trenchant dot org
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blueblog

the useless personal web log of adam mathes



It's just like the NRA always say: guns don't kill people, 7-year-olds do.

Funny how you never hear stories like this from Europe where they have those wacky gun control laws.

2/29/2000 12:34:28 PM | +



Dammit, I slept through the Bases Startup Fair yesterday.

I really need to start making an effort to get a job this summer. My old theory that since I was a computer science major at Stanford I shouldn't actively seek out a job, as that would be a show of weakness and desperation, and I should simply let companies fight over me doesn't seem to have panned out. And the 8000 times I've said "I love evhead!" in this weblog hasn't seemed to do any good either.

I'm not sure if after reading this weblog anybody would want to hire me for the summer, but the good old resume is up for anyone to peruse. Dammit, where are all the Silicon Valley execs reading this that are desperate to hire workers?

2/28/2000 07:55:26 PM | +

Interesting -

godisdead.com is another url for Fade to Black magazine... but godisalive.com is another url for sexhorse.com

So godisdead has the Hottest Feminist Contest amongst other hilarious offensive things, and all godisalive has is bestiality pics. I think I just went from agnostic to atheist.

2/28/2000 07:27:07 PM | +

There's been quite a hubug about colleges banning Napster due to supposed excessive bandwidth usage. Horrible article - I love the quotes from moronic college idiots though.

"Napster’s kudzu-like system is functioning as an unintentional version of the denial-of-service attacks that crippled many large Web sites recently, choking other traffic off the networks."

“As much as 30 percent of our Internet access was going to this one particular site, and that was causing other access to slow down as a result,” said Alan Cubbage of Northwestern University.

Are you kidding me? Are people dumb enough to believe that shit?

Not that it bothers me. Piracy of mp3's is getting too mainstream now with Napster. Boo hoo, college kids can't as easily exchange copyrighted music. Cry me a river. note - stanford doesn't ban napster and if they do i will not protest. i will simply find some proxy server and continue to err... not that i use napster because i am a strong believer in u.s. copyright law...

Just wait until iMesh catches on and every moron instead of easily downloading 3mb mp3's of overplayed alternative singles is instead getting 65mb porn avi's or 600mb mpeg's of last week's box office failures.

2/28/2000 12:27:30 AM | +



It's astounding how much school work I can get done if I don't update this little log or play Crazy Taxi.

I wrote seven spineless pages of my research paper. If I keep this up I can finish tonight or tomorrow. Sure, it sucks, but I'm not really going for quality.

2/27/2000 06:19:02 PM | +



I'm writing a research paper on Tecumseh. I haven't written a real research essay in over a year. I forgot how much I hate them.

2/26/2000 07:47:30 PM | +

weblog non-news:

Jess redesigned a bit. I like it.

rio thero redesigned too. Links that change font size on mouseover make my head hurt.

2/26/2000 07:43:43 PM | +



lake effect -
Did a bit of a double-take on finding blueblog. Really, click, then press your back button ... plus, I like his idea: "Blogging for bastards" (2/23).

More similarites with Dan besides boring white on blue page design - I'm a weblogger originally from Chicago, and my first homepage was on the same ISP Dan uses WorldWide Access - when I was in high school. I thought my parents cancelled the account when they got DSL this summer but apparently they didn't because my old not updated homepage is still there.

Maybe boring white on blue design is somehow a product of our Chicago heritage.

2/25/2000 06:50:51 PM | +



I am secure enough in my sexuality to put this on my weblog -

I love Rainbow Brite. Really, I do. Before I loved the Powerpuff Girls - I loved Rainbow Brite. Yes, I am a heterosexual male.

2/24/2000 09:41:39 PM | +

Yummy, yummy punk rock girls.

Extra credit to anyone who caught The Queers reference. Double bonus points if you're still reading this.

It's refreshing to read "standard" cutesy little homepages. I haven't done that in a long time.

2/24/2000 09:07:37 PM | +



I'm going to see Wonder Boys at a "special screening" tomorrow. Being in college, I get to see these free advanced screenings in the hope that me and my intellectual college buddies will generate more positive buzz thereby increasing opening weekend sales. So, I'll probably see it tomorrow and then make another post about it on my stupid weblog. Look at me! I'm a tool of the man! Wheee!

2/23/2000 05:28:51 PM | +

Wired on weblogs - yawn.

"The vast majority aren't very interesting," joked Dave Winer, CEO of Userland and a weblog pioneer. "But that's OK. We'll make it up in volume."
God, Dave sucks.

Since the mass media doesn't seem to "get" the whole weblog thing all that well, and they think asking "pioneer" Davey Whiner is good research, I'm currently writing up a kind of guide to weblogging that they can easily read and quote from, citing me as a "weblog expert" for the coming barrage of cheezy mass media articles. Just to whet your appetite -

Working title - Adam's Blogging for Bastards.

Chapter One - "So you want to be a whore for attention weblogger."

Chapter Two- " 'But I don't know any good links' - stealing copying other blogger's links - how to attribute properly while kissing ass heavily"

Chapter Five - "Advanced sucking up - mutual 'conersation' linkage"

Chapter Seven - "The sidebar - how to choose who to permanently suck up to"

Chapter Eighteen - "Why only webloggers read other weblogs"

and finally Chapter Twenty - "How to get traffic to your weblog by writing stupid things to piss people off"

2/23/2000 05:04:00 PM | +



Money hungry ladies, trying to marry some scumbad pseudo-millionaire just doesn't make good economic sense. I'm sure that pre-nup just sucks anyway. The really smart and greedy should apply to date a desperate stanford comp sci major with questionable multi-millionaire potential, wait a few years, marry, divorce, then take all his internet funny money. Isn't that how divorce works in California?

(Yeah, I know I'm a few days late... but any excuse to throw up a link to the app to date me... despite the fact that i don't think it's that funny any more...)

2/22/2000 09:55:49 PM | +

I'm actually doing real school work right now. I almost forgot what that was like.

Admittedly, it is a three page paper that is the only assignment in a pass/fail one unit class I'm taking. But that's not the point. The point is I'm doing work.

Actually, the class is interesting - IE292 - Industry Thought Leaders's Seminar And through the magic of Stanford Online anybody, most importantly me, can watch the lectures whenever they want.

2/22/2000 09:17:15 PM | +

Neale got Zannah to host his nifty new home. I guess I should try to be more of a whore for attention so someone will offer to host trenchant.org

I could do something more obnoxious than weblog junior high. Just give me some time.

Then again, maybe I should just pay the stupid $10 or $15 a month for real web hosting.

2/22/2000 04:54:47 PM | +



On impulse I bought trenchant.org. Now I just need to figure out what to do with it.

2/21/2000 11:34:21 PM | +

I think I like Totalnic - $35 for 2 years. And I like the no b.s. web site.

So if I use the Public DNS Service all I need is some server space and trenchant.org could be a reality.

Of course, then I have to do something with it. It would make more sense to create something first, then get a domain name for it, but no. Being rational gets so boring after a few decades.

2/21/2000 10:46:17 PM | +

Geez, Dave won't let anybody have fun with the stupid hotlist.

2/21/2000 07:31:21 PM | +

Dammit... I really wanted trenchant.com but it's already taken and being used for NOTHING.

trenchant.net is taken too, although I'm not sure after seeing that site people are going to be hiring him for design work.

trenchant.org is open. I've always thought of me, myself, and I as an organization. Hey, kind and generous blueblog audience, want to host trenchant.org for me? Or buy it and host it for me? No, I didn't think so.

2/21/2000 06:50:54 PM | +

I'm thinking of buying myself a doman name for my birthday in April. Not blueblog.com I think I want get bluesomething.com but I'm not sure. Suggestions?

2/21/2000 06:22:09 PM | +

I'm trying to resist the urge to put 8000 links to blueblog here just to beat out the immensely popular Bradlands. (view source... i laughed)

Then I thought it would be a lot funnier to put 10000 links to sexlog and then make an update saying that the "weblog community" is a bunch of pervs.

But it turns out I'm just too lazy to do anything. Besides, it's kind of juvenile, exploiting Dave's stupid software. Not that there's anything wrong with being juvenile... I mean I have Battletech toys in my dorm room.

2/21/2000 06:07:41 PM | +



Pigdog with more mad craziness:

DeCSS Now!

"Start spreadin' the love, eh? And FUCK the MPAA."

It's so stupid it's genius - distribute a program called DeCSS that has nothing to do with DVD encryption just to piss off and confuse people looking for the real DeCSS. God, I love those crazy pigdog guys.

2/20/2000 06:53:03 PM | +

Just what the world needs - a weblog about porn. (Seriously, it's awesome.)

2/20/2000 02:20:14 PM | +



I'm reading how to be a web whore by Philip and Alex - the paper version - and just when I start to think the whole insane devotion to Unix and Oracle is "outdated" Blogger will spit something like this out:
Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers error '80040e31'

[Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver]Timeout expired

/pyraFunctions/addItem.inc, line 118

2/19/2000 07:25:30 PM | +

Anime on DVD is a good resource for exactly that.

I'm about to watch Annie Hall on DVD. All by myself. Ahhh, Saturday nights in college.

2/19/2000 07:24:03 PM | +

In addition to having weekly new kick ass mp3's of video game music remixes and 1980's cartoon tv theme songs BIGmog also has music videos of alt-rock over anime flicks.

Is there anything this fun to do with a college lan connection that doesn't in some way violate copyright law?

2/19/2000 04:50:06 PM | +

The comic Overclocked is unfunny to me, and I obsesses over the emulation "scene" it is supposed to be about - so I'm guessing most people will find it even less entertaining. But they have opened a nifty sub-site dedicated to Videogame Music Remixes. The Secret of Mana - "Fear of Heaven" is particularly tasty.

2/19/2000 12:16:31 AM | +



I just got Sailor Moon R: The Movie on DVD and I am not ashamed to admit it. The world needs more schoolgirl superheroes.

2/18/2000 11:15:39 PM | +

Derek tries to explain What the hell is a weblog? and opens it up for input.

I'd write my opinion on there, but I'm off to yet another Stanford baseball game tonight. It's too nice to be inside today.

But anyway, in a nuthshell, there are some neat people who use the Internet everyday. Weblogs are just a way for those people to share their webified lives. Good weblogs have personality because the people behind them have personality and pour it into their weblogs. Anybody can do a regularly updated list of links. Not everybody can make it worth reading.

2/18/2000 05:35:24 PM | +

Jauteria:

"...the primary reason I stopped trying to teach myself to use Frontier back in v.5 when it was free was that the mutant Mac-Windows interface was so bizarre and off-putting that I couldn't look at it."

Oh man, look at that pic. I felt the same way when I tried to use Frontier a few years ago. Ok. No more Dave ripping. (Besides, everybody knows that in the end the blogger bunch could kick the crap out of the editthispage ninnies any time, any place.)

2/18/2000 02:07:27 AM | +

Let me clarify my last post a little. I don't know if I really wanted to say that Derek's site is "pretty fucking annoying" like I did in the last post. (Especially now that he's working with the pyra gang and I must kiss ass to them at any opportunity. I love evhead!)

So, I'd just like to take this opportunity to say that I think that whole black thingee surrounding that inner thingee is, umm... Look, I couldn't design my way out of a paper bag (if that isn't obvious from this site) so I just want to make it clear that I feel that anybody, especially anybody that has anything to do with the fray can design their personal site however the fuck they want - even if it might slightly annoy me. Or Dave. Actually, especially if it will annoy Dave. In fact, bonus points if it annoys Dave. and breaks every useit.com design "rule."

Note to self - stop reading other weblogs and try surfing and logging real sites. Seriously, isn't that what this whole weblogging this is supposed to be about? (I mean after the ass-kissing, isn't that what this is about?)

2/18/2000 01:43:21 AM | +



Aww, look, Dave and Derek are having a little online tiff.

Yes, Dave is kind of a fucking moron, and yes Derek's personal site is pretty fucking annoying. But who the hell cares? Where's the inter-blog love? Come on, everybody, let's just kiss and make up. Come on. Let's all have a little inter-blog linky love fest. I love all you bloggers, even those who have "dysfunctional" pages and make software that rips off my first love.

2/17/2000 10:24:10 PM | +

"I am the Radiskull..." (via mthology)

Radiskull, an angry skull with a mohawk, and Devil Doll, the cutest little demon you've ever seen kicking it old skool. Episodes one and three are hilarious. Two is a little weaker. Requires shockwave.

2/17/2000 05:24:32 PM | +

Conversation between 10 year old me and my 3rd grade teacher:

"Adam, you need to learn proper cursive. Your handwriting is illegible and completely unacceptable."

"I don't see why handwriting matters. Nobody writes anything important by hand anymore. Anything important I ever write will be on my computer."

Comments on a midterm I got back today:

"Try to write more legibly in next exam - otherwise, no credit will be given."

I hate being wrong.

Oh wait, never mind. Exams aren't important. I'm still right about everything.

2/17/2000 05:18:28 PM | +

Spite Magazine - reborn - almost. (For the eighth time or so, but who's counting.)

Via the Spite Mailing List

"I had stopped writing articles. I had stopped updating my contributions to Spite's improvised comic. I had stopped existing, in a Spite sense. But one thing hadn't stopped: all the ladies asking me for pictures. Oh yes, the many female readers of Spite kept on clamoring: "Oh Will, what do you look like? I want to see your image on my screen." Months of silence did not deter their increasingly desperate pleas. Well, I have finally relented. I appear at my finest in this, the newest addition to Spite:" HOME PAGES
A virtual tour of the home of Will Hines

Look at this and understand why there are no pictures of me or my dorm room on my lamer home page.

2/17/2000 12:57:48 PM | +



New Stating the Obvious - The Cash-Out Effect. Rogers Cadenhead writes pretty much what I wrote last week about slashdot being bought out by VA Linux, albeit in a much more sensical and thorough way than my "Editorial integirty my ass" comment.

2/16/2000 11:52:58 AM | +



I haven't said anything about the death of Charles Schulz because there's nothing funny or ironic about death. Besides, I'm sure Peanuts was good 30 years ago, but it never really meant a lot to me since I'm only 19. I did, however always love the cartoon specials - probably because they're 30 years old and genius. Anyway, they're being shown right now on Nickelodeon and I'm watching them.

2/15/2000 09:32:33 PM | +

I can't fricking link to it directly... but the most recent This Modern World on DotComix - "Modern Couples" may explain why my last relationship so utterly failed - compulsive sarcastic disorder.

2/15/2000 07:58:48 PM | +

I know everybody already reads suck - but today's column on those nutty denial of service attacks is the only intelligent commentary I have read about the attacks. The gist - Internet Protocol wasn't designed for the mad craziness it's being used for today and it needs to be changed. But it won't. Because we're all a bunch of lazy slackers.

My favorite story from my advisor Eric Roberts is about his work on Arpanet - the precursor to the Internet. In designing one of the early protocols, they needed to set a hard limit on the number of unique machines that could be connected to the network to cut down on the number of bits needed to identify a computer. In choosing that limit, they agreed that the absolute largest number of computers that would ever be connected at one time was 64. But they decided they could be wrong - so they doubled it to 128 so they would be completely safe. Eric said this made perfect sense at the time, but it turns out they were a little off.

2/15/2000 07:47:28 PM | +

Gamecenter has a feature on Japanese virtual girlfriend games. (not that I even know what that means or anything... i mean this was definitely news to me...) Gamecenter, being all lame ass mainstream and cnety, just focuses on the "clean" dating games:

"But you can get another kind of video game dating action in the privacy of your own home. Dating simulations let you experience all the fun and excitement of getting shot down while asking your crush out, without any of the heartache when she laughs in your face."
Yeah. Great. It then goes on to review dating games and ignore the pornographic hentai ("pervert") games. As far as I'm concerned, if you're Gamecenter and you cater to a demographic of horny teenage boys who never get laid, the article should go like this -
There are all these Japanese games where anime babes have sex! Unfortunately the text is in Japanese, but you can see anime babes having sex! If you actually want to read and play the games you can check out jast
Errr... not that I even know what any of that means... maybe it actually is better that nobody reads my little weblog.

2/15/2000 01:11:50 PM | +

Remember when bloat used to be kind of biting and funny instead of just stupid ass kissing? I don't see the point of sucking up to already popular blogs that everyone has already heard of. (I love evhead!)

Hmmm... maybe it's time to break out the old trenchant wit that I think I used to have when I still thought of myself as a writer and work on my own weblogger rankings. Because I'm certainly not doing any real weblogging any more - so I might as well just make fun of those who do. Links and commentary on people who just provide commentary and links, half the time to someone else's commentary... it'd be like hardcore postmodernism. Sounds like a good name. Hardcore pomo. Maybe not.

Ok, I admit that Sally's commentary on /usr/bin/girl was genius in the top 8 new weblogs but other than that it did nothing for me.

2/15/2000 01:21:02 AM | +



Ladies - if you're alone this Valentine's Day please note that I'm still accepting applications to date me.

2/14/2000 05:07:51 PM | +

Keen! The nifty picture of weblogs added almost all the features I asked for. It's so good I'll overlook that Casey probably snagged his subtitle - "Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying About Popularity And Start Navel-Gazing" from my ramblings below ;)

2/14/2000 04:25:24 PM | +

I was reading Using the Internet to Pick up Babes and/or Hunks at the always interesting photo.net. yeah, I snagged the first link from cam - but what's a weblog without a little linking to the A #1 bad mofo of weblogging.)

I've visited photo.net before, but I've always just been interested in the photography and camera advice stuff. Today I looked at phil's project on online communities:

"If you still feel that physical communities must always be superior to electronically linked communities, let me ask you to ponder three words: junior high school."
I think that is the best justification I have ever heard for electronic virtual communities.

2/14/2000 02:49:54 PM | +

I dropped the class that was causing me to hate school and life so I think blueblog may resume it's irregular programming schedule. So, technically I'm not a "fully registered student" anymore, but I think that was overrated anyway.

Now my only reason to by miserable today is that it's Valentine's day and I'm alone. Just like I am every Valentine's day.

Well, at least I have blogger. I love Blogger

2/14/2000 01:45:33 PM | +

Blueblog is on hiatus until the end of the academic quarter or until I get my shit together, whichever comes first. The smart money is on the end of the quarter.

2/14/2000 11:51:31 AM | +



Nifty changes to blogger's list o' blogs - now sortable by last date updated, title, date created... fun fun. i want to make sweet, sweet love to blogger.

2/9/2000 03:13:54 PM | +



Finally, a reasoned analysis on why Tex Avery shorts were genius and Disney cartoons were total crap.

2/8/2000 07:52:42 PM | +

Oh. I knew the cross-site scripting thing was bullshit. But I didn't realize that all that "promiscious browsing" shit I made fun of was just part of yet another evil Microsoft plot to save MSN until Dvorak pointed it out (via eatonweb)

2/8/2000 06:46:06 PM | +

Coke's secret recipe. (maybe)Apparently it is just sugar water. I wonder if I made a batch of that and the original recipe if there would be any taste difference.

2/8/2000 05:24:38 PM | +

Online java applet navel gazing... Boiled Brains weblog monitor

I couldn't get it to work in IE5, but it was fine in netscape. So that's the "weblog community." One web of linky butt-loving.

It'd be cooler if you could click and drag the dots and watch the web of interconnectedness change. And it'd be cool if I could figure out which one was mine because I'm a self-obsessed loser. It's really difficult to find a particular site though... a search and highlight function would be nifty.

2/8/2000 12:29:28 AM | +



Warning - Shitty white guy posting on things he shouldn't follows - Rahzel is really cool. (Despite the fact that his official site is flash enabled.) Do yourself a favor and "obtain" a copy of If Your Mother Only Knew - it blew my fricking mind. How someone can make the beat and sing the chorus with one mouth is beyond me... but it's awesome.

I didn't want to pass my midterm anyway.

2/7/2000 11:23:04 PM | +

Maybe I should actually try to find good websites and share them with others through my weblog instead of talking about my boring pathetic life.

Oh never mind, Strangers With Candy is on.

2/7/2000 10:11:53 PM | +

None of my friends will drive me to Fry's so I can buy Crazy Taxi just because I "have a midterm tomorrow" and "am failing all of my classes."

Evan - my drawmate on the football team - gave me a bottle of multivitamins (yes... football players get any and everything for free in college) because he thinks I'm so unhealthy I'm going to die. He told me I wasn't getting the point when I poured a shot of vodka to take the vitamin with.

2/7/2000 10:01:16 PM | +

It's 3:46am. I am up due to a bad combination - a next door neighbor who's girlfriend spends the night EVERY fucking night and paper thin walls of my shitty self-op house.

But this way at least two out of the three of us are happy. And I was already unhappy, so I guess it doesn't really matter.

2/7/2000 03:52:36 AM | +

I was depressed. I read all of the neverever archives. I was more depressed.

2/7/2000 02:23:23 AM | +



That reminds me - not a single new application to date me since the relaunch, from 15-year-olds or otherwise. Hmm.... the app doesn't seem as funny as it did last year. Maybe I should redo it or ditch it or something. I don't know.

2/6/2000 11:47:27 PM | +

ev-

Well, this is just um...funny? Wrong? Cool? Interesting.
Wrong. Very wrong.

The thing is, I felt like I was a pedophile when I was in high school and looked at 15 year olds. My excuse for not dating high school girls when I was in high school - "High school girls are too young. I mean, I'd feel like a pedophile. I couldn't date a girl that wasn't at least 19 or 20 and I just don't know any available ones right now." (Well, that sounded better than "I'm not dating high school girls because they've all rejected me.")

Now that I'm in college and surrounded by attractive, intelligent, available 19 and 20 year old women... I'm sitting in my room looking at bad internet personals for 16 year olds. I hate my life.

Not that I was even considering it, but if I did hit on these chicks I'd end up competing with the riothero for the hot Asians, and well, Mark being a web-celeb and prom king and all would probably win.

Yeah, I know. No more linking to ev and mark.

2/6/2000 10:46:02 PM | +

I admit it. I used to read slashdot excessively back in the day (three of four years ago) Now, I hate to be the hipster bastard who jumps ship as soon as something gets "popular," so I kept reading even as linux became relatively mainstream.

But when they started publishing shit by the self absorded bastard Katz, that's where I drew the line. Besides, after a while, linux sucks just as much as everything else. (Except BeOS.) And after a while everything on slashdot starts to look the same.

By the time /. sold out to Andover I was completely convinced slashdot's whole open source "we do it because we love it" bullshit bubble was bursting. Not that there's anything wrong with selling out, but you can't have it both ways. Either you're a tool of the corporate establishment or you're an independent. There is no middle ground.

Anyway, now slashdot is now owned by VA Linux. Editorial integrity my ass.

2/6/2000 10:06:08 PM | +

Turns out my crytpo class is really hard. Either that or I'm an idiot. Maybe sophomore year really is too early for graduate level classes.

2/6/2000 09:51:39 PM | +



The whoring begins. I've decided to embrace my sluttishness. I'm now on weblogs dot com. Wheee.

2/5/2000 01:17:12 AM | +



ev is right - why the hell isn't there a good web app log, or news resource, or something? I remember having that same thought back in the day when I developed web apps at ingenious (who've sold out when I wasn't looking... geez, you intern somewhere and then all of a sudden they're bought out...)

Maybe I'll start one. Not that I'm competent or knowledgable - but once something like that gets rolling competent geeks would probably contribute useful stuff. And it would be yet another way to suck up to ev - and would probably help me sell out for the summer. Yup, it's all about me, isn't it? I'm just a selfish little bastard.

I'm off to the opening night of Stanford baseball since my drawmate is some big important left-handed pitcher on the team or something. I don't know... I don't grok sports.

2/4/2000 04:46:00 PM | +

Tomorrow makes a full month of moping over my lost love. read: getting dumped

Since I'm still depressed, I've decided to completely reform my theory on life.

  1. figure out what to do to make myself happy
  2. do it
Simple. I mean, look at Cookie Monster - now there was a guy who knew what he wanted out of life, knew how to get it, and just did it. Sure, basing my entire life philosophy on Sesame Street characters may seem dumb...I don't think I was going anywhere with that sentence. Shit, I'm in college and I think this letter finding game is pretty fucking hard, how are pre-schoolers supposed to do it?

2/4/2000 04:20:43 PM | +

Sluts? In junior high? What kind of school did neal go to? Or was I just missing out?

Note that the "loser antisocial outcasts" category isn't on there - but if it was I'd be there. That settles it - no reading or linking to other weblogs again ever. Err... except ev

2/4/2000 04:02:42 PM | +

Am I really the only geek at stanford with a weblog?

Oh, that's right. The other kids go out and have fun.

2/4/2000 02:17:52 AM | +



Looks like all the cool kids are going to SXSW.

Yeah, I'd like to go. Not for the conference but to kiss ass to ev and others in my constant quest to sell out for the summer.

2/3/2000 10:44:04 PM | +

Took a nap. Felt better. Mark specifically told me not to click here. I did anyway. Head started to hurt. Browser died.

That's it. The world of graphical newfangled 5.0 beta web browsers is too much for me. I'm going to reboot into linux (command line only - X sucks) and just use lynx for the rest of my life. I sure hope blogger is lynx friendly or else I'll just start crying. Because life without blogger just isn't life. (ok, maybe the kissing blogger ass thing is getting old)

2/3/2000 06:09:15 PM | +

I'm angrier than I normally am today. And my posts today definitely are. I only got four hours of sleep. Maybe I should take a nap.

2/3/2000 04:40:34 PM | +

Hmmm... read this hotwired article from 1996. (!) Brief history on why JavaScript sucks. Although the links to those exploits are dead, the methods described still work and can annoy the hell out of a casual web surfer, and there are worse ones. Note that these things are just annoyances - I'm not entirely sure what exactly the CERT advisory means by "malicious" JavaScript code. The point is there is NO security model in JavaScript and never has been.

Note that everything that used to suck about JavaScript still sucks, and that Netscape never fixed anything.

The thing is, I've always hated Netscape and their lame ass browser. Speaking of things they never followed through on, mozilla is a total failure. Even if it turns out to be a good browser - which it probably won't - it'll be too little too late.

2/3/2000 01:24:31 PM | +

Is this whole "cross-site" scripting thing really such a big deal? I mean, oooh, more malicious javascript. Scary.

That security advisory from CERT is a riot. They suggest disabling scripting languages in your browser or...

Web Users Should Not Engage in Promiscuous Browsing

...

With scripting enabled, visual inspection of links does not protect users from following malicious links, since the attacker's web site may use a script to misrepresent the links in the user's window. For example, the contents of the Goto and Status bars in Netscape are controllable by JavaScript.

"Promiscuous Browsing" - sounds like something Puritans would bitch about. Let's face the facts here - the real reason any of this is a problem is because JavaScript sucks ass. Why the hell should anybody be able to change the contents of the status bar anyway? Why should a web page be able to capture and intercept any right clicks and pop up a "no peeking" dialog box instead of the proper fucking menu? And for the love of god what business does a browser window have spawning eight other browsers when closing it? What I always love most about that is Internet Explorer will politely get confirmation from you if a browser tries to close itself - wouldn't want a browser suiciding on us - but not for spawning ten other stupid popups. Die JavaScript, die.

2/3/2000 12:58:42 PM | +

Want to know what the weather is going to be like for the weekend but are too lazy to find it out yourself? Want to know what the weather is outside but you're too busy staring at your computer screen to find out yourself? Call 1-888-573-TALK (1-888-573-8255) and just ask the nice little computer synthesized voice anything you want to know about the weather anywhere in the whole world.

Jupiter is pretty neat. I'm taking a seminar in computers and human language right now and this was an example application we tried. Nifty stuff.

2/3/2000 12:45:36 AM | +



Now that I think about it -signing up for on campus recruiting (see previous post) seems way too much like the first ten minutes of Office Space.

Being an a-spiritual techie, I don't believe in omens or anything. Actually, I try not to believe in omens because it's rained on my birthday every year since I was born and every year I tell myself it means nothing. I think in the movie version of my life the opening will be about that. Working title - My Stupid Life.

2/2/2000 06:58:07 PM | +

Adventures in selling out.

Today I registered for on campus recruiting.

I had to wait ten minutes while some idiot asked obvious questions about how to bid for interviews - which I already knew the answers to because I had just read some stupid page about it.

"Hi, I'd like to fill out an intent to participate form for on campus recruiting."

"Have you signed up online for jobtrak?"

"Yes, I've signed up on jobtrak and I read the page describing how interviewtrak works and the bidding process."

"But have you watched the video yet?"

"No, I haven't watched the video but the site specifically said that you could watch the video or read the web page about the interviewtrak system instead."

"Yeah, the thing is, we're really encouraging everyone to watch the video before we allow them to fill out the intent to partcipate form."

"But I read the page. I understand how to use the system."

"Do you have some sort of deadline you're trying to make?"

"No. I just don't want to watch the video."

"Here, you can sign up to watch the video, there's time slots open Thursday and Friday and then I'll give you the form."

"Well, how about I fill out the form now, and not watch the video?"

Supervisor enters. "It's just we've been having a lot of problems with people who said they read the site, and then they come back and ask us a bunch of questions that were already answered in the video..."

"I've read the page. How about I fill out the form now, and if I have any questions, I'll go watch the video."

"I guess that would be ok."

Why can't selling out be easier? Why is everyone giving me a hard time?

And isn't this supposed to be a weblog, not some lame ass journal? Errr... I said I was going to take a break from blueblog this week... but blogger is so good I refuse to use anything else.

Hey, sucking up got riothero on blogger's front page. Maybe if I suck up enough to ev I could work for pyra this summer and not have to interview with evil, soul less corporations.

So... err... I like blogger and pyra. I want to be like ev and meg if I grow up.

2/2/2000 06:08:43 PM | +

Theory - all moping college webloggers have the same basic design.

Evidence - Boiled Brains and blueblog

And yes, if you have an obscure, unread weblog, linking to me may guarantee a little butt loving return link - but it definitely won't guarantee you any more traffic.

2/2/2000 05:42:05 PM | +

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