revjim.net

December, 2001:

NYE2k2 party update

This doesn’t look too promising. As it stands we have 11 confirmed guests:

Justin farrisgoldstein
Bonnie bookriot
Sarah sarahpryce
Wes thenakedindian
Monica monica
Amanda quixotic
Becca becca_dallas
Jaclyn jaclyn
Matt crackmonkey
Brad sn0w_cr4sh
Morgan z03‘s mom
Justin (other Justin)
Nicki

The following people are tentative:

Mike mw
Rachel belle_mort
Elizabeth foxyred
Genevieve thinktink
Amanda
Royce
Joel rockbugg
Emily shutterbugg
Kitty B kittybtm
David
Julie
Bo

Currently unaccounted for:

Amy bleu92
Sean peener
Lisa starrla78
Mike vertigo00oo
Becca
Allison
Will x_devious
Mary ms_lady

So. People. Respond damn you. And for those of you who are coming: bring your friends. Just let me know how many so I can plan accordingly. If you are still tentative or have not been accounted for… please respond. Like… yesterday.

Minolta Dreams

The Minolta DiMAGE 7 (or… alternatively the DiMAGE 5 which is about $100 cheaper with about 2/3 the image quality and almost EXACTLY the same features) is the best, affordable Prosumer digital camera on the market. The Nikon CoolPix 995 has second place surpassing the Minolta only in maximum aperture (and not really by enough to make a difference). While I had been secretly hoping for, and yet at the same time very unsatisfied with the Nikon 995, my anticipated satisfaction with the Minolta DiMAGE 7 is raised considerably. While the DiMAGE 7 has an MSRP of around $1500, it is currently selling close to (and sometimes lower than) $650 while the Nikon is up around $750.

Someone please buy me this camera. I will be your slave. I will cater to your every need. I will be the brother you’ve always wanted and the friend you’ve never had.

Alternatively, would anyone like to purchase about $1250 worth of photography services?

chicken soup

My boss just brought me the Chicken Soup that came with his meal from downstairs. He didn’t want it. I was starving, cold, and broke… and now very grateful.

SBLive!

Sound Blaster Live! kicks ass. Sounds great. Records great. Very clean. Mmmm. Sexy.

I have a GREAT idea!! ;)

Someone tell the Linux developers that I would like to use TAB completion when typing in passwords. Thanks.

soft money

I’m dog tired so I’d thought I’d take this moment to praise the New Jersey Libertarian Party for coming right out and saying what they really mean. Soft Money may sit poorly in the minds of some people, but it is not, at least not yet, illegal. And everyone does it, so why bother hiding that fact? The data is public anyway.

DEREGULATORS!!! MOUNT UP!

Fucking electric company.

Our government goes and “deregulates” electric service allowing other companies to “provide” you with electric service by reselling you the service that is provided by the original company that ran the power to begin with. My horrid apartment complex decides to go with CoServ electric, most likely because they get some sort of kick-back for doing so. This leaves me with no option to switch billers, and no option to switch providers.

So… to begin with, I get service that is constantly failing just long enough to make sure everything in my apartment has to be reset. In addition, I get to deal with CoServ’s unfriendly customer support people, incredibly high deposits required, outlandish reconnect fees and horrid policies.

Currently, my electric company owes me $167.84 because one department does not have the ability to ask the other one to discard a payment check that will be coming in the mail. I waited for the check to be cashed, then called in to get it refunded to me. I was told that I would be cut a check the day I called in. So I called today. Now I am being told that the deadline to cut a check is Tuesday in order to have a check mailed out on Friday, in order to get it by Monday or Tuesday. So… my check wont be cut until NEXT Friday (2002-01-04), and I won’t get it until the Monday or Tuesday after that. This is after me having to put down an additional $200 deposit (on top of the $400 deposit I put down when I moved in) and paid them $110 just to drive out to my apartment and turn it back on.

Ugh.

Let us contrast this disgusting display of customer service with my Nextel Cell Phone service:

My service almost always works. When it doesn’t, I know why. If I wanted to complain and get credit for the times it didn’t work, they would be happy to give it to me. I paid NO deposit. I pay AFTER using. I have had a bill as high as $500 go unpaid for well over 60 days with no disconnect of service. I was accidentally triple billed last month. I didn’t even notice. They credited me this month automatically. I had to call them to find out what the credit was for. If I am talking to them on the phone, and I get disconnected, they call me right back.

Before the PUC “deregulated” services, they watched and monitored the companies providing these utilities to ensure that prices were not too high, and that good customer service was being offered. Now they merely check to ensure that the old regulated companies are providing “equal services” to the “deregulated” companies.

Deregulation was supposed to make life better for the consumer by making the market on public utilities more competitive. It has done nothing but remove the restraints initially placed on these companies by the PUC. When you live in an apartment, you have very little choice in regard to things like Cable, or Electricity, regardless of “deregulation”. And when the primary providers of such services is a company like Verizon, most smaller and alternative companies REFUSE to resell the service because Verizon is so hard to deal with.

So… “deregulation” has given an unrestrained, untariffed, and virtually unpoliced monopoly to the primary providers of public utilities.

Thanks. Thanks a lot.

(p.s. I don’t know shit about politics, or government, or laws. I don’t know anything about deregulation, or the policies in place behind it. I didn’t even bother to research the topic at hand before authoring the above. I make no claims to its accuracy and welcome any questions, corrections, suggestions, or solutions.)

Ballet Photographs

I am not 100% satisfied with the results of the photographs that Elizabeth and I took last Sunday, but I think there are enough good shots to get by. If not, we’ll do it again this weekend. (Elizabeth: I’ll have all of them up for you to see, with bigger versions so you can get a better idea of what we have, when I get to work today). In an attempt to compensate for the bad lights I had, I ended up overexposing just a tad. So they look more contrasty, more like fashion photos, than even-toned like they should be.


Nikon N90s // Sigma 28-80mm zoom // Ilford Delta 100 (first) and Kodak Portra 400 BW (second and third) // Fort Worth, TX // Elizabeth

pot smokers

It smells like pot in here this morning. Not because I am observing my once-every-six-months-to-a-year ritual of smoking a joint (if I were, I certainly wouldn’t be doing it alone at six in the morning), but because there are discarded bowl remnants in my ashtray.

I like the smell of pot, sometimes, depending on how strong it is and how clouded the room is. I’m not quite sure why. I think because it reminds me of my dad.

When I was younger, and had no clue what pot was, I can remember always smelling it lingering in front of Dad’s door when he had it closed at night or sometimes during the day when the much older than me but younger than him kids would come over to hang out on the weekends.

One time, as I was going through his cabinets looking for something I came across a small metal bowl (like a mixing bowl) filled with this green herb. I couldn’t figure out why mom would keep spaghetti seasoning under the bathroom sink, but I couldn’t ask her why as I wasn’t supposed to be going through her cabinets.

My dad doesn’t smoke any more, not even cigarettes, but I’m not quite sure when he stopped. I remember the day I figured out what it was dad was doing in there. I was shocked. I went to my mom and asked her, “Does Dad smoke pot?” She got very upset with me saying “no” at least a million times. I knew that meant yes, and, even then, I was okay with that.

Many of my friends smoke pot on a regular basis. They always try to pressure me into joining them by saying things like, “You have pot smokers hair, you listen to pot smoking music, and you have pot smoking friends. Why don’t you smoke pot?”

I used to smoke all the time. I even sold it a few times when I overcame my paranoia of getting caught and had enough money to buy large quantities of it. I got real sick of that lifestyle real quick though. Because of the amount of pot being smoked and the frequency at which it is smoked, pot smokers are, for the most part, perpetually high. I just couldn’t live with this constant state of being high and having to function in everyday life.

On top of that, pot smokers get so used to being high, that they don’t really realize that they are. What I mean is, when I am drunk, for instance, I know I am drunk. And because of that, I don’t try to do anything that requires intense concentration. I don’t pour drinks while standing on carpet, I don’t try to drive, I don’t run up the stairs, I do my best to not call ex-girlfriends, and… if I feel the need to make a decision that I know I shouldn’t be making, I always check with a sober friend to make sure I am making the right decision. Now granted, I am a more courteous drunk than your average drunkard, but the point is, many people who drink don’t drink all the time. Therefore, they know when they are feeling drunk and know they should at least attempt to behave accordingly.

Pot smokers are constantly spilling things, dropping cherrys on the floor, knocking glasses over, and forgetting some of the simplest things like “if you play your bass turned all the way up at two in the morning with the windows open the police will knock on your door”.

This is part of the problem with me throwing a party. If I invite any of those friends, they wont come if they can’t smoke. And since I am inviting people that don’t smoke, and wouldn’t appreciate others smoking, I have to confine them to the garage. In addition, they wont smoke without other people to smoke with, so they come with an entire host of people. This wouldn’t be so bad, except then it would be like having two parties one of which could get very loud and the other of which could get people thrown in jail. They just don’t mix well.

So, because of that, many of the people I’d like to invite will not be invited simply because they WONT have a good time if they AREN’T smoking pot, and I can’t have fifteen people passing a bong around in my garage at two in the morning on New Years Eve. I wouldn’t mind if someone brought a joint or two, smoked them, and then came back upstairs to the party. But it doesn’t work like that. Amanda, one of the few pot-smoking friends I have that doesn’t HAVE to be high to be having a good time, said she’ll only come if some more people she knows come. I’d really like her to be here so hopefully Lisa, Mike and Sean will decide to come down this way this year instead of having a party at their place like they’ve done for several years now. Though I have to admit, their New Year’s party last year was one of the best I have ever been to. I’m not sure how much of that had to do with me hooking up with Ashley.

snippets

A cute girl poked me, and then ran off:

(15:59:25) girl: -poke-
(16:00:22) girl logged out.

That ALWAYS happens to me. ;)


The Maybe, maybe not, party currently has 7 attendees, and 6 tentative attendees. Not too bad. Still not sure if it is going to happen though.


Jaclyn, Beanie, Toby, Maiko and I are having Christmas tonight. Since I couldn’t find stockings, we have decided to go without them. When I get home, I am going to pick up the living room and kitchen, decorate the mantle, start a fire, wrap the presents, put on some Christmas music, and then we’ll have Christmas.


I was thinking about trying to get everyone together today for coffee… and then I realized that 80% of the usual coffee crowd is not in DFW currently.


I am supposed to be here until 5…. but it is a ghost town. I am going to leave early. I have to stop by the photo lab on my way home to pick up the pictures of Elizabeth.


On Monday, when I dropped the film off at the photo lab, there was a guy in there arguing about his bill, so I just stood off to the side and waited my turn. I became involved in an article in a magazine, and when it came my turn the man behind the counter asked, “Two to drop off?”.

I said, “Yes” and handed him my film not really paying attention.

A few minutes later he said, “Okay Daniel… these will be ready to pick up on Wednesday at 1pm”.

I said, “Thanks”, and walked out the door.

When I got back in the truck I realized something… I never told him my name, gave him my phone number, or even showed him a credit card. That made me feel good.