after some work, i have gotten gallery set up on my site here, with the latest round of pictures. it's kinda neat, but i'm still figuring out how to use it. need to kill that horrible green color on the front page. is it better than my normal photo galleries (my own lobotomized version of ps elements' web galleries)? i'm not sure yet. anyway, here it is.

in other news, panther is in fact the baddest operating system on the face of the planet. expose is the most addictively useful thing to hit the desktop in years, the finder finally deserves to bear the name (this is huge progress), and the performance... well, coupled with the patch released today, UT2k3 has had roughly a 33% framerate improvement, and certain other games have improved markedly as well.

oh, i know i promised to stop, but one more thing about baseball. can we stop shedding tears for grady little? i mean, sure he was a nice guy and all, but seriously, he did not win any games for the red sox, and he lost plenty. and the debacle in game 7 is a perfectly legitimate excuse to dump him. it's sad, but it's true.

oh, and 24 is back on at last. neophytes, now's your chance to jump on board.

i decided to come back a day early from my camping trip up in maine, due, ironically enough, to bad weather. why ironically? well, that was one of the main reasons i went up there, of course, to revel in the bad weather, and to go crazy like king lear upon some rainy, windswept mountaintop. actually, that part of the plan worked out great (he said, while gnawing on his dirty socks), but what i didn't anticipate was two things. first, it was really wet--i used the last of four dry flannel shirts less than 16 hours into my stay, and my boots were a goner at that point, too. second, was that i retired to my tent, chased by the rain, at 1830 sunday night, and consumed 300 pages of the only book i brought. so, when i woke at 0600 yesterday morning, i was faced with a choice: try to stay as dry as possible so that i could look forward to another long, tent-bound evening, or say 'fuck it', go out, get really wet, have a good time, and just drive home that night. i didn't quite decide to go home at that point, but i definitely did decide to go out and get wet. which i did. and i did a good job of it, too, i assure you. but part of me wonders if the old me wouldn't've run for home. the old me may well have stayed, convinced that the dry tent might've been enough to make up for the terminally wet me (and been wrong). maybe i'm just wussing out in my old age. of coruse, considering the difficulty of the drive home in sometimes torrential rain, maybe staying there would've been easier...

ah, whatever. before i wussed out, however, i had a great time hiking in the rain and wind and cold. it was excellent and deserted and foggy and stormy. no bugs, few animals (they were all smarter than i, go fig). i went up and over two mountains (a 'mountain' in acadia national park may not really be a 'mountain' all the time in the strict sense of the word. mountains, as i understand it, have to be 1,000 feet above the surrounding terrain. therefore, i went up and over one mountain that qualified with room to spare, and one hill with ambitions). anyway, i went on a 1.2 mile hike up the mountain, then, since that hike was so steep, i decided to go down another way. and since it was so early in the day, i decided to really go the long way around, up, over, through, and back. so i went on a 1.2 mile outbound leg, and a 7-8 mile return; it was really quite something. up is easy on rainy days. the two mountains/hills i climbed both featured terrain that is as vertical as something that can be termed a 'hike' can be, which is good stuff. but going down sucks. my knees hate it, and yesterday, my ass hated it too. slippery rocks and moss. hehe. and wind. like 50-mile-and hour gusts that threaten to blow you off a cliff. good times, good times.

of course, i took pictures, and in this case, even some movies, and sounds.
pictures are here, and i'll see if i can put up a movie later, and here is the sound of the rain hitting the top of the tent monday morning. it doesn't quite do it justice (it's much louder), but it's the best the voice memo thing on my palm pilot could do.

warm and dry and wearing fuzzy slippers, and liking it...

hi kids, i'm back from my little vacation in the woods, and i'm enjoying my day off (more later). but this article i read during lunch (i've been reading salon while eating lunch for the past three years. do you think i'm in a rut?) pissed me off a bit. the focus of the article is disturbing enough, but what i find more disturbing is the trend hinted at by the stuff at this website which it linked to, put up by rep. henry waxman, the author of the quote in the title. this whole thing strikes me as pretty fucking stupid. i mean, politics is politics, and it's all about opinions. science, on the other hand, is science. if i were a politician, i would hope that i'd be smart enough to stay the hell away from science, because it's way too easy to be conclusively proven wrong. after all, you'd be potentially fucking with people who spend their entire lives diligently pursuing facts about something, and then you're going to go tell the world something else. real fucking smart, particularly since sites and articles like these seem to lay bare the entire gamut of the administration's ulterior motives.

ahh, the joys of being a fully-fledged cult member. here i am, pecking away with one hand, in line at the nh apple store (yes, jon-boy's), just to pick up a new operating system. damn, i'm a nerd.

a few final irrational 'thoughts' before i take off the red sox hat for a while and let the blood return to my brain.

- i just took tracey home, and while it's not exactly rush hour, the streets are crawling with pedestrians and cars at 0100 on a friday early morning.

- a yankee fan on the T this evening checked the score and reported it to fellow passengers as being 4-1 red sox in the 7th, and said that that was going to be it... part of me knew that was trouble.

- pedro gave everything that could be asked of him. it's unfortunate for us all that he asked himself for a little more. perhaps unfortunate for grady little, too. make no mistake, if timlin and/or embree came in two or three batters earlier, the outcome is different. (Addendum: though pedro takes the blame upon himself very gallantly, an astute caller on the radio this morning pointed out that a pitcher will never give a straight answer on whether they're out of gas. the manager is ideally supposed to take the decision out of the pitcher's hands by waving to the bullpen before he even gets to the mound.)

- that sound you hear is america turning the channel back to 'friends' and 'law and order'.

- to those who think the yanks are such a 'classy' organization, their owner continues to subvert that reputation. fucker.

- all those of you who tuned in the occasional game the past three weeks and screamed at your tv, this is your warning. run like hell. seriously, the past three weeks embodied everything good and bad about being a baseball fan, specifically one here (although you can say the same about the cubs). if you find yourself paying attention again next season, then you may be beyond help. so run away if you know what's good for you, or you could wind up like me.

now, how do i get these crayons out of my nose?

p.p.s. (addendum): as always, for the final, most illustrative explanation of how this feels, i refer the un-afflicted to espn's bill simmons

well, obviously nomar read today's globe, because he straightened up and unfucked himself and started to look like the nomar we all know. these are the red sox we saw all summer. down 6-4 with the fans morose because tim mccarver is telling us how it's going to go from contreras to his boyfriend rivera, but no, 'tis not to be.

this red sox team has given us the most exciting summer of baseball this town has seen in years, and no attempt to tarnish that by the yankee-loving media will succeed. regardless of tomorrow's outcome, i doubt any of us could ask for anything further. as it stands, i'm glad this isn't the last baseball post for the year.

isn't tim mccarver a little too old to have a schoolgirl crush? and shouldn't mariano rivera file a restraining order against him?

i picked a hell of a game to miss; fortunately, it seems to have made a bit of news...

people who write articles like this or say things like this should do a little better research.

how, pray tell does the right-fielder wind up in the bullpen anyway. hmmm... maybe the police report would be informative... the guy they beat up was a schoolteacher, for fuck's sake. does a groundskeeper's job carry a duty to be impartial in anything besides work with a rake? does a failure to do so call for a beating?

and of course, shaughnessy's all over pedro on this, with a side order of revisionist clemens-wasn't-so-bad-ism. he got hit a little, and decided to come inside to back them off the plate, intimidate them. but if he already had runners on, the last thing he wants to do is hit a guy. a mistake, sure, but not intentional, not at all, and it's ridiculous to argue it might've been. and clemens, let's not forget, for the sake of responding to gammons' article, was the jackass who started this in may by hitting kevin millar in the head. the other thing they didn't show on cnn or fox was garcia, the hit batter, trying to take revenge on the second baseman with a dirty slide (hitting batters is sometimes an understood part of the game--an overzealous slide to take out a fielder is rather ungentlemanly). also, apparently zimmer was jawing at martinez the entire game, and then when the 175-pound pitcher sees this 300-pound hemmorhoid cream spokesman heading at him, he pushes him away. go fig.

but the clips on CNN make it look like an unprovoked, horrifying assault on an elderly man. was manny aimed at by clemens? oh, hell, no, but it was as good an excuse as any. they all deserved to be fined. pedro didn't have it that day, and tried to regain control by other means, but fucked it up. manny was just waiting for the right time, and while he probably chose a poor one to get it on (kinda like calling someone out at a face-off in hockey), personally, i was impressed by his standing up for the team. zimmer knew he'd been a dumbass and should be commended for his mea culpa. cnn and fox showed him on a stretcher, not eating dinner out later that night. and the jackass yankee exec saying that fenway was an unsafe place to play, insisting the fans were rioting. uhh, there were no arrests inside the ballpark--the fans were 100% blameless--the nutcases were all on the field. but that doesn't stop cnn from making it look like a riot.

i got home fearing the worst had happened, from the snippets of news and glances at new york papers in rest areas, fearing that the team and the city had both disgraced themselves. nope, not really. that's not to say anyone's behavior was admirable, but the entire thing was essentially organic to the game until the incident in the bullpen. and if garcia and nelson really beat that man up, then that's the real story here. next time i hear someone call the yankees any kind of victims, i'm going to puke.

Addendum, later today:
as always, espn's bill simmons' page is the funniest thing going, even before the fracas.

"From Matt in Atlanta: 'As a Sox fan, I think we got exactly what we wanted, a Sox/Yankees ALCS. Is this the series where Roger, starting in Game 3 at Fenway, walks out to the mound, picks up the ball, rolls the rosin bag around in his hand, all of a sudden gets a crazed look in his eye, drops his glove, the rosin bag and the ball, and charges Jeter with a steel-chair in hand, lays him out, stands over him and while pointing at the Red-Sox dugout, rips off his pinstripes to reveal a Red Sox jersey? This would be the only scenario where Roger should ever get a standing O in Fenway.'"

so, i don't know if i'm the only Movable Type user afflicted by this in recent weeks, but i have gotten a metric shitload of spam comments added to some of my postings here. probably fifty or so in the past three weeks. it's truly disturbing to see so many of them, particularly considering what a horribly time-inefficient this method of spamming must be (unless there is some kind of exploit available that can mass-produce comments). so, let's see some of the winners, here, let's get them the publicity they crave...

for instance, noemail@4larry.ddd wanted to tell me about his cheap v iagra site, and contributed the title of this post...

and a mr. P hente rmine says "Wonderful work. I enjoyed your site a lot." whilst plugging his pharmacy site.

today, a friendly-sounding ms. Kittytiger extolled the virtues of h uman gr owth horm one, and added enthusiastically, "Heeeee-ha! howdy guys from your cowboy fan ! i really loved your site and found it to be very friendly and helpfull. here's a nice hgh link for you pals:" Wow.

or what about mr. Alex Dolbayov, a respectable enough-sounding guy, until you read his insightful commentary, "Great Site Folks! I have another big t its site for you which is really the #1 big t its site - check it out, its full of big t its !! here's the link." i'm sure you're all as disappointed in him as i.

and of course, let us not forget my most prolific contributor, a mr. Pizdets, who says, "What a nice site, you know." What site? an underage p orn site in russia, near as i can tell. wow, he must be busy being amoral and shit, but it's nice that he took the time out to send a kind word.

the web is truly a fascinating and wonderful community, n'est-ce pas?

so, does anyone else have this problem?

*not surprisingly, spam comments have forced me to repost this under a different name. 3/4/04. Fuck you all.

before yet another red sox playoff game completely melts my brain, i suppose i'd better get a few lucid thoughts out.

number one. hooray, panther is coming! by all accounts, they've yet again managed to make it faster, and it sounds like even moreso than jaguar did. i think it's very telling that mac users expect their operating system to get faster, and windows users consider an upgrade a success if it doesn't degrade performance too badly. as an added bonus, the new version of ical is a huge improvement. i even updated the rpi hockey calendar, to which you can subscribe here.

number two. california. ugh. so, according to cnn's results, it appears that the nefarious republican scheme to undo the results of a fair election has worked perfectly. it took 4.4 million votes to recall davis. it only took 3.7 to elect the Governator, which, incidentally, is barely more than the number of votes against the recall. and that was the plan. it's easy to get people to say 'i'm unhappy', as was shown here, and that's all this was. i said it before, i don't necessarily have anything against schwarzenegger; policy-wise, as republicans go, there are many, many worse (at least until this week). but if he really wanted to earn the trust of the people of california, he shoulda had the balls to try and win a real election.

number three: color me disappointed in the oakland a's' reaction after the red sox' dramatic victory monday night. since we've been relishing every replay of it since, i honestly don't see what the objection to derek lowe's gesture after striking out the last batter was. and ramirez' home run trot was a: warranted and b: not atypical, really. but the real winner was their gm, billy beane's remark about how they coulda pulled it out with an additional $50m on their payroll, a reference to the red sox' relative salaries. not only does he overlook his good fortune in getting a windfall of great young pitchers (ergo, essentially free) all at the same time, but he devalues his own players who tried so mightily and failed. dumbass.

number four: al franken's new book is brilliant. highly recommended for anbody who likes a well-researched anti-hypocrite rant, or just a good laugh at the expense of more than a few idiots.

number five: r.e.m. is still amazing. they sound great live, and though i haven't been a huge fan of their last two albums, the older parts of their repertoire sound as good as ever. and better yet, not only do they play them live (a lot of them, no less), but they seem to enjoy the hell out of doing so.

i'd like to take this moment to apologize to my tv, since i spent this evening shouting at it. all is forgiven.

the drama is great and all, but the old joke is that the red sox will kill you with losing ("First they came for my father, now they're after me..."). it seems that winning is very nearly as dangerous.

a good portion of the five and a half new england states (half of connecticut is yankee territory) are despondent, all of a sudden, the hope of 9pm last night gives way to the despair of 6pm tonight. 'this is the year' gives way to 'oh no, not again.' for the red sox proved, in an unfortunate way, that no matter what people say about football, it's still baseball that matters in this town. and yeah, they lost, twice. that would be tolerable if it didn't happen in the way that deep down, we all feared it would. last night, 1am eastern time (thank you, espn & fox for feeding us a steady diet of yankees and cubs, and sticking us with a schedule that can't be termed anything but cruel), the red sox had the game won. almost. but their bullpen let it get tied, and two hours later, lost it. the shock of the announcers and the fans in oakland was drowned out by the resignation here. admit it, we didn't know it would happen, but at the same time, we can't say we're surprised. they didn't just lose, they lost the way they always do. in the most tantalizing, demoralizing, horrifying way possible. generally after threatening to pull it out a few times, and just barely missing. keeping hope alive enough that you ignore the signs of what is to come. so now the sox are down 2-0, and we're unfortunately dangerously close to facing a winter of second-guessing a mere twenty hours of an otherwise spectacular season. that kinda puts it into perspective, doesn't it? but this isn't time for a technical discussion of what went wrong. the passionate fanbase that stayed up until 3am, and then probably couldn't sleep after that is probably in no mood to be rational. and being a fan isn't rational anyway.

and those oakland fans, bully for them, but apparently the big story in the bay area, with not one, but two teams in the baseball playoffs, is still football. on one side of the bay, they've a treasure trove of gifted young pitchers, and on the other, the greatest hitter of the past twenty years. and by comparison, they practically don't care. over here, we're hanging on every word, every pitch, with 200,000 households watching a game at 3am, knowing somewhere inside that it won't end well. we've got a telltale groan from the next cubicle, the yawns on co-workers' faces. we look down the street in the dead of night and see lights on. people in apartments can hear the profanities exclaimed in unison, piercing the dark. and even three thousand miles away, there's still enough red sox fans in oakland to let us all hear a familiar chant on the tv. soldiers of the nation, boldly forsaking responsibility and sanity to be there, just in case it all comes together. and even though things look dark now, we'll all still be there on saturday, because as grim as things are, it's been a fun ride, the more so because everybody's landlord, boss, gas station attendent, and dunkin' donuts employee have probably been there too. while that whole winning thing is nice, the smile on the little old lady in the post office when she realized that i was signing for an envelope of playoff tickets is also worth something. i'm glad that i got 3 hours of sleep, with two heartbreaking losses bookending two pretty shitty days at work. it sucks, but i'd rather be invested in suffering than apathetic about success.

it's fashionable say that the red sox fans enjoy suffering, a common dismissal of sportswriters that's intended to be insulting. at the same time, you could say that it's true; maybe the fans enjoy suffering, because suffering is what baseball has dealt us. at the same time, isn't it better to enjoy the hell out of suffering, thereby magnifying tenfold the occasional triumph, than to take victory for granted, with all the drama attenuated out of life?

america in general looks askance at british soccer fanaticism, thinks it's a joke, and not coincidentally, fans like the red sox' are also something of a punch line.

it's not enjoying defeat, it's enjoying the struggle. and that will always be there. but it's too early to say anything about next year. saturday, it's time to get smashed on good beer, and if the season is to end, well i'll damn well try to end it hoarse.