Spent the day using Knoppix and freebsd for programming. Kinda 
enjoying it. Don't think I'll always want to use it, but I'm
at least appreciating how decent it's become. and /dev/dsp is
actually pretty usable now! :) the only thing that really bugs
me is that whenever I do something wrong the beeps are a little
loud. aumix cant seem to fix that. listening to mp3s via mpg123
is kinda amusing too (I'm using knoppix lang=us 2 so I'm not in
X11, I'm in consoleland yay fun. ) Ah yes, programming, I remember
thee. 

So a couple weeks ago I was sitting in the car parked at a metered spot,
talking on my mobile phone. The meter had just run out, and a meter maid
was like 2 cars behind me, so I figured I better move. I did, before the 
meter maid was within a car length of my car. I guess it was too late. I
got the ticket in the mail earlier this week. Rather than fight it, I 
just paid the motherfucker. Fine, whatever. Not worth dealing with. 

So my question is, why can't the fucking DPT get here already? Someone 
blocked my driveway, I called them nearly 90 minutes ago, and nobody is
here yet. I called them back 30 minutes ago, and they said "we'll be 
there when we can". I mean, come on. This guy will probably drive off
in another 30 minutes, before the parking guy gets here, and get away
with it. And I'll have to have sat here for 2 hours, waiting. Tired.
Wanting to go home to go to sleep, in a warm bed. hmph. 

Yesterday I finally finished (after many months) Quicksilver by Neal 
Stephenson. It required a lot of investment to read the 900+ pages, 
but man, was it worth it. I'm now itching to go buy the second book
in the series. The stories were pretty good, but also, I feel like 
everything I'd forgotten or ignored learning in my 10th grade western 
civ class (managing to get a B minus I think), well not everything 
but some, is now back. In style. Leave it to Stephenson to make that
stuff interesting (well in all truth I find history more interesting
now than when I was in highschool, in general). I will be starting
"The Confusion" soon, and if my reading habits of the previous book
continue, I probably won't finish it for another 6 months. I seem
to mostly read when traveling...

Woot, Brennan Christophe and I made Made Of Meat.
I likey. Made a new little homepage, too. nifty.

*sigh* 

OK so I won't just make that my .plan update. I was very tempted to do the
ol' ESC :wq ENTER. Hell, nobody probably reads this anymore anyway, since
all I do is "blabla here's the shitty mp3 I made today"[0] (I could go off on
a huge tangent of how I'm feeling about that shit now, but I won't. Well maybe
 I'll do it as a footnote[1]). Soon, that will change. Just waiting til I 
move, really. And get a few other nibbles and pieces sorted out. 

We went and had a really good lunch at Citizen Cake today[2]. Amazingly good,
really. mmm. 


0: I just checked webdog and it seems .plan are going out of style.. what with
the rise of the "blog". fair enough. hell, even I'm a sucka and have a little
webpage that lets you view this text. oh well, maybe I'll move to a full-on
blog. some day. 
1: I'm finding challenge in making things that sound good all flow and sound
right all the time. I keep making 3 minute tracks that have about 5 seconds 
where I'm like "damn, that's nailed" and I wish that the rest of the track
sounded as good. Ah the challenge of details. The integration is a challenge.
It really makes programming seem simple in comparison--at least if you design
code right, you can have all these simple independent systems abstracted and
functioning together... can't quite get to that point with music, at least 
yet. This is compounded by the fact that I can only do one thing at once,
this might (or might not) be easier with more people.
2: Allison and I have discussed logging where what and how we eat all the 
time. I'm tempted to, considering we do eat out quite a bit, and seem to
find so many good restaurants, it would be as useful to us as anybody else,
since we constantly ask the question "where should we eat?". 

Woot, Al and I get to move soon! yay!
Here's something I made today, based on something I did last summer.
Kinda chaotic, needs quite a bit of tweaking and cleaning up, to say the least...

I decided the lyrics to that last song I posted here were a little too harsh,
so I adapted some that I had written a while back and made this:

lone parasite (the vocals I will rerecord soon, cause the mic I have at home sucks)

to anyone who thought the previous lyrics were too harsh, it was more 
commentary than how I actually feel. email me if you want more details.

Wow, I could swear I've written something like this before.
Wonder what will happen with that...

A work in progress of a song.
Has a ways to go, yes. But interesting (to me).

hahahaha, rad.

I had bacon every day of my trip back east. mmmm.
about 2/3 through 'Quicksilver'.. It's good. Kinda overwhelming.
Makes me think about how I never realized how miserable people 
must have been in the 17th century...

About to head back east for the rest of the week for wedding fun.
An interesting note: Grado Labs rules. I sent them by broken SR-225s,
and they sent them back fixed. They did however write a little note
that said "SR-225s repaired- $40". I guess they want me to pay them
$40, which is fine, so I sent them a check today. That being said, I
could have just as easily not sent them a check, and probably could've
gotten away with it. Any big company would've demanded payment before
returning me my headphones. But not Grado. They rule. Cheers to small
family run businesses. <3. 

I'm trying to use this little (paper) Calendar I got. Funny thing is,
I can't actually put anything in it. Just questions. I just wrote,
for may 1, "DJ Shadow?" The answer to that question has to be yes,
doesn't it?

So Brennan, Christophe and I played, as "Consume, Vagina Boy!!!". It 
was good, though we sucked and had technical problems but overall I'm 
quite happy we did it. Big thanks to Analogue for the chance haha.
Here's a NSV video of it (needing Winamp 5.01+ or something like that):
http://www.blorp.com/music/Consume/cvb-live-mar2004.nsv
(the second song has a lot less fuckups but isn't quite as catchy)

Woot leap year. Also 4 years ago today gnutella was conceived... 
Brennan and I might open (with Christophe filling in for Francis
on the drums) for Christophe's band on Wednesday, at the Edinburgh
Castle here in SF... Should be fun[ny]. ha ha. A slightly entertaining
10 minutes, or so.

Got some fun little things in the oven, figuring out a name to use.
'tis a shame, Nullsoft was such a good one, and now nearly a decade
later, pretty much all of the promising ones seem to have been taken,
heh. doh.

ARGH wtf? 

I mean, I know what he's thinking, but c'mon?!?

Had a good little trip skiing and gambling with my parents.. Tomorrow
Al and I take off for another little trip. Feeling pretty good about
things, now. =)

I've been in a weird confused restless state for the past bit.

It's funny to realize that after all this, I spent over 6 years working
for Nullsoft, Inc. (or its acquiror) -- this is nearly a quarter of my 
life so far, and a much higher percentage of my adult(ish) life -- and 
here I am, starting over. 

I feel like whatever I do next is pretty much doomed to fail*. Not that 
I have any real plans, but maybe I need to do something that I don't 
want to succeed anyway. 

* it's very common, it seems, for the second project to be at most a marginal
success-- it's super common in the tech field, but happens everywhere -- look 
at Zwan**, for instance (no offence mr. corgan, but forget about jesus).
(edit: OK so I was a little bit hard on Zwan there, it was just such a 
let down after how good earlier Smashing Pumpkins albums, and Slint, were.. 
That's really unfair for me to use them as an example anyway, since they 
probably didn't say "ZWAN IS GONNA BE SO HUGE". Anyway, I digress)

** Christophe points out to me that the Smashing Pumpkins started sucking at
the end, too, so this isn't a good point 

Maybe I'll manage to escape that fate, I don't know. I'm not in a super huge
hurry to find out, but I do still want to create things. I guess the trick is
denying yourself ambition (which seems to find its way to you, regrettably), 
and to just make shit for the sake of making it.  Not because you think it'll 
be big, not because it's "what you're doing next", but rather, because it's 
interesting. To you. Whether or not anybody else cares, is their business. 

Having said that, when I start releasing new things, I hope people will take 
it the right way -- that I'm just doing the same thing I started doing 6 or
7 years ago.