so, i finally got around to installing the developer tools for OS X 10.3, and i took a look at some of my old work, in hopes of picking it up again at some point after other distractions fade away. lo and behold, though, my program doesn't even compile now. like, not even close. 103 errors. Ridiculous ones, to boot. And i already applied the downloadable update, too. is there anyone who knows more than i who could shed some light on some hypothetical global change that might've caused this?

guess i'll have to play mariokart instead.

okay, so i'm lying, it's not actually finished. it is, however, nearly finished, and it is well over 50,000 words at this point, so i've met the requirements (and don't have to worry about uploading over thanksgiving frantically!).

the fifth edition of the story is up, here, though i must warn you, it currently ends in a precarious position for a main-ish character whom i introduced way the fuck too late in the story. rest assured, though, for all 0 loyal fans, there is an ending coming, and it matches the increasingly improbable storyline quite well. at least it does in my head for now. no doubt it will hit the page somewhat different, but that's life.

thanks to those who came to our thanksgiving festivities last night. we learned many new things. for instance, parsley is best when grazed directly from the plant. also, wine from georgia (the ex-soviet georgia, not jimmy carter's) is aparently yummy, i'm told. and also, despite the decided lack of a recipe, guinness-flavored mashed potatoes are also very tasty (the secret: print out a mashed-potato recipe, cross out 'milk' and write 'guinness').

anyway, pictures are here.

in unrelated news, i was randomly linked over to the poly, and found this. good to know that doug baxter is still making peoples' lives hell.

despite the fact that i've just had a pile of new shit dumped on me, i don't think i'll be doing any work this afternoon.

here's a lovely picture of the excellent effigy they made for the protests in london:

stolen from the london times. awesome stuff. wish i was there.

in other news, the good thing about really bad movies coming out is that you get to read good scathing reviews.

so, how many pounds of potatoes should i buy for tomorrow?

hello.

it's wednesday night, and i'm resurrecting my nearly lost tradition of downing a few beers on a wednesday playing some games, and watching bad tv. that's right, it's almost time for 'the o.c.' many of you have already heard me rant about this show and how ridiculously badgood it is, but have i mentioned that it's wicked good. have i also mentioned that i'm on beer #4? i might also point out that the harpoon ipa i purchased came in a brown paper bag marked 'super beer bag.' a nice added bonus, and i think perhaps i will wear it on my head at some point.

so, uh, where is this headed? nowhere good, i'm sure. first of all, there's 'the cat in the hat'. in a given hour of tv (well, tv on fox) you can actually see, by my count, 5 separate product tie-ins to that steaming pile of shit. mike myers is bad enough, but the mutant plastic thing 1 and thing 2 are giving me nightmares. they all have the same half-cat half-pig faces that the characters in 'the grinch' seemed to have, and it's just terrifying. i'm sure it would give me nightmares if i wasn't 1.5 sheets to the wind right now.

and hooray for the massachusetts supreme judicial court for pissing off conservatives nationwide, and oh by the way, doing a good thing to boot. for all those people who are against gay marriage, look at it this way. someone said that some 1,042 benefits are available to married couples that aren't available to unmarried couples. straight people pay taxes that pay for those benefits. so do gay people, but they've no chance of ever benefiting from that aspect of the public pool into which they pay their money. sounds wrong to me. nevertheless, the idiots on the radio were foaming at the mouth over it this morning, which surprises me not. the flip side to this is the possibility that this gets used as a wedge issue in the upcoming presidential election. and that's kind of an ugly thing. given the unprecedented amount that the mainstream media has kowtowed to right-wing interests of late, who the hell knows what's going to happen? part of me is inclined to fear even good things in politics these days. though the court decision is great, who's to say that it isn't a blessing in disguise for them? who's to say they won't bang this drum, so as to make the red states forget about their boys being shot at in iraq, and worry instead about homosexuals taking over the country. vote for bush, he's against sin! you see, it's not like i'm wearing a tinfoil hat, but at the same time, it wouldn't surprise me in the least to find them behind anything.

in other news, i'm tempted to dump one of my bottles of harpoon on the curb tonight. props to fallen TSEs.

oh, and another thing. the show 'fraternity life' on mtv is sooo depressing. even the fraternities at rpi that seemed really rough and ugly seemed to treat their pledges better than this. at the very least, i think they'd have at least tried to stop their pledges from de-pledging, and given a damn if they did. it's a real pity that kids these days are being given this impression of greek life.

remember, if none of this makes sense--i'm drunk.

my fingers make all sorts of cool new cracking noises, of late, i discovered. i can now crack the first knuckle just by compressing them towards my palm. and it makes a truly satisfying crack, too. i think it's because i've been doing a metric shitload of typing lately. oh, fuck, i'm doing it again!

of course, i'm going to be tapping away at work. anybody interested in a 35-page treatise on the inner workings of the expert mold-base extension? seriously, i have generated a ridiculous amount of text in the past four years. it boggles the mind. but more importantly, there's the ever-wonderful nanowrimo, slayer of my sanity, killer of my knuckles. my novel is up to nearly 50 pages, and more importantly, 30,000 words, and doesn't suck any more than it positively has to, i don't think. which is not to say that any kind of logical or meaningful ending is in sight, but hell, what's there is there, and the beautiful thing about nanowrimo is that that's all that matters. i'm just glad that i haven't had to resort to plot ninjas yet.

in other news, here's an amusing little article about my wonderful company, and our dashing ceo. things are as entertaining as ever, let's just say, and leave it at that. in light of what sometimes happens when employers read weblogs, it's probably best that i don't give them any reason to screw me out of the inevitable severance package. bah.

in other news, and furthering my inadvertant efforts of being cryptic, the time i haven't been writing, i've spent beta testing an upcoming game, and i am completely and utterly and hopelessly addicted to it, and i can't wait to play it multiplayer at a lan party. did i mention it was wicked awesome? i'll talk more about it when it comes out (here's hoping that gushing, vague, non-specific praise doesn't violate the spirit of the NDA).

Read this and vomit, RPI alums!

so, slashdot has run yet another storyabout itunes and the ipod, and it's indicative of the overall moronic tone things take over there about such things. worse, in this case, they were egged on by cnet, whom someone hilariously pegged as the 'fox news of tech journalism'. 'five reasons not to buy an ipod' my ass. it's not every day that you find something, gadget or otherwise that you can't imagine how you did without, and the fact that the line to nit-pick it has grown so long merely underscores its popularity. hell, at this point, it's very nearly become a generic term for some, like kleenex or xerox. no issue of rolling stone fails to mention it. me? i've had one for six months, and it has made me exercise more often and be more productive at work, among other things. naturally, i've beaten the hell out of mine, because i do that to everything i own, and it's held up fine, and i don't even know where half these criticisms come from (and the /. crowd's pleas for .ogg support have gone straight to self-parody). if the ipod ever is supplanted as the king of mp3 players, and these pale imitations take over, it will be a damn shame, but in the meantime, i'm content with my underworld/they might be giants/joy division/teletubbies running playlists.

well, thank you to anderson cooper who gave us all the excellent idea to drink along with the democratic presidential candidates. despite the dire warnings of how the debates were deadly dull from the normally reliable daily show, tonight's forum was (is) actually damned entertaining. first, i'd like to point out that if dennis kucinich's rap video didn't doom him tonight, it sure as hell should have. howard dean's would have been embarrasingly bad, with the jock jams soundtrack. i can't believe how many of these campaigns' media staffs seem to have yet to even discover imovie. anyway, back to anderson cooper, who's really doing a fine job. seems to have taken a dislike to mr. dean--he's pointing a lot of sharp questions and follow-ups his way. carol mosely braun seems very presidential, in the sense that she has the gravitas and dignity that are important intangibles. unfortunately, next debate i'll be drinking every time she points out that she's a: black, b: a woman, or c: both. i loved the question to kerry about the red sox, although i'm sure the tampa bay buccanneers will take exception to his comment that the marlins' victory was the first legitimate victory in florida since 2000. but everybody knows what he meant. it was funny. wesley clark is also very dignified, but rather dull. what strikes me is is the number of things john kerry keeps citing. yeah, it's kinda tooting his own horn, but on the other hand, tooting one's horn groundlessly is suicide in this setting, so we must assume it's the truth. i think i linked it before, but the globe had a really good article about him a few months ago, that pretty much convinced me that he's the person for the job. what's unfortunate is that i'm less confident that he's capable of convincing everybody that he is. he may not be. and that's kinda too bad. howard dean's bandwagon is a remarkable achievement and a potent reminder of exactly how powerful people our age actually are. but there is something about the whole dean phenomenon that reminds me of the early days of the linux phenomenon when everybody installed it because it was what everyone was talking about it. i know i did. but a month later, i realized it didn't do anything i needed it to do and uninstalled it. bandwagons are a wonderful thing for the person driving, but i'm going to check to see where it's going before i get on. of course, none of these people are nearly as good as president palmer, as i turn the channel to last week's 24. and good job to the girl who asked the candidates if they used a mac or a pc. i couldn't quite tell who said what, i know that braun and sharpton did, and one other, too, was it edwards? this wasn't an issue last election--both bush and gore used a mac. is it important? no, not really. it's amusing though to have that particular question take a national stage.

well, it appears that i didn't do the job right last year, so i seem to have another novel stuck inside me. fortunately, national novel writing month is here again to help motivate me to extract it. run in fear, or, if you prefer, read it here when it begins to appear.