failure weblog

6 or 7 shots of tequila while watching eternal sunshine of the spotless mind and crying. it doesn’t get much better for a good time friday night than that. cheers, world. you win again.

i don’t think i’ve mentioned that a month or two ago i got on some weird kick and downloaded world of warcraft and played it for the 10-day trial period. i’m not a gamer, but it was somewhat interesting. i’ve toyed with buying the game and paying to play, but i’m not sure i want to spend the money on it. it did get me to see if half price books had unused copies of it (since the original game is years old), but i guess you still have to buy it to play at all, so the answer is “no”. while in the half price books, i did buy some cds though:

• medulla – bjork (elektra/atlantic/warner)
• the ramblin’ man – waylon jennings (buddha/bmg/rca)
• actual sounds + voices – meat beat manifesto (nothing/interscope/pias/universal)
• pontiac – lyle lovett (curb/mca)
• the road to ensenada – lyle lovett (curb/mca)
• pablo honey – radiohead (capitol/emi)
• ok computer – radiohead (capitol/emi)

i watched lady in the water a while back. i think i’d heard so many negative comments i wasn’t expecting much. but when i read on the blurb it was a bedtime story he’d made up for his kids and the movie started with “once upon a time…” — well, maybe all that made me not as harsh because i thought it was pretty good. as far as children’s stories go.
i also re-watched wild at heart. okay, i have absolutely no idea how i sat through pretty much any of that movie with my mom. gruesome violence, unbridled cursing, and tons of graphic sex scenes — all wrapped up in a complex plot with bizarre characters. what the hell was i thinking? (i hadn’t seen it before then, as far as i recall…so maybe i can claim ignorant stupidity. watch a david lynch film with your mom? brilliant!) i also have no idea how my mom was willing to sit through it, starting with the first scene. i was uncomfortable watching it by myself this time, just from imagining watching it with my mom. sorry, mom.
i took my harley in for its 1k maintenance. when i was almost there my front tire started going flat and i had a hard time steering the last half mile or so. i guess it’s fortunate i was already headed there anyway. it had had a nail in it, so i had to buy a new tire. *sigh*
i picked the bike up yesterday, then last night i met brad and kelli at west alabama for awhile, then we went to tacos-a-go-go.
i watched all of the british series the office via netflix streaming. it’s only like 2 6-season episodes and a 2-part special. it was good. it felt much more uncomfortable than the few episodes of the american version i’ve seen. i have to admit though, i didn’t really expect it to make me tear up some. i just sort of identified with some things tim said at various points (what with his self-deprecating and ironic sense of humor, along with his general feelings of living a mediocre life), so the damned happy ending of the xmas special was a sucker punch.
ash came to town for a visit and stayed with me a couple of days. it was great to see him. i wish we could hang out more. maybe i’ll finally get over my lethargy and visit him in taiwan. getting over my lethargy in any respect would be a pretty impressive feat.
while ash was here, we watched swimming with sharks. we’d watched it before, back when we were roommates back in ’96 or so. the movie’s pretty dark, but it’s well done.
tim canterbury: “i just think… well, i dunno. if you look at life like, ah, rolling a dice, then my situation now, as it stands, yeah, it may only be a three. if i jack that in now, go for something bigger and better, yeah, i could easily roll a six. no problem. i could roll a six. i could also roll a one. ok, so… i think sometimes just leave the dice alone.”
tim canterbury: (speaking about dawn) “[…] but, if i’m really being honest i never really thought it would have a happy ending. i don’t know what a happy ending is. life isn’t about endings, is it? it’s a series of moments. and umm… it’s not if, you know, if you turn the camera off it’s not an ending, is it. i’m still here, my life’s not over. come back, come back here in 10 years, see how i’m doing then. cause i could be married with kids, you don’t know. life just goes on.”

last night was the geek gathering for the radio show. there were several other groups meeting up at coffee groundz at the same time, so it was kind of hard to determine how many people came out for the gg, but there were a lot of people around. loopylow is starting a project to trade/pass around comic books, based on something he did informally a few months ago with a few of us (that’s how i got, read, then passed along the batman black and white graphic novel). i would provide a link, but i don’t think the site is up yet.
this afternoon i ran some errands, and while i was out i stopped by borders to use a 40% off coupon i had. i picked up:

• the idiot – fyodor dostoevsky (everyman’s library)

it sounds like it might be a book about me, perhaps. while tastefully not remarking on your thoughts about my relation to the title (the truth of which i will not attempt to rebut), i’ll clarify my remark by saying the brief synopsis from the dustjacket flaps is what i was referring to. (and no, my ending my sentence with a preposition does not bolster your position.)
when i made my august 5th post, i had forgotten that day is also the anniversary date for my current job. that means i’ve now been at the same place for 8 years. that’s a pretty long time.
you know, i moved to houston back in 1995. i didn’t move here because i loved houston or wanted to be somewhere near the coast. in fact, like most Texans outside of houston (especially rural Texans) i didn’t have a particularly fond opinion of the place. but i obviously wasn’t thinking things through when i dreamed about how much i loved outer space and decided to get an aerospace engineering degree. as an aerospace engineer who loves space and could really care less about airplanes, chances are if you’re gonna stay in Texas you’re going to end up in houston.
and so i did. i resigned myself to this fate, but on a number of occasions (specifically once i’d shifted from aerospace engineering to unix work) i got close to moving somewhere else. in most cases it ended up being a girl that dealt the final blow to my seriously pursuing a job elsewhere. (well, the girl finished off my already generally lackadaisical job hunting attempts. industry personal contacts are almost always the way to find new jobs, and i don’t have many of those in other cities.) i liked san antonio when i worked there back long ago, and i’ve always enjoyed my times in austin. connections in the d/fw and plano area even almost got me to try that area a time or two (although i’m not sure if i’d like it much better than houston).
now back to the girls stopping me from moving thing. if you know me very well (or read this blog much) i think you know i’d rather be in a relationship than be alone (which i’d venture to guess is true with most people), and ideally i would like to get married again (which may or may not be true for most people). but maybe it’s time for me to finally drop that completely out of the equation as a possible reason for staying in houston. that doesn’t mean any other city would necessarily be better in that category, but it doesn’t seem less likely it’d happen in some other city either.
i’ve been here in houston for 14+ years. i’ve never considered houston “home”, but after my divorce i lost even the shallow roots that had started to grow here. (my roots to Texas on the other hand — specifically central Texas — are very deep.) i have friends here, i enjoy being a part of the radio show, i like my job okay (even though i think i’m at a dead end), i like most of the people i work with — there are definitely things i like about houston. but should that be enough to keep me? are major life goals being better accomplished in houston than they would be somewhere else? the thing is, i know a burgeoning romance could keep me in houston. i know that is a major life goal, and it trumps other things in my life. (and, obviously, has for a long time.) but if that’s not happening, why do i let my inertia, comfort, and laziness keep me here? i don’t have an answer. maybe i should figure it out.
grace: when are you coming home?
anthony: i can’t come home, grace — i’m an adult.
(from bottle rocket)

today is the 3rd anniversary of me owning my 1965 ford f-100 pickup. which means it’s also the 4th anniversary of the date my divorce was official. (though tamara had sunk it years before the legal formality took place.) but i don’t care to talk right now about the years tamara tarnished the memories of, let’s just celebrate 3 years with a cool pickup.
a couple of weekends ago i went by the half-price books and returned the michael buble cd that wished it was a bjork cd. unfortunately, they had no other bjork cds. but i went through the stacks again while i was there and came out with a few things:

• written in chalk – buddy & julie miller (new west)
• down in it – nine inch nails (tvt)
• tramp on your street – shaver (praxis / zoo / bmg)

they also had lyle lovett’s first cd, but the case was empty and there was no number to tie it to a cd stored behind the counter. i went ahead and took it up and asked — they said without a number it was useless, and they threw the case in the trash. i got that nin ep because it is halo 1 — i.e., the first nin release. i already had halo 2 and 3, but i’d wanted halo 1…plus i figured it might be somewhat rare these days.
awhile back i did the instant (streaming) netflix thing and watched the isle. it’s a korean film. as usual with korean films, beautiful cinematography, but the plot is somewhat twisted and dark. the blurb for it says the guy is an ex-cop, but i never got that from the movie. maybe it’s in korean somewhere. anyway, there are these little bitty floating…houses, i guess…they’re just one small room (maybe 10×10) with a 2 or 3 foot roof…and you rent them to fish. or i guess to bring hookers to, because that seemed to be a very popular thing to do there. so this guy is going there to kill himself, but he can’t seem to do it. then he falls into this odd erotic/tense relationship with the girl who doesn’t ever talk that runs the rentals. it’s an odd dynamic between them and weird things happen. an interesting story nevertheless.
i finished reading anna karenina last night. it seemed like it mostly had this slow steady pace with lots of ruminating about philosophy and sociology and such, but then it seemed like tolstoy must have said “man, i need to wrap this thing up.” things started happening very quickly, and some of it seemed like it just happened suddenly without much understanding of how things got to that point right then. but overall it was a good read. i got a fair number of memorable bits from it. it was interesting to see how i could identify with different characters, or how i could sympathize or be mad/annoyed with certain characters when they did things. i could understand anna’s husband’s position, but also could see how people viewed him negatively (and how he knew it but didn’t understand why exactly). but i also could identify a fair bit with levin.
two weekends ago i was going to jack and sue’s (in my pickup) and i saw an accident. and i was almost part of it. i’d just gotten off of the 59 feeder and was going west on beechnut. it’s 3 lanes westbound and i was in the outside lane. the middle lane was stopped up so some guy in the middle lane moved over to the outside lane. except there was a car halfway up his side. they put on their brakes and tried to swerve without hitting the curb. i slammed on my brakes and since i have drum brakes i went ahead and hopped the curb halfway into a parking area in case i couldn’t stop in time. the car who scraped the side of the car in front of me just kept going like nothing had happened. the car he’d hit followed him. so even though i was planning on turning at guessner, i kept following them. i eventually got up beside the hit’n’run guy. he was an older hispanic guy. the car was used, but only had paper tags from carmax. he didn’t speed up, didn’t slow down…just drove like everything was fine. at one point the car behind him honked at him. i was beside him and he looked confusedly over at me. i motioned my thumb back to the car behind him. he kept going. i got in front of him, then we went under beltway 8. he then turned into the h.e.b. there. the other car turned in too, so i went up to the next entrance and came around. the hit car blocked him after he parked and i got out and walked up. he seemed clueless, spoke hardly any english, and claimed he hadn’t hit anybody. i’m pretty sure he was drunk and/or high. the cops showed up quickly. after denying it was him and being told the cops were on their way, he offered them $100 and said it was “nothing”. i’m sure it was several hundreds if not one thousand or more in damage (paint, body, trim, etc.). when the cops showed up he acted like he didn’t understand any english at all…or really spanish. the cops put him in their car. he didn’t have a license or insurance. so i guess those people should have taken that $100.
this past weekend i went on a motorcycle ride to galveston with brad and jason and some other people (about 7 total). we left in the morning, went down 45, had breakfast at galveston, rode the highway over to jamiaca beach, then took 288 back up to houston. i didn’t think i’d get too much sun, but it was longer than i thought and i got a bit toasted. plus my nannini goggles let too much air in at the bridge of my nose so one side of one of my eyes got bloodshot (i guess from the air pressure and/or volume). the other thing was the people leading the pack all rode very cautiously, and the speed limit. i’m not used to that and it was somewhat unnerving being in a middle lane of traffic and having cars passing me on all sides and pulling up on my tail.
i need to take my bike in for the first maintenance (1k). i’m over 1600 now. and i still need to get that engine ordered for my bel-air.
“we fillied around for a while with other travelers of the night, playing ‘hogs of the road’. then we headed west. what we were after now was the old ‘surprise visit’. that was a real kick, and good for laughs and lashings of the old ultra-violent.”
–alex, clockwork orange

i’m pretty sure i’ve mentioned on here in the past about looking into getting a new tv. i spent some amount of time several different times over the last year or two looking at plasma and lcd tvs. i’d decided a long time ago i was planning to get an lcd, most likely a sony bravia xbr model or a samsung ln. both higher end, more expensive lcds. probably a 46 inch. but i kept balking because of the price. then suddenly a couple of weeks ago i decided i should get a plasma instead. plasmas have always been better than lcd as far as picture quality, but lcd technology has come a long way. plasma is still better for contrast and motion though. in the end, i decided overall picture quality was more important for me. then i saw on july 4th that best buy had the samsung pn50b650 on sale for $1399. that was about as good as i could find online, but i figured the extra price in taxes would be worth getting it local and being able to deal with a local store if there were problems with the tv. i went to the best buy at richmond and 610, and they also were offering free delivery — but they were out. he also said delivery was running days to weeks. he asked if i wanted to order one, but i said i’d wait. i figured i’d just go get it at another best buy. i went home and looked it up on their website — the closest store that had them closed at 6pm (on saturday?) and it was 6:10pm. so i decided i’d get it the next day (sunday). sunday i got up and went online to check availability before driving there. but evidently the sale was over, as the price was at $1799. so i gave up on getting the tv.
as a comparison, the absolute cheapest places online were around $1350. but some of them seemed like they would be horrible to deal with if the set came in busted. (ask my co-worker chris about dealing with that.) amazon had it at $1525, but given i could have had it for that price locally (with taxes) i decided i’d just wait for labor day or something.
then a few days went by and i was checking prices again. cnet’s shopper showed things like usual, but when i checked google shopping it showed the tv at amazon for $1344. i checked to make sure it wasn’t a refurb or warehouse deal (return), but it was the price for new. there were a few good things: lowest price i’d seen, no tax, tv over 27″ so i could pick my delivery date/time, and tv over 40″ so they would do delivery where they bring it into your house, unbox it, set it up, plug it in, and make sure it works before they leave. sounded like a good deal to me! and since i was originally planning on spending $1541 on the tv, i went ahead and picked up a 3-year extended warranty that kept me right at that price point total. i set the delivery for friday morning (17th) since i wouldn’t be going into work until in the afternoon.
friday morning they called and eventually came by. they brought it in, moved my old tv, unboxed the new one, put it in place, plugged in the power and hdmi cable (i’d already rewired my amp and blu-ray player to use hdmi cables earlier in the morning), turned it on and went through the setting and made sure i was getting a feed. everything was fine. i signed for it and they were gone. interestingly, the tv is about the same height as my 36″ rca tube, so it doesn’t necessarily seem more huge to me…just wider. but it’s nice that i can set everything to use 16:9. (now stuff doesn’t go off the edge of my tv sometimes, since several of my devices weren’t designed to work with 4:3 screens.) the inaugural run of the tv was bottle rocket on blu-ray. i followed that up later with clockwork orange.
also on friday morning my mom called and said she and my dad wanted to come down saturday and see me. i didn’t have plans so i said that was okay, although driving 6 hours two days in a row for a visit doesn’t seem fun to me. they did it anyway, arriving saturday around lunch. we got something from hot bagel shop, found them a hotel, then dropped by a couple of half price books. then we went and ate supper at sylvia’s enchilada (the original one out on westheimer). sue and her daughters met us there and ate with us. then we went to the half price books out that way. what with all the half price books visits, i was bound to end up with some stuff. here it is:

• volta – bjork (atlantic / elektra / warner)
• about a burning fire – blindside (elektra / warner)
• if i could only fly – merle haggard (anti-)
• celebrity skin – hole (universal / geffen)
• everybody stomp – hoosier hot shots (proper)
• this island – le tigre (le tigre / universal)
• keep moving – madness (universal / geffen)
• twelve inch singles 1981-1984 – ministry (wax trax)
• psalm 69: the way to succeed and the way to suck eggs – ministry (sire / warner)
• everything is wrong – moby (elektra / warner)
• play – moby (rave new world / v2 / bmg)
• the shape of punk to come – refused (burning heart / epitaph)
• linger ficken’ good – revolting cocks (sire / reprise / warner)
• specials – the specials (2 tone / chrysalis)
• family music – ymck (records of the damned)

since one of the half price books stores is in rice village, i printed out my coupon for signing up on the yankee candle email list and dropped by there. i used the coupon to pick up a large blueberry scone candle.
oddly, the bjork cd — although appearing by packaging, labeling, etc. to be bjork’s volta cd — is actually a michael buble cd. i’ll be seeing if i can return/exchange that. unfortunately, it was purchased at the half price books furthest from me (of course).
it was cool to come across some older industrial and 2nd wave ska cds, but one of the most intriguing finds is the ymck cd. they’re a japanese band that does chip music, sort of chip music jazz or something. i was pretty surprised to see one of their cds in the bins.
the next morning we went to crescent city beignets and had a late breakfast of beignets. my parents had never had them before i guess. i drove my parents around and showed them river oaks, where i work, the medical center, etc. we went and ate a late lunch at tacos-a-go-go. then they left.
not too long after they left, jack and sue called me to see if i wanted to eat with them at chuy’s. i was pretty mexicaned out, but i hadn’t seen jack and jackson and dietrich in some time, so i said i could get something to drink and hang out.

a couple of weeks ago i ordered various stuff from amazon, a number of which were based on music i’d heard through pandora based on my adult./the knife channel. i was waiting on all of my merchandise to arrive before putting up this entry, but i’ve had one straggler go over a week past all the others and i’m tired of waiting on it. (as an aside, while looking up the status of this order i realized i’d never received a couple of cds from a 3rd party on amazon from an order back in february. i contacted them, but they didn’t seem too helpful. but i understand it’s been a number of months. i wonder if it ever got to my house or not?)
anyway, here’s what i got:

• the best of bass 305 – bass 305 (dm records)
• please clap your hands – the bird and the bee (emi / blue note)
• let it die – feist (polydor / universal)
• the world of tomorrow – komputer (mute)
• trans-europe express – kraftwerk (capitol)
• this island remixes – le tigre (chicks on speed / le tigre)
• kala – m.i.a. (xl / interscope)
• first album – miss kittin & the hacker (emperor norton)
• pop-up – yelle (source etc / caroline / emi)

after listening, my best choices were yelle and miss kittin & the hacker. bass 305 is nice, but sort of a one trick pony that gets boring pretty quick. the bird and the bee one is an e.p., and i bought it just for the bee gees cover (“how deep is your love”). feist i’m still deciding on. both the bird and the bee and feist are kind of dreamy/60’s female vocals with somewhat minimalist music backing them. the specific komputer album i bought is a nice kraftwerk style, and if you like kraftwerk it should be exactly up your alley. and that kraftwerk album completes their general catalog for me. the le tigre album is remixes, and to be honest i only got it for the peaches “tko” remix. the m.i.a. album is interesting…i haven’t developed a strong opinion on it yet. miss kittin & the hacker is a nice minimalist electro thing, with vampy/disaffected vocals. yelle is french techno pop music with a heavy 80’s influence…think bananarama with more modern dance/techno sensibilities. but if you start looking up the translations of the french lyrics, you may be surprised. (i was.)
i also picked up a couple of blu-ray movies using a coupon at border’s:

• eyes wide shut – kubrick (warner brothers)
• wall*e – (pixar/disney)

i hadn’t seen eyes wide shut since i saw it in the theaters with tamara. it has much less sex/nudity than i remembered it having (although it’s still a fair bit). i’ve read some interpretations of the movie which make aspects of it more interesting. there is obviously some complexity going on below a simple straight read of the film…well, as straight as you can get with it. but some of the interpretations seem far-fetched to me.
i never saw wall*e in the theaters, but i assumed i’d like it since i’ve enjoyed pretty much every other pixar film. it was good, although it didn’t really jump into the top part of my list of pixar movies.
and i ordered a couple of books from amazon while i was at it:

• germany and Texas – glen e. lich (inter nationes bonn)
• die kettner briefe / the kettner letters: a firsthand account of a german immigrant in the Texas hill country (1850-1875) – ilse wurster (comanche creek)

the book by lich is actually a pamphlet that was printed during the Texas sesquicentennial (1986). it seems to be attempting to note the influence of germans in Texas.
the kettner book (by wurster) is a collection of letters between a german who came to Texas in the 1850’s and his family back in germany. the letters were translated into modern german, then from modern german into english. part of what makes it interesting to me is he was in mason county and the leifeste families were there as well. so my ancestors on my dad’s side were probably sharing a lot of the same kind of experiences he was writing about.

what an interesting weekend — a lot of difficulty in the midst of a lot of enjoyment.
i had made plans to hang out with mrs. potts at some point, as jack and the boys were gone to the northeast and sue’s brother was coming down to pick up her mom and the girls to take them to louisiana. that meant sue was flying solo for a couple of days, so she wanted to take the opportunity to go out on the town a bit. (and what am i, if not a trend-making social butterfly?)
she ended up being tired after getting off work late friday, and she suggested we do things saturday afternoon/evening. so i met up with jamie at empire for supper, then we went over to coffee groundz for a few hours. the conversation delved into pretty complex matters about life, relationships, dating, past experiences, the present, and the future. (i’ve actually been having a lot of intense conversations about that sort of stuff lately.) i left there around 2:30am and headed home.
saturday i got up around 11am and got a text from brad pitching a crawfish boil and bbq fundraiser for sending kids in his group to camp this summer. he texted again not much later saying jason suggested we all meet and ride there. i hadn’t ridden with them in some time (especially jason), and i’d thought i’d go anyway, so i told him i’d meet up with them. we met at the vineyard in the heights and then rode to a place off of allen parkway toward downtown. it was only a few miles’ ride, but we had one car pull out right in front of us and another pair of cars both cut us off and almost slam into each other — a lot of excitement for such a short run. after eating there, we decided to get something cold, so i suggested the gelato at coffee groundz. from there, jason, brad, and i decided to go riding. we ended up going down 610 south to alt-90 west out to grand parkway, then on westheimer to county line ice house. sue eventually called me — turned out she’d slept until like 3:30pm. (no kids to wake her up, see?) we headed up grand parkway to i-10, then i went back to my house.
sue called not much later, and was soon at my house. we got a late start on the day (it was about 8pm), so we went in her car to rice village to the yankee candle store. it’d been months since i’d been in one. for some reason they stopped sending me email a long time ago, so i stopped knowing when sales were, new items, etc. there were no exciting sales going on and no new scents i needed so badly as to pay full price, so i ended up buying nothing. sue, on the other hand…haha. i asked them about their mailing list, and they suggested i register again online. (which i did later.) from there we headed back to my house.
we switched to the motorcycle and i took her to cedar creek (over between 19th and 20th a few blocks west of shepherd). we sat outside and had some food there, and — oddly enough — talked about a lot of really complex issues regarding relationships, marriage, the past, possible futures, etc.
around midnight we hopped back on the bike and headed to poison girl. sue had never been there, and i thought she might like the place. we were there for a bit when who should come walking out to us but jason (the one i rode with earlier in the day). before he showed up, i had noticed this girl that looked so much like the hrc it was rather weird. i felt compelled to ask her if she was russian. for a long time she was busy talking to people, several of them being guys hitting on her, but eventually she was walking by us so i stopped her and asked her if she was russian or georgian (i hedged my bets, since i knew the hrc had some georgian background). she seemed annoyed about being asked if she was georgian, but she then affirmed she was russian. she said it was weird i would think that since she didn’t look like 99% of russians. but she said she was from moscow. she then went to lecture me on all kinds of facts about russia — how it’s so big, so diverse, etc. i felt like i was being lectured to by a living travel brochure. she asked if sue and i were artists, then said she was a painter. then she left. it was really weird how similar she looked, acted, dressed, etc. like the hrc. jason and sue and i then went on to have conversations about some fairly deep stuff related to relationships (as well as our own past, present, and future). around 2am we took off and sue and i headed back to my house. she crashed on my couch, and was gone when i woke up.
of course, my mind wasn’t satisfied by all of the deep conversations i’d been having. it went ahead and concocted some dream scenarios for me, which left me waking up around 7:00am panicked and troubled. i couldn’t get back to sleep for an hour or two, even though i was really tired. eventually i got back to sleep though.
sunday sue texted me about going to aaron brothers. i was waiting for their sale to pick up some frames, and it was happening so i took my motorcycle and she met me there. i bought some frames and we put them in her car. then we headed over to Texas art supply to pick up some mats and foamboard and tacky glue for mounting prints. from there we went to pronto and ate. yes, more conversation about complex/deep topics. we went back to my house and helped her get a picture framed for calista’s room (mostly i cut a mat and helped center stuff). after that she took off.
a couple of hours later i decided i’d get some fast food from taco bell and watch a movie by myself. i got to taco bell and went to check the time on my phone to see if their lobby was still open and i noticed i just missed a call. jason (yes, the same one) was at the pappasito’s at the corner of richmond and kirby and had seen me drive by and was calling to see if i wanted to join him. so instead of taco bell i went and ate with jason and his friend isiah (whom sue and i had met shortly at poison girl the night before, although i’d met him once before then…a few months ago at poison girl, i think). we ate, then they decided to go to poison girl again, so i went ahead and joined them. we were there awhile, then they decided to go to dark horse tavern. i decided to call it a day, as it was almost midnight.
and here’s some tolstoy to close it out…
“[…] levin felt that the confusion was beginning to clear away and his shame and self-dissatisfaction to pass. […] he saw what had befallen him in quite a different light. he felt that he was himself and did not wish to be anyone else. he only wished now to be better than he had been formerly. first of all he decided that he would no longer hope for the exceptional happiness which marriage was to have given him, and consequently he would not underrate the present as he had done. secondly, he would never again allow himself to be carried away by passion, the repulsive memory of which had so tormented him when he was making up his mind to propose. […]”
–tolstoy, anna karenina (part 1 chapter 26)
“when levin first returned to moscow, and while he still started and blushed every time he remembered the disgrace of the refusal, he had said to himself, ‘i blushed and started like this when i was ploughed in physics, and had to remain in the second class; and in the same way i felt myself lost when i made a mess of my sister’s affair that had been entrusted to me. and what happened? now that years have passed, when i remember it, i am surprised that it could have grieved me so much. so it will be with this grief. time will pass, and i shall become indifferent.’
but three months passed and he had not become indifferent to it, and to think of it still hurt him as it had done in the first days. he could not find peace, because he had so long dreamed of a family life and felt so ripe for it, but was still unmarried and further than ever from marriage.”
–tolstoy, anna karenina (part 2, chapter 11)

for some odd reason, i get a bunch of russian spam here on my blog. y’all never see it because i never approve it to go live. but i’m generally curious about what they’re saying. so i headed over to babelfish with some of them and translated them. then i tried to re-interpret them in more natural american english flow. so below is the result: a title, the original russian text, and my feeble attempt at an interpretation (based solely on rephrasing a babelfish translation)…
a/c cooling question
Доброго времени суток! Решил поделится своей проблемой. Я ищу кондиционеры. Скоро лето, я живу на последнем этаже,на южной стороне дома. Летом такая жара, что спасает только ледяной душ несколько раз в день. Посоветуйте какой кондиционер оптимально мало жрет энергии ? А то у меня и куллер стоит дома + 3 компа…За электричество огого выходит 🙁 На […] спрашивал, но они что-то невразумительное сказали, я ничего и не понял. Ð’ общем хочется узнать мнение народа! ) Жду!
—
good day! i need help with a question. i’m searching for an a/c unit. it’ll soon be summer, and i live on the top floor, on the south side of the place. it’s so hot in the summer, [something funny]. so what a/c unit uses the least amount of energy? [something about how much it costs]: he asked the spam site, but i didn’t understand their obscure answer. so i’d like to hear people’s opinions. i look forward to responses!
the toothache
Привет! Недавно я писал на этом форуме о зубной боли, но тему прежнюю не нашел. Может ее удалили ? Что за люди ? Может у них нет зубов ?:) Сейчас у меня все гуд. Все вылечил […]. Там много тех, у кого есть зубы….:)
—
hey! i recently wrote on here about toothaches, but i can’t find it now. did they remove it? what, do they not have any teeth? now i’m totally amped. everything is cured. […] there are a lot of people with teeth…
food responsibility
Здарова, мужики! У меня насущный вопрос – кормят ли вас ваши жены?:)) Или они наготовят всего и потом Ñ‚Ñ‹ должен открывать холодильник, искать еду и думать – а где тут еда?? Мне вот жена каждый раз перед отъездом рисует подробную карту местности в холодильнике […] Рубрика Всё о детях, но почему то моя карта оказалась там )) Это что же получается – я ребенок что ли ? Протестую! )) Давайте сделаем опрос! Кто по вашему мнению должен накрывать на стол ? Мужчина или женщина?
—
yo, peeps! i have an important question – do y’all feed your wives? or do they stock it all, then you have to open the fridge door and be like “where’s the food?” every time before my wife leaves she has to sketch where everything is in the fridge for me. […] [some stuff i don’t understand at all that seems to be him saying he’s not like a child because of this] so here’s the question: who in your opinion needs to take care of feeding? man or woman?
gps mistake
Решил поделится своими наблюдениями 🙂 И рассказать о своем казусе. Я очень люблю ездить по области , конечно же в этом деле мне помогаютgps навигаторы. Однако этот случай мне доказал, что слепо верить спутникам не всегда нужно )) ПСЫ. […] Смотрю – на жпс приемнике дорога есть! Ну и поехал я, не снижая скорости. И что вы думаете?) Глядя на экран навигатора, а не на дорогу, Я УГОДИЛ ПРЯМО Ð’ ОГРОМНУЮ ЛУЖУ. И потом долго не смог выехать) Слава Богу КРАЗ проезжал, так вытащил он меня. Ð’ общем делитесь своими историями, какие анекдоты с GPS у вас происходили ?) Посмеемся вместе ))
—
i figured it out and am gonna tell you my observations. and describe my incident. i love to drive around the area, and i always use a gps. however, this incident proved to me one shouldn’t always blindly believe the satellites. man. […] i looked — the road existed to the gps. well, i zoomed right along. and what do you think happened? while i was staring at the gps screen, and not the road, i drove right into a giant puddle. i was stuck for a long time. thank god i finally got out of it. so what kind of stories have happened to you with gps’s? we’ll all laugh about it together.
not up with tech news
Доброго времени суток! Спешу поделиться своим недоумением! Правда, что ноутбуки lenovo – это бывшие ноутбуки IBM ? Зачем они продались ? Или я не в теме ?? Поделитесь своими мыслями! […] Где IBM ?
—
good day! i gotta share my confusion! is it true that lenovo laptop computers used to be the laptops made by ibm? why did sell them? am i missing something? tell me what you think! […] where’s ibm?
military conspiracy theories
День добрый! Я много смотрел и изучал военные архивы и заметил странную особенность. Еще во время второй отечественной войны использовались прототипы рации midland. Никто не слышал об этом ? На их сайте […] ничего об этом не сказано. Кто-нибудь использовал эти рации? […]
—
good day! i’ve read and studied military history and i noticed something odd. during the second world war prototypes of midland portable radios were used. did no one know about this? on their site […] nothing is said about this. has anyone used these portable radios?
a woman’s role research
Добрый день! Я пишу это сообщение от лица главоря семьи. Но кое-кто этому факту не доволен. Причина этого проста – ведь я женщина! А как правило, женщина не может и не должна занимать такое положение в семье. Хочу провести опрос и узнать ваше мнение. Всю полученную информацию я помещу на […] сайт […]. Там я разделю результаты по географическому принципы и отмечу на карте тенденции мнений по данному вопросу! […]
—
good day! i’m writing this message from [some position in the family…head?]. but some people don’t like this. the reason for this is simple — i’m a woman! but as a rule, a woman can’t and mustn’t occupy this position in the family. i want to question you and find out your opinion. all collected info i’ll put on the […] site […]. i’ll break it down geographically and note on the map the trends to this question. […]
a hip moscow digs the fetish prostitution
Приветствую всех Известность секс знакомства в столице Российской Федерации не знает ограничений. С каждым годом количество предложений проститутки москвы увеличивается, однако, на самом деле, следует отметить, что девушки представительниц древнейшей профессии здесь всегда хватало, даже в царские времена. И это не удивительно, ведь только проститутки москвы способны дать полный спектр секс знакомства, не требуя цветов, шампанского и сладостей, при этом их стоимость явно не будет высока. транссексуалы москвы уже давно стали постоянными, но невольными гостями разнообразных передач о ночной жизни, а также героинями публикаций. И это, по сути, делает им хорошую рекламу, поскольку предложения интим знакомства и без того весьма популярны в нашей стране. Тем не менее, частые клиенты у девочки обслуживаются по одному постоянному адресу. Ведь девочки, доставляющие им наслаждение, привыкают, и знают, что каждому клиенту нравится, а что – нет. Например, не так уж и трудно найти в Москве настоящих поклонников садомазохизма, транссексуалы москвы и других явлений, которые еще некоторое время назад считались аморальными. Теперь же проститутки вполне нормально, а на каждого гостя всегда найдется свое предложение. С уважением ваш друг Влад
—
what up, everybody?! the rep of sexual encounters in the capital of russia is off da hook. every year estimates for the number of prostitutes in moscow increases; however, in reality, there have always been plenty of women practicing “the oldest profession in the world”, even in the tsarist times. this isn’t surprising, since only moscow prostitutes will offer to do pretty much anything without requiring gifts, drinks, and candies. this helps make the price right. [a bunch of stuff about the acceptance of transexuals, sadomasochism, and prostitution in general] with respect, your friend vlad
i edited some down, and tried to remove all of the actual spam links. but i thought it was interesting. they’re still about the same oddness as spam messages in english, but somehow they’re more quaint, interesting, and intriguing in another language. i guess it’s similar to how people seem to be attracted to people with “exotic” accents. but underneath they’re still the same.

back in may of 2008 i set up a fedora 9 desktop, then installed the citrix 10.6 client on it. (see: citrix ica client 10.6 on fedora 9 blog entry)
although i’m still running the fedora 9 desktop (i’ll update it one of these days…really), i just recently decided to update my citrix ica client to the 11.0 version. the instructions are somewhat similar to the 10.6 install, but not quite…
[1] unlike the 10.6 version that needed libXm.so.3, with the 11.0 citrix ica client you need libXm.so.4; however, as with libXm.so.3, libXm.so.4 is a part of openmotif. which isn’t on modern versions of fedora. you can get libXm.so.4 from the last time fedora included openmotif, which is fedora core 5:
wget http://archive.fedoraproject.org/pub/archive/fedora/\
linux/core/updates/5/i386/openmotif-2.3.0-0.1.9.3.i386.rpm
the openmotif-2.3.0 rpm doesn’t appear to have the dependency problems that the openmotif-2.2.3 rpm had, so you can just do a normal rpm install on it:
rpm -ivh openmotif-2.3.0-0.1.9.3.i386.rpm
[2] now get the citrix 11 client…
http://www.citrix.com/English/ss/downloads/details.asp?downloadId=3323&productId=186&c1=sot2755
download the x86 rpm (as compared to the tar.gz or the arm client)
now install it:
rpm -ivh ICAClient-11.0-1.i386.rpm
(since i didn’t do a from-scratch install, i don’t know if libXp.so.6 is still required for the 11.0 citrix ica client, but if your install attempt complains about libXp.so.6, just run “yum install libXp” as root.)
the ica client is installed in /usr/lib/ICAClient
(that means wfcmgr, wfica, and so on are in that dir)
once done, it’ll show up in your menu in Applications -> Internet -> Citrix Receiver
some other stuff you might want to do:
[3] as root:
ln -s /usr/lib/ICAClient/npica.so /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/
(or put it in your own personal mozilla plugins area if you don’t want to do it as root. that would be ~/.mozilla/plugins if you didn’t know. create it if it doesn’t exist.)
[3a] if you kept selinux active, it will end up complaining later on. if so, do this:
chcon -t textrel_shlib_t /usr/lib/ICAClient/npica.so
[4] restart firefox.
in the address bar, type “about:plugins” and look for the citrix client in the list.
[5] to get the citrix apps to show up as icons in your applications menu…
Applications -> Internet -> Citrix Receiver
Tools -> Settings
Preferences drop menu, choose Citrix XenApp
in Server, Server URL, click [Change…]
in the “Server URL” box, put: http://your.citrix.server.url
[OK]
(it should figure out the rest of the url path if you just get the citrix server fully qualified domain name right.)
you might have to close and re-open citrix receiver, but you will get a citrix (xenapp) logon box…
username:
password:
domain:
[OK]
once you’re done with that, a “Citrix” folder will be added to your Applications menu.
in that are the icons for your available citrix apps. (note that the web-based citrix stuff runs differently than the desktop/icon stuff, as far as paths/protocols. or at least that’s what i was led to believe. i’m just a citrix end user, okay?)
if you get an error:
You have not chosen to trust the “Thawte Premium Server CA”, the issuer of the server’s security certificate (SSL error 61).
then your citrix ica client needs a new thawte root cert. to resolve this, do this (as root):
# cd /usr/lib/ICAClient/keystore/cacerts
# wget http://www2.slac.stanford.edu/computing/windows/\
services/citrix/downloads/ThawteRoot.crt
enjoy.
as before, i claim no responsibility for any accidental citrixide that may occur by following these steps, or if your fedora install gets borked, or if your cat gets feline diabetes from this, or whatever else may result. you’re a big boy or girl and you chose to run linux. figure it out yourself, you lazy good-for-nothing freeloader!

today was kind of a suck day. i didn’t sleep well, i woke up late, i didn’t get to shave, i forgot my phone at home, i was very busy at work, i had to work late, i managed to completely crash an appliance, my phone didn’t charge when i plugged it in, and i had to rush to the studio for the radio show.
in good news, the show went well, i then went to the house of pies for some bayou goo, and i got well-wishes from a number of people via email, facebook, mail, and phone while completely avoiding any shenanigans at work.
then i came home and made this mixed drink that seemed like a wonderful idea in my mind, but it turns out to not be so great. or maybe i just need ice to keep it cold. but i came up with such a great naming convention for it, i have to provide it to others.
radioactive piss = pineapple soda and malibu rum (serve cold)
bloody radioactive piss = radioactive piss plus a splash of cherry juice (or grenadine)
bloody radioactive piss with kidney stones = bloody radioactive piss plus a packet of sugar in the raw
for what it’s worth, this drink is still much better than my other drink from a few years ago that seemed like such a great idea before i made it…
alien abortion = sour apple pucker and bailey’s
like the radioactive piss (both named after looking at the drink and attempting to describe them), the alien abortion looks really cool. it was supposed to be a layered drink. unfortunately, the tannish bailey’s immediately curdles and pours itself into folds of what kind of looks like flesh inside of this hyper-glowing green liquid that is sour apple pucker. it tastes about as good as the description.
enjoy!