08.13.99 - My night is colored headache grey, daysleeper....

I wrote a little thing about my life as a California transplant in Missouri. It's about my fondness for marshmallows. Enjoy.

08.12.99 - So no shit, there I was, fighting the forces of evil....

You know, I always wanted to be a Jedi. I still want to be a Jedi. I could run around, chop off arms and other assorted limbs at the drop of the hat, and know that ultimately this was all healthy and okay because the real challenge was finding out who my father/sister/secret Santa really is.

But bummer of bummers, I'm not a Jedi, and the likelihood that I ever will be a Jedi is nonexistant unless someone should slip some LSD into my coke. I am a priest, though, which is a triple word score in my book. And I'm a webdesigner. Bonus!

I'm not sure why I'm mentioning all this -- it's probably fallout from the retreat, where once more my brain was sufficiently pounded into a squishy mass, though not as bad as last year when I was ordained. It was...pleasant. The retreat, that is, not my liquified brain. Seriously, though -- I really enjoyed myself. I miss the people. I remember when I used to go to s-f conventions really missing the folks when I left. This feels a bit like going to a family reunion ("Look, kids, it's your Uncle Bobhotep!") rather than a convention, though. I wish we all lived closer together.

Likely in retaliation for making him listen to Tori, Belligerant Dave turned me on to the new n i n single. It reminds me of an industrial version of Carly Simon's "You're So Vain". Sort of.

This site is going to get updated. Eventually. But between the congregation to which I owe service and my social life and my work life, I've been a bit -- erm -- occupied.

Which reminds me -- what do you think of the obnoxious background? I wanted to scan in actual note paper, but it didn't work out. Maybe it will when I get a life again. Hah hah hah. Hah hah? Hah hah hah!

Happy Kemetic Orthodox New Year everyone!

07.26.99 - I put in Tori Amos, and Dave runs. I never knew Tori Amos had such mystical powers.

Meanwhile, work continues and Steph continues and life continues and I'm getting steadily more tired. Tomorrow is the tunnel at the end of the light, then I get to lie down on my nice mattress and curl up with my sweetheart of a cat and not be me for a while.

I wrote a story-poem that Donna tells me is very sad. I didn't think it was that bad. I liked the mix of symbology and passion, and to be honest I felt better after I wrote it.

To off-set the melancholy, I also wrote about my evil candle in a light-hearted manner. I wish I could find an image of it, but there don't appear to be any on the Internet and I don't have a photo.

I think I'm going to call the new area "Vent" instead of "Delicious Information". Since that's basically what I'm doing. Some people scream and punch walls or laugh or dance around when they need to work out emotions. I write.

Vent (not to be confused with Kvetch!) coming soon to this site!

07.23.99 - None of you are safe now. I buckled in and built a notes page.

I still hate Java but not as much as I did yesterday. Now I just want to get it drummed into my brain so that I don't have to go flipping through an 800-page book every time I have to figure out something (and the ironic bit is that said book's got "in a nutshell" in its title).

My work week ends in five days, when I officially collapse on the floor and start contemplating the joys of not having to resort to caffeine in order to be coherent. Meanwhile, I picked up a fun and easy way to do flipovers, and I bought milk for my cereal and mango milkshakes. Hey, every little accomplishment counts.

I recorded me saying the word "Djehuty" (the Kemetic word for the Greek Thoth) and put it on the site. There's some other interesting stuff in there; have fun. Meanwhile, I must return to plugging away at arrays and stacks and methods and classes.

07.22.99 - God I hate Java.

This is not JavaScript I'm talking about, this is Java. The bastard son of C++ who was supposed to topple daddy's kingdom but has instead decided to make my life decidedly less enjoyable.

I don't know what to say other than I must be a total moron because I'm sitting here trying to push variables onto a stack of other variables and I have no clue how this works or what I'm supposed to do next. I need examples! EXAMPLES!

And I don't have any. Or enough. Or something. All I know is I'm frustrating myself by trying to do this stuff, and the only solution -- short of seppuku -- is to grin, bear it, and try and hack my way through these files. I feel like such a muffinhead right now, while everyone else around me seems to be "getting" what I can't "get".

I know it's going to sink in eventually, but for now I hate -- with a capital "T" -- Java.

That's okay. I'll live. And someday I may even get back to seeing the light of day and my Bast site again. By the time I do, though, I'll probably already have the tattoo. Did I mention I'm getting a tattoo?

07.17.99 - It's Saturday morning and I'm staring down the barrel of two weeks of solid work. This means there really WON'T be any major updates anytime soon, unless I get the desire to not sleep, which is always possible. But for now you can click on the "essays" link and get an idea of what I'm going to do for that page. Delicious Info may get a name change. I thought it was cute at first, now I'm not so sure.

I'd like to add that I found out that ImageStyler has a less simplified version called ImageReady, which I will probably get instead of ImageStyler as I have found it to be a little limited in use. The question now is -- can I get it without having to buy PhotoShop? The answer is -- probably not. Which is unfortunate, because I don't have $700 to blow on one piece of software. On the bright side, JASC has 6.0 of PaintShopPro in open Beta, with a projected cost in the low $100s and it does many of the things PhotoShop does. The buzz from my best friend (and son of Seshat) Dave is that PSP 6.0 is very cool, and fixes a lot of the things that made 5.0 annoying. Now if only I could remap the keys....

07.11.99 - Doom. To the tune of Weird Al's new album and some Joni Mitchell on the side. I have discovered a very cool new utility that has been out for well over a year (doh!) from Adobe called ImageStyler. It's sort of like a layman's PaintShopPro or PhotoShop -- does many of the neat effects without spending twenty hours doing tutorials and it's extremely web friendly. Of course, it can't replace those other two programs, but it does make things a little easier (example: the logo to your left).

07.04.99 - Now that time has blissfully blurred my memory of dealing with JavaScript, I am once more struck with the desire to build. Unfortunately, I'm also struck with the desire to pay my bills, so until I get some time off from work I'm going to have to hold off on the irresistable urge to change just one...more...thing. I did get a brainstorm with the idea for the "per" glyph around the text boxes. Cool, hunh?

06.25.99 - Initial design begun. Don't expect changes for at least a few weeks, though. None of the links work and my cat is starting to think I don't like her anymore. JavaScript, I am convinced, is an agent of the Dark Side of the Force.