As I listen to a financial commentary on one of the public radio station show, Market Place, some days ago... the person commented on how 'lucky' we are.  He said, if the price per barrel kept up with inflation since the 70s, the cost per barrel would be +90.00 USD.

Okay, this pisses my shit off!  I'm all for looking on the brite side of things; HOW-fucking-EVER, IF the price of min wage had kept up with inflation, the people on the lowest economic level would be paid well over 8.00/hr... which (in theory) would push up the wages for more skilled labor. ...and that would push up the cost of other things, aswell, etc, etc, etc.

So... this feels like a circular argument, it feels like a mental excersize in the art of frustration, it's a USELESS point...is it the chicken or egg that came first?  WHO the hell cares, right?  The point of this is.... what is the OUT-OF-POCKET price NOW, HERE, TO-fucking-DAY!

Everytime 'they' (social/financial commentators and economical analysist) can pull out some refernce to try to make this bitter pill (energy price) easyer to swallow with spin, we in the middle and lower middle (including the lower/lower economic levels) can pull some refernces out of our ass, aswell!  So...instead of this debate, more effort should be made to be less dependent on costly energy.

How bout....  solar photo-votaic?  solar supplimented heating?  geo thermo heating/cooling?  waste restraunt grease?  bio diesel?  wind turbins?

.....er...SO, AGAIN......WHY THE FUCK CAN I NOT PASTE ONTO THIS SITE?!?!?!?  

I THOUGHT THE PROBLEM WAS SOVLED!   I DID IT THE LAST TIME!   I CAN'T DO IT THIS TIME?  FIREFOX IS GIVING ME THE SAME CRAP....ABOUT I DON'T HAVE THE:

"UNPRIVILEGED SCRIPT CAN NOT ACCESS CUT/COPY/PASTE PROGRAMATICLY FOR SECURITY REASONS.  CLICK 'OK' TO SEE TECHNICAL NOTE AT MOZILLA.ORG WHICH SHOWS YOU HOW TO ALLOW A SCRIPT TO ACCESS THE CLIPBOARD"

I DID THAT...I'D TRIED!   I CAN'T FIND THE INFORMATION THAT I NEED.  NOW, I MUST DISCLOSE THAT I AM -NOT- THE MOST COMPUTER SAVY PERSON IN THE WORLD.  I CAN TAKE THEM APART, SWAP OUT THINGS, PUT ONE TOGEATHER...PHYSICALLY BUILD ONE AND CAN GET ONE, EVENTUALLY, UP AND RUNNING; BUT, I'M LOST IN THE SOFTWARE SIDE OF IT.  THAT'S WHY I RARELY DO ANYTHING WITH ROOT ACCESS.

AGAIN, I ASK....  WHY?!  IS MINDSAY SO FREAKING WEAK, PROGRAMED BY WEAK-ASS PROGRAMMERS THAT IT CAN'T RISK THE POSSIBILITY OF ALLOWING USERS TO CTRL-V (PASTE) INTO THIS WINDOW?

FOR THE LOVE OF FUCKING GOD, WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?  HOW CAN THIS SITE NOT ALLOW PASTE?  EVERY SITE IN MY EXPERIENCE ALLOWS FOR PASTING...THIS ONE DOESN'T.  MY USER EXPERIENCE ISN'T GOOD!

66.80/barrel...  Some inventors believe it will go up to 70/barrel.  www.journeytoforever.org

Okay, my first three post (below) were way off topic. 

vanessa mae toccata in fuge in d minor  ....STRANGE, why can I PASTE, now?  Strange....okay, let me get back to my train of thought...

I'm listening Vanessa Mae's Toccata in fuge in d minor done with an electric guitar.  It's an amazing piece of work. 

I'm home...in between Pennsic.  I'm planning to go back in a few days.  My plan is to spend a few days there to drink and sociallize.  Vlad's MySpace party was Monday night; I missed that one. 

We have our own Pennsic Virgin...three, actually.  I know one is enjoying the hell out of Pennsic...being youthfull, he partakes upon the mature beverages, and does it maturely.  I was worried about him trying to impress people by showing off; but, he drank moderatly (NO!  Before anyone goes there!  He drank long before hooking up with our group!  His parents does POT....according to him.  Also, according to him, his parents lets him drink!  His friends dirnks...so, we are NOT corrupting anyone!  We don't force anyone to do anything!  We don't engage in bullshit peer pressure!  Infact, I prefer others to not drink so that I can have that keg of Woodchuck to myself!!!)  ^-^   (yeah, I can't stand the taste of beer.  I like a nice desert wine, mead, woodchuck, mix drinks.  I'll drink water before I drink beer!)

From there, I must leave for home on Wen...in order to prepare for Otakon.  So far, the van will be John, Shaun, Justin, Diane and I...  Otakon, 22,000 attendees and his one is REAL work.

On the future... we have a possible Ball Jointed Doll convention in the SoCal area.  www.denofangels.com  Also, a gothic/lolita convention/event/social in Chicago.  Both events are in the pre-production phase... these people are looking into it, nothing is set.  I hope this works out for them.  I would like to attend these events.



I'm still on a hunt for a 4x5 view camera...the kind people might see in old movies and pictures.  View cam have those cloth bellow and the cloth hood in the back.  These things are ackward to move around but they offer great resolution!

a 35mm size negative offers about 27mp...million pixel or mega pixel.  The most common professional DSLR offers 6mp to 8mp.  As you can see, 4in x 5in film offers so much more detail.


On another tangent, my friend is stalking ebay for a used 15in powerbook.  She's looking into the 400, 500, 550, or 667mhz models due to their 'low' cost (about 500-600.00).  People could get a Dell or HP for 799.00 but...   why would I want to mess with ad-ware, ad-virus, popup and crap on a -current windows- machine (Who knows if Longhorn will kill all these negatives).  ...and, yes.  I am using Firefox on this notebook to type this...and I run Search/Destroy, Ad-aware, ZoneAlarm and AVG...but why should I when I don't have to...  doesn't this go back to 'good design'?   Can anyone imagine mal-ware or ad-virus hijacking your car's radio or placing stupid ads in your car as you drive?  There would be all sorts of federal hearing and jail time thrown out!


I've been 'following' (not closely) the stupid crap-head in the Nikon vs Canon camp.  I'm a photographer... and my view (like the majority of the photographers) is that well designed camera is suppose to get out of the way of use taking a picture.  http://kenrockwell.com/tech/notcamera.htm  (Wow!  I can PASTE...maybe complaining does help?!).  I don't see the point to any of this "my lens is longer than your lens" arguement.

I know there will always be some attachement that goes on...this is only human; but, people should be interested in the result than the hardware.  This is NOT the 1700s where quality of equipment can vary greatly.  Today, with modern science and manufacturing proccess, and companies reverse engineering...and...SCINCE, EVERY company out there can match the result of EVERY OTHER company.  Carol Zeiss and Nikon was never given exclusive rights to make glass by god!  =P 

Moving on, I favor Nikon because I'd invested in Nikon lenses and Nikon lens mount haven't changed for the past 50yrs.  I can pick up many lens from pawn shops which will fit my camera (this occured at Anime Weekend Atlanta one year when my lens broke)

Also, Nikon's entire line (the SLR) are (was) built tougher than any other camera.  Minolta and Canon started to use polycarbonate plastic housing (which Nikon followed) in their low and medium level bodies.  Due to my life style (evidence by how much duct tape, atheltic cloth tape [which works better] and rubber bands around my N6006 or "F601" for outside of North American market), I need a tougher camera body.  I was so taken with the Nikon F3, F4, F5 and the current F6, that i'm trying to save up money to get an old F4 and F5 in my collection.  There is nothing like having a brick that you can use to hit people with when you're defending yourself.



I'm looking for a copy of Sir Issac Newton's Principia.  Even if the math is beyound me, I must read what Newton saw when he locked himself away for those 18mo of his life.

These are the Fab Four: Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo and Newton.  Everyone of these help to give birth to the mechanical universe.  After that...Einstein-ian physics took it's place in history and I have NO dellusion...well, yea, I do!!!  ^-^  ....of reading Einstein's theory.  I'll be drown in a sea of math and forumlas which I won't be able to make out.  Then...there is Hawken, who unified Newtonian physics and Einsteinian physics.

......Also, one person (actually, more) is missing... Carol Segan. With his PBS program, Cosmos, made astro physics and astronomy HIP.  Was Segan greater than the Fab Four, Einstein or Hawken?  No.   Were the Fab Four, Einstein or Hawken greater than Segan?  No.  They were all great in their own way.  Segan made science hip and trendy...gotten an 'entire' generation of PBS viewers to think about science.

Thinking about this... if that's the criteria for being 'great', what about Gene Roddenberry?  Several generations of NASA dreamers owe their life, their career and their passion to some whimsical show called Star Trek.  Moreover, many of today's researchers and university professors were inspired by this very same 60s tv show about a future utopia and a cow-boy captain's adventure to right all the wrongs and ills of the universe.


Thinking about right and wrong...and the significances and fragility of the individual... the movie Rollerball comes to mind...  NOT that lame recent Rollerball movie staring the great Jean Reno (La Femme Nakita, The Professional), but the one made in the 70s.  I was introduced to that film a few years before the recent Rollerball movie came out.  In the earlier version, the question was asked:  can the individual become more important than the system?

In a 'corrupted' (corrupt is relitive...some behavior or practices are accepted in differnt [fictional] society) dis-topic future, a lone star (Johnathan) is the symbol who reflects our (the audience) values.  In his world, he is the Rollerball star and is trying do what he does best....play rollerball.  The corperations are threatened by his stardom and wants him dead.  In the end, can one person be more than the system? 

Is the NBA bigger than Micheal Jordan?  Is Lance Armstrong bigger than Tour de France?  They depended on each other, i think, to get to where they are....but, after the Tour, Lance is bigger than some bike ride.

The original Rollerball is a more complex movie than the recent Rollerball.
 

...is the bad design MY problem?  NO, it's everyone's problem!  It's a social problem! 

John Denver...yeah, that folk singer... was killed a few years ago when he was flying a Long EZ...  (the very first plane to use composits) ...and why did he die in such a safe plane design?  BECAUSE the CRAP-FOR-BRAIN builder placed the Aux fuel switch in such a way where it needs a YOGA master to get to it...so, John Denver  ...Denvor?  rolled his plane and couldn't recover!!!  That was the ONLY Long EZ with such a fucked up modification!   NTSB.gov...I beleive that's the URL, should have all the detail of all transportation 'incidents'.

So...the problem is bad design...  I don't know if the programers of this site would have a huge fucking ego to be 'personally insulted' or if they view or hold 'elegants of design' higher above their own personal egos.  I can speak for myself...as a person who looks to the heavens for my next fix of FLIGHT, I would never risk my life against my EGO in a small plane in bad weather...I know this is too obvious but many people got killed trying to do what they should NOT do....  Kennedy jr, his wife and his wife's sister?!  Killed because he was VFR on a two engine plane when there was a fog rolling in on the island.  The plane was too much for that Crap-HEAD, who killed his fiance/wife (?) and her sister!!!

Aaliyah is another example...  killed in a senselesss and uselesss plane crash!  The fucking pilot is to blame, more so than Aaliyah's lame-ass-fucking-hanger-on bitches!   The pilot KNOWS (we all do...any trained pilots do) that in hot weather, the engine isn't efficient.  In humid weather (moister in air), the proppeller loose efficeintcy....  Where did they die?  In FLORIDA! Oh, it's COLD and ZERO humidity in Florida!   The pilot is at fault (he/she should had said "NO!"...and, such a big  fault...killed a bunch of people...  and Aaliyah becomes 'another number' at the NTSB.  A shame... but, Aaliyah's crew is partly at fault...for insisting that they aren't left behind, so that they don't have to wait for the next plane ride.

....okay, I'm off topic  ^-^  Sorry.




 I would not put out a product which is ackward to use...  It's not just about personal ego or 'pride' of work....it's also, more importantly, marketing.  A good user experience vs a bad one.  Good user experience will foster repeat customers...macintosh?  ....which is why I've not logged into this site for ages.... untill i got a notice in email.  ^-^

Oh...  and another thing!  Once one hit's "Publish Entry", it is published...and where's the navigation button to go back?

Who programmed this system?  I hope they read this!   I hope they don't have a fucking ego to feel insulted!  If they do, they are worthless...  because a good program (like a well designed machine) is suppose to be 'invisible' and 'just works'  (like a toaster, like a flash light...traits, behaivor and reaction should be predictable and intuitive) like a Macintosh!!!   ^-^  

Well designed cars, the controls are invisible.  Everything is 'where they should be'.  A great example is my 1993 Nissan Maxima...  one of the crappiest designed dash board there is!!!  The Cruise Control master button is blocked (the view) by the steering spokes (the part that attach the wheel to the collum)!!!  I must SET the cruise speed a few times before I know if the MASTER switch had been pushed...a firm push and the green light comes on.