/dev/zero

create your own visited states map
or write about it on the open travel guide

I’ve passed through many more, but I only checked the ones I can actually REMEMBER visiting. For instance, when I was about 5 or 6, my family drove from California to Wisconsin. I remember the trip, but I don’t actually have personal memories of every state we passed through. I remember the corn palace and Mt. Rushmore in South Dakota, and passing through Springfield, Ill. and at some point stopping at Cralsbad Caverns, which I think is in New Mexico.

I’m told we also drove to Wisconsin, and from there to Alabama, when I was about 3, but I was too young to remember it, so Alabama is not on this list.

Wives with kids who want new men.
Sorry, I’m not interested in kids who want new men…

Coupon-Ink for your Printer
What the hell is coupon-ink? Ink that only prints coupons?

Reliable Online drugstore. Order From US. We Deliver overnight.
I didn’t relize Us magazine was a drugstore…

My Mom did it with my Boyfriend.
Maybe you should stop introducing your boyfriends to your mom, eh?

1800 Stokes St Apt 9 San Jose CA Refi for Andrew
Really? You can really refinance my apartment? Even though I haven’t lived there since ‘99?

About your internet connection problems&why
I’m having an Internet connection problem? Damn! Why doesn’t anyone ever tell me these things!

Are you sure?
About what?

bloomington for multipliable
You said a mouth full.

boathouse
You to.

Cheap Cigarettes
Ya know, I don’t smoke, but damn, with prices like these, maybe I should start!

Do you need Antivirus Protection? Norton under 30 Bucks!
Linux, FREE!

elevate your soul
I don’t think you can help me with that.

enchesoun eternalized fullattended
I’m sure that means something in your language. In mine it means “I’m a stupid spammer.”

filler passport fancy durkin
“And I can’t get it up.” (Psst! I keep getting these emails about viagra. No use to me, but maybe it will help you?)

Foreclosures - search from 250,000 home listings
I’d rather search for things from my home, thankyouverymuch.

frizzle
Damn, even Snoop Dog is getting in on the spammer action.

Girl from church is looking for you
Really? And how did they get my email address?

Guarantee degrees from Prestigious non-accredited Universities
How does a prestigious university lose it’s accredation?

Hallo!
Hallo. Was wünschen Sie?

Have $500 in your account by tomorrow
Or you’ll do what?

he’ll
Psst! Where you’re going is spelled “hell”, not “he’ll”.

How to Win With Men;
Well it certainly isn’t by sending “how to win with men” emails to heterosexual men…

IT’S YOUR FUTURE!
What? WHERE?!?!?

Listen closely!
“That’s the sound of a spammers soul being sold to the devil”

Look Great in 2004, while sleeping.
I’d rarther look great while awake.

polonaise
Hmmm… Mayonaise… hollondaise… bernaise… Sorry, I don’t have a recipe for “polonaise”. Can’t help you.

Question for you…
The answer is “No, your mommy was wrong, you won’t go blind doing that, but you will grow up to be a spammer.”

Re:I need your help…
Your lawyer and a spammer are both drowning. Where do you go for lunch?

Sit down relax and have trust in us
You sold used cars in another life, didn’t you?

Tired of Running to the Post Office
Nah. I usually drive.

Work for just 5 hours a week!
I tried that once. My boss didn’t llike it very much.

Work from home anorexia
I told you, my name isn’t anorexia.

Working from home pleistocene
It’s not pleistocene either.

Your love life will never be better
I’m really sad to hear that, since it’s never been worse.

About BAT MITZVAH and a few gift ideas
I don’t know any 12 year old Jewish girls.

feel the growth…
No, I don’t think I will. You should probably see a doctor about that.

OPINION SURVEY - What do you think?
You’re a scum sucking, bottom feeding pea-brain who probably got beat up by the big kids and never got over being laughed at in the shower. Your uselessness to society is exceeded only by that of Bill Purdy. With dim bulbs like you around, even Dubya looks good. You should be skinned, parboiled and canned, placed on a shelf and labled “SPAM. Do not open until 2026.” Your skull is so dense it would solve our nuclear waste containment problem for the next 100,000 years.
But that’s just my opinon.

If you’ve tried to comment on my MT blog, the comment system is broken. You can submit the comment form, I will receive the email with your comment, but it will not make it into the database. I still don’t know why. I’m trying to fix it now.
I’ll be doing a major upgrade of the software soon anyway, so I may just tear the whole thing down and rebuild it.

The Where Ya Been Meme:

Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Andorra, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Bhutan, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Burma, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, China, Colombia, Comoros, Congo, Costa Rica, Côte d’Ivoire, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Djibouti, Dominican Republic, East Timor, Euador, Egypt, El Salvador, England, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Fiji, Finland, France, Gabon, Gambia, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kiribati, Korea, North, Korea, South, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Latvia, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Malta, Marshall Islands, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mexico, Micronesia, Moldova, Monaco, Mongolia, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nauru, Nepal, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Northern Ireland, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Palau, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, The Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Rwanda, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and The Grenadines, Samoa, San Marino, Sâo Tomé and Príncipe, Saudi Arabia, Scotland, Senegal, Serbia and Montenegro, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, Somalia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United States, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Vatican City, Venezuela, Vietnam, Wales, Yemen, Yugoslavia, Zaire, Zambia, Zimbabwe

STATES:

Alabama / Alaska / Arizona / Arkansas / California / Colorado / Connecticut / Delaware / Florida / Georgia / Hawaii / Idaho / Illinois / Indiana / Iowa / Kansas / Kentucky / Louisiana / Maine / Maryland / Massachusetts / Michigan / Minnesota / Mississippi / Missouri / Montana / Nebraska / Nevada / New Hampshire / New Jersey / New Mexico / New York / North Carolina / North Dakota / Ohio / Oklahoma / Oregon / Pennsylvania / Rhode Island / South Carolina / South Dakota / Tennessee / Texas / Utah / Vermont / Virginia / Washington / West Virginia / Wisconsin / Wyoming / District of Columbia

My brother now has a blog. He’s using MovableType as well. I’m so proud.

$406. For a bunch of paper.
ENGL-1301 - “Composition and Rhetoric” - 2 books
MATH-1314 - “College Algebra” - 1 book, 1 study guide (OK, 2 books)
ECON-2302 - “Principals of Micro Economics” - Already have the 1 book, from my ex-sister-in-law.
GOVT-???? - “US and Texas History” - 3 books
CULA-1302 - “Intermediate Food Prep.” - Uses the same book as Basic, which I took last semester.
ARTS-23?? - “Beginning Photography” - 1 book

My books ranged in price from $26 to over $75. Most close to $40. And no locker to store them in while on campus. Oh well, that’s what the car is for.

I’ve realized part of the problem I have with updating my blog is that I hate typing long bits of text into web forms (with the limited editing capability provided by a browser), waiting for a CGI to respond, etc.
So I went on the hunt for a good client to do my blogging. I used to use w.bloggar, but it’s Windows based and I’m usually on Linux. So I went to movabletype.org and took a look to see what clients they have in their “resources” section.

One of the clients I downloaded, Zempt, claims to be available for multiple platforms, but I could only find the Windows version. OK, I’m on a Windows laptop right now, so I downloaded it to give it a shot.
I ran the installer, and during the account setup process, it had an entry field for my Blog URL, and a grayed out field for my submission URL, with a checkbox for “I know my submission URL already”. I do happen to know the URL to submit to, but I thought, “What the hell, it seems to think it can figure it out for itself. Let’s see how well it works.” I plugged in my Blog URL (the one you’re reading, http://andrew.pure-chaos.com) and clicked OK.
It was spot on. Not only did it find the right path, but even figured out that the submission URL path is on a different hostname, and even domain, from my blog (http://www.godmoma.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-xmlrpc.cgi) Now, I’ve used some clients that were able to make pretty educated guesses once it was told which blogging package I use, but none of those would have figured out the separate domain thing. That would have confused them.
“That’s pretty nifty!” I said to myself. “How’d it do that? It had to have had some help from my blog itself.”
So I went snooping. Checked /index.HTML. Nope, nothing in there added by MT to give such a hint. Looked at the various other index files (rdf, rss, XML) Nothing. So I grepped for “godmoma.com” in all the files in my blogs “home dir” and hit on rsd.XML. Took a quick look at what’s in it and found it was obviously a collection of “here’s critical URLs related to this site” stuff. Off to Google I went.
So it turns out Daniel Berlinger, a bright client programmer had thought of rsd.xml because he kept getting so many support questions relating to how to configure his software to work with different programs / hosting services, etc.
If I’d known what I was looking for, I would have seen that my index.HTML (and rssfeed.HTML) did, in fact, contain the actual hint. But ti was a hint to a hint, in that it was a <link rel=> pointing to the file that holds the API hint that my client used. So the blog software I use already supports a feature I didn’t know existed, to make life easier configuring blog client software. So long as the client knows to look for it. w.bloggar doesn’t. I’d start using and supporting Archipelago, just for inventing such a thing, if it weren’t for the fact that it runs on Mac.

Isn’t it wonderful what the world of distributed development and open APIs means? A problem is observed in another blog package (Manilla) and client software (Archipelago). Someone comes up with a solution. That solution works across packages. Heck, thanks to open APIs, no one is even locked into any one client program for a given blog package. You can pick any of a dozen programs, each of which work with dozens of blog packages.
If Microsoft had it’s way, there would be a single client program for any given blog package. (And of course there would only be one blog package: Microsoft’s.)

You are a Wizard! Wise, knowledgable, stoic. You
tend to think things through before you act.
People tend to seek your advice and council on
any number of situtations. You are more then
willing to help, but tend to not make decisions
for others, rather you help them make up their
own minds on what they should do.

What would you be in The Lord of the Rings?
brought to you by Quizilla

As previously mentioned, David gave me his PS2 for Christmas. Martin gave me a copy of Lord of the Rings: Return of the King to go with it. Appropriate since he played my copy of LOTR: the Two Towers to death (literaly. Apparently the disc came apart.)
My comments on the game:
Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli had it easy in the movie. They didn’t have to actually fight anyone in the Dwimorborg (sp?), let alone beat the crap out of the king of the dead, then fight their way back out again.
Sam kicks even more ass in the game than he does in the movie.
I’m tired of games were beating the boss monster boils down to learning it’s exact attack pattern and the exact pattern of parry and attack to kill it. Shelob was a bitch to learn the pattern cause, come on, with 8 legs and 2 sets of mandibles, trying to keep track of all that movement and figuring out when the pattern repeats aint easy. It’s also a pain in the ass when the boss monster attacks, then jumps back. When you’re a hobbit, with short little legs, by the time you move forward to get within striking range of the monster that just jumped back, it’s ready to strike again.
It took me a while to figure out the king of the dead CHANGES his pattern half way through the scene. Until then I’d beat up on him for half the scene, then he’d whup my ass. After that he was no challange at all.
Right now I’m stuck on Pelennor Fields, playing Gimli. You have to simultaneously fight off mumikil (hit them 8 times with ranged attacks and they go down. Not real tough.), orcs, Easterlings and the Nazgul Witch King. And I have to keep my own health up. And the health of Merry and Eowyn. Again, Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli had it easy in the movie. Eowyn was perfectly capable of taking care of herself. But for some reason *I* have to rescue her in the game. WTF???
I’m at the point now where I actually started looking for hints online. The only sites I can find that actually have any want money. Again, I ask “WTF??” No, I’m not going to pay money for what will probably be hints that don’t work anyway. I could find cheat codes, but I don’t want to cheat. I just want to know what I’m doing wrong on this level.
Oh well, I have a dead PS2. I’m told Gamestop will buy it off me for store credit. I can probably get enough for it to get a network adaptor, a copy of Two Towers and the Prima guide for ROTK. (I’ll actually pay for a hard copy guide, since I know Prima’s walkthroughs are good. They get their data directly from the game publisher.)

So, any suggestions for good PS2 games?

A friend mentioned new years resolutions in her LiveJournal:
“I don’t make resolutions.“

Ditto. The only thing I decided is, starting tomorrow, I’m going to watch what I eat better. Not “I’m going to lose weight”, but “I’m going to eath healthier.” I’m going to watch the amount of carbohydrates I consume. Not a “Low carb diet”, just eat less bread and sugar and so on. No more drinking 3 Cokes a day, etc. I’ll be happy if I reduce my waist by 1 or 2 inches. More would be nice, but just that much would make a tangible difference in the way my clothes feel on my body.
I’m also spending the next two weeks, Spring semester starts, to really work hard on finding a job.

I also plan to make more regular updates to my journal, and expand some of the topic areas.