Tuesday, April 02, 2002

Checking in

Haven't posted here in a while myself, so here's a big update on various assorted things I feel like updating you about.


  • I'm feeling much better than I did two months ago, and I'm handling the Sucky Thing That Happened a lot better. (Not that it should be taken by anyone as a sign that my opinions about the situation or anyone or anything that happened have changed or that I'm okay with it or ever will be. I'm just able to be more civil and less overwhelmingly sad/angry/hurt about things.)

  • My computer died last week. The operating system had been acting increasingly buggy the past few months, and then a botched installation of Internet Explorer 5.5 put the final unremovable nail in the coffin. It had a good run--seven years of constant upgrading, installing, and uninstalling with no major problems until now. The hardware was all fine, so I just backed up my files, reinstalled everything, and it's all back up and running again.

  • I lost track of time while trying to save my computer from dying, and missed Tom Green's Japanese special. Strangely, MTV isn't re-airing it a hundred times this week like they do everything else. Someone be sure to tell me if you see it in the listings anytime.

  • While I don't particularly care for the more gross-out stuff Tom Green does (mainly because I just don't like gross stuff), I do appreciate his style of humor. I think his critics tend to focus on his outlandish behavior more than the interactions and contrasts he creates between the normal everyday world and his craziness, and it's in those interactions and contrasts where most of the actual funny resides. It's like he says in this interview: "It's an interesting thing, especially from my show since it is so based on getting people's reactions. In Japan, it is the people's tendency to not acknowledge when someone is making a fool of himself, which I often do." It's just about not being normal or predictable or behaving as expected. Then again, it's often funny just to see someone acting silly.

  • For those of you who don't religiously visit my website every day like you're supposed to, the big news of the decade is that there's a new issue of The LunchBots comic online now as of April 1. It's the first new issue published in about sixteen years!

  • A warning to those of you who use Lycos's Angelfire or Tripod free web hosting services: For those of you who do religiously visit my website every day, you might have noticed that in the past few days the sections on my site that are hosted by Angelfire have finally been hit by the infamous frequent bandwidth limit shutdown plague that has siezed a majority of Angelfire and Tripod sites.

    It appears that they've switched from controling your bandwidth consumption by using monthly and daily limits to using hourly limits. The result is that now instead of them temporarily shutting down your site when you reach 1 GB in one month or 33 MB in one day, they now temporarily shut down your site when you go over around 1.4 MB in one hour, and that's just stupid. I mean, what's the point in having 20 MB of storage space if only one and a half megabytes can actually be viewed or downloaded by your visitors? I could be wrong about this, but they don't seem to be answering anyone's questions on their support forums about this lately, and their previous statements and the numbers back it up. They claim it's being done this way now to "protect" site owners from going over the monthly limit and having their site shut down for days at a time, but the way this works, even if you only use about 1/10 of your alloted bandwidth per month like I do, it's now possible for your site to be shut down for one- or two-hour periods every few hours--like mine currently is.

    So... that means that either there's a glitch in the system somewhere, or they're just being stupid about this, or they've got some serious problems going on there. (And let's face it, who in the web hosting biz isn't having problems these days?) Given their recent cutback from 50 MB of free space to 20, the fact that they didn't bother to inform any of their users about the cutback in the amount of free space or the threat of having your files deleted if you continue to stay over the new limit, and their removal of the "contact us" form on the Angelfire help pages, it's looking like us rats should be getting ready to flee the ship...

  • New episodes of Invader Zim, which I maintain is the best American-created cartoon in a loooooong time are now airing Fridays at 9:30 ET/8:30 CT and Sundays 1pm ET/Noon CT on Nickelodeon--a network completely undeserving of such an intelligent, twisted, wonderfully morbid and cynical, and creative show (which is why they cancelled the show, so catch it while they're still contractually obligated to broadcast it).

  • It's 4 in the morning and I'm drinking iced tea and eating leftover cornbread dressing from Easter dinner. Yummy.

  • I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Ozzy Osbourne is a funny, funny guy. And the great thing is that he's funny without even trying or seeming to be aware of it.

  • Speaking of underwear:


  • Watching my Buffy Season 1 DVD set, I've just gotta wonder how far Joss Whedon had planned out certain characters' storylines when he got started with the show. I mean, there's major stuff that's happening later in this sixth season of the show (yeah, I've broken down and read some spoilers) that is seemingly foreshadowed waaaay back in the beginning, giving a really eerie depth to what seemed like innocent little jokey remarks at the time.

  • Red Lobster is now running an ad with the same "Happy Together" song, but now with scenes of couples hugging and stuff instead of people getting to know friendly ocean critters before ripping them apart. Because nothing makes you feel more romantic than eating seafood, I guess.

  • That's all for now.

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