a co-worker of mine

in

feralboy.com/log/ barcode a co-worker of mine and i were talking the other day about barcodes. we started off talking about the whole trendy "barcode-on-the-back-of-the-neck" thing, and then the co-worker suggested taking it a step further. he wondered how cool would it be to have your frequent shopper card code tattooed on your arm, so when you went to check out a movie or get your discount, you'd just swipe your arm over the scanner and check out the stunned reaction.

i got myself a safety light last night. i think i'll go with "chase" lights on the ride home.

so much stuff to write

in

so much stuff to write about, but i can't seem to find the time to put it all down in a logical fashion. real quick, tho; i had my scariest ride home to date last night; cruising down liberty ave. in the twilight down the double yellow between two busses. dave said "big deal; i used to do that while eating a subway sandwich." i guess i should have known i couldn't impress a former bike messenger with that story. by the time i got home it was full dark, which means i think i need to run to the local bike shop tonight on the way to the wall and pick up a taillight or something.

true or false (or, worst....test......ever)

in

moving forward with the interview process for a certain company (hint: they sound like a former presidential candidate, but they're not). last night i did another online questionnaire. this one was a personality profile. they are fairly stupid. they just keep asking you the same true/false questions over and over again, sometimes in a slightly different way, hoping that you'll screw up and put different answers for the same question. anyway, i culled some of my favorite questions and broke them down by category: the "how stuck on yourself are you?" category Others seem to find me attractive. No one ever got ahead by being modest. I am very good at almost everything I do. Other people recognize my talent, although they may not always say so. I often fantasize about being famous.

the "how suicidal are you?" category I am a moody person. Nothing seems to matter to me anymore. I can't do anything well. I'm always tired. I feel like life is just passing me by. I often wonder how I got to be the way I am. The future seems hopeless to me. I frequently have headaches. My life often seems to have no meaning. When I was young, there were times when I felt like leaving home. Sometimes I feel like a failure. Sometimes my problems seem too much for me. Sometimes I feel like I'm falling apart. I sometimes feel irritated without any good reason.

the "how much of an asshole are you at work? category It doesn't bother me to criticize or contradict the persons who are above me at work. People often disappoint me. In a group, I don't mind expressing unpopular opinions. I could do a better job if I weren't interrupted so often.

the "how militia-style paranoid about government/authority are you?" category If I wanted to, I could disguise myself as someone else. I get nervous if I think someone is watching me. The average citizen has no idea what our politicians are up to. If you want justice in this world, then you must be ready to fight for it. Some laws were just made to be broken.

the "how insane are you?" category People can often sense my power. If I were in charge, I could get this country moving again. I have some powerful enemies. Because of my unusual gifts, few people are close to me. Sometimes I feel a kind of power around me. In time people will recognize my importance. I know who my enemies are. Sometimes I know what people are going to say before they say it. People with my special talents don't need many friends.

the "how much of a party animal are you?" category In my view a person who doesn't drink can't be trusted.

to quote lecter: "oh, agent starling... you think you can disect me with this blunt little tool?"

weekend update (or, that's my story, and i'm stickin' to it)

in

brief update. good weekend all around. went down to w.v. friday night, and bouldered at hawk's nest saturday. didn't think we were going to be able to climb at all, tho. when we first got down there, both the dam's floodgates were open, and they had released high water, and most of the problems' landings were underwater,. and the ones that weren't were all cummy from the spray. the things we were working on were actually dry, however, so everything worked out. it was a good day for everyone; we all sent. i did two really good, hard problems myself. one was a tall, gorgeous one-move problem that had you lunging up and catching a hold with two fingers, backhanded... then step up and get your other hand on it. it was probably the most satisfying boulder problem i've done to date. looks like brian enjoyed his send, as well. yesterday night was the wedding for the slf's good friend. it was at this historic landmark building in pittsburgh... gorgeous old victorian house, and apparently it's even haunted. the priest gave a very strange speech during the ceremony... he somehow wound up talking about the virginia snipers and the hostage tragedy in russia. the reception was fun, and interesting. there was a guy there who was probably about my dad's age with a woman who was so young that she had to be a paid escort. one girl who was manning the video camera for most of the night taped an older couple putting napkins from the reception into the woman's purse. needless to say, they were less than pleased about having that hallmark moment caught on tape.

conflict (or, are you talkin' to me? are you talkin' to me?)

in

the Special Lady Friend came with me last night to the gym. she used to come quite often, but when she switched jobs almost two years ago, she let her membership lapse. so, very nice to have her back and climbing again; and she did quite well considering how much time off she had had. there was one especially interesting part of the evening, tho. there's this guy who climbs at the gym frequently, and is un-affectionately known as "Belay-Me Elmo". always comes in by himself, and finds some unsuspecting new-ish climber to belay him. well, last night he was there, and decided that he wanted to do some lead climbing on the (mainly) toproping walls. the problem with this is that you usually need a bit more room when you are either climbing or belaying lead. BME was trying to do this in the front hallway, which is usually loaded with topropers, and last night was no exception. there is a wall specifically for lead climbing, but it was closed while the gymnasts next door did their thing, and wouldn't open for a little while longer.

during the course of belaying the slf on a few climbs in the hallway, i watched him skip a clip (a big no-no), and ask some woman who was already anchored in and ready to start belaying to unhook and move so he could start the climb he wanted to. waaaaay, waaaaay back in the day when i took the lead course at tcw, the guy giving the course said that he really did prefer that you not lead climb when it was busy on the toprope walls, for exactly that reason. on the next climb i was anchored in to belay near where he was belaying this poor unsuspecting chud. he said something to me about having to move way over, and here's the conversation that ensued:

me: (in a nice conversational tone) you know, that's why they don't like you to lead climb on the toprope walls when it's busy. BME: why are you throwing fucking attitude at me? me: (in an even nicer nice conversational tone) i'm not throwing attitude. i've just seen you kick one girl off a belay after she was anchored in, and now you're asking me to move. it's too busy in here for you to be leading. BME: whatever... don't fucking talk to me. just stay out of my way. me: (stares blankly at him, and then turns attention to the slf) belay on!

didn't want to press the issue because frankly, he looked a little crazy, and i didn't need to be getting into a fistfight. boy obviously has anger-management issues. after that climb was finished, he did move out to an area that was more sparsely populated, which was a good thing. after he had gone, i was telling the story to some friends, and the manager of the place just happend to be there. he said that if he had known that happened, he would have taken away he lead rope "like it was a toy"... so, hopefully that'll happen next time, and maybe i'll even be there to see it! apparently every time he's in and lead climbing he does similar things, and is basically just an all-around arrogant jackass. i hope i'm not ever bouldering over where he's belaying... because heaven forbid i should (begin dr. evil "finger quotes") //slip\\ and //fall\\ and catch him in the //face\\ with my //elbow\\.

ch-ch-ch-ch-changes... (or, a little housekeeping)

in

quite a productive morning. with brian gone and no longer yack-yack-yacking in my ear all day long, i'm free to turn my attention to other important matters. sent in my money for my high school 10-year reunion, so i feel like i'm locked in now to going. swapping emails around with the two other people besides ryan that i've stayed friends with, and we're all making each other go, so it might almost be fun. i also decided that i'm a bit fed-up with my current hosting provider's lack of .net support, so i've spent some time this morning looking for other hosts. i've found a few that look ok, but i think i'm going to go with alentus. 400mb space, 8gb transfer, email, etc. for $25 a month ($27 if i get the webtrends add-on). i'm more into updating my site than i have been since i started it 4 years ago, and i can't keep trying to hop back and forth between my brinkster account and this one everytime i want to do something. it would be nice if i could get a site that also did perl so i could host my own Movable Type site, but i think that blogger is just fine for me.

of course, moving a site means moving the domain. i have long since forgotten my network solutions (now verisign) account info, so i went to try and retrieve all that stuff. of course the email address for my admin contact is my defunct forwarding address that those mail.com fuckers changed their pricing policy on after i had paid up that address for 3 years. oh, well... it was a nice side benefit to drop that email, since it was getting a lot of spam. anyway, finally retrieved my account number and got to their "forgot password" page, which gives you a choice of questions, and want you to pick the one you picked when you signed up, along with the correct responses. i had completely forgotten which question i picked, so i started answering them in order. of course you get only 3 tries, and there were 4 questions listed, so my account is now locked. sent an email to them to find out how to get my password back, and we'll see how long it takes to get that all sorted out.

stats (or, how did i get here?)

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figured out yesterday that my hosting provider actually offers some sort of gratis stats reporting. so, i took a look at my stats yesterday, and saw a few interesting things:

  • everyone who comes to my site that isn't someone i already know is looking for something about either hacking tivo or building a climbing wall. perhaps i should flesh out those sections a bit more. i already went in to the wall page and updated it with a link to the co-op blog.
  • everybody is using some form of ie.
  • i have, on average, about 50-60 "visitors" a day. not too shabby.

xhtml (or validate me! validate meeeeeee!!!!)

in

work was a little bit slow yesterday, so i redid the styles on this page. i was inspired by the wired news redesign; their new design is clean, and without html tables. you can see some technical details of the pages here, and a bit of the philosophy behind it here. designs that rely completely on css seem to be the way that the web will go, as this article in webmonkey points out (the article also advocates dropping support for 4.x browsers completely, which is fine with me). So, as of right now, this page is xhtml 1.0 compliant. the only issue i have right now is the right column is showing up one pixel too low in mozilla, but i'll work on fixing that. below are some sites that were very helpful in setting up the layout and styles for this page.

http://www.glish.com/css/ http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/css/ http://theblivit.net/templates/

Valid XHTML 1.0!

oops, part 2 (or, fuck fuckity fuck fuck fuck)

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From: JackieTo: matt CC: Ian (recruiter guy) Subject: application

Matt, We received your application. However, the questionnaire was incomplete and we did not receive a writing test. Please return to http://www.company.com and complete the questionnaire from Question 8 to Question 19 (Part 2) and the writing test (Part 3). If the system requires you to complete the application again, enter your name and address on the first page and then enter "X"'s throughout the application to get to the questionnaire. Please call if you have any questions.

Jacqueline Human Resources Manager Company, Inc.

shitballs. i talked to that recruiter again this morning. he wants me to come in to the office tuesday a.m. to meet with him for half an hour or so. i don't think i can now, after this disasterous auto-submission of my bad, bad answers.

suffer the slings and arrows

in

so, this turned up in my inbox today (links are mine): From: Derek DePrator To: webmaster@feralboy.com Subject: kudos on yr review of the j mascis show, please read on:)

hi im derek deprator and i formerly played guitar for cobra verde. i laughed my fucking ass off to your review, it's so fucking accurate of the kind of show those fucking pussies put on it's not even funny. john petkovic is a fucking backstabbing asshole that deserves every negative word that's printed about him timed infinity, cuz god knows he writes for the newspaper here in cleveland so he knows all these press folks so there aren't damn near ENOUGH negative things written about him... but anyway if you're interested...this is me www.geocities.com/eleettapes/derekdeprator/ and here www.tellersrock.com though that url will probably change soon because we're going to change the name of the band...john blamed our lead singer on 'influencing me' to quit the band and screamed at her...me and her are 22 years old and he's this 37 year old 6 and a half foot tall guy it's like shit, pick on someone yr own size fuckface. anyway i just wanted to let u know the site was brought to my attention and i'm glad other people feel the same way i do. feel free to throw stuff at them next time they come to town...cuz god knows j and watt are the only two people in rock and roll stupid enough to hire them repeatedly (we'd opened for mudhoney, breeders, makers, matthew sweet, none of whom ever asked us back, gee wonder why)

hope to talk to ya soon bro, u run a good site.

derek

i have to admit that i was pretty freakin' happy that there are actually people outside my small circle of friends who actually read my page.

--update-- ooh, the plot thickens. now i'm getting bashed in c.v.'s yahoo group.

--update 2-- the whole thread has been yanked. while i support the board moderator's editorial control, i think that the discussion was light-hearted enough that it could have remained. i said my peace, and someone replied jokingly, and everyone was happy. there was no hatred flowing around, so i still find it a little odd that the thread was pulled. probably because i linked to this entry with the email from the former band member. hm... now that i think about it, it probably was a good idea. ;-)

annoyance (or, no thanks, i'd rather...)

in

what an epic this morning has turned out to be already, and not even 9 a.m. yet. i wanted to try and get up a little bit earlier this morning and do a few things and then get to work, but no thanks, i'd rather sleep in a bit more.

i was going to dress up in my halloween costume for work, but no thanks, i'd rather not be the only person in the office who's dressed up and feel like a ninny.

the weather was nice enough that i probably could have ridden the bike this morning, but no thanks, i'd rather be warm than healthy this morning.

i get down to my bus stop, and the bus pulls up a few minutes later, and it's completely jammed; front to back, floor to ceiling. i'd be standing squeezed between two amazingly obese women for the duration of my trip, unless even more got on at the next stop, in which case i'd be completely surrounded. so, no thanks, i'd rather be late than claustrophobic and annoyed.

the recruiter that i emailed yesterday to tell him to forget about the job wanted me to call him this a.m. with my schedule all screwed up because of the bus incident, i tried to call him a few minutes early while on my walk, but got his voicemail. i probably could have just called back a little later on, but no thanks, i'd rather avoid than be confronted.

oops (or, how to burn bridges)

in

started to take that online application this afternoon, and it was.... interesting.i didn't even get to the english part... after you fill out a bunch of personal info (ssn, blood type, etc.), they present you with a long web form with a bunch of general hr questions. i gamely answered the first couple, but then got bored and started to get funny. some of my responses are below (you can see riiiiiight about where it all went downhill):

What motivates you and how do you motivate others? I am enthusiatic about challenging problems and new technologies, and my enthusiasm is infectious (but not in a way that requires any sort of OTC medication).

On what personal attribute would you sell yourself? Friendly. Patient. Enthusiastic. Remarkably non-condescending for a techie.

What would your most recent manager say needs improved (emphasis mine) the most? While I haven't asked her specifically, I believe my manager would say the only problem is that i work too many hours, and my work is too bug-free, and completed too quickly, thereby making my coworkers seem like lazy dullards in comparison.

Where do you see yourself in two years and why? If I haven't abandonded technology completely to live a nomadic life in the deserts of the American Midwest, subsisting on the kindness of strangers and rock climbing every day; then I would imagine I'd be doing pretty much the same thing I am now: going to work every weekday and writing code, although I'll probably have a bit less hair.

i then decided that it was pretty pointless, and just started composing an email to the recruiter i spoke to, telling him that as i was going through the questionnaire, i thought that perhaps the work environment wasn't exactly what i was looking for. i closed the pop-up window that the questions were in, and the page that launched it changed itself to say "thank you"... which made me think they had some sort of javascript onClose(form.submit()); script going on, which makes me a little nervous.... oh well, if i'm not actually going to interview, then i don't think they're going to bother to read my half-filled-in responses, right? right?!?!

wow, vice city is a

in

wow, vice city is a whole lot of fun. the voice acting is superb, the new weapons and vehicles are great... doing wheelies and "stoppies" on a motorcycle for money is awesome. i'm hoping to get a little further into it tonight, and maybe buy some buildings to start generating some hands-off revenue. the Special Lady Friend called me last night from london; 3 a.m. her time and 10 p.m. mine. sounds like she's having fun so far.

i had a short phone interview yesterday. the recruiter was very cool, and i think things went well. one funny moment: at the end of our chat he was telling me about this online application that i need to fill out; one section is just general name/address/phone stuff, one is a questionnaire on work history, things of that nature...

recruiter: last part is a timed english test. don't worry, it's not poetry or anything like that. me: mmmm-hmmm... recruiter: we'll show you some sentences, and you can tell which ones need fixed or don't need fixed. me: *swallows hard and bites tongue*

there is a major grammar problem in pittsburgh (although i hear it's more of a midwest epidemic, really), where people have a real issue with their infinitives. did you hear about the travelling shakespeare company that comes to town once a year? their big scene is "or not, that is the question".

the cat's away (or, panic on the streets of london)

in

the SLF left yesterday for a week of fun and no sun in london. i'm sure that i will miss her while she's gone, but this week is just getting slackier by the minute. i see that my copy of gta vice city has arrived, and a day earlier than i expected, even. gta3 was such a cool game... the non-linear gameplay, being able to beat down hookers, etc. i've been dying for the sequel, and it's sitting on my doorstep waiting for me. that should take up a good portion of the rest of my week. plus, at work today both my mgr. and my boss are gone for the day. i do have a little bit of work that i should be doing, but i'm fairly unmotivated. i'd prefer to either hax0r up this messageboard so i can get automatic comments for the blog (sorry quicktopic, i love you, but i hate manual processes), or just fuck around with the new pontifex2 demo.

jackass (or, the decline of modern civilization)

in

yesterday afternoon, after doing a little bit of construction at the shop, went to the movies with paul and his girlie, and we went and saw jackass. it was disgusting, infantile, cringe-inducing, and a waste of celluloid. it was the perfect example of what's wrong with money-oriented moviemaking in this country, and i loved every second of it. i never watched the tv show, but i knew enough about it to know that i didn't really care if i saw it or not. i was in the mood yesterday, and i'm glad i went. i don't know if i've laughed so hard at crass jokes in my life. i think i lost 20 IQ points while i was sitting there, but it could have gone on for another 2 hours, and i would have happily sat through it. run, do not walk, to go see this movie.

weekend (or, be careful where you park that thing)

in ,

this will be a nice long post, as a lot happened this weekend. friday night, the SLF and i went to pi for dinner, and then to dave and casey's for a little bit of the grape. it was a very nice time, although there was one odd moment. paul and his girl came a little bit later on in the evening, and the conversation between the SLF and another woman there turned to how small and cute paul's girlie was. the other woman (whom the SLF had only met one time before) said something to the effect of "they never have clothes for us big, ugly ho's"... my head snapped around at that one, and i waited to see the SLF to cut her open to show her the black stuff inside her, but it didn't happen.

saturday morning was brunch at the SLF's friend's house. there was lots of tasty treats... crepes and this fantastic baked potato and veggie thing, and a kickass apple crisp thing for dinner with like double-thick crust. here's a few pictures from that:

patty group 1 group 2

after brunch we ran back to the SLF's house for her to get changed, and then we were off to the bob mould show.

the opening act was this guy jason from a chicago-area band called verbow. he was very good... fantastic voice, lovely songs... a nice opener.

bob was really good. his voice is so strong, and he has such a stage presence. i do have to say that i didn't enjoy this show as much as when he opened for the first gut pagaent show. his acoustic stuff was more amplified this time... not as clean and pure. he did some really good stuff, tho... opened with "wishing well", and did some old stuff, and then some stuff off of his upcoming album. one thing he talked about between songs was this incident, which i had read about before the show, and was telling all my friends gleefully about it. bob basically retold the events as they happened, and then also mentioned that the woman in question had posted like 9 times to *his* message board to explain herself. it was all quite amusing.

then bob switched it up. he put down the 12-string, and picked up his electric and started doing songs from "modulate", which is his "electronica" record. he put on a cd of the backing music, and played and sang along. it totally didn't work for me; sounded like he was playing/singing at half the speed as the backing track. he did a few encores, and in general i thought the show was very good. full review thread here. below are the only 3 pictures that came out halfway decent (i try to not use a flash at these sort of things):

jason from verbow bob 1 bob 2

along with the SLF, ryan and his new boyfriend friend were there. after the show we wanted to go out and have a little fun, so we decided to go to brewers. this is a "hotel bar"; in addition to the bar on the ground floor, it's also a halfway house for semi-homeless gay men. it's also a nice hangout for a good assortment of crack whores, as well as a healthy helping of black transgendered prostitutes, all of which are named "mahogany", for some reason. you just have to understand what a scary place this is. i had never been there before, but ryan had been there several times before. one time he went he had his briefcase stolen, and another time he was at the bar, talking to a semi-cute, well-dressed boy, when he started to smell something. the bartender comes running over and throws the guy out; turns out he had shit himself while ryan was talking to him. i just want the scene to be set.

ryan's boyfriend friend drove all of us in his new xterra, and i wouldn't say that he's the best driver. he sort of darted from the main road onto the sidestreet where brewers is, and almost nailed some guy in a black pickup truck. we parked, and as we were just about to get out of the truck, the guy we nearly killed came back down the street, honking and shaking his fist at us.

ryan: maybe we should turn the car off, wait for him to drive away, and then park somewhere else. ryan's boyfriend friend: nah.. it'll be fine.

into the bar we go, and it's scary. women who used to be men, most people looking like they hadn't had a bath in several days... it was quite.. um... "earthy". everyone (besides me) was doing shots of blueberry pucker (ick!), and we were all having a good time. awhile after we got there, a new group of people came in, including a female impersonator. i managed to get a few pictures of us with some of them:

marys 1 marys 2

we finally leave and head back to the truck, and of course the windshield is all smashed in. fucking hick motherfucker had come back with a baseball bat and smashed most of the driver's side of the windshield, and knocked the sideview mirror mostly off. ryan's boyfriend friend got a glass splinter in his finger sweeping some chunks off of his seat, but mostly everyone was unscathed. it was still a little freaky tho.