I love this skin for winamp.

And if you go to window settings --> opacity --> 80%, you can give it a touch of tranlucency, which is sexy.

It even pops-up a semi-transparent (or diaphanous, if you prefer) rectangle which tells you what is "now playing," and, if you want, it will connect to the internet and grab the album cover and display it as a little icon/graphics. Which is really cool.

I like this guy.

Hey, check it out, those crazies over at moveable type have released all the code and whatnot necessary to implement a standalone trackback feature.

Perhaps I will code that into my system one of these days.

I just went nuts with this thing this afternoon.

Well, I was walking down the stairs as normal, and suddenly my knee blew out. I let out a grunt of pain and sat down hard on the stairs. Not cool. That'll teach me to go running. I think I'll be swimming or biking tommorrow, definately something non-impact, bless it all.

My LCD screen from my old laptop that I'm selling on ebay has gotten five bids. I hope they all did their own research and that my disclaimers are heavy enough... It's somewhat of a pain to install those screens... Ah well, caveat emptor.

I just went for a run. Big mistake.

No, actually it felt pretty good. I only did about half of my normal workout because then I had a heart attack it's good to pace yourself when "getting back into it." I hadn't worked out in about two months.

Around lap 7 I got a endorphin [or whatever doctors say it is now] buzz, but it faded pretty quickly and left me feeling tired, despite the pounding techno music that kept me going, somewhat, through lap 10. Hopefully I'll be able to move tommorrow. I'm think of starting swimming.

Well Equivocal Ramblings may have the #3 spot on the google search for equivocal, but I have the #4, 5, and 9 spots.

Incidentally, other than a certain broad, who writes a 1349-word blog entry? Goodness.

Eric, over at Straight White Guy talks about his guitar-playing, and it struck a chord with me, and with the things I've always said about myself.

This was my response on his blog, and I'm posting it here, well, because this is my blog, and I do what I damn well please here. And I think every blogger has to say that phrase sometime, unless it damn well pleases him or her not to.

I feel exactly the same way, Eric.

I started teaching myself guitar when I was fifteen. My punk buddies and I had dreams of forming a band, but it was never for other people it was always for ourselves.

My guitar playing now has always been for myself. If someone walks into the room, I falter, generally. Especially if I'm trying to sing. I just can't do what I do in front of people. I'm a musician, but not a performer or entertainer.

Even recording throws me off, and I sometimes wish that someone would tap my room so I could hear it later...

I think this is because I use my music as an incredible emotional catharsis, so when I sing and play those songs people are seeing a soft underbelly that I tend to hide and protect.

My goal is to be able to sing amazingly well and on-key in another 15-20 years... Then maybe I can share with others...or maybe not.

This page touched off a whole series of investigations into how to turn a windows xp install into a mac os x lookalike, by using skins and whatnot. After a while I became disgusted with the whole thing [mostly because it went so much deeper than simply skinning and because it started to pull over some of the inadequacies of the apple platform].

But I still think it would be come somewhere, in some capacity, to have a system like that. So here's the starter link; you can click through to many more. Let me know if you do it/have done it, I'm curious.

If you happen to be somewhere [like church] where there is a large group of people all facing the same direction, and there is a wide selection of ages in the group of people, you will, more than likely, if you sit back and let your eyes defocus a little bit, that the younger people move.

Like the little bugs or ants that appear when you put your nose to the ground and then defocus your eyes. All of a sudden, life at a very small level becomes apparent.

Well, the reason that little kids move so much more than their adult counterparts is, I believe, because they experience time differently. I cannot rememeber where I first heard this theory of relative time espoused, but I will notify you if ever I do.

The passage of time is slower for children. Therefore, more activities can be done by children than can be done in the same amount of time by an adult. Now, as stated, that is a little obtuse, because "same amount of time" has little meaning in a relative-time universe. The point is, when placed side by side, the children experience time faster... Kindof like little animals with the faster metabolisms...

Neoteronous and I went sailing yesterday.

We did not let the facts that he had never sailed before and that I had not sailed very much, and certainly not in the last five years, stop us.

We went over to my folk's house and borrowed the gas-guzzling Suburban. We hooked up the trailer hitch. We got the life jackets.

Then we drove over to the grandparents' house where our family stores the little 13-foot catamaran known affectionately as the "Kitty Hawk."

After wrestingly the trailer onto the hitch and up the driveway, we high-tailed it down to Bayfront Park, in Mill Valley, which I am NOT going to link to, because although it is a lovely park, the promised "small crafts launching ramp" was either [a] not existent, or [b] a ridiculous float, to which there was no vehicular access, and from which it would be next to impossible to launch our craft.

So, aided by a wonderful GPS navigation device which traced out, in bright, electronic-green swathes, our circular and repeated navigation of the greater Mill Valley area, we searched for a suitable launching site.

Eventually we gave up on Mill Valley, and the calm waters of Richardson Bay, and decided to go swimming instead. A phone call with my father provided insight as to where we should go.

We arrived shortly thereafter at McNear's beach. We paid eight dollars to get in.

As we drove down into the overflow parking lot, we realized that we may be able to launch the boat relatively easily, even without a ramp. There was only about twenty-five feet of beach that we would have to port our ship across.

So, way behind schedule, and running dangerously close to missing the only other scheduled event of the evening -- mandatory feeding of the dog I was babysitting -- we hurried to assemble the boat. Actually we first hurried to open our beers. Then we hurried to assemble the boat.

After much trial and error, and a significant amount of mast-raising and mast-lowering, we were able to get the boat into what seemed to be a halfway-reasonable condition for launch.

We ran the sail up to test it, and then, lowering it, we ported the boat down to the water.

We loaded aboard our provisions, including more beer, and sausages, and melon, and water, and all sorts of delectable goodies. In fact, it felt almost more like a picnic than a sea-faring adventure.

We shoved off, and before we knew it, we were out in San Pablo Bay. Which is part of San Francisco Bay. And this particular part of the bay was populated by incredibly HUGE ships. Including oil tankers and things that looked like military landing craft, the latter of which had a hackle-raising habit of heading straight towards us.

Before we knew it, we were uncomfortably far from shore, the two of us being land-lubbers and all. There was a significant current, which was augmented by huge wakes rolling in from the various ships that kept crusing by. These two forces, coupled with a fairly strong wind began to push us northwards.

Which would have been fine, except for two things. One, northwards there was a huge metal-and-concrete pier that jutted out in an "L" shape, cutting us off from open water. Two, our sail was not up correctly.

The whole time that we were setting up the boat, I have been obssesing about this rail that ran up one side of the mast. I kept thinking that the lanyard ran up inside it, but I couldn't figure out how it would. So I finally gave up.

Well, I realized, when we were already far out from shore, that that rail was made for the sail to go in, and that the reason that we were luffing and barely able to catch any wind was because without the sail in the rail, the propulsive force of the sail is undermined by the wind's ability to sneak between the inside of the sail and the mast.

So we dropped sail, and I worked to fix my mistake.

Meanwhile, we drifted closer and closer to the pier at an alarming rate.

Finally, we got the sail back up. We tacked crosswind successfully, and we actually got some speed. Then we tried to tack back the other way, and for some reason we lost all wind-power, and due to our general lack of sailing expertise, we were unable to get back under wind power.

With the impending collision with the pier foremost in our minds, we gripped our paddles and feversihly rowed against the wind, current, and wake to escape our large concrete predator.

And then Neoteronous's paddle snapped in half.

And then we ran into the pier.

A man appeared out of nowhere on top of the pier, accompanied by several wide-eyed young ladies, who seemed especially concerned with our fate, primarily, I'm sure, because of our handsome and masculine appearances. This man (or guardian angel, as he very well might have been, since he disappeared immediately after coming to our aid) helped us fend off the pier, on which he was standing.

We caught sight of a metal pole that ran the length of the pier, and I stood on the front of the boat, up on the pontoon, with my arms out and forcefully keeping the mast and the metal rail apart. Neoteronous was doing the same thing on the aft side, and once the oncoming current required so much counter force that, after shoving the boat away with his feet, he was left hanging from the metal pole on the pier, the boat having skittered out from under him.

I looked back, but all my efforts were concentrated on muscling the pier away, and I could not lend a hand to my struggling sailor-mate.

However, my aid was not necessary. With a burst of adrenaline, he catapulted himself along the metal pole, going hand-over-hand Navy SEAL-style until he was able to leap back into the retreating boat. The wide-eyed young ladies were especially impressed with this feat.

Soon we reached the shoreline, and waving goodbye to our new-found friends and rescuers, and to the pier as well, we walked the boat along in the shallow water. After a ways we pushed out to deeper water, and began rowing with the one remaining paddle and sculling with the dual rudders.

This was fairly successful, and to celebrate, we opened another round of beers. We also discussed how we should have, instead of simply running into the pier, boarded it and claimed it for the king of england. We could have run up the Jolly Roger, and then shimied up the mast, and thrown down plunder and booty and wide-eyed maidens onto our ship.

Of course, then, as Neoteronous pointed out, we still would have been stuck at the pier, but at least, as I suggested, we would have drama and romaticism tied in as well. We surmised that we had perhaps provided enough amusement to the adjacent parties, and so we moved on.

Having successfully exited the danger zone, we again ran up the sail, and successfully sailed to shore.

There we discovered -- as we tried to heave the boat which seemed incredibly heavier than when we lugged it into the water -- that we had not put in the plugs for the drainage holes in the pontoons.

This means that the whole time we were out in the water, the ship was slowly sinking. Had we stayed out much longer, the pontoons would have been riding well under water.

We finished our picnic and beer on board the boat -- but only because it was safely beached.

When the water finally drained out of the hulls (we estimated that they were more than half-full), we loaded up the trailer and headed for home.

So there you have it. The adventures of two non-sailors on the treacherous San Pablo Bay. It was a beautiful day, and a correspondingly crazy adventure.

Neoteronous also blogged about Holmes recently, and has had personal experience of him...

Well Neoteronous and I have been living the life. Nailincoffin came over too. As well as Working the Moose.

We have been hanging out in the house that I have been housesitting, with the dog, Bogart, that I have been babysitting. Hardwood floors, beautiful kitchen, wireless, battery-powered internet and a gas grill. With prime ground beef. What more could you ask for?

A beautiful wife, and some little munchkins running around, but that's a few years distant, at least.

Anyway, we've been living the life here in northern ca.

Huh, gostats is down.

Well, better throw up that sitemeter code that's been waiting in the wings...

In sharp constrast to Sweden, the U.S. proves that it still understands the First Amendment from time to time.

Steve Martin wades into fatty...and democrats...and hollywood...

Turns out Kim has the perfect phrase (acronym) to describe the feelings I get when reading the news...

Better minds than mine feel the same I guess...

Joseph Farah on WND has a good article on nuclear disarmament by Israel. He brings up the little-thought-of-point that nuclear destruction may be all that keeps the muslims at bay. Wow. I hadn't really thought of that too much, I thought it was more the US influence...

I'm working on a new laptop right now. It's a brand new Dell Inspiron 5150.

The screen on this thing is so beautiful and sharp that I can clearly see the artifacts from standard jpeg compression on all the websites that I go too. Which makes me glad that I use .png's almost exclusively, because they look great.

Oh, and I'm also sitting in a beautiful dining room with just the laptop and my external hard drive sitting on the table: no power wire, no ethernet. No, we're running on wireless-g and batteries, and it's spec-tac-u-lar.

I've got a buncha things to blog about; I was thinking about them as I was falling asleep last night.

Over the past few days I've been running into all sorts of people that have almost nothing in common, but what they do have in common is that they all are vehemently anti-bush. Anti-George W. Bush, that is.

Most of these people have been lapping up the propoganda that Michael Moore *spits* has been feeding them.

I don't know quite what to say, because if I open my mouth, I will rant angrily about this liberal bullshit and the demise of patriotism. I love my country, dammit. Michael Moore *spits* hates it.

Most of these people agree with me unhesitatingly when I mention, in carefully chosen words, how what Michael Moore *spits* made is not a truthful [Note: I don't use these words!] piece of journalism, but rather anti-bush propaganda .

Hey, I just renamed him. His full name now is Michael Moore Spits. How about that?

Wow, blogging slowed down recently. It's not for lack of topics though -- it's lack of time.

These last few days I've been running around like crazy: running errands, working like a fiend, socializing.

Went to see the Grandfolks & Uncle over at the 125 Club and got decimated in scrabble by my Grandad.

We play vicious games under "tournament rules" (which a certain MG strongly disagrees with) that end with the winner being the first person to score 150.

The first game I was playing long words, 7, 8, 9 letters, and the game ended after only seven plays. Grandad beat me, but the play before I scored fifty points, putting me at 147. Second game wasn't as close -- I was playing all these little words that were mostly 18 or 22 points, not so good...

This is awesome.

One question, drivers?

But I suppose that normal pci drivers would work fine, once you have the drivers installed for the bus. Amazing!

This is one of those things that you think should exist, but you've never heard of before. But when you do, man alive...

I posted 18 times...yesterday...day-um...

I came up 5th on yahoo in a search for "Population of Billings, Montana."

That made my day (night).

Remember this post? I am proud of that post. That was a fine piece of work.

...If the CPU is the heart, and the hard drive the brian, and the mouse the eyes...

...then the printer is the butt [ed: another non-swearing post!!!]...

What is up with these half-tone, smeared, crumpled balls of paper that keep coming out of these things?

But seriously...

When I went to the city for the fourth, I picked up TRE right on time. Then we headed across town, sat in traffic, yada-yada, ended up late, late. When we finally decided to give up looking for free parking and enter the parking structure, we noticed that all the parking spots had fortunes -- like the cookies -- written in paint in front of them.

One said "You are wise to avoid danger by parking safely here" or some such tripe [ed: see how i didn't swear there? good, huh?].

The first parking spot we found was an impossible ninety-degree left with a high curb blocking the turning path. I looked at it and knew that it would take a 17-point turn to get into, and probably all of 20 minutes. Just as I committed and made the first two turns, three cars came from every direction and caused a huge block-up. The fortune on the parking spot:

"Make do or do without."

We made do.

I bought [ed: so many things] a shop jack today, 2.5 tons worth, and it came with two 3-ton jackstands. It was the "Manager's Special," and only cost fifty bucks. Now I don't have to borrow from the Phantom Neighbor anymore.

[With these short, matter-of-fact posts, I feel like I'm becoming like The Dullest Blog in the World.

I'm not sure if that is a bad thing or not, given my post from earlier today.

I wear sunglasses, sometimes, during the day. But then, when I'm riding home from work or where-ever in the evenings, I see the sun going down and I get all nostalgic about all the rays of light that it has sent our way during that particular day. And then I take my sunglasses off, and squint in the bright light of the soon-to-be-setting sun, because I know that I won't be able to enjoy sunlight again until sunrise comes.

Make that Flop.

thanks to After Abortion

UPDATE: Of course, those who support Kerry won't see these statements as hypocritical or asinine. They will probably praise him: "Look, he has his own views and he's not afraid to state them, but look how he looks after his people!"

Moonbats.

Fargin' moonbats.

I just renamed the Bob Dylan's music folder on my hard drive to "Bob." Because it's about time.

From Thomas Merton's Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander. The emphasis is the author's.

Let me quote that again.



So you can't criticize something that your religion has been dead set against for thousands of years? [Or in this case, the parent religion of your watered-down, modern spin-off has been preaching for thousands of years...]

I agree that there is a problem if it really is hate speech. If he is inciting people to go out and harm or pester people, then there is a problem. But if he is simply quoting scripture passages (as the article says), where is the problem? Where is the problem if he forcefully condemns people, with fire and brimstone? Where is the free speech?

Thank God that I live in America. Heavens above!

I believe even our Canadian neighbors are beginning to subscribe to something like this. Heaven forbid!

A really hot chick walked down my street and slooooowed WAAAAAAAY down as she floated past my car...she was looking in the windows, admiring...

smirk.

Or maybe she was just shocked at how dirty it is. Maybe she was in shock and disbelief. But I prefer my first theory.

Well, the errands weren't that bad. I got to follow my entire trip with my (ancient) laptop filling in for the in-car computer, and the GPS works great. I had a nice green tracking line of my route.

Of course, now I need to plant an emergency check in the old bank account before all those durn checks I wrote today get cashed.

I got some of my vaccinations for Africa, too...

Ugh. Errands. Getting things done. Packages to Sweden. A day in the life. Off to Costco Eye Exam.

While cleaning out my desk, I just found my original cell phone contract -- that I never signed. I think that means that there is no contract. Fascinating.

Selling shtuff on ebay is all well and good when done from time to time, but as a way of life, it really sucks.

When you get down to it, it's pure materialism and greed and crap. And it gets you down after a while. Sigh.

So you listen to punk rock internet radio, and it doesn't help. Maybe breaking things? Wanton destruction? Do we have any cardboard boxes that need a bare-knuckle-breakdown? I'm off to the garage to see...

You could also translate "nothing" here as "emptiness." That may make more sense, in English, anyway.

Frequent visitors will notice that I had a brief flirtation with Newsfeed's RSS feed today. I had to take it down due to some difficulties with the javascript function I "borrowed" to implement it. I will do some more coding of my own, and then perhaps it shall return.

Also to note: now I am HTML 4.01 Transitional Valid. Yeah, Seldom, I know that's wimping out, but it's a start, and I have all these hard-coded articles to deal with. When I finally get the articles in pure XML, and write a nice parser, and then a publishing function, then I will move up to XHTML 1.1.

I'm only posting this here because the pictures are so beautiful (and they are web-cam).

Just got done working on the car.

The rear left wheel's left brake pad had worn all the way down to the metal, and it was ugly. The other side was worn down to just past the groove side.

I took the wheel off and put new pads on both sides, and then took it for a test spin. It works perfectly, despite the deep grooves that cover 60-70% of the radius of the disc rotor. The brakes feel fine, but I get that rotor resurfaced this week. But, all in all, the operation was a success.

I know these people!

destiny sauté

I Am Jack's Restless Thoughts

The Prophet

Once I got into the city this afternoon, Silver started making some bad brake noises. Like grinding and scraping metal, even when I wasn't braking.

So I stopped and check it out, and sure enough, there was a big groove carved out of my left rear rotor. Damn!

Had to drive more on it tonight, and tommorrow gotta take the wheel off and see if there's something messed up with the pad. Damn!

I may have to replace the rotor and the caliper. Damn!

UPDATE: The rotors only cost $33. So it's not that bad.

I just thought of that. I made that up! Whoo-ee!

I can tell I'm almost over my sickness because I am getting back to the "instantly-lethal-to-flying-pests" stage. Most of 'em don't get away no more. They did when I was sick, with slow reflexes.

Over at Church of the Masses, so-and-so was talking about the addictive nature of video games.

This came up in our conversation tonight, and my buddy said that his pal said that (huh?) computer games are worse than a heroin addiction, and worse than crack.

Here's a link to the poor Korean man that died because of computer games. Whaddya thunk?

Roared through the streets of San Francisco, arrived just in time to pickup TRE right on schedule, and then to zip down to the embarkadero and sit in traffic. And then be fashionably late and miss the salad.

We ate dinner at a friend of TRE's house, three roommates hosted this wonderful lamb dinner, with various greens, and rice with apricots, delicious. Then a homemade desert, that I didn't quite catch the name of, but it was accompanied by these awesome fresh blueberries, prepared in triple-sec, lemon juice, and sugar.

There were something like twelve people, all crowded around this little 6-person table in the kitchen, while the wonderful chef brought dish after dish of great, home-cooking to our plates. Several bottles of wine (including some LARGE bottles) were rapidly consumed, leading to the infamous "black-toothed situation."

Then we went to watch the fireworks. Which were kinda lame, because the fog layer was so low that all the fireworks were shot up into the clouds, where they exploded and where we could not see anything from them but flashes that lit up the clouds. Some of the fireworks sent showers of sparks and whatnot down, which did manage to raise some "ooh's" and "aah's" from the crowds that had gathered on top of the various buildings.

Then we all went to get ice cream at Swenson's, where we were served by a "very professional man, with a mustache." Somehow our group got split up -- rumor had it that some folks were headed to a club named "Stud" to hook up with a chick named "Amy."

So it was myself, TRE, RK, and ARA. We continued to hang out, ate our ice cream on a nice bench, and swapped stories and whatnot. Then we headed back to the girls' pad, where we made G&T's. More chatting. We climed up the fire escape unto the roof and made fun of the neighbors. 'Twas a good fourth.

My little brother and I are both learning the Bohdran. Here's a link for y'all to check out. I've pretty much got the triplets down, my bro is just about there too.

Every once in a while, you've gotta just put on some internet radio and chill out.

x upgraded to Opera 7.51
x upgraded to Firefox 0.91
x made myself a gourd of mate

- sell the rest of these piles of electronics on ebay.

Happy Independence Day!

Remember that hard drive I was selling?

Well, I sold it to a guy in Stockholm, Sweden. I love the internet. In fact, I love it so much that, just this once, I am going to capitalize it. The Internet. There. See what I've done?

Well folks, an opportunity has arisen in my life. It truly is a "once-in-a-lifetime" opportunity.

Now some once-in-a-lifetime opportunities as so-named because they are rare, and you most likely will only get to do them once. And some are so-named because they kill you. Here's hoping that this opportunity of mine is the former.

I'm going to go to Africa in a few weeks, and I'll be there for a few months. First we are going to fly into Nairobi, Kenya. Then we are going to go on Safari for two weeks. Then we are going to proceed, probably by plane, to Kisumu. My grandfather flew flying boats into Lake Victoria, once upon a time.

I am not quite sure what we will be doing in Kenya. Some of my friends have extensive medical experience, so they will be put to work doing that. My other friends and I will probably be teaching. Maybe we will do some physical labor. Maybe my computer and electrician skills will come in handy. I only wish that I had time to finish my private pilot's license before I go.

There was more I was going to write about now, but I forgot what it is. So, more later. I'm going to bed.

Well, I met my family and a family of friends out at a local lake, and we hiked, cooked hamburgers, and had a good time. The kids put on an impromptu talent show (at the prompting and pestering of the parents), which included poem recitals, memorized things in Latin, the singing of songs, and juggling.

This outing left me too exhausted (my energy levels are terribly low after this fight with the flu) to execute my plan for the evening, which was to head south and meet up with Neoteronous and Heraclitus. I'll have to reschedule.

This is an oldie (May 25th) but a goldie. Read it.

Man, if I had one of these, then all I would have to do would be to get a pocket pc and then i could really do the music thing in the car (my famed in-car computer is down for maintenance, and for a new screen). Of course, the dongle-less version is better, more robust...

But the thing is, these actually need to be USB 2.0 before I even consider that, folks. What is this USB 1.1 crap?

I am still waiting for the convergence of the pocket pc, the tablet pc, the laptop, and the mini-itx pc. And throw a digital camera and a cell phone in there, and make sure it does all the old palmy stuff too. Though not with that os or those apps. Enough of that. Then I can sell my handspring on ebay, not that I am using the precious thing now anyway. It's a crying shame to was all those AAA batteries, anyway.

also from the Second Treatise of Government...

Amen, again! People seem to misunderstand what "freedom" is these days... They don't understand how freedom comes with following the law...

from the Second Treatise of Government...

Amen!

"Luke, Laura, Lacey, c'mere!"

So, what is up with folk who name their kids names that start with the same letter (and is there a concise way of saying that?)?

I mean, do these people think that rearing offspring is some kind of cosmic joke that they are playing on the world at large?

"Let's name them all names that begin with F. Or S. H'yuck."

I think we all must ask ourselves this question, mustn't we? Or not. Maybe I'm totally off my rocker.

I went to get a new passport today. That's what I did today. And I mean ALL of today.

Actually it wasn't THAT bad. I stood then sat in line for what seemed like an eternity, waiting for these people who must have been the most unprepared jackanapes you can imagine.



I am not making this up. The lady behind me had two kids, one really cool < 10 yr old who was trying to entertain the 2.5 yr old who was disturbing an unbelievablely large number of innocent bystanders.

Not to toot my own horn, but me, I had my form all filled out, ready to go BEFORE I walked into the building. And when it turned out that I needed to fill out form DS-64, which I hadn't anticipated, it took all of three minutes. Yessir, 80 minutes in line, 8 minutes in the room.

I'm not sure why I keep linking to my ebay sales from here, but why not?

I'm parting out an old defunct laptop for a friend, and another one for me, so I will be selling a lot of parts of laptops -- ram, keyboards, scrap -- over the next few days. If any of you need old dell CPi or Inspiron 7000 parts, let me know. Replacement parts are friggin' expensive.

Things that have been re-affirmed from blogs and the internet (a pessimistic post):

(1) People have no qualms about abandoning their rationality.

(2) Rational debate with people is not possible.

Corollary to #2: People have a tendency to believe what they want to, irregardless of rational reasons for holding those beliefs. Convincing someone of the opposite position is largely a matter of presenting arguments -- either emotional or rational -- making them question their principles, and then waiting for their pride to blow over and for them to accept whatever it is on their own terms. You can be especially successful if you make them think that they thought of the idea on their own.

I hate these games.

The green arrows are the free ways across the bridges. If you go opposite a green arrow, you lose. Or, in my case, you can't. 'Cause you're six cents short. The pink spot on the left was my drop off point. Everything south of there was (vastly) out of the way. I think I'm out of my mind. Can I still blame this on lingering effects from that fever? I think so...

In Jurassic 5 - Remember His Name, the phone rings, is answered, and the guy on the other end talks, all within the beat. How cool is that?

Wow. Today I drove down to San Ramon in the East Bay to drop off the server rack that I had picked up from Jeff yesterday.

Fifteen minutes after I left home in the morning I discovered that I had left my wallet at home.

I decided that it would take too much time (another 1/2 hour) to pick it up, and that would put me behind schedule for my doctor's appointment in the afternoon. I had three hours to make the delivery and get back, and that was pushing it.

However, as I passed the first bridge (no toll southbound), I realized that I would need two dollars to get back by going over the bridge northbound.

I frantically searched my pockets. Nineteen cents.

I searched the car. Seven quarters. I missed the two-dollar-mark by six cents. Six cents!

So I drove even further south, hoping to skirt the tolls and get northbound on the 101 so as to cross the Golden Gate.

However, the Dumbarton Bridge has a toll of three dollars, which I did not know. So I had to go even further south to the 237, and then all the way back up north. I probably spent eight dollars in gas to avoid a two dollar toll.

Needless to say, I missed my afternoon doctor's appointment. It's lucky for my employer that I'm not charging him for all that gas, either.

The drop off went smoothly, but I was thinking about asking the lady for five bucks the whole time.

I drew ya'll a nice little map of the action, but The Gimp crashed. Serves me right for running it under windows anyway, right?

WTF does this stuff come from? A little demon? Your friends who have been secretly polled? Huh? HUH?