Saturday, December 20, 2003 [23:57]
Last minute gift ideas
I need some. Quick. Right now, I'm seriously considering going down into the basement and looking through the tattered relics of Christmas 1995, in the hopes that everyone has forgotten what they got all those years ago.
Damn, but I miss being six. Those were the days when you could play with play-doh for half an hour, have the teacher throw it into a kiln, and then take the result home for your parents to cherish forever. It didn't matter that the blasted ashtray wasn't shaped even remotely like an ash tray. It didn't matter that your parents weren't smokers. Snot nosed kid that you were, you could do no wrong.
Hmm. Ceramics. I like it. Chia pets to all, and to all a good night!
Wednesday, December 17, 2003 [03:33]
Does not play well with others
Before you consider letting me join a team project, consider this. I am a Machiavellian bastard who will stab you in the back. Not for personal gain, mind you, but just to see the look on your trusting face.
Nothing personal.
Monday, December 01, 2003 [19:14]
Be Excellent to Each Other
That is the whole of the law.
Saturday, November 29, 2003 [22:01]
The joy of LARPS
I just checked the access logs, and unsurprisingly, I'm the only one reading the blog. It's a liberating feeling, like you get when you walk around the kitchen in your underwear. Nobody will worry about my punctuation or my grammar. Nobody will be offended by anything I say. The only thing I can't do is use traffic-friendly words like "sex" or "Britney Spears". Or "underwear", but it's a little late for that now.
Yeah, it would be a real shame if I started using strings of gibberish like "Counterstrike Linux Jessica Simpson porn" in a shameless effort to lure the uninterested here. Real shame. Anyways, you're probably curious about what LARPS is/are/were. Frankly, so am I. My cousin is a high schooler from Cedar City, and he's started a combination role-playing/sport called LARPS. The most coherent explanation I got out of him was, "We go into the desert and beat kids with sticks."
I also have it on good authority that LARPS is not a religion or a cult. I'll have to take his word for it, though I've noticed that all the best cults are very quick to remind you that they lack any cult-like qualities whatsoever.
As with most role-playing systems, it's a bit confusing at first glance. I didn't fully understand the class system, the spell system, or the point-earning system. But if the end result is spending a carefree day beating twelve year olds 'neath the scorching desert sun, I'm willing to learn.
My cousin has big plans for LARPS. He claims to be earning $300 every time he organizes an event, and is even working on franchinsing out into his old home town back East. Eventually, he wants to build two humongous franchises in New York and Los Angeles, then use his million-LARP army to lay waste to both coasts before setting up his kingdom right in the heart of Cedar City.
He must be stopped. I've done my best to expose his nefarious plans, even going so far as to broadcast the warning on the Internet. So if you people can't be tricked into reading this by promises of "free DirecTV descramblers", don't blame it on me.
Friday, November 28, 2003 [16:22]
On the Perils of Commercialism
The day after Thanksgiving is the most revered day in the great religion that is American commercialism. For the last three years, I've managed to avoid getting caught up in it, slumbering peacefully while the acolytes performed their dark and spendy rituals.
This year, Mom wanted a laptop.
So this year, my brother and I hauled ourselves out the door and into the morning chill at a quarter to five, in search of the fabled $500 laptop. By the time we got there, the line of customers streched half way around Best Buy. They came by the hundreds, lured by the promise of cheap DVD and MP3 players, choosing to endure the sort of conditions normally associated with a refugee camp (or a late-season football game).
After a failed attempt to rally a mob to storm the keep, and a few moments spent explaining to a frozen young lad that getting stuff and freezing your butt off was the True Spirit of Christmas, we fell into silence. We waited, and waited, and froze. I took comfort knowing the money saved on the laptop would help pay for reattaching my extremities.
Finally, the gates were unlocked, and the peasants flooded into the inner sanctum. In order to avoid a repeat of some legendary year gone by, the rebates were passed out before the doors were open. If you had a piece of paper for an item, you were guaranteed that item. It seemed to cut down noticeably on the flying elbows, sucker punches, and other suburbanite kung-fu.
Clutching our guaranteed laptop ticket, we made our way to... the household appliance section? Yep, we formed a nice little queue among the washers and driers. It took about fifteen minutes to check out each laptop, which I consider an obvious ploy to sucker the captives into buying cuisinarts.
We spent the time looking over the various options, trying to decide whether to say 'no' or 'hell, no' to the free six months of MSN and the three year service agreement.
Meanwhile, Mom is waging the second front, hitting retail outlet after overwhelmed retail outlet. We would eventually meet up at the CompUSA from Hell, and spend a merry three hours in line. I spent some time filling out suggestion cards with plugs for SuSE. A miserable time was had by all, but at least someone got a digital camera out of it (in keeping with Anderson Christmas tradition, it's not at all clear who).
I'll say what I said last time I participated in the annual orgy of consumerism: Never, ever, ever again.
Expect another entry like this in about four years. I have a short memory.
Friday, November 28, 2003 [03:38]
Testing
All new format, same old crap.
Thursday, November 27, 2003 [16:22] : Nothing new to report
But I'm grateful for my loyal following. It's you readers who have made this blog what it is today.
Thursday, November 27, 2003 [09:04] : Behold!
Turkey day has come at last. But due to a scheduling conflict, my family jumped the gun and had the annual chowing a few days early. The leftovers are already gone and... okay, why should you care about this?
I just realized something. Blogs are stupid. Somebody could have taken me aside and warned me, but nooooo. Slackers! All of you!
Wednesday, November 26, 2003 [23:41] : And so, it begins
It was bound to happen. I was the only person on Earth who hadn't carved out a bloggy niche in somebody's server. Now, everyone has a blog.
Of course, it wasn't enough to just sign up and get one. No, I had to write the blogging software myself. And, being me, it had to be a twenty line bash script that would make any respectable computer professional cringe.
For most people, the primary purpose of a blog would be to facilitate communication between the author and his five(5) readers. For me, it's to give me something to tweak. The readers, I'm sure, won't mind if I only update it once a month.
November 26, 2003
This is a test. This is a test of the crappiest blogging software ever. This is only a test.
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