So heather hamilton got fired for writing sarcastic comments about her coworkers in her blog. Probabily not the first time something like this has happened, but pretty amazing. More comments about it live at metafilter ..

Pretty amazing. Not like anyone actually reads my shit, but I've come pretty close to badmouthing specific actions and individuals at my current job. It sucks for heather, it really does - she looks like she has skill and she definately has the wit - but she really doesn't have, and maybe shouldn't have, any legal recourse. I have mixed feelings; at first, I thought she was silly to not expect the response she got. But then again - what happened to free speach?

What do I know. Worker bee indeed.

someone go pre-order me the new hatebreed album .. it would make me very happy :)

I'm reading Beebo Brinker right now .. its quite good. I seem to be enchanted by stories of lesbians living in New York City. It's kind of a strange genre of fiction; I wonder what it's like to live in "The Village".

Back to work.

i went to the dentist today. i don't have any cavities, but i don't have a protective sealant on my teeth which is critical to not having cavities in the future. For a mere $1000, which my insurance probably won't pay for, I can get said sealant.

Bizzare. I've never gone to a dentist that tried to upsell me before.

I'm playing with Director for the first time in like 4 years; it's a funny, funny program. Lingo :P tee hee.

Someone please entertain my gimpass with a URL. (Yes, that really is Petro's band .. haha :P)

so i set up movabletype, a blogging database thang that lets me edit entries to smallbear.org from anywhere on the web. relatively painless installation, and it makes managing this thang much easier. also, it lets people add comments on individual entries (yeah, like ya'all have anything to say about what i post .. hah).

so yeah. that's what i did at work today. great.

jess made chili ;)

It's about 20 degrees outside and getting colder. It makes it hard to get out of the bed, so warm. Feels very much like Pittsburgh, or Rochester .. I hate the cold, but that warm-in-cold cozyness is just impossible to find in the heat of Austin.

I've resigned myself to the fact that I got rejected from the PhD program. But when I tell people, they say things like "Well, you didn't really want to go anyways, so it's not a big deal, right?" .. Am I really that oblivious to my own feelings? Who knows; maybe they are all correct. Trying to avoid six years of work by hiding at a school probabily isn't the right thing to be doing.

I found another whole, real person on the web.

I updated alaska to work in netscape 6, mozilla, etc .. duh, wasn't using getElementById() ..

And it's my nine month aniversary to the most wonderful girl I know. I love you Jess :)

I just got the most bizzare spam:
SIR,

I AM COMPELLED TO CONTACT YOU BASED ON A VERY GOOD RECOMMENDATION MADE TO ME ABOUT YOUR HONESTY BY THE NIGERIAN AMBASSADOR TO YOUR COUNTRY. THIS RECOMMENDATION WAS MADE BASED ON THE GROUNDS THAT MY GOODSELF, MY COLLEAUGES HERE IN THE PETROLEUM RESOURCES DEPARTMENT, THE HONOURABLE AMBASSADOR HIMSELF AND YOU WILL SHARE THE FUND AT THE END OF THE TRANSACTION.

KINDLY MAKE AVAILABLE FOR US A SECURED & SUITABLE ACCOUNT IN YOUR COUNTRY EITHER PERSONAL/PRIVATE WHERE A TRANSFER OF USD 41.5 MILLION WILL BE MADE URGENTLY, FOR SAFEKEEPING AND FURTHER INVESTMENT.

WE ARE OF THE OPINION THAT YOU WILL DEFINITELY ASK QUESTIONS ABOUT THE CONTENT TO ENSURE YOUR SECURITY IN THE TRANSACTION. THERE IS NOTHING TO BE SCARED ABOUT AS WE ALL IN THE TRANSACTION ARE WELL KNOWN PERSONS WITH REPUTATION OF MANY YEARS IN GOVERNMENT SERVICE IN THE ABOVE NAMED DEPARTMENT.

OUR POSITIONS IN THE GOVERNMENT ARE VERY SENSITIVE AND ADMIRABLE AND WE WILL NOT LIKE TO COMPROMISE IT FOR ANY AMOUNT. IF YOU KNOW THAT YOU CAN GIVE THE REQUIRED ASSISTANCE WITHOUT LICKING ANY INFORMATION TO ANY PERSON THAT IS NOT INVOLVED PLEASE REPLY THIS MAIL IMMEDIATELY AND INCLUDE YOUR BANK INFORMATIONS, PRIVATE PHONE AND FAX NUMBERS FOR EASY COMMUNICATION. PLEASE NOTE THAT WE HAVE ALREADY MADE NECESSARY ARRANGEMENTS WITH THE HONOURABLE AMBASSADOR TO TRAVEL DOWN TO YOUR COUNTRY TO RECEIVE THE MONEY WITH YOU AND THEN SHARE.

OUR INTERGRITY IS NOT IN DOUBT IN ISSUES LIKE THIS AND YOUR URGENT REPLY WILL BE OF GREAT HELP AS IT WILL MAKE US TO STOP FURTHER SEARCH AND POSSIBLY CONTACT WITH OTHER PERSONS.

DO NOT HESITATE TO CONTACT ME VIA MY EMAIL FOR NOW.

I HOPE THAT THIS IS A BEGINNING OF A LONG LASTING BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP.

I AWAIT YOUR URGENT RESPONSE.

THANK YOU.

BEST REGARDS,

MR DAVID PETERS

Standards only work if people follow them. Sometimes, standards Are too annoying and painful, so people just ignore them. I've fallen into that trap with web standards; I've tried to follow the W3C and make these pages validate (and, for the most part, they do), but at the same time, it would be useful for people to be able to view the content at the same time. I'm working on a side project, and wrote valid markup & css that works in IE, Mozilla, Netscape 6+, and Opera. I was, and am, totally enthralled that it works in all of those browsers; however, it occurred to me - getting something to just work shouldn't be cause for a celebration; after all, it is just markup!

It's probably synonymous with starting a new car and being absolutely spellbound by the fact that the engine actually works. Forget the shiny chrome, the fancy design, the comfortable seats; The car goes! Maybe it really is that exciting; does it take markup to help us find excitement and joy in the little things?

Ught. Found out that CMU is only taking 6 people
into the PhD program this year, and only 1 designer.
There goes any chance I had of that one.



I guess it wasn't meant to be.
Busy busy day; grapevine then
kinkos then
gym then
library then
home again home again, jiggity jig.

this is an email i just got from my mom.

this kid named chris who used to live at the edgerton st apartment house when alec did asked alec if he could help chris' younger brother mark-ey out by giving him a place to stay for a few days since he had been living out of dumpsters. could alec refuse a haven request like that? so markey, who is about 18 and homeless accepts the floor in alec's living room, takes his first bath in who knows how long, goes to sleep, and the next morning alec discovers he is dead. in alec's living room. of course the police are called, and in their thorough search of alec's pad they discover in mark-ey's coat pockets a huge stash of illegal drugs, mostly pharmecutical pain killers, all packaged in plastic baggies just waiting to be sold. alec is immediately in the top of the list for likely drug lords, but as he told it he held back nothing and at one point had the police suggesting that alec see a therapist to talk about how upsetting the event was for alec.

My taxes are done. Don't ever use H&R Block. While their site is legit enough, and the tax app online is pretty cool, their customer service is a joke - I called up at 8am yesterday and was placed into a 45 minute hold cycle! Then some big yinzer named Lamont couldn't tell his ass from his computer and finally I just gave up.



Eek, the decision is in about a week . . . so nervous.

The sun is out; the plants are in the sun and they are quite happy.

Unrelated events:

• Mardi Gras is tonight, and perhaps we wont get tear-gassed this year ..


• Our company is hiring java geeks, if you are one, lemme know ..


• kottke's got a monkey ..


• Jess & I are getting about 4.5k back from the good old US of A in our taxes, if H & R Block online would ever get off their gimpy butts and validate our return .. I wonder if people don't mind paying taxes this year because its "patriotic" .. Am I the only one bothered by the "doing drugs? you are supporting terrorism" ads being pushed by Uncle Sam now?

Oh, the neglect. Smallbear.org has been so ignored.

One fun thing to do is look at the logs of smallbear.org and see how people got here. It's fun because it makes me feel loved. It's also fun because people are stupid and strange. For instance:

Host: ppp-225-24-133.uk.tiscali.com (80.225.24.133)

From: www.google.com/search?q=peed+myself

Browser: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows 98; Win 9x 4.90)


I'm not sure why searching for that comes here, but I'm also not sure why people are searching for that at all.

Another fun thing to do is go here. He's like Jakob except he doesn't suck.