On an amusing note: last night after we saw Die Another Day (don't bother, it will be on cable eventually), I got off on some damn fool rant about the Transmetropolitan movie which me & Radagast might eventually write... anyhow, I said something about Slashdot... then I had a culture shock for about 30 minutes. Sylvia has never visited /. and she had no idea what I was blathering on about. Same planet, different worlds.

Don't worry-- she will be assimilated.

Sparky is headed home soon, to help me run errands before she goes to work.

I have to find an organization in Seattle which needs community service volunteers... phrased that awkwardly because I'm embarassed about having court-ordered community service. Ach. Booze + Brodie = Bad Boy Brodie. Damn it. Well, the Boys & Girl's Club doesn't want me, and neither does the West Seattle Food Bank-- although the Food Bank lady did tell me to come in on Monday. I'll probably head in there and get an application, then start feeding some hungry people in Seattle. I feel good about making a contribution, but I think that I'm also spending a lot of "money" on my credit card which I don't have this X-mas, mostly because I feel like I've pissed away quite a few years of my life.

So I'll go to the hardware store and buy some coax, and get wifi shtuff at Radio Shack or on pricescan.com. Then I'll feel better about Brodie, right? Naah, then I'll just be busy, and I can impress my housemate Lance with computers... I guess in the long run, a wireless network in the house actually WILL make me happier, I just feel shitty because the Boys & Girl's club rejected me based on my criminal tendencies. Fug. Why can't I just be mindful, all of the time? Had I been looking out for my best interests on October 21, I wouldn't have gone to QFC with Drunk & Drunker. It's all cheese, anyway. This isn't really slashdot-appropriate, but I feel sluggish and cabin-fevered... so who cares.

I just wish I could feel happy and complete for a few minutes. I have everything a young man could ask for, and a lot more, and still I yearn for that little extra bit. No matter what. I always want more. Happiness by consumption and acquisition of material goods it ain't... I just like to feel smart, and a functional wireless network at home will probably assuage my self-loathing for another month or two.

We keep ourselves so BUSY in this culture, and it's to distract us from the everyday horrors we witness and inflict on others. I subscribed to Slashdot today as an X-Mas gift to CmdrTaco and CowboyNeal. And whoever else gets a cut. If I'm blowing dough left and right, I might as well support people like Rob-- if only because Geeks in Space used to "crack [me] so consistently up."

I also registered about 100 domains yesterday with gandi.net-- only 12 euro / year. Some of them, like http://daringheart.com (not up until after X-mas) -- which is for my mother -- were X-mas gifts. I got Lore Sjoeberg of Brunching.com the domain name http://chimpanzeesversusfreemasons-whowouldwin.biz

And that should be enough to warn you against ever shopping with a credit card online while under the harmful effects of the Reefer. Heh. Oh well. At least my Vaio is sexy, right? This little laptop is my dream come true... and a new hard drive is on the way for Sparky's computer. I have to remember to buy her some more RAM for X-Mas as well. Then I have to remember to calm the fuck down and stop turning every challenge in my life into a panic.

Brode
http://brodeco.com/activitylog.php for more of the same.

Acquired:
Sony Vaio NVR23

You have permission to envy me.

http://brodeco.com/ and http://brodeco.com/activitylog.php for less info.

PS, http://chimpanzeesversusfreemasons-whowouldwin.biz/

Here I sit in the BrodeCo office again, chewing thoughtfully on a pizza crust... taking the occasional bong hit, and munching chips while surfing around on slashdot. Waiting for slackware to download (still). Basically, WinXP crashes or otherwise fucks up the download each time...
My girlfriend is allegedly going to buy 4 new sticks of RAM for our computer-- probably by tomorrow. Huzzah for the shopkeep.
Uh... yeah. I decided to start posting on Slashdot, too. I mean, more than once every few years.
Well, I'm going to log onto FIX now. Ah, FIX. Eases the pain. (I've got a fucking impossible migraine headache.... grrr.
Kelly out.
Oh yeah... I'm reading "Programming Perl" (aka the Camel).... Perl is really cool. I can't wait to grok it.

Gah. Well, I still haven't installed Slackware 8.1 ... here is a list of reasons why:

1) I have a life. Computer problems take a backseat when I have a girlfriend. Always. It's not very geek of me, but it's true. I get most of my geek work done when Sparky is at work.
2) Windows XP is poorly designed.
It's a pain in the ass to make an ISO image with XP. It just is. I tried downloading something called "ISO Recorder" but it crashed. Then I got "Power Toys", which was supposed to add ISO burning functionality to this piece of shit OS. No luck.
Actually, on a side note, I'm really impressed with both XP and the XBOX. I finally love Big Brother. (That doesn't mean I'm going to leave this blasted Win2k partition on here. No, this mothafuckin' partition is going BYE BYE as soon as Sylvia leaves for work tomorrow and I can sit down and geek out for a good 8 hours.
3) I'm stupid.
I don't remember half of the crap I've learned about Linux... most of my tech knowledge is stored safely in an overhead compartment, somewhere in the nether regeions of my brain. Damn it. Stuff like fdisk, etc. comes back to me once I read some HOWTOs, but this really gets to me-- that I've been using computers for 20 years and I still really don't know shit when it comes right down to it.

I ran Cat5 from the XBox to our NIC card, but nothing magical happened. I would have been really impressed with Microsoft had XP at least shown some glimmer of detection. Oh well.

Note to self: remember to fix Sparky's Nokia.

I wired up a nice sound system here at the house, but I'll have to wait until Lance wakes up to use it. I can't wait to see the look on his face when I teach him about KaZaA. In fact, when Lance finds out he can watch The Simpsons and Futurama, I'll probably have to clean up the office-- my guess is that the office will get really crowded, and I'll have to buy that new video card [once my replacement VISA arrives] with Fire Wire... blah blah blah... yeah, Lancey will be excited to puff the magic dragon with me here in the Brode Cave.

But, yeah. I'm really fucking frustrated with the current OS project. Grr.

Monitor: AST Vision 5L
Printer: HP psc 2110 all-in-one (very tempermental)
OS: Windows XP, sadly (am downloading slackware-8.1-install-iso right now, but XP crashes mysteriously whenever Slack is about to arrive on my Desktop. http://subgenius.com for less info)
There's a Sony monitor sitting next to the AST (which I'm looking at)... but I'd need to be in a better mood to install it or even think about it before tomorrow (we're giving our friend Luke the monitor back ASAP)
Oh, and there's another piece of shit monitor in the closet to my left, but I don't even want to dignify it with more than a passing mention.
This is all being done with the help of an Athalon 1800 Processor, and there's Ween playing on an Acer 56x max crap-factory standard CD-Rom drive.
Our Sony CD-RW is just kind of sitting there on the Acer's left (my right) and there's a Creative 8x (antique) screwed in just above it [when the tower sits at a vertical angle)...
There's an X-Box in the living room, but it's just barely compatible with the television.
I'm smoking "Tobacco"(tm & copyright 2002 the Microsoft Corporation), but later tonight I will be inhaling the fumes of burning "Cannabis Sativa" ("Cannabis Sativa" and all associated memes are copyleft & copyright 2002 by Brodie Michael Wesley Kelly, http://brodeco.com/, all rights reserved by your dead rotting corpse of a grandmother, may she be raped by Conquistadores every weeknight at 9/8 Central on your local NBC affiliate.)

Oh, and there's some beer. Beer is good.

Beer helps me enjoy installing Slackware.

More details as they are imagined.

Sincerely,

Jehovah
One True God