Another gentleman is having the heads cut off in Iraq where the terrors are in such an uproar. Osama Ben Laden captured a South Korean robot fixer and then put him to the tests on the wrong side of a knife. There is defenselessness and the video is released onto the Internets and the sad story is seen by all. This sort of rudos behavior is making the blood boil not just in my hearts but in the hearts of many who see the bold spirit of Korea being attacked by terrors. South Korea declared attacks “not good” and the United Nations of America sent a letter to the terrors base in Saddy Arabia that “this is not the way to do business ladies”. Terrors say that they are making to cut off heads to get America to quit the big Iraq job but then American President Bush says “think again buster”.

For the sake of your sanity, please read today’s SomethingAwful update. It helps put everything in perspective.

This morning I went out climbing with Phil and George. Phil had never been before, but he made a valiant showing. He needs to get some climbing shoes. We intended to go with Jeff and his friend Doantam, but I think that wires got crossed some how, since this week he’s in Texas.

Work has been good since I settled the score on Berkeley. Everything feels much more comfortably finite now, and I’m trying to tie up loose ends and put some sort of reasonable cap on the projects I’m working on. I think my big problem with working in general is that if I work harder, and get more done, that just means that I’ll be given more work to do. In school, if I worked hard, I could actually “finish” early, and relax. I’m sure that after some incomprehensibly long time like a year or so, working hard could pay off and I could move up to better pay or a better position or something. But that’s all abstract to me. Plus, it seems to stretch out interminably 40 years into the future. I just don’t work on those timescales yet.

I picked up “Unreal Tournament 2004” at the store a couple of days ago and I’ve been enjoying the heck out of it. Most fun I’ve had with a shooter since Half Life. All of you out there with the inclination should blow the $30 and come play with me online.

Leslie’s about to head out for her week-long trip to Texas. I’m excited for her–she’s getting her eyes lasered! I don’t think either of us has taken a trip that long alone since we moved into this place. Kind of odd, what having a job will do to you.

I’ve been thinking about changing the format of the website to something different, something simpler. I’m planning on using WordPress. What does my readership think? I want to improve the static content (like my resume, things I’ve written, etc), maybe integrate gallery into this site, put up a few new pages. I haven’t worked up the gumption yet to figure out all the CSS to make it pretty, but I’ve a feeling I’ll have a lot of spare time this week to do so should I feel the urge.

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Comments

Ali — 2004-06-24 09:31:10

I’ll try to stop on the way to the climbing gym today… a mouse and unreal tournament please….

bryan — 2004-06-24 12:20:50

that’s the spirit!

clare — 2004-06-25 00:14:51

yay CSS!

http://phish.com/news/index.php?year=2004#story182

We got back last night from a very satisfying trip to Austin.

We got in on Friday night, dumped our stuff at Clare’s, and then I went over to Doug’s house for a bit to say hi to everyone. I headed back to bed pretty soon so I could wake up on Saturday morning to go to yoga with my old teacher, Annick. It was ass-kicking, but good. I spent the rest of the daylight hours around UT, eating at familiar places and walking the drag a bit. I also stopped into the co-op to buy some UT paraphenalia that I finally want after shunning it for the four years I was there. I got a burnt-orange hoody that says, quite clearly, “TEXAS” on the front, as well as an orange tie-dyed t-shirt that says the same. It seemed a pleasing blend of my past and future.

Saturday night we had a fancy dinner compliments of Clare’s parents at a tiny restaurant on Lamar called Wink. I personally had raw bison, skate wing, rabbit cake, chocolate soup, lemon tart pot and a nice glass of muscat.

Sunday I had lunch with Ellen, which was wonderful. We gave in to our greasy urges and got bacon cheesburgers at Players and talked politics and personalities. From there, I had dinner with my parents and viewed some excellent pictures from their recent excursions to Honduras and Portugal.

Sunday night was Patrick’s bachelor party. It was the first bachelor party I’ve been to, which was a bit unnerving. I can only guess at the parade of them I have to look forward to in the next few years. We spent the night downtown in bars, exploring the nations of the world via beer. We ended up at Opal Divine’s at 2am, sitting on the porch smoking cigars. Good times.

Monday we got a big group together and went to Schlitterbahn for the day. It was awesome–the kids were still in school, so it wasn’t too crowded, and the sun managed to come out in the afternoon. We rode rides, but also spent a good amount of time just floating lazily in their interminable rivers. We made several trips to their snack dispensaries for turkey legs, ice cream, and funnel cakes.

After we were home and showered, we went out to the drafthouse to see an appalling documentary called “Stupidity.” I won’t even go there.

Tuesday was a lazy day. We all slept in, then I struck out on foot for a nostalgic tour of campus. I dropped into ECAC to say hi to old folks, and then went 0 for 3 trying to find my old professors. I guess they got the hell out of dodge as soon as finals were over. After that, I rendezvous’d with George at half price books where I picked up Dune Messiah and Farenheit 451 for $.98 each. We rounded out the afternoon with a trip to REI where I managed not to buy anything, with a quick pitstop at Best Buy where I gave in and bought the PC version of KOTOR.

Then Doug shuttled us to the airport, we hopped on a plane and before dark we were standing back in our apartment. What an awesome, perfectly-timed trip. Now back to this grind for a while…