Before the party

This bird was so dead.


What the heck are all these iDVR stickers and signs everywhere. I like the idea of giving out temporary tattoos but was it seems like they all just end up on the floor group, I found hundreds of them downtown.





e:enknot at the e:lilho hair studio


where e:imk2 got extensions that looked so real




I know this is so not right, but I am totally sick of these peaceprint birds everywhere. It just sees like such a stupid slogan and I always think it is a euphemism for poop.



If the e:ladycroft going away party wasn't tonight I would have gone to this.


The party was pretty nuts. We ended up having 65 people according to e:lilho 's countdown. I would post the list but she made up funny, inappropriate names for some people.

Some highlights
Holy crap - e:metalpeter looks so different without a beard.

Hallways are much more visible from outside at night.

Here are some pics although I didn't get many, I do have an hour long video that I can probably never post.

Put the banner up




Chris Haight got "cake" in e:mike's face somehow.


Thanks e:carolinian for all the mojito stuff. I have never seen so many limes in one place.


Giving robert and company a tour of the house, we could only see the unfinished side of the attic by camera flash. They had plenty of theories about the cage.




The end of the night video - such a waste of alcohol

They have finally released the new macbook pro


As someone said on the macrumors forum, "Great specs, same price, im loving it! " This means that once I get it my life can return to normal and I can become an even more productive programer/designer. I can finally go back to 3D design which will in turn let me make lots of fun icons for my projects. I will also be able to check windows and mac/linux all on the same machine. It's like a web designers dream come true.



I am so curious what the LED backlit display will be like. The only thing I am kind of disappointed that the system looks the same as the old one. I was hoping for some reason it would be shiny brown. To bad it couldn't come with a new operating system. Guess I'll have to wait until October for that.

But for those that care, surebert 3.0 is here. I revamped the docs and the changelog. This version had many significant changes to the main file so that it switched versions to 3.0.



For those of you that are javascripty you can play with it. I didn't notate all the source yet but I a at like 90%.

In response to e:jim,39535

First of all I would like to say I totally support people's freedom to believe whatever they want as long as they don't get tax breaks on it and I don't have to pay for any part of it.

I hope this doesn't offend anyone but as an athiest, gay, polygamist my sheer existence is probably offense enough for most people, although, honestly - I think I pull it off with grace, pun intended.

I believe that religion does bring happiness, kindness, joy, compassion and union to many people. It standardizes and codifies the way that humans should act with one another.

It is not the only thing that can bring these emotions. Any group with a common belief system can share these feelings without a spiritual context. People having these emotions in a religious context often believe it is the spiritual aspect that causes it.

The thing about religion is that it also causes so many problems. People fight wars over religions and kill people in the name of jesus and other magicians. I know all you good christians can't believe it, but it is true. Other people kill other people for not believing in Jesus - not only that - they kill them for not believing in him, in prescribed way.

I am not the kind of athiest that screams about it. I am definitely not interested in converting other people to it, but that doesn't seem to stop so any people for trying to get me interested in their spiritual beliefs which offends the hell out of me.

That is why in fact I am an athiest, because I don't care about religion or the absense of it. I would rather describe myself as someone who never considers spiritual aspect of religion or the absense of it very much. If I never had to hear the word spiritual or religion one more time, I would not be athiest. I would be in perfect harmony, lol.

I read the bible, and I am over it - like I am over Alice and Wonderland and The Hardy Boys - learned some valuable lessons but the magic part is pretty hokey to me.

Okay, check this out - I am going to go get a random bible quote from the internet and see why I don't need the book. Here it is

Galatians 5:22-23

"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law."

Seems reasonable, guess what - I could think of it myself. I pity the people that can't think of this but I know they exist. I guess I can consider myself luckily for having the education to even consider these things. Maybe in previous times, it was necessary to have these ideas given to you.

Then I roll the die again to find:

"Romans 12:13

Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality."

Here we are back in magic land and there lies my problem with the book. Showing hospitality is a fine goal, contributing to the needs of the saints is questionable and sketchy. I mean who defines the needs of the saints.

Okay one more time this is too fun

Thessalonians 5:15

See that no one repays anyone evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to everyone.

This one is great but once again, I could totally think of it myself. At least it is a noble goal.

And again.

Samuel 2:2
"There is none holy like the LORD; there is none besides you; there is no rock like our God."

While this is freaky and dangerous. It is the basis of war.

I feel that I have the capibility to understand human interactions without guidance from people in an ancient world or divine intervention. In fact, I think it is a unfortunate that the book mixes these two messages together - the message of treating people kindly and that you need to believe in the power of the mighty magic wizard, his halfling son and their sidekick ghost. It seems like the message could be much more powerful divorced from the book. Why can't human interaction and social etiquette be secular? I mean why not distill the bible down into a smaller book of ways to live your life without the spiritual bullshit.

I have seen so many people fall down the slippery slope of having their life suck because they were a bad person, then turning to church, the people they meet are nice and kind and then - bang they are in magic land and keep asking me to come visit it - when I wasn't having any problems in the first place.

CONCLUSION

I just had a brilliant realization while writing this. aybe I will change the world. I am going to create a new religion based on the Paul Visco interpretation of the bible. See, you think I am joking but what I plan to do is take the magic out of the bible. Same great book, less agic. That way the next time someone tries to tell me the magic book is really about a moral code about how to treat other people, I can say - no that book is full of magic sdtories, what you need is the Visco Bible.

So I was watching, "So You Think You Can Dance" and the one girl who twisted her ankle and lost was so sad because she had fought for her life after a terrible wedding floor collapse accident a couple years back. So right away I googles "wedding floor collapse" and I could only find one in Jeruselem, Israrl. I thought - she was asian, it couldn't be but then I searched some more and it was. They got it all on video. It is perhaps the most horrific accident I have ever seen 23 people died. I will save you the googling, you can watch it on my journal.

Some of this is from pride but first read the journal before this one. It is a video about a wedding - it is nuts.

These totally disgusting chicken wings came this way from Casa Di Pizza on Elmwood. Normally, I like this place - but this is fuckin' sick. Look at them, when did they incurr this damage, while they were still chickens or after? I like to call them sickenwings.





e:eknot and I saw this major accident residual near the Scientologist Church Look at that bent stop sign.




Has anyone gone to a chiropracter. I hurt my neck on a ladder and want to go to one. Tomorrow night I have an appointment with a massgae therapist. I wonder if that will help/



Hm, why does Hyatts have 24 hour video surveillance now


e:ladycroft 's party was nice, we had a fire and I got to talk technology with the estrip guys.





And then the parade
You probably can't tell in this photo but this dudes back is scratched the hell up.






Clowns are scarry.


Drag Queens float by




Christians can help us. I remember the mormons sending me those books about getting healed.


Getting yelled at by "christians"

I tried like 600 times to get a pic of this guys eyes, they looked like the woman from the 80s national geographic cover. He must have thought we were insane because between me and e:mike there were about 30 pics of hi on my camera.


The festival was packed


I guess there are other gay catholics besides my brother.


I would be interested in working with the glbt archives someday. I am sure I have some useful technology for them.








This was hilarious to me. The gay marriage float was almost totally lesbians. What does that say? Guys just don't want to settle down no matter what their sexual preference.


Here is the videos of it.

The cutest guy in the parade was our very own e:libertad who e:mike rekindled with




Saw e:matthew 's twin again.


The roller dirby girls e:dragonlady and e:rachel along with e:zobar




e:terry being e:terry


An "awesome" woman giving into fashion and wearing a wool hat on what is the hottest day I remember for the summer so far.

I went and got a massage at "The Massage Studio" on Allen near elmwood after e:enknot suggested it. I had hurt my neck last week on a ladder and had a hard time turning left. I will definately go back again and now I know what kind of birthday gift I want. The guy that worked on my was name Jerry Giovannucci, I would definately recommend him.



I didn't know what to expect as I have never had a massage before. When I went in the room I felt nervous because I took my glasses off and put them on the table so I couldn't see the guys face as he was talking. Damn, I really need Lasik.

Then the guy said to put my clothes on the chair and get under the sheets, which left me wondering how much of my clothes I was supposed to remove. I didn't want to remove all my clothes and seem like a freak, and I didn't want to leave my socks and underwear on and feel like I was being shy, as we all know that isn't me.

I ended up keeping the underwear and regretting it as the band kept annoying me when he was massaging my back. I mean it's not like you are naked anyways, you are wearing a sheet. Next time looser fitting band or nothing.

It was freakin fantastic. If you never had a massage there are so many parts of your back that you have no idea how much tension is in.

I can now look to the left again!

I am usually the most pro-buffalo person I know but right now I would rather live in any much colder or hotter-dryer climate. It's not about the weather. In fact, I love hot and humid and it rarely bothers me to be warm. Just as e:hodown, I have been known to wear a sweater in august on the subway in New York City.



The thing about this year is that I can't believe my allergies. Like I don't think I can live here anymore if it is like this from now on. The last week has been hell for me, but the last three days have been the worst.

Since yesterday afternoon my nose has just been dripping water. Like not even snot. It just drips and drips and drips. My eyes are swollen shut and I have itched my throat and nose raw.

Going outside makes it even worse. I just want it to be winter again, and that is so sad. I mean I always had allergies before but not like this. Maybe I live near something particularly allergic to me.

I am so strung out from being on allergy medicine. Clariton always worked for me before. Like 95% allergy free when I would take it but this time I am so allergic I decided to try benedryl, which did nothing but make me a zombie.

To make it worse I decided to cut my hair but being blind without my glasses on I forgot to put a safety on the razor which led to me cutting a stripe in my hair. Now I am completely skin head. I guess itis the right time of year.

I ended up just carrying around a hanky.

So I had horrible allergies, went to the festival. Ate a lobster sandwich, it was pretty good.



Does anybody know the story about these chairs on Franklin? What was the place, a coffeshop?


People seem to love police horses. You could even buy mounted police souvenirs.




Afterwards we toured the church next to our house. I know I said that they sold their pews before, and everyone asks me what it looks like, but I didn't know they really sold them all. It looks so strange.



I cut my hair when not wearing classes which turned into me needing a buzz cut. I didn't notice I wasn't using the safety guard.

On a good note, we finally rented out the upper of the rental property on Prospect! Now that house is full again.

Sadly, my camera is not acting properly, look at what happens to its ability to focus. Thankfully, I had a contact at Nikon who was willing to help me out. He also mentioned they have a new camera that looks totally amazing, the P5000. It is a similar form factor but its 10MP and takes interchangeable lenses. I am kind of sad because we are off to Zoar Valley Again in the morning ;(




After the Allentown art festival, I came home and tried to vacuum out the hot tub to dispose of it. It was just nasty trash that came with the house. I couldn't find the hose attachment for my second favorite vacuum although I know I spent at least $30 on it.

So I spent like 2 hours emptying the hot tub by filling the vacuum and carrying it over to the garden 5 gallons at a time because of the missing hose attachment.

I want a tool room so bad. I have like 3000 tools and they are strewn all over this house, the garage, the rental property, the basement and attic, the car, etc.

I always find the wrong parts and end up using either the axe or a butterknife for every task. The frustrating part is that I own the tools, they are just in too many places and the multipart tools like the interchangeable screwdriver handle will be found but all the bits will be missing.

Once I got it emptied I wanted to take it apart but I couldn't find metric measured alan wrench? So I decided I would just beat the fuck out of it with the sledge hammer ( I know anger management) anyways that was missing! so I moved on the the axe and cut my finger. Then I decided I would go through every room of the house one by one till I found the sledge hammer.

It worked and I found all of these missing vacuum attachments which was a bonus.

I want one of those peg board work rooms so bad, but anyplace I could have one, I would have to do so much work before I could make it, and I can't do all that work while the tools are all over the place and missing. It is a horrible vicyous circle.

Like the garage. Seems like the perfect place for a workroom, but it is full of so much of e:lilho 's trash, a nasty old refrigerator that needs to go out, a wheelbarrow full of stic, the chiminea, the power washer, and about 6000 cans of toxic chemicals that I don't what to do with. I inherited them from the previous owner. How do you get rid of old paint?

Okay, this is redic. I was just looking at camping equipment for our annual camping trip and saw that they have the camping equivalent of a craftmatic adjustable blow up matress