The sticky notes at the front of the page

for my 3 MPs (no, not my MP3s...)

Blogroll has moved to a new page. It was just too huge (close to 1000 blogs in Bloglines) and helps the page load time tremendously. Blogrolling.com just sucks, and Bloglines has too much. Oh, and I have updated Blogrolling.

Have a nice day!

Saturday, November 29

Post T-Day...

Well, since the kids were at their dad's for Thursday, we had our T-day on Friday.

Quite the non-traditional meal it was as well. Horseradish mashed potatoes, bread sticks, mushrooms, onions and green peppers. And the protein for the meal? Filet mignon! We bought a whole beef loin, and I cut custom steaks out of it, and servered them rare. It was so late, I ran out of light at the barbecue, and they could have cooked a little longer. Garfield complained that we might as well shouldn't have cooked them, they were that rare. That was as he was putting the last bite in his mouth. Oh, but they were good. We cut them with butter knives. The kids had sparkling apple cider, The_Rose and I had Martini & Rossi. It was quite, quite good, even if I cooked most of it myself!

Sparx called Thursday, asking for Collin, then he promptly hung up. The second year without Sparx at Thanksgiving. It will be the second year without Sparx at Christmas. I hope he's enjoying himself.

Permanent link posted by bytehead @ 11/29/2003 08:43:00 PM Links to this post

Thursday, November 27

Found! The Real Napster Kitten!

And an avatar from the first:

Grizelle is sleeping on Garfield's bed, with head between the headphones of his minidisc player. Quite amusing!

Permanent link posted by bytehead @ 11/27/2003 04:15:00 PM Links to this post

Wednesday, November 26

A Sparx update

Looking at a previous post, I decided to give an update on Sparx. He's moved in with his girlfriend.

Permanent link posted by bytehead @ 11/26/2003 01:36:00 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Teoti is down. :(

After modifying my Links to Monitor to include .org, .net, .com and the new mirror that xix set up, all four options are now showing the servers being overwhelmed with requests. I have a feeling either Teoti is being ddosed, or the synchronization code for the sites is doing something weird to cause it.

Updated

According to this

Teoti SQL Down
Posted on November 26, 2003 11:52:59 in Links Blog

The teoti.com database is down and I am working on tracking down the problem with the host. Suffice to say worse comes to worse I move the db to a different host in the interim. December 15h cant get here soon enough, date I anticipate a new server. Sigh. I post this here since a few of you know my homepage address - keep in contact with me at the contact email for further updates if you wish.

That explains that.

Updated to point to archive 3/19/2008

Permanent link posted by bytehead @ 11/26/2003 01:30:00 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Lies, damn lies, and Garfield

I know kids lie to their parents. It is to be expected. But once you get busted, you're usually much better off by telling the truth. And boy, is Garfield busted.

He's been claiming for the last week that his phone broke. Funny, when I called it, the carrier said that it was no longer in service. He tried to scam money out of The_Rose for $100. First it was for some tool that he said he needed, but he couldn't tell her what the tool was. I forget what else she got told. The final one being he needed it to replace his cell phone that he had broken. He never got the money. During this time without his cell phone, he's been getting $20 out of me, usually for a $15 copay for the doctor or the pharmacy. I'd ask to get change back, but I haven't seen it yet. Of course, he has bought his Cokes (that he won't share with anybody but me) with my money. I also find out yesterday when his dad comes to the house that he asked his dad for $30 for the copay for his doctor visits. All in all, he's scored enough money to get his phone turned on. Which it did, yesterday.

He claimed that they replaced the SIM card (for free, although it was going to cost $100?). I told him why he still had the same number, since it was a new SIM card. He argued and argued with me. I didn't lay on him the one fact that trumped everything he had to say to me. I saw the insufficient funds mail, where the carrier tried to take the amount out, and couldn't. And since I know that the cell phone is the only thing that has been touching his account for quite some time, I would like to point out to him that I am not as dumb as I appear, and that the trail goes exactly where I said it went.

Permanent link posted by bytehead @ 11/26/2003 10:45:00 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Tuesday, November 25

The Friday Five for 11/21/2003

Saw this here, and thought I'd try it out. 5 questions for me to answer.

1. List five things you'd like to accomplish by the end of the year.

Have a prospect for a new job.
Have a happy Christmas.
Get the clothes line up.
Get a start on a new computer for the family.
Stay healthy and sane.

2. List five people you've lost contact with that you'd like to hear from again.

Wow, a hard one for me.

Phil Loaiza
Bob Furney
Roger Courtney
Bill Calderone
My parents (You didn't require them to be living...)

3. List five things you'd like to learn how to do.

PHP programming
the intricacies of dealing with TrueType/OpenType files
Get Garfield and Sparx to grow up
Pilot a boat (seaworthy kind, not the type that live in small bodies of fresh water! )
Write a novel

4. List five things you'd do if you won the lottery (no limit).

Build a new house, preferably a campus situation
Buy a new car
Help out a few members of family and some friends
Invest! Invest! Invest!
Get the wedding bands that I truly wanted

5. List five things you do that help you relax.

Listen to music
Meditate
Have The_Rose rub the knots out of my back
Watch a movie
>Sex

Permanent link posted by bytehead @ 11/25/2003 09:32:00 PM Links to this post

Archival - Call your congresscritter for free!

I found this here. From 9/26/03, so who knows how long it will remain there. At any rate!

A toll free number has been set up for the US Senate and Congress at +1-800-839-5276. They immediately answer "Capitol" and will happily transfer you to your congressional representatives. Call during business hours and feel free to speak your mind, asking them not to expand the Patriot act, repeal the DMCA, push through donotcall.gov, etc.

Permanent link posted by bytehead @ 11/25/2003 09:02:00 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Misc stuff and administrivia

Greybeard got chased by Harry the other day. It was amusing because I'm sure that Greybeard brought the chase on himself, and it was just to play with Harry, even though it seems that the adult cats here, Harry and Kali really have zero desire to have much of anything to do with the kittens. Grizelle gets Harry's attention when she starts rolling around on the floor like she's in heat, and Harry will watch her. But he also sniffs the air, and isn't getting anything close to the scent he's expecting out of such behavior, so he just ignores her.

I have updated my Links to Monitor. More images have been added. Some duplicates have been removed. Some additions have been made. Enjoy!

Permanent link posted by bytehead @ 11/25/2003 01:59:00 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Gen. Franks Doubts Constitution Will Survive WMD Attack

From Gen. Franks Doubts Constitution Will Survive WMD Attack

Gen. Tommy Franks says that if the United States is hit with a weapon of mass destruction that inflicts large casualties, the Constitution will likely be discarded in favor of a military form of government.

and

If that happens, Franks said, "... the Western world, the free world, loses what it cherishes most, and that is freedom and liberty we’ve seen for a couple of hundred years in this grand experiment that we call democracy."

Let me get this straight. If a terrorist group or North Korea or Iran or even Russia launches Weapons of Mass Destruction against the United States, the Constitution, the highest law of this land is going to get tossed out just like that. To be replaced by a millitary form of government? General, I believe that is called wishful thinking, especially considering the source.

"It means the potential of a weapon of mass destruction and a terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event somewhere in the Western world – it may be in the United States of America – that causes our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass, casualty-producing event. Which in fact, then begins to unravel the fabric of our Constitution. Two steps, very, very important."

Considering the fact that a non-WMD strike of two jet airliners into two of the tallest buildings in New York City has already started the shredding of the Constitution. It's already starting to happen. Unfortunately, I don't believe that the general population of the United States is going to care until it's too late.

Of course, who am I chiding? Yeah, I probably do a lot more than 90% of other Americans out there in trying to keep up with what is going on. I get an e-mail every time my congresscritter opens her mouth. Do I read it? Unfortunately no. I should be. Shame on me. But at least I'm making some kind of effort. Hell, Congress just passed a bill giving the FBI even more powers to look at evidence without any court oversite. I've heard some rumbling about this, how it will be reviewed next session. Yeah, right. If the congresscritters find it so onerous now, why did they vote it into action to start with?

Permanent link posted by bytehead @ 11/25/2003 01:55:00 AM Links to this post

Friday, November 21

Interesting play toy I wouldn't mind having.

From:The Mossberg Solution -- Personal Technology from The Wall Street Journal.
Last month, a South Korean company, Digitalway, released the biggest shocker of all -- a keychain drive with a whopping 1.5 gigabytes of storage that is selling at Best Buy for just $199.99.

This is too cool. Of course it's currently out of stock at Best Buy, and not even in a store near me. Probably a good thing.

Permanent link posted by bytehead @ 11/21/2003 02:57:00 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Thursday, November 20

Not sleeping well.

Somebody is playing tricks with the phones again. I got these in line things to tell when somebody is talking on the phone, primarily to reign in Sparx in his abuse of the telephone. Now that he is gone, somebody is going around and disconnecting them. Again. I fixed the bedroom phone once this week. It's been disconnected. Again. The phone by my computer I found disconnected today. That was because I didn't hear the phone ring, but my computer was announcing the Caller ID. The only credible person it can be is Garfield. He's claiming that he had nothing to do with it. I don't believe him. He must be calling his girlfriend on the sly (long distance of course!), and trying to hide that fact by making sure that we can't tell he is on the phone. The two little ones have zero reason to be doing this. And I sure as hell know that it's not the cats or the dog that would be doing something like this. I am not amused! I probably wouldn't even be half as upset if they just removed the call announcing device, and leave the fscking telephone connected. No, they can't be that smart!

Plus, the fact that I realized that somebody decided to glue 5 pennies to my bedside table (they weren't just "stuck" from spilt Coke or something) hasn't made my night more enjoyable. The accidents are bad enough around here. We've lost two lamps due to stupidness this week as well. And I yanked down the vertical blinds myself earlier this week. So, I need to get some curtain rods for the TV room, as The_Rose has already ordered and received the drapes we're going to use instead.

I'm so riled up, I can't sleep now. I don't know what I'm going to do. Try to watch TV and zone out, or go get some coffee / iced tea / Coke and finish off my Wired magazine.

Somebody wants access to my private blog. Not exactly what I had been planning. I don't know. I might make an exception here.

Permanent link posted by bytehead @ 11/20/2003 12:57:00 AM Links to this post

Tuesday, November 18

I probably should be sleeping right now....

Had trouble sleeping last night. Almost got to sleep, then bang! my mind is racing.

Hit the computer for some card playing. Decided I wanted to move Sparx's music over to this computer to burn his CD he wanted. Used pcAnywhere. Took forever. To find out it was over 2.4 gigs. Sigh. I think it would have gone much faster had I used FTP, but oh well.

Which then got me thinking about him. I'm still waiting for more bullcrap from him. Exactly what, I don't know. But I'm waiting...

Finally got to bed around 4:30AM. Stumbled out of bed around 9:00AM. Took The_Rose to lunch at Toby's BBQ, then took care of some legal paperwork.

I got a new style working for Teoti. Ping-of-Death had originally created it, but it wasn't working with Mozilla, so I looked at the source code and tried to get it working. Finally got some things working. Tried to fix other things, like the size of the logo, and ended screwing that up differently. Got the logo centered. Put the large T! in the lower right hand corner in a couple more boxes. Fixed where the small T!s were going (under Mozilla). Submitted it to Teoti. No comments so far. Few hits when you subtract mine out. Sigh. Oh well.

I also got rid of some more spy/mal/adware crap out of the other machine. I'm find stuff installed in \program files that has no uninstall. In which case, I just blow the whole directory away. The crap that gets installed in \windows and \windows\system32 I also get rid of. Sorry, I don't care if something is running out of Windows or System32. If I don't like it, it gets blown away. I also have a new utility that allows you to delete files that you can't normally delete. You have to reboot, but I have no problem with that. Beats going into safe mode just to delete something that has 3 copies running at all time, which will then recreate the .exe and restart the process if you kill the process or delete the file. That was quite the bitch.

Well, here's to (hopefully) a good night's sleep.

Permanent link posted by bytehead @ 11/18/2003 09:58:00 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Monday, November 17

Grab bag night

Critters...

We've been taking care of a stray cat for awhile now. Here's the pic

He's been neutered, declawed and trained. He gives high 5's! He won't eat anything unless it's on the ground. The_Rose figures that he's an inside cat that got out, and lost his way home. We've got some signs up, so hopefully the owner will see one and give us a call. We just don't need a fourth cat. Sigh.

Other... critters... maybe...

Meanwhile, at another blog, I saw a picture of something I dearly would love to have. A Domo Kun phone

This the link discussing said object. I think that might be a worthwhile project. I can't make my phone screen that red, but oh well!

Human critters...

Sparx supposedly has a job with Atlantic Dry Dock. Trouble is, it's two counties away. No license, no car, no insurance. I've heard something about his girlfriend's parents allowing him use of the car, which solves one thing, but it doesn't solve the fact that he has no license and no insurance. I have no idea what is going at this point. And do I care? Not!

Meanwhile Garfield is complaining that I'm not letting him use my car. Complaining about he might run out of gas. Like my car has any gas in it? Sheesh!

Took the two little ones out to get some shoes. They wanted to go out and do some other things, but I was tired, and I wanted to get this done.

Electronic critters...

A lot of blogs are getting blacklisted by SurfControl, which offers Internet filtering packages. I checked my site, and I'm not blocked. Yet. Other sites however have found out that they are, and are complaining about it. Putting them in the category of "Usenet News". Which makes zero sense, but what else is new?

Permanent link posted by bytehead @ 11/17/2003 07:27:00 PM Links to this post

Thursday, November 13

Uncensored Gore

LA Weekly: Features: Uncensored Gore

Uncensored Gore
The take-no-prisoners social critic skewers Bush, Ashcroft and the whole damn lot of us for letting despots rule.
by Marc Cooper

It's lucky for George W. Bush that he wasn’t born in an earlier time and somehow stumbled into America’s Constitutional Convention. A man with his views, so depreciative of democratic rule, would have certainly been quickly exiled from the freshly liberated United States by the gaggle of incensed Founders. So muses one of our most controversial social critics and prolific writers, Gore Vida

This is an interesting interview. I like his thinking. Going along with my previous post about eletronic voting, I though that this quote might very well be prescient.

LA Weekly: Speaking of elections, is George W. Bush going to be re-elected next year?

Gore: No. At least if there is a fair election, an election that is not electronic. That would be dangerous. We don’t want an election without a paper trail. The makers of the voting machines say no one can look inside of them, because they would reveal trade secrets. What secrets? Isn’t their job to count votes? Or do they get secret messages from Mars? Is the cure for cancer inside the machines? I mean, come on. And all three owners of the companies who make these machines are donors to the Bush administration. Is this not corruption?

Read the whole interview. Very interesting...

Permanent link posted by bytehead @ 11/13/2003 08:46:00 PM Links to this post

Techdirt:Is It Against The Law To Put The Name Of The Toronto Airport On The Web?

Is It Against The Law To Put The Name Of The Toronto Airport On The Web?
Contributed by Mike on Thursday, November 13th, 2003 @ 01:43PM
from the ah,-legal-challenges dept.
Sometimes you have to wonder about folks who are very quick to dash off legal threats to websites that happen to mention their name. The site Urinal.net is a (surprisingly) popular website posting pictures of urinals from around the world. They were recently profiled in the Wall Street Journal and on BBC radio among others. The site has hundreds of fans who regularly submit pictures of urinals they take from locations all over the world. Basically, it's the sort of bizarre, but amusing, site that makes the internet fun. Not everyone seems to get the fun part, though. Someone from the Greater Toronto Airports Authority (the GTAA) happened to find a page on the site that includes two completely normal photos of urinals from the Toronto Lester B. Pearson International Airport, and decided that this must be illegal. They've sent an email threatening legal action against the site if they did not remove the name of the airport from the site. The site's owners complied, but were clear to mention that the GTAA had muted them. In response, the GTAA has also told them they cannot even mention the GTAA. Again, the site has complied in very amusing fashion. The description of the airport now reads: 'The [facility in question] - covering 1,792 hectares (4,430 acres) - has been [Canada's largest city's] main international [aircraft take-off and landing facility] since 1939 when it was first known as Malton [facility].' They also note that the 'Gee-Tee-Aye-Aye' forbids them from naming the actual airport. It makes you wonder, on what legal authority the GTAA is claiming you cannot name their organization or their airports. It's not likely that anyone is going to be confused into believing that urinal.net is the official website of the Toronto Lester B. Pearson International Airport. These days, people seem very quick to pull out legal threats any time anyone so much as mentions their name on a website.

I can't believe that the Greater Toronto Airport Authority has been threatening other websites to take down the name of their airport, the Toronto Lester B. Pearson International Airport, and their own name. And considering that hundreds is not thousands of websites have now put something like this up in their blogs and news, I can't wait for the legal letters to start flying.

Permanent link posted by bytehead @ 11/13/2003 08:18:00 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Wednesday, November 12

This scares me, and I'm not afraid of anything!

Vote count marred by computer woes:

Boone County
Vote count marred by computer woes

Indianapolis Star report
November 9, 2003

Lebanon -- Boone County officials are searching for an answer to the computer glitch that spewed out impossible numbers and interrupted an otherwise uneventful election process Tuesday.

"I about had a heart attack," County Clerk Lisa Garofolo said of the breakdown that came as an eager crowd watched computer-generated vote totals being projected onto a wall of the County Courthouse rotunda.

"I'm assuming the glitch was in the software."

A lengthy collaboration between the county's information technology director and advisers from the MicroVote software producer fixed the problem. But before that, computer readings of stored voting machine data showed far more votes than registered voters.

"It was like 144,000 votes cast," said Garofolo, whose corrected accounting showed just 5,352 ballots from a pool of fewer than 19,000 registered voters.

"Believe me, there was nobody more shook up than I was."

Yeah, and Diebold isn't going to give Ohio to Bush either!

Permanent link posted by bytehead @ 11/12/2003 08:45:00 AM Links to this post

Monday, November 10

Misc. stuff for tonight

Hmm..... All three Teoti urls are overloaded right now. :( It's not supposed to happen, being on multiple servers, but at this point, it looks like it ain't working. I just hope we aren't being DDOSed right now. That would piss me off.

Sparx was supposed to call me sometime today. He hasn't. I don't know if that's good or bad news. :/

I had sent out in my humor email list a spam I had received about refinancing my home at 77 South High Street, 23rd Floor, Columbus, Ohio 43215. Nice, but I didn't live there, I worked there. I got back some responses today about it. Most people thought it was funny. My brother thought I should have taken them up on it! :-O

I use Mailwasher for my anti-spam needs. I'm only downloading email from 4 POP3 servers, but I have it also checking my three HotMail accounts as well as the POP3 account that I have for my shell account with Core Communications, so I modified that to default to just the main 4 POP3 accounts, which I then despam. Then after I've downloaded those messages into my email client, I then grab the email for all the accounts, and bounce everything I get in the other 4 accounts. I mean everything. I've used the core.com account for about two, maybe three alt.* usenet postings. I've been getting dramatic increases of spam to that account. It's scary. I figure I'm about at the 70% spam level in my email. That figure might go down however, if I drop the four (for all intents and purposes) non-working addresses. I guess it would have to. :/

I have encoded my email address here on the blog so that most harvesters shouldn't be able to grab it. I hope!

Another interesting aside on spam. I have received spam from somebody that was stupid enough to put everybody's address in the CC: spot, not the BC: spot. Since my current core.com POP3 account (that I've had for ten years now) is user bytehead, I found an interesting address that the spam was trying to reach. bytehead(at)bluemoon.rn.com. Bluemoon was a BBS that was hosted on a Sun workstation box (IIRC) and gave the users Internet access. He had some access (a dedicated 56K line I think) to rn.com, and that's how we got our mail. I see that www.rn.com now refers to nursing, I'm sure that wasn't what it was back then. Record created in 1990 (it was before then!) and they've got it until 2010! Wow, they don't want to lose that domain I guess! It's sad that 13+ years after having that address that it's still being bought and sold by spammers!

OK, I'm googling, and I find bluemoon.rn.com in use as late as 1991. Who knew? Wow, around 40 web entries found in Google. Hmmmm. Wow, I forgot we also had bluemoon.use.com. And that domain is up for sale right now. Hmmmm. $25 I see. Actually, it looks to be $25,000 instead. Sigh. Oh well.

Time for bed now, I guess.

Permanent link posted by bytehead @ 11/10/2003 11:29:00 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Sunday, November 9

Sign of the times?

Quoting xix from Teoti - The End Of The Internet: Just so we get some facts straight this post will be about the people who obviously have a problem with Teoti. Ya know I hate to post this publicly sometimes because frankly 90 percent of our users dont give a shit about something like this but maybe some of them do and they need a voice. So here we go...

~~www.vydana.com/ivydana/forum/index.php?action=vthread&forum=1&topic=25~~Link gone forever - Looks like they password protected the forum :(

On other forums Teoti and I are being slammed. I would appreciate hearing your thoughts on the -consipracy theory- of myself being more than one user. You can read my post on that page in reply to those users and mods on that page. These people will remain mods here until they abuse thier powers or they request to not be a mod(which printf has already requested to not be a mod).

As always I am one of the few webmasters on the internet that will bring background politics into a public forum and the reason I do it is so that you all can determine the truth for yourselves.

Teoti will live on whether any of you come or go, there are a lot of very decent honest people on this website that visit on a daily basis that make working on this site a pleasent experience for me and I hope an enjoyable visit for you.

I have purchased a server with the donations thus far and there is even a little money left over, which I will use to CO-LOCATE that server. If any of you know what that means you know what I am talking about and how expensive it is. In December I am using my OWN money to colocate that server.

Ok time for your comments. I will be deleting this negative post within 24-48 hours sorry to bother the people that dont care about something as trivial as this.

Wow, www.teoti.[com|org|net], one of my favorite links that got me interested in a little bit about blogging seems to be under attack. This is the first web site I've actually thrown money at (a couple of BBS's before, but it's been damn few!) to help keep running it and improve it. I have a Godship. Actually two of them. (I decided to empty my PayPal account of cash, but that's another subject...) It seems that some people on Vydana's blog are bad mouthing Teoti, possibly Vidana herself. I don't know. The forums in that blog are now password protected. I've said my piece in my reponses, which follow:

A banning sounds fair to me. I mean, come on. If anybody visiting Teoti, God or not, Mod or not, or both or not, wants to try and duplicate what xix has created with Teoti, I very sincerely doubt that xix would get upset by that. Create it in your own image. You know, the Internet is actually a pretty big place. You don't like this corner, go create your own.

But bad mouth this place, and more than just a few of us are going to be a little pissed about. And since I'm now forbidden from reading what the bitching was going on, I'll just assume the worse, and move on.

And leave it at that.

Permanent link posted by bytehead @ 11/09/2003 07:38:00 PM Links to this post

Thursday, November 6

Personalities

Personalities are strange things.

A kitten who hasn't really sought me out much since I started work, decided he couldn't get too much of me. Greybeard got up on my shoulders while I sat at the kitchen table and laid there and purred his head off while I scratched him everywhere. He got down, and I thought he was through with me. Not quite. He wanted to get up on me again while I was on the computer, so I picked him up, put him in my arms and proceeded to scratch some more. After I got tired, I put him down, he went to another chair, curled up and had a contented sleep. Short lived, as the little kids were home 10 minutes later... Still he has a very laid back personality.

Grizelle is another different personality. She is an extrovert. I mean, extremely extroverted. She is loud, she is persistent, and she has no problems talking her head off. She wants milk (only once a day, and about a table spoon at that, she won't drink more than that), she wants cheese (when the kids give it to her), and now that she is spayed, and we let her out occasionally, she wants out (and in!).

And how the kids handle the kittens. I guess the kittens let themselves be handled the way they are because... they get handled that way, and have been since we started letting the kittens in the house. Grizelle gets held like a baby, in a blanket or not, and she acts like she's content to be held that way.

Meanwhile, Garfield is evidently experiencing his own wakeup call. The issues Monday of him having to do what he had to do that evening, regardless of what The_Rose and I wanted and then Wednesday forcing us to go meet his recruiter, and then trying to force me to take him to school tonight because his truck had a leaking tire stem, he sure isn't getting it that now that he's 18, we do not have to give him as much attention as he thinks he needs. That's been one of the thorns with Sparx, who thinks that he can monopolize our time and energy just because he has in the past.

I hope both of them read this journal entry.

You're 18. You are supposed to be an adult. The_Rose and I don't have the time to waste on you!

I really wish that Garfield, instead of just reacting to what has been going on, would slow down and process things for awhile. But it doesn't look like that's going to happen. Yes, at one point in time, it was looking like both Garfield and Sparx needed to be kicked out of the house. That currently isn't the case now. Garfield has at least managed to change himself enough that he's at least a little more bearable now. And Garfield is at least amenable to change, something that Sparx doesn't want to hear about.

The one thing that both of them share, which is totally wrong, is that they are still kids around the house. They are not. I've heard something like "If I'm not around, that's one less kid in the house" about three different times this week. Nope, if Garfield isn't around, that's one less adult in the house. The adult may still be acting a bit like a kid, but hey, that's allowable. Even at my age.

I quite frankly could care less if they stick around here for a few more years. If they do, I want them either going to school, or working. And I want them to follow the rules that get laid down by The_Rose and me. And most of it is just common sense that they can't get through their head. Neither one owns this house. The_Rose and I do, so stop acting like you do own the house. I don't really care if you both have been living here 10 years longer than I have. I own the house, you don't, that's the fact, now get over it! Don't go around blasting music at anytime of day or night, especially when people (like The_Rose) are trying to sleep. You don't go tromping through the house just anytime you feel like it, slamming doors. You don't monopolize the telephone for hours. You don't complain about the meals being served. You don't complain when The_Rose wants her computer, just because you weren't smart enough to get on before hand and do your school work before she got home, and instead listened to your music. Both of you need to grow up.

I think I've said more than what I actually wanted to say in the beginning, but I'll let it fly.

Permanent link posted by bytehead @ 11/06/2003 11:54:00 PM Links to this post

An update

After pointing some friends here, I've taken some of their advice, and modified things. I've corrected some of my grammar (I guess my participles were dangling, but I don't usually go commando...), found the reason for a couple of javascript errors that were showing up (I had things ready to work with double quotes, but not with single quotes, and since I'm using single quotes {technically an apostrophe} now and haven't used a double quote yet, I changed it around. Now I just have to make sure I use the " for double quotes in my titles) and I've also made two different stabs at informing people how to read and add comments (Hint! Hint! Mr. D!) I find the errors that IE lists problematic, as they get the line number right, but the character number in the line is always way off. Oh well, another discussion later maybe.

Sparx has been in contact with me. He is extremely worried about the credit card stuff. I told him I wasn't discussing it with him. That was Tuesday. Wednesday, he wants to talk about coming back home. He hates it there (I originally heard it as "I hate you", but he swore he said "I hate it here"), and he wants to talk terms about coming back home^H^H^Here. Calling DCF was a good way to burn some bridges. Especially when this has been the second time that he's called them. The_Rose was pretty shook up by it. It didn't give me great feelings either.

I am truly concerned that Sparx took my shotgun out of my closet and put it into his. He also took some ammo for it. I am not amused, not even an iota. All of the children here have issues of doing stuff with things that are plainly not theirs. I have my issues about that, but then, I was an only child growing up myself. Still, I didn't go around grabbing my father's gun, hiding it from him, or keeping it for my own use. And that's the other thing that scares me. Was Sparx hiding it from me because he thought I might use it on him in a fit of rage and anger? Or keeping it for his own use, in which case, use it on whom? I don't like the consequences of either one of those.

Garfield made my drive him to the recruiter's, so that I could meet him. The_Rose got home from work early enough to go with me. It's not that I have a problem with him enlisting, I am just more than a little fed up with being on his schedule, not mine. And I've just about had it. I wasn't pleased with what he did Monday, and tonight really didn't help me out either. I wanted to be home, cooking dinner for the family. And what was supposed to be a 5 minute thing turned out to be closer to an hour. I can't blame that all on him, The_Rose and I shopped at a nearby Asian grocery afterwords, but more on that later. We ended up bringing home McDonalds. The_Rose's (and mine) biggest concern is that he's doing this out of desperation. He's decided that really doesn't want to do construction, even though he's worked very hard to become a good carpenter. I'm not even real sure that he's going to college at this point, despite having the bills to pay for it now. I understand, he's only 18, and he doesn't know yet what he really wants to do. But this is getting expensive. With us paying for his long distance (even though he has a cell phone that has unlimited nights and weekends with free long distance...) calls to Ohio, helping him get his truck, putting gas into his truck and everything else, we're probably out a couple grand.

The Asian grocery was pretty interesting. We found an ounce of Phillipine saffron for $1.19. Compared to closer to $119 per ounce. Or not. I've found Saffron on the net for $30 per ounce to $60 per ounce. Interesting, that the price of saffron isn't what it used to be. I'm still looking forward to using it in our next rice dish.

And now I need to figure out how I'm going to cook the hamburger that I thawed out for dinner Wednesday night for tonight's supper (since it's past 2:00AM right now...)

Permanent link posted by bytehead @ 11/06/2003 02:06:00 AM 0 comments Links to this post

Tuesday, November 4

New functionality! - Administrivia

I got blogkomm set up and is now running.

So now you can make any kind of comments. Spamming comments will be deleted.

I may have some more settings to change, but it works. Any errors you find, send me an e-mail (or a comment if you can get it working.....)

Permanent link posted by bytehead @ 11/04/2003 05:58:00 PM 0 comments Links to this post

Monday, November 3

Horribly unpleasant day today (bad language in use as well...)

The_Rose and I kicked Sparx out of the house today.

The reasons? No interaction with the rest of the family unless he needed it. No job, nor any signs of doing anything towards getting a job, which The_Rose and I had been pushing for about 6 months now at this point. Not doing any kind of assigned chores, or doing them so badly that he could hope that we wouldn't ask him to do it again. And the final straw, getting kicked out / withdrawing / dropping out of his senior year of High School. Whatever you want to call it. A 0 in English. A 5 in Phys. Ed. An 8 in his beloved Welding!!! He did manage a 93 in Auto Tech. These were 9 week scores. Getting 100's for the rest of the year, he still wouldn't be able to graduate. And then, fighting with The_Rose and me when he knew that we could lower the boom at any time. He's 18. We do not have to provide him with anything. He did not get it. He still does not get it.

After talking to me, Deb, The_Rose, and his brother, telling him that he needs a permanent change, he needs to get away from that cunt he calls a girlfriend...

We gave him two options. Leave the house, for good. Or, he could go check himself into an in-patient institution and get his shit together.

I thought he was going to check himself in. He decided that he wasn't.

The previous night, he had decided to check himself in, but he wanted some time. Two days. He got till noon today. He wasn't happy about it, but that's tough. He wanted to listen to some music hang out with his twin, and the younger set of twins. He wanted to write, and to do some reading. So, at 9:15PM when we have everything arranged it seems, he gets on the phone and talks to the cunt that is his girlfriend for an hour. The younger twins are now in bed. OK, they don't leave for school until almost 9:00AM, so maybe he'll get up in the morning and talk with them. The_Rose and I get up, and he doesn't get out of his room until after they've left for school.

This morning shortly after he does get up, he walks out of the house, telling me on his way out (before the door got slammed shut) that he was going out. No expectation of where he was going, what he was going out for, nothing. But the cunt was there to pick him up. He comes home to find his bag packed and in the yard. He gets all pissed off and leaves again. Then he comes back around noon, throwing paper at me, telling me that what The_Rose and I are doing is bullshit. Everybody he's told his story to tells him that it's bullshit. I tell him that they may think it's bullshit, but they obviously told him that it wasn't illegal. He tried to start arguing that with me, and then stopped. Deb stops by to pick up Garfield to run around and pay some bills. She is totally amazed at what is going on.

Deb was interceding herself to act as a mediator between him and The_Rose and me. She wanted 5 minutes. One minute into the discussion (where he wouldn't shut up and let me talk to start with), the cunt has to call his phone (he's on a prepaid plan) so that he can call her back on the land line, and he immediately leaves the conversation so that he can call her right back. He has obviously chosen the cunt over his own survival. He chose his girlfriend over everything. We listened in on their conversation, where she called me Fat Fuck quite a few times. She also threatened The_Rose and I with a restraining order, pretty funny considering she isn't 18 yet.

I pretty much lost it. I called the cunt's father, and let him know that his daughter (who is still 17, although her birthday is this week I believe) had skipped school today, that she had threatened both The_Rose and me, and while I didn't blame her for Sparx dropping out of school, she certainly influenced it, and told him that she was out of control.

Deb has had it at this point with him. He has made his choice, and she is not feeling in the least to be any more generous to him. She leaves with Garfield, leaving The_Rose and me to handle Sparx by ourselves. Sparx kept trying to lawyer me, but I wouldn't bite. I refused to let him try to talk me into anything. I felt like a beagle running a rabbit, running around in circles, fully aware that I'm smarter than this, and that I need to stop the running now. He finally got to the point that he knew that The_Rose wasn't changing her mind, and that I wasn't changing my mind. And that he was not going to be staying in this house any longer. He decided to call the cunt one more time to get a ride, where we once again listened in, where he told her that the only way he was going to be able to stay was to drop her completely. I thought it was somewhat funny, because at this point, even him disavowing anything to do with the cunt wasn't going to change the fact that he was now gone. Because even if he did manage to say that and even truly do it today, tomorrow, next week or next month, he'd be back at it again. And I really find it quite curious what he sees in her. Because he was faced to have to admit last night that deep in his heart, he can't even say he actually likes her.

He finally leaves. I've already made plans, we're going to go out and have dinner together as a family, talk a little amongst ourselves, come home, and maybe even talk some more. Nice plans.

The_Rose is doing her monthly bills when she finds that there have been multiple charges to AT&T Wireless. The_Rose and I have Cingular service, and while Garfield uses AT&T Wireless, he's on a monthly billing plan. Sparx is on a prepaid plan. I have no doubt that those charges (multiple charges in one day!) are those of Sparx. We may turn the whole matter over to the police, and let them handle the fraud. We've already cancelled the card, asked for a new card, and have reported the AT&T Wireless charges as fraud.

Garfield leaves with his dad to see the Army recruiter, when he comes home to tell us that he has enlisted. And that he has to go through some training tonight. The_Rose and I beg him to give it 24 hours, because neither one of us is even close to being in the right mind to discuss it, and that we want to have a family dinner. He can't wait, even while insisting that he takes one of our cars, and not his truck. Now The_Rose is upset, because we can't even have what's left of our family stay together.

You might now think that the worst is now over. Oh no. The tale continues!

Just as I'm about ready to get the 4 of us out the door to grab dinner, we have a knock on the door. A social worker from DCF came to investigate a complaint that The_Rose had pulled one of the little ones down by her hair, and rubbed her nose in something, all because she didn't do something right. 6 months ago. There were also complaints about mistreatment of Sparx, but since he was 18, they could do nothing do about it. The social worker talked to The_Rose first, then she talked to the two little ones, then she talked to me. All the talk was about Sparx, with some talk about The_Rose in regards to Sparx.

We do end up getting out of the house, getting dinner, browsing the book store and finally getting home, minus Garfield.

It's past midnight right now (I'm using the start date/time of this blog for the actual time of it) and I'm just now starting to get tired, my brain finally slowing done.

administrivia
I have shortened the description of my blog a little. It's probably still too long for most people, since I run a 1600x1200 resolution on my monitor, and while I don't run full screen in the browser (although I do use the F11 key when I think about it... Try it, you might like it!), it's probably still too long for this template, and running into the links in the upper right corner. Oh well. I might get the template modified to actually be a two line header at some point.

Permanent link posted by bytehead @ 11/03/2003 11:44:00 PM Links to this post