Well, this is... slightly awkward.

On the right side of the screen there, I've got a javascript counter running, with the days until move-in day. I had originally picked an arbitrary day, in August, and used that. Later on, I actually corrected it.

Y'know, honestly, when I try to write javascript, it doesn't work. Ever. And I'm not going to simply abandon that counter. I like it there. Once move-in day comes, I'll probably change it. Y'know, like, a countdown to Halloween. Or Decemberween. Or whatever. It doesn't really matter.

At any rate, it says there are 27 days left.

While I was writing about my annual back-to-school dream, I got to thinking about the fact that I haven't actually changed my profile, to say "College Student" instead of "High School Student".

I really have to do that.

That would be good.


...Yeah.

</laukaisyn>

Quote of the Day

"It hits us, hits us both, simultaneously, like a semi made out of lightning which is also a professional boxer."

</laukaisyn>

Photobloggy!

Y'know, I briefly mentioned the "dead spider" in the trophy case. I found out later on that he wasn't actually dead. He moves. Just, y'know, very, very slowly. Eventually, he moved into a better position, so I could take a better picture. And, um... I forgot to put it up.

</laukaisyn>

Photobloggy!

It's kind of ironic, really, that Mister Softee decided to park outside my house. Especially considering what happens in this chapter of Sixty Percent Chance of Rain...

</laukaisyn>

Welcome to Alternate Freaky Technocolor Dream Land. Population: Me.

I'll be the first to admit that I dream in extremely vidid technicolor.

And I'll be the first to admit that what happens in my dreams usually has very little to do with what's going on in real life. As a matter of fact, what happens in my dreams usually runs exactly counter to what's going on in real life.

I'll get to that later.

At any rate, I don't have "recurring dreams"... I have "sequels". *(I know you think I'm kidding, but I'm not.)* I don't get the same dream three times; I get the same dream, in three parts, over three different nights. The problem is, it could be weeks until I dream the second half.


One dream that I usually have, that I don't really talk about, is my "back-to-school" dream. I'm in school, and I'm heading to class on the first day of school. I always have this dream in July or August, and I know I've had them for the past two years.

It takes place at a specific staircase, in Nowheresville Memorial. It's the one right near Kathryn's locker (but for some, odd reason, I've never actualy bothered to talk to her). I have to get from the second floor to the third floor, because my homeroom is Spanish. (That detail is important, for some reason). I'm at the foot of the stairs.

This is where all three versions diverge.

In the version I had before the eleventh grade, the stairs were exactly the way they are now: They go straight, directly toward the floor in question. The problem is, on the left side of the stairs (I was going up the left, I don't know why), there was no staircase past the landing. It was a rectangular hole. And on the right side, was this guy I really disliked making lewd comments and rubbing himself laying at the top of the stairs.

I woke up before I got to Spanish.

In the version I had last summer, the stairs were the way they are in real life. Only there were holes in them. Not like dream before, but maybe about 18 inches around and twelve inches down. You had to avoid them, and there were quite alot of them.

Again, I woke up before I got to Spanish.


I had this dream again last night. This version was altogether freaky. Mostly because I started thinking about it. The stairs were entirely different. You walk up one way, to the landing, then turn at the landing, and walk up the other way to the next floor. That's what we had in elementary school. Okay, that wasn't the problem with the staircase. The actual problem was this: one flight of stairs should lead to the landing, and the other should lead to the floor above. Neither actually lead to the floor above.

From the second floor (this is where all of these dreams start), it looked like you could get to the third floor -- the "Foriegn Language Hallway", specifically. Okay. Fine. This guy (who I don't know too well) goes up, up to the landing, and then... comes down the other landing. "How did you...?" "...what?" --that kind of thing. We're all confused. He shrugs.

When we all look up, we see that the staircase is not actually connected to the third floor. There's a railing, all around; and the bars that go down from the railing were still there, only there was a whole in them, implying (at least to me) that you had to jump from the landing to make it the the third floor.

I don't remember my feet leaving the landing, but I do remember dangling from the edge. I specifically remember staring up, and realizing, for the first time, tha I was wearing fingerless gloves.

I climb up, and look down, and realize I am also wearing those black, baggy goth pants with the zippers and the hooks and all.

Fine. Whatever. Apparenly, I'm a goth in this dream.

So I wander over to Spanish. I look, and, yup, it's Spanish. (For the record, it looked nothing like any real-life Spanish class).

So I throw down my backpack. It was once green, and it now has this stained blue appearance. (I haven't actually used this backpack since the eigth grade. And it's still green.)

I decide I'm going to go to the bathroom before class starts. Rather than going to the teacher, and asking for a hall pass, to use the bathroom in the hall, I wander over to the bathroom in the classroom. I didn't get into it, because someone pushed me out of the way, but I got a good look at it. (We don't have bathrooms in class. It was like the bathrooms in first grade. First Grade. That's a stretch.)

Only, it wasn't exactly like the first grade bathrooms. There was a ladder shoved in the corner. I thought to myself, "A ladder? Why... Oh! I must lead up to the lighthouse!"

Yup. In this dream, Nowheresville Memorial has an additional two-story lighthouse on the roof.


But at least I finally got to Spanish, so I could see for myself.

</laukaisyn>

Quote of the Day

"The one thing about watching the History Channel... You always know who's going to win. It's not like it's suspenseful."

</laukaisyn>

Bizarre Child Support Battle in Brooklyn

Bizarre Child Support Battle in Brooklyn

Eyewitness News reporter Michelle Charlesworth is live on Manhattan's east side with the story.

This is a question for men tonight: what happens to sperm in a bank when you stop paying to keep it frozen? Can your estranged wife pick up the freezing bills and use your sperm, then come after you for child support payments? That is at the center of this lawsuit against a sperm bank a wife and a notary public.

This couple is currently getting divorced but before the relationship hit the rocks they were trying to have kids. According to court documents, Mr. Deon Francois' sperm was frozen at NYU. Then the break up happened - about two-and-a-half years ago. Mrs. Francois continued to pay $500 a year to keep the sperm frozen and underwent in vitro.

Mr. Francois says he didn't know about any of this, in fact, he didn't know that she was still trying to get pregnant. He thought that if nobody was paying to freeze the sperm, it would be thrown away and it was a non-issue.

John James, Deon Francois' Attorney: "He did not want a child at that time and he did not give any kind of written or oral consent for NYU to use the sperm, in fact didn't pay storage fees. He moved out, he forgot about the whole plan of having children with Chaamel."

But Mrs. Francois attorney says not only did her husband know, he was cashing thousands in refunds from the couple's insurance company - reimbursement for fertility bills that she had already paid.

Steven Gildin, Chaamel Francois' Attorney: "What do you do in a situation when a man relies on a woman who says 'I'm on birth control' but she's lying. Or what if the birth control just fails? Does that father then have the right to walk away from his financial responsibilies? It's the same thing."

Now the embryo is an 8-month old baby boy and a judge says Mr. Francois owes $150 a week in child support. What about a legal release to use the frozen sperm? She says he signed one, he says it's a fake.

What about a notary? She says it's notarized, he says it's a fake, and his attorney says his client has run out of money.

John James, Deon Francois' Attorney: "He wants to focus now on concluding the divorce matter and focusing on the case against NYU the notary and his wife. Well he needs to be compensated and he has to pay child support and it's going to cost maybe several million to raise a child in the 21st century."

No comment from NYU tonight and Mrs. Chaamel Francois is pregnant again and her attorney says he will go after Mr. Francois for child support because she became pregnant while they were married and that is what the law supports.

</laukaisyn>

You're Welcome.

               ^_^


</laukaisyn>

Georgian Authorities Destroy Illegal Tomato Plants Near Parliament Building

Georgian Authorities Destroy Illegal Tomato Plants Near Parliament Building

MosNews -- 14 tomato bushes were found on Tuesday in gardens near the Georgian parliament building in Tbilisi.

Georgian authorities have destroyed the bushes on which the tomatoes had already started to mature. Each bush was tied to a wooden stake.

The bushes were found on a lawn where the Georgian president’s Dutch wife, Sandra Roelofs, planted tulips.

The authorities were quoted by RIA-Novosti news agency as saying they did not know how the tomatoes appeared on “the main lawn of the country.”

Georgia led by Mikhail Saakashvili was the first ex-Soviet republic to start the wave of so-called “colored revolutions” not supported by the Kremlin and considered a form of westernization. However, there was no news of any political motives behind the planting of the tomatoes near the parliament building.

In recent months tomatoes have become the missile of choice for protestors in a number of former Soviet states.

</laukaisyn>

I don't think it should be called a "Gas Station". It should be called a "Flammable Products Station".

No, no. Seriously. I'm not kidding.

Think about it. A "Gas Station" sells every conceivable flamable product known to man (and allowed by law).

They sell every kind of flammable petrol product made for automobiles.

They sell cigarettes.

They sell charcoal.

They sell lighter fluid.

They sell beer.

For crying out loud, they even sell lighters and matches.

</laukaisyn>

In Video Game, a Download Unlocks Hidden Sex Scenes

In Video Game, a Download Unlocks Hidden Sex Scenes

Action video games are renowned for serving up simulated gore and violence, but an intriguing mystery surfaced last week in which politics, business and simulated sex feature prominently as well.

With some code written by Patrick Wildenborg, a 36-year-old Dutch techie, and a few friends, some scenes in the best-selling video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas become sexually explicit.

His free code, which can be downloaded over the Internet, acts as a software key, Mr. Wildenborg explained. He said it merely unlocked the sexually graphic images that are hidden inside the game and written by programmers who work for the game's developer, Rockstar Games, which is owned by Take-Two Interactive, a leading game publisher.

Mr. Wildenborg's program has become quite popular since it was posted on a Web site last month. By last week, the effects of his software handiwork came to the attention of Leland Yee, a California assemblyman, who has long called for legislation to curb the sales of video games to children. In a statement last Wednesday, Mr. Yee chided the game industry's self-policing unit, the Entertainment Software Rating Board, for failing to properly rate Grand Theft Auto as a game for adults only.

In taking on the Grand Theft Auto series, Mr. Yee was going after a well-known target. "This particular game has been known to include extremely heinous acts of violence," his statement said, "and now it has been uncovered that the game also includes explicit sexual scenes that are inappropriate for our children."

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is not intended for younger children. It is rated M, or mature, for players 17 years and older. The national electronics store chains sell M-rated games, but tend to avoid adult-only titles.

The game rating board said on Friday that it would investigate Grand Theft Auto to see if the publisher had violated the industry rule requiring "full disclosure of pertinent content."

Mr. Wildenborg's program, called Hot Coffee, is known as a mod - for code that modifies a game. Such programs have helped spread the popularity and lifespan of many games by adding features and flourishes not imagined by the publishers. For the most part, the industry encourages these hobbyist contributors.

Whether the publishers will be held responsible if they wrote, and then hid, the sexually graphic scenes is not clear. The sexually explicit scenes do not appear with a few keystrokes, as happens with software "Easter eggs" - typically names, messages or games hidden in programs. The graphic episodes in Grand Theft Auto cannot be rendered unless a user downloads the Hot Coffee code or a similar program.

"At the end of the day," Mr. Wildenborg wrote in an e-mail message yesterday, "Grand Theft Auto is not a game for young children, and is rated accordingly." The hidden graphic images, he added, are "not something it is possible to accidentally stumble across" in the course of playing the game.

Representatives for Take-Two or Rockstar Games could not be reached for comment yesterday. But Rockstar issued a statement on Friday that said it was confident that after the rating board's inquiry, Grand Theft Auto would retain its current rating, M, for mature.

</laukaisyn>

Link of the day!!!!!!! Clicky fun!

Right. Yeah.

Seeing as how you got one yesterday, today is a Link of the Day.

Plus, you get two of them!


It's kinda fitting, too.

The first is Jinx, [Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for.]. The Second is ThinkGeek, [A simple idea to create and sell stuff that would appeal to the thousands of people out there who were on the front line and in the trenches as the Internet was forged.]

So... yeah. Oh, and, the cool part is, while they don't actually acknowledge eachother's existence, they're competing vicariously. ThinkGeek is pro-Ninja, whereas Jinx is pro-Pirate. (Yeah... I'm not joking.)

</laukaisyn>

The Vacation Crisis

I found this in a local paper (read: Villiage Newspaper). It was originally on the "Opinions" page; and it was written by Michael Miller.

July is the vacation season. But chances are you aren't on a vacation. Separate studies by Universal Resorts, Expedia.com, Hudson Staffing and the Families and Work Institute show that the American vacation crisis is worse than ever. And a lot of it is self-imposed.

Americans took the money, and left the vacations on the table. French workers get five to six weeks of paid vacation each year, and they are expected to take that time off. German workers average at least 30 days of vacation each year, a minimum of 24 full days by law. Workers in Great Britain typically receive 23 vacation days, the fewest among Europeans. Australians get 30 days of paid vacation by law, and average 25 days of actual days taken off. Meanwhile, there is no federal right to any vacation time in the United States (21 percent of full-time workers don't have access to paid vacations), though most employers do have a vacation policy. Between 36 percent and 51 percent of full-time U.S. workers don't take all their vacation days off. Two weeks of paid vacation is typical here, but Americans are on track to give back more than 421 million days of vacation time during 2005. One study puts the actual value of that extra work at about $54 billion worth of economic productivity.

The trends are ominous. In 2004, Americans gave back 415 million days of vacation time, a rise of 50 percent over 2003. Since 1970, American hours worked per capita have increased a full 20 percent. Meanwhile, per capita hours worked are down 23 percent in France, 18 percent in Germany, 12 percent across the entire European Union and even 18 percent among Japanese workers. It is American productivity which ballooned the stock markets, adding incredible value to American corporations. And those corporations are not returning the loyalty and effort.

In a corporate world rife with downsizing, restructuring, mergers and acquisitions, employees are hesitant to take time for fear that bosses will decide that the job can get done without them. In addition, many companies have cultivated a machismo workplace attitude in which vacation and downtime are seen as a sign of weakness. Twenty-three percent of American workers check in with the office "most days" while on vacation, and that figure rises to 38 percent among managers. Perhaps it's no surprise that 34 percent of U.S. workers said they return to the office more stressed or as stressed as when they left.

Even when companies try to make it easier to take vacations, many Americans can't bring themselves to go. One management firm invited employees to buy extra vacation days, and 52 out of 138 workers put up the money. By the end of the year, though, just under three-fourths of them had asked for refunds.

More and more it's becoming clear that vacation is vital to sustained productivity, which is why Europeans take the vacations and still get the job done. Studies show that job performance increases after a week's vacation, that workers come back recharged and rejuvenated (it takes most Americans three full days of vacation to decompress and feel relaxed). An annual vacation can cut the risk of heart disease in men by 30 percent and in women by 50 percent. Rand Corporation, the think tank giant, now gives employees a 5 percent bonus if they use all of their vacation days.

To hardworking Americans, time isn't just money, it's the currency of life. Juggling long work weeks with commuting and kids and civic responsibilities takes its toll on physical health, mental health and marital health. It takes two incomes to get by and it seems as though there is a relentless treadmill.

But perhaps Americans are starting to catch on. Since 2001, Salaries.com has asked respondents if they'd rather have more time off or a $5,000 raise. The first year of the survey, 33 percent said they'd take the vacation time. In the 2004 survey, 53 percent said that they wanted the time.

So maybe we're wising up.

I thought you guys would appreciate that. I have the unnerving impression that, if you're reading this blog, you're not on vacation. You're at a desk, somewhere.

</laukaisyn>

Link of the... well, yeah. You know.

Okay. Well, first off, I'm breaking with tradition and actually using little link banners! Yeah!!!!1!!

Okay. Well, this link is forRandom, or Random Galleries. Take your pick. (I'm still calling it "A track runs through it", but that's a long story.)

It's an anime gallery.

But it's not the typical anime gallery. "Several things make this site different, I only host personally scanned high quality images, all galleries are temporary and will be removed after an appropriate time, and there is usually some sort of theme that will be found in each gallery..."


Also, just incase you weren't paying attention, they do high quality scans, for wallpapers and stuff. So, if big, high-res pictures of Anime characters are your thing, stop reading now and click here.

</laukaisyn>

Lost in the land of... that freakish little void in the middle.

"Isaaru has confiscated your monkey."

Free cookies if you actually know where that's from. *(And I don't mean the nasty internet variety. I mean the awesome oatmeal raisin kind.)*

Oh, and, uh, just so everyone knows, I have a cat in my lap.

Another question: does anyone know how to get that last point in Peasant's Quest? See, out of the 150 points, I can only get to 149. So, err... yeah. And I'd also appreciate any advice anyone's willing to offer on Stinkoman, because I can't even get though level 1.

So, um... yup. That's pretty much it.

</laukaisyn>

Y'know the phrase "parking infraction"? This is one of those. I think.

I had a parking infraction, once.

I wasn't caught. No body knew it was me.

See, the thing is, when you say "parking infraction", you immediately think of the lazy dumbass who parks in the firelane. Or the 17-year-old girl who just got her license and parks in the handicapped spot (when she isn't handicapped).

No. This is different.

This took place in the parking lot of the local supermarket.

We got all our stuff, loaded into the cart, brought the cart to our car, and put everything in the back seat. So I go, to put the cart back.

I look both ways, and run across the lane with my empty shopping cart, back toward the store.

I get it onto the curb, and, well, mom was waiting for me, so I didn't bring it to the line of carts; I just kinda left it there.


So I go back across the lane. To mom's car. I finally get there, and I hear a car horn, blaring. I look back, and there is a cart -- my cart -- sitting, square in front of this other car.

It just rolled off the curb.

And this guy thought the cart would move if he honked at it.

</laukaisyn>

Quote of the Day

"...it's really a post-modernist deconstruction of pop culture (which is itself pretty post-modern, so you're sucked into a post-modernist wormhole of self-reference) - simultaneously celebrating it and mocking it by taking all the familiar themes and tropes and references of pop culture, and turning them inside out and stripping them of their real-world meaning, and extending them to their logical, absurdist extreme."

See? people can have intelligent converations about cartoons.

</laukaisyn>

Summer... v. 2.0.

Right. Okay. And no one has any idea what that meant.

Some time last summer, I apologized for the fact that I hadn't been posting by blaming it on the fact that it was summer.

"...I'm really enjoying this whole summer thing... if I just help out around the house a little -- run the laundry, not run over my own foot with the dishwasher -- then I can be left to my own devices. Computer games and books. That's all I have to say."

I'm not going to link to it, because it was three times as long as that, and those were the only good parts, really.

But, so... yeah. Yeah. SUMMERY GOODNESS! w00t!!!

Oh, and, if anyone's wondering what I've been doing, ther answer is Homestar Runner; Final Fantasy X-2; Spyro, Enter the Dragon; Six Questions of Socrates; Final Fantasy VIII; and, uh... sleeping.

Yup. Truly tantalizing.

</laukaisyn>

Quote of the Day

"The presidential bike suffered some damage, McClellan said, so Bush rode back to the hotel in a Secret Service vehicle."

</laukaisyn>

Link of the whenever I damn well feel like it NOW!

Hey, did you guys hear about that banned Dr. Suess book? It was so off-the-wall, with references to violence and suicide and stuff, that it was banned! You haven't heard about it?

Well, perhaps you've heard that a tooth left in a glass of Coca Cola overnight will disolve? Huh?

Did'ya know that Fanta was invented by the Nazis?

Well, hey, here's a secret -- if you overpay on a traffic ticket, you can keep points on your licence. Or, better yet, you can just get an International Driver's Licence through the UN and not get any tickets!


Okay... guess what? all of that stuff up there? It's not true. It's false. Complete and utter bullshit.

You can see for yourself, if you don't believe me. Snopes.com is an extremely detailed, categorized Reference for Urban Legends.

</laukaisyn>

Quote of the Day

Alright. This one has a bit of explanation.

Mom has been complaining at us for a little over a year that we "broke" or "lost the pieces for" her mandoline.

Okay, fine. So, we finally stumble into the H-Mart (which is a supermarket for all things Asian). And Mom finds the "Benrinrer slicer".

Here is the some of the English on the front of the box:

"You can enjoy cooking with the Benriner cutter. It will process vegetables into thin slices."

"New double possible blade!"

"Wonderful sharpness, speed, and Completion!"

"Beware of Imitations."

For some reason, the back of the box is really well translated. But not the front.

</laukaisyn>

To be entirely honest...

I've never actually liked the fourth of July.

And, of course, that has to do with the fireworks.

Now, it's not the noise of the fireworks that bothers me. It's the thought of all of the drunk dumbasses in the street with sparklers and roman candles who think they're being cool.


Think about that for a second.

</laukaisyn>

What is virtue, though?

Has anyone ever read Six Questions of Socrates, by Cristopher Phillips?

Basically, it's the author, going around, and asking smallish groups of people questions, which fall into one of six chapters in the book: "What is Virtue?", "What is Moderation?", "What is Justice?", "What is Good?", "What is Courage?", and "What is Piety?".

Each chapter then has the conversations that started from there.

And it's a really, really wide range of people that he'll go around asking, too. In the first chapter ("What is Virtue?"), he starts off in Athens, Greece, then goes to the Navajo Nation, and then to Tokyo. The second chapter ("What is Moderation?") has brought him from a community of Muslim-American women, somewhere near the Pacific, to Seoul, Korea, and now (since I'm about halfway through the chapter) to Tempe, Arizona, which is something of a college town.

Seriously, it's an amazing book. Seriously. I'm not saying you have to buy it... at least go to the library and borrow it for however long. But, it's one of those books you have to read. Regardless.

</laukaisyn>

<suck>Apple Firewire cables.</suck>

Okay, so DragonCelt gets himself an iSight.

Sweet ass, I'm thinking to myself, we can videoichat instead of just... ichat... ing... (And, for the record, yes, I do think like that.)

So, we hook up, and we're talking, for all of maybe thirty seconds. He says "Hi." I say "Hi." The other guy in the background says "Hi."

Fine.

All of a sudden: "iChat has unexpectedly quit. Would you like to create an error log and send it to Apple?"

So I try it again.

And we go through the same thing again.

And again.

And again.

Apple has a handful of error reports that just say "yeah. it's ki again."

And we do it again.

Until iChat finally gives me an error that says: "Could not connect to AIM. You have attempted to login to often in a short period of time. Wait a few minutes before trying to login again."

So I go online, and turn to my trusty friend, Google. Type in something like "isight problems ichat", and you get a response.

The sort of response that tells you that "it might be the Firewire cable". The sort of response that tells you that "Apple's sexy thin Firewire cables may not be of adequate quality to withstand normal use."

So, I'm talking to him through the "internal microphone" -- for those of you that don't know your way around the eMac, it's the little hole in the upper lefthand corner, above the monitor. He's using his iSight as a microphone, because it can cope with that.

</laukaisyn>