Testing 1-2-3. Posting with our new JavaBlogger client.

There is no substitute for a Venti Coffee.

Yes we watched the Iron Chef last night. For the record: Bobby Flay is completely without class.

My cousins took the Pepsi Challenge and won.

One of my favorite movies starring one of my favorite actresses was on TV last night. We were imediately sucked into the movie and stayed up too late again.

My Early Morning Jog™ quickly became Stare At Wall And Drink Coffee™ ...

Oxymoron of the day: Windows Security.

I have a new obsession.

A new drug.

A new way to express myself.

Thank you, Hostess, for the wonder, the dream, the truth that is "Twinkie."

How I will consume you without being consumed myself is a mystery.

I am beholden to you, Oh Glorious Twinkie.

I'm not making this up: Replace the launcher program on your Palm organizer with a wacky cartoon pickle.

Right Now™ I am eating cold fried chicken off a piece of tin foil on my desk in my darkened cube in an hermetically sealed building with an ISOProx II access-card-system. Today, dragging, coffee has been my only beverage and this chicken, my only food.

In another reality, I am in a canoe on the Weikiva Springs River with a dog named Boris eating apricots and sweating from the excercise of rowing under the afternoon sun.

While the haircut I got today wasn't the most pleasant experience of my life (my head was batted around like a baseball), the results are astounding. Pictures witheld by request.

In the same way that Hyakugojyuuichi is funny, Hatten is disturbing.

Breed The Rabbits. This is harder than it seems.

Yes, I really do update the DanCam on occasion.

The Monkey Man is terrorizing New Delhi.

Maze Generator. Generate your own, unique maze.

Pinky the cat goes berserk.This 4mb quicktime is well worth the download. Do not worry, he exacts his revenge in the end.

My hair is absolutely going wrong. Pictures witheld by request.

Me in New York.

My wife and I in front of the house I lived in in Pensylvania when I was four.

My wife and I circa 1992 (she was my girlfriend then). Please compare that with the more recent pic of us.

I'm getting a lot of referral hits from this site but I have no idea why.

Happy Mother's Day, Mom!

Welcome back the goatee.

I was thinking of going back to a goatee. You can see me pre-beard here.

If you are pregnant, suffer from anxiety attacks, or are prone to fainting spells, please do not read this sentence.

I'm sitting in the "Business Center" (really just a room with two semi-broken PC's and a copy machine) of the Embassy Suites in Raleigh, NC. I'm typing this on a PC with its screen stuck in monochrome mode. Everything is a shade of green.

We're having a very nice time. Today: exploration.

I was overjoyed as I watched the Survivor finally and witnessed the most Simpson-esque moment I've ever seen on real TV: Watching the host of the show grab the tally-box and dissappear into an arriving hellicopter without revealing the winner.

Without a doubt, the most classic example of real-life Homer Simpsonism I've ever seen.

Today is Tax Freedom Day which means that until today, 100% of the money you've earned so far this year will go to paying taxes. Read that sentence again please.

When I look forward to using my perscription nasal spray as much as drinking that first cup of coffee in the morning, you can be sure that allergy season is well underway.

The new iBook is out. It's a chunkier, uglier, weaker, cheaper version of it's sister product the PowerBook. But what did we expect?

I am Jack's XML fanaticism.

X-Rays were employed to detect the decay in "number four" ... which means that on May 10th I'll need to return to the chair and have the decay removed with a drill and replaced with some kind of white filler. I'm not looking forward to this, but it's my own fault, isn't it? Or can I blame genetics?

I think it's time to change things. I mean change everything. You won't notice, of course. To you, it will seem that everything is the way it always was. Only I will see the difference. There, that's better!

The guy on the other side of my cube wall is either completely silent or abrasively noisy. Days go by and despite the fact that he is there all day long, I hear nothing but his clumsy typing. Then he'll get a phone call and shout for hours in another language (he is from India).

After that, even his typing volume increases. And wouldn't you know it, today I forgot my Glenn Miller CD and must block the sound with the stale mp3 collection I have here at work.

The way I'm feeling today is best summed up with this photograph. It's a combination of "Why are you wasting my time with this?" and "What more do you want from me!" all wrapped up in an package of allergy-related sinus headache.

So I'm learning Java finally. It's really more of a personal goal than something I need to do for a job or client (although it will really help along those lines). When I was taking comp-sci classes in college, Java was just a glimmer in James Gosling's eye, so I missed the boat then.

My career path at the time was taking me further away from programming and closer to the networking and systems side (before I became a Technical Communications major).

The concepts of OOP are so refreshingly different from what I've done for so long. Having spent so much time with ColdFusion and ASP over the last few months, this is like visiting a new country and making the discovery that this is actually where you come from.

 

The five baby birds we rescued are alive. Their parents are feeding and caring for them, despite the significant changes to their nest setup and location. You can see one of the parents approaching the nest in the picture below, carrying food. My wife was able to identify the birds as Downy Woodpeckers (follow the link for images and sounds).

Dodi, the woman who donated the nest-box and helped transport the birds was there again tonight while we were taking pictures. She was the owner of a pug (dog) who's godmother was Sophia Loren. We had a very nice time.

On the way back, I took a nice photo of a Barred Owl.

A small hollow tree harboring five small woodpecker chicks was snapped apart and knocked over, the small birds left helpless on the ground near the bikepath by our apartment.

We hope that the donated birdhouse, lashed to sturdy branches of a larger tree, will help them survive - if their parents, watching from a nearby tree, will resume caring for them again.

Daily, I am amazed at the disrespect for wildlife that our society breeds into its children. Things cannot continue this way.

Yes, things are changing rapidly, constantly, always.

When things change around you, it's best to take note of the change. To observe it, to understand it, to learn with it and to grow whenever possible - but without loosing sight of who and what your truly are, without loosing your essence.

As human beings, we change and adapt, but with deliberate slowness.

Hivelogic, too, is a living entity and must change. But because hivelogic is an insect, the way it changes it different than the way we change. Insects often go through a metamorphasis, dropping the shell of what they were and emerging from the hard, fixed, remnants of their past life anew and evolved.

During this metamorphasis, I will still post here daily, but behind the scenes, things will be moving, growing, and changing, until the new insect is ready to emerge.

Please stay tuned.

A few quick updates in the form of a bulleted list (because I can):

• I've re-added the link to Hyakugojyuuichi in the menu under a section auspiciously called Media. It seems that most of the people coming here are looking for it and now they won't (heaven forbid) have to actually read the contents of this page.
• PeopleCards have arrived, and they seem boring. Despite that fact, I have applied to be on a people card.
• Everyone is making a huge deal out of that stick-figures fighting thing so I know I should blindly follow the pack ought to post it. It's probably worth a look.

So there you go.

I'm cooking up more cool things here, and the "standard weblog" format of this page is on its way out. Yes, this weblog will still exist, but it will be a part of a new whole.

So, you say to yourself, Hivelogic seems nice, but what has it done for me lately?

I'd say you have a point there, and it's about time that you learn.

Stay tuned, cool things (such as revealing the true purpose for this site) lie ahead.

Okay, I'm pretty much done here. This is mostly what I wanted.

If you don't see a lot of changes, that's ok. If you're the type of person who always views source and typically downloads and reads CSS, you may see what I've changed. If not, let me summarize: I'm using a modified holy-grail approach for the layout of this page. Three simple <DIV> tags make all of this possible (although I could have been lazy and used two). There are no tables, no frames, and nothing difficult behind the scenes. A child could do this. Okay, a geeky child.

I went on a great nature hike today - it feels good to get excercise via an entertaining activity as opposed to "going on a jog" which tends to be so deliberate.

So there you go.

Update: Got lazy, now using just two <DIV> tags.

You're watching this page come together piece by piece - like a window into a womb.

The new coffee I have purchased is fruity, zesty, "interesting" ...

I hate it.

At 5:30 am, I don't want interesting yet.

Okay, things are starting to come together. What you're looking at is a work in progress. Let's go over our to-do list:

• dynamic resizing: check
• cleaned-up CSS: check
• cross-browser compliance: check
• slick new background: [BUZZ]
• phat new logo: [BUZZ]
• very cool thing I'm not revealing yet: [BUZZ]

So I'm halfway there. It's going to get worse before it gets better. Don't you hate that?

I'm working on something better than this, but it's not done. I just couldn't spend any more time with the past. It was time to go.

The way I feel now is accelerated. I'm doing a lot of things. I'm very busy, suddenly. This is very good. The staging-server behind me is almost done downloading updates and patches. The new ISP is now handling almost all of the hivelogic.com traffic. The product-set that my business partner and I are developing is simply huge and so very exciting. The book idea is damn cool. The shuttle just took off outside the window.

Have you ever been in a groove and you can feel it, feel things changing like the earth shaking beneath your feet? That's where I'm at now. Man alive, if I can just keep this level going for a while longer!

New server ... testing 1 2 3 ...

I haven't posted as much content recently, and I'm sorry, really. There are several important things going on now, listed below in no particular order, offered not as an excuse but as an explanation:

• I'm writing a book you'd be interested in reading, and I'll eventually expose chapters here, once I find a font I like for the PDF distro.
• I'm working full-time and on-site via contract
• A recruiter named Rick called me today. He wants me to me to work in Ft. Lauderdale. I told him nicely that I wouldn't consider moving back there for any less than a quarter of a million dollars. The phone call was very brief.
• I desperately need to get a haircut.
• My business partner says that we could be the primary provider of interoperable software to the fortune 100 companies, if he could only get his hair cut.
• I'm eating wintergreen Altoids by the tin.
• My cousin busted his face.
• I'm switching ISP's for hivelogic.com and for my commercial website.
• The Korean restaurant still has my credit card.

So there you go.

On a more serious note: I've started a fund (using Amazon's PayPages) to raise money for abandoned, mistreated, or injured animals. I call it the Hivelogic Helping Animals Fund. I'm donating 100% of the money I collect to worthy causes that support this goal.

My first mission is to help the Seminole County Animal Shelter which is running out of money fast. It's not supported by the county or by taxes, and it's in need of cash or it will have to close down.

You can donate as little as $1.00 to the fund, or as much as $50. This is for real, and I can use your help. Thanks!

Follow this link for a story about a cat with a bowel obstruction. Although it seems too silly to be true, take a chance and read to the end. The photograph it ends with is classic. What weird stuff there is out there.

I went over my referrer logs this morning, and I wanted to say thanks to a few of the new people linking here and sending me hits.

As you know, the only thing better than coffee is a website hit. Sometimes, late at night, I sit bolt-upright and completely awake - with the absolute knowledge that you - yes you the one with the shirt - have visited my site. And for that I say, thank you. Please, everyone, be seated.

Note: The following pic is fine for work but not for the squeamish:

Can we stop this cruel game!?! And allow the boy to keep one shred of diginity! I can't stand to see him in all this pain!! You vicious bastards! Let the boy come work for you!! Is it so bad to see somebody happy?!

Big Boy blew into town three years ago, riding the tail of Hurricane Georges. He was hurled off a bait shop roof and dropped onto a 60-foot oak tree in Jones Park. From his perch, the four-year-old tabby has since nurtured his celebrity status.

So ... who the heck are you and how did you get here? Use this lameass poll to tell me.

Hivelogic Poll

How Did You Get Here? You told me about it, Dan. Linked from another site. From a web search. From an article you wrote. Not sure how I got here. I am Dan. Current results

Free Web Polls

I drew a cool picture today. You can actually tell it's Godzilla.

I "scooped" Ev. For the record, I made the the post below about the end of an era before the one Ev made. I'm East Coast, he's West, so I was hours ahead of him. If anything, I owe it to Rob (the freakishly tall guy with the obnoxious URL) who pointed out that Clippy uses the AYBABTU phrase while we were on the phone talking about how I'd "scooped" him on the story about the brain parasite. It was the first time I'd ever heard the term "scooped" and was relieved to discover it wasn't something sexual in nature. Unlike "spooning" someone, "scooping" someone just means you landed the news story first (although this barely qualifies as news).

Okay, it's official - AYBABTU is dead. I submit for your review this unaltered picture from Microsoft's OfficeClippy site, marking the end of an era.

I actually saw this story about a woman who got a worm in her brain from eating a taco this morning on the news, in case you missed it. Here's a quote:

Becerra told ABCNEWS' Good Morning America that she lived with the worm in her brain for three years. She gave it a nickname, Tonya, and she said Tonya gave her life-altering seizures that kept her from living her life.

Weird stuff happens on this little planet.

Blogger is down again. All of my blog-based friends are silent. I'm the only one still talking. Wait! This is just like real-life!

Error 103:java.sql.SQLException: java.sql.SQLException: The log file for database 'blogger' is full. Back up the transaction log for the database to free up some log space. [more info]

Seriously though, everytime this happens I realize how much easier this is when I just type it out and FTP. Tonight I'm just happy to know HTML.

I suspect that it is impossible for my friend Ender to tell a lie (this is just a hunch). But if here ever were to lie, I think he'd do it with grand style. He'd sit opposite you across the marble table in the darkened conference room, look you in the eye, and say something like "I'm sorry, I don't know what you're talking about." He wouldn't blink or move, just sit there and stare at you as if to imply "We both know I'm lying, but watch how easily I dismiss even the most remote sense of guilt about it."

Update: The 19" Sonry Trinitron has arrived.

Today is my wife's birthday. Happy birthday wife!

And as to this ... guilty as charged.

My wife just walked in with a major haircut. It used to be quite long and I do prefer her hair longer, but I have to admit, she looks great!

As a writer, one always hopes to capture the current situation with perfect analogy. I rarely do this very well, so I just love it when a friend does. In an email discussing what we should do about the lameness of our current webhost (for another site), he writes this absolutely hilarious analogy:

I hate to dwell on this, but I just can't get over it. The user operates a "control panel" on a web page, which actually sends a message to a guy named Nick, who carries out the action described in the message. It's just like the Flinstones' world, where you push a button which pokes the ass of a little animal who washes the dishes! Its too funny! I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

That's just classic.

PB over at onfocus is always posting the pictures he takes while on a nature hikes in CA. Well, I can take pics too! I present for your perusal these lovely Florida images. Welcome to Central Florida, kids! Click the thumbnail for the full-size image.

 

The process starts: I have been issued a badge with my picture on it. A cube has been assigned. A PC has been allocated and awaits a network connection. The coffee machine dispenses steaming-hot brown water into my mug. The white-noise speakers in the ceiling work double-time. The uni-ball is the perfect writing implement. And so we begin.

I think this Shockwave racetrack builder has to be the coolest thing ever. Build your racetrack and play against the bird, or your friend. Cool Shockwave toys are great.

There's an article entitled Japan Finds Its Seoul about the Japanese developing a taste for Korean culture (link from Min). I remember my trip there as vividly as if it were yesterday, it is truly an amazing place, filled with tradition. Here's an excerpt from the article:

Korean movies and pop music attract millions of Japanese fans. Korean women are idealized for their beauty, men for their prowess as lovers. Seoul is beating out London and New York as this year’s coolest vacation spot for Japanese tourists.

Frustrated dotcomers gaze longingly at the entrepreneurial atmosphere that has transformed South Korea into the most-wired country in Asia.

It is truly a unique and amazing place - in no small part because of its people and their culture. I think it's because their lifestyle is very pure, the food they eat so fresh, completely well balanced, and their lifestyle so active and clear.

In business pants and dress shoes, one if my wife's uncles was able to lead us on a difficult 2-hour hike up the side of a mountain in Pusan while my wife and I (who jog 4 times a week and thought we were healthy) struggled behind him.

As to the beauty thing - I remember walking through the streets and markets and shopping malls in amazement - an average girl there would stand out in a crowd here with ease. I suppose the men would too. And if they realize it, they don't make a big thing out of it.

Then again I may just be in a good mood - the Bibimbap I had yesterday rocked! More Soju please.

This is neat: http://3462401762/. So many ways to do the same thing.

Finally went ahead and ordered the 19" Sony Trinitron I've been drooling over for a long while.

This is really out there, but hilarious. A sample:

Micro soon recovered, however, when she went down on the DEC and opened her device files to reveal her data set ready. He accessed his fully packed root device and was about to start pushing into her CPU stack, when she attempted an escape sequence.

"No, no!" she cried. "You're not shielded!"

"Reset, baby", he replied. "I've been debugged."

"But I haven't got my current loop enabled, and I can't support child processes", she protested.

"Don't run away", he said. "I'll generate an interrupt."

"No!" she squealed. "That's too error prone and I can't abort because of my design philosophy."

But Micro was locked in by this stage and could not be turned off. Mini stopped his thrashing by introducing a voltage spike into his main supply, whereupon he fell over with a head crash and went to sleep.

It's just funny.

I cannot stop watching it.

I spent the last two days working with a client on-site. It went well: their project is huge, and it looks like I can really help out, so I'll be taking on a full-time contract for a while. It's a great opportunity for me to apply a lot of what I've been working on, and I'm looking forward to it.

Enough about me, I know what you really came here for. You came here because you wanted the strange, bizarre, and uniquely japanese experience that only Hivelogic can bring you (this is totally safe to watch at work, but you'll need flash and a sound card to enjoy it).

A morning without coffee is like a shower without soap: a tease that lets you know you're only half way there - and missing the good part.

The Downward Spiral: Life can be rough for some people. Even for a (somewhat) pretty girl in New York City. In fact, life's roughness can sometimes be documented visually through the mugshots in your criminal arrest record. Click the picture below to see what I'm talking about:

Frances, age 6, has never eaten meat.

And then there's Harley Davidson Barbie.

Seperating content from delivery truly is the future.
I see it so clearly now.
Something big is going to happen. I can feel it.

Desipte the fact that everyone has posted this video on their sites already, I owe it to my readers, many of whom don't have a clue, to re-post it here. I actually saw this a while ago, but in typical fashion, kept it to myself. For the record, Christopher Walken is a god and has always been one of my all-time favorite actors (at his right hand: Kevin Spacey). He's in the new Fatboy Slim video dancing like crazy (his starting career, I've read). Check it out.

I didn't have time for an April Fools joke this year because I was too busy helping a friend with a major hosting crisis. They're a development company and did quite a bit of hosting. Then AT&T decided to shut down Northpoint and they were left with no connectivity. Bad for them, bad for business.

Luckily I had a few machines on remote networks to help with the DNS and the mail queuing. Fun, eh?

Nice productive day, a fitting end to a nice productive weekend. Today a complete system reinstall was in order. Windows ME just tortured me one time too many.

I decided to purchase a new hard drive: I don't like upgrades or reinstalls, and I was intent on preserving my old config and data, just in case. And it seems as if hard drives are a commodity nowadays. "Okay, let's see, I need a quart of milk, a loaf of three-seed bread, I need to get a key made, and maybe a 40 gig hard drive."

So here we are, hard drive purchased and installed, Windows 2k and mandatory applications setup and ready. No problems, not one. I guess there are some benefits to having done this a few hundred times before. Oh well, we're back and that's what counts.

A real-life conversation a friend and I had in AIM this morning. I'm considering teaching some classes for a local training company. Here we go:

hivelogic: do I get a free book for teaching?
Friend: Yes.
hivelogic: is it hardbound?
Friend: No.
hivelogic: I will teach no such class.
Friend: The money might be good.
Friend: Not sure how much that class pays.
hivelogic: good enough to re-bind the book?
Friend: Easily.
hivelogic: can I refer to myself as Dr. Pritchard?
Friend: You will be completely in charge. Call anyone anything you want.
hivelogic: can I dim the lights and have "naptime"
Friend: Yes.

So I think I'll go ahead and teach it.

I'm big in Japan. Really.

There is literally no end to the spam I get. I usually scan, delete, scan, delete. Today I found something entertaining, and worthy of posting here:

Imagine, coming home from a hard days work, the house is quiet, the kids are staying with grandma. Your spouse is working late...

To set the mood, you light up some candles. Turn on some nice background music, Barry White perhaps...fire up the jets on your luxurious whirlpool tub and let the bubbles flow. Get lost in this moment and forget all your troubles.

WHOOPS! I don't have a Whirlpool Tub!

Well we do, and at an AFFORDABLE price, YOU CAN TOO!

How's that for creative spam?

    

Recently I had the opportunity to speak publicly in the aid of a friend. Rob was down and out on his luck, and I felt it only right to lend him a hand.

This Reebok commercial has to be one of my favorites. I wonder how much of the footage is original, and how much manufactured for this outstanding piece of visual noise.

Well here we are, another day without Blogger. Am I affected by this? Not really - you're reading this post, aren't you? But thousands of others will have no voice until the semi-competent Ev gets things running. When you go to blogger.com you see the chronicle of his attempts to make things right. I've pasted it here for your perusal:

8:11 PM: Argh. I just ran a query that took 21 minutes, and then it failed, so I had to change something and try it again.

9:52 PM: Still chugging away! 90% of the database changes have been made. The rest should be fairly quickly. Or maybe not.

10:18 PM: Shit. Something just went horribly wrong.

11:16 PM: It'll be okay. Just don't bother come back here tonight.

3:23 PM: Let's see. We're on the verge of hour...11? "As much as 3-4 hours?" Ha! (I'm getting closer. But am still a ways off. More tea...)

First of all: Tea? Allow me to introduce you to a "college-level" beverage we like to call coffee. Truly the nectar of the gods. Try some. I have a feeling that it may be more effective than the overextracted, watered down, chopped-leaf mixture you tout as a stimulant.

Am I complaining? No. I'm pointing and laughing. But I do feel bad for those without enough HTML to say what's on their mind right now. And we're nearly done with an extensible XML-parsing system that will relieve us of the blogger burder. We'll open it to the world when it's ready.

Oh, and as to Jerri being kicked off? Tears of joy my friends, the bittersweet tears of joy.

The common street thug named Puff Daddy is changing his name to P.Diddy. I'm not kidding. Read:

"And you can call me P. or you can call me Diddy, or you can call me P. Diddy, you know what I am saying?," he said.

Why the name change? Puffy had too much baggage.

"I just need a fresh start," Combs said. "That's all."

This is just absurd.

I'm getting a few hundred page views here a day - and yet none of you post comments. You should, you know. It's easy.

Learn how to dance properly. Even if you're the type not to follow the links I post here, follow this one. It's just too damn funny. (Hat Tip: Ernie - how'd you find this one?)

Godaddy lets you register domains for $8.95. I've been using Domainmonger for a while now with perfect results, but I'd love to save some money and register more useless domains. Anyone have experience with these guys?

I don't usually read Suck.com, but this week they've got a nice gem entitled Ten Reasons Not To Go To The Movies. If you know me, you know I'm all about not going to the movies anymore. Is it just me, or has the Average Ignorance Quotient™ of people dropped by a factor of 10 within the last few years. Example: bringing a 6 month old baby to Hannibal.

I now have a commenting system (again). Click the "Comments" link beneath each post and you'll see the popup window. Enter a comment. It's fun.

If you were wondering, there were several reasons why I hadn't had one for a while:

• blogvoices.com was very cool but way too slow and held up the loading of this page.
• all the good commenting systems were written by geeks. As a rule, all geeks use PHP (I should know, I taught PHP at LinuxExpo 2000) and the hosting service I use does not use PHP.
• I don't have time to find/write one in ASP (yah!) or ColdFusion.

The solution? Blogvoices.com. No, blogvoices.com isn't any faster (in fact, it's slower) but a guy named Rob came up with a good (and incredibly obvious) solution to handle the speed problem. So now I have comments again. Post something already.

Okay, sorry, I had no choice, I couldn't resist.

Okay, I've done it. IE 6 is installed. First thoughts:

• Pages load fast. Much faster. Especially interactive pages. This is good.
• Web and CSS standards seem to be observed - at long last. We may have reached a place where we get standards compliance (read: pages look the way they were intended) without the bulk and instability of Netscape 6.
• The Personal Bar is very cool. I like the idea of having news, weather, and my contact list (and MSN) available to me in the browser. Fewer clicks is a good thing.
• A few cookies seem to be gone, I've found myself having to re-enter username/passwords on a few sites (like blogger.com) but others like amazon still remember me.

So there you go. My initial response: favorable. My initial advice to you: if you care about web standards or fast page loads, take the (minimal) risk.

The IE 6 Public Preview has been released. My mouse is hovering over the Download Now button. I could download it and risk loosing what little stability I have with IE 5.5 ... or I can just wait.

This is just too much.

A friend sent me this in an email this morning:

A crow was sitting on a tree, doing nothing all day. A small rabbit saw the crow and asked him, "Can I sit like you and do nothing all day long?"

The crow answered, "Sure, why not?" So the rabbit sat on the ground below the crow and rested. All of a sudden, a fox appeared, jumped on the rabbit and ate it.

Management Lesson: To be sitting and doing nothing,you must be sitting very, very high up.

How true it is.

By popular demand, I have created a Link To Hivelogic page. You can choose from a few neat-o link buttons and in the next day or so, a nice banner or two. Check it out.

I went ahead and posted my (very) brief essay called Log On Lies.

You know you've "made it" when Ernie of little yellow different links you. Break out the peppermint schnapps Weezie, we're movin' on up!

The best part of the day begins in this fashion.

From the Hamster Ball Stories website.

I have a Dwarf Chinese hamster I named buddy. I got him a ball he can ride in, when we put him in he chases the dog!! It's really funny. Another funny thing is that Buddy eats all of our dogs crackers!

What a find! I'd also like to give a big thanks to Justice for this image, which is real Iraqi postage.

What is a bear market: a great opportinity to invest. Take the long view. Be calm, kids. Really.

There's a ton of flooding going on in Boston right now. The boston.com website tells an interesting story:

And in Weston, a dog being walked around the local reservoir was sucked into a culvert, pushed 200 yards through the tunnel and flushed out the far side into a brook, Weston firefighter Alan Lazzari said.

Okay, off to a breakfast meeting. I wonder if I can expense it?

And another one bites the dust.

Dear Dan,
A little over a week ago, you should have received an email from us notifying you that we are terminating our free Counter service. Please note that this letter is your second notification.

Sad stuff. I never expected things to be free, but I admit that I've gotten used to the phenomenon, and will miss it. I just hope that sitemeter never dies this way.

On another note, I keep going floundering on my feelings about MacOS X. This article and a recent email from a friend want to make me decide once and for all to like it.

I love it when things like this come to pass. From The Onion:

Congress Adds 'All Your Base Are Belong To Us'
Amendment To Bankruptcy Bill

WASHINGTON, DC-- Seeking to increase fiscal accountability among citizens who have no chance to survive make their time, the House of Representatives added an "All Your Base Are Belong To Us" amendment Monday to H.R. 333, the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2001.

"What you say!!!" shouted the bill's sponsor, Rep. George Gekas (R-PA), following the amendment's approval. "This bill will not only make debt-ridden Americans more accountable, but it has the added benefit of taking off every 'zig' for great justice." Opponents of the amendment protested that it would potentially set up U.S. the bomb.

Tip o' the sombrero to Justice for the link.

That Fox special, Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land On The Moon just got me thinking. The conspiracy theorists suggest that the whole thing was a huge hoax. Soundstages in the desert. The real reason for the cloak of secrecy behind Area 51. It's a good argument. If we have made it to the moon, how did we pass through the radiation belt which surrounds the earth?

Radiation scares me. Even just the word. Radiation. Images of Three Mile Island. Chernobyl. Horishima. Nagasaki. It's bad stuff. Radiation. Every time you go outside, look up into the sky, you're exposed. UV radiation. Gamma radiation. Alpha Particles. X-Rays. This stuff is real, it's everywhere, and it's getting worse. What are we supposed to do, live in fear?

I say we need to restore the earth. Make it a better place. Be a better people. Really.

This is totally lame in my opinion.

My mouse if hovering over the uReach Confirm Order button. Should I stay or should I go?

And then there's this. It's worth a look. Really.

You know, I read a lot of blogs, mainly to capitalize on what they're doing and either steal it or point and laugh. Sure, I also like to watch the trends sweep over the Californian blogs so I can prepare for what will arrive here in the backwoods of the East Coast in a few months.

I've learned that there's a new and popular "mystery thing" to blame any and all of your problems on. It's called DNS. Sorry folks, but despite what you're claiming, your troubles are not DNS related, and Network Solutions does not control the specific setting for your mail records (your ISP does, and it's called an MX record).

On a lighter note, I stole this hilarious tax return for the recently laid of dot com employee from Ernie (the grandpappy of cool californian/asian/ahead-of-the-game/just-got-laid-off blogs™).

Busy day yesterday: an interview in the morning, lunch with a friend I haven't seen in eons (that's decades to you and me), phone interviews the rest of the day, projects wrapping up, others starting.

Stuff I need to do today:

1. Endure the tortures of the damned at the grocery store
2. Call my mom, wish her a happy (belated) b-day, hope she got my snail mail card
3. Turn danbenjamin.com into a shameless self promotion/propoganda website
4. More interviews ...
5. Setup a new UNIX web/email server for a friend
6. Find reliable and free hosting for a bunch of my sites (not this one). Any takers?

So at least I'm busy.

"So," people keep saying to me, stopping me on the street, "what is a blog?"

It occurs to me that the things that are free on the Net will either stop being free or go away completely. And if not now, soon. I'm not alone in this thinking, of course. Dan Gillmor, talking about his Yahoo services, says:

So far, I haven't paid a dime for any of this, at least not directly. How long, in an environment where online advertising is dropping even for gold-plated brands like Yahoo's, can this last?

It's not that I particularly want to spend more money. But I recognize that someone else pays for my free lunch -- and when others stop paying, the meals could disappear.

But you know, I don't really see this as a recession. I mean, your grandad always told you there's no such thing as a free lunch, and if it seems to good to be true, it won't last.

I was reading an article at news.com (which uses those insidious mid-screen box advertisements) talking about broadband Internet access being dropped by cost-concious customers as the economy slows. I don't know about you, but I'd much sooner loose my cable, television, and even my land-line before I'd even consider letting go of my broadband access (yes I know this certifies me as a geek).

Last night before I went to bed, I was watching the Neandarthal meets Cro-Magnon Man show on the Discovery Channel. Of course I had bizarre nightmares about it throughout the night. Man, it sucks to be a caveman, even in your dreams.

This is cool: there's a site dedicated to the Mir reentry. It has a reentry countdown timer and even a simulation of what the reentry should look like as the space station explodes and rains its extraterrestrial pathogens down upon the unsuspecting seas of earth.

I bet those of you with android bodies are rejoicing right about now, aren't you.

Today we purchased a special container with a rubber seal to hold 25 lbs of catfood. Also purchased: a special plastic scoop to be used to deliver the catfood from the new container into the special smaller container. The smaller container, also a new purchase, is intended for brief storage of the cat food so that it will be convenient. This system should make the daily dispensing of catfood into the bowl an easier and more direct task.

This is a true story:

I go to the doctor. My appointment, hastily made, is with a doctor I have never heard of or met before. His nameplate is attached haphazardly to the wall by the office door.

The doctor is distracted, makes eye contact without actually looking at your eyes. His movements are cautious, deliberate. I realize he is android.

Antibiotics: perscribed.
Situation: improving rapidly.

My mind is protected.

Haiku:

drinking some coffee
nothing to worry about
late for the airport

flight: completely full
sinus infection brewing
heading to Boston

a realization
a new perspective on life
a cycle, broken

sometimes what you dream
is not what lies in your heart
this is a hard truth

It all started on the plane to Boston a few weeks ago. I got some kind of cold. The cold went away. Last weekend on another plane ride back to Boston, my left maxilliary sinus started to ache, bad. My teeth on that side went completely numb. Then I experienced the worst pain I've ever felt, through my entire left sinus.

The pain continued even as I tried to distract it, and just got worse. Then, as we entered our final approach, the pain began to subside. It was a miracle: with each foot we descended, the pain decreased noticeably. By the time we'd landed, the pain was gone.

Until the return trip.

Since then I've been stuffed up, in a bit of pain, sense of taste fading, self-medicating with over-the-counter remedies, waiting for today's appointment with the Doc. It's a sinus infection, blocked sinus, something like that. I've had it before about 4 years ago.

Wish me luck.

And finally, if you're not easily offended, you should watch this, it's great.

Me giving my lecture at Linux Expo 2000.

"Magical rice has grown where the flies landed on my wound!"
-Bad Art Collection, Jhonen Vasquez

I am very moved by this page. I hope that linking to it here will help this poor, poor man.

Going to meet Dave at the breakfast place. He has probably forgotten.

I have not had coffee yet: Things are moving in slow motion. Some kind of celophane substance is floating in mid-air here. My cat is speaking Portuguese. I hear the sound of a thousand hungry rhinos at my bedroom door. One of them is angry, but which one, which one.

Someone please get me some coffee. Why is it always like this before I have coffee.

The cabbies in Boston seem to fall into one of three categories, without anything more than the most minor variation:

1. Foriegn, listening to AM radio station in their language (regardless of language) at maximum volume while talking on cell phone.
   Misses your stop.
2. Boston native, lived there all his life, tells you how he beat that guy up for talking about his mother that way, the bastid!
3. Boston native, doesn't speak except to complain about how expensive Boston is.

So there you go.

For Great Justice.

Weird: John Ritter exposed a bit too much on Three's Company.

Spam is an interesting phenomenon. I admit, I've used a direct-mail coupon for an oil change before, but in all the time I've been using the Internet (back before anyone had heard of a program called Mosaic or a technology called SLIP) I've never once clicked a link or replied to a message that came in via spam.

It seems like I only get spam in one of two categories - multilevel marketing or sex. I got these two this morning, one from each category:

Hello There,

Please allow me to introduce myself.....my name is Brad.

I am a member of what will surely become known as "THE" Internet Business Opportunity Of The New Millennium.....and, in the spirit of welcoming a new millennium, I felt compelled to share this incredible business opportunity with you!

This one came in from "Misty" (are there really people named Misty?) and fits easily into the second category:

I Miss You SOOOOOOOO Bad!!!!

I am sitting here at work thinking about how good it would feel to have your hands sliding up my skirt.(I don't have any panties on!)

I just remembered. I have my digital camera with me. I'll take some pictures for you to look at. Hehe. I'm so bad today.

And still I don't click the links ...

Why does man kill? He kills for food. And not only food: frequently there must be a beverage.

Torg! Come out of the space ship. Now destroy them!
Crush them Torg. Do as I say!

So I'm looking at Amazon this morning, and came across an a few interesting books. One of them is called Cigarettes: Anatomy of an Industry from Seed to Smoke. I haven't added it to my wishlist, but a quote from the author makes me feel like I should, it sounds interesting:

The cigarette is the only consumer product that, when used as the manufacturer has intended, can be deadly.

I found some pictures on the web of cars that I've owned. Below is a picture of an RX-7 that's virtually identical to the one I had. I loved that car, despite the fact that I spilled brake fluid on the sealt-belt which caused the dye to run. Every time I drove it I got an ugly red stain across my shirt - but I wore it like a badge of honor. I drove an RX-7.

Yes, it's true, I've resurrected Dan's Daily News again - due in no small part to a conversation I had with Ernie last night (via AIM). I realized that I have too much fun with it to not keep going.

Also, as I mentioned, I've completely redone this page using only CSS (aka style sheets). I'm actually putting together a tutorial on how I've done this, because if you're used to traditional development, it takes a bit of "tossing out the old stuff to fit the new" brain-stretching.

In the meantime, I offer to you these bizarre links:

• the prince
• the hamster

And I'd also like to offer you this image. Please save it to your own hard drive and review it daily.

Oh, you know the old saying, if you can't be witty, at least be cheerful.

I'm chatting with Ernie from little yellow different. Check his stuff out. That's what blogging is all about.

We're BACK baby!

Wow, it's done! This page is now created using only CSS. All HTML tables are gone completely. No, it wasn't easy, but now I can focus on content again.

What does this mean to you? It means that if you're using something nice and recent like IE 5.x or Netscape 6.x, you'll see something wonderful - and it will look identical in both browsers ... just the way I want it to look.

Before, if you visited this page using If Netscape 4 you saw something terrible - a mockery of this page's true beauty. Now, you get a message telling you to upgrade your browser and the page you see is completely devoid of layout. You see something out of the early 90's - but if you're still using Netscape 4, you're used to it.

Somehow I knew you wouldn't believe me. Go ahead, view the source. And here are three screenshots of this page looking identical in IE 5 and Netscape 6:

  

So there you go.

Okay, that does it! Call me crazy, but I'm converting this from HTML 4.1 to an entirely webstandards compliant website ... and I'm doing it today.

This is just too funny. I think it means that things are as bad as some people think they are.

Wow this page looks bad in Netscape 4, which doesn't support CSS very well at all. Please don't use it. Use something else instead, like Netscape 6 or IE 5.5. If all of you (yes even you there, the guy drinking the coffee) change to something better, I won't have to do browser detection.

Irate Napster Users Wanted to help fund the Fairtunes.com effort (they need $15,000) to create an OpenNap server beyond the reach of the RIAA. Interesting idea - the server would exist outside of the realm of America's authority. It would probably be illegal for Americans to use their server, but you know we all would.

As much as I hate to admit it, the idea of loosing tons of free music (despite the fact that I only download songs that I already own on CD *wink*) is very depressing.

Mmmmmm, french fries.

Then the fries are frozen until the moment of service, when they are deep-fried again, this time for somewhere around three minutes. Depending on the fast-food chain involved, there are other steps interspersed in this process.

McDonald's fries, for example, are briefly dipped in a sugar solution, which gives them their golden-brown color; Burger King fries are dipped in a starch batter, which is what gives those fries their distinctive hard shell and audible crunch.

So there you go.

Yes, the images at the top of this page rotate now, thanks for asking. And yes, I've been reduced to using ASP because upgrading to ColdFusion would cost too much.

I've been steering completely clear of all TV recently, except of course for Survivor 2 and the Iron Chef (damn you Morimoto, I'll take my revenge). Everything else just kind of fades into the background like a swelling wave of cicadas in summer. Sure, Must See TV still plays in our house, but I don't look forward to it the way I used to. And please, let's not even discuss The X-Files (you gotta check that link).

For The Record, I've never eaten at Beefy King. And now that I'm leaving Orlando, I really think I should. It's my understanding that the Beefy Spuds truly represent the pinnacle or Florida cuisine.

I like funny things. This is funny. And so is this.

Well, the cat is out of the bag and everybody that wasn't yet told has been told, so here we go. Yes, we're moving to Boston!

Okay, now even you know.

The place where I come from is a small town. They think so small, they use small words. But not me - I'm smarter than that. I worked it out. I've been stretching my mouth to let those big words come right out.

I've had enough, I'm getting out. To the city, the big big city. I'll be a big noise with all the big boys. There's so much stuff I will own.

Well, it's March first. There are some very important and interesting things I'd like to tell you, but I can't ... not yet. Sorry, I know you probably hate that, knowing that there's something interesting to be told, and then having the would-be teller pullback that way. Well, I've got my reasons!

On another note, I was just reading an article over on Salon.com about censorware blocking translation sites like babelfish because they can be used to redirect to other (banned) sites indirectly. But you can always do the same thing with akamai like so:

http://a1.g.akamaitech.net/6/6/6/6/www.yahoo.com/

See how that works? Now just swap the URL in question with the www.yahoo.com and you're set.

Sure, everyone likes robots - until they turn on you, try to kill you, sabatoge the mission, turn you into their slave. Now suddenly, robots are back in vogue again. How easily we forget what the so-called "peaceful" robots did to us eons ago before they destroyed the earth the first time, sending us scrambling into caves like savages.

And so, it begins again, so innocently. "Look how cute!" the child says, "This one looks like a baby, that one dances to the music." And now everyone has a robot in their home. Nobody thinks twice.

Well, I'm not fooled, and I have some advice for you: never tell a robot your password or leave it alone with your dog. Trust me on this.

Zero Wing updates:

• The animated .gif that started it all
• The mp3

So there you go. I mean, c'mon, even Dave likes AYBABTU.

Lots of people have been asking me to explain the AYBABTU phenomenon to them. I have located (and mirrored) the definitive FAQ on the issue. It does a great job of explaining what it is, how it started, and even where it's going. And yes, you can buy shirts and mousepads if you want.

I'm still sick but feeling a lot better, thanks. I'm going to attempt to get through a lunch at my favorite restaurant today. Maybe getting out will help.

Another All Your Base picture for your enjoyment:

This All Your Base thing is a lot of fun. A few simple searches turn up some wonderfully funny results. And then there are the picures:

For a bit more information about the All Your Base phenomenon, you can read this Time Magazine article which tries to come to grips with this phenomenon:

Nothing is more adored by cubicle-dwelling Gen-Xers than geek kitsch. And nothing is geekier or kitschier than Japanese video games of the 1980s, back when efficient translation was not considered essential. The dialogue of Zero Wing contains such gems as "Somebody set us up the bomb," "Take off every Zig for great justice" and a chilling warning from a villain known only as Cats: "All your base are belong to us."

As important as something like this is, I've decided to mirror the original movie as well as the phenomenal Flash video.

• The original movie (quicktime)
• The Flash video

Bon apetite!

You're building a webpage that needs to be cross-browser and cross-platform. Even ancient browsers like IE3 on a Mac need to see elegance and perfection - you cannot leave anyone out. I've just located a great Javascript for this, written by the Mozilla people. Clearly the script to use for this.

Well, I think I've settled into the new look for this page. So many changes recently, I just figured I needed something new here to mirror the rest of my life.

If you're wondering what you're doing here, you probably came here via danbenjamin.com which is going away for a while (as a website, anyway). If you went there, you wound up here, so welcome to the latest and greatest.

It starts innocently enough: Someone digs up a silly old PC game called Zero Wing, and somehow the intro gets passed around. It's funny. People like it. It seems harmless ... at first.

Then a few phrases catch on ... All Your Base Are Belong To Us and For Great Justice ... and the next thing you know, it's a meme.

Although I hate to follow a trend so blindly, at this point, not mentioning it here after viewing this wonderful flash movie would be a disservice to its creators.

This is important. This means something.

I forget how badly I hate being sick until I get sick. I've got some strange kind of cold which, combined with my allergies has rendered me miserable. Sorry to those of you who have had to communicate with me over the past few days. I'll be back to my old self again soon ...

Boston and back in a day. Glad to be back and amazed at how easily people can travel great distances in such a chort period of time. For some, going to Boston and back in a day is typical and normal. For me, it was an event!

Being there makes me feel alive again. Like I'm back on the map, locatable, findable, like I'm somewhere that matters. A place where bagels taste right and honking in traffic doesn't get you killed.