Archive for January, 2004

no, not really. I’m just super-tired and don’t think I can pull myself to blogging tonight. I just had a conversation with a girl who (I thought) came across as very snappy at 2:30am! Watch as Scott grows green with envy. Oh well, don’t fret… I’ll post tomorrow for sure. I guess tomorrow is today.

AS AN APOLOGY FOR NOT BLOGGING…
I uploaded a song that you can all have fun listening to!!! =oD

>>>>> Every Little Thing – Jump (mp3) <<<<<

Leave comments! Tell me what you think!

note: check out this bandwidth. Isn’t it nice? Be respectful though, if I get too many leechers with the mp3, I’m going to have to go back to hosting the songs on my personal server in my room which only uploads at about 35k/s. So, here you go, max your download bandwidth grabbing this mp3 ^_-

Unfortunately, I am a very boring person. Therefore, no one would ever have any reason to read any of the things I write. However, they do. You don’t believe me? Well the very fact that you are reading this line of text that I wrote proves me to be correct. Now the ironic part lies within the fact that people regularly come here to read about the smallest and predominantly meaningless events in the life of a person who has no life. Nonetheless, people do come, and I continue to write. My purpose for writing these things is the hope of creating a nice preemptive paragraph for a mostly meaningless yet interesting question: to blog, or not to blog. That is the question that haunts every waking our I spend in my room. Ok, so I’m not that bad off, but the fact remains that I am boggling less and less with every week that passes. I almost regret sitting down and starting a new entry, until I get a few paragraphs closer to the end. The magic has gone. The excitement has dwindled. And where have all the pretty women gone!? I only meet two or three a week through this website. Oh well. I guess even that is counterproductive, given the fact that they live in some other state or country. One would think that it would do me good to spend less time on the computer and more time living life. I think this is very true, but most people have a false assumption about the subject. For me, doing the computer is living life. Embarrassing? Yes. Strange? definitely. Stupid? Absolutely. But, I will admit that some of the most fun I have is when I’m sitting here doing something constructive, like programming for example. I do things, get things done, learn things, accomplish things, and have something to show for it at the end of the day. Social interaction is an essential part of daily life, but it’s vastly over-rated. Simple mingling with mere acquaintances seems pointless. Don’t get me wrong though, I’d very much like to spend some time talking with someone here and there. The whole thing is an ironic paradox actually. The image I cast attracts a certain type of person. But once someone gets to know me, they see I’m different, and then will slowly back away. So my outer shell attracts people I don’t work well with, and repels the people that I would work well with. Oh well, there’s little I can do at the moment. Plus, I’m greatly over analyzing the subject, and I’m all writing serious, can you tell? Pfft, I need to lighten up. Ok, fun blog today!

What could be more fun to talk about than lamers and AOL? Ok, you got me. A lot could. Oh well, I’ll talk about it anyway. It’s come to my attention lately that a lot of people who come up to me and are like “Scott, I’m a 1337 H4X04″ use America Online. I find this a beautiful irony! It’s common knowledge that anybody remotely knowledgeable with computers will find AOL very limiting and frustrating to work with. Also, anybody with any really great computer skills would never talk in newbish (using numbers for letters). Finally, anyone who knew the first thing about “hacking” would know better than to walk up to someone and say “Hi, I’m a hacker.” Only posers, lamer, and hacker wannabe’s say things like that. So, mix the three, and we get unskilled lamer America Online users! Woo Hoo! You’re cool now! Ok, now a word to any AOL users in the audience. There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with AOL for people who simply use it for email and mild web work and things of that nature. I’m not trying to diss or offend people who use AOL. It’s just that if you want to become “skilled” at anything, you need to drop AOL. Seriously, it’s for your own good, all right? I need to stop bringing back this subject… but I made a really cool graphic in Gimp(.org), don’t you think it’s cute? I need a chick-attractor for once. Ok, so, that’s for all the newbs that IM me claiming to be able to hack me form their seat while they have the little blue AOL logo by their screen name in the Instant Messenger.

The personal blog: a window into a teenager’s life? It’s hard to deny the fact that I write lots of (mildly) personal thoughts, ideas, feelings, annoyances and goals in my blog. One naturally could go to my blog, read a few days of it, and get a really good idea of what is going on in my life. The fact that I write it myself and place it for anyone to read means that I more or less expect at least somebody to read a small part of it every once and a while. Recently, I got to thinking of how this could be used for good uses. I’m trying to bleed into the point of this paragraph, but I can’t think of a good transition. Basically, what I’m trying to say is that if I were a parent and kept claiming to not understand my son, reading his blog would be a quick way to get some information that would shed some light on things, wouldn’t it? I mean, wow! What an awesome tool for a parent to use (covertly, of course) to find out what’s going on in his or her child’s life if they seem to be so interested. Everyone knows that it’s hard to speak perfectly when on the spot, articulating your words in ways that convey the correct emotions, thoughts, ideas, and magnitude of importance and relevance. With the stereotypical communication gap between a child and his or her parent(s), it just seems like if the parent(s) wanted to figure out why things are the way they are, they could turn to it and get all the information they needed and more. I mean, heck, the blogs are written because the writer has information s/he would like to share with everyone. I mean, it sure seems like it sure could put to rest lots of unanswered questions about the views of school, life, girls, etc… along with raising a lot of new levels of awareness to other important issues that need to be looked at (though I wont list those: you have to derive them yourself) What am I saying? I don’t know. Do I want my parents to read my blogs. No, not really. They make a big deal of stupid little things (they read one or two lines here and there and take them way out of context). Then they proceed to discuss the misinterpreted line with each other until they reach critical mass and then blog up about it. Also, they make such a freakin’ big deal of it. Recently, for example, one of my parents walked in my room and saw me working on something with my website on my far right monitor. S/He proceeded to stand there and read it all until they were done with that page and were like “scroll down now.” blah blah. I was able to, in a console, kill it across the screen and let out the proverbial “oops! That was accidental.” because it was just too awkward. I guess I don’t care if they read it, they just need to grow up a little about it ^_^ I’m not trying to belittle my parents’ current ideas on the subject in any way, but I do think that if they stopped and thought about it for half a subject, they’d stop acting so young about it. Ok, there’s my two cents. Watch them now happen to read it all the sudden and this is the first paragraph they read. Knowing them, they’d probably stop here and proceed to “talk to him” about it /rolls eyes/. Oh well.

Scott: Around the world in 80 days? At this point, it’s just a little idea I have. I doubt it will go through, but if I get a ton of good response back from this paragraph, maybe I’ll change my mind. Earlier today (driving to school) I was thinking about how many complain about the pictures of me (or lack thereof) that i show on my website. To add more, wouldn’t it be cool to think of a creative way to do it? Well, my idea was to get pictures from all over the world (80, to be exact) and place me in each one (gimp’ed, of course) in ways that’d be cool, interesting, creative, or funny. I don’t know, does it have potential? No. Ok, I’m an idiot. After proceeding to re-read this paragraph, I just realized how stupid it is. Scratch the idea. Forget it. Never talk to me about it. Ever. I’m an idiot. I um… I didn’t write that paragraph. Misia did. Yeah, blame her.

Scott, you are writing some strange stuff dude… Yeah, tell me about it. Especially the whole blurb about pedestrians. Why am I doing all of this? Well, first of all, it’s mildly relaxing. Second, I actually find it fun. Third, it’s something to show people when the [rare] conversations bring up a subject that parallels it. However, I do have a hidden motive. I truly desire to be able to write well by using a technical and logical appearing text format and still have my writings be powerful and full of emotion or humor. So, in other words, it’s practice… Practice for what? I haven’t decided yet. However, I thought it’d be fun to take a seemingly random subject (but a curiously interesting nonetheless) and write about it. The combination of the seriousness of the technical fashion of writing combined with the implied humor and absurdities might make it really interesting to read. My ultimate goal? I’d like to be able to write well. I’m not asking to have my little articles published in a side column of a magazine (losers-4-life) but I think it’d be nice to be able to write well. I know that I, at least, hold great respect and admiration toward those who can sit down and write nicely flowing articles. Combine this ‘talent’ with humor and bang! You have a new phenomenon of textural entertainment!

Well, I’m off to class in a few minutes, which reminds me… I haven’t talked about my classes for this semester yet! Well, why don’t I wrap up by saying that now. I’m in six college classes at the moment. Monday and Tuesday mornings I have a math class. The teacher is very nice, and explains the math well. She also makes it easy for the people who already know the stuff (me) to sit back and watch as a ‘refresher’ while not requiring much outside of tests and the occasional quiz. I think this is one of my favorite classes for this reason. The next class I have is Chemistry (Tuesday and Thursday mornings). The teacher I have is awesome. He really knows his stuff and has a great teaching voice. He expects us to have come right out of high school chemistry (I haven’t had chem in 4 years!) and needless to say, I am a little behind. However, I’m almost completely caught up. I had to relearn how to calculate the charge of atoms on the periodic chart and relearn the transition metals and other [simple] things that I knew at one point, but have long forgotten. The next class I have is another math class (Tuesday and Thursday nights). This teacher is really nice and a good teacher, but he requires that we turn in homework. And, might I add, he requires a lot of homework! It would look bad if a lot of his students fail, so this is the reason I believe he requires so much. I haven’t started any homework yet (I already know all the stuff) and he’s requiring we show it in five days. I have some work to do! It’s dumb, tedious and unhelpful work. Oh well. The next class I have is on Thursday nights. Just one day a week, but for three hours! It’s macroeconomics. It’s pretty easy I guess. The hardest part is staying awake! My final class is on Fridays only (again, 3 hours). This computer programming class is a breeze, but a nice one at that. I am provided with an Internet-enabled computer during the whole class. I load putty and ssh my home network and use GCC (the C compiler I use to test my homework projects) and proceed to finish all the homework he assigns as he assigns it. I’m done with it all before he even dismisses class. I’m sure this will change in a few weeks, but for now it’s nice. Oh yeah, I kinda forgot one. My chemistry class has a lab too. It’s right after class on Thursdays. Thank goodness, I have an intelligent (and semi-sane) lab partner! That really helps. I can’t help but reflect back on my days of high school chemistry lab projects with a partner who was a very very nice girl who didn’t speak much. I guess this one is a contrast, but a refreshing one at that. So, there you go. I need to pack up and get ready for trig class and macroeconomics right after that. I’m sure I’ll have plenty of time to blog tomorrow. Have a good day everybody!

Pedestrians: the roaches of the American road. People may claim that their only method to get from their house to their work or school is to walk. Some people take strolls on the pavement as a means of relaxation and recreation. People may say that walking on the sidewalk is limiting and that the road offers a greater experience. Others claim that walking to work or school outside in the fresh air on a nice day makes them feel good inside. Screw them. Meanwhile, the one hundred and fifty million car owners have to risk lives and lawsuits weaving in and out of the seemingly endless plethora of men and women of all ages and sizes who feel it is their personal duty to act upon their privilege to walk in the road. These pedestrians, as they’re referred to in court, are a non-escapable nuisance of life in America today.

Walking in the road is dangers. Every year, more than eighty thousand pedestrians are injured by motor vehicles. Every day, almost fifty road-walkers are killed by cars. There is no escaping the fact that walking in the road is dangerous. Remember when your second grade teacher told you not to play in the road after she caught you mooning traffic in the median? Everyone has grown up knowing that roads and highways are dangers places to play. Why are these rules any different for people who decide to walk in the road? Why is loitering in the road considered to be such an ignorantly stupid thing, while walking in it is a common practice that’s even supported by law? If an accident occurs involving a pedestrian, most often the car driver is declared “at fault”. The (then happy) pedestrian gets to take off work, lounge around the hospital, and get paid not to work while the driver who hit him has to pay fines and increased insurance rates.

And now, the interesting part. Did you know that every year, more drunk pedestrians are killed than drunk drivers? Drinking and driving may be dangerous, but you should always remember: Never drink and walk. Walking while under the influence of alcohol can create unsteady balance and wobbling of the legs causing the pedestrian to walk out into swiftly moving traffic. Drunk pedestrians lack proper judgment. Obviously, not all pedestrians are drunk; so why do we see so many judgment-lacking pedestrians? Every day while driving to college and/or work, I pass people who walk, stroll, or jog in the road. Rarely do I come across an alert pedestrian. They are most often walking in a daze biting their fingernails or picking their noses. They don’t stand near the outside edge of the road, they stand right on top of the little white separator line. While this might be considered “a good idea” because they are legally protected in court if (when) they are hit by a motor vehicle, there is a fundamental flaw. Getting hit by a car huts like crap. Why would anybody with a proper sense of judgment want to walk in the side of the road? I may understand this pastime if you’re walking on the left side of the road facing oncoming traffic so you can jump out of the way if somebody is too close to the edge. However I don’t see any logic or reasoning in walking on the right side of the road with headphones on looking the opposite direction with headphones on. It is these people that are unknowingly turned into fertilizer when large vehicles drive around a corner and plow right into the stupid pedestrian slamming them to the edge of the street and rubbing their body into the sidewalk killing them (almost) instantly.

You’re probably asking yourself, “but what can I do?” There is not much you can do to stop pedestrians from using the streets, however you can do a lot to help control the mindless sheep who pollute the roads. First of all, you should all practice swiping. For those of you who do not know what swiping is, it is a little act that can greatly reduce the number of pedestrians on the road. There are two main methods of swiping, though more can be creatively devised.

The first and most common method of swiping occurs if you see a pedestrian in the road near you. You are to accelerate softly, so as not to startle the away-facing pedestrian, and drive very close to the edge. Pedestrians like to push the limits by standing right on the white line. Although their arms, torso, and sometimes head is on the left of the line, their feet are technically inside the allowed region. So, you too can play their game and drive right on the white line. Although your tires are within the allowed region, your vehicle side, door, handles, and side view mirror are graciously positioned to the right of the rim of your tires. Thus, when you meet the pedestrian, you can usually do a pretty good job at transferring the acceleration from your car into their upper body, usually creating a twist/fall motion in the pedestrian causing them to crawl off the road. In the event that an arm is unfortunately severed, you must stop, pick it up, and return it. If a pedestrian’s limb detaches from his or her body, it is a ton of fun to go and pick it up though. Don’t take it for yourself, however. That is stealing. (arm-robbery?)

The second method of swiping that you can do with your motor vehicle is called NMF (not my fault – pictured). Although it sounds simple, this maneuver is far more difficult to do, however is does have better results. When you see a forward-facing pedestrian from a long distance, try to drive as close to the right of the road as you can, all the way in the side lane. Even though you are in their space, continue driving right next to the road. Chances are, you will be seen by the pedestrian. They will have to make a choice. a.) step in the grass, b.) step in the road to avoid the car, or c.) get ground into the pavement. Unfortunately, option c is rarely chosen. Surprisingly, most pedestrians do not choose a (to walk in the grass) because it might soil their new shoes. They choose to walk in the center of the road instead (since you’re on the far right). Now the fun comes in. Slow down (as necessary) to try to get a vehicle behind you. Then, when you’re almost about to get to the level of the pedestrian, slam on your breaks (”to avoid from hitting the pedestrian”) and the car behind you will quickly change lanes to avoid hitting you. This driver, however, has accomplished two things. First, he has avoided from hitting you in the road. Secondly and more importantly, when he switched lanes he plowed right over the pedestrian. Congratulations! You’ve killed a pedestrian, and it’s not your fault.

Encourage pedestrians. Pedestrians, being the small minded and most likely insecure brainless humans that they are, need encouragement to do simple everyday tasks. You can help reduce the number of pedestrians by encouraging them to walk in groups. This way, when an accidental pedestrian killing occurs, more pedestrians are killed at once. This greatly reduces the number of individual incidents, while increasing the amount pedestrians that are disposed of. So remember, if you must walk on the road, walk in groups. The larger the group of stupid people, the better. (note: cheerleaders make great groups of pedestrians) This way, instead of just one or two people being killed by a semi, thirty or forty people can go at the same time.

Scott, don’t you think doing this is wrong? I certainly do. I think that we should not be planning to strategically kill pedestrians. I do not believe that hitting them by cars is a good thing. I think they need to all be rounded up and shipped to an island somewhere in the middle of the ocean. But, unfortunately, since this is not possible, killing and injuring them will simply have to do.

Ahh, the reassuring comfort of silence. I have chosen to take twenty four hours of my life and ‘unplug’ from the things that are so frustrating. In case you haven’t known me for long, this is something I try to do at least every two months. Some times, you just get overwhelmed with the sheer volume of stupid little things that you know you should do, the dumb little things you have to do, and the beautiful things you wish to do. I’ve found that every once in a while (when stuff seems to really pile-up) it’s good to take a day off from the frustrating world of these assumed responsibilities to refresh your mind and make your priorities clear. I will do this by unplugging from everything. By this, I mean that I literally unplug my monitors (yes, all of them) and spend a day (or more) detached from the computer. This is a great way to once again realize that all the little people that email, instant message, and contact you over the Internet are relatively unimportant when compared to the responsibilities of real life. No, I don’t need to stop what I’m doing and email somebody how to rebuild their monitor. No, I don’t need to tell some kid how to use a raid drive with the latest kernel version. No, I don’t have a responsibility to help every little newbie that IMs me with silly little questions about Linux that they’re too lazy to google for themselves. Today, I unplug, and enjoy life as a normal human. So, if you try to contact me and I remain mysteriously silent, now you know why. I just needed to spend a little time away [from people like you] to induce a little reboot in my mind. Thanks for understanding! However, during this time, I do use a computer to do one thing. Blog. That way, it’s one way communication. People can still find out about me, and I can still talk to people, but I don’t have to worry about them harassing me back. So, here you go, I hope you enjoy it. =o)

All right, to start off this refreshing day, let’s jump right into the subject of all the people that actually do like my website. I’ve flirted a little bit with the subject in the previous post, but I haven’t gone in much detail with it. ScottIsHot.com was born only eight months ago. I started the website as a name for myself that would be easy to remember. I never intended to make a real website out of it. I was running many servers at the time for friends and things (ftp server, irc server, etc) and scottishot.com was easier to remember and to type than nibjb.sytes.net. However, since I had the domain name, I figured I’d might as well put a website on it. I had previously created a [small] blog, and thought I’d simply continue it on my new website. I slowly added things that I thought were cool, and transformed it from an informational website to more of a mainstream personal website. That sounds like an oxymoron, but it’s not. The two words do clash harshly, but I try to maintain both. At this point, I get about twenty thousand hits (with over two hundred thousand files served) every month. Why do I get so many people interested in my relatively small website with little more than some technical writings and a personal blog? I am honestly amazed, and I don’t completely understand it, but I do like to think that I have a solid hypothesis and I try to mold my site around it to make it better for everyone. People come to my site because they connect with it. I think [almost] every person can find something on my site that they feel they connect with; from the strange perspectives on life, love, liberty, and happiness, to my Apache configuration files. People, when they’re slightly bored with a computer in front of them can type-in scottishot.com, press enter, and read the latest day in the life of this mysteriously anonymous Scott character and have a feeling of connection. Some people like it because it makes them feel like they have an eventful life (in contrast to my somewhat-predictable [boring?] life). Others live vicariously through the very act of reading about the things that happen to me. Since so many people have so many different reasons, I try not to cater to any one group, and my blog topics cover an staggeringly wide range of topics. The simplicity of my writings combined with the ease of contacting the writer and intermingled with the feeling of being able to really be a part of my life is how I keep the feeling of closeness with my readers. Anyone can reach me, anyone can ask questions, and anyone can get talked about! Since they feel they’re a part of my life, they can come and read any enjoy it. So, there you go. Those are some of my ideas of why I get so many people coming to my website. I may have hit a few points there that seemed right, or I may have gotten it all wrong, who knows. If you have your own theories, feel free to comment about them and I may write about them in tomorrow’s entry!

So, you figured me out ‘eh? I get a lot of people these days that think they’ve gotten me figured out. They see the things I say, the things other people say about me, and draw a [semi-logical] conclusion about why I act the way I do and why I think the things I think. I think almost everyone that knows me well has their own ideas, but the funny thing is that so many of them are different! I try to encourage people not to jump to conclusions about me, because they can often appear logical but because of some small thing that you don’t know, they’re completely wrong. This can be very detrimental when you base other ideas on that fundament[ally wrong] assumption and say things to or about me that just… eek… it’s a mess.

Ya’ know, I look/listen at/to strange things ^_^ You’ve probably noticed my strange ramblings about browsing deviant art and listening to foreign non-English music, but you may not have realized why I like it so much. Well, I’ll clue you in. First of all, one of my favorite things to do for fun and relaxation while at my computer is to go to deviant art (.com) and simply browse a few hundred of the millions of pages of user-submitted art. I will look through the pages of thumbnails and then open-up the pages of images I like and if they’re really good, I’ll look up every thing that artist posted. I tend to be drawn to images that tell a story. I especially like it when these stories are surreal of fantastic, telling of strange places and far away lands. Look around my blog and it’s archives. I’d say 95% of the images I use come from deviant art (.com). If you’re bored, it’s a great place to go to spend some time. However, be warned: it’s very addicting. I go to it and browse about four times a week. Some times I can go two or more days without looking at deviant art, but much longer and I start going through withdraw symptoms. On a slightly different subject, a few years ago a friend of mine got me started on watching a foreign film. I ended up really liking it (even though it was subtitled) and downloaded as many more similar foreign films as I could. I found some awesome movies, and I noticed that some of them had really cool music. After searching for and downloading the music, I proceeded to download as many songs from the same bands as I could because I liked it so much. Then, I found an online radio station that played Japanese music twenty four hours a day. Japanaradio (.com) was this station. Now, years later, I still listen to this station almost all hours of my day. I don’t even listen to American singers anymore. I’m almost all about Korean and Japanese music. I also don’t listen to music where guys sing… only girls. I don’t know why it’s this way, but I just don’t like the feeling from hearing a guy sing softly to me. It’s unsettling. I think that listening to music with words that are not understandable is cool, because you can make-up your own meaning for the songs. You have all the advantages of being able to listen to a woman sing beautifully, with none of the disadvantages of having to hear the shallow lyrics. This, my friend, is why I listen to foreign music! Also, I like Korean and Japanese music because I’ve come to really like listening to the language. Chinese is a little harsh, German seems a little cold, French is a little sloppy, and Thai music is too hard to come by these days ^_^
note: the image on the right is of Boa, one of my favorite Japanese singers.

60 minutes to live, what would you do? Yesterday, I drove my sister and her friend to a movie (they wanted to go and didn’t have a car, and I was bored and wanted to get out, so it worked out well). On the way home, they both were tired in the back seat and seemed to be right ton the edge of falling asleep, when my sister’s friend said, “If you only had one hour to live, what would you do?” What a strange question, but wow, it really does make me think to answer. Both of them just spat out “I’d call as many of my friends as I could in the 60 minutes.” However when I thought about what I’d do, i had a hard time thinking of something. I don’t say this in a bad way at all, so don’t take it the wrong way, but… I don’t really have anyone I’m close to. I don’t have any close friends. I don’t think I’d call anyone. Maybe I’d call my parents, to tell them where I’ve hidden my “if I die” paper (yeah, I have one, and you should too), but other than that I can’t think of anything I’d do. I think I’d like it to be night time, and a little cold… and I’d put headphones on and walk around alone outside somewhere. That’s the time I most value =o) So, as strange as this paragraph is, I actually was able to conclude with a somewhat sane answer. Ironic? A little. Why, are you mad? Yes?! Ok. /sigh/ I’ll say it. “If I only have one hour to live, I’ll do my best to blog in the 60 minutes I have.” =op

Well, it’s time for me to go. I have this thing I have to go to for school (yeah, I know it’s Sunday) so I need to leave in about ten minutes. I planned to write more, but yet again the clock is my limit. Oh well, I’ll have plenty to write about tomorrow afternoon. To everyone who reads my blog and supports me, thank you. To everyone who reads my blog and condemns me, get a life. To everyone who reads my blog and remains silent, you need need to talk more. To everyone who doesn’t read my blog, what’s it like to be sane?

postnote: I finished my hw and decided to do something on the computer that did not involve communicating with others. So, I spent a little time and cranked-out the layout I had in my head for a few weeks. What do you think?

Man, this is going to be rough, but I’m going to push my way through it! You see, right now the last thing in the world that I want to do is sit down and write this blog. However, I’m sure once I get into it, I’ll be able to enjoy it again. You’ve most likely noticed that I haven’t posted for the last few days. I (for the first time in a while) disappeared for seventy two hours without notice. People who tried to contact me couldn’t get through, people who emailed me didn’t get their mails returned, and people [desperately] going to my website were unable to read the latest events of the life of Scott. Forgive me! This one was [mostly] out of my hands. And by the way, if you feel deprived, because your lack of Scottness in the last few days, you are addicted my friend. No worries though! It’s all good. It’s time for me to start blogging again. I have peeled off the shell of procrastination and jumped into the hot tub of accomplishment (splashing some productivity out around the edges from the waves of change). I’m talking in directionless riddles. You know what that means! No more introduction; It’s time to start the blog.

Scott! Where have you been? Well I did address the fact that I had stepped away from my computer for a few days, but I did not go into the reasons why. Truth be told, I was captured by the RGB and lights were flashed in my face. Oh wait, that was last night trying to fix my monitor. (get it, rgb? Wow. Dumb.) I think I’ll work backwards. As you can tell from the dry and pointless attempts at comic relief spewing from my mouth, I didn’t get an excess amount of sleep last night. My parents were gone last night and my sister (14) had a friend over to spend the night with her. We watched movies until the wee hours of the morning. Then they went to sleep… and i started a blog. I started this blog, actually. The funny thing was that by the second paragraph I couldn’t comprehend what I had actually written. I had typed so near the edge of my consciousness that I would slip in and out of sanity while curiously typing throughout the whole ordeal. I ended up giving up, closing the window, and setting up my bed [a blanket on the floor] and went to sleep. The days before that were pretty much the same. I woke up early, went to school, got home, studied and/or went to work, went to night classes, got home late, went to sleep, and repeated the process. However, I’m sure you’re like “yeah right Scott, you’re going to try to tell me you didn’t have time to blog?”. From the very moment I wrote those previous words, I knew I’d get flooded with people trying to chew me out for not blogging. (more on this later). So, I figured I’d go on and explain. My hard drive died. Dead. Unfortunately, it’s my main workstation’s hard drive that I do (/did) everything on. I decided, however, that this was a glorious opportunity to rebuild Linux on a fresh hard drive in a patient and methodical way; a great contrast from the previous Linux installation that was done in haste with little care. So, for the last few days I’ve been stuck in a console. Only now do I have X up for a GUI, a web browser installed so I can go to deviant, gimp to edit the images I find, and open office to type this blog in so I know I’m spelling everything correctly. Could I have simply used another computer? Yes, and I’m sorry.

Dude, you’re freaking out about this. No one cares how often you write. One would think that, wouldn’t they? However now I’m faced with the strangest crowd of [obsessive] blog readers. Every day I’ll get about 30 IMs from new people who stumbled upon my website and decided to contact me. The strange thing is that I missed two days’ blogs and I got at least three times that many from people who were like “yo, you skipped a day! Get back on it man!” As odd as it seems, and as difficult as the concept is to grasp, people actually do thoroughly enjoy my website [especially the blog] and make it a small [but stable and reliable?] sliver in their day to day life. I have yet to figure out the mystery of what attracts these strange people, but I do find a little bit of comfort knowing that there are people out there that have just as little of a life as myself. All right, it seems like all I talk about in my blogs these days is the blogs themselves. No one wants to read about that! On to bigger, better, and infinitely more intriguing topics, like the way my room looks ^_-

Ok, Scott, in yours pics you have… two chairs at your desk. Wow, you are an observative one aren’t you? In case you have no idea what I’m talking about, you can see my collection of pictures of my room through various times in the past few months. Notice that in all of these, I have a desk with spots for two chairs. I haven’t gotten a whole lot of people ask me about this, but I have gotten just enough that i figure it merits a healthy mention in the blog mud pit. About three years ago, I had a desk chair that broke. About the same time, my mom’s parents (my grandparents. Duh.) moved houses. They had an extra desk chair left over and offered it to me. The desk chair was nothing special; a little gray cushion and small backrest on a black body. Strangely, a few months later, I got the identical chair given to me from somebody else (who I have forgotten). So, two matching desk chairs that fit me perfectly and are usefull for so many things now exist in my room. I figure, if I have them, why not arrange them in a way that they can both be used at once? I can slide my desk chair back and forth between two positions to work on two computers, or better yet, I could work on one system while somebody else [sitting next to me] is working on the other. After the first few months of doing this, I became so accustomed to the strange benefits of having multiple chair spaces at my desk that whenever I moved my room around, I made sure I had room for two people to sit. It because a strange desire for me… not an obsession or anything like that… I just felt happier when I had another chair beside me. Since then it’s evolved into a very strange situation. Two chairs [romantically] placed side by side and I’m always in one while the other one is always empty (with the exception of the occasional school book). So, there you go. You now know that I have a… ‘thing’ for having a chair [empty or not] next to me. Call it optimism. Call it nostalgia. Call it self delusion. You can even call it a nonsensical prospect of an aspiring lunatic mind. You can say what you want, just don’t move my chair ^_^ (o… k… that was the weirdest thing I’ve ever written in my whole life)

Another awkward bloggish intimidation Scott? As if your imagination cannot supply your mind with a vivid picture of the awkwardness this blog causes at times, I will describe in some detail something that happened this morning that was nothing short of ridiculous. I have a website which I work to maintain with my own time by my own means using my own funding. Some people rebuild cars, some people tile floors, I add to my website. Not everyone likes cars. Not everyone likes tile floors. Not everyone will like my website. Live with it, move on, and leave me alone about it. There’s no need to rub someone’s face in the fact that you simply don’t see the point [reason? Logic?] in someone’s hobby [for relaxation]. However, something weird happened earlier today. The actual confrontation wasn’t weird, but the way I responded in my mind was very strange. Afterwards, I tried to figure out what caused me to reason the way I did. Ok, I’ll back up. I was sitting in my room like a good little boy in front of three monitors and configuring something in a console. One of my parents walked in my room and started talking to me. I slowly responded, but didn’t feel the caliber of the conversation was to a level high enough that it would be rude for me to continue working in the console as I spoke. So, being the [curiously bizarre] multitasker that I am, I continued to work on my far left monitor as I talked. About thirty seconds into my spiel about things I’ve long since forgotten, I noticed that that parent was looking at the far right monitor where I had happened to leave my website up. “Is this your website Scott?” Now cut for just a second. Why do I do this? Every time someone confronts me in the flesh about reading [live] my blog, I freak out. Right now, I just realized that I’m breaking a sweat typing about it. Are these nerves? Why!? Ok, so, anyway, I gently resisted because I didn’t want to stop doing what I was working on and also because I didn’t want him/her to stand beside me and read all that stuff. Sit down at least, in another room. However, (yet again) my resistance was taken as concealance and then s/he demanded that I load it again so s/he could read it. Why does this keep happening? (me resisting for one reason and having it be taken as “Scott’s hiding something” Well to make a long story short, I tried my best to smooth talk my way out of the strange situation and succeeded in doing so. However one thing that I thought was funny was that h/he [threatened?!] to go to someone else’s house who had the Internet and “read it all.” The funny thing is that s/he could have done that at the computer in the kitchen, but s/he has a silly idea that my website is blocked on it. Isn’t life funny some times ^_^

Yes, well, I’m about to leave so I need to wrap up. I doubt I’ll be writing again today because I do have a lot of schoolwork I’d like to get done. After that, if it’s still early enough to keep my eyes peeled open, I’ll see if I can blog some more. Otherwise, expect an entry Sunday afternoon or night. Also, you should keep your eye out for a refurbished layout one of these days… wink wink. All right, well I apologize for my stoic seriousness in today’s post and the lack of interesting information… but like I said, today’s post was more of a “house cleaning” and hopefully tonight’s / tomorrow’s will be more of a game of twister while eating Oreo cookies in front of the TV watching the Jetsons, and other strange examples of things that rarely happen… But aren’t the experiences enjoyful, nostalgically reflected on in pure bliss? Ok, Scott’s getting ahead of himself. Save it for the next blog buddy. Oh yeah, Scott forgot to add an image to this post. Pfft, what a dork. I’ll have to select one for him at random… Oh yeah, while I’m at it, I think that Scott’s blog might do better of all the images he adds have the cool (gimp’ed script-fu) faded edges on them. What do you think? My reasoning is that it might make the page flow better and not seem as sharp around the edges.. but feel free to comment. All right. That’s Scott, I’m the narrator, and you know who you are.

Is a late new years resolution brewing in Scott’s little mind? Possibly. Although I asked for suggestions and ideas for a new years resolution many months ago, Jan 01 came and I didn’t get any that stuck me as good. Well, a few were really good, but they simply weren’t possible. One of the ideas that’s been rolling around my mind is the concept of organization. I’m not talking about “Ok now Scott, put your pencils on your left and pens on your right.” No no, I’m talking about organizing my goals. I have a few long term plans / goals that I have set in my mind. I strive to obtain these by the things I do every day (school, work, etc.) However, the sloppynes of my own mind (that’s shown through my life) is what is staring to bother me. Although the long-term goals projects I have are constantly in my mind, the short-term projects are the ones I have a ton of trouble with. I keep hopping on one project, then stopping it to put my time into another project, then I get distracted with an idea, and that leads me to do something else for a while… By the time I have a minute to stop and think what I’ve actually done in the past few months, I see little more than a jumbled up pile of unfinished projects, or plans that got placed on hiatus. In the past few months, I’ve kept three note cards on my desk at all times. The first one is my long-term goal card. I literally write the things I want to do with the rest of my life. It may seem stupid, but if you actually do jot down four or five points, it’s a nice way to put things in perspective later on. The second card is a “I want to” card. Here, I write down all the things I would like to do. This can be anything, from meeting friends to making web sites to buying a computer or writing software. This card serves mainly as a reminder card of things to start working on once I have some free time. So, when free time comes, I grab my favored few items off of the “I want to card” and put them on my “short-term” card. This card gets changed every day practically, and often thrown away and a new one is created. On the short-term card, I write the things I want to do within the next one or two weeks. I cross items off as I do them. I really don’t like removing items off the list without doing them (giving up) so I try hard not to add something unless I think I really can do it. I know you’re thinking “Why Scott? Why all the trouble?” and I’m glad you asked. So many people these days seem to get bored and have time to kill. They even get frustrated because they have nothing to do. It’s usually in these times when people mope around their house and get all depressed and stuff. Although I doubt I’d take it to that extreme, I do very much hate having nothing to do. So, with a list of projects to work on, I always have something to do for twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. I’m going to see about placing these 3 lists on a section of my web site so other people can see what things I’m planning on doing and I might even get some motivation out of it. The assumed responsibility of knowing other people see what you want to get done is enough to motivate you to get it done faster. So, there you go. My final polished resolution is to get more organized with my time and my projects and not have so many hanging projects that I never finish. Ya’ happy? No? Go away.

What’s up with all this gothic/gangster stuff? I know these two ’styles’ have been around for a while, but all the sudden it seems (in my area, at least) that people want to be one of these. I cannot tell you how many people contact me these days and tell me they’re either a gangster, or gothic. First of all, let’s take a look at the gothic crowd. I have nothing aginst them, I mean, hey, they’re people too… they just dress weird. I know (personally (in the flesh)) a few people who are gothic and are very nice. However, there are two things I simply don’t understand. First of all, “Why do they call themselves gothic?” I mean, (correct me if I’m wrong) isn’t gothic a simple term that describes something about or relating to the middle ages? These people wore brown clothes and warriors wore armor. I don’t see the connection between the people who lived in the middle ages who’re referred to as “goths” and the black-dressing spike-decorating face-painted black lipstick people today who call themselves by the same title. I guess it doesn’t really matter, it just strikes me as funny. The people I know that are gothic don’t have answers either. I ask them that question, and only one of them has even heard of gothing meaning the middle ages. Well, yeah, beside the technicality, my second question is “why?” I guess this question may appear shallow, stupid, accusing, demeaning, etc… but it really is made of a purely curious intent: “so… why be ‘gothic’?” The 2 most common answers I’ve gotten is “to be different” and “to have friends that are like me”. I guess those count a little. I don’t know, I’m just weird. I got to thinking about it in the car earlier today and I thought I’d put the subject up for discussion and ask you all what you think. So, drop any comments you might have, and if any real “gothic” people want to clue us in to the truth, that’d be great. And, oh man! I almost forgot. Gothic, ok, I’m all right with that. It seems… sane. But what the heck is this uprising trend of gangsters? I will admit I’m practically clueless on this aspect. I don’t know what, who, why, when… I don’t know any of this stuff. All I know is that I’m getting people come up to me and be like “yo I’m a gangsta” like it’s really cool. I don’t know if the ‘gangster’ style is a style, or people who really think they’re tring to be gangsters. Correct me if I’m wrong, but if you want to be a gangster, don’t you just have to join a gang? I’m confused. I see lots of little 14 year old white boys outside of school with huge jeans and sweatshirts loaded with fat ‘ol gold neckace jewlry and a hairnet to top it all off. Somebody clue me in to this one?

Well I’m off to work… I’ll post more later. I just got back from my classes and I don’t have any more tonight… but… I do have a lot to stuy /sigh/. I’ll try to put in as much time as I can into work, but I have so much to do! Ahh! I know what you’re thinking “how could you blog all this junk if you’re running out of time?” Well, the answer is that I’m eating lunch, and this only took me 15 minutes so far. I know, I’m bad. I’m putting my blog before work, school, and life. Oh well, call me mister butterfinger. Check back later and I’ll finish this thing…

Yes, that’s right! … or at least it was a few hours ago when I started this much of the blog and then procrastinated for many hours. Nonetheless, here I am, and here you are. How do I know you are sitting there reading this page? It’s because I know you’re sitting there reading this page! Wow, you are stupid. Ok, let’s see what’s on the serving tray for tonight! I’m in a funny mood and remain indecisive on the topics I’d like to talk about. Yes, I’d like to talk about them all, but it’s already 7:30 and I have some homework I’d like to knock out tonight. Needless to say, I don’t have the luxury of infinite amounts of time blogging. Instead of breaking off a new paragraph at this point to form a new thought, I’ll use this sentence as a transition into a new idea. This way, it looks like my webpage has larger paragraphs and smoother thoughts. How silly. Anyway, the first thing I wanted to talk about tonight in my blog is my blog. You know, the little thing you’re reading now. Believe it or not a lot of thought, determination, and work goes into these crazy little postings. Can you believe it’s already been almost two weeks since that seven thousand word post? It’s about to run off the page and be more or less lost forever. I will be saddened when this happens, but also happy in the idea of the past being erased behind me and I have a blank slate from which to carve ahead of me. My last few blogs have been pretty skimpy, and I’m sorry. I have been really busy lately and I haven’t had the kind of time that I wanted to be able to devote to these blogs. Now that the apology is over, I can continue on with the rest of the blog. I will start a new paragraph, but I will only slightly deviate from the topic at hand.

Future changes to this blog are always churning as ideas in my mind and aspirations in my heart. (Wow, that was poetic. I should write “the computer lovers book of poetry and love stories”) Where was I…oh yes! Changes. See how at the bottom of each blog entry, the separator has changed a little bit? No longer does simple white space separate blog entries! I added cool little icons and clickey thingies and even something so fancy as a dashed horizontal line. I also added an automated word counter, so I no longer have to waste time going into a JavaScript cut and paste script to determine the length of the blogs after I write them. It’s all 100% automated, so I can go back later and add a few words or remove some and the number is automatically updated. However, there is a small problem. The word counter seems to be a little on the low side. That blog I wrote last week that I claimed was 7200 words only showed up as 6800 words. I think the main differences lie in the way that the word counters process small words. I’ll have to look this up to be sure, but it’s my guess that the automated word counter doesn’t count words that are 3 characters long or less. Enough with the technicalities! I’m sure (or mostly sure) that you read this paragraph because you were curious of the other ways in which I could change this blog. Well, I do have one more idea that’s rolling around the back of my head, but I think it may be years before I go through with it. For now, I think my blog will change here and there around the edges, but more or less be the same. In the future, I thought it’d be cool to make this blog video. That’s right, forget the text: it’d be video. I’m not sure if it’d be just for me or possibly public for everyone, but I have some time to figure things like that out. The cool part is that I can talk freely and continuously. Another cool aspect is that I’ll be able to see the way I look. I wish I had started this when I was 12! It would have been awesome to be able to watch videos I recorded of myself talking to my webcam, and it would have been awesome to be able to go back and watch myself grow up. However, I didn’t do this, so the question sits at my door. I know I wish I had done this in the past, but is now a good time to start? It’s funny. I sit here thinking “uhhgg I don’t think I could make myself sit down and talk to my web cam when I have so many other things I could do” and suddenly I flash back to myself saying “uhhgg I don’t think I could make myself sit down and type a blog when I have so many other things I could do.” I think it’d definitely be possible and possibly even probable (oxymoron?) However there are more questions. Is this a threat to my personal safety? Would I get self conscious and have to do my hair just right before I blog every day? Would I lose all care in how I look and come across a lazy bum? What if I just keep this private? Or would I make it public? How weird is something like this? I could do it audio-only (mp3?) which would make it really easy to move over the internet and hey, why not make it public. I mean, if I simply read my blog to a microphone, compressed it into mp3 format and sent it out… would it be more interesting to listen to? I think that reading gets boring over time… but my voice gets simply annoying. I don’t know though, you all are welcome to comment and cast me your ideas. Oh yeah, a post thought that coming back and adding in a while after: take a look at my quotes. Instead of normal quotes that all look the same, I’m using a plug-in for movable type (my blogging engine) that corrects quotes with the correct “curvie” quotes. See? Nice.

Thinking back to myself at 13, I’ve learned a lot since then! I just had a flashback to myself sitting on a windows 98 computer poking around the control panel and saying to one of my friends “I really like this operating system.” I’ve come so far in my accomplishments and achievements… or have I? When looked upon in a different light, what have I actually learned since then that’s of any value? Beside a [slightly] deeper understanding of scholastic subjects (history, math, etc.) and a little more experience with computers, what’ve I gained? I think that if you try to measure a man’s life by his actual personal accomplishments, you will usually not get very far. Even the most successful of people don’t always have incredibly accomplishments that make you stand back and go “wow.” I think that more importantly than the accomplishments you make yourself are the bonds you make with other people. Being able to say that you gained trust and friendship from genuinely nice people and also returning these qualities is actually pretty cool, when you think about it. The more you work to do something, the less impacting it is. (Work varies inversely with time exponentially) Oh no, I just restated what I just said mathematically. See? I’m turning into a nerd. A geek. A whacko. I don’t wear glasses with masking tape holding them together above the nose… but I think if I did, I’d be the stereotypical image of a geek. This leads me right into my next point of how different I as a person am. Despite the obvious physical changes, I think I’ve really changed a lot in my mind. Around the age of 14/15 I shut myself in a room and detached myself from the world (in a good way!) and started becoming a solitary worker. I don’t know if it was a good thing or a bad thing, but it certainly is how I am now. Long hours of frustrating work that tries the patience of anyone seems to be little of a problem for me if I’m in my own room and setting my own pace. I remember reading documentation and making things in Flash (4!) and 3dsmax (3.1!) back in the good ‘ol days while the kids at school were making model airplanes. It’s strange to talk about now because something very strange has happened in the last two years. People at younger and younger ages are having access to greater computer technologies. Kids that’re 12 and 13 years old already have experience with 3d modeling and animation programs. Just last night I had company over and one of the guys who is a freshman (I think?) is learning how to use inventor in a standard class. Some special engineering or technically centered high school, maybe, I could understand that. But from what I had come to gather, this was just a simple normal high school and they’re teaching stuff like this. Something else that’s interesting is the availability of server-side web programming languages to everyone and the younger and younger ages of the people who get into it. I remember that when I wanted to create a website with dynamic content (nibjb.sytes.net) I had to build my own webserver in my room to run it, because I couldn’t find anywhere that gave free active server web hosting and I didn’t meet anyone that had access to it either. So there I was trying to run a little windows server using ASP and learning how to code dynamic webpages from the bottom up. My progress was so slow! Everything I did I had to do myself. Now I look out and see all these little kids who are given instant access to PHP and stuff and are able to learn it really fast because of the availability of great and simple tutorials and people who’re willing to help them. I don’t want this paragraph to sound like I’m sorry for myself for not knowing more about computers, so I’ll just end it soon. I’m happy with the way things have unfolded, because the long amounts of time I spent by myself have shaped me into the [socially reclusive interaction-incompetent?] person I am =oD

So these kids are given the world and still ask for more. Get a load of the newbies these days! Yeah, I know, there were newbies 10 years ago, but were there as many? I can’t recall any big complications or frustrations with newbies from long ago in my past. Then again, I probably don’t remember the newbies because I was spending too much time actually being one myself. Now once again, by newbie I don’t mean a beginner. By newbie, I mean someone who knows very little but acts arrogant and tries to make people think s/he knows a lot more than s/he actually does. I think that these days the intelligent geek slash hacker is actually a title that strangely sought after by some people? Wow, this raises a whole new point. Back when I was in 6′th grade, the computer users were always the ‘geekie’ people who no one liked. Some of the things I’ve sensed these days is that not only are they tolerated more these days, but in some circles they’re actually raised up! It’s crazy to watch kids tv shows and see the little guy with the computer who hacks a school is lifted up to the hero. It’s almost as if it’s being promoted these days. I’ve touched a lot of areas but haven’t actually spent time getting deep in any one of them. I don’t know, what’re your thoughts? Do you have an opinion? Are you a geek? Were ‘geeks’ accepted when you were young? Are they now? Why? What changed?

Oh no my screen name is going to be suspended! Oh, wait, my bad, it’s just another newbie. I think it’s really funny when people IM me things like “I’m going to suspend your screen name” and stuff like that. It’s like “hello! IM me something I don’t get 10 times a day from random people!” Ahhgg, oh well. As you can probably tell, I had an encounter with “America Online is the number one ISP, and if Linux supported it, you would use it too Scott” -ShynePosome newbies tonight. I had many encounters with newbies. I don’t know what it is with newbs and attacking me, but I sure get a lot of it. I had this one guy just tossing insult after insult at me about Linux. I will admit I did egg him on, but only because some of them were so funny! I mean check this out. This one is from ShynePo after I made fun of the guy for him using AOL. He proceed to say (in all seriousness) “AOL is the #1 ISP, and if Linux supported it, you’d use it too Scott”. It’s just like… wow. That and “u probably pirated Linux Scott.” I got a chuckle out of that one (considering that Linux, itself, is free). I’ll go on and say this because I know if I don’t I’ll get IMs about it. Yes, I know that certain distributions of Linux charge certain amounts of money for high-end uses. Red hat server operating systems are the ones I think of off the top of my head. When I mentioned that it was free for normal users to ShynePo, he was like “nuh uh, I saw it in best buy for 200 dollars.” Oh well. Later I got an IM from a group of newbies. Actually this was really weird. They banded together in a group and called themselves the newbie hackers. I’m sure that none of them knew anything about ‘hacking’ (not that I claim to). I was invited to a chat room with half a dozen or so “newbie hackers” and they all insulted me with the “Linux is stupid” and “AimPoo doesn’t work” garbage that I get every day in IMs and emails. After the hurl of insults, lots of these people proceeded to ask me questions to try to get help and favors from me! How crazy is that?! Vahh. I’m so over lamers these days. Hey, that’s perfect! I’m not going to call them newbies anymore. They’re lamers. Perfect.

Scott, you’re meeting women? How is that bad?? Yeah, actually. But don’t get all excited. It’s through my website. I’ve been getting a surprisingly large amount of nice women contact me as a result of finding me website one way or another. However, I do think that this is a bad thing. I’m only experiencing communication with other humans of the female gender through semi-anonymous online conversations and across the physical gap of land distance (rarely will someone live in central Florida)

SCOTT!!! YOU SHOULD GO ON HOTORNOT.COM!!! Ok, yeah, I’ve gotten this a million times in email. However, this time, I think I’m actually thinking it over. Since my domain name is ScottIsHot, I think it’d be pretty funny to make a big deal out of it. My current idea is to take 10 or so “It would be like Married by America… only you wouldn’t get married, and it wouldn’t have to be in America”pictures of me and then have an online ScottIsHot vote for them. The top two or three pictures I’d post on HotOrNot.com with a link to my own site. I hear from lots of [girls, mainly] that they get lots of emails from people after seeing their pictures. It’d be really funny to see what turns up. It’d be like “married by America” scott is hot style. You all (the viewers) select what you want me to look like and what I should say in my personal profile, and I share everything and everyone I meet from it with you through this blog. I think that if I take it seriously, it’ll get really stupid really fast. But I think that if I play it all just for fun, it could be a pretty cool thing to do. If you have any more ideas, let me know, mmk?

Well I think I’m about blogged-out tonight. At this point my office word editor is telling me I’m at 2700 words. This reminds me of just a month or two ago when I was all ecstatic about writing a 2,000 word blog. I put it all over my profile and talked about it in person even. Now a few thousand words seem like nothing. Even a little while ago, typing that seven thousand word blog wasn’t much effort. I can only imagine what it’ll be like in the future. I think I have the length area mastered, and even a little overboard. I think now I should put some serious time and thought into writing less fluff and more intelligent paragraphs that make sense, make an impact, and are fun to read. Maybe tomorrow. I’m ready to tackle that homework now. Then, time to plop my pillow on the ground and crash on the floor. Thanks for tuning in to tonight’s show. I’m Scott, and you know who you are.

Tonight’s blog will be a little different. I don’t have that long to blog tonight, and I have some information I’d like to pass along, so I’ll be pretty straight forward with everyone. That’s not to say that tonight’s blog won’t be really funny though ^_- Anyway, the subject I’m talking about is random hate. Ok, I know, I’ve talked about this a lot already. However, this time I’d like to just let it all out and be more or less done with it. The reason I’m bringing it up again is because I’m getting more and more of it, it’s actually starting to bother me a little bit, and it can make me look really bad. Multiple people are trying to impersonate me and say really bad things using my name. I want to clarify some of the possible problems and hope that things will continue to turn out all right =o)

So, Scott, what’s the problem? Humm, there are so many different classifications of this problem and so many possible causes. However, in one sentence: “Some people have nothing better to do than to try to mess up my life.” This is extraordinarily clear if someone were to read the assorted letters of hate and IMs of rage I get from total strangers. Some of these people find it their personal goal (for some unknown reason) to try to put a little sting in my life. The “last straw” tonight was when someone took a conversation I had with him and changed every other line of it so it was obvious I wrote it, but the way he changed it made me look very gay (literally). The whole thing is so stupid. I don’t understand what people get from it, then again, the more I delve upon the subject, the more I am defeated by it.

Scott, what can you do about it? Nothing. Well, not much at least. One thing I’m doing is I’m writing this warning to everyone! The downside of anonymous communication via the internet is that anyone can pose as anyone else and mess things up. So, if you see something in the comments section that came from “Scott”, that doesn’t really mean it came from me. My word if warning to you all is to take every new post with a grain of salt. Don’t take it too seriously, and if you think something’s fishy, come to me about it. So, now that you know that much, I feel a little better about relaxing and just letting my comments boards fly. Is there anything more I can do? Well, yeah, actually. I do have some ideas. The two ideas that I can see myself actually doing are somewhat funny sounding, because they’re both web pages. First of all, I want to make a warning page. If someone’s borderline being mean, I want to have a pre-typed page warning them that what they’re doing is immature, and to please stop. Then, if they persist, I will add their screen name, email address, IP, computer info, description of what they did and/or any other information I feel like to a new page I will call the “wall of shame” where they can be publicly recognized as acting very immature. This page will, however, have a “remove my name” button that the user can click to go to a removal page. I haven’t figured out how I’m going to do it yet. I want it to be a very annoying process. My current idea is you have to wait a (meaningful) 100 word apology letter to me, personally, and I will remove your name. Besides ignoring them, the next best thing is deterring them by public humiliation. Also, I think I might have a “hack at will” flag for people who claim to be “elite hackers”. That flag will basically say, “If you’re a real hacker and want someone to mess up because he or she is acting really mean for no reason, target this person.” The funny part is that only newbies claim to be elite hackers. Their names will be posted on the list with a flag. And they will be hacked with the silent ‘real’ hackers. I love it! Woohoo! The newbie hacker wannabe gets burned! /throws confetti in the air and runs in small circles under it/ However, I do love everybody so I will warn the real hackers not to mess them up too much. And I will also make sure to be available to accept an apology to have their name removed (or green-flagged?) on the page. Now, you know me, I’m always wanting to make something cool and public and open source out of it. You thinking what I’m thinking? That’s right. I’m going to make it a nice pretty little script, and make it open source and downloadable! How cool is that?! If you have questions, ideas, tips, or suggestions, be sure to comment or contact me about it. … mmm … I smell newbie toast!

As you may already know, long ago a very strange, embarrassing, stupid, and awkward-to-talk-about rule was placed on me for as long as I live in this house. I, for no reason, am allowed to remove my bed from my room. Why would I ever want to do that? Well, first of all, I don’t use it. I sleep on the floor (feels better with my back) and have done so for months and months. So to me, my bed is useless. It’s huge, bulky, gets messy easialy, and acts as a junk collector. Durring the curious episode in past months where the subject of the location of my bed being changed was up for discussion, the topic was closed with a final verdict from my parents: “Your bed will not be allowed to leave your room for any reason no matter what.” Recently, the bed was REALLY bugging me and tonight I finally tried to bring it up again. It got no where, of course, but I did raise one interesting comment. I asked “what if I put it in my closet” and they said “pfft, if you can get it to fit in your closet and still have room for your clothes, then feel free”. I called their bluff ^_^ They didn’t think it’d fit. It fit with a half inch to spare! I lengthened my desk, opened up my floor, moved things around a little… my room feels a lot bigger now and I finally have horizontal room to work! Now, it’s late, I’m off to bed… err… floor.

[ VIEW MORE PICTURES OF MY ROOM ]

Since so many people read my blog , I’ve come to the conclusion that at least some of them must be affected by the things they suck in. Thus, the words I write directly control their attitude, thoughts, ideas, and attitudes. I’ve realized that the least few blog entries have been dull, boring, and uneventful. That kid was right when he said “why would anyone want to know what you ate for breakfast?” Despite the [disturbing] fact that people do repeatedly as me to write about simple things like this, I’ll have to agree that as a whole, the readers of my blog would much rather have some fun in the process. Why would anyone in their stable mind choose to subject themselves to the gruelingly boring rants about computer technicalities, intricate political ideology, and the stupidities of the things that happen to me during the course of the day? Well, ok, maybe that last one is interesting. Where am I going with this? I’m trying to say that my website (the core of which, subsequently, strangely, and disturbingly) is my blog. This little asylum for the simple-minded has benefits in almost every aspect of its existence. I love writing it, my friends love being in it, strangers love finding it, and everyone can relate to at least some aspect of the mysteriously revealing ‘Scott’ that’s presented on the curious “Scott is hot” website. Now that the introductive formalities are out of the way, let’s take a glance at what we’re going to be discussing in this afternoon’s action-packed post. First off, I’ll talk a little about this blog, the future of it, and the strange things that happen as a result of me posting my personal thoughts for everybody to read. I’ll then continue to talk about the interesting possibilities that arise when people think my blog is not really real. Then we’ll talk about you. Yes, you! “The reader of this blog”. From there, I’ll move on to the fun little newbies that we all see so much of on my quotes page, and I think I’ll wrap it up on what I want to do in the next few weeks.

June 16, 2001: blog entry #1 Sometime between this date and now, a switch has been flipped in my mind that turned me from the casual information typer to the recreational blogger. I’m addicted. I’m addicted big time. I don’t foresee myself even being able to stop, it’s become such a part of my day to day life. Some people stop for thirty seconds before they go to bed and ‘reflect’ on their day. Nuh uh, not me! I spend two hours dumping the day’s thoughts through my fingers so I can read what I wrote methodically and enter all the information back into my mind in a more methodical manner. I’ve noticed some definite advantages from doing this. By typing as fast as you can (preferably, unhindered by typing itself, just letting your thoughts pour out in a text editor) you can dump most of what you are thinking about into a tangible, organizable, sortable form. Who cares? Not so fast, hear me out. Once all my thoughts are floating on the page, I can go through and pick which ones I want to stick in my mind. I can highlight and erase certain areas and disregard them. (Maybe something I don’t want to think about?) The coolest ability is to spit out a memory, change it a little, and write about it. It doesn’t take much, and it works really well! Hey, it may be an escape from reality, but it sure is easier! Maybe I said, did, or didn’t do something that bothered me. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about when I say something (really small, maybe) that you did makes you sick to your stomach every time you think about it and you can’t stop dwelling on it. All you have to do it spit it out, change it so it’s like you want it, and stick it back in your head. You no longer have to think about it ^_-

“How has your blog changed you?” I got this one twice in my topic selection box in the last two weeks. I think it’s a pretty cool question! Well first of all, I’m able to go back and read the things I write. The strange part is that as I write, I don’t remember the things I talked about. Someone will say something about a paragraph I wrote last night and I’ll have no memory that I wrote it. As I go back and read it, it’s like I’m reading something I’ve never seen before! The point I’m trying to make is that by now, I blog so much so often that it feels like a natural extension of my mind. When you talk, you don’t think about how to say each word; you just open your mouth and let it out without thinking about it. By now, I do the same when I start writing in my blogs. The biggest advantage of blogging is that it really does put things in perspective. If I’m thinking about something “really big”, I can go back a month or two and look at the things that I thought were “really big” back then. It really puts things in perspective and reminds me the places of the various things in my life. Another way that my blog changed me is that spending so much time writing has really improved my writing skills. I mean, two days ago I was in a literature class and the teacher said “This is a Gordon rule class and you will all be required to write 6,000 words this semester” and I just sat there thinking “pfft, I blogged more than that two days ago!” I can sit down and spit out a two thousand word paper like it’s a tomato. Get it? I spit out tomatoes? (It’s from last night’s blog) Never mind. Does my blog affect me in bad ways? Sometimes, yes, it does. It’s rare, and in general I get a lot more good things out of it than bad, but it does definitely have negative effects at times. The first, strongest, and worst negative side effect of writing your thoughts where they can be read by anyone is that you cannot control who reads them and how they take them. I try to construct my sentences in ways that I know I will be taken the right way, but it’s happened many times where people read something and take it the TOTAL wrong way. Then these people usually jump to further conclusions and base decisions about their speculated misconceptions. As if that’s not enough, sometimes they don’t take the problem up with me. They’ll go to a friend or worse yet: a parent! By the time one of my parents gets this crazy misconstrued story, it can be so far from the original that you’d never know it derived from anything I ever wrote! Also, another disadvantage is that if someone wants to hurt me or get me in trouble, they can usually scan over my blogs and try to pick out little sentences that they can take out of context to make me sound bad or stupid. Yesterday I got a really weird line from one of my parents when s/he got irritated with me. “We’ll I’ll just wait until you leave for work then I’ll read your blog.” Is that a threat?!? It was like… how do you respond to something like that? I simply didn’t. Oh well, bring it on. If you or anyone else want to try to make me something I’m not by picking out little pieces of these writings and purposefully taking them out of context in order to try to start an argument or cause a problem, then it shows your own stupidity reflecting in your this attempt at making me look bad. Ok, so, it’s good, and can be bad. Am I glad I started it? You bet! Am I happy with it at all times? No. Can you limit it so only some users can read it? No, not really. If I could make it so only strangers could read my blog and people I know would be locked out, would I? You bet.

Ahh yes, we roll right into my next topic, who reads my blogs? This is a really interesting question, because I’m mostly clueless about this myself. I know that many strangers find my website and regularly revisit it. I know a few of the people that I meet ‘in the flesh’ who go to my website. For some reason, I get really uncomfortable talking about my website with other people in the real world. Why? I don’t know. Am I embarrassed about some of the things I write here? Yeah. Do I regret it? Sometimes. Will you ever change? Probably not. Anyway, the strangest people read this thing. I can’t list them without getting specific, but it’s the people that hardly know me that take the most liking to this little jumble of words. I think it’s the excitement of being able to take a glimpse into the mind of a madman through his nonsensical rantings about nothing in particular. It might be going a little far, but I think that everyone finds something about my (through my writings) that they can relate with. This personal-seeming connection is what makes it so fun to come back day after day to read the developments of peoples’ attachment to their anonymous “alter-ego-friend”. Like I mentioned recently, none of my family reads my site. It’s funny to me. The most repeating visitors I get are from total strangers. I get a lot of visits from people I barely know. I get few visits from people I know closely, and I get no visits from the people I am closest to. In other words, the more you know me, the less of a desire you have to read my blog. It’s funny, as I was writing this (literally at this exact second) my mom came in and asked “what’re you doing, writing your blog?” The strange thing was my answer: A quivering “no?” (I wasn’t really; I was using Photoshop editing the image I’m going to put in this area) But the curious part was my instant reluctance to admit that yes, in fact, I’m typing out my blog. I don’t know why I cringe when people talk about it and deny its association with a quick reactive “no”. Ahh well, I guess I’ll have to figure that out later. This paragraph is getting a little lengthy, and I’ll move on. I have something fun to talk about next =oD

Tons of people contact me from my site. 1 in 10 are dumb. I don’t mean to insult, offend, or put down anyone when I state simple facts. (hehe) Seriously, this paragraph is just for fun and it’ll poke at the ribs of some of the people who contact me and say utterly ridiculous things. As a pretext, I’d like to define the word “newbie” for those who might not be up on the lingo. If somebody is really stupid with computers, but acts like they’re really cool, they’re called a “newbie”. If someone’s just starting out but they don’t claim to be some incredibly knowledgably computer user, they’re a novice or a beginner. However, “newbie” is generally a negative term to attach to people who don’t know much but think they know it all. I will openly admit that I hardly know everything there is to know about computers. Lots of people mistake me for someone who’s a total genius with computer stuff, but it’s all wrong. I may know more than some people, but I can tell you that there are tons of people that know far more than I do. I’ll call myself an “intermediate”. “newbie” is sometimes shortened to “newb” as an abbreviation. Another word I’ll introduce you to is “leet”. Newbies think they are “leet”. Leet is an abbreviated misspelling of the word elite to imply that they are “the best of the best” at computers. Newbies will often claim to be “leet hackers” or something dumb like that. A quick note on hacking: if anyone tells you s/he’s a really good hacker, then they’re lying. If someone were at all knowledgeable about that stuff, they wouldn’t be talking about their (incriminating) hacking-oriented activities. If someone claims to be a hacker, it’s purely to try to elevate their social status (people think it’s cool?) and most likely they’re simply making it up to sound neat. Ok, so you know what newb is. You know what leet is. But what is “leet speak”? See how I can use numbers to look like numbers in the following sentence: I 4M C001. That says “I AM COOL” in “leet speak”. Leet speak is very slow to write, slow to read, annoying to deal with, and frustrating to deal with. Oh yeah, and the irony of it all is that only newbies talk in leet speak! No one with half a brain would come up and use words like “H4X0R” for “hacker” or say something as silly as “KUZ I G0T`Z’TA HAX” (quoting ‘TheBlackAlbum’).

The funniest thing is when newbies brag to me about things they (don’t really) know My quotes page is full of these comical ramblings! I have yet to be able to understand what drives these newbies to try to act this way, but I don’t think it’s something I’ll every be able to understand anyway. I’m not talking about people who’re simply a beginner with computers and are asking questions. I love talking to nice people about computer things and don’t at all mind if they don’t know much about computers. That’s not what I’m talking about here. I’m talking about the little lamer dude newbie who IMs me out of the blue and is like “I hacked you and can see your c: drive”. First of all, being on a unix-base system, I have no c: drive. Secondly, what a stupid think to say! I mean, honestly, if someone had access to my file system and decided to use it for ‘hacking’ purposes, would you go up to the person and tell them that? Of course not! Obviously, if someone comes up to me and says “I’m hacking you”, I have nothing to worry about, because they don’t know the first thing about hacking. The funniest thing is when newbies IM me threats and things. You would not believe how many people send me threats that they’re going to have my AIM account suspended. I get two or three of these every day. It gets so old. My thought on motivation behind things like this is insecurity mixed with jealousy for stability, or craving the results of knowledge (ability) without trying to work for it? Ehh, what do I know. Another thing I get a lot is people who try to do nothing other than insult me or make fun of me for things. They try to tell me things I say wrong or do wrong about my own computer system(s). The funny part is when I “play along” and get them to say outrageously wrong things but they say it in an arrogant way that’s sounds like “Scott, you are such an idiot. How could you not know that one plus one equals three?” At that point, I have more fun with the newbies than anything else. Lots of you tell me “Scott, you always say not to respond to bad things people say to you, so why do you talk to these guys?” Well, my answer is simple. These guys don’t say bad things to me. Almost everything they say is wrong, and really funny to me. I don’t know why I get such a kick out of these people, but they have fun “cutting me down” and I roll over laughing at every line they say. An example of a funny little thing was when the people on the AIM screen names ‘TheBlackAlbum’ and ‘ShynePo’ worked together (I think?) to try to both insult me at the same time. I don’t know which one it was, but I think one of them drew me with the cookie monster head the other day. Anyway, just last night I made some comment to TheBlackAlbum like “I’ve had enough of your newbishness” and then he didn’t respond back for a few minutes. Then, out of the blue, he responded “newbishness is not a word. It’s not in the dictionary.” And he included a link to dictionary.com looking up the (nonexistent) word “newbishness”. Obviously, newbishness was a word I made up to be funny that has the root word of “newbie” with the pre-suffix “ish” to imply language (like ‘elvish’, ‘newbish’) and used “ness” to describe the affect thereof. Thus, I created the word “newbishness” which obviously doesn’t exist in the dictionary. But the funny thing was that he didn’t know what that word meant by looking at it and tried to find the definition on dictionary.com /rolls eyes/ Some people never cease to amaze me. Well this section is long enough, so I think I’ll start to wrap up with my next project, then close the blog.

What’s this about a ‘ToDo’ script? Well, you may have heard me toss the idea around. I always have little things that I want to do but always seem to forget them if I don’t write them down and organize them all in one place. So, like my quotes page, I’d like to create a quick little “to do” list script. It’ll be incredibly simple. Just one page that edits the list (with a password) and that data (in html) is dumped in a text file that can be php included anywhere on a website. It’s just an idea at this point, but I think I’ll go through with coding it. I doubt it’ll take more than half of a page of raw code =o,

Well, that’s it for this afternoon. 2:28! 2 minutes to spare. How cool, I estimated this blog would be done at 3:30 and it’ll be that time exactly. Remember when I was all amazed “2000 word blog!” just a few months ago… I sat down and cranked out over three thousand words just now without even trying. I hope it was as of some interest to you! Feel free to comment, but please keep them respectful, ok? Also, send me blog ideas if you have them, I’d be happy to write about a topic you send in if it catches my eye. Until we meet again, keep away from the carrot-flavored pineapple!