textfile_ livejournal

12:01pm: Holiday Shloss
Been working on an interview/weird audio segment which I've decided to name "Holiday Shloss", in which a good friend of mine, Aaron Shloss, discusses his feelings about the holidays and the people around us. Click on the player below to listen.

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2:15pm: I wrote a poem at work the other day:

Sitting in my Cadillac,
Staring at the Sun,
Oh! my poor old retinas
Have never had such fun.

Exhaust fell off at Reno
Lost a cylinder as well -
Now I'm running loud and bogging
And something inside smells.

Perhaps I dropped some jerky
In between the seats,
Or the man I gave a lift
Left something bad for me.

Now I'm sort of wondering
If I'll find a place to stay
But also sort of not because
The sky is better anyway.

The galaxy transmits across
When I look up at night,
But its tongue is foreign,
And drowned out by lights.

I need a place,
To find a place,
Away from things that shine,
So that I may hear the heavens,
And know what's on their mind.

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2:38pm: Poor acting aside...

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9:54am: "...because it's a very important question".

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1:45pm: Intelligent image resizing

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7:23pm: "I don't want to see the welding seams! Smoother!"
So we trudge through people's dull mindscapes, hoping the water gets thinner as it gets deeper, only realizing the errancy of this thought moments before the drown..  Each waft through the glue is a compromise.  The weight of all around that offends and shocks and disillusions and confounds bears heavy as it accumulates, and as the burden grows day to day, it becomes harder to ignore.  I swear - sometimes I don't understand why no one ever swerves into oncoming traffic at 70.

My hands have been going numb occasionally for a few seconds.  Is this normal?  Should I cut them off?

Everyone is so simple, so easily read - it sometimes nauseates.  Like a giant-print fucking Sherlock Holmes library edition. 

Why are so many so unapologetically normal?  Priorities?  People's are fucked. 

I'd like to think that as the centuries pass we are getting smarter.  So why is dumb so popular?

9:25am:

Carry.Me.Ohio.

12:11am:

Why the fuck don't you see bears riding bumper cars anymore?

8:14pm: Chlorine now!
The chemical is now being used by Iraqi insurgents as bomb energy. Read the LA Times article here for a great summary of the current fucked up happenings in Iraq. It's a god damn death circus.

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10:15am: uhhh
My fuzzy clock tells me its Five to Ten, I quit my job yesterday and some Things I May Want to Do are coming into focus, but not completely until I can realign the rangefinder assembly on the Kiev or replace the headphone jack on the Ipod and figure out what to do about stereo microphones.

Things are so fucked up top with Iraq and domestically that I've found the only way to deal with it is to ignore it all, unless I am directly involved in its change. Obama's gearing up for a lanced death chamber cage match with Clinton and while Barack wields a cutlass and buckler, Hillary shoots Greek Fire out of her eyes - apparently the Rodhams inherited the formula and kept it secret all these centuries.

And, who's kidding who here - there are only ... six people on this thing that I really give a shit about, so do I write this blogorrhea for you all, myself, or both? Is it helpful to visualize my thinking? If so I could just write in a notebook. If not I am, in secret, an attention craving whore who shits on that which he stomps, and now, with that written, do I accept or reject? You cannot write on Live Journal without an audience in mind. It would be much more raw and basic without.

How personal should this become? My thinking is sometimes penetrated by solipsist dysfunction and it becomes difficult to reconcile that I am a member of the human race, as well as a social community of local friends and internet acquaintances. The spell checker said I should capitalize "internet". Fuck you man.

I think I'm a sort of loser, but it doesn't phase me very much because I view it as a temporary condition through which I must pass to arrive at the other end of the sea. Maybe, being 22, with 23 not too soon coming, aids my denial of life with fake constructs of youth as permanence. There are lot of things I think of myself as, but am not, really. It takes commitment and passion and blood to assume any kind of identity beyond mere living to live, and of the three I've expended very little.

I have ideas and notions and fancies but...usually just end up shutting down for a night or a day and telling myself it's another step in between.

Huh, look at all that. Something, my six Live Journal friends, is fucked.

10:25pm: Pontiac treks
It's fucking cold man. Drove home from the city this morning and the check engine light came on again - same old trouble code, EGR circuit malfunction. When I got this car, the smog pump was locked up so I took the belt off and haven't been using it. And I do believe that particular pump provides air for the EGR system. So I decided to change it out today with another, nonlocked unit I picked up a few weeks ago. And it's fucking cold.

So of course, shit goes wrong. It's fucking cold, there's no fucking room in the garage for this boat and my knees go gangrene from bending over too much and I can't reach any of my tools or lights without falling over something sharp or electric and hot. My hands feel like they're swimming in dry ice and the bolt I'm taking out is a bitch - my hand keeps slipping off the ratchet and clanging into the clutch fan. The bolt gets stuck in the pump so I have to cut the head off - my hands are fucking glaciers and sparks fly up and hit me in the eye.

Bolt destroyed so I need another; one trip to hardware store, get one that's too short. Back again, get the right one. Need a belt, go to Autozone but they don't know what kind I need, smog pump is not listed, so I measure myself and go back to get it and it's wrong, and it's fucking cold, man. Fifteen degrees? What the fuck is that? Bullshit.

End up just driving the car up there and switching out belts in the lot until I get the right length. Then I broke the clip that holds on the hose the pump shoots its shit through, so I had to fuck with that too.

All and all, a successful part replacement, I think it could have been much worse. We'll see if this affects the EGR code. It only comes on after long highway driving, never around town.

10:02pm: Says Arpin:
"i heard you installed linux in your cock and now you dont have any more venereal diseases."

Fucking brilliant

6:34pm: ipod recordings
I put Linux on the Ipod and can record at 96KHz now, which is good for archival recording. There is hard drive noise when starting and stopping. Even with this problem I think it will work as a cheap, temporary field recorder.

3:44am: linux fuck
I've spent the last few days glued to my monitor - no food, no sleep, just 24/7 linux and trying to get the fucking thing to work. Some notes:

• XGL is runs shitty on an ATI 9800 (ok, not true - XGL runs shitty on everything unless an OpenGL app is stressing it, and AIGLX cannot use XGL with Beryl)
• ATI should fucking open source their drivers
• AIGLX is sweet and can only get better
  
• KDE: Fluid but I dislike the built-in browser/file manager (Konqueror) as it reminds me of Windows with IE integration (however, thinking now - this is not so serious)
• Gnome: fuckin great (ehhh KDE is good too)
• Beryl runs well with AIGLX and ATI 9800
• Eye candy rocks
• Working with terminal feels good
• VIM is very comfortable
• This shit isn't too hard
• Backup xorg.conf's!
• apt-get! apt-get! or aptitude for messy dependencies

Started with Kubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft) and things worked well but as I recall direct rendering was disabled by default so I couldn't run a pretty 3d desktop with Beryl.  So I tried installing the closed source FGLRX ATI driver and it fucked everyhing up.  I fucked it up so bad the X server wouldn't start anymore, even with old xorg.conf's.

So then I decided to try Gnome and installed the alpha Ubuntu 7.10 (Feisty Fawn).  That was cool but got weird problems, like Gedit crashing when opening files after being launched as root, and the system updater crashing.

So downgraded to Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Edge) and everything finally works.  Got Beryl rocking out hard fucking core with bubbly windows and fucking wobbly tilts and fades and a bunch of cool crap.

So after days and days of agony I finally have a stable system in front of me.  What do I do?  Search for a cool terminal background.  Yep.



EDIT: Ok, well, I ended up ditching Kubuntu and tried Ubuntu, with Gnome enabled by default. Gnome's ok, a little flaky though so I think I'm switching back to KDE. The AIGLX driver is good but one my particular card the closed source ATI driver, FGLRX, unfortunately, works better and faster in XGL than AIGLX on a standard X-server. I am becoming comfortable with the Linux environment and can usually recover whenever I break it now. So, very close to completely migrating over. Imported my email, working on getting Ipod syncing down as well as office apps and such. Beryl is great and very pretty, but XGL fucks up any other OpenGL application running under the Beryl layer so it is not yet ready to replace my 2d desktop but it's getting there.

1:47am: Gallery update
I have finished with the pictures, if you'd like to see them click here.

1:04am: fuck
Shit, this is gonna take some time.

11:40pm: Scanning software
I am using an Epson CX4600 scanner to do some work.

The only other scanner I've used was an HP, and the house software was a bit rough around the edges. So I found Vuescan, a third party scanning utility, and went about it. It is spartan in design. Bullshit free and powerful. It allows scanning with multiple passes to normalize output, bit-per-pixel settings and auto rotation/mirroring.

I did end up trying the factory Epson scanning software, though, which actually turns out to be a very thoughtful implementation in its "Professional Mode". With that said, however, I must recommend Vuescan if you are deciding to do some serious fucking scanning.

Main screens of each:

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7:07pm: Rough luck, Sailor!
I am embarking on two projects:

1) Quickly scan in all available prints I have available until I can get a hold of a professional quality scanner for negatives.

2) Learn and use Linux, specifically, Kubuntu.

The whole looking for work thing is not conducive to avoidance of mind atrophy. Here, Squire!

10:55am: The worst thing about tranny porn is that it's usually too late when you realize it.

5:41pm: 2007!
The New Year is off to a great start!

Decided to go to a local party. Weird mix of people, but good natured, and I grabbed my friend's girlfriend's ass and he got really pissed, so it was a fun night all and all.

So I get tanked and go out to my car to puke and decide to go to sleep. Turn the car on for heat, close the doors, go to sleep.

Then a cop wakes me up and takes me to jail for public intoxication. The car was still running when I left, and I think I left my phone and house keys on the passenger seat.

Lake County jail was depressing as shit, especially on New Year's Day. Not that I place much stock in such holidays but everyone around me did, and made this clearly known. Also, listening to a guy who's been in there for a month talk about how, if he weren't locked up, he'd be bruising the shit out of his no-good slut of a girlfriend Moline because she's probably fucking his brother on their card table, shit, he's probably pouring champagne on her tits right fucking now, tends to affect the mood.

Five hundred bucks to get out, probably at least another hundred for the car tomorrow.

Here's hoping all of 2007's surprises aren't yet spent!

9:07pm: There's something really fucked about Saddam. Who really sponsored it?

8:16pm: The dog diarrhea'd all over the carpet.

6:08pm: Personal Happenings
Let's see how well I remember feigning optimism and Live Journal-centric writing!

Today I went to some junkyards looking to find parts for an '86 Parisienne I'm trying to fix.

Go to this place called U-Pull-It in Chicago Heights. It's a smaller independent operation and prices are cheap so I go there when I can, but unfortunately they did not have any cars I could use. On the bright side, though, it seems like they might be run by some type of syndicate.

So then I drive to Pick-n-Pull, the local chain yard in Hammond, and see that today, and for the next two, everything is half price. Plus a guy at the entrance is selling tamales and deep fried pancakes. Got a fuckload of Parisienne parts from a car that I know has been there awhile but never noticed.

And there was this Caprice with perfect fenders I was looking at earlier in the day that caught the eye of some kids later on. I walked back around to it from another section, and they had appeared and were trying to get a fender off, as well as wanted to use some of my tools. These delusional optimists had four bolts off and thought the whole thing was almost loose. When I told them how many others needed to be gone before it would move, they seemed discouraged.

The yard ended up closing around that time anyway so the kids didn't have a chance get anything out. If I don't fall asleep in the bathroom tomorrow morning I can get out earlier, and those greasy little hands won't get a chance to fuck with any of my future shit.

There are two local New Year parties I'd like to go to, plus a few in the city - so I'm unsure of what to do with that.

Hopefully time will bring clarity, and not confusion or STDs.

4:18pm: What the hell?
Something is fucked about Wordpress' default security functionality. Why can people log into my admin account, when I don't sign out, if its access is linked to my IP address?

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2:24am: I don't know my friends, it seems I have nailed a very many doors shut this year. My life philosophy has been flawed for so long and it takes the worst to see it.

But I'd like 2007 to be a good year. I'd like it to mean something to me other than calculation or organization or reference. And I think, then, that a "year" only means something because we have it mean something, and I wonder why my new year could not have started so much earlier.

I could wonder about that, and other things, for a great while.