Archive for January, 2004

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!