twist of fait accomplis
May 2003
... just wanted to let you know. A long-winded trip summary of our visit to Chicago is forthcoming.
A thought for the moment: it still kind of jolts me when I'm reading a blog and see myself mentioned/linked... in the last two days I've been experiencing a load of imagined fame thanks to the likes of Corey, vix, and kellan.
<American Idol dork mode>Ruben and Clay are two talented cats... it was good to see such a close race. Honestly, though, by the end, Kimberly Locke was my favorite.</American Idol dork mode>
BTW -- did anyone notice Josh's conspicuous absence? And not even a mention of his name?
So I went into the doctor and told him, "My throat's sore. I think it's my ear." Sounds like the start of a bad joke, doesn't it?
Anyway, the good news is no ear infection. Just some congestion and nothing a little Flonase and some time won't fix.
Is it just me, or do doctor's offices seem totally different than just five years ago? I always feel like I'm being rushed... the doctor I used to have would come in, sit down (it makes me nervous to talk to a doctor who's standing and fiddling with his doctor-toys), and ask me how things were going before we even started talking about any illness. I also don't really have a single doctor... I've seen pretty much everyone that works at this particular office. I liked the doctor I had when I first started going there, but she moved to another location after about six months.
Anyway. Everything's good to go and my brain won't leak out of my ears during Paul's wedding. Hope he appreciates it. Ungrateful bastard.
And to Alex: start feeling better soon, man. We're all pulling for you. Except for Corey. I heard he doesn't really like you very much. Ungrateful bastard.
(Last note: if you're in the mood to support a good person and a good cause, consider supporting Kristy and her participation in the National Race for the Cure [for breast cancer].)
The last few days I've had a sore throat. "No big deal," you might think. But this isn't a general "my throat's scratchy, I need some Chloroseptic spray." Rather, it's sore in a very specific spot of my throat... very localized. Last year I had a similar problem and I seemed to remember that it wasn't just a sore throat... that it was actually connected to something else. Allergies? An infection? So I did what any normal person would do to find out what the diagnosis was.
No, I didn't call my doctor. I checked my blog.
I found: my initial whining about my sore throat (and an accompanying sore under my tongue). I decided it must be herpes from my stint as a male prostitute. A little more browsing and I came across the prognosis: it signalled the start an ear infection.
So: tomorrow morning, to the doctor I go (only a week after Huyen visited for the same thing). And maybe I'll tell the doctor, "I'm here with a sore throat... and if it wasn't for my blog, I might have stayed home."
Man claims 'Idol' was his idea, sues Fox
This guy is full of crap and let me quote two lines to show why:
"Keane's suit alleges that he came up with the idea for a show called "American Idol" in 1994 when he lived in Marshalltown, Iowa ... The proposal also included a voting system with viewers casting their ballots by telephone or the Internet."
Assuming that he came up with the voting system idea at the same as the general concept of the show, there's no way someone could have foreseen using the Internet for voting on a show like this. In 1994 there were very few people using the Web and barely anyone at that point were running polls on their web site, let alone worrying about how to prevent voting fraud on a large scale. Shoot, the most future-thinking companies didn't even have a web site until late 94/early 95. Damn, it's 11 years later and American Idol still isn't using the Internet for voting.
Got this spam that includes some phone numbers for contacting the guy... anyone want to have some fun?
From: "Rosemary Sargent" <5hyuk6pebko@yahoo.com>
Subject: RE:
Date: Fri, 16 May 03 17:04:25 GMT
Dear Sir,
I was browsing through your website yesterday and decided to send an email to webmaster@ in hopes its a valid email address. My name is Johnathan Magro and I market equipment that is used to send out mass email. I sell email sending servers, bullet-proof hosting servers for email traffic, 320+ targeted email addresses for email sending, plus much more.
Please call me at 866-263-6135 and ask for John Magro for additional information and for our interactive demo website.
We can provide a free tour and sample mailing for you prior to purchase of any email sending server. We will include 320+ Million email addresses there as well.
Let me know if you are interested.
John Magro
Allied Marketing
973-639-1824 (Main Phone)
Here's a stupid question: can you send a personal check from the United States overseas (say, to Poland)? Will they be able to cash it without any problems?
I need to send a few bucks and realized that I've never sent money overseas before...
Seems like everybody's pretty hyped for the new Matrix movie. Me, I feel like Les Moore from Funky Winkerbean.
In the mid-80s I remember a series of Funky Winkerbean comics where Les was the only person in the world that didn't like Michael Jackson. For about two weeks, they focused on this, having Les run into people that couldn't believe he didn't like Michael Jackson because, jeez, everyone loves Michael Jackson!
The Matrix is my Michael Jackson, 20 years later. You might say I was unimpressed with the first film... I fell asleep. Needless to say, I won't be anywhere near the theatre this weekend.
99 Bottles of Beer in 515 languages.
That's computer languages. Truly geeky.
I had intended on making my GalleryWalk script free to the masses, but never really followed up on it. A few people are running it and it seems to work well, but I have to say, I may give up on it soon and move over to Noel Jackson's Photopal. It looks like a nice little PHP photo album script and generates automatic thumbnails and RSS feeds. Like Gallerywalk, it doesn't require an SQL database and it's template-driven. I like.
I had a nice post written up Monday and had a crash, so the post went poof. Summed up: congrats on the graduation/happy birthday to sis-in-law Thi, had a nice weekend -- Huyen's mom was in town and I took two 2-hour naps on Sunday (can't beat that), and corey's latest design effort is online for my mellow my man DJ Ragz.
Just got back from a tasty lunch of curried seitan over rice. Mmmmm...
Half Pint's DVD comes out next week (available online for about $12) and one of the special features is a slide show of our wedding (me and Huyen... me and Pint aren't married) along with audio of the two songs Pint performed. The main part of the DVD is a live performance in Jamaica. If you dig reggae, you can't do much better than this DVD...
As you may remember, I got tired of people constantly hitting my site looking for "Olsen Twins nude" or "nude Iraqis" or "nude 10-year-old girls" or "naked little boys," so I struck back by starting to display this message in place of a regular page for anyone that came to my site through a search engine and had "nude" or "naked" in their query:
... read the rest of this entryIt's been a... strange... few weeks. Strange as in "stuff happening that doesn't usually happen is such a short timespan." One of my great aunts passed away last week while another found out that the serious heart problems she's been treated for may have been much less serious than originally thought. Various other not-so-great health news from around the family hit the wires (aka "via Mom"). Huyen turned in her resignation yesterday and has a new job in the crosshairs. Work stuff for me is... work stuff. All the great Progeria-related news has brought a new influx of visitors to the site.
Just a lot of stuff to take in all at once.
Happy birthday to Alex... sorry we missed your celebration, buddy.
Vietnam Took Lead In Containing SARS
[O]n April 28... Vietnam's government was able to declare the country the first in the world to contain severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS.
From Paul via Boingboing comes the coolest link I've seen in ages:
The Estate Auction of Louis F. Pluth
In 1952, a roundup grocery store closed their doors because of a death in the family and was never opened until a few months ago... over 50 years have passed! Everything was left, including all the memorabilia you would find in a 50s store...
