After searching google looking for the answers to a fairly basic PHP question, I realized that this particular question takes entirely too much searching and nosing around to answer.

I searched for PHP Redirect, Response.Redirect PHP, Server Side Redirect PHP, and a few others. I had done this before, it's just that I have a selective memory and since I work with so many programming languages I don't really try to retain the syntax quirks for each one all the time. The previous work I had done is on a server that is currently inaccessible to me. So eventually I found a post that refreshed my memory [just to give the dude credit here...].

But given the difficulty of the search, I'd thought I'd post a simple, to the point answer here, and see if google will let me flex the page-rank-muscle enough to help the average Joe who wants to to a server side redirect with php. [because I don't have my long-promised, much-awaited, indefinately-delayed techfiles site up yet...]

If you're familiar with ASP, the code is a simple:

stylie. However, if you want to do a simple PHP redirect, you must use the header() function, which is a bit complicated. Bascially, the syntax is:


Hopefully this post [since blogs have taken over google, heh!] will make the search slightly easier for someone else than it was for me. Cheers!

'Nuff said.

thanks to distrowatch.

UPDATE:

Here, you lazy jack-a-napes, prove me wrong.

Someone did indeed come up with the name first, but it is a JavaScript program, and as far as I know I am the first to apply it to google as a fitting title.

So... uh... alright then.

Ok. Admit it. YOU have used Google as the Poor Man's Spellchecker.

Fess up.

[and, as far as I know, I just coined that term.]

[but just to make sure, I will "google" that and see, okay?]

Aah, at last I have begun development on the elusive but famed "Categories" feature found in many blogs, and coming soon to this one.

Of course, following normal standards, this comes late (ish) at night, with a general lack of sleep for the previous few days, and a con-current shirking of responsiblities.
Nice.

I just went to get my car smogged at Ferraro's, in Fairfax. It's the same place as the Rino Gas Station, right there by the hippie food store in downtown.

Ok, so I drop my car off, I've had it smogged there for probably the last three times (six years) that I have had to smog the car. Sure, the car has changed a bit (the deer incident, the windshield incident, thousands of miles of road trips), but it's basically the same.

I mean, it's a Volvo. They are basically clean-burning tanks. The smog test should be no problem...

So the lady and the Italian dude who own/operate it are nice, they take my name and info and whatnot. I remember buying a battery from them back in the summer of 1997 and telling them how I was going to go to Italy that August.

If you've ever seen an Italian national's eyes light up when you mention visiting their fatherland, then you would know why they call it a Roman candle. 'Cause their eyes light up so much you'd think that they were going to explode.

But anyway, enough pleasantries: down to the rant.

So I get down there, drop the car off, no problems. I walk over and get a hamburger, and chill out for a few minutes, sipping my milkshake.

The lady calls, the car is shaking when they turn it on (I alsmot said "boot it up" there, goodness...). Ok, no big deal I tell her, I have been trying to track down a vacuum leak for a while... Haven't found it yet, but the car runs fine at higher RPMs, it just idles funny. She also mentions the check engine light being on. Ok, I say, but that goes on for something else regularly and should not be a problem... She says I should come talk to the mechanic...

As soon as I get on the lot -- and I have nothing against Asians -- this lunatic (Japanese, I think) practically assualts me.

Dis car, dis car no pass. I not do it.

Well it was hard enough to understand the Italians, but this is fucking ridiculous.

Ok, so why aren't you going to test the car?

(mind you, at this point they have not even tested the car, they are just bickering about whether they are going to or not)

Turns out they aren't going to test the car because the check engine light isn't coming on when they start the car and they think the bulb has been taken out.

(the light came on for me a few days ago, so i doubt it. Besides, if there is a engine trouble code showing, you can just pull it out of the engine -- the light is immaterial).

They rant and rave some more in broken english, and, after basically accusing me of criminally fixing the car to pass, they proclaim from their high and mighty throne that they are offended that I have implied that they would be willing to do something illegal and they order me off the lot.

It is a good thing that I happened to have a particulary long fuse today. Maybe it was the fact that, having not eaten anything all day, and then having just wolfed down a double-cheese burger from the lovely local M&G's, that my body was desrious of sleep and low-enegery activies more than anything else.

So, deciding that pointing out to the frenzied mechanic a few things about the way cars work would be a waste of time, I decided to simply leave, and not bring them any business.

It wasn't till later that I began muttering obscentities and publically degrading their professionalism.

But, seriously, man, WTF? In a sleeply little hippie town like Fairfax, the last thing I want to deal with is a fucking blah-blah* mechanic!

I'll fix the vacuum leak this afternoon, and check the bulb and whatnot and take the car somewhere else. Somewhere where I can get a friendly Santa Paula native to pass the car.

*racial slurs edited out.

I've said it before; I say it again, and the sign's not even dusty yet:



Go read the Curmudgeon!

Dave Barry blogs! [a lot] Huzzah!

I don't know what it is about Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer, but I have never gotten back results from any scan on any computer where the security threat is less than "Potential Risk."

Now perhaps it is my philosopher's background, but when you say "potential," do you...

...

...

Nevermind.

Anyways, I find it funny [as in curious, weird, not so much ha-ha] that even on a network secured by none other than Your Computer Genius, there is still "Potential Risk." Right in there among all those "Severe Risk" cases.

I assure you, though, that upon inspection, most of these "Security Risks" are not so problematic.

Three people with admin accounts on this machine, a few custom macro settings over here [probably tighter security than defaults, anyway], and an inablity to confirm an old and now outdated patch on another machine.

My quibble here is that, after hours of engaging intensive lockdown warfare on networked windows boxes, I do not have the satisfaction of learning what comes after "Potential Risk" in Microsoft's scale of Risk Calculation. Sigh. Well, at least they made the MSBA. God Bless them for that. It is indeed a handy tool.

But my conclusion? After thousands of hours of windows hardening warfare, and after a life of computer and network security specialization, I have concluded that Microsoft machines, even by Microsoft's own estimation, can never be less than a "Potential Risk." I stand in eager awaitment of contrary notification. Donzilla/YCG out.

With all of the Google IPO mania, I still have time to find it amusing that I come up third on the site when searching for "gordo's burritos"!

Of course, I love the place... So I'm happy to support, but that Google, man, ain't she weird, though?

A insightful take on blogging.

(David's anti-spam whatsit was not working, so i just posted my comment here. why not? it's cyberspace! -- remember when that was the hot term??)

It's funny, I reference things all the time now that people in everyday life do not get. And then I realize that they haven't been reading so-and-so's blog, and so they probably wouldn't have heard the inside scoop on whatever news story is going on.

I've found that I can relate to a whole ton of people, too, simply through my blogging.

That's really one of the best things about blogging, I think, that people express themselves and bring to you new realms that you would not have thought of introducing yourself to, and yet, you enjoy them.

For the first time since I have been back home, here in Northern California, the supply of peanut butter and ripe-but-not-over-ripe bananas have coincided, and my peanut-butter-banana-and-honey sandwich craving has been fulfilled.

Despite blah-bla-blah, bla, and blah-blah-bla* one thing I have to say of my former place of residence, is that there were almost always fresh -- sometimes not-ripe-yet -- bananas and peanut butter. Of course, the bread here is much, much better.

*Slew of negative sentiments edited out.

Today I got to wear the Plumber Hat.

As I do not get to wear this hat often, it was with some gusto that I lugged my toolbox from the car into the house, while mentally questioning the aggregate cost incurred by the loss of gas mileage that must result from storing my metallic reliqury in the vehicle.

It turned out that I did not have to wear the Plumber Hat for long; the problem -- the bathroom smelled like a sewage treatment plant, heavy on the sewage, light on the treatment -- was fixed by bolting down the toilet, which was beginning to come loose. I would explain this particular cause and effect relationship, but having taken off the Plumber Hat, and not prefering to put it on again any time soon, I will leave it to your imagination.

I have not worn the Blogger Hat for a while now, and I think that this is probably because every time I hop on the computer, and peruse my favorite blogs, and the news, I start getting depressed. Maybe it's the lack of rationality displayed by certain politicians and groups of people. Maybe it's the professed goal of so many people and prominent powers in the world today: destruction. Maybe my Hope is just too weak. Whatever.

I also combined two hats today: the Automotive Repair Hat, and the Pyrotechnics Hat. This involved trying to find a vacuum leak under the hood by spraying starting fluid [basically ether] at various suspect points in the vacuum system. Fun fun.

Alright, more later. Peace.

scrawled on scrap of a spanish song sheet

400 Dorm Shrine, anyone?

I stumbled across this the other day. Totally awesome! I know some friends who have been doing this. The next time my little brother says "I'm bored," I'm giving him his own rosary-making kit and saying "Git to work, cowboy."

Been sparse blogging lately, and sparse most other things too. The workmen who are replacing the windows have the house all torn up, and every morning at eight-something they begin their banging with hammers and goodness-knows-what. The rackett is incredible.

Of course, that does not phase me, since I could sleep through a 18-piece brass band playing in my bedroom.

To avoid the dust (as well as proximity to the noise, I suppose), and to avoid indecent exposure, I am awoken every morning when the workmen arrive, and I stumble into my boxers and then stumble upstairs, dragging a blanket and a pillow, and I bed down on top of whoever has vacanted their beds upstairs in whatever room is least likely to be blitzed by the nail-gun-toting window men.

So it's not entirely my fault that my life has be chaotic recently.

Went to work yesterday -- the first time I've "gone" to work for a while -- and got done in three hours a project i have worked for months on. When I'm on, I'm on, I suppose.

[1] work:

Now the little company network that I have been developing for years has a full terminal services solution. Everything is encrypted by SSH2 servers and anyone with the right logon credentials can access a terminal server and run a few select programs as blazing speeds, thanks to a recent server upgrade and a recent DSL speed increase.

[2] walk:

Just went for a walk around the ol' neighborhood where I grew up. Lotta things have changed, lotta things remain the same. A buncha tv-blue-flickering-glow rooms, a buncha folks putting out the trash and recycles on the street 'cause tonight is "pickup night."

Walked past the old-Mr.-Pot-belly-with-a-Corvette-guy's house, saw what the butchers with their tree-saws had down to the little communal park that now has a few shrubs, a bunch more walkways, and very few trees (ok, a few saplings, but those don't really count), saw that the old holy lady's house still had the cross carved in the cement in the driveway, dunno if the old holy lady is still there, and saw the empty lot which is still empty where we all sued to roughhouse as kids.

So there ya have it. I'm gonna try to go to bed early and get on a normal sleep schedule.

Is it just me, or is this scary?

Simply throwing technology at a problem is NOT going to solve it.

Seems to me that we have a case of someone being lazy.

Just watch the kids, dammit! Don't slap RFID bracelets on them, pen them up, and then go off and snort coke all day! What the hell are you getting paid for, anyway? Ever thought that the personal oversight of these kids is important to them in a developmental way? Human contact, etc? C'mon, where's the wholistic approach?!

Sure, there are legitimate uses for RFID, but I don't really think that any of them involve tagging humans.

Time to go shopping.

*gasp*

Ah, but wait. This is not what you think it is.

This is shopping man-style.

Which means sitting in front of the computer, various beverages strewed around -- all within easy reaching distance, and a credit card at the ready.

And an auto-parts web page up.

Now here comes the really hard parts: picking the really important, necessary parts, that my car can't possibly run without.

Like the Exhaust Flange Nut. And does that fit well with the AT Shift Linkage Bushing, or should I get the Mainshaft Bearing and pair it with a Strut Spacer and a Torque Rod Bushing?

And then I'll have to decide between a Throttle Cable, and a Idle Screw O-Ring.

And while the Blower Motor Resistor sounds great, I sometimes wonder if a Heater Motor Screw isn't all around more satisfying.

And the really tough call is whether or not i can get any further along without a Flame Trap Nipple!


[Ok, so I'm done. But there's SO much more potential!]

Back safely from so-cal STOP
Averaging one thousand miles per week STOP
How are you STOP
Send my love to all STOP

Holy Crap! It's not only late, it's May!




[well, all the posts can't be good. you've got to expect that from time to time...(~groucho)]

Okay. Let's post about what I'm NOT doing. I'm NOT driving down to SoCal. At least not right now. I will be in about, oh five or so hours, after I sleep a bit. And then get up at four. In the morning.

I was thinking about leaving, late after work, about 9:45. I was driving away from work, and I could go home, or I could drive down.

I decided to go get a burger at a burger-joint which was on the way down. Now this is probably the second-best burger joint in the area, an old 50's drive-in style place.

So I said to myself,



[my selves have a very formal relationship, i guess]

So I decided to wait and get a burger [one of the other reasons I did NOT want to drive down right then was that I was tired, mostly because I had been working for nine hours or something awful like that, and I had begun to make stupid mistakes, like locking myself out of my own remote computer by blocking the wrong ports?? on the router].

I thought:



I even thought:



Well, I got to the burger place, and it was not only closed, but it had been torn down, bulldozed, and a big sign was up over the fenced-in, recently-demolished construction site announcing the arrival of so-and-so's super-dandy java cafe in a few weeks.

So, I considered that a definate BAD SIGN, and went home and went to bed, er.. blogged, and went to bed.

Funny, these Compaq computers I've been working with know what's good for 'em.

You slap a new stick of RAM in them, no complaints.

You take one out and its BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! It's violating all known BIOS beep codes telling you how it's been deprived!

[driving down south, on the 101, near santa barbara, a few days ago]

After too many hours of windows 2000 domain administration and too few hours of sex to date, Donzilla abrupty turns into the feared NETWORK ADMIN MONKEY.

I have a collection of inordinate size of road notes from the last few [shorter] road trips. And I am heading down south again tonight, so the backlog will continue! [getting backlogged, that is]

One Note-From-The-Road [tm] before I forget.

In South San Jose, there is a series of road signs that goes:

Captiol Expressway

Yerba Buena Road

Hellyer Road

I find that really funny, and I can jsut imagine some red-necks driving down the road saying:

Good Herb! Hellyer!

Notes from today:

[round 1]

Little punk playground kid (at the top of his lungs): HEY! HEY! Rachael can't stand there! HEY! She can't! She has to come back here!

Rachael (slightly dejected, with an air of being wronged): But I got here first!

[round 2]

The elderly lady at "Jack's" across the street from my Dad's company's office where I have worked on and off for about eight years STILL does not know how to operate the cash register.

I walk in, grab my drink, plunk it down on the counter, offer two dollars.

She hits the register. BEEP! Hits a few more keys. BEEP! BLUNK! BEEP! Eventually she gets it working, and gives me my change.

It is a generational thing, I tell myself. It must be. Otherwise, how could you work at a place for more than eight years, with the same damn cash register, and not figure it out. Only if you did not care to, right?

It's the same with computers...

[round 3]

I cannot forsee myself ever working for a company where I am not allowed to wear sandals. Without socks. (I recently learned that the sock-with-sandals artifice (at a local institution of higher education) was contrived by a certain segment of the female population in revenge upon a certain segment of the male population for enforcing a more stringent female dress code. C'mon, you can't wear socks with sandals. That's just improper. And absurb. End of Mini-Rant.

Took off work early yeasterday, at about 2:00 pm. Jetted over to the city, and I met the Random Englishman at his old childhood haunt, Gordo's Burritos. We had ourselves a couple of burritos, took a quick siesta in the shade in Golden Gate Park, and then ran around for hours throwing frisbees, climbing trees, and so one. Was a great break from work, to which I am late right now and must go.

Oh yeah, and then we cooked dinner (amazing fresh, local sausages and cheese and bread all cooked and melted and whatnot) and then saw Shaolin Soccer. Apparently it was not even going to be released in the United States, which makes sense because I don't think that the mainstream American would get all the humor so much. It was definately crazy, definately not American humor, definately entertaining. The guy who wrote it, starred in it, and directed it is amazing.

The stupidity is the author's. The emphasis is my own.

The subtext of this asinine article reads:



Right. Our election system, working for these last two-hundred some-odd years, is going to create a "genuine constitutional crisis."



And next you're going to tell me that you're NOT POLITICALLY MOTIVATED. And that you're not a SORE LOSER. And that you DON'T WANT TO DESTROY AMERICA. Go read Michael Savage, please.



Okay, wait "Rome and Greece," "Wise old men"? You said those like they were bad things?!!

And, WTF? "Virtually invented for the occasion"? I can't believe I'm wasting my time reading this. Right, because you expect me to believe that in 1787 when they formed the Electoral College they created it specifically to confound Democrats. Hey, wait a minute...



Once again, the system works as it should, the right man got properly and lawfully elected.



And you like exploiting that ignorance, don't you? That ignorance allows you to criticize a properly-functioning government body (is that an inherent contradiction??) that is doing its job, simply because you, and a certain political party, have become dissatisfied with the results.

The one redeeming point (maybe) in this article:



Now I left that whole thing in there for you, my intelligent reader (who has already skipped this entire post) to figure out. First, he doesn't count properly. The selection of the electoral representatives is the first step, surely. Second, I think he criticizes the party system, but i am not sure, because he has been continually ranting about how we ought to remove the electoral college. Is this DoubleThink (tm)? Shouldn't we, rather, ditch the party system (gasp, the unthinkable)? But no, the "convoluted" system he refers to is not the party system, but rather the way that popular vote influence electoral college votes... Sigh...

[BTW: this was the #1 google hit for "electoral college trumps popular vote"]

Perhaps the Electoral College was invented to keep people aware of the balance that was needed in a central government, a balance that should not be weighed down by over-representation of a particular region.

Perhaps the Electoral College was invented to keep idiots from running the country. Perhaps in that goal the inventors have suceeded.

Post-run report: I can barely walk down the stairs.

I ate about 3 dinners worth of food, too.

I just went for a run. It was probably the first run I have gone for in four months.

Heck, that means it is probably the only run that I have gone on this YEAR. How bad is that? Even with Lent and all? Geeez...

Here is the lap-by-lap (gee, that sounds dirty), or minute-by-minute, rather:

03:46 - I start tasting blood.

04:32 - "Why the hell am I..."

06:12 - I think about the Marines.

07:22 - A Hispanic family, the two small children running ahead of the mother and father, rush onto the playground that adjoins the field that I am running on.

07:32 - An old lady checks me out.

07:34 - Probably as an instinctual consequence of (a) tasting blood, and (b) being charged by a large dog, I think about killing dogs with my bare hands.

09:55 - I practice a few predatorial jabs at an imaginary pitbull's throat.

11:12 - "Nah, I think I'd better put his eye out. Like THIS." More violent gestures.

11:42 - I think about the Marines.

12:14 - I remember that the beloved Velociman has put out a bounty on pitbulls.

12:45 - More furious dog-killing gestures, much to the alarm of the dog and its ball-throwing master.

15:28 - I look up and realize that the Hispanic family, especially the mother, is watching me closely. With weird expressions on their faces.

18:44 - The family, and the dog and its master (who is using a long red ball-picker-uper-thing so she doesn't have to stoop and pickup the ball with her hand) all beat a hasty retreat from my "Training Zone."

21:00 - I feel pain.

21:12 - I think about the Marines.

28:45 - I decide not to finish with a sprint.

29:39 - I finish with a sprint anyway.

30:06 - Done.

Heavens be praised!

I just found out that I have a second copy of my favorite pen, the "Just Say No To Drugs" pen!

And it has ink in it! Hurrah!

This hit me pretty hard.

Check it out.

...and then the Democrats said other things like:

We are trying to "sour support" for the war. Because we hates it, my precious... We hates that nasty little bushy... He stole it, my precious, he takes the presidency from us, he did, we hates him...

Well...

Just got back to O-J from the show down in Costa Mesa, was good... Felt like we had half the band, half the equipment, and the crowd was abnormally small, but it was still old-timey, low-down, hob-knobing fun, just like the good old days. A much-revered friend showed up from far away and played with us, which was great... It's kinda amazing how much we all have through together, in the band... The life on the road... and the women on the road, oh yes the women (if you haven't seen The Last Waltz, see it ASAP).

But in all seriousness, it was good. And I'm just rambling... Tommorrow hope to catch up with some old friends, clean up a few things, put some pieces back together, collect a few belongings, and head back north, to work for a few days, and then to come back down south for another show. Life on the road indeed. But the Silver Bullet is keeping it up, better than I expected. Yee-haw!

This is not surprising to me, coming from a country where it is still lawful to beat your wife.

Once when I was in Italy, I was sleeping outside a train station in Florence.

At some point, in the middle of the night, I began to hear cries, whimpering, and blows. Suddenly screams made it apparent that someone, a woman, was being brutally beaten.

I pulled my self out of my bedroll, and left my belongings, and scrambled towards the source of the noise.

I was not the first man to do so. A rag-tag bunch of hobos and drunks and travelers had sprung up, in the middle of this Florentine night. I was quite proud of that band. It was as if the human spirit was truly alive, even in the ne'er-do-wells that haunt the train depots.

But, as we moved, en masse, towards the location of the beatings, ready to wreak some righteous ass-beating down upon the ass-beater, we stopped short.

An Italian told us that it was a man, beating his wife.

That don't make it right, we said.

But he has a right too -- he is not breaking the law, we were told.

And so we all dejectedly returned to our sleeping bags, and the man returned to his beating.

Italian law is a strange thing.


Thanks to Achilleus for the link via Newsfeed.

There were a lot of good post ideas floating around in my head today... but the swarms of alcohol that floated around in my head last night precluded them from coming to the pixelated-light of the computer monitor. Maybe tommorrow.

Just did some maintenance work on the old car. The Ol' Silver Bullet now has four (count 'em, four) new Bosch Platinum Spark Plugs. I kept the swearing/cursing/banging-things-in-frustration levels down by having a younger brother there. We both became multi-aces by each killing dozens of mosquitoes with our hands. I changed the spark plugs without really damaging anything in the engine -- as far as I can tell, although, after the little test drive the engine compartment (especially the area right around the spark plugs) smelled strongly of roasted pizza. While I was pretty sure that that was a bad sign, I was hungry and went and had dinner instead of doing further "research." Tommorrow I am once again heading south to southern california, for a friend's wedding, and then to participate in a performance of my band, Comrade. Wish me luck!

In case anyone missed this, I was reading through back issues of "better life through blogging" and found this charming link.

This makes Donzilla mad.

Who, in their right mind, can possibly care this much about oil prices?

Who cares?

The price of gasoline IS NOT something that you base a political party platform on. Or something you even mention.

This is disgusting.

Donzilla wants to apologize to his readers for the amount of profanity in recent posts. Note the lack of such in the above post, good, eh?

I met 'em years ago on the streets in Barcelona. They rock.

every day (well, every day that i work, and that is a far cry from "every day" right now) I walk past the San Anselmo Police Station carrying something that looks very much (actually, exactly, 'cause that's it) like the object pictured here.

they NEVER DO anything about it.

i'm wondering if they're amassing a huge file of stuff "on" me... I'll be they have the detectives down at the crime lab working in shifts... monitoring the cameras (which they MUST have, right?) which are monitoring me walking past the parking lot...

I swear, one of these days I'm going to run past there, butt-naked, with six hypodermics sticking out of my arms, carrying a clear GARBAGE BAG full of white powder, my hair on fire, and a double-barrelled nosebleed, and they'll be sitting there... saying...

...or whatever their motto is today...

um... yeah... i want one...

military-grade-specs...

"My Tablet Beat Up Your Laptop"

Peace...

watched Paul Newman's The Hustler last night. very good.

since this is (purportedly) a website devoted to the practice of writing, by me, perhaps i will write a short review in order to practice that descriptive writing skill. or maybe i won't.

anyways, the movie was excellant. i was expecting it to be a movie that is not cliched per se, but rather one that was familiar because it established cliches. after all, it was filmed in 1961 (he's a very young paul newman...).

but it was neither. it was not (very) predicable, and the characters were amazing. the emotions were gripping and compelling. the movie was stylish like much of shakespeare, blah blah... ok more later.

Check it out. Donzilla likes it.

There is something about any pregnant woman that would make me willing to suffer and die, face down in the mud, in order to save her from harm.

There is an epitome of Woman-ness there, present in the Mother, especially in the Mother-with-Child.

I feel a great tearing in my soul, and a real, physical gut-wrenching when i read about those mothers, who i have such strong (biological or instinctual or what-have-you) urges to protect at all costs voluntarily kill their child.

so i'm a hypocrite.

i post a wonderful article about making your own Bodhran, and then i go out and buy one.

but, redemption! i am constructing a massive tipper out of the timber pictured above.

now this tipper is being constructed out of the sawed-off haft of an old, honorably-discharged toilet plunger.

so, due to its sordid past, you can expect this tipper to be a real shit-disturber in the future! (har-har).

Some days I feel like replacing Equivocal Catharsis with a big, flashing sign that reads:

another bit o' required reading for anyone remotely interested in the 'iraq situation.'

8 posts ago, I posted this post about my current item that is for sale on ebay.com.

Once again, I submit my theory that PEOPLE WILL BUY ANYTHING ON EBAY. Your honor, I rest my case. I wonder if this is immoral? Nah...

alright, site redesign.

this whole thing is still very much a work in progress, ground out from the ground up out of php and css, (if anyone is interested in a complete php/css/xhtml blogging solution, let me know, i may release all this on sourceforge soon) but anyways we have a new design.

green is still my favorite color, and my primary choice for what-have-you, but this deep, rich blue appealed to me after i typed in its html code randomly.

so there you have it.

of course all the sub pages have yet to conform to the new css standard, but such is life, right?

Peace.

Yeah, so two days ago, while getting sick i disassembled my entire dash, found the one-wire hookup for the tachometer that was behind the instrument panel, and now The Silver Bullet (famed much), is the proud attache of an autogage white-face tach. Zowiee! [ed. note: much famed??]

Man ... was ...

... not ... made...

*stumbles to the door*

... to sit in front ...

... of evil, little machines ...

*throws door wide, stumbles out*

... all day long ...

*blinks in the sunshine*

Do you want to dance, asks 10 year old brother. Yes ...

*they dance outside, in the sunshine, on the driveway after the rain*

Pave France is coming out with great thoughts on the recent "truce" offered (supposedly) by Bin Ladin. Required reading for all who think about the middle east and iraq "situation."

my biological clock is shifting back to the 3-am-bedtime, 12-pm-waketime rythmn again...

i am going to try a new strategy: let it happen. I can be terribly productive using the schedule anyway, even if my various housemates do not particularly agree with it. i can go for a run at 12:30, when i wake up, and blog a bit at 2 am, before i go to bed.

sounds go.

thoughts:

isn't it funny how you can suddenly remember how a friend said something, and suddenly know what he/she meant? something you didn't understand at the time, but suddenly the words, the sounds of what they said pop into your head and you know what they were getting at and where they were coming from.

i've always said "life wouldn't be as much fun" if it didn't have these little pains and discrepancies. who am i to retract that now?

of course, what it really means is, life's sufferings would not be salvific if we could not add them on to the sufferings of He who died for our sins.

2am.

today in summation notation.

friend called, dad has cancer.

friend called, got raped last night.

friend called, the friend and four others got expelled from school.

oh, but you know me, can't complain.

gotta stop answering the fucking phone.

time for bed, huh?

getting sick, a few days ago, wouldn't want to perpetuate it by staying up late now, would we?

nope, especially when its a simple pyschologically-induced reason to shirk responsiblities, no sir, wouldn't want that to go away, no-huh...

alright, peace.

I am, once again, going to be made famous on the great cosmic joke that is ebay.

And you may admire your enemies spirit, but only after he is dead.

There is no time before; there is plenty of time afterward.

When Christians start dying in the persecutions to come, perhaps people will also admire our spirit.

Perhaps they will see that we are not deluded or pursuing false dreams as are these bloodthirsty hamas men.

Perhaps they will see what true martyrdom is. Perhaps the Acts of the Apostles needs to be read more.

Thanks to Allah is in the House for the link.

Check out the link! Make yourself a Bodhran!

thanks to Seldom Sober for the link

special thanks to OS News for the original article.

Woah! I missed a day of posting! Good heavens!


I am also going to miss a friend's bachelor party because of 'the sickness' which I have fallen victim to -- haplessly, unwittingly. There I was, partying, dipping, drinking, snowboarding, gambling, and going to bed in the (just barely) pre-dawn hours for five or six nights. And then I 'took ill'? Where is the justice in this world? Arrgh!

But seriously folks...

on a side note, using SuSE Linux as my main machine is working out very well. despite its (insert huge amount of frustation-induced screaming here) inability to accept drivers for serial ata (I need to upgrade the kernel) it has behaved very nicely.

it is much 'prettier' than windows and the customizable ability is great. also, i am doing things like editing my website processing files on the fly -- opening them directly from the website and saving them directly to the server. while i have tried to do suchlike in windows before, it is much, much smoother under linux.

that's all for now...

i read all of Paul Davies' How to Build a Time Machine, (mentioned below) and while i enjoyed it, i also feel the need to write a scathing review and criticism of the parts i strongly disagreed with. i also feel the need to write a php-based xml processor to manage and database (used as a verb, very nice) such rants. more later.

Gentlemen, gentlemen, this is ridiculous!

Who has the upper hand?

Who has the bargaining power?

We do not bargain with CRIMINALS!

Terrorists and all who threaten terrorist actions FOR ANY REASON are unavailble for negotations.

The free world will kill you and beat you into submission, and then you beg for life in prison instead of swift execution. You will do the begging, and it will be for forgiveness and mercy.

You guys have it all backwards.

When terrorism stops, and when terrorist scum stop threatening, that's when the soldiers will go home. Not before.

YOU HAVE NO BARGAINING POWER!

You have no power. You are cowards and weaklings. You kill women and children, and unarmed men. You kill civilians. There can be no nobility here. You are not heroes. You are deluded fools.

We will not capitulate.

You are only digging your grave deeper, and making your inevitable punishment harsher, and calling for more and more currently peaceful, largely muslim countries to become ensnared in your debacle of a war -- and you are ensuring that they, too, will be presently, summarily, completely destroyed.

[thanks to Seldom Sober for the link]

So my Fuzzy-Logic Clock on my SuSE Linux desktop reads "Twenty to two."

That means its late.

However, there are a few local points of interest.

(1) I finished my taxes a few minutes ago. Normally this would not be interesting, but it is (A) on time, and (B) Donzilla gets a LARGE check back. Like all of the money that was withheld large. However, he still did his duty 'cause the government got a nice interest-free loan from Donzilla up to a year of that entire LARGE check. Yay! WowiEE!

(2) Woke up this morning with the worst cottonmouth ever. And not only woke up once that way, but 5 or 6 or 7 times! Gulp down a glass of water, wince, and fall back asleep. 30 minutes later, repeat.

(3) Spent a bunch of time (and money, and liquor) gambling with old friends last night. We played dollar games of pool, and drank Maker's Mark and Sierra Nevada. Money changed hands, but we (amazingly) broke even.

(4) Snowboarding yesterday was AWESOME, as usual. Was doing some teaching, but still managed to get some great high-speed runs in and a few jumps. The slushy, "spring-conditions" snow was not too bad, and there were even a few falls where I felt perfectly padded by the slush.

(5) Spoke at some length with a wonderful lady, the mother of one of my very best friends. She was telling me about her missionary work in India, and what she said really struck me deeply.

She said:

On the streets of India, it is commonplace to walk past a man who is in the final agonies of his life. A man, woman, or child who is literally, right then and there, dying. And perhaps you pass many of these unfortunate souls on your daily routine.

At night, a truck comes and takes away the bodies, which are then cremated. No one knows who these people are, no one cares, no one stops to comfort them while they are dying. That is poverty.

These people are mostly dying of starvation. Their emaciated, weaken human frames are dying a terrible death while, within feet of them, the sacred cows, plump and fat are wandering the streets.

This is prime, well-fed, USDA-approved, Grade AAA beef here. I mean they are, literally, holy cows. And they would be excellant eating. And, for no apparent reason, the poorest of the poor die of abject poverty and starvation -- all while the bovine population flourishes.

The devil is a sick, sick being.

And I do not EVER want to hear of some one objecting to anything related to animal cruelty, as valid and non-worshipping as they are, until we solve this problem.

What, chickens are dying? Baby calves are seperated from their mothers at birth? Fuck you. Go to Calcutta. Come back. See if you can still whine about animals. See if you still are human.