hump day again, folks, and today it really is comics day. (last week's was postponed 24 hours on account of easter).

for some reason, it seems like the weeks have just been flying by lately… there's no break, no pause. perhaps it's got something to do with the fact that i keep myself busy doing meaningless stuff on the computer or hanging out with friends. i really need to get out of the house more. at the very least, i'm hoping to start taking my laptop with its freshly charged batteries out on the back deck and doing some writing when i get home from work in the evenings.

BTW, thank the great oogly-moogly for bartelby.com.

so, this weekend was pretty fun, except for the fact that the instigator of the supposedly two-day affair bailed out by calling the Wicked Witch of the West (his bitch girlfriend) around midnight or so and leaving with her. i swear if she didn't owe him almost 2 grand, i'd kick her ass to the curb myself and lock him in his room without his phone for a week.

but, nevertheless, while people where there, the party was pretty damned fun, me happily prepping and grilling the food, and later climbing up on top of the garage with everyone else, me with a half-glass of whiskey in my hand that brian insisted i drink (since he was kind enough to bring the bottle with him when he came), and all of us hooting and hollering at what was at best an average fireworks display.

having finished yet another accelerated development project here at work, i've had a little time today to get back to reading some of my favorite blogs. puffin-a-go-go's a given since we spend and obscene amount of time together (y'know, being buddies and all), and there's also sharon (who hasn't updated in a couple days… much like yours truly), and my favorite sister whose most recent post has a long and funny story tacked onto the end. sara (my sister) has been trying really hard to keep a daily routine going with her blog, despite being horribly overworked. but, y'know, as i like to explain it, she may be horribly overworked, but she's horribly overworked in FRANCE. and finally, a post from a few days ago on murmur where tim serves up what is a really great metaphor in general, and really great for the way i myself have been feeling for a while now… except i'm still stuck in the "lost my keys" stage.

oh, and on Sunday, i went through the whole ordeal of reinstalling windows yet again, in an attempt to stabilize my system, which really can never work since i'm running on windows. perhaps i should just say screw it and learn me some linux.

well, i'm back now from my short weekend visiting my folks and my little bro, and i'd have to say i had an enjoyable time. seems like a whole lot happened in a 30+ hour period. saturday afternoon i spent pretty much all my money getting my oil and other various fluids replenished, so i ended up having to ask the 'rents for money (for the first time in a thankfully longish time) to get me through until payday. if my roommates would stop giving all their money to their stupid evil girlfriends, or spending it on guitars, i could probably actually do more than just pay bills with my money. (to set the record straight, brian has actually been the most consistent and responsive rent/bill payer for a while now, so the guitar comment is more of a friendly jab than an actual complaint).
i seem to inevitably end up in the "godfather" role, where i'm the one handling all the bills and my roommates end up owing me large sums of money. i don't anticipate having these problems when we move in with paul, even though the roommate i'm taking with me is the one who owes the most money. but, i've pretty much decided that if he doesn't catch up soon, i'm going to have to open up the proverbial can labeled "whup-ass"–either on him, or on that evil bitch of a girlfriend (who owes him probably a couple thousand dollars and keeps asking for more despite the fact that they both make about the same amount of money and she's living with her parents).

anyway, enough about that. my mom cooked her usual excruciatingly good meals while i was home, and i, of course, brought little samples back with me to help me survive 'til payday. today it's leftover country ham… mmm good.

my brother's been getting more and more interested in computers in the past year or so, so quite a bit of our conversations this weekend centered around that (he wants to buy a new computer, and m&p have agreed to front the money if he stops acting like a holy terror for a while.) so we discussed his options, and we've pretty much decided we'll build him a system like the one i'm planning to build, and probably come in under the parent's budget constraints. he wanted to buy an iMac, but it was about $500 outside of his range, so we're talking a PC. it's cheaper, and there's tons of free software (hehe). i also helped him out a little this weekend by acting as his computer merit badge counselor for Boy Scouts. basically i just asked him a bunch of questions, he gave me a bunch of answers, did a few little things on the computer, and everybody was happy. and, this may sound like neandarthalic chest-thumping, but i surprised myself with some of the stuff that i knew about computers and computer history.

sunday was fun, we were in the kitchen standing in the patio door with an air rifle (BB gun) trying to see who could shoot the ears of corn in the squirrel feeder (no animals were harmed in the making of this blog). then we ended up talking about my prowess as an archer from my own Boy Scout days (me insisting i was good, my dad insisting i was… well, maybe not that good). dad ended up busting out my old little kid bow and an arrow (probably the only one left intact from my days of shooting trees, stumps, the ground, and the garage). after my bro hung a soda can from a tree limb, i tried to shoot it with the bow and arrow. took me four tries, but i nailed it. after that, of course, for like an hour the three of us were standing out on the patio trying to shoot the can with dad's different bows. i think i was the only one who got a good solid hit on it several times, dad and javan each either hit around it, nicked it, or "bumped" it with the shaft of the arrow. so, i guess i was pretty proud of myself for proving to my dad that, hey, i really WAS good at it.

so, all in all it was a good weekend, a little of mom's home cooking, some family bonding time, and some good driving (amazingly enough, there wasn't a single spot of construction on the entire Western Kentucky (aka. William H. Natcher) parkway).

but i'm back at work now, bored as hell. half our servers are down because the AC went out in the server farm area and they overheated. hehe. ain't technology great.

oh, and be sure to check out my sister's posts about underwear (Mon., Apr. 9) and French radio and music (Thurs., Apr. 12). very entertaining stuff.

and also, sharon–continuing her sometimes theme of posting "forwarded emails" with commentary– has a nice post (Fri., Apr. 13) with some guidelines for interacting with and/or understanding the opposite sex.

well, it seems our server is having some troubles lately. the main reason i decided to switch x13 to a commercial server space was so we could get more consistent service and uptime. so much for that. luckily, the web server itself has been operational more often than the rest of the service we're paying for… the FTP has been up and down for the past several days. we're investigating our options.

This past weekend was fairly enjoyable. friday night paul and brian took it upon themselves to "medicate" me in hopes of curing me of the cold i've been fighting the past week. the night before, i went to the "healthy" burrito place (Qdoba, on bardstown road… and well, it's healthier than La Bamba's) where i proceeded to completely soak each bite of the burrito in lovely lovely tabasco in hopes that it would help "burn" the infection right out of me. as you can imagine, by the end of the meal, i was sweating like a pig, with a big grin on my face. but back to Friday… now, for nearly five years, i've had this aversion to whiskey as a result of a bad night with a bottle. couldn't even stomach the smell of the stuff. i've been trying, over the course of the past year or two, to regain my ability to stomach it, since i like(d) it so much more than beer. as far as i'm concerned, beer is piss water–any kind of beer. and, you have to drink so much of it to get any effect, you end up feeling bloated and uncomfortable by the end of the night, which kind of defeats the purpose of getting drunk.

anyway, brian and paul got this idea that they could give me whiskey to fight my cold. they lined up three shots for me. a regular, a kind of regular +, and a double. they expected me to drink this. number 1 went down fine (followed quickly by some mountain dew), number two went down not quite so fine. i stared at number three for a while contemplating the wisdom in shooting versus sipping. i went out on the back porch for a smoke. i decided sipping was about the only thing i could handle, as my gag reflex was fully prepped and ready to go were i to even attempt to shoot the last one. funny thing is, i barely got a buzz. normally, three shots of whiskey would have made me loopy… i'm afraid this may NOT be a good thing.

i won't go into more details of the night (paul & brian were both much worse off than i was, to say the least) but all in all it was a fun night of walking, completely f'ed up, up and down bardstown road (and spending half the time on back roads for reasons of paranoia).

yesterday was a nice day at work. not once, but twice i got an eye-contact/smile/wave/"bye" combo from the cute girl at work. i've been digging on her for months now, but i can't seem to get the nerve up to ask her out. i'm too much of a shy guy, and don't know what to say in those situations. i just know, as soon as i walk up to her, i'm going to feel like a complete moron. a maroon. ah, well. i'll figure it out eventually. oh, and one of the guys at work is threatening to reveal my secret, or force me into a situation. his threat earlier today was to page her over the intercom and use MY number. the fact that i'm a foot taller and 100 pounds heavier than him doesn't seem to dissuade his eagerness for subterfuge.

finally, for those of you who enjoyed the pics of capeboy, here's a couple more now that amiga.org is back up.

unfortunately, i still haven't been able to find a good pic of the cute amiga girl, but if i do, i'll let ya know!

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.

the good: tomorrow is the day the puffin and i go up to st. louis for my much anticipated Amiga convention… amazingly enough, the first i'll ever have attended. i've always wanted to go to the st. louis con, but never seemed to be able to afford it. well, now i'm in a little better place financially, though i still seem to have a non-paying roommate on my hands. so anyway, big announcements are expected, but mainly i'm going up there to have a little fun and maybe get some new computer equipment to finally fix up that Amiga 1200 i was bragging about a few months ago. i'm not sure if we'll have net access up in the hotel up there, but if we do, we'll try to keep you posted on our blood/alcohol level.

oh, and as paul mentioned in his blog, he's burned an MP3 cd for our trip, so i've basically got a 10 hour puffin mixed tape to look forward to hearing. i've never known him to build a bad mix tape.

the bad: well, it's official. she's moved in. we got home from dinner tonight and lo and behold there's a moving van out front of the house of the formerly ugly orange doors. we had the pleasure of seeing "idiot jerk" walk out of the house to the moving van… er, well, brian and paul had that pleasure. i was trying to just kind of ignore the whole thing, lest i do something rash. brian however, took great pleasure in glaring menacingly at "idiot jerk" until we got the front door open. i'm pretty certain that without any of us doing anything outright, the guy will certainly know that he's not welcome in my neighborhood.

but, as i said, i'm trying not to think about it, and though i did feel that little pang of… i don't know… maybe jealousy… or something, and though i do know that at some point, i am most certainly going to freak out about this, i'm doing fine right now.

brian asked me the other day if i was "freaking out" because of her return. my response was that, no, i'm not freaking out right now, but i will most likely be freaking out in a big way if/when she moves in next door and i'm forced to see her (or even just her car) on a regular basis. i already find myself glancing up to the porch of that house, or glancing toward the windows to see if there're any lights on inside. thankfully, i've noticed no moving van outside, and haven't seen her car yet. plus, she hasn't called me back, so the possibility exists that she may not have actually signed the lease, and may not be moving in. we can only hope.

this past weekend was actually a fun one for me. a friend from my old job (hawley-cooke, whose web site i created and maintained for almost a year before they kicked me off the project and let it go to complete and utter shit by hiring someone who has no clue what he's doing) came by on Saturday evening, i guess around 6pm to drag me out up and down bardstown road, and into various drinking establishments. we walked up and back (probably 2 miles or so), then stopped in at a little bar near my house and had appetizers and microbrewed beer (probably one too many). then we set out again, walked even farther down bardstown road ('til it turned into baxter ave.) then turned around and walked part of the way back until we got to another bar, where we went in to warm up and… drink more beer.

at this point, she was pretty drunk, and i wasn't exactly straight sober either. we walked back to the house (mind you, this is like 6 hours later) hoping to find paul and brian still awake so that we could all make the traditional saturday drunkfest trip to the twig. fortunately for us, we showed up just as paul was getting ready to go home, and he happily obliged us by driving (even though he complained that we only wanted him for his soberness and ability to drive). needless to say, we were all having a grand time (despite the fact that ms. nicole seemed about to die from hypothermia), and the louisville paul brown (that's the food-stuff, not the person) never seemed so satisfying.

after the twig, we decided to extend the evening at paul's house (since nicole still had to sober up enough to drive home) and paul stopped for some spirits in hopes of joining us in our altered state. we all gathered in the upstairs living room and talked and carried on for a while with nicole falling asleep after about an hour. paul & i continued our normal drunken philosophizing and meandering conversation until she finally woke up and paul decided it was time to send us on our way.

all in all, it was a very nice, enjoyable evening spent with friends.

then sunday was laundry day. mmm, clean clothes.

where to begin?

the last week at work has been rather… interesting, to say the least. the roosters are crowing while the little chicks and hens are just kind of nervously clucking and hopping about. top that off with my aforementioned bout with near-deathly illness (that being a rather nasty head-cold), by the time friday rolled around, i was ready to just kind of kick back and enjoy the weekend. i got an invitation from some co-workers to go out and wind down with a little drinkage after the workday, and, for once, had actually agreed (if somewhat reluctantly) to go. so, 10 minutes before i'm getting ready to head out, brian finally pops up on AIM, and i tried to find out if he and paul had any immediate plans for the evening of which i should be made aware. in other words, if they were actually planning on going out and doing something fun, i was going to ditch my work buddies and tag along with my homies. if, on the other hand, it was friday business-as-usual–no defined plans, except just taking the night as it comes–i'd go ahead and get my drink on with the corvus crowd.

so, here i am, wanting only one thing — a definitive answer as to whether or not he and paul had anything planned. what i got was some half-baked crap about "having something good planned" for me specifically, and that i would "definitely like it." i'm not sure if they could tell by my snappy responses, but i was actually getting very frustrated at them for being so damned evasive. i got this vague idea in the back of my head that maybe this had something to do with sharon, as i vaguely recalled some conversation we'd had almost a month ago about the possibility of her coming through town in the near future. and also, i figured that both brian and paul know how much she means to me, and that she'd pretty much be the only person for whom i'd consider changing my plans. their mutual assertions that it would be "worth it," and paul's "trust me," pretty much cinched it for me. (of course, i think that until they read this, they're still under the impression that i was completely hoodwinked.)

and sure enough, moments after i got home (having noticed that the front door was suspiciously unlocked), who should come up the stairs but sharon herself, in all her radiant beauty. i don't know how many of you have ever actually had a "frown turned upside down" in the space of two heartbeats, but i can authoritatively say that it does happen. we spent the next few hours just hanging out and talking, having a good time. i finally got to meet the boyfriend that i've heard so much about, and having met him and gotten to know him a little, i have to grudgingly give him my approval. well, you know, not that that really matters. but it's like i told him as they were leaving… "you better take good care of her, 'cause i don't want to have to hurt you."

sharon and i shared a couple whiskey shots, chased with some really flat coke (which, i realized, is one way that i can actually do whiskey shots, lord help us) and chatted briefly down in the kitchen, before rejoining the rest of the boys upstairs. all in all, it was a low-key visit, but a very welcomed one. i'm always happy to talk to sharon, and obviously so much happier to actually get to see and spend time with her. but i'm greedy, i wish she (yes, and grant as well) could have stayed a little longer, hung out, maybe had a big crazy night drinking, bowling, and carrying on. maybe we'll be able to do that when i go visit them in sunny cali. we'll go show those little hollywood bums how to really party.

well, this has been a rather pleasant weekend (plus Monday). sometime friday my federal tax return finally posted to my account (thank god for e-file and direct deposit!) probably making this occasion the one time in my life where i've actually been pleased with our "government." of course, i still think income taxes should be done away with in favor of a federal sales tax, but that's another topic for some other forum.

my plans all along (since figuring out that i would be coming out of the tax season much better off than paul, who unfortunately had to pay taxes this year) have been to utilize this bounty to considerably improve my financial state by paying off all the various and sundry little petty debts i'd gotten myself into over the course of the past two years. little things like unpaid doctor bills, vet bills, cd club subscriptions, etc. all told, it amounted to a little less than $700 of debt, so i've not been doing as badly as some, but i'd never been able to catch up long enough to actually take care of these things. well, now that i've had this groovy tech job for almost a year, and have gotten rid of one deadbeat roommate and replaced him with two lesser deadbeat roommates (sorry, brian, couldn't resist… brian's actually the only one of the two new ones to be fully paid up), i've actually been able to place myself on a little firmer financial footing. all our bills are being paid on time, and once the newest roommate pays up, i'll be doing much better. SO, i'm out of debt. which, as brian would say, is what we'd call a "good thing."

i'm on a bit of a high right now, having just phoned the last collections agency that i was concerned about and finding out that… somehow, outside the bounds of my memory, my account with them had been paid in full back in 1997. i don't recollect it, but i sure don't mind finding it out four years later!

top that off with the fact that i'm planning to head out to a local computer retailer today to pick up a secondhand Dell branded sony trinitron monitor for the low low price of $168.00, and coupled with the fact that i've just purchased a 256MB stick of RAM for this fabled machine i'm planning to build in the next couple months, and you can understand my elation. i may, finally, have a system i can actually use to do the types of stuff i like to do. a machine that won't complain when i run more than three programs at the same time. a machine with which i might just be able to take over the world. oh, wait, i'm still going to be running windows, aren't i?

anyway, enough gloating. suffice to say, right now, this matt is a happy camper.

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.

welcome one and all to the official unveiling of bipolar 2.0. what you see before you is the glorious work of your friendly neighborhood (if your neighborhood happens to be hong kong) jessie hung (whose own site seems to be in a state of flux right now…), and also with some judicious scripting magic performed by yours truly.

a thousand thank-you's to jessie for this winning entry, and also to our other contestants (notably the greatest girl in the world), whose entries you'll also be seeing in the hopefully near future. as soon as jessie picks her favorite show from transmission3000, we'll be sending out her prize.

my task the past few days has been teaching myself rudimentary php scripting, and modularizing bipolar to the point where we'll soon be able to offer the option of selecting your favorite look. so, for those staunch goth/metal kids out there who loved the black & skulls theme of the old bipolar, you'll be able to choose that as your standard interface. notice, of course, that i'm saying "soon" and not really giving a specific date. in case you hadn't noticed by now, i'm a bit of a lazy bastard, and since i'm the one that has to do all this work, i'd rather not put myself under too much pressure.

also, due to this choose your favorite bipolar idea we're working on, if anyone still wants to get in on the bipolar redesign act, just whip something up and send it our way. we'd love to eventually have several hundred different designs available, if you guys think you're good enough.

anyway, enjoy the new design, and tell us what you think, or write jessie personally and tell her exactly how much ass her design kicks.

… glory be! the bipolar boy's actually got a little follow-through! …