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Hi everybody, I'm back. The wedding went well, I was snagged to run the sound equipment as well as making the slideshow. The better I did at one job, the more jobs they gave me!

My slideshow was a bonafide hit, as was my PowerBook. Just showing people the Magnification on the Dock was enough to get oohs and ahhs. I answered their questions as honestly as possible and let them make up their own minds. Five years ago, I would have been one of the crazed zealots who "embellish" the truth to make a sale, but I guess I'm too old for that now. Overall, people were interested, and a few are VERY interested (unfortunately the most interested was a nearly-homeless 20-something jazz musician who loved GarageBand), but most people still think WinTel is "good enough" and are thus not interested. Amazingly enough, a cousin of the Bride was a physicist (the only person in history that I've met who got the joke on my OpenBSD t-shirt) and he is running Slack on his home PC and Suse and RedHat at the University, and he was explaining the Gnu Project to a fellow geek, an environmentalist who works for the government, and that looked like a definite "switch". Gnu/Linux has an ethical/emotional/ideological pull to it that other systems don't have. Cool with me, I'm a bit biased towards the *nixes myself, having enjoyed the Windows BlueScreen for years.

I'm finding that it takes about 4 days to unwind from work, to the point where I feel relaxed and at ease. Taking just a Friday off doesn't really do me any good stress-wise.

A six hour drive gives you a lot of time to think -- especially when you've forgotten all your tapes and CDs at home and the radio keeps fuzzing out every 20 minutes. Like my friend Sam the Butcher, I am trying to get my life together -- it was never really "apart" in the first place, but it can definitely be better. Life is short. I only have one life--that I can prove, anyway. Anything more is icing on the cake, but I figure I'd better get to work in making this life the best it can be.

THIS POST'S IDEAL TOPIC ICON: BFG9000, Exhausted From Vacationing, Is Too Weak To Stop A Broke Jazz Guy From Running Off With His PowerBook

Watching some boring show last weekend, these two old codgers were talking about history and other "mostly boring" topics. The one thing that interested me was the statement that "in the Middle Ages, the peasant class, who were known as the serfs, worked for the King for the first four months of the year, and then for themselves the rest of the year."

Sad, considering that Tax Freedom Day for us Canadians is fast approaching 7 months of the year. It's slightly better in America, though if you added up the user fees in the States required to equal the amount of services you get in Canada you'd probably be getting close to the same sad level.

But what's even sadder is that I am even worse than that. I work 50 weeks of the year for my 2 weeks of freedom (vacation). I wear black every day to work, so much so that it's commonly accepted that I'm a goth (which I'm not), but on my vacation I wear khakis and a light blue buttondown shirt and never stop smiling at people around me and opening doors for ladies. It's an unconscious change I never thought of until now.

This reminds me of my friend's .sig on all of his emails, personal and corporate (he works at a bank): ...did I mention that I hate my job?

Hilarious if it probably weren't true. That makes it sad. I'm sad for the guy.

I lost weight on my last one week vacation (I went to Mexico) and my blood levels were better. I got a tan and didn't touch a computer. I didn't worry. I woke up in the morning and had a cervesa and looked out the window at the sun. Then I did fun things until I went to bed happy.

Serfdom. Think about it.

I won't be able to post for a few days, I'm going to a wedding where I'm running the slideshow (Turned out Mighty Fine(TM) if I do say so myself).
 

THIS POST'S IDEAL TOPIC ICON: Alex Doulis.

Sorry I haven't been posting much, I've been banned again for the last couple days. I was "unbanned" in total for couple hours a few days ago, until I posted this in my journal. Then I was banned again. And as before, I haven't posted anything banworthy, so I'll assume it's

A) that incriminating JE,
B) a personal vendetta on the part of an editor, or
C) a computer glitch.

Choose Three.

Slashdot is either screwed, they think I'm a terrorist, or they've banned all of Canada from posting. Bummer.

And of course, no responses to my five emails. They probably filter all emails with the words "Please Explain My Banning" or "Please Review My Posting History And Reply With Banning Reasons" as spam and send it to /dev/null (or the "Recycle Bin" or "Trash" in their case).

Which leads my friends back to the NSA conspiracy thing; perhaps there has been no response because "No further communication is permitted"... Yikes. I thought *I* was paranoid. I'm actually the sane one. I think the editors have just banned my ISP the way some people ban AOLers and I suffer because of AC trolls; my friends are pulling out previous case files of NSA involvement in private companies, prohibiting communication, monitoring forum posts, and barking orders at ISPs and stuff. Nice walk down yro.slashdot.org Memory Lane, anyway.

Whatever. All I'm saying is that I can't really comment in anyone's journals or contribute to news discussions until the Grand High Dictators for Life actually read the emails I've sent them.

(Yes, I'm bitter. This is retarded. I can't post, but I can moderate and metamod? My karma is now Good, but if I could post, I'd be Excellent in a week? My history is better than most? Bahh! The editors are just jealous ;-) Of my spelling, anyway. )

EDIT: I just noticed my Karma'a at Excellent again, I'm guessing due to my friend mmm coffee, who is not only generous and wise, but has a nym which has kept me on the righteous path of caffeine addiction.

THIS POST'S IDEAL TOPIC ICON: Mother Theresa Excommunicated By The Pope, Who Then Goes On Vacation And Won't Give Her Reasons.

Today I metamoderated the same 10 posts I metamoderated yesterday. Actually only 9 were the same and the last one was different, but you get the drift. I am sure I hit submit yesterday, so it's not a mistake on my part.

Am I a human Bermuda Triangle? I wonder if strange things like this happen to anybody else.

THIS POST'S IDEAL TOPIC ICON: Cursed By God.

I sent my letter to not only moderation at slashdot.org, but pater at slashdot.org (Cowboy Neal, the Great Guru) and malda at slashdot.org (Taco). To get Taco's email, I went to his Journal.

Here's what I found.

=======

Code Refreshes, I, Robot, MacHack/ADHOC
9:07 Wednesday 21 July 2004 [ Add Friend | #78007 ]
The code refresh went as well as could be expected... which is to say that there was some twists, turns, and a whole lotta bad aftermath, but that's par for the course. Under the hood things are all working properly. We had a couple of quick bugs that are now fixed. A few more minor bugs are waiting to be swatted.

=======

I'm guessing my conspiracy theorist buddies and I went too far in the "Slashdot is evil" thing. Seems that the old law is true: never mistake for ill will those acts that can be blamed on incompetence. Oh well, I'm having more fun reading my friend's journals than trying to save the world of slashdot anyway.

My mom was right--I *AM* a minor bug waiting to be swatted.

THIS POST'S IDEAL TOPIC ICON: Mulder with a Dunce Cap On.