Category: general

It’s been a while since I’ve seen one of those “the end is near” doomsday red bannered news headlines on CNN.com. Seems like ever since 9/11, even the smallest piece of news is huge-bold-white-font-red-banner worthy. I mean, even John Ritter dying made the red banner. I wonder what the criteria is for being red-bannered? Most of the time, it’s someone blowing someone else up over in that middle-eastern place where people are always blowing other people up. Occasionally, it’s to make sure I’m aware that some crazy movie star is leading the pack of distinguished porn actors and other Hollywood-types in the latest election.

I have become, much to CNN’s knuckle-cracking delight, a news junkie. So much so, that when the news Gods don’t bless me with the red banner for a few days, I notice the fact, and even write about it. I check CNN.com like every hour, just to make sure that the human bug-light that is the red banner hasn’t appeared or changed.

I’d like to be in the room when they’re deciding what goes in the red banner. “Hey Mike, how many people died in that suicide bus bombing in Jerusalem again?” “Umm… lemme check the wire… it says here that two other people died.” “OK, we got three total people dead here, I’m thinkin’ we slap this headline in a huge ass white font, framed by an insane red banner, and slap it at the top of the page.” “OK, you want me to make that whole thing blink like once a second?” “Nah, let’s save that for something really big, like when the pope kicks it or something.” It’s sensationalism at it’s very best. Hopefully, the red banner will never leave. I would not know what to do. I will keep you, the faithful reader, updated – and as soon as there is a red banner headline again, you’ll hear it here first.

What else is going on? Well, Anthony and Ben and I took his new truck out for a test run the other night. We went out to this construction site that I hadn’t seen any kind of barricade on. We drove up some pretty dang step inclines, tilted the truck up on two wheels (it was too dark to see what degree we were at, he has a tilt-o-meter gauge). A couple times we started just spinning tires since the terrain was a lot of loose dirt and rock, but it was really fun. And, what’s even better – no cops came and arrested us. Next time, we’ll have to find a real 4×4 place where we’d not be breaking the law to drive. Anthony said we might take it up to Ruck-A-Chucky this weekend and try to ford the middle fork of the American. I want to go underwater so bad.

I totally haven’t been working on the “cast of characters” page. I need to finish a few writeups and add some images, and it’ll be done. For now, it’s in the perpetually-coming-soon category. Until later…

I was thinking about Frank being at Fort Knox now, and how awesome it would be to be near all that bling. I mean, you can probably smell the bling as you’re driving up right? There must be some steel-reinforced cavern full of gold-brick-bling. Awesome. Bling bling, dubs, and Cristal – what else do you need in life? Wow, my brother is totally in the Army….

Yesterday I got a junk call from SBC (the phone company). The lady was telling me that they have a telemarketing-blocking system that you can subscribe to, of course the 1st three months were free as part of some introductory deal. The conversation went something like this:

Her: You wanna buy our anti-telemarketing thing? (paraphrased)
Me: You mean like the National Do Not Call list, right?
Her: Yes sir.
Me: Like the free National Do Not Call list, right?
Her: Yes sir.
Me: But yours costs money?
Her: Not for the 1st three months sir.
Me: So… you’re telemarketing me, selling a service that stops telemarketing?
Her: (awkward pause) Yes, I guess I am sir.
Me: Seems kinda self-defeating, doesn’t it?
Her: Our system blocks more calls than the National Do Not Call list sir.
Me: No thanks, I’ll wait for the free one.

What an odd conversation.

As music goes, I’m listening to the new Snow Patrol album, I don’t think it’s out in the US yet, but here’s a review of their old album. I grabbed it from absmi last night, and so far it sounds pretty good, a little predictable – but I am really jonesing for some new tunes. The more tracks I hear, the more I’m liking it.

This Saturday night is the Hot Hot Heat show at the Crest. Hurray for a show that’s 20min away and in a small venue. I think this one is gonna rock. If you’ve never heard of Hot Hot Heat, they are a rock outfit with a punkish tinge, and they remind me a bit of the Strokes. The lead singer sounds nearly identical, vocally, to the dude from Dexys Midnight Runners… you know, the band that sang that awesome 80’s one-hit-wonder “Come on Eileen.” Anyway, should be a good show.

Oh yeah, I got a new haircut. I have been “slicking” back my hair for nigh on 10 years now, so I decided it’s time to stop. Steve used my clippers to tighten up the do. Now I brush it forward, it’s awesome. I’m awesome. Chicks are all over me.

You guys read the internet, right? Check out Matrix Ping Pong (wait for it to load) and some Time Traveler spam.

So, I take back the thing from below about the comment script not working. Let me explain…

To make this blog, I used a bunch of freeware apps/code that I hacked up into what I want. The s/w I’m using to write/edit/upload these entries is called “Blog.”

The Blog s/w has a built-in commenting feature that is implemented thru e-mail… and I didn’t like that. So I Google’d and found some freeware ASP commenting scripts, which I heavily edited for my purposes (specifically, I went to work on this script source: Blogcomments).

The toughest part was the comment counter at the bottom of each journal entry. Believe it or not there’s about ~100 lines of code just to get that counter working correctly (and for some reason it’s still got a stinkin’ extra space after the comment count!). Anyway, the commenting feature now works, as does the majority of the blog. However, there is still a lot to be done, adding archive links, formatting, eyecandy, etc.

Hope you’re enjoying it so far.