Wednesday 18th June 2003
That wasn't exactly intentional. I just didn't manage to write a What's New before I went to sleep. And then I managed to sleep until 12.18 in the morning. So Tuesday got overlooked.
And to think: I doubted that this moron was an alien....
On the bright side, there's a bit of news....
I bought a bike. I was going to do that last year, but I was in DuhMoines when Hunter went out and got one. Then I got back here, and then it got cold out. So I put it off. So, finally, the other night, I went out and got one. Bikes have changed.
The last bike I bought was a Diamondback BMX. That's still what I'm used to. This time, I got a mountainbike. Which is just weird. In general, it's a lot like a dirtbike, if slightly larger. But then it's got twenty-one gears, linked to remotes on the grips; I can deal with that part of it.
The weird part is that the entire frame is...bouncy. Pneumatic ramrods assisted by coilsprings. Which bugs me. Bunnyhops are totally out. Everything I count on is removed by this suspension. Hit a curb, and you barely feel it. Not what I'm used to.
I suppose I'll figure it out. It's just strange at the moment.
Then Comcast called me. Some telemarketer droid dogmatically reading a script at me. Having nothing better to do, I went ahead and listened to him for a while. The pitch: since I already have cable here, through AT&T, Comcast, taking over for AT&T, can upgrade me from analogue cable to digital HDTV for five bucks a month. Okay. I suppose jumping from ninety bucks a month to ninety-five won't kill me. In and of itself.
So. Now I've got a thousand channels of...not much. Each of which pixelates in like a DivX film. It's a bit slower than cable was, since everything has to download before you can see it. But...I suppose there's something to be said for watching Deadly Eyes, broadcast in 4:3, stretched out to 16:9, with a reminder popup that I was also going to watch R.O.T.O.R. starting at two.
Television sucks. For a hundred bucks a month, it can suck a thousandfold.
Hang on: a fifty-pound rat is eating Scatman Crothers....
Okay. Back.
Of course, the work order got fucked up somehow. So I only have one descrambler box at the moment. They should be back tomorrow with a second one for the computer. Then I can framegrab this shit in as mpegs. I've got a VCR; it just serves no further purpose than playing back stuff from years ago--typically into the computer to encode it into something useful in the twenty-first century. Which basically means that sixty percent of the StarWars films have yet to be released on DV.
In update news: Petco have finally responded from corporate, regarding the fraud. Kinda. More specifically, they replied to let us know that they're aware of it. We have yet to get any official word on what they're going to do about it, if anything. So: more on that as it develops.
In other update news, our newest alien EMailed Hunter. Kinda. Except that, being an alien, he EMailed hunten@gremlin.net, which doesn't officially exist; so the maildaemon kicked it to me, since I'm the webmaster@gremlin.net. Which means that, according to the disclaimer, it's now my property....
From: Jonathan Bush Date: 17 June 2003 14.29 To: hunten@gremlin.net Subject: "what kind of illness did I have,Rosa?" I asked." You got ill because you couldnt hold your world,"she said with uter conviction.
Hello Hunter.
Of course, now that I've got this image, we also have today's Caption Contest >:)
More later....
--Gremlin