Something I want: an alarm clock that lets you record your own wakeup message.

I’m often much more ambitious at night than I am early in the morning.

If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have a paradise in a few years.

— Bertrand Russell

The Goatee. The Mullet for the 21st Century?

I’ll never forget the look in his eyes. I was chasing Road Runner across the desert and craggy plains of the American West, traveling on my ACME rocket booster roller skates to keep up with his NASCAR-like swiftness.

Through the rain and the darkness, at my incredible rate of speed, I failed to realize the rugged road had disappeared from underneath my very roller-skate-clad paws. I was suspended in mid-air as if time had stopped, but the reality of my inevitable fall was on my mind as I whipped out a sign from an alternate universe which read “Oops!”

Road Runner, standing on the edge of the cliff I had just blown past, mocked me for having studied the Law of Gravity. Education and intellect apparently were my undoing.

The next thing I know, I’m rising up from a crater in the ground amidst the smoke and dust of my apparent 900-foot descent into the earth. Somehow, I had managed to survive! I was alive! Alive!! Suddenly, life had a new and precious value, and my hatred of Road Runner seemed so pathetic and superficial (so what if he used to call me a bastard when we were in grade school? Sticks and stones, y’know?). I decided at that moment I would find Road Runner and bury the hatchet, put our past behind us, and run down the remainder of life’s road as friends.

Then the anvil hit me.

— HerbieTheElf, on Plastic

Well, I certainly haven’t had much time to add entries lately. Of course, I say that, but the fact is, it’s just something I haven’t done. Like so many other things, one just has to make time for and do the things he values more than the things he does not value as much—and this particular computer programmer values having some sort of creative, right brain outlet. Thus far, Visual Basic is not fulfilling that role for me.

Now, if you happen to be a strict objectivist, you might say that the very fact that I don’t always choose to do the things I claim to value implies that I do not, in fact, value them more than the things that I actually do. This seems somewhat detached from reality to me in the same way that most other very individualistic philosophies do: they ignore a truth apparently obvious from everyday experiential life—that human beings, like other species, are not discreet automata. We have a far advanced rational facility in comparison to any other member of the animal kingdom on Earth, but it’s still a great leap from ourselves to a purely rational machine.

Anyway, I was going to tie that into the recent United States Supreme Court decision barring executions of mentally retarded prisoners and then something about morality and cultural values but I’m kind of tired so I’m just going to go to bed.

(If I have misrepresented any philosophy, please let me know. I don’t intend to spread ignorance. Criticism is welcome.)

Just got through watching the 2nd Half of Disc 1 of Season 3 of Sex and the City. The geniuses at Blockbuster rent out a six episode disc for two evenings… so you have to watch them quickly.

Again, Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) Carries the show. Carries. Never mind.

On another note, Nickelodeon To Air Gay Parent Special. This is tonight… I’m surprised I haven’t heard more about this. Apparently it’s at least sort of a big deal; folks over on Plastic are saying that there have now been 250,000 complaints sent to Nick. Watch out, next thing you know they’ll be showing the Teletubbies on Nick Jr.

I’m not sure what this is supposed to mean:

“They have been led to believe that Nick is a safe harbor,” she said. “Now they’ve been exposed. The skirt has been lifted and Nick has been exposed.”

Interesting metaphor.

Microsoft today released Internet Explorer 5.2 for Mac OS X. Apparently it resets your cookie preferences and your home page to msn.com. No thanks.

Okay, we’re up and running with a MySQL/PHP backend!

That was easier than I expected.

Bummer, Andersen dudes.

Redesign #7. Just a few things tweaked but a lot of stuff changed underneath so as to be more like how it ought to be. Looks good on IE5/Windows. Doesn’t show any styles on Netscape 4, because it’s so broken, I don’t want any styles on it!

Anyway, I’m actually pretty happy with the site. I promise (I think!) to stop posting a redesign message every 24 hours.

I’m a bit of a tinkerer if you haven’t noticed.

Totally redid the layout of the site. I like this much better than the old way… finally, something I actually like!

(I think this is redesign #6.)

Here’s a joke I got in my e-mail this morning. A lesson in poor delivery.

SUBJECT: Joke of the Day!
A godfather summoned his accountant and wanted to know what happen to the $3 million the accountant had embezzled him.
The lawyer for the accountant said “My client is deaf and mute. So, I have to sign language to him”.
“Fine. Ask him where is my $3 million dollar?” said the Godfather.
The lawyer signed to the accountant.  The account signed back to him.
And the lawyer respond to the Godfather “I don’t know what you are talking about.”
The Godfather pulled out a gun point at the accountant and cock it.
“where is my $3 million dollar?”
The lawyer signed to the accountant. And the account signed to the lawyer
“It is buried in a bag in the shed behind my house.”
The lawyer said to the Godfather “You don’t have the guts to pull the trigger.”

One should always be drunk.
That’s all that matters;
that’s our one imperative need.
So as not to feel Time’s horrible burden
one which breaks your shoulders and bows you down,
you must get drunk without cease.

But with what?
With wine, poetry, or virtue as you choose.
But get drunk.

And if, at some time, on steps of a palace,
in the green grass of a ditch,
in the bleak solitude of your room,
you are waking and the drunkenness has already abated,
ask the wind, the wave, the stars, the clock,
all that which flees,
all that which groans,
all that which rolls,
all that which sings,
all that which speaks,
ask them, what time it is;
and the wind, the wave, the stars, the birds, and the clock,
they will all reply:

“It is time to get drunk!
So that you may not be the martyred slaves of Time,
get drunk, get drunk,
and never pause for rest!
With wine, poetry, or virtue,
as you choose!”

— Charles Baudelaire (1821 – 1867)

Finally, wordparts.com goes live. More to come soon… still lots of cleanup and testing to be done. I’ve learned a ton about “modern” web technologies in the last 2 weeks. Fun, important stuff.

For those of you geeky enough to care, wordparts.com is currently a static page being served from Mac OS X. It’s XHTML 1.1 and CSS2 compliant and will likely be moving to a PHP/MySQL backend in the next couple of days.

Anyway, it doesn’t look correct on 5.x versions of Internet Explorer for Windows. IE5/Windows has got some table rendering bugs for which I just haven’t implemented the widely-used fixes. That’s coming soon. Other than that, if this page looks terrible, it’s probably because you’re using an ancient browser. If so, please upgrade. Anybody, on any sort of browser (even old ones, handheld devices, set-top boxes, vision-impaired, etc.) on any platform should be able to get at least the content; likewise, anyone on a modern, standards-compliant browser should get a correct representation of what this site should look like. Victory for open, accessible, vendor-neutral standards!