Today I worked on porting the old ovariancancer.com site over to my surebert CMS. It was fun to use illustrator again to create a Gilda Radner. I miss it a lot since switching to linux. Not that inkscape and the others aren't great but they just are no illustrator. Probably because I am used to it.

I know this is a horrible, not funny topic, so I am not saying anything about it. I am just pasting the image I got off google news this morning after the terrorist based "bomb" blast in india. The image has since been removed from google news.

Most of this weekend generally sucked. I spent a long time programming stuff that should take very little time, if I had the proper tools, a quick dual processor machine with lots of ram and a fast internet connection. The thing about being a web programmer that sucks is not the development but the incessant testing in diverse systems. If if you follow the prescribed way of writing client side code, there is no guarantee that any display mechanism(browser) is going to respect the rules. Thus I spent a million hours testing. My vaio s360 linux system is just not cutting it. The system just doen't have enough computing power.

I want a powerbook that does mac, linux, and PC all in one with 3 GBs of RAM. One of my co-workers has this setup. It seems like the dream development platform for web designer. It would have the possibility of saving me hundreds of hours in testing.

It looks like I might need to settle for a mac mini at this point and just give up on having a powerful laptop.

I am tired of snow but not too tired, like if I had a better computer, I would probably enjoy the snow.






Oh teds dogs. We go every time (e:mrdeadlier) and (e:enknot) 's friend comes to town. Notice the neutrino in the background there.



Remember my infrared pics, I swear I caught a ghost on one downtown by Lafayette square.





Here is some of the decoration from inside the building.








On Saturday I went to my little cousins' birthday party. (e:mike) got so excited so many times, you would think it was his birthday.




Mikeosaurus with the dinosaur head


(e:matthew) and his swan hat




The kids got their own SUV.


My cousin jennifer is a balloon clown. Well not really but when she was a kid she learned how to tie balloon animals and we had a lot of fun playing with them.










My little cousin got a million action figures and toys, even some historic ones like this death star.






The mice had some food to eat in the attic. They got in the tortoise hay seed. Actually, there are no mice anymore, but cleaning up after them was fun. It is nice to have them gone.


I also cleaned the kitchen which involved washing out the entire fridge. I can't believe how disgusting some of the things were.




This was in the tray under the fridge. The mice had used it as a birdbath. I not only cleaned it all out, I also fille dit with salt so that if they ever come back they will get no water there. What the fuck is it?

Please check my last journal about mini pet pigs if you know anyone who has one, I want to visit one.

Here are some random videos from my camera that didn't come out on my other journal. I know this is cruel and inhumane but these fucking bugs came out of a couscous box. I hate when bugs ruin food. What the fuck are they. I often find them in couscous, even sealed bags of couscous.

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These cute snow squirrels are the ones that live in our attic. They are out playing.

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This is a video from that white out day. It is hard to tell just how severe it is because the camera can focus in the whiteout better than our eyes.

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This picture was taken with an infrared filter made of old blank developed film. I can't tell if it worked or not, but it looks neat.


The snow was so everywhere this morning, thank god I only have a 3-6 minute jog to work.






Okay these are taken from a special myspace snow angle, but still it was deep.

I am allergic to cats and dogs but (e:matthew) wants a cute snuggly that he can play with. Seeing as chinese children are too expensive, the pig seems like the next best option.

Does anyone know anyone with a mini pig, I kind of want to visit one first. I want to get the smallest kind possible if I got one as I can't imagine arguing with a stubborn 150lb pig.

These are just babies but they are so cute.

I was reading outcomebuffalo the other day. I don't know why I bother because the news there is always so totally freakin' outdated. They might as well call it outdatedbuffalo.com

Check this out, here we are on February 13th and the "Breaking News" is an article from December 5th.



It seems like there should be more to talk about in a city as gay as Buffalo. One article about the gay bars on Allen being too loud for the neighbors is quite interesting.

Cathode Ray is saying that it is discrimination and that the people living around the bar just want to shut it down because it is a gay bar. Now I am going out on a limb here because I don't know the whole situation, but I bet it is more because it is loud and there are lots of people on the patio.

On the other hand, the stupid idiots that bought houses right by Allen, knew they were moving into a loud city street in the middle of the gaybarhood.

From the article

The owner of Cathode Ray stands by his accusations of gay bashing by certain residents of North Pearl Street, but police officials say that in "mixed use" neighborhoods like Allentown, made up of both residential homes and commercial businesses, the issue that emerges is not homophobia, but "quality of life."...

In July, Kym Mosgeller, of North Pearl Street, wrote a letter to Ellicott District Councilmember Brian Davis listing complaints, mostly in regard to noise levels, against three gay bars on Allen Street - Cathode Ray, Adonia's and Q-44 Allen. She attached a petition signed by other neighbors of the street who were unhappy as well.

Afterward, John Little, owner and operator of Cathode Ray, hung posters in his bar under the headline "Gay Bar Bashing" accusing Mosgeller of trying to close the gay patios, "but allowing the straight patios to remain open." He was referring to the patios used by patrons of nearby Mother's and Fat Bob's.

There is simply a huge difference between Mother's, Fat Bob's and Cathode Ray in terms of volume and the attitude of the people. It makes me wonder why are bars so loud. Anytime I go to one, I end up getting a sore throat from screaming the whole time.

I mean it makes sense for a dance club, but Cathode Ray is definitely not a dance club. I wish there was a quieter sit down gay bar that wasn't as posh as Fugazi. Buddies used to kind of be like that but the new one downtown really isn't. I liked how they had two rooms at the old one, the dance area and the actual cheers style bar.

I have been so busy learning as much as I can about linux and video conversion. Luckily, I have lots of experience with ffmpeg, unfortunately, I could not get it to compile with all the codecs I wanted. Now it is all working and my journal can go back to normal.

I took all these pictures and videos this weekend.

I finally cooked the bacon wrapped filet mignon that (e:hodown) sent me for christmas. I didn't have an oven before.


It was my mother's birthday this weekend. We went out to left bank for lunch and then bought deserts from Dolci. I never knew a cake could be so rich, both flavor wise and cost wise.

Yummy Left Bank Sunday Brunch








Cakes from Dolci on elmwood


We got her flowers on elmwood at the flower shoppe next to Acropolis.


Mike Visco at his mother's birthday.

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She wanted to see the decorator showhouse, so after Brunch we headed on over there. I was jealous of the staircase, otherwise, I like my house better.





I am so jealous of their slate roof. I wish I had one so bad.


The pigeon protectors look pretty neat iced over.






My keyboard is so worn out from programming. Just look at the spacebar, it is really time for a new computer.


Here is (e:terry) in his element, playing warcraft. It's been so long I can't remember the time BWC - that it Before Warcraft.


Some point during the last two weeks (e:flacidness) came to visit. It was fun but for some reason I don't have a picture of his full face. See (e:lilho) 's journal for more pics from the visit.

Warning: This is a fucked up story involving dream based sex and drugs.

Last night I had the craziest dream that we had bought this beach front property in California where there was the shambles of some brick house and a concrete foundation and a lot of overgrowth. We decided to have a party and invite our hundred of friends who all showed up but most of the guests I didn't know - which isn't too weird for my life.

Somehow it turned into some crazy drug party where everyone was on some crazy new drug that I had nothing to do with and they all started having sex outside. This was weird because for some reason I didn't know anyone anymore, and well it was outside at my new house. I was a little embarrassed so I decided to wander over around the neighbors house and see if they were okay with the scene.

The neighbor turned out to be a hot a mechanic who wasn't wearing any pants but was covered in mud. I assumed by his appearance that he had already been at the party and didn't care so I started to go toward the other neighbors house. The other neighbor was a rapper having a rap party. I know that sounds stupid but I swear that is how it went. The girls from the rapper party started having sex with my nerdy friends.

I also noticed the people at my party had made some sort of weird letter m shape on the brick wall of the house. It looked like this. SIDENOTE: Why does no one else draw diagrams on their journal. Its so easy just click the draw button in your publish box.


After drawing it now I realized that the shape was kind of like the word "me" although in the dream the e part was a little smaller. The people at the rap party asked me if I could get any dabs. I was like what the fuck are dabs and this really hot black girl but with bad skin opened my hand and dropped a bunch of tiny powdery brown microdot sized pills in my hand. The only other thing she said was "A little dab will do you."

So I run through the mounds of people fucking on the lawn in order to go inside and tell matt and terry about the dabs at the same time trying to not break them up in my sweaty hands. I was afraid I would not be able to measure out doses if they all broke down. At this point everyone was on dabs accept me and my friends. I held all like 20 of them in my hand but when I got to the shambles of house, (e:matthew) and (e:terry) had redone the kitchen and matt discovered this old fashioned iron cooking stove behind a wall. He wouldn't stop talking about how great the stove was. He was so happy with it, but I realized when I opened it that it was all made of crumbling asbestos tiles on the inside. I had accidentally started a fire with it trying to cover up the asbestos with fabric and the asbestos started crumbling all over. I still had the dabs in my hand but they were also starting to crumble. I wanted to just throw them out at that point because I was sure they were contaminated with asbestos but everyone appeared to be having so much fun. Before I could decide either way I woke up in real life grinding my teeth so hard. Weird.

I really hated macs before. I mean I had so many of them and had to work on them for years. The last one I owned was a Powerbook Titanium that (e:terry) spilled a 40oz of beer into. It was a tragic end to my mac ownership.

Today, however, one of my co-workers had a macbook pro that not only dual booted windows and os x, but also could run windows and windows apps natively within os x using something called parallel

Now, just like (e:enknot,79) I am totally obsessed with it.



I am sold now. It would be the best of all worlds because I think I could run OSX, mac, and linux all on the one laptop. Seems like a web developers dream machine. Plus it has a 256MB graphics card so I could still do 3d modeling. I have been wanting to make new icons for my applications for a while, but the 3D workstation is unfortunately now the estrip server at artvoice.

The only thing about it, is that it is certainly very hot and certainly heavy. It also comes with an ati graphics card and I really preferred Nvidia. The last two laptops had ati and I find nvidia ones are just better.

Infrared -
I am also obsessed with infrared cameras. Did you know that if you take traditional camera film and develop it without taking pictures, you can use it afterwards as a filter to filter out regular light but allow infrared through. The ends of developed film also are the same kind of black filter material.

I am really considering purchasing a thermal imaging camera but they are so damn expensive. I think if I buy one I could always sell it on ebay.

Wow, so I am really am going to San Francisco for another conference. I got the confirmation email about it today.

I am going to hang out with (e:twisted) and (e:hodown) is going to meet me there. I tried to get (e:matthew) and (e:terry) to go but terry couldn't get the time off and matthew wouldn't go without him. I was going to fly back with twisted on her way to Italy and stay in New York with (e:hodown) but she hadn't been to San Francisco so we made the plans for her to go there.

It sounds like it could be fun and the conference itself sounds much more promising than the last one. I promise myself not to eat only sushi while I am there.