Category: Uncategorized

I am now listening to a radio commercial for Fazzoli

What the heck.

Take a look at this report on the bandwidth used by Modern Evil for the month of July (partial):

You may notice something strange about the data there. I sure did. Especially in the larger context you can see here:

Do you see that?

How about that?

So I went to my webstats interface with 1&1 to see if maybe I got linked to by some major site, or maybe I had 250,000 new readers all of a sudden. No big new referrer; the biggest referrer is still google, with around 3.5k referrals for the month. In fact, not a lot of new readers. The thing says that there were almost 3 million page views, but just the normal average of 1200 “unique visitors” for yesterday, the 30th. It averages it out to tell me that each visitor loaded around 2500 pages yesterday. 90% of them the main page at http://www.modernevil.com/index.php.

Now, I know there was a problem with the site yesterday, but did you have to refresh the main page three million times?

Sigh.

I only pay $1 per Gb beyond 5/month, last I checked, so your little 3million page views in one day hasn’t exactly broken the bank. But I’m waiting impatiently for midnight to see whether today has gone insane as well. My website doesn’t bring in $7 a day, a week, a month… most months anyway. So if you cost me another $7 tomorrow I’m deleting the site for a while.

That 326Mb FTP the day before yesterday is me downloading the entire site. I did it just before deleting twelve sections from Modern Evil, in case I needed to put them back or something. So no worries. If I do have to take the site down (ostensibly because someone is attacking it) for a while, it won’t all be lost.

Now, on the other hand, if you could all work together, tell 250 of your friends each about the site, and actually get that volume of traffic in a reasonable distribution, I’d be more than happy about it. I’d be able to make money from advertising.

So.

There’s the old non-functioning Plymouth Horizon that’s been sitting in the yard for a couple/few years because one apparently irreplacable part required for its operation went bad. Stupid computers. Anyway, due to a complaint the City is forcing us to have it removed. Fine.

My father and older sister got in contact with the Kidney Foundation to donate it. This is good because we don’t have to pay to have it hauled off and they can … do whatever they do to turn it into money to help people with … kidney problems, I assume. Maybe they can even find the right computer part for it to get the engine to start again, and increase its value significantly. And the Kidney Foundation is having Ecology Auto Wrecking pick it up. Today. Sister went in today, they’re picking it up today, fast, great, right?

Except now I’m on my day off, I’ve cleaned the kitchen already, did the yard work & stuff dad asked me to to and was going to go out and watch The Villiage before I ruined it for myself by simply trying to use the internet (the internet has tried to ruin the movie for me more than four times on three different sites already today). There’s an 11:50 showing at the local theatre I could get to, it would get out around 2.

But then the car towing people call me. They need me here when they pick it up for some paperwork, and they’ll be here “Between 1 and 5”.

Fuck.

Between 1 and 5? Fuck. I may as well just wait for Angela to get home before I go watch The Villiage. I don’t even know if she wants to see it, or just The Manchurian Candidate. And now I’ve got to basically stay home waiting for them for the next … could be six and a half hours.

Shit.

That is NOT how I wanted to spend my day.

Here I am, not in control of my own “free time” again. I mean, I understand that in order to earn money I have to have a job and that while I’m scheduled to be at the job, my time is not my own. But the concession that this model makes me that makes it somewhat acceptable is that when I am NOT at work, that my time IS my own. So I put in my 15 hour days (if you include the time from getting up at 5AM to get ready for work until I get home at 8PM on the days I bus both ways) four days a week, and the other 108 hours in the week are supposed to be mine. Around 30 hours a week sleeping, and still, 75 hours a week doing what I want to do is pretty good.

So when there are little things I have to do that I’d rather not do, an hour here, an hour there, it’s not a big deal. But today I’m basically losing all the hours I would normally get alone to do what I want. I’m losing 10% of my free time for the week. This time is not my own any longer.

I can try to make it my own. Figure out things I can do while I sit here and wait. I’m sure there are things. Books to read, DVDs to watch, video games to play. Just not the activity I’ve been planning to do during this time for months.

And it is fucking pissing me off!!!

But what can I do?

I’m powerless.

I am like a mote, or the Democratic Party.

I guess I’ll go try some Quidditch.

Fuck.

I hate feeling this way.

Yeah, I’m one day early.

Shove it, as they say.

I’m going to start going though and removing/archiving sections.

If you don’t have a prior arrangement with me, you can refer yourself to the name of this blog.

I should be sleeping right now. I’m not.

On the same token, I should have probably gotten more done today.

But what does “get things done” really mean? And what did I do all day?

See, normally Wednesday would be the end of my work week, and Thursday through Saturday would be my “weekend”. But this week I switched days off with someone at work (something not quite right about her childcare, I suppose, and she needed Thursday off) and had Wednesday off and Thursday on. Thus, home today, work tomorrow.

Mostly what I did today was relax.

Surfing websites and the like until I ran out, then surfing a little more. Enjoying the high-speed of the internet access available here. Watching movie trailers, listening to music previews on iTunes … all pretty nice and relaxing and producing good feelings. Watched a little TV… really, a little. Like, 5 minutes of watching coupled with about 10 minutes of playing with the “Guide+ Plus” feature that my TV has always had but never been able to use… it knows what programs are going to be on, and I don’t even have cable! It just gets the information from the AIR!

Then I read through the entire getting started guide for Second Life (no, not entirely before I logged in and played around the other day) and logged in. And peeked and poked around in Second Life for quite a while. Hours and hours. Building things and window-shopping (I don’t have the in-game currency to actually SHOP – I’ve not committed myself to a proper membership with a land and currency grant quite yet. Though if I like it as much as I seem to so far I’ll probably do that withing a couple of weeks.) and chatting a bit and watching a show-and-tell of objects, and even participating in a building contest despite my low, low skill level at building. Looking at what the other people did in the same time just makes me want to get more used to the interface.

Oh, and a faster/better computer.

I have a computer that’s actually slightly under the CPU requirements for Second Life for Mac OS X. They want a 1Ghz G4, and my 2.5yr old iMac is only an 800Mhz G4. The rest of my system is right around the minimums. I can hardly wait until Heath moves down in a couple of weeks with his computer and I can see what it looks like on there. 2.6Ghz P4, plus a Radeon 9600 XT. Should be beautiful. Heck, should have reasonable frame rates. I’ve averaging something around 3 frames a second. At best. Gotta save up for a replacement computer.

If I could afford the screen to go with it (and settle for not driving any time this decade) I’d go for a PowerMac G5. For under (or right around) $2k I could get whatever the new iMac is going to be this Fall or a nicely configured iBook. For somewhere between $2k and $8k I could configure a very nice PowerMac setup, perhaps with one of their sleek new screens. For $17k (plus interest as I pay it) I could get out of debt entirely. And for between $18k and $22k or so I could get a VW New Beetle TDI, model year 2002 or later.

Now if you people would, through a combination of cash/paypal/bitpass donations and profit from merchandise sales and book sales, just get an extra … $50k into my hands, I could get everything on that list. New laptop, new desktop (all the better for designing new products, art, and websites, and for writing new books with), no debt hanging over my head, plus a sweet new car (all the better to drive all over the country thanking you for your help… well, anyone whose purchases/donations exceed $500, okay?) and a positive demeanor.

Heck, if every person who reads this just gave me $50, I’d be covered. Think about it. Go out to dinner with a date, then to a movie, get popcorn and sodas and candy, then go out for drinks afterward and by the convenience store for condoms on the way home, and you’ve left a lot more than $50 in the dust. Why not just avoid the whole expensive mess, send me $50 (or buy at least as much merchandise & books), rent a video and stay in for a change!

I must be getting tired; I’m babbling about how easy it would be for you to give me money. You guys never give me money. (Except Zoe. He’s been consistantly generous with making purchases and donations over the years.) It’s silly for me to ask, or even type about it.

What was I thinking?

Oh, and I should mention it here: I’ve got the idea of what I think the twist in The Villiage should not be from a “what is right in the universe” standpoint, and I’ve outlined in my head the review I want to write for it already so that when I do go see it Friday I’ll either already know the end of the film or be very pleasantly surprised. (Or, as with Signs, disappointed when my ending was so much more satisfying and worked so much better with the rest of the film than the ending that M. Night Shyamalan put on it.) And then I’ll write a spoiler-filled ‘review’ where I reveal the ending I’ve already got written down, using specific references to scenes and plot points in the movie to prove my point. Now, if I’m right, that’ll work out fine and just seem like I’m re-telling it, giving away the ending. And if I’m wrong, like I was with Signs, I’ll write a review that will put an idea into your head that will change the entire nature of the movie for you as you notice little details supporting my review’s truth until in the final moments it is revealed that I lied to you about the whole thing and you were watching a movie that exists only in the heads of the people who read my review before first watching The Villiage.

Moo.

I’m going to bed. This has gone on long enough.