Rebelo gave me an idea for a slightly new look, so here it is. It's been up for a couple days, but I haven't had much to say on this site lately, so I figured I'd disfigure it with another "new layout" post.

positivecurrent is back =)

My basement is nearly finished. All the drywall work is done, and everything is painted except for one room. Next week we should have carpet down there, and this whole mess will be over. Or it should be anyway...there's still the matter of submitting the claim to Price City's insurance, and hoping that all works out. And, of course, we still have to submit a claim for all our personal belongings that were destroyed. I'm not too worried about it, since everybody I've talked to at the city offices has told me the same thing, that I just have to submit a claim and I'll get the money. If I submit a claim and have any problems getting paid, I'm definitely going to fuck some shit up.

Oh yeah, baby. One day, and I've already got a new layout. :) I put that last one together in about five minutes, and it showed...those colors made it hard to read.

Well, VoX has been gone for quite a while, no doubt because the late Salty's server is no longer operating, though I haven't heard whether or not Mr. PMB is gonna be back up somewhere else. I hope so.

Ok, a muscle in my right shoulder has been twitching on and off for three days now, and it's really starting to bug me. Not only is it just annoying, but I'm getting paranoid about it, thinking I ought to go see my doctor. Maybe I'll have to get a lobotomy or something.

Man, Blogger is a bigger pain in the ass to set up than I ever would have imagined. I could have set up News Publisher in half the time. Anyway, I guess this will be my temporary site 'til I can register a new domain name and take up Solo's generous hosting offer.

Well, this has certainly been fun, and I don't want to quit, but I am quitting. The biggest reason for this is because my host, linuxwebhost.com, sucks monkey balls. This server is down about 50% of the time, and I can't afford a real host, so I'm just giving up completely.

I may or may not be back anytime soon, depending on how things are for me financially. It's not like the $8 I was paying for hosting was breaking my back, but combined with a lot of other bills, it was too much.

I know you're all disappointed, but maybe you can fill the void with some of the quality sites listed on the left. Thankyouverymuch. Goodnight.

Ahh, this thanksgiving is going to be relaxing. I had originally planned on eating at my in-law's house at noon, then eating at my mom's house at 5:00. But my mother-in-law went psycho the other day and started talking shit about me for no apparent reason (other than that she doesn't like me). She and my wife had gotten into an argument about work, and she somehow thought I was to blame for the entire thing, and accused me of starting this argument which I had nothing to do with. So of course, I got really pissed and said something like, "You better fucking leave me out of this, bitch!" So she not only thinks I forced my wife to get into an argument with her, she also thinks I'm a dick for calling her a bitch and defending myself against her accusations.

Anyhow, I decided I'm not going to spend my holiday around a bunch of fucking psychos, so while my wife is eating thanksgiving dinner at her parents' house, I'll be helping my mom get dinner ready at her house. Besides, my mom's a much better cook than my wife's dad, and I'll have more room for the good stuff.

Bandwidth = 28.1 Kbps

Oh yeah, this connection is smokin', baby.

NetFlix sent me two copies of the same movie, The Freshman. The question is, do I keep one, or do I point out their error and give it back? After all, their site says I only rented one copy, but then again, they might realize their error and want it back. I guess I could just hang onto it for a while and see what happens...

I'm pretty drunk right now...but apparently not enough to mess up my user/pass for newspub. I'm listening to Tool's Eulogy as I type this...gotta love those guys.

Anyhow, Zethon told me he got those cool AIM buddy icons from consumptionjunction.com (too hard to make a link for), but I'm too messed up to find 'em. Anybody know the exact URL?

Also, Zeth and I were talking about how cool it would be to travel cross-country and stay at other people's houses whom we know through the internet. I'd certainly let anybody who I link to (and probably more than just them) stay at my place for as long as they wished, if they were on the road. Not that I actually have enough money or time to do so, but it would definitely be fun.

Jeez, I hope I remember making this post tomorrow morning. Well, I'm off to watch U-571 at my mom's on pay-per-view, so later. :)

I'd hate to see what would happen if I ever got the ambition to do web design for local companies. I could run circles around the local "professional" companies, and I still consider myself to be an amateur.

Here, take a look at this site. Notice the 400x400 pixel jpeg image, shrunk down to 150x150, weighing in at over 58K. With only 4 or 5 colors in that image, it could easily be under 2K as a gif. Oh, and I guess they've never heard of anti-aliasing. The site navigation is horrible, as well. If I'm checking the site to see what time a particular movie is playing, I have to click the link to each theater (three of which are in the same building) in order to find the movie. I guess they figure people go to the movies to enjoy the actual theater (sticky floors and all) rather than the film that's playing there.

I guess I'm not knocking the site so much as I'm knocking the backwards-assed hick mentality of this town. People settle for shit like that, when there are probably a lot of teen computer geeks out there who could do a much better job for much less money, and all because they don't have a business license or advertise on the crappy local TV station (that's another rant in itself). Everything in this town is less than mediocre when compared to most other places.

The new Netscape 6 is a real quality product. Well, it probably is, anyway. I wouldn't know, since I can't install it:

Well, I got that ticket dismissed, piece o' cake. :)

My car has a big dent on the passenger side just behind the rear wheel, but it was there when I bought the car. Today, my wife hit her sister's car while she was backing out of a parking spot at work. It put a matching dent on the driver's side of the car, but my wife, being a woman and all, thought that was the dent that was already there.

So, I wasn't too upset when she got home and told me about it, 'cause I just figured it didn't do any more damage than was already there. We went outside to look at it, and I couldn't even see where she hit the other car. It was then that she realized that the damage on the driver's side was all new, so now my car is twice the piece of shit it was before.

That's just another reason women shouldn't be allowed to drive.

Ahh...I finally figured out what I want for xmas.

By RegBarc -- Dennis is such a nice guy, lettin' a good ol' boy like me post on his humble abode. But, I have an alterior motive.

You guys all remember the Beast? My 1982 Mercedes 300 Turbo Diesel stationwagon? Well, I am replacing the sound system in it completely, getting rid of the current speakers and installing new ones. On top of this, I am pimping the car out. Two (2) 12" subwoofers, a 150 Watt amp x 2 to power it, and my CD collection.

All I'm having trouble is choosing the correct subwoofer to put in there and the correct amp to power it. Currently I'm looking at stuff from Crutchfield because they have some really nice prices and their web site is damn nicely organized.

But, if you people have any suggestions, leave them in the comments box so that both Dennis and I can see them. That way, he can tell me if you're talking completely out of your ass or not :)

I called the PPD, and asked whether or not it's illegal to own an unregistered vehicle, and I was told that it is not, but it is illegal to park an unregistered vehicle on the street, though driveways are ok (it's a city ordinance). I told the woman I was talking to that it seems ridiculous that state law says you can own an unregistered vehicle as long as you don't drive it, but city ordinance dictates that you cannot park an unregistered vehicle on a city street. Common sense dictates that where you park the vehicle shouldn't matter, as long as it's not being driven, so I asked this woman how the general public is supposed to know about shitty laws such as this. She told me that she thought most people do know about the law. I then asked her if I could obtain a copy of the city ordinances, so nothing like this would ever happen again, and she flat-out told me no.

So, I scheduled a hearing with a hearing officer, and my case will be heard tomorrow at 4:00 p.m. If the general public is expected to comply with city ordinances, yet they are not allowed to know about those ordinances, then it should be a breeze to fight this ticket. Had I known about this particular ordinance, my truck would have been parked in my driveway, not on the street.

Some cocksucking pig left a ticket on my windshield last night for having an expired registration. I'm pretty god damned sure that it's not illegal to not drive a vehicle with expired registration, so I'm gonna call the PPD this morning and find out what's goin' on.

There's no way that pig could have seen my tags at 3:00 in the morning as he drove by my house, so I'm thinking he was parked behind my truck ('cause it's so big) so he could hide from other vehicles while he clocked them with his radar.

What really pisses me off is that the tie-rod end that failed the safety inspection is being replaced right now. That truck will be registered by the end of today, but certainly not because of some overzealous fucking pig.

I think the UHP is using aircraft to patrol US-6 now. :( I was cruising along at about 10 mph over the limit when my radar detector beeped a couple of times, so I slowed it down a bit, expecting to see a cop around the next bend. The radar signal got much stronger, then stopped, but I never did see a patrol car. I thought it might have been an airplane, 'cause I had heard the UHP uses them on I-15. After another mile or so without seeing anything that could have set off the detector, I was seriously considering stopping the car, getting out, and looking for a plane, just to ease my mind. I never did stop, but about 4 miles after that happened, I saw a patrol car that had somebody stopped. There's no way they'd have a plane out if there weren't cars to back them up, so that just strengthened my suspicions. Those god damned bastards.

I'm just glad my radar detector's got my back. I've probably avoided 15 tickets thanks to that thing.

Update:

Ty got me wondering if airplanes can even use radar, so after hours of exhaustive searching (no, really), I found this site, which had this to say:

Q: How are aircraft used to monitor speed?

A: Using white reference marks on the road, the airborne officer simply times the target between two of the marks to establish average speed. Most states use VASCAR (a few use stopwatches), first programming in the known distance between the marks, then operating the time switch to determine target speeds. Cruisers waiting below stop the violator and write the ticket. Contrary to popular belief, radar cannot be used from aircraft.

Finally, after working for the same company for four years, I got a new computer today. I had been using a Pentium-150 with 16 megs of ram, and now I've got a PIII-733 with 128 megs of ram. Oh, how sweet it is. :)

I just had the best cup of coffee that I've ever made. The funny thing is that I didn't do it any different than the hundreds of other times I've made coffee. I did, however, use my new coffee cup that I paid $6 for at Lechter's, big enough to hold three cups of coffee. That must be it.

Metroid is my favorite game of all time. I played Metroid at a friends house for hours on end, and I never got sick of it, then years later I bought Super Metroid and played the hell out of that game too. I think one of my favorite things about the game is the sound. I looked for a damn long time for some wav files of Metroid sounds, and I finally found some a couple days ago. I wanted to use the power-up sound as my Windows startup sound, and the sound when Samus dies as my shutdown sound. Anyhow, I zipped the wavs up and put 'em here (2.1 megs) for anyone that likes the sounds as much as I do. They'll only be there for a week or so, so get 'em while they're hot.

This weather sucks. When it's a low pressure, the clouds roll in and dump snow, but they also hold the heat in and the snow melts. Then a high pressure comes, and it's cold enough for snow to stick around, but there are no clouds in sight. I want lots of snow, and I want it to stay for a long time.

I walked outside around midnight tonight, and it was bright as hell. The full moon is out, and there's a light haze (or something) that seems like it's spreading the light around more. It's just odd to be out that late and still be able to see almost as good as in daylight.

Well, all this talk about doing away with the electoral college is making me happy. Right now, with the outcome counting solely on Florida (with a margin of only 359 votes so far), it makes the rest of the states' votes seem worthless.

Here in Utah, the disparity between democrat and republican votes is huge. In most states, the difference between the two parties is usually less than ten percentage points, whereas it's usually a difference of 40 or 50 percentage points here, and that difference is almost always in favor of republicans.

If there were no electoral college, my democratic vote in Utah would actually make a difference, because it could be pooled with democratic votes throughout the rest of the country, rather than being cancelled out by the electoral college (and the Mormon church).

Go here NOW and vote to keep Paul's hair long.

I've been wanting to go to The Tinder Box since August, but the nearest one is in Salt Lake City, and I just haven't had the chance to get up that way. I wanna get a pipe and several different kinds of tobacco, and probably several cigars. I used to smoke cigarettes, but I quit that shit because, c'mon let's face it, those things smell bad. I love the smell of pipe tobacco, though. My grandpa used to smoke a pipe, and even though he usually smoked the cheap stuff that you can buy at the grocery store, it still smelled good.

It's sad that in Utah I have to drive 120 miles to get some fine pipe tobacco. Sure, I can go to Wal-Mart and get some cheap-ass stuff, but The Tinder Box has so much good stuff. I usually spend 20 minutes or more in the humidor trying to figure out what I want. I love that place.

I told Zeth I'd put a song up for download this evening, so here it is. It's such a beautiful love song, I hope you all enjoy it.

It's been half-assed snowing on and off today, but I wish it would just blanket the place. I'd really like to go out and do some donuts in my car. I've got to head over the mountain to Provo tomorrow, so hopefully I'll run snow most of the way, which is very likely this time of year.

My truck failed to pass a safety inspection today--one of the tie rod ends is worn, but surprisingly, my brakes passed. Still, I'll be driving with expired tags for a couple days 'til I can get it fixed. I once drove a car for three months with expired tags and got away with it, so a week or so shouldn't hurt. :)

My mom could kick Martha Stewart's ass.

Finally, we've finished moving everything out of the downstairs. The wrecking crew is coming by tomorrow morning to remove the carpet, but I think they're going to remove all the sheetrock and paneling next week. The estimate for new walls and carpet is just under $10,000, but there will need to be plumbing and electrical work done, not to mention all the personal belongings will have to be replaced, so I'm thinking the damages will come close to $20,000.

I'm eating the first meal I've had all day right now. I ate some sunflower seeds earlier, and drank some Dr. Pepper, but that didn't stick with me long.

Last night was the first night we spent here since Sunday night, but we slept in the cramped extra bedroom, and I sure as hell didn't sleep well. I hate this house. I think I'm gonna sell it when this fucking mess is all over with.