ranting into the wind (original) (raw)

my 20gig decided last friday would be YLOD day, after 4 years and 4 days of near daily use.

it has been replaced with a new 160gig.

so now, i have a YLOD paperweight, and a bunch of games i can no longer play. what does one do with a YLOD unit? pay one of the $30 "guaranteed fix it" guys on craigslist, then sell it? try to sell it broke?

and, along with some other games, i have all the original versions (no greatest hits versions or multiple games on 1 disc or the 'special edition' that removed the hot coffee) of gta 3, vc, sa, lcs, and vcs. should i try to sell them all together, or just dump em all at entertainmart?

and who decided what's "tasteless" for the web filter? a web comic of stick figures talking is filtered as being "tasteless", but a web comic whose current storyline is a cat and a toaster magically transformed into hot chicks in skimpy clothing fighting each other with an x-acto knife? that's just fine..

for over a year they've had websense turned on to block us from doing anything interesting, but it only affected our main machines, not our VMs. this morning, like within the last two minutes, they turned it on for our VMs as well, because all of a sudden i can't get back to facebook.

eta: and then, i can again..maybe.. for a few more minutes..

there's a "downtown" in my dreams that seems to always be the same downtown, but isn't quite real. when i go there, i know it's a few blocks that way to not-quite-6th street, and a few blocks that way to not really UT campus, and over there is the hotel/office tower that i pulled a heist in in a dream years ago, just around this corner is the fountain i ducked for cover behind when there was a shoot-out between the cops and i don't remember who..

this time i got downtown separately from the people i was going there with, so i was just standing on a corner, watching people walk past me. then sphinxie appears in front of me and asks why i'm just standing there. i say i occasionally see people i know, but they don't see me, and i don't want to try to force my way through the other people to catch up with them. so she grabs my hand and drags me to a club that's got all dark wood rails and stuff on the face, and inside is kind of small, with a pool table in the back, but i woke up before we went in.

anyway, left me with this weird knowing there was a connectedness of the downtown, like it's a recycled movie set, and then the feeling of just standing there separate from everyone around me, until that one bit of casual contact drags me somewhere else, but then i still didn't go in. and those two things are also related but separate from each other.

so, i know i rarely look at this anymore, but when i do, it would still be nice to page back through older posts on my friends page. at the default 10 per page, i can go back about 3 pages. if i set it to 50 per page, i only get one page. i can click on individual friends and go back much farther, but that's hardly efficient. and filtering out certain people who have made the most posts doesn't get me back any further, it just means i have fewer posts on the one page.

also, clicking individual friends reveals previously unseen posts that are only a month old, so it's not like i'm trying to go back through 10 years of posts or anything..

ok, my bad for not logging in here in too long, but how come i can no longer go back a page on my friends page?

woke up in the earlies yesterday morning with a very dry mouth, and seemingly out of my conscious control (since i was barely conscious) my tongue was rolling almost all the way over rapidly one way then the other to lick the bottom of my mouth until it stopped feeling so dry.

not sure how to handle this. also not sure why i'm tiptoeing around it. made a separate journal, trav_in_adhd, rather than setting up a filter, cause i'm lazy like that.

anyway, join or don't. right now all the posts are friends locked, but for the same reason i don't know why i'm tiptoeing around it, i don't know why i'm locking it.

"3 Often runs about or climbs excessively in situations in which it is inappropriate (in adolescents or adults, may be limited to subjective feelings of restlessness)"

i don't tend to full on climb on stuff, but i just did as a demonstration of what i was talking about when everone looked at me like i was crazy, but 2 or 3 days a week in my wandering aimlessly around the room, what i strongly have the urge to do is jump up on the chair facing backwards and shake the back of it monkey-rage style..

i was honest to god working on a ticket, then i got a notification of an email about the halloween contests being announced at 3. deleted the email, then checked 4 websites before remembering what i had been in the middle of doing.

coming soon.. flavored nuvaring! "damn! that's one sweet cherry!"

val's post had me thinking about movie stuff. specifically camera work in a no-budget film. i could duct tape cameras to various parts of the explorer and start them recording before starting driving, then just edit down to the bits to actually use, yay digital. one on the running board for that cool 70's style road level shot of the tire as you turn a corner. one on the front bumper, one on the hood between the wipers. even just move one camera around between shots rather than investing in 3 cameras.

the other shot, and this one i kind of want to do just to see it without really having anything to use it for, would be to put a rope up in a tree hanging down to about face height, camera at the end of the rope. would also need 1 or 2 guide ropes held by someone on the ground to keep it from twisting around. with the camera pulled out to the length of the hang rope, let it swing down right at someone's face. prep them by showing them that the guide ropes will stop it just before it hits them, so they should do their absolute best not to flinch away from it, then give the guide ropes an extra inch on the actual shot so it really will hit them and you get a real reaction, but hopefully not a broken nose in the bargain.

alternately, nicer to the actor and allowing for a further effect, have the camera at chest height. actor wearing a rig so that when the camera hits them in the chest, you yank them backwards away from it.

cow orker sent me this link: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2009/09/14/the-vmas-2/ about how the vma's were a joke, and mtv and media in general is still grasping to hold on to what it was 10 years ago, but there's no longer a market for that. the audience is no longer passively sitting there watching the tv, they're now active, at computer screens and on phones.

and i realized, this is really what max headroom was showing, with the boardroom at network 23 making changes to the programming based on real time per second ratings.

this has been in my head since yesterday, too:

jay baruchel is directing a movie, possibly a student film project. anyway, scene is the two leads in a date type situation. jay is freaking out behind the camera, keeps cutting.

also behind camera in unknown capacity (mentor? producer? dunno) is jack black (could also be seth rogan or jason segel, depending..)

jay: CUT! DAMNIT!
jack: what the FUCK, dude?
jay: it's.. it's just.. i don't know.. i.. no one really makes rated r movies anymore, you know, and we're kind of flirting with that line, aren't we? i mean.. with the whole.. you know..
jack: ok.. ok, i got this.
(jack goes and whispers to the female lead, then comes back beside jay)
jack: ok ROLL IT! remember, honey, just do what i do. just like the mirror game from film school. MARK!
(jack places index finger over jay's mouth to shush him. female lead places index finger over male lead's mouth to shush him. jack uses other hand to lift his shirt. f.l. uses other hand to lift her shirt.)
m.l.: fuck yeah!
jack: CUT! PRINT IT! that was PERFECT!
jay: what the FUCK?
jack: there's your r, buddy. quit bein a pussy. oh, and honey? you can put your shirt back down. or not, you know, your choice..

from http://asofterworld.com/ :

“Man, I was thinking about unrequited love. I figure it's best to just walk that shit off. Find someone else to be excited about. It's like if you love ice cream but your ice cream man friend won't give you any. Maybe he's got a good reason. It cuts into profits. Who knows? But he likes you as a friend and wants to hang out anyway. It just drives you crazy to hang out with that dude, even if he's being reasonable from his point of view. So don't hang out with him. What, you ONLY like ice cream? It's ice cream or nothing? Don't be an asshole. Learn to love donuts.”

i think what was bothering me is a feeling of disconnectedness. when high school ended, i didn't stay in contact with anyone. 1 friend from high school was in 1 of my first semester college courses, but we both stopped going to the class at about the same time. i didn't particularly make outside of class friends at college. anyone i knew from the co-op i didn't stay in touch with. i've never made outside of work friends at any jobs, so whenever the jobs ended, so did contact with anyone from the job.

even before i moved to dallas, i'd fallen out of chat a lot since i wasn't able to chat at work and was finding other things to do with my evening time. when i moved to dallas, i lost any tangential contact with chat people from parties or clubbing or whatever. i stayed vaguely aware of it from kerri plus the occasional drop in to chat, but it's a lot of people i don't know at all now. i picked up most old chatters in livejournal when that started, but.. not the same.

so, on facebook, looking through westwood '90, and pearl st co-op... it's all strangers. whether i'm inclined to send them a "hey" message or not, i don't have anything really to say to them, or any reason to think most of them would care if i did say something to them, or even remember me. seeing that some of the people i used to know are at least still connected on facebook, whether they are still in real life or not, kinda pointed up to me the fact that i'm not really connected to.. anyone outside of my current. so i felt a little adrift, i guess.

You will be first quite scared of your own ability to break all the loving limits that seemed fantastic before.

Things for YOU do to keep your loving life spicy.

so i've seen on a couple different shows lately (man vs food, diners drive-ins and dives, and uh.. one other one i think) places where they take a hamburger patty, pile cheese on it, then press a second patty on top and cook it up. and i think that sounds like a good idea. but they don't go far enough. i'm thinkin, cheese and BACON CRUMBLES. this must happen.

the other thing i keep going back to is getting whiskey into my steak, without molassas. rollin in me head lately is a marinade of whiskey + worstechire + i dunno what. i need to figure out the i dunno what.