Neighbor's Barking Dog from Hell

See the little fucker to the right? That’s my neighbor’s dog. The little shit is a Jack Russell Terrier that has no volume control or off switch. Whenever the damn thing is in the yard, it’s, “bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark…” until it goes back in. No exaggeration at all, it’s fucking constant.

So tonight…

That little beast has been yipping and yapping since 10:00. NON-STOP! It’s now 12:30 in the morning. Yay. And it’s still going strong. It’s probably a really good thing I don’t have my .22 handy.

Looking out the front window, I see the neighbor’s car isn’t there. (His absent status confirmed with no lights on in the house either). Well that’s just fucking wonderful. How thoughtful of you, neighbor, to leave the terrier terror out in the yard while you’re gone all night. read more »

Home from Spain - final update!

The last two weeks of Spain were amazing! The second-to-last Wednesday me and seven other friends headed solo to the city of Valencia (a coastal city on the Mediterranean). Getting there was fun, seeing as though we didn’t have an advanced Spanish speaker with us, so we had to make-do with what little Spanish we knew. We took a 2 hour and 15 minute bus to Madrid then a 3 hour train ride to Valencia.

That Wednesday night, me and a friend stayed in one Hostel while the 6 others stayed in another (ours was cheaper). The next day, we all took an hour bus trip to Gandia. Gandia is claimed to be the “Orange County, California” part of Spain. It’s constantly humid, warm, and have incredible white sandy beaches. We all stayed at an oceanfront hotel. I got a room with a sea-side view and balcony. read more »

Sunburn and Molting

See this little guy with his skin coming off in sheets? It’s pretty much how my head looks right now. Just replace green with red. Tell you what — sunburn isn’t much fun when you’re bald.

I got a little too much sun this last week. Not intentionally, it’s just how it worked out. Today I’m sitting in my office at work and scratch my noggin. I get a handful of dead skin. That’s nice, I think. I make my way to the men’s room to survey the damage. It looks like someone lathered my head in Elmer’s glue and it’s starting to peel away now. Pretty picture I’ve formed for you I’m sure.

So home I go to use a mixture of razoring, loofah, and sand-soap to rub my head raw. That oughta be fun… Damn German/Scottish heritage, turns into a lobster in the sun skin.

"I'm swamped!"

Yesterday’s Pearls before Swine seems a little too relevant…

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From Pearls before Swine

Firefox 3 is a go!

Okay — first and foremost, if you are not using Firefox yet, please evolve from your neanderthal tendencies and claim your modern heritage. There simply is no excuse to use the god-awful Internet Explorer anymore. None. None at all. The only exception to using Firefox should be Safari if you’re a Mac user.

The fact that Firefox is lightyears ahead of Explorer in security, it’s also the only browser that allows so much customization. In the form of extensions, Firefox can do almost anything online. There’re so many time-saving and useful add-ons that there is no substitute.

So, now that the rant is out of the way… read more »

Eye Candy Fashion Show

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A couple of years ago, my good friend Henry’s son, Cameron, was diagnosed with a large cancerous tumor in his head. Dubbed “the peach”, Henry and Cameron survived one hell of an ordeal that involved extensive surgery to remove 95% of the tumor and months of chemotherapy to battle the remainder.

Cameron, who recently turned 13, has been quite the trooper. After his surgery, the recovery was a very steep hill that he surmounted and surpassed. Despite his amazing journey, however, Cameron’s tumor has grown back. This time the growth is too extensive for surgery to be an option. Regardless of his diagnosis, Cameron maintains a positive outlook and continues against odds to battle his head’s intruder. He is really a remarkable young man. read more »

21st Birthday in Spain

It has been quite and eventful week! For once, the sun finally came out. We spent almost all of Tuesday on the beach. On Wednesday, it was my 21st birthday. For class, we all made smores (which was a first for our professor). After class, we spent the afternoon on the beach (it was sunny!) until lunch. At lunch, Carmen (my host mom) made an excellent meal. Complete with some bubbly (champagne) and a giant Hoho (those Little Debbie snacks) for my cake. Later in the day, we watched Pan’s Labyrinth and afterwards went out to the bar. At the bar, they surprised me with song and more cake then later went dancing. In essence, it was a pretty good birthday.
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It's official, Obama announces his democratic ticket at the Excel Center.

I think unless you are completely ignorant and/or a masochist, we’re all ready for “the change” in America. The end of monkey/president comparisons and ridiculous military campaigning has more than run it’s course (by more than 4 years). Personally, I’ve ridden the fence between Hillary and Barack thinking that they’re both excellent candidates with strong qualities to each. But mostly I’m eager to see a liberal approach open the White House windows and air the damn place out.

From Barack Obama tonight:

…tonight we mark the end of one historic journey with the beginning of another — a journey that will bring a new and better day to America. Tonight, I can stand before you and say that I will be the Democratic nominee for president of the United States.

It certainly will be interesting to find out how the next few weeks will compare. My hope is that Obama does indeed select Clinton as his running mate and we get the best of both worlds.

Now — who else is gonna plaster their car with Obama support stickers for the Republican Convention this fall?

Subnormality delivers the goods - oh wait...

I enjoy many webcomics, but this is my new favorite. Surreal, disturbing, and brilliant. Right in my vein. :) Consider:

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From Virus Comix

Explosion shuts down The Planet/Hostgator dedicated servers

On Saturday at about 4:45pm, a major power transformer in the one of the Houston data centers exploded knocking down three walls and causing a large fire. Power was disrupted and technicians were unable to do anything until approval from the fire marshal was granted. It took over 24 hours for this approval.

The good news was that none of the hardware (servers, routers, etc) were harmed. No one lost any data, but since backup power was not allowed, the network went down and many of Hostgator’s dedicated servers went offline. Mine included. This is a fluke event and unpredictable by anyone. No one to blame except fate.

Early this morning the folks at both The Planet and Hostgator have managed to get 90% of everyone back online. Sorry for the downtime. I’ve still been noticing some lag and issues with my email. Obviously the support staff is swamped with irate customers and trying to get things back online. Hopefully everything will return to a normal plateau shortly. Thanks for your patience.

If you want to read more visit: read more »

• The forum at Hostgator
• The server status report from The Planet

Eurotrip Videoblog

A few guys that I met down here are keeping a video blog of the trip. If you want to see what its like so far (since I don’t take pictures) feel free to check it out.

Visiting the towns around Spain

A lot has happened since my last entry! I’ve been pretty busy. Last Thursday we took a train to Medina del Campo. There’s not much there except a really big castle. The had a huge tower in the middle and a moat around the it (although it doesn’t have water in anymore). They were saying that in the summer, they bring bands into the castle and they have a concert in the moat, that would be cool to see! The train system here is very independent. It makes it difficult for people who don’t speak Spanish to catch the right train. Some from our group ended up getting on the wrong train and went 40 minutes away in the opposite direction.

Last Saturday we went to Salamanca. Salamanca is an extremely old city and actually has the oldest university in Europe (I think even in the world). Like everything here, it’s beautifully decorated and hosts a myth with a frog. It’s said that if you are able to find a frog in the immensely decorated front, you will return to Salamanca in a year and if you don’t you will fail your exams. After a while of searching, I found it (supposedly) but it doesn’t look like much a frog anymore. read more »

Goddamn Mother Nature

Who else woke this morning looked at the thermometer and promptly said, “What the Hell?!?”

Two days ago it was above 80°. This morning it’s 40°. When I get out of work, I refuse to acknowledge the elements if I see white shit falling from the sky.

What Sid does in the office all day.

When I go to the office in the morning, Sid goes to his “office”. And in the office, he has his collection of toys (or chompables) that normally keep him busy. It’s hard work chomping all those things beyond recognition. Obviously this time he had a different agenda. Apparently the Ikea Pug Bed (PAX THUBLÅD in Ikea speak) needed a few alterations.

Damn it.

Now Sid needs a new bed and certainly has his daily intake of fiber. Fiberfill that is.

New Goober Server

Goobertech is on a new server (and all the other goober-sites, too). Now there’s twice as much space and twice as much speed. There shouldn’t be anymore lags in load time and no more damn MySQL timeout errors. Woohoo.

¡Hola de Espana!

Hello Everyone! I safely arrived in Spain after traveling for almost 18 hours. The flights and everything were fine and they showed movies on the plane. I watched American Gangster then took an Ambien and when I woke up we were there.

In Spain its about 20-25 degrees Celsius (about 75F). It rains nearly every day so we always need to have a our rain coat with us. I live about 15 minutes away from the school. I have three other friends which live nearby so we walk to school together. Our apartment is really small. My bed is especially small and is not firm at all! I cannot sleep well at night, good thing we have siesta everyday and are required to take a 3 hour nap.

The first day we arrived (on Friday) was very hectic. We were all tired from the trip and arrived in Valladolid to meet our families at noon. Our host mom is Carmen and is very nice! She owns her own carniceria (butcher shop) and is an incredible cook. Each day she cooks us lunch at 2:30 and feeds us way to much. I’m going to gain at least 20 lbs this trip I think. After lunch, it’s pretty much required to have a nap because every store in Spain closes and there is nothing to do. After the nap on Friday, me and Mike (my roommate) explored the city and got lost for about an hour (we weren’t given maps yet!). We finally returned and ate supper (supper is served at 9-10). Afterwards we met up with other people and went to the bar. read more »

Cancer is so yesterday, on with the world traveler status.

And he is off!! By now Kevin should be somewhere over the Atlantic on the way to Madrid, Spain. 30 SJU and CSB students along with Kevin will be staying with host families in Valladolid (northwestern part of Spain) and attending the University there for May-term. They will also be touring and doing some fun stuff on w/e’s and throughout the month until returning on 6-20.

Kevin had a whirlwind last month with end of semester finals, term papers, projects, meetings for Spain and for fall study abroad in Australia. Even though his time was limited, he still managed to attend all the parties and social activities that were a necessity (according to him) for end of year bonding. Amidst all of that, he had numerous medical and dental apts since everything had to be completed before he left today. read more »

I'm inheriting $4,650,000 from Nigeria!

I probably get five of these a day, but this one was particularly clever. Not only did the sender do enough research to bypass my gmail filter, but he also sent it to my work email address. No “bot” could do that, you’d have to google search my name and find the various contact info. Kudos to the Nigerian scammer for being tenacious.

I was not aware of any Fuchs’s in Nigeria, but you never know right? My chances of that are probably better than winning the lottery with tickets I never buy. Anyway, here’s what Mr. Aroma sent: (love the name, no?) read more »

A rant about Cancer I found

I found this while stumbling around the internet one day. Besides for the author being a girl, and #5 didn’t happen to me, it amazing how accurate it is in regards to my personal thoughts and experiences. In light of everyone getting cancer now-a-days, I think it’s just something people should keep in mind. read more »

Pug Perch

One of Sid’s favorite treats is when I open the front window so he can bark at everything that goes by. Pedestrian, car, bus, squirrel — it doesn’t really matter, Sid doesn’t discriminate. All get a dose of “guess who’s boss” via the doggie vocals.
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I will possess your brain...

…in the form of an unbreakable ear worm. I listen to 89.3 the Current pretty much exclusively when in the car or at home. And in the past month, I’d swear I’ve heard Death Cab for Cutie’s new song, I will possess your heart, at least once an hour. Probably more. And then it runs in my head all day long. All night too.

Not that that’s a bad thing. I really like the song and amazingly, I’m not sick of it at all. I’m not sure what it is, but there’s a quality to the tune that feels at home in my head. So kudos to the Death Cab.

So today I’ve been sitting and working online for 14 hours straight. Again, I’d swear I heard the song at least once an hour. So I checked. It’s actually been aired only three times since I’ve been awake (and once beforehand). So either I’m tired, had a few too many beers, been working too hard, or all of the above. Oh well — I’m really not complaining. Like I mentioned, the song is great. read more »

In a recent inquiry with the Rabbit...

I’ll be having plenty good dreams tonight…

Also — when and where is Australia, give me the details. I actually know peeps over there and it would be cool if things aligned so fucking perfectly that someone from the Swedish bikini team paid for my first class ticket to the Land Down Under to join her in a naked scuba diving fest with her teammates in someones private pool without stingrays or box jellyfish. :)

Yes — that would be nice. Very nice indeed.

;)

Twitter updated with Facebook and Aggregating on Goobertech

Got all that? It took a fair amount of effort to make it all come together.

If you’re uninformed, Twitter is a social networking site with the sole purpose of creating a list of status updates (like Facebook), or maybe some of you are still stuck with Myspace’s version. Anyway — the potential for niftiness with Twitter exceeds all and so I’ve begun my plunge into its depths.

Here are the steps I took: read more »

Rubber Johnny

I love this. I first saw this short three or four years ago, and now it’s on DVD. :) It’s so reminiscent of David Lynch’s Eraserhead. It’s made by Chris Cunningham who’s done a couple of Björk videos. I want this on my big screen now! Why doesn’t Netflix have it?

Related Links:

• IMDb
• Official Rubber Johnny Video page

From Youtube’s page:

Rubber Johnny is a 6 minute experimental short film and music video directed by Chris Cunningham in 2005, using music composed by Aphex Twin.

The concept for Rubber Johnny came from Cunningham imagining a raver morphing as he danced. The idea evolved to the present film, in which Johnny (played by Cunningham) is an isolated mutant child with a huge overgrown cranium, strapped into a wheelchair and locked in a basement. Capable of morphing his body, he spends his life trying to amuse himself and his dog, a terrified chihuahua.

Watch the clip after the jump… read more »

My Martini Recipe - the Goobertini

Art by Keith Weesner

Speaking of martinis, here’s how I like mine:

(Dirty of course.)

Tasty business there. Remember, although a good martini is stiff, don’t sip and nurse it. Nothing ruins a martini faster than letting it get too warm. I also think they taste better whilst wearing a silk robe Heffner-style. :) read more »