archived notes for Feb. 2000

02.29.00 - Musha ring dum a doo dum a da. There's whiskey in the jar-o. It's amazing how folk songs change. This is now the second version of "Whiskey in the Jar" that I've heard. All someone would have to do is change the name of the Captain to Black Jack Davy and make Molly/Jenny a ghostly gal moving through the faire with her winding sheets and a bucket of bad eels for her lover and you'd have the Ultimate European Folk Song. Maybe toss in a cuckoo or two as well. Yeah.

Okay, Jason, you can stop pestering me. I bought the Guano Apes CD and it should be en route in the next few days.

We went to the local comic shop after lunch, and I reminded myself again why it is I don't go into comic shops. It's not because I hate them, but rather because I like them. I'm a plotmonger, and I like to draw, and since comics consist of artwork revolving around neverending stories (except for the rare finite series), they are very bad for cheap lassas such as I.

Of course, there's also always online translations of manga, and so it is I have now read through Volume 1 and 2 of Rurouni Kenshin. Oro-ro!

Susan has recovered from her fear of the color purple. I never feared it, personally. It was one of the few good movies Whoopi Goldberg's been in.

I really need to find some time and not only update my aromatherapy pages, but update the look of the site. (sigh)

I named my hero Kiroji in my speculative fiction book I'm working on -- he's the foil for Myr, and I intentionally went for syllables that sounded Japanese. I wonder what would cause a culture to make the default gender feminine instead of masculine when referring to someone whose gender is unknown? I wanted to make it so men's names have the gender modification at the end, which is the opposite of how it is in Kemetic language (i.e., the feminine "-t") and some Japanese names (i.e., "-ko"). Are there any societies on earth now that default to the feminine?

Hm.

Dangit, now I want to try and make some onigiri.

02.28.00 - Hmmm. Susan updated Digression's look, but hasn't put in any links to pages inside the site. What could she be planning?

Pamie explained what was going on in her life. Yay! I can breathe again.

And Dave also updated his look, switched to SSIs and style sheets, and added an entry.

Meanwhile, all I manage to make is a mock-up for Oracleweb.

But I got those Final Fantasy VIII Guardian Forces, now, didn't I?

All things considered, melon flavored bubble gum really isn't that bad.

Someone buy the people at the patents office a computer and a roll of quarters for the reality machine, please. A patent for the affiliate system? This is getting ridiculous. (sigh)

02.27.00 - I keep having these dreams where I'm a vampire, making other people vampires and plotting my next vampiric takeovers. It's not a nightmare or a frightening dream, and that may be why it disturbs me a little. I'm not a deathmonger, and when you stop to think about it, vampires are pretty hideous creatures -- but these are really very happy dreams, where everyone who becomes a vampire with me admits to how much better their life is now. It's a weird, wonderful dream, but it's scary because I know it's not right.

Anyway, I thought about writing it down as a story, but my brain says, "Vampires are blase!" and refuses to cooperate. Which is kind of a good thing, because it led into something I wasn't expecting. You see, when I went to write the first sentence, it should have been:

I keep having this wonderful dream where I'm a vampire....

I keep having this wonderful dream where I'm human....

02.26.00 - I got this in email. I thought it was funny.

And Jesus said unto them, "And whom do you say that I am?"

They replied, "You are the eschatological manifestation of the ground of our being, the ontological foundation of the context of our very selfhood revealed."

And Jesus replied, "What?"

02.22.00 - Has anyone ever noticed that The Motley Fool and Amazon.com look awfully alike? Hm. I guess they must either be partners, or Amazon owns the Fool now.

Jeff and I went to a Macromedia seminar today, and left halfway through. It wasn't bad, it just wasn't worth our time, though I did learn some interesting things about vectors and grids. Unfortunately, this was basically just watching a rep from Macromedia go through their tutorials and give out t-shirts to people who answered her questions. It was entertaining in some parts, but we decided that ultimately it was unnecessary. We did get free trials of all their products and orange juice and coffee and muffins out of the deal, though, so not all was lost.

Film review of the day: I think everyone should see American Beauty. Excellent, excellent film with fantastic acting and a wonderful story. Perfect. Go see it.

I got into work before Dave this morning. Dave still appears to be visibly shaken from this revelation.

02.20.00 - Vent: Instructions.

Apparently, somewhere on Venus there is a tholus ("small, domical mountain or hill") named Bast. There's also a mons ("mountain") for Seshat and one for Sekhmet on Venus, and craters for Hethert (Hathor) and Serqet on Ganymede in the Jovian System. In fact, Ganymede's craters are named mostly after Egyptian gods (or, at least, their Greek names). Hunh.

Kind of neat. Descriptions and spellings aren't great, but it's still kind of neat.

Derek Powazek on weblogging. I guess my notes area has turned into a weblog, though often as not I just babble about life without actually putting one damn link up. It's my mini-venting area for all the stuff I don't want to go down in history as actually having spent too much time thinking about. And the links -- well, to be honest, I think sometimes I just put them up so if two months down the line I say, "Heeey. Where's that link to that place with the guy with the hands and the hair and the face -- oh yeah! I linked to it back in October!" I can just go find it.

My cat says hi.

Interview with the Spampire! Cute. And meanwhile, Colorado does some "forward-facing" but ultimately -- IMNSHO -- useless legislature in regards to spam. I'll tell ya -- of all my advertisement spew, the one that bothers me least is the junk email. I'm much more annoyed by phone solicitors, flyers in the mail, and those "commercials" they keep interrupting my tv shows with. Where's big bad Colorado when it comes to those, hm? Hm?

02.19.00 - It's nice not being oncall again.

I made another pensive playlist. I think it's good for what I'm writing now insofar as fiction and webdesign.

Something's up with Pamie, and I don't like it. I don't even really know the woman, and I feel sorry for whatever it is she's going through. I guess this is payback for all the times I scoffed at my sisters for watching soap operas.

Some gold studs with little light blue topaz (I think they're topaz) chips in them came with my black sapphire bracelet. Yee! I love pleasant surprises. My only complaint about the bracelet is that the links between the gemstone settings are rigid, meaning that it isn't quite as fluid as I'd like. I think I'm used to my scarab bracelet, which has little links between the stones, and thus slides over my wrist much more easily.

(Believe it or not, I found my scarab bracelet on QVC -- it was the only place I could find a silver scarab bracelet that didn't look cheesy. I know, "QVC" and "didn't look cheesy" are probably two things you thought you'd never here from me, but 'strue.)

Which reminds me -- who the heck ever said that engagement rings have to be gold and diamonds? I don't like gold, and I could care less about diamonds. I like my cool silvers and blues and greens. Why should I have to conform to something that doesn't in turn conform to my fashion tastes? I mean, honestly. I have nothing that matches gold -- my life has revolved around silver up to this point. Why should I have to flex because of the status quo? Heck, even my two-ankhs ring is silver. Silver! I like silver! I'm cheap and easy, I admit it. Well, maybe not easy. But I like silver. I really do.

End of mini-Vent. Harrumph.

More tomorrow, maybe. I wrote some Kemetic things that I'll be putting on the site when I get a chance. Kind of interesting...you'll see. Right now I'm going to do some fiction writing and then go to bed. Maybe I'll redesign notes tomorrow.

02.18.00 - Trailer for the X-Men movie. At least Apple has gone and fixed the download problems they were having before. Still not sure what I think of the upcoming movie. Jean Grey should be a redhead, dammit.

Feeling better today, even if my period did start. God, I have a lot of work to do. Blech.

Cheryl Mandus went and did an Egyptian cat mask. Oh man. I want it. That, and the very cool kitsune mask. Mmmm.

I think I need to work on Kemet.org's load time. There's no excuse for it taking 24 seconds (aside from that stupid flipnav I put at the top). Per-Bast.org takes .92 seconds, Seshat.org is at 2 seconds. Weekend project!

The next Anakin Skywalker? Hm. I dunno. Just please, not any of the Hollywood pretty boys. We already had a cute Anakin. Now we need someone who can swordfight.

Speaking of which, I found a place that teaches Capoeira here in Saint Louis. Hm.

02.17.00 - I love rainy days.

It's raining today, which means the sky is gray -- making my house perfectly suited for the use of candles -- and the constant patter of little rainy feet is going on outside. The suicide bombers of the heavens fall down by the millions in the form of raindrops, splattering on leaves, pavement, and car hoods, leaving nothing but a wet smear to remember them by.

I stayed home today due to fatigue, and my evil twin stayed home today due to a bad milkshake at Chili's. Rather ironic, as I was the one telling us all that the milkshakes were soooo good at Chili's. Regardless, my margherita grilled tuna was good -- but I was just feeling not great this morning, no da?

I have a copy of Octavia Butler's Parable of the Talents, and it looks very interesting. I think, though, I'm going to read the first book -- Parable of the Sower -- before I dig into this one. I remember sitting with Octavia Butler once on a panel at a convention and really being astounded by her insights. I'd never heard of her before then, though -- she was just a woman who crept in late to the panel with an incredibly deep voice talking to people.

A box came in the mail today! From my friends in Oklahoma! Oh my. It had a scarf in it with ankhs all over it and a scarab necklace and another necklace with feathers and stars for beads and a little arrowhead talisman and incense! Oh my! I was so surprised and happy. I don't know quite what to say. Wow!

My cat things when I sing that I'm talking to her. I think she tries to sing back. She does this cute little back-of-the-throat chirping -- "Mprrrr?" -- and lies down on my lap. Which is great when I'm not typing, but not so great when I am.

Darjeeling tea good, Green Earl Grey very good, Black Currant extremely good when served with sugar and milk. The Brits not only make good sweets, they make good tea, too. Or steal it from indigenous people. Or whatever. Mm. Tea.

Finished a chapter of book today. Hope to do another before I head off for a bath. It sure is easier to read these things than it is to write them. Le sigh.

Update: Holy cow, Parable of the Sower is online in a free format. Uuuuh. I hope this is legal. Hm.

02.16.00 - It's kind of creepy, but Dave and I were talking about the idea of sliced peanut butter the other day, and I joked that we ought to patent it and go for it. Well, too late now.

I seem to have picked up my grandfather and uncle's talent for predicting market trends and inventing things but not going for it. The trashcan on wheels? My grandfather invented it years before one actually existed and failed to patent his prototype because the guy he built it with had a heartattack and died. Gourmet coffee shops? I've been drinking gourmet coffee since I was five -- because my uncle has been running a gourmet coffee shop since then and back. Standardized food procedure in restaurants (a la any chain restaurant out there today)? Yep, granddad invented that, too. And McDonald's stole it from him. Or so says my mom.

Oh well. There's always writing.

Maybe I'm a little silly, but I love opening new windows when I head over to offsite links. Personal preference. If I get some time someday I'll redesign the site to use cookies so folks can decide if they want new windows or not, but until then, the way I like it is the way I like it, and I'm keeping it that way.

Anyone who plays computer games should read this strip.

What the hell happened to Amazon.com? I liked the old version better. This looks like a fricking web portal -- ooooh.

Oh wait. Interesting. The new version is only for NetScape users. It shows me the old page with IE 5.0. (scratches head) Hunh?

Gosh I love Wine Gums. And I'm going to try black currant tea. British food may have funny names, but I think I like the sweets.

02.15.00 - Can you believe it? My first commercial site. I'm so proud.

No, the art isn't mine. Neither is the design. But the rest is. Well, me and Dave. It's more than it looks. :)

That's why I haven't been around, in case you were wondering, Dear Reader. Today was launch day, and that meant everyone wanting last minute changes and techs going home early and payment plans getting updated and design being revised at the wire and Stephs hunting down other techs to do what the previous tech who already left was handling.

But that's what Stephs do best.

I learned a great deal about Dreamweaver during this site building, which, I might add, took us a solid four weeks or work. What I learned about Dreamweaver is that it is not a team player. As a tool for a web staff with two or more people on it, it sucks.

It. Sucks.

I kept overwriting Dave's stuff and Dave kept telling me I had stuff checked out and links kept getting overwritten and the program kept crashing and -- guh. no no no. mommy. the light. it hurts.

ANYway.

I would use it if it was JUST ME and I relied on a WYSIWYG editor (which I don't), and I can still see myself using it for basic design when I need visuals to get my juices flowing, but I'm going to go into convulsions if this turns out to be the software we choose to use as a group. Unless we find out what was going wrong and fix it.

Oh wait, hey. What's this?

02.13.00 - I am the cat catcher.

Backstory: We had a stray in the area give birth to a litter of kittens somewhere around the office of The Company. Our secretary Tamma, who absolutely loves cats, has been trying to catch them. One, unfortunately, got caught in a car engine a month or so ago when Tamma went out to start her car. While the cat survived with stitches, the car unfortunately had to have its fan belt replaced.

There's only one that's still hanging around the office with any regularity, a small gray kitten who has been somewhat affable to us but won't let anyone pick her up. I've tried to catch her twice in the last few weeks, and she's slipped past me each time.

Bwahaahaha. Not tonight.

My hands are torn up, and I came very close to my face getting shredded, but I grabbed her tonight and wrapped my arms around her and did not let go. She thrashed but ultimately I am the cat catcher, and this cat was not getting away.

Jeff, who was watching from the passenger seat of my car (we were just on our way out), was naturally stunned and impressed by my incredible cat-catching talents. Little did he know he was living with a mild-mannered priest who happens to have a bulldog's death grip when it comes to wrangling kittens.

We have her in Roger's old office now until morning when we can take her to the shelter. She's very sweet and yowling for her mama, but she'll be okay. Tamma has to let the shelter people take care of her for three weeks (to make sure she doesn't have any diseases), and then she's going to take her home. This is good for Tamma, who lost a cat a few months ago to heart disease.

And speaking of diseases, I have to launder all my clothes and take a shower before I can touch Amber again. Le sigh.

Today is the feast of Wesir, and today I put up the long-awaited memorial for Terry on Kemet.org. Being a big dunderhead, I miscalculated the anniversary and so it's a little late. Meant to have it out before then, but then I also thought I still had a few days to go. I'm sure he understands my tendency to be off with dates, though. It's a catbrain thing.

02.11.00 - Does this sound familiar?

02.09.00 - Yee ha! New Vent. I think the bellydance tapes are twisting my head.

Compared to this, worshipping a cat-headed god doesn't seem so strange now, does it?

The ImakhuCam (or the BastCam or the StephCam or whatever you want to call it) is primarily set up for work now, meaning it goes on around 11ish and goes off around 8ish, Central. Keeping it at work for the time being as this seems to be where the best lighting is.

Yes, you too can watch me blow my nose, chew on my lip, make outrageous faces at PhotoShop and DreamWeaver, and do other wild and crazy things.

02.08.00 - I came home very tired, I made and ate dinner, I felt better.

Today was a day at work where I worked on one thing all day, and wondered at the end why it took me all day just to get that one thing done. I'm learning to do forms with our company's site and its peculiarities, and it's a challenge. I think part of the problem is that I'm working on something that someone else has built. I don't know it, I don't own it, I can't modify it, and I don't understand its subterranean levels. I have to rely on interpreters and guides, and I feel a little like Dr. Livingston sometimes.

I got through the entire first tape. Yay! I am really out of shape. Boo! I couldn't do a lot of the stretching stuff, which means I'm not as nimble as I thought I was. But that's okay. I'll get better.

I decided to try and do the second tape, and got five minutes into it before I reeled off out of my living room, into Jeff's bedroom, and landed face down on his bed. Still, five minutes is better than none! And it's fun even if the one Egyptian folk dance they teach ("Pretend you're skipping while keeping one finger on your forehead!" Hunh?) looks kind of dorky.

Jeff is turning me into a Sim and marrying me off to Ben Affleck. Whoo hoo! My simulated self is SO happy.

Speaking of which. Ben's new flick Reindeer Games looks kind of interesting -- is he pulling a Cage and trying to cover a whole bunch of acting roles while he's hot? And Matt Damon is doing the voice of the main character in Titan A.E., which is only part of the reason the movie is looking more attractive to me -- the fact that Ben Edlund also co-wrote the script means I will go see it no matter what. Ben Edlund, for those who don't know, is the creator of The Tick comic book and wrote many of the scripts for the cartoon. I love The Tick -- I love it so much I even bought Tick merchandise when it came out, and I still have the big blue Tick head and ninja hedge t-shirt to prove it.

I found a nifty dingbats fonts site. Will be using some of those for OracleWeb's initial design.

Write. Exercise. Laundry. Shower. Sleep.

02.07.00 - Dave obviously felt intimidated by my purchase of a webcam. He decided to put in a message board!

My USB cord for workcam came from EggHead today in a box that was roughly 8x12x6. A cord. A wrapped up piece of cord that's maybe five inches long when compacted. In a box that's bigger than my head. What's up with that?

(I shouldn't gripe. It came FAST and the shipping was free. But still.)

I had the best massage on Saturday. My back feels so much better. I will have to do this more often. I told my masseuse that it had been four years since my last trip to a body worker and she gasped in dismay. I think everyone should be treated to a massage at least once in their life. Strange people with soft hands rubbing you down with warmed oil. Who could ask for anything more?

I have too much design work to do. I wish I had time to do it all -- I really do enjoy it. There's nothing really to update -- no new sites to send you off to, and on top of everything else I spent this entire weekend working on internal Kemet.org stuff as well as their links page. I may be adapting Gossamer Threads's DBManager for the booklist and bookstore. We'll see.

02.04.00 - Attention fiction writers! Rare and cool William Gibson article on Aint-it-Cool-News. Continue through the stuff about his movies and he talks about his writing. Very neat.

I did the bellydancing tape this morning -- well, I did up until the point where my roommate opened the door to come out for breakfast.

02.03.00 -

02.02.00 - Happy Groundhog day, everyone!

Software recommendation day here at Per-Bast.org -- you can skip it if you want to, but I thought I'd pass along some happy experiences I've had lately.

If you have a Cable/DSL/T1/T2/T3 connection and stream MP3s at work -- a la my.mp3.com's CD-streaming service -- you might have run into some problems with Winamp (which takes over the screen when it changes tracks) or RealPlayer (which cuts off the last seconds of some tracks). Try MusicMatch. So far, it's done nothing to annoy me. I am so happy. And it rips CDs into MP3s for you. Oh, happy happy. And it's free. Yay.

Second software recommendation today is KABCam, which I'm using for my webcam at work and home. At work I have to send passive transfers, which the software I got with my webcam from Creative wouldn't handle. KABCam is basically a no-frills FTP that captures an image and sends it up at the time you designate. Brands the image if you want it to, adds a time stamp if you want it to. Great stuff. $16, which was worth it to me (I couldn't find any freeware cam software, unfortunately).

The webcam thing is fun, but you won't see it at work again until I get another USB cord. It's just too much of a pain to plug stuff into my machine at home due to the location of the computer (flush against a wall), so I'm going to buy another cord for it and take the cam back and forth.

The final recommendation is ravensara. I had an allergy attack last night (in fact, you couldn't see it but in that final picture I was dealing with Niagra Falls in my left nostril) and I decided to try some of the essential oils. I put three drops of ravensara on a folded kleenex, laid down in bed, and put the kleenex on my chest so that the fumes went toward my face. My right nostril dried up immediately; my left remained stuffy, but it stopped dripping, and I managed to fall asleep not long after. Yay!

Moooo.

Man, I am so glad I'm not a Swiss Nasal Passage Cleaner model.

Happy Groundhog day, everyone!

Software recommendation day here at Per-Bast.org -- you can skip it if you want to, but I thought I'd pass along some happy experiences I've had lately.

If you have a Cable/DSL/T1/T2/T3 connection and stream MP3s at work -- a la my.mp3.com's CD-streaming service -- you might have run into some problems with Winamp (which takes over the screen when it changes tracks) or RealPlayer (which cuts off the last seconds of some tracks). Try MusicMatch. So far, it's done nothing to annoy me. I am so happy. And it rips CDs into MP3s for you. Oh, happy happy. And it's free. Yay.

Second software recommendation today is KABCam, which I'm using for my webcam at work and home. At work I have to send passive transfers, which the software I got with my webcam from Creative wouldn't handle. KABCam is basically a no-frills FTP that captures an image and sends it up at the time you designate. Brands the image if you want it to, adds a time stamp if you want it to. Great stuff. $16, which was worth it to me (I couldn't find any freeware cam software, unfortunately).

The webcam thing is fun, but you won't see it at work again until I get another USB cord. It's just too much of a pain to plug stuff into my machine at home due to the location of the computer (flush against a wall), so I'm going to buy another cord for it and take the cam back and forth. Yes, by the way, I haven't screwed up -- the repetition of my journal entry is a joke; see the movie it's in reference to if you haven't yet. No really. See it. A friend of mine is in it. :)

The final recommendation is ravensara. I had an allergy attack last night (in fact, you couldn't see it but in that final picture I was dealing with Niagra Falls in my left nostril) and I decided to try some of the essential oils. I put three drops of ravensara on a folded kleenex, laid down in bed, and put the kleenex on my chest so that the fumes went toward my face. My right nostril dried up immediately; my left remained stuffy, but it stopped dripping, and I managed to fall asleep not long after. Yay!

Moooo.

Man, I am so glad I'm not a Swiss Nasal Passage Cleaner model.

Happy Groundhog day, everyone!

02.01.00 - Hey there! Guess who got her webcam/digital camera today?

Yeah, you guessed right. :)

I haven't set it up yet, but I will as soon as I figure out why it doesn't want to FTP into my web directory. Worse comes to worse I can always default to my AOL server space -- not like I'm using it for anything else.

At least, I think I can. AOL is kind of wacky, no da?

Anyway, here's the first six images I took, sans the ones I deleted for being Just Plain Stupid ^TM. Enjoy.

Next up: Bellydance videos!