Ryan's Currently Unnamed Blog

Well, after far more stuggles then I thought there would be, machines are finally coming back. I had planned on experimenting with both KDE and GNOME as my desktop environments, but think I'm going to check out just GNOME first since its smaller and simpler (took hours to compile still, I'm sure KDE is far worse) and if it doesn't quite do what I'm hoping, might check out KDE afterward. With my fallback being good old Fluxbox. Eyecandy is nice but I prefer a system that doesn't slow down when I try to open a menu or something.

fenchurch   down  14+12:03
ford        down  35+12:23
l0rt          up     10:10,     0 users,  load 0.00
marvin        up  30+01:28,     0 users,  load 0.00
trillian      up  65+10:45,     1 user,   load 0.11
zaphod        up  42+20:14,     1 user,   load 0.25

Think ford has a power supply issue... got a huge pile of spare parts, just need to find time to figure that crap out... still haven't settled on a name for the new laptop.. but l0rt is working for now! haha

LOL.. so I got to spend a day or so in NYC, and my experience was hellish to say the least.

On the way out there, the flight was delayed. Ok, I can understand delays if there's a mechanical problem or if weather delayed the plane from arriving. But, the plane was sitting right at the gate when I got there. 55 Minutes later after the scheduled departure time, they finally let us get on the plane. The only explanation was "Air Traffic Control Delays" due to windy conditions in New York. Unless they are dramatically slowing down the rate at which plans can land in NYC and they don't want a backlog of planes circling around New York waiting for clearance to land, it just makes no sense at all.

So yeah... we finally get ON the plane, and then we sit at the gate for another 45 minutes before taking off. Ended up getting into New York about 2 hours late, but thankfully didn't mess with my plans TOO much.

My return flight was the next day. 4PM flight, I get to the airport at 2PM and go to checkin. The automated kiosk was very polite in informing me that my flight had been canceled and offered a flight at 6am the next morning. I check the departure screens and just about EVERY flight to chicago is cancelled, but other cities are just fine. Again, they blamed it on wind in NYC! LOL A phone call or two later they put me on a flight that was scheduled to leave at 6pm on another Airline. Delta. Alright, so I wander around the terminal building at LaGuardia and find out that Delta isn't in this terminal. Sweet, so I ask some security guy how to get to the delta terminal. He politely points me out to the street, tells me to wait for the bus and it will take me to the other terminal building where delta flies out of.

Bus shows up... drops me off at the new terminal building. I check in with delta, get a boarding pass and head towards security. The two security guards were too busy telling some story to each other to notice that people wanted to go through security. And of course the guy in front of me had like 1000 questions about he can bring on the plane. Like he's gonna head back home if he brought something they were gonna make him throw out. Ha. Anyway, I finally show my boarding pass, and she tells me in a thick Indian accent that Chicago flights for Delta are out of a seperate terminal building. The Marine Terminal Building. So, it was back out to wait for another bus and FINALLY get to this gimpy little terminal building that's from like 30s. Was kinda interesting being a pilot and seeing that this is where they launched some of the transatlantic flights in the 30s. The Yankee Clipper being among the most famous of the "flying boats".

Finally check in there and of course, the 6PM flight is delayed. We boarded at about 7:30PM, waited on the runway for another hour and half and finally got to chicago around 10:30PM.

All that for a little wind? Sure it was breezy, but it wasn't that bad... I could see if it was like 40MPH gusts...

Halloween comes a few hours early for me.... Scary!

So.. its about 8:30... i'm finishing up some things here at work.. First day back in the office after being out most of last week for training... I happened to notice THIS on our production web server's homepage (and ever page on every site):

This.. for those of you who may not have guessed.. is a BAD thing. Turns out that IIS (Microsoft's webserver) is crashing right when it starts up.. even on a completely plain website. After running down a lot of possible solutions... we have come up with absolutely nothing. Other then a mysterious entry in the system log:

A process serving application pool 'DefaultAppPool' terminated unexpectedly. The process id was '3952'. The process exit code was '0x80'.

So... I isolated out the main website into its own application pool... and it crashes immediately. Ok.. I disable all the webserver extensions.. still crashes. Finally, create a pool for a basic HTML only website.. and it too fails to produce any different results.

Seeing as how a large percentage of our business relies on this actually working, we are faced with a decision... switch to a back up server that can't really handle the load too well, or.. bend over and call Microsoft for a Paid Phone Support Call. After deciding that its critical to get this machine up and running we pull the trigger on the support call.

That was about 10:30PM once we got the call started... Pleasantly surprised to find out that the normal cost of a support call, $245, only applies from 6am - 6pm Pacific time. Since we are unlucky enough to have a problem in off hours... this little beauty is costing us $490 (see MS site).

It's now 11:45 and I've spoken to two people at microsoft to describe the problem just for them to figure out who I should be directed to. The last 45 minutes or so I've been on hold for. Will keep adding to this post to keep my sanity alive while I'm trying to resolve this.

Food... oh, how I love thee...

ha... ok, I know I don't have the best diet in the world... I eat a lot of fast food.. and I probably should have a cholesterol level somewhere in the 400s and weigh like 350 pounds... but, last time i checked, my cholesterol was low and I'm still trying to put on weight... 185 pounds for 6'3" isn't hefty... but anyway.. on to my point...

I've written before about Burger King and their tacos... I probably go to my local BK 4 or 5 times a week. And I order the same thing. Its good. The people there know me. Not sure if that's good or not. But pefection in a fast food burger = a whopper with no pickles or tomato and for the last 6 months or so... every BK meal is accompanied by two of their tacos. Awesome.

Couple that with the fact that the closest BK to home is open until 3am during the week and 24 hours on the weekend... and well... yeah.. its just ideal.

There's actually a second BK that's a little easier to get to from work. I went there today for lunch, well.. at 4:45pm.. i'm not sure if that qualifies as 'lunch'. Mainly because I saw a commercial for a new Italian Chicken Sandwich. Supposed to have chicken with mozzerella and marinara. Mine came plain. And the two tacos were also noticiably missing. AND there was no receipt in the bag. By the time I found the number and called them, it was like an hour later.

At least I get to eat a free lunch there tomorrow.. but wtf?!? I can see some fuckups occaisionally... I've had no mayo instead of no tomato before. That's understandable. And there's no way i got someone else's order.

Oh well.. i guess its just too much to expect a minimum wage person to care about their job to get it right. Just SOOO disappointing. Probably a good sandwich... but unless its stellar tomorrow... this one experience soured it forever... probably will be back to my good old standby #1, king sized with tacos... and at my regular BK....

Tried to get out of the same old rut... but everytime I veer away from the tried and true... it always goes wrong... So.. to everyone that ever made fun of me ALWAYS getting the same thing... THIS is why i don't mess with a good thing. lol

Ok, pointless entry over... mountains of work to do...

Oh the humanity! Not sure what has happened, but my home comps have taken a turn for the worse. Here's a report of the uptime of my machines at home...

fenchurch   down  11+13:19
ford        down   6+10:47
marvin      down   5+22:34
trillian      up  36+09:06,     0 users,  load 0.00
zaphod        up  13+18:38,     2 users,  load 0.02

First of all.. bonus points to anyone to knows where the names for my machines came from... and super bonus points if they could explain why each name is appropriate.

Fenchurch is an old dell laptop... been on its last legs for a while... and parts of the keyboard stopped responding a while ago intermittantly.. its been taken apart and put back together and taken apart again and is currently in several pieces strewn about... not a pretty sight, and I'm pretty sure its beyond repair...

Ford is a linux workstation... it refuses to even begin to boot up... no clue what's wrong with it.. haven't been able to mess with it lately.. that happened a week ago... (or 6 days, 10 hours, 47 minutes ago.. to be exact)

Marvin is attached to my TV and used to be my TiVo replacement (MythTV in case anyone cares) but since it doesn't do HD, and my crappy comcast DVR can kinda record stuff... sometimes... its been relegated to being a jukebox that plays music... rarely... can probably scrap that project and repurpose it... nothing wrong with that machine.. the power went out and its on a power strip with a really sensative breaker that needs to be manually reset whenever it loses power. Just haven't bothered to reset it.

Zaphod is a dual processor machine that used to get my mail and ran a lot of web stuff, but that's mostly been moved off to my real server on a real connection... it still does some stuff, but that can probably be moved over to trillian...

Trillian is my 'new' firewall/router... the old trillian was a Pentium-166, circa 1996 or so. The hard drive in it had been going for a while.. and it finally crashed.. hard... so... its now an old Pentium II I had laying around... took a weekend to rebuild that machine... but its much better off... old one had 8MB of memory and 2GB of total hard drive space.. but still managed around 400+ days of uptime... its got a ways to go still.

Speaking of uptime.. zaphod used to get up to about 100 days before randomly locking up due to a poor SMP support on the motherboard and linux pushing it a bit too hard. but now its been dying at about 30 days.

Anyway, the point of this is... I have a lot of work ahead of me to figure out what's going on with this stuff... I think that I'm gonna be putting the remains of fenchurch into a newer laptop that's also having some issues... but that's gonna be a project that might take months to finish.. and quite possible could end up being a big waste of time that results in some burned out laptop hardware.. eh.. will see where it goes.

Every now and then... you hear a song that suddenly takes on new meaning... I've owned the latest NIN CD With Teeth (Hover over that link for a nifty new amazon popup, not sure how much i like it.. i generally get annoyed by such things... lemme know what you think). There's lots of tracks on there.. but I've never really thought much about "Getting Smaller"... good song, but not a standout... kinda felt more like filler then anything else.

However, yesterday.. while driving home in the FREEZING cold weather.. I this song came on.. and suddenly the lyrics had all new applications...

Anyway.. here's the lyrics and if you want to hear it.. here ya go.

Getting a little erratic here (Erratic perfectly describes has little consistency there is in my day to day life over the last month or two.)
And I don't know who to trust (Too many betrayals to mention... friends, family, work)
I guess they got a way of reading my mind (Work monitoring computer usage... governments monitoring phone calls)
I guess I gotta adjust (So much has changed... I have been forced into some adjustments, others i know i should make but haven't yet)
Got my arms they flip flop flip flop flip
Got my head on a spring (Ha.. love that idiom... but yeah.. definatley been watching my back lately.. very aware of the forces at work around me. Some call it paranoia.. i call it self preservation.)
Well I thought I got you on my side (again.. betrayals)
I haven't got fucking anything (seems like sooo much is missing)

I'm just a face in the crowd (Just a nobody.. nothing to distinguish me from anyone else)
Nothing to worry about
Not even tryin' to stand out (I've accepted this.. and given up trying to be special in some way)
I'm getting smaller and smaller and smaller (outside of my office (and that's only because nobody else can do what I do)... my importance to the outside world is diminishing every day)
And I have nothing to say (well, this line doesn't really fit.. i always have plenty to say.. but i'm losing the will to try to assert that or to have people understand me)
It's all been taken away (I've really feel like I've lost huge chunks of my life... important parts too.)
I just behave and obey (I've given up on so much... I just go along with the flow.. doing what people want me to do)
I'm afraid I am starting to fade away (and in the process... I'm losing who I am)

Uh-huh

I cannot see through the cracks
When I'm pressed up on the wall
I'm not looking to stand up real high (I don't expect to return to my former self)
I'd be happy to crawl (i'd be happy with just a tiny bit of progress though)
I think I'm losing my grip (there have definatley been moments that were difficult to deal with)
But I can still make a fist
You know I still got my one good arm (hey! my right arm may be fucked, but i DO still have one good arm!)
That I can beat...
nnn, I can beat myself up with! (i've tried.. doesn't work)

I'm just a face in the crowd
Nothing to worry about
Not even tryin' to stand out
I'm getting smaller
And smaller and smaller
And I have nothing to say
Its all been taken away
I just behave and obey
I'm afraid I am starting to fade away

And for what it is worth (This sentiment of this verse applies to SOOO many things.. i can't even begin to list them here)
I really used to believe
That maybe there's some great thing
That we could achieve
And now I cant tell the difference
Don't know what to feel
Between what I've been trying so hard to see
And what appears to be real

Fading away (indeed)
Fading away
Fading away
Fading away

My world is getting smaller everyday-yay-yay-yay-yay (indeed... it really is, and i'm surprisingly ok with it)
My world is getting smaller everyday-yay-yay-yay-yay
(and thats ok)

My world is getting smaller everyday-yay-yay-yay-yay
My world is getting smaller everyday-yay-yay-yay-yay
(and thats ok)

OK.. enough of my bitching.. just one of those things that line up so nicely with what's going on, and when i first heard the song I couldn't relate to much of it at all. Funny how things change.. well.. that's all.. for now...

So.. yeah.. my life has been reduced to working long hours and coming home, maybe spending 30 minutes on a laptop before i can't take anymore then watching TV, most likely [adult swim], or a DVD, probably my 40 disk Buffy the Vampire Slayer set... up to season 4 now... yay.

I've also aquired all the episodes of Sealab 2021, Detective Conan (aka, Case Closed in the US), Full Metal Alchemist, and One Piece... Would really like to burn those to a DVD so that I can watch them on my TV... That's easily about 6 months of entertainment right there. Oh well.. someday...

Also get to pass time by playing my stack of PS2 games I haven't played in like... ever. So many entertaining games... I'll post about those some other time though. I also got a Nintendo DS... along with a stack of games.... but i'll leave those to some other posts. They came out with the Lite versions a while ago that were smaller and had longer battery life then the original, i thought about buying one.. but I couldn't bring myself to buying a white one. They just came out with Black and Pink... well.. Onyx and Coral.. and I highly recommend it.

All this is well and good.. and an adequate way to pass the time.. but.. really feeling like i need to get out some. Can't remember the last time I went out that wasn't to go to work, or to buy food. And worst of all.. its October... Halloween is coming. Six Flags has fright fest going on.. which would be awesome to go to, especially since my company got half off admission coupons since we had a party there. Not to mention halloween parties or anything fun like that.

Plus.. i had to pass on TWO concerts I would have loved to go see... Veruca Salt (ok.. Louise is the only person still in the band and I haven't heard ANY of their new stuff.. but would be awesome to see them.. ya know.. for old time's sake) at the double door on 9/29... and the Insane Clown Posse on 10/1 (First time in 3 years that I'll be missing the Hallowicked tour... sucks)

Leaves are changing... had awesome weather in the upper 70s the last few weeks.. and I'm stuck inside... would have been an awesome time to go to a forest preserve and geocache or something. Perfect excuse to enjoy the weather and the colors.. but nooo.. i'm too messed up to do that. I'm starting to feel somewhat better... almost like i could actually go out this weekend and do some of that... but... the weather? they are saying we might get flurries in a couple days.

Fall was nice.. guess winter is just about here already... wheee.. At least the Bears are winning... but even those games haven't been fun to watch and I quickly lose interest once we are winning by 20 points...

Joy.. i'll quit my bitching though.. I got plenty of stuff to do.

I know i haven't updated things here.. there's actually two or three posts that aren't public yet because i haven't completed them yet because its still a pain to use a computer from home... and... well.. work has been crazy busy so I haven't really had the time to write anything from here either...

so yeah... I just had to make a comment here because its probably been about a week since i looked at this blog.. and a little longer since i cleared out all the comment/trackback spam. Sepetember 29th is the last time i cleared it out.. and there has been FIVE HUNDRED SEVENTY EIGHT trackbacks... and every single one has been for a porn site or an 'online pharmacy'.

So, uhh.. yeah... seeing as how that's being abused way more then it should be... i'm probably going to be doing away with the automatic trackbacks... its just crazy! Not like anybody uses it anyway... but i figured i'd post about this here, because.. like.. i haven't in forever.

I also have a pile of email to go through... grah.. so much to do.. so little i can do.. yay

If i had to sum up my current state in one word... "Broken" pretty much does it. In just about every way that a person can be broken... I think I am.

Not to be totally emo about it, but my spirit has been crushed, my body demolished, and my will to persevere and struggle along just to find some way through this mess has been snuffed out, perhaps for good.

I know that things always seem bleak at their worst, and that the thing that turns it around is always unexpected.. but yeah.. that's about where I am.

I don't really care about anything. I've been working 80 hours (salaried, so no overtime, no bonus, no nothing, other then a pat on the back and a handshake) a week for the last month or so, single handedly pushing a huge project that's worth millions to my company.

Somehow finding time to get away for something that I felt was more important then anything else in the world. Probably spent another 40 hours a week looking through websites and making phone calls to ensure that things went as smoothly as possible. My cell phone plan has 700 minutes.. that's like 11 1/2 hours... i've never used more then half that.. I still have a week left on this month and i'm up at 1764 minutes. Most of that time spent on hold, only to find that after waiting for an hour, they can't help me for what I need to do. 40 cents per extra minute.. i'm well over $400 in extra time charges... gonna have to call them to see if i can change plans before the bill gets generated... but again.. i really don't care.

There's tons more too.. but I don't want to go into details... there's four different companies/people that i need to call and argue with to get anywhere from $200 to $500 back from them, but again, don't really feel like sitting on the phone trying to get a hold of someone and then jump through hoops to get them to refund me cash that was paid for services they couldn't provide. Can't do it at work because I can't have people overhearing me, don't want to pay 40 cents a minute on the cell phone, and don't really have the time to go home during the day to make the phone calls.

All along, I was thinking that things will get better once these two HUGE things are done. This Perfect Storm of projects has swallowed me whole and now that they are mostly done and I'm just wrapping up the little loose ends, there's this empty feeling. I'm sure work will find something for me to work on.. but yeah.. that's gonna make me happy. Other then that, I have next to nothing going on.

So, not only is there the emotional, spirtual, and physical exhaustion from all of this... This frail human body of mine can't take the abuse. I was worn down to begin with and then after pushing harder then i should have this weekend, trying to be superhuman to get as much done as possible in a short period of time, that took its toll on me as well. A few bouts with heat exhaustion (I really don't do well exerting myself hard for long periods of time in even moderately warm temperatures, but really didn't have much of a choice), stress related digestive issues, a fractured ulna (forearm bone) that I'm hoping won't need a cast, and an acute rotator cuff tear (2 of the four muscles in my shoulder are torn, one slightly, one about halfway) that I have to go back for another MRI to see if its healing or not. Hope to whatever higher power that it IS healing itself, but if it isn't that's going to require surgery (and cost me about $4K that I just don't have available at the moment, having spent just about every penny I have that's not locked up in a long term investment vehicle... yet another way I'm broke... have tons of assets but no cash).

I guess I should be happy and that its both in my right arm, and the fracture isn't in the wrist, so i can still type enough to work. I have to use the mouse with my left hand since I have my right arm immobolized, upper arm held down to my side... forearm across my stomach. So I can type if I turn my whole body to the right, since my right hand is at my left side. But that gets tiring so by the time I get done at work, all I've done is lay in bed or on the couch watching tv or trying to play my PS2 (still have at least 3 games still in their shrink wrap lol)

Don't feel as if ANYTHING is improving, and as of now, the only thing I have to numb the pain is Ibuprofen, since the doctor didn't want to perscribe anything that I might get addicted to. But even Vicodin would only ease the physical pain and there's far more then just that. Thankfully, I have somethings to help me sleep, and for the first time in a LONG time, I got more then 8 hours of sleep last night. Without that I'm sure i couldn't sleep for more then a few hours at a time.

Well, that's enough bitching from me... normally don't go into THIS much detail, but i just can't relay all of this to the people who have been asking where I've been and what I've been up to.. so there you have it.

I'd ask for people to keep me in their thoughts, but I honestly think I'm beyond repair... at the very least, there's no quick fix... And (again, at the risk of being totally emo), I'm not sure I'm even worth expending any of that effort to try to save me. I can only put up the fake happy front for so long... and its going on two months now... maybe even longer. And its funny when I get comments about how patient I am in dealing with people and have such a positive attitude... if they only knew the truth...

OK... i don't get it... i really don't.

I've had the pleasure of working late a lot recently... and as such.. i've gotten to know the cleaning crew and the security guys pretty well.

Today I had the pleasure of walking by the bathrooms at work while they were being cleaned. I'm very familiar with the guys bathrooms in the office. They are like bathrooms... blue tile floor, which extends about 4 feet up the walls with a lighter tile above that (i think.. i'm going off memory).

But, i caught a look into the woman's restroom... and theirs is carpeted (granted, same rugged office carpeting), and they have mauve wallpaper.. and chairs to sit around in.

This raises several interesting questions... Do people hang out in the bathroom at work and relax? Do they talk to other people? I know in the men's room, its all business... you rarely acknowledge other people (except for those few people who don't seem to know that rule, and they make everyone uncomfortable). And carpeting? I wonder if that extends into the other areas or if thats just in the lounge area that I saw... but a carpeted bathroom sounds like hell to keep clean. Or maybe guys are just slobs. or maybe they thing that the guys bathroom appeals to guys more...

Do they really put thought into this kind of stuff?!? Are consultants that do research on this and recommend to companies how their bathrooms should be?

i have about a thousand other questions... but i think i need to go back and look again next time I'm alone in the building. One thing is true... I've put FAR too much thought into this already...

Ok.. my tastes in almost everything are very diverse. As a result, I've found some really obscure bands online that I really like, thanks mostly to Last.fm and their fantastic service.

I happened across a local act, Sid Maudlin and despite having only 20 people there to see her, you could just tell that she had something special.

So, I've seen her several times, and I expose some friends to her music... but all the while hoping she won't become so popular that EVERYONE is listening to her stuff and its impossible to get in to see her perform.

Its a catch-22... She obviously needs some success so that it can be profitable for her... One can only put so much time and effort into a labor of love until it gets abandoned because you have to do something else with your time so that you can pay rent or buy food.

I went through that with Veruca Salt.... Chicago band... saw their early shows, was one of their first groupies, and two months later, 'Seether' hits Q101, then MTV, and before you know it, they are on a nationwide club tour and then playing arenas opening for Live. That was fun only because I got to tag along for part of the tour and was a DJ at the radio station down at school when they came in for an interview.

On one hand, its cool to see them do well and to know you were among the first, but on the other, it sucks when people jump on board and take away the small intimate atmosphere.

Anyway, back to Sid... I always knew she had a lot of potential. Really catchy sound, witty lyrics, and a look that would fit right in on the pages of Rolling Stone. So, I guess it should be no surprise when I found this webpage!

Go ahead...

Click on it...

Look at it...

Be shocked and amazed...

Ok... you were either too lazy to actually go look at it.. or you're back... Either way... wow! Its great for her and the exposure will probably lead to a big record deal with videos and everything that goes with it... but its probably the end of her local club appearances... which is really a shame.

Checking her schedule.. she has a show on the 14th downtown... which I won't be able to make... here's hoping that she has at least one more small show before she gets too big for places like the Double Door or the Metro.

I guess this means I'll have to watch some TV to see these commercials... hmmm

omg... i hate network solutions with a PASSION! Sorry in advance for the long post.. but this is just too funny...

used to be back in the day they were the only people to register domain names with. And as such, a previous business partner of mine went off and registered a bunch of domain names for our clients. Well, he later fell off the face of the planet and disappeared owing a lot of peopel a lot of money. Good Times.

Even better.. was that one of the clients continued on with us.. and his domain name stayed on this other guys network solution account... to which we had no administrative access.

The domain is coming up and about to expire... So I call the fine people at network solutions and ask them what to do about it. I paid them $35 towards the domain to keep it registered, but they wouldn't give me access to the account. Great.. well.. I bought myself another year.

The following year it came up again for renewal. I called them again and asked them what my options were. They actually suggested first that I continue to pay on the domain, and once the domain it is registered to expires, i can grab HIS old domain name (another $35 for network solutions) and set up email addresses for the administrative emails and I would effectively regain control of the domain.

Sounds like a good plan.. except that that domain had about 4 years left on it. And, I actually needed to make changes to the DNS Servers on my clients domain so I NEEDED to have access to it NOW.. not 4 years from now.

So, their next option was to allow it to expire, and then buy the domain outright. We liked that plan and I called on the DAY that it was supposed to expire to make sure it would go to plan.

It didn't.

That was a year ago in June. Some company called New Artisans, LLC bought it.. and directed it to a page that said it was for sale. The form didn't allow for an offer less then $1,000 to be made. I sent in a form offering $1,000 and saying that i wanted to talk about the domain.. never heard from them. There's some speculation on the internet that New Artisans is somehow in tight with Network Solutions.

So, I called up network solutions after seeing that the domain name IMMEDIATELY switched, and their response was. You lost ownership of the domain and its theirs now. There's nothing you can do.

So.. fast forward one year. Their gamble didn't pay off.. because there aren't many people with Eric's name who are in his profession and need the domain name (leaving it vague just in case someone wants to steal it... since it isn't ours yet.) Anyway, they allowed the domain to expire. That was June 6th. I was expecting that our backorder would kick in and snap it up right away.

WRONG.

Apparently there's a 30-60 day redemption period, which New Artisans was afforded the full 60 days. Just today it flipped to having a status of 'pending deletion' and i called network solutions to see how long it will take for them to release it.

First, I was told that there was no timeframe. This is quite shocking.. since i'm fairly certain that they can't hold onto the domain forever. When asked about this.. they said they indeed have to release it eventually. All I was asking for was a estimated range. I ended up playing some crazy guessing game with them. So.. this could be years before its released? No NO no.. of course not! ok then.. 2 months? no.. it will be before that too.

Ok, a month? 2 weeks? i can't promise you that. Ok, so 2 months it is! No, it will be less then that.

WTF!?!

And to top it all off.. I started by giving the domain name, and my name.. and explaining that the domain is for a client of mine named Eric. (My name's Ryan in case you were confused).

So, about 5 minutes into this conversation, she tries to console me by using my name. A classic sales/support technique to try to establish a relationship with the customer. Except she screwed that up too because she called me Eric. After the 4th time, and once it was clear that I wasn't getting any answers from her, I stopped her and said... 'Will you please stop calling me Eric? I told you my name was Ryan when I first called, and mentioned several times that Eric is my client'

Her response? Oh, I'm sorry, I must have misheard you. But as I was saying, Eric, I don't know.....

At which point I cut her off and said, 'I just told you that my name is NOT Eric and to please call me by my name, RYAN'... and went on to say that this was the kind of service I'd expect if I was paying $5 per domain, but for $35 I'd expect some GOOD service and people who can give me answers and know who they are speaking with. Finally, I explained that this is the exact reason why I avoid network solutions at all costs and have long since moved all my domains away from them.

I then proceeded to end the call by telling her that I know its out of her hands and she's doing the best she can and that I just want to be done with network solutions and have absolutely nothing to do with them.

As if it couldn't get any better.. her response: 'Well, thank you for calling network solutions, is there anything else I can assist you with'

I said, 'uhhh.. no... i guess you haven't heard a word I've said'. Right after I said no, she started her ending speech, 'thank you for calling network solutions and have a good day'. I can only assume that's the end of it because i hung up once I realized she had no clue.

Wow man.. just wow... you can't make this stuff up! I couldn't even find a place to embellish the story..

So yeah.. I ended last time talking about how you can securely send something when you don't know te recipient well to have a prearranged encryption scheme or trust the transportation involved. Thanks for all the answers that were submitted, but it was Lilith who got the answer right! Some of the answers were very creative and I hadn't heard some of those approaches before, and that's the first time anyone has ever figured that out!

Anyway, you may be wondering, when am I ever going to send something to someone I don't know? The answer is that you do it all the time! Everytime you go to a secure website or use a cell phone you are using this form of encryption and you don't even know it! The 3 roundtrips happens quickly in the 'handshaking' that happens when setting up the secure communication.

But what are these locks and keys? Well, it all hinges on the fact that there's no easy way to factor two REALLY big numbers. For instance... quick! figure out what two numbers can be multiplied together to get 12,835,384,025,881,369? That's actually a tiny number in terms of modern encryption, and there are some shortcuts, but its still a daunting task. Its compounded by the fact that its the product of two prime numbers. So, there are only 4 factors: 2 two prime factors, 1, and the number itself. There's a lot of REALLY smart people who are searching for a way to factor numbers efficently. There are some ways, but it doesn't scale well to large numbers. If you manage to come up with a way, there's a nobel prize in it for you and you will have effectively rendedered all modern encryption meaningless. (Conspiracy thoerists already think our governments have a method to do this, which is why they allow such strong encryption.)

There's more math magic that happens, but essentially, a public/private key is a pair of large prime numbers and through some mathematical conjuring, they are paired so one of the primes can be used to encrypt a message, and then it can only be decrypted with the other one. You can highly publicize one of the numbers, but the other is kept secret. Like wise, your secret key can be used to generate a signature that can be verified with your public key.

So, with this technology, its possible to send a message that can only be decrypted and read by the intended recipient. Of course, what he does with the decrypted message is up to him. So, if you send him your credit card number there's nothing keeping him from posting it to the internet, but at least you can be sure it got to him safely. Also, anyone can verify that a message was truely sent by you, and wasn't modified in anyway.

The only missing piece is... how does one verify that a key truely belongs to who they say it does? Enter the "Web of Trust"! I'm sure you've heard of the Kevin Bacon game. Where supposedly everyone in Hollywood is connected to Kevin Bacon by people they have worked with with no more then 6 steps. The same principle applies to PGP keys. I can meet someone who has a key, verify their identity, and then sign their key. Essentially, I am attesting that they are who they say that they are, and this allows people who trust me, to also trust this new person. The idea being that I can create a key that says I am Bill Gates, but without having people sign my key I won't be able to fool many people. Needless to say, the signing process needs to be taken seriously, as with some effort, you can poison the web of trust with false data. But as these incidents are exposed, they can easily be handled by revoking signatures.

A report on my key shows that there are currently over 32,000 people that I can have some level of trust of who they are. There's 1 person that I can get to in 15 'hops' but the average is about 5.8 hops. And there's over 20,000 people that I can get to within the 6 hops that Kevin Bacon uses. Like that there's a few 7 step paths to get to Wil Wheaton. There's tons more I can say, but this is already getting long.

So.. why am I writing about all of this? Well, signing keys is crucial to expanding the web of trust and shortening the paths within it. So, I'm planning on hosting my own Key Signing Parties, once a month, at a local Starbucks. So, any fellow geeks who are around Lake County, IL... The first tuesday of the month (today), I'll be hanging out at the new starbucks on Route 60 between Butterfield and Aspen road (click for google maps).

All you need is a print out of your key fingerprint, along with the ID and email adress so you key can be located, and a form of ID. You can read more about key parties and how they work, but this is going to be small and informal for now. If you show up... I'll be the guy with the long brown hair in the grey EFF shirt. I doubt there will be many people that fit that description! lol

Yes yes... I'm a big nerd.. I think I'm done rambling about this... for now at least..

Well, 2 weekends ago... I got away from my 'regular' daily life a little bit. Of course, I wanted to write about this weekend MUCH sooner, but life, being what it is, just wouldn't allow me the time to do that. So, digging through the fog as best I can... I'll begin to recount the weekend as best I can. This is probably going to be boring for just about anyone, but I wanted to get some points down so I would have something to remember the weekend by.

First off, shortly after getting into Wisconsin, we were greated by some of the local recreation areas. I knew about all the Adult Book Stores, and Mars' Cheese Castle but I didn't know they were THAT liberal.. LOL Yeah, yeah... its actually not about that at all, I know.. but its still funny! One of these days... I'll really need to take a drive by there and see what its really about!

Thankfully, the trip out there was relatively uneventful. Once I got in the area, there was actually all kinds of contruction and closed roads. Thankfully, my GPS Device was able to reroute me around all the unexpected detours and the (many) missed turns.

First thing that I did when I finally arrived, was get right to work on getting things setup. Its actually quite a bit of work and I wasn't really with anyone that wanted to do the work so I got started on things. After about a bit, we were right back in the car, to head out to pick up some food, beverages, and supplies for the weekend. The first stop was off at a Starbucks though, were I had quite possibly the best Blackberry Green Tea Frappuccino ever! And while we were in the store, we noticed that they had these machines where you can recycle cans and bottles. We had a few bottles and cans, and donated the proceeds to charity. Wasn't much, but made me happy to be doing a little bit of good with something I would have normally just thrown out!

Finally got back to the campsite and put away the rest of our stuff and kinda chilled out for a while. Most of the weekend is a blur as to what we talked about and what we did. At one point, the conversation turned to business stuff, and I actually got quite a few ideas of ways to expand on some of the current ventures. So yay for new ideas! I'm really convinced that getting together with people and brainstorming about things will lead to many fantastic ideas... just by letting the conversation go whereever, and then capturing that information and later reviewing it to determine what makes sense (lol, depending on our mental state... it might not!) and what is feasible to get done. So yay for new ideas. It means I have a LOT more to work on, but the potential is really bright!

Anyway, we hoped back in the car and wanted to get a hold of some gear so that we could climb some of the boulders and more sheer rock faces there. The first place we called said that they would have everything we needed, and to come on by. My GPS got us there with no problems, but as soon as I walked in, some old guy asked if he could help me and I told him what we needed. He just looked at me and said, 'I wish you would have called... we won't have anything until Monday.' This, of course, did us no good since we were only there for the weekend. I politely told the guy that I DID call and that we were told to stop on by. The guy apologized but said there's nothing we could do.

Got back to the car and we noticed a cop following us. Of course, this made us paranoid that we were somehow going to get busted for something, but after about 5 minutes (which seemed like 2 hours) he finally turned away. Not like he had anything on us, just really didn't want to deal with anything. Anyway, after searching through the GPS for some alternate stores to stop by, we finally found one that had what we needed, but they were 30 minutes away, and they closed in 45 minutes. They didn't sound all that convincing and we really didn't want to waste all that time to get out there to find out that they didn't have it. Called them back and they assured us it was going to be OK.

Thanks to the roads being messed up in Wisconsin, we turned off of the expressway when we were supposed to stay on it... but we still made it to the store 5 minutes before they closed. Got our stuff, and headed back.

I really should have taken more pictures while I was out there.. got some videos and some pictures, but nothing that can or should be put out in public. So, sorry about that... I know you're terribly disappointed!

After more chilling out, we decided that we wanted to go get some real food. So, we ended up finding a restaurant to drive to. For being what I perceived to be out in the middle of nowhere, the food was absolutely incredible! I'm not sure if it was the company, or being waited on, but it was definately something that stands out from the weekend.

That's most of the good things that I can remember from the trip. And unfortunately, there was quite a bit of bad too. I had some time to myself, mainly at night before going to bed. Normally, I work until I pass out from exhaustion, and I have little trouble getting to sleep. And also, since I normally keep longer hours then most people, I was on my own. I physically wasn't far away from some of my best friends, but yet I felt isolation and very very alone. Not sure what to really make of it, because its gone now. Maybe its why I keep myself so busy, so that I won't notice that, but I definately caught a glimpse of something that I normally never ever see. And, to make matters worse, when I was breaking down things to get ready to leave, I managed to cut myself. Was a fairly deep cut on a finger near the nail bed. I actually felt it scrape along something, either bone or the nail, i'm not really sure which. It bled for a while, and wouldn't really stop. I don't think I lost that much blood, but combined with a weakened (and probably very dehydrated) state from being outside in hot humid tempuratures all weekend, my body reacted very negatively. I can remember passing out and coming back in a state of terror, unaware of where I was or what was going on. Kinda embarressed to have something like that happen to me in front of my friends and it definately wasn't a fun experience, but at the same time I feel like a new bond was established. I've known for a long time that there are many people who are around for the good times. Its the bad times that expose who your real friends are. The people who are there for you without a second thought. That will drop what they are doing to come to your aid.

A few years ago, i would have laughed theories that the whole world is connected. I, being the logical person that I am, would have scoffed at the existance of something that we can't perceive. I still have the fortune from my fortune cookie... and I thought nothing of the fortune when I first received it. But now, its profound:

"True friends are there for you when they would rather be anywhere else"

(Or something similar, going to update that when I get home. -- well, i was close enough.. leaving my version there!)

For a long time now, I've signed just about every single email that I've sent. A lot of times people ask me what it is... and sometimes they even think its a virus or something.

If you really want a good explanation, there's a few good writeups of the whole process that you can read.. I'll post those at the end of my discussion and I'll probably cover most of it here.

First, Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is an encryption system that's designed to be about as secure as you could expect, given that you don't have much control over the people on the internet. Encryption is actually a fascinating topic, and if you're at all interested in the history, political impact, or how this stuff works, I HIGHLY recommend The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography by Simon Singh. It goes all the back over 2000 years ago and does a very good job of simply explaining the challenges to strong encryption systems, and how one would go about trying to break such a system. There are some technical parts, but also some entertaining stories so its not mind numbing like a textbook. My non-technical friends will still find the book enjoyable... Go! Read it! Now!

There are many strong encryption algorithms that are nearly impossible to break by simply trying every password due to the large number of the possible passwords and the processing time to attempt a decryption. Some systems thought to be strong have been defeated after finding a mathmatical shortcut which dramatically reduces the number of possible 'keys' or by the tremendous growth in computing power. Things that were considered unbreakable during World War I, due to it taking hundreds of years to work out the decryption by hand, can now be broken in seconds on a computer that's considered worthless and obsolete.

With that said... today's algorithms are strong, and it would take hundreds of years on the largest supercomputer clusters to defeat them. A far better strategy is to steal the password. Before the advent of Public Key Encryption Systems... the same password was used to encrypt and decrypt a message. This raises the question of how does one go about communicating the password? Remember the guys in spy movies with briefcases handcuffed to their wrist... well.. PGP is a modern day version of that!

But what if you don't trust the messenger? Even if the key to the briefcase is sent seperately, how do you know that there isn't some conspiracy to get at your stuff? As a mental excercise... try to come up with some solutions to that problem... How would you send a locked container to someone so that only they can open it?

I have lots more to write about, and there's a point to why I'm talking about all of this... I'll get to that in a later post... Bonus points to anyone who gets the answer right a comment (and if I told you the answer already, you don't count! don't give it away)

Well, there simply isn't enough time in the day... I'm still planning on writing about my recent weekend trip out of town (sufficiently vague to protect those involved, of course), but wanted to post something here since its been quite some time.

First, comment spam is essentially GONE here.. which is good.. but trackback spam is getting more and more annoying and I'll have to find some better way to prevent that.

Also, last night I made my first visit to the Safe House up in Milwaukee and I definately plan on going back sometime to grab some food there. Its only a short 45 minute drive or so, and its a place where I could probably spend days there and still find interesting things to look at and do there. I of course cannot dilvuge much more info then that, so that's about it on that.

Hopefully will have more time in the near future to put some thoughts out here. Oh... hopefully might be rounding up a group of friends to go see the new movie that's opening up this weekend, America: Freedom to Fascism. Its only in Chicago, New York, Kansas City, Tampa, and Austin. So, if you're around there, you might want to check it out. I'm hopeful that it will get some good exposure and be well received. From what I hear, its pretty well done without being too over the top or 'out there' to reach the American public, and it has a goal of trying to Wake Up the masses to the lies they have been sold. Having spent many hours in Aron Russo's presence, I'm withholding judement until I can actually see it, but it can't be THAT bad!? or can it?

I support the MPP and so should you. Not because I want the whole country to become pot heads or that I think its ok for people to waste their life away in altered states... but its another one of those victimless crimes. And in the cases where there is a victim, the crime wasn't the drug, the crime was the action. For instance, if 'Timmy the Pothead' gets high on something and goes nuts and kills 20 people... he's a murderer, regardless of what he had put in his body before he committed the criminal action. Actually... in that altered state... I'd say that Timmy is more likely to sit on the couch or make make some nachos then he is to go on a killing spree... It just takes too much effort. And, before you bring up the drug-related gang violence... let me ask you who created the black market that makes selling the drugs on the street so profitable? So profitable that people are willing to fight to protect their turf? And all that money they make goes to good uses... and gets taxed too... riiiight...

The reason you should support the MPP and any other organization working against all odds to fight the machine... is because the 'War on Drugs', like most of the other wars congress has been fighting on our own land (Poverty, Education, Terrorism, etc...), the War itself does FAR more harm then good. Education hasn't improved in this country... We aren't any safer against terrorists, and have given away most of our freedoms, and the erosion of the middle class and expanding poverty proves one thing... Congress should get out of the War business.

So, I get this email from the MPP... and it has this ad in it... and perhaps this War on Drugs is far worse then you might have imagined. Watch this video, and tell me that you think that we are choosing wisely when we make our policies.

Discussion is welcome, and stupid cliche responses will be either made fun of, ignored, or deleted. Have some substance to your viewpoint if you're going to make a comment.

Wow... I'm only 5 years, 1 month, and a couple weeks late to the party... but i just found out that my birthday has been designated as Towel Day.

How the hell did I miss that? Probably because I don't hang around enough DNA fans. That's Douglas Adams for those of you that don't know. Ya know... Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? (which is FAR more then the 'just a movie' that was released last year)

If you really don't know about him... take some time to Read up on him over at the wikipedia.

That is all.. much to do and I'm making little headway.

Its been a while since I caught up with Wil Wheaton's blog... like 9 months... before he went into exile. He made this comment in his recent post (wow, he's such an awesome writer... i could read him talk about every day stuff forever... i'm willing to overlook him not responding to my secret PGP encoded fan mail like a year ago.. lol):

On my way through the casino, just after midnight on a Monday morning when the weekend travelers had gone home, I noticed that Las Vegas can be an intensely lonely town when you're here without someone, which is incredible, considering the nonstop party that this place is. There are people everywhere, but it can be like standing in a torrential downpour, and somehow not getting wet at all. I'm glad that I'm here with PokerStars, who are really like an extended family to me, so I don't have to experience those moments of lonely isolation that are so common in the flashing lights beneath the ever-present haze of smoke.

Wow... how very true... and I've had some time alone in Vegas and had those exact thoughts... but could have never have put it so eloquently. Makes me wonder how much he stuggles to write that, or if it just comes out of him naturually.

So, yeah, I don't really know what's been going on with him for the last year or so, but its always good to catch up with an old friend... even if he doesn't even know you exist.

Its kinda crazy how things often run parallel... I saw that he has been doing work for Suicide Girls and on his profile page he lists the Dresdan Dolls among his favorite bands... wow...

Ok.. finally getting around to writing about my second trip up to Summerfest.

Really wasn't anyone I wanted to see on Sunday... the lineup was pretty lame compared to some other days. Lots of country acts for some reason. Came to the realization that pretty much ALL types of music is represented well at Summerfest... except for Rap... and Metal... wtf!?

Anyway... show was set to start at 7... we got to summerfest around 7:30.. Didn't really care much about seeing Bauhaus play... they are alright, but mainly for the innovation they did like 15 years ago. They felt more like aging has beens then the legends that they should be. Its a shame... and its always sad when people are still going far past when they should really stop... Either that or the whole European thing didn't seem right to me. We completely missed "Peaches"... which looks like a raunchy solo act... that quite possibly may have been a guy at some point. Might have been mildly entertaining.

Anyway... we parked, and made our way in... grabbed a few drinks, and made our way toward the stage. Now, this is when I noticed that they were frisking people on the way in, and had a guy on a bullhorn announcing that no cameras were allowed (among other things). So... I ducked into the bathroom and strategically hid my camera, and successfully smuggled it in. Really don't know why they care so much... And it isn't like every cell phone isn't a camera now anyway (a crappy camera.. but still a camera). Anyway, I never use the flash at a show.. so I almost never have any chance of getting caught with mine. But I just couldn't pass this one up...

Some people should really honestly look at themselves in the mirror before they leave the house.... and before they start drinking (whatever is sooner, assuming that they get dressed before they start drinking). I simply had to risk using the flash on this one, and it simply had to be recorded and posted on here. So, my apologies for putting your heinous image on the web.. whoever happened to have a ticket for section 2, row FF, seat 36 (i think). Wow.. that's heinous. Right after the flash went off... I became aware of 2 security people standing right behind me... I quickly turned the camera off... threw it into a pocket... and enjoyed the show.. they left a few minutes later, thankfully. I'm not sure what would have been worse... seeing this behemoth from behind... or from the front... I think behind is a lot safer.. and less nightmare inducing. My personal BBW collection is growing! haha

Anyway... it wasn't long before Trent took the stage, and it was the usual NIN show... brutal and intense... with only a few brief interludes that offered a little relaxation before being plunged back into sensory overload.

My only real complaint is the lack of a projection portion of the show... was really looking forward to seeing the video that gets played along with "Right Where It Belongs"... by far, one of the most powerful songs I've heard in a while... especially with the video that goes along with it in concert. I simply must find someone who has a good bootleg of it.

Regardless, the only visuals were provided by some LCD panels at the back of the stage, and a cage like curtain that dropped over the front of the stage and provided some low res LED imagery... Not bad, and made for some cool effects that didn't turn out quite as well as i'd hope they would on the videos I got. Oh well.... I do have to say that i was quite impressed by the closing of the show... with the cage/curtain coming down, with the NIN logo on it... as Trent and company destroyed their instruments on stage. Wow...

So, its been brought to my attention that trackbacks are broken... hmm.. wonder if i just broke it by adding the comment stuff....

I'm thinking it works (and it still a potential way to spam me... will probably have to figure out some way to prevent that)

OK, so... it only took a few weeks for my blog to get HAMMERED again by the comment spammers. Yay... So, I looked around and added a small Turing Test (For those that don't want to read, named after the Brilliant Alan Turing, a machine that can pass the test can fool a human into thinking that the machine was human). Basically, i'm trying to keep people from posting automated comments to my blog with links to their casino site or whatever else they are selling.

So, from now on... you'll have to enter in one of those annoying little verify the number things. I used one that should be really easy to read and not annoyingly difficult. I might even make it so that if you are registered on my site (just have to give me a name and an email address, nothing too invasive) then it will skip that part, but for now, I just wanted to stop the bleeding!

On another note, You probably noticed that I'm working with placing images in my posts, and getting them to display nicely. I came across an awesome looking piece of CSS code that works well in all browsers. I was having some trouble with a few of the implementation details, and sent off a not to the author, and amazingly, I got a very detailed response! So, this post will probably appear to be fairly broken as I try to illustrate some of the problems I'm having with using his work. Perhaps its something in the CSS on my side, perhaps there's some browser issues at play as well. So, I'm going to have some random images sprinkled throughout this post, and I'm trying to ramble on long enough to have some filler text that goes around them.

So, i get to post of the pictures from my recent trip to Florida on a post... never did get around to recording my experiences there.. and now that its almost a month later, its already turning to mush... oh well...

Now, when I post an image within the middle of a paragraph, it breaks the current paragraph. My current configuration wraps all paragraphs I type in a <p> tag but I'm not so sure that has anything to do with it as I think the div is what's breaking the flow of the paragraph. Its nothing major, of course... just not sure what's causing it. I haven't yet begun to change any of the overflow properties that are preventing the images from being displayed outside of the column containing the posts, and I have to see if that setting is critical for anything.

This picture is the same exact code only aligned to the left instead of the right. The left ones work, but the right ones don't, but I want to check this post out in IE and see what it looks like. (Aha! The right aligned ones DO work in IE, but I'm pretty much a FireFox only person... so Scott was right, the right aligned stuff does work.. but not in FireFox! ) So, I've just been sticking to the left side for the pictures. Also, the flow seems uninterrupted when I started this paragraph with a <div> but that may just be because of the way that b2evolution wraps each paragraph in <p> tags. Lots to look into.. fun fun.

So... sorry for the technical detour.. but I'm working on some stuff and without a public post showing some of the strangeness, its harder to test out. And a big thanks to Scott for helping me out with this and for spending a lot of time on his little gem. I'm well aware of the amount of time and effort that goes into writing elegant and cross-browser CSS.

Ok, So I Made two trips up to Milwaukee for Summerfest the self proclaimed “World’s Largest Music Festival”. It’s a short 45 minute drive without traffic, but ended up taking us a little over an hour.. yay for traffic!.

First band I was there to see was Sid Maudlin. Missed a little bit of her show due to leaving later then we wanted to and traffic, but still was good to see her. A little disappointed in the sound and the size of the crowd, but playing earlier in the day at Summerfest, you can’t really expect much. Its actually a huge thing for her to get that kind of exposure and I’m hoping that things pan out for her. I picked a CD she was selling because it had a handful of new tracks on it that weren’t on her website or on the other CD I bought. That, and I always try to support the artists I like, especially the smaller ones that don’t get the respect that they deserve.

After Sid wrapped up, we had a few hours to waste before the Main Event for the night, Cowboy Mouth. We ran into Luis (thanks for the spoons!) and chatted for a while, and other then that… we just wandered around… listened to some mediocre cover bands, drank lots of Miller Products, looked at the crap they were trying to get people to buy, and even played some Quake 4 on some Dell Machines and entered their contest where they are giving away a laptop. I’d certainly take the laptop if i were to win… but I’m really looking forward to getting an email (SPAM) from them to ‘dellsucksass@rkware.com’ or whatever address I made up when filling out the form.

The did have one promotion that got me thinking… It was a golf thing… Pay $6, get 3 balls. There was a little island 135 feet off the shore, and they put a hole out there. First Hole-in-One got a brand new car, next 3 got a free round trip on Midwest Airline in the continental US. I’m sure that the airline tix were donated, and maybe even the car, but even so… judging from the drunken idiots who think they could golf… I imagine that little booth was quite profitable. Not sure what their expenses are, but there was a long line of people wanting to try. They even had some poor idiot sitting in a tent out on the island watching the hole for a winner… Yeah.. I’d be loving THAT job!

That day happened to be the first game of the second Cubs/Sox series. My office encouraged people to wear jerseys to show support for their team, and i didn’t change clothes before going up to Summerfest. Was REALLY funny to me that i had about 20 people make some kind of White Sox comment. About 90% of them were white sox fans also (where the hell were THEY 2 years ago?) and wanted to have conversations of some sort about the team, and if they beat the cubs that day (they did, of course!). I’ve worn similar stuff other places before we won last year, and I barely got ANY comments, and when I did, they were from Cub Fans that wanted to mock me for some reason. The best comment by far was from some guy from Milwaukee… a Brewer fan… He wanted to make fun of me for being a White Sox fan, because his girlfriend was a Chicago Fan (White Sox, i think, but I don’t remember now) and he somehow tried to put us down. I just laughed at him and told him that I LIKED the Brewers because we got Scott Posednik and Luis Vizcaino for Carlos Lee… a trade that helped BOTH teams a lot… and the fact that the Brewers took 3 our of 4 from the Cubs also helped bolster my opinion of them. he was a bit too drunk I think to follow the logic… so I left him with a well, maybe my Sox will play your Brewers this year in the World Series… to which he laughed… mainly because there’s no way in hell the Brewers are making the World Series.

Anyway, 10PM rolled around, and we waited for some ‘World Beat’ band that had a surprisingly large following to wrap up, so that the crowd could clear out a bit and we could get a spot somewhere near the stage. Well, I guess most of the people there were Cowboy Mouth fans… as they didn’t budge at all. I guess that explains why they were so into their music. lol

Fred and the gang played for almost 2 hours, and they could have gone on much longer. I was kinda concerned about the bleachers that were bolted to the ground, but it actually worked out quite well, even though we were standing on the ground between the second and third row with everyone standing on the bleachers, we actually had a really good view of the stage.

That is, until some fuckwad decided to stand right in front of us… Right during “Everybody Loves Jill” too… grah… pissed me off for a bit, but we managed to find a spot all the way at the other end, standing on the bleachers… was a challenge to not fall off with 20 people bouncing on a 40 year old piece of metal. Didn’t get any pics with my camera since I instituted my “No Camera” policy during CM shows since my last one was nearly destroyed.

Made a return trip for Nine Inch Nails on Sunday… I’m going through pics for that and will be posting about that soon!

Ok, I finally found some time to write up my Fourth of July activities. Well, some of them... Still going to post about Summerfest... need to go through some pics and figure that out....

I spent my Fourth of July with my parents, leaving to catch my local fireworks display. We ended up walking there, and even though its a two minute drive, srcwe discovered that there are no sidewalks for most of the way and we were walking through constuction zones! Oh, and it was about a 2 mile walk, and it took us about 45 minutes... haha.. oh well, we DID get to see the neighboring towns fireworks, and ours started about 5 minutes before we got there. Was kinda surreal walking towards the fireworks, with a few other people also wandering towards them. Then afterward, there was a HUGE exodus which made me wonder what percentage of people came out for them, and how many homes were empty at that moment. Anyway.. holy tangent! My local fireworks display was really kinda cool, since there's a good sized lake with an island in the middle where they launch the fireworks from. So, there's a lot of places that make for great viewing angles. There's a large festival area that was far too crowded. I can't stand being stuck in a crowd, so we walked to the other side of the lake, plenty of room for us to lay down, watch the fireworks and see them reflected in the water. Definately cool and gave me a chance to use the 'fireworks' setting on my camera which worked far better then I expected.

Anyway, at my parents, we dug into our supply of old fireworks. Its been a few years since we've done anything destructive, and we could have planned it out better, but we had some fun and, of course, we caught it all on video! All the standard disclaimers apply... we know what we are doing and you shouldn't try to do this unless you too know what you are doing and I'm not responsible if by reading or watching this you get some crazy ideas yourself and get in trouble or hurt someone.

With that out of the way, picked out a Silver Salute and a Cherry Bomb... and decided to pit these two forces against some household items. A roll of toilet paper, and a feeble Coke Can. I wish we had put the roll of TP on something hard and had a more sturdy 'lid' then the flimsy aluminum pan. Not to save the grass from getting a hole burned into it, but rather to allow less of the explosive force to escape from the side of the roll. Anyway, thanks to my new membership with YouTube, you can watch the video here if you have flash, or you can download it too (5.29MB, 1:25, Windows Media).

Wheeee! Make sure you watch to the end to see the slow motion part!

Next up was the Cherry Bomb. We got a little smarter and used a brick to put the can on. After enlarging the mouth of the can to get the cherry bomb into it, we were able to set it off. Again with slow motion and zoom and the end, and you can download this one too (4.32MB 1:09, Windows Media).

Not much left at all of the can! haha... well... We had our fun! On a completely different note.. i need to see if Sony Vegas 6 can produce video in some more open format.

OK... first of all... Let me start by saying that I typically am a very busy person. I have tons of things to do... more then can possibly be accomplished in the time that we have in this world, but I do what I can.

To that end, I don't sleep much during the week... sometimes I get as little as an hour or two of sleep, but I don't pull the all-nighters anymore unless I can really help it. I tend to catch up a bit on the weekends, but during the week, I get by on a few hours.

So, I generally consume lots of caffeine. In the winter, this is normally in the form of coffee, however... I normally only drink that during the colder months. Instead, I've turned to the nerd stable: Mountain Dew. (have other preferences, but that's the best option that's in the vending machine here at work.)

Now, when I started last time, Pepsi (bah, can't believe I've sunk so low as to consume Pepsi Products... My fridge at home is still stocked with Coke though...) was in the middle of a promotion where they were giving away cars and free $20 gas cards. Your entry was in the form of a code on the caps, and they gave away a car every day, and a free gas card every 10 minutes. I had intended on entering all the codes in one short period of time, in the middle of the night, during the week... but the contest ended before I could do that.

Well, they started again, this time giving away a Motorola Razr Music Phone (bah.. my SK3 is better! by far!) and free ring tones (which probably won't work for me anyway A quick check of their website, and sure enough.. no Sidekick support.). Ok, back story complete... no on to why I have absolutely no luck and why I choose to not leave anything that I care about at all up to chance.

The Promotion started on May 15th, and since then, I managed to consume 52 Bottles of Mountain Dew, and I have 52 Caps. According to their official rules, 1 in 12 caps is good for a free bottle of Mountain Dew when you buy one. Guess how many I have received after 52 bottles? Statistally speaking, I should expect to have won 4.333 free Mountain Dews by now. But no... I have 52 codes that are completely worthless to me. Well, maybe if I win a phone I can sell it on ebay or something.

So, what are the chances of getting 0 winners with a 1 in 12 chance after 52 trys? 1.0839% and if I don't win on the Next one, I'll be below 1%. Yay!

Oh well.. if it weren't for Bad Luck, I'd have No Luck at all!

And, I can't really think of anything else to add... so here ends my most pointless entry yet. Still want to post a few pics from my Summerfest encounter and some Fourth of July craziness, but haven't had time yet to go through the pics and stuff.. Soon!

Wooot!! Got some time to play my new wizard on the new progression servers last night... almost 200 people in Nektulos! crazy stuff! Halfway through level 5 already though!

Not too bad for a few hours work!

DarkPanic! lol

Ok... so, I mainly let my SK charge last night and today is my first full day with it....

Two slightly negative thoughts so far... among many things that just impress me. Tons of people have raved about the cool new things... the trackball is actually really nice.. and the speed of the menus is noticably faster and the fact that things are grouped in the main menu makes a lot of sense. Briefly played with the mp3 player which seemed cool but not too useful for me and the internet (when i had decent service outside of my office) was noticably faster, especially when dealing with text based pages. I haven't played with the camera yet so can't really comment.

My two concerns though are... the device in general 'feels' more fragile then I was expecting. Maybe its just because I want to be careful with it, but I dunno. Secondly, and more importantly, the keyboard bothers me a bit. I liked the feel of the rubberized keyboard on the SK2, and I often typed with the tip/nail of my thumbs. That doesn't feel quite as right on the new keyboard because the keys are harder. So instead, I use the pads of my thumbs and find that i often press adjacent keys when I don't mean to.

Maybe it will just take some getting used to.... Otherwise, I'm quite pleased!

OK... I'm impressed... and maybe its just a classic case of underpromising and overdelivering to provide a great customer experience.. but i'm loving tmobile right now.

Not only have then been awesome with my 1,000s of questions over the last week or so with repairing broken Sidekicks... if there are any fees to move phones onto another plan (there aren't any... wow... screw you Sprint and your $35 activation fees)... and details about what I can do with my new Sidekick3.... but.. on top of all of that.. i placed an order for one at 11:08pm central time... got the express shipping... which said 3 business days... i was prepared for it showing up friday... or maybe monday (or maybe even wednesday due to the holiday)...

Buuuuuut... I was able to look up my UPS tracking number (using my phone number as the reference number... how clever!) and I saw that not only did it ship out today... but its being sent NEXT DAY! So I'll have it Thursday!

Wow... After all the crap I dealt with from Sprint for years... I can't tell you how awesome T-Mobile has been... I'm sure that some people will have some horror stories about them... but they have been awesome to me!

Wheeee... just after midnight eastern I was able to place my upgrade order for the new Sidekick 3. Was hoping for a better deal on the upgrade price, but can't really complain too much. Express shipping for $15 (less then 5% of the price of the phone... doesn't bother me much!) should hopefully get it to me on Friday.

I (along with countless other nerds in this world) am hitting UPS's tracking page a bit too often to see when my phone is shipped and when its scheduled for delivery.

I know that UPS won't deliver it on Saturday... and Monday may or may not be a holiday for them. Oh, and I have a replacement hard drive for my server downtown. Almost exactly when i was ordering my SK3, one of the 4 drives failed. $90 later (wow.. hard drives got cheap! a Server quality 250GB hot swappable SATA drive.. wow...) and NewEgg has a replacement drive on the way. Gotta find some time to get that swapped out, probably on Saturday. Yay for the machine not even blinking through a hard drive failure!

Yaaay! a little bit of good news! Now if I can just get through all the other crap work I need to do so that I can enjoy SummerFest up in Milwaukee. (Sid Maudlin and Cowboy Mouth on Friday and Nine Inch Nails on Sunday) everything will be perfect!

Oh, and new EQ server opens today! guuuh... too much to do.. and not enough time! But yeah, back on the topic here.. my SideKick3 is inc! and I'm sure I'll be posting more about it.

New EQ progression servers open on Wednesday! Soooo gonna be ready for this! Got a wizard all set to go on the Sleeper server..

Just need to find time to wrestle away from all the other crap going on in life... ahh.. such fun!

So much to do! Take 4 days off of life.. and its amazing how much crap piles up. I probably won't be caught up until next week and I really want to post something about the trip but I already feel the details getting fuzzy... all the little stories just don't seem as entertaining anymore.. but I'll do what I can to post about it...

bah

Well, its finally over! I'm sitting in airport now awaiting the return flight to Chicago!

Was finnally able to relax.... Unwind... And let all the burdens of day to day life just drift away. I was able to stop worrying about stuff that wasn't done yet and focus on actually enjoying myself... Ya know.. Doing what I want to do... When I want to.

Its probably not a coincidence that my most relaxing moments where those when my sidekick was dead (poor thing! It definatly got a workout!). Normally, I panic... Wondering what messages were lost... And when ill be able to get it charged again.

But in the new frame of mind, I just let it go... And I haven't felt that rested in quite some time.

I'm gonna try to remember lots of the craziness from the few days in florida... And I want to post those... Gonna really need sleep though... My clock is going to be way screwed up... And I know this weekend is not going to help matters.

Anyway... I'm reaaaallly tired... Hoping to get a good hour or two of sleep on the flight... Then I'm heading home to shower and change and spend all day at work catching up from the 3 days I've been out.

Vacation updates soon! While they are still fresh in my mind!

Oh, and check out my flicr page for vacation pics if you haven't yet!

Well... 8:30 came and went.... And there was a long line of people trying to figure out what's up... 8:45 and I get into line... And by the time I get up to the front, they are putting people on standby for a 9:15 flight... Great... So I get on that because I don't have too much time to waste...

I make it over to the other gate just in time to hear myself called... I got a seat on that flight... And my original flight got an announcement that they were gonna begin boarding and they completed all the work on the plane...

So.. Might get in a minute or two earlier then my original flight...

Yay for not checking any bags though... So, its just a minor setback... About an hour... Lets home that's it for the crappy stuff... But I'm not holding my breath! More to come...

Soooo... I almost expected crap to go wrong with this vacation I'm taking... After a crazy weekend with two friends in from out of town, Ben from Vegas and Sara from LA, plus the company party on saturday.... And the things I had to turn down.... Air show with my dad (company party conflicted) and fathers day (oops, planned this vacation without realizing)...

It was a huge headache putting this little trip together... And as much as I despise Florida, part of me was actually looking forward to getting there and unwinding for a few days.

Well.. My flight was supposed to leave chicago at 8:05am... I pulled an all nighter because I just had too much to do and was just looking forward to getting on the plane so I can sleep...

But they made an announcement at about 7:45 that some part on the plane needs to be replaced... And again at 8 that they will be making a decision by 8:30 if they can fix it or not... There was a bunch of maintainence guys scurrying around the plane.. But they are gone now... At this point.. I have no clue what time ill get into florida.... But its a fantistic start!

Why does ANYTHING remotely related to florida go to shit in unexpectedly creative ways. I really shouldn't be surprised... And I'm trying to adopt an attitude of just laughing at it just enjoy how crazy the situation is...

And yeah... Before anyone has any smartass comments about how I should be glad that the found it before they took off.... I'm a pilot... Its called a preflight checklist... If its missed, I would be even more pissed! Its called aircraft maintainance... And this isn't some rinky dink airline... Its united... At the airport they are headquarted at...if they can't get the part here, installed, and tested in an hour... They should have another plane laying around that they could swap out...

Oh... And to make matters even more enjoyabale... They just paged a 'Robert Boender' for the second time.... Or a name that sounds a lot like it over an airport speaker.... How entertaining would THAT be... Stuck in an airport on the same delayed flight as HIM!!

Haha... Well.. At least I'm laughing... 8:24 now... Gotta rest my hand... Ill probably post that story sometime soon (I know... Ya can't wait!!)... 5 more minutes and I get to find out what's up... Yay! At least I managed to kill 20 minutes.. Yay sidekick! Will have to post about that too... And the new ones due next month...

Ok, so my company is having its summer party at Great America, a Six Flags theme park near Chicago. I was pleasantly surprised that despite it being one of the first summer weekends, with temperatures in the mid 90s (and humid, yay humidity!), the park really wasn't all that crowded.

A park employee offered an explanation: many high school age kids had graduation parties. I think that the HUGE new waterpark that they opened had something to do with it. I'd saw about 1/4 to 1/3 of the park is taken up by 'Hurricane Harbor'... And it actually looks like it would be a lot of fun. The place was packed... But the real reason I'm writing about this is simply because I was more impressed by the sheer size of the PEOPLE here.

I really should have taken a picture of some of them... And I wouldn't hesitate to post the nasty ass behemoths here.
Now... Its no real secret that americans are waaaaay overweight. And, yeah... I can't put on any weight if I wanted to... But wow... These people have no shame!

There were faaaar too many 300+ pound women in bikinis strutting around like they were supermodels. They actually looked PROUD of their appearance! I'm sure some of them have issues that go beyond laziness and eating everything in sight... But unless there was some convention that rented out the park, I really think this was an honest cross section of the american public.

Was it always this way? I don't seem to recall seeing this many GIGANTIC people, but maybe I just wasn't paying attention. I was a lifeguard for 4 summers and haven't seen this many disgusting people in all my days lifeguarding, combined!

Now, I'm really not a shallow person... And I'm sure that some of them are fantastic people... But wow.... They should have people in whatever store they got their swimsuits that watch these people and use a cattle prod on them when they get close to the bikini section....

Wow... I just don't get it.... Enough rambling.... Next time.. I'll get pictures!!

Oh, and this was also posted FROM Great America while I was waiting for a ride... Yay for mobloging from my Sidekick!!

OK, I finally got off my ass and got my blog stuff reinstalled... Between Google's Cache, and stuff I can dig up on archive.org, I think I can get most of my old posts back.

I kinda waited to long to back up MY database from my old host and it was gone before I did anything about it. They wanted me to pay $75 to get an old backup back. HA! good thing I'm not with them anymore. This is running on my own server now hosted on a PHAT connection in downtown Chicago.. but more on that later!

I know everyone has dearly missed my ramblings so I'm going to be posting a few more catch up type posts since it's about 9 months now since I last posted on here...

Good Times!!