: so Kerry changed his position on something. My god, he admitted he was wrong? Wow! That bastard! I prefer my leaders to be bull-headed and unwilling to admit their mistakes.

Tue, 25 May 2004

I often Monkey

The cursed beast chased me down the hall until I arrived at the flat rough surface of the ending wall of that horrible basement. He'd been tailing me since breakfast, and by now he was as big as a moose; the biggest god damned capauchin monkey I'd ever seen. And to top it all off, my cell phone was ringing.

I was trapped. THe only thing I could do was claw at the concrete cinder blocks. He loped towards me, waving his hands madly over his head, screaming obscenities in whatever strange monkey language it was that he spoke.

He was 10 feet away now, and yammering insanely, standing firm and staring me down. My face watched in horror, and my hands clawed desperately at the thick blocks. My hands were bloodied, and my mouth was agape.

The wall gave way, I pushed through the membrane, and the monkey vanished into the brimey deep of nothingness.

And as I looked back, terrified that the evil visage would once again present its awful form, and what I saw was not an image, but a place, a present, a stream.

What if there is a star out there for each one of us. What if that star is there solely for the purpose of casting a single stream of life upon a distant blue green planet. What if that stream comes in very strange and elaborate ways, and light is significantly slower than the stream.

For each one of us, a pin prick in the sheen of blackness. A dot poking in from the void. A spherical discharge of being, reflected in 10,000 million worlds. A reactive reflection of ourselves.

The Allegory of the Cave was the first to suggest it.

Stephen Hawkings suggested that there was a 50/50 chance that humans would find a single unifying theory in the next 50 years. He revised that prediction a couple of years back, and started the 50 years over from that point.

I say nerve, because I surmise that the more we understand about the how's, the less we'll know about the why's. It's just going to get more and more complicated as we discern our way to the bottom of this giant stack of turtles.

Mon, 24 May 2004

Benson

This new cat is sweat, but crazy. And Rain is still a complete bitch. She cut me today when I moved her to the kitchen so she could drink some water. I found her on the window, drinking water out of the dafodil there. So I moved ehr to the kitchen, and received a number of scars for my trouble.

Whatever, so not owrrying or helping that cat out any more.

Slowly, I am aclimating myself to the fact that I am never going to find a job, so I am giving up looking. I will spend the extra time writing and pitching.

My dad says I should call the people I interview with and ask what I could do to look better for future interviews. Sorry, but that's not happening. Esspecially when all the jobs I'm missing out on are either being eliminated, or the HR people are just lying to me. Either way, it's not really a viable option.

Not that I don't appreciate the advice, but he did vote for Bush.

Sun, 23 May 2004

Kitty Cats

Christ, we are now running a home for fucked up cats. One Thursday, Hop-A-Long called and said "We have a cat for you." Great, happy, I'd been lonely at home all day without a kitty to keep me company. So we drove out to get Benson, a 1 year old black and white barn cat that's very soft and cuddly, but has a problem with not knowing when to stop playing.

We figured this was payback for what we made Starr into: a biting, clawing playing machine that kicked and bit as hard as possible anything that came within her grip. So we get Benson home, and his is psycho playful, running around, harrassing the rats, climbing on things, sneaking between feet and generally being a crazy cat.

Then he uses the litter box for the first time. THis cat has the worst diahrea ever. And it stinks up the whole house. I am not at all happy. This morning, I awakened to the smell and almost threw up.

Add to this mix, Rain, the furry calico that belongs to V's co-worker, Wendy, the punk rock girl. Rain has had an interesting life, and is spending the week with us while Wendy's roommate moves out. This cat is just a bitch.

She hides behind whatever's handy, and hisses at whatever comes near. Benson was initially very nice and playful, saying HI, and looking for friendship. But Rain just hissed and swatted at him, then at me. Now she's curled up in the closet hissing and clawing at us all.

My hands are sliced to ribbons. I hate these cats. I think we're just going to stop fostering and go ahead and adopt after Benson. This shit is whack.

So we went to the A's game today. They played the Royals. 10 innings, tied 2-2, then the Royals walked Maclemore (Ex-O) so they'd have a force out on all bases. 2 outs, bottom of the 10th, Eric Byrnes hits a single and drives in the winning run. Rad. Second time I've ever been to an A's game, second time they've won.

So,the Colloseum sucks. We had to walk around for almost an hour to find our seats. in the end, we went out, around, up , over, through, and around again. Nightmare. I just sat and didn't get up for the whole game. Great game though.

V has Symphony tickets for Tuesday. Fun fun fun.

Wed, 19 May 2004

Up and Up

Well, I've slacked off. Time was when I'd update this thing every damn day! But no longer. This always happens with new daily things I try. Same thing with the comics. I suppose I should do more of those, since I find them humorous myself, and others seem to as well.

This morning, I was awakened by the Fed Ex man bringing me the Unity One. Probably a good thing, since V took the bike to work and I stayed in bed. I got up, accepted the package, then went to the ACCRC to set up the vulnerable machines for the Friday night shindig. The installs went smooth as silk, save for a brief pause while trying to get a 3com ethernet card to work with Debian. I used to deride Debian nuts, but now, I am one of them. I love my Debian machine. It makes linux so much easier.

Tonight, V and I are going to an A's game. They're playing the Tigers, which should make for a dull game. It's $2 tickets on Wednesday, and 1$ cokes and hot dogs. Very cool of the A's to do this for the poor ass Oakland folk.

Then, tomorrow, it's back to the ACCRC to go shopping for curry makings with Chris. He's gonna make curry again, and this time he promises that it won't take all night long to cook.

Mon, 17 May 2004

Sickies

As I write this, V is lying on the floor, sleeping to the strains of Big Daddy attempting to figure out why Paul Newman drinks, as Elizabeth Taylor's dulcet southern twang pierces my eardrums.

V is rather ill. Perhaps something in the food at Linaea's birthday party disagreed with her. I didn't eat much there, because I just didn't feel hungry. Probably the coffee. But Jane made a boatload of food, and only a 1/4 of it was gone at the end. Made me wish I'd brought Chris with us. He's a notorious food demolisher.

This Friday, we're going to have another BugScan style party, this time with Tipping Point's Unity One/200. It's an Intrusion Detection System that drops hostile packets. We're going to throw up some standard Linux servers and use the Unity One to defend them, then let everyone attack the fuck out of it.

6PM, at the ACCRC this Friday. Bring your laptop, or get me online and I'll let you know the IP of the machines. We're gonna open it up to the net too.

Fri, 14 May 2004

Harold

So the alarm was set to go off at 6:05. At 6:00, someone rang out doorbell, twice. We didn't answer it. It's never for us anyway. Always someone trying to get ahold of one of the guys in our building who sell nefarious substances. We never ask, they never tell. But the junkies that show up on our doorstep are quite annoying.

So, we let them ring and ring and ring. All our friends have cell phones anyway. Five minutes later, V got out of bed to the strains of Vivaldi. I slept in for a little while more, but once she was dressed, I lurched out and clothed myself. It wasn't easy: the previous evening I had been at the Korean Bar nextdoor for a Tribe pub crawl. Lots of Soju. In fact, a whole half bottle per person. Not good.

So, we left at about 6:45 and got to Lake Merritt shortly thereafter. V usually walks to entire lake in "Butt Buster" mode. That means she walks the three miles like an honest to god power walker. But today, since she hadn't walked since the weekend, and I hadn't been in at least a month, we walked slowly.

We started out at the bird sanctuary where they fresh water and feed is. It's a regular waterfowl watering hole. Lake Merritt is brackish water, so this is the only place the geese, ducks, night herons, egrets, and other birds can get a drink.

The only reason I do these walks now-a-days is to see the babies. They've all hatched now, save the Coot babies, who we can't find. All the Coots are hidden too, so they must be nested by now. But the Canada Geese are in full bloom. Some of those babies are already about half full sized. They're practically teenagers already!

So, near the crew docks, the babies all gather with their parents, since there's a beach there and the wee ones can climb onto the shore easily. The rest of the lake is walled off, and inaccesible to the stumpy legged little feathery dudes.

Lots of babies this morning, though. There were two geese that held a flock of about 19 two month olds. They couldn't possibly have all belonged to this couple, but they sure did act like their mom was in the lead.

The Geese of Lake Merritt don't migrate. They hang out here all year. There are probably too many of them for the sanctuary to take care of, but they don't seem to mind or complain.

We wandered around the lake further, and came upon an open expanse near the road and a walled section of the shore where there were no geese in sight. Here, we found Harold, the lost baby goose. He was waddling back and forth across the grass, peeping for his mommie. He couldn't have been more than two weeks old. I forgot my camera, but he looked quite a bit like the wee lad pictured below.

Well, Harold was very scared. He waddled down the steep rocky slope into the water and began swimming out into the lake. About five feet from the shore, he picked up a chase bird, a grey seagull with a bad attitude. The Seagull began biting poor Harold's little feathery butt. He got him about three or four times before Harold turned back for shore. V and I were watching with broken hearts. A few other bystanders watched as well, and a middle aged man grabbed some bark, broke it up and threw it at the seagull. He succeeded in chasing the gull off, and Harold made it back to shore, peeping loudly with fear and desperation.

It took him a while to climb back onto the grass, and we waited until he made it across the path and onto an open patch. Then V and I cornered him, and V made an amazing last ditch throw with her hat. Harold was running towards the road, but V's hat landed directly on to of him, a perfect trap. I scooped him up in my flannel jacket, and we caried him back to the sanctuary, about a mile away.

We went into the nature center there and met a worker who was obviously there early. We handed over Harold, but were reprimanded for having saved him. "That's nature." said the thin black man who grabbed Harold firmly in one hand. "You should have left him."

Well, we said, he was being attacked by a seagull. The man waivered in his speech, but finally rebuked us once more.

Well, fuck him. Nature is in the woods. This is downtown Oakland, and this poor little guy was doomed without our help. His parents were nowhere to be found, and they likely had more kids, so they couldn't just leave them behind and go flying ot look for their lost baby. He was so wee and cute, V and I couldn't possibly leave him there to be eaten by some psychotic seagull.

Harold's little fuzzy neck was saved, and I don't care if there are too many geese to feed or take care of. I'm better for having helped that little guy.

I think this is a bit overblown.

By the way, there's a new photo gallery up now.

Wed, 12 May 2004

The Playboy Curse!

Every year, E3 rolls around about now. In fact, it is going on as you read this. And every year, the haggard gaming media is enticed to write massive hyperbole ridden statements about how Fight Club the game will be bigger and better than anything ever made.

The only way to be cool about E3 is to either detest the entire thing and slack off while there, or to just not go at all. No one dresses up for this event. No civilians are allowed, even. This is an industry only event, and it's riddled with industry only parties. BoingBoing has a story link today to a bit about the Playboy mansion party that took place last night.

This is unique in that, previously, the companies that have held their E3 parties at the playboy mansion have been hawking wholely unrelated games. This year, however, there is a Playboy game called.... aw, who the hell cares. It's a wannabe Sims clone with boobies.

Rather appropriate that they should have their own party there this year, because there is a Playboy mansion curse. You see, a number of years back a little company called 3dFX held their party there. Then, a year later, another company called Psygnosis held their E3 party at the mansion. Notice any similarities there?

It's really a shame Psygnosis had to go... Great company back in the day.

Anyway, the company publishing this steaming pile that will be the Playboy game is called Cyberlore, and I will lay even odds that they don't make it out of the year alive.

If you're spending all your fucking development money on silicon filled ditzes carrying silver platters, what the fuck could you POSSIBLY expect to happen to your product. Bad games don't sell. They just spike for a week until everyone learns that they bit. Learn this bit of wisdom Cyberlore, cause I can guarantee that two years from now when you're negotiating the sale of the 25 nice leather hcairs you bought when you opened your office, you will be looking back at this E3 and wishing you had spent that dough on some marketing, another artist, or better QA. Cause lord knows, no one who went to that party will be talking about your game except in that it was the reason the party was held.

Actually, looking at Cyberlore's site, I see that they did Majesty, a great game. I sincerely hope they have a sequel in the works, because Mechwarrior add-on packs and Deadlock II (Ick!) do not a product line make.

Tue, 11 May 2004

Oxygen

The laundromat across the street is a constant hazzard for residents of my neighborhood. First, they must dash across the increasingly busy Telegraph Avenue due to the added distance the nearest crosswalk adds to the trip. Then, once inside, they must deal with the two old men that work there.

These two mena re delightful fellows, don't get me wrong. But one of them is from Mississippi, and he is almost unintelligible. He sits there with his oxygen tank linked to his nose, eyes wide, high as a kite, dishing out incorrect numbers of quarters. When he gets going, he will talk to anyone in the place, making direct eye contact, and pontificating at length about anything from The War, to the problems with todays youth. It's best to simply smile and nod, then walk hastily out the door.

His compatriot who works in the morning has only one good eye, the other having long ago succumbed to a cataract. He's mostly deaf, but cordial when he hears you. He never counts his quarters properly, typically dishing out too many, then handing over too much cash change. An unscrupulaous soul could swindle him, but I always make sure I get the right amount. That sort of ledgerdemain is not cool.

So I discovered a few things today. One was the INT top level domain. I found this while searching for This Fax thingie. I want a .int domain name. I want one right now.

I am bored. Tomorrow, I have lunch with Juniper dude, then Thursday I have an interview with some non-profit tech support company. Lot of those around these days. I guess non-profits have the dough people want.

Mon, 10 May 2004

Sponge Monkeys

Veronica got her first taste of the StrongBad Emails last night. Jane and Ben and their new daughter, Linnea came over for a visit last night, and V's dad was here too. I finally got someone to play Stratego with me. And I won, though it was completely by luck.

I did not get the office manager job. Probably for the best. The woman that I interviewe with kinda screwed me on timing and letting me know, but at least she got back to me. Whatever, I really didn't want that stinky old job anyway.

On Wedenesday, I have a lunch date with a fellow from Juniper networks. He's picking up the hardware that I reviewed, then taking me out to lunch.

If you have a gander at the links on the right side of the page, here, you'll see a link to Margaret Cho's weblog. Very cool stuff. I found it thanks to Jessica's blog.

Anyway, Paul and I are about to go traipsing around Oakland looking for stuff and things and parts and crap. Should fill the time between now and when I hopefully hear back from GamePro. I am getting so sick of this job hunting shit. Please, if you want to hire me, just ome to me and tell me so. I am sick and tired of interviews that go badly, interviews that go well, and interviews that get canceled. I am sick of having the job I interviewed for phased out for budget reasons. I am tired of exchanging emails for three days, then finding out you gave the job to someone else anyway. I am just tired of it all. Writing if easier than this shit. At least my fucking editors return my emails.

Fri, 07 May 2004

Betterness

Seriously, blogs will put therapists out of business.

Thu, 06 May 2004

Tight Lipped

I'm glad that I didn't tell anyone about the interview. I didn't get the job. They phased out the position.

I don't want to talk about it any more. I feel ill.

Good And Evil

So, yesterday was probably one of the best days I have had in years. I got a buncha laundry done, I had an excellent job interview at a company I've wanted to work for for a long time, and the East Bay Express put out the Best of the Bay issue.

So, I had about 15 items in this year's Best of, and the whole time I was pitching and recieving the go-aheads on these items, I was thinking "My god! How can they give me so many?"

Well, the answer came in the form of an issue that was 40 pages thicker than any they'd ever published. This was the largest East Bay Express ever. So when I retruned from SF at around 5, thanks to bad bridge traffic, I went to pick up V and Beverly (her co-worker), they were at Van Cleef's, the new bar downtown next to city hall. I'd nominated it for best bar, but they wrote the write-up in-house. V told Peter Van Cleef this, and when I walked into this shwanky, coolest bar in Oakland, the place where Jerry Brown goes after work, the bartenders shouted "Heeeeey! He's here!"

I was pulling out my wallet to buy a drink, when V informed me that Peter was ensuring that I drank free that night.

I've been in that place about 20 times now, and I have yet to buy a drink.

SO, yeah, I had a job interview. That is all I am saying. I don't want to jinx it. Only 3 people outside of that office know where I interviewed and for what. I am not taking ANY chances on this one. But it went really well, and I have multiple inside tracks on this one.

Oh yeah, I also finished up my two remaining stories, so I have nothing left to work on at the moment. But Scott Cory's parents finally got back to me and gave me his schedule so I can go follow him around and do an EBE feature on him. That's good too!

Tue, 04 May 2004

Karma System

A lot of people have proposed the idea of a singular karmaic system for individuals on the Internet.

How many questions have you asked?

How many questions have you answered?

I think that pretty much sums that one up, don't you?

It should probably be limited to questions asked by other people. Technically I've answered an almost infinite number of unasked questions. "What word will he write after he writes write?"

It's Blooo-ooog, Blooo-ooog. It is better than a shrink

It's Blooo-ooog, Blooo-ooog, too bad all my entries stink!

Everyone loves a Blog. Yer gonna love it Blog. Come on and get yer Blog.

Giant Sucking Sound

This is getting out of hand. All my former coleagues are being sucked up by Future Network USA. Two of my former Editor in Chiefs, and one other editor I worked with are all there now. They've had Cathy Lu for a while, and she had my job at MacHome before I got there.

So why won't they hire me?

Well, I'm not completely depressed today, but I am completely unmotivated. I need to do laundry (my own, of course), and I have two stories to polish off.

But I really don't feel like doing any of that. I feel like going back to bed and sleeping until someone calls me and tells me I have a job.

But, sadly, I must wash and bathe. Fun fun fun.

Mon, 03 May 2004

Reporting

A few months back, I posted my resume on Craigslist. Actually, I did this a bunch of times, but this particular posting generated an interesting response from a fellow down in San Diego named Bob. Bob is a stringer for Cox News. He was, at the time, the entirety of the Cox News California Bureau.

Well, Bob and I had lunch at a nice, cheap thai place in Berkeley, and by the end of the meal, the California Bureau of Cox News was a two mamber operation. As freelance gigs go, Cox is an absolute god-send. I've sent them about five pitches so far, and three have been picked up: ROOBOlympics, Google, and BLEEX. So I am quite happy with them at the moment, thank you very much!

Cox is very old school. They run newspapers, including the largest paper in Atlanta, the Atlanta Journal Constitution. This means that, while my writing has to be pretty low key, I can pitch the standard clap-trap from Slashdot and appear elite in the eyes of my editors.

So, this afternoon, Paul and I drove to Hop-A-Long to get the paper work for him to adopt Kyle, the bastard. He's going to take him down south tomorrow, and install him into his new home, the Sutter's residence. Kyle should be very happy to have a place eto go outside, and a ton of gophers to kill. The Hop-A-Long people are sooooooo paranoid about adopters. You'd think with the amount of animals they try to rescue they'd be desperate for folks to adopt cats and dogs, but they really are hard-asses about it. Paul's had a ton of cats, but Dawn, the Hop-A-Long rep, kept on lecturing him about proper cat care and such.

This means that we'll be without a kitty for a day or two. Perhaps this will negate the bathroom floor covered in kitty-litter. GOd, I hope so...

Sat, 01 May 2004

Blogging Ruminations

So, the idead of blogging seems to be the extenuation of a very long process in human evolution. We've kept journals for millennia, and the bible is a colaborative weblog: it links back unto itself time and again, rewarding those who foresee future trends.

Weblogs are all about the prediction of the future. I write about it first, then it becomes one of those god damned memes: Bingo, I have predicted the future by my own judgement of what is cool.

So here are my current attempts to predict the future of Internet meme journies.

I must say, however, that Ade Edmunson and Rik Mayall are old. Christ, this is bad. I feel older too, god dammit! I mean, I was in short pants whent they were Young Ones, but this is seriously more frightening than the aging of my parents. Which isn't that bad, actually. Am i blind, or are my parents very young, still?

I think my father still avoids it, but I can see my mother sitting in front of the TV, volume low, watching South Park in secret in the living room, hoping my dad, who's upstairs watching Fox News, won't hear her laughter.

I got Battle Royal today at Wonder Con. Overall, a fun Comics convention, but kinda small. I got a press pass, and payed for V, while Paul paid for himself, like a good parent would. I objected once, and he stood firm, so I did not pursue the issue. A god first experience, and the 501st, Vader's Fist was cool to see walking around. The whole team of Star Wars-clothed figures marched up the escalators at the end of their day. It was a double barreled shot blast of Cosplay. That's when everyone dresses up like Bill Cosby and hangs out in a convention center with old, has-ben actors. Seriously, it's not porn. It's just women and men dressing up like their favorite geeky characters.

I saw no Vash the Stampede's. But I did see lots of very small, very expensive, very hand-painted-by-some-poor-bastard- in-china-who-paints-by-hand-every-day-but- only-pays-56$-a-month-for-his-1-bedroomi -apartment Vash the Stampede's, with Kuro Neko Sama.

to the best of my abilities, Kuro Neko Sama means "Little Black Cat," which means "Kyle" in our vocabulary.

So, the only reason I ever read anyone else's blog is to see them mention me. Imagine that! I am that self-centered: but so are you, so don't deny it.

No mentions tonight, as I have consumed an entire 6-pack of Hornsby's hard cidar tonight, thanks to Paul.

WonderCon

Last night I left V and her dad home alone to watch movies and drink beer. I went out with Ron, Luz (SP?), Rob, and Mona to play Illuminati. I've only recently learned how to play, and I absolutely love it. Luz won as the Bermuda Triangle. I was the Servants of Cthulhu.

The houe was filled with cats. I was a mess by the end of the night.

No word on the Temp agency job. I'm not hanging my hopes on it, because every previous time I have done this, I've been fux0red over. So I'm trying not to think about it. Thursday, I will know.

I have two stories to finish up this weekend. One on BLEEX, the Berkeley Lower Extremity Exoskeleton. The other on this long blue 1U network meeting appliance. While the product itself is fine, and will probably sell like hotcakes, there is absolutely 0 need for it. It does nothing that you can't do with IRC and the built-in Windows control sharing software.

Anyway, today, we are going to WonderCon in SF. Should be an absolute blast. Harvey Pekar and Tobey McGuire will be there. V is going to use the opportunity to curse-out the DC staff, as they canceled her favorite comic this year: "Harley Quinn." Now she's really into Spawn Dark Ages. It's a limited series that's long finished, so she'll be scouring the bins for the old issues. I'd like to get some Transmetropolitan, anything related to The Filth, and perhaps some Sandman, as I have always heard good things.