11 years of failure (.net)

11 years ago (1998) today (may 8th), failure.net came into existence. it has spent its entire life thus far with me.
at some points in the last few weeks i watched the animatrix and fido via streaming netflix. some of the the animatrix stuff was pretty cool. in general, stuff based on the matrix is pretty nice — it’s just a good framework for lots of interesting concepts. fido, which is a story set in a 50’s style world about zombies that are controlled and used as servants, wasn’t as good as i’d thought or hoped it’d be. there were some pretty funny things, but overall i didn’t think it was as good as the promise it showed in the trailer.
wednesday before the show i had some extra time so i ate supper at burger king on westheimer and then headed across the street to the half price books. i ended up buying a few cds:

  • the drum and bass collection – art of noise (china/discovery)
  • fight songs old 97’s – (elektra)
  • straightaways – son volt (warner)

the show was the first of three pledge shows for the kpft spring pledge drive. during the beginning of the show the program director walked into the studio with a concert snare on a shoulder strap. which was kind of odd. he couldn’t really play it, which led to me mentioning i’d played drums in the past. so they handed it to me and coaxed me into playing something for them. i was drawing a blank for what drum song to play for them (because there are so many well-known and cherished drum songs, you know), then someone suggested the old drummer standby: “wipeout”. so i demonstrated a bit of my rusty drum skills. the rest of the night they had me doing drum rolls before they announced the pledge totals. at some point jay tried to get me to play some backbeat, so i had to confess that when i play everything turns into a marching song because i cut my teeth in marching band playing a lot of john philip sousa numbers and other similar military style marching junk. i’ve got rhythm, but i’ve got no soul. (or funk.)
some of the bands i like have put out stuff only on vinyl over the years. some of them have put out vinyl versions of albums. every now and then i’ve ended up picking that stuff up, but i haven’t had a record player for years. well, recently i picked up even more vinyl.

  • entertainment – adult. (ersatz audio)
  • misinterpreted – various (ersatz audio)
  • oral-olio – various (ersatz audio)
  • auto-motif – le car (monoplaza / ersatz audio)
  • entertainment – adult. (ersatz audio)

(yes, i bought two copies of entertainment. the second was a good deal.)
these are 12″ records that were put out in the late 90’s and early 00’s. there are still a few more put out by ersatz audio i’d like to get. i guess at some point i might have to break down and get a record player so i can hear them (and rip them to electronic copies).
i guess the biggest thing lately that i haven’t mentioned yet is that i bought a used apple tv on ebay. i got it for $150, which a fair penny less than the $250 it sells for new. i got it all hooked up in my home environment, and once i verified everything appeared to be working okay i created a patchstick and installed xmbc/boxee on it. it also gives me the ability to ssh into the apple tv. anyway, i just started playing with it some, so we’ll see where that leads, if anywhere.
my leg…it seems like it’s been about the same the last couple of weeks. i get up in the morning and it starts slowly swelling up. throughout the day it feels kind of numb and/or aches. my ankle ends up aching a fair bit. i get in bed for the night and overnight the swelling goes down a fair bit. get up the next day, repeat. a couple of weeks ago i went by and picked up the compression stockings the doctor had written a prescription for. i’ve only worn it a couple of times though, as it didn’t seem like it really kept my leg or ankle or foot from swelling all that much. i’m guessing at this point it’ll probably be months before the swelling stops, if it ever goes completely away.

6 comments on “11 years of failure (.net)”

  1. 1. “supper”: while you and I have had the supper vs. dinner discussion before, in my lexicon (which is largely Houstonian/Austinite with a large Mississippian influence and a smidgen of St. Louis thrown in for fun), “supper” while it can mean “the evening meal” carries connotations of formalness. So calling an evening meal at Burger King “supper” just seems wrong to me.
    2. “the early 00’s”: How do you say this line? The early double-Oh’s or the early “zero-zero’s”….(BTW, I’m not joking here. I seriously
    want to know!)
    3. 2010: first I went from thinking that “partying like it’s 1999” was some far off distant event, to being a real event, then a past event and now it’s progressed to being an event that happened 10 freaking years ago. Then you have the “I’ve now caught up in time to the sci-fi movie 2001” event. Next year, we’ll catch up with it’s sequel 2010. Da*n… is there any way to slow this ride down?

  2. 1. in my mind, my choices for the evening meal are “supper” and “dinner”. “dinner” was always a more formal form for me. “supper” you were were just eating late in the day like every other day, “dinner” meant someone was coming over as a guest or you were all sitting down together at the table or something. (although it wasn’t that delineated…”dinner” didn’t *have* to mean formal.) i don’t know the accurate pedigree of my lexicon, other than i assume i got it as a native central Texan from my parents whom are both native central(ish) Texans. maybe “supper” was just a more exotic word because it was used less around you? and/or vice versa?
    2. i wrote that because i could write it and didn’t have to worry about how it would be said. 🙂
    i decided early in the discussions in years past that i liked “the ought’s” (or “aught”). although considering the pattern of the rest (20’s through 90’s), i think to match it should be “the o’s” and “the ten’s”. (i like “the o’s” better than “the zero’s”. e.g., “oh-nine” versus “zero-nine”.) but there is no good answer exactly, since an *exact* pattern match can’t be made since not all numbers in “the ten’s” start with “ten-” (or end in “-teen” if you wanted to pitch for “the teen’s” stupid 10, 11, and 12, and inconsistent naming conventions!).
    3. i hear ya. but i’m also sometimes freaked out by how recently some history seems to be when i start to think about it. world war 2 was really just 65ish years ago? the “wild west” was only how long ago? sometimes i read what year someone well-known died and i think “they should have been dead long before then!” because i tie their name to history i think is older than it really is.

  3. 1. Growing up, a hot sit-down meal at noon was “dinner,” otherwise it was merely “lunch,” whereas the evening meal could be “dinner” or “supper” interchangably, although “dinner” might be used as a more formal term, just as it is used as noon for that purpose. But when you had “dinner” at noon, then the evening meal was always “supper” to avoid confusing the two. So basically “dinner” was always the big, formal meal of the day, regardless of the hour. Simple, ain’t it? 🙂
    2. I’m wondering when we are going to drop the whole “two thousand” thing in favor of “twenty.” To my ear, 2013 would be the first year this might occur. But then, it could carry on up to 2021, which is definitely a “twenty.”
    I like the “ohs” for the 200Xs, but the problem with that is that we don’t say “twenty oh nine” now. And you can’t use the “two thousands” — that’s the entire century, or perhaps even the millenium.
    So what did we ever call the 190Xs? I wonder if, at the time, they said “nineteen hundred X” like we say “two thousand X” now, which would mean “nineteen oh X” was adapted much later when the use of “nineteen” was the prevailing term.
    Language is a funny thing, indeed…
    3. Will we live to see ELO’s 2095? — which by the way is “twenty ninety-five” in the song. 🙂

  4. I just had a phone conversation with my mom and she supported your (meaning Terry’s and Ack!’s) idea about dinner and supper. So, I looked it up on dictionary.com and found some really interesting stuff.
    1. dinner: The chief meal of the day, eaten in the evening or at midday.
    2. from dictionary.com “In Middle English dinner meant “breakfast,” as did the Old French word disner, or diner, which was the source of our word. The Old French word came from the Vulgar Latin word *disiÅ«nāre, meaning “to break one’s fast; that is, to eat one’s first meal,” a notion also contained in our word breakfast. ”
    and:"Customs change, however, and over the years we have let the chief meal become the last meal of the day, by which time we have broken our fast more than once."
    3. The Brits also agree: from OED supper: “Formerly, the last of the three meals of the day (breakfast, dinner, and supper); now applied to the last substantial meal of the day when dinner is taken in the middle of the day, or to a late meal following an early evening dinner. Supper is usually a less formal meal than late dinner.”

  5. I’m thinking you should write a blog post about all of these comments – great stuff!
    I was born in Pennsylvania but have lived in Houston since 1978. However, “supper” is not and has never been a part of my lexicon. And honestly, it seems like a really weird word to me.
    I was raised using only 4 possible meal labels, all with pretty clear definitions. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, and brunch. Which meal you’re eating depends on what time (and day) it is. Here is my own personal quick reference chart:
    Breakfast: 5 AM – 11 AM
    Lunch: 11 AM – 1 PM
    Dinner: 5 PM – 9:00 PM
    Brunch: Friday – Sunday 10:00AM – 2:00 PM
    Where the brunching hours overlap the breakfast or lunch hours, you have the option of choosing which label you like to use for that meal. Also, if you are eating during any time not listed, it is called a “snack”.
    I’m with Ash on finding out if we can “slow this ride down”. It’s crazy!
    I also like what Ack! said about dropping the “two thousand” thing in favor of “twenty”. Like did people really say “nineteen hundred one” in 1901, or even “one thousand nine hundred and one”?
    I think people might start using “twenty” in 2010. I might start now. 🙂

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