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Saturday, January 19, 2002
It turns out that the best time to do your bills is during a night of drinking alone. I'm not really sure how to explain it, but writing checks isn't nearly as painful this way.
.: posted by Jeremy 1/19/2002
Devin, here's a deal for you. You can be a landlord and a pawnbroker and a webmaster and a fence, all in one. This one purchase will cover almost 25% of your total career aspirations!
.: posted by andy 1/19/2002
Friday, January 18, 2002
typing emails in a dark office at 8:17 on a friday night isn't fabulous. makes me wish i was back in austin, and that this was all just some kind of nightmare. there's a word that means something is horrific in its banality, and the word is possibly based on some author's name, and that's how i would describe the afore-mentioned nightmare. horrific in its banality. in the movie "way of the gun", there's a character who has six revolvers, and he puts a round in each of them, then puts them all in a pillowcase and spins it around to mix them up, and then takes one out and puts it up to his temple. he's about to pull the trigger, but then hesitates for a moment, and you almost have time to get an inkling of the idea that maybe things aren't so bad, and he won't kill himself, but he only puts his free hand up to his other template to keep blood from spattering everywhere. then he pulls the trigger, but since this is a sort of russian roulette game, it clicks on an empty chamber, and he puts it down and pulls another revolver out of the bag. then the phone rings, and after debating whether to pull the trigger or answer the phone for 5 or 6 rings, he picks it up. which is funny, because ultimately that phone call only extends his life 12 or so hours, and ultimately leads to his death anyway, but not on his own terms. but that's not my point. my point is that i really wish i had someone to go get some beers with and just be around happy drunk people, which i would have in texas, but i sure don't have in greensboro, north carolina. blah.
.: posted by andy 1/18/2002
Wednesday, January 16, 2002
I just opened my new, separate page. From now on, I'll post links on that page, and everything else on this one.
.: posted by andy 1/16/2002
A Florida professor put on leave for supporting Palestine. Interestingly, his brother-in-law is one of the men held for years with no charges and no trials, based on "secret evidence". He was finally released, but is now back in federal prison for overstaying his visa. He's been in federal prison for several months now. I guess we've stopped deporting people for overstaying their visas. Now you go to a federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison. Even if you overstayed your visa because the federal government kept you in a federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison for its entire duration. Kafkaesque much?
.: posted by andy 1/16/2002
My birthday was yesterday(the fourteenth). I got a birthday card from a good friend, and a birthday phone call an even better friend. I got several birthday beers, four or five, I can't remember, from a few other friends. I had a birthday breakfast, albeit at 11:30 at night. I had a birthday surprise in the form of a check for work that I wasn't expecting. I got to do some work, and managed not to hurt myself, definitely a gift in light of my track record while working in the last few weeks. All in all it was a pretty good birthday.
.: posted by Grand Inquisitor Fnord Moco 1/16/2002
Tuesday, January 15, 2002
I agree whole-heartedly with this article. Along the same lines, I think it's odd that Capt. Scott O'Grady, the only American pilot shot down over Serbia, is supposed to be a hero. What about all the pilots who didn't get shot down? Shouldn't they be bigger heroes than the man who got shot down and had to be rescued? I don't have anything against Scott O'Grady, but getting shot down, blown up, or burned alive doesn't make you heroic. For all we know, the people in the WTC were making deals with the Devil after the planes hit. That article concludes with a little tidbit saying that the victims of the WTC attacks will receive as much money from the federal government, this month, as Afghanistan will receive from the entire international aid community in the next decade. And that's not counting all the money they'll receive from charities and insurance policies. For many of these families, losing a relative will be the biggest financial windfall of their lives. If I'd been blown up, Beth would probably be able to stop working at the end of this month. Good grief.
.: posted by andy 1/15/2002
Monday, January 14, 2002
Fire destroys genetic research. It flared up two extra times in a separate lab after they initially put it out, which has been known to happen, but all the same...
Also, it's dawned on me that I have a whole lot of free time here at my new job. I finished all my work for the day in the first two hours, and then I went around and made some more work for myself, and even so, I've had to kill almost four hours today. This is the sort of situation that spawned sadmind.com, back in 2000. So maybe it's time for me to make a new thing like that... I'd use this page right here, but I get pretty prolific when I get this bored.
.: posted by andy 1/14/2002
Sunday, January 13, 2002
You kids and your stringed instruments. I usually find the first thing that goes when drinking is fine-motor control, a very important part of playing most instruments. I think violin is a pretty good choice as a personal hobby/entertainment device. Probably not as good as the piano, but definitely better than the trumpet. Pianos are great coz once you know how to play, you don't necessarily need to keep playing on a daily basis to be able to play at all. The trumpet is so physically demanding on your lips that if you don't keep your lip muscles in good shape, even if you are a pretty decent technically skilled trumpet player(which I think I was/am), you can't play for more than about 5 minutes before your face feels like it's going to fall off. There's that, and the problem that it's not that much fun to just pick up a trumpet and start playing something. There's also not much good music out there that I can think of that I would WANT to play solo on my trumpet. Also, it's really loud, hence the connotations that come along with the name "trumpet".
Pianos are really great coz you can play almost any piece of music on them, you can play chords, and if you haven't played in 2 months, you won't be in physical pain if you decide to play something for a date. Also, there's this nice chair you sit at that can seat the pianist and the listener. I want to learn the piano. I can already read treble clef pretty well, but reading bass clef and also reading multiple notes to be played at once will be a new experience. Violins don't have this "problem", but they do take a lot more initial technical training, which is a pain. And while there's a lot more good solo music for the violin than there is for the trumpet, there's still more for piano. Violins are much smaller and portable, though, and they aren't too loud, and they don't hurt you. But they are firewood, like all stringed instruments.
.: posted by Jeremy 1/13/2002
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