August 2001 Archives
I'm trying to get this silly thing to post. :P
Posted on August 1, 2001 2:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Ah... there we go. Well! I decided to start doing one of these because everyone else I know seems to be doing them and they seem like fun. Mine will probably be boring and all and I probably won't update it much, but... we'll see what happens.
Posted on August 1, 2001 2:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
As you can probably tell, my HTML skills blow. I just can't seem to catch on. Sure, I'm learning in the most half-assed way possible. And I'm barely doing anything to learn it in the first place. I'm sure my efforts show. One day this might look pretty. One day...
Posted on August 1, 2001 5:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
It's a happy new day! I'm already looking forward to the weekend. Unfortunately, it'll be another busy one. We've been out of town, having relatives and friends visit, or doing various other things for the past several weeks. This weekend brings a pre-wedding Pampered Chef party for Ryan and Huyen on Saturday and the company picnic on Sunday. Should be fun. Probably entirely unrelaxing, but fun.
Posted on August 2, 2001 11:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
I've managed to accomplish very little today. I seem to be rather unmotivated lately. Ah well. I did manage to discover that the microphone I bought last night actually DOES work. It's just the microphone jack on my computer at home that doesn't work. Oh well. I'm now on the lookout for a new sound card.
Posted on August 2, 2001 5:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
If anyone was actually reading this, they wouldn't BELIEVE how much anime I've got to watch. And games I have to finish. Lately I've felt that I just haven't had the time, though I'm sure that's not true. I've gotta have at least 20 DVDs to watch and about a dozen games I haven't finished. Blah. I need to become independently wealthy.
Posted on August 3, 2001 3:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
I'm starting to think this was a failed experiment. My life isn't interesting enough to write about, honestly. I think I believed that writing something every day, no matter what it was, would spark some sort of dormant creativity in me. But I don't think it's there. Oh well. Perhaps I should leave this sort of thing to the people that do it well.
Posted on August 6, 2001 11:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Indigo Girls tonight. They always put on a good show. I love performers who really seem to be having a good time performing and aren't just doing a job. What's even cooler is it'll just be Emily and Amy up there. The very first time I saw the Indigo Girls live was just after Swamp Ophelia was released and it was just the two of them then, too. I tend to enjoy live shows more when they're not just regurgitations of what's already on an album somewhere.
Posted on August 7, 2001 4:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Speaking of music, my girlfriend and I are fairly opposite in our enjoyment of music. Oh, we like a lot of the same things, but it's often for different reasons. For her, the lyrics are paramount. If there's no lyric booklet, she gets extremely irate. She'll get excited about a particular lyric and write it down and everything. For me, the music is much more important. Half the time, I can barely pay attention to the lyrics anyhow. Though I can enjoy good lyrics, the voice tends to become just another instrument for me. Which is probably why I can enjoy stuff like Dead Can Dance and Japanese rock and pop so much.
Posted on August 7, 2001 4:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Well, the Indigo Girls show was great. Got there about an hour and a half before the show started and had a bit of a picnic. The place was packed. Even the lawn was already pretty close to full by the time we got there. The opening act was a fairly generic alternative group called Nineteen Fortyfive. They were entertaining enough, though. Especially because the bass player's bass was almost bigger than she was. And the sign language interpreter was really getting into it while she was signing. The Indigo Girls did a great set. :) Amy broke a mandolin string early on but they pretty much played for 2 hours straight without incident. They played a few songs from their forthcoming album as well as some old favorites. The crowd wasn't overly annoying and we had a great time. We even managed to get out of the parking lot pretty quickly. We had a great time despite the overwhelming heat. I think it was still over 80 degrees by the time the show was over at 11.
Posted on August 8, 2001 3:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
I'm kinda glad my girlfriend encouraged me to get back into reading comics after the long, self-imposed hiatus caused by lack of funds back around the time I went off to college. I really do enjoy them. Sure, they're a massive drain on my cash flow, but it's really not THAT bad. Not as bad as my DVD habit, surely. It's gotten me thinking about the comics I'd thought of writing so long ago. I still can't flesh out the stories well enough to make them work, but it's nice to be thinking along those lines again. As such, The DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics by Denny O'Neil was a great buy. Best book I've seen about how to write a comic book script.
Posted on August 9, 2001 5:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Back when I was younger and first got into the whole online thing, I got into some really bizarre stuff. I pretty much hated my entire school career mostly because of my peers, so I was always looking for something that'd make me better than them or something. So I got into circles of people talking about psychic powers and astral projection and the like. And did stupid stuff like get catalogs for devices that would supposedly allow you to levitate. Very bizarre. I was a strange teenager. At least it exposed me to some interesting things, like lucid dreaming, but it sure makes me wonder what I was thinking at the time. :)
Posted on August 10, 2001 4:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Blah. Bad bad storms this weekend. There was a pretty amazing electrical storm on Saturday that blew out our power for a good long while. It sounded like the lightning was striking nearby, it was so loud. It almost sounded like it hit the antenna on top of the building, since I thought I heard an electrical sounding noise inside the apartment. Spooky. Luckily, the only casualty of the storm was my Ethernet card. Lord knows how exactly that happened. The DSL modem was fine, everything else in the computer was fine (except for an oddly overactive and loud CPU fan... but that seems to have calmed down now). I guess it's possible that it was on its last legs and died of fright from the storm. Who knows? Ah well. I went to Best Buy and picked up a new one and everything's happy now. At least it's better than the first year we lived in the apartment when every time there was an electrical storm and we lost power, the caller ID box would get fried and we'd have to get a new one.
Posted on August 13, 2001 9:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
I got a haircut yesterday! Yay! Even though nature is slowly deciding that I just don't NEED hair any more, I still like keeping it fairly short. It gets all out of control when I let it grow too much. Now I won't look like a complete piece of trash at the weddings I'm going to in the next couple of months.
Posted on August 14, 2001 3:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
As I mentioned yesterday, I've got a couple weddings to go to over the next couple months. Unlike most of the weddings I've gone to in the past, these ones are in convenient locations. :) Ryan and Huyen's is in Leesburg, which is about a 15 minute drive from here. Not only that but they say you can walk from the church to the reception place. Groovy. Michael and Jennifer's is somewhere in Pennsylvania, which isn't entirely convenient, BUT it's going to be close to one of Sarah's friends, so we'll be able to stay with her instead of having to stay in a hotel. Now I just have to figure out what the hell I'm going to get them. Sometimes I feel stupid getting, like, a pan for someone. But... eh... I guess that's what wedding presents are like. It just feels WRONG somehow.
Posted on August 15, 2001 4:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Eeep! I've been invited to a bachelor party! I've never been to one of those before. Not sure if I'll be able to make it. One thing I wonder, though... should I bring a gift? Perhaps a cheese log...
Posted on August 16, 2001 10:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
On a number of people's recommendations, I decided to try out a new artist recently. Her name's Shena Ringo (I've seen her name romanized a number of ways, but I'm sticking with this one for now) and she's quite different from what I expected. Far too many Japanese female vocalists sound too much like American pop female vocalists, which I loathe. I'll admit that quite a lot of them have good voices, but the music is uninspired and trashy. However, Shena Ringo's completely different. I really like her sound. She can really screech, too. :) Samples of her stuff can be heard here.
Posted on August 16, 2001 2:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
I'm sleepy today. Sleepy sleepy sleepy. I haven't slept well lately. I've half-remembered very bizarre dreams. I should keep a notepad by my bed and write stuff down when I wake up from a dream. But I know I'd probably forget to do it. I think the last one involved people from work. Most people from work don't belong in my dreams. Only a select few are right at home there.
Posted on August 17, 2001 11:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Why am I still up? Why why why? Oh yeah... I'm an idiot. :P
Posted on August 18, 2001 1:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Oh. I don't know if I mentioned it, but my CPU fan's been acting crazy. Happened around the same time as the ethernet card dying. The middle fan was making a ton of noise. So I bought a new one. This thing's a monster. A Golden Orb. When I got it, it was bigger than I expected and I worried it wouldn't fit. But it did. A bit tigther than the old one. Just... you know... the power wires leading from the power supply to every single other thing get in the way a bit. :P But it's O.K. And it's quiet. And things are better now.
Posted on August 18, 2001 1:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
I had a really odd dream this morning. I just remembered some of it. I was in Japan. For some odd reason, my family was there, too. They've never expressed any interest in visiting Japan, really, but they were there. We were in a CD store, I think. I was speaking English to the cashiers and they were responding in Japanese and I could understand what they were saying. My mom told me I shouldn't buy anything that I could buy back home just as easily. I'd already bought a few things there, then I picked something else up and bought that, too. It was kind of a bizarre dream, treading the boundary between the utterly mundane and the really trippy.
Posted on August 19, 2001 12:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Cool. My younger brother, John, finally got himself a teaching job. :) He graduated with his Masters this year and I think he was starting to get a bit worried about finding a job since, well, it's 3 weeks into August and school tends to start pretty soon. I haven't heard all the details yet, but I know he'll be teaching in Haverhill, MA. Congratulations, little buddy!
Posted on August 20, 2001 1:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Woo hoo! My Goonies DVD shipped from Bestprices.com. I can't wait to get it. It's been a while since I've seen it, but I remember one time when I was younger, we rented it and watched it about 4 or 5 times straight. The disc has all sorts of goodies on it, including commentary with the kids. For more information about the DVD and about this classic movie, check out this excellent unofficial site.
Posted on August 21, 2001 9:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
I signed Sarah and I up for a cooking class at Kitchen, Etc. This should be interesting. It's a 2 hour class and this one's on Indian cooking. I'd like to see exactly how a class goes, since it might be nice to take a few of them if it's any good. It only costs $20 and they give you a $10 gift certificate to the store, too, so it's really not a bad deal. We'll see how it goes. :)
Posted on August 21, 2001 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
I pretty much hated high school. Loathed it, really. Junior high, too. Honestly, at this point, I can't quite remember a time when I liked school. I know there was a time, way back when, when I loved to learn and that made school worthwhile. But then everything else stole that from me. I was a geek, I'll admit. No pocket protector or anything like that, but I wasn't far off. Being shy didn't help, either. I was picked on quite a lot and never felt like I fit into any group, really. I always tried to rationalize that I was better than all of them and everything would turn out fine in the end. But I wasn't and it didn't. I just ended up missing out on things. I never went to my prom. A girl actually asked me, too, though I've never figured out if she was being serious. I said no, rudely, figuring that she wasn't being serious, embarassed because she'd asked in front of other people. I've missed out on far too many things, especially because of the shyness. It didn't get much better in college, though I found a few people I could actually relate to and like. But I generally hated it, too. Partially because many of the people truly were bastards but also because I know I missed out on things I could've enjoyed. And I still regret all of it. Letting go of the past is something I've never gotten the hang of.
Posted on August 21, 2001 1:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
It's sad. I'm addicted to DVDs. Back when there was only VHS, I wouldn't shell out the cash for a tape unless I REALLY wanted it. I think I couldn't rationalize spending as much money as you had to to buy something that wasn't going to last very long. I don't know if I ever really thought of it that way consciously, but I'm sure the notion entered my brain at some point. Now that there are DVDs, though, I spend a few hundred dollars a month on the things. I should probably be using the money to haul myself out of debt, at last, but... I'm an addict. I need the shiny discs. Gimme gimme!
Posted on August 22, 2001 1:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Blah. I've been feeling really lousy lately. Haven't been getting more than 4 or 5 hours of sleep a night. So I ended up going home early yesterday and I slept for about 6 hours, got up for a little while to eat dinner and stuff, then slept for another 7 hours. I still feel exhausted. Some day my body will be nice to me. Some day...
Posted on August 24, 2001 2:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Watched The Goonies this weekend on DVD. Though I didn't love it quite as much as I did when I was younger, it still was a great flick. I still have to watch it with the commentary, which should be a real treat. Though I've read that a lot of the actors involved didn't remember a lot of things, so it might not be that great after all. It was cool seeing the old Cyndi Lauper music videos, though. I hadn't seen those in FOREVER. It was so weird seeing all the old wrestlers in her videos. Back then, it seemed like wrestlers showed up in everything, from music videos to cartoons to sitcoms. Maybe I just don't notice these kinds of things as an adult, but it just doesn't seem to happen as much any more. Though I just can't see The Rock joining up with G.I. Joe.
Posted on August 27, 2001 10:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Ack. This pisses me off. Warner's releasing a special edition of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory tomorrow. Because they feel this is a family title, they're releasing it full frame. I guess it's actually open matte, meaning you won't lose any picture, but you'll gain some on the top and bottom, screwing up the framing that was intended. A lot of people wrote in about this. So now Warner's releasing a widescreen edition on November 13th, the day before my birthday. That's all great and happy. The only problem is... it's now too late to cancel my pre-order of the edition coming out tomorrow. Argh! I guess that's one of the problems with pre-ordering... Oh well...
Posted on August 27, 2001 3:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Posted on August 28, 2001 10:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Well, I decided to keep the short version of the post about the Bruce Campbell book signing. It was mostly just a long-winded account of our 3-1/2 hour stay at the bookstore. It was definitely worth the wait and it was cool meeting my first celebrity and all. I had plenty of time to come up with something witty to say, but I failed. It didn't help that he asked me a question right away. Damn that Bruce Campbell! ;) Still kinda wish I hadn't misunderstood the bookstore guy and had gotten him to personalize what he wrote in my book, but oh well. It's not like we're best pals or anything and he won't remember me anyhow. I still haven't washed my hand and I never will ever again. When disease overtakes it and they cut it off, I'm preserving that baby for all time.
Posted on August 29, 2001 11:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
So... after their appearances in and leading up to the horrible Our Worlds at War crossover, the Suicide Squad is getting its own series. I loved the old Suicide Squad series. I recently finally finished reading the entire 5+ year run. I'm a little concerned that the new series won't even come close to being as good as the original. From what little I've seen of the first 3 issues, it sounds like it's going to be a series that only exists to kill off unnecessary characters. Sure, the first series did that a LOT, too. But that was against a backdrop of some excellent storytelling and great, fully realized characters. I'm probably jumping the gun here. Giffen's a good writer. I'll definitely give it a few issues, but I'm not hoping for much at this point. I see slightly more promise in the new Doom Patrol series.
Posted on August 29, 2001 1:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Woo hoo. Tonight's Ryan's bachelor party. Should be interesting. I've never seen Brian Regan before, so this should be cool. :) It'll be interesting to see what Ryan's other friends are like and to see what some of the other Pingers look like in person. I'm frightened.
Posted on August 30, 2001 3:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Well, Ryan's bachelor party was pretty nifty. Definitely different than I expected a bachelor party to be. Brian Regan was hilarious, as was his brother. And so was the other guy. I think his name was Andy Campbell. Something like that. I think Ryan was thanking God that we weren't torturing him the way this poor girl was being tortured by her friend during her bachelorette party. She looked positively mortified as her friend dragged her around on a quest for a pair of men's underpants. Women can be so very cruel... I didn't get to sleep until around 4am. I am dead today. Good thing it's a holiday weekend. The wedding's tomorrow at 4. I'll be sleeping until then.
Posted on August 31, 2001 5:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)