November 2005 Archives

You know what's better? This is from a news story, available here. I'll increase sexual performance the old fashioned Western way, thank you: practice.

Saturnday I went on a walk through Golden Gate Park alone. I parked just west of 19th on Martin Luther King, walked west to the coast, north to Cliff House and the beach below it, then to the northwest corner of the park and back through the middle to my car.

Thanks to the beauty of Google Maps Pedometer I have estimated this walk at roughly 8.5 miles. My feet are killing me, but it was so worth it. No, I don't have pictures. While part of me wishes I did, it's something that I just don't do. There are times and places for pictures. A solo walk through the park is not one of them. Instead, go on your own. Make your own adventure. Mine will make more sense to you if you do.

Here's something you all may not know about me: I dream about zombies. A lot. Like, think about how many times you've dreamt of zombies and at least double it. That's how often I dream about zombies. I don't often remember my dreams, but when I do there's a 93.7% chance (no, really, I've done the calculations) it's a zombie dream.

Something else you may not know about me: I love dreaming about zombies. It's like a video game where I make the rules. I've fought off hoardes of zombies with Cary Elwes (who is a pretty nice guy), who was trying to save his wife, only to have him fall to the zombie hoarde. I have staved off onslaughts using an uzi that inconveniently ran out of ammo only then moving to engaged them in melee combat using a katana. Katanas are effective at decapitating zombies. Zombie dreams are my favorite.

So, then, imagne my surprise last night (or this morning, dreams expand time) when what started off as a normal dream did not end as such. I was hanging out with friends in a city park or something. Before long, I got an ominous feeling. Like something was watching us and was more than likely going to try to kill us. This is normally where I become somewhat lucid and can then take control of the dream, directing it where I want to (usually towards zombie devastation). This time, however, I did not become lucid and the dream happily traipsed down the road to Nightmaresville.

I won't tell you who was in it. I won't tell you how they died. I won't tell you what killed them or how I managed to escape it. I won't tell you any of the gory (and they were gory) details. I'll simply leave you with a question. And, remember, just because it was a dream doesn't mean it didn't feel real.

You ever know what it's like to wake up and feel like it's your fault someone's dead?

So, surely, anyone worth their salt looking for information on AJAX has either already seen this email somewhere on the internet or has posted it on their own blog. That said, I post a link to it here for my own personal library moreso than for you, dear reader, since I doubt most of you care about web development at all, much less AJAX.

Recently, I have decided that I need to be getting back into PHP (given I work in a Perl-centric universe). Also, I have decided I know decidedly little about AJAX (buzzword!) and wanted to know more. So, the melding of these two things seemed like a fantastic idea. On that note I present to you an email from Rasmus Lerdorf, PHP Guru, that I think explains AJAX as effectively as anyone could.

I hope at least one of you who knew nothing of AJAX (or remote scripting or whatever you want to call it) finds that insightful. For those of you who could care less, I will bring the funny another time. I apologize for its absence in this post.

<POST REMOVED AS OF 2005-11-17 12:16:21PM PST />

Perhaps it will be reposted again at some point in the future. For now, though, muse on what "Feeling Magic" could mean to you. What sort of situations would you use those words to describe? What kind of circumstances? What kind of people?

Reasons for post removal are personal. Questions regarding it will not be answered. Know, then, that I am not angry nor disappointed nor jaded. It was simply not ready to be shared.

In less than one month's time I will be the ripe old age of 24. That's right, people. Nearly one quarter of a century I have wrought my will upon this planet. And I intend to continue doing so with much vim and vigor in the years to come.

To that end you can help me accomplish this task by purchasing me one or two of these. Thanks!

For the record, drinking a huge-ass cup of French roast coffee and listening to Astral Projection makes work fly by so much faster.

Last Friday I started work on what was sure to be the defining piece of literature for the modern era. Slowly I came to realize that not only are blog entries not literature, but that my Faulkner-esque run-on sentences detracted from my overall point as did my Hugoian number of commas in said sentences. So, begrudingly, I set aside the work that would truly benefit all of humanity, like Jesus only the opposite.

I had wanted to write on why dating is, in fact the worst thing ever, superseded only by Carole King and the concept of geocentricity. Drawing on personal experience, I was to chronicle my rise and fall through the numerous failed relationships I have tried and, in doing so, would glean incredible insight into not only myself (for, surely, this work was to be an exercise in self-exploration), but also the concept of dating in general. I would present it here, on this blog, for all 9 of you to read, thus enlightening you and moving you to do better deeds and usher in a new era of a true Utopian society. Such was my hubris and in the end, like a Greek hero, I was destroyed under the weight of my own genius.

Later that night, tired from a long work week and emotinally drained from the blog-post-that-never-was, I drove to the East Bay to enjoy the company of good friends and their wine. There was some sort of business-related talk which was, in fact, the entire reason for the visit, but it was quickly extinguished once the wine began to flow. Eventually the conversation drifted towards dating and, specfically, my failed blog post. I related my story to Chrys about how I wished to settle, once and for all, why dating is, in fact, pretty much the worst thing ever and how I had failed. We talked for a while about what dating was, the ridiculous labels some people need and the ambivalence others have regarding it. We talked about how some people will tell you what you want to hear only to pull the rug out from underneath sometime later. We talked about my failed relationships and hers. Our ex's and how, ultimately, we knew all along they'd be another ex, but we were too stubborn to admit it.

We talked about every aspect you can imagine in a relationship in every kind of relationship imaginable and, eventually, I told her (again) how valuable the advice was that she had given me. The one time I've ever asked someone for advice and it's actually stuck and, in that moment of thanking her, I realized why dating is pretty much the worst thing ever: ego. It's our ego.

We get so wrapped up in other people that we want to be everything they ever wanted us to be. We change our habits, our fashion, our entire lifestyle just to be accepted by them so it won't bruise our ego. Even when you've come to terms with who and what you are, it is so easy to slip back into changing yourself so you fit someone else's mold. And it works amazingly well...for a while. Then it gets to become work. You have to make a physical and emotional effort to be someone you're not and, in the end, you resent the other person for it. You come to hate them, even if you really did love them at one point, because they're the ones that made you like this. They're the ones that crafted you into shell of who you once were. They made you change yourself.

So you break up. Sometimes it's easy, but most of the time it hurts. It hurts because you wanted, so badly, for it to work out, but it didn't. And because you let your ego get in the way, you let yourself become something else because you really wanted this to be the time and that made it personal. It became them versus you when all it really needed to be was, in business terms, a conflict of interest. They want A and you are B. Oops! Shit, I'm sorry. I thought I could make it work. I still like you, but maybe we're only supposed to be friends. But your ego still hurts. You still wanted to be right this time.

It may not happen exactly like that every time, but I bet if you really think about every failed relationship (romantic and otherwise) you've ever had, they all come down to letting your egos get in the way. I'm lucky to have realized this truth this early in life and it pains me to know that there are people in my life that have not realized it and others that never will. Some are single and others married. Some are young and others old. And I hope they all read this.

Dating is pretty much the worst thing ever, but it doesn't have to be. I hope I've shared with you how to change it. I am far from being an amazing writer and it would seem that I have a stronger handle on comedy than I do on waxing poetic about the minutia of everyday life. Still, I felt like sharing and this is my forum to do that. I leave you with a visual aid to take away from the entry (thanks Joy):

In the near future devices will be invented that will allow humans to browse the internet at any moment of any day anywhere in this world or others. A tiny biocomputer, implanted at the base of the skull, will wireless transmit requests and receive information in what will undoubtedly be an XML-descended language. Using our own bioelectricity, it will translate this information into meaningful electrical pulses that will be fed directly to the neocortex which will then translate the signals into meaningful information.

In this vast wealth of technology in the not-so-distant future, if a human were to think "I wonder what the single greatest invention of mankind is?" the tiny biocomputer, receiving pulses from the neocortex, will activate and post this request to the unseen network and before the human can even finish thinking the question, the biocomputer will already have the answer: The Taco Bell Beef and Potato Burrito.

Below is a description and then picture of my fearsome super villain and his colleagues. Enjoy. It is a pencil sketch and I have absolutely the bare minimum of artistic talent. Regardless, from left to right we have Raptor Imperialis (Overlord of the Hawkmen and Supreme Ruler of the floating island-fortress of Xanadu), clearly angry as demonstrated by his furrowed brow, brandishing his laser spear and riding Pinky. Pinky (King of the vastly intelligent dolphins) is equipped with a eye-overlay-patch-thing, some kind of sonic cannon, and a bandolier. The riding harness is dolphin-safe. Next is Logos, a logic-fart of nanomemetic dust. He is riding in his "sidecar" (a wagon on a string). Lastly is Theodore Tilman Wittingford-Hayes a.k.a. Lunatron 9000, riding on his giant tank-tread leg with clamps for hands, a radio antennae to disrupt Earth's television signals and a smaller radar to detect incoming missles. The porthole is so he can see out.

Fear them, people of Earth.

So, it's been an entire week or something since I updated last. Would you like to know why? Because nothing truly exciting has happened and I have had no stunning revelations that filled me with a creative juice to ejaculate onto the internet for you to read.

Clearly, my metaphor classes have been paying off. Moving on and recapping this last week. Monday, Halloween, I raced home from work, hurriedly bought $20 worth of candy, and sat at home pateintly waiting to hand it out. In three hours, I handed out candy to maybe 12 kids. Next year, I am either going to get a bounce house to attract more children so I can hand out the candy I have left over from this year or I will pretend not to be home, lie in wait on my balcony, and shoot anyone who approaches my house with soft-pellet guns, screeching "The End Times draw nigh! The dead walk!" at the top of my lungs. Children under the age of 9 will be spared my wrath, however, and anyone dressed up as Bob Ross will be requrested to join me in fighting back the Zombie Hoarde or suffer at my hand. Be warned Bob Ross impersonators!

And that was pretty much it. I hung out with friends this weekend, but that was low-key. Tons of fun, though.