Here are some pressing bulletins that have taken me a week (or in some cases, longer) to commit to blog-paper. I say blog-paper because it's not really committing it to paper, but it's more than committing it to a text box. This is a special text box, and I'm not just saying that because it's where I keep my pancakes. What? Belive it or not, this entry is going to be as pointless and meandering as its introduction. Anyway, here's some stuff:

This is an old link that I kept meaning to work into a post, but I'm cleaning house, and the text file where it lived is going bye-bye. So, behold, one of the greatest innovations of all mankind. If someone gave me a five hundred dollar amazon gift certificate, I would probably hock it, but then later regret not having spent it on this. Think of how it would go next to the Game Grid and a ratty old pool table in a basement with 3 dartboards.

Speaking of greatest innovations of all mankind, may I present to you the might and majesty of some german dude's open source PDF Creator. It pretends it's a windows printer, so any windows app that can print can now magically create PDFs. And they are BEAUTIFUL. Absolutely GORGEOUS PDFs. I mean, holy crap, they are nice. And it's easy to use, and it's free, and as an additional side bonus, the PDFs it creates look REALLY AMAZING.

Since discovering this and running around my home shrieking like a little girl about how awesome it is, I've been made aware of the Adobe Distiller, which is an official version of essentially the same thing. It comes with PageMaker, so I knew of its existence, but never bothered to learn what the hell it is. So, one could argue that the aforementioned PDF Creator is not actually as revolutionary and world-shaking as I am making it out to be. But, I am also told that Distiller is clumsy, resource hoggy, and just plain bloated. Plus, I doubt it could generate PDFs that look anywhere near as good. So burn on you Distiller fans.

Speaking of PageMaker, I've been using it to lay out the final report for my broadcast management class, and it has made me all nostalgic for the newspaper days, and making me wonder why I turned my back on the print world and the joys of graphic design and layout. It's good to know I still got the skills though. This is especially true as I now am accruing the bills that typically accompany them in the colloquial saying.

Woah. I think there is a speed at which you can consume an IBC Black Cherry wherein its chemical composition and extreme coldness actually cause it to bore into your soul. I have consumed 2 of these since getting home from the collate-a-thon this morning, and it's a wonderful kind of pain to have that kind of searing, delicious, yet somehow liquid-based knife run through your body. Anyway.

So, I've had to password protect the RvB archive, because Google is a little too good at its job, and it was directing people to my archive in droves, and my connection simply couldn't take it. Digging through my Apache access logs brought a lot of interesting things to life. First off, someone on Comcast in the northeast is determined to bring my webserver down using denial of service attacks designed for windows-based webservers. Good luck, buddy. Second, that after being guided to me by google, friggin' assholes have no problem launching 5 simultaneous 30meg downloads. Moderation, people. If I could get the throttling mod working, I'd open it back up to the public, because the assholes would be incapable of ruining it. As it is, people wanting access will have to actually contact me, instead of using Google as a remarkably efficient leech agent.

In addition to plugging up my bandwidth hole, finally, there's another neat plus. While I was going through and repeatedly checking logs, I saw someone access my gallery, and reverse-lookup'd the IP. Turns out, someone from the east campus lab at the University of Kansas had been looking at the NES controller I made for the empress, and thanks to the Apache log giving me the referring URL, I was able to find the exact google search that led them to me. Of course, I was giddy about even showing up on google, and before anyone says it, yes, this is because I am a huge nerd.

However, after putting in that same search, (nes controller computer hookup) I found something really cool. I AM NUMBER 4. EF OH YOO ARE. FOURTH ON THE LIST. AWWWWW YEAH.

Okay, so it's no Regular Expressions, but we all gotta start somewhere. And for those of you who are thinking, "hey, man, you're fourth on the list of an incredibly specific set of search terms, my grandma is 2nd for 'old lady who lives on 345 califa st and is named agnes'", I will respond, "Shut Up, Jerk, I was happy about something in my life for 6 seconds until you came along and totally ruined it." And then I'll probably pout for a bit.

Anyway, I'm marginally google-famous and I was excited about it for a while. Now that I've tasted the blood of the search result though, I am determined to jack up my position, and get more of my stuff listed. YOU SEE WHAT YOU'VE DONE, ANONYMOUS UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS GAMER?

This week's priorities were getting the bcast management report done, and not failing my last test in communication law. Well, I suck at math, but I believe that a MIGHTY 242/250 IS CERTAINLY NOT FAILING MY GOOD SIR. I knew 20 questions in that I was going to bitchslap that test. I did not know how badly I was going to bitchslap it.

That was not an easy test. I just have the mad trademark/appropriation/obscenity/indecency law skills that drive the ladies nuts. Okay, so just the law school ladies. Okay, so just the law school ladies who give a flying damn about media law. Okay, so that just leaves Mildred, who is not so much a student as a custodial employee in the building next to the law school. But she's nuts about me. Even though I'm in the journalism school, and there's a custodial turf war going on across mid-campus right now.

Actually, now that I think about it, I guess I'm kinda glad I don't drive the law school ladies nuts. Give me the journalism school ladies or early childhood education ladies any day.

The TAB blog is nearing ready-for-the-time-that-is-prime status. I (mostly) got the text size knobby thing working, and the color switch works for you whiners who can't handle a little black background, with your sissy little retinas and 3rd-string corneas. I haven't figured out the best way to make the comments work. I don't know if I want to do a floating layer, like those annoying ass Geocities ads, but I'd like to have some sort of collapseable floating thing that stays the hell out of the way while someone's reading, but is right there on hand when they want to leave a comment, so they don't have to scroll to the bottom of a page. My goal here is a sort of peer review, and I may have to wait until exams are over to implement something that advanced.

In any case, it sure as hell makes posting new pages easier on me. Which may or may not happen soon.

Woooo, a tease.

A while back I commented to Dr. Rockwell(his blog is currently down for some reason) about blogspamming, and now I got blogspammed for something called Phentermine. At least it was pharmaceuticals and not porn, and it was private, not public. Still. These jerks are finding every nook and cranny.

Oh, and hopefully you RSS fans out there have noted the changes I've made to the pages you get.

[many, many lbs]