so yea, I'm digging Apple's iTunes service. no, no, I'm not sick. Yes, I know It's a mac product. there is a reason for my madness...You can blame Pepsi. See, being cheap, I can't pass up free things, and Pepsi's iTunes song give-away caught my eye. Turns out you can actually tell if the bottle is a winner before you even open it just by tilting it right, so now I've basicly get my caffine, and a free song every time I buy something to drink!

so here's the deal. Pepsi estimated that only 1/10th of the 1 million songs are going to be redeemed. most people just throw them out, or donate them to a place like Itune Recycler...What I want you do do it this: Dont throw away your iTunes, or donate them to some faceless independent music labels so THEY can get free music. Email the codes to me. Your donated iTunes downloads will go to supporting my every musical whim, and allow me to expand my music collection at no cost to myself! and um....it will give you a warm fuzzy feeling too...and I'll save a kitten or something...yea...


GIMMIE THE DAMN CODES ALREADY!

Soon the Demon shall rise....

And by that I mean the D2-04 Demon, the long awaited replacement to the D1-01 Digimortal (my Uber PC). I'll have some picures here shortly of the completed shell, but I'm still waiting on AMD to get off their backsides to start to Retail Professionals Promotion this year (so I can get my sweet AMD 64 bit CPU/systemboard/memory for an insanely naughty price).

Also in the works at the moment, My guild's website. While I can take absolutly no credit for any of the code, hosting etc, I am proud to have some of my work defining the colorscheme/overall layout. Musicly, after my Vocal Mix Volume 1 sounded so good on the stereo, I've started putting together the track list for Darksev Vocal Mix Volume 2! some hints you say? ok, look for Agneli & Nelson, Deleriem, probably some 4 stirings and Julie Mckenna on this set :) Rawr!

Oh, and if you were to come across a copy of the not yet released yet highly anticipated Fear Factory album Archetype....I'd say you probably would not be dissapointed when listening to it if you liked Demanufature, but I can't say how I know >;)

As soon as I make some kinda comment about being bored with the guild, don't we go and start a killing spree :D I swear, people actually DO read this hehe. Actually, we raided last night thanks to the efforts of a bunch of really desperate members trying to start things themselves (with little support. Hard to get people to do stuff if they are not being forced), thankfully, before we went and killed ourselves, my favorite halfling (yea, I got a soft spot for a few shorties...) stepped in and made it an official event (meaning people had no choice but to show up Mwahaha).

I did have a twinge of EQ depression today, when I was looking at all the work I've done, and realized that some of my best isn't even being used anymore. Bitzn, Kat, Ash, Caanus, Adark, Lumi, Oogy are all retired characters now, and a few have been sold off on sites like PlayerAuctions. Names get changes, personality's change, and effectively, the person, the character the art was created for dies, the only remaining manifestation of who they were is a few bits of data on my server. :( Maybe I just miss old times and old friends. It's really scary how attached you get to people whom you don't even really know just by playing a game.

Back in the Real World (tm) the FNG at work learned a valuable lesson today. Random acts of kindness lead to indifference, indifference leads to disappointment, disappointment leads to anger, anger leads to hatred, and hatred makes you a better tech! :D basically, FNG did a really nice thing involving hands and knees type cleaning for another department, said department did not reciprocate that kindness (I.E. waved and walked out) when we were stuck with an assload of work to do after the store closed tonight. Now FNG understands why we don't like to help people...after all, being nice to people is how we got to become store "cover my lunch/do my job for me" bitches, and we're still trying to get that stigma removed.

Since the guild hasn't been doing squat since the whole leader leaving hooplah, I've had to resign myself to doin gother things. lets see, Keeping Larry happy is definatly a priority...He even made me bring home a 1/2 gallon growler of the B&O's Hearth ale the other night (shameless plug for favorite bar).

hmmm what else what else....Finished up another EQ sig/portrait combo (see EQART section), and I tell ya, these things are getting so much harder to do. I used to stare at a screenshot and instantly have an idea of what to do, now I end up playing with brushes for a few hours until I get the concept finalized. That's probably a good thing, because the final pruduct usually looks better, but eh, I hate it when I have to force some creativity out of me.

Gonna go grab some more beer/food and log onto EQ again and see what's up for tonight. I say again because I logged in disgust earlier because the officer crew that was on declared another 'omg i'm afraid to try anything' free night. lately, unless the new leader is on, it's like NOONE wants to raid, and It's getting to the point where alot of people are getting ready to leave the guild over it. Hell, at this point, the only reason I'm still around is I'm honorbound to try and get the guild back on it's feet...but if it gets to a point where I no longer feel that it's possible to get things going again, I'm out of there

Today was the long anticipated release date for the next milestone of the amazing Mozilla Firebird web browser, and boy were we in for a shock!

What's new:
- Name change. Apparently, another Open Source project with the name firebird was getting a lot of cross traffic and vise-versa, so the folks at Mozilla thought a name change was in order. Mozilla's Next Generation Browser project is now called Mozilla FireFox!

- Aside from being more secure than Internet Explorer to begin with, Now FireFox has even more security enhancements for users.

- The OFFICIAL Windows Installer debut with this milestone, so no more ZIP files for the computer-unsafe to fight with! Download manager and some additional updated Tabbed browsing features are included as well.

Seriously folks, don't sit there and suffer through the internet with all it's BS popup ads and errors. Don't go out and BUY expensive blocker software, give open source a try. Mozilla FireFox is 400x the application Internet Explorer ever will be. It's faster, cleaner, is not based around ActiveX (the reason for 3/4 of the Critical security holes in IE), has intergrated pop up blocking, tabbed browsing, an easy way to save/manage bookmarks and downloads, and best of all, it's FREE

Get FireFox HERE

Give it a day or so for the servers to calm down, as everyone is rushing to get this browser. As an added Bonus, Mozilla Thunderbird (the Mozilla Mail Client) milestone 0.5 was released today as well. Remember all those problems and security holes with Internet explorer I mentioned? Well guess what, they are in Outlook and Outlook Express too! Plug em up with Mozilla Thunderbird! And the best thing is, Thunderbird AND Firefox are completely Themeable, so they can look, and act, identical to each other to eliminate confusion!

People confuse the hell out of me. Let me pose a situation to you, then a list of reactions.

Situation A: Your walking down the street, and someone gets hit by a city bus, thrown 50ft into a cart of watermelon. You, being a rational, sane human being...

1) run screaming that the aliens are trying to kill us while donning a tin-foil hat
2) call for an ambulance immediately while administering first aid to the injured man
3) stand there mouth agape and utter a very neolike "whoa..."

Now, I could see at least 2 of those being normal reactions.

Situation B: Your boss calls everyone into the office one day, and announces that he is leaving the company. The only possible indication of this was the number of memo's floating around the office asking odd questions. Later you find out he was causing a severe number of problems with other upper management, and was trying to get a bunch of co-workers fired while simultaneously taking over the company for whatever plans he had concocted. You, as a rational and sane member of the company...

1) decide that boss was the only reason you came to work, leave the company in a huff, and make a few speeches about how you like everyone, you just don't want to be around them anymore
2) Go back to work, and hope the new boss is better than the old one
3) come up with odd conspiracies with the other coworkers around the water cooler for about a week, but end up going back to work regardless.

once again, 2 of these are good reactions, and one is what a crazy person would do. Mind you, these incidents may or may not have any bearing in real life, but should be a cause to think. There are people out there that would have considered the 'crazy' options completely viable.

did my taxes tonight. you know, it's kinda sad that I end up paying more in local tax than I do in state tax...I mean, I see the state guys sitting on the side of the road not working, but it's hot/raining/boring out there, they earned it. for all I know the local guys are sitting in a garage with thier feet up watching TV, I know they do less work than just about anyone (you should see our roads! I've seen cars get lost in the potholes! and that's not even getting into the bad weather effects/snow/ice!), so they should at least have to do it in the middle of nowhere if they want my money.

It's like grounding a little kid. if you make him stand in the corner with no toys for an hour, then understands that it is punishment for doing/not doing something, but if you send him to his room, all he does is play PS2 and learns that it's fun to steal your money and waste it on donuts and beer while sitting in the back of a plow truck that has never left the shed watching scrambled porn on a B&W pocket TV. Honestly, it's almost more worthwhile to give your money to politicians...

Larry is back from his million dollar vacation and is ravenous today. (for those just joining us, Larry was the winner in something much like Gastrointestinal survivor the other week, when he voted EVERYTHING off the island so to speak....it was rather unpleasant). Today he's made me consume some wonderful freezer stuffs, including a Pot Pie, some Mirco-rav, 3/4 of a Digorno pizza with about 1/2 pound of extra cheese, 2 single serving cartons of Life Cereal, 1/2 a large bag of Salt&Pepper potato chips, and he used half a carton of orange juice, 3 cans of various generic cola and some beer to wash it down.

Winamp playlist has got some new stuff on it today, at Alvin's request I checked into a band called Moonspell, which falls somewhere between Sisters of Mercy and Type O Negative sound-wise, so I'm definitely impressed. Following them is a good helping of Collide, some more aggressive Dream Theater and some older Stabbing Westward.

I can tell already it's gonna be a very 'productive' week of sitting around staring at the walls...I don't work again until Saturday...darn retail budgets...


\m/ (0_0) \m/

Lava lamp.....so mezzmerising....cant...stop....staring......

In other news! Whales Explode all over the place! OMG!
Elephants throw the worlds most violent Kegger! OMG! (read the "also see" articles!)
Mark's Mom makes a long distance phone call... from the grave! (and she calls the new guy!)
the Late night EQ art trend continues!

And those are the headlines!