Author: jae

note to self: try to figure out why so many people are saying such bad things about Ralph Nader.

i can understand why so many disappointed, cynical people are angered about the way things turned out in ’00, but you just got to realize that getting your flu shot hurts a bit before it makes you better. are we sick of the two-party system that dominates the political landscape of America? you’re @$%& right we are! (shut up, i’m at work right now.) so why aren’t we doing anything about it?

s/he who chooses the lesser of two evils is, in the long run, the worse of three. do your chores first, or no dessert! if we want something, we’ve got to take it, and quit bickering over silly little meaningless crumbs dropped over the table. there’s a banquet going on around here somewhere.

don’t listen to the media, you’ve got more choice in America than that!

new vat layout, draft 1.03.

it’s quite possibly the least semantic markup i’ve ever produced, in terms of making meaningful XHTML that is clear in purpose and intent. it’s also not incredibly extensible, in the sense that if i wanted to make an alternate stylesheet that placed all the different boxes in a completely different order, or give it a radically differing layout, it would be very tricky indeed. for now, i’m content to work within the boundaries i’ve laid down, and improve upon it later.

please, let me know what you think. thanks!

been working on a redesign of the Vat’s website.

it’s going great, aside from a little design setback earlier today (i made a graphic i just didn’t like for the sidebar backgrounds (it’s a 3-column layout), but improved upon it tenfold).

it’s much more colorful, and holds up really well across different browsers, resolutions, and font-settings.

it’s being designed as a very dynamic site, so each page load will display new additional content on a random basis. much of the work behind the scenes will be generated on-the-fly.

christ, why can’t i make a living doing this? this is like the third major site i’ve done pro bono!

today was my manager’s last day at work. i hate goodbyes. i didn’t even say goodbye (or even hello, for that matter). i feel bad about it… and sad. i’m nobody there anyway; just a ghost with a headset. i feel guilty, though: guilty of distancing myself. it was a somber day for me. i’ll miss her; she was a fair, fun, and humane manager. long live Melissa.

not much else to report. the new Beasties LP rips.

you’d never guess who said what about a certain proposed change to state and federal Constitutions that would allow same-sex unions to be banned:

“We meddle with the Constitution to our own peril. If we begin to treat the Constitution as our personal sandbox, in which to build and destroy castles as we please, we risk diluting the grandeur of having a constitution in the first place.”

…former Representative Bob Barr (a conservative Republican from Georgia)!
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5270230/

email posting test

designing an accessible, standards-compliant website is harder than you might think. there’s a million great reasons why you should, though….

An Open Letter to the President of the United States of America

Bloomsday (100th Anniversary of James Joyce’s masterpiece Ulysses)
spooky computing at a distance
next Ramone to die: Johnny (sob!)
guess the dictator (or sitcom character) game
97X to return online!

~and~

Happy (belated) Birthday to mjb!!

another legend has succumbed to the scourge that is heroin…

it occurred to me today: why do i use LJ when i have my own blog? …readership? not a bad reason, considering. and stil, i have this little-used blog sitting over there, collecting dust between LJ entries, while i sit here trying to understand why i can’t seem to get up the nerve to update on my own goddamn site.

so i will, from now on, attempt to post global issues in my blog at transmothra.com, and just post the more personal stuff to LJ.

pissed?

have a paid account? syndicate it using my feed.

have Mozilla Firefox with an RSS aggregator (such as the elegantly simple aggreg8) installed? or some other news aggregator? then subscribe using my feed: RSS 0.92 | RSS 1 | RSS 2

or just add me to your S2 links.

called off work today. had to fix exhaust system. got dual exhaust put on finally. it was cheap ($300), but then again, they didn’t even put on any catalytic converters. which kind of irritates me, being a Green and all. i still need a tune-up badly.

hope i don’t lose my job now!

while i was waiting for it to be fixed, my girlfriend took me out to see Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. not bad. definitely the best of the films.

also got a PS2. our $50 DVD player had stopped reading discs, so i figured it was time to get a multiple-use machine.

=D!!! +5

the Vat guys prefer that i start using pre-made templates on their site. which, you’ll notice, only work with the default font size, for the most part. at least, don’t try boosting up your font sizes unless you want to see a pile of garbage. needless to say, i don’t like them. i’d much rather continue to develop a better interface & backend for the current version.

our phone service has suffered lately. now, when you call, you apparently get 2 rings, then a fax tone, and then nothing happens. period… and here i am, trying to get that web gig without a working phone.

just testing the email post thingy…

your truly, dancing his little ass off, at 1470 West‘s closing party:

more here.

tonight was a night of last goodbyes; of false beginnings, and of false endings…

there used to be this club in Kettering, Ohio, called 1470 West. it was named after it’s own address, at 1470 W Dorothy Lane. it was where a lot of us who never quite fit in, fit in. we’d go and dance our angst out of our bodies as we danced the night away, burning away our scar tissue along to the beat of that primal inner drum.

i was 19, i think, the first time i saw those neon palm trees, and felt the bass pounding in my chest, urging me to move. it was magic, and it was real… and it was ours.

some friends and i used to trip on acid and dance the world away in that place (there i said it!). a lot, needless to say, got figured out under the strobe lights, beneath the fog.

the place burned down several years ago, i hear. i don’t know; i was in Florida at the time. so when they opened the new place, of all places downtown, people whined and said it wasn’t the same. well, i suppose that for a long time that was probably true.

but tonight, that place was 1470 once again. even the old DJ was there (and boy, was he old!). he came out at the end of the night to light a fire of classic early 90s club tracks under some hot, sweaty asses.

the place was packed. i could only get 2 drinks, the lines was so long. i made sure they were strong ones.

i didn’t close the place down like i wanted to, but then again, i am older now, and do not have the stamina like i used to have. and it was so very hot and steamy in there… it was all i could do to keep myself standing, much less moving my ass like some devil-worshipin’ slave to the groove. but i was too hot, and too tired, and absolutely drenched in sweat by the time we left.

it was time. it was time.

i feel much like i just graduated from something. i wasn’t even a regular for these last ten years. but i still consider 1470’s to be my alma mater.

i had some fun there, and got into enough trouble (oh the time i passed out at the bar and woke up being drug on my knees, &c!).

some things never die.

and some things, i suppose, must, eventually.

omg. i got my girlfriend the Sims Deluxe as a reward for landing a job. she makes herself, of course… and she makes Eddie Izzard before she even considers making me.

will be at 1470 West on Saturday. it’s their last ever night.

no more 97x, no more 1470. SW Ohio just got twenty-three times less cool.

yay! i got my mood theme working again!

how much you wanna bet that THIS guy is recently born-again?!

(summary: PT Cruiser runs red light, hits Subaru SUV; SUV vaults through the air, LANDS ON DUDE, dude DIES… and is revived hours later!)

EDIT: since the stupid DDN requies registration, i’ll just pirate the whole god damned story.

Car goes airborne, lands on pedestrian in intersection

DAYTON | Doctors revived a man Sunday just hours after medics pronounced him dead on the scene of a car crash, police officials said.

Dayton Police Sgt. Charles Hurley said Scott Tegtmeyer was walking in the intersection of Third Street and Edwin C. Moses Boulevard at 12:40 p.m. when a Chrysler PT Cruiser ran a red light, struck a Subaru sports utility vehicle and sent it into the air.

The Subaru landed upside down on Tegtmeyer and dragged him several feet across the intersection, Hurley said. Tegtmeyer, bloodied and surrounded by shattered glass, was pronounced dead on the scene, but he suddenly started breathing while in transit with paramedics. By 3 p.m., doctors had fully resuscitated him.

On Sunday evening, he was in the Miami Valley Hospital Intensive Care Unit.

Neither of the female drivers of the vehicles involved were carrying passengers. The woman driving the Subaru was transported to Miami Valley Hospital. Information on the condition of the driver of the PT Cruiser was not available. Hurley said police talked to eight witnesses. He also said it is possible a camera mounted high above the intersection captured the crash.

Dayton police reconstructionists, trained at putting clues together after crashes, were on the scene with digital cameras and measuring devices. The flipped Subaru showed noticeable crash damage on the left body panel. Ten yards away, the customized P.T. Cruiser with a “AAA” sticker on the back of its tinted windows showed damage to its front end.

another political rant in a wedev community.

fuck Israel. and fuck Palestine, too.

thevatmag
my friend Travis is blogging for the Vat now!

welcome to LJ, Trav!