Ben

Twenty-four hour Turkey people. Happy Tofurkey day, everyone. Granted, this is a little late -- it being 10:30 PM and all -- but I thought I'd make the sentiment anyway.

I drove home today. It was weird: no cars on the road, at all. I picked my sister up at her residence hall around 10:30 this morning, and it took us a half hour to get to the interstate (and to get gas), not because of traffic but because I caught every single light. Driving in Tallahassee is actually less stressful when there's traffic, because you don't notice that you're stopping at every light. Argh.

We got to Venice around 3:30 this afternoon, hung around waiting for dinner, ate way too much food (of course), and then watched TV until about 9. Apple pie. Yum.

Now I'm just winding down. Probably going to go to sleep in a few. Hope everyone is in good spirits! The holiday season is officially upon us, for better or for worse (although I think it's for the better). :)

Looks like I'm going to get an A in that class I was worried about. Go figure. I might have three A's this semester, wouldn't that be awesome for my GPA? (Yes, yes it would.)

Okay, kiddos. I need a hand here: I need to pick a "writing sample" to submit with my IU application. I have three papers to choose from, plus the yet-to-be-finished paper for my Info Needs of Adults class this semester.

If you could help me pick which one I should submit, I would be very thankful. :)

• Web Content Management Systems and Their Role In Any Web Site
• Blind and Visually-Impaired Internet Users and Their Use of Virtual Communities
• Can't See, Can't Use: Inaccessibility in Consumer Electronic Devices for the Blind and Visually Impaired and the Development of Accessibility Standards

Oh, the way she feels about me has changed,
Thanks for playing, try again.
How could I forget?
Mama said "think before speaking."
No filter in my head,
Oh, what's a boy to do?
I guess he better find one.

I'm never speaking up again,
It only hurts me.
I'd rather be a mystery,
Than she desert me.

One more thing:
Why is it my fault?
So maybe I try too hard,
But it's all because of this desire.
I just wanna be liked,
I just wanna be funny.
Looks like the jokes on me.
So call me Captain Backfire.

It's Ms. Pacman, not Mrs. Ms. Pacman was probably a sister or a cousin or something.

New song. It's just me fucking around in drop-D with my new PODxt pretending to be a dual rect. How Incredibly Appropriate. It's about 8 minutes long, and a 9 MB download.

You are 73% Libra

I just got back from Orlando. I'm tired, but I had a good time. Details in the morning when I'm gooder awake.

Keith Richards has been tapped to play Captain Jack Sparrow's father in the Pirates of the Carribean sequel. - RS#962

This is by far the funniest thing I've read in a while: How To Overproduce a Rock Record! I think it's funny now because I get all the jokes about compressing this and that. What I'd really like to learn is how to actually produce a rock record, for real. The internet is somewhat limited. I'd really like to watch it happen in real time... but that'd probably cost money that I don't have. :(

Talking about music, I don't think my album will ever see the light of day with my weak vocals. Not too sure what to do about it, but the mix is inevitably going to be off until I mix in the vocals... the songs just don't make much sense without them.

Spent some time today updating the COSS home page. They wanted to put the new COSS Newsletter bug on the left. While I was knee-deep in the year and a half old HTML and CSS, I realized that this page could definitely handle the XHTML 1.0 Strict doctype. And so, now it does.

Which File Extension are You?

Ol' Dirty Bastard died?!

After an obscene amount of time spent playing my guitar, I'm finally giving up for the night. :) I like my new PODxt Live, but it's going to take a little tweaking to get it working right... and tweaking means thinking... and thinking is something I'm increasingly unable to do as the night passes. So, I'll recharge for a few hours, and get back to work. :P

Marvel Comics is suing NCSoft because City of Heroes allows its players to create characters that resemble trademarked Marvel superheroes. Today's PVP addresses this "issue."

I just did my good deed for the day.

A student came in with a concerned look on his face. He's got a floppy disk in his hand; this isn't going anywhere good. Turns out he's a DIS student who put the only copy of his semester-long paper on a single floppy disk. Now it's turning out "This disk is either unformatted or contains a file system that Windows can't open." He's properly fucked at this point...

... but I had a few tricks up my sleeve. *grin*

On a whim, I thought, hey, we have a Linux installation on one of our junk PCs in the server room. Maybe Linux can brute-force the disk into submission? I did a mount /dev/fd0 and ls /mnt/floppy -- and, oh emm gee exclamation point one one zero one, I get a complete file list! I immediately mkdir ~/floppy and cp * ~/floppy. Success! I'm feeling like a frickin' God.

Except that now it's stuck on the hard drive of a Linux box that also happens to be disconnected from the network. I try to umount the floppy, and remount a new, formatted one, but the OS doesn't seem to recognize the difference... so I'm trying to get the network back up so I can sftp to garnet, but I can't remember how to reinitialize the eth0 interface. It's almost humorous at this point, because I've solved one problem but the net effect is still the same.

Well, long story short, the GUI realizes that there's a floppy mounted, and there's an icon on the desktop. So, I say, hrmm... I try to GUI-copy the files from my home dir to the floppy... and it worked. Insert breath of relief, and I hand the kid a new floppy with the data he needs on it, with the warning that nobody uses floppies anymore and that he should get a USB flash drive instead.

How fucking awesome am I for thinking of the Linux box? lol

Today's daily net search challenge:

There was a female violinist/vocalist who had a pop hit in the mid-90s. A one-hit wonder. I clearly remember that she played her song on SNL with an electric violin. However, I cannot for the life of me remember her name, the song, or any details beyond what I've already told you. This is driving me crazy. Please help!

Update: Maybe she was one of those Lilith Fair disciples?

Forgive me if I completely ruined your friends page by messing with the benclarkblog feed.

I decided to experiment with FeedBurner, and see if I could get some of my supplemental content (Flickr, del.icio.us, etc.) in one XML feed. FB has some potential in this area.

I just got two CDs in the mail from Half.com orders:

(1) "Clumsy" by Our Lady Peace -- just to round out the OLP obsession lately. "4 AM" is such a beautiful song, and who would deny the quality of "Superman's Dead"? All good things.

(2) "Deluxe" by Better Than Ezra -- I forgot how GREAT this CD is... the first two tracks are really bringing back the memories... one particular summer spent programming SuperHOME in HyperCard while listening to my walkman tuned to 107.9. Ahh, fucking nostalgia. :)

I'm fourteen again. *sigh*

I stumbled on and all the world fell down,
And all the sky went silent,
Cracked like glass and slowly,
Tumbled to the ground.
They all say if you look hard,
You'll find your way back home.
Born without a friend,
And bound to die alone.

I'm thinking of your highness,
And crying long upon the loss,
I've found.
And on the plus and minus,
zero chance of ever,
Turning this around.

Why doesn't anyone believe in loneliness?
Stand up and everyone will see your holiness.

They say if you look hard,
You'll find your way back home.
Born without a friend,
And bound to die alone.