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Paul's Journal

paul
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02/14/2007 19:22 #38156

Piggy
Category: pets
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.
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metalpeter - 02/14/07 19:57
What ever animal you get you really have to reserach it well. I don't think a pig is something that you can snugle with. I wonder if there are any big furry animals that you arn't allergic to. In any event I wish you guys luck in finding a new pet. If I could have any pet it would be a tiger cub, but only one problem they arn't so great once they get past cub stage not to mention they are more expensive to feed then a person and are verry dangerous and they make verry bad pets. But if there was a way that they wouldn't grow past a certain size, it would be preaty good.
lilho - 02/14/07 19:56
i am full support of pigs as pets for you.

02/13/2007 20:38 #38137

Gay Bars On Allen
Category: allentown
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 I don't know why I bother because the news there is always so totally freakin' outdated.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.

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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.

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metalpeter - 02/14/07 18:38
I will openly admit that I have never been to a gay bar for women or men. But i don't really go to bars that often. Not to mention I can admit I would feal weird in one. I think maybe more in a girl bar cause it would be like oh hear is the guy who wants to see us make out (and that would kinda be true). I wonder if the part of Allen the bars are in is a factor. I kinda think that part might be more residentail but not sure. I wonder if it was any bar that was loud in that same spot that wasn't gay if the reaction would be the same. I think that what Josh said is a big factor, that you have people who want to be there for the scene. But only can have it loud on the weekends during the summer months.
jason - 02/14/07 11:48
Josh I have only ever been to Roxy's, and yes it was more perverted than a Cheers-style establishment (the word perverted having nothing to do with gayness itself, just the vivid girl porn star posters on the wall, so please guys just take it easy).
joshua - 02/14/07 10:08
I almost forgot - a gay Cheers-style bar? I have to admit that I think its a cool idea. Six years ago a friend and I mistakenly walked into a dyke bar in Greenwich Village - I swear to you I've never had so many hostile glances. I felt like a Baptist minister at an abortion convention. Needless to say, we left and went next door to the White Horse Tavern - it was an interesting experience.

Anyway, I digress - having never been in a Buffalo gay bar I can't say with any authority, but my impression is that many of the gay bars in Buffalo have a more flamboyant orientation than a bar like Cheers. The neighborhood gay bar Cheers-style - considering the alcoholic nature of our city I don't understand why this hasn't happened yet.
joshua - 02/14/07 10:01
My problems with this issue are manyfold, but I'll highlight two of them.

Firstly, claiming that the neighbors around Cathode Ray are homophobic is absolute horseshit - those bars have been there for a long time and residents of Allentown have always been fully aware of the "mixed usage" of the neighborhood. Claiming homophobia when it isn't warranted cheapens the struggles that gay people have, just like when minorities play the "race card" in the instances where there is no problem.

Secondly, I've known many of the residents of North Pearl Street - the LAST thing that people around Allentown, or Elmwood Village, or even Buffalo in general (Buffalo is a fairly gay-friendly place) are is homophobic.

Thirdly, as an extra bonus, and this is simply my conspiracy theory - the "suburbanization" of our neighborhood is ongoing, and we are constantly having people move down here for the "atmosphere" not really having ever dealt with city life. I could barely sleep because of the noise when I first moved in - now I don't even notice it. I think if anything some posh crybabies are piping up not really having known what they were getting into when they moved into Allentown.
mrmike - 02/13/07 22:14
The timing is interesting. Cathode Ray has been in place for almost 20 years now. The North Pearl gentrifiers are just now noticing there is a bar on the corner? the hell?
jason - 02/13/07 22:08
Interesting observation. To be honest I think the fairest way to approach it is as if it has nothing to do with the bars being gay bars. Is there a history of gay-unfriendly activity in Allentown? I am not aware of anything like that, so why automatically come to that conclusion?

The same issues would come up regardless of the clientele if an establishment was excessively noisy. I agree people should know what they're buying, but as it is a mixed use area the rules governing noise (if any) should probably be enforced more stringently.

02/13/2007 02:35 #38125

So you may ask where I was?
Category: mobile
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.
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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
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Cakes from Dolci on elmwood
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We got her flowers on elmwood at the flower shoppe next to Acropolis.
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Mike Visco at his mother's birthday.
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::Download Flash Video::



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.

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I am so jealous of their slate roof. I wish I had one so bad.
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The pigeon protectors look pretty neat iced over.
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My keyboard is so worn out from programming. Just look at the spacebar, it is really time for a new computer.
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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.
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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.
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02/09/2007 19:41 #38093

A little dab will do you
Category: dreams
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.
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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.



tinypliny - 08/04/11 21:53
HAHAHAHA. this was hilarious!
twisted - 02/09/07 21:35
That is the weirdest dream ever. I hope the shambles of a brick house isn't my house. Which reminds me -- I got a 30 day notice to fix my sidewalk or else. So you may want to think twice about staying here since at this rate my house could be condemned by then, haha. Just kidding. I think.

p.s. - could you introduce me to that hot mechanic with no pants?

02/09/2007 00:36 #38080

Apple Obsessed and Infrared
Category: obsessions
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.

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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.

paul - 02/09/07 19:47
There is nothing in that weight class with a better video card. Trust me I watch the laptop market like a madman.

I had a dell M60 with 128MB nvidia quadro and it was pretty sweet. I love their real time shaders. The 256MB on the mac is not that bad. I just don't like ATI as much. Really you wouldn't want much more in a laptop unles syou are willing to carry around 8lbs and have a 1 hour battery life. The new Sony SZ series which I was eyeing before this had both a 128MB nvidia card and an inbuilt intel graphics card so that you could switch between the two. In built when you wanted longer battery life and were just typing or surfing the web and then switch the stronger card when playing games. I wish the mac had that.

The thing that really makes me crazy is I know they are the cusp of releasing LCD based screen which have longer battery lives and crisper colors.

If work would pay for it, I would be very happy with the mac now though.
jenks - 02/09/07 19:04
I don't think I even know what a video card actually does- is the difference really noticeable? But yeah, I think the desktops use nvidia, and I *think* on some of them you get a choice (for a price.)

Boot camp is cool. It's free from the apple website. But it's a beta. And you have to reboot to switch between the mac/win.

Parallels is even cooler (but not free)- it lets you run BOTH OSs at the same time and flip between them almost instantly.

I'm itching for an upgrade myself, but can't really justify it. Especially since I didn't get a stupid refund.

Oh, and all the new intel macs can do 802.11n. Not sure how much of a difference it makes, though.
jason - 02/09/07 16:29
Addendum to my comments - apparently Apple offers nVidia cards for their regular Macs, not their laptops.
jason - 02/09/07 16:15
I've seen the Win/Mac Dual boot also, using Boot Camp, and I thought it was pretty cool. I'm thinking the new Macs are amazing as well, but to get the good stuff you have to pay far more money.

You mentioned their video card, an ATI, and I also prefer nVidia. Not too sure if nVidia even makes Mac hardware, but also consider this - the video card Apple is offering on their "new" Mac is not even close to being the top ATI card.

You're looking at what is essentially a very, VERY pedestrian $100 card, similar to the one I bought for my PC years ago. WTF? Dell treats you better in this respect. Not to be too picky but if the Mac is supposed to be a media machine, and if they were married to ATI they could at least give us the option to try their wannabe SLI technology, if not an option to order a beefier video card.

That's pretty much my only major bone to pick with Apple. They have good stuff, but their model for building and selling personal computers will prevent them from being more than a minnow. Not that it matters, they sell a shit ton of everything else.
enknot - 02/09/07 07:52
I told you I told you I toooooold yooooou! The mac lappy must happen soon!
vycious - 02/09/07 06:19
if you buy that camera, we HAVE to go ghost hunting!
kookcity2000 - 02/09/07 04:34
:::link:::
kookcity2000 - 02/09/07 04:32
dude you can rent those cameras. They are pretty steep, we pay someone to do a survey of our switchrooms at the plant every year to check for hotspots & bad connections with one of those.

there are these articles about DIY IR & UV lenses for cameras that are pretty sweet. You can make your own UV filter (according to the internet) if you cut a piece of glass out of a black light bulb.

I'm trying that when I get out of work on Sunday.