Who is the Man with the Name that Rhymes? (June - December 2005) | Who is the Man with the Name that Rhymes?

Saturday December 31th, 2005:

Last Post of 2005

There isn't much to say today. I'm some how managed to get sick, again. It's not really bad so much as it is annoying. I don't feel tired, worn out, or anything you would call "sick". For the most part I'm just phlegmy, which sucks for someone who's job is a server. All this week I thought about calling in sick one day, but the more I'd think about it the more the realities set in: I wasn't really feeling terrible enough to be physically unable to perform the job; If everyone who had been, or was, sick at Sportstime called in there wouldn't be enough staff to run the place; And I really need the money after all I've spent this year.

You'd think for people whose job it was to handle and prepare food, that they would the first people who should have time off for a sickness. The reality though is that those people are the ones who can least afford to be off of work for illness. Thus, I've stayed at work this week serving food and drink that I'll bet has at least infected one person. This is the price we pay for living in a society that fosters instant gratitude.

The title of the post, and the clock reading 10 hours left in 2005, is encouraging me to some reflect back on this year. So in response to that I've decide to sum up what happened to me in 2005 on a month by month basis based on my prior posts:

January

Very melancholy from I'm guessing my lack of success in Bloomington
Finding time to distract myself with novels like 1984 and Don Quixote, and let us not forget pirated video games
Had a GCBC release party
Started selling the GCBC DVD
Started Proffessor Productions

February

Got big into personal writing a lot and also writing for the wikipedia
Started some basic work on the SBB Ultimate Collection and Strange Case/Raven DVD
Spent more time playing video games including the newly released Tekken 5
Started working a shitty job for shitty people(i.e. Buffalo Wild Wings)

March

Done in by shitty jobs and depression, wrote my farewell letter to Bloomington
The last temptation of Steve party and the announcement of SBB at the riverhouse for Thunder '05
Started, somewhat, looking for a job back home

April

Felt into another lapse where the only thing pushing me is personal projects
Once again, doing the not having a job thing as found time to waste with MGS3: Snake Eater.
Started working on my sister's web site for Bei Capelli
Started reading Nietzsche's "Beyond Good and Evil". Though tough to read, it contain a number of insights.
One great weekend of parties at the Hooks, during Thunder, and my Boxwine Birthday which turned out a little worse than expected due to sickness and depression.
Thanks to Thunder '05 being a freezout, SBB doesn't happen. I officially declare it dead in my mind
Aforementioned events make me consider happiness/depression is very cyclic in my life

May

Mired in a swamped of depression and cynicism with the world, I start reading on the best gift I got this year, A Heartbreak Work of Staggering Genius
Started thinking about what a difference it makes thinking about a life in terms of number of days
Found some "professional" jobs to interview for, only for them to turn out to be bullshit. Ended up working back at my previous job with New Albanian
Wrote the "Wine Group" about my idea for box wine and having it consequently rejected by bullshit lawyerspeak

June

Started the ball rolling on the new DVD project
Finished the SBB Ultimate Collection
Started a war with Maximus Destructus which would be inevitable won by Proffessor Productions
Car gets fucked up and bought a new MP3 player

July

Fell back into the work routine
Setup hacked PS2
Mused about purpose for my life
Wrote out goals for the year. Of the 11, I accomplished 6, almost have finished another, figured out one of those didn't matter, 2 I've been stalled on for a while, and the last I remain hopeful about getting it done still
Figured out my political philosophy is pretty close to Libertarianism

August

Kept into my work routine
Threw an ok party, realized a lot of people didn't care about parties any more
Got to work on the XBox project

September

Pretty unexciting, more work and playing a lot of new video games

October

Unexpected laptop crashing kills DVD project for a while
Spent a lot of time trying to get that shit fixed
Moved out of my parents house to downtown Jeff

November

Looked back through the year
Mused about the future and the society we live in
Fixed a lot of computer problems
Recited a bunch of philosophy I was thinking about through this year
Spent a lot of time setting up my home the way I wanted it

December

More philosophy
More games
More parties
More getting stuff done around home
Trying to get stuff wrapped up for new year

And that's about 2005 for Shawn Conn. What's in plan for 2006? I guess we'll just have to stick around and see...

-Shawn "If the Name Don't Rhyme It Ain't Mine" Conn
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Wednesday December 28th, 2005:

Thanks

I've returned yet again. This time from a different posting point, a new laptop. Yes, I now have another laptop. I probably didn't deserve it this year, but my parents like to be generous. As I've said before, I didn't really have anything I wanted for Christmas. I told my parents as such. However, they overheard my remark about how would be nice to have a nice small laptop for writing and web browsing and decided to go all the way with that. I was quite surprised when they gave it to me; I wasn't expecting it at all. It was a very thoughtful gift, as were all the gifts I got this year.

Compared to last year, this season has been very good. I've been very happy. There's been a lot of good parties and a lot of good friends. Something feels lacking though; There's a feeling of loneliness running through me again. I'm not exactly sure what to do about it. When I get like this an intense feeling of self-hatred comes through me. I try not to think about it too much because I know it won't help anything. I know that there's something there, hiding in the back my mind somewhere, that I need to fix. I just don't know how. That's why I'm going to move on and go to a different subject.

The Xbox

After a really long hiatus, I've finally got back to the XBox emulator box project. Last time I mentioned it, I had just finished installing the mod chip. Concurrently, I was getting many PS2 games loaded to my PS2 hard drive. I got distracted and decided to make the most of all the games I had to play. Just this week, I've taken the next step to finish the project. The BIOS has been flashed so it can run other software. Also, the dashboard(think the main menu of the XBox) has been upgraded to EvoX so that it run other software with out having to load any discs. The next step now is to get a bigger hard drive and then start loading it up with new software.

Wrapping it Up

I haven't heard much about New Year's. I heard about one party, at Wendy's. That so far is my only prospect. I don't really care much about a New Year's party; my mind is on other things right now. Other things I want to finish before this year is up. Sorry if this was a crap post. There's just a few things bothering me right now.

-Shawn "If the Name Don't Rhyme It Ain't Mine" Conn

Monday December 19th, 2005:

The All-Or-Nothing Days

I recently bought the Sin City: Recut, Extended, Unrated DVD that came out just last week. In marketspeak this means Sin City: we placed the 3 different stories in a way that they're self-contained(thus making you have to access them individually on the DVD if you wanted to the entire movie with the cut scenes), added a few scenes we cut for pacing, and called it unrated because the MPAA didn't view those scenes when got an R rating(not that it would matter because unlike all those other crazy "unrated" versions with more boobies the scenes that were cut out were more tame than most the movie). If you can't tell, I had beef with the way they did the 2nd (extended cut) disc. The movie consists of 4 stories. On the DVD they have separated the stories so that you have to play them individually on the DVD. If you want to see the whole movie with the added scenes you have to play each story individually. No play all option exists. You have watch one, select another, repeat. There is no excuse for this at all. But otherwise, it's a great DVD with a good number of features. It's even got the graphical novel for Marv's story, The Hard Goodbye.

There's no settling down. It's going to be blood for blood and by the gallons. It's the old days. The bad days. The all-or-nothing days. They're back. There's no choices left and I'm ready for war.

That's just one of the many memorable quotes from the graphic novel. It's interesting to the subtle differences between the movie adaptation of the story. The story seems a bit more psychological-I think partly because you're reading it-and fits the hero, Marv, closer to the film noir antihero archetype. Where the movie makes him seem like a near unstoppable boozing and killing machine, the book has a little bit more emphasis on his weaknesses. Also the novel enlightens you more into the mindset of Marv than the movie does. It's good reading.

Business to get out of the Way

This weekend was shaky for me; There was some good, then came the bad, and then some good again. As far as the parties go, I'll leave the details out-it will take too much time to chronicle it-I'll just skip to Sunday...

The night before left me feeling depressed and lonely. I woke up with a minuscule amount of energy. Surprisingly, I didn't sleep much after 10 a.m. The routine of waking up, turning to see the time, and trying to sleep again was pestering. Today at 1 was the New Albanian employee party. After waking, I went to the party in a less than happy mood. Furthermore, being at bowling alley, the opportunity for bowling was less than appealing to me.

It didn't take much from my boss, Amy, to coerce me to at least attempt bowling, but I foretold her I was no good. Somehow, fate, irony, or plain apathy decided to step in and rescind my forewarning; I bowled a 110, probably my highest score ever in bowling. Somehow, I was able to get a few strikes and spare. Even more amazing was the turkey, the only that day, I scored in the next game. It made me feel at least some what better. Good enough to drink a little. Following the party there was an after party at another place. I decided on going, but I had trouble finding the place and I couldn't get a hold of anyone. I decided to head back home, which made me depressed again.

Though most of the day was a downer(and still is), at least I had fun for a few moments. Being there today reminded myself how much I enjoy my job, more so given a recent article I read(although 87 percent sounds a little high). It's one of the few things that I have going for me right now. I don't know if I'll be able to keep my spirits up through the rest of the big party weeks to come. I know I should, especially for the upcoming party at my house- it's the duty of the host to set the festive mood- but I really don't feel well.

Putting this aside, I'm knocking off things to finish before the year is over. In A New Start section before, I talked about metaphorically putting some old things to the flame. I've burned a few more bridges; I've seen them turn to ash. There are still a few more to go. Two of things I'm knocking off, you'll see by the end of this post.

One of this big things I plan on finishing up is with Camel Cash. Yes, those stupid bits of paper I've been collecting since, what seems likes forever, 2000. At the end of this year, I'm going to enact what I've been calling plan b. I'm going to buy cigarettes with the camel bucks, sell the cigarettes for cheap, and save the money in a fund. Once I'm done selling all these cigarettes I'm going to spend the money on a relatively nice pool table.

My throat is starting to hurt and my thoughts in this post are sporadic. I can't tell if it's the lack of food or water, my lethargy, or unhappiness that is causing it. I'm going to cut to two more things and then punch it out of here.

A Saturday Party

I love when I get stoned, really stoned. Getting stoned for me in the past few years are big events to me. I rarely smoke. Partially because my budget doesn't figure in buying pot, not that I'm against it. Another is that I try to keep that all things good in moderation philosophy. When I do get really stoned, all my sense become magnified by 10. I usually fall into a state of euphoria where everything is perfect; my sense of humor is sharp; my mind becomes free all doubts; I seem to have a understanding of all that is around me. Perfection doesn't exist, but being in that state seems pretty damn close.

My general mindset of the last half of the year has border some where between being content and apathetic. It usually falls between those two. So when last month rolls around and I get really stoned at this party, it has had a profound effect on me. The previous paragraph pretty much sums up the experience I had. It was good, very good. It was like the first time I really got stoned. I don't get that happy nowadays.

Since then I've been trying to figure out what made me happy and hold on to it. I can't describe it much, but I've noticed it's been popping up more and more, almost like it's lurking in the shadows. Since then I've had drinking experiences where I'm happy drunk, that hasn't happen much for me in, well, I don't know how long. I have noticed a couple of things that I want write down.

First off, one big thing I've noticed when I'm in this state is that the barriers between conscious/subconscious are gone for me. Analyzing my mind, I see that there's three barriers in mind. There's the things that mind just thinks, does, with out any sort of conscious, sentient push from "me"(e.g. wincing after being cut)-If I was Freud, I would call it the Id- After that, there's the things my mind kind of knows and does through learned habit, learned from formerly conscious thought. For example, I strike up conversations with attractive girls or doing something to get their attention based on past experience where I consciously determined that would be a good way to look at them without seeming rude because I'm staring. And lastly, there's the fully conscious part of my mind that knows about a situation and then acts based on conscious thought(e.g. I'm figuring out a problem or determining what I should do for the day). When I reach that state, all these entities are one.

I believe that's the effect of lowered inhibitions that most people feel when intoxicated. I imagine it comes from the body being in a more relaxed, not wound up, state. If we are to believe that we are animals, then it's as if the body is no longer in its defensive state, a state breed into all animals that keeps them alert to world and its potential hazards. When this state of relaxation is reached, the body, being in a coexistence with the mind, gives the mind the ability to relax as well. Thus, we start doing and saying things that wouldn't occur in our alerted state. I guess the only difference is that I've made a note to be consciously aware of it.

As I was in my stoned euphoria, I could feel my mind drifting back and forth between sobriety. At times, I felt like my high was coming down and I started to act how I normally would act without the influence of drugs. Then when I just thought the high was over, it came back. Looking back, I think a lot of people that just get paranoid( i.e. overly conscious about the world) when they smoke pot experience this. I say this because there were moments when I had this paranoid effect, but I had to consciously tell my mind, "you're being too conscious. It doesn't matter, just relax", and I would become back to my same old, stoned, self.

Whether this will help me recapture what it means to be happy and apply it the rest of my life I'm not sure. More and more I am thinking that because who I am, someone who thinks he might partially manic depressive, I just might have phases where I go to very happy, very depressed, and then just balance out to "normal" until next big up or down jump. I leave my writings as evidence either for or against that.

How to approach death

If the above was manic, then the following borders more on depressive. Over this past year I've been thinking about life and death a lot. There have been times when I've been really depressed to point of thinking about suicide. Thinking is just about all that I've done because somewhere in my mind exists the consideration for the rest of the world( friends and family), the idea that my life is worth something so far that it has a purpose, and the realization that my life's problems pale compared to how bad some people have it. But all that thinking has made me realize something. If those reasons start to disappear to the point where it's serve enough, I think that suicide might be my "exit strategy"

The point of life is what really you make. So far as our bodies are concerned, the point is procreation, birth, life, procreation, life, then death. After procreation, as far as life is concerned, we are just being pounded on until our bodies give out. Our society is filled with a constant recycling of people, each one living out what they define as their life. Our existence is a question much deeper and ultimately unlovable.

Setting this as back stage of my thoughts, my mind as come to realization that a life, my life, only has value so far as friends, family, and myself are concerned. If a person had no friends, no family, and no sense of self( or a purpose) would he have value? To answer my self-proposed question, the answer is no. If someone has no friend, no family, and no self, I have quintessentially described an animal who might have the capacities of person. The theoretical person I described, if he existed, might as well be invisible because his death would be inconsequent to rest of the world.

There are some that say that all life is important, and thus we should act accordingly to that. But to that I'll just point out that at some point even the most conscious vegan has to kill something that might be considered life. At this point a place a footnote here; I'm not arguing pro-death, pro-life, or anything here. This is just what I believe.

There are two thing that have had a big influence on this line of thinking during my year in 2005. The first is what Rolling Stone reported to Hunter S Thompson's last written words. The second, is an article I recently read in Wired dealing with a world of growing life expectancy. The combination of these, and my other own thinking, has made me realize I'm going to live until I have a point of being here in life. Once that is done, I'm done.

And with that, I'm done for now.

-Shawn "If the Name Don't Rhyme It Ain't Mine" Conn

Wednesday December 14th, 2005:

Staying on the ball

This latest update of "Who Is" is brought to you from the comfort of my own kitchen after I've dined on a couple of egg sandwiches as I try to stay warm from a nearby heat vent. I've been really sluggish when it has come to updates on "Who Is" for a while. My current list of priorities is kind of scattered all over the place; they're things I want done around my home; there's also other side projects that I've been trying to get to; And of course there's always the huge array, or perhaps queue to use a different type of metaphor, of video games on my PS2 that I've been playing through.

I've just finished Katamari Damacy and it's sequel, We Love Katamari. I think I'm done with that game for a while, say the rest of my life, or whenever a sequel might come out with a different twist on the old game. Right now I'm playing through Resident Evil 4, which so far has been entertaining for the 7 hours I've been playing it.

I've also got my FTP server running still if you haven't read. Though this time I've gotten a domain name for it so that you don't have to remember it by an IP address. The address is ftp.mitaphane.dyndns.org with user name "download" and the password being my favorite alcoholic beverage.

In other news, there will be a party at my house on Christmas night starting around 10 p.m. or later. I have been talking to a few people about it already to gauge whether it would be a good time. After hearing that Emily will soon be leaving for Texas after Christmas, it was decided this would make a good Christmas/going away party. Like usual, everyone is welcome. So you have no excuse. Be there.

I don't know how ready I am for this Christmas season. The time is rushing upon me and I have many things to attend: the annual Christmas at Steak n' Shake, a party at Coire Reilly's house, a party at the Vaughn household, a party over at Peter's, a party for the employees over at New Albanian, my Christmas party, the activities with my family, and I haven't even thought about New Year's Eve. I don't even know what I'd like for Christmas; Since about 5 or 6 years ago, I've told my family that they don't need to get me anything for Christmas anymore. There's not much I need and the things I always want around this time year are usually not material possessions. Regardless, things will play out as they did in yesteryears. I'll get presents that, while I didn't want or need them, will still be nice and I will still show my thanks even though a little part of me will still feel a little empty this season.

A New Start

Speaking of this season, I've felt that I need to start a new tradition around say, the 30th of December. I need to take some of the baggage, literal and psychological, I've acquired from this year and toss it to the literal or metaphorical fire. There's a lot of things that have stuck with me in both my possession and my mind that I don't need to hold on to anymore. To usher in the coming of the new year I need to toss some of these things out to welcome the new changes in my life. The things I'm talking about is stuff like old junk that just lies around my house that I've kept for whatever silly reason. While some of it is important to keep around to remind myself who I am, there's other things that just hold me back and don't really serve any purpose. Likewise, I need to come to terms with things I've learned and experienced through this year and put that behind me as well.

I tell myself this because there's one thing that been staying in my mind recently; There's a big leap from just having good ideas to having good ideas and actually implementing them. I have felt this a lot this year. Good ideas are an important part of achievement but, with out the determination and persistence to follow them through, they are just a tease. They are a tease of what might have become and what you could be. To sum it up in an often used phrase of mine, "coulda, shoulda, woulda, didn't." The fact that you had a great idea, one that you could plausibly do, doesn't mean shit. It means you're reasonably more intelligent than the bland masses out there. Big deal, there's a lot of people like that. Now, if you had a great idea and followed it through, regardless whether you succeed or fail that means something. It means you took initiative to go beyond that border between imagination and reality that a lot of people stop at. For better or worse, you achieved something.

This is my thinking for next year. I'm keeping it fresh. I'm going to do my best, and I'm going to do something for myself.

To Leave On an Old Note

To get back to a topic I left open on my last post, the one regarding inherent problems in human life that emerge as problems in society. I left my thoughts open since Box Wine Monday was starting at the time of my writing, but I wanted to come back and close my thoughts. Eventually, where I was going with my ideas was the idea that there's only a finite amount of happiness in the world. I was using these inherit problems as an example of things that can't be solved and even if they could they would present a solution that could potentially be worse than the initially problem. My point was problems like these are sources of sadness that can't be fixed; they are inherit to the human condition.

I state that there's only a finite amount in human life based on a few things; We only have a finite lifespan in which experience happiness; The feeling of happiness, like a lot our emotions, seems to be somewhat governed by the law of diminishing returns(e.g. As we acquire more of something that makes us feel a certain way, it will have less of an effect it has on us in the future); Lastly, when you think about what we consider to make us happy, it only makes sense when you consider the dichotomy of happiness and sadness(i.e. true happiness can't exist with a true sadness).

Not that I really had place to go with this either. It's just some thing to consider.

-Shawn "If the Name Don't Rhyme It Ain't Mine" Conn

Monday November 21st, 2005:

Rest

Since about mid-to-late summer, I really haven't enjoyed my posts here too much. Even though there's a lot things I want to convey to written word, there's always something holding me back from keeping up the pace I used to have. Maybe it's me being tired of the same motif on this website. It could be that I feel like I'm writing the same shit over and over. Maybe I just have a number of other things I'd rather be doing. I'm not sure...it could be a combination of those things. Or it could be with all the number of computer related problems that have popped up in the past few months I have gotten tired with using computers outside of the necessities(paying/checking bills, news, communication, etc.).

Things are going well otherwise in my life. My job, while not some fast track to big career opportunities, is very fulfilling in every goal(with the exception of providing insurance). I have recently setup a very nice, more nice than I expected in fact, 5.1 surround speaker system in my living room. My DSL from SBC, after the 2 weeks of bullshit I had to go through to get the modem, works great; I get download speeds of 300-400KB/s and a decent upload speed of 64KB/s which works out better than if I had got cable Internet from Insight. The place has also gotten some decor now, though it's still a work in progress.

Speaking of my home, I'm hoping to through some sort of party here during December some time. I was going to throw some sort of house warming party, but after thinking how close the holiday season was I decided it be better to wait that way everyone who might be in town could join as well. If you live out of town(and reading this) get a hold of me to tell me when you might be in town this December so I can plan for a date that will work for everyone. I guess I'll probably start calling people at little after Thanksgiving so that I can get a feel for when a good time would be.

Miscellaneous Cool Things

If you haven't tried out Google Earth give it a shot if your PC has the specs to run it. It's unbelievable(especially for a free program).

Here's a very insightful piece of writing(I'm turning a blind eye to the horrible layout for the articles on the website) from Chris Crawford.

Congrats to Newt's SBB Wikipedia article. I hope to add my own fixes next time I'm on the Wikipedia.

Jacob's Ladder is a good movie, thanks to Ted for letting me borrow it.

Armchair Philosophy

So for those non-Louisvillians reading this page, just last week the city finally enacted it's smoking ban across restaurants and other public places(with the exclusion of clubs, bars, restaurants that have 25% or more of their sales in alcohol, and so on). And in Jeffersonville, an even stricter ban has been working it's way through the city counsel.

My personal thoughts on this are that our local government shouldn't be dictating what private business owner can do with their establishments. If the whole issue is over public health then require a law for a public place to designate both smoking and nonsmoking areas. Otherwise, stop trying to become a nanny state for those who choose to live unhealthily and don't hurt others in that process. Just like with seatbelt laws, I'm sure if you look at the numbers you can point to statistics that say these laws save lives and make things safer. But using that reasoning, I'm sure you can say that if you impose a citywide curfew for everyone(or other such draconian laws) you could significantly drop crime too.

As I've gotten older, I've realized that there is no permanent cure all for society's ills. Things like uneducated people, sickness, crime, death, and pain are all things that are a part of life. Thinking that there's way to eliminate any of these things is naive. At best, laws that help try to correct ills in society minimize these problems to acceptable levels. If you're going to use the metaphor of disease(societal problem) and cure(law) then it's helpful to think of it like real drugs that cure problems; every medicine, drug, has its own side effect. In other words, from the prospect of that one problem, the problem is fixed but in the larger view the problem is just redirected to another area.

The things that society deems bad occur because some underlying causes; People are violent because they were treated violently; people use unhealthy recreational drugs to relieve stress in their lives; people make bad decisions because they weren't taught right growing up. The list can go on for quite a while. If you want to get down to it, most of these problems are fundamental elements of human life that can't be avoided: scarcity, psychological problems, genetic problems.

More to come...

-Shawn "If the Name Don't Rhyme It Ain't Mine" Conn

Monday November 14th, 2005:

The Fixed

Has it already been another two weeks since my last post? I really haven't been keeping up with this thing. It's not that I don't have anything to post in here. The lack of frequent posts is more the result of me having my time divided between other things. Things like:

Doing stuff around the house to make it look better(Involving lots of hanging things on walls)

Playing video games(finished Katamari Damacy and Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne as of late)

Working at my Sportstime(as well as contemplating a new occupation for the new year).

The title above could refer to a lot of things in my life, but at the most recent it refers to the fixed desktop computer. This computer is a hand me down, a hand-hand-me-down rather. It used to belong to my aunt, who got a new computer. It went to my sister for her business, until she realized it wasn't that worthwhile to have for her business. Ergo, it went to me. It's a fairly old as far as computer life spans go, a PentiumII 366MHz CPU. It's been upgraded a little to suit my needs(a RAM upgrade, an extra hard drive, an ethernet card, and new USB2 ports). Surprisingly, it doesn't have too much of a problem running WindowsXP.

The problem is when I first got it online with my DSL connection, I'd start to have all kinds of weird ass errors: bit torrent files corrupting, WindowsXP upgrades crashing, problems with boot ups, and more. For a week, this problem plagued me and I could figure out what the hell it was. Then all of a sudden two night ago I had the revelation that the RAM could be bad. This would explain the seemingly random errors. A computer could write to a bad RAM module, but the moment it would read from the same RAM it would be filled with garbage that would cause CPU crashes, corrupt data, and more. This would also make sense given I bought the RAM from Jon Chapman's old computer that had weird ass problems when trying to install WindowsXP.

So I downloaded a RAM checking utility to test out this hypothesis. Sure enough after running it, there were reports incorrect memory values after writing to certain sections of memory. After doing a basic troubleshooting to see what component was bad, I found the bad RAM module an expelled it from my computer. No problems since then...

The point of this computer is to download large files without having to put wear and tear on my laptop. Also, it's nice to have a computer constantly connected to the Internet that can serve as your own personal server. In fact it's sharing files that you, my friends, and have right now. If you're wanting to browse the FTP server you can go to 68.248.162.64 and use the username download and the password is the name of my alcoholic beverage of choice. I'd say it explicitly but being that I don't know who the hell is reading this, I thought I'd play it safe an just give out a hint to the password. It should be fairly easy to guess this beverage if you know me in the least. And if you still can't guess you can also ask me over AIM.

Two more things as well, the "Share" folder has write permissions so if you want to be nice and upload something cool go ahead. Also, if you don't have a FTP client you can go there by placing this address, "ftp://download:<password>@68.248.162.64/", into your web browser and it will take you there.

The Broken

After the restoration of my laptop, I was eager to start the ball rolling again on the strange case project. But yet again another technical slap in face, or kick in the balls if you prefer that metaphor, has come this way. This time I think there's a codec problem or a problem with the imported files. The movie files for the Raven and Strange Case won't play back properly in either Adobe Premiere or Encore. Thus, I am not able to cut the movie down nor be able to transcode it to MPEG-2 for the DVD.

I'm sure I'll figure it out somewhere down the road, but this has become yet another frustrating hurdle in this project. Combine these problems with no other outside motivation beside my own and it's very to see why this project has become so stagnant. It's stagnancy(if that's a word) make me loathe it so much. But I need to keep pressing on. Don't focus on the negative. Focus on the positive and look ahead, that's what I need to do.

Other revelations...

So when I haven't been affixed to my myopic views of the little problems encounter in my world, I've been thinking about the near future for me. I imagine in the new year, I'll be seriously looking for a new job. This whole new moving out adventure was suppose to be the start of that. My thoughts were that with new expenses would come a greater push to get a new job. So far however, my expenses haven't been that great. When comes down to it, I suppose there isn't much I really need to buy. I still have over $4000 in savings and no debt.

Ideally, I would be content with my job as it is. But there's also that no health insurance issue that my parents keep bring up to me. I keep telling them I'm well aware of the issue as well, but there's not much I can to do it about it aside from taking some job I know I won't like. I've talked to my boss, Kate, about this not long ago as well. She told me that if weren't for the health care issue, turnover at New Albanian wouldn't be much of an issue. If it were possible, she'd like to offer health care to all her employees, but the truth is it's still way too expensive.

A throwaway Society

I'd like to think that my lack of health care is more a failing of our society than my own personal failure. For a country that has people claiming it is #1, there's a lot of things we are far from #1 at. Our country may have the #1 largest economy, but that's because we buy things like crazy. I recently read an article in "The Economist" about why the hurricanes and war hasn't destroyed our economy. In that article they mention trade deficits are still up in this country not because our trade partners don't buy more of our goods, but because we consume so many goods.

Our society has thrown away that model where an employee develops a long term relationship with the company he works for. Having employees for 20,30, or 40 years and then the company taking care of them after retirement is too much of a burden in this fast-past extreme 21st century post-9/11 competitive global marketplace, now with 50% more spending. Today, the employees that work at our companies are as disposable as our cameras, electronics, food, and other products they make.

All our suburban communities are centered around the same bland long stretch of road littered with same franchise stores that can be found all around the country. Each of these communities have its own capitol to consumer spending, Wal-Mart. And each of these Wal-Marts have the same bland layout- you've seen one, you've seen them all. They all sell the same products at rock bottom prices to save you, the consumer, money. Not that these are savings passed on to you because as cheap as that huge ass jar of pickles is it still comes at cost. Whether that be at the cost of the pickle industry, the cost of fair non-skilled employee wages, or the cost of local businesses- you get what you pay for- someone is paying for you to have that big ass jar of pickles at the now lower price of $2.99.

And as much as we are saving(?) from companies like Wal-Mart, you think American would actually be saving more but we don't; We spend more. Savings rates in this country are crazy low. And just like its people, the government is doing the same as it racks up some $300-400 billion in debt each year. And it's not like this spending is actually doing this good. Unless you think a $376 billion(from the figures I've read) invasion and occupation in the Muslim heartland is actually going to help fight would-be Muslim extremists from trying to hurt this country.

That reminds me of a revelation I had a while back. This "war" in Iraq has cost around $376 billion. I was thinking about how many people are in Iraqi, according to the Wikipedia about 26,074,906). If you do the math that's like $14,419 for each Iraqi, which is much more if you consider the cost of living over there. I'm guessing the cost of living is at least 10 times less over there which would make it more like $140,000 for each Iraqi. Going with this idea, what would happen if we just offered that much money to every Iraqi citizen to start a new government and hand Saddam over to us.

I know there's a lot of holes in this reasoning: the inflation from such a huge amount of money in the market, the logistics of getting Saddam and the Iraqis to cooperate, and so on. And on a real practical scale, it probably be tough to achieve the goal of making a democratic Iraq with this method. But would have been any more practical than what we did; go in guns-a-blazin', blow up what was left of Iraq's military(less than 5% what I hear) after the first Persian Gulf war, call it "Mission Accomplished", then figure how the hell do we get 3 factions to work together after creating a massive power vacuum in a region that isn't known for its stability.

That $14,000 for every Iraqi could have bought many great things for people. Instead, it bought a lot of corrupt people, buildings/infrastructure to keep the rich still rich(and to keep us supplied with oil), a lot weapons of non-mass destruction used on a slightly less-than-mass scale, and then some handouts for the Iraqis once all major expenses have been paid.

I'm not saying that there's anything inherently wrong with capitalism. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with the people in this country. Capitalism works if regulated so that it doesn't go out of control. And there are a lot of good people in this country. The problem is our sense of our priorities is all screwed up. And it's in these priorities that our society has failed me.

-Shawn "If the Name Don't Rhyme It Ain't Mine" Conn

Tuesday November 1st, 2005:

So Begins Another Month

Hopefully, it won't be another month that my website will go woefully unupdated. With that stated, I'm kicking off the month with a new post straight from the mind of Shawn Conn. To keep inquiring minds informed, I'll start off why I've been absent from my website: One, I've been busy fixing my computer(which is completed). And two, I've been lacking Internet access as I've moved out of my parents house into...well...another one of their houses(but one I solitarily live in).

The decision to move out 4 weeks ago was made within about a couple days of actually moving out. Being on such short notice, I've kind of been playing things out as they pop up. Thus, I've been occupied with wanting to get everything in order here. For the most part that is done now. There are a few more things I think that need to do be done around here, but they will be done in good time. I have a lot of things on my (metaphorical) plate. There's many of those things half done. I hate half done things. I'm trying to get things done ASAP, but I realize I am only one man.

Since I've been absent there's been a number of topics I've been wanting to write about. Now acquiring the means to convey them here on my website again, I have to shuffle through the ones I've been wanting to talk about. You see, I've been jotting these topics down on little notes here and there while I wait to be able to get them posted on here. Now that I have the means, there's a lot of notes of random ideas, quotes, and stories that I must sift through to get to you in one comprehensible format. With that laid out for you, I'll rip into the first topic.

The Score

About 3 months, 1/4 a year, and 1/102 of my life thus far, I wrote at a list of things I'd like to get done. Here's how I've scored thus far:

I need to fix some tags screwed up on MP3 player

Fixed the problems related to my MP3 player

Copy the rest of the PS2 games I want

Got a good number, minus about 5 or 6 more I want, of PS2 games on a nice 300GB. In other words, it's plenty of games to play while I wait for the Nintendo Revolution, which I think I'm going to buy in light of Nintendo trying something with their new controller that sounds like a whole lot more fun than what Sony and Nintendo are offering.

Overhaul the Tekken character Wikipedia article and start some new articles I wanted.

Done and done.

Get a very light laptop solely for just carrying around and writing.

On hold until I gain a complete idea of my financial situation

Figure out how to mod an Xbox and turn it into an emulator box.

Chip installed with BIOS needing flashed, but on hold until I solve other pressing matters. It's been put on a lower priority being that I still have a huge number of PS2 games still to play through.

Get my car really fixed(I'm going to need the defrost at some point).

Still needing to be done, I think I might actually get to this next week since it's now finally starting to get cold.

Get a small little home network setup once they roll DSL out here(near the end of the summer I hear).

Completed. I've got my laptop, desktop, and my PS2 all networked up here.

Hit up some sites in search of a real job.

I've decided to really get started on this into 2006. My thinking is that with new bills will come a greater push to want to get a better paying job.

Finish the Strange Case DVD

Restarted but to a bad start. I'll maybe discuss it maybe later but right now the subject annoys me too much to want to talk about it.

Throw the big fuckoff end of the summer bash pool party.

The party, to me, was disappointing as I look back on it. I had some fun but there was a lot of people that didn't show up which saddened me.

The Feeling of Accomplishment

With all these things going in my life. I've felt a bit overwhelmed at times. At my core, I like to live a simple as possible. More details, responsibilities, demands, and things complicate my life to where I just don't feel comfortable. When I take on a task, I like to focus on it completely and finish it to completion. But when there's too much on my mind, It just overwhelms me.

In these past weeks, I've learned that it is helpful to know when the drive to complete something, for that obtainment of the feeling of accomplishment, is more harmful than helpful. At some point you have to step back and realize that the same drive that can lead you to greatness can also destroy you. I've spent what is nearing 10,000 of my estimated 30,000 days already. I can either consume the time I have or let time I have consume me. With only so much time left, I'll go with the latter option.

-Shawn "If the Name Don't Rhyme It Ain't Mine" Conn

Friday October 11th, 2005:

Where Is the Man With the Name that Rhymes?

I've finally moved out my parents' house to move into... well my parent's house. They own another house in downtown Jeffersonville. They've cut me a deal since, unlike the various crack head people they've rented to in the past, they know I won't screw the place up. I've just now moved all my things in. The next step is to give it some decor so it does have that bland motel room look. And before that, I've got to get various important utilities activated. Expect another update once that happens.

-Shawn "If the Name Don't Rhyme It Ain't Mine" Conn

Friday October 7th, 2005:

Laptop Reloaded

So it's been nearly a month since you've seen new news from the Man with the Name that Rhymes. I imagine those who've been keeping track have been wondering why I abandoned my post. The news is, I didn't. Well, that's half true. Here's the story...

For a week or so after my last post I went back to my gaming routine. If you recall, these last few months have put me in dismay when it has come to things like being social. That combined with my job being a social hub, left me to gaming since it seems more reliable than people at times. I started up a new RPG, my life was well.

Is that how it was? "well" and "blur" could have been swapped out in that sentence and I think it would have been the same thing in my mind. With all kinds of bad, depressing, and sometimes horrifying things in the world outside of this area, I had recently been trying to shut out the rest of the world from my mind. Disasters, man and god made alike, made believe the end could possibly be near. A seemingly retarded, incompetent, and insulated federal government was making me loose my faith in government of my country. I didn't want any more of it.

September was melting away quickly with out me noticing it. Politics, news, world events, would certainly get discussed at the workplace, but after the work chat I went home and ignored the rest of it. I ignored my friends too. I just felt indifferent to things in the world. I insulated myself with some games, or sometimes just project tinkering. I still do in some way feel indifferent, but I realize when bad things occur the opportunity arise to fix them, and possibly make things better than before.

About 2 weeks ago, during the start of what felt to be a depressing weekend-a reoccurring theme lately-I jumped on my computer to check my email. Upon startup, I was slapped in the face with my computer rebooting Windows upon seeing the splash screen of WindowsXP. I tried again to start the computer. Reboot. Again. Reboot. And so on. Frustrated, I said fuck it. I went back the video game. I wasn't going to be pissed off by a $3000 of plastics, silicon, magnetics, and wires. I decided to take on the problem head on after I relaxed with gaming. Things were going to take a while to get things on track, so there was no need for anxiety.

Back to the problem.

Step one was to check the BIOS, see if the computer has any problems with the hard drives, they didn't. Good. That meant most likely the discs, and most importantly, my data was intact. Computer are replaceable, personal data isn't. Upon checking out the boot screen, I noticed WindowsXP nasty secret, the hidden BSOD, the infamous Blue Screen of Death. Back in the old days the BSOD meant, "shit's fucked up. Reboot sucka." That shit was the operating system. It had a failure that couldn't be fixed without a reload. Often it also contained an error message- Helpful, if you're computer knowledged, practically worthless if not.

Now with the shiny, sleek, "user-friendly" WindowsXP this BSOD still appears. But instead of the screen just staring at you saying "you fucked up retard. Try again." It says, "Oops sorry, you don't want to see that." It reboots the computer automatically before you get a chance to see the error. With that in place, I couldn't do anymore with my computer.

I decided to assume the worse given what I could see; The computer was busted but recognized hard drives and Windows booting meant my data was intact. I decided to buy some parts that would let me recover that data from the hard drives. It would take a bit to get them by mail so in the meantime I setup the spare desktop I had as a temporary replacement. I also would contact tech support regarding what I believe could be a bad video card. You see, my laptop on occasion would crash and do the BSOD reboot. Upon restart Windows would recover and tell me the problem came from an ATI(the video card manufacturer)driver. After talking to tech support, they told me that if it was the case then they would have to replace the motherboard, a very expensive thing to do. I prepared for the worse.

Of course, I would know this for a fact until I tested something, a new install of Windows. If Windows became corrupt then it would never boot right. Thus, if this was the case I wouldn't have to pay a ton of money to get things fixed. Regardless though, before that happened, I was going to backup my data.

After getting the necessary cables, I gutted the laptop and took out the hard drives. I checked both disks. Both were recognized, both had all the files on them. Things were good, well, almost. One hard drive had finished being backed up. I just had backed up all my documents, images, music, movies, and other sorts of media files. I went to the second disc, the one containing programs and other important files. Upon copying all the files, Windows halted at a folder, "C:/Documents and Settings/Mitaphane"

This was a very important folder. It contained not only all my user settings for windows, but also some disc images I threw in one directory, some small programs I wrote. Most important though was all the work for The Raven/Strange Case. I checked the folder size. Windows said "0 bytes." I wasn't going to be angry, but I was going to be vigilant. I did a bunch of research, I asked tech guys, I tested out other user folders. I did all I could to see if it was something else than what I feared, the folder was corrupted.

How could it get corrupted? I did see that BSOD reboot problems occur during a shutdown of windows. Maybe that was it. Upon copying of the rest of the hard drive I saw the problem with corrupt files happened one or two more times. Perhaps it was corrupted. After thinking and thinking about it, I decide to format the other disc. With it being backed up, I could put a new install of Windows and check my laptop. So I did that. But before Windows on it, I tweaked an option in BIOS. Hyperthreading for P4.

To keep it brief, it was a feature for the processor that I turned off before I installed Windows. Unfortunately, turning it off before an install meant if I turned it on again Windows would start acting crazy. Thus it was left off. But since I had to start new this time(I was planning on coming with terms with the fact that all my work was gone) it might as well be turned on. After the new install I noticed at least one thing. The random BSOD reboot problems I had before were gone. I had lost one thing but I had gained another. Maybe things weren't too bad. It's taken me a week to get all my programs and shit back up and running, but by the end of this week it should be done.

I initially had the mindset of letting the project go to hell. The work was gone. Ted's brothers didn't give two shits. Ted was seeming apathetic about the project. And recently Ted and I had a big problem with the Strange Case commentary working. When shit's fucked up and it's all going to down, it's real easy to say "fuck it." But when bad problems arise, even better solutions can, and do, come.

-Shawn "If the Name Don't Rhyme It Ain't Mine" Conn

Tuesday September 13th, 2005:

I Return

I apologize for the long hiatus. When it has come to Internet related activities in the past few weeks, I've been very lazy. Supposedly my mom was told by SBC a few months back that DSL was getting rolled out here by the end of the summer. I've since determined that statement as bullshit. I'm probably stuck with dialup until I move out of this place since I'm not going to pay $45+/month (+ bullshit installation fees) that Insight will charge me if I want cable modem service. So I guess if I want to do anything on the Internet I'm stuck with shitty speeds unless I want to head over to IUS.

In the past few weeks I haven't been doing much of anything outside of work. 5 days a week I'm at work 5-8+ hours a day. That means the following:

5 hours: I work until the lunch rush is over and let my fellow server finish the shift(there's not enough work usually to justify having 2 servers between 3p.m. - 5p.m.).

Between 5 and 8: I work as I mention before but I don't have anything else to do so I stick around, drink a shift beer, talk to fellow employees or patrons, and then leave.

8+: Like the aforementioned category except I finish the complete shift.

Outside that, I really haven't done much in my personal life. Since mid-summer, I've been in dismay when it has concerned calling people and doing social activities. I'm sick of trying to call people(names with held to protect the guility) and getting bullshit voice mail. I've gotten wise to this shit. Sure I bet there are some people that are too busy to pick up their phone. But when you leave a message for people and they still don't get back to you, that's when you know they're just ignoring you. So I say, in the most spiteful way, "fuck you"

So instead of trying to find social activities, I rely on my job to provide my social needs; It works out well considering the pub-like atmosphere or Sportstime/Richo's; And when I haven't been working I've been going to my old standby for entertainment: video games.

What I've been playing

Since I've setup my PS2 with the hard drive loader and I've been renting, ripping, and returning games from GameNFlix like crazy, I've built up a huge list of games to play. Slowly I've been making my through the list. This is what I've played so far:

Beyond Good and Evil: A fun action/adventure game sporting a relatively fresh storyline from what the industry has been producing lately. The gameplay is like Zelda (simplified lock on combat with enemies) with a touch of stealth in some parts and some vehicular exploration(and racing at parts). The final battle in the game was done rather well I might add. Unfortunately it wasn't accepted in the commerical arena as it was in the critical arena. I guess it's more sequel for you video game industry.

Final Note: The Nietzschean title, while cool sounding(it did attract my attention to the game), is very superficial and really has nothing to do with game to my disappointment.

Front Mission 4: A sequel to the Front Mission 3 obviously. I often wonder if should become the industry practice now to start off a game franchise with the number 2 following it so that it will boost sales. Rants aside, I had not actually played the first two. They were released on the SNES in Japan but not in the states. I remember I was quite disappointed; I had remembered seeing screen shots of the first Front Mission in Nintendo Power ages ago and getting exciting about playing it. Only for Square Soft, now SquareEnix(or as I like to say "Squenix"), to decide that a turn based strategy game involving manned, giant fuck-off, bipedal robots, also called mechs, or wanzers, probably wasn't Americans cup of tea(or coffee rather since no real Americans drink).

The game, as mentioned, is a turned based strategy game. If you remember Square's classic Final Fantasy Tatics, you can think that game with giant fuck-off robots instead of mages, knights, etc. It was nice, mild, 40 hour diversion. Personally, I thought the previous entry in the game was more enjoyable despite the addition of pretty graphics and combination attacks in this game.

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: Even if you don't play video games much(or at all), you've probably heard of this game by now. Since the beginning the series has been gaining "wanted levels"(in game refrence) of its own by people that don't have the time to raise their kids right but have time to blame video games for societal problems. The first two titles got shit from people about popularizing a major crime.

The third game is the title that really made the series shine as it expanded it's depiction of a city into a full 3-D world, added some what realistic(with an added dose of cynicism) radio stations, and much more layed crime story line. It got shit from people about being able to pick up prostitutes and have "sex" with them that's portrayed by just making the car shake. In fact, if you change the in game view to be inside the car and see both your character and the prostitute just sitting there motionless. And to top it off you could kill the prostitute afterwards. That was one thing that almost everyone had to mentioned, despite the fact the player had to do all of this himself(none of this is required to finished the game).

GTA: Vice City got shit from Hatiian groups from a mission in the game where you "Kill All Hatians" that was completely taken out of context. Apparent no one told them all the gangs in the game are based on sterotype figures from various ethnic groups. So just because you're told to kill the Italian Mafia, the Japanese Yakuza, or the Latino Diablos in the game it doesn't mean you're suppose to kill "everyone of that ethnicity." Of course I don't expect people that don't take their time to do research to understand this, but I sure as hell didn't hear any Americans of Italian, Japanese, or Latino decent make complaints about this game.

So with this last title, San Andreas, for the PS2. It seems that Rockstar guys have done it all. They took what was good about the game and amplified about 2 or 3 times. If GTA3, Vice City, and San Andreas are a trilogy, then this is quite the grand finale. San Andreas pretty much sports at least one facuet of every video game genre there is: Driving of almost every type of well known vehicle, first person shooting(one part even emulates Time Crisis), dating "simulators", some what relistic flying(banking, throttle, and rudder control), RPG stat building elements, car upgrading, on and off road racing, a rhythm dancing game, tons of little sub missions(such as police, ambulance, taxi, pimping, trucking missions). On top of that it also contains a huge huge area with deserts, oceans, lakes, airports, suburbs, countrysides, highways, and 3 rather large cities. To complete everything in the game, it took me 93.5 hours(which doesn't count the times were I reloaded to save the weapons I earned).

They even put in the most contraversally thing yet, a sex mini game that was buried in the game. While normally not in the game, you can tinker around with save files and unlock it, although it does take a bit more work if you have the console version. Needless to say, politicians( and whoever those other people that complain this stuff) were furious about crudely drawn, clothed(there is no nudity in the game at all), polygonal people humping each other in game that meant to be sold to people 17 and up. Maybe all those people complaing might have a point if there was actual pornographic images in the game, but there is not. I define pornographic as images complete nudity or the act of masturbation/sexual intercourse. You can't find any of that in the game.

But, whatever, if it wasn't this, these people would find something else to complain about.

As far as the game goes, all of it is much fun. But, be prepared; There is too much of a good thing. After playing through this I am done with the Grand Theft Auto games for the rest of my life. As much fun as I had, there were an a good number of parts where I felt like I was just playing the same game over. And when it comes down to it, the game loses a lot after two iterations, even if it adds a lot of new things.

Onimusha 2: An ok sequel. I was rather bored with the game. While the first was fun, the 2nd really didn't have much to add outside of rehashing the gameplay, expanding to having other friendly characters help you in the task of killing hordes of enemies, and adding this stupid game where you had to buy items to give to friends in the hope that they would give you something worthwhile in return(i.e. a powerup or weapon technique).

Viewtiful Joe 1&2: I left this last because this has been the most impressive game that I've played latety. The game is a simple platform/beat'em up(sort oflike the fighting game genre except your opponets are hordes and hordes of enemies) game but it works because of the fun gameplay mechanics that the slow motion, fast motion, and zoom provide. Slap on a story that a cross between the great-on-concept-failed-in-execution movie Last Action Hero and the Japanese Henshin genre(click the Wikipedia link, I didn't know about the genre before I discovered it there) and you have a fun little ride. I paid $20 for the first copy(as it wasn't compatible with the hard drive loader) and it was a well deserved purchase.

And with that, I move on to my next video game...

-Shawn "If the Name Don't Rhyme It Ain't Mine" Conn

Thursday August 18th, 2005:

Big Fuck Off Party

My house. Saturday 20th. Starting from 2:00 pm until I pass out. Be there.

-Shawn "If the Name Don't Rhyme It Ain't Mine" Conn
Comments

Sunday August 7th, 2005:

On the Radar

I haven't been keeping up with this website in a couple of weeks. I've been relaxing, getting a few things out of the way, and, yes, still working at Sportstime Pizza. My attention has been drawn away from any sort of career ambitions right now. Though I would like a better paying, more creative job, I'm satisfied right now with a decent paying one that includes working with a lot of great people.

I don't know why I felt inclined to mention my job. It seems I've mention occupational things every time I write here. It must be some sort of unconscious mental reminder about needing a job that will support, you know, all those things you pay for when you have like a real adult life: house payments, kids, and stuff like that. I just wrote that and I realize that none of those things are even close to becoming a reality in my life. It's thoughts and feelings like that make me feel like I'm being pushed. I don't like it. So, I'm going to stop and tell you what I've been doing with my life when I'm not forced in a routine of making income, or other mundane daily life processes.

Console Hacking

I probably mentioned briefly a while back about fitting my PS2 with a hard drive and being able to copy games. I didn't probably mention much more so I'll go into detail now. The way that it's managed was with the Independence exploit(once again the Wikipedia is doing some work for me). All that it takes is to get a specific file onto a memory card. Thanks to Jim, I got that file pretty easily. From there all you need is a Sony network adapter, which I had purchased a couple of years ago, and a regular IDE hard drive to fit it to.

As I played around with this exploit, I found out there were other programs that allowed you to do much more. The first was an FTP program that turns your PS2 into a FTP server. This was important because it lets you see the file structure of the memory card and the PS2 HDD by connecting your computer to it. From there, I was able to browse around and see that all these different programs were contained in this .elf file format. Since I was able to get and put files on to PS2 memory card and hard drive with my computer, I figured out that putting a new program on your PS2 was as easy looking for .elf files over the Internet and then copying them over to the PS2.

As tempting as getting emulators, media players, and such for my PS2 was, I decided I was going to do that with an Xbox. For the PS2, I've just been borrowing and renting all the games I want to play(or have heard good things about) and copying them over to the hard drive. It's been pretty successful. Except now that I have way more games than time to play them, but that's ok. I'm not going anywhere.

The Xbox

As another project itself, I've gotten started with hacking an Xbox. About 2 weeks ago I had been doing research on the subject. After all that, I found out what I had to do:

Buy Xbox (as easy as stopping by WalMart)
Get a mod chip that would work with the version 1.6(the version out on the market now) Xbox (a little research- not too hard)
Install the chip (some what more trickier since it's been a while since I solder, but I'm sure it won't be that tough)
Flash the new BIOS (a little tricky, but researching what I need shouldn't make it very difficult)
Copy the hard drive and install a new one (I'm sure it's just a little more difficult than putting in one for a new computer)
Replace the Dashboard(the program that starts when the Xbox starts up)
And finally start loading it up with programs, games, emulators, and whatever else.

Well about a week ago I got the Xbox and the mod chip. I spent a day this week gutting it to get ready to solder the chip. Until I found out that I was missing one essential wire for the chip. I contacted the vendor and he said he send it to me right away. While I've been waiting, I been looking up tutorials on how to install my mod chip. I know how to install the chip now. I'm just waiting on that damn wire now. Hopefully it will get here soon, I wouldn't want to have to charge back my credit card on that vendor.

Thanks to these 2 little projects, some what continuing work on the Raven/Strange Case DVD, and other time consuming things I've found that I've been minimizing my social time lately. Really the only people that I've been regularly talking to is the people I see often at work. The time I spent at work has kind of compacted into my social and work hours of the day, leaving the rest of the hours spent on said projects or other needed activities like sleeping. It's nice to be there, but I don't like being out of touch with people too long.

Party

Thus, I'm throwing a pool party at my house on Saturday the 20th. Which I believe will start at like 1 in the afternoon and continue on through the rest of the day. Anyone and everyone will be invited. There should be food there; there should be a lot of booze there; And their might be a band playing music there. Other than that, I don't know of any other details. I'll have all the details ready by this Saturday which is when I plan to put the full party advertising into effect. Until then stay noted.

Monday July 25th, 2005:

Beyond Comprehension

Every now and again this summer I've been getting these moments. I suppose they could be called epiphanies having no other word in my lexicon withstanding. They are moments where I feel like I'm in something that's beyond my understanding. It's a moment where I feel like I get a glimpse of some sort of huge scheme and then I complete lose that view or insight. They are ideas of plans, thing yet to happen, abstract concepts, or thoughts about every thing I know as a existence.

I have distinct memories of thinking when I was young about the universe being infinite. I was thinking about going away from Earth forever. The thought came to me, "what if I hit some end point," like I got to a boundary where existence doesn't exist anymore. That thought, I remember, weired me out a lot. I learned many years later in an astronomy class that the universe does have a boundary, a visible one. It's the distance we can see farthest into space given that the universe has been expanding since the beginning. I don't get that weird feeling anymore thinking about that, but that memory has stuck with me. It's just like the feeling of fear I had when I thought about what would be around after death. Being older and wiser, I've realized that it's pointless about a fear of death but there are still other thoughts, like the aforementioned ones, that have weirded me out.

There's an archtypical character in fiction, and non fiction in some ways, of the mad genius, a person who has brilliant intelligence but has gone insane. I've heard phrases before like the border between genius and insanity is small. I know nothing of any sort of science regarding the brain so I'm not going to talk like I know something about it. If I do have any thoughts about I would say this; I've said for a while insanity is a relative thing. Being insane, to the average person, is the same as having abnormal thought processes. Normal is being defined by what the majority of people do. Therefore, I think when you have extraordinary intelligence it's reasonable to assume that there is a greater likelihood of deviating from the activity of a 'normal' brain.

This is all speculation. I'm sure there's some statistic out there that says people with above average IQ scores are just as likely to be nuts as people who hit the average. Then again, I would probably have beef with that statement since I think IQ tests don't determine anything.

But I do think there are concepts that are beyond the limits of the human mind. I also think that too much thought will eventually break a person's mind. I don't know about enough to go insane, but enough to see some serious repercussion.

This is some the stuff I thought about when I saw this link not too long ago. It's a page on LiveJournal that lists the most recent postings. I think it's interest just to see how many redundant posts you see. It's interesting to see how many people can talk about the same bullshit over and over. It's amazing to imagine an entire a planet of people. A number, that's incomprehensible to understand, of people doing the exact same thing, interacting with each over and over each day, every day, and even right now.

Before I end this little discussion of Shawn's deep thought of the day, I wanted to write this down:

Today I thought about the world, the universe, and everything, existence. The thought came to me existence could be built over again. We didn't need this world we could build it a new. We didn't have to worry about the materials or the cost. Why? Because we had the ideas, the concepts. That's what builds our new reality. Abstract ideas being the concrete blocks that makes up our new universe.

It's sounds crazy and stupid at first, but we it in our universe now. We see computers represent simpler worlds right now in simulations. We conceptual ideas, package them, and then we find some way to represent them physically if need be. The creation of the physical part is the tough part, but even if it doesn't get to that stage it doesn't mean it's not there, it's just in a different form. It's like wave-particle duality; electromagnetic radiation can be represented as a transient, formless wave or as stationary, solid particle. Either way they both exist. We even have that concept in language; A noun can be turned into a verb, and a verb can be turned into a noun.

These ideas will pave our path to the new existence.

Hmm, 3 in the morning. I should get some rest, as I have to go to work tomorrow to find out if I actually work tomorrow. Until then...

-Shawn "If the Name Don't Rhyme It Ain't Mine" Conn

Saturday July 16th, 2005:

Pressed for Time

I got a number of various topics here that I've been wanting to write. I was thinking about doing them all in different posts, but my head is hurting right now. The time for separate and organized is out the window. Instead, all this shit is coming to you right now, all random-well ok psuedo-random which is random enough for you-, all pointless, and all not enough to be entire post of its own.

Human Interaction

Human interaction is another one of those topics that can be completely astounded by sometimes. I was just thinking today about the sheer magnitude of 6 billion people that interactive with each other on this planet. A while back, whenever it was when I did my post about keeping track of your age by days, I was doing math about how many people you could meet and could know. Could you meet, just meet, everyone on this planet?

I went with the assumption of a life time around 30,000 days(pretty conservative estimate being that it's around 80 something years). Keep in mind that this isn't even considering your infantile years, the time you spend sleeping, and other moments where you would be otherwise incapacitated to meet someone(how ever you want to define it). With that in mind, how much of the world's 6 billion+ population could you expect to meet:

30,000(days)x24(hours)x3600(seconds)=2,592,000,000 seconds.

Even if you'd spend just a second to get to know one person. You would only be able to meet less than half the people on this planet. That's pretty crazy stuff.

Political Agenda

There was a good article I read on Wikipedia a while back about Libertarianism. After reading it, I decided that it must be my main political philosophy. If for anything the principal of "favoring personal and economic liberty or freedoms to the extent that they do not infringe on the same freedoms of others." In an ideal society, that is how I would run it; The only law would be the law against denying other people the freedoms of life, liberty, and property.

Of course, I'm also a realist. I realize that practically, this is impossible because there's always fuckheads out there who harass others, embezzle money, and all other sorts of stupid things that prevent this idea from being workable. But as I an idea I believe it's something that should be striven for.

This is out to Craig

He was talking about stories about Claire. I have one indirectly. It's a little thing I wrote a while back that was attempting to chronicle how I knew Claire and how I knew over the years up to her death. I never got finished with though. It had been sitting in one my folders for a while, and I meant to get around to finishing it. I wanted to get it done within the months after her death but as time waned on I found myself not able to finish after getting to a trip Maryland with her. You can see it here.

It's rather funny that she get mentioned I was reminded this week about her. The mother of Randy McComb, the person at SBB who had died, had emailed me about getting the SBB footage of him in the fight. Obviously, talking about old footage of lost loved ones reminded me of her. I don't think of her often, and I don't think I've had dreams with her in them. I think about her sometimes remembering fond memories. It usually ends with a weird twist when I recall she's no longer around and how odd that seems sometimes....

I hope you enjoy this next paragraph because it costs $8. That's a little off however. It cost a little more than $8. There's also the cost involved with transportation of these thoughts into words, then changing keypresses into text on my computer, the cost with the transmitting of this text onto a websever, and finally the cost to transmit the data to your computer. All this so I can tell you just ok(I would say mediocre but I think that has a slight negative connotation)the remake of another recycled product from out of ideas Hollywood.

Looking back on the paragraph I see how fitting and poetic it is that I went through all the build up just to say, "This movie I saw today was ok." There was so much talk about this remake. There was talk about how this movie was Tim Burton's take on this childhood classic. There was talk in this interview I read in the Courier Journal where Johnny Depp said they weren't remaking the film, but the movie, a statement which I reserve the right to call "bullshit" seeing how they also remade all the Ompa-Loompa songs(they're godawful by the way!). There was also talk from Nate, Steve, and I at the theater about how there was almost nothing but remakes and franchises playing. There was talk from me about how that's fucking lame, right before I threw down my $8.

There was also talk about how are seats were shit, although this we brought upon ourselves, and how annoying it is to have a ton of loud teens and preteens in the theater. I hope I don't sound too old and cranky there. Too the kids credit, it could have just as easily been some other age group and I would have been just as annoyed. I guess I just hate seeing movies with huge crowds, especially when you have shit seats.

After all that, I was just mildly entertained. I knew the story already so the only thing fun there was to realize the differences(the ending resolution is different!). There were some fun moments with the whole, "we're going to focus on how crazy Willa Wonka would be" complete with his own childhood flashbacks. The movie for me was mostly ignoring how my eyes hurt as I focused upwards, analyzing differences, being mild entertained at some differences, wanting the new, cool, updated for pop culture '05s Oomp-Loompa songs to be over with as quickly as possible. But to credit the Oompa-Loompas, I think these guys are more funny than old ones.

At the end of it, you could see that they wanted to portray Wonka differently than Wilder did it. If they wanted it dark, that's cool. But I think they should have cranked it up 10 notches. I wanted to see those vile kids get slaughtered. I wanted to see Wonka fight his dad, Sauron, um Christopher Lee, to the death. I wanted to see more bizarre shit in the Wonka factory. That I think would have made the movie worth $8. But fuck it, I guess they got my money. Now they can sell to cheapest PG-13 denominator, sell to everyone else, and call it a fucking day.

I haven't enjoyed my last few trips to the theater. I need to remedy this. It's starting make me angry.

Closing it Out

I don't know if it was the headache, having to work early, or that movie but I've been a bitter mood since I've gotten back from theater. Its the same kind of bitter attitude that churned up those angry posts a while back regarding finding future jobs, and generally my outlook on the future. It's a sort of pessimistic, angry, sometimes nihilistic when I'm feeling philosophical, mood that wants to see shit go up in flames.

I think another part that has made me this way today is I keep feeling a pressure to get stuff done. I don't know why it's there, but it is. I felt a pressure to keep getting stuff done at work even though we weren't that busy for most of the day. I've been feeling a push from my parents, telling me I need to get a real career sort of job to which I always retaliate with all the bullshit I've faced trying to do that. I've felt pressure to get stupid DVD projects done even though I no one gives two shits about it. I've pressure to the number of people who been getting a hold of me lately to solve their various computer-related problems. When I was relaxing at work, after work, in Richo's with Nate, I was going to the restroom when one the fellow servers mentioned to me in passing that the table we were at need to be clear soon, being it was a Friday night. It was probably an innocent reminder. However the following tension saying that I needed to get out of here soon maybe want hurt someone.

I need to stop with this nonsense. I've got a handful things I would like to get done within the course of the year/end of the summer and I should leave it at that for a while. I need to return to my old borrowed maxim, which I can't recall where I took it from, of "I don't have to be a human doing, just a human being."

This is what needs to be done:

I need to fix some tags screwed up on MP3 player
Copy the rest of the PS2 games I want
Overhaul the Tekken character Wikipedia article and start some new articles I wanted.
Get a very light laptop solely for just carrying around and writing.
Figure out how to mod an Xbox and turn it into an emulator box.
Get my car really fixed(I'm going to need the defrost at some point).
Get a small little home network setup once they roll DSL out here(near the end of the summer I hear).
Hit up some sites in search of a real job.
Finish the Strange Case DVD
Throw the big fuckoff end of the summer bash pool party.
Complete my other private(which may become public later once I feel like talking about them), personal goals

Other than this, no more new shit gets done from me this year unless it otherwise has to be done. After I complete this I need some time to reflect on my life. I need to reevaluate a lot of things. With that said, I bid you farewell people.

Wednesday July 13th, 2005:

Taking It Easy

With much that I wanted to get done and day off, yesterday was good to me. I spent almost the entire day playing video games. It was a relaxing change of pace. I recently installed a hard drive on top the PS2 network adapter I have. With the right memory card utility, I can load up a hard drive loader program that lets me copy games to the hard drive. So after borrowing a lot of games I have a lot of game to play.

Yesterday I finished up Castlevania: Lament of Innocence. It was an ok game. It was yet another 3D adaptation of the classic 2D action game(with RPG elements that Symphony of the Night made popular). The fighting action was kind of fun. With stylized combos, magic, and fixed camera positions in rooms, you can tell it was heavily influenced by Devil May Cry. This may or may not be a good thing. If you're like me, you're really close to limit of burn out on 3rd person action games that mimic a lot what made DMC popular. But it's done well enough to where it's still fun.

Putting that aside, a big disappointment for me was the level design. The translation to 3D looses a lot from the previous Castlevania games. In almost all the 2D Castlevania games, each level has it own unique themes based on different sections that a castle would have. Combined with a gloomy, gothic atmosphere, it was a lot of fun to see where you ventured to next. Lament... lacks this a lot. While having different themes for each sections, a lot of rooms are variations on the same 3-4 molds they have for that particular stage(there are six "stages"). If you're familiar with Halo's horrible level design, think that but with a gothic theme. It didn't feel like I was roaming a castle; It felt like I was playing through a Diablo style dungeon crawler, complete with randomly generated levels.

Today

Today was alright. Work was well, work. I was kind of tired and not really much happened until near the end of the shift. Everyone that wanted to go to Richo's came over to Sportstime thanks to one of the servers not showing up to open up the place. Thus, I had about more than double the people you'd expect in there at 3p.m. Needlessly to say I was rushed. Luckily, help soon arrived and it wasn't too bad. Plus, making off with $57 ain't too bad.

A few people have asked me various questions about the system at Sportstime. What I usually tell them is there's only a basic frame of anything of a system there. For the most part, all the stuff you learn from that job is from what people tell you(because it's been that way for awhile), what best works for you(to get the job done), and those few things our owners/managers actually care to tell the staff.

That's just one of the reasons I like the job. It involves a bit more personal responsibility than working at some franchise; You actually learn about how people work together; And despite all the problems, things still get done and people have fun. It could be smoother in some instances, but it still works out the majority of the time. Actually, the place is on some sort of boundary is the way I look at it. That boundary is the difference between having a huge restaurant that's very strictly organized and a restaurant that is just a small hole in the wall. I imagine if the place was any bigger things would go to chaos pretty quick.

Not only is my job a place to work for income, it's an insight on human interaction.

-Shawn "If the Name Don't Rhyme It Ain't Mine" Conn

Sunday July 10th, 2005:

Keeping Busy

I don't know what it is, but it feels like I have no time for anything. I think I mentioned it in my last post too. I don't work a full time job, it's 30, maybe 34 hours at most. Perhaps it's just a combination of so many things going on at once and new responsibilities that are coming up. A lot new things have came my way this summer and I'm sure there are many more to come.

Musing

I'm pretty sure that I'm going to have one last pool party this summer. I'm thinking late August. I'm thinking it's going to be big. I'm going to invite everyone I know: people at work, people at school, all my friends, and all of that. It's going to be one last big bang to close out the summer of '05. Partywise, with some exception of some rather interesting parties at my boss's house, this summer has been very disappointed when it has come to parties; Steve has given up on trying to be social; The Hill Street crew has closed up shop; And everyone else I've tried to get a hold of act like their fucking cell phones don't work.

Everyone calls me around the weekend to ask me what the fuck's going on. While I generally know of one or two things going on, it's not like a really am motivated to make something go on. I'm a pretty laid back person, coming up for things to do in a social setting isn't my forté. I try to keep my eyes and ears open for things to do with people but I'm hardly creative when it comes to activities.

Lately I've been sticking to my own personal agenda to get things done. I've put being social to a minimum. Most of my social active comes from Sportstime. Within a week or two I expect to be more social again. I've finished up a lot of things I wanted to get accomplished. I anticipate a lot of much needed down time coming my way.

Needing a Purpose

I have a piece of wisdom that I've recently acquired over the past year I would like share in my next section here. Will and I were driving someone on recent Box Wine Monday. He mentioned how he hated feeling sorry for old people. I asked why should he feel sorry. He explained to me that he thought sucked getting older meant that you couldn't physically do the things you can do when you're young. That might be true. But on the other hand you do acquire a lot more wisdom about the world as well. This is assuming of course your mind doesn't break down as much as your body. The way I look at it is a trade off.

One piece of wisdom that I've gathered as I've gotten older is that at some point everyone needs some sort of purpose to live their life. Life itself is a struggle against the world to maintain existence and procreation. With modern human life becoming far less of struggle than it once was, we have to maintain some sort challenge in our lives in order to give us a psychological reason for waking up each morning. Especially in this country where there's a big belief that if you're not contributing to the country's GNP, going to school, or in the military, that you're completely worthless.

I'm sure there's some sort of psychological term for it but right now I don't have the time to the research on it. Anyway, I believe if this psychological need isn't fulfilled a person will become eventually further and further depressed. This reasoning has made me understand why people enjoying gardening. I personal hate having to cut grass that will grow back and all the other sorts of chores that come with having a lawn. But for people who are retired from their occupations, I can see the sort of satisfaction that one can get from just accomplishing a task that makes your landscape look nice, especially when that's your only concern in life.

Well that's it for now...

-Shawn "If the Name Don't Rhyme It Ain't Mine" Conn

Thursday July 7th, 2005:

Life's Triumphs

Here I am, back after two weeks of what I like to call "Getting Shit Done." I've heard through many of my elders(of varying age groups) that the older you get the fast your time seems to go by. It certainly feels that way to me. 2005 is half over and I really can't tell where the time went. Sleeping and Tekken are somewhere in there taking up huge chunks of my life, but it seems like little day to day things are consuming my time more and more.

A big part of this I imagine is the added responsibilities that come with getting older. Not that I'm responsible for really anything that important, but I have taken on the little responsibilities: maintaining my sister's website, helping her with computer stuff, working at Sportstime, maintaining my other websites, finishing the SBB DVD-ROM, working on The Raven/Strange Case... DVD, and the list goes on. All these things have built up to cause a bit of stress when I think too much about all the shit I'd like to get done.

No worries though, I've completed another big accomplishment. I've add an ability to place comments on the good ol' "Who Is..." At the bottom you'll see the link. It's completely self explanatory. All I have to really else to say about it is why I added it. Once again, it was because of a comment made by a visitor, my friend Craig, while he was in town two weekends back. He told me that he really enjoyed my website because of the thought provoking topics. He also told me that it sucked that as much as it provoked thoughts, there wasn't a way to comment on it like other people's websites/blogs/LJ's/etc. Thus, I took the effort once again to use my limited Perl scripting abilities to make this a possibility on the website. A good number of hours later, I am successful. The coding still leaves a little more to be done, but it's fully functional now.

Being able to accomplish something on your own abilities is a great feeling. It allows you to do and to learn new things. That's one of the reason's why I decided to make a new website instead of just sticking with my old blog. At times I guess it can be annoying because it isn't just as simple as type, send, and forget. But it does leave you feeling more knowledged and empowered.

A lot of times it can be intimidating. You can see what's out there, what's been accomplished, and looking at the result of something basic you created compared to the professional thing might make it seem like a waste of time. I wrote a VBS script a while back for automating the creation of RSS feed for my site. All I have to do is punch in the new title when I run the script and it does everything else. While I was spending my what-would-be-two complete hours on writing it, Will stopped by and hung out. He asked me a question as I was pushing my brain to solve the problem: "You think after all the time you spent writing the script that it will outweigh the time that it would have taken to keep doing it manually?"

That's a question I asked myself before. I figured maybe I could have found some sort of solution out there all ready made that would have save me time. I also figured that if I kept editing the RSS feed manually that it would be that bad. But given my option among those I chose the one where not only did I use the abilities I learned in school, but also gave me the greatest feeling of accomplishment afterwards. That is also why I created the comment page and script myself without looking for some other solution.

Well, it's getting pretty late now. And despite my desire to discuss other topics, I must rest. There's a lot of new topics I've been holding around for a while to write about. Look to see posted a through this coming month.

-Shawn "If the Name Don't Rhyme It Ain't Mine" Conn

Wednesday June 29th, 2005:

Not enough time

There's not enough time today to tell you anything except that I don't have enough time. I'm working on many things but surely you already know that. So many demands, so many people, so many little tasks to do. I'm going to spend 10 minutes, maybe less, here and then move one. I will return once I get things out of the way. I'm working on a tweak for this site so it might be a while before I come back on time.

Looking at my clock, I see that I don't have much left for this site. So I shall write that I will return.

Thursday June 23rd, 2005:

Peace

After a lengthy 3-day war, Proffessor Productions and Maximus Destructus/Mestophalies Pictures decided to come to a peaceful coexistence. I wish I had a great story about it how the peace came to be, but there isn't one. I guess if you really need a story, use the story in that shitty movie that should of been called The Matrix Peace Treaties while substituting me and Graham for Neo and Smith. Something stupid like that will do.

Graham sent me an email with two great mini posters that will get included along with the DVD:

And with that another chapter closes behind me.

A Review.

Also in this post, I'm doing a tiny review of a hard drive MP3 player I bought a couple of weeks ago. The MP3 player is the Neuros Digital Audio Computer. I decided to get this player after a good bit of researching on the Internet for hard drive based MP3 players. The biggest thing I was concerned about was the battery life, portability, and duration. If I was going to throw down around $300 for one of these things, I want to make sure it's going to last me a good number of years.

The battery issue was a big concern for me. After reading up on these types of players, I discovered that pretty much all of them contain a Lithium Ion battery that can only be expected to last a few years at most. My experience with my laptop showed me that; Now 2 years old, my laptop's Lithium Ion battery can't hold a charge that will last more than 10 minutes of computer time. This isn't a big deal since it's a desktop replacement, but for a portable MP3 player it is a big deal.

After searching a number of manufacturer's websites, I found a reassuringanswer to this problem with the Neuros. Even out of warranty, the cost of getting the battery replaced by the company is only $12. That's pretty reasonable to me. And it's especially far more reasonable than the $99 Apple expects you to pay for the iPod. On top of that, the hard drive can be replaced too. That's always nice if you want to store a larger amount of music.

The next issue, portability, was the lesser of my concerns. It's still an issue for a portable device, but I was willing to sacrifice size for other positive features. The player isn't a small as some other hard drive based MP3 players I've seen; It's about the size of a soap dish I would say. And it's about twice as thick as an iPod. Beside that, it's not too big to put in a big pocket.

The big thing that attracted me to the Neuros with portability was that it had an internal FM transmitter. I have a car that only has a CD player. Thus, my only option for an adapter is an FM transmitter. I had a separate FM transmitter for my MP3/CD player, but it used up AAA batteries too much. It's nice not to have to worry about batteries or wires for this device. It doesn't seem to hold up against interference as much as my external FM transmitter, but it has a nice range and again I don't have to worry about batteries.

There are a few annoyances with the devices but those I think are mostly related to it being a hard drive based player. For example, it seems a little fragile to be moving around really fast with it. Also, getting the player set up with your music collection can take a long time. With the software provided, it took a few hours to load all my songs into its database. After that, it took another 5 hours to transfer them over to the player.

It's to be expected that's going to take a long time when you have 10,000 songs to be loaded, but what I can't understand about the software is how long it takes to remove songs from the database. I tried to remove a few songs that were no longer on my hard drive, but still listed in the database synchronization software, and it took hours before the program could do anything else. I don't have a problem with waiting for things, but if you're going to write a program will potentially handle a lot of data( like for example 10,000 MP3's) at least put a friggin' progress bar somewhere that way somebody can tell how long the program is going to take.

To summarize, it's a pretty good hard drive based MP3 players. It's not as small as some players. It doesn't have a very quick and cool scroll wheel like the iPod. It probably won't win me style points with all those emo kids touting iPods. But it does have a lot of functionality that I want. It's highly reccommended by me if you're looking for a portable hard drive MP3 player.

Tuesday June 21st, 2005:

Busy

Even though today is my day off from work, I still feel very hurried today. I woke up today to fuck around with my car. As of late, I've had a problem with the A/C Heater console. Whenever I screwed around with the temperature the unit would make distinctive clicking noise that it makes when the unit gets turned on or off. After it made the click the unit would just die and not respond. If I played around with the dials sometimes it would respond but not always.

It wasn't that big of a deal until recently. The past week or so not only would the A/C Heater die on me, but it would take down the dashboard instruments as well. Thus, I couldn't see how much gas I had, how fast I was going, or any other important information. It was very annoying to say the least. I noticed if I pressed down on the temperature knob that the dashboard instruments would come back to life. While driving down the highway, I tried to play around with the knob to see if I could make them stay alive permanently but as I was playing with the knob the car would make sudden stops as if I was pressing the brakes(even though I wasn't pressing them). So, I decided not to fuck around with that again while the car was in motion.

Then came the last problem. While the A/C Heater unit wasn't on it still was blowing out hot air. Driving in a hot car with no A/C can be aggravating sometimes, but driving in a hot car with hot air blowing in your face just makes you want to punch someone.

With my day off, I spent time fucking around with the car. After finding the fuse panel I decide to take out some of the fuses. The descriptions on the panel weren't the most accurate but eventually I found the one for the A/C Heater unit. On pulling it out, the dashboard came back to life. By a process of elimination, most definitely the problem lies with the A/C Heater unit. After doing that my next target was the fan still blowing hot air into the car. The fuse was stuck in there but Mr. Needlenose Pliers said "fuck you" to that problem; Upon pulling that fuse out there was no more hot air blowing into my car. I have no defrost, A/C, or heat in my car now, but at least I can drive comfortably and informed about the status of my car. That will do until I get it fixed.

A Rebuttal

Another part of the day was also spent at my sister's salon where I was showing her business partner how to manage and update their website so they don't have to rely on me. I brought my laptop there so I could transfer the files to their computer. As I was doing that, my computer noticed there was an open AP where I could browse the Internet while I wait. It was then I heard the rebuttal to yesterday's accusations about Maximus Destructus(referred to now as "MD") and Graham Gohmann's accusations about Proffessor Productions(now referred as "P2" or "P squared" to avoid the rather bad acronym "PP").

To those accusations about P2 being about money I say this; Who released all his financial information about the funding for the GCBC(see the Feb 8th 2005 entry in the archive)? Me. Who spent around 100+ hours of work into a project, which if you used $24 and a $200 printer as means of profit, that resulted in a wage of $2.24/Hr. Sure, yes, I did enjoy much of that time I spent on the project as Mr. Paine once pointed out to me. But what he didn't mention was all the hours of headache spent trying to solve bullshit technical problems. Bullshit technical problems that would end up killing another studio's project, i.e. "The Yardbeast"

What drove me to create the DVD was the fans. From the beginning it was the fans who gave me my power. The power to go on and create this epic 3 disc set. I know a lot of people seen the movie and enjoyed(as well as many other Gohmann works). Sure there had been talk about doing something about seeing these movies so others could see them easily without calling up Ted to haul over his camera. But that's all it was: bullshit talk. It was all talk and no action.

This was another that drove me. To stop talking about it and do it. What drove me was my desire to have a way to watch GCBC myself. Had MD, AndrewSunset, Gohmann Films, or any of those other bullshit names produced a GCBC DVD I would have been first in line(maybe 2nd behind Coire Reilly, the self-proclaimed biggest fan of GCBC)to buy it. But you know what? They didn't. And as far as the accusations about GCBC never being meant for public release, why is Ted Gohmann, director/actor/editor of GCBC, gave the green light for the DVD and also helped with production of the DVD(menu animation, extended edition, etc.). I like to see MD answer that question.

I've been honest with the fans. But I don't see MD being honest with the fans. I don't see them answering what happened to Skitzo 2. I don't see them answering any questions about what work they have done regarding Skitzo 3. You want to know why that is? It's because Maximus Destructus isn't nothin' but a bunch of big talkin', nay sayin', baby eatin', punks that think that all their biggest fans are freaks who should be put into a mental institution headed by King nutjob, Ted Gohmann. That's why.

And if Graham Gohmann wants a dime from anything tell him to produce a 3 disc Skitzowolf Trilogy boxset. I'll be the first to buy it. That is if he can get off his lazy butt to make it.

Monday June 20th, 2005:

Proffessor Productions Presents

The case, disc inserts, and DVD-ROM is complete. All that remains is for me to buy the materials which I will do sometime this week. I think the price is going to be $5. Most of the materials are pretty inexpensive so there's no concern there. My only concern is about the cost of ink, I'm not expecting a ton of people wanting the DVD-ROM so I think I'll be fine on that end.

The idea for the covers, and disc art was just a huge collage. I figured that made the most sense being that the disc is a compilation of all the events of SBB over the last 5 years. As you can see, I pulled highlighted images from each and every fight. Among those is this very cool picture where Jon Chapman is throwing his fist so fast that the DV captures it as a blur. It almost looks like the shit the agents in The Matrix do:

Once the SBB materials are in I'll post a PayPal link for those people interested in getting a copy of the DVD-ROM. Also for those are saying, "Why a DVD-ROM istead of a DVD Video?" I'll say this: All the archived videos I have are just the DiVX encoded movies I've had since I started the SBB site. In order to get the video at a decent quality for DVD Video I would have to go back to the source VHS, Hi8, and DV tapes and reimport and reencode them all again to the MPEG-2 format. Getting all the tapes together would take a while to say the least. I haven't ruled out the possibility, but for right now I'm not worrying about it.

Proffessor Productions has an Enemy

There is a cancer infecting Proffessor Productions. That cancer is Maximus Destructus. You may remember it as Graham Gohmann's studio that created the seminal werewolf film, Skitzowolf. Since those days, Maximus... has dropped the ball. The sequel, Skitzowolf 2, pulled a Take Easy It 2: Have a Good One and has yet to see the light of day despite the rumors that the source film still exists.

Last summer, there was a light of hope however. A trailer for "Skitzowolf 3" was seen. I talked to Graham about it sometime last summer and he confirmed the rumors about work on Skitzo 3. Since that day nothing has been since however. A teaser was available on their website for a while, but it was weak at best; No new footage was seen at all in it.

The only thing Maximus... has done as of late is sit on it's collective gluteus maximus. Disappointed by the lack of work I sent Graham, the head of Maximus..., an email:

The votes are in. The fans say WE WANT SKITZOWOLF 3. NO MORE BULLSHIT! LESS TALK MORE ACTION! NO DOOMSAYING!

His reply came back a few days later last Thursday:

EVEN IF SKITZO 3 IS EVERY RELEASED, IT WILL ONLY BE
AVAILABLE FOR A 1 TIME SHOWING @ 12AM ON JULY 4TH

HOWEVER...DUE TO CERTAIN SET BACKS...GREGG & I HAVING
TO WORK, PRODUCTION HAS BEEN SLOW. SO IT COULD BE
THAT SKITZO 3 IS POST-PONED UNTIL THE FALL.

EITHER WAY - WHEN IT IS RELEASED, IT WILL BE FOR A
ONE-TIME SHOWING, NO MATTER WHAT. NO BEATING DEAD
HORSES THIS TIME. ONE VIEW, AND ONE VIEW ONLY. THERE
WILL BE ANNIVERSAY SHOWINGS THAT FOLLOW. BUT THE
PUBLIC WILL NOT GET IT'S HANDS ON IT - ESPECIALLY
MONEY HUNGRY DVD PRODUCERS LIKE PROFESSOR PRODUCTIONS.

SERIOUS PRODUCTION WILL BEGIN THIS WEEKEND.

"Serious production?" Sounds like serious bullshit to me. The only thing Graham has done as of late is critize Professor Produtions for creating the GCBC DVD. Or should I rather call it the exploitation of Gohmann Brothers's work because that's what Graham wants you to believe. The truth of the matter is I gave the fans what they want, A DVD disc set of Gohmann Film's cult hit Good Cop, Bad Cop, and a Rogue. Rather than appreciating my efforts to immortalize their work and give the fans what they want, Graham would rather stingely sit on GCBC and pretend it never existed in a very Lucasian manner.

Wednesday June 15th, 2005:

Now In

Two things to talk about today. First, I have more bumper stickers with Proffessor Productions glorious logo on it. I have 18 of them and I'll give them to you free provided that you really put it on your car or other item of interest. They cost me a few bones so I don't want to give them out to people if they really don't want one.

Second, I got a letter from The Wine Group today regarding my letter(see the May 15th 2005 entry in the archive)I sent a while back. It read as follows:

Dear Shawn:

Thank you for contacting us and sending your unsolicited suggestion. We appreciate your courtest and interest in our wines.

Unfortunately, our legal counsel has advised us that in order to avoid any problems concerning the company's proprietary interests, we must return all unsolicited submissions without review. This is due to the fact that The Wine Group has its own in house research and development department which is responsible for developing and initiating new ideas. Unsolicted sugesstions from outside the company may duplicate those being developed in house and it is possible that The Wine Group may implement proposals similar to unsolicited suggestions such as yours. Therefore, in order to avoid any problems we cannot accept any unsolicited ideas from outside the company.

Again, we thank you for your interest and we are returning your materials(my letter was folded up with in the letter they sent me) without review or evaluation.

Sincerely,

Elaine Miyasaki

Consumer Relations Manager

So that's how the saga between me the mysterious Wine Group ends. I can say I was half expecting a reply like this. It's most unfortunate that in our society we have an overabundance of fuckhead lawyers that makes everyone paranoid about lawsuits.

Wednesday June 8th, 2005:

Bullshit Quote of the Week:

"These [surveillance] cameras ... will help (the LAPD) to lift a rock and shine a light on rampant counterfeiting of DVDs, which used to take place in the dark shadows,"

Souce: Hollywood Foots Bill for Spy Cams

Yes...dark shadowy places like I encounted in NYC: One street adjacent to ground zero near Wall Street. For that matter, how is any daytime public street(where pirated a lot of Pirated DVD's are sold) dark or shadowy? Fuck you MPAA for bullshit hyperbole.

Friday June 3rd, 2005:

Coming Soon from Proffessor Productions (yes I know there's and extra 's' godamnit!)

Now that I have an income, meager as it maybe, to fund Proffessor Productions projects, you can look forward to 2-yes! count 'em 2!- releases this year. The first:

Steve's Backyard Boxing: The Ultimate Collection

This is the DVD-ROM of all past 140+ boxing matches from Steve's Backyard Boxing. Included also on the DVD-ROM will be the website for navigational purposes. I labeled this the ultimate collection as I believe there won't be any more boxing (and thus this will be the last collection of movies). I've been saying it for a while, but to reiterate, there are 2 things that have pretty much finished SBB: Steve and everyone else.

Steve: because he has no desire to continue it.

Everyone: because they're lazy bums that don't care that much about boxing.

Not that I'm upset over this. I don't care to spend my days upset about the long gone glory days of SBB. I'd rather keep it up, but hey I can't say I didn't try.

To get back to topic, the DVD-ROM should be done by the end of the month at latest. I've had most of it completed at the start of 2005. I held off the rest of the work since I didn't have the money to complete it. Now that I do, I'm in the final stages of the project: finishing the cover for the jewel case and the design for the disc. I have the designs. Once I assemble all the pictures I need I should only need a few hours to finish that. Then all I need to do is buy the materials.

I'll probably buy enough for 50 though I don't expect demand to be that great. I'll probably be selling them for $5 for those that are interested.

The Double Creature Feature: The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde/ The Raven

Once again Proffessor Productions has teamed up with Gohmann Studios to produce more Gohmann Brothers movies. The Raven & The Strange Case... are the 2 more critically acclaimed movies than the previously released Good Cop... Though Proffessor Productions did release a previous version of the Raven that was just the Super-Ultimate-Deluxe-Platinum-Mega-Ultra-Awwp-Limited Edition. This time it will be the Super-Ultimate-Deluxe-Platinum-Mega-Ultra-Awwp-Limited Edition+2 plus The Strange Case. And lest we not forget it will be in AWP certified sound.

Expect to see more of the same like the GCBC DVD. We've scoured the bowels of the Gohmann film vaults to squeeze out the last few bonus movies we can find. We found one video starring one the rarer Gohmann actors, Donnie Gohmann. And unlike some of his other counterparts, he actually has a sense of humor regarding the stuff he does on film. We also have some screen tests and other treats here and there. I don't know if the presentation will be as grand as GCBC, but it will have some good stuff. I'm shooting for a release by the end of the summer.

After all is said and done, I think the price range will be around $10. It should be a little cheaper this time around. I don't expect demand to be as big as Good Cop... thus I'm only going to buy enough materials for 25 copies. Also, I plan on doing a reissue of 25 GCBC DVDs for those who still that want it. It's price will be dropped down to $10 as well. Should you want either one of these DVD's email me if you want to reserve a copy. The same goes if you're interested in an SBB DVD-ROM, but I wouldn't worry too much about those going that quick.