Well, allergies are acting up. Sneezing, coughing, runny/stuffy nose, plugged up, itchy, watery eyes. Others report likewise.

On account of the storms, perhaps?

Also, dry, bloddy noses. Gotta love the medium-high desert of California.

California, a climate for everyone.

As soon as this morning coffee wears off, I'm gonna go for a run.

I've even been STUDYING this morning.

I just received this from Fr. Ben via email. God Bless you Father Tom! Rest in His peace! We miss you!

It is 8:35 am and I'm up. Not because I stayed up all night either. I just got up, after a full night's rest. This is the beginning of my new schedule.

It's alllllmoooossssttt...

shorts-weather.

Just went for a balls-to-the-wall bike ride up the Ojai road (from tack). Went up (towards Ojai) for a hard twenty minutes, and then flew back down.

You get to the point where pedaling can't make you go any faster, so you hunker down, swing off the seat and hold on behind the seat. Mud splattering everywhere, people in cars, bulldozers, tow trucks staring.

I tried to do the 'the ditch run' after getting back here, but I was just too tired. Had trouble walking back into the dorm too.

UPDATE: A spiritual attack.

I'm close to leaving. School hasn't even started, and I 'm close to leaving.

I am seriously thinking about packing up my car and leaving, maybe tomorrow. The school hasn't cashed my check, classes haven't started, and it'll be like I never was here. Like a phantom: people saw me, but I'm gone. I could be in San Francisco in eight hours, or be in a hotel in LA in two, with all of my belongings in my car.

Can anything be worth this strain on my mental health? I've got to get out.

Maybe I'll just move out, and when classes start, I won't enroll if they don't like that. I can't live here.

If you see me, say goodbye. I could be gone tomorrow.

AAAHHH! My hair's too long, my cell phone has no reception, my internet connection keeps going down (because of a BAAAAD cable) and I am in a friggin' DORM room!

Well we made it off campus. First to Ojai, then around the 33 to Ventura and down the 126 to Santa Paula, pausing at The Habit in Ventura for grubbin'.

I said that oh, about a month ago. I was going to elaborate then, but I didn't. I don't think I will now, but maybe later. In fact, almost certainly later. I'm going to bed now. Maybe I can take my insomnia down by degrees -- half-an-hour a night.

New ideal summer job: short-order cook in New Orleans. Learn some cajun cookin' baby!

UPDATE: Halflife 2 is not an insomnia-cure.

I like this blogger's stuff.

I am in the process of tranferring the technical side of my blog to a new location. It's still a beta.

As you may have noticed, since I got back and began working again, there have been a whole string of technical posts... It's not that they are out of place here, but just that I get a lot of hits from people who search google or yahoo for answers to their technical problems, and it would be more helpful to that crowd to have all the posts in the same place.

My idea is to keep a rss-like shadow of the technical posts here, so that those who are interested can follow them along.

- Hem, The Cuckoo

Music has always been a community thing for me. That's why I don't like headphones unless everyone's listening to them. Even when they sound as damn good as this pair (Grado SR125's) does.
Of course, me producing my music is different. That's usually been a very private thing.

The mysterious fuzziness in those pics is due not to my camera-phone, but rather (I suspect) to some heinous compression in my cell-phone-network-accessing-pc-card-modem's service. I'll try to connect uncompressed and fix them.

The whole point of a blog - that is, using the "blog" style of publishing - is that your work is visible, immediately/instantly, to the entire world at large. However, the anonymity of the internet guarantees that you don't know who is reading your work or when. Sure, the various tracking procedures can oftentimes reveal the identity of any particular visitor, but, unless you are a maladjusted junkie of some kind, who has either subscribed to or written a real-time website monitoring app (they exist), you don't generally monitor the comings and goings of your online and virtual, visitors.

This extends from the actuality of the site to a detectable presence in the writings themselves. How and why the notion of the indefinte audience affects the author are subjects of much debate and contention, however, we do know a few things about this subject.

After doing much (tongue-in-cheek) research for this article, I have determined that blogs generally do the following things:

- talk about blogs (this blog, your blog, any blog)
- bitch, rant, rave, grumble, groan, moan, meow, or whine
- post pictures relevant to the pursuit of beauty
- are not ordered entities

I mostly write about girls in my journals, when and if I keep them (the journals, not the girls). And since my "blog" has become well-read, I largely don't publish my musings on these particular females in any form except obtuse or obscure poetry. Which means that the "blog" is not the sum total of my cathartic, creative output - it is an artform limited by its very versatileness - or is it?

Is it rather limited by the cojones, so to speak, of the blogger? This blogger was fired from his long-time job because of his blog. I think it's bullshit to pretend to have an "online-journal" of one's life and not then to not post the very things that are most relevant to that life - like girls, jobs, and so on. If I get kicked out of school for what I write on my blog, so be it. I'd just like to see what they put down as the excuse. Further, there's no guarantee that every event related here is truthful, factual, and non-fictional.
Ultimately, the blog should correspond to the author's wishes, much like any song, book, or article. However, this particular artform takes on a life of its own.

[ My skull, Yorick, grins at me as I do pushups while staring his empty sockets down. He says All is futile, young human. The pain you are going through is worthless. Any strength you have is fading. Glory is empty, empty as my eye sockets.

His real name is Yorick, but I call him Hyped, and not because he's 'all hyped up' on 'life.' ]

I'm subsisting on cold chicken, my Momma's bananna bread, and the occasional peanut-butter sandwich, while we are waiting out this storm (which is supposed to hit with 6" of rain tonight). It's not a bad diet, really.

Oh, and we are now housing some reh-few-gee's (15 of 'em) from some houses 'on the bluff' that have been washed away. Maybe tommorrow I can get down there with a camera and take a picture of the mangled pick-up that used to be brand new before it was washed away by 'the flood.'

Oh wait, my camera's dead. Dang!

In honor of Michael D. Byrne:

- Milton, Paradise Lost

BLOGICIDE! Aaah! Flee in terror!

More from the Santa Paula creek RIVER.

So we basically have a natural disaster here at Thomas Aquinas College, in Santa Paula. The Santa Paula-Ojai Road is closed in both directions, thought the way to Ojai may still be passable. We've lost a bunch of the road on the Santa Paula route, so it is going to be a while before it becomes passable again.

And I'm probabluy the only one live-blogging it!

I've been zipping around on my bike, taking photos with my phone.

BREAKING NEWS FROM THE SANTA PAULA ROAD

Well, the place is flooded. The rain for the last several days has elevated the creek to a roaring flood, the road itself is cracked, mudded over, or washed out in several places. We are, for all intents and purposes, stranded up on this little commune in the hills. Apparently we have four days worth of food stored up. I still have chlorine drops for the river water I suppose. Classes were, of course, canceled today. The sun just came out for a second a minuter ago, so there may be hope. We haven't started building The Ark yet.

Bloggin from school, from Cingular wireless data service, in my dorm room. Dorm room? Geez. WTF am I doing in a dorm room?

Yeah, so you know I'm ALMOST ready to go when I pack the computer up. The computer always goes last. So one more blog before the road, and I'm on my way.

Oh yeah, and that is me over by the mixing console. Yeah.

After years of mucking through Microsoft Licensing web pages on their site, I find that Windows XP Pro and Windows 2000 Professional are given CALs (Client Access Licenses) for free by Windows 2000 Terminal Services Server. So you do not need CAL's for any client running either of those OSes, which is cool.

However, what we are really tlaking about here is not CAL's per se, but TSCAL's - Client Access Licenses for Terminal Services specifically. So, if you wish to access the Server on the LAN normally, i.e. not Terminal Services, you still need a regular CAL. There are two types of CAL, the regular CAL and the TSCAL, and Microsoft Tech Support Web Pages do not consistently differentiate between them.

Blogging from a Cingular store in San Rafael from my (now working) GPRS connection over AT&T/Cingular's EDGE network. Just had to call to get someone to authorize it on their end, and now it's speeding along at 217Kbps. It rocks. Too bad I don't have a battery in this puppy, but my laptop now will ALWAYS BE ONLINE. BWWWAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAA!

Things (technology-wise) that have impressed me lately: Firefox's importing of other browsers cookies into its fresh install.

Then I open up eBay or something and I am right where I left off in the other browser. Incredible.

Uh, yeah. Not sure how or why this happened (to one of my client's laptop's access installation) but it did, and this article fixed it.

I like the idea of having a chip (SD) with a hash on it or encryption key or something that identifies you on the network. Then you take it out and away you go. The new advances in biometrics and fingerprint scanners are cool too. Just got to stay away from the whole big brother thing.

Those scummy bastardés. (Swearing in French is okay, right?). This has been bothering my sensitive ssh tunnels for a little bit now. And all without warning. Damn Service Pack 2. God Bless BitVise.

Huh. Imagine putting Microsoft's little product in the same family as Citrix! The impudence!

This website has an interesting list of SMTP servers, and shows how they correspond (or should) to various ISPS. Whatever happened to ISPs closing down Open Relay, is what I want to know?!

There has been a lamentable dearth of pictures here. So I'm gonna fix that.

I think this would be a much better picture if my phone hadn't been drinking so much.

Right. Well I'm off to work, and also to play around with my new GC83 which I got yesterday, running on the AT&T/Cingular network. As of yet, I have not been able to connect, but we'll see.

Question: On most people's blogs, if you post a comment, and someone replies to it, do you get an email notifying you of it?

(I had to think about that sentence for five minutes before writing it.)

Should I implement that feature? Whaddya think?

Oh, and listen to the band.

Mine.

"Last night" - for your viewing pleasure...

Frank Sinatra just came on my music (One for My Baby (And One More for the Road)) and said "It's quarter to three..." and I looked at my clock and it was. Weird. G'night, sportsfans.

Eight beer caps scattered around the garbage can is a bad sign... especially when two of you were only sitting four feet away...

Well, this didn't last long. Watching You Bet Your Life with my brother.

I've got my next cell phone all picked out, yessireebob. And it's a beaute. Even a tad bit bigger than my current cell phone, to boot.

The Nokia 9500 supports WiFi b and EDGE. How excellant is that? Totally excellant.

Silver's back on her feet, so to speak.

I think I have a tapeworm. I have eaten about 8 meals today. Also, my kidneys have hurt since I quit drinking.

I was walking past my T.V., which was on, while talking on an earbud (those little danglers that fit into your phone) when the cable suddenly leaped towards the T.V. and I heard a crackling sound. The electricity snuck up the cable and shocked the inside of my ear. The INSIDE of MY EAR! I have NEVER been shocked (by electricity) on the inside of my ear! Anyways, it caused me to involuntarily curse, both into the microphone and into the hearing radius of my little brother. So, be forewarned, gentle readers. Keep your small electrical cables which are connected to the inside of your ear AWAY from your evil, evil T.V.

Yesterday was pet* day, the day before was drop-everything day, and I can only wait with eager anticipation to see what today is.

*The word pet, which means a domisticated animal in English, is the word for fart in French (pron. pay). source.

Turns out that the engine codes do not lie: Silver is being held up by a bare wire on the RPM sensor (probably my own doing with hooking the tachometer in and then having the yokels fix the dash light while I was gone, messing up everything under the dash), and the fuel pump relay is blown.

Two things I could easily fix myself, but I. don't. have. the. time. Better to just work the day instead, and make some money. And add this repair to the long list of expenses I have yet to pay.

But it's time to stop doubting Robin & my opinions about car trouble. We were both right on.

Slowly coming into consciousness. Been a wicked insomniac for the last week, two weeks, something. Had my first hard sleep in a long time last night... Good, but I need to go to work...

New plan: bed at ten, up at six every morning. No alkie.

I worked basically a nine to five today on less than three hours of sleep. After not working (at a desk) for four months. I'm tired.

Just got word that the house we were staying in in Africa got attacked by robbers, who made off with 3000 Ksh. Nobody was hurt.

Um. I've been writing quite a bit, and not sharing it with y'all ( <-- a one-syllable word).

I call this one Fireside Memories. I wrote it about an hour ago. I have a bunch more, but I'm going to bed.

Microsoft Remote Desktop Client and Windows 2000 Terminal Services: getting the copy/cut and paste functionality to work between the client the server host through RDP has been a chore. I had to locate these files:

Rdpclip.exe
Fxfr.dll
Rdpdr.dll
Fxfr.ini
Fxfrinst.bat

Which I finally found in the Microsoft Windows 2000 Server Resource Kit - they were NOT available for free downloand from ms.com, I dunno why.

Anyways, I obtained the resource kit, and am on the verge of installing the functionality. Just got to dust off that ol' regedt32.

If you measure your scotch in hands, is that a bad thing?

I know that Toque has been into Social Distortion for a while, but I'm just starting to listen to them. Understated (punk, almost) rock, that sounds like the American cousin of Flogging Molly.

So it turns out that calzones bought from corner stores in San Francisco aren't half bad.

So Ridley over at Wanton & Forlorn delves into the genealogy of punk with an interesting take.

"So... if the tow truck takes us to [the mechanic], and we get a taxi from there..."

"...we don't haf' ta drive ever again, tonight."

And so the 1.75 litre bottle of Johnnie Walker Black was introduced to our 6 oz flask... again. and again. and again.

,. and that ruined my plans to go down south to my friends' wedding.

Wow, what a New Years. I'll blog about it later. My car broke down in the city,.

:: WARNING ::

I have stumbled upon a new marketing technique that IS IN USE in commerical establishments around you.

I was driving up to Costco today to pick up my contacts, and I stopped for a coffee at "Java House" or something - a coffee shop that I have a particular grudge against, since they bulldozed "Eric's" to make way for it, and "Eric's" was the second-best burger in the county, and the best damn philly cheesestake around.

Anyways, the marketing technique.

I ordered a coffee.

The next thing I new, I was holding a few cents in change and driving off.

Here's the secret: You dramatically overcharge your customers, and, if you do it DRAMATICALLY enough, they PAY YOU WHILE IN A STATE OF SHOCK.

Try it some time.

I'm not even going to tell you how much I spent on that cup of coffee, and they put sugar into it! They WAAAAAY overbalanced it and ruined it, and I had to drink this $3.55 cup of terrible coffee.

I guess it's welcome back to Marin County. Bastards.

AT&T charge ten bucks a month to extend the 'home calling area' to Canada. Which would mean no more long distance calls to anywhere in Canada, and no phat phone bills one trips to Canada. So activate it for one month, then cancel, and so on, if going to Canada. Brilliant.

T-Mobile has an interesting price, but the speeds ain't so good. 30-40kbps, typical. And the hardware is expensive there. And they want a contract.

Turns out my speed estimate of 100-130kbps is right for the AT&T wireless data network. But Verizon is stepping up to the plate. This is exciting news.

I'm back behind a desk.

Back home... for another three nights.

Another wedding - this time in Bakersfield - is scheduled for this Saturday.

Joe Schroder, please report in.

I deleted your voice mail message, and then when I tried to call you, I inadvertently deleted your number from my phone.

Blogging from the Finely's house in Ojai. Joe & Julie were married successfully yesterday. We drank a lot.

Well, not really that much, but it was champagne, and I haven't had much of that for a while now. So it was bubbly-fun.

I saw a lot of old friends at the wedding and reception; there were many reunions. I walked through puddles in the parking lot.

Movies I would like to get on DVD:
On the Waterfront
Garden State
Sweet & Lowdown

A hungover Robin is reading me selections from Travels with Charlie form the couch, and I've been trying to sing Neil Young songs with a begin-to-get-sick-slightly-hoarse voice. Must. Fight. It.

Oh, and I'd also like a copy of the soundtrack to Garden State.

Oh, and my new credit card gets 5% cash back on almost every purchase.

My brother (the elder) gave me 10 of my own dvds back for Christmas.

We watched True Grit today, as a family, mostly. This was a LONG day, since I went to bed at 2:45 am and got up at 8:10 am. And did not get much sleep the few previous nights.

And a few nights before that, I was in many different countries.

And there was something else, too, but I forgot.

Oh yeah, I talked to like six or seven or eight people today, old friends, for anywhere from forty minutes to an hour and a half on the phone, people scattered all across the country. Incredibly good times, though some sad news was found out.

Please pray for my friend S.C., who has been diagnosed with a malignant brain cancer, and my friend Mr. R., who has had a stroke and neurological complications that are becoming very hard for his family to deal with.

That is all.

Oh, and my Florida-based webserver is time-shifted one hour ahead of where it should be, so these posts are one hour ahead of what they should be. Guess they don't do dalight savings down there, or something.

I've figured out that I can live comfortably on $2000/month. (Um, post taxes, I guess.) Alloting the standard 1/4th of income for rent, so $500. So that means that I need about $100,000 in investments (at current savings account interest rates at your run-of-the-mill online bank) to live off the interest. I'd be considerably further along towards that goal if i didn't go back to school right now.

Ah, well, I am thinking I should pickup a few web-type contracts (short term) to fill in the hole in my budget made by my Africa and (more so) my London and Ireland beer escapades, and the extra could round out my savings...

So I'm going back to school in SoCal, as soon as I square away the finances...