September 11, 2001
9-11

That's today. This is where I was. Right here. Got home from work. Heard about the trade center towers. Turned on tv's...
(unpacked about 5 more from the boxes and tuned in as many channels) I was watching both towers smoke and saw the live feed as first one, and then the other tower collapsed in a great cloud of smoke. Disgustinly amazingly surreal.. this is really happening.. and an attack on the pentagon. Hi-jacked air-liners being used as weapons.

It's time for me to sleep.. but I'm feeling uncharacterically nationalistic and my blood is pumping thru my veins at a higher than normal sleepy time rate. And I have to work again tonight. Bother. Wonder if when I wake up LAX will be gone.

Also, I failed to write about my first earthquake experience, it happened just shortly after my last post on here.. saturday 9/8/01 at 5pm pst...... 4.2 for about 20 seconds.. wiggled me around and gave me a lil rush but nothing fell or broke.. my loose video card connection to the cable was disloged but nothing worse.

End of the world being nigh?
I could use a massage, robot or not.

-oZ
posted by oZ at 10:09

Once again, can't sleep.. almost exactly one week since my last bout of non sleep. This time I fired up the movie I downloaded before hitting the matteress. Moulin Rouge. Strange how I've gone so long w/o seeing this, I'm not usually into musicals..however this film is shot in the fashion of movies that I dig and I almost didn't even notice the singing. A life is sad sorta story.. all you need is love sorta film. At least that's my take.

Last night I saw Rockstar. Impressed by all the different characters Mark W. can pull off.. don't mean in this movie, but like across the board in all the different movies I've seen him in (Basketball Diaries, Boogie Nights, Planet of the Apes.. sure I'm forgetting something.) It's easy to suspend my disbelief cuz It's easy to believe that's really him in those roles. Anyway, tangent me, not my point... That movie was a love story too. What I got from it was this: It's better not to love at all.

Contrasting the two films, conflicting theories on life.. but.. not really. Both are saying there's 2 sides.. One of love and happiness, and One of worldly indulgence. And both end with the characters choosing love. So why would I draw two different conclusions? Two different movies with two different stories, silly, that's why.

And where am I in all this? I have neither side to choose from.

"No romance, no romance, no romance for me mamma"

I'm an alien. I'm a robot. Unhuman in a human shell.
Should I be going thru these human motions? Or should I be trying to find out from where I came?
or
Am I even me? Have I been invaded by another life form and what I used to be is dead and what I am now is the new owner of my body dealing with the memories of the old owner?? Or some hybrid of both of us?

But doesn't everyone have an inner conversation? And was it always so? Has the planet been taken over with such subtileness that none of us noticed? I mean, that's how I'd do it.. but.. if I'm not me and I'm the new me then .. well duh.. OF COURSE that's how I'D DO IT. loopy loopy loopy

Do you think *you're* real?
posted by oZ at 14:19

La la la.. can't sleep.. not even worried about the clowns eating me. but.. tired red eyes, awake head. Thas how it is sometimes.

I was watching the sci-fi channel last night and there's this show I'd never heard of called Farscape. 3rd season underway now, methinks, and they're playing the first couple seasons back to back for ppl like me to catch up. At first I wasn't all that interested, I mean, its nice to see a sci-fi series that's not star trek (which I've never dug), but then I happened to be paying attention on the episode where the character Chiana was introduced. One word: yum. They know I like blue, don't they?

Her name's Gigi Edgley and she looks great out of the make-up too (as a little internet research has shown me). Yes, I can't sleep so I'm cyber-stalking this hot lil aussie that I'll never meet. Le sigh.. sometimes I AM lame.

Otoh.. YOU are reading THIS.

Farscape
Gigi Edgley
Gigi Fanpage
posted by oZ at 11:41

Goodbye Little Red Car...

So months after I bought the mini-suv, I finally connected with a charity (forgot which one now) with a tow-truck guy who's coming to pick up the honda. Talked to him earlier this week and I thought his broken english was telling me he'd schedule a pickup between 8am and 10am after I explained my own scheduling conflictions. This would have been this morning. 9:30 rolled around and no phone calls so I called him. Oh, we'll be there between 8am and 5pm he tells me. BASTARD!! Well, he says, why don't you leave the keys in the car and you won't have to be there. I explain the concept of secure garages and.. finally agree to leave the car parked on the street, knowing that there''s a 50% chance that the ppl we pay to "protect and serve" will "serve" the car with a ticket for expired tags. Anyway, blah blah blah, chance to be taken, I go down and try to start the lil red thing and no luck. But I have jumper cables from the shopping spree at Targét that one day when I bought all that nifty useless (not now, huh?) car stuff. The car was facing the wall though, so I had to push it out far enough to get my other car in front of it.. luckily, most of the tenants here are gone at this time of day and it wasn't much of a hassell. The car's really light, I reckon I coulda just pushed it onto the street.. but turning corners wudda been a bitch with just me pushing and steering.. so...

Cables hooked up, first 4 attempts to start it fail, but the 7th or 8th got it puttering and the 9th or so took. Just the dozen or so yards I drove it remind me how driving a lil car is so different from driving an suv. The difference in handling is amazing. Still, its a stank-ass piece of crap and I'll be glad to be rid of it. Wish I'd make some money back off it, but maybe it'll work out in the tax break.

And that, dear bored reader of my blog, is why I'm still awake at 9:50 in the a.m. and why my fingers are smudged with black. I will sleep soon and when I awake, I will check for the absence of said car. Again I say, Goodbye, little red car.

-oZ
posted by oZ at 09:57

So, Fry's had one of their usual sales.. and I got 512 megs of pc133 ram for 49 bucks. Maybe if your a kiddie then this isn't a big deal but for a computer veteran such as myself.. that's just fucking incredible. [This gives me a total of 639 now -- should be 640 but it shows at 639.. whotever its alot.] And I finally replaced my cd-rw (after over 4 years of good duty at 2x, - only a few problems with the drawer open/close mechanism - ) with a 16x internal unit. Cool deal, it reads back at 40x as well so its a nice upgrade. But..

I went to do my first burn and.. doh, easy cd creator doesn't recognize the burner.. so i reckon I'll install the software that was boxed with it (usually adaptec's easy cd creator comes with EVERYTHING, but not in this case.) There's something called "NTI cd-maker, file CD" that I install and it see's the drive now, yay, but... but.. but...

Nope, it won't accept a normal old cd-r.. it want's a cd-rw.. so i dig one out.. I've never used one of these eraseable cd's yet and figure I'll give it a try.. I format it and wait, and wait and wait, and for over an hour it says its formatting (even after it says its 100% done) and well I just give up.

I've got a copy of Ahead software's nero on my machine so I give that a shot and it too doesn't see my new burner. Poop. Well, almost ready to rip it out and take it back, when I find an update for nero that mentions more drive support added.. so.. a 10.5 megabyte download later (an agonizingly slow 8 minutes.. slow for a cable connection) I'm installing the update and guess what? Nero is seeing the drive now!

1st disk burned, 651 megs onto a 650 meg disk at 16x took 5 minutes and 43 seconds all told.

Good Stuff!

posted by oZ at 02:25

Got home this morning and found my pc dead. Dead. No ressurection, mouth to mouth failed. So I began my autopsy. No funny smells once the skin was off. Could use a dusting I suppose. I ripped out the power supply and called around but, being home at 6am, nobody's open so I dug around untill I found the box with my other computer in it.

My other computer is based on an amd-k5 100, its got maybe a 2g HD and 96 megs of ram. I've got Linux-mandrake on it but forgot my own password, luckily I remembered root. What good that does when the o/s doesn't recognize the network card, I dunno. Some how a computer just seems worthless to me anymore without a net connection.

So I gave up and went to bed.

Got up early and called around. Fry's number doesn't answer. 2nd shop I called wanted 20 bucks to check if my powersupply was bad, and then they cudn't even do that till thursday. Today is monday. I hopped in the car, picked up my contacts from the eye doctor's (hey, I'm up early, I can do daytime things) and just dropped in this tiny lil computer shop on main street. Guy is busy but doesn't complain, tests my powersupply, confirms its dead, and sells me a new one. Took 10 minutes tops.

Came home, slapped it in, and waaazaaalaaa... I'm online.. ok, it scared me at first when I booted up and my mouse wasn't being recognized but 2nd try was a charm in this case and here I am again.

Now I'll bitch about my thumb.
Today, hopping in the car after the computer shop and before home, I was in, was moving the gearstick into first with a quickness but I hadn't taken the parking brake off yet and.. well, I drive an Isuzu Amigo and the parking brake sticks straight out from the dash. First time this has happened to me and I wonder why, but as I slam the stick into 1st my thumbnail catches on the parking brake handle and while the rest of my hand, thumb included, flys forward, the top 1/3rd of my thumbnail stays put. Or tries to. Whot do I have now? A nasty bloody thumbnail.

And looking at my thumb, there's still fresh scratches from the other day when I was busting apart the speaker covers in the back of the car, and some kinda little scrape on the inside of my thumb too.

It's a wonder my thumb doesn't hate me.

I'm sorry my thumb, I'll try to be more gentle.
posted by oZ at 17:00