[(- tonight, matt's bipolar update will be executed by the illustrious puffin, read well kids, this shit should be good. m@ -)]

apparently matty has been too occupied with the goddamn spider-man game to deem a bipolar update necessary. don't fret boys and girls, your uncle puffin is here to provide a little insight to the coffeemonk world.

brian transmission3000 madness as of late. it would seem peoples is going nuts over the hey mercedes show. from what i can tell the best is yet to come (mofo better get the three second kiss show up and running soon). he's got the june of 44 show from last year waiting in the wings as well as blonde redhead (and if you haven't pick up their latest album, do so. it's one of my top three of the year).

i am currently recovering from a ultimate nullifier jam session from earlier this evening. full of blisters and fatigued arms. i'm the only one with enough rhythm to play drums, so i pretty much get drafted into that position. bri and matty wailed on axes. much fun was had. however, i'm a guitarist, and my strengths as a musician are more suited there. my other musical project has been developing nicely. it's just my friend neil and i, but we are very happy with the songs we have written.

our friend bob had a letter to the editor of the LEO published this past wednesday. it was good to get a glimpse of the old bob (long story made short: drugs should be an accessory, not a lifestyle). a nice spit in the face of candied know-nothing, dare i say, journalism. well, the ending of the letter was very current bob (all mystic and hippified).

for a good laugh, check out radiskull and devildoll at www.shockwave.com. quite hilarious and oh so edgy. now, if we could only get some new sifl-n-olly stuff i'd be a very happy puffin.

more beer calls. until next time.

puffin

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!

I started out this past week doing pretty well, updated three times in two days… kinda fell off after that.

to follow up on my last post, the next day I was once again working a little late, and once again ran into the janitor in the bathroom before going home. this time he was rather more friendly, he actually spoke to me, and he seemed to be in better spirits. I wanted to tell him that I thought he was doing a great job, but I couldn't figure out how to say it. I guess even despite my last post, you just can't really tell these people that you appreciate them without sounding like a bastard. probably the best way to respect them and show your appreciation, I guess, is to just do your part to not make their job more difficult than it needs to be. clean up after yourself, don't smear shit on the walls, don't piss in the floor, don't pump the soap dispenser out all over the counter, don't put an entire roll of toilet paper IN the toilet.

I can't help but think that his improved attitude and friendliness towards me was some form of positive karmic feedback as a result of my contemplation of him, his position, and my presenting my ideas and trying to engender respect for him and his fellow "menial laborers" among the readers of this weblog.

in other news, the site we're working on at my new job has slipped by yet another "deadline," but we'll hopefully have it up this week (people are thinking it might go live tomorrow, but that hope is probably unfounded). If it goes live, I'll link it in here, so you guys can go check out the demos for a laugh or two.

since I hardly ever include a link, I'll just post this one here for your surfing pleasure. my apologies if I've posted it before.

stats pages can be quite interesting, as we've found out here at bipolar. our number one search string for the month, the one phrase that has lead more people to the site than any other is… "250lb women." go figure. i'm going to have to start working in slutty xxx phrases more often in my hot steamy discourses. funny thing is, I don't remember ever having written anything about 250lb women, nor do I remember my perverted friend brian (next door porn site just for you. have fun!

in other news, I had an interesting trip to Bloomington this past weekend, perhaps I'll tell you about it later.

a follow-up to yesterday's "vanity insanity"

damned interesting. after waking up last night and checking my e-mail, I was very surprised to see, in the latest glassdog MEMO, a brief entry discussing the same subject as my own post earlier that morning.
    the entry was about egosurf.com, a site that makes vain pursuits such as mine much easier, and which even includes an option for e-mail updates from a continuous search. ** update 12/17/2004** egosurf.com is no more. just use google. for the "e-mail update" feature, just use google alerts.

what a relief, now I don't have to waste two hours wading through links that end up not having anything to do with me.

I am a really really sad individual. sad in a "what a pathetic loser" sort of way, rather than a "woe is me" kind of way.

I have just spent an inordinate amount of time on raging.com–a new search engine by the AltaVista crew, which really isn't any different or better than all the other search engines out there except that it doesn't have a bunch of extraneous "My" kinda crap and ad banners all over the place on it–and if you've never done this, i really don't recommend it. the ultimate pursuit of vanity.

i plugged my own name into the search engine. to my partial surprise, it found over 1,000 pages that "matched" my query. i immediately tried to get more specific by using "+" signs, trying, somewhat unsuccessfully to get it to do a boolean-and type search. my lack of success, I suppose, bespeaks my ignorance and the fact that I've only briefly read those search "help pages." who the fuck knows how those damn search engines work… i plug in rabbits and I get hot steamy asian anal rampage.

anyway, there actually were a few pages with my name on them, but strangely enough, none of them had anything to do with any aspect of my life over the past three or four years. and, of course, none of my own pages come up… weird. 'course I suppose it would help if I submitted the damn things to the search engines.

i did find a few genealogy pages, with listings of people who might have been my ancestors, and obituary pages, which was a little off-putting and I didn't really delve into out of some paranoid fear of actually seeing my own name.

thats it. i'm out.

just a quick update concerning my recent happy news.

Jim from Corvus Digital called me yesterday, finally, and at a time when I was awake and home to receive his call. after brief chit-chat, he informed me that he was calling to "offer me a job." glory be and hallelujiah, after weeks of nailbiting and despair at my inability to succeed in the world, I have been redeemed! I am finally a "professional" web developer (well, will be in two weeks anyway), I have landed my first salaried position, and my first official position making more than $9.00/hr. maybe now I'll be able to start paying my bills on time.

in other news, i've pretty much decided to go in a completely different direction with my coffeemonk.com redesign idea. the two people who've responded with useful and detailed constructive criticism don't quite agree on the things I've attempted thus far, and I've come to realize that the old adage clearly is true–"you can't please all of the people all of the time"–and really, you can't please some of the people most of the time. (–this last is not an attack on my friends, whose time, help, and honesty I truly do appreciate–)

also, I've taken some time surfing around in that randomly connected chain that is the web, and have been inspired by some of the really great graphics design people out there, whom I could never hope to equal. my jumping off point for this little sight-seeing trip was saturn.org which is a great example of the type of web design I enjoy, and wish I could create.

I'll be doing more surfing for inspiration, and perhaps will have some new inspiration in the next few weeks (I already have half an idea tickling at the back of my head, but haven't quite got the whole picture yet).

ok, after my little mental drainage the other day, I'm feeling at least a tiny bit better. perhaps it has something to do with the fact that brian and paul have threatened to beat me until either all my depression is swallowed by the intense pain of breathing, or I'm simply overtaken by the euphoric feelings of near-death.

I don't enjoy my job. I perform my job, but I gain absolutely no satisfaction whatsoever from it. Is this the way life is supposed to be? my parents always told me that when I was older I'd be able to find a job that suited my interests, a job that would help me feel fulfilled. have I done something wrong? am I not trying hard enough? can I not spout enough bullshit to weasel my way into a job I'd love to do, but perhaps don't quite have the required level of experience? what is the deal with the only positions that are open are either a) total shit that no one wants or b) nice, but require exhorbitant amounts of hands-on or book knowledge. how do these hiring managers think people get experience for these jobs in the first place? someone, somewhere has to hire someone just a little less than experienced, or am I just missing out on something?

as a side note, and kind of just so I can work in an interesting/funny link I've found, let me just say this.

I like Kegels.

I really like Kegels.

The KegelMaster is possibly the greatest invention of the modern age.

quick update tonight, as if anyone cares. I haven't heard back yet from Corvus, but that's no big surprise since Jim said he'd contact me "by the end of the week." I'm planning to call him in the morning just to "check in."

haven't done much browsing lately, mainly because of the weekend's activities and the new job/new schedule I'm still adjusting to.

for your surfing pleasure, here's a link to another of my daily visits Mudhoney from Seattle, WA. This is one of the best news sites related to my all-time favorite band, Mudhoney. For those of you who aren't familiar, may I suggest picking up their best of compilation "March to Fuzz," a killer two-CD set encompasing their 11+ year career. You won't be dissapointed.

once again, it's been a few days since I've updated. seems like it's going to be an ongoing struggle with me to come up with stuff to talk about on a daily basis.

brian pointed out to me that there are some .wav files on the Chester fan site I linked to in my last post. You have to go to the "And Now" sound files section.
**update 12/17/2004** again, that site is now down, check out the official site.

friday was an intriguing day. brian and I have been discussing the high speed internet options for a while now, and have finally decided we're going to go with something when he moves in. well, on friday, I received a call from Bell South "whoring out" (as brian said) their FastAccess (DSL) service. Since we'd already discussed going with Bell South for the "good deal" they were proposing, I went ahead and signed up. Little did I know that only that day, brian had been in discussions with our system person about setting up all kinds of whacked shit like firewalls and a "complete" home network outfit so we can all use the same high speed modem. I signed up for the service, thinking we'd just install the modem on brian's new system and network it from there. No Dice.
      if only art could imitate life. when brian showed up at the house and we discussed the situation, he called up Bell South and tried to talk them into giving us the special setup we'd need, at the price they'd offered. what followed was almost an hour long crusade against the corporate establishment that would have made Tyler Durden proud. he talked to one rep. who obviously had no clue what she was talking about, then called back and spoke to Roland.
      to Roland's credit, he worked very hard to get us the setup we needed. it finally came down to the point where we'd worked out our hardware needs, but they were going to have to charge us another $150 for "professional installation" on a product that only required plugging two wires into two boxes–one to the modem and one to the computer. obviously, since we have a bit of technical savvy, we weren't really into paying someone that much money to do something we could do in about two minutes.
      brian very calmly explained that fact to Roland, and logically requested that he waive the "installation" fee. Roland had a bit of a problem with that, so our faithful corporate dominatrix proceeded up the ladder to Roland's boss.
      once Roland's boss was on the phone, brian was quick to praise Roland for at least attempting to assist us, and at least partially knowing what he was talking about. then the war truly started.
      flabbergasted that our needs couldn't be met, the supervisor continued to try to talk brian into accepting their offer (incluing the "install" fee). brian, of course, would have none of it, and made several counter offers, none of which could be done. in the end, brian finally ended with the comment that if Bell South couldn't meet our needs, we could just as easily go to one of several other ISPs offering high-speed access and get a competitve rate. whether this is really true or not, we don't know, but he had a great time flogging the corporate "whores" in a very professional and courteous manner. it was a joy just to watch and listen.

right now, I'm at work, going through the first day of a week long training session, where corporate types are trying to pound their propaganda into my head. I survived the Army, this is a walk in the park.