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06.30.02 it's 10am sunday morning. what's that sound? oh, sure, it's building maintenance, come to fix a leak we didn't even know we have. joy. # 06.28.02 why are the only people at laundromat's always so nasty? don't clean, suave, hip people have to wash their clothes too? why am i the only person who appears not to be homeless there washing my laundry? i just don't get it. did clothing become disposable and nobody told me? # according to a study publised in the new scientist, cum makes you happy. the study sounds a little shady, but apparently semen has some limited anti-depressant qualities to it. maybe that's why mark is always so chipper... # How do we keep what happens to us? How do we fit it into life without turning it into an anecdote, with no teeth, and a punch line you'll mouth over and over, years to come[?] - Stockard Channing i've seen a few movies this week, but the best, far and away, was six degrees of separation. it was such...a play! it was everything i've missed about good theatre. a handful of people working together exactingly to pull emotion from you in a very specific quantity, of a very specific quality. and i love stockard channing, even more than i did before. i want to buy her entire lifetime original movie collection right now! # 06.27.02 i picked a hell of a day to start reading the news again. first there's scandal threatening to break the back of the recovering economy. words like rising unemployment and declining job prospects pummel my addled brain. then there's the rather interesting if not somewhat disheartening news of the pledge. (here's some history on the tiny oath) sure, as chronicle columnist jon carroll notes, this is a totally common sense, why didn't we think of this sooner action - i mean, it says under god right there, plain as day. i pledge my allegiance to my country, and to my country's god? not hardly. but no matter the ideals behind it, the result of this ruling will simply be to further fuel the ideological hegemony that's run rampant in washinton (hell, most of the rest of the country too). no one politician will dare to stand up and admit that this isn't such a bad indeed - instead we'll get to watch everyone run to their crosses and the dem's run for the right and everybody trying to remind the largely-christian voting public that they're not heathens and they wont stand for heathens. bah. and then there's the emerging police state. and random drug testing in high schools. at least there's always the datebook section. # i believe it may be a sign of the coming apocalypse, but my first reaction this morning to an email entitled How To Easily Create A Six Figure Income This Year Selling Sex! was surprisingly positive. maybe i really can make thousands working from home... # 06.26.02 well, after spending the day scrambling to make things work out with dot5hosting, i discovered that i might actually have the best host ever already working for me. when i emailed my current host (dreamhost) to cancel, they wrote back and said "what do you need?" and then they gave it to me. what a deal! now to just get my money back from dot5... # 06.25.02 i've got an urgent need to know if anyone uses or has used dot5hosting before. if you have any feedback (or suggestions for a good, cheap host) let it fly... # "I think it's great," said Kurt Dietrich, of Los Angeles, who makes his living selling handmade cat toys. that really says it all right there, doesn't it? starting in september, ebay will offer health insurance to those who make a living selling on the online auction site. # 06.24.02 everybody here has their own agenda. the city is driven by an engine of individual desire. they go places and want things and act and do and speak for their own individual purposes. i feel like i'm floating sometimes as i'm moving through it. looking around, you can see it written on their faces. you can see it as they move among one another. i'm a taxi, get out of my way. i'm a pedestrian, get out of my way. i'm a bus, get out of my way. i'm a business man, i'm a police officer, i'm a bicycle messenger - get out of my way. i'm a waiter, a doctor, a bank teller - get out of my way. i'm a student, an artist, a grandmother - get out of my way. the city moves and breaths and pulses by their desires. they move against each other in a massive choreography of push and pull. with the right soundtrack, it's breathtaking. # more bad news: advice columnist Ann Landers has died. sad sad sad. we're all about the bummed news around here. happier updates, coming soon. # 06.21.02 terrible, terrible, terrible. the fantastic internet radiostation SOMA FM has shut down due to the excess fee's being levied against internet radio by the RIAA. are they totally insane? do they really believe that we're all going to just sit right here and watch Must See TV for the rest of our lives? {update: the register has a great rundown} # get this: peer to peer spam protection. a learning network for spam filtering, perhaps? you pc people can check it out with a free outlook plugin. # i saw my frist giants game today, and i can honestly say that baseball is one boring sport. and did you know they stop serving beer during the 7th inning? what's going on there? national pasttime my ass. # This one person wanted me to write something called 'Booty Dance.' They said, 'C'mon. Throw some kids grinding their bodies together in a club, and it writes itself.' at the suggestion of reese, i checked out an article from today's chronicle talking about a filipino american director. just thought it might be of interest to our filipino american reader(s). # 06.20.02 mid-day naps are the closest thing in reality to a reset button. fantastic. # another wry, ironic, slightly salty and yet altogether bittersweet column of some little significance from sf gate's mark morford. # this just in: layoffs and technology sectors and dotcoms help nonprofits. what kind of goodness is this? a nice, good news way to start off your thursday. # so i'm riding the bus home tonight and i'm staring out the window at a poster on the side of a bus stop. it seems to say something clever, so i cock my head a little to see all of it. as i do this, an odd looking fellow walks past the bus stop. i glance at him for a moment as he walks in front of my poster. he looks up and catches my glance, returning it with a stare and a mocking kiss in my direction. stupidly, i turn away, embarrassed to have been caught. of course it was only a quick glance, but he wasn't really worth looking at, and he certainly wasn't worth getting caught over. i'm leaning over to explain the event to jessie when i hear a rapping on the bus window. startled, i turn to see my new friend, up close against the window of the bus. he makes some strange gesture towards me and mouths a word that didn't register as any known profanity. then he makes the same kiss right up against the bus window, slaps it with his hand and walks away. i going to love this city. # 06.18.02 some helpful advice from the boyfriend last night has convinced me that i should look for a job that's part-time, insignificant and fun. some money to eat and some time to kill, nothing more or less. which opens up a whole host of smalltime jobs that i wouldn't think of in a million years. i haven't had a smalltime job in quite a while, so i'm having trouble thinking of things. i've thought of bookstores, record stores and clothing stores (all for the discounts). if money was not much of an object (let's pretend) what would you do? # PERKS OF URBAN LIVING #1 - discovering that my eggs seem to come with two yokes - who knew such thing could happen in city life? #2 - running into casey not even a block from home. go random street encounters. # so i couldn't take it. i didn't last long. despite my dire economic situation, i simply couldn't last through the next week (or two?) of bored job-hunting without some kind of internet. so i bought the keen little netgear router. it's everything we need around here, acting as a cable/dsl router and both wired and wireless hub. there was a little trouble at first, but she's working like a beauty now. after all that, i got a chance this afternoon to start filling up my favorite gift's tiny little hard drive. it's tricky, since i don't have a firewire capable mac. it puts some limitations on what music i was able to load up for the time being, but i'm pretty excited nevertheless. right now i'm at 653 songs and i've got more than half of the device left empty! what a pocket sized joy! # 06.17.02 oh apple, why do i love thee? my airport base station is officially dead (this is not uncommon) and i've got no relief coming from the folks in cupertino. i'm a little blasted by this, because i've had almost no success at dsl sharing between macs and pc's without the little wireless beauty. i'm also pretty disapointed by the death - my wonderful little flying saucer performed so simply and wonderfully for the last two years. if only i had just gotten an engineering degree instead of a printing degree, perhaps i could make the nessesary repairs. so it looks like i'll be offline for a while. i've read nothing but good things about this guy, which could be quite the savior, solving all of our household internet problems, and with a wopping five year waranty even. but until then, i'll be disapointingly unwired. # THE BIG MOVE, PART 2 so that's it. i'm here in san francisco, i'm pretty much moved in, and besides some internet trouble (isn't there always?) i'm settled in. immediate plans are scarce, but there's a master plan at work here, i assure you. what it is, i simply can't tell you. but i'm excited to at least be here and i'm really looking forward to the what comes next part of this equation. you may have noticed that these entries are filed under "the big move" - that's because there's a lot of distance between san luis obispo and san francisco, geographically as well as mentally. there are other moves coming up too, lots more little ones - jobs, apartments and the like. but for now, this is the biggest move i've made. graduation, as you may have guessed, was nothing special. it was sort of nice to see people i went to school with for the last time, but all in all, the commencement ceremony was mediocre. it wasn't helped by the fact that i was totally outside of any realization. i'm still having trouble with the idea sinking in. i suppose when i start working, or when september rolls around and i find myself not registering for classes, then i'll really get it. so there's trouble getting myself onto the internet right now, so i suppose you should still not expect too much in the way of updates for a bit longer. i hope to get all the trouble worked out soon though, at the end of which i'll be blogging like i've never blogged before! in the meantime, let's take a second to welcome byron to the prosaic* family of weblogs. seems my alma matter pulled a little IP trickery with blogger and so byron's jumped into our boat. everyone wave hi! # 06.14.02 THE BIG MOVE, PART I today was great. my little sister got into town yesterday and we hung out all day today. my roommate's took our spare-change money and bought lots of alcohol and shellfish and we had a very strange party. my (first) childhood friend showed up in town with his two young children (that was strange). many people came by our home tonight to visit and say goodbye; some even brought their mothers. i drank lots of champagne. as of tonight, there's one day left, and i'm getting very excited. my last final is in the morning, then i have to finish packing. tomorrow i'll graduate from college. i'll move up to The Big City and i'll move in with my boyfriend and you'll all get to share in the fun of starting a whole new chapter with me. can you stand it? in the meantime, i wont be around much. for the next few days, i need to spend time with the people around me before they're gone. so there will be few, if any, posts until early next week. so yeah, um, wish me luck. # 06.11.02 new fab-o-audio! there's a new mp3 available right now for download. in honor of this week, we're listening to patsy cline's if you've got leaving on your mind. enjoy! # i went out for a while tonight with my friend tyler. we've been hanging out more often recently and having a great time. tonight was the last chance we will really get to spend together before i leave, so we took advantage of it. we walked around downtown, enjoying the waning moments of sunlight. we shopped around, chatting our way through furniture stores, clothing stores, music stores, book stores. we stalked cute boys. we stopped at le fandango to get drinks. he introduced me to his to-die-for friend who was bartending. finally, we stopped in at the frog & peach across the street to say hello to some friends and listen to the fun punk band that was playing there tonight. (for the record, they're pretty cute.) they were pretty good, and we both died laughing when they did a cover of natelie imbruglia's torn. (i liked their version better.) too bad this is such a cheese-sandwich sort of post, because i really did enjoy myself. # do you see that? four days. i still have to pack. how long does will it take to pack up this house? i have four days. yuck. i hate packing. remember? # this is what i'm talking about. # just discovered: an external search module for movable type. the creator of this utility has turned it over to ben and mena, who should be building it into mt sometime soon. # the recording industry may very well be starting to strike back at file-sharing through the use of "napster bombing." the idea, which salon suggests is being used (but doesn't confirm) is basically just to spoof high-demand unreleased tracks and introduce the fakes into the system. (any radiohead fan who uses p2p will be familiar with this idea. see: innocents civilian here) but the article goes further to discuss the possible marketing uses of this kind of spoofing. it raises some interesting possibilities, and makes me wonder if recording industry abuse of the system will be seen as a kind of validation of it. if they prove unsuccessful at shutting these things down, then perhaps they will continue to evolve organically and the RIAA will find new and totally original ways to use the networks to their own advantage in promoting. narrow, narrow, narrow - we're about to witness the whole idea of advertising, marketing and selling find a new focus that's both small and versitile. # 06.10.02 today apple launched a new ad campaign called switch. for the first time (since the 1984 commercial) they're targeting pc users, by highlighting the stories of those who have already made the switch. the campaign includes a new main section to the apple website (the switch tab, of course) and includes a list of the top 10 reasons to switch, 10 questions about switching and even a guide to making the switch. according to cnet, pc users will even be able to bring their old computer into any apple store and a mac tech will help them transfer files and settings to a new mac. but the real the highlight of the campaign are the 8 tv spots created by documentarian erroll morris, each featuring an actual pc-turned-mac user. some of them are better than others. (i particularly enjoyed sarah whistler and mark frauenfelder.) this is a pretty big move for apple, as this campaign will be getting quite a bit of airtime, running on major network and cable channels duing popular timeslots that aren't always within apple's usual demographic. (ESPN, anyone?) obviously, apple isn't trying to destroy the pc. they've got a 5% market share. there's really no threat to windows and they're not going to convince the masses to abandon their dells. but if they can convince just 5% of pc users to switch (and steve jobs has been saying this a lot recently) then they've doubled their market share. this is just a new level in what has already been a bold push into new markets, with developers at the forefront. os x places apple in a really great position to bring on board more developers, and if you're watching the tone and tactic of developer sites, it seems to be working. (cnet is awash with praise, o'reilly is crawling with mac banner ads and mac developer propaganda, even slashdot to some extent is seeing it.) i think this is pretty obviously a good move for apple. they're making bold moves and positioning the macintosh in direct competition with windows (they were really playing for a kind of quiet coexistence for a while). i know more and more people who are finding that the mac (under os x) works well for their needs. maybe this new campaign will convince more of those people to take the plunge. as a former pc users myself, i think they're going about it the right way. # what the hell is this?! # 06.09.02 my brain is like a top - give it enough spin and it'll whirl around like a demon, zipping at random from one thought to another with reckless abandon. of course this results in the desperate state of mind in which i can't quite keep ahold of a great idea long enough to fully exploit it. and in the end, the top runs out of momentum and stutters, wobbles and falls. # i think that america should give up it's radio system to the brits. we've fucked it up enough (read: clearchannel) and they just sound better. a dj with a british accent is more entertaining than out rather loud, obnoxious variety. that said, if you're hard at work today, listen to some music. try kcrw, which i believe is hands down the best radio station ever. you can grab a stream from their website or find the mp3 stream at shoutcast. # i was reading some more geek stuff last night and i worked myself into a frenzy. i realized that i would never get the chance to toy with new technologies if i waited for a need to arise (esp. in this blog - it's got some pretty lo-tech needs). so i played around and came up with a news amalgamation page. it's really simple and not terribly geek of me, but i'm proud nonetheless. i found some XML-RSS feeds from favorite news sources, then i modified a perl script (just for aestetics) that will run server side to retrieve these feeds and convert them into html. then i set up a cron schedule on my host's server to retrieve the feeds and dump them twice an hour. finally i used server side includes to pull them all together onto one page. of course there's still bugs and stuff i want to do (i want the description tag for each channel item to roll into the link title so you can just hover for the article's summary) and it's not all that pleasing to the eye, but i thought i'd share it with you. perhaps it would make a nice place to check various news sources in the morning for you - which leads me to ask if anyone has a specific site they like to peruse that might be useful up there. right now it's very tech centric, but i'd love to add more sites, if you have any ideas. # 06.08.02 this is one of those technicalities of moving: i don't know who out there has the phone number or address, but if you do, listen up. in one week i'll be moving and any usps address you have will expire. i'll keep my mobile phone at the same number for a while, since it's all free-long-distance and no-roaming-for-a-billion-states and shit. the move is gonna be temporary though, so we get to do this again in a month or so and change everything. let me know if you need updated info. # you've probably already heard about click to add title, the full-scale, all out powerpoint bakeoff. but i thought i should point it out anyway, in case some of you aren't big blogdex whores or mefi worshipers or whatever. plus, it's uber-geek, and Leslie Harpold's round one entry ("winona needs us!") is A-Number One kind of funny. # 06.07.02 hah hah hah, those silly chinese! they actually reported on an onion story! what a wacky bunch of lovable communists...hey wait, i smell a sitcom! # you may remember the letter to the editor that appeared in our school newspaper last week from the kind folks at NARTH. that letter got an understandable amount of attention. there were a few letters from the gay community, obviously upset by what the woman from NARTH was claiming. there have been a few letters from the president of the university asking, rather generically, for tolerance of ideas and "cultures." there weren't, thankfully, any letters from people backing her up. and finally, yesterday, they got around to printing a letter from our own prosaic* foreign correspondent, Dan. no doubt you've all seen dan floating around here - before his stint in south east asia, he was a regular commenter and contributor of content suggestions. we keep in regular touch and he has been following developments in the 'P' scandal via email and the website of the student newspaper. immediately after the letter appeared from NARTH, i received dan's response. dan's got a lot to say on the subject of "reparative therapy" - he gave NARTH a try during his freshman year at poly. working with the president of the organization (Dr. Joseph Nicolosi) gives dan some insight into the faults of the process and the concept. given that, i had a lot of anticipation about his reaction. he sent me a copy of the letter that he wrote in response. with his permission, i've archived it and am posting it, in it's original and unedited form, right here. a highly edited, although still very appropriate version of the letter appeared in the paper yesterday. take a few minutes to read his letter. feel free to share your thoughts with him. # thanks to the magic of the southpark generator i can bring to all of you a realistic recreation of the results of these grueling hours spent toiling away at my senior project have had on me.
# 06.06.02 it's a prefect evening for a drive. i'm sitting next to the open window, feeling the cool outside air begin to overwhelm the day's heat. the sun has just set and the light is thin and murky. as i type this, my skin is damp and my hair wet from the shower. i'm listening to a great radio station. this would be the perfect moment to find myself cruising down the highway, the windows down and the radio up. # i found a sucker at the bottom of my sandwich bag today. they always give out suckers at the sandwich shop around the corner. the wrapper tells me the flavor is "artificial strawberry!" # wired has (another) article on the legitimization of blogging. this time it's with thanks to a new class on blogging in the journalism program at berkeley. this isn't entirely different from other, similar articles which raise the debate over that fuzzy, gray line that lies between blogging and jouralism. (well, it's fuzzy and gray elsewhere - here at prosaic* that line is practically in tahiti.) there are some interesting points in the story though. namely, links to micro content news which seems to consider itself a sort of 'trade journal' of the personal publishing world and weblogg-ed, a meta slash personal site exploring the use of blogs in the classroom. it would be interesting to know how the berkeley class is going to be taught. will they teach journalism-published-via-blogger or will they teach blogging-writing-by-a-journalist? and is there really any difference? # a larger kraft paper banner covered the garage. large crayon letters spilled across it, spelling out the message "HAPPY 9TH BIRTHDAY ELLIE!!!" as i walked past the open front door, i could see children running throughout the house. the sounds of music and laughter spilled out into the street. how is it that we choose to mark the passing of days? by what method do we decide which delineations are worthy of our celebration? today is ellie's ninth birthday. it's the first thurday in june. it's a sunny day, warm but for a gentle breeze coming from the northwest. it's aaron's birthday. it is the 9th day before my graduation. today is many things, without a doubt. but which of those things will prove most important? which of those things will today be remembered for? or will today be remembered at all? i want to celebrate it, to celebrate all of those days that have passed us by unrushed, unhurried, uncelebrated. the greatness of it seems to stem not from it's events, not from the shadow it casts, but from the sense of wonder it inspires. and so i wish you many things today, in hopes that you find your reason for remembering. # the register reports on the release of version 1.0 of the mozilla browser. after four years in development, it's finally here. and it's pretty spiffy. as a matter of fact, this post comes out of mozilla. it still feels a little buggy in some spots, but for the most part, the browser is highly responsive and seems to be rendering pages beautifully. especially handy is the tabbed interface. just seems like one of those ideas that someone should had a long time ago, you know? oh, and did i mention the security control? yeah, you can block popups natively. not bad. # 06.05.02 it's done. after a grueling, one week labor, my senior project has arrived, crying and peeing, weighing a mere 40 pages. blessed with the riveting title, Test Image Design: Designing a test image for use in a Comparative Evaluation of the Color Gamuts of Flexography and Rotogravure for Flexible Packaging, this one is sure to make best seller's lists everywhere. you're welcome to have a look if you're sick enough. but promise not to make fun, because it's terribly flawed, having been killed at the tender age of 5 months and rewritten starting last wednesday. but it's done now, and so am i. # i've mentioned o'reilly's jon udell here before. i'm really getting a kick out of this guy's stuff. most recent is a more accessible article on social networks and the science of trying to see them. it's hard, as you might guess. (udell's article points out that there is such a think as a microscope, but there's still no macroscope.) most interesting perhaps is the last part of the article, which includes an interview with Valdis Krebs, who's mining the cross pollenated goodness of amazon to discover larger patterns. # 06.04.02 over the last few days, i seem to have developed an eye twitch. the muscle directly under my left eye will spasm at random intervals (if only it would mark the hour, at least it would be useful). this results in a comical and frustrating contortion of my face and the appearance of rapid blinking. it's a lot of fun and people are really starting to get a kick out of it. i can't be sure of the cause, but i suspect it's a manifestation of stress. if you think things seem a little "woe is i" around here these days, you're probably right. i'm using this page a lot more in recent weeks as a sounding board for my own anxiety and self-pity. but rest assured, i'm well aware of this shift, and i've the utmost intention of resuming regular broadcasts as soon as things settle down. so if it's starting to get on your nerves, just pretend that i took one of those oh-so-popular summer blogging hiatus' that is all the rage with the kids today. # darren just notified me of a handy utility that allows you to import comments from the dotcomments system into movable type. i tried it out and it worked pretty well. there were a few glitches along the way, like file permissions (be sure to set your comments folder to 777). also, i think a few comments got mangled in the process. but since i was bringing on board nearly a year's worth of stuff, and seeing as there's been no real complaints that those old comments were missing after the move to mt, i'm not going to worry about it too much. of course now this means you can all go back and relive those old memories. # i was hit on by not one, but two girls today. what's going on here? did i get up on the straight side of the bed today? should i # 06.03.02 it's that time of year, around these parts. it's the time where we all gather 'round and play the let's get a job! game. everyone's doing it, and you can be a winner too! so we'll start with a hypothetical situation: let's say you are unemployed. not desperatly or painfully, but still, you've got no job. so then let's say you come across a job, and it's really great. it's a job you really want at a place you think you're really going to like to work. all signs point to yes. the job even says they want to hire you. in a few months. things aren't where they ought to be, and the job you're wanted for isn't really there yet. what to do? you can't very well sit around for another couple of months - you're unemployed after all, and money doesn't grow on top of credit card debt. but you really want this job, and you can have it without question. just not quite yet. where do you look for gainful or semi-gainful employement? where would you find the income? or would you pass and keep looking? # do you watch ? because you really haven't watched tv until you have. it's really amazing, and tonight's season finale was truly exceptional. i wont go into what happened tonight, because i know some people haven't seen it yet. but i will tell you, gentle reader, that my sunday night's promise to be much less interesting until next season. # 06.02.02 i'm laughing out loud at myself right now. a horoscope just made my day. fumbling around the web, trying to learn a little about smil and rss channels brought me (quite by accident, really) to my.netscape.com, where i must have registered once, long long ago, because right there on the front page was my horoscope: ARIES mar. 21 - april 19 and the beatles whisper in my ear: don'tcha know it's gonna be ... alright. # SHE'S SO HEAVY jessie called this morning. we talked for a while, said out goodmornings. we're hanging up the phone and he asks me if there's anything wrong. nothing, of course, i answer. he's persistant. is something making me mad? but there's nothing. nothing comes to mind, nothing rears it's ugly head, throws it back in disgust. nothing wrong, we part ways. was i mad? of course not. nothing was bothering me. but nothing was making me mad, and now i've got it. kicking mad. throwing mad. spitting mad. i can't shake it in the shower, i can't shake it over lunch, i can't shake it to the beatles. so here we go, all post-teen angsty and shit. i should be dying my hair black and writing bad poetry. you should know that i'm mad because:
# i did something today that i haven't done in a very long time. i spent the whole day playing video games. i totally geeked out. darin and i rented a big bad rpg game for the playstation2 (borrowed) this morning and spent the whole day eating junk food and playing the game. we even left it on pause for a half hour while we went out to get dinner. i zoned out in front of a game like that since i was 16 or 17 and it was great. what a nice way to blow off a saturday. # 06.01.02 i'm walking through the cool night, my cheeks cool and damp with mist. it smells like the ocean. the moon and the stars are obscured by a fog that carries voices across the road. every third car is colored the familiar black and white, cruising slowly past. empty beer cans litter the sidewalks and dim front lawns as i walk home, my hands dug into my pockets. everywhere, boys and girls walk down the street, in twos and fours and sixes. young men and women together, standing, touching, holding, kissing on front porches and in parking lots and in driveways. a homeless man stumbles away from the liquor store, bag in hand as it's owner rolls down the security gate. crowds stand together in the parking lot outside the 7-11. money changes hands, registers ring, cases of beer are loaded into parked cars. it's two am in san luis obispo, and i wont really miss it. # « May 2002 | archive index | July 2002 » built with movabletype |
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