Hello.

Saturday, November 10, 2001 07:15 p.m.
You know, I'm really glad I moved up here. It's clear, crisp, and cold every day, I can see the ocean, and the sunsets are spectacular. Traffic isn't bad, there's plenty to do, and my neighborhood is quiet at night. I hate to jinx it, but I'm amazed that I live in such a nice place.

I went and got a bunch of pictures developed today. Some pre-wedding pictures and some honeymoon pictures, mostly. I'll try adding a picture from our honeymoon below. I was really pleased with how well these pictures captured the glassy smooth texture of the water that day. Of course, now I can't get them to scan properly. Oy. Anyway, here's one below. Apologies if the color balance looks bizarre from where you are.

Friday, November 9, 2001 11:07 a.m.
Well, well. 23 years and nine months ago Andrew's parents did a bad bad thing. And so here I am.

I'm not really sure what Liz and I are going to do today. Probably go out somewhere, enjoy the chilly, clear weather.

For my birthday, I got The Emperor's New Groove- The Ultimate Groove DVD set (eat that Seth!) and Big Trouble in Little China DVD set (bwa hah hah hah!!). Liz also got me a really neat book of Ethan Coen's poems (most of which are like Shel Silverstein but really dirty).

Now I must do the whole "eating food" thing.

Thursday, November 8, 2001 02:48 p.m.
Howdy. Haven't logged for a while due to Pitas being down. Anyhow. Let's start out with a nifty new drawing Liz made last night:



Cool, eh? There's some lighting issues with that scan... I should scan it in better but I'm too lazy.

I got a new coat for my birthday (it's tomorrow). It's a very nice coat and I like it. And now I can probably retire the Green Monster for the most part.

Spent some time after lunch today leafing through a LOTR movie "official guide". I don't know what amuses me more, Hugo Weaving as Elrond or.... Hugo Weaving as Elrond. Hee hee. Anyway the movie looks neat. It's strange... I find the concept of someone making movies of the LOTR books so inherently absurd that I haven't even bothered with fannish expectation for these upcoming flicks.

Seth, you do not look like Enya. Although the concept is amusing. Actually, I was thinking at lunch today how funny it would be to make a comic with various Johnnies represented by various strange pop culture characters.

I have a really abusive relationship with IE. I use 4, since 5 and above is just giving Microsoft WAY too much power over this tiny computer. Usually 4 will work fine for a couple of weeks, then suddenly start doing all sorts of crazy things. So then I switch over to Mozilla and use that for a while, until IE tempts me back with its speedy loading and uh... yeah, that's about it. I have this image of the little IE desktop icon putting "I SORRY, I NO HIT YOU NO MORE!" in its tooltip.

Now I go to search for various bits of mail I seem to have lost.

Tuesday, November 6, 2001 05:19 p.m.
Dennis Leary was right about NyQuil. Woooo... I only took about half the recommended dose, and I was out for about 11 hours.

Liz and I went out and puttered around today. I spent some time reading on a bench near the ocean. Funny being near the ocean in late fall/early winter. In my landlocked childhood, we only went to the beach during the summer.

I think my cold is mostly through. Good stuff.

Monday, November 5, 2001 02:33 p.m.
Well, I've now seen every Pixar feature except for A Bug's Life. Wonder if Movie Gallery has it?

Metafilter moron of the day: Some winner in the Star Wars trailer discussion who referred to children as "kind of boring and sort of dumb." I really hope he doesn't have any.

Had an interesting discussion on a bboard about "getting over" movies. (as you might guess, this started with a discussion of the SW trailer). It struck us all that there's a lot of good stuff out there right now that people are passing over because it's not related to any movie that came out 20 years ago. Having just watched most of the Pixar feature library, I'm compelled to agree.

Going to get out of the house just as soon as I wash me clothes.

Sunday, November 4, 2001 10:56 p.m.
I had kind of a transcendant moment tonight. Liz and I went out to see Monsters, Inc. It's a really great movie. Anyway, there's a little kid in the movie who's really amazingly portrayed, given that she's computer animated. She doesn't talk at all, just makes toddler noises. Some parents brought toddlers to the movie and sat in the back. Halfway through the movie, I noticed that I was hearing the girl talking even when she wasn't. Turns out that the kids in the back were making the EXACT same noises as the kid in the movie.

Weird.

Anyway, had an ok day.

Saturday, November 3, 2001 11:58 p.m.
So, had an ok day today. I'm feeling better, which means I'm feeling worse about not doing anything with myself.

Got some more writing done. It's flowing pretty well. I think I'm being less judgemental about it, in a certain way.

I just finished watching Toy Story. Classic movie. I'm going to watch the sequel at some point.

"Wind the frog!"

Saturday, November 3, 2001 01:29 p.m.
Ahhh... feeling better today. Actually got a good night's sleep last night which probably helped. And I was hungry this morning, also a good sign.

Well, instead of renting a bad movie, I watched bad TV and wrote. Quite a bit, actually, on a new story. Felt good.

Mike, thanks for posting that link to Editplus. That's a snazzy little program.

Hopefully I'll be all better by tomorrow.

Friday, November 2, 2001 04:27 p.m.
Interesting. Sometimes Pitas will return an error message when I try to blog. No message will appear on my blog, until I blog AGAIN, at which time BOTH messages appear. Bizarre.

Friday, November 2, 2001 04:20 p.m.
Hoooo boy. After watching an episode of "Oprah", I am now very scared. Amazing that I never watched Oprah before.

Liz and Karen are having a Ladies Night Out tonight. Which suits me fine, since I'm still ailing. I think they're going to see Monsters, Inc., which sounds like fun.

I've been collecting neat little freeware apps lately, like these and this and some others that I can't dig up right now. Anybody have a neat little freeware or shareware app they can't live without? I habitually dled such programs when I ran Linux, and that habit's kind of transitioned over to the Windows world.

Tonight I will probably rent a movie that I want to see but I know Liz won't. She'll be out, and I can indulge in my guilty pleasure.

Wednesday, October 31, 2001 11:03 p.m.
Not much to blog about today. Liz's last name is now officially Sarazin. Karen was going to come down, but strange things happened to her car (!), so Liz and I settled on Chinese food and a movie. Soon I will go to bed, presumably to another semi-restless night. My sinuses are giving me much annoyance.

Tuesday, October 30, 2001 06:20 p.m.
Well, today was almost a productive day. But that's a big step up from yesterday, which fell squarely in the "waste of time" category.

Watching Akira on DVD right now. Colors very nice. More later.

Monday, October 29, 2001 08:08 p.m.
"Statistically, Ru Paul is the strongest link."

Monday, October 29, 2001 06:38 p.m.
So, I was doing that thing I occasionally do. Typing in a random phrase in the URL window. So, I tried "Powers That Be" and got this. Freaky.

Monday, October 29, 2001 05:35 p.m.
What the hell good does it do to interrupt the news and say "Hey, we think terrorists might attack someone at some point in the future. Just so you know."

Oy.

Monday, October 29, 2001 04:11 p.m.
I have giant watermelon head.

You will fear the head!!!

Sunday, October 28, 2001 03:36 p.m.
Ok. I'm going to try to articulate some of my issues with the book I just read here. I'm sorry (really!) if this makes little sense to anyone reading... I need to write it SOMEWHERE.

When you create a very complicated world that is substantially different from our own, it is important that the reader feel sure of where he is(unless you're going for surrealism), and involved in what is happening. This is why it is VERY hard to write a single novel that both introduces a complicated world and changes it substantially through the novel's events. I generally don't like such novels. Vinge doesn't do a great job of this here.

And you know... I don't generally dig SF that is really "epic" in a direct way. I like SF that deals with personal and semi-global conflicts, but set in a world that remains recognizable throughout. Jack Vance's "Cadwal" books are a great example of this. They describe a struggle for the future of a single planet, set against the backdrop of a galaxy which remains essentially static. I like that.

A more fitting foil for Vinge's novel might be Iain M. Banks' Consider Phlebas. Far future world... subtly dystopic. But Banks allows the reader to sink into the world without doing much damage to it within the novel itself.

Also, I'm not a big fan of books that maintain two unconnected narratives unless they do it very well. It's kind of a cliche nowadays to maintain unconnected narratives that connect in the final third, as Vinge does in A Fire Upon the Deep. I generally end up favoring one narrative (in this novel, it was the narrative concerning the Tines) and resenting the other for pulling me away. Now, this CAN be done well, but it's hard. I much prefer switching narratives between parts of a novel, rather than constantly switching back and forth.

All that said, I think that the contrivances in A Fire Upon the Deep really bother me the most. Basically, otherwise intelligent characters act like morons so that the novel can be really, really long. And then suddenly at the end they start behaving intelligently. Oy.

And I didn't really hate the book. It had a lot of interesting ideas. But it had a lot of issues.

Anyway. It's a Pat's game today. So I'll be watching that, then hanging out with Karen and Jim.

Sunday, October 28, 2001 01:21 a.m.
Finally finished A Fire Upon the Deep. Interesting read. I felt, in the end, like it tried to do too much and spread itself WAY too thin. But there were some interesting ideas in it. More on this later. Now I go do the whole sleeping thing. "Set your clocks back just as long as you can"

Saturday, October 27, 2001 01:59 p.m.
Ah. Nice morning today. It's a beautiful day outside. Liz and I had a sleepy morning. Now she's at work and I'm back from the grocery store.

Today is going to be a fun freeware day! I really kinda like little fun freeware apps. I found a freeware mail client and a freeware ftp client I like, as well as some imaging programs. And fooling around with quirky little apps is enjoyable. Plus, my new ISP runs a mirror of Tucows, which is kind of neat.

Friday, October 26, 2001 10:52 p.m.
Had a nice evening tonight. Liz and I went out with her parents to have some "light" dinner at the Snow Squall. Nice place. Liz's parents are excellent dinner company.

About halfway through "A Fire Upon the Deep". Vinge is not an artist with words, but he has many an interesting idea. Kind of a depressing world, though. I seem to be reading a lot of depressing SF.

That and I need to stop watching the news.

Friday, October 26, 2001 03:57 p.m.
Okey dokey. Das home page has landed here. Liz's art page is also all moved over. Still crossing my fingers... this connect seems faster so far.

As promised... I tried to connect late Wednesday, hoping to check various blogs and my email. Hmm... the internet connection was suddenly unbearably slow. Huh. So I went to bed.

The next morning, things had gotten worse. 4 out of 5 times I couldn't connect, and when I did, it was too slow to be useable. I got a gamut of errors, most seeming to indicate (to me) that something was amiss on Midmaine(my ISP)'s end. So I gave them a ring. Got a clueless guy on the phone. That's cool. I'll give them the afternoon to work it out.

Come back in the afternoon. Things are still wiggy. Hmm. Fool around with the computer, install an external modem that was lying around, test some settings, no go. So I decide, for whatever reason, to call again.

This time I get Mike. I tell Mike my problem. The following is an approximate transcription of my conversation with Mike.

Me: I'm having connection troubles. The error messages seem like they're pointing to trouble on your end.

Mike: We have no troubles. Have you got new modem drivers?

Me: No... like I said, I can't connect to do so.

Mike: (sigh) Well, that's not our problem. You need new modem drivers.

Me: *blink blink* Huh. So, have you changed anything with the connection, the server, anything like that lately?

Mike: No.

Me: Well, I was connecting fine yesterday, and the day before, and for about two months.

Mike: (long exasperated sigh) Look, sir. You need new modem drivers... your modem isn't working anymore. Drivers are like... uh... the oil in your car. You need to update them regularly or they expire.

Me: (very long pause as I stare, stunned, at the phone) Um.... uh... er... uh.... yeaaaaaah. (click)

So I decided no more Andrew money for Midmaine. I'm now signed up with this other place... which seems to be working fine without "new drivers". And they have a config help page for Linux, which while probably unnecessary for anyone using Linux is pretty nifty nonetheless. That and they have offices in Portland.

Interesting endnote: I went over to look at Compaq's support page for this laptop's crazy modem. Modem driver? Only a 22 MEG download. 22 megs for a MODEM DRIVER? GRAH!

Friday, October 26, 2001 02:01 p.m.
WHERE MY DOGS AT??????

Seriously.

If you were wondering where I was yesterday, I had to switch ISPs. Again. I hate all mankind.

The upside is, I'm supposed to have twice the webspace at this new place, so we'll see how that goes. Right now I'm just hoping this connection keeps working.

Bandidos who mail me at safe-mail... My acct there is obviously still in effect. My midmaine acct. is explodey but I don't think anyone mails me there. I should have a new email at this new place... we'll see if I can work that out. Liz's art page will be offline for... uh... until I figure out how to access this new place's webspace.

At some point I will blog about my saga with Midmaine. If you want to see what can and will make Andrew go Super Saiyan, stay tuned.

Wednesday, October 24, 2001 11:36 p.m.
You know, somebody up there really thinks that "Making Andrew double-post accidentally" is the HEIGHT of humor.

Wednesday, October 24, 2001 11:36 p.m.
This might be a doozy, so light'em if you've got 'em.

First of all, after watching Die Hard on DVD for the umpteenth time, some Die Hard Superlatives.

1. Most obscure terrorist: That guy Bruce Willis rifle-whips just before the final showdown. Who is he?

2. Best line: "We're going to need some new FBI guys, I'm thinking."

3. Not really a superlative, but have you noticed that most eighties action movies have "blink and you'll miss it" extraneous nudity? Why bother putting it in, and especially why bother when 90% of your audience isn't even going to see it?

Anyway. Had to get that out of my system.

I was driving over the Casco Bay Bridge today. It was about 4pm. The sun was edging lower in the sky, hidden behind clouds. Fans of light were hanging from the clouds, dipping down to touch the water in all directions. It was nice. Living here is nice.

Something else I have to get off my chest: I don't hold bad judgements against people. I don't even mind when they're clearly a mistake in the first place. But sometimes people outline to me in great detail why something is a bad idea, then do it. This vexes me.

I think I may have to go back to school sometime. The thought, strangely, does not fill me with dread. I guess I'm eager for a direction at the moment. Any direction.

At least I'm eager.

Well, that was a jumbled mess. But it was the state of my mind today.

That, and I'm sick. Sick sucks. As previously mentioned.

Wednesday, October 24, 2001 10:13 a.m.
Bllllleargh. Once again, it's cold season for Andrew.

Good game session last night.

Afraid I'm not going to be much fun today. Sick sucks.

Tuesday, October 23, 2001 01:09 p.m.
Well, now that I'm feeling better, my body has decided that I really need to be incredibly congested. Yay!

On the reading front, I seem to have finally picked up Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep. Some people seem to think this is good, so hopefully I'll enjoy it. It's been sitting on the shelf long enough. I have "Across Realtime" as well... both have been sitting on the shelf since I stole them from library throwaways in high school.

Liz is about ready to go off to her tutoring gig. She's becoming increasingly discouraged due to a lack of students willing to be tutored. I think it's partially due to the fact that the program is mainly a peer tutoring program, and high school students don't want to be taught by other high school students they don't even know.

I need to go down and switch my laundry.

Monday, October 22, 2001 10:41 p.m.
I'm feeling a lot better now, in that I ate something and it felt like a good thing.

Liz has demanded that I blog about her only... hmm. This, as linked by Mike, really managed to scare her tonight, though it was strangely fascinating to her. She had a long day at work today, mainly due to the telephone lines being cut to the whole shopping strip she works on. Now she is home and sleepy. It's nice to have her sitting here next to me.

Now that I have blogged of the Liz, I may write about other things. Not much to say, though. We got an email from Tim Daniels, who seems to have found a special kind of hell called grad school.

I feel like reading something, though I'm not sure what. An IM conversation with Remi earlier today kind of stoked me. It's entirely too easy, though, for me to take up an hour or two thumbing through an HTML manual. I will try to pick up some "real" fiction.

Though I've discovered a lot of Jack Vance resources on the web, I still feel the need to make a Vance page. Right now I'm leaning towards an annotated bibliography with synopses and reviews. Of course, I have a bunch of other projects I've never finished, so this will probably just be yet another excuse for me to fill holes in my knowledge of HTML.

Monday, October 22, 2001 12:14 p.m.
Ugh. I really picked the wrong leftovers to eat yesterday. And let's just leave it at that.

Hopefully I'll feel better by the end of the day. Right now I still feel kind of woozy.

Noticed a group of little birds has taken to playing in the puddle in our parking lot. It's neat.

Well, hopefully I'll be feeling a little more gregarious by the end of the day.

Sunday, October 21, 2001 09:15 a.m.
Fixed an error with the arrows on Liz's page, and made it (hopefully) more clear where you are number-wise.

Had some kind of odd dream last night, but I can't remember it now. Ah well.

Liz expressed a desire to make some more art (she's tired of looking at those pictures over and over again). For the curious, the first picture in the series is the most recent one.

Does anyone have a vote for the most absurd contribution to this new benefit superstar Marvin Gaye mix? I'm pretty sure mine is Fred Durst. It would be Nelly, but it's coming to seem logical and right that Nelly has a guest spot on every song on the radio.

Sunday, October 21, 2001 12:56 a.m.
Okay. The new mainpage is here. From there you can get back here or over to Liz's page.

Let me know if you experience any weirdness. I haven't had much time to test the stuff out. If your weirdness has to do with using Netscape 4, though, I don't want to hear nuttin.

Many thanks to Lizzie for helping me design the pages. I will probably add some more content to my side just as soon as I... well.. have some.

And a link to the mainpage should show up to the left just as soon as I get finished blogging. Which would be now.

Saturday, October 20, 2001 06:33 p.m.
Liz's page is all set up. I'm not going to unveil it yet, though, because I think she'll want to have a look at it beforehand.

Why is it that I get lots of Notre Dame football here in Maine(on TV)? I mean, it's bad enough that it's football and not basketball, but Notre Dame? They're not a spectacular team, and I'm nowhere NEAR Notre Dame. The hell.

I'm thinking through my mainpage redesign... now that both Liz and I actually have CONTENT, it needs to link to said content more effectively. That and it was originally designed to look like my blog, which is now doesn't resemble in the slightest.

Saturday, October 20, 2001 01:25 p.m.
Archive's rolled over.

Had a nice morning. Liz and I went out to Rick's for breakfast (wish they did bfast on weekdays!) and then came back here and set about creating an art page for her. That should be up later this afternoon... I'll provide a link for it here. Working with Liz creatively is nice.

Oh, and the "main" page will probably be redesigned, or disappear entirely. Note that some images previously posted on this blog may disappear as well, since I have very limited webspace. Grab 'em while you can.