the diary of antoine roquentin

I just installed Spam Karma 2. It totally killed the spam! Sweet. I was getting one a minute this afternoon. So yay. Oh crap, I need to take a shower and go to class.

And it’s official: my iPod now works again, the music is all reloaded onto it and I’m rocking out to some Jamiroquai. Had to hack the firmware to make the updater think it was out of date, then update it. Fuck ipodlinux. At least until the Nano is offically supported.

And once again I pledge my soul in eternal service to Disk Utility.

Categories: Ennui

I tried EVERYTHING to try to get my iPod to boot, and nothing. Fucking nothing. The software that’s supposed to restore it goes ” Can’t mount iPod.” That’s it. So I’m probably fucked. I’m going to try to format it on my Mac at work, but that’s the last hurrah. After that I’m going to have to try to get Apple to fix it. Shit. Fucking stupid firmware.

Categories: Ennui

Don’t you just love it when you add a bunch of porn to your download queue, and then you randomly check back a week later and you have a whole folder full of sex? Well I love it. I love it enough to blog about it.

update: half the files were sub-1MB and DRMed. Piss me off.

PS: one of my old friends (Peng Lo) sent me a MySpace message today. Unfortunately, I checked out his profile and he is so lame! And not as hot as I remember either. Weird. But then again I never thought he was hot until we started hanging out. Back then I wasn’t a malcontent wannabe intellectual. But I remember we got along remarkably well, whether it was because he wanted to use me I’m not sure. And it really made me angry that the whole thing with him happened when it did when I could’ve been trying to go out with Royce. But then again, Royce has that underground underworld drug Crescent City vibe to him and I’m sure that going with him would have only caused trouble. Or at least I say that. Oh, who am I kidding, it never would have worked with Royce, I was so young back then. I watch my video blog from that time and I’m just appalled at how immature I was. Oh well.

I’m going to check out my new media and go to sleep.

Categories: Ennui

> Lacquer – Strangers

Today is one of those days where I’m just too tired to function. I mean, I can do my work fine because I’ve done it one million times, but when it gets time to go home and struggled through the algebra on six hours of sleep, it just doesn’t happen. I came across this problem with negative exponents and I was just so exhausted that I stopped doing my work and listened to some podcasts until now.

I was browsing a Power Mac G4 Cube web site (I’ve wanted a cube forever) and came across a timeline of Apple’s developments over the years. It was incredible: 1985 and the days of the Apple IIe (my first computer) is only 20 years ago.

On Nov. 18th, I will have passed through such a big portion of my life. Technology and science have advanced so much in my short time in existence. If 1985 to 2005 goes from the Apple IIe to the Power Mac G5, what will we have in another twenty years? It will be fucking incredible, that’s for sure.

I read an article that said that this year one million people or so made the switch from PCs to Macs. People that are immersed in the world of technology can feel the tide, and it’s away from Windows.

For Joe, the move was to Linux. For me, it’s Mac OS X.

As Nietzsche would have said, “Windows is dead.”

Oh, in case you’re wondering, all the anti-Windows ranting is because I got my cool G5 shirt today! It’s a bit big, but I don’t feel like getting out the sewing machine today. It depresses me that people will ask what it means. But it’s just another reminder that I don’t live here.

I was slumming around Apple’s Developer Connection website to see if I could fake that I was a developer and get one of those sexy $999 Developer Transition Kits with the dual P4 Power Mac. Will it be the Power Mac P4? That has such an ugly ring to it. One thing’s for sure: I’m buying the first Intel-based Mac that comes out. I don’t care if they call it the Power Mac Dog Turd with 2MB integrated L2 stink cache.

The last few days I have discovered the wonder that is podcasts. They’re perfect: like on-demand radio. I’m able to listen to This Week In Tech (with Leo Lapporte, formerly of The Screen Savers), Now (the interesting PBS show), and this cool French PodClass, where each week you get a new lesson on French, interspersed with cool French music. I got inspired and did some online research about French electronica and I’m downloading some of the bands that were the influence for Air and Daft Punk. It’s a hella tight podcast, but I wasn’t exactly in the mental state to absorb the lessons today. It did, however, make me realize the depressing fact that I will only be able to write in English for the rest of my life. Well, I guess maybe France has the equivalent of Dragon NaturallySpeaking but I wouldn’t be able to search for the French equivalent of the word “voice-recognition” because I don’t know what that would be. Nor would I be able to read the forums discussing such things. I remember asking my Spanish teacher what the verb for “burning” a CD was in Spanish years ago, and she had to admit that she didn’t know but told me the Spanish word for “burn” and had me use that. It’s probably the same thing in French. English is a virus.

Well, I think Misty read that sort of scathing post I wrote about her. Perhaps I should password-protect it to cover my ass. Eh, who cares. If I can’t talk honestly with Misty, who is for all intensive purposes my best friend, who can I be honest with? I left her a message on her answering machine and a comment on her my space, and she never got back to me. I need to dye my hair, but I’m too lazy. And I can’t listen to my iPod while I’m doing it. Uberyawn. But I’ve been coming along on my paintings. Yesterday I was up at 3 a.m. painting away. I really like it, but there’s this one part and I don’t really know what kind of color I want to use on it and if I use the wrong color that I will be stuck with it forever. Well, more like for a week until it dries and I can paint over it. Maybe I will take a picture of it and Photoshop it to see what the results would look like. I was thinking a really really white blue, but trying to get a pristine color using my blackened brushes would definitely be a challenge. I read on the back of the tube of paint that the black is made from charred animal bones. Which didn’t make me feel so bad after I got a bunch of it on my hand. It’s sort of revolting to know that your painting with animal corpses (actually, it’s sort of hot now that I think about it…).I would be writing my eulogy if I got any of the cadmium based colors on me. I don’t only paint with black, I’m boycotting cadmium based paint products. ;)

Speaking of my eulogy, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want to do with all my crap once I die (not in a suicidal way, but I write obituaries all day sometimes and you can’t help but start wondering).

!!!!THE POST WHERE I SAY WHETHER I WANT TO BE KEPT ALIVE ON LIFE-SUPPORT!!!

No. Kill me. Please. What until the doctors are absolutely sure there is no brain activity, then pull the damn plug.

I will have been trapped in this hunk of flesh for long enough. I’m taking this meat into the ground when the reason for its existence (my mind) is no more. I think that I’ve been a member of the “fuck you, body, you are obsolete” camp ever since my carpal tunnel syndrome started. But hopefully with genetic engineering and technology I will be able to shed the vestigial flesh. Anyway, if I happen to die (car crash, spontaneous human combustion, BSOD, BBOD) I want my computer to be given to Joe (in Portland) and tell him to delete all my pr0n, compile all my programs, web designs, and writings, and burn them all to DVD-ROM to be put in some sort of near-indestructible (depending on my budget) container or external hard drive and put it in the coffin with me. And if I own a Mac Mini, laptop, or G4 Cube, please bury it with me. Give the archaeologists of the future something to ponder. I’m pretty sure in the future I’m going to have two systems: a more portable one and then a big powerhouse desktop computer for my more intensive apps. Again, bury the lamer systems with me, give the cool one to Joe so he can burn all my files and format the partitions (do a full format, writing everything to zeros). If it’s a mac and he doesn’t want it or something, give it to my mom. She’s hella tech savvy now.

Auction off all the rest of my crap (assuming I have a bunch of crap). My family can have anything they want and they get first pick. Actually, Kelly, you can have my computer if you want it. All the stuff gets auctioned off to pay for my future hosting costs of my website and all of the crap in my bank account goes to the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation). So there.

Oh, and I don’t want those creepy morticians touching my corpse. Bury me in what I died in, unless it’s embarrassing. But no pumping my corpse full of freaking preservatives and making me look alive. That’s disturbing.

Also, somebody in my family, could you please take over my website and keep up with the hosting and domain costs? It’s only like $7/month. And like, add a post about my demise? I guess I should put a list of my passwords somewhere. It’s so against my password philosophy, but I’ll do it. I’ll hide it somewhere in my room.

OK, that was all I wanted to get out there. And I’m NOT suicidal, just being prudent.

I voted today! I was going to scan in my ballot and show you guys what I voted, but I don’t have a scanner. Oh well. It’s not like it was an important election anyway, and tomorrow when I go to work I will know that my vote meant absolutely nothing. But that’s one of the joys of existentialism, nothing means anything! Woohoo for moral relativism!

I should go to bed. Around midnight I get this second wind and then I’m up until 3 a.m. I have to do epic amounts of algebra tomorrow, and I have to have every last brain cell in attendance.

Categories: Ennui

Check out my tat!

It’s so fucking hardcore.

I got my iPod case today, and it is so awesome. Nifty even!

images!

The Nano and Case meet…they are apprehensive…

They start talking about Jean-Paul Sartre and Philip K. Dick…they move closer…

At last, they are one! *throws rice*

Needless to say, I love my case and all of its anodized aluminumey goodness.

I’ve been doing algebra all day long. I’m halfway through the chapter on exponents, and then I get to move on to polynomials, which I have no clue about. They shouldn’t be too hard, but now I’m straying into the part of the book that I didn’t learn in high school algebra. Will my brain explode? Only time will tell.

It has been so incredibly cold lately. I thank the gods for the glory that is my tricked out PC, it keeps my room hella toasty (P4 3.0GHz HT). When I walk down the hall in the middle of the night I keep expecting to bump into cow corpses. And the bare white walls don’t really help my subconscious’s assertion that I live in a meat locker.

I was enjoying the cold earlier today though. After work I walked down to Rite-Aid to get some toothpaste and other sundries. I was bundled up in my wool scarf and my not so warm jacket, but I realized that it was the first time in a long time that I had been out when it was really really cold. The last time I was this cold was when we went to Manhattan in the middle of the winter and didn’t dress for it at all. We nearly froze our asses off until by the grace of New York City, we happened upon Tiffany & Co. and were able to thaw sufficiently to make it back to the subway station.

There’s just something so refreshing about being that cold. I felt rejuvenated walking around Crescent City in the near-freezing cold. I could just close my eyes and pretend I was in Manhattan again.

I really really really want that G5 longsleeve shirt that I ordered. It’s been so freezing cold in this house I would love to be warm in style.

NETFLIX UPDATE: only I will remember this, but I’m going to pretend that you have an encyclopedic knowledge of my life as well. And if you do remember this, you are so much cooler then the world can ever know. Remember when I canceled my Netflix and they charged me $20 for this DVD that I swore I returned? As you know, I started it up again, and the week after I got my first slew of DVDs, the one that they charged me for so many months ago (Bowling for Columbine) mysteriously appeared in front of my door. Apparently my dad had thrown it out a long time ago and only realized that it was a DVD once I had started my subscription again. So way to go, dad. I guess I can’t be too begrudging, at least he did find it. The reason that I’m telling you guys about it is that Netflix actually gave me my $20 back! Way to go, Netflix. You rock.

Well, it’s quite late… and all of my Photoshop endeavors have taken up a lot of my time… well, the time that I wasn’t listening to podcasts and doing my algebra.

OMG OMG OMG!!! I never blogged about it! Guess who called me last night?! JOE! My cell phone rang at like 10 o’clock yesterday, and Misty is the only one who calls me after like seven and it was an hour before she would get out of work so I was really surprised that it was him. We both fired up our computers (who am I kidding, we never turn them off) and talked on Yahoo voice chat (the equivalent of free long distance). It was so fun to catch up and it was just like all those fun times that we would hang out in my car or his car and drive around Crescent City talking about technology and cities and philosophy and anything cool that we wanted to talk about. We ended up chatting for almost three hours. It was so cool! Talking with him totally recharged my battery. Living in this Del Norte County hellhole, it’s easy to forget that there are actually cool people out there who want to create instead of destroy. I was in Safeway last night with Misty and she ended up talking to TJ, my former best friend of sorts from high school. It was really depressing. TJ just stopped talking to me. It was around the same time that I came out, so you know the conclusion that I drew. He’s mature now though. Were such different people. Or so I think.

Man, TJ and I had so much fucking fun. We used to play this game called…oh shit what was it…WARPATH!! That is quite possibly the best game ever created. Me and TJ would talk on the phone for ever, interspersed with us dialing into each others’ computers, fuckin’ old-school 28.8 2D fragfest. It was hella cool. I miss those times so much. But at least I have all these memories of these great fun things that me and my friends have done. I’m sure there are people who haven’t had a hundredth the fun that I’ve had living in this town. So I’ve got to content myself with that.

In completely unrelated news, I bought a Firefox T-shirt. I was waiting ever since I started using Firefox for them to come out a black T-shirt, and they finally did! Well anyway, I’m going to be stylin’ with my new apparel. My longsleeve G5 shirt could come as early as tomorrow! I sorta want a Creative Commons shirt, but they’re a bit more pricy than I would like and the designs aren’t very compelling. I want the one that you get when you donate $70 to them… but of course it makes their day to make their coolest shirt only available to those with deep pockets.

Well I should sign off. I’m sure I’m going to have a few image comments on MySpace tomorrow. I made my tat my profile pic.

Categories: Ennui