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08.30.02 Lights go out and I can't be seen Tides that I tried to swim against Have put me down upon my knees Oh I beg, I beg and plead --coldplay, clocks i'm taking some time off, i'm gonna happy up my holiday. do something fun. come back to me on tuesday. # 08.29.02 EJECTED FROM THE COLLECTIVE i got the call i've been waiting for today. the call from the g. after three weeks and as many interviews, some people feel that i am simply too junior for the position. which, of course, makes sense. because of the people making that judgement, because of our history together. and because i am too junior. i'm too junior for everything i could possibly want. everything i might possibly be qualified for. and i'll remain too junior for all of it, until some company somewhere shows the balls to take a chance on me. how can i gain the experience that these companies want to hire me, unless someone actually hires me? this is the paradox i'm faced with. and it blows my ass, really it does, because i've done everything right. i have so much experience already, so much more than other people in my same position. i did all i could. i gave my 110%. but it's my fault, because i made ties with companies that didn't last, people who don't have jobs themselves anymore, because i moved into a dying industry, inside of a dead economy. i was warned. in the end, this rejection doesn't really matter. it's just another to add to the list. and it is probably, in the end, for the best. i don't think i could have worked for that person anyway. # moring notes: saw beck's solo show last night. impressive. shipping the boyfriend off to far away places tonight. gonna be lonely. i'll expand on these topics later. # 08.28.02 my hot idea for the day: use really garish html-email as the latest PSYOP weapon of choice (a la panama y noriega) on our (our?) crusade for "regime change" in iraq. on memory lane: remember the commodore 64? my first, and still most beloved computer. ,8 darlings. one year ago today: steve jobs was trolling around powell and market, and i was reading cory doctorow's derision of human-produced metadata. staying power: nigel godrich, who listens to joni mitchell, is still my idea of cute. spotted at lunch: a woman playing bagpipes on the street; a man on crutches jaywalking, his empty pant leg flopping around in the wind; 13-year-old-barrett, not to be confused with business-suit-barrett, walking with mom-barrett, a rather disturbing barrett-instance which did not make the translation well. daily grievance: why doesn't my webmail function for more than 10 minutes at a time today? this makes avoiding work a definite challenge. # happy birthday meezie! here's wishing you a thousand french fries and frosty dairy deserts. # 08.27.02 jaguar hacks: if you're running mac os 10.2, you may be interested in this tutorial on the CUPS printing system, built into the unix layer of the new os. it's a little tricky to turn on, but once enabled it will allow your mac to connect to non-postscript printers shared by windows machines. and for those who really like to live on the edge, there's a hack to enable quartz extreme on non-agp video cards. it will only work with pci cards which would otherwise be compatible with quartz extreme, and is reported to provide modest performance gains. # the san francisco chronicle will kill it's evening "PM" edition in late september, according to a memo published on medianews.org and later reported by the chronicle itself. not that anyone's really going to miss this examiner leftover. # well look at this. it seems some little girl's been getting her name out. why, with this little mention, i think my boyfriend (or girlfriend, if you'll believe the papers) is well on his way to becoming a household name. # 08.26.02 what's going on around here? # from bOING bOING, a super-spiffy ibook case mod. it looks cool, but the site is in french so i can't really tell how it was done. if i wasn't at work, i'd post the picture here to grab at your eyes, but instead you'll just have to settle for this link to the image. # an article at the iht (and everywhere else, it seems) says that bush is claiming himself exempt from that sticky constitutional issue, wherein he has to ask congress for approval before going to war. you know those checks and balances? never mind. the House of Shrub is claiming that the terms of the 1991 Gulf resolution, under which the elder george launched the Gulf War (that's what i gather from the article - i was 11, you know) are somehow, miraculously, still in effect. i guess daddy gave them to little george as a christmas present. or maybe he left them lying around, in a sock drawer perhaps. # this weekend, i was lucky enough to get the chance to meet up with detroit's very own good time girl. if ya'll don't know, darren's a lotta fun, and it's a shame he was only here for a weekend. # 08.24.02 here's my weekend update. it's a new mp3! i love the doves, and their first album really rocks my boat. this morning saw me fumbling through the album, trying to decide which was the best track, my favorite on the album, to present you with here today. but i can't choose, i think each track is too wonderful. so i'm posting the intro, an instrumental called firesuite. if you like this track, i think you'll really love the rest of the album too. get it girl! # 08.23.02 nothing's left to do. shouldn't have spoken so soon. friday evening, tinted windows make it look dark out, remind me of short winter days, dusky at five, the holidays, warm cookies. today should have been a better day. # 08.22.02 "95. I say "dude" during sex." hot. know who else is hot? richard. yes. i have hot new blogs to read. i'm excited. and guess what? i'm working alone again tomorrow, no boss for miles, i did my work today, nothing's left to do. watch the phones, read the web. post entertaining links below. chat me up, keep me busy. # why of course! cell phones for dogs! now there's an untapped market. but will they support 3G? # today we answer your questions, in a little segment i like to call VIEWER MAIL.
dear chris, i'm a longtime reader, first time writer. i wanted to write in to prosaic* and ask you a question. you see, i heard a strange sound this morning, and it seemed to be coming from the direction of your apartment. it sounded at first like a woman screaming. then i thought perhaps it was a baby crying. finally, i figured it must be a peacock, because god knows those fuckers make the worst sound ever. so i'm wondering, what was a peacock doing in your apartment? signed, curious on california street. well curious, i'm glad you asked. because, you see, we have a water problem in our building. a water temperature problem. most likely that high-pitched wail you heard this morning (at approx. 7:10 AM) was the sound of me screaming when, whilst washing my hair, my head precariously close to the showerhead, the temperature of the water changed dramatically from lukewarm, climbing right past scalding to the temperature range known only to looney tune's characters - "face of the sun." this, of course, was followed by a little maneuver i like to call the "very-hot-water dance" in which i jump around the bathtub/shower and try to avoid the boiling hot jet of water. said jumping, of course, causes the tub to rock back and forth on it's lovely, unbalanced little feet, which would probably cause a great deal of irritation for a downstairs neighbor, if we had one. so, curious, i hope that we were able to answer this question to your satisfaction. thanks for writing in! # 08.21.02 the chronicle has an article about celebs with blogs, including a handy little "star map" to help you find them. they also choose their three favorite and worst celebrity weblogs. who knew al roker had a blog? any day now, my grandmother will start asking... # Everybody else goes to bars and gets shitfaced just to puke all the next day. Everybody else wears hip huggers that are actually upper-thigh huggers with their cottage cheese asses hanging over the waist band. Everybody else watches Judith Light sell incontinence products. unbeknownst to me, my friend tyler (who's really quite big in japan) has sort-of-kind-of started a new website. he doesn't seem to be updating recently, which is a shame really, because now you're all going to go look at his page and he has this great chance to catch your attention but he wont because he's not updating and the site is not quite finished. oh well, that's never stopped me from linking someone before, has it? # shitty terrible shitty bad morning. woke up to the alarm, ohmygod it's only gone off once, for sweetness i can hit the snooze button. an hour later the panic rouses me from my bed. i should be leaving right now. this is how late i am. but a girl's got to look her best, so i shower and dress, change my pants because i'm not sure if this shirt/slack bit will hold up in the daylight. who changes their pants when they've gotten up an hour late? so i run out the door and i look at the clock and i know that i'm usually getting into the office right now and ohgodillbelate and theyllfiremebecauseimonlyatemp and godddamnitgoddamnitgoddamnit. 20 minutes late, panicked, tired and breathing hard, the temp walks into a still-dark office. do you know what this is? this morning was, i am sure, one of two things: 1.) Fate, flexing her muscle, warming up for tomorrow while making sure that i know who's on top. 2.) Fate, blowing out the dust, cleaning out the junk and the badness, warming up for tomorrow so nothing will get in my way. did i tell you i have an interview tomorrow? yeah. i'm nervous. it's a good job. it's my third round of interviews. it's a double header. they will offer me the job or send me to the curb. i will demand it from them. satisfaction comes from resolution. # 08.20.02 Due to increasingly aggressive filtering, publishers of subscription e-mail newsletters complain that they are being forced to self-censor their publications, carefully omitting phrases or sometimes even deliberately misspelling words that might trigger a spam filter. in an effort to introduce a non-semantic method of spam filtering, a company called habeas is offering a service that would hide a copywriten haiku within "true" messages and prosecuting spammers who try to use the poem to slip past filters. sounds like a swiss-cheese idea to me, but i was surprised by the passage quoted above. {update: you can install the filter for free here} # look, it's a cute article about weblogging. this is not like those other articles about weblogging that i am constantly posting here, where some innane a-lister waxes poetically about the importance of the blog in another failed attempt to get someone with some cash interested in paying them. it's a newsweek article, and as such, reads like every other newsweek article you've ever read. it's cute, including cute quotes and interviews from some obscure kid who has some cute story about how blogging helped him make friends, talking about how everyday ordinary people can use it, etc. etc. it's an article about blogging, for your mom. # everyone's favorite 70's space probe, voyager II, is 25 years old today. happy birthday! # deutsche telekom, owners of bottom-of-the-pile US cellular provider voicestream is looking to schlep off their US carrier division onto cingular, the wireless arm of the babybells. this, of course comes after dt tried to hock voicestream to at&t wireless. let's also not forget their big new push into california as t-mobile, the new name that will replace the voicestream brand across the country soon. unless the voicestream brand is replaced by the cingular brand, that is. who can follow this whole consolidation binge, anyway? # cbs is casting a former porn star for the new season of survivor. although this sounds hot at first glance, here are the reasons it will not be: 1.) he's straight 2.) he was in "soft core" porn, also straight 3.) he's not very attractive and 4.) "he is now a successful used-car salesman raising a family in the suburbs." # 08.19.02 salon is calling terry gilliam's 12 monkeys a "masterpiece." it's been quite a while since i saw it, so i don't quite know what to think. they certainly talk it up well, but i mean, it's bruce willis. # here there once was a piece written as a eulogy to the 8 legged dj. it didn't belong here, in spirit or in form, and so it was moved. # 08.18.02 snif, snif. bye. # 08.17.02 i'm lost in a sea of coincidence. walking to breakfast this morning with jessie, standing at the corner, less than a block away from our apartment, i run into my old roommate, tony. we lived together in the dorms during my freshman year and i've barely seen or hear from him since. he was as surprised as i was. an hour or two later, jessie and i are sitting at the starbucks at bush and kerney, watching the city walk by, and we see a tall black man in a suit walk out of the D&T Market (across the street) and climb into the backseat of a black luxury towncar. so what's it mean for our fair city's economy when the mayor buying a lottery ticket? silly willie, doesn't he know that i've got the winning ticket? # 08.16.02 bigtime prepress vendor creo has purchased scenicsoft, maker of preps, upfront, trapwise and other best-in-catagory prepress applications, according to maccentral. the purchase, assumable, will roll a host of scenicsoft code into creo's printergy family of workflow products. which is probably good, because creo knows what they're doing. although they're starting to smell a little of microsoft... # apple will be releasing jaguar (os x 10.2) a day early at a special apple store event, according to the company's website. macnn is reporting that the new os will be available for a $20 discount for upgrade customers who bring their os x discs or receipts on august 23rd. and even more rumor in the price department, walter mossberg of the wall street journal claims (confirmed here) that os x will be available for a "family price" of $199, which will include 5 installation lisences. # at ease has a brief article (taken from Q magazine) discussing radiohead's new material. the boys played 9 or 10 new songs during their brief tour through spain and portugal last week and Q caught up with them after the shows had finished to talk a little bit about the sound of the new album. there are no permalinks on at ease's news page, so you'll have to scout for it once it moves down the page, but it's worth the effort if you're interested. # usa today is running the first (of two) articles dramatizing the events of september 11th that lead to the unpresidented grounding of all airplanes in the united states. in typical usa today fashion the article is very melodramtic, a little hard to swallow. but it's interesting nonetheless to get an idea what was going on in the nations air traffic control centers during such a dangerous and volitile event. i didn't want to like this article for a number of reasons, but in the end i couldn't help myself. # visalia man george loomis (hey, it's close to fresno ok?) was awarded $130,000 in a settlement tuesday with the visalia unified school district. remember george loomis? he's the golden west high school student who sued after the school failed to repremand students and (more importantly) a teacher who made multiple jokes and harassing comments about loomis' sexuality. the settlement includes sweeping anti-discrimination training for faculty and students. # saw a cute boy this morning, blonde hair, blue jeans, stalked him three blocks down to market. crossed paths with richard nixon's ghost in the hallway and caught the old woman in the mail room dancing to kylie. today's friday, just like doughnuts and coffee. yesterday was a Big Day, but not today. because today, today is a tiny bird, fragile and small and warm in my hand. what's your today, today? # 08.15.02 so wrong, so wrong and yet so right. it's Mo'Nique Magix Black Woman Name Generator. get it, girl! # 08.14.02 quick! can anyone tell me if dry clean only garments should be ironed? if so, what setting? (low heat, high heat, steam, no steam?) anyone? please? # the HRC today released the findings of their 2002 corporate equality index, surveying and indexing over 300 US employers for policies and practices respecting and supporting glbt employees. 13 companies scored 100 percent: aetna, american airlines, apple, avaya, kodak, intel, j.p. morgan, lucent, ncr, nike, replacements ltd (?), worldspan and xerox. read about the best and worst scoring companies and look for your employer. # question: is the bus picture getting old? your thoughts below, please. # work's slow but the web's fast. my day, in links:
# 08.13.02 it probably just seems strange because i recently read this article over at wired, but when i saw the recent ap story about the green lantern comic including a gay character, i was surprised. not so much because the character was gay, but because the gay character was created by cartoonist Judd Winick, who was a cast member on mtv's real world, san francisco. which is funny because i just (just) finished the part in a heartbreaking work of staggering genius in which the author encounters winick multiple times while publishing his cartoons in the author's 'zine. got all that? so yeah. there's a gay character in the green lantern. i wonder if he's cute. # hey, have you heard the news? davezilla got a c&d from the godzilla people. which of course caught the attention of the rabid internet geek squad, who, realizing the similarity between davezilla and mozilla, quickly mobilized in his defense. which is good, because we can't let the japanese get all lawsuit hungry, i mean this is america, you can't just sue anyone for any-old-thing, it's like, what are they thinking? ahem. that said, i'd like to take a second to draw attention to a really cool davezilla feature i had not previously noticed. it's called manly tips for bachelor living and it's really funny if a.) you're a straight guy b.) you've dated a straight guy or c.) you've lived with a straight guy. but my favorite, a timeless classic which is all too true, is tip #1 -- if it sprays, it can probably kill. # 08.12.02 the new york times (registration requried) has an article about the upcoming move to a larger barcode. it's shaping up to be the y2k of US retail, requiring code scanners, software and databases to be retrofit to accomodate a new, 13 digit barcode. the new barcode system will launch in 2005 and will finally provide compatability between US and non-north american barcode systems, which are all based on a 13 digit code. i wonder if i'll have to get a touchup? # i found this last week and meant to post it. i'm sure i've done this before, but this one is a really well thought piece on the successes and failings of mac os x, as seen by a former user of the BeOS, the greatest operating system never finished™. it addresses a lot of the new mac's problems, but i wonder how many of them have been solves or circumvented by jaguar's pending release? # this office is so damned air conditioned, tinted, flouro-lit; i can't tell if i need to bring my jacket with me to lunch or if it's blazing hot. weather roulette. # yeah. so. m�m. great show, great venue. they played just down the street from our apartment, at the great american music hall, which is indeed all of the things it claims to be. the show was just the right sort of full, a good crowd but not packed, you could still get around with a drink, if you so chose (and i did). i hadn't heard m�m before, at least not enough to count. i was impressed, to say the least. although, as jessie said, i missed finding strong vocals at a concert, they really made an amazing sound, beautiful and atmospheric. the show was lit in blues and greens, giving the whole theater a submerged feel. i particularly enjoyed seeing a powerbook on stage, but i was both surprised and delighted to see them making their sounds genuinely as well. the quintet employed various means to woo the audience, including a wonderful cello and a series of child's toy instruments, tiny lyrical keyboards and air chimes, all played live and sampled into the mix alongside drums and bass and guitar. i wish i had understood their accents. (and drank a little less) # 08.11.02 saw mum tonight. really great. ran into a friend, met some new people. fun and games, drank too much. still, i'm posting, unlike some other people. i'm really drunk, kids, it's embarrassing. we left the broccoli in the fridge, now the kitchen smells like farts. # 08.09.02 did anyone else miss this? weezer (always creatively thwarting the RIAA types these days) is releasing an indie-store only EP on september 17th. titled "the lion and the witch" the EP will not be available on the internet or at any major chain stores. there's a list of stores where the record will be on sale here, about halfway down the page. # 08.08.02 goofy news from bOING bOING: a yugoslav man who fell asleep on the beach wakes up with a barnacle stuck to his penis, and a long island woman is forced by airport security at JFK to drink her own breast milk to prove that it is not a dangerous toxin. might the baby in her arms have convinced them? idiots. # if you're a movable type user and you haven't already heard, stand up and be counted. # like waldo, only cuter. # 08.07.02 looks like our boy byron has gotten his first cease and desist. whatcha gonna do, whatcha gonna do when they come for you... # i'm standing at the crosswalk, waiting for the light and i'm watching the cute boy in front of the coffee shop. he's wearing baggy pants, a black t, and a nap of dark, disheveled hair. he's slightly dirty, looks a little bit like a skater. his face has that hard, intimidating look that so many straight guys wear, but not as if he is unkind or mean. he's talking on a cell phone and gesturing with his free hand. another boy appears, his shirt and tie reminding me that i'm still downtown. he has a head of dark curly hair and is wearing glasses. he resembles slightly resembles barrett as he approaches. the straight guy looks up from his phone call and waves to the suit boy. they walked towards each other and kiss. delightfully surprised, i find myself gawking absentmindedly at the brief encounter. you see, sometimes i forget that i'm in san francisco. # since i'm a temp, i don't want to move or change any of the stuff decorating my cubicle. including the plaque on the wall, expressing appreciation to an unknown someone for their support of "challenger" little league. so i sit, staring, day in and day out, at a faded old picture of handicapped children in baseball uniforms, vaguely wondering if i'm smelling some kind of food, hidden away inside this desk. # 08.06.02 anyone know of a central list of apple-authorized support centers (in san francisco) where i could take my ibook if i wanted a repair or upgrade done? # i wasn't terribly impressed when apple announced at macworld (ny) that the next big iapp would be a calendar program. blah, who cares? plus, what i saw of it at the time looked pretty rinky, much less impressive than the other apple-made apps. and the name sucks - the codename for the program was white rabbit, which is lame-but-not-as-lame as ical. but today's article (with pictures) over at think secret is making me rethink my opinion. i wasn't sure what the need was for a stand-alone calendar program, but if you combined this with the new version of mail.app, you'd have a pretty good PIM set up, for free. ical will create multiple calendars (home, work, school, whatever) and upload any or all of them to itools (dot-mac, rather) or any WebDAV server - from there anyone can subscribe to your calendar using ical. or any other calendar application that supports the calendar data format standard (entourage, natch). so it's not as bad as i'd originally thought. # aarrgghhh! slowest...morning...ever... i'm dying of boredom in this four hour stretch that seems it will never end. i'm a filing madman today ("blue for internal audits, green for external audits, blue for internal audits, green for external audits, blue for internal...") and still the morning drags. blah. you can alleviate your boredom however, by going over to blogtree, a new site that's trying to keep track of blog genealogy. you can look up your favorite sites and see what blogs inspired them. interesting, if it catches on. # 08.05.02 i step out the front door, fall into the river and i know it's monday because the light that hits the buildings is so clean. the chronicle man isn't in his usual spot today, sleeping in his blue delivery truck, curbed, engine idling. the express buses look full as they speed past me and the sidewalk is fresh, clean, empty and it's clear sailing all the way in. why don't these business suits ever look like they're having fun? i wonder, but i know that they're just upset the weekend's gone and they can't remember where to. # 08.02.02 some thoughts, no links. those two girls who were kidnapped, they found them today, shot the man who took them. this is what? the third time in a week, maybe two? is there a sudden rash in kidnappings? or is the media stuck in feedback? are they news today because they were news yesterday? thoughts? # PART TWO there's much love out there in blogland recently. kind words, nice emails, sweet comments. you're all so good to me. radiohead have it right these days; they're singing me to shipwreck. stay away from these rocks. theres a gap in the between / theres a gap where we meet / where i end and you begin. just cos you feel it / doesn�t mean it's there / just cos you feel it / doesn�t mean it's there / there there. kevin's so sweet; he sent me a list. here, i'll share mine with you: good things: # PART ONE hello world. suddenly you're an albatross around my neck. i didn't mean to ignore you for the past two days. i couldn't help myself; i'm so tired. the new job starts at regular hours. i haven't gotten up this early in almost a year. it's wearing me down. getting used to this will take me a while. the job's interesting. by interesting, i mean boring and tedious. it's a paper-pushing job. but there's irony tucked in around the edges. i spent so much time studying ISO 9000 and quality management and procedure development in school. i shared some hearty laughs with friends about it. i didn't think about the sheer, unimaginable volume of paperwork it would generate in real life. my penance is filing. # « July 2002 | archive index | September 2002 » built with movabletype |
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