Author Archives: Nathan

Drink is evil

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I can’t really explain what brings me to state that, but I’ll just say that it wasn’t anything I did. Situations get really complicated with alcohol mixed in, as some people are finding out tonight.

I feel like posting now, but don’t have that much to say. (That turned out to be an understatement. This whole post is me ranting about a member of the forum who was incredibly annoying. It probably won’t be interesting to anyone, except me.) Here I go!

In the Aloof Forum I’m a member of, there had been a member who just was rather annoying. In his first incarnation, Madeye always was complaining about the lousy features, or that Admin needed to fix something. Some of the things he brought up were actually valid concerns, but the way he brought them up was just horrible. He couldn’t take a joke, either. It just went downhill for a while, until he personally insulted two of the moderators. Apparently, they had been trying to decide whether to ban him, and that was the last straw. A few days later, Madeye Revisited registered at the forum, with his first post as “I’m Back! Ha, you thought you got rid of me” He went on about how he had realized what he did wrong, and would be better this time. He was around a few weeks, but on thin ice. Understandably, some of the mods (moderators, the people who oversee the forum) still didn’t like him, and edited a few of his posts. One ended with “I’m a crybaby”, which I think was added, but was not inconsistent with the tone of the rest of the post.

Now here’s where I come in. Up till today, I’d been ignoring the scuffle, or treating him like a regular member. But yesterday, a link to my site was in a prominent location on the forum, and he went to look at the page mentioned. He posted something like “Wow, I can’t believe your blog template, it looks so prefessional. Did you really design it?” I had just written him a long post about how things can be misinterpreted in text, and that he needed to understand that, both to be more conscious of what he wrote, and so he would not mis-interperet our posts. In response to his “awesome blog” comment, I said that, as an example of what I was meaning, I could have taken that to mean that I was stealing the template, but I wasn’t, because it came free with blogger, and I didn’t take anything out, so they must be okay with me using it this way. I also said that
“I’ll assume you were unaware of the way your comment came off, but be warned that I can, and eventually will, take things in the worst possible way.”

He posted this reply, which was a typical one.

I just cannot believe how people can underestimate my posts like this, this is some kind of joke right. You are trying to tease me right?
I was making a compliment, an honest compliment and there you do breaking it out to me that I am acusing you of stealing the template. This is ridiculous man!

He declared that he was leaving, which was the third time he’d done so, and was gone for a while. I wrote one more post, clarifying that the internet was not quite like real life, or more like a foreign country, and that he might say something offensive without meaning it. As long as one is properly apologetic, it’s no big deal. But when you don’t look/sound sorry, eventually, the foreigners think you mean to insult them.

Then he was back, complaining that the board was probably all ’18+s’, and that we demanded perfection in all things, and that we weren’t royalty, and that he always posts like this at another forum, and we just don’t understand him, but it’s not really his problem. He isn’t perfect, and we’re always guessing that he’s trying to insult us over the templates.

Still trying to resolve it peacefully, I posted back that regardless of what I had thought, I now knew that it wasn’t an accusation, and asked for a truce. He accepted. That was the end of last night’s posting.

When I got up Saturday, he’d visited the rest of my site, and decided that it was “a little messy but has amazing content”. He’d designed a layout for me to use. Now what was I supposed to do with that? I didn’t really like it, and despite his insistence that my site “wasn’t crap”, he’d called it messy. So I asked him why he thought it was messy. I ended up with a few decent suggestions, and some wasted time. He posted an image called “Nathanproof” to show me why he thought it was messy, and I guess he uses some strange skin on his machine, because everything was blue. Which made my red corners stand out too much.

Anyway, he went on to post in another thread, where a new user had posted a link to their site, and he’d, among other things, used a rolling eyes emoticon, and said that he had no clue what they were talking about. This evening, AloofKitten, the administrator’s wife, deleted the post, banned him from the forum permanently, while her husband simultaneously deleted his website.

I don’t know where along the line my opinion switched, but two days ago, I would have said that he was annoying, but that he shouldn’t be banned from the forum. But when he was banned, I was glad. Something about dealing with him personally changes your opinion. He just doesn’t understand anything, or ignores it. I have no idea how much advice he ignored over the course of his two lives here. I’m just glad he’s gone, and won’t be coming back.

And if that bored you, I’m sorry, but I feel better now.

–Nathan

my bike!

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I got up late Thursday, as I am likely to do later this morning, and had only a few minutes to get to the commons. I went downstairs to the bike room, and my bike wasn’t there. I’ve taken to not locking it inside the building, but it took only a few seconds to realize that I’d left it locked up somewhere else. I quickly went over to the Commons, arriving at 9:31 (closes at 9:30), but Twila is nice, and will let people in a minute or so late (usually). I then went to my 9:45 class, then had to remember where I’d left my bike. After a minute of figuring, I remembered that I’d ridden it to class Weds afternoon, and then walked home (to the dorm) with someone, forgetting all about the bike. I apparently didn’t notice that I didn’t have it when I went back to philosophy, either. I’d wanted to be a bit early, and was reading the text on the way over, so I walked. It’s hard to read while riding a bike–I tried once.

But as I was saying, when I first got my bike, I rode it everywhere, but then I realized that it’s kind of anti-social, and now use it when I’m late, or whatever, but don;t mind leaving it behind to walk with a group. I usually would only do that if I plan to get the bike later, like after Philosophy. Leaving it out overnight is not the best idea, especially because I only have one of the infamous Kryptonite Locks–If I ever get registered, they say they plan to ship free replacements starting in mid-October.

off to bed so I have time to eat breakfast this morning–I think it’s Belgian waffles, but maybe that was yesterday. (It’s so confusing referring to ‘yesterday’ after midnight and before you go to bed.)

–Nathan

Hey, I’m still here

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Does it seem to you that now that I got a new computer, I post less? I thought so. I sit down and say “let’s write a post, and then see the link on my personal homepage to someone’s blog, or the Aloof forum, and then end up wasting an hour, after which I go back to what I was doing, and never quite remember that I was going to write a post. Or (like this weekend) I decide I should write a post, and then the power has a surge, blinks, and the network is down half of Saturday and most of Sunday. I have fun online, though. One day, I got into a friendly competition with a gal from Canada, in the forum, to see who could post more nested quotes. Go look at this page, to get an idea what that looks like. That was pretty much the whole competition, but it was fun. I conceded in another thread, and DocD posted the next morning, to which Celtic also conceded. But I bore you.

I’ve done some pretty interesting things offline, too. Every Tuesday, we have hall mass. At the after mass social last Tuesday, a couple of guys decided that they should have a Villa campout. They ended camping out right outside my window. I went outside about 1:00 to talk for a few minutes, and came back in a few minutes before 2:00. I was just wearing a t-shirt, so it took an hour or so to get warmed back up. I’ m glad my grandmother made me a warm jean quilt! (Thanks, Grammie!)

That was the first of two (three?) nights where I was outside in the cold. The next night, I was riding back to the dorm after a meeting (about 9:30), and heard some loud music/voices from across campus. I rode over that way, and ended up spending the next two hours watching Spiderman 2. Good movie, but towards the end, the whole screen may shake (perhaps shiver is a better word). 🙂 The grass was kind of wet, though, and after the movie, I noticed that the seat of my bike was damp, so I guess some sort of dew or something had been coming down during the movie.

I hinted at three nights because after mass, they mentioned potential plans for another campout. Looks like it’s not happening, though. I got distracted in the last paragraph, so there’s about an hour between that line and these ones.

Tuesday afternoon, I went over to St. Mary’s, the student lounge, for a game of college bowl. Turns out there were only 4 of us total. We broke into two teams of two, and my team took three of four rounds. The game is similar to Knowledge bowl, or Jeopardy, in a sense. Each person has a buzzer, and a toss-up question is asked. The person who rings in first gets to answer the question, for 10 points. If you interrupted the reader to ring in, and get a wrong answer, your team loses 5 points. Otherwise, it’s a no loss situation, except that your team can only have one member ring in. This is where I was dominant. I think that I may have answered over 2/3 of the toss-ups, correctly. In fact, I know I never lost points, and can’t remember ever being wrong on a toss-up. After the toss up, the winning team is asked a question fro only their team, usually from 20-30 total points, often in multiple parts. Here we didn’t do as well, but good enough. Luckily these questions don’t cost points for wrong answers. I’ll be going to College Bowl every other Tuesday, and hopefully finding more participants. W could actually go as a team to a competition, or onto a TV broadcast. But we don’t have to, and will make the decision later.

Nik just went to bed, and I should probably follow suit–I can pull late nights for a while, but REALLY late nights catch up to me before too long. You know the feeling where you want to hold the pencil and write something, but your hand thinks it better to let go of the pencil and just rest on the paper? Sleep-deprivation right there. Luckily, I have my first class at 10:20 MWF, and 9:45 TR (Tues/Thur), so I don’t have to get up really early.

Off to bed, with a promise to TRY and be a bit more regular in my posting.

–Nathan

Wedding/Laundry

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I know I promised an update soon, and I fully intended to post one on Friday, but things interfered.

This is an all day post. I wrote the first part sitting in a motel in Depoe Bay, OR (north of Newport), but I wrote the remainder throughout the day, until I posted and went to bed.

I came down here for my cousin Brendan’s wedding, yesterday. The ceremony was pretty nice, and they lucked into holding it outdoors. They had planned an outdoor wedding, but yesterday morning, it was really windy, and pouring down rain. I was told about the attempt to put up a tent, and in Brendan’s words, the tent rental guys “got scared when they saw the 40 mile an hour hail.” Apparently, the people they were renting the tent from decided that it was too windy, and refused to allow them to use the tent. That meant that they would be limited to the motel for covered facilities. The family of the bride had a large suite, and directly upstairs, Brendan and Allison had another large suite. All the furniture had been moved out of the living area, and the reception was held on two floors there.

They got lucky and hit a break in the weather about 20 minutes longer than the wedding, but they started the wedding about 19 minutes into the break–it started pouring not a minute after everyone got back inside–good, because of the lack of tent.

Only in college would you be sitting in the laundry room, typing a post in Notepad, because you want claim to the washer when they get here to empty it. I started one load, and someone else had come down and started a load, so there was only one washer for me. The other two that were full just finished, and I’m waiting for a person to empty them. If they don’t show up in a few minutes, I guess I’ll just pull their clothes out of the machine and set them somewhere else. Counting drying time, I’m already pushing midnight before I can start to fold/iron the clothes. Oh well, I wasn’t planning on going to bed early anyway.

Okay, time to take their clothes out of the washer…

Done. Now I have 25 minutes until the first washer is done. Hopefully, the owner of the clothes I took out doesn’t come until after then, because there is only one dryer open.
Ironing is fun, I just did my first shirt a few minutes ago while I was waiting for the first washer–Yes, I know that you don’t Iron before you wash, it was a clean shirt that I took to the wedding and wrinkled in the suitcase.

I guess I could go somewhere else for a few minutes…

Nik went to a meeting for a business fraternity tonight. He borrowed a shirt and tie from me. Turns out that was a good idea, he says, as they chewed out several other people for not having ties. He doesn’t have any ties here, but his parents are sending some out to him. (That reminds me-I need to check my mail after the weekend-I’m expecting a package sometime this week with a replacement stylus for my Palm Pilot–I lost mine!)

If you know me very well, that sentence was typical. I’m always remembering stuff I have to do/should have done/should be doing, and losing stuff (at least temporarily) is a common occurrence.

Anyway, Nik came back with an egg, which he has to carry around to class with him for a week. It’s a raw egg, as one person dropped theirs in the meeting, and it broke all over the floor of the classroom

I updated the website partly–I have a NEW! ()picture I can put after anything I add, and an UPDATE! () image for…you guessed it, updated stuff. I also ave a script that will stop displaying them after a week, so I won’t have a section that is NEW! for months on end. Ever noticed sites (or Radio Stations) like that? I have….

Tonight at 8:00, we had “Sunday Night at the Races”. This week, we had four people laying down on longboards (long skateboards), and a person pushing each of them by their feet. They had to race around the quad, and then switch positions, followed by another lap. Two groups collided halfway around, which sent one person head-first into the prickly bushes. Ouch!
(I should note that the quad is in full view of Mehling (girls dorm), and so that is an additional motive to compete, and a reason not to mind the prickly bushes so much, if you get my drift….

I probably should move on to something more productive–I’ll call this the end of the post and go fold laundry.

–Nathan

The New York Times > Absentee Votes Worry Officials as Nov. 2 Nears

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The New York Times > Washington > Campaign 2004 > Fraud: Absentee Votes Worry Officials as Nov. 2 Nears

Wow. And I thought it was secure to vote by absentee ballot. Apparently, some people are collecting ballots, and then may throw them away if they vote the wrong way, or collect and discard ballots from neighborhoods that are traditionally of the party opposte theirs. Other people are paid with jobs at polling places. Political parties are even allowed to collect ballots in some states. That’s just asking for a dishonest person to alter/replace some ballots.

Conspiracy theory, anyone?

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Milwaukee Urban Star : Digital Audio Project in Realtime : NPS Cyberspace : Jim Engeriser, Joe Brenny, Mary Collen, Ed Embrose, Roy G. Biv

If you want to see some pretty interesting information, click over to this post. They have a whole collection of facts that indicate that 9/11 was all part of a conspiracy. I know it sounds crazy, but assuming all the facts presented are true (of which I make no promises/accusations), it’s a pretty damning argument against the Bushes. Funny how these theories just now came up, but then again, it’s all a big set of coincidences, right?

Going wireless, drumming

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I mentioned in my previous post that I got a laptop. Right now, I’m sitting in the library, at a table in the middle of the room. No wires, no cords, but still an internet connection. Wonderful. I’m told that he Campus is in the top ten finalists for a grant that will allow the entire campus to go wireless. That would mean that I could go anywhere on campus, and still check my e-mail, write a Blog post, and so on.

Funny thing I noticed last week–someone viewed my website from the University of Portland about two days before I got here. The referring link was from the forum on my free webhost-someone else here must be using aloofhosting. It’s a small world..

Went to the game, where the Pilots won 1-0. I got there about halftime, and joined up with the drum squad. I don’t remember if I’ve mentioned the squad yet, so here goes.

Basically, lots of Villans bring lots of drums to all the home soccer games. We beat out rhythms, encourage the players, and heckle the other team. Today, #4 from the other team (UAB, which I think is University of Alabama Birmingham) kept having his shoe come untied. We looked in the program and found out that his name was Jason. And so every time his shoe was untied, we’d all yell for him to tie it, etc. Then came the offers to buy him velcro shoes, and so on. When a player subs out, we all chant Right, Left, Right as they walk off the field, and then ‘Sit down’ as they do. The two games I’ve been to, both times at least one player has gotten frustrated by us and taken a funny hop step, or several small steps in a row, or faked us out as to when he’s going to sit down.
Then we have the cheers. This game, towards the end, when we were up 1-0, we sang, to the tune of “Sweet Home Alabama”, the following. “Go home Alabama/Jason tie your shoe.” and so on. Every goal results in the Pilots flag being run down to the goal and dipped once for each point we have, as we count off each point. Then if their score is zero, we line up and sing , to the tune of Auld Lang Syne, something like the following: “One-nil, one-nil, one-nil, one-nil/one-nil, one-nil, one-nil/…”.

In general, we try to rattle the other team, and support the Pilots. I’m told that the legacy of the Villa Drum Squad is that no one likes coming to Portland to play. Apparently, the word is out. I’m told that Good Day Oregon, a morning talk show in the region, is intending to do a segment on the Squad, and may do an interview Wednesday. We’re going to be out in force for the first ever night game this Friday, and they may also be there to film us in action.

Lots of reading to do tonight, so that’s it until later.

–Nathan

PS: Not all technology is smart. While spell checking this post, Blogger Spell Ckeck didn’t recognize the word Blog. And Blogger’s only product is blogs!