Monthly Archives
Already : Hatachi Monthly Archives
oops Monday June 30
so i have two posts in queue, but those were enough to knock off the posts that were already up on the website...so sorry for displaying a blank page over the weekend. i've got to transfer some pictures from CD to my computer before i make my next post, should be up tonight.
orientation student leaders Wednesday June 25
so, as i told my mom a month ago, and as i told her today, this post is dedicated to my cousin stefanie. for two reasons: to shamelessly draw attention to her website (which i had never known about before, but is now linked), and because she's one of my readers who never comments, and i think that by writing this post i can change that.
well, my mom once said that you can't change people, you can just change how you act around them. fine, so that's what i'm doing. i'm not trying to change you, stefanie, just do what you want.
so, anyway, what i really wanted to tell you about are the "OSLs", or "orientation student leaders", that work for the university every summer, showing new freshmen the ropes even before they come down here for school. you see, stefanie, about four years ago your cousin and my brother nate applied to be one of these cats, and because we both know he's so charming and nice, he succeeded in scoring the job.
well, that very same summer, nathan broke off his long three-year relationship with a girl named anna (did you ever meet her? i think you may have), and got out of a lease at the last minute with her and some of his high school friends, thereby alienating him from some of his high school friends. however, a guy named schaffer who nate was an OSL with asked nate to join them, because they were short one person (man, i wish i could find a nathan right now, as i am short one person in my living situation for next year)...
what transpired those two following years was nate's self-rediscovery, and that time was probably nathan's most memorable collegiate experience. therefore, seeing what the OSL experience had done for him, and in my infinite younger-brother desire to emulate older brother's successes, i applied to be one of these orange-shirt clad individuals my freshman year. when my roommate todd heard that i was doing this, he jumped on the bandwagon because it sounded interesting.
and then he got the job and i didn't.
does my mom tell you all the time that "things have a way of working out" and the like? she gives that to me all the time...maybe i should just ask her. mom, do you give stefanie that same line that you give me about "things working out"? well, either way. it doesn't matter, the point is that while i was disappointed at the time, things worked out for the best.
the reason i say that is because the OSLs of nate's year are/were some of the coolest people i've met in my college years. however, after meeting the people todd worked with two years later (some of which who were decent, mind you), i determined that the whole system was going down the tubes and that it was a really good thing they didn't pick me that cool-and-collected todd instead i decided not to do it in the first place. seriously, todd was one of the coolest people of all of the OSLs that i met.
and then there's this year, which is two years later in the progression: now five years since my first encounter with the program. you see, stefanie, the quad at uiuc is real historic and famous and all that jazz, and so these OSL people have to walk around giving tours at the very beginning of each orientation program to their students. and back in nate's day, that was cool.
back in nate's day, they used to say funny things, they used to make the kids laugh and keep them interested. and now they just let those little rugrats run around and whatever while some guy babbles about the same mindless stuff for fifteen minutes. honestly, if i was coming into the school this year, i would have gone home with a negative impression of the school from the menial things they say about foellinger, that lovely historic auditorium that i just happen to work in.
i wonder what kind of tour i would give.
hey, you little maggots, listen up. i know you think you know what you're doing here, but the truth is that you don't know jack yet. and that's why they've sent you to me.
but that kind of opener wouldn't work, even if i could do it in the drill-sergeant-from-full-metal-jacket voice, because the orientation people are so amazingly politically correct that they don't allow anything like that, they don't even allow humor unless it's been approved by eight departments.
so, it's like mom says. i guess it's good that things work out the way they do. but that doesn't stop lots of maggots from getting in my way on a daily basis when i bike to work. like this afternoon. i almost had a hit and run with a mom.
arggg.
t-shirt update Saturday June 21
so, if you didn't get your t-shirt order in, that's fine -- i am making the order next week. $10, leave your name, e-mail, size, number preference, and 8-letter-or-less name preference in the comments of this post. so far we have 21 shirt orders, and i think if we get to 25, it'll be cheaper, and i can re-invest that money into the barbeque that i'll be hosting for y'all. i'm even getting my dad to be the grillmaster.
forget the bar Tuesday June 17
last saturday, nathan picked up our car from the service department at the car dealership, but he didn't get my keys back, and i went in today to retrieve them. however, the woman at the window was confused because we had already paid, and thus, the procedure of retrieving keys that i could see in plain view took well over five minutes.
since i had figured that i would be running in and out, i neglected to roll up the car windows, and when i returned to the vehicle, i found this on the driver's seat. mind you, the parking lot was empty both when i left the vehicle and came back to it. weird.
i couldn't tell whether or not there was a hidden camera, or if this person was just screwing around, or if this was actually serious. a careful evaluation proved that it was indeed lipstick, and somebody would have to be pretty serious to pick up a dirty piece of paper off of my floor and kiss it. moreover, beneath the bunk phone number is what i believe to be a legitimate champaign cell phone prefix. so, forget the bar: apparently, these days, the service department at worden-martin is the place to pick up the opposite sex.
on the drive back home, i wondered what i should do with this scrap of paper. i knew it would end up on this blog, but beyond that, what should i do? it could be kind of fun...i could:
call the cell phone number at four in the morning, or some other inane time, and expect the voice mail to pick up. if the person actually picks up, i'll say it's the wrong number and i'm terribly sorry, etc. etc. but if and when i get the voice mail, it'll probably be like everyone else's voice mail: "hi, this is so-and-so, i'm not here, so, so-and-so, leave a message". then i'd have their first name, and if i was really lucky, their full name. i'd also do a google search on the phone number, because some people are also dumb enough to put their real number on the web.
armed with their cell number and name, i would look up the prefix on the cell number and find out which kind of service they have. then, i would call that company's customer service center and socially engineer my way into getting either a last name, or an address. there's a thousand and one ways to do this, i.e., say you are moving, and that you need to know what the current address on the account is to see if your mother had already called, etc. i mean, there's a thousand reasons. you just have to sound believable, and hope that they don't ask a verification question like social security digits or something. most utility companies are into that nowadays, but as i found out with cingular last year, if you have a cell number, you can find out a lot (i did this with the planet's cell phone).
so, with some luck, i'd have this person's cell number and full name, and home address. then, i would go to their house in the middle of the night and take that note that was written to me and scrawl something on the back of it in blood-red drippy ink. it'd be something that you'd expect from scream or one of those kinds of movies, something like, "i know what you did last monday". yeah, something like that.
or i'll just throw it out. but that was fun to think of.
ah, yes. summer.
i've only been home eight days; it feels like a whole summer. first of all, i've had lots of free time to do the things i need to do. thus, i have finished the entire miller lite site that i had to design (it's really simplistic, but based on the business, what more can you do with it?), and taken major strides in getting a tax break for this year.
you see, i will be receiving a taxable amount of income for all of my web work, so the goal is to operate in the red for as long as possible in order to build a business while not paying taxes. and that's not tax evasion, it's what most businesses do while starting up.
the next "work" related project, then, is to deck out pitchpipe.org. if this page is going to representing the business end of mark, it might as well look that way. thus, you'll probably no longer be able to get to this page from that page, so update your links if you're just lazy and use the root domain.
for the record, on june 10th 2003, champaign county recognized the existence of pitchpipe productions, a company whose sole owner is myself. rawk. and since i use my laptop for a lot of business, that's going to be the first major expense i have.
but it's not like i've been all work and no play all week. quite contrary.
it's a walk in the parkfrisbee golf, or "frolf", as schaffer sometimes calls it, is a walk in the park. it's not like real golf, either -- at least, i haven't started caring about it enough to care whether or not the frisbee goes in the basket in the first try or not. sure, it's nice, but i almost feel as if it's out of my hands, like fate has already decided (despite the fact that i'm the one throwing it).
we've been consistently chillin', i've been seeing lots of friends, having a blast, cooking, starting up poker nights, meeting people at murphy's, having radio shows, and feeling generally amazing. i love this town in the summer. or could it be that i'm still feeling the "i-just-rearranged-furniture" high?
arizona summary Sunday June 8
if you want it, go to arizona and get it.jon lives in the same apartment that he lived in last year; things haven't changed much. one addition to his apartment complex this year, though, was this cat. this cat meowed a lot, and it looked lonely. i don't like cats, but i felt bad for it because it seemed like someone had abandoned it in the 95-degree heat. however, after awhile it seemed as if someone was letting it in at night, and there was no way i was going to give it milk or food. in that case, it would never go away. i told jon to call animal control, and i would have, but i, sadly, never got around to it.
the scene of the crimethis is jon's living room, the place where i slept (there is a futon couch on the left). this is also the room where jon and i sat for an entire weekend, beating zelda start to finish. here's my take on zelda, if you've played at all: don't waste your time on the joy pendants; you only need 21 of them, not 41 as it may seem. moreover, if you want a silver membership at beedle's shop, you're better off reconsidering. not worth it.
thanks for the infoapparently, on may 31st, the sign above was discussed over dinner. jon's friend chris, albeit being a stellar guy and guitar player, has little self-control in terms of gambling...and he'll admit it. since i had never been to a casino, we took a stroll out to one of the indian casinos before it was too late for me -- as i don't turn 21 for another month.
a sight you don't see oftenyes, i was drinking starbucks chai latte. light on the ice. however, i had my revenge against the crappy-coffee-corporate-congolmerate known as starbucks: jon knew a guy on the inside, and this drink was free. that's right, starbucks, free. i feel so good affecting your bottom line with a dash of red ink.
the dynamic duojon's on-air show is called the wednesday weekend kickoff. almost in big ten school style, weekends start on wednesday at arizona state. we hosted a show together, and we had some really solid material. jon recorded it, it's part of their summer protocol: looping old shows. it reminded me of "the loop show", and WBCR. long live college radio.
the drive to san diegothe five-hour drive between arizona and san diego is beautiful. absolutely amazing road trip material.
oopsjon accidentally spilled pepsi on himself. this picture was not posted to make fun of this fact, because, face it, we've all done that. the point is is that i knew from the moment we left the interstate looking for a place to eat, i knew pizza hut was an incorrect choice. i just had a feeling about it. and then jon believed me after this.
pearl jam rawks with the lights onpearl jam played three encores. so much music, in fact, that the venue (the san diego sports arena) turned the lights on in an effort to notify the band that their time had expired. i'm glad that they finished anyway. cutting that show short would have resulted in very anger people, which is would have been bad: there were lots of metal folding chairs available, WWF-style.
i've got the atlantic, both sides of the pacific, and the sea of japan (as if that counts). now it's time to cross off the indian ocean.
on the drive backthe drive between san diego and phoenix is killer, dude.
wrapping it up Saturday June 7
...and other adventures in the southwesti'm teasing the (long, long) story that will soon appear here when i return safe and sound to champaign sunday afternoon. but until then!
virii Wednesday June 4
i realize that i've had a string of nerdcore posts recently, and i promise to do arizona real justice when i get back to chambana on sunday. while i'm in this element, though, i issue a warning to all university students:
even though the university offers free mcafee virus scan software on their website, do not download it. i just spent the last hour battling my laptop to get it to work on the internet again after installing this software. it entrenched itself so deeply that i wasn't even able to uninstall it: it crashed every time. when i tried to stop the program's system services, it also crashed. essentially, the only way to remove it was good ol' dos style:
DELTREE *.* /yand if you don't know what that means, you need a little oldschool schoolin'.
internet interconnections Monday June 2
the one noteable obstacle in wireless networks is the issue of interference. i am sure that some programmers and engineers spent a long time on the issue of interference, but none of these intelligent scientists could account for "the lopez factor".
when i started my laptop for wireless use on jon's couch, i had much trouble staying connected to one wireless network. it seems that jon's apartment complex also hosts other wireless routers, and even though jon's signal should be the strongest (it is in the same room), i kept getting bumped by the lopez family.
apparently, the mexican lopez family is taking souping up their cars to new heights: the output gain on wireless network routers. i'm sure that if i could go upstairs, i would see a nice linksys hub, but the rubber feet would be removed such that it rides real low on the table. i think they added some aluminum foil rims, and a glow-in-the-dark sticker on the bottom that looks really cool at night.
no harm no foul, i guess.
waste not, want not
there's a guy named justin frankel, and about five years ago he started nullsoft, authors of the esteemed mp3 software "winamp". however, nullsoft was purchased by america online awhile back, and well, america online can make things that are good be lame. however, with wednesday's release of "waste", nullsoft's free private, secure peer-to-peer file sharing software, they have redeemed themselves.
thus, i have elected to mirror the site here, since it is apparent that nullsoft was forced to take it down.
