August 2004 Archives

I posted this: OJR article: Scholars Discover Weblogs Pass Test as Mode of Communication up on the Sizurfed Blog as well but thought it was interesting enough that I'd bring it up on the "front page." You should go to the Sizurfed page though, cause there's more. Cousin Sean and I had been talking on the phone the other day about my plans for the upcoming year and my mental health and how I was feeling like I just wanted to crawl under a rock and die because EVERYONE kept asking me the same questions and I didn't have anything new to tell them and some of my friends were calling me asking me how I was but I am absolutely petrified to pick up the phone and talk to anyone -- ANYONE - who is going to ask me about how life is and what I am planning on doing. I have nothing new to tell anyone. We also talked about how interesting it would be to be in the school of sociology or any academic field and have a dissertation on weblogs, but this is about feelings of worthlessness:

Let me tell you a brief story that shows you how life moves in cycles. Right when I was first beginning this website, I had just gradumutated from college and was spending some R-n-R time at my brother's in Alaska. It just so happened that one of those days that I spent up there fell on his birthday. Further background investigations will tell you that both of us had just had our hearts ripped out and stomped on by members of the opposite sex. I had pretty much calloused mine over at this point -- not to be penetrated again (as yet holding to that, though I'm not really in a position to attract) while my brother was still fresh out in the dumps. Well, either out of pity or true love, some of his friends decided that it would be best if they had a boys night out. Not being one to shun the fun a mere two years ago, my brother and I acquiesced.

We were to meet Sir Chuck at the Goldrush Bar in downtown Anchorage. I can't remember now if it was called the Goldrush Bar or not, but I do know that when this locale first grew out of the frozen tundra of South Central Alaska it was in the form of a brothel for the entertainment of all those grizzled men who would amble in fresh from their diggin to, well, start diggin again. I remember mulling over these thoughts, my eyes wandering around the wooden interior, my gaze taking in the staircase on the left, following those stairs up to the second level that spanned over the full length bar, marveling at the frontierish feel and then noticing several rooms behind the bannister on the landing where in and out scurried several scantily clad entertainers. (It was like one of those frenetic scenes in Scooby Doo where Shaggy and Scoobs would be chased by the monster into one door only to emerge chasing the monster from another.) Hmmmm. Yes. I could see how this could have worked.

So there I was trying to take in this fine architecture, managing to take in several Captain and Cokes, and still maintaining an appreciation for the beauty of certain forms when my line of sight was hampered by the presence of another shape.

Listen. Even while harboring the most vitriolic sentiments towards the opposite sex after having my heart ripped out, I could still appreciate the beauty of the female form. I just was going through an unhealthy stretch of misogynistic behaviours. Unfortunately, this thing that had just wandered over was anything but beautiful. Well, maybe I'm being unreasonable. Perhaps she had some nice qualities that I wasn't seeing, it was rather dark in that strip bar... No. Nooo. No, I think I had it right the first time, except for maybe the moniker of "thing." This "woman" was definitely not beautiful. When I say "woman", I mean woman. Not girl, not young lady...woman. A true Alaskan rugged outdoorsy been through many many a cold winter and could kill a bear with my dagger eyes so don't think I'd have a problem gettin to you woman.

So there I am - man who hates woman staring back at my nemesis - in a slightly crude, slightly shoddy female form. Imagine a sculptor working with clay towards creating Venus when a sudden shift of the table knocks her from her perch and she lands with a sickening splat on the floor. The sculptor simply picks up the Venus, and out of sheer exasperation decides to abandon the project as is and start a new one, leaving the now deformed lumpish freak of Venus standing on the table nearest as testimony to the wonders of Nature. That was my nemesis. Only dressed in pithy amounts of leather rather than clay. And she had not been dropped, but rather in an act of volition had descended from her table to take her stand before me as woman who hates man.

"Hel-lo," She croaked. "What's your name?" Oh God did she croak. I knew she'd been heading for me. I had some sort of sixth sense about it, outta the corner of my eye I saw the shadows creeping across the floor - I felt an icicle between the hairs on my neck. I knew that just by leaving the safe seclusion of my brother's condo that night, still unable to face the world with a suitable level of comfort -- leaving rather than sitting idly by with the slug of intermittent shyness weighing on me, timid and aloof, comforting myself with the hypnotic notes that are emitted from the obsessive squeezing of air between the palms of my hands -- I knew that by leaving that security I was going to face something that was potentially a harvester of my insecurities. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your interpretation -- I had had what can now be described as an enlightening talk with my brother driving into Anchorage towards that very bar.

I had seen an episode of Seinfeld a few nights before and remarked how I found it rather disheartening to be able to draw a closer comparison between myself and George Costanza rather than anyone else on the show. In this particular episode George decided that he was going to tackle his problems with the opposite sex by employing a new approach. Honesty. And so it was that I would borrow George Costanza's line in an Anchorage Bar, and use it to the amusement of my fellow rabblerousers, and the bemusement of one dropped Venus.

"How about a lap dance sweety?"
"I'm 24. I don't have a job, and I live with my parents."

My brother laughed. He laughed so hard he cried. He laughed and struggled to utter out, "I can't believe you actually said that." But I had. Like someone just beginning to feel the onset of poison, the leather-skinned, leather-clad deformed Venetian woman slowly stopped shifting her weight around, er, dancing, and without taking her eyes off me began to back away.

Then I finished another drink. And then Strawberry Shortcake started dancing. Strawberry Shortcake!!!

Listen to the rhythm of the night, whoa-o whoa-o whoa-o!
Oh. Hello. I did not see you there. Welcome to my underground layer. I have been expecting you.

Actually -- I've been too busy to notice the fact that you were daft enough to sneak up behind me. You are like the Cornelius Horan of the Internet you wily beast you.

For starters - today is the one year anniversary of Grandpa Yezbick's passing - so while there is a bit of sadness in the air, along with gloomy clouds and nasty rainy stuff that makes us tote umbrellas - there is also a happiness that a good smattering of the Yezbick's as well as a sprinkling of Butler's were able to get together this morning and attend the mass offered in his honor.

Not only that - but it was Aunt Mo's birthday yesterday - which meant cake and ice cream for everyone. Yay! Thanks for gettin older Aunt Mo. Sorry they carded me at the restaurant today. That must've made you pretty jealous. Oh - and thanks for having a librarian friend. Now I shall extend my network even further....MmmmmmmmmmmBwa-ha-ha-ha!!

Not only that, but I was lucky enough to have my Aunt Barbara point out that I was a numbskull for ever thinking that this guy was a muskrat. He's a woodchuck. How much wood could a woodchuck chuck...

Not only that, but Grandma and Grandpa Harper are here (I've been ordered not to talk politics while he's around, which should be remarkably easy - seeing as there is absolutely nothing political happening this week) and that has already made for plenty of colorful commentary. A lot of it is nonsensical - but I respect it for its subtle nuances of light and shade. The kicker is - if the talk gets too colorful, Grandma is standing right by with a dustpan to whip it back into black and white.

Damn it Janet!

Oh Al...

So that's that. I'm a busy bee. Buzz Buzz Buzz.

Today I went on a little journey (about two hours) up and down the Detroit River on the Riverboat Diamond Jack. I was helping out at the Bloomfield Nursing Center again -- and managed to snap about 12 shots while I was out. If you're so inclined -- there is more information about Boblo Island at Coaster Enthusiasts of Canada's Closed Canadien Parks Page. Of course - Boblo is back in the news because of redevelopment on the island in the form of a resort community - so a simple google search should suffice. See-store and Willi probably have better memories than I do -- but it was still sad seeing the decaying majesty of that steamship today.

See-store has made her obligatory blog post for the month...We were having a little trouble with my layout -- so I started working out a new one. If you see anything wrong -- e.g. disappearing text on her FRONT page -- let me know...I already know there's problems elsewhere -- but I gotta get some shut eye.

I'm also on the verge of going ahead and ripping the archives a new one by rewriting with cruft free url's...I'd like to write a redirect but it doesn't appear my hosts allow it -- though I'll have to double check. I could just be writin' it up wrong. It's not like anyone's linked anyway.

Wading through the abyss in search of life along these lines -

php include sideblog/mtentry if mtdate == /sideblog/mtdate
if else no display.

orrrrrr...

push mtmore into sideblog archives...

Doesn't that sound fun? Just thought I might happen upon it quicker if I were to verbalize and let a little air into the ruminations. It doesn't help not knowing A-1 about programming. It would be great if I could osmosize these books.

Yes. Osmosize.

"What do you mean, 'Flash Gordon approaching?'"

Kevin, Though I like your version of my divine pores opening up and becoming flammable better, that didn't actually happen. I think somewhere, deep down, you must know that. :) And, for the record, it twasn't the Christmas Holidays, it was Thanksgiving 2002. Further, are you implicating that one of the reasons that I couldn't hear was because of my hair itself? That my very hair provides some sort of sound barrier due to it's Yezbicky thickness? That cracks me up. It might explain why I always get music lyrics wrong.

OK, to your friend Ariel and her grave misinformation:

"One of my coworkers was bitten on the neck by a brown recluse this morning. I got to call the poison control center and see what needed to be done. Which turned out to be nothing. Wash it in soapy water and don't worry unless you start getting dark urine. The lady I talked to said that very few people actually have bad reactions past a little infection, and that the whole thing is a bit overblown in the media right now."

Poison Control must suck universally. When I got my spider powers (Memorial Day, 2003), I was cleaning out the tool shed for the folks for whom I housesit. Rudely, I disturbed the habitat of the reclusive brown spider, who then fell into my shirt - a turtleneck mind you - very narrow margins there, and yet it fell into my shirt, scrambled for cover, and bit down when it's new location (my shoulder) began to move. No bigger than a quarter, this dude did some serious damage.

I took a shower an hour later, and noticed a normal sized, yet still growing spot on my shoulder. I called Mom, who knows a lot about her kids and spider bites, as my sister boasts a Black Widow bite, thus, the Hackett sisters are now recipients of bites from every species of venomous spider in the Southeast.

Essentially, I wanted to know if I should wear cute pajamas. Our conversation went like this.
J: "Mom, I'm wondering if I should wear cute pajama's tonight."
M: "Not a bad idea."

Fortunately, Grama Yezbick had made me a pair of cute pajama's, so I was all set.

This pajama business was of course, in case I had to call the ambulance to come and get me in the middle of the night. I wouldn't want to be wearing holey pj's in front of strangers, now would I?

At 5am, I woke up in severe pain, with a shoulder swollen to the size of at least a peach - only to grow much larger over the next two days. I called our good friends at Poison Control, who clearly go to correspondence schools of some kind. I told them I thought I had been bitten by a brown recluse, and relayed my increasing symptoms over the phone.

They told me I was a big whiner and that I had the flu. Even in my weakened state, I realized that I did not have the flu, but she was insistent, despite her lack of explanation for the swelling, painful blob on my shoulder. She told me to go back to sleep and call the doctor if I somehow didn't feel better in a few hours.

Which I didn't. And I spent the next 2 days in and out of Vanderbilt Hospital, watching the venom spread visibly toward my heart and brain, and in SEVERE pain. (At least I got to try Morphine.) Anyhow. I had to have babysitters for the next week or so, had an all over body rash for 3 weeks (itching at the capacity of poison ivy + chicken pox + mosquito bites), and generally was not myself.

The venom stayed in my body for the next 20 weeks, which provided a nice excuse for anything I did that was unusual. Eventually, the giant, igor-like hump on my shoulder began to shrink, and got all the way down to a tiny little scab that refused to come off, causing my cousin Mark to chase me around the yard with a pair of pruning shears, threatening to cut it off. Good times.

Hope that clears up the misinformation campaign. If I learned anything through this process, it was to ICE any bite that seems sketchy. Ice halts the spread of venom, I learned too late.

Thank you, tip your wait staff, I'll be here all week.

You know I've probably managed to hype this whole introduction thing up to levels it never should have approached. It seems that the more I think about what I want to say about my cousin Jennifer the less I actually know about her. I suppose the easiest place to begin is at the top.

Jennifer is divine. No. Really. She has a degree from Vanderbilt University and everything that testifies to her divinity. Or something like that. All I know is that she knows enough to have the legal authority to pronounce my see-store married. Which she did.

Jennifer doesn't drink very often. As a matter of fact she is what you could call a lightweight. She is so lightweight that when she goes out drinking with, say, two of her cousins, her pores open up after the first drink and begin emitting highly flammable alchoholic fumes. In fact - I distinctly remember being one of those cousins present on a particular familial gathering, watching from a distance...

I was standing next to our waitress in the recesses of a dark hallway. It was around the Christmas holidays and the bar was full of people having a problem maintaining their sobriety - So much so that the CD that was playing had been stuck on a skip for about three minutes before I nearly lost my shit. I stood up and mosied over to our waitress and asked her if she could hear anything amiss. She stared vacantly for a while and then admitted that,

"Oh yeah. Oh my gawd! How long has that been doing that?" I told her it'd been long enough. "Well," she slurred. "Why don't you come back here and help me pick out another CD?"

Cue the wah-wah.

So there I was, being led back through this dark hallway by this attractive, curvy, if not all that intelligent waitress - into the recesses of the bar, the back office even, where she began fumbling with the keys. While waiting I just happened to cast a glance towards our table and noticed that my cousin Jennifer was having a hard time hearing exactly what it was my cousin Brian was trying to tell her. Now, I don't know if that was because of the din of the crowd, the skipping of the CD, or Brian's softspoken manner -- but most likely it was these three factors combined along with the long curly Yezbickish locks that flow from Jennifer's head. Those Medusa strands had already ensnared a few admirers, making for some interesting observations of, well, I wouldn't even call it coquettish ways. It was more or less a sort of informed befuddlement on the part of my cousin. I think those interactions were dragged out for our own amusement.

Anyhow -- the strands of hair. Why do I think they were the culprit? Well, as I was saying - I was about to get a groove on with the waitress*...er, an actual groove - as in the CD sense, because the older one was skipping - when I looked over and saw my cousin Jennifer leaning across the table -- her long strands of curly Medusa like hair dangling...Right. Into. The. Candle.

I can't remember exactly how much hair product she had put in her hair for the night out on the town -- but that top went up in flames. Let's just say that the dark recesses the waitress and I had retreated to were no longer dark. The entire bar, as I recall, let a sudden hush fall over it. It was kinda like those cartoons where there is a gigantic flash in front of a bear's eyes and all of a sudden where once there were pupils - now there are hypnotic black and white swirly spiralling thingamajobbers. The sudden stun passed for most everyone else - but my cousin Brian was now assisting Jennifer in beating out the flames. This particular scene was reminiscent of the tortorous times my brother, or Uncle Jim, or see-store for that matter would continuously repeat that god-awful phrase "Why are you hitting yourself?"

As they had succeeded in dousing the flames -- I had managed to make several steps towards the table. Both the waitress and I saw the "inferno" and had come to check out the damage. It wasn't long before the entire bar began to smell like burnt hair -- and a sudden mass exodus was underway. Where once it seemed like unthinkable good-n-plentys were to rain down on me for no apparent reason other than the goodly graces of the holiday spirits - now there was simply that horrific stench driving a wedge between us. Hmmmm. I can't remember her name.

But Jennifer might. In fact -- before we were making our way back into the recesses of the bar it was Jennifer who recognized the waitress from some of her classes while she was still working on her degree. It was Jennifer who coaxed the waitress into sitting down with us and chatting. It was Jennifer who told the waitress that indeed I too was from Atlanta. It was Jennifer who put the whole thing in motion -- and then burned it all to the ground.

Ladies and Gentleman -- it was Jennifer who was bit by a Brown Recluse - and has lived to tell the tale.

I give you,
Jennifer...

*I think she was tootin. How else can you explain it?

P.S. There may have been some selective memory involved in this recollection. No matter --

It's an introduction...
Jennifer - the floor is yours.

Today I managed to figure out why the wireless network in the house kept cutting out on my laptop. I'd installed the SBC/Yahoo connection manager before setting up the Wi-Fi, so each time I was logging on to the net the Server would check the connection to the DSL modem which was firmly attached to the desktop upstairs. Signals were sent and misunderstood by all parties involved and a separation would take place. That has now been taken care of on my end.

I also unpacked the old Proview monitor from my deceased desktop, dusted it off and attached it to this laptop so that I'm able to work with two views concurrently. It's kinda nice having my last.fm connection up on one screen and my surfing window open on the other. Of course - where this will come in extremely handy will be in designing and touching up this site. Speaking of which - Did some back-end design earlier today. I'd sent Cousin Jennifer an email asking if she'd like to have a little guest appearance here in the coming days so that she could tell her tale of Brown Recluse horror in response to the response Ariel got from her poison control center when they told her not to worry, Brown Recluse bites are really overrated. Well - when I sent J the link, it led her nowhere - and I was alerted to the problems that the sideblog archives were going through. So I did a lil rearrangin and the link is now minus some extemporaneous digits, and works. As should any of the permalinks now - which for some reason were leading people a little south of their intended destinations. The sideblog archives page is a little prettier, as are the monthly pages -- but I still need to work out the individual entries, which suffer from a blandness akin to a winter cloud cover.

One other exhaustive note -- I'm gonna try to start entering all the sideblog links into one date -- they're sweepin by so fast on the side there, most anyone reading wouldn't have a clue they'd ever been there. I'd like to figure out how Kottke got his remaindereds over to the main post -- and have gone to the library in search of answers. A Perl manual now joins the XML vocabulary on the bedside, whilst Proust still accumulates more dust, and perhaps the inclusion of a coupla nifty scripts will allow for some entertaining additions.

All that said - I spent the past hour rummaging through old photographs in search of the perfect accompaniment for my cousin's byline in tomorrow's "edition." I'm gonna have to rummage some more. WAY too many Harper pictures in that mix. (Speakin of which -- good luck to mom's and the grandparents -- looks like y'all got a couple o' hurricanes bearin down on ya.) The Falcon's preseason opens tonight, and following that I'll be workin up a lil introduction for Jennifer so y'all will have some acquaintin before she gets to her bloggin. Not that most of you need it. Bein family and all.

Following J's guest appearance we should have - and I know I've said this before a few times -- so I'm tempted to bite my tongue here and keep it to myself - but we should have another presence over on the One Grover Over portion. It seems See-store's laptop got nailed with the pop-ups -- and she sent an email today saying she'd handed it over to the tech guy - that he was gettin on it - and that as soon as he finished she'd be bloggin.

So that's the news. I'll be back with that intro in a few hours. Until then -- keep yourself occupied by watching this circus develop. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

...you casually pour yourself a glass of lemonade, watching the birds swoop in outside your window, enjoy the refreshment swallow by swallow until you finally take that last sip and find yourself staring at the remaindered sludge at the bottom of the glass that the dishwasher left there as revenge for going beyond overload capacity? Don't Ya? I thought you did.

Brains. The Second Coming.,

Hmmmmmm...looks like these default stylesheets from Flickr won't validate.

I'm currently running my laptop with Windows Service Pack 2 installed. Guinea Pig 1 reporting. So far no green monsters of sludge have emerged from beneath qwerty to claim my soul, so I guess everything went well with the BitTorrent download.

Yes. I said BitTorrent.

And I also said download. [thanks waxy!]

Not only that, but I managed to eat 12 Buffalo Wings, drink two homebrewed brewskies and cleanse the pallete with some New York Super Fudge Chunk ice cream. All while watching the Hall of Fame game. How did football season get here so quick?

I also managed to install Sage v1.2 for Firefox, organized all my feeds into 11 categories, with quite a few subcategories - was all excited that it would increase the amount of time it took to get my fix...which is impossible. There's just too much info out there. Perhaps getting that LIS degree will help...hmmmm.

Couple observations about Sage. I haven't yet figured out how to mark my feeds as unread, which is how I have been conditioned via Syndirella. I'd read an entry in a feed, finish off the rest of the feed and then mark the entry as unread so I could go back and either blog it or peruse it further. I suppose I should start reading like a normal surfer and actually use the bookmark tool in firefox. Same sort of process.
I have yet to fiddle with the customizable stylesheets - but that should be a fun aspect to toy with. One day it's all nice and organized -- then I get my hands dirty and render it utterly useless for a week or two. There's just something about that blue hue that I find utterly repulsive. I must say the rest of the layout is quite easy on the eye.

One delayed thought --- It'd be nice if you could lock the feed so that it only opens up on one particular browser window. It takes a while for all the feed details to load - and upon finishing - the results are displayed on whatever page you are currently perusing. That's a chunk out of surfability. I'd like to be able to move around while waiting for the load icon to finish spinning. Just a thought.

Okay. The headache has receded. I don't know what brought it on but it was rather painful. A couple of big multimedia things today -- late in coming. A couple weeks ago I attended the graduation of one of my cousins - Elise, of the Butler clan. It was really interesting seeing everyone -- as their faces were all familiar - but I was only able to recall a few names. Fortunately, you the viewer don't have to recognize either the faces or the names. You don't have to do anything. But, if you prefer to, you can peruse some of the occasion at my new Flickr setup here. (Most of you will know that by clicking on the pictures on that page you can get a bigger image and other goodies, but I thought I'd mention it for those of you not up to the savvy) I also hooked up that little daily zeitgeist thing on the side, so that will be morphing and changing as I upload more pictures this month.

The other big upload of the day is this 2mb movie that features a short snippet of Elise's quartet from the graduation party. Those in the know will be able to scan the crowd and recognize many faces. Those of you outta the loop will have to settle for the limited notations on the photos in the Flickr. I tried my darndest to get that movie file size down to a reasonable amount. I'm astounded that Myerk was able to shrink wrap his drummer movie into a mere 500 kb. Wish I had that kind of power.

I should be a little more attentive to content around here in the coming days. I was distracted a little by the struggles for a more cohesive form and perhaps the hours of rearranging divs and ids was what set off the headache in the first place. Rather disheartening that I took all the time to set up that photo page and upload the scripts to create automatic galleries before I decided to give Flickr a try. There is so much cruft, so many broken links on this site that have been indexed since I made the switch over to .php from html. A simple htaccess redirect would change all that -- but I haven't a clue how to manage that yet.

Went to the library and picked up XML in a Nutshell, The Essential Guide to RF and Wireless and The Cybrarian's Manual in an effort to become the consummate geek in the shortest amount of time. I figure that while I've got the behavioral aspects down, I've still got quite a bit of the technical side to catch up to. It's amazing how much easier it is to read these books with their larger font as opposed to the 8pt font in my Proust book which has sat mostly undisturbed the past few weeks at my bedside...

Well -- I best be on to the geekdom building...TO THE WINDOWWWWW TO THE WALL!!!!

I have now had a headache for 48 hours straight. Drugs are not having any effect at all...reaaaaallly hurts. Really. So until it feels better -- we'll zee ya.