October 2002 Archives

One of the things that really throws me about the occasional spam I get at my university account, is that sometimes the random names generaters that make up the "From" names come really close to the name of someone I know. Sally Kincade is a common one, there have been a few Arrons and Daves too. Of course then I look at the preview and see "I couldn't believe it, I made $55,481.99 in the first month alone..." and know it's just crap but still.

On another note, working on the front page a bit (and soon to do the gallery) to make it easier to put pictures up here. Sort of a self generating gallery/slideshow. That way I just have to dump a bunch of pictures in a folder and it's all done. Much less work for me = much more likely I'll put more pictures up. Afterall, the world needs more pictures of Adolph the Cat being tormented by Pikachu.

My stepfather had a stroke about two weeks ago. It was an incredibly bad one, such that the neurologists at the hospital weren't sure he would recover at all if he even lived. The decision was made to administer some controversial drugs which stood about an equal chance of helping him tremendously or making the stroke that much worse. After a brief consultation my mom decided to have them administer the drugs. They worked.

When I went to visit him in the hospital he was still very much out of it, I'm pretty sure he recognized that I was there but there wasn't much beyond that. Having been doped up after surgery once myself (though on a much more minor scale) that was about all I expected. Through the course of a couple of visits I got to talk to the neurologist and heard about his expected recovery/rehab progress. They said that since the drugs had worked he should make an almost total recovery, but that it would take time to recover movement and speech. Movement would be quick but speech could take months to a year to recover and would be a slow process.

I bring this all up now because 1) it didn't feel right to write about it so (relatively) publicly as it was happening and 2) I talked to my stepdad on the phone last night. I called my mom to see if I could come up for a quick visit this weekend (it will be quick since he still gets exhausted quite rapidly), while on the phone she asked if I'd like to speak with him. Sure, I said. I didn't know what to epxect really, slured speech maybe, mumbling at worse, I was actually quite affraid of what I was about to hear. Then he came on the phone.

Other than being a little quieter than normal and having some trouble with names of places (talking about australia) I'd have had a hard time telling anything happened. We chatted for a little while and I could tell he was getting tired so we parted planning to continue more on saturday. It reminded me of my grandfather.

My maternal grandfather has alzheimers and has deteriorated quite a bit. I feel guilty because I haven't seen him in quite some time, but it was a choice I made and believe my mom understands. I remember my grandfather up at 6:00am to go play volleyball and run even at 80. I remember him taking us all on hikes out on the olympic peninsula. I remember a very strong and intelligent man and I couldn't bear to have that memmory replaced by visions of a man who didn't recognize me. When I saw my stepdad in the hospital after a major brain trama fading in and out of cognition I was terrified that I'd end up "losing" another strong male figure in my life.

Words really can't describe how good it felt, how relieved I was, to talk to him on the phone last night. To listen to someone who was every bit as sharp and stubborn as he's always been. It was amazing for me that after such a devastating blow the body and mind could recover so well so quickly. I imagine that view might be quite different from his perspective, I know there are lots of speech exercise he has to do daily to help his recovery, but it still astounds me what the human body and spirit are capable of.

This conversation made my day today. I've changed it slightly to make it more obvious what was being requested, but here you go.

Woman: Can you change the way this page prints.
Me: How so?
Woman: Change it so when I print it prints in landscape format and on blue paper.
Me: This is just a webpage, I can't change the paper in your printer from a webpage.
Woman. So that's a no?
Me: Correct.

In actuallity she requested that it print on A4 size legal paper, but that's not quite as silly as blue paper. Yeah anyway.

I've been working on (designing mostly) a new project for myself. I've got a map, a BIG map. It was taken from an old elementry school and covered most of the wall of a small room. In the house I'm in now the walls are plaster so I can't very easily stick anything into them and hence nothing into a map hanging on the wall. So I got started thinking what I could mount the map on that I could tack things into and wouldn't cost an arm and a leg. I settled on sheetrock. This is going somewhere I promise. While trying to figure out how much I'd need and how to mount the map it occured to me that I a sheet of sheetrock would make a pretty good canvas - that I could paint a map on a sheet and go from there.

I get a project. I get to paint something other than walls, and I get to be (slightly) artistic. It's a go for me. Going to take some time I figure, but since it's winter and I don't really want to be working on outside projects it'll be convenient too. I don't imagine it'll take me much more than a week or two once I get the stencil and colors.

Plus I can label portions of the ocean "Here be dragons". We'll see if I can actually pull it off.

Finally made the projects section (Here). Of course right now it only has one project (the Duffman Costume) but more will come eventually. It's not quite finished (the costume) but should wrap up soon.

I don't have quite as many pictures of the Xbox computer-cram, but I'll probably try and post something about that too.

I got to be on the radio the yesterday, well sort of. I got to be on australian radio yesterday, but it was a nation wide broadcast so it was still very cool :)

Triple J put a call out to their american audience listening over the net to send in some emails with their thoughts on America's pending war with Iraq. Being the staunch supporter of Herr Schrub that I am I sent my thoughts in. They called me back (which was a big no-no, apparently I'm never supposed to take calls from a radio station on a company line, use the cell phone next time). We chatted for a bit and they asked if they could call me back in about 10 minutes to put me on the air. I was one of 4 people interviewed in a segment for their morning show. I followed a guy from boston who fully supported the war and was followed by a woman from connecticut who fell somewhere between our two polar views. The surfer from San Diego that finished cemented the west coast = war is dumb view.

I don't think I did to bad, I only flubbed one word. Given that I'm not the world's greatest public speaker that was actually a pretty stellar performance for me. And I don't think I came across as too much of a screaming liberal or tin-foil hat wearer :)

Being a geek, naturally I captured the stream. Thank goodness ASFs can still be recorded even if microsoft doesn't want you to be able to. The WMA version is Here (820k) - just my 2 minutes of the segment. I'd put it up in a more cross platform friendly version but don't have a good MP3 encoder handy. But now that I know Macs have a version of Windows Media Player so it's all good. See, geek through and through :)

Do a google search for "write like hemingway" and Pat's page comes up first. First. Out of sixty thousand potentially quite valid results. I like the essay, I've always enjoyed pat's work even if I don't always understand his perspective or "message" (though Pat doesn't strike me as one to hide a message). But first out of sixty Grand, clearly quite a few other people liked it and linked to it to drive it so high via google's ranking system. Congrats Pat.

Looking at the stats for the site, as is typical, most of the traffic goes to images posted on other sites, but it's a pleasing trend to see that most days cross into the low twenties for distinct visitors and that the root page gets about 10% of the traffic for any month. For a site (or at least my portion of it) with nothing more than promises of useful information, pictures of idiots in odd situations, and the inane ramblings of a young web developer it's not too shabby.

Project page to come soon. I swear this time. I've got half of the pictures and 2 pages written I just need a little more.