jesus, it's been a long day. (see technically, this is still the 22nd for me, so this is Saturday's post).

i finally decided (thursday) to take Sara up on her suggestion, and join her running team. now, mind you, i have no intention of running any races, or doing any of that really crazy stuff. if it's raining or snowing, my ass will be sleeping. but nevertheless, i got up at 8 am, donned my newly purchased running apparel (with that fancy "water-wicking" fabric, bought on sale at Tar-jay), got my ass down to the track at Seneca park, and proceeded to run/walk 3.something miles. ouch. my thighs still hurt.

afterwards, we went out for a celebratory breakfast at Bob Evans–her celebrating that i finally got off my ass and exercised, me celebrating that i did so and didn't keel over from a heart attack. then we went home for about… oh, five seconds… then ran out to meet our realtor to look at a condo and a house we were interested in getting second opinions on. her dad joined us, to help give us advice. turns out, both places were really not great, so we're now moving on to other possibilities. with each additional "unnacceptable," we're moving farther out from the epicenter of our target area, but y'know, there's not much we can do about that without winning the lottery or something. next step, a place sort-of out by bowman field.

i also finally got my papers from the military, and it looks like i'll not be eligible for the VA loan i was kind of holding out a dim flicker of hope for. so, now we gotta find out what exactly we qualify for. then, the "real" search begins.

after that, we chilled at my place for about… 15 minutes, then headed out to a birthday party for her little five-year-old niece. food, family, and er… fun-ish.

the last stop of the night was a birthday gathering for the inimitable puffin, at ZA's. we hung out until the early-to-bedder's (including my lovely fiance) had to beat a retreat, then proceeded to make fun of the ska and rap bands that set up to play a show. we were all getting pretty soused and having a good time, none moreso than neil.

a highlight of the evening was getting to hang out with brian for the first time in god-knows-how-long. but really, the whole evening was great, and i think the puffin could hardly have asked for a better birthday celebration. good food, good drink, good friends, and bad bands.

loverly.

oh, and my thighs are still sore.

i went to check out some pics from a friend's party last weekend, and realized that he'd "revamped" his site blogger-stylee, and had undertaken a very cool writing project. 100/day being the name of the site, i assume (i've been so busy house shopping i haven't had a chance to talk to him about it) that his goal is to write at least 1 100 word post per day. The cool thing is, this being a writing exercise, he's not doing the typical blog dealie, he's actually crafting a story from 1 100 word post per day. i haven't had a chance to read it all (see: aforementioned busyness), but the posts i have read have been quite good, and each one really pushes the story along, in that allotted 100 words.

i like this idea quite a bit, because like him, i'm also an aspiring author, but unlike me, he's actually a productive one. check it out from the beginning.

everybody say happy birthday to the puffin! a big ol' 31, beginning that long slog towards middle-age, right along with me.

Happy Birthday Puffin!

first off, before i get into the boring bipolar related stuff, let me point you in the direction of ghost town studio, the most recent issue of which features an article and images i put together. it's a very interesting little news piece about the Sears/Kmart merger.

in other news, and to the matter at hand, i've just discovered (inadvertently, i might add) that that annoying little firefox bug where scrollable DIV elements, or rather, DIV elements with their overflow properties set to allow scrolling, wouldn't scroll with a mousewheel (or equivalent widget). the scrollbars would work fine, of course, but it would be heresy to knowingly release something that refuses to work with the one really major improvement in HID design to come along in the last 10 years.

anyway, that nasty little bugger is fixed, at least in the latest trunk builds of firefox, and so should be fixed forthwith in the upcoming minor point releases of firefox 1.x of course, if you go to download the stock ff1.0 today, you'll still get the non-scrolly divs, but in a few weeks or a month's time, it'll all be history.

so, i told you that to tell you this: sometime soon, tonight, tomorrow, sometime this weekend, or maybe even next week, i'm going to flip the switch* on those "major improvements" i talked about way back when. so now's definitely the time to go back to that post and knock the crap out of those pages to see if they fall apart too badly. MC Seth-yo did some extensive cross-browser testing, and aside from some completely understandable though thankfully infrequent failings, the designs really held up pretty well. (of course, that may be selective memory talking, and when i go back to look at those screenshots he did, if they're still up, i may be in for a shock or something.) anyway, soon these changes will go live, the world will rejoice, and you, if you're really really annoyed by not being able to scroll with Mr. Mousewheel, should be encouraged to get thyself to mozilla.org's firefox ftp download area and download a copy of the latest trunk build. right now, the latest trunk still reports as being 0.9.1+, so be warned. latest trunk builds can be squirrelly, not as stable as the normal release builds.

also, i'll very very shortly (tonight) be installed an MT plugin to close old comments (we've been getting bombarded by comment spam for a while, but i've been to lazy to install additional protections on top of MT-Blacklist), so if you've been itching to comment on a post from 3 years ago, you better get on it.

**UPDATE**: the switch has officially been flipped, f'real.

Clinton's DLC sent out a message today about a "reform insurgency." and have to say i agree with them on pretty much every point.

and jennifer, in her comments on the post-election post (which i'm still pushing to get people to read and comment on, 'cause talk=good), mentioned two other worthy organizations we should investigate and invest our time & money in.

Democracy for America
Black Box Voting

but my number one recommendation to get yourself politically involved, even in a tertiary disconnected sort of way, is to donate to and join the ACLU today! To become a card-carrying member requires only a $20 donation, but please feel free to donate as much as your little pocketbook can stand.

and now, back to our regularly scheduled silence.

oh yeah, and by the way, i turned 31 on monday, so thanks alot for the birthday present America… was there a gift receipt in the box? it's a lovely president, i'm sure, but i might want to exchange it for something else.

needless to say, i've been more depressed today than any day in the last ten years. i'm flabbergasted, completely dumbfounded. everything i thought i knew leading up to this, has been thrown to the ground and stomped on.

ok, hold on. yes, i expected it to be close. yes, i expected the unwashed masses to vote against equal rights. i even expected, on some level, for Mongiardo to lose, though i was hopeful 'til the end (not that i agree with his social conservatism, but he'd've been better than that old coot who won). i expected these things, but i also expected the throngs of liberal voters we were promised, and i expected the reports of skewed poll numbers leading up to the election to have been more accurate. i expected more people to have woken the fuck up during the last four years and to have seen the horror this administration has wrought. i expected quite a bit, and i was sorely disappointed.

as andrew sullivan pointed out, it wasn't the war on terror that was the pivotal issue of the campaign, it was the fear of homosexuals. it was "moral values" that drove the conservative voters to the polls, and it was precisely those "moral values" that Kerry and the other Democratic candidates hadn't campaigned to win.

and the thing that gets me is, how can you claim superior "moral values" when you're preaching discrimination, hatred, misunderstanding, ignorance, denying families the right to exist, stealing money from our children and grand-children (and now, most likely, our great-grandchildren), sending our youth to die for a war based on lies and faulty information, and the economic subjugation of the "lower" classes by the already wealthy? how are those "moral values?"

as you might've read in my last post, that email discussion with my dad, those aren't anything like the "moral values" i was raised to believe in. i was raised to believe that if you treat others with love and respect, that you'll build a better world. unfortunately the policies of those in power operate on a completely different tack. and even worse, the party in power has managed to befuddle the masses to the point where they actually believe they are supporting their values and ideals.

what we need now is to not give up. don't give ground. i dont' know if we need to go as far as Rich Malley suggests, but we certainly need to keep the screws tightening.

more importantly than that, we need to truly educate ourselves and become the shining font of education and information in order to re-establish our reality-based community (sic)
and spread truth.

as i said to my co-worker earlier today, we certainly can't be expected to be imminently knowledgeable about every issue, but we can certainly pick a topic or two to be "experts" on. find something that interests you, study it, learn it inside & out, and anytime you get an opportunity to talk to someone who's uneducated or misinformed about that subject, don't hesitate to shower them with the facts. don't hedge, don't qualify, don't apologize or state your "opinion"—assault them with facts. know both sides of the issue, know what the results of different policies would be, and make sure they understand when they're supporting the wrong ones.

form a network of knowledgeable friends. find out what your buddies know, where their areas of "expertise" lie. when you get in a conversation with someone who's talking wrongly about something your buddy knows inside & out, give him or her a call, or suggest that the person you're talking to seek that person out. or get their email address, and have your buddy contact them. somehow close the gap of knowledge and education.

it is imminently possible to eradicate the republican standard operating procedures of misinformation and miseducation, it's imminently possible to take back the "high ground" on morality and family values, but we can only do it if we can educate ourselves first, and present our personal knowledge in ways that can't be misconstrued. don't leave room for doubt, don't leave room for interpretation. cite fact.

we can take this country back, but we will have to work for it.

seems like the last month has been a major upheaval, lots of crap going on, but it's mostly just busyness, frustration, and happiness.

the band's been practicing, and though i've totally neglected the site since before the last show, we're really not dead. in fact, we've a show coming up this weekend, which i've only just finished making flyers for, that i hope to get up around town tomorrow before practice. our second show with a drummer, and we've been coming up with ideas of how to change things around to make us happier… more on that later.

sara's and my wedding plans are proceeding apace, and we've actually been talking about the possibility of buying a house or condo prior to the festivities (once the lease is up at the current abode). we're getting ready to send out "save the date" cards, and she's been dress shopping. we finally finished "catholic wedding school" so that's thankfully out of the way, and we didn't even have to endure a great deal of that "natural family planning" crap the popesters like to foist on people. yippee.

add to all that fun the fact that sara's finally started back to school, and our schedules have been in major flux trying to adjust back into that whole routine. we're starting to settle in now, so i'm hoping to start getting some work done again.

which leads me to the next exciting thing (for me, anyway). i finally, after years and years of wishing, finally bought myself a swanky new laptop… an AMD Athlon 64 beast of fury and brilliance, that has caused me no end of heartache the past couple weeks mainly due to my insufferable need to wrest complete control over my machines from the great satan (Windows). So i got the machine and proceeded to poke and prod at it, uninstalling as much as possible and deleting a bunch besides. It was becoming a stripped down monster, but then i made some networking change trying to surreptitiously get a 'net hookup at work, and then i couldn't connect to any of my machines on the home network… so, a couple reinstalls later, a much more cautious takeover attempt, and i've finally got it in order again. i'm still installing some of the day-to-days, but it's mostly up and running. thus, this, my first blog post on the new champion. (named the hard drives after the members of Mudhoney, for those who wonder those things)

also, somewhere in there, i got to hang out with my brother who came up to the fair with the FFA, and i managed to get myself in to see the eye doctor, who told me absolutely nothing helpful. in fact, he said that, not only was there nothing that he could do about the problems that i'd come to see him about, but there is another issue that i wasn't even previously aware of, and which, surprise surprise, he also can't do anything about. some retinal specialist, eh?

and the last bit of life complicating news is that i managed to get started working on a little freelance project for some friends (and with an old Corvus coworker–ben), a thing which is currently moving slowly, but positively. i've been wanting to try to take on some freelance stuff, so this should be a good opportunity to see if i can manage to balance the leisurely bits of my life with actual obligations to others.

so, bunch of stuff going on, a lot of it just tedious, time consuming, and schedule wrecking, but thankfully enough of it happy and fun that i've not minded the other bits too much. so, here's to another 'bout of time wrestling.

hi. uh… my name's matt. you might remember me from such hits as "posts on a semi-regular basis," or "lies, lies, and more lies." needless to say, considering the time of year, quite a bit has happened since my last post. i'm not going to try to go into it all in one post, but here's a summary, in the form of an ordered list:

1. visited nathan in bloomington over a weekend
2. followed, almost as i predicted, the fun the Courier-Journal was having with Ernie Fletcher's stupid transition team choices, and his lies about them not being lined up for jobs. he hadn't even been sworn into office yet, and already his making questionable choices and getting reamed for it by the liberal media.
3. got to meet sara's new niece Emma Rose
4. got a new cell-phone, but had to wait a week for it to work, because of the whole number-portability thing
5. went home for thanksgiving and finally got to meet my new niece Emma Ruth
6. made some modifications to the MP3 of the moment thing… anyone notice? — for a while, i was uploading the mp3 directly from WinAmp to the server, and the magic script gnomes were providing a link to it for you to download. i scrapped that in favor of…
7. more modifications to replace the previous modifications — now, if you see the little "listen (x)" link after the MP3 name, (on my side anyway), you can "tune in" to my bipolar radio stream.
8. even more modifications that basically entailed me taking the javascript that was driving the MP3otM thing, and converting it all to PHP. — oh yeah, and, it doesn't show up at all if it's been more than 30 minutes since we last listened to anything.
9. finally managed to get around to buying christmas presents, spent way too much, but found some cool stuff.

sara's working on her 1st semester finals this week, so i've been trying to keep her sane. i'm just looking forward to the rest of the month, at least until she starts her 2nd semester. it'll be nice to be able to hang out with her without her worrying about a test or having to study 90% of the time.

i'm looking forward to this next week as well. christmas with the fam is always an enjoyable time, even if i'm somewhat of a anti-social hermit while i'm there. i've been getting better over the years, we'll see what happens this time.

btw. winamp5 has been officially released.

well, after almost a month of little-to-no internet connection at the ol' homestead, we've finally switched to evil cable broadband access. seems pretty good so far… and it works, which is a big improvement at this point.

it's been a busy few weeks beside, with me finally taking the time to start entering comics into the database program after over a year of neglecting the task. (which i did pretty-much simply because i had no 'net connection at home, thus no ready distraction).

i also finally managed to get out of the house long enough to go visit my friend nate (a formerly frequent commenter who's been too busy trying to make people call him Doctor to pop in for inane chatter.) it's been a while since i've seen him, and we had a good visit where we did next to nothing but watch TV and video games all weekend, which, in and of itself was pretty much an off-continent vacation for me, as little as i do either of those things.

and the most wonderful event of the past weeks has been the celebration of my one year anniversary with my incredible girlfriend. i've never managed to maintain a relationship for more than 5 or 6 months at the most, so this is a major accomplishment for both of us–her, for putting up with me, and me, for not screwing things up. being with her has made this the best year of my life–one that i want to repeat and improve upon as many times and as much as possible.

in other news, the kentucky gubernatorial race has been really ticking me off. personal attack ads are (unfortunately) not uncommon in political races, but usually they're at least defensible. the Fletcher campaign has been participating in quite a bit of it's own misrepresentation (of the candidate himself, and of his opponent), but the most egregious example has been the ads put out by the Republican Governors Association. most of these ads have been denounced as outright falsehoods by every responsible media outlet in the state, and some of the statements made in them have even been denounced by RGA members themselves. but don't take my word for it, pick up a newspaper, i'm sure you'll find mention. or better yet, a page on Chandler's site collects several quotes from papers around the state. to top it off, the RGA isn't even authorized by the Fletcher campaign to place these ads (though of course, he doesn't ask them to pull them) which are also not paid for by campaign funds. is this legal? unfortunately, yes. what it amounts to is "legally" untraceable donations to a political campaign. what it amounts to is soft-money spending to promote a political candidate. they've taken steps to ensure that the ads are technically legal (they never say "vote for Fletcher" or anything like that). and now, it's prompted similar assistance for the Chandler campaign. but at least we know that Chandler is capable of acting independently from his party and any special interests, which is something Fletcher has shown no ability or desire to do.

Restoring Truth is an interesting (if poorly constructed–hey, i'm a web developer, it's a big deal to me) site run by the Chandler campaign showcasing many of Fletcher's misrepresentations, and outlining how his political speeches don't necessarily reflect his voting record. on one of the pages of this site, it mentions that it was put together for about $50, which is pretty believable when you consider the number of typos and misspellings i caught while going through it. the navigation leaves a little to be desired as well, but the information is valuable and worth the effort to retrieve.

one of the things that Fletcher constantly tries to push on Chandler is an association with the scandal-ridden Patton administration. for anyone who actually believes this line of bullshit, i'd recommend you read (at least) this page outlining Chandler's Ethics Plan. overall, it outlines Chandler's commitment to government ethics, and in several places lists supporting evidence from his years as State Auditor and Attorney General. like specifically, how he has cracked down on members of his own party when they've done wrong.

in the end, you need to get out there and vote for who you most agree with. and keep in mind while reading that a "spin-free" forum doesn't exist. Chandler applies spin, Fletcher most certainly applies spin, i apply spin. try to get the facts, and when you can't build a complete picture, at least be aware that you can't.

i'm going to vote against Fletcher because i don't like his politics, i don't like his ties to the special interests, and i don't like his lying to the public. i'm going to vote for Chandler because i generally (though not totally) agree with his politics, i love his ability to break from strict party loyalties in pursuit of justice, i like his committment to ethics in government (self-policing and watchdogging), and i like how he's tried to run a "clean" campaign (if you disregard that mess during the primaries) promoting his own merits and outlining his opponent's record without resorting to snippy and erroneous personal attacks (as far as i've seen).

but again, to reiterate, read shit for yourselves, get the facts, make your own decision. what's right to me may not be for you, which is what democracy is all about.

i've gotta say that i'm pretty excited right now. my sister just gave birth to her first baby, my first niece. i haven't been able to talk to her about it yet, since she's in France and 6 hours in the future (and thus most likely asleep already after her certainly grueling day), but i'm excited nonetheless.

my first thought was that i have to get to the baby store and buy something for the little one. i plan to be an uncle of the "spoiling rotten" variety for as long as i can manage. only on occasion will i pull out the "mean as a snake and twice as ugly" uncle role, a part so well played by my own uncle "Red"–a man who, even in his (probably) late 50's to early 60's, still makes me fear the "titty twister," toe yank, ear grab, or good old-fashioned chase-down-bear-hug-tickle-of-death (the tickle-of-death usually consisting of very firm and painful pressure to the ribs and/or large chunks of skin… not so much a tickle as an attempt to break something).

now that was a hell of a sentence. sometimes i surprise even myself.

anyway. i'm excited. i'm an uncle. pictures to follow as soon as they're received.
**Update** as you may've noticed, pictures have been added to the picturebar at the right there, and i've even added 4 *more* pictures since adding the first batch. check out the growing devlin family gallery

now, in other news, i did finally get the pictures from gallery for some shots of the beautiful bride and the reception.

yes, they're a bit dark. i, being a person who generally hates flash photography, neglected to bring my flash along, and the lighting just wasn't up to the task. this was also, of course, before getting my swanky new digital camera.

i also threw up a second new gallery from the same roll of film, this one of my and paul's cats Zoe and Harriet.

last but not least, i finally updated lucifigousprick.com with information about the last show, which, while fun, was also quite frustrating in many ways. more about that later, perhaps, or just go to the site and you can probably piece it together.