This is too cool. Hymie

This is too cool. Hymie just told me that google expanded their USENET news archive back to 1981! I now have hours of USENET news reading fun at my fingertips. Ahh the good old days of alt.pud, alt.config, alt.2600 and hsv.general. I was pleased to see that the Google Usenet Timeline includes the first mention of the Amiga. It also has a funny post from 1982 complaining how it will take Lucas some absurd amount of time, like until 1997, to get all nine Star Wars episodes out.

While at the doctor's office

While at the doctor’s office yesterday I started thinking about the three month life span my relationships have had the past year or so. (Why wonder about this at the doctor’s office? Maybe my mind was in a “let’s fix things” mode.) One of the things I wondered was if it started after Kathy’s death.

Last night I had a dream. In the dream I learned that Kathy hadn’t really died back in June 2000. It didn’t matter though, because in my dream she had just killed herself. I found my parents and they were upset and crying because she had called them looking for me. I think she’d left an answering machine message like “What are you doing with her?” In the dream I understood that “her” didn’t mean Leia, it meant anyone.

The World had a report

The World had a report on my hometown yesterday. Here’s the teaser for the report: “As America hunkers down for what President Bush says will be a long and global fight against terrorism, local officials all over the United States are looking for ways to defend their citizens. And as Aaron Schacter reports, much of the playbook for homeland defense is being written in a relatively small community in northern Alabama.”

I finally got an apartment

I finally got an apartment this past weekend. I’m living at St. Andrews. It’s a yasac (yet another sprawling apartment complex) but my apartment overlooks a five and a half acre park which has a bubbling brook running the length of it. Also it’s nice to have a sanctuary away from the busyness of life. (Is it a coicidence that busyness and business are so similar?) I’ve kinda missed the sounds of all my computer fans spinning in the night, it will be nice to have that back.

f I was a work

I realize it's the prerogative

I realize it’s the prerogative of fools and talk show hosts to come in after the fact and point out the mistakes made previously, but I’m feeling indulgent. I work on a project at work that was written by consultants with KPMG, as far as I’ve been told. I have not seen such shoddy code since my own early experiments with programming. It’s a bunch of StoryServer templates (read: Tcl templates) with HTML and JavaScript mixed in. While this isn’t a bad thing in and of itself, what they did to it would send shivers down the spine of Dante and Virgil.

The above is an

The above is an excerpt from my deferred adjudication paperwork. One benefit to deferred adjudication that is not often mentioned is that it confers upon you a new superman status that puts you above the law. This is the loophole that many super villains exploit in order to operate outside the law. It is a little known fact of the legal system that they must tell you when you are or are not to follow it. Once I complete my 60 days of obeying the laws of Texas I will be free to flaunt them as much as I want. At such time I plan on carving my name into the moon with a high power laserbeam and the troopers of Texas will be helpless to stop me.

This morning at 7:30am I

This morning at 7:30am I got up, showered and made my way northeast to Sulphur Springs, Texas. The arraignment for my speeding ticket was at 10am in the morning and it takes about an hour and a half to get there from Dallas. The plan was to just enter a plea of not guilty and to start the trial process rolling forward. I arrived at Judge Glossup’s court about 20 minutes early.

I've been looking through old

I’ve been looking through old emails trying to find some quotes on bandwidth and server rack space. While poking about I found this thing that I sent over the summer. What happened to me? Why don’t I think like this anymore?

“While I was camping I started thinking about things that happen in August. Now keep in mind I was sort of in a fantasy frame of mind. My sister has a birthday in August and my father’s birthday was in August. His birthday was August 3rd to be more precise. Then I started wondering what happens to people’s birthdays when they die. Does it stop being their birthday? Birthdays do have some sort of magic in them I just don’t know if it stays there when the person dies. Then that got me to thinking about what would happen if you lost your birthday while you were still alive. Would you stop aging? If someone stole your birthday would they age faster? Would their personality change as they absorbed the astrological significance from your birthday? Would you be free to be someone completely different if you didn’t have a specific birthday to help define you? Could you go on a quest to find a new birthday? Would the quest have to finish before your old birthday because something bad might happen if you reached your old birthday without a new birthday to celebrate? Who or what dispenses new birthdays to people? I’d never really thought about these things before and they have been on my mind ever since. I was wondering if you had any answers.”

I've been caught up in

I’ve been caught up in social obligations and house/apartment hunting. I’ve been caught in up analyzing my relationship with Leia. I’ve been trying to figure out how to get back on track financially. I’ve been a grumpy prick for the past week. I feel pulled apart by all these social groups. Then there is work. As I learn more about the processes they have here at Cingular I approach loathing for the company. The formal requirements they’ve written for this thing I’m working on are asinine. I guess I’m not the sort of person that is made to work at a large corporation. I wish I was smarter, more inventive or creatively inclined because then I’d figure out a way to get out of this mess.