| RANDOM QUOTE | Only those that risk going too far
can possibly find out how far one can go.
-T. S. Eliot | |
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| glitch13.com :.::.: ..:.::. :.:::...
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| SMALLER AND WORSE THINGS |  | Category: Rant
Thursday, June 20th, 2002 @ 09:44 pm
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DEATH KNELL
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Well, I think this may be it. Poor ticket sales and lack of industry support may have put the final nail in glitch13.com's coffin. When it first started, the media proclaimed it would "revolutionize the way [we] waste time." It was supposed to reinvigorate the sagging interest in websites that offered absolutely nothing. Well, they were wrong. Dead wrong.
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In reality, I've just lost interest in this website. I wish I could say something, like all those other webmasters who kill their site, like, "I love doing this, its just that the need to earn a steady paycheck and maintain a normal life just outweigh my interest in continuing..." But, as most of you who know me, that's just not true.
The format and subject (or lack there of) of this site has just stagnated and I'm not really interested in either anymore.
In other, more interesting news, I'm making pretty good progress on girlygirl's website, and its proving to be a fun project. She'll prolly end up with a cam and a wishlist, but hey, I'd fucking do it people would buy me shit. Her site's design is coming along swimmingly, and that backend is proving to be much more esthetically pleasing from a coding standpoint, and more interesting to work on. I could geek on about database abstraction and modular graphical functions, but you could probably care less. Suffice to say, it will probably entertain you more than this site.
So, what will happen to glitch13.com you ask? Dunno. Prolly get it off this pay server. Foo may choose to bail too, unless may girlygirl joins him with her site to ease the financial burden. Who knows. After that, I may or may not repoint the domain back to my home computer, with a more lax, less media intensive, less everything site.
If this site was on your daily check list of surfing, I'd apologize for taking it down, that is, if I didn't already know that fact that visiting this site daily has has little to no pay off for some time now.
In closing, I'd like to use the immortal words of one Mr. Andrew Von Fix,
that is all
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| THE PROBLEM WITH GEEK CHIC | | Category: Rant
Tuesday, February 5th, 2002 @ 07:03 pm
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Know the Enemy
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When I first got into the whole programming-slashdot-linux scene, I remember seeing a lot of the term "geek" being used in a complimentary sense. Geeks were (and still are in these circles) made out to be uber brains and "holier than thou" mega bad-asses. Its been alluded to many a time in this scene that geeks have actually been bad arse cool motherfuckers that have been overlooked for way too long and that we have finally reached a golden age where they are recognized for the brain-chic style that they have possessed all along.
Once I got fully indoctrinated into the profession I then started, and currently still hold (programming), I felt I was one of these people. I was part of the uber-elite, the genius stylers, the rogue brainy rebel that I've always known I was. Jesus Christ was I wrong.
Don't let this propaganda fool you, these people are still fuck wads with no lives. My enlightenment began when I felt I had enough experience and was fit enough to attend my first Linux User's Group meeting. Fuck me silly and call me Susan, these people were losers. And not just losers: allow me to digress...
I was by no means the most popular person in high school, but I still retained a certain charisma or good looks that allowed me to escape the dork stereotype. I was friends with people who were considered geeks, and after my experiences with them, I realized it was a well deserved title: you see, true geeks, while being picked on all the time, really believe they are in fact much better than your average insecure teenager. Actually, they are downright dicks. I learned an important lesson on the day of that Linux User Group meeting: fitting in with a dork scene is no excuse for being a social pariah and a dick to anyone you don't consider "on the level". The bigger problem is now that these people believe they belong to some elite clique, they feel that they have license to bloat their own egos even further.
Of course you have your exceptions, Rob "Cmdr Taco" Malda, of slashdot fame, would be one of them. Self-proclaimed geek, open-source developer, has a girlfriend that's pretty easy on the eyes, etc. But this is an extreme case of an extreme exception; you could almost say its the exception that proves the rule.
In closing I'll say: If ever you're in a room with 8 guys who all have leatherman tools in a pouch on their belt, and they don't actually work with leather for a living, these are not people you want to be around. Unless, of course, you're a egomaniacal loser.
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| MASTERS OF THE OBVIOUS | | Category: Rant
Tuesday, January 29th, 2002 @ 07:30 pm
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The Can Opener
50 years in the making
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I was watching the history of the New York Stock Exchange a couple days ago, being the History Channel junkie I am, and they dropped a bit o' trivia on me that nearly blew my fucking mind. It was about portfolio diversification. Now I'm not a economics guru by any stretch of the imagination, but I believe I have a firm grasp of the meaning of the term: you buy stock in a lot of companies, that way if one or two of them take a dive the diversification of stocks will take the brunt of it, and it will average out so you won't be taking a big loss. This is protection against the 'all your eggs in one basket' type of investing that causes people to lose all their money if the one type stock they own goes tits up. Seems kinda obvious, eh?
Au, contraire mon frair. The New York Stock Exchange opened its doors in 1792, with smaller, local stock exchanges predating that by decades; all this with the idea of diversification not existing until 1952. The guy that came up with it won a motherfucking Nobel Prize in Economics in -- get this -- 1990. What in the hell?!
This of course isn't saying that nobody ever thought of it, but Jesus, since the very beginning there have been investment firms in operation, consultants, and any number of people who's job it was to help people invest wisely; yet this idea was not published for over a hundred and fifty years?
It kind of reminds me of another piece of What The Fuck trivia that comes to mind every now and then dealing with the can opener. This little jewel of modern convenience wasn't invented for fifty years after the introduction of the tin can. How can you go about life for 50 years, bashing cans against pointy rocks, before it dawns on you that there has to be a better way?
And of course, as if it couldn't get any sillier, the better way turns out to be a big honking crowbar type thing that requires you to get your cans opened at the local grocery (probably due to the fact that any layperson would lose a few digits in the process of opening their non-perishables). It wasn't for another ten years that someone finally came out with modern can opener, who's derivatives we see and use today.
Sometimes I can't tell which astounds me more: humanity's amazing brilliance, or its complete inability to grasp the horribly obvious.
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| POWER, AND MORE OF IT | | Category: Rant
Sunday, January 27th, 2002 @ 04:15 pm
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The reach of Chernobyl's radiation
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I hope you don't mind my lack of pithy in the explanation of this update; to assume my point of view, one must understand my perspective.
I remember reading a Sci-Fi story about a voyage to Alpha-Centauri. It was supposedly happening in current times where three scientists had created a drug and accompaning chambers that would allow one to reamain in suspended animation for around 250+ years.
They began the voyage with much world-wide fanfair. The person from who's perspective the story was told had the task of waking in fifty years to transmit a message back to Earth as a sign that the first leg of the mission was a success. He did so and re-entered the 'sleep'. They were to take shifts of waking and journaling the trip. When it was his time to wake again, there was a huge, hulking spaceship burning in flames behind the ship they were in.
The story went on and they finally reached the distant solar system only to find that Earthlings were already there. As it turns out, by the time they reached the star, around 550+ years, humanity had technologically surpassed them and could now travel between the systems in around 45 minutes. The ship they had seen burning was a failed attempt during early progress in this advanced technology.
End Preface.
We have not built a nuclear power plant in twenty years. People bitch that we burn too much fossil fuel to create power, but the shadow of Chernobyl has loomed over the industry since the big accident, and people are afraid to try it again. This, of course, hasn't halted the operation of several plants that were created before, but we're still stagnating.
We have to realize that advancement in the field has kept it's original inertia, and has gotten to a point where a catastrophe of that magnitude has reached an almost miniscule amount of probability, and it will continue to do so. It will continue to do so thanks to mistakes like Chernobyl. That's how life works. You smack your bike into the pavement, you pick yourself up, and you've learned one more thing that you shouldn't do when riding a bike.
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| TIME TRODDEN, REVISITED | | Category: Rant
Wednesday, January 23rd, 2002 @ 11:07 pm
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or,
-ON THE RELATIVE INADEQUACY OF CERTAIN UNMENTIONABLE ANATOMICAL DETAILS OF YOUR HUMBLE JOURNALIST-
or,
-SHORTCOMINGS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN ALL OF ITS FORMS, BE THEY SPOKEN, WRITTEN, OR EVEN THOUGHT-
Yeah. So there's some fru-fru talk to kind of serve as a rough guideline of what's to come and to give this post a faint air of decency. I hope it's enough, cuz I'm feeling rather short lately.
Firstly and foremostly, we have the "time trodden, revisited" part, so I'll get to that directly. I asked you all for your input on what gives your lives meaning and makes you want to get up and greet a shiny new day (more or less- I'm not splitting hairs when it comes to quoting myself). You responded. And now I respond (and I'm sure there will be biting back in the comments and then the world's problems will be solved).
It seems that the bulk of your responses involved the pursuit of the (semi-theoretical) CP. I'm inclined to write the whole matter off as silly responses, given the general tone of the exchange. However, all of them were granted permanence of record, so I can only assume that this is an honest-to-claude focus for those who mentioned it. And with that, I don't really know what to say. The two of you who have actually experienced it seem to regard it as a pleasant fluke that occurred mostly because the opportunity presented itself and there was no reason to not indulge. He who hasn't seems to put it on a pedestal higher than the perpetual motion device or sliced bread and yet can't seem to resolve his anger and immodesty/hubris enough to afford any reasonable expectation of the achievement thereof in the foreseeable future. But hell, there's always room to strive and hope and if that's what keeps him going then who am I to judge?
There were also comments made regarding the pursuit of inebriation, entertainment, and the opportunity to entertain. In my mind, these are all separated by kind of nonexistant lines. I'm totally down with all of them and have been for some time. My only gripe is that it seems that so many ducks have to be in a row (to turn a phrase) in order for these pursuits to be achieved that I am at times fiercely annoyed with their existence (the ducks', that is). But I guess in the end my annoyance doesn't do much to outweigh my enjoyment of entertainment and/or diminished mental facility, so I'll nip a paranoid rant in the bud.
A comment was made about fellating our webmaster. While this is not a practice I stand in opposition to, I will leave participation in that activity to interested parties.
Speaking of our webmaster, he also made mention of taking care of this site. I think that makes sense. Hobbies are considered healthy channels for one to focus creative energies into. So much the better if the hobby facilitates the entertainment or enlightenment of others and encourages communication within a peer group.
Lastly on this topic, someone stated that the big three killed his baby. This was decided to be an unsolicited conversational off-ramp and was thusly done away with. Later, by way of explanation, he made it known that this was intended as a quote of a song that means something to him. After shedding brighter light on the matter, the whole exercise was considered to truly be facetious. However, I have gone to the trouble of locating the lyrics of the full song and learned many things in the process- some of which I will gladly share with you now, gentle reader.
 It's damned near impossible to find any collections of White Stripes lyrics on the web or in newsgroups.
When you can find lyrics, they're usually for the same one or two songs.
Their new video (for "Fell in Love with a Girl") is a brain-folding trip into Lego animation land.
"The Big Three Killed My Baby" is a very angry song and I did a pretty damned good job of figuring out the lyrics on my own, thank you very much.
I'm not going to reprint the lyrics here, but suffice it to say that they are about the enforced permanence of the auto and oil industries and how Mr. White seems to feel dwarfed -yet no less outraged- when faced with them. Which takes me to the next part of my post. (And I'll aim for brevity).
The reason I posted the whole question of what keeps folks going is because when I look out at the world I feel rather powerless. This bugs me because I'm living in the freest fucking nation on this planet and yet when I see what has been accomplished by certain unleashed and well-fed dogs I am left slackjawed. There is little one can do to change this state of affairs and I am sick of it. I find myself over and over again wishing for impossibly longer middle fingers and a whole new vocabulary full of words so foul that the one and only true God would fall down in tears if I would so much as whisper them. But that won't be happening any time soon, so I proceed to the next day... with my heart full of black stuff and prayers for meteors on my lips.
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