Well, Saturday started off pretty well. Woke up, went to Hooters (wooo), went to Barnes & Noble, then ended it with a stop at Best Buy. That is of note because the Citadel Best Buy is moving from it’s current location to South Carefree & Powers. Which sucks, as then there will be no BB on the south side of town. Meh. While I was there, though, I bought the [L=http://starwars.com/episode-iv/trilogy_dvd.html]Starwars DVD Trilogy[/L] for the cool price of $45.99. Neato. So the next morning I decided that my Sunday-night viewing of Starwars would not be complete unless everything was as close to perfect as possible. I had plans to go to Pueblo for the chile festival (note the chilE, not chili. Not much food there, but lots of green peppers), which was a good time, in the afternoon, so I had to work fast. I strode into Best Buy just after they opened at 11:05am and with wild abandon purchased [L=http://www.klipsch.com/product/product.aspx?cid=55&section=specs]A wicked 12″, 440 watt Klipsch subwoofer[/L] – I love good bass. [L=http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?id=1051826211873&type=product&ref=03&loc=01]A wicked (black) Sony 5-disc DVD player[/L] – I’m a Sony whore. Why in the hell would I purchase such ludicrously expensive electronics? Two reasons. 1) Starwars 2) Aforementioned moving Best Buy == huge sales! The woofer was $289 marked down from $499 and the DVD player was $129 from $159. WOOO. The DVD player is of great importance, as we have been having some issues with the XBox playing some DVDs. My home theater system is complete. TV, receiver, dvd player, speakers, woofer, everything. So James invited Emily & her roommate Ashleigh (sp?) over and we watched Starwars. The girls couldn’t handle the marathon (sissies) and petered out around 11:30pm, while Keen and I kept on going through the third movie until almost 2am. Yes, I admit I was dozing here and there through RotJ. Regardless, the woofer + DVD player + Dolby Digital 5.1/DTS is rock-my-socks awesome.

Man, had a bunch of things piling up on my plate to post about, and am finally getting around to it. Things are going pretty well on my end, so I’ll put up some things I’ve seen recently along with blurb to jumpstart some discussion. Unfortunately, you’ll have to actually read the articles that I link to to get the background. If you don’t and you comment about them, I’ll slap you. [b]Why do people hate RedHat?[/b] [L=http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1592544,00.asp]http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1592544,00.asp[/L] With that link, I’d like to say that I’ve had the opportunity to work on two separate, no, make that three, RedHat-owned Fedora Core installs. One is a webserver in Texas. I was installing some custom java webapp hoohaa on it, and although the Host, iPowerWeb, does their best to make a colo’d server ready to go, it wasn’t what I was looking for. Despite that, it was pretty easy, even pleasant to find standard SysV init scripts, all my normal utilities, everything ready to go. A few hours later, *poof* a very customized box. The other two options have both been on the same physical hardware – once running Fedora Core 2 x86 and once on the same OS, x86-64bit. Both were very straightforward and did exactly as I pleased. My only complaint with Fedora is RPMs. And it’s not just Fedora, it’s almost all major linux distros. RPMs are almost always binaries, which makes it a real PITA when I have to link apps to eachother while building them. I’m not a linux hacker, and maybe I should be using the $app.src.rpms, but I’ve found that to be an annoyance. So yea, I like linux. But is it as good as FreeBSD? Not yet 😉 [b]Sweaty Southern Sex Kittens[/b] OR [i]How women could utilize femininity in a relationship[/i] [L=http://brandotalk.blogspot.com/2004/08/sweaty-southern-sex-kittens.html]http://brandotalk.blogspot.com/2004/08/sweaty-southern-sex-kittens.html[/L] You know, there are a lot of people out there who think that feminism is about destroying the male-dominated society, blah blah blah. That’s great. Yay for out with the old, in with the new. The unfortunate part of this plan is that males don’t like it when their women are psycho. The link above is sort of a guide on how women -could- use femininity to make their man happy, and in turn totally own him in every way. Before you all go totally apeshit about what a horrible masoginistic woman-hating testosterone filled peice of shit I am, keep in mind that every male DOES love southern women. Maybe it’s because they’re not busting our balls 24/7, or trying to push an agenda, but instead are trying to get the most out of the relationship by contributing a little bit in leiu of demanding 100% “equality.” I guess it boils down to women are women and men are men, and neither should try to be the other. But that’s just my opinion. Discuss.

Thought I’d drop a line and let ya’ll know I’m not dead. Some neato things are afoot, but dunno if they’re going anywhere. Keen’s in New York, already scooted away after having just returned from Vegas. Punk. Amazingly enough, Adrian from my highschool spanish class works at Mitre with Keen now. We went out all together and played pool & drank at Phantom … was a good time. Small world, eh? [b]Update[/b]: Apparently Keen does not leave until Tuesday. Damn his [L=http://keener2u.textamerica.com]moblog[/L]! Just because I wanted to be more portable, this site now runs off of mySQL instead of Microsoft SQL. FYI. [b]Update[/b]: Thanks to [L=http://jared.seehafer.net]Jared[/L] for pointing out the missing ‘add comment’ link and the mishandled dates (both fixed).

Well, it’s 12:38am and I’ve ran out of things to do, so I figured I’d update here. Not too much happening, but here’s the lowdown. Keen came back from Vegas the other day after a nearly four week stint of work & Defcon. It’s a little weird saying it, but I missed him :-/ I’m glad he’s back, even though I never see him due to wildly conflicting schedules – he’s already out of the house by the time I wake up, and I’m coming home a couple hours after he’s already hit the rack. Kinda sucks. People. I went out with Tore and Laura to Phantom Canyon the other night. That was a pretty good time. Laura seemed … better than usual. Dunno if it’s the lack of UCSU, but she just seemed a lot more pleasant. She looked healthier too. Weird. Tore … well shit, I saw him like 2 nights before that so there isn’t too much new there ;-). I went out with Sammi for lunch today and had a great time. Also, Mr. Mike Lee made a surprise appearance last night and we chilled @ the store for the evening. It was nice to see him around – he’s a bartender at Oscar’s and is doing well. My day job is being acquired very soon. Got into a semi-argument, or more correctly a ‘problem solving discussion,’ with the soon-to-be-owner-person about how 802.1q & 802.1p (VLANs & class-based QoS) would have issues on our network, and summarily what we need to do to fixify it. He’s so high energy that our 3 hour conversation wore me out for the day. He must take caffeine intravenously every morning. The store is still limping by during summer, but school starts on the 18th and things are looking up. I can’t wait for business to pick up again! We are switching from our costly T1 ($500+/mo for 1.544mbps up/down) to a wicked adelphia hookup – $149 for 4mbps/1mbps. That and a couple other trimmings are hopefully going to prime us for money-making. That’s all for me, getting ready to close.

I’m getting tired of looking at the same bland page here at rand0m.org. And I’m even more tired of getting an unbelievable amount of communiques insisting that I put up “more content!” So here goes. Topics for today include EverLAN, my birthday, Girls (in general), Work, Work #2 and then maybe some other things. It’s pretty sad that I have to structure my posts so that I don’t lose focus and scrap the entire process resulting in weeks of no-content. EverLAN was super. It went off with nary a hitch and was super well attended. Setup started July 14th, event on th 16th, ended on the 18th, cleanup on the 19th. EGC was closed from the 15th until afternoon of the 19th. Basically, 500+ people brought their PCs to the Phil Long Expo Center up on the north side to enjoy LAN computer gaming, file swapping, meeting people and to participate in lucrative competitions — one to the tune of $10,000 for 1st place. There are a shitton of photos running around: [L=http://rand0m.org/gallery.php?gid=13]my gallery[/L], [L=http://www.everlan.net/modules.php?set_albumName=summer04&op=modload&name=gallery&file=index&include=view_album.php]everlan.net galleries[/L]. Also, Team3D, one of the world’s most well known Counter-Strike teams, made a visit to the gaming center. They were a bunch of really classy guys, and there are some photos of [L=http://cos.everlan.com/gallery.php?gid=13]them here[/L]. Of other note is that Adelphia has an awesome network team — if you can get ahold of them. My 22nd birthday happened on the opening day of EverLAN. I did absolutely nothing. I got a card from my parents, and a card from my Oma in Salt Lake City, UT, and a nice package of things from Laura (beachball (?), stickynotepad (was super @ everlan), some chocolates). I didn’t even drink a beer. I think I got a call from Keen, but that seems fuzzy. All in all, probably the most worthless birthday I’ve ever had – business as usual – and I don’t even care. Wow. Girls. I got to see Sammi while she was here, but she is gone. I was hoping to catch her again before she made off to FarmLand, but I didn’t. Damn. I think Laura [L=http://www.livejournal.com/users/pinklaura/10427.html]hates me[/L]. Awww Shoot! I ran into Michelle … something … the hot chick from back in the day. She is still incredibly hot. There’s this woman on my floor named Zaheera (sp?). She’s doing some temp work for GlobeLink, a translation-services company. She is almost 22, has a bachelor’s degree in history (earned 1 year early), speaks 6 languages and is pursuing her masters in international finance. She’s not the most attractive girl in the world physically, but man, I want to have sex with her brain. She is incredible, but I feel wildly inadequate due to her overwhelming competence … so I talked to her twice, and might ask her to get a cup of joe tomorrow for lunch? The day job is doing well. My job is the same as always, as there is not too much for me to do in the way o fnew things … I think that will change soon. I determined (see below) that I need to make more money. Hopefully the $ situation changes soon, otherwise it will change soon — not going to continue limping by on sub-Wal-Mart-night-stocker pay. The store is doing not so good. Summer sucks and has hit us hard. Like, real hard. We have been considering changing locations to one more suburban, but have been fruitless in finding a good mixture of location, size, cost, mean income, population density, and more. Location is -everything-. Everything. Luckily PHS starts up again soon, so hopefully we won’t die. Shittikaka. I made a gallery-style thing for the photos. I don’t know if I mentioned that in an earlier post, but it’s there and it’s pretty neato. Keen is in Vegas for Defcon. I was totally planning on attending, and had saved as much as humanly possible, but alas am short. I had no idea that it’s painfully difficult for me to save $1000ish with my low-ass-wage job … even over 3 months. w0lfy, damn him, got notice on Tuesday that -his- employer is sending him to Defcon all expenses paid. With three days notice, eg $400+ in tickets, $600+ in hotel costs, not to mention per diem, pay, and more. I long for such a job. You have no idea. Defcon officially starts up tomorrow, and I am expecting Keen to take a shitton notes and even more photos. I am still at odds with Tore. Wait, no. I don’t care anymore. People are fallible, people can change. I think Tore is at odds with me. I don’t know, though, because I haven’t talked to him in forever. He went to Texas, despite his previous strong inclinations to not do so. I [i]feel[/i] like I should apologize, but then I think about it for a second, and I don’t have to apologize for my opinion, no matter how bigoted or biased others may think it is. I believe Tore will continue to be offended for an indeterminable period of time — this, by the way, it very much non-traditional Tore behavior. I liked him, his attitudes and his thoughts a lot more before. Before what, I don’t know … just … before. He changed. Or maybe I changed. Don’t ask me.

Wow today was a busy day. To start with, I awoke well rested for the first time in forever. I had to go out to falcon in the early morning – left at 8am, but unfortunately got half way there and realized that the radio I had with me wasn’t configured. Came back, conf’d it, went out there, spent 2 hours on someone’s roof and then came back into town. Yay for installing / fixifying radios. I then went to lunch with Super Sammi at Phantom Canyon. Ordered the Rootbeer/BBQ Chicken, which was very melony and not at all what I was expecting, but eh. Anyways, lunch was great. Her trip to South Africa sounded kick-ass … I can’t wait to travel abroad 🙂 Anyways, it was a very insightful lunch because Sammi is really smart. And insightful … and everything else good in the world. *sigh* So as I was coming back from Falcon I drove pretty close to Signs By Tomorrow and was thinking “wow, I haven’t heard from Paul in a while, I’ll have to give him a ring sometime” … sure enough, not 20 minutes after I got back to the office he calls me while in the middle of a computer crisis. I tell him I can swing by post-lunch, and I do, to find … Janelle there! Yay for unexpectedly meeting the ex-gf with no prep time / obligatory self-delusion time! I had a little trouble concentrating, but I did fix SBT’s problem in less than thirty minutes (their internal software support didn’t fix throughout several -days- (ego boost here)). I then split outta there as fast as I could to avoid any awkwardness w/ nell … and it’s just business, you know? (lame excuse filter here) Anyways, got back to the store and it’s been chill. Been a good day.

Keen, Paulie and I [L=http://rand0m.org/images/rafting070304]went river rafting[/L] on Saturday afternoon. It was a really good time … I was kind of thinking about backing out on Friday, but decided that what the hell, I’m going to go and have a good time. There were *TONS* of hot chicks around. It was just gratuitous :-). Paulie and I both leapt off the raft and went for swims, and after a much-too-long-for-comfort attempt to get me back in the raft (due to a loose lifejacket) everybody ended up back on shore, nice and dry. Except Keen, who wore cotton 😉 We ate at a place called Pizza Madness and the food was incredible — definitely have to go back there next time I swing through Canon City. The Gorge, btw, is HUGE. I can’t explain how high the cavern walls get, nor how long the Royal Gorge Bridge is. It’s really all quite impressive. [L=http://rand0m.org/images/rafting070304]Photos Are Here[/L]. I went to Corey’s bday party on Thursday night, got like 3 hours of sleep. Then I worked Friday night and went to Falcon in the morning, got another 3 1/2 hours of sleep. Then I went rafting. Then I worked a lockin until 9am Sunday. I was a very tired monkey – luckily, I didn’t do shit on Sunday, and went on a nice lunch outting with my sister earlier this afternoon. Been a great weekend. James friend came over last night with her two hot-as-fuck roommates for the sole intent of getting drunk. Unfortunately for everybody involved, not only did the end up not getting drunk, but they left early. Why? One of the girls is a prude. Meh. Oh well, they were nice eye candy for a couple hours. Tore and I tangled on AIM. I think he’s a pompous obstinate blowhard who believes that the world owes him something, and gets an unbelievably large pleasure out of manipulating people / playing mind games with folks. Additionally, he is always right and there is no room for any opinion other than his own. I strongly disapprove of all of that — the world doesn’t owe anybody shit, no matter what college tells you, mind games are horrible things and only serve to -REALLY- piss off those of us who don’t play them, and thinking so highly of oneself as to not even consider others’ opinions is just plain awful. This does not work out with Mr. A-Type me. I am unsure of where this will lead. Sammi is back in town, scheduled lunch with her manana. Dunno how that’ll [L=http://rand0m.org/viewcomments.php?NewsID=431#4541]go.[/L]

Marilyn Motazedi, the sister of a childhood friend, passed suddenly this weekend at the age of fourteen. My sincerest condolences go out to her frends and family I recall spending time at the Motazedi home, with Marylin always tagging along beside Eric and I. Her glowing smile, her bouncing curls, her chiming laugh. Her love for her parents, her tight hugs. The rivalry, the unending adoration for her brother. Fate’s hand among us, roused much too swiftly.

I really have no motivation to post anymore. I could go on about how the store is, the HPI deal, Tore’s incredible attitude & bullheadedness, James HotSex Adventures, Keen and I’s solving all of the worlds problems while talking on our porch, seeing a couple PHS people, meeting up with Laura at Phantom several times … but meh. Too much to type and I have zero impetus to do it. So here are some links, some of which are pretty scary. heh. [L=http://rand0m.org/temp/cyberwoo.htm]HOTCYBARSEX WITH HOTMAMA[L] – hilarious cyber sex outtake. [L=http://rand0m.org/temp/scarytext.txt]Random beligerent conversation[/L] – priceless. [L=http://rand0m.org/temp/egcfirewall.txt]A FreeBSD Firewall Script.[/L] Don’t ask me. Things of note. 1. I was chatting with Nick the other day, and I linked him to a Match.com profile that was of the perfect girl. His first reply “does she keep her mouth shut?” I laughed heartily. And fuck anybody who doesn’t laugh. It’s a joke. Jesus. 2. I was late this morning and ended up going to work without a shower because Keen took a loooooong shower. So I feel dirty, because I am. That is all.

We are having a Barbecue on Sunday around 2pm. Everybody is invited. BYObeer, if you have any 🙂 Keen came home on Wednesday and brought along a copy of Dan Brown’s “Angels and Demons” which is about the Illuminati and their infiltration of the Masons. I did a bunch of reading as of late and man, the Illuminati are interesting. Also of great interest is the vast amount of Masonic symbols and rituals that are existant in the Mormon church. I am told that Brown’s next book will address exactly that. Surely an inflammatory author, but one that has definitely made me want to learn as much as I can about religious symbology and more importantly, the pedigree of religion & power.