how depressing is it to be sitting at work for 8 hours with absolutely nothing to do? let me tell ya, it's pretty damned depressing. the only positive side of it is that i've been able to finally chat with nathan since his girlfriend convinced him to get on ICQ long enough for me to convince him to download a jabber client. now that Nathan's on jabber, we've also convinced paul to try it out so we can all do a group chat thing and seriously defeat any productive potential we have while at work.

not to mention the fact that, in the process of having an absolutely great time last night, i stayed up way too late, got a little tipsy, and today am just completely bushed. apparently, we're about to get our first home-cooked family meal in the new place, as paul's just informed me that brax will be fixing up some spaghetti. and damn, it's comics day! i've been frickin craving my traditional wednesday Denny's Big Texas BBQ burger all damn day.

anyway, went to see the Reverend for the sixth time last night, and as usual, they were awesome. i'd have to say it wasn't their best show, but since their shows have progressively gotten better and better each time, i'd have to put it just below the last time i saw them. which is probably considerably better than most of the bands out there. another positive thing was the opening bands, who pretty much rocked the house. Death on Wednesday opened, followed by the Gotohells. It was pretty funny, just before the Gotohells came out and started playing, we were standing around talking about old Van Halen and other "hard rock" that we grew up with and really like (in retrospect, at least for me). Three chords into the Gotohells' set, i was surprised by how "classic rock" they sounded. I was thinking, listening to their set, that they sounded a bit like a good sized helping of Van Halen and other classic rock, mixed in with a little pinch of Mudhoney and grunge sound thrown in. We were all pretty impressed with the opening acts, which is very rare for us. In fact, let me see if i can remember opening acts i've actually liked out of all the concerts i've been to… the Cows, Engine, Deke Dikerson (much better live than the album that i was able to find)… and… uh… that's about it. I'm sure brax and paul could remind me of some other openers that i liked, but hey, if i can't remember them, they weren't that impressive were they?

then the Reverend came on stage and just rocked straight outta the box from beginning to end. they played quite a few songs off the first two albums, some stuff off the middle few and last albums, and some new (unrecorded) stuff as well. i think the highlight of the evening for me was when they played "eat steak" which is one of my all time favorite songs. after the Reverend made a comment to some person in the pit complaining they couldn't hear the lyrics, saying "next time, maybe i'll be more willing to work with you if you bring up a shot of jagermeister." brax then got the idea that we should take him a shot right then & there (this is a normal RHH show occurrence) and he dragged paul along to take it up to the stage. i hung in the back and just enjoyed the show. a few songs before their first break, paul came back and grabbed me and dragged me up into the pit with them. (thus setting up the next highlight of the night) at the end of the encore the Reverend came out to the edge of the stage and shook hands with people, me include. so, i got to shake hands with one of my idols.

i finally bought a new t-shirt, and met up with brax and paul who were hanging out and talking with Jimbo (the stand-up bass player). so i actually got to meet Jimbo as well, exchanged a few words with him, bordering on a conversation. Finally, as we were still waiting for the Reverend to come back out to mingle, i got to meet Scott as well. We had a great conversation about Louisville, Lexington, girls, the karaoke bar he'd gotten kicked out of the night before. and in the end, he offered to put us on the guest list for the Lexington show. damn. it's so tempting to go, but as tired as i am right now, i'd never make it staying up until three again and facing an hour plus drive home.

so, aside from Brax nearly getting in a fight with some chick because he was drunkenly dancing to the music, and aside from the fact that idiot-jerk (yes, the same idiot-jerk from previously told stories relating to an ex-girlfriend) was standing in front of me through almost the entire Horton Heat set, i had a wonderful time last night. i did spend considerable time trying to figure out if it really was idiot-jerk standing in front of me, and then, once i had figured it out, i spent considerably more time debating the value of jumping over the rail that was in front of me and pounding his face into the floor. thankfully, propriety and the desire for personal safety (who knows how many of his friends were there) won out and i left him alone. this was also part of the reason i hung back when paul and brax moved up to the pit. i wanted idiot-jerk where i could see him… just in case. but, once paul came back to drag me up there, i enjoyed the act of walking directly in front of idiot-jerk (even saying "excuse me.") on my way down to the pit. overall, i'd say the move to the pit was worth it.

i had a great night last night, and again, if you ever have the opportunity to see the Reverend Horton Heat, don't miss out. if i hear of any of you knowingly skipping out on a Horton Heat show without a very good reason, i'll personally find you and kick your ass… or at least give you a stern talking to.

3 for 3 baby, yeah.

alright, now that the internet's working, our servers are up, and i've gotten some free time, i'll finally write the post-Amiga-convention update you've all been waiting for.

of course, paul pretty much covered the majority of it already, but i suppose i have a few things to add.

the drive up was thankfully uneventful, though we did have to stop a few times for strong coffee. as we came into St. Louis, we started following the directions we'd gotten from mapquest.com. We pulled off I-270, and saw in front and off to the right of our exit ramp, the hotel that i was pretty sure was the one in which we'd be staying. despite the hotel's location, the driving directions said to turn left. we followed it left, right, up a big hill, and to the right again, where we came to the literal end-of-the-line. a big metal guard-rail was spanning the abrupt end of the road we were on, looking out over I-270. we cracked a few jokes about mapquest trying to heighten the sense of adventure for travelers, and i suggested that it was possible, if he built up enough speed, we might be able to make it over 6 lanes of divided expressway and the banks on either side to land in the parking lot that sittingly off in the hazy distance. he decided not to put alice (his car) up to that test, as she'd just had a hard day of driving and needed a rest.

at the convention, we found the typical assortment of rather large, mustache wearing, long stringy-haired people… the types of people you'd expect to find at a star trek convention. in fact, these people and their fanaticism are partly why i've never bothered to go to a meeting of the local Amiga user group. i had my fill of those types during my tenure as president of the star trek fan club in Murray. (ooh, there's a good bit of history for ya.) now, looking around on the web after the convention, i'd managed to locate a few images of the people there who were "out-there" enough for paul & i to actually give them names. unfortunately, amiga.org has been overwhelmed by visitors searching for show news and have been shut down by their hosting company for exceeding their transfer limits. after more searching, i was finally able to find a pic or two of capeboy. as soon as amiga.org comes back, i'll introduce you to funnypants guy and amiga grrl, and maybe the amiga girl we actually thought was fairly attractive, but who, of course, neither one of us talked to.

also, as paul stated, we spent the majority of saturday drinking the free beer, walking around the exhibit hall floor making fun of 85% of the people there. oh, and of course, there were the several hours i spent drunkenly struggling over whether or not to purchase that almost $300 worth of equipment, or to save my money and be able to eat this week. well, i ended up stalling long enough to not have to make that decision, so i purchased almost $100 worth of software as a consolation — not like i could go to an Amiga convention and come back empty handed!

so, day one saw paul & i drunk for the majority of the day, and one the free beer ran out, we went to the bar next door to "top off."

day two was a little more laid back, considering paul's difficulty recovering from the previous day's sleep-deprived drunkenness, and the return of his cold. we decided (for paul's sake) not to stay for the entire day of the conference, partly because he wasn't feeling well, partly because he wanted to get home to watch x-files, and partly because we'd already seen everything in the exhibit hall at least 20 times the day before. i went to a couple more seminars, and stalled my purchase until around 2:30 or 3, then we took off for home.

ok, well, this has gone on too long. suffice it to say, i had an enjoyable weekend, and i really appreciate puffin offering his services as chauffer and body-guard for the trip.

and finally, in reference to the whole spider-girl thing, marvel announced today that spider-girl will NOT be canceled. so, if you guys actually wrote in at my prompting, i'd just like to say thanks, you've helped save one of my favorite books.

here's what i was going to post last night, before that whole Mir/Taco Bell discovery.

update: go here, to voice your support (in an official Marvel forum, no less) for one of my favorite titles. (of course, i've just realized that you have to be registered for marvel's forums to post a reply, so perhaps one of the other options below would be better.)

Marvel Comics is getting ready to cancel one of my favorite titles–Spider-Girl. having heard that the EIC Joe Quesada is trying to figure out a way to save the book from the accountant's axes, it would really mean a lot to me if all of you could spare two minutes to respond to his post on marvel's boards. just write something simple, like "please don't cancel this awesome book!" or something along those lines.

you can also go to fandom.com's spider-man domain and take the little poll about halfway down the left-side column. be sure to choose "that sucks! it was a good title." (or, one of the other positive responses.) it would mean a great deal to me, and you can take pride in the knowledge that you have helped to make this crazy guy happy.

and again, you can go here for an online poll that will be submitted to marvel at the end of the month.

c'mon, do it for me. please?

i started writing this big post yesterday about the (seeming) futility of life, but ended up having to scrap it because people here at work kept bringing me stuff to do. funny how i can go most of the day without anything, then from 3:30 – 5:30 stuff always finds its way to me. i'd much rather just HAVE something to do all day, than sit around half the day only to have to rush to fix or finish a couple little piddling jobs at the end.

it's not all that bad though, 'cause today, for the first time in several weeks, i've actually managed to make it through all the blogs in my "blogs" bookmark folder.

well, i hope everyone has been enjoying the new bipolar redesign. and i've gotten word from a couple people already who are interested in contributing to the choose your own bipolar collection. i'm really looking forward to getting that together… if only so i can eventually see which design turns out to be the favorite… i'll admit it, i've become a stats junky. the only problem is, i think this whole idea has postponed my original idea of just putting up screenshots of the winner and runner-up designs so you guys could look at 'em. maybe i'll get a screenshot of sharon's design up… or maybe i'll just devote the time to putting her into the rotation and figuring out the whole browser-cookies-with-php thing.

and my sister is apparently going to be spending the weekend in Florence, Italy, hopefully she'll come back with some fun stories for us.

oh, and brad, if you've still not managed to read the new green arrow, do so. It's pretty kick ass (as if we expected anything different from kevin smith after his astounding run on daredevil).

anyway, that's what i'm going to call a post for the day, unless something really exciting happens and i just have to write about it (don't hold your breath.) oh, and maybe i'll get back to that futility post in the future, if i feel there's really a point to it all.

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…

alright, i've been reading erasing.org for several months now, on a mostly daily basis, and i just now clicked the Sadness link. such a simple concept, replacing words in corporate slogans with the word sadness. simple, profound (in spots), and so much the story of my life (at times).

so, i got an email from since he's been reading, he's not really finding anything out about my life, but about the other useless crap i've felt compelled to fill these pages with for the past few posts.

i figured he would have liked the "holy grail" post, but then he's heard about her enough times, it's old news to him. i figured he would have liked my "year in review" post since i provided a brief roadmap to some of the more important points of my life that have occurred since the inception of this blog.

but he's right. with the exception of the "holy grail" post, everything else has pretty much just been filler.

so, i've been busy at work, at least until a week ago, when the frantic activity suddenly came to a grinding halt due to the fact that no one could seem to get me the remaining three pieces of content that i needed to complete the new corvus site (on which, btw, are welcome).

in my home life, i've been busy cataloging my comics, now that brian and i are helping beta-test OmniComics and catching up on email. i've now got five emails in my inbox at home, compared to the 25 that were sitting in there for a few weeks. i've been trying to refine my focus a little, concentrate on certain projects, see them through to completion… y'know, the way it should be done. like the puffin i tend to get 15 or 20 projects going at the same time, and just never finish them. when i think about all the things i've got "waiting in the wings" i just feel kind of hopeless and lost. so, it's been good to finish the email project, to be near completion on the comics project, (and yes, i'm still working on the bipolar redesign project, which is… uhm… kinda close).

overall, i can't say i'm really happy, but i'm not really depressed either. i'm just kind of… here. and i don't know, maybe that's even worse than the other two.

ah, don't worry 'bout li'l ol' me though, i'll be fine.

what a couple of weeks. it seems like i've been too busy to do many of the things that i began enjoying on a daily basis. like blogging, for example… and not just writing this one, but reading the many blogs i enjoy reading from day to day. i'm hoping once this big project i'm working on at work is finished, i'll have a little extra time every day to get back to my blogs.

it's nice to see nanette again, though I really haven't had a great deal of time to actually hang out with her & brian since she got here. thursday, the delayed but much longed for comic day saw me at work for an extra two hours (or more) so pretty much as soon as i got home brian & Paul were bitching profusely about my tardiness and their overwhelming hunger. we introduced nanette to the (usually) wednesday tradition of comics & denny's, where we were informed a major travesty had occurred and they were out–completely out–of ranch dressing. no ranch dressing?!? how can we possibly eat a meal a denny's with no ranch dressing!?
…
well, angrily, of course.

since my Christmas present for Paul had arrived, we popped it in immediately on our return home and proceeded to laugh hysterically for over an hour.

Next came Friday, which found me, once again, staying late at work, except that this time i was there an extra 5 (that's five, f-i-v-e, 5) hours, bringing my total for the day up to a whopping 13!. i stopped off to grab beer, cigarettes, and food on the way home (since brian had informed me that both paul & guy were present, that they were going out to eat, and would be imbibing a bit… well, except for guy, who doesn't drink. then once home i proceeded to drink a little and whup both paul & brian's asses at a healthy game of timsplitters deathmatch. i'm sure this was all very amusing for nanette, who sat reading on the couch, and who'd occasionally attempt to assuage our egos by politely laughing when we silly boys tried to be funny.

then, after the drinking and the killing, we decided to do the eating. we took nanette to the infamous, legendary Twig & Leaf for a bite of the ol' Louisville Paul (oh, i mean hot) Brown. we settled comfortably into our booth and reviewed the menu. even i had planned to try the hot brown, since i've either never had one, or can't remember having had one. much to our surprise, when nanette tried to order, we were informed that they were out of the alfredo sauce that is used to make the hot brown. apparently there has been some conspiracy regarding nanette's visit to Louisville. our two traditional restaurants were both understocked on crucial elements needed to make the dining experience a complete and successful one. fortunately, they hadn't run out of their regular cheese sauce or twig taters (ie. tater tots). we finished our "meals" and headed back home clutching our protesting stomachs.

today has been an interesting exercise in "speed moving." one roommate, the unfortunately hippie-fied and constantly delinquent bob, is being ejected from this house. to our dismay, even having been given two months notice, (and a few random reminders) he had made no effort to pack or begin moving any of his (enormous amount of) stuff. so, Brax came over, he & I went to hawley-cooke to grab an assload of boxes, and we began packing bob's things for him. by the end of the evening Paul had also arrived, and between the three of us, we managed to compress what traditionally has been a two or three day affair into the miniscule space of 5 hours. bob's things are almost completely removed from his former room, and waiting for him in the basement. i can't wait to see the look on his face when he actually returns home to an almost empty room. hehe.

now it's time for bed. my body is tired, my brain is tired, and i have to rest up for what will surely be a record breaking drinking bout tomorrow night. (for me anyway).

well, thought I'd do a quick little update before I leave work. one thing of note is that I've added permalinks (at the end of each post, use the "PL" links to link to individual posts) not that I can really imagine that anyone will ever need or want to do this. I'll have to add it to brian's blog tonight, if he wants it.

yesterday was comics & denny's day, and after doing that thing, Paul and I went over to his house to watch Star Trek: Voyager (which I'm completely out of the loop on, not having seen an episode in something like two years now.) It was a fun little episode, lots of Seven of Nine, which always makes Voyager worth watching.

I've had jack to do today, sat around in my new cube most of the day just surfing the web, found some weird stuff, but nothing really cool enough to write about. checked out some other blogs, saturn.org, powazek.com, and some others I didn't pay as much attention to. I pretty much clicked almost every link on saturn.org, there's some interesting stuff there.

I had an idea that I was going to finish what I started talking about in yesterday's post, but I don't think I can.

I keep wondering why I'm doing this. right now I guess I'm doubting my reasons for keeping this up, and wondering what the ultimate purpose is. I'd like to think that I do it to give myself a forum, somewhere to work out the things in my head, since I can't seem to find time (or enough inspiration) to do my other creative writing stuff anymore. i'd like to think I do it to communicate things to those people I should talk to everyday but can't, i'd like to think i'm doing it for something other than my ego, vanity, and desire for recognition.

hopefully I'll feel better about this whole thing tomorrow.

my soul has been sucked out by COMICS! my god, what's happening to me!? I've been endeavoring to catalog my entire comics collection (a measly two & 1/2 long boxes) and haven't done ONE OTHER THING on my computer at home. hell, I barely check e-mail anymore. one thing's for sure, I'm getting to know my collection really well, and learning a bit about comics in the process–writers, pencillers, inkers, valuations, and the fact that story titles get recycled every year or so.

if I wasn't before, I suppose I'm now officially a comics geek.

ack.

not much else has been going on, though I did see yet another totally captivating chick at Deddens last Friday. Tall, thin, really really cute, and she could play pool like crazy. she held the table through at least 6 or 7 contenders (all guys) and totally impressed me and the puffin, with more than just looks. skill, looks, personality… it was quite a package. she'll forever be known as "the pool goddess."

did we talk to her?

what do you think?

of course not.

another day in the exciting world of matt.

wanna know what the hell's taken me so long to update? (probably not, but since you're already here… )

reason #1 – New Spider-Man game for PlayStation

this is probably the best Spider-Man game I've ever seen. there are some quirky things with it, but it's generally just great! I've been vegged out for several days in my off time playing this excellent game. (brian pointed out a little while back that I hadn't yet fessed up to being a comic geek. well, I think this post will remedy that.)

reason #2 – OmniCom 3.0

brian found this earlier last week, and almost immediately after he'd shown it to me, I was online attempting to download it. four days later, I paid the shareware fee (& I never pay shareware fees).
    this little beaut is a comic book database program that's pretty much the closest thing we've found to exactly what we'd been looking for. it's a great program right now, and from what the programmer's told me, the next release should be even better. the installation routine in the last release (3.0) is a little wonky–you pretty much have to install it where it wants to go (ie. you can't choose a directory)–but if you just let it do it's thing you won't regret it (and the author says he'll do his best to fix the install problems ASAP, so you may not even have to worry about it). If you're looking for a program to catalogue and track your comic collection, this is it. don't look any farther. the author seems like a great guy, the registration (a measly $15) was promptly delivered, and he's been very open to some of the ideas we've presented to him for the next version of the program.

now, go get 'em!