net fun and the old folks at home

hey, so i just discovered that by signing up for youtube i get announcement emails whenever someone i watch puts up a new youtube so i can keep up with the ztubes now… all these easy connections available with a reasonably decently modern computer… yay… speaking of this new old laptop, these are the things open at the moment: three instances of Firefox, one with seventeen tabs and one with fourteen tabs and one is just the download window… iTunes… Outlook Express… two Explorer windows… two notepads… three MS Word 2007 documents… a YouTube copy program… the performance monitor… a bittorrent program downloading a CD... an FTP program connected to my website... and there's a copy of the musical Bare being ripped to the hard drive… the performance monitor says the CPU is running at 90%... i suppose i may be pushing it (this little laptop)… anyway, except for not completing the burning process (so i have not been able to burn anything, boo)…

and on a completely unrelated topic (which i reserve as a name for a future blog), thanks to large hearted boy we can keep track of various music lists popping up around the web as 2007 comes to an end… you know how human love their lists and orders and rankings and best of and worst of things… i might even put a list of favorites up somewhere someday, when i am myself again, but you might expect several dozen categories to delineate the many facets of my reasoning and interests and planar consciousnesses, or something like that… isn’t it exciting?...

and not only that (also reserved for a future blog title), the boy mentioned above has lots of stuff on his site that i will be visiting and downloading regularly… and speaking of (yes, reserved for title consideration for a future blog) downloading… i am a relatively happy camper using Firefox these days, but i am noticing one major drawback that will probably have me going back to IE for at least one process and that is multiple downloads of mp3s from web pages… unless Firefox or some software comes along with an easier and faster way to download all mp3 files linked on a web page (and it seems to me that a script should be, and probably has been, written to do just that… i just don't happen to have such a script or the skills to write it at the moment), i recall IE will handle rapid fire multiple downloads of files fairly well and much faster than the Firefox is doing it for me today…

yes, i am still scoffing down mp3 files from music blogs… completely unknown to me artists, for the most part… and according to the bloggers, these artists are happy to get their music out and heard and i think that makes great sense cuz why would anyone go buy a CD if they haven't at least heard a little something they like by the artist… i don't care how big an artist gets, giving away a freebie now and then is the realest way to say thank you for the multi-million dollar houses and lavish lifestyles they get to live… you realize there are rap and hip hop artists pretending to be gangsta street kids who are worth half a billion dollars?... well, at least one is… and many are worth many millions… i measure an artists worth not merely by talent and certainly not by record sales, but more by how much he or she gives back to humanity… do one concert for charity for every concert you are paid to do and then i'll consider putting you on a pedestal…

meanwhile, back in RealTime™, mostly sorta…

so along about half past midday, i wake up after at least ten hours sleep, maybe eleven, and while the sleep was not pure or constant, it was the longest sleep i've had all year and it was a good feeling… and i tap the keys (and upload the previous entry) a bit until the roommates enter the picture… Rasputin, after i watch him eat a big bowl of ice cream and fudge, suggests a barbeque place and so all-you-can-eat got me again today… and then fudge swirls and ice cream… so the idea to cut back still remains just an idea and the belly appears once again… dumb me… dumbme… dummy… yup, so that's what happens when i sit back, relax, go with the flow here these days (and the past few years)… but that's not the worst of it (cuz i do enjoy the biggish ways when i forget how bloated and lazy and dumb it makes me feel (not to mention what it does to the body)… the worst of it (stop laughing, i have to get it out first)…

i get home and sit back in the big green chair and get into Saturday college football as Rasputin falls out on the couch and along about 10pm i remember that i had tickets to a concert at the House of Blues tonight… at least two, because i usually buy two cuz i always hold out hope that i will meet the one or at least some one who might want to enjoy a concert with me… and this wasn't one of the cheap concerts, either… but it's almost an hour away so by the time i got there it might be over or very near the end and that's that… sucks to be me…

ok, you can laugh a bit now…

meanwhile, i laid out $900 for Precious's new laptop because she's been harping on and on about how much she needs it and Rasputin hasn't had the cash and his credit is extended with his new car payments so Dell or computer stores will not give him credit at the moment… at least i am getting myself a laptop tray with two fans, which is something i've been meaning to buy for a while now as this laptop runs extremely hot, being a huge and heavy old gamer machine with a Pentium 4 and a video card CPU and in spite of a couple or few fans inside, i still keep my crotch fan on high most of the time, especially now that it's windows open and air-conditioner off time around here (at least a few days a week)…

anyway, back to Precious thoughts, our big concern is how well she'll take care of it cuz she's lost a $300 iPod and tends to treat everything like it's worthless or easily replaceable and low and behold, she (this is what we were getting to later) brings me her phone and says her charger is broken so can she use mine… i ask to look at her stuff and she tells me it's been going on for a few months and she's been using mine whenever she can find it… so i ask her to remove the battery and re-insert it to be sure it hasn’t jarred lose (she drops it a lot and occasionally throws it) and apparently she's put a store sticker on the phone so it's not easy to get the battery case off so she just tosses the phone on the floor and gives up…

so i insist that she brings me her charger and phone and i play with it for a bit and it looks like one of the many times she's dropped the phone it was in mud or tar or something and the key contact for the charger is covered in black stuff… and her charger contact at that point is much shorter than mine because she's been pushing it, forcing it through the black stuff to connect… and she has been doing that to my charger lately… so i get a pin and try to clean off the contact and i tried to straighten and extend the contact on her the charger and it may be working now (testing it by charging the phone as i write this)… it appears to be charging with her charger just fine… hopefully is was just the dirt on the contact point and it'll work for her now… until the next time she gets impatient or emotional or careless and the phone pays for it…

she's been working for months now and has spent every penny on stuff (clothes, food, accessories, music, DVDs, etc) for herself, but refuses to save anything for a computer or car or anything she claims to really need… is she a typical USA teenager or even more spoiled and wasteful?... whatever, she's gonna have another even more expensive toy to destroy in a week or so and hopefully she will not break it too quickly as she does need it for a few years for school… and you see now why i do not step in and help her get a car… carelessness, impatience, not paying attention to stuff, definitely not the best skills behind the wheel… hopefully she'll find some life experience (hopefully not near death, but maybe that's all that'll get through and i wonder if even that'll change anything in her head) that wakes her up to appreciate what she has and how to take care of herself, others, things, and the world around her… and she'd like to claim to be an environmentalist and activist, but laziness definitely negates any such interests in actuality… but somewhere inside there's a good heart, even if it's buried under typical USA teenage selfishness, insensitivity, consumerism, and carelessness for now…

i wonder if having another emotional catharsis heart to heart might help… her defensive walls have gone up so quickly in recent months that we haven't really talked in quite some time and she brushes off anything i say, which isn't how it used to be… she is always too busy with things that seems inconsequential compared to the discussion we might have… like just now, after telling her that her phone charger seems to be working again, i started talking to her about care of stuff and started bringing up a laptop and she did not have time to talk because she had to go for a walk… a walk is more important than finding out she's getting a new laptop (she doesn't know yet)… so i wonder if there's more going on than merely taking a walk… or… does she just have that little respect for me these days that she will not regard what i say seriously (which is how she acts)… or… is her self-esteem and self-doubt so low that she will not allow anyone to talk seriously to her…

so she took a walk… at least that's what she said… i wonder if she's out meeting someone or doing something she doesn't want us to know about…. or is that just parental-type paranoia… i certainly hope she walks a lot because she so rarely gets up off the couch when she's home and just keeps gaining weight (yesterday, after claiming to have not eaten all day, she had apple pie and ice cream with fudge and a Pepsi just before going to bed)… the leftover turkey and thanksgiving stuff will probably be in the trash tomorrow as she won't eat it and there's way too much for just me and Rasputin and i never really was a fan of turkey much…

and so, with tons of turkey in the fridge, we drove Precious to work stopping for Arby's for her on the way (cuz she was late) and then went to Sonny's BBQ and pigged out well (hey, if you're gonna pig out, you might as well pig out well)… and then, as i said above, home, lost in the momentary high carb and bloated bliss and, of course, the laziness of home… so i said no to a few potentially good meetups cuz i had tickets to the concert and here i sit, and that's it…

well, no, that's not it… i am bouncing around excited cuz i found a whole mess of music blogs and have been, for the past couple of hours, downloading mp3 files… one of these days i'll actually listen to all this unknown music and choose the ones i want to keep and delete the ones i don't want… unfortunately the burner isn't working, so i'll have to wait until i hook up my external CD burner or wait until i get a mybook external hard drive before i can organize the files well… so anyway, that's the entry for the moment cuz, i mean, you care about every little detail and want as much depth and real as i do, i mean, even if you don't say so, right?… i hope life is bouncing around fun, if not flat out excited, in your world too…

yeah, so how's life going in your world at this moment?...

how about now?...

later?...