wow, is it that time already? time for the weekly post from matt? oh, how far i've fallen.

thankfully though, it's nice to see that my sister, my best friend, my partner ( over there my favorite girl are all better at this than i am. despite my sister's newly overbearing workload (and the fact that she doesn't have access to the net from her home in the suburbs of Paris) she still manages to post on a regular basis. paul, despite his new computer and subsequent addictions to OmniComics and instant messaging, is still managing to post almost every day. brian, despite numerous hours doing those things that brian does, posts practically every day. and sharon (who's name i can now use, with her blessing, since she's decided to forgo the whole anonymity/hiding behind a persona thing), despite her apparently constant need to change her site's design and where she's hosting it, is also posting on a more frequent basis than yours truly. and she's also baking me brownies. did i mention that i'm still completely in love with this girl?

but it seems like, between busy times at work, fights with webcams, system wipes & reinstalls, and extended hold-out-until-my-eyes-dry-up-from-lack-of-sleep battles with House Ordos and House Harkonnen, i should be able to find some time, somewhere, to update this blog. it seems like it, but it's apparently not true. "we try to resist keptin… he put creatures… into our bodies… makes us do tings." but not "tings" like updating a blog.

i'm not exactly sure why that star trek reference is relevant, but i've not made one in years, and somehow felt it would fit. so sue me.

anyway, so i did finally manage to reinstall windows on my machine at home, get it back up and running, and "glory be!" the webcam seems like it may actually work correctly this time. i hope. of course, i forgot to take it to work with me today, so you don't get to see my practically immobile self sitting in my cube for 8 hours today.

and finally, today is the official last day of the redesign bipolar before we do! contest, so if you're working on an entry, you've got until 12:00 AM tonight to get it in. we've got a couple entries so far, and they're both pretty durn good. i can't wait to show 'em to ya. i think we'll have a few bugs to work out before we get the things up (after judging is done), but barring unforeseen circumstances or acts of god, we should at least have screenshots of all the entries up by the "no later than" winner announcement deadline of 9:00 PM on Monday evening.

12:00 AM tonight, Friday night, the 23rd. remember. and if you've got an idea but haven't even started on it yet, no problem, we're accepting any entry, from the most fully developed online bipolar "portal" site to the most hastily-drawn badly-scanned concept sketch you can come up with. so do it. 12:00 AM. that's midnight. Friday. don't forget. 12:00AM. twelve-o'clock. when the big hand and the little hand are both pointing up (for you analog people) and the sky is dark. that's the deadline.

well, this past week has been a big pile of crap. i still haven't managed to get my sleeping schedule into any kind of reasonable order, and my entire life seems to have been suffering. i can barely stay awake at work, my productivity level has dropped considerably, and i've just generally felt horrible the entire time. why do i always do this to myself… i mean, it's not like i've never treated myself this way before. it's cyclical… i'll do well for a while but always eventually end up running myself into the ground.

to top it all off, brian bought Dune 2000 last weekend in hopes that he & paul & i could play some networked games, and the damn thing has sucked out my will to live. for the last four nights, this game has contributed significantly to my loss of sleep. combined with the fact that the nice new web cam i bought has been fucking up since Tuesday night and i've been spending several hours almost every day since trying to get it working again. hopefully i'll be able to spend some time on it tomorrow so that you can all watch the exciting events a casa de bipolar.

speaking self-referentially of bipolar as i was, i should now point out that we now have our first official entry into the redesign bipolar before we do! contest. i've sworn to both paul and brian that our first contestant (who's apparently in the process of moving her site again) will not get preferential treatment from me. but it looks really nice, so anybody else planning to enter better have their shit together.

well, helped out paul a little more today, and it seems like he's well on his way to becoming a computer geek just like brian & i. he's catching on to some of the more esoteric aspects of owning your own computer, like file/directory organization, and desktop maintenance. he's a quick learner, that one.

while paul was playing around some more, checking out the napster thing and installing some more software, i headed out to compusa again today and took back that piece of crap Kensington web cam. (really, though, the Kensington had much better picture quality, it just wanted to crash my machine). the logitech (same exact type brian has) hasn't crashed my machine once, so i guess i'll take the quality hit. so, bipolar cam3000 is now truly bipolar. there are two separate portables right now, but we're working on a dual portable (most likely with a smaller image size) as well… it's not going to be that hard, we're just lazy.

speaking of being lazy. don't forget about our contest!

as in, "i reckon that'll work…"

of course, if you were really observant yesterday, you'd have noticed that i made the last post around 3:30 AM… so, despite the fact that i was almost falling asleep at the wheel on the drive home from work on Friday, i ended up staying up until almost 4 in the morning.

it's been a pleasant day today. got up around 1 or 1:30, went out for lunch at KFC, then ran over to compusa primarily for kicks, but also so i could buy this year's version of TurboTax deluxe, and so Paul could debate buying a new computer. Well, he didn't, but i did manage to get my software, and picked up a new webcam for 30 bucks, to boot. Though Paul didn't get his computer, he did get approved for a credit card thing, so (looking at it one way) he walked out of the store $2400 dollars richer than when he'd walked in.

we came back to the house and i started trying to set up the web cam. it gave me some weird problems trying to install and update the software, but i finally got it working. then, i tried to change a simple little option in the controls of the software, and it locked up. in fact, it pretty much locked up the computer every time i stopped using the camera. so, when i'd exit the program, it'd lock up the computer. i even tried a different webcam program, and it had the same problem. so, needless to say, i'm taking the damn thing back tomorrow and trying a different cam. (if you're interested, the first and only pic that actually made it onto the site is here

while i was busy fighting with the webcam, paul was apparently busy convincing himself to buy the computer he'd looked at. he and brian went back out to compusa, and about an hour and a half later, the puffin came back with a kick ass new Sony VAIO. his new machine kicks brian's and my machine's combined ass. after setting it up, we debated for an hour or so (as we played around with it) about whether or not we wanted to strip that Windows ME crap off there and put on some Win2k. We finally decided that we couldn't stand the thought of a machine actually running ME on a regular basis, so we ended up reformatting the hard drive. and since then (almost 6 in the evening) brian and paul and i have been diligently working to bring the new beast to full working order. i've had fun, but now, it's time for bed.

oh, and don't forget the contest.

argh. thank god the weekend's finally here. i've been so damned tired all day today. i could barely keep my eyes open at work, and i think i was grumpy and uncooperative occasionally. sleeping 4 – 6 hours a night just doesn't cut it, and i seem to do the same damn thing every week–get home from work, and have the best intentions of getting into bed and asleep at a decent time. but, like i said in my last post, i have been making great strides with personal projects, so i guess it's not as bad as it could be. though really, i'd be much more accepting of my inability to get to sleep at a decent hour if a female was involved…

which, at least on thursday night, was almost true. i got a call from mi amor and we had a wonderful long conversation. it was so nice to hear her voice again… she and i have been away from each other for many many years, after i went off to college, then she went to college in a different state, and now… she's moved all the way over to the (as brian likes to say) "left coast." needless to say, it's a rare treat for me to actually get to talk to her. and the sound of her voice and her laughter still resonates within and lifts my spirits.

my sister has been so busy with her new duties at work that we've hardly had a chance to IM each other over the past couple weeks, and she's apparently had very little time to update multiliterate as well. i'd kind of gotten used to being able to talk to my sister across the ocean, and to read about her interesting experiences in the city of love, i really miss it now. well, here's hoping that she hits her stride with the new job and manages to wrangle some time to update.

in contest news, paul has answered the "redesign bipolar before we do" challenge. he hasn't told us his ideas yet, but i'm sure they're going to be good. but don't let that sway you from entering… paul may be one of my bestest friends in the world, but that don't mean his redesign's going to get any slack from me come judgement day. and we're even talking about the possibility of setting up multiple versions of bipolar… if we get enough good designs, we may eventually set it up so you can choose your favorite. rest assured, we will declare a winner even if we have to drag a wino in off the streets to break a tie.
so… enter the contest damn you.

oh, and i've added a "judging" section and a parenthetical statement to "rule" #1 on the contest page. if you're planning to enter, or are already working on a design, you might want to check the additions… they aren't changes, just clarifications.

at least i can say this for myself… at least i'm consistently inconsistent.

so, it seems like quite a bit has happened since the last time i posted, but then, nothing's really changed. like brian mentioned, i finally managed to finish watching that dune mini-series that i started watching, what… 3 months ago? watched the second episode on Monday, and the third yesterday (which kind of forced brian into watching it, since he was off work yesterday). overall, i thought the series was really well done. there were some instances of really shitty acting, but the primary characters were all done really well. i thought the second episode was the best of the three, by far. if you've not watched it, be sure to do so if the sci-fi channel reruns it.

i also finally managed to finish cataloguing my comics collection, so that's one huge project pretty-much out of the way. the next step is to find coverscans for all the issues i have, so if anyone knows of any out-of-the-way comics coverscans caches on this 'ol net, .

i cleaned my room, did my laundry, balanced my checkbook, caught up on some overdue email… altogether, it's been a pretty productive week for me. and i'm feeling pretty good about things right now.

and today, apparently, i've been productive and prolific, as not only am i writing this post (finally) i also wrote two rather lengthy posts to a discussion thread on an Amiga site that i frequent (which is something i never do). here's hoping today's trend calms down and spreads out to at least one post here per day… well, it's a thought anyway.

oh, and i know brian's kind of mentioned this, but just in case you hadn't noticed, bipolar has already moved to it's new home. note the swanky new address in the address bar up top…