Sunday, July 27, 2003

I bought a 15GB iPod for my brother, who is currently serving with the 101st Airborne in Iraq. He's spending his days and nights in Mosul right now, and was part of the perimeter cordon during the assault on Uday & Qusay's hideout. The news that the 101st will be in Iraq until March of next year is not sitting well at all with any of the troops, because that will make for a thirteen month deployment.

With that in mind, my brother has begged for CDs or books or movies or anything to pass the time. Hence, the iPod. I snagged it from CompUSA this afternoon and I've thrown about 1,700 songs--my entire mp3 library, modest as it is--onto the thing. I plan on asking Massurah next week if I can come over and leech some more off of him, since he's got about ten times the amount of music that I have. I figure that filling up a 15GB iPod ought to provide enough music to keep my bro occupied for a few months, at least!

I miss him. I hope he gets out of this shit without getting hurt.

Posted by Keeper @ 12:15 AM CST [Link]

Saturday, July 26, 2003

Today I joined the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit group dedicated to preserving consumer's rights on the Internet. As the recording and movie industries spiral out of control and begin randomly suing their customers, organizations like the EFF are the only things that stand between us and the complete removal of the right to own property.

Posted by Keeper @ 11:51 AM CST [Link]

Friday, July 25, 2003

I walked into an elevator today that had just been vacated by a woman wearing watermelon perfume, and the scent hung in the air, verdant and heavy. I was reminded of my wife, because she loves watermelons.

Posted by Keeper @ 02:24 PM CST [Link]

Sunday, July 20, 2003

I had a fifty mile ride today on the V Star, and the smile on my face couldn't be removed even by a gallon of turpentine. There is something so wonderfully perfect about cruising down an open rode at sixty-five, and the only sound you hear is the thrum of the pipes.

The thing that I like the most, though, is waving to other bikers. My first wave came a few weeks back, when I was tooling down Space Center boulevard and a guy who looked like he came right out of the seediest, scummiest biker bar on the planet came blowing past me on the other side of the road. This guy was scary looking--huge beard, three-quarter helmet with the spike on top, leather jacket, biiiiiig hog with freeway boards, huge gut; the works. I look over at him and he looks over at me, and he puts his hand out and gives me a low deuce as he rides back. I maintain the presence of mind to respond in the same way and a feeling of absolute joy welled up inside of me--I was now in The Club.

Almost everyone I see on a bike responds to a wave, and it's fabulous. About the only guys I don't get waves from are the little punks riding crotch rockets--other than that, EVERYONE waves. I even got a wave out of a motorcycle policeman on a huge thundering Kawasaki.

I love the bike. I want to ride another fifty miles tomorrow!

Posted by Keeper @ 12:36 AM CST [Link]

Friday, July 18, 2003

Slashdot keeps giving me moderator points. I keep using them, and then like two days later I get more. I don't want to mark myself unwilling to moderate, because I like to meta-mod, but moderation is kinda scary. Then, I get all involved in finding a story I like and carefully going through all the posts at -1/nested/newest first--it's like wading through a sewer, looking for interesting items. Once in a while you find a diamond engagement ring or something, but usually there's nothing but shit. Or, in the case of -1 comments, ASCII renditions of the goatse.cx guy. No, I'm not going to provide the obligatory www.goatse.cx link. Go there yourself, if you haven't already been. Before you go, kiss your humanity goodbye.

The bike has had its first shop visit--oil leak. Turns out that there were some mangled threads on a rocker-arm bolt, and oil was worming out past the threads. The problem has been fixed, and I've hung a freedom bell on my frame to ward off evil spirits and stuff. Hey, anything that helps.

I wish I was riding right now. This week was the F&SN Critic's birthday, and tonight we're all going to Tommy's (a restaurant I've never been to before) for a celebration. I'm thinking about killing his wife and giving him her head in a box as a birthday present.

Well, not really.

Posted by Keeper @ 05:31 PM CST [Link]

Sunday, July 13, 2003

The idea of killing off the CoG discussion boards is still very much on my mind.

I remain confused at those members who accuse me of having an inflated ego. I do have an inflated ego. After all, you're all here because I put up a web site that contains almost fifty pages of me making fun of someone. You better believe that kind of thing requires massive ego, my friends, and I've never pretended otherwise.

After a huge shake-up last week, the details of which I've gone into far too many times already, a large number of old-timers have said they've departed. It's not so much their departure that I mind--mainly because a lot of them apparently had some pretty skewed notions of how a forum should be run, including notions like "The forum admin should have to check with me before he makes any decisions" and "I believe I am above moderation because I think I'm a valuable community member"--what I mind is that those who chose to leave, and publically stated that they're leaving, aren't leaving. They're still hanging around--posting, chatting in IRC, and making web pages slighting the CoG boards.

For the love of all that is holy, people, stop being children and leave, if you're going to leave. I understand if people want to leave the boards--I mean, it's gotta be tough to find out that the seemingly free-spirited community you called home does indeed have rules, and that those rules will be followed even at the expense of the regulars' feelings--but this level of childishness is beyond anything I'd ever imagined. I'm starting to think now that when someone posts a message saying "I'm leaving!", what that message actually means is, "I AM NOW A VICTIM. WORLD, PLEASE PAY ATTENTION TO ME AS I REPEATEDLY STOMP MY FEET. I AM A MARTYR. EVERYONE MUST NOW OBSERVE MY MARTYRDOM AS I PARADE AROUND, LOUDLY HOWLING ABOUT HOW UNFAIR THE DISCUSSION BOARDS ARE AND HOW EGOMANIACIAL THE ADMINISTRATOR IS!"

If you want to leave, leave. If you want to bitch, or if you want to try to hurt me because you think I've hurt you, or if you want to play the martyr and demand attention, then leave anyway. The CoG discussion boards are, and have always been, a place to laugh and talk about bullshit. In recent days, they've instead become a place to hop around and crow about being wounded. The first person who left--the person whose departure kicked off the whole mess--at least had the strength of character to stay gone. Everyone else seems to want to kick over the anthill and then stick around to watch the scurrying.

So, after going through all of that, the idea of killing off the CoG discussion boards is still very much on my mind. It's not fun any more.

Posted by Keeper @ 12:18 PM CST [Link]