So I thought I’d put something up just to do it. I have a hair of free time right now [well, all morning] and my website and my fans deserve all the love and attention that I can douse them with.

So far, Utah is everything I thought it would be — dreary, terrible weather, unbelievably intolerable family, and the kicker, a bed that is a futon! Yesterday was pretty hellish … went over to the grandparents’ house, and it was really sad. It made my insides ache to be over there: it just reaks of impending death :-/ Ditched out of there, and went shopping with my sister. I have very little to say about that besides “there are lots of hot girls here in UT, and they are all married by age 20.” The shopping was blah. Didn’t go see LotR, because every theatre in town was sold out :: I guess ritualistic satan worshipping really rakes in the bucks here.

Today, I have done nothing besides sitting here with my laptop on this nice futon and surfing / doing some light work. Fixed a couple small non-rand0m.org website issues, and spoke to Jack. Heading out to celebrate my dad getting a job [that’s another news post] at Red Lobster … I hear that everyone is out from college — which means nothing to me because I’m here in UT. But yea, apparently Laura is headed into town, Emily was out yesterday, Sammi is on her way as well [I think]. That’s the gist. And, in other news, The Burnz continues to be the good brother when it comes to mind-bending, heart-impaling situations — especially when it cames to Paco, and his gang of angry felonious-walmart-box-stackers.

So I’m here in Utah already. Woke up around 4am and was out of the springs by five — which means I was here at 3. I got a phone call from steve, which kicks ass — I guess that if you call my phone while I’m here in UT, I’ll still get it. That’s pretty damn cool. Anywho, figured out some shipping issues with my laptop battery and got a dial-up account for here in UT [via UUNet, w0o!]. And that’s all so far.

The drive consisted of me listening to some CDs with my big headphones on while being unable to hear anything else. Oh, and sleep. Lots of sleep. Unfortunately, though, I’ve been here less than 2 hours and I’ve already been hit with the “so, I hear you’re losing your license” thing twice. My mother’s inability to keep private shit private is one of the top 3 reasons I really, really didn’t want to come — the other two are 1) family and 2) I’m missing shit back home. I know, I know, I should love my family and value the time I spend with them and blah blah blah. You’re right. It’s difficult to do, though; my family is very difficult to spend time with. Oop, family is back and they want the phone. I’ll update with more of the tragedy later tonight.

Update: Tonight was really low-key … I did absolutely nothing besides snooze, read and surf the web. I really really really hope that the rest of the trip is like this. Oh, on another note … I got a call from this particular hotty in co.springs, and she told me that she shaved her legs. So HA, I win!

So I’m going to Utah tomorrow morning, and I am dreading it. I spoke to my father, and he is too. You know, I really like my dad. But yea, my sister is going to be there, and I “get to see family” … like it’s some sort of blessed occurence. Fuck that. Family is great for like 3 minutes at a time, 3 times a year, no more.

Okay, so not much else is going on. I spent some time at the perk taking care of stuff last night that needed to be done before I left … umm, oh yea! My fucking laptop battery isn’t going to be here in time for the goddamn motherfucking trip. I called those bitches up and I’m like “where the hell is my battery!?” and they gave me this whole “they were damaged in shipment to us – it will leave for you this afternoon, and get there wednesday”. I’m thinking that’s not gonna fucking cut it. So I told those bitches to give me free shipping, so they did. And they’re sending it to my granmother’s house in Utah. There is no way in hell I’m going there without a laptop. None. So HA! Yet another triumph over The Man. Although I wouldn’t mind being The Man, it sure is nice to kick his ass occasionally. And *don’t* get me started on leg shaving.

Update: I spent the evening with Tore … it is very comforting to know that kickass people still exist. Even though we’ve both changed a bit, he’s still great to hang out with. I’m packing to head off to UT in 3 hours … the dread is physically painful. Oh, and I realized, just now, that when you trim something down, it is not “paired”, but “pared”. Dammit … Oh, btw, I’ll be on AIM and available via e-mail most definitely while I’m gone – nick “rand0m” and rand0m@rand0m.org … I’ll see what I can do about posting the inane things that happen while I’m there – I’ll be back on the 27th. bye!

Man, it’s been a good weekend. On friday night, I went up with Tony to his Brother-In-Law’s place [his name is Alan (sp?) and he is the penultimate capitalist … kind of an ass, but very good at what he does] and played poker with a bunch of guys. I actually came out positive by a whopping $0.45. Last time I went [a few months ago] I got reamed like Jenna Jameson and lost like $20. However, as is tried and true, when we played pool for money I started playing miserably. Don’t know what it is up with that … pool + money = bad-pool-playing-me. I had a really good time up there, and look forward to doing it again 🙂

On Saturday, I slept. Then I woke up around 11ish to the sound of my phone ringing and Steve’s cheery voice 😉 Went over to his place, fixed up my rapidly-disentegrating [only the body, mind you] truck and then we went out. We did some stuff. I forgot exactly what we did, but we ended with rounding up Tore and Emily and Ben [Steve’s brother] and going and seeing “Not Another Teen Movie” at the south Tinseltown :: we all got in free because Ben works there, which is hella cool … The north cinemark is a little nicer, sure, but goddamn, it’s a 30 minutes drive and it’s not free. The south Cinemark works just fine for me :: same cardboard popcorn, same soda-laden floors, same magical movie-feeling. Right. Then we went and ate over at Village Inn, and finished off the night over at the perk. [oh, throw in a HPI server crash and going to my office in there] … I was kinda worried that cramming two distinct, separate parts of my life [Tore & Emily and then Steve & Ben] would not go so well, but it seemed like everyone just rolled with it — which made the night a lot better. Even though we whored out Emily’s study time, I think everyone had a good time :: I know I had a really good time with you guys 😀

And now for the completely random stupid shit you expect from this site, which doesn’t include my day-to-day details. Okay, my question :: Why the do I hang onto old stuff? I dont’ know why, but I seem to just cling to old shit so I can reminisce and ‘go-back’. It’s fucking whack. I say this because I’ve noticed it a few times — my search / archive for old stuff. I found the old IBu, I found my old website layouts, and I was going through my e-mail on Friday, and I couldn’t fucking believe I had that much old e-mail. Seriously, after cleaning out and organizing my obscenely large mailbox, I had just over 4,000 messages running around. Some of them are old, and the majority are either A) heart-wrenching, mind-bending painful e-mails to long-lost lovers or they are B) Completely worthless bullshit e-mail that has absolutely no value. And you know what? I keep them hanging around, nicely put into the ‘archive’ folder, never to be read again — until I feel the need to dive back into history.

Update: Oh yea! I forgot to say — “Not Another Teen Movie” is hilarious. It is bust-a-nut, non-stop laughter the whole time. It’s satire and spoofing of the typical teen angst flicks is raunchy and superb at the same time. Gonna go see Vanilla Sky sometime soon, so I’ll have a blurb about that up sometime.

Update: Here’s a nice e-mail that I recieved today —
“ Click here to get Real Drugs, Real Cheap – TODAY!”
Doesn’t that just inspire you? It sure makes me glad to live in the U.S. today.

Update, **With A Question!: Okay, it just hit me. What if the comments get long, and you have to do a bunch of scrolling to read the comments, then go to the little box and fill it in, and back and forth and back and forth. That would kinda suck. Because of this, should I make the little fill-in form part [the white boxes on the

And the past few days have been pretty typical. I work way too much, then I do something none-work related, I go home, I pass out for not-enough-hours, I wake up, and do it again. Sounds pretty lifeless, huh? You’re right, it is. It’s starting to wear … not much, mind you — I love my job — but it is starting to wear. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that there isn’t much to do, and more importantly, not many people to do it with. There’s poker tomorrow night with Tony up in Woodland Park, though, which is a very nice change from the norm.

I woke up the other morning to a sound I haven’t heard in years — not figuratively, I really do mean years — the sound of my parents fighting. It was extremely unsettling, and the whole day was kind of in a funk … they were fighting about how much they irritate each other when they are around each other so much, and how my dad needs to get a job and how he’s trying like hell [he is] and how she “should try to get a motherfucking job!” I wouldn’t be surprised if she does get a job, just to do something other than hang around the house and … … do whatever she does all day. That was a weird day.

On the work side, there’s now a large chance that the tasty, large, scrumptious contract that I’ve been busting my ass on will fall through. The Administration here does not like the initial contract, and, as the first draft is so hardcore, has little inclination to do business with the guy. sOo, Jack and I have been writing contract-legalese for days straight, and it doesn’t seem up to par. I have a bad feeling about it … I want the contract pretty badly, just to have something under my belt other than being a sysadmin — the vast sums of money wouldn’t hurt either 😉

On that note … I don’t know what the case is with the ticket thing. Jared pointed me to getting a public defender — it’d save me a load of money, definitely, but at what cost? What kind of representation can I expect from a PD? I don’t know how the whole thing is going to turn out, so I just keep it out of my mind. Oh, I haven’t told anybody here at work about it yet … I don’t know how to bring it up :: “Hey, Guys, I need $1,000 so I can pay my lawyer fees so I can go to jail for 5 days and not be profitable, and consequently, lose my license and quite possibly not come to work for a few days after that! Isn’t that awesome!?” I don’t think it would fly. Any ideas / suggestions besides “shoot yourself” and “just shutup and die already” ?

Update: Okay, I realized this today — listening to music on the computer using hi-fi headphones is painful … mp3s just don’t have that high level of quality … pops, cracks, skips — just sucky — and something I have to live with if I want to save my meager laptop hd space :-/

Okay, so yesterday Jack and I had a 2 hour conference call with Red Tag Office Supplies about the web site development proposal. It went pretty well :: we hashed out a ton of details and figured most things out, and at the end recieved a draft contract from them for our services. Unfortunately, that contract is shitty, and has lots of stipulations that just suck, like the following:

– no links to the client’s site for any reason, including portfolio
– intellectual property right restrictions [extremely harsh]
– obscene amounts of documentation required
– annotated source code [wtf!?]
– inability to hire 3rd party contractors without written consent
– 6 months of unlimited website support and maintenance [!!!]

It’s just obscene amounts of bullshit. I must admit, though, that the lawyer for Red Tag really knows how to cover their shit. Here’s a preview of what the site will probably look like :: here’s my quicky layout as well. The graphic’s designer’s layout looks better, imo, but mine is cleaner and easier to work with. sOo, I’m spending the morning revising that contract [again].

Other than that, I was supposed to get a book on ASP, but it didn’t happen :: spent last night at the Perk revising that 14 page monstrosity of a contract … In other news, I bought a new laptop battery — I just might get more than 10 minutes out of this baby yet!

Update: There is an absolutely priceless article on The Onion. Out of this world funny 😀

Yup, another Sunday, right on it’s way out. I slept until noon today. Oddly enough, that was only 7 hours of sleep. My sleep schedule is way out of whack; I have to be at work tomorrow morning at 8:30am for a 9am con-call :: I’m not looking forward to being thrust out of my normal rhythm, but I am looking forward to finally getting a signed contract.

So I’m poking around my computer today, and I’m wondering why the hell I have only 13GB of hd space free. I find a whole lot of duplicate files and such, which I cleared out, but then I found the culprit — yup, the innocuous looking Recycle Bin. That bastard has whored out just over 10GB of my hard drive for it’s own use. I don’t even know what I’ve put in there, but I can tell you, I don’t know what to do with it. Why not delete it, you say? Because there are certain things in there that I’ll probably need in a while, but don’t want to store permanently. So they end up in The Bin. Having all that stored there has saved my bacon a couple times … if only it didn’t take up so much HD 😉

Right, so I’m talking to some people about getting a place downtown, and it hit me that I don’t know much about the whole moving out thing. First tip off: the realization that I would need a bed. These places don’t come furnished. Duh. And another thing :: they cost a lot of money. I mean, not *a lot* of money, just a good chunk of the paycheck. I think moving downtown, and not to some other state, is definitely the way to go :: just have to find the people to do it with now. On that note, if you’re looking [or even if you’re not, (cough*matt*cough)] for a place that is right downtown, let me know.

On a final note, this week’s MP3OTW was generously uploaded by Master Ha-Reed — props!

Went out and saw Ocean’s Eleven with Jared and Tony, and I have to say that it’s a good movie. Go see it, it’s worth your $6.50. Hell, invite me along and I’ll see it again 😉 Went and got coffee afterwards, and saw a bunch of phs peepz … see paragraph 3 for this part. Then chilled downtown for a while before Tony got cold and everyone left. It was a good night.

Request time: I need a few things from the many, many people who read my site so often [cough]. First off, I’d like a nice, shiney new top banner. Busy is bad in this case, sleek and cool is very good. Help? Secondly, I would like people to submit articles. Anything. Any old peice of rubbish is perfectly fine — send it to me, and if it doesn’t suck, it will go up. And, to top of those two, a few miscellaneous things that have been bugging me: my name has 1 ‘L’, I am not a religion-practicing person of any sort, no, I can’t help with your dial-up situation, no, latency isn’t part of service level agreements, no, your website will be slow as shit because of all the crap you want, yes, I’m a terrible law-breaking driver and I’m losing my license, and finally, yes, a bigger paycheck would kick ass. Ahh, much better.

Last but not least, I found a couple things out. I am not Randal. I am Janelle’s ex-boyfriend. What a shitty label. How does one escape such a thing? Oh that’s right, as long as I’m me, and somebody knows us both, that’s the instant connotation. That sucks ass, I tell you. Please talk to me, not her ex-boyfriend, okay? kthnxbye. I really like 8 pt tahoma … it’s a tasty font. Also, TheFascistRag has a good update — although I almost want to be one of the people he hates, minus the whole soul-destroying thing.