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January - February- and most of March

Prescript: (there is a exciting story about 6 paragraphs down, if you just want to skip to that)

Well been a long time without an update. I’ve been working on www.shawneecycles.com and haven’t had time or interest to write here. I’ve got the time now, the interest, lets wait and see. A first off I guess I went out and took photos for the first time in quite awhile a few days ago. IT was a fun mess around session with some folks just getting into 35mm photography. Couple of good shots from it for the website will be up soon. I almost loaded a roll of film in my camera but instead just went with the digital.

I’ve been doing tons of riding. Well not tons but a lot for me. I’ve road about 250 miles since the new year but that is almost all Feb and March, most of the time I don’t even think about riding until April.

I have received a few emails from people about my Rocket 88 review which is awesome. That bike has probably failed more people then any other bike in history. The sad thing is that Schwinn is so hard to contact about fixing them. Recently a guy emailed me from France wanting to know how to fix his bike. I hope he has luck with it.

I almost fell out of my chair yesterday when I head about Terry Schiavo’s feeding tube. I can’t believe this nonsense. The congress and the president are trying to save this woman. Apparently they don’t put much stock in the court system of Florida. Where does Bush get off thinking he can just reverse court orders. Oh I know, he gets off in that magical place that of Christian Conservative Wackoville. As of writing this the tube is out and I hope it stays that way. There I no dignity in living like a science experiment.

I’ve gotten into painting stuff with an airbrush, I’ve done a couple of RC car bodies, and just recently a bicycle frame.

I’ve gotten into listening to books on audible on my drive to work, I got one from www.audible.com, who sucks because they don’t sale mp3 files they sale DRM (Digital Rights management) encased files that have to be burned to cd and re encoded. My first book was an 8 hour long epic called A History of Rome read by some pompus british man with an oxford accent. I wanted to make this a regular mp3 file and put it on my mp3 player, but no DRM said that wasn’t allowed. I don’t like being told no!!! In an attempt to strip the DRM I was doing some dubious goggle searches, clicked on something I shouldn’t have clicked on and my computer was destroyed by a ravenous barrage of viruses and malware. In about 30 seconds every single piece of crap malware program was installed on my machine. Like all those wonderful helpful searchbars and time keepers. Then the computer rebooted its self. It continually rebooted its self at startup about ten times. I hit f8 and told XP to load up the last good system settings. That started the computer up but I nearly cried when I saw my desktop. My DaVinci background was gone replaced with a bright red screen commanding me to download a 79.99 spyware remover so my computer would work again. My precious icons were gone replaced with little pictures of enhanced breasts entitled SEXXX. An error continually popped up demanding to know where my modem was so the computer could doubtlessly call some 900 number porn hotline for me.
When I even tried to open my browser a horde of popups appeared enticing me to enlarge my penis or get some Hot SEXXX. Everything was locked out except the browser nothing would work, and most webpages crashed because the active X controls were fragged. I had no recourse but to Format the hard drive and quickly before the madness spread across my home network. By 3AM the computer worked again. And I listened to The History of Rome on cd this morning in my car.

December- All of it

Well This month has flew by, I am now in my second week of Christmas vacation and have finally gotten around to updating the page. I have uploaded a couple of new galleries, but in all honesty they don't have many shots in them. One is called experiemental and will be the home of all oddball stuff I do in the future. The other is recent work. Mostly shots of when me and my brother went to the river because he wanted a picture of a barge.

Bike riding has pretty much shut down, this last week we've had over a foot of snow. I did manage to take the mountain bike out and ride around a little in the snow, when i wasn't falling down that was fun. My quest to find a MMOG (Massively Multiplayer Online Game) I like continues, tried about 4 in the last few weeks and haven't found one I like.

Christmas went by without a hitch this year. Tress and lights, presensts, big meals, family, everything went off well. The age I am in my life christmas is not very much fun. If we had children I think I would like it again, but as of now its really just another day.

I got two great CDs recently, both by Southern Illinois' greatest band, The Woodbox Gang. Been listening the heck out of Trashcan Americano and Wormwood, but I still have to get Born with a tail and I've killed men to complete my collection. If you would like a very original, down in the dirt, music experience then go there and listen to their mp3s.

November 7th-29th 2004

OK so sue me I forgot that I was supposed to be posting a log everyday, but I thought of a better idea, a log that covers a whole month. What a good idea. I am pretty proud of myself, this month I have cranked out 194 miles on my bike. Not a groundbreaking amount but by far the farthest I have ever riden in Novemeber. I rode every single Saturday and Sunday this month and only a few times during the week. I went from huffing and puffing on a 8 mile ride, to crusing along at ease for 30 miles. My average speed went from 11 in late October to 13.5 here this last week, though it is still down from the summertime high of 16.5. I currently weigh in at 290 pounds tonight, kind of depressing since that is exactly what I weighed a month ago, in fact that is exactly what I weighed 6 months ago. I think I weighed around 287 before thanksgiving so I guess I was making progress.

In geek news I bought Everquest 2, I played it for a few days and got sick of it fast, my computer really can't handle it's ultra powerful graphics engine, and I really don't feel like grinding away on a leveling tredmill for hours on end. Instead I went back to the store and bought Ultima Online Samurai World expansion or whatever it's called. It is a 7 year old game but much better then EQ2.

Novemeber 6th 2004

Doing well today, wrote and posted a review of my mountain bike. Took a 20 mile ride with the mountain bike on the rail-trail as well. It is incredible just how much more energy it takes to pedal a full suspension mountain bike on flat smooth terrain. It blows my mind just how much energy everyone riding those horribly designed Wal-Mart full suspension Mountain bikes are wasting. Current weight 294, but I did just eat some pasta amd drink two diet sodas.

Novemeber 5th 2004

Well almost forgot on my second big day of never ending blogging. I realize that I am a horrible poker player now. After playing several games for small change I realize that I just don't have the patents or the instincts to be good at cards. Instead of waiting for the good card to come to me I always want to play the ones I have. When I do get good cards everyone seems to always fold. Oh well the life of a profesional gambler is not for me. I weigh 291 pounds today half a pound lighter.

November 4th 2004 A Hard Rains is Gonna Fall

Well it’s november 4th and I am still trying to figure out what happened. I was positive that this election would be the one where the nonvoting Americans rose up from their easy chairs and stormed the polls to shake the halls of power and rattle the chains that bind us to the lying, imperialistic, incompetent, and destructive Bush administration. It didn’t happen. If anything America proved that it likes being mislead into war, it likes spending away our future, and it likes born again conservative idiots from Texas, so be it. Hillary 2008, but that is awhile off so let us ignore politics for awhile.

If you noticed I haven’t updated the site in a long while I have been pretty busy with my new job at Marion that I really love. I have also been working on another project that has been keeping me pretty busy. Anyway I am going to start a short daily posting I want to challenge myself to make one update a day to my site even if it’s just a short note to say I am still alive. We’ll see how that works out.

In Hiatus news I have a slew of photographs to put up and will probably do that on Christmas break. I also want to add some reviews since they seem to be getting some hits.

IN local news Redline RC in Marion Illinois closed down. I intend to do a full story on this soon but apparently Fred couldn’t afford insurance for his track or some nonsense like that. Well RC racing takes a big setback here in Southern Illinois, but maybe a club will form and keep the racing going. We can only hope.

In personal news I am on a journey to lose some weight and become a better bike rider. My old buddy Karl Cossey will be coming back to Harrisburg soon and I intend to be fit enough to kick his ass all down the street like I used to. I’m more then a little bit worried since so far this year I have only ridden about 700 miles this year, and almost all of that in April May June, the good thing is that it all comes back fairly quickly. Tonight I weighed 291.5 So I have got to work on losing some weight and get back to my ahh, “racing” weight of 280. God that’s funny.

In more local news Greg Short has opened a bike shop in Harrsiburg and I am thrilled about it. I hope he manages to stay in business. I have offered to make him a website and help promote the store for next to nothing. So far he is great. A few days ago I asked him if he could get some parts to fix my Schwinn Rocket 88 Mountain bike, I haven’t been able to get the parts in over a year and I was presently surprised to find out he already has them. So Go visit Shawnee Cycles and buy a bike or at least a water bottle.

8-15-04

Been busy here at the end of summer getting ready for my new job and ocasionally taking pictures. Today I converted the Humor part of the site into a new format that makes it much much easier to work with. I still need to come up with a template for the Review section. I scanned a whole bunch of photos the other day and need to get them online.

Me and Shauna did a little campling last week and I made some very strange pictures of at night with my flash. I should have those experimental sections online soon.

I built a new computer the this weekend, a AMD 2500XP, ironicaly all it is doing right now is emulating a Nintendo and Super Nintendo. Me and Shauna are on a quest to finish Super Mario Bros 3. The main reason I scrounged up the hardware to build this system is I wanted a computer to plug up to the TV, of course when I get it plugged up I find that computers plugged up to TVs look like crap. A little reasearch showed me that TV monitors are less then half as sharp as computer monitors, this could give me a good excuse to get a HDTV.

Watched the olympics tonight, it was very boring. But I am always amazed with the skill of the athletes, it's just that 200m freestyle swimming is really not that interesting.

Something I have been noticing is the rebirth of the station wagon, but with a strange twist. The station wagon was the ultimate family car of the 60s 70s and 80s, but has since been replaced by the minivan and lately the SUV. Ironicaly it seems like the station wagon is back but reincarnated as a cool alternative vehicle, manufacturers are giving them exciting names to appeal to a younger, or at least people who want to be in a younger demographic. Names such as Vibe, Matrix, Magnum, and Pacifica. What is really funny is that the manufactures are marketing these things like they just invented them, and the funny thing is that most people who never knew, or just forgot what a station wagon looked like will fall in for it, and make a down payment on the hotest new thing.

7-28-04

Well it's pretty much official I will be teaching at Marion Jr. High School next year. I am really excited but am going to miss Galatia. I'm pretty nervous as well since I'm going to such a large school.

About three weeks more until summer break is over and I have become interested in camping. Me and Shauna went last weekend to Fern Clyffe, but it rained the whole time. 'm thinking about going back there tommorow but it will be strange because I have never camped by myself, my wife has to work, and I have no friends.

Here is an interesting fact for you, if you go to google and search for abu gharib photos my webpage will be in the top page of results. Not only in the top but for awhile it was the 6th site down from the top. If you search for southern illinois photography you will not be able to find my site, or at least it isn't in the top ten pages of results. There is something fundamently wrong about that but I shouldn't complain it gave me a big boost in traffic.

7-16-04

The summer keeps rolling along and will be over before I know it. A while back me and Shauna went to Trigg Tower and did some pictures. I did an eight shot panoramic view that consisted of 8 images stitched together using the excellent PTA software www.tawbaware.com Yesterday I went to Lusk Creek Canyon, a place I had never been, even though it is about 30 minutes from my house. The place is also known as Indian Kitchen since Indians hung out there long ago. When I arrived I found out why I had never been there. It is almost a 3 mile walk to get to canyon. I set my mind to forced march mode and rushed through the trail to get there with time to take some photos. I made a 12 image stitched which is equivalent to an image taken with a 20 megapixel camera, pretty cool for me but doesn't compare much to the guy who stitched together 196 images.
I've trying to move from simple static web design to dynamic web design with php. It has been very difficult. I think for now I am going to use some cgi scripts to make the page do some more interesting things. I would like to create a database for my pictures and have them easily searchable, but I am having some problems figuring out mysql.

7-09-04

Big problems this week, my water line broke and it was a real job putting in a new one.  I learned a bit about plumbing from my grandpa and uncle, and learned a whole lot about digging in mud.  But it is all fixed so tonight I am back on the job.  New website design seems to be already paying off, the other day I had 500 page views which is pretty amazing since I was averaging around 80 or so.

Tonight I've added 4th of July gallery with a few interesting shots but nothing real spectacular.  Took a trip while back to photograph in Bell Smith Springs, tried to do some mosaic images but messed up since I've never tried that before.  I plan to head back and do it again.  I did manage one decent stitched image though so it wasn't a complete waste.   

7-05-04

After coming to the realization that my website was about nothing at all and that it made very little sense I have decided to completely revamp the site.  The new plan is a more eye friendly professional looking site to showcase my photography and art portfolio. I think the change will be for the better, if you never saw the old site click here.  I've always tried to keep my site looking off the wall because I didn't want it to be too serious.  But when I asked people to look at it and tell me what they thought I realized that it was just to out there to be interesting and keep peoples attention.  I wanted it to be a humor site, an art site, and a review site.  I'm going to keep some of the old content but slowly phase out everything but the art.    

6-30-04

The Viable Hiatus marches on.  I have posted my first natural area photo area Garden of the Gods .  Pictures are all taken with my new DCS 520 Kodak Digital SLR,  the most productive cameras I've ever used.  I'm not going to kid myself and pretend that it is as good as a film camera but it's damn close.  Noise is a bit of a problem, but really only noticeable at higher ISOs and longer exposures which suck, but the camera lets me take awesome quality pictures do amazing things with them then get them on the web fast.  

6-28-04

I went to see Fahrenheit 9/11 today in Carbondale Il.  Since that was the only place in Southern IL. the film is playing.  I'm just glad Kerasotes which owns about every theater here allowed the movie to be played.  It was a 4:30 PM on a Monday night, the theater was packed, the audience included young old, people you would expect to see at any motion picture and people who looked like they rarely leave the coffee house.  Through out the movie any time Bush was on screen you could count on someone to laugh. ( usually me)  It seemed like people were just on the edge of their seats all through out the film and when Bush wasn't making a mockery of the presidency there was a quiet serious hush that seemed to suck the air out of the theater.  It was truly one of the most powerful films I've ever seen.  

In other news I got one of those split keyboards today and am typing on it now.  Since I have never been a very good typist I'm having a bit of a problem with my fingers trying to cross from one side to the other.  

6-27-04

Beware the disgruntled photographer. 

I took my camera out to Garden of the Gods to take pictures for a new project I am working on here for the Hiatus.  After wandering around shooting for a about an hour I set down on a rock and waited for a what I hoped would be a nice sunset.  After awhile another photographer showed up and set up on a rock opposite of me a little ways.  Now this guy was just screaming photo nerd.  He was packing a 6x9 antique view camera, think civil war era, the had a photographers vest and I think a couple of camera bags.  While I'm sure that using this kind of equipment makes excellent images it would akin to driving across country in a model T, sure you could do it but it would really suck.

 He looked like he was shooting my way so I went off to the car to fetch my tripod and give him some time to make a shot.  I came back in 5 or so minutes and set my tripod up on the rock I was on.  The sun set and the colors were any thing but spectacular.  On my way back to the car I ran into the photo geek, I was actually really impressed by this guys gear so I tried to start a conversation by commenting on the lousy sunset and how I wanted some dramatic colors.  The geek kept walking and barked something about wanting a CLEAR SHOT.  I was kind of surprised by the unfriendly tone the guy took so I explained to him I had been sitting on that rock for an hour and was sorry that I was in his way but there really wasn't anything I could do about it.  The guy didn't really have much to say so I told him to have a nice night and went to my car.  Now on reflection I can't seem to get it out of my head.  I really wish I had ripped into this guy, I mean I always miss chances to get into good arguments, it could have even come to blows and I would have smashed his fancy wooden camera.  All he had to do was ask me to move for a second it takes less then a second to make an exposure.  Oh well.    

6-25-04

Got a new camera

It's a a big honking camera.  One of the first Digital SLRs, this is the Kodak DCS 520 so far I really like it and am really taking allot of pictures again.  I haven't been much into photography for about a year but a friend gave me a ton of magazines that sparked my imagination.   I started working on the photo galleries for the site and then started wanting to take pictures again. 

All of my life I have used manual focus manual exposure cameras that require the photographer to actually think about what he does before he fires the shutter.  Now with this big monstrosity I can just point it and and hit a button, in a millisecond it fires off a shot. 

In other news I've been working on my house this summer so far I've, tarred the leaky roof, tore down the droopy fence, removed the broken garbage disposal, and am stuccoing the foundation. 

I've made one trip to Chicago and will do at least one more.  There will be some pictures up from that soon. 

Glad to see that Travis Pearcy gave me a link over from his new site at,   http://www.pearcyboy.50megs.com Thanks man. 

Don't play EQ anymore.  I was running from some kind of monster and fell off a cliff, and died.  I was like that is it I've had it.  Haven't played since. 

3-12-04

Just wanted to let people know I am still alive, been busy playing EQ so haven't been doing lots of updates.  I have been working on my hamster documentary a little bit but I realized hamsters aren't really all the interesting.

Now I want to write about something that makes me really really mad.  It's the crap that is on TV, namely a show called Extreme Make Over on ABC.  I had heard of this show but hadn't seen it until last night.  My wife was watching it and I was able to catch a little bit.  The show is the most disgusting piece of crap I could imagine.  This show just proves how obsessed America has come with the superficial.  As far as I can tell this show takes real individual people and transforms them into carbon cut copies of what our society believes is the "correct" way to look.

This show takes all that stuff about beauty being skin deep and it's what is on the inside that really counts and just throws it out the window.  What this show does is confirm to millions of Americans that they are "ugly" and shows them how wonderful their lives could be if they just looked like some model.  God it makes me mad.  The stupid scene where they walk down the stairs and they look like a different person and all the people pee their pants, moan and groan for the camera, then they all tear up and hug like she just survived a tough bout with  cancer or learned how to walk again, when really all they did was have a plastic surgeon move around some fat and get a haircut

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!  

2-02-04

I want to welcome a new member to the staff of Viable Hiatus Mr. Jerry Atrix.  Jerry is an expret in the field of good ol boy philosophy and has his thumb on the pulse of the nation.  We are excited about the pieces he has been doing and hopefully will continue to do for VH.

1-16-04

EVERQUEST NOOOOOOOOO!

Yes I am playing Everquest again.  That Massively Multiplayer computer game where you spend your days running around with lots of other characters controlled by real people and killing thousands of 3D monsters over and over again.  This game is so horribly addicting that it earned the nickname Evercrack.  This is actually the sixth time I've started playing one of these games.

A quick recap,

Ultima Online, played for two months, stopped playing when I realized I was spending countless hours chopping on trees and killing chickens for stuff to make arrows. 

Asheron's Call, just bought this on a whim, played it longer then any other MMOG.  This game had been around for a long time and Asheron's Call 2 had just came out so at the time it wasn't attracting any more new players as a result I was the only player under level 20 that I ever saw.

Asheron's Call 2, decided to try out this game for awhile.  Had awesome graphics, a beautiful world, and was allot of fun.  It lacked complexity it was just to simple, I just got tired of it.

Star Wars Galaxies, thought this was going to be the one that would make me a believer but instead it just made me bored.  This game had graphics that were better then Asheron's Call 2 and a world that was so detailed it seemed real.  Yet since all a person did on this game was run around on the world for miles and miles and miles it got pretty boring.

Everquest the first time, played for a month then just stopped, don't ask me why,

Everquest the second time, so far been playing a week, and really enjoying it.

Don't expect to many updates since my Everquesting is the focus of my life right now I won't be making many new articels. 

1-16-03

On Blogs

I'm sure everyone has heard the word blog by now.  But most people couldn't agree on exactly what a blog is.   I think I first heard the word about three years ago when a kid at a school I was student teaching at sent me a link to his blog.  In 2000 blogs were a very niche activity.  A blog is a web log or an area on the internet where you can post your thoughts and feelings about anything from sardines to world politics. 

I remember being kind of mad when I first saw his blog, it was built on a blogging site so anyone with rudimentary computer skills could use it, something I see as more of a bad thing then a good thing.    For people like me who had been running there own website for awhile the idea of a blog seemed kind of insulting.  I had to learn how to publish on the web in order to get my thoughts on the net, on the other hand a blogger only has to fill out a form to get web access to  puke out their thoughts into electrons.  Three years ago I dismissed the idea of a blog as a fad before the fad even started.  Now the fad is in full fever.  Guess I was wrong.

In the mid 90s I remember reading that the web would give anyone who wanted it a voice and I think now we are seeing that come true in the form of blogs.  When I first got into web publishing an amateur web site maker person had two choices for the site they made.  Most people made personal web pages.  A personal web page was your home on the web where you put all kinds of stuff about yourself, all the free webpage sites like geocities were geared towards you making a personal webpage.  Or you could try to do something more like I did which was an e-zine or electronic magazine.  Ezines attempted to take the successful magazine format and convert it to a digital format.  These seemed to have completely failed.  the magazine format does not lend its self to the web.  It was standard practice to update your site once a month but in web time that is entirely to long.  No one has patients to wait for a month for new content. 

 Despite there huge popularity I think that blogs are mostly stupid and eventually will settle down.  People are all excited their blog and other peoples blogs and linking here and there and everywhere.  They think they are being heard, and for some people they are, but soon a majority of bloggers will realize, like I did years ago, that they have no readers and they are just wasting there time.   

1-15-03

I've got allot to say today!

On war

The more I read the more angry I get.  Back in 2002 I made a prediction that bush would attack another country before the next election because the timing of this attack was to early.  I made the prediction it would be Iraq.  I wasn't really that serious when I made the prediction and low and behold it comes true. 

www.antiwar.com
Iraq Body Count.

On politics

I have lost interest in politics over the last few years.  It seems like there just have been too many disappointments and too much BS.  50% of Americans don’t vote.  That’s a pretty staggering figure, it makes me think of a cartoon where too politically oppressed people who are about to be executed, Chinese I think, are talking about America and they say something like they can do it and they don’t, of course they are referring to exercising power by voting.  Anyway here are the events that lead up to my dissolution of the political system.

Glenn Poshard loses a close race against George Ryan for Illinois governor.  Then we all find out that Ryan is a criminal.

Congressional map is redrawn and as a result David Phelps loses his House seat to Shimkus, essentially Southern Illinois loses its one voice in congress. 

America chooses Al Gore to be the next President by 500,000 votes but Bush wins more states.  Coincidently the state the makes the difference is ran by Bush’s brother.

Well anyway I figure what better time then now to get back interested in politics.  If we let Bush have another term there may not be a country left to get interested in.  It seems like his policies are all geared to making consumption of our national resources easier and less restrictive for big business.  I was accustomed to Republicans slamming Democrats over their “lust” for big government and spending money, but it seems like when Republicans are in power money gets spent with wild abandon, or given back to the rich which results in a massive debt.

This is why I have thrown my support behind Howard Dean.  I watched him give a stump speech on CSpan the other night and I was moved.  I think he has a genuine interest in making the country a better place.  I also give him credit for being the only democrat not to support Bush’s war.   

On Space

I'm a geek, and I like space, I like star trek and star wars and hell, anything that has got to do with stars, but I am not fond of Bush's new space initiatives.  I believe that space is a direction that man kind will travel.  I believe that a colony on Mars is a strong possibility, but space exploration is something that should be take a secondary position to the welfare of our nation.  There are too many people under the bootheel of poverty right now. 

I know that NASA's budget is a fraction of our huge national budget but none the less we are running a deficit.  Think about it like this your family is about 50,000 dollars in the red so instead of controlling your spending you decide to buy a new SUV and have a cabin built in the middle of nowhere. 

Why are we going back to space?  well it seems like the moon base is going to be a launch pad for missions out to mars.  The rational for the moon base is that it's much easier to launch things from moons low gravity and no atmosphere.  My question is how are you going to get stuff to the moon, teleport it.  Everything that is launched off of the moons still has to be launched off the earth first, unless they believe they can make a rocket out of moon cheese.  No I believe that Bush announced we are going back to space because we have a probe currently driving around on Mars, (isn't that cool) which I thought may never actually happen after so many failures, because China has a thriving space program and is planning on a manned mars mission, and Bush figures he wants to have all the good landing sites occupied. And finally those aerospace (defense) companies should could use a good shot in the arm right now.  I just got a crazy idea, the first battle between the Chinese and Americans could be on the moon. 

1-12-04

A barrage of new activity for this new year.  It seems as if my new years resolution was to build a better website.  Today I added a new story and a FAQ page.  Check them out if you are so inclined.  In other Gholson news, I'm getting close to the end of Star Trek Deep Space Nine season 5.  Soon I will be down to two seasons of Trek left to watch.  Pretty scary.  I'm working fairly hard on a painting that will be up in the gallery soon.  Hammy Hamster has been uncooperative the last few days so filming of her movie has been postponed.   She decided to fill her wheel up with bedding material and never come out.  Had a good time checking out stories on one of my favorite websites www.bbspot.com  

Until next time keep it real

1-09-04

Whats Going on, I'm rearranging the site a bit in an effort to make it appear more organized.  So now there will be some main content areas.  The index page will only show the most up to date article.  Old articles will now be on the articles page.  There is going to be a movie review section that will mainly feature small budget type films.  I'm putting a FAQ page to answer the barrage of questions that I get asked constantly.  And finally a downloads page to host any files I decide to distribute. 

1-08-04

Unbridaled enthusiasm

Hello, and welcome to 2004, well 2003 was a great year and yadda yadda blah blah

I started production tonight on the first Unbridaled enthusiasm short film starting the up and comming Hammy Hamster.  The film is entitled behind the bars, a look into the life of a hamster.  Got some footage tonight check back for updates. 

Been trying to think of other film projects for my new DV camera.  What I would really like to do is a documentary on Ghost Hunting.  Would like to do it over spring and summer.  Not sure if the Ghost Hunters will go for it. 

I'm going to pull all my movie stuff together and make a movie review section.

I'll leave you with some lyrics from a They Might be Giants Song

Make a hole with a gun perpendicular
To the name of this town in a desk-top globe
Exit wound in a foreign nation
Showing the home of the one this was written for
My apartment looks upside down from there
Water spirals the wrong way out the sink
And her voice is a backwards record
It's like a whirlpool and it never ends

Ana Ng and I are getting old
And we still haven't walked in the glow of each other's majestic presence
Listen Ana hear my words
They're the ones you would think I would say if there was a me for you
 

11-03-03

Well as some of you may know napster is back, napster 2.0 that is.  This time it is not free.  For a mere 99 cents per download or 9.95 per CD you can download music from a catalog 500,000 titles.  Pretty lame, but not nearly as bad as my stint purchasing "online" magic the gathering cards for the online game. 

Actually I am glad to see that the record companies have finally figured out that digital media distribution is the wave of the future.  Actually looking into my crystal ball I can see a good thing coming from this.  OK, follow me here, music is traditionally sold as an album, a collection of songs.  Popular music usually has a couple maybe three good songs and a bunch of filler material that may not be true for every artist or album, but lets just accept that stereotype for now.  OK, so if the traditional method of procuring music becomes downloading songs online, so who is going to buy the whole album when you can get the only good songs for a few bucks?  Perhaps artists will no longer be able to get buy producing filler.    

Watched a movie tonight called Levity.  Really really good movie, Morgan Freeman, Billy Bob Thorton, and Christen Dunst are the actors.  It is slow very deliberately paced film about a man, Thorton who is desperately seeking redemption for a crime he commited 21 years ago.  Through a series of seemingly holy coincidences he becomes entangled into the lives of people who need his help.  While this movie moves very slowly, has some really crappy music, and seems to suffer from poor or cheap production, it comes off has a life affirming, real drama about how a man may not be able to erase there mistakes but can pay for them.    

9-19-03  Shoutcast server down due to lack of interest, funds and time.

7-31-03 I want to give a shout out to my peeps Jamie and Steve Jones who are experiencing the bliss of matrimony right now and will for the REST OF THEIR LIVES

I want to start off by following up on mediacom.  In short they kick ass, as of now I would highly recommend getting cable internet if you like ungodly fast downloads, 100 ms ping times and decent customer service.  The installers are made a mistake and plugged up my cable to the wrong place on the line and that is why I didn't have any signal for a few days but soon a barrage of folks showed up and got it working well no problems since then.  Good work mediacom!

Couple of new things posted over on the right so go check em out as soon as you finish reading this

Star Wars galaxies, hasn't changed my life in anyway. 

Daredevil was a horrible movie, the worst superhero movie I've ever seen. The best part was the cameo by Kevin Smith.

Time is running out I will be back in school Soon, chills up my spine.

A friend of mine has a blog, anyway in this blog he talks about hosting a webpage Circle of Stones, which is a Free Ultima Online shard, sounds intriguing. 

I have to get about 20 photos ready for the DuDuoin State fair that I entered in the art competition. 

I can't believe I used the word peeps, someone should gag me.

Oh yeah music, been listening to Hootie and the Blowfish, they are this band with a black singer named Darius.  Also listening to The White Stripes new album Elephant and Radiohead's new album Hail to the Thief.  Both excellent and I downloaded them both from Kazaa I dare the RIAA to subpoena me!   Those jerks won't take me alive!

Been Reading Neuromancer by William Gibson it's a awesome book that invented the whole idea of cyber punk. In strange future people get computers built into their heads and plug themselves up to the "matrix" a mental representation of data., essentially a more intuitive version of the world wide web.  This book was written in 1983 before the internet.  Cowboys go into the matrix to steal and sabotage for their clients, like modern day hackers.  The language is very surreal and takes time to decipher sometimes. 

7-14-03  HAPPY BIRTHDAY CHLOEE (did I spell that right??) 
I want to give a congratulations to Adam and Mariah for the successful birth of their daughter! 

SO let me tell you a little bit about my day. First off this was supposed to be a really exciting day because I was getting broadband cable internet access and cable TV. They were suppose to come install it between the hours of 8 AM to noon. So I was up and settign in front of the door at 8. I ended up setting there until 2 PM. So this man and woman show up and start doing the install and let me tell you they were all business. All my attempts at friendly small attack were deflected by mumbles and grunts. Not to say they weren't friendly they just didn't care much for talk. Well anyway when they were all done it didn't work and the guy didn't really seem to know why so they took my money and left me buried under a mountain of disappointment so huge that even Dragonlance novels couldn't cure it. So now I am in Mediacom customer service limbo and I doubt that I will have service for a while luckly I can still depend on DIAL UP. 

Anyway I got to thinking now that I've set around for the last 6 torturous hours waiting for a call from the mysterious cable company how in the hell would my day been any different if the cable had worked.  Well other then the fact that I would now have a gargantuan list of downloads queued up in Kazaa it wouldn't be any different at all.  I mean I would have a few extra minutes of time that I would have saved while surfing with broadband  but I would have used that time whining about something else anyway. 

In other news I watched the movie Swimming today it was pretty good.  It was one of those art type movies the video store only gets 1 of.  The funny thing is that these type of movies are about a million times better then the blockbuster type movies that the video store gets 50 copies of.  The even funnier thing is that these type of movies are always in while all 50 copies of the blockbuster type are gone.