no one will read my blog

Fix my blog

2007-06-15T23:53:00.001-04:00

Now I remember the other reason I quit blogging. My fucking layout is so screwed. I just spend the last two and a half hours tweaking it, and it still isn't right, and I give up. At least you can read it. Unless, of course, you're using Internet Explorer, in which case the sidebar doesn't show up. I don't know why. Maybe it's because your browser sucks? You're missing out. If you can fix it, let me know how, because I'm not willing to relearn all this crap right now. Hell, I never really learned it in the first place. I have no idea where some of the crap in my CSS code came from, honestly. Once upon a time, it just fucking worked, by some act of god. Maybe it's blogger's fault? Who cares.

Hello! Umm...hello?

2007-06-15T21:11:00.000-04:00

OK, before you say anything, I know it's been a long time. A really, really long time. I don't know what you expect me to say, but I've had other shit on my mind lately. The truth is, I should have been blogging all along. The reason I quit was because someone that I didn't really want to read my blog stumbled across it "by accident" and humiliated me over it. It was wrong, and overall, I would say detrimental to my well being. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Even though I'm writing for an audience of one, myself, the fact that it is public for anyone else to see makes this therapeutic. I think maybe it's because when I'm writing for everyone(and no one), I'm not trying to fool myself. My agenda changes from focusing on the way something feels, to describing what that something is, and that often leads to me feeling a different way about it. For that reason, there are a lot of drafts that I will probably never post, because I can't write more than a couple of paragraphs before my whole perspective on that subject goes through some kind of shift and I'd have to start over for it to make any kind of sense. Does that make any sense? Oh well, who cares. I've wasted a lot of time lately.
I'd say a lot has changed since I last talked to ya, but in truth, I have no idea. A lot has happened, but whether any of it is significant or not will have to be the subject of another post. I don't even know if I have what it takes anymore. What if all my future posts come out as incoherent rants about some minor event in my life? I guess then I would know that nothing much has changed within me. I don't know if that's a good thing or not. I'll have to re-read my old posts and get back to you on that one. On second though, that sounds horrifying. I seem to recall some rather sophomoric posts about my political views and some acidic diatribes about my past. The past couple of years have mellowed me out a little. Or have they? How the fuck should I know. That's why I'm here. This is my chance at rediscovery, I suppose. Hope you like it. If you don't, suck my balls.

Happy Belated New Year, Everybody

2006-01-03T15:06:00.000-05:00

It's 2006! Hope everyone is having a great year so far. I didn't even bother making a resolution. I probably should have, though, because my resolution from last year worked, more or less. 2005 was a year of getting my shit together. There is still shit to get together, but some order of contentedness has returned to my life. It's hard to believe the decade is half over already, but I'm optimistic about the rest of it, for some reason.

I have been really bad about posting, in case you didn't notice, which I'm quite sure you have, but, hey...fuck off. Sorry, I didn't mean that. I'm posting now, aren't I? Just because I forget sometimes that I have a blog doesn't mean that I've given up on it. I just don't have a whole lot to get off my chest these days. And my muse must have died(probably of boredom), because my inspiration to write seems to have flown the coop.

It's not that I'm uninspired...I'm just inspired in a different direction right now. My compass for that sort of thing is sort of wobbly, however, so it'll take me some time to figure out what it's trying to point to, I think.

I still haven't said anything, have I? Am I rambling? Do I always ramble? Am I doing it again? Is there a point to any of this?

I'm working on updating the Xbox modification article I wrote a few posts back. I recently went through a huge hassle of physically removing the hard drive from my xbox, and plugging into my PC. It's kind of cool that it's even possible to it, but I could have totally fried my Xbox if I wasn't careful. I'm not sure exactly what happened to cause my Xbox to crash, but it can be prevented with proper precautions. Read more about it in a little while on the updated "Build a media center PC for $150(or so)" post.

Just when things were getting good...

2005-11-21T18:57:00.000-05:00

This has been, by far, the worst day of the year for me. I've been sitting home alone all day, with no one to talk to. My roommate is, shall we say, incapacitated for who knows how long. That is, unless I can come up with $50,000 to bail him out of jail, where he's being held for something, and I don't even know what!

This totally blows. Not only is he one of my best friends, but he's really the only person here in Louisville that I can count on. I miss him a lot, and I worry about him constantly. Who am I going to go out clubbing with now? Who's going to be my moral support? Who's going to send all the girls I think are cute my way? This dude has been there for me in a way that only a handful of people in my life have ever been there for me. I love him like a brother. I wouldn't be where I'm at today if it weren't for him, and right now I need him more than ever, and I can't even talk to him. I know his problems are way worse than mine right now, and that just makes it even harder. That fucker just made me lose a contact. Yes, I'm crying like a little bitch right now.

I feel like my life just got ripped out from under me. I'm gonna have to find a new roommate, but I don't think I'll be able to find anyone who can afford our place. I'm gonna have to move, and start over again, and that just fucking kills me. A week ago I was telling my Mom how I've never been happier with the way things were going for me. Everything felt like it was coming together, and I was so grateful! And now I just feel like I'm going to lose it all, and I'm miserable, and lonely. I need to talk to someone, and no one is answering their phone or calling me back. I'm always everyone elses shoulder to cry on, and now I need a fucking shoulder. It hurts me to the core to know that people I care about only think of me as a fairweather friend.

OK. That's all. This isn't helping.

2005-11-20T22:34:00.000-05:00

OK. I'm gonna tell you something, but you've got to promise not to laugh. I just became a vegetarian. It's not a spiritual or moral thing, or me showing a more sensitive side. It's not a plea to save the animals, or the enviroment, or to stop world hunger, either. It's not that they are bad reasons, in fact they're a motivating factor for this decision of mine.

I've got a few vegetarian friends. I used to pick on them, saying "Humans are built to be omnivores," or worse, "If we're not supposed to eat meat, then how come this steak tastes so goddamned good?" Well, someone convinced me to give it a shot. I was planning on being kind of half-hearted about the whole thing, and eventually lapse back into eating meat.

I had all these preconceptions about vegetarians being treehugging wimps who couldn't handle the thought of an animal dying to feed them. I thought it couldn't possibly be as healthy as eating vegetables and meat. And, after all, aren't these animals bred specifically to feed us? I realized that I had opinions, but no evidence to back it up. I was ignorant on the matter. So, I read into it.

I read that it takes 17 pounds of edible plant material to produce one pound of meat. Meaning, if everyone were a vegetarian, we'd have 17 times the amount of food to eat, which would practically solve the world hunger problem on it's own. Not that I expect that to happen. I'm a realist, not a moron. I also read that 40% of South American rainforests have been destroyed in order to make pastures for cattle, and that 400 million acres of topsoil are lost each year due to erosion solely from livestock pastures. That's a lot of land lost forever, just for some fucking burgers.

I also found out that although we have the teeth of animals that ought to be omnivores, we don't have the digestive tract to match. Carnivorous and omnivorous animals typically have a short digestive tract, so that meat is expelled before it has the chance to putrify and release toxins into the blood stream. Well, as it turns out, we have a rather long digestive tract, which is intended to slowly absorb nutrients as food passes through the body, a system ordinarily found animals with strictly vegetarian diets.

But what got me the most was a list of famous vegetarians. Of course, it listed a lot of celebrities who are vegetarian, like Moby and Alicia Silverstone. It also listed a lot of people I wouldn't expect, such as Weird "Al" Yankovich, Hank Aaron, and Michael Jackson. I don't idolize celebrities. My idols are long dead: Socrates, Buddha, Da Vinci, the people we should really look up to. Well, guess who's names were on the list? Yup. All of the above. Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, and Thomas Edison, too. Virtually all of the minds that I respect the most were on the list of vegetarians. There has got to be something to that.

So, I'm going to give it a serious try. So far, it's been pretty easy. I hardly ever ate beef to begin with, except for an occasional hamburger. I never cared much for pork. I will definitely miss seafood, shrimp in particular, although it was a pretty occasional thing for me anyway. Chicken is going to the hardest, since it's always kind of been a staple for me.

Hehe...that's two things I've quit in a month. What's next?

2005-11-08T20:43:00.000-05:00

It's my seventh day sober. I feel normal, or about as close to normal as I get. I really thought it would be worse than this. I thought I'd be moodier, but really I think I'm a bit more stable. I have a whole lot more energy, and feel more "in tune". My attention span seems broader, and my memory seems to be on its way back to normal. I'm surprised at how much it has affected my sleeping habits. I'm in bed earlier, and have been waking up without the help of an alarm clock, which has never happened before. I recall probably 5 times as much detail from my dreams as before, which is great, except I've been getting memories from my dreams mixed up with memories from real life. Sort of confusing.

On the negative side of things, I'm a lot more anxious these days. I'm hoping it will pass, but I dunno. I think a lot of it stems from boredom. I really need a new hobby, but I've been feeling sort of apathetic towards any potential prospects. The closest thing to a new hobby I have found is getting drunk more often, which is not exactly how I would like to resolve my problems. Maybe it's time for me to get a chick.

I've been thinking a lot about going back to school, and it's beginning to seem more and more appealing. It's something to do other than work and sit in this chair check slashdot.org umpteen times a day. I'm still pretty clueless as to what I want to go to school for. Maybe being sober will help me get back in touch with the things that I am good at. I guess we'll see.

Anyhow, I apologize for this remarkably dull and humorless post. Ah, who cares. I get about 2 hits a week on my blog these days, and I'm not surprised or concerned about it. But, if you're reading this far, I appreciate it and hope that you'll check out some of my higher-quality posts. LOL

Drugs Are Really Enticing - The Final Chapter?

2005-11-02T22:55:00.000-05:00

I remember reading in a textbook during D.A.R.E. classes in elementary school that marijuana is not an addictive drug, and that it has no withdrawal symptoms. And for the last ten years or so, I've never seen marijuana as a threat to my health, and have smoked it accordingly. No...I have smoked it in more than just mere accordance. I smoked it with reverence. I smoked it with passion. I smoked it a lot.

I bring this up because it has been about 21 hours since I last smoked, and I am definitely feeling withdrawal symptoms. It was all I could do to get off the couch and walk all of 10 feet to the computer. I'm tense. I'm irritable. I'm tired. I'm restless. And, as enthusiastic as I was about quitting when I took my last hit, now I'm fighting this internal war over whether it was a mistake or not.

What the hell am I supposed to do? I've been stoned for so long that I forgot what it was like to go through a whole day sober. It has proved to suck. I try to think about how much money I'll save by not smoking, then I think to myself "What else are you going to do with that $50 in your wallet? Besides, you get paid on Friday." Part of me says that's absurd, and the rest of me thinks I should do it just to spite the lamer part.

Fucking sobriety...

So anyway...expect more lucid(and hopefully less pissy) posts from me in the coming days.

Build a Media Center PC for $150(or so)

2005-09-30T19:57:00.000-04:00

This is gonna be a more technical post, to those of you who may have read my blog before. But, if you have an XBox, or want a media center PC for your home theater setup, and don't want to spend a ton of cash, keep reading.

You won't find the killer application for the XBox at EBGames, or Best Buy. You won't find it at your local import shop, either. In fact, I'm pretty sure it crosses a lot of legal boundaries. But man, is it amazing! And it's totally free. Well, sort of.

It's called XBox Media Center, or XBMC for short. It's an open source program with a TON of features. It can play your DVDs(with or without the Xbox remote control), your CD's, your Picture CD's, and is capable of accessing all of the Samba shares on your home network, so you don't fill up the measley 8GB Xbox hard drive.

The only downside to the program is that it requires a modified Xbox in order to run the program. There are basically two routes you can take in order to accomplish this. You can buy what is called a modchip, which requires taking apart your Xbox, and adding a chip to the motherboard that will bypass the Microsoft proprietary BIOS, and thus allowing you to run an alternative BIOS that won't require programs to be "signed". The newest generation of modchips are feature packed and supposedly a cinch to install. You do however risk totally frying your XBox.

However, there is a simpler, not to mention cheaper, method of modifying your XBox. It's called softmodding, and it's really pretty ingenious how it works. There are a few XBox games out there that have bugs in them that will allow you run arbitrary code with a properly designed game save file. In my case, I used 007 - Agent Under Fire. It is a horrible game, fortunately, so you should be able to find it used and very cheap. You want to get the original version, not the XBox Classics version(or whatever it's called). If it's unavailabe, try MechAssault or Splinter Cell. I haven't used either, but there is information out there that will get you to step 2. While you're at the game store, pick up an Action Replay for the XBox. I got one for $20, and the game for $10 at EBGames about a year ago, so I doubt it's any more expensive or any cheaper now. You might want to pick up a second XBox while you're at it. Just in case =) I've heard that it's possible to make a USB pen drive function like a memory card, but I haven't tried that yet, but I did get a pen drive for Christmas. So, if I try it out, I'll let you know how it's done.

Step 1-
Download a good FTP client(I hear FlashFXP works well for you Windows users), and a good IRC Client(mIRC is probably the most popular for windows). Start up mIRC(or whatever client floats your boat. I recommend BitchX), and connect to an EFNet server, such as irc.efnet.net, and join the #xbins channel. Now, go ahead and start up FlashFXP. We only have a limited time to connect to the FTP server, so go ahead and have it ready to go. You're going to be connecting to ftp://distributions.xbins.org, with your IRC nickname as the username and the password is emulation. Don't hit the connect button just yet, though. Go back to the #xbins channel and type "/msg xbins !list", and it will send you back a message telling you all the connection details I just described, so just go back to your FTP Client and connect.

Navigate to the /XBOX/exploits/_Packages/UXE Auto Installer 007-MA-SC/ directory, and download the UXE_Installer_007_FINAL_Adoubeur.rar. Go ahead and browse around, if you like, and download whatever sounds cool. There are a ton of emulators for various consoles, and some cool applications like a web browser for your XBox. You can play with all that later, though. The 007 file your downloaded is basically a file that's structured just like an XBox save game, in particular one designed in order to exploit a glitch in the way that 007 reads save game files, boots a fake bios, and allows you to run unsigned programs, in our case, a pseudo-dashboard which will allow us to install UnleashX as a more permanent dashboard. You'll need to have your action replay plugged in(with the memory card, of course), and have the software for it installed on your PC and ready to go. You're basically just transferring the handcrafted fake save game to the card, which you will in turn insert into your Xbox controller. Unrar the file you downloaded from xbins, and drag and drop the AgentUnder_BONDAUF.zip

Install BitTorrent if you aren't using it already. It allows you to download huge files pretty quickly. In this case, we're downloading a less than huge file, a precompiled version of XBox Media Center. Go to XBox-Sky and find a relatively recent copy of XBMC. I'm using the 10-12-05 version, but the project has been cranking out releases like mad lately. Get whatever is seeded best. It should amount to a pretty quick download, and will almost certainly be done by the time you have made it through the next step. Once it's done, go ahead and unzip it into it's own folder. XBMC would be a good folder name, but it's up to you. Open up the XboxMediaCenter.xml file in your text editor of choice, and make any appropriate changes. You'll be able to do this later, if you want.

Step 2-
If you don't already have your XBox hooked up to your home network, go ahead and do that. You do have a router, right? If not, you'll need an ethernet crossover cable. You can buy one, or sacrifice an old cable. Go ahead and pop in your memory card, with the fancy save game, and start up 007 - Agent Under Fire. Don't waste time playing the game- it is no GoldenEye. At least it was cheap. Tap buttons repeatedly, if you like, or wait patiently for the game to tell you to Press Start. Load a mission, and choose to load a game from your memory card. The screen will blank, but don't worry, because BAM! The screen should be showing the application embedded in your save game file. What's that? It's in French? Vous ne parlez pas francais? Damnit, do you want me to hold your hand? You could probably figure it out yourself, but OK. You should be seeing an oddly childish looking menu screen with the first option listed as "Backup fichiers system". Go ahead and do this. It will backup your xbox's c-drive to e:\Backup(on the xbox, not your PC). The next option should say "Backup de l'eeprom". Go ahead and do this too. I can tell you from experience that you won't regret it. This will take you to a different program, but it's still in French. Choose the "Backup de l'eeprom" option again. Look, you've made the program happy. Next, Choose the "Retour au menu principal." It means "return to the main menu", you dumbass. After a brief pause, you'll be back into the blue and purple ugly screen. Wait a second, and it ought to tell you what your Xbox version is right below the options(in black text). Burn that number into your brain, or just reference it again in a second. There are two options you can choose from. One says "Installer UXE sur Xbox 1.0a to 1.5", the other says "Installer UXE sur Xbox 1.6". Guess which you need based on the number you saw earlier. If you have a later version, I honestly don't know if you are shit out of luck or not. Sorry. Anyway, that will install UXE, and everything should be good to go.

Load up FlashFXP and connect to your Xbox. I believe the exploit defaults to 192.168.0.7, so connect to that with the username as xbox and password as xbox. Navigate to the E/Backup/ and download everything in there.

Take out the game, and restart your XBox. It should now start up with a new dashboard, instead of the old XBox one, which you won't miss, but are free to access at any time. Congratulations! Your XBox is now softmodded. But we're not done.

Now, go back to your PC and fire up your FTP client again. Connect to the IP address for your XBox, using xbox as the username AND the password.Navigate to the /E/ folder, and create a new folder called xbmc. Transfer the contents of the XBMC folder, you created earlier into the apps directory.

Restart your Xbox. You should now be able to open XBox Media Center through your dashboard. Sweet. Play around with it. Pop in a DVD or a real CD, not a burned one. It should play just fine. If you have the advanced or hidef a/v kits for the XBox, you should have surround sound enabled, and you are able to play around with your HDTV resolutions if applicable. It comes with some killer visualations, like MilkDrop, which you might have seen with WinAmp. XBMC is totally skinnable(as are most other homebrew XBox applications), but the new default skin is pretty sufficient.

Now, you can edit your XBoxMediaCenter.xml file to access and Windows shares you have, or you can install any XBMC compatible file server onto your PC and share files that way as well. I like to use BitTorrent to download entire albums or movies, and set my PC up to share those with my Xbox, and it works like a charm. XBMC can look up album reviews, movie reviews, download Album and DVD covers. You can install various scripts to access various ShoutCast stations, or to watch media on sites like iFilms. I can spend all day playing with it.

Step 3-
You can either leave XBMC as it is, or you can configure it to load up right away when you turn on your XBox without a disk in it. You'll need to back up the HackDash.xbe file in /E/Systeme/Dashboard/ folder folder, and so go ahead and download that. Now move the default.xbe file from your /E/xbmc/ folder to the /E/Systeme/Dashboard/ folder, and rename it to HackDash.xbe. Load up your XboxMediaCenter.xml file, and edit the tag to match the path to your XBMC folder, ie E/xbmc/, and move that file into the /E/Systeme/Dashboard/ folder. Restart your Xbox, and voila! You've got your very own Media Center PC.

Rob Nixon- The man and the legend

2005-09-24T00:00:00.000-04:00

Writing is harder than I remember it being. I can't seem to finish a post. I think that I'm probably burnt-out. I've made a commitment to quit smoking pot on November 1st. It's going to be rough at first, but it's something that needs to be done, I think. My short-memory is shot to shit these days, the past week is just a blur. Nothing stands out anymore...it's all just part of this intoxicated haze I've been under for years. I think I'm capable of more than getting stoned and serving tables at a country club. I'm an intelligent guy, with great ideas. I want to create things. Lots of things. I want to write a book. I want to make a video game. I want to make a great album.

I want to be a contributor. I'm not contributing shit to anyone right now. I go to work and do my good deeds, playing the role. It's rewarding in the same sort of way that telling a lie is rewarding. I want people to look back at my life when I'm gone, and say "Rob Nixon is a legend." It's a lofty goal, but do you think Leonardo Da Vinci earned his reputation by setting easily obtainable goals? Hell no. He was willing to whatever it takes to get the job done. And that's something I lack right now- willpower, and part of it is just a facet of my personality, and the other part is the all the blood in my body being totally saturated with THC.

I don't think quitting is going to be a magic cure-all for my retarded movitation, but it's as good a start as anything else I can think of. I'm going to take the money that I would have spent on pot, and start spending on things that will empower me instead of exhaust me. I've got my eyes on a nice weight bench. I used to be way into lifting weights. There is just something about envisioning that all your problems are encapsulated in those weights falling onto your chest, and imagining that if you can just shove them off, everything will be OK. It was how I handled my aggression, and it worked. I didn't smoke pot at the time because I didn't feel like I had to numb any aspect of myself for the first time. I spent most of my money at the time on food and supplements. I was healthy, and looked the part. I had confidence in my strength and appearance, and felt like I had the world in my hands. It would be nice to be able to feel even a fraction of that again.

Errr....Hi There

2005-09-18T23:09:00.000-04:00

Yes, I realize that it has been a really, really long time since I've written anything. As I mentioned in my last post, I got fired from my job at the time, and well...it's kind of hard to pay bills without money. Debt is a bitch.

Anyway, a lot has happened in the past 6 months.

Since I last talked to you, I had a month long relationship with a girl who turned out to be pregnant before I had even met her, went through two jobs, smoked pounds of marijuana, found out that another exgirlfriend of mine is pregnant, and...that's about it.

So, ummmm... right. It's good to be back. I have missed my blog, which I treat as therapy, almost. I've missed the internet in general, for that matter. If any of my readers still check to see if I've updated, this post is NOT an anomaly. I'm not going anywhere for a while, if I can help it.

Why I'm Home on a Sunday Night

2005-03-13T15:11:00.000-05:00

This just hasn't been my weekend. All week I've been stressing out over how much I have to work. I haven't had a day off since last Thursday, and it would have been Tuesday before I had another day off. Well, thanks to me running off at the mouth, I've got a few days off. In fact, I have an indeterminate amount of time to myself. What I'm trying to say here is that I got fired for calling my boss an asshole to his face.

I worked for Macaroni Grill for a little over a year. It's been a pretty good year, I made a lot of new friends and got really good at serving. I got along with just about everyone, management included. So, I'm actually really surprised that I lost my job. But I knew yesterday when my boss looked like he was about to pull his non-existant hair out of his head that I had pressed a couple of the wrong buttons. I was trying to get him to do my cashout(restaurant speak for turning in all your checks and giving or receiving cash), as I was already half an hour into the dinner shift and I was supposed to be back on at 3:00pm. The clock read 3:24. He told me that I hadn't been cut yet, and I was trying to explain to him that I knew that, but that I was needed on the floor to take tables, and needed to cashout so I could change shifts. As I was trying to explain this to him, he started to walk away, presumably to yell at the hostesses for cutting me, which they didn't, so I tried to get his attention.

Do not try this at work- "Hey Brian! Quit being an asshole and cash me out." As soon as the words exited my mouth, it was like a needle falling off a record. My boss, Brian, stopped dead in his tracks, spun around, and walked right up to me.

"What did you just call me?," he demanded, his newly shaven head turning a vibrant shade of violet. This is a man who is literally twice my size, a former Air Force bitch, who is obviously pretty upset with me all of a sudden. As much as I hate to admit it, I was a little intimidated.

"Brian, don't worry about it. I'm just trying to get my work done here," I tried to reason with him. I wasn't trying to get myself in trouble, I just wanted to make some cash and be done with it. I've talked myself out of this kind of stuff before, but he looked more than a little pissed.

"What did you say, Robert?"

Crap. He wasn't going to let this one slide. I could try to be witty and make a joke out of it, but something told me that wasn't going to work, either. "Brian, I said you were being an asshole."

"Clock out, and I'll talk to you in a second."

Shit! This was about to be the third day in a row that I've been pulled into the office for something. I knew I was on my last leg. There was nothing I could do but sit there and wait to hear what he had to say. Little did I know that a chain reaction was already starting. Immediately after Brian and I exchanged words, a text message was sent to a manager four states away, a friend of mine, who in turn contacted another manager, a friend of mine, who then called up Brian saying that he can't fire me. I didn't know about that until I started writing this paragraph, though.

Anyway, Brian pulled me into the office a few minutes later. He looked flustered. Maybe he was wondering if he could afford to lose one of his best servers, but all that he said was "I can't have you calling me an asshole in front of other team members. I can't make a decision right now, because I don't want to. Just clock out, and go home. We'll talk about it tomorrow."

Could have been worse. I got the night off, and I was hopeful that when he calmed down he wouldn't think much of it, and I would get a write up at most. I got home, and right away, the phone started ringing. I looked at the clock, and it wasn't even 4:00pm yet. Less than an hour had elapsed, and people that I don't even work with were calling me to find out what had happened. This thing was already blown way out of proportion, which had me a bit worried. I made some plans to go out, had a glass of wine, talked to an "old friend", and took a nap. Might as well enjoy having an unexpected Saturday night off.

I went out and had a great time. For once, I wasn't driving, so I was down for anything. I went to a kegger for the first time in a looong time. It was like being in college again, except I know a lot more now that I did back them. I brought along a half gallon jug of Dead Guy Ale, and set myself loose around the party. It was a good one- 3 DJ's spinning some good music, a couple of guys freestyling, and a chill crowd. The house was incredible, too. Somebody put a lot of work into it's layout, some century or two back. I got my drunk on, met a couple of cool people, and ended the night with a big slice of Spinelli's pizza. Work was the last thing on my mind, and I got a good night's sleep.

I woke up today, ready to find out about my whole job situation. I was still trying to keep the job, so I got myself into perfect uniform. Bought a new tie, even. But alas, it was not meant to be. The second I walked in the door, people started to talk. And there was Brian, beckoning me from across the restaurant. He didn't look like he was happy to see me. I went into the office with him and another manager. There it was, on the desk...my termination papers.

"I'm gonna let you go, Rob," Brian said. I could tell that he had been thinking about what he wanted to say. "I know you were having a rough shift, but you can't just can't call me an asshole." I grinned, just a little. I couldn't help myself. I looked at the other manager, and she was grinning too. Brian could be an asshole, and everyone knew that. "It wouldn't even have been a big deal, but you said it in front of other team members, and they've been talking about it." So if he caved in and let me keep my job, he lost the battle. As a general manager, he feels that he has to keep the upper hand in situations like this, or else lose respect. In truth, no one has much respect for him in the first place. But I understood his reasoning.

"You know what, Brian? You're right. I was way out of line. I get what you're saying, now where do I sign?," and yes, I aware that it rhymed. I signed my Macaroni Grill termination papers for the second time in my life, and handed over my books and apron. Brian offered a good reference, and I shook and his hand and thanked him. If I was going to burn bridges at Macaroni Grill, I was going to do it right.

I left peacefully, and told a few people that I would miss working with them. I wanted to tell everyone, because I really will miss them. Brian didn't want people talking about this anymore than they already were, and he saw me talking to them as a threat to his shift. He said "Rob, I'm sorry, but you have to go." It was a bit weird. This place was kind of like my second home, one I loved and hated to come to, and here I was being asked to leave. So, I did.

And that brings me up to the present time. The phone is ringing off the hook, and in fact, I'm about to go straight back up to the Grill and smoke a fat blunt with a couple of my people.

Woooo. That was good. I shot the shit a little outside of my former place of employment, and it was obvious that people that were going to miss me, and I was about as overwhelmed as I can be after smoking a blizzie.

So that was, like the saying goes, that. I'm an unemployed man. Temporarily, anyway. My roommate has probably landed me a new job already, but I guess I'll find that out on Tuesday. I'll hunt around tomorrow for another restaurant job, hopefully something a little more fine-dining than Macaroni Grill. For tonight, I'm going to enjoy my first weekend off in over a year. I've got to pretend that I'm absolutely broke, because I'm pretty damned close. If all goes as planned, I'll be going out for free tonight, anyway. I'm getting my crew together, and we're gonna have a good time celebrating my 'freedom'.

Fun with matches

2005-03-07T17:07:00.000-05:00

You know you have entered a zone of some sort when you realize that you've been staring at a candle for 20 minutes. Here is something I like to do sometimes, usually when there is absolutely no one around, and it is almost silent, so that the only thing that I can hear is my breath.

Materials Used:

A candle
A wall with glossy paint(the glossier the better), of whatever color fits your mood.

Light the candle, and set it on the floor in front of your wall. Sit down in a comfortable position with your back straight. You want to have your body positioned so that your line of sight is dividing the illuminated area in half. In other words, sit down right smack in front of the wall(but don't burn yourself). Now, look at the flame. No, it won't hurt you. You may see an afterimage for a couple minutes afterwards, but this just means that the photoreceptors in that part of your retina are fatigued. They just need to rest for a sec and they will be OK, I promise. Unless you botch lighting the candle or putting out the candle, you will not be injured. That being said, if, by some horrifying act of God, you are under the age of 13(or forbidden by law not to play with fire), please ask for a responsible adult's permission(and preferably supervision) before you go starting fires all over the place. no one will read my blog is not responsible for any damages to property or individuals, ever.

Close your eyes and take a few deep, slow breaths through your nostrils. If you have allergies and/or have trouble breathing through your nose, try starting off by breathing in very gently, and gradually increasing the force as you inhale. That works for me, anyway. With each inhalation, realize that you are breathing in fuel, and with each exhalation, you are breathing out the waste. Try to make each breath as long as possible, but without making you feel like you are depriving yourself of oxygen. The idea is to get your breath into a comfortable, relaxing rhythm. The best way to do that is to pretend that your lungs are like a bucket. Let the air enter the bottom of your lungs first, and then it will fill up like a balloon. The exhalation should be like a balloon slowly deflating. You want the exhalation to last about as long as the inhalation. After a few more breaths the timing will come a little more naturally. Feeling sleepy? Good. You can open your eyes now, but keep the deep breathing thing. Your head may have slumped a bit, so slowly lift it back up so that your back is straight. Oooooh...pretty fire. Now, what if you had the ability to control that flame with your breath? Try to breath so smoothly that the flame becomes still. You want to be one with flame. It is a visual representation of your breath. Just keep breathing.

If you can keep your attention on nothing but your breath, while simultaneouly watching the flame, you are on the right track. If your attention wanders, gently guide it back to the breath. If you get bored with it, give it up, and pat yourself on the back. You probably feel pretty damned good, or at least better than you did before you sat down. If you keep at it, you may reach a meditative state. You might have already, for that matter.

Anyways, I doubt anyone will ever try it, but I don't care. It works wonders for me, I did it about an hour and a half ago, and I still feel charged up. I just got a call from the girl that I alluded to in the past couple of posts. I feel stupid for ever getting upset about Friday nights events, as it all amounted to nothing in the end. So...I'm about to go out in a minute here, and I don't intend to come home tonight =).

Guess who's back?

2005-03-05T17:32:00.000-05:00

OK. I am MUCH better off than I was first thing this morning when I posted that last entry. It's funny how the slightest realization can make you do a 180. I went over to a friends house and smoked a nice blunt, and I was still fuming. Then I started playing EA Sports Fight Night Round 2, which is an awesome game on the PlayStation 2. I originally thought it would be a good channel for my anger, but really, it was a great distraction from my anger. Really fun game. Anyway, that cheered me up a little, so I went for a drive. I started trying to piece together last nights drunken escapades, and realized that what it all boils down to is this- I whooped a couple of peoples ass in Asshole(a card game in which egos are shattered and livers are destroyed). They started getting stupid, and I was pissed because all I wanted was for homedude to go home so I could take homegirl upstairs. No big deal, really. In fact, it works out better this way.

It's Saturday. I don't have to work, I've got some fresh salmon filets marinating in the fridge, and a couple bottles of Gabbiano Pinot Grigio in the fridge. The house is already clean, all I've to do for the rest of the night is cook a good meal, drink some good wine, watch a good movie, and get some good sleep. Still pimpin' it.

Mind Over Matter

2005-02-24T00:03:00.000-05:00

The power of the will is mighty. I think a lot of people underestimate the gains that can be had by not merely wishing, but by willing them into existence. The difference is subtle, but I will try to explain. A wish is equivalent to a shallow 'want'. "I wish I had a new car," or "I wish I had a better job," are simply weak declarations of your current status of driving a P.O.S., and holding down a job that you hate. But when your desires are not shallow, and are truly heartfelt, that is when The Might of the Will comes into action.

I am as guilty as the next guy for wishing for shit that I don't deserve. Being human, I see something that I like, and I want it. It's instinctual. But if I can't have it, I am being counterproductive for even giving it a second thought. If, however, what I want is immaterial, a product of mind stuff(versus matter stuff), then it is easily obtainable. I learned this trick when I was a kid- If I say to myself "I want to know this stuff," and then completely focus my attention on something else, I could think back to the something else and recall the important facts from whatever. The subconscious is that freaking awesome. Here is a rather bizarre specific example- To this very day, when I play Duke Nukem(the first one!), I can distinctly recall an episode of a show whose name I can't even remember, but it was on FOX, and it had animatronic dinosaurs, it may have been called "Dinosaurs". I am straying from the point- I was playing Duke Nukem when the show came on, and I wanted to watch it, but I was having too much fun killing aliens, so I 'watched it in the background', knowing that the next time I played Duke Nukem I would be able to watch the fully realized copy in my minds eye. It is weird, but that is how my memory works.

Here is an example everyone can probably relate to- You are midsentence when you can't remember a word or a name, it just isn't coming to you. You can think of some words that are like the word you are thinking of, but not the right word. You think about it and think about it until eventually, your focus is shifted to something else, and for the time being, you forget about remembering the word. Then, like a bolt of lightning, it comes to you. Sometimes, it's hours later, sometimes it's days or minutes. But it seems like it always comes like a shot in the dark, like your brain saying "Hey! You know that word we were thinking about? Well, I ran my search program, and it finally found it. You wouldn't believe where I found it, either...," but you probably know the drill.

I learn just about everything 'passively', as I call it. It is handy. I am getting really good at it, too. Nowadays, instead of involving myself in a material task in order to passively pick up my facts, I meditate. None of that fancy humming with my legs crossed, sitting half-naked on a pillow. It's not that I don't meditate like that sometimes, but it doesn't always have to be like that. But I have found that by concentrating on my current state of mind, I can easily recall information, or even a state of mind, just by 'feeling' the way I did when I set the intention to absorb it. This probably all sounds crazy to you people, but you can do it too. Maybe I'll write a motivational book about it someday, and charge thousands of dollars to speak at self-help seminars. There I go, wishing.

Sometimes it's like planting a seed(the seed being will), giving it time to take root, then marvelling at the way it blossoms. I am currently going through one of these more profound experiences. I touched upon this in a previous post. It has been weeks in the making, but it has been worth it. I had this brilliant idea of connecting my will to have confidence with the feeling that I get from exercising. That way, I am combining two very positive(and much needed) forces together, which already go hand in hand to some extent, just reinforced by willpower. Last night was a telling result- I went to Have a Nice Day Cafe, where I proceeded to dance(and drink) heavily. And, for once, I didn't give a shit if people were watching me dance. Hell, I wanted them to watch me dance. The confidence was working it's way out through me getting my groove on, and it was an awesome feeling, which has been persistent throughout today. I'm going to the gym in the morning, to pump up my muscles and my sense of self-worth, and I already know I'll be ready to seize the day.

The moral to all this is that the mind is eager to pick up on new skills, attitudes, states of consciousness, and it doesn't have to be hard. Put aside your desire for wordly wealth, and aspire for intellectual wealth, and you will go much farther.

"Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without."

--Buddha

This coming from a professional waiter...

2005-02-21T15:32:00.000-05:00

I am the worst blogger ever. It has been a really long time since I've posted anything. I've got a few rough drafts of posts saved away, but I haven't said anything worth saying in a while. So, hang in there. Inspiration will come when I have ceased to be busy.

I blame Cary, NC for everything.

2005-02-11T15:28:00.000-05:00

I have not posted in a while, and I'm sorry. Will you forgive me? Thanks. I knew I could count on you. Life has been...unusual for me lately. I have been out-of-sorts, but not in a bad way. I've been kind of sick for almost a week now, but I'm feeling a lot better now. Still hacking shit up, but it seems to be passing.

I have been on a drinking binge these past few days. I'm exaggerating a tad- I have gone out and drank the past few nights with friends. I went to a club on Tuesday, which will probably surprise a least a couple of my readers. And, for the first time in a long time, I had fun! I danced, and not by myself! Hehe... I forgot how awesome dancing with sweaty girls is! I wasn't sitting around, shooting the breeze, judging everyone I see. I was out getting wasted with some new kids(my age) at work who wanted to see me loosen up some. They suceeded immensely.

For those of you might not know, I can be a really, really... reserved person. It takes me a long time to 'warm up' to certain people, and with other types of people(usually the ones that I know right from the start that I won't like), I put on a front. I play a character. It sounds kind of pathological, but it's just my way of getting along with people that I ordinarily wouldn't. I don't make a lot of real friends. I have(and have always had) a few really good friends, and then I have acquintances- People that I like, but I just don't connect with enough to hang out with them, which I've realized is a ridiculous way of looking at things. It is a snobby way to be, and right now my friendships with a few people here are on shaky ground(not bad terms- job changes, people moving, and the like). So I've felt a need to let down my guard and open up to people.

So far, it has been surprisingly easy, like a barrier that has just been biding it's time until some kid gives it a swift kick and it crumbles to dust. I have connected with several people in the past weeks that I probably would not have let myself connect with in the past. For me, that is a drastic move. I can be a judgemental prick, and in the past I have been unapologetic for it. Well, here it is- I am sorry about my prior snobbery. I am not such an awesome person that you should have to be similar to me for me to like you. It wasn't too long ago that I was a chubby dork. Hell, I'm a skinny geek now, so who am I to judge?

*huge sigh*

That feels better. I've needed to put myself in my place for years. Maybe my chronic suburbanism had finally subsided. When you grow up in a town like Cary, North Carolina(a suburb of Raleigh), it's hard not to hate everyone that crosses your path. I don't know what it is about those people, but something about them always rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe it was the way that people who I've known for years don't even acknowledge my presence in the company of the 'popular' clique. Or the way that I had to find the few people in the whole artificial town that were real people, not trying to conform to any cliques standards in order to make friends. Cary High School was like joining a fraternity, at least in my class. When I heard about the shit that went down at Columbine, my very first thought was that it could have been Cary. The atmosphere the kids described seemed very familiar. I didn't let it get under my skin, but I still have a lot of resent for some of those people. After 13 years of living there, there are maybe 10 people that I even think about on a regular basis, and only two that I keep in touch with- Dave and Angela. 13 years, two friends accumulated. There were more along the way, but those two are in the select few along the way who did not fuck me over in some way, shape, or form. They are awesome people.

People in Louisville, Kentucky- my limited scope of it- are not like Cary-ites(as they call themselves). They are much more accepting, and just plain friendlier. I fit in here, and it's a new feeling for me. I honestly used to think I was a person who just couldn't be at home anywhere, but I do sort of feel at home here, at least for the time being.

So anyway, yeah, I've turned a new leaf, and I'm happy about it. I'm going out tonight with some chicks from work, it should be fun. Who knows, maybe I'll have a story to post when I get home!

Accelerating Returns

2005-02-03T19:17:00.000-05:00

I recently made the switch for Linux, for the umpteenth time. I love the whole idea behind it, which, for those of you who may not know, is that it is a free operating system. You can legally install it without ever paying a cent. Not only that, but there is a ton of free software available for it. There is a Linux equivalent to just about every Windows program out there, and it's all a lot better than the 'freeware' idea for Windows. When I first read about Linux in some message forum or magazine or wherever, I thought it was a good idea, but I figured it would flop like communism. I installed it for the first time in '95, I'm guessing(God...10 years ago. Crazy), and I wasn't really all that impressed. It didn't have support for the high-end PC I was using back in those days...parts of which I am still using, sadly enough(Donations of computer parts will be accepted, btw. Email me =)! And in those days there wasn't a lot you could do with it. And it was a fucking bitch to configure. I never did the internet to work with my 33600 baud US Robotics Sportster modem. I gave up, and went back to DOS. Yes, ye ole Disk Operating System, so kindly stolen for us by the folks at Microsoft. If DOS had framebuffer support, I'd be using it now, though. On the other hand, no I wouldn't. It costs money, and I'm trying to avoid bad karma by kicking my warez addiction(as in pirated soft-warez...arrr) to the curb. Linux is awesome- The learning curve is high, compared to Windows, but it is worth the switch if you are up for the occasionally difficult installation. Right now I'm running Gentoo Linux on an 800mhz Duron processor, and it actually seems fast to me. Much faster than windows. And I can do everything with it that I was doing with Windows, only this time, I am doing it completely legally(as opposed to my collection of pirated goods of yestermonth). And did I mention it's free?

To sidetrack my incoherent ramblings, I checked the NYSE exchange today to see what Berkshire Hathaway(a holding company run by the stock market genuis Warren Buffet) stocks are trading at - $90,100 per share! Can you imagine if you were to have bought stock in Berkshire Hathaway 40 years ago, for fifty bucks a share? You could have bought a dozen shares for a few benjamins, and be a millionaire today. If there are any future Warren Buffets reading this, hook me up with a few tips! Please?

And on another totally unrelated note, I mentioned a while back that I was planning on buying a couple domains. Well, thanks to a generous offer from an old friend of mine(thanks again, Mark!), In a few days 'no one will read my blog's new home will he http://noonewillreadmyblog.blogspot.com. Expect a ton of changes in coming weeks. Also, since everyone lost interest in the collaborative story, I have decided to move it to a new medium. The whole idea sprouted from message forums, and thats where it's going to go. So look for http://noonesstory.com soon, too!

How to Play Guitar For Dummies Like You

2005-01-30T23:50:00.000-05:00

I got my first guitar when I was starting the 6th grade. It was a beat-up piece-of-shit acoustic guitar that I hope I never have to play again- a no-name guitar that my dad received when he was 8 years old. The strings sat literally half an inch above the fretboard, so I had to sit it in my lap and press down until my fingers bled just to make a clear sound. But, I kept at it, and my parents bought me a sweet Kramer electric guitar- perfect for attempting to play the Metallica and Megadeth licks I had learned. When I got big into grunge music, I traded that guitar for a Telecaster. I don't see the big deal with Tele's, though a lot of guitar players will probably dislike me for saying that.

I took lessons for a while, but I foolishly told my teacher that I didn't care about the theory, I just wanted to play some songs. I wasted years learning to play music by tablature, which only worsened after I got hooked up to the internet. Somewhere along the line I decided to ask for an acoustic guitar for Christmas. I got a cheap Ibanez Cimar. I loved the sound at first touch. The only problem was none of the songs I knew really 'fit' the tone of an acoustic. I had to expose myself to new music. I learned some Dave Matthews Band songs, and used to jam out with Dave, sometimes with another Dave. I fell into a DMB rut for a while, playing nothing but their songs for a while. I got pretty damned good at it, though. It's pretty hard. Eventually, I got bored with playing the same stuff all the time, and I put down the guitar. For a few months, I never touched a guitar.

A friend broke me out of my rut my introducing me to the music of Bela Fleck and the Flecktones. Immediately, I was hooked. I fell in love with the banjo, the bass, the bluegrass, the funk. If you've never heard them before, I highly recommend giving them a serious listening to. It is music that will engage your attention, whether you want it to or not. Seriously, Bela Fleck can make a crowded audience completely silent. He is the best banjo picker alive, if not the best ever. That opinion aside, I decided then and there that I wanted to be like him- I wanted to have total mastery of my instrument, and music in general. I picked up the acoustic again, and starting playing with a different intent.

I started to try different approaches towards playing. I would play a lot of wimpy one string melodies, trying in vain to unravel that mystery. I found something out- There is absolutely no discernible quality of science to melody- there is no formula for a good one. It was something that I had a really hard time getting my head around. I never saw myself as a creative person, I always viewed myself as a strictly left-brained person, for some reason. I thought that everything existed for a rational reason, easily explained by science, and I could almost always sort it out by logic alone. Now, here was something that I couldn't rely on some resource to tell me the answer, it had to come from within. I had to drop my guard, and contemplate the notion of faith. That realization was a turning point. An atheist for most of my life, I had to accept the idea that maybe there is a chance that God could explain things. I'm straying from my point- Melody is a bitch, and you will struggle to find logic at it's core. A good melody just is.

I began to explore harmony and rhythm, and learned to play well without a pick. I would write songs by noodling around until I stumbled on a melody that sounded good, then I would build on those notes, starting out playing the melody with simple chords until I found a rhythm that 'fit'. That is when the fun starts. The difference, to me, between good music and bad music is the amount of meaningful relationships between notes that you can incorporate into a song. I can't define what I mean by 'meaningful relationships between notes', as I don't know much about theory. I could feel it, though, and once that feeling set in, the idea of playing guitar receeded to my subconscious. It is something that baffles me- when I play guitar now, I no longer have to think to myself "I need to put these fingers here, and play these notes, in this order." When I'm playing, my fingers cease to be fingers and become automatons, as if they have an intelligence of their own, Sometimes when I watch them while I play, I can't believe that the dance they do is a product of my mind. But I know that the dance is really mine, because the fingers play whatever sound I will them to. I have read about people who internalize the playing process, it's quite common, but I didn't expect it to actually happen to me. I can't help but wonder if it might have something to do with my realization that God might be in control of more than I give him(her, it?) credit for.

It's been 12 years since I started to play guitar, and only in the past year or two have I felt that I'm at the skill level I should be at. I play, on average, about 2 hours a day. Some days it's more like 6 or 7 hours, other days it's just a few seconds, if at all. I never put it down without feeling like I have gained something. There are days when I am just in a groove and great music just happens, and there are days when inspiration just does not strike. I have taught myself a lot, and I am continually excited by the idea that I will never be able to know everything about it. Learn an instrument! It is fun and therapeutic, and you will be a better person because of it.

To any newbie musicians out there, I want to give a little advice-

Don't get stuck on theory. Music is expression, and you can know everything about music theory and still make music that sucks. Knowing some theory is probably a good thing, though.

Practice is important, but you can't force it. If you are playing and your attention is elsewhere, put the instrument down until you really want to play it again. You can improve your playing by playing half-heartedly, but you will be better off playing when you can focus on it.

Play with other people. You can learn a lot this way, both about the people and music.

Once you've learned a song, learn it again. Find different ways to play it, transpose it, play it with different rhythms, build off chords, arpeggiate, play with effects pedals, whatever. Just don't play it the same way twice, ever. You will be amazed at how far you can go while retaining the feel of the song.

Unless you are prodigal genius, it's going to be hard at first. At first might mean months, or it could be years(as it was for me), depending on the instrument and natural proclivity for music(if applicable =). Keep at it, and you will get good.

Learn to play within your limitations. I have crooked pinkies, and there are some stretches I just cannot make on the guitar, so I have to find another path. Music is flexible, and so are you.

Don't think about it too much. You will find that if you just let go and melt into the music, you will gain much more as a result.

This one sounds ridiculous, but it's important- Form a relationship with your instrument. Get to know it inside and out. Be familiar with it's tone, and explore ways to exploit it's uniqueness. Get in tune with it(no pun intended), and you will find that it does have a personality.

If you are planning on being in an orchestra some day, being able to sight read is necessary. If not, don't bother. Try to learn stuff by ear, and use sheet music or tablature as a last resort. And as for any sheet music or tablature you find online, be skeptical- 99% of it is wrong. Use it as a framework for figuring it out yourself rather than taking it as verbatim.

Most importantly - Be unorthodox. Fuck convention. Never let someone tell you that you have to play something a certain way, because I'm telling you right now, you can play it any way you like. You will never grasp music on a deeper level if you never reach that realization. It's what you make of it.

More Fun at Wal-Mart

2005-01-29T01:12:00.000-05:00

I went to Wal-Mart tonight to buy some stuff to make dinner, a recipe I totally ganked off the Food Network. As I was walking through the parking lot on my way in, an old man in a handicapped parking spot called to me to give him a hand. He was probably in his 90's, recently had a leg amputated, and his "good-for-nothing son" was out of town. I helped the guy get his motorized cart out of the back of his van, and that was that.

The actual obtainment of the ingredients for my delicious Chicken Chorizo Stoup(a cross between a soup and stew, it's stoupid), recipe courtesy of Rachel Ray, was uneventful. The real story comes into play in the Self-Checkout line- I happened to be behind a totally normal looking older man, in his early 60's, I would guess, who had in his cart a small trashcan(with a bag already in it), a couple of empty boxes, and an obviously used screwdriver. At first, I thought he might have been a maintenance guy doing some work on the machine. But, no, as I watched him, he pretended to scan each item. He then pulled a receipt out of his pocket, and pretended to take that from the receipt printer. No one(other than myself) gave him a second glace. The whole time he looked as though this is something he does everyday, and I wouldn't be surprised to find out that he does. I guess that's one way to cope with those psychosis-inducing U-Scan machines.

On the way back to my car, I witnessed an older lady parking in the fire lane, at least partially. The rest of her car was blocking an entire lane of traffic, and she had a line of people honking at her. Instead of, say, moving her car to an actual parking spot, she got out of her car and startd walking past the other cars shouting "Do you have a problem? Do you have a problem with the way I'm parked?"

So there you have it- In a 20 minute period, I was able to experience first hand the physically handicapped, the mentally handicapped, and the apparently emotionally handicapped. The whole thing got me to thinking of how I take my youth for granted. I won't be young forever, and it is important that I take care of myself physically, mentally, and emotionally so that I won't become the old fogey relying on the kindness of strangers to get in and out of the grocery store, or the total nut-job who takes some sick sort of satisfaction from going through check-out lines.

Is this what our society is leading to? A nation where our elderly are left to fend for themselves, because Wal-mart is right down the friggin' road? Forget the nursing home for the 90 year old one legged man, we'll just let get install one of those motorized carts in his van and he'll be fine! At least until he realizes he's out of Depends at 9:00pm on a Friday night, and has to count on people like me to stand there with him for 15 minutes in 30 degree weather, ranting the whole time about the quality of his life. I definitely felt for the guy, but there is no fucking way I am going to let myself be in those shoes.

And that poor bastard in the check-out line. Sure, he's no threat to anyone, so who cares? Let him be insane and live off of social security. Who does this guy have around to keep himself in check? To get him to seek medical help? Probably no one, or no one competent enough to make him see that there is an issue with his behaviour. We live in society where responsibility for those less fortunate than ourselves is an option that virtually no one exercises. Is there no government agency where people like this guy can turn to free treatment?

I don't want to be a burden on my family, friends, or society as a whole when I get old. I want to have a comfortable savings to live off of, and have enough left over to afford whatever medical assistance I need. But I also want to be someone who contributes something, really contributes something meaningful to society, so that society will actually want to help me back. Here I am, planning out how I want to die. This is why I normally shop at Whole Foods instead of Wal-Mart =)

For now, I want to go eat more of this Chicken Chorizo Stoup. If you like hearty, spicy food thats easy as hell to make, check out that recipe above. It's delicious, and only takes about 45 minutes to prepare and cook. My declaration of my love for the Food Network will have to wait for another post, though.

And, folks, be sure to spay or neuter your elderly.

Chapter 2 - Mission Improbable

2005-01-15T01:55:00.000-05:00

A wave of nausea washed over Timothy Parker. His body was attempting to expel the 'sickness' that had lied dormant, just beneath the surface of his psyche, for so many years. He darted out of bed, clods of grass and dirt trailing behind him, and raced for the bathroom. As he purged his system of once delicious, now importunate Gummi Bears, Tim continually flashed back to the moment where he had 'lost control'. He tried to piece it all together, to make it fit, but could make no sense of it.

"Goddamnit! FUCK Bob! If only Jessica hadn't brought him into this. BOB! Why hast thou forsaken me?" Timmy lamented, as though Bob were a cruel God who had lain upon the earth a woman, for Tim's own delectation. Alas, for He is a weak God, and abandoned the helm of Timmy's fate to a dark, unseen hand. Tim's own pseudo-mystical delusions aside, Bob Buxtom was a mortal(and a handsome one, at that). Jessica Buxtom was his wife. 'The Queen of the Queen', Bob liked to tease, but unbeknownst to him, Timmy had adopted the same moniker for her. The title definitely suited her - her demeanor was that of a 'delicate dominatrix' in the way she handled business- Firm, but easy to scoop. Timmy had really thought he was going to get to sample some more of her Sweet Seduction^TM that night, too, right before she broke the bad news. That's when the 'Hand of God choked the shit out of her', as Timmy recalled it. He had been smart, about it, at least- No messy clean-up(God, how he hated to mop!). After draining her blood into an empty and conveniently sized ice cream tub, he came to, and the nightmarish act he had played out was reality. After a quick, yet thorough, removal of evidence, he carried her ethereally light body, which he once adored, to the backseat of his 'bitchin' 3000GT. He buried her in his friend Dave's backyard. He had full memory of the horrible act committed, but to remember it was like watching a psychopath slaughter a beautiful, helpless woman- through the slayer's eyes. Tim chose to block it out, as he sobbed uncontrollably between spasms of dry heaves.

A snap back to reality- 'I forgot to clock out!' Timmy's heart skipped a beat as he fully grasped the magnitude of that insufferably fortunate glimpse of his subconscious at work. He glanced at the clock, eyes still blurry from horking up the gelatenous ursidaic confections. It was still early. Working quickly, he sat at the computer and loaded a program he had designed for the times when he wanted to shut down the store early without anybody knowing. The program merely reads the scheduling database(which he designed as well, and was quite proud of), then compared it to the 'timeclock.log' file. After filtering out people who were scheduled but never punched in, the program then adjusts the Clock-In and Clock-Out for each individual that actually worked, and outputs the altered 'timeclock.log' with all the shifts 'corrected'. He even took into account the statistics for each individuals tardiness. Tim's teenaged co-workers loved working with him on a Friday night when he had plans, because that normally meant they got to go home an hour or so early and get paid for it. Tim made a quick adjustment in the source code of the program to correct the timestamp on the 'timeclock.log' file, so that it would seem unaltered. 'Jess would have never thought to look at that, but a forensics specialist certainly would', Timmy thought as he recompiled the source code into the complete hack, choking up at the memory of Jessica's helplessness with all things computer-oriented. He fought to stifle back the images, now. He had to save his own ass. He would mourn her death later.

Tim saved the necessary hacks onto his killer 1-Gigabyte USB pen drive, and raced out of the house.

As he sped obscenely towards the scene of the crime, Tim prayed that Bob hadn't noticed that Jessica never came home. He would have to operate in stealth mode. Tim knew the layout of the neighborhood like the back of his hand- this was not the first time he had snuck around this neck of the woods at 5:00am. It would be light soon, and Tim knew he had to work quick. He parked his car near a trail he knew in the woods that led directly into the Burger King parking lot, just a short sprint away from the loading dock door of the Dairy Queen. As he approached the Queen, he saw that she was barren. His heart was pounding like a Vinnie Paul drum solo, blooding boiling over with adrenaline. He paused for a split second at the sight of Jessica's brand-new Jag. 'I should probably do something about that when I'm done,' Tim noted to himself.

He maneuvered his way under the security camera outside the back door(the only camera on or in the entire building), and unlocked the door without a sound. As soon as the door was shut and locked, Timmy threw himself down the short hallway to Jessica's former office. He turned the knob, and it didn't budge.

"Goddamnit! I did not lock the fucking door!," Timmy hissed in a ferocious panic.

He snapped the door knob hard and to the right, and this time, it turned. An enormous sigh of relief escaped Timmy's nervous lips.

Jessica's office looked like it had never been touched. He plucked a few stray hairs out of the file cabinet drawers, against which he had stared down her sweet, soulful eyes without a shred of remorse. "No, that wasn't me. I was a man possessed," Timmy protested to no one. He popped his pen drive into Jessica's computer, and let it do it's binary magic while he checked around the store a bit. That was when he saw it - The tub of Jess' blood. How could have he been that careless? He ducked back into the office, and patted himself on the back for his 'elite hacker skills'. His program had worked perfectly. No one would ever know that Timmy had worked yesterday, the day that Jessica Buxton went missing. Certain now that he had elimated any trace of foul play, he snatched up the tub and headed out the way he came in. As he walking towards the door, the doorbell rang.

'Who the FUCK is that'? Timmy cautiously looked out of the industrial sized peephole.

'Shit! It's Bob! Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit...', Tim muttered under his now feeble breath. Bob was standing inches from the door, his eye up to the peephole. Suddenly, Bob's head jerked back, as if he had been startled.

'Did he see me'? Timmy had just crossed the treshhold from relatively composed(considering the circumstances) to scared shitless.

"Jess! Let me in! I know you're in there! Come on! It's 3 o'clock in the fucking morning, and I had to leave Nick home alone to figure where the Hell you were. Open the goddamned door, Jessica!" Bob was shouting at the top of his lungs.

'Shit! The cops will be here in no time if he doesn't shut up'. Acting upon an urge he could not rationalize, Timmy opened the door.

"Timmy! What are you...Are you fucking my wife?' Unbridled Incredulity sets the tone for the state of mind this threw Bob Buxtom into. 'This fucking kid...is here at 3AM...my wife's car is in the parking lot...this kid is dead meat'.

"What? No, don't be ridiculous. I was just uh...fixing the schedule. Woke up in the middle of the night worrying about it. Had to get over here and change some things before I could get back to bed, you know how it goes..." Tim was fearing for his very life, but he stood determined to try and play it cool and BS his way out of this. It would take a miracle.

"No, I don't know. Where the fuck is she?"

"Who, Jess? Why would she be here, it's 3-"

"Trust me, I know what time it is," Bob interjected sharply. "The funny thing is, if you look right behind me, you'll see her car. So, where did she go? Amazing coincidence that you would just happen to show up at 3am in the morning on the night that my fucking wife vanished into thin air?" Bob pulled a Beretta 9mm pistol out of the waist of his designer jeans. "Get inside."

Let's play a game.

2005-01-09T01:49:00.000-05:00

Back when I was a kid, I used to run a BBS, or Bulletin Board System, on my computer. This was back before the web, so back then a lot of computer nerds would call another computer over the phonelines(remember modems? =) and trade files, play games, and post messages. It was a lot of fun, and I miss it dearly. Global communication on the internet is phenomenal, but I miss the days where you could get to know a group of people with similar interests, in your area, without ever meeting them. I would spend literally hours calling various BBSes with names like 'the dead end','The Serpent's Twist', and 'the nocturnal me system'. There are a tons of others I feel like I should mention, but I think think those convey the overall tone of the BBS 'scene' as it was called. It was possible to get just about any file you wanted, free of charge. All they asked was for you to upload something else in return. BBS games were actually kind of fun, considering they were composed completely of text characters. There were thousands of artists making sometimes very beautiful art out of text characters, which to this day I attempt(and fail) to replicate. But the real fun was in the message bases. Most message bases were organized in a manner where you had several generic forum topics, and people would post until the discussion died, and then at some point somebody would jumpstart it again. Nowadays, it seems kind of quaint. Theres a great deal of nostalgia for me in it, however, and I wanted to post something as a tribute to it.

One of the message forums on my BBS(tv²,it was called) involved collaborative story-telling. I would post the first paragraph or so of a story, and then someone would reply with the next part, and so forth. I was always intrigued by how far off the evolving result is from how I imagined it would unfold. So, I want to try it here.

I'm going to start out a story for you all, and the next person to participate should continue, and the next person continues whereever he or she left off. It doesn't matter what you say. Get creative with it. It can be one word, if you want. Or a whole chapter. You'll have to read the comments, obviously, to continue the story. Whatever you do, don't end the damned story! Here goes:

Timmy couldn't stand it anymore. "A high school diploma should be worth more than this," he thought as he glared menacingly at the task in front of him, as he stood in the bathroom of the Dairy Queen where he was recently promoted to Assistant Manager. Not that the job didn't have it's pluses: All the chicken fingers and Blizzards he could eat, plus he got to boss around a bunch of high school kids. The pay was decent, in this neck of the woods. And his Boss was a MILF of the highest order. For the first time in a while, Timmy felt like he was going somewhere with his life. He was climbing the rungs of the Dairy Queen ladder. He liked the extra responsibilities involved, not to mention the authority. This, however, was a responsibility he would rather not have.

"How in the hell did I get myself into this mess?"

I'm not a quitter.

2005-01-02T02:29:00.000-05:00

New Years resolutions - Most of us make them, Some of us mean it, and Few of us succeed. I think the reason for that is most people aim too high and narrow with their goals: "I'm going to lose 50 pounds." Or: "I'm going to stop smoking." They seem like admirable goals, but both are extremely difficult to pull off without long-term dedication. I'm not saying it can't be done(It should be done!), but let's face it- those resolutions suck. At least at first, anyway. Depriving your body of something it has grown to consider sacred, whether it be food, cigarettes, or porn(or whatever your addictions are...you know you have them!), well...it just isn't fun. So this year I resolved to do something that has instant gratification with minimum deprivation.

My resolution is simple- I, BOB, resolve to 'get my fucking act together'. Straight, and to the point. But beware!, for in it's elegant simplicity lies it's power. It's so non-specific that I can accomplish it in a multitude of ways. Anything positive that I do, and would like to continue doing well, can be considered 'getting my fucking act together'. So far, it has been pretty easy. My act is so completely not together that it is hard to actually do much of anything without causing at least a slight improvement in my situation. It's like a basketball about to run out of steam, jittering fractions of an inch above the surface. All it takes is a good, quick slap, though, to get it going full force again. I'm hoping the analogy will hold true to my sorry act.

Thus far, it appears to be working. I really did get a lot done before and after work(until I sat down to write this stupid post!). I won't bore the world(no one) with the details, but it involves pecan squares and a couch. Seperately. Not exactly the kind of slap my act needs, but I feel better about it, and that's the whole point. And on that note, I'm gonna go get some nice, productive sleep.

Important News Flash

2004-12-30T14:24:00.000-05:00

Check it out! If you search for 'Bob Nixon needs Anger Management' on google, No One Will Read My Blog comes up as result #31 out of 17,000+, and the best part is(I'm actually lol-ing as I type this) the first line of text that Google displays for that result is "Or else, you know, I'll kill you. All I need now is military..."

I am so awesome.

To Put Things In Perspective...

2004-12-29T13:52:00.000-05:00

Well, people, the world just got a little bit smaller. And slightly faster! The recent earthquake in Asia forced two tectonic plates(I'm assuming the India Plate and the Eurasian Plate) to overlap up to 98 feet, and although an exact measure is not yet known, this will have an effect on the speed of the Earth's rotation. The earth is now spinning up to one-ten-thousandth of a second faster per day, or about 1 second every 28 years. It is also wobbling slightly more than usual, so if you get pulled over on New Years Eve, you can blame it on the Quake.

This thing was pretty major. There are some videos on the internet of the Tsunami hitting, and it is incredible. These people had no idea what was coming, as they don't usually experience tsunamis in those parts. Some of the videos are from tourists at resorts who see this huge mass of water coming to them, but have no idea how quickly things are about to change. It's hard to fathom, really. Imagine if that were to hit, say, the Atlantic coast of the Americas. where there is absolutely no warning system or emergency plan for tidal waves. You would be sitting on the balcony of your Holiday Inn SunSpree Beach Resort hotel room, dumbfounded by the 30 Foot wall of ocean coming your way. You would think to yourself "Wow, that's gonna make a big splash," and by the time it hits, and the water starts pounding the coast with enormous force, it's too late to get out. By the time your mind registers what's about to happen, you would be trapped. It could(would) happen.

My friend Dave says, "It didn't affect you. You don't know anyone who was killed. You have never been to any of these places. So why would you pay attention?" Note that Dave does not subscribe to this notion, he is making a point. The answer is simple, folks. You can choose to be ignorant, or you can choose to believe that this could(would) happen to you.

So, if you're ever on vacation at the beach, and you see a really fucking big wave, run. Run like you would if God were about to dump the ocean on your head, because that's pretty much what would happen.

Attention all Nerds

2004-12-28T14:28:00.000-05:00

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Warning - What you are about to read is of a nerdy nature. If such things offend your inferior intellect, please go away.
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The other day I stumbled across this. It is a project led by Universiteit Leiden and UC Berkeley. The aim of the project was to complete a work by Escher, Print Gallery using mathematics alone. The picture implies a twisted version of the Droste effect, where a picture features a picture of itself. Escher was a great mathematician(he never graduated high school), and he often used complicated grids to transpose a 'straight' drawing into a twisted version.

I'm not going to describe the process of how he did this or how the project completed the piece, because it is over my head. But it is still interesting to see pictures of the different steps they went through to achieve the final result(including a straightened out version of the original! Very cool.) If you have a good understanding of math, you'll probably appreciate the article they have linked(PDF format) that describes the whole process in great detail. And for those of us that don't understand the methodology, we can still be impressed with the result. The page also features some blowups of the completed picture, so that you can see how far in it goes.

I thought it was cool, anyway.

Thank God for Wal-Mart

2004-12-27T02:01:00.000-05:00

First it was snow. Then, it was the airport. Then, it was snow again.

As I pulled up to my parking spot upon returning from the airport, I noticed that someone had plowed a single lane through our parking lot, leaving a 1 and a half foot wall of what I thought was just loose snow on either side of the plowed area. I approached it slowly, and at first, it seemed like loose snow. Then, I got stuck. Right in the middle of the parking lot. I tried my damnest to get unstuck, but clearly this required at least two people. Seeing as how my roommate wasn't home, I was pretty much screwed. So, I just left it there. A little while later, my intercom buzzed. I went downstairs, and there was some old guy standing there, pressing every intercom button, cussing about how he can't get his truck into his garage because some asshole's car was blocking it. I explained that I was in fact the asshole, and that I needed help getting my car out. He recruited another neighbor of ours, and the three of us just spent the last two hours getting my car unstuck. We tried pushing. We tried digging. We tried stuffing towels underneath my tires. We tried rock salt. Nothing. I ended up having them drive me to Wal-Mart to buy a towing strap, and had to be pulled back out of my own goddamned parking spot.

Now remind me... why is snow so much fun, again?

Bailed out by total strangers twice in a matter of days! Maybe I'm wrong to assume that everyone I come across is an asshole. Maybe I'm the asshole. Maybe the 'maybe' in that last sentence doesn't belong there.

I have realized that I have some serious issues with 'tense'. I just quickly proofread this post, and I now realize that I somehow manage to waver back and forth between present and past tense, often I would do this in the same sentence! I was never very good at expository writing. From now on, I'm writing all my blog posts in the future tense from a second-person perspective.

You will enjoy it.

Why I Love Northwest Airlines

2004-12-26T23:07:00.000-05:00

After struggling for five hours to get the hell out of my apartment on Wednesday, I finally managed to carve a pathway long enough to get my car out of the parking lot...with my ice-scraper(painstakingly, as my knuckles would attest). After driving around for an hour trying to find an on-ramp to the highway that was not blocked by a freakin' truck, I finally made it to the airport. My flight was supposed to leave at 11:15, and I did not make it to the airport until about 1:15. No big deal, as my flight was cancelled anyway. As was the 2:30 flight. The first flight out that I could get on was from Louisville to Detroit at 6:30, then from Detroit to Richmond, arriving in the latter city around 11:45pm. Better than nothing, I thought.

So I managed to fuck around at the airport for 5 hours(Ever been to Louisville Int'l? Not much to do.) The plane arrived on time, and I boarded. And we sit there. On the plane. For an hour and fifteen minutes. Before we start moving. The plane's fuel gauges, as the pilot explained, were not functioning correctly. So the mechanics had to use a dipstick of some sort to manually measure the fuel level. Well, their dipstick was broken, too. So they finally got the bright idea to just fill the plane all the way up with fuel.

By the time I arrived in Detroit, I had missed my connecting flight. But, it didn't matter, because the flight was fucking cancelled anyway. As was just about every other Northwest Flight leaving Detroit that evening. So I was stuck in an airport, which had no open shops, no where to eat, no where to smoke, and I had to stand in line for a couple hours with about 300 PISSED off people(you can rest assured that I was one of them.)

"Mr. Nixon, the next flight out to Richmond is at 2:00pm tomorrow. Here are your tickets. Next!," the booking agent said.

"Wait a minute! What hotel do you plan on putting me at tonight, and how much money are giving me for food?," I retorted.

"Most people are sleeping at the airport, sir."

"I am NOT most people, ma'am"

And with a heavy sigh, she filled out the necessary vouchers, and sent me on my way. I call, and get a shuttle to the hotel with zero difficulty. Finally, things are looking up! On the shuttle to the hotel, everyone was laughing about how badly Northwest screwed things up. It's amazing how total strangers can bond over near catastrophe.

At the reception desk, I handed over my voucher, and the lady told me that she would need credit card. I asked her if she is going to hold anything on the card, and she informed me that she was going to charge $50 security deposit that I would get back in 45 days. Not having $50 in my checking account, I offered to pay cash on the security deposit, and was refused. At this point, I flipped my lid. It was already Christmas Eve, and all I wanted to do was go to sleep and hope the next day would be better, and this bitch reception manager was essentially telling me "too bad."And, if it weren't for the generousity of a sweet lady from New Orleans, I would have been in rough shape that night. But she payed my security deposit, and said some choice words to the receptionist in my defense. That marks the first time that I have ever hugged a complete stranger.

The next day was rather uneventful, until I got to the baggage claim. Yeah, you guessed it. They lost my fucking luggage. Apparently, they lost just about everyone's luggage. So I got to wait in line for another hour and a half to be told that they had no idea where it was, and when or if they got it in, they would send it to me. Great. There go the clothes I bought specifically for this trip. Oh yeah, and my Christmas gifts! Thank you, Northwest!

Anyway, Christmas day was great. I haven't seen most of my family in a really long time, and most turned out this year. I hope everyone else had a good Christmas, or a good weekend if you don't celebrate.

Back to me. My luggage finally turned up today(Sunday) at 6:30am. And wouldn't you know, the shampoo bottle that I had tied up inside two grocery bags popped open, and somehow got out of the bags, getting shampoo over just about everything inside. The entire inside of my bag was coated with Redken for Men. That is always a good way to start off your journey home.

I borrowed some luggage from the folks, packed up what I could, and left for the airport again. I complained about how a lot of my stuff was ruined to the clerk at the Northwest check-in desk.

"I hardly see how that's my problem, sir."

"Well, it's not exactly your problem, ma'am, but I would like to know what your company plans on doing about it."

"I don't know. I've been here all day and I'm new. My supervisor should be at the gate."

Fine. I see they train them well. I was certainly looking forward to inform her supervisor that she never asked me for identification before handing over my tickets, but as it turns out, he was no where to be found. I resolved to settle it later.

All in all, I spent about 40 hours travelling in the past 4 days. I could have driven there and back twice, and be on my way to Richmond again, in the time that Northwest took to take me there and back once. To be fair, weather had a lot to do with it. But nowhere along the way did Northwest make the trip any less stressful. Cancellations and delays aside, I was appalled the entire time with the attitude that the Northwest employees were taking with customers. I have worked in customer service for years, and I am very good with the public. I refuse to be talked to as if I am an inconvenience. Wow, this post is getting long. I'm sure no one will read this far. So yeah, my trip mostly sucked.

I'm Having a Nightmare of a White Christmas

2004-12-23T10:21:00.000-05:00

I'm supposed to be on a flight home in less than an hour. I can't get my car out of my parking spot due to record snow in the area. My flight is cancelled, anyway. So I'm trying to find a fucking cab to the airport, where I will probably end up spending the majority of my day attempting to find a flight out. From the looks of things, I might be spending the night at the airport. If I can get a cab, that is. If not, I'll be stuck here for a while. With no food. I love this time of year.

Merry Christmas everyone!

You're One Step Away From 'Artificial Intelligence'

2004-12-22T20:05:00.000-05:00

"The Web...is an Ocean of Knowledge, about two centimeters deep!"

-Fjalar Ravia(if that is his real name! =)

The first time I read that statement, I thought that it was kind of corny. But the more I think about it, the more I realize the wisdom it contains. The essence of this statement is that the web contains an enormous amount of information, but one should not despair, because it is all right at your fingertips.

If you are looking for an answer to something, you CAN find it on the web, as it is almost certainly out there. It may not be easy to find the answer(depending on the subject matter), but with a few linguistic tricks, some knowledge of search engines, and a lot of guesswork...ahem, I mean zen, you can find it. Also, I find that a Red Bull vodka or two does not hurt! =)

Let me demonstrate(Use the provided links to follow along, they should open in a new window)!

I am looking for a book, "Windows 95 System Programming Secrets," which is out of print. Let's see what happens when I google for it. Well, it pulls up a bunch of bibliographies and some stores selling used copies, but nothing much, really, other than what appears to be some source code to accompany the book. A quick peek at one of the entries reveals the names of some of the authors, let's try to search on some of them. I recognize the last name Pietrek, he writes a lot of articles, so I'll try him first. Wow. This guy is popular: 32,000+ results! That's no good. The first hit is a personal website of his, it would appear. I check various links on the page to find mention of the book. Occasionally, books are released to the public domain, and the authors will sometimes post links to online copies. No luck, until you look at the FAQ page! Mr. Pietrek says "I've seen that somebody has taken the time to pirate ["Windows 95 System Programming Secrets"] on a website. I've seen it on a website outside the US. Suffice it to say, this is not endorsed by me, I believe it's illegal, so asking me about that site is a sore subject :-)" What's with the smiley face? Anyway, that is very good news for me. :-)

It's possible that whoever has pirated the book has published it in HTML format, but Adobe's PDF format seems a more likely option. Let's try searching for " 'Windows 95 System Programming Secrets' " again, and this time add a " +.pdf ". This looks promising. After quickly browsing through the results, I see that a lot of them are just recommending the book, and on the same page they have other programming documents available to download in PDF format. Close, but no cigar. Aha! This one looks promising. It's a foreign domain, and it has some english titles in it, one of them being "Windows 95 System Programming Secrets.pdf"

Looks like a winner to me, folks. I just downloaded it, and yup. It's the real deal. I'm sure none of you are interested in the book itself, but I hope I gave some idea of how simple it can be sometimes to find the information you seek. All that took me about 10 minutes, and a whopping grand total of three searches. Admittedly, I got pretty lucky, but in my experience, knowing a bit about the author is often key. If Pietrek hadn't explicitly stated that the book existed online, I might have followed a more convoluted route. I still would have found it, though. If you question the legality of downloading a pirated version of this book, understand that Pietrek essentially gave the world the combination to unlock the vault where his book is kept. I would not be surprised if it was deliberate, contrary to what he claims to feel about the whole prospect. So, download it or don't. I am not responsible for your actions.

Learn more about how to search at Searchlore.org. Don't be put off by the awkward layout and prose! It is entirely intentional. Take your time, read some of the articles, try out some of his tricks, and get absorbed by the riddles littered throughout. I've been reading this guys wisdom for years, and I highly recommend you try to track down some of his older stuff. It shouldn't be hard to find!

Lies I Tell Myself

2004-12-17T16:21:00.000-05:00

1. I am not an angry person.

2. I like my job.

3. I don't really need an education.

4. I'll save up money to get an education.

5. I don't know what I want to do with my life.

6. Something will come along eventually.

7. It is important for me to pretend that nothing affects me.

8. Optimism does not blind me.

9. My posts have to be long and thought out.

Woohoo! A post in under 10 minutes. Thats a record for me.

An Ode to This Half Gallon Jug of Rogue Dead Guy Ale

2004-12-14T18:32:00.000-05:00

O, what glorious life is this!
when one is able to purchase
an ale of immortal stature,
subsumed in colossal measure.

Sixty and four divine ounces!
The vastness of which announces
forthcoming inebriation,
and full anaesthetization.

A stein would be a travesty!
A shrine in a sacristy
is where Thine nectar belongs,
showered with elysian love songs.

I shall cradle it in my arms!
and bask in its marvelous charms,
for such a resplendent vessel
merits a delicate nestle.

But, ho! Sip it I shall not!
Intricate as a gordian knot
this tincture may be, valiantly
I unravel it comptly.

Aqua Vitae! A Potent quaff,
O!, a herculean swig of
such spirit is a postulate
to transcend rhapsodys gate.

Drugs Are Really Enticing - Chapter 2

2004-12-13T19:16:00.000-05:00

Four Ripped Fuel capsules. Two pills of ritalin. And Coffee. Lots of coffee. That used to be my recipe for getting through the day. I referred to it as my "Awake Medicine." I am not an energetic person. I've never been really "active," in the sense that I played a sport or jogged. I don't get excited over much, really. But pump me up with a bunch of stimulants, and I'm rearin' to go. Running everywhere I go, literally climbing walls, talking a lot, and generally just being stupid.

It took a while to fine tune my Awake Medicine recipe. My first attempt was six ripped fuel caps, a few cokes, and a few shots of espresso. All in all, over 1200mg of caffeine(like taking twelve espresso shots), not to mention ephedra(back when Ripped Fuel was cool), and whatever other crap they put in Ripped Fuel. After feeling a severe funk, I ended up passing out on my bedroom floor, with no memory of ever going home. I blame the fifth espresso shot. Eventually, though I got it right. I eased up on coffee, and abused my ritalin prescription, and viola! Instant happiness.

When I used to work at a office supply store, things could get pretty hectic. I worked in computer sales, and around back to school time I would sell 10 a day or more. All the merchandise was arranged at the top of our shelving structures, or in the stock room. Getting the PC, monitor, printer, and whatever else for a single sale could take about half an hour. Unless you were jacked up like me. Theres no time for ladders and all that 'safety' bullshit when your heart is racing at 200 beats per minute. A sense of urgency like that drove me to climb to the top of the shelving and yell for the closest stocker to catch whatever I was about to throw at him. Then I would grab the nearest shopping cart and 'skate' to the next item, as quickly as humanly possible. I almost nailed an old woman one time. It was a good system for me, and the managers never complained about it. Then, the regional safety manager visited. Needless to say, he was appalled that my managers would let someone climb 15 feet up and hurl heavy boxes at people. So after I had my monkey privileges taken away, I had to find other ways to occupy my time. But that is a different story.

*Note* - I do not recommend that anyone try my Awake Medicine Recipe. I had days where I seriously thought I was going to die of a heart attack. I have a fucking high tolerance for caffeine. Ungodly high. So yeah, don't be stupid.

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no one will read my blog might be getting it's own domain soon! I'll post more information as I get it.

This Blog is Under Construction

2004-12-09T15:40:00.000-05:00

I've never really bothered much with HTML, CSS, javascript, and the like, for myriad reasons. If I was ever going to make a webpage, I'd want it to be something truly original. Being the perfectionist that I tend to be, I didn't want to put forth a lot of effort into rehashing something that's already been done. Then I got the bright idea to put up a blog, which blew the whole originality criterion right out of the water.

Today, I was plodding through some random blogs, and realized that I was getting seriously irritated by seeing so many blogs that had the exact same template as mine. I don't want my blog to resemble anyone elses blog in terms of design. I've been toying with the CSS properties in the template, so now things look a little bit different around here. A little bit boring, but I'm working on that.

If anybody out there has some tips on what I can do with this blog with a little code, I'd be very appreciative.

[-====================================================-]

On a totally unrelated note, yesterday was a sad day in the history of rock and roll. Dimebag Darrell Abbott, guitarist for Damageplan, and former Pantera guitar-god, was shot and killed last night at a Damageplan show in Columbus, Ohio. 24 years to the day after the assassination of John Lennon, we have lost another rock hero to a deranged fan. During the bands first song of the night, a man rushed the stage and shot Dimebag several times at point blank range, then proceeded to unload on others on stage, and into the audience. All in all, he killed 5 and wounded 2 others before he was shot and killed himself by a police officer.

And for what? Rumor has it that the guy was yelling something along the lines of "You ruined my life, you are responsible for the break up of Pantera!" Fucking crazy bastard. You just killed the best rock guitarist since Eddie Van Halen was good, and one of the most influential musicians in heavy metal. The world owes a favor to the cop who blasted your fucking head off with a shotgun. But if were me, I'd have shot you twice.

Feeling Fucking Hostile
Bob

It's Official - God Hates Me

2004-11-29T21:26:00.000-05:00

I am damned. I've always suspected it, but now I know it to be true - God does not like me one bit. Let me explain. While spending Thanksgiving at my friend's parents house, I was reintroduced to my nemesis, Space Cadet 3D Pinball. Years ago, when I worked at Office Depot, I would spend countless hours playing this game in the break room. I got pretty damned good at it, and at the time my high score was over 20 million points. On my first try on Thanksgiving I broke 7 million points, which is still not too bad, I guess. Since then, I've been playing it every chance I get. Apparently, 4 years of not playing it hasn't hurt me too much. Until today, that is.

Let me explain a little bit about the game to those of you who suck, or have never played it. You start out as a Space Cadet(go figure), who must work his way up to a Fleet Admiral by completion of various missions. All in all, there are about 24 missions you must complete to get to this rank, with only 3 balls at your disposal.

Prior to today, I had never gotten past the 4th rank. This evening I worked my way up to Fleet Admiral, the final fucking ranking. My score was over 40 million points, and it had taken me over an hour to get that far. I was on my 3rd ball, but I had a replay and an extra ball waiting for me, so chances are, I was going to beat the game. But God had other plans for me, it would appear. As soon as I started my second mission on the Fleet Admiral rank, my power went out. Let me re-emphasize that: MY FUCKING POWER WENT OUT.

So there you have it. If I had just barely broken my previous high score and the power went out, yeah, I probably would have been a little pissed. But to come close to doubling my previous score, and be just minutes away from beating this damned game, it just proves that God Hates Me.

What did I do to deserve this? I renounced my atheistic views on life years ago. I never killed anybody, or committed adultery. I don't covet my neighbors house, wife, servants(whether they be male or female), nor his ox and donkey. In addition, I've never born false witness against my neighbor. I love and honor my parents(most of the time), and I don't carve the likeness of anything that is in the heaven above, the earth beneath, or in the water under the earth. Yeah, I've stolen things in the past, but surely those Nickel Creek songs I downloaded off of Kazaa yesterday don't count. And yes, I do work on Sundays, but come on! How's a man supposed to make a living?

Waiting for lightning to strike me down,
Bob

PS - God, if you're reading this, I would appreciate some feedback. Feel free to post comments here(you have to register first, but it takes like 5 minutes. Just make some shit up.) If you'd rather comment in private, feel free to email or IM me. You probably know my email address and screen name already, seeing as how you're omniscient and all. I want to get this resolved, I hate it when people are mad at me. You're my dog, man!

Bob the Dictator

2004-11-24T22:34:00.000-05:00

I've always liked the sound of that: Bob the Dictator. I think Dictators are funny. Not so much because they seem to like slaughtering entire races of people, but because they are in obvious need of psychiatric help. To put it simply, they're fucking crazy. No sane person would ever aspire to become a Dictator. Their whole philosophy on life is "I am right, and you are wrong, unless you agree with me completely on every single issue." Those evil bastards.

The reason I bring all this up is that I took a test on OKCupid.com(yeah, it's a dating site, but it's funny). The test was designed to tell me what my political orientation is. I always assumed I was basically a democrat. Well, according to this damned thing, I am a Totalitarian. Thats right. It also provided a nice visual aid of other totalitarians, such as Darth Vader, Hitler, and Osama Bin Laden. So, I got to thinking, maybe I should be a dictator. There has to be some scientific basis for my test results, right?

My first action as Dictator of the US will be renaming it to The United States of Bob. It's my country, and if you don't like the new name, get the hell out. No, actually, I won't let you leave. I'll fucking kill you if you don't like it. Wow! Being a dictator is fun! Let's see, what else am I gonna do. Dictators like genocide, right? Let's kill all the rednecks. Nah... as annoying as they are, they can be kind of funny, in a stupid kind of way. On the other hand, let's kill them. Just think: a world without NASCAR, Country Music, Blue Collar Comedy, and tight jeans. Man! This is starting to sound awesome.

You all should start calling me "His Excellency, President for Life, BOB, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea, Conqueror of the Rednecks in the USoB in General and Kentucky in Particular." Has a nice ring to it. And Bob had BETTER be in all capital letters, and preferably in bold type if possible. Or else, you know, I'll kill you.

All I need now is military. So, as soon as I get back from my Thanksgiving trip, I expect all you fuckers to be lined up at my door, then we'll start my regime of terror. Well, terror might be too strong of a word. Regime of Happiness! That ought to garner me some favorable support. I'll pretend to be one of those benevolent dictators. And if you don't believe me, my personal militia will have you drawn and quatered.

And Dictators are all about some economic fairness. I'll show you fairness. Everyone: Give me all of your money. Simple as that. I'll let you keep the coin change, I've got a shitload. Then, I'll split it all up equally. Theres about 6 trillion dollars floating around the country, according to Google. And there are about 300 million people in the US. $20,000 a person? What the fuck? That can't be right. Tell ya what, I'll take half of all the money in the US, then I'll give the rest of you $10,000 each. That should be plenty for food and what not. Homeless People and those with ridiculously large houses: expect to have new roommates. According the US department of statistics, of all the occupied houses in the USoB, there is HALF a person living in every room. Damn! Is this country really that bad off? We've got 1% of our population experiencing homelessness every year, and we can't even fill up all the rooms in our homes? There is something seriously wrong with that. You people suck. I don't think I want to be your dictator... Just kidding. But anyway, that ought to level things out a bit. I'm not such a bad guy, am I? Am I? That's what I thought.

Phwew. All this excitement is tiring me out.

Love,
His Excellency, President for Life, BOB, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea, Conqueror of the Rednecks in the USoB in General and Kentucky in Particular

Drugs Are Really Enticing - Chapter 1

2004-11-20T17:35:00.000-05:00

When I was a kid, I swore up and down that I would never do drugs or drink alcohol. I was raised to think they were evil, addictive substances that would ruin your life. I didn't know anything about them, but I knew they were bad. Life went on this way until the 5th grade, when the D.A.R.E.(Drug Abuse Resistance Education) program came to my school. For those of you who may not be familiar with the program, it involves a police office coming to your school and telling you everything you can imagine about drugs. It was like learning any other course. The officer came in a couple times a week for an hour or so, and devoted the course to a particular subject. Stimulants, Depressants, Hallucinogens, Addiction, you name it, they taught it. I loved every bit of it. At the end of the course, we all had to write an essay on how D.A.R.E. helped us. Whoever wrote the best essay got to read it in front of the whole school, kids' parents, other D.A.R.E. officers, and whoever else attends those kinds of things. Well, yours truly won the essay contest. I still have my D.A.R.E. bear around somewhere.

The problem with all of this is, while I knew I was supposed to be learning the dangers of drug abuse, what I really learned was that I really wanted to try some of these drugs. Putting drugs under an umbrella category and calling them bad is easy. But when you start describing the effects of LSD, I'm sorry, but it's hard to see how any 11 year could not think that it sounds like fun. I remember them giving us a warning that if any stranger gives you a 'stamp' with a funny pattern on it, don't eat it. It could be laced with LSD. Well, I felt a bit jilted, as no stranger had ever offered me a tab of blotter.

Getting drugs as a fifth grader is not an easy task. I had to wait two whole years before my first experiment with drugs. My friend's all went over to this kid that lived down the street's house, and he had some pot and a aluminum can. I took one drag and pretended that I was high as a kite. I don't think I really felt anything from it, though. I didn't get another chance to smoke pot until the last day of eighth grade. A girl in my class was selling joints for her brother for five bucks a pop. I bought one off of her, figuring it would be a good day to celebrate getting out of middle school. Well, me and my neighbor John snuck out into the woods after school and smoked that fucker, but neither of us got high off of it. I think I got robbed. This whole drug thing wasn't as cool as I thought it would be, so far.

Two weeks later, John and I were at his dad's house, and we went upstairs for some reason or another(we had been told the upstairs was off limits). We both smelled smoke, and as John's dad didn't smoke cigarettes, we had to investigate. On his dad's dresser laid a smoldering roach in an ashtray. If we hadn't smoked that shitty joint that fateful last day of middle school, we might have been more naive about what we were looking at. We started rifling through his room looking for his stash. And in the last drawer we opened, we hit paydirt. Serious paydirt. 8 or 9 ziplock bags full to the brim of cannabis sativa. It was like every Christmas I'd ever had packed into one spectacular moment. We took a bag, thinking his dad would never notice, and fashioned a pipe out of a can like I had used before. That night, we smoked ourselves retarded. We walked for hours, laughing hysterically at anything and everything. We stole mail out of peoples mailboxes. I threw a car battery at someones fucking house. Nothing was going to stop us. Things went on like this for weeks. When our supply ran out, we'd just swipe another bag. I went to the beach with John, his mom and his aunt for a week, and we brought the pot with us. Two 14 year old kids in Myrtle Beach with little to no supervision and a shitload of pot. We were on top of the world. One night, we were going to sneak out to smoke a bowl or four, when John's faced turned white. It was gone. He had stashed it away in the back of a drawer, where he thought no one would look. We were freaking out. The whole day, no one said a word about it to us, so we were pretty confused. Then, after dinner, John's aunt pulls us aside. "Oh Shit. Here it comes. My mom is going to fucking kill me," I thought. She smiled at us, tossed the bag in John's lap, and said "Thanks, but it wasn't that good." I couldn't make that shit up, folks.

By the end of the summer, I was a total burnout. Me and John's whole relationship had become centered around getting high together. I was becoming extremely paranoid, to the point that I really thought my parents had installed hidden cameras in my house. I avoided home like the plague. My concentration and memory had detoriated drastically, and John was probably worse off than I was. Then, one day, it happened. John got caught. His dad figured out where his pot was disappearing to, and confronted him about it. He wasn't about to tolerate that kind of crap, and he enrolled John into a boarding school across the state. In my last conversation with John before he left, he told me that his dad had told him "that pot is for me and my customers only." I've run into John only a couple times since then, which is weird because his mom lives like 4 doors from my old house. Last I heard, he was into some hardcore drugs. When you've got role models like dad and aunt, I guess you're pretty much destined to be a fuck-up.

(To be continued...)

Coming Soon: Cybermonkey 2024!

2004-11-19T01:58:00.000-05:00

My families first computer was an IBM PC XT 5160, which featured:

a whopping 4.77 mhz processor
640 kilobytes of RAM(more than anyone would ever need, according to Bill Gates at the time)
a massive 20 megabyte hard drive
a floppy drive(for the real floppy disks).

This was a top of the line computer in it's day. It cost my parents about $4,000.

To put that into perspective, a top of the line computer today, from Dell would have:

a 3.6 ghz processor
1 Gigabyte of RAM
800Gigabytes of hard drive space
A CD-Writer and a DVD-Writer

as well as a ton of other crap I won't add here for the sake of comparison, all for less than $4,000.

Since it's conception, technology has always increased at a relatively constant exponential rate. According to Moore's law, transistors roughly halve in size every 2 years. What this means is that computer processor speeds double every 24 months.

If Moore's Law can be sustained for another 20 years, which many experts say that it will, we will have home PC's that would rank in the top 50 supercomputers in the world by today's standards. We're talking about processors with4 Terahertz clock speeds(although we probably won't be using clocked processors by that point). The standard amount of RAM in a computer will likely be in the Terabyte range, not to mention that the speed of your RAM will probably be in the Terahertz range as well. And, to me, this is the kicker: Petabytes of storage space on your desktop. The whole freaking internet does not contain a Petabyte of information yet. Think about that one for a minute.

What in the hell will people do with this much power? When the individual has more computational potential than many of today's World Powers, what will that mean for society? The supercomputers that have about that same amount of power today are used for some serious applications, like global weather and climate research, predicting economic trends, Nuclear bomb simulations, some truly heady stuff.

I see a future where computers will make many of our more important decisions for us. They will, after all, have approximately the same brain power as a monkey. Take a monkey, subtract the impulse to throw feces, and add in a relatively simple decision making program, and you can go play a round of golf while your monkey decides where you should be going with your life.

Computers will be our new entertainment hub. Goodbye TV. By 2024, we should all have fiber optic connections to the internet, meaning data transfers at the speed of light(or as quickly as our computers can handle the data). Downloading a movie or a new game will be practically instantaneous. Global Interactive 'TV' will be a reality. Want to make a movie? No problem. You've got a more powerful computer than the farm of computers used to make movies like "Shrek" or "The Incredibles." In fact, your computer will probably be able to play games with animation as smooth and lifelike as today's feature animated films. When Grand Theft Auto: The Amish Country comes out, it will really feel like you're dragging those damned Quakers out of their horse-drawn carriages and beating them to a bloody pulp with their own hoe.

Speech recognition will finally be a practical reality. They've been promising us this one for a while, but the nuances of language have proved to be more complex than we thought. But if a monkey can understand verbal commands, so can your cybermonkey. Just say "Cybermonkey - find me some porn," and BAM. There it is. Terabytes of glorious porn without ever touching the keyboard.

The future is coming much sooner than you thought.

Could I Have Been Anyone Other Than Me?

2004-11-16T23:49:00.000-05:00

When I was a kid, I always wanted to be a chemist. I got a chemistry kit for Christmas one year, and it came with about a dozen or so different chemicals and some basic tools. In the booklet provided with it, it listed an assload of different experiments you could perform with them. My favorite was one where you mixed a couple different chemicals in some water, and you got this cool pink water. Well, kids, the fun didn't start there. If you took a straw, and blew bubbles through this stuff, the pink went away, and it was clear again. Looking back, it sounds pretty stupid. But at the ripe young age of 7, I thought that was the coolest thing. I knew that I wanted to be a chemist. That all changed around my Junior year of high school.

Mrs. Carr. Or as all the kids liked to call her, Ms. Carraharrah, due to the fact that she was retarded and couldn't say a letter without adding a trailing "ah" sound. She made learning the wonders of chemistry about a tenth as fun as learning that just because someone is your elder doesn't mean you can't make fun of her to her face. It's hard to have a lot of respect for someone who has lived in America their whole life and is harder to understand than half of the concepts she was trying to get across. And being the lazy fuck that I am, instead of struggling to comprehend the subject of my dreams, I took to writing notes back and forth to the crazy chick that sat beside me. Whoops.

Next up, after Chemistry failed me(rather, I failed Chemistry with a grade of 37), I decided, hey, I'll be a computer programmer. I've been a computer geek my whole life, and it's good money these days! I've been programming for years, it ought to be cake! Then I remembered that I fucking hate programming, and the only reason I learned how to program in the first place was so that I could figure out how to 'crack' the software on my computer so that I didn't have to pay for it. To this day I still have people telling me that I should be a programmer. "You're always on the computer, why not do something useful with it?, " They say. To them, and this is official, I say "Because computers fucking suck." The only reason that I use computers is for free information. I'm too lazy to go to the library, so I use the damned internet. That's it. Yes, I know my way around a computer extremely well, but I derive absolutely no satisfaction from that fact. When you've been using a computer since before you could read, the wonder is somewhat lacking.

So... two prospective careers down. My Senior year of high school I was fortunate enough to take a psychology class with a Mr. Mark Schafer. This guy could have made accounting exciting. I learned so much from the man it was remarkable. I had a 2.0 GPA weighted, yet I got the highest grade in his class of anyone that year. He knew how much of an underachiever I was, and after my final exam he pulled me aside and told me that I was the smartest kid he ever taught, which I know to be bullshit, but still, it was a meaningful sentiment to me. I thought then that maybe psychology is really my forte. That is, until I took my first psychology course at NC State, where the teacher was about as exciting as a hole in my socks.

Three strikes, and I'm out of fucking ideas. I'm 23 years old, and I have absolutely no direction. I don't know what I want to do with my life, and that's a pretty horrible feeling. Most people my age at least have it figured out enough to the point where they are willing to settle down with a career that they might be good at, even though they know they might not love it. Well, being the stubborn dipshit that I am, I won't do much of anything if I don't like it. And look where that puts me- I'm a goddamned waiter at a chain restaurant. Thanks a shitload, Mrs. Carraharrah.

Anger Management.

2004-11-07T22:47:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I get mad. Most of the time I'm a pretty laid back individual, but sometimes...I get mad. It's usually over nothing, really. Well...not nothing. Stupidity pisses me off. It's the stupid shit people do that just makes me want to punch a wall. I'm not necessarily even talking about other people, because a lot of the time it's my own stupidity that I get mad about.

When I was a teenager, my temper was a source of amusement for my friends. They would intentionally do things they knew would throw me into an uncontrollable rage. Looking back, thats pretty damned funny. I guess I'm "The Angry Guy."

I'm finding it much harder to pull off at the age of 23, though. Some people at my work tell me I'm scary when I'm pissed. I guess I get a look on my face that just shouts "It would be a good idea to nag me about what my problem is." That is a gross misinterpretation of my body language. The message that I'm trying to get across is "If you say one fucking word to me, I swear I'll punch you in the throat." Seriously... am I the only person who just wants to be left alone when I'm wigging out? When 20 different people ask "Hey, Rob, whats wrong?," all that does is refresh my memory about whatever my deal is at that particular moment and a whole new flood of Hulk-Hormones are unleashed into my bloodstream.

Some people at work place bets on what time I will blow up that night. I think that is absolutely hysterical and depressing at the same time. So far, no one has made any money off of me that I know about.

A friend told me the other day that I need therapy. She's seriously concerned about it. I told her I thought that was a ridiculous idea, and that I wasn't harming anyone but myself when I get angry. Well, she cited examples of how I helped ruin other peoples nights because I was in such a vile mood. That really struck a chord in me. I really, honestly had never thought that me flipping out could affect someone elses night. I've really been watching myself since then. Whenever I feel some anger coming on I've got to contemplate "Is this really worth blowing up over." So far just asking myself that question seems to work. I've been rage free for a week now. It's been hard, though. I really think I need to start smoking weed again or something.

SuperSize This

2004-09-29T01:33:00.000-04:00

I just got done watching the documentary "Super Size Me." You've probably heard a little something about it, but if you haven't, I'll give you a little information: This guy, Morgan Spurlock, eats nothing but three square meals a day at McDonald's for a month. During this time, he has to try everything on the menu at least once. He cannot consume anything that does not come from McDonald's, including water. It was a pretty darned interesting movie, as far as documentary's go.

In the end, he ended up gaining about 25 pounds, had serious liver problems, raised his cholestorol like 65 points, and suffered a loss of libido. All this is a month. Scares the bejesus out of me. I eat fast food way more often than I probably should, I now realize. I say this as I'm sucking down a giant mixture of Minute Maid Lemonade and Sprite, after having polished off an entire pizza. I eat like a crazed fool these days.

I started the Atkin's diet a little over a year ago, when I realized I was tipping the scales at 180. I've weighed 180 before in the past, but it was mostly muscle. Now that I don't work out 5 times a week(or a year, to be totally honest), I was faced with the fact that I was fat. So I took the easy way out and joined the low-carb bandwagon. I'll tell you something, hype or no hype, it works. I lost 20 pounds within the first 3 months. My goal weight was 160, and Atkin's worked so well I couldn't stop losing weight until I hit 150. I stopped it completely a couple months ago. My metabolism is still kicking so hard I can't gain an ounce to save my life. Yesterday, for the first time in my life, someone called me "little." I couldn't believe it. I know she didn't mean it as an insult, but it kind of hurt my feelings. I don't think theres any way I could eat more than I am nowadays, so it kind of sucks. I want to have the body I had when I was 18, but I just don't feel like I have it in me.

Either way, I'm hitting the gym tomorrow for some serious weightlifting, then it's protein smoothie time. I never want to hear the word "little" used in reference to me again.

On the Joy of Waiting Tables

2004-09-26T13:16:00.001-04:00

To me, there is no job more rewarding than that of servicing the public as a waiter. The gratitude and respect I recieve from my customers is nothing short of astounding. Unfortunately, not ALL my guests are so great. Here are some tips for dining out:

1. For starters, make sure that everyone in your group is not seated at the same time. For instance, if you need a table for 12, make sure everyone arrives in couples or less, preferably 10 to 15 minutes apart. This way, your waiter will be given the need to make 6 or more trips through the kitchen to get drinks, and will not be able to focus his attention on any other tables he may have at the moment.

2. NEVER answer a waiters question with a direct answer. If your waiter asks you what you would like to drink, a proper response might be "What are your soups today?" or "Where did you learn to write your name upside down like that?" Keep this routine up for at least another round before giving your answer. Waiters love to play hard to get.

3. Be sure that if your waiter makes the SLIGHTEST mistake at any point during your visit that you give him a mean look throughout the rest of the stay. If he questions why you might look upset, be sure to tell him that everything is fine, while still glaring at him. Be sure to never tell him what the problem is, or else next time he might not make the same mistake, thus eliminating any chance of you getting something for free.

4. When going to a restaurant on a date, be sure to ridicule your waiter at any given chance. Not only will you impress your date with your cruelty, but it will definitely make your waiter want to please you more. Your waiter will also be understanding if you decide to forgo gratuity. The knowledge that you might be getting some action is enough thanks for us.

5. A pat on the shoulder can be better than a 15% tip. Tell your server that they did a great job. Then there is no need to leave a hefty tip, because you've already brightened their day. If you are coming from church, then it might be best to write "God Bless You" in the tip portion of your credit card slip, in place of actual numbers. That way, it is up to God to leave the server enough money to pay his bills.

I hope everyone enjoyed my helpful tips, and be sure to make use of at least a couple per visit.

Am I way off course?

2004-09-24T13:43:00.000-04:00

After stumbling through a few people's blogs, I wonder if maybe I've got the wrong idea about this whole thing. From what I can gather, most people like to post mindless blather about their everyday lives. Do people really care about that crap?

I could go off on a tangent about my job, my life, or whatever, but honestly, it doesn't interest ME enough to even begin to consider that it might interest other people.

But let me give it a go. Right now, I'm debating on whether or not I want Taco Bell or Wendy's for lunch. Both sound equally delicious and cheap. After a nutritious meal, I intend on showering, then perhaps I might put on clothing that does not say "Joe Boxer."

Nope. I can't do it. Maybe the world cares about my failed attempt to get out and do something last night. Or maybe everyone would like to hear about the series of events that led to me living in Louisville. But something tells me it just isn't so. I'd rather reserve those thoughts for a conversation with someone who really cares, or at least is willing to listen.

Conversely, the kind of thoughts I would like to share with the world don't really translate well to a one-on-one conversation. Am I wrong for pursuing this course of action? Does anybody care what I have to say, period?

As if my introductory post wasn't boring enough

2004-09-23T23:39:00.000-04:00

I bought a new book yesterday, Consciousness Explained, by some guy. I'm too lazy to go get it so I can see the author, but if anyone wants to feign interest they can ask me. I've only read the preface so far, but it's already a pretty good read.

He gets into how if we were able to take a brain, and remove any nerve inputs to it, it would essentially be in a perpetual coma. He then tosses out the idea that if we were somehow able to stimulate the brain in exactly the same manner as it would be stimulated in a normal brain, then the isolated brain would not be able to perceive a difference. Think "The Matrix". The computational power required to completely simulate this experience(no matter what it is) would be so astronomically large that it would be impossible, according to the author. He goes on to discuss how although certain chemical changes in ones neurology can produce hallucinations, they are usually relatively weak. If any of you have ever taken LSD or another hallucinogen, you should know what I'm talking about. To believe that a hallucination is real requires suspension of disbelief, because they always fall short of reality. You might be seeing your carpet moving as it were alive, but if you reach down and touch it, you realize that it's not, and that should be enough to cause you stop perceiving it as such. Truly strong, engaging hallucinations SHOULD be impossible. As powerful as drugs and certain neurological changes can seem, they can never be a replacement for reality. A couple trillion synapses misfiring does not a universe make.

After I put the book down, I started thinking about dreams. What are dreams if not some wonderfully realistic hallucination? In a dream state your body virtually is cut off from reality. Sensory input is reduced to an absolute minumum level to maintain survival during the dream state.

If no computer out there, including our own brain, will ever be able to simulate reality to a convincing degree, then where in the hell do dreams come from? I've read volumes on the subject, and it seems like every theory relies on our psychology to explain where they are produced. Scientists have studied the physiological origins of dreams to an exhausting degree. We understand what changes our body and brain go through while we sleep. There are some rather ill-conceived ideas that dreams are nothing more than random synapses firing, but that does little to explain the level of detail one experiences in the dream state. Things in dreams can be felt, smelt, heard, tasted and seen. They are experienced actively and fully. Emotions are felt full force, and thought processes function normally. Lucid dreamers will even tell you that it is possible to control the entire dream state, as if it were an interactive movie. Dreams are more than the illusion of experience, they are the continuance of experience.

So obviously, either our current understanding of the brain underestimates it's full potential by a longshot, or our conception of consciousness as something that occurs from the brain is wrong. I have heard it said by practitioners of certain types of meditation that it is possible to temporarily shift consciousness from where it normally seems to reside, in the skull, to other parts of the body. People who have experienced Out Of Body Experiences claim to have experienced full consciousness completely outside of the body. To take the idea even further, individuals who have found enlightenment through whatever practice claim that it replaces your own consciousness with that of God's.

All this seems to suggest that consciousness is not a product of the mind, or even the body, but perhaps something not yet fully understood by science. Perhaps it is a product of the atomic energy possessed by all things, living or non-living. While this concept might seem foreign to scientists out there, it is a long established idea in eastern philosophy. Everything operates on vibration, or wavelengths. Sounds like the concept of sound, right? Well, from my understanding, it is almost exactly like sound. In fact, many if not most skilled meditators will focus on a particular sound, usually a short phrase or syllable, known as a mantra. The most powerful of these mantras is the sanskrit word Aum. This word is so powerful that it not only means the whole of creation, but it's vibration IS the whole of creation. It is said that if one can tune into this vibration, he or she will be brought to the God consciousness I talked about a minute ago. Furthermore, tapping into any vibration is going to bring about a shift in consciousness.

If all this seems absurd to you, then you are probably a pretty sane individual. But science is beginning to get a better grasp on this vibrational thing. If any of you closet physicists out there are familiar with String Theory, you might be on the right page already. It postulates that beyond the most elemental of all particles, the universe may be composed of vibrating "strings", which depending on their particular vibration may form an electron or a quark. String Theory aims to be the Grand Unified Theory of everything. And if it proves to be right, it will basically be confirming what eastern philosophy has told us for millenia. The Upanishads laid all this out almost 1000 years before Christ.

So after much delineation, let me stop boring you to tears. What I'm trying to say is that of course no computer could ever simulate consciousness. Consciousness is something much more than our senses. It is the totality of EVERYTHING, from a distant star to an electron passing from one atom to the next. It is the infinite. It is Aum. It is God. It just plain IS.

OK. So maybe a couple people will read my blog.

2004-09-23T15:19:00.000-04:00

So, you've decided to negate my prophecy. Thanks.

You have no idea what you are getting yourself into. Actually, you might. We've already clarified that I'm no Oracle of Delphi. So if you have any idea what you are getting yourself into, feel free to let me in on it. Because, let me tell you, I have no freaking clue what I'm doing.

I really don't know what to tell you what to expect of this blog. You might find some boring rants on altered states of consciousness. Or I may decide to take you all on a mind-blowing journey through the fascinating world of hexidecimal numbers. But more than likely, you'll find nothing more than me stumbling through my thoughts trying to make something interesting out of this whole thing, and failing. Miserably.

You have been warned.