Journal

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03/2003

The month's almost over and I only have one small social event to report. It was fun though, so I figure I might as well write about it. My friend Marisa managed to get into some sort of WB promotion for The Simpsons. Basically, it was bowling with Simpsons trivia, prizes, etc. Three games of finger blistering fun and we didn't end up winning anything. However, the lot of us came out with commemorative t-shirts, plastic Duff/WB drinking cups, bowling towels (oh the excitement), and non-winning raffle tickets for an X-Box. I had my picture taken with Marisa and two sad individuals dressed as the WB frog thing and Bart Simpson. Yes, it was scary... but it was her idea, not mine. I now have an attractive refrigerator magnet to remember the event. Joy. I'm glad I went but I lost a lot of time in the process. Still have things I need to do on several projects. On the other hand, I really needed to get out and do something fun for a change. Thanks Marisa. : )

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03/2003

Not much else has happened lately. I've been busy working on two programming related projects and trying to find time to sleep in between. I'm going to pass out one day and wake up, only to find that I've slept for a week. That would probably be a bad thing, but hey... sleep's sleep, right? I made brownies in a disparate attempt to accomplish something. It was either that or I had to work straight through the past few hours. In any event, I'm taking too much time away from the coding by writing this. Back to work!

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03/2003

When I get some more time, I plan on putting together a series of pages about UFX 11 where I hope to explain the features and show off some techniques and example graphics I've put together using many of the 300 effects. I'd like to try to put that material together soon, but I still have a lot of other things to do. I'm on vacation and I'm not even on vacation! I'll have some time in a week or two. As for now, it's back to work on two other projects. Nothing as glamorous as UFX 11, but they're things I need to do. You get the general idea.

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03/2003

Well, I've finally managed to finish the program I started on back in September of 2002. It's called Unleashed FX 11, UFX 11 for short. Essentially, it's a collection of 300 graphics effects for Corel Photo-Paint 11. I spent a significant amount of time working on it, debugging code, tweaking effects, adding and revising features as it went along. I'm impressed with the final product. It's got some really great effects and it's a one-click process to apply an effect to an existing graphical object. Definitely something to look at if you're interested in some add in effects for PP11. If you're interested in finding out more about UFX 11, here's the URL linked to Unleash.com where it's being sold.

http://www.unleash.com/ufx/index.asp

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03/2003

Ever say something that completely shakes someone's beliefs, something so astonishing that it shatters paradigms, makes random bystanders faint, blah blah blah, etc.? Well, I informed my father a few days ago that the local Baskin Robins does not have vanilla in its ice cream display case of flavors. He was shocked. Right. So, life's a never-ending series of... oh wait, I already went through that a paragraph above. I'm on spring break and I don't have anything better to do at this moment in time (i.e. no social life). Does that explain some things?

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03/2003

I found my stapler. Joy. Life sucks when you have to staple lots of random things and you can't locate a stapler. I distinctly remembered packing my two, two mind you, staplers in a box with some other things. So, weeks went by and no stapler. I didn't resort to this, but picture me manually connecting sheets of paper together by taking used staples out of old documents, bending them out straight, risking pain and frustration by forcing the staple, by hand, through multiple sheets of paper, and then trying to bend the ends back down to hold it securely in place. Right. I've done that before... honest. I've even scavenged on the floor for lost staples. Oh, the horror. Yeah. In any event, I finally found one of them earlier tonight. (If you're looking for more detail, it's a Stanley Bostitch Model B600 in nice shiny black. Were you expecting red? I'm not a freak, come on... have a little faith.) That's the problem with stacking things inboxes and then piling stuff in on top to fill any remaining empty space. The stapler ended up in a box of junk that was inside of a larger box. At least I found it, right? Now... where did I put the staples for it? Can't you tell that my life's just a never-ending series of quirky and humorous episodes not entirely unlike Seinfeld. Well, you'd have to remove most of the humor and all but one character... and then most of that character's endearing qualities... right. Okay, so... I didn't have anything better to write about and I thought I'd pick something at random and the stapler's sitting a whole eight inches away from the keyboard. Yeah...

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03/2003

I hit 60 pages of journal-rific bliss if you were wondering when that was going to happen. I think I might have made too big of a deal out of it a couple of paragraphs up. If I combined this with all of the mindless sort of journal stuff I wrote in high school for English classes, I'd have 120 pages of how my life's more boring than yours. I should compile all of this, novel fashion, and sell copies. I could probably make a few cents and retire to an island of shrubbery in the middle of a parking lot. So..., here are the quick and dirty statistics: 60 pages, 19,227 words, 83,139 characters (no spaces), 103,238 characters (with spaces), 240 paragraphs, and 1,382 lines. Maybe hitting 100 pages will be more exciting?

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03/2003

I just checked and it's been since December that I last updated the site. Oh the horror. Has it really been that long? I guess I've been busy. I started work on a grand new implementation of AntiPoetics and then somehow managed to never finish it or find time to upload anything new. I just went through and it looks as if I have only a few very minor items to upload. Not sure when I'll get around to it, but I hope it's soon. If nothing else, maybe I should upload my content outlines... I probably have 40 pages worth of outlines for new content and updates. Maybe I shouldn't say that, I don't want to scare anyone off.

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03/2003

I'm typing this in MS Word just for convenience, spell checking, etc. That said, it has informed me that, through the wonders of the status bar, I'm on page 59 out of 59 of these seemingly endless ramblings. Perhaps I should throw a party when I hit 60 pages? Nah, I'll save that for 100. Maybe I can celebrate by eating a maple-iced donut. Ha... not worth it. Speaking of donuts, I miss Krispy Kreme. It's a heck of a lot further from the new residence to venture out for one. Would you drive half an hour for a blob of dough, salt, sugar, and fat? Well... I might... but only if I get really desperate and that hasn't happened yet and I'm not holding my breath, only my waistline.

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03/2003

Last night I talked to my friends Jennifer and Shannon for a while on AIM. Almost a month had gone by where I somehow managed, in my current state of Internet connectivity doldrums, to not sign on and talk to anyone. Seems like there should be a no-s sort of singular sounding version of doldrums but there's not. Where's a good thesaurus when I need one? Right, glanced around and there it is... but that would be too much trouble and far too pathetic. Back on topic, AIM does not run on my ancient box-with-modem that I keep around for semi-practical e-mail checking and scanning purposes. So, I used the antique "Quick Buddy" java client. Loads of fun. Essentially I told the both of them that I had not died, contrary to what they might have suspected (expected?). I miss my friends, even though I never really get to see any of them in person. I need to find some sort of tedious job with long hours so that I won't realize that I don't have a social life... or at least it would be a really good excuse. Oh right, I go to school and spend all of my time programming... I don't really buy that as an excuse though.

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03/2003

I tried a maple-iced donut from Dunkin Donuts earlier tonight. It was odd... sort of like eating pancakes with maple syrup... only it was a donut... and the maple flavor came from the icing rather than syrup. Um... yeah. Well, I'm still no closer to getting my life organized. However, everything I own is either in a box, found its way to a shelf, or it's laying on my floor in no particular order. Hopefully things won't stay that way for too long. On the upside, it's relatively easy to find things by just glancing around. Joy.

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03/2003

I don't think I ever mentioned the accident involving the moving truck in February. When I was in the process of moving out of my old house, the movers stopped their truck on the driveway only to have its brakes fail. So, it smashed into the house causing a lot of very unsightly damage. Maybe I'll find the photos I took and scan them. Now, that would be exciting... yeah, right. In any event, it was a big mess. I should buy a digital camera so that I can chronicle the random events of my life and put them on the web immediately. Oh wait, I'm typing this stuff on a computer and it still takes me a month or 4 to get it online. I seriously need to put together some sort of automated utility for uploading the random content I'm working on by a specified date, whether or not I'm done with it. Now that's motivation, right?

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03/2003

Cars keep driving by. I can hear them at all hours of the night as I sit here staring at the screen. Everybody going somewhere while I'm stuck right where I am with nowhere to go and no one to be stuck with. I just want friends; I don't want a relationship. I don't think I could deal with that; I don't think anyone could deal with that. It's laughable really. Here are my all too exciting personal interests: writing poetry, listening to electronic / goth / whatever music (see the Music Collection in Tsumaranai Junk), programming, creating weird art if I feel like it, photography, Lego bricks, maybe watching a movie once a month, reading if I can find anything compelling, sleeping during the day, staying up at night, and... well... that's pretty much it. I don't enjoy crowds or loud noises, I don't drink, don't smoke, don't use any legal or illegal drugs, I don't frequent amusement parks, and I don't enjoy sporting events. Probably enough to drive anyone crazy, right? If you'd like to prove me wrong, click HERE and post something.

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03/2003

My life is not "fun." I don't even think I know what it means to "have fun" anymore. I hooked up my Super Nintendo a few days ago and I played Wing Commander for maybe half an hour while my computers were batching through some code. I don't even think video games are fun anymore. It's so sad... what my life has become, or what it has always been. I guess it's just a matter of how well I can delude myself. If I try to stop and evaluate things, find out what I enjoyed from my past and it's all either dead, gone, or lost any sort of novelty that might have made it exciting.

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03/2003

Right now I really feel like I don't have any friends. I haven't responded to any personal e-mail since I moved and I've spent all of this time largely alone, in front of this computer, coding and working on stuff for school. I need a social life... not a fake sort of talk on the phone, seeing a random person once a month, or talking to random people over the Internet sort of social life... but one that involves people in person, with less than a month between, and the word "fun." Can't leave out the "fun" part.

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03/2003

Hmm, bad news? I was sorting through boxes of randomness. These are things I've collected, things that were in desk drawers, my closet, under my bed, boxes, or just wherever. In all of the random garbage that is my life, I found two uncut strips of black and white negatives. It's just stupid stuff really... The photos are of some old friends (as in we're not friends anymore) and me walking through the woods at a national park near here. Stupid stuff, but it hurts to look at it all. Staring through the negatives at a light bulb to make out the images hurts too, but it's not the same sort of feeling.

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03/2003

Not much going on currently. I've been working on homework and my program. I think the program's nearly finished. Just a few ends to tie up and then it'll go up for sale. Scary. Well, it's a really big step for me and I think it's a great piece of software. I'll post more information about it after it's up for sale.

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03/2003

I bought a copy of Road to Perdition on DVD. It's a great movie... maybe because it's dark and tragic... everything is for love, and almost everyone dies. It has a happy ending though, maybe that's what people want?

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