Ahhh, back to my old mistress, the blog. Sometimes you just can't express your thoughts anywhere else.

In other news, just happened to be on the IMDb and saw that there's a film version of the musical version (yes, Virginia, that is confusing) of Reefer Madness that'll be premiering on Showtime this weekend. My God, it looks hilarious. Oh, but it seems the IMDb's unwashed masses think otherwise. Still, I hope to give it a look sometime, mostly because:

• I have a soft spot in my heart for musicals. I'm probably the only guy on Slashdot who has a line from a musical for his sig.
• Alan Cumming was brilliant in Cabaret (or at least from what I can tell from the cast recording), and looks like he could be just about as brilliant here.

But even besides that, who can resist send-ups about how marajuana is turning America's youth into "hooligans and whores"? It almost makes me wish I hadn't been such a pussywillow in my younger years and had actually tried some. Oh, well.

It is my hope that, someday, the people of Slashdot will get the Underpants Gnomes South Park quote correct for a change. It is as follows:

Phase 1: Collect underpants
Phase 2: ?
Phase 3: Profit

Thank you.

Watching the Milkdrop visualizations is like having some kind of surreal dream. I watch the twists and turns and transitions and everything looks kind of weird, but nothing ever seems out of place. Everything is so fluid: Lines and dots arcing and twirling, pieces seamlessly blending and fading into each other. It looks so beautiful, and it makes me feel like there's some sort of meaning behind it all and I'm just too stupid to comprehend what it is, like I'm watching Mulholland Drive or something.

I know it's a silly notion, but I'm mentioning it because, really, when has a piece of software made anyone feel that way before?

Back when I first met my best friend, we were in the eighth grade. We were both into computers and comics, and were both "social outcasts," with him being quite fat, and me being quite skinny (and in fact, we still are). So, we naturally became fast friends. And when you're that age, you can't help but have dreams for the future that you don't realize are a tad bit unattainable. For my friend Mike, it was creating his own commerically-successful operating system.

In hindsight, the idea of him developing an OS is quite silly. He'd only programmed in QBASIC at the time (though, when I think about how much he used to lie back then, it's somewhat suspect), and had never even considered touching something like C or even Pascal. But to give him the benefit of the doubt, when he believes in something, he'll be behind it 100%, and no argument from anyone else (or at least me, anyway) will sway him. So, if he really wanted to, he could have done it.

But being almost nine years older, and knowing him as well as I do, I realize that without some major self-change, Mike would have never made his OS. He's not a programmer now, and he never will be, and there is one big reason why:

He's just not cracked out enough.

To be a programmer, your personality has to be ever so slightly skewed. And by "ever so slightly," I mean, of course, "quite." Your brain just has to not work exactly like everyone else's. When I was a kid, I used to think I was very weird, and that I would never find anyone else who was just as strange, or God forbid, stranger. But then I went to RIT. And then I met people who were majoring in Computer Science. And then I met people who were in Computer Science House.

And it just made me say, "My God, I'm actually pretty normal."

CSH is the biggest group of nutjobs you'll ever meet. Which isn't to say they're not cool people. Quite on the contrary. Most of them are very intelligent and funny in that sarcastic/offensive way that us nerd-geek-dork types love. But when you hang out with a group of them for a while (or for any regular Joe/Josephine, five minutes), you start to realize these people are not quite what you'd call normal. You start to learn about their views on life. On love. On politics. On the world as a whole. And then, the humor gets a little bit more disturbed. And not like "bludgeoning a loved one and thinking it's funny" disturbed, though you could imagine it happening. No, I'm talking about disturbed in that "What the fuck???" kind of way. In that "Why is Kids in the Hall supposed to be funny?" kind of way. (And yes, most of them do like Kids in the Hall.)

[Note to self: Penny Arcade]

[To be continued...]

I miss Unweb.

For those of you that don't know, Unweb was a Web-based RPG where you fought Web sites. Yes, you read that right: Web sites. Basically, you would enter the URI of a site, and based on what technologies it implemented (JavaScript, Cold Fusion, etc.) and how clean the code was, it would create specific stats for a monster you would have to fight.

It was quite possibly one of the best games I've ever played for two reasons. First, it blended a love of the Internet with a love of gaming in really clever way. It was just plain fun to be punching in sites left and right and seeing what it would come up with. Wondering whether Microsoft's site would be the beast you would expect it to, or whether your own site would be a little pansy that could be killed in two hits.

The second was that, by design, it was simple, and combined with the cleverness, that made it quite addictive. If I remember correctly, there were only three things you could do in a fight: Attack, Defend, or Flee. And these weren't radio buttons you had to select. There was a button for each. So, you would just click on your action, look at the stats, click on your action, look at the stats. And since there would be a listing of recent sites people fought, you didn't even have to come up with your own addresses. All it boiled down to was simple clicking, and as anyone who's played Diablo knows (and in fact, the game is loosely based on it), clicking can actually be damn entertaining.

So, in short, Unweb was just fun. And if I had the chance, I would not let Playboy.com slap me around again.

Comcast just upped my 2Mbps downstream limit to a whopping 3.3Mbps. To say I'm "happy" is quite the understatement. Most of my Web downloads are starting in the 150Kbps range now. And doing a test off Mozilla's site, my transfer started at 330K, then jumped to a staggering 380 before the 40MiB download ended. It's just beautiful.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I'm going to put this extra bandwidth to good use, and download myself some, umm... stuff. :P

I didn't think it would ever happen. I always thought to myself, Nah, I would never say something that stupid. But apparently, I did. One of my comments was marked as flamebait.

I guess I underestimated the Slashdot community. I figured, Hey, this is Slashdot. Everyone's got to know that D&D Dead Alewives skit. I can post this quote without having to put the obligatory emoticon! It'll be great! Well, now I know better: Always cover your ass with a smiley.

The funny thing is the parent comment I replied to was originally modded down as flamebait itself. As of now, people who actually have a sense of humor have modded it up to +2. Meanwhile, even though people have posted in my defense (even the parent poster!), my post still sits at 0. Guess what I thought exactly one week ago was completely wrong. You've got to love God's sense of humor. :P

One Sunday night in 1998, when I was but a senior in high school, I was flipping through the cable channels and came across something strange. On the screen was some old, crappy-looking movie, but right in front of it, on the bottom, there were the silhouettes of movie theatre seats, and sitting in a group off-center to the right were a guy, a weird fly swatter kind of thing, and what sort of looked like a bong. What the hell is this? I thought. I glanced at the watermark. Sci-Fi Channel? This doesn't look very sci-fi. Still, my interest had been piqued, so I watched it for a bit. And I laughed. And laughed again. And I kept laughing until it was over. And after all was said and done, I checked the newspaper and found out I'd been watching something called "Mystery Science Theater 3000." And to this day, I am very glad I'd been flipping through the channels that night instead of doing homework.

I watched episodes on Sci-Fi every Sunday until the series finale, and each episode was just as funny, if not funnier, than "Quest of the Delta Knights" (the first episode I saw). My junior year at RIT, I lived with three CS majors, two of which were in Computer Science House, and so, MST3K viewings on the TiVo naturally became a Sunday morning tradition. Then, through the power of eDonkey, we started to watch them whenever we felt like it. And it was at that time that I learned how MST3K is really meant to be watched. As funny as the show is, when you get with a group of people, it gets ten times better. You start to "play along" with the show, throwing silly questions around ("Doesn't he look like John Travolta?"), making comparisons to other movies ("Yeah, it's like 'The Exorcist,' except sans the vomiting, and it's crappy."), continuing to run the running gags thrown out by the crew (and getting smacked for it), and, of course, laughing together.

But now, I find myself finished with college (for the most part) and living at home. And while I still watch MST3K on a weekly basis (it's the only show I actively check to see if it's recorded on my TiVo), I have no one to watch it with. I'll watch "The Touch of Satan" or "Boggy Creek II," and while I'll still roll onto the floor with laughter, sometimes I'll say something outloud like, "What the hell was Raul Julia thinking?" but it'll go unanswered.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that watching MST3K alone now is kind of like if Tom, Mike, or Crow had just up and left the show. It just wouldn't be the same. So, I'll watch the show until the end, when Sci-Fi, in all its infinite wisdom, decides it's time to let go of the Satellite of Love for good and pick up Andromeda re-runs. But every once in a while, I'll think, with a tiny little ache in my heart, "Man, I miss my crew."

So, for the second time, I've had to end a sweet tryst with the sexy Firebird, and go back to my old flame, the dependable Mozilla. It's sad, really, because I love them both. And yet, there are only a handful of times in life where you can have your cake and eat it, too, and this, of course, is not one of them. Still, if I had the oppurtunity, I'd love to nibble at that cake when no one's looking, and here's why.

Mozilla's a rock. She's mature, dependable, and the things she does, she does quite well. She'll quickly load at my side when I need her (assuming I haven't turned off Quick Launch), keep pop-ups at bay without me even knowing, take care of as many tabs as I want until the cows come home, and has a few Web development tools up her sleeve (DOM Inspector, JavaScript Console and Debugger) to prove she's not just like the other girls.

Futhermore, when I'd like to see some change, she obliges. She'll happily put on a new skin to suit my mood. And if I'd like her to learn a new trick (and lets face it, who wouldn't want their girl to learn a new trick now and then?), she has the capacity to learn, and boy howdy, are there a lot of extensions for her to try.

Sounds great, doesn't she? Well, she is, but she's also not without her share of faults. For one, although she'll wear any new skin I want, her wardrobe is a tad bit thin. Also, it's becoming obvious that she's getting a little bit long in the tooth. Her code size has jumped more and more over the years, and when I'm not looking, she'll start to snack at my memory. At first, I thought I could easily live with these problems, because she brought so much to the relationship. But as the months passed, they just became more and more glaring. And then, one day, a friend of mine introduced me to her sister.

Oh, and what a sister she was. One of the first things you realize when you meet Firebird is that she's got a very nice code size. I mean, as much as I love Mozilla, I can't overlook the fact that she's gained a few pounds. So, for me, the fact that Firebird is a petite little thing couldn't go unnoticed, and in the back of my mind, I thought, "Oh, yeah, baby. Thin is in."

And with that small body, Firebird's also got the curves.

[To be continued...]

Over the past two weeks, I've gotten mod points TWICE. God must love me.