Wow

Someone totally slammed China for their lack of human rights.

(The actual logo here.)

...and you turned me into a llama!

M'kay, I just noticed something here that might be a matter of confusion. There's now, in the band hall, a person by the name of RMT CTL. This person has been fairly active making posts and generally commenting on life as a band geek and as a geek of another trade. Fear not, this person is not someone new to the band hall nor is it someone hell-bent on damaging this sacred shrine. It's me, Jason. The other day, I went in and made some modifications to my profile and chose the moniker of RMT CTL (which is my dream license plate - and which I notice is still available!) So yeah, when you see RMT CTL, just think of me being controlled by a kid with a 27MHz handheld.

Would you please pass the Grey Poupon?

Aah, the nostalgia

Let's take a trip down memory lane, shall we. Think back about, oh, ten years or so when there was this little computer game called Gorilla. Do you remember? Hmmm, some of you look like you've wasted more time on it than others. Well, good. I'm here to say that good ol' Micro$soft has removed the beloved QBasic program from Windows XP users. Actually, they probably did that starting with Windows 2000, but I never tried it. Anyhow, I'm here to tell you that I have the old QBasic program and Gorrilla to go along with it. Go here first to download QBasic. It's a zip archive so you'll need to extract the files to your C:\windows\system32 directory. Next, download Gorilla from here and extract it wherever you would like. I don't advertise these downloads on my Windows page of my web site because technically, QBasic is a proprietary Microsoft technology and I have said that I will not post un-free softwares on my Windows page. So, to download them, you pretty much have to link directly to them.

Once you have QBasic and Gorillas downloaded and extracted, to run Gorilla, go to a command prompt in the directory where your Gorilla.bas file is located and type 'qbasic /run gorilla.bas' without the quotes. This will launch Gorilla and you can proceed to terrorize the city with exploding bananas.

Have a lot of fun!

Hay hay, people!

Grass grass...

So, now I command you to click on the link to my blog over on the left side of this page. It's new and it's got a picture. That's all I have to say. Now do it before I break your arm or some such nonsense.

Did you see this in the news? Didn't think so. 

Vol. 11: Make & Do

If you're sitting around sometime and you're bored, try making fake blood and filming gunfight scenes.

If you really want to be left alone, be seen making fake blood.

There's never a single all-encompasing good idea in the universe. Take breathing for instance. Normally, this activity is considered a good idea. But change the venue to, say, the bottom of a swimming pool, and the good idea starts to look a little suspicious. Likewise, it can be said about an all-encompassing bad idea.

Up-date

For the total fun. I pulled my hamstring doing flips off a rock into a pool at Sherwood Hills Resort last night. And the New American Philharmonic Orchestra had a great concert, complete with flying timpani mallets. Concert tonight at 7:30 @ V.A.B. Center for anyone who wants to come. My favorite piece we're playing is Der Schvan von Tuonela. Very moving piece. And yes, that is the group's real name now, since some "American Symphony" decided they'd threaten litigation if we didn't change it. Flippin' chips, Kip!!!

Homeneo Runner? Cool.

New semester, new semester, hey-hey, new semester.

And.... THIS.

Pevek, Russia. That is the city I'm going to take over on Monday. My troops left about an hour ago and will arive around 2AM tomorrow morning. I guess they'll just chill at the city til I get to school Monday AM and give them the order to attack.

Speaking of dates, nobody better forget February 12. It is a date significant to this blog. Make sure to buy a binary teething ring for it to celebrate (not a token ring - it's database won't be able to handle that til it gets a little older).

Time for lunch.

Just totally cool, that's all. 

It ought to be an...

...Olympic sport. Okay, right about now, several things could be running through your head that might be good candidates for Olympic sports. Things like Olympic lawnmowing, or Olympic Slinky walking, or maybe even Olympic needle-in-carpet avoiding (try that with bare feet at night)... And while those are superb examples of activities to suffer from wholesale discrimination by the IOC, they are not what I have in mind for a new Olympic sport. What I'm thinking is much more far-reaching than those. This sport is truly on Olympic scale. In fact, there are no out-of-bounds because the entire cosmos is included (no, it's not Olympic starship captaining, but good idea.)

The sport I'm suggesting is Olympic 404-error finding. The person who can document the most creative 404 errors in a certain time wins. Of course, there would be a panel of judges to determine the creative content of the found 404 pages. Think about it. We all know what a IIS 404 error looks like and what a standard Apache 404 error looks like. But, sometimes, folks get really creative and put up really cool 404 errors, like this one. It has been my experience that the more creative and less "corporate" the site is, generally the 404 page will follow suit. So, I think we should have contests to see who can come up with the most 404 pages in a certain amount of time given a consistent Internet connection speed.

Just a thought.

So...I found out some cool news...http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10855323/ if this link works...that probe is landing practically in my home-town backyard. If it doesn't work...here's an idea of what's happening. A probe, named Stardust, is landing after collecting about 7 years of dust and microscopic particles from comets. It is landing in Dugway Proving Grounds (where I grew up) on Sunday. It's actually not the first one (the last one crash-landed), but it's still really cool! Have a great weekend ya'll!

yay for ben

That is a very nice picture and my hat is off to you. Yes, it is true that I don't know where most of my hats are (perhaps washed away in the flood of '05), but it is still off to you.

One could waste hours...

...on this site.

I think this will have to be the site of the week: Speak 'N Spell.

Hasta luego.

Yay for Family Guy!

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as your local fence-sitter...

I have to agree that the war effort is probably more than what any of us would like to have spent. Indeed, it may be even ludicrous. But, if "experts" are saying that it will cost $2Trillion, where are they getting that figure? Do you realize that 2 trillion is 2 thousand-billion? That's a helluva lot of money. So, in all fairness, I would like to know where the figure of $2T comes from. Also, I would like to point out that while we are experiencing casualties in the war in Iraq, there are many more unseen things, good things, that are happening over there. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not a big Bush supporter or pro-Republican nut-job; I just like to look at things from more than just one side of the coin. If you are also interested, I do not believe any of the stuff coming out of Michael Moore. I don't believe that man would defend his country if it were the last cause on Earth. He's just out to get one for himself. But, that's neither here nor there. Like I said before, I like to look at issues carefully before forming a decision and saying it's either all good or all bad. For instance, while the war is costing American lives, it is also bringing a new freedom to millions of Iraqi citizens, both in Iraq and abroad. We are in the process of witnessing the nation of Iraq coming from the dark, oppressive closet of a dictatorial regime into the light of democracy and freedom. Yes, it may be a large up-front cost, but if you think of the other side of the coin, you may see the global impact of a free Iraq.

Anyhow, I do not mean to start a flame war and if one starts, I will do all I can to stop it. I just like to give people the benefit of a non-biased approach. Don't we live in a society that has as one of its tenets "Innocent until proven guilty?"

We have a multi-party system in this country for checks and balances. The differing parties have the opportunity (and do take it liberally) to disagree. This keeps one party from having too much clout. When one party takes over, we have situations like what happened in Iraq, Nazi Germany, North Korea and others where there exists a government that serves itself and oppresses the people.

I did call myself a fence-sitter. This is because I'm neither a Republican nor a Democrat. I think that each party has wonderful ideas and plans to "promote the general welfare." However, I also find that they both have tenets that I find disturbing and oppressive. So, I prefer to make decisions on a case-by-case basis and trust that someone in authority probably has a better view on something than I do. If there is something I disagree with, I try to make my opinion heard.

Anyway, take it easy! Try not to roast me too badly. I am allergic to pain, after all. :)

Everybody wants to rule the world

And I'm not talking about that one Tears For Fears song.

My most profound appologies to my fellow geeks (band, tech, or otherwise). I have been holding out on you. But it wasn't on purpose. More like on laziness. What am I talking about, you wonder? Well, I haven't let you all in on a geekret (geeky + secret). So, now, to try to mend affairs, I present to you...

*drumroll, please*

cooler link of the while: GEwar.net

Just when you thought Google Earth couldn't get any cooler, someone goes and hacks it. You will need the latest version of Earth for this. Hat's off to Luke for rev-engineering the API.

All I will say is this: when you get hooked up, post up here what your username is and I'll invite you to join our alliance (Multimedia SWAT, currently #22 thanks to the Tom).

lyrics of the day:

We're on our way
Here we go
We're gonna take over...
- The Aquabats

P.S. Did I mention I like elipses???

P.P.S. I had a fun date last Friday. And I found another favorite restaurant: Famous Dave's.

I love my schedule this semester!

I love my schedule this semester!

Let the Madness Begin!!

No, this is not a repeat of last season. It's doesn't even come with a 90-day guarantee. The most you'll get is maybe a 5-day guarantee. We're Back! School is officially in session on Monday and that means that all the madness of the world will be cobbled into a couple of days. You may have noticed that in previous semesters, we've featured lots of hard classes with a considerable amount of stress. And, oh the tests! Tests and quizzes to dull your senses. Well, this season, we thought we'd start out with a little bit of, well, just that!

So, without further ado, get your notebooks and pencils ready for a great semester of learning and application. Uh huh. It's cliche, but what else can I say?

Anyhow, I didn't want you all to go into this semester completely devoid of any amusement at all, so if you'll please direct your browser to this link and either select to download or stream the movie presented on that page, I assure you that you will be amazed. Okay, that was a long sentence so let me recap: Click here, download or stream the movie (beware, download is big), enjoy. If you download the movie, it is in mpeg format so you might need to install a software DVD player to view it. If so, go and download PowerDVD from CyberQuest. Be sure to only get the trial version.

Okay, so I just have to mention that if you're interested, I do have a copy of the Lord of the Rings Symphony for band by Johan DeMeij which you can download for your listening pleasure. If you're in Dr. Root's band program and have not yet played the LOTR symphony, stick with it and you will. He loves it and so do most of the students. You can download the symphony here. Keep in mind that this is on my personal web server in my apartment so my bandwidth (and therefore your download speed) is somewhat limited. I probably shouldn't be hosting that on my site, but it's very difficult finding a good recording of the LOTR symphony. If anyone complains about it, I will remove it. By the way, while you're on that site, you may take a listen to the Ditty Bops. I really like their music.

Anyway, the time has come to bid you all adieu. Take care and good luck this semester! I know I'm going to need it. :)

"Ferrari is like a toned down version of God" --Jeremy Clarkson from Top Gear

ps: I have been in one of the above-pictured motorcars. I have a permanent place in my heart for them.

Byline

News from Jarrett's neck of the woods

And this from ours.

Getting Civilized

I've been playing Civilization 3 of late. And starting to learn Ruby.

long, geeky quote of the day:

"The Ruby developers use CVS (Concurrent Version System, freely available from http://www.cvshome.com) as their revision control system. You can check files out as an anonymous user from their archive by executing the following CVS commands:

% cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@cvs.netlab.co.jp:/home/cvs
login
(Logging in to anonymous@cvs.netlab.co.jp)
CVS password: guest
% cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@cvs.netlab.co.jp:/home/cvs
checkout ruby

The complete source code tree, just as the developers last left it, will now be copied to a ``ruby'' subdirectory on your machine, updating your local source tree from a repository on the other side of the world. Isn't it a great time to be alive?"


Actually Jason, the Napster in that picture is on my office machine. Downloading music is okay on campus as long as it's legal. Napster didn't used to be legal, but it is now since they are no longer a p2p filesharing network client thingy. However, one of my co-workers is one of the very people that would drop said burning automobile parts on my person should I use a p2p client to start pulling ""archived"" music or movie torrents off the web. I have only ever downloaded about 2 illegal music-type songfiles in my life, which I later purchased anyway. I may be a pirate, but not that kind! :)

In other news, I hope everyone had a greatwonderful Christmas and is having an Appy New Year so far. I know I am. I am in Ithilien right now, just getting ready to leave. And I am learning all sorts of new things, like how Dreamweaver 8 uses html and xml for a lot of its functionality (hooray for customization/automation).

haha

I just rememered that the Jingles2la tagline was "3 Monkeys 10 Minutes"

Good times, good times.

A funny thing happened on the way to town the other day...

So, I was casually driving up to the Clearfield area to visit a friend and the funniest thing happened...my car somehow ended up facing traffic. Thankfully my car was off to the side of the road, but for a while there I thought that I'd be eternally stuck between the I-215 exits ramps from I-80, facing the wrong direction. Flipping a 180 on I-80 is definately not a good way to start off the new year...but hey, at least everything ended up alright. :) I think I will never drive again....at least, not in weather like that...although I think I have concluded that it was the wind, not the road. So...with that...
Happy New Year!!!!
(Good morning starshine, the earth says hello!)