Well, the theory was that my dad would be moving out of here by the end of the month. Obviously, that hasn't happened yet, nor is it likely to happen within the next 48 hours. It seems the management at the new place he's moving into is being slower than expected at allocating a unit. So he stays here for a few extra days until it's all sorted out. Odd stuff.

Whenever I read Noam Chomsky, I find myself overcome with two opposing sensations: a feeling of awakened awareness, and an overwhelming powerlessness and depression, which then gives way to denial. Like Neo right after Morpheus revealed the truly horrifying nature of reality to him. But I'm not going to hurl all over the floor.

Given that this was a film from Kevin Smith, I knew it wasn't going to suck, obviously. What I didn't quite expect was how Raquel Castro would come in and steal the show in the role of 7-year-old Gertie. Even with the title role, that's no small feat in the company of Oscar-caliber actors Ben Affleck, Liv Tyler, and George Carlin.

I like how Russian music download stores make it so cheap to buy an album that sometimes you might just start downloading random stuff or listen to semi-obscure bands you may have heard about, but never really listened to before. At around a nickel per song, how can you really go wrong?

Well, now I feel like I've accomplished something. This is good. :)

Hmm, how long since my last rambling was it? Just a couple hours. So be it. At certain times, there is more to say than at others.

Last night, after watching a couple of Angel episodes, I went to bed at midnight. Laid a wake for a little while. No sleep came. Took melatonin, followed by lithium. Waited. Again, no sleep came.

Though I didn't get a terribly huge amount done, today turned out to not be too bad. A few minutes ago, the first phase of the "going live" part in $SUPER_SECRET_PROJECT_2 began. I'm sitting here waiting for something to suddenly go horribly wrong, but so far, there are no signs of that.

Well, whatever I was praying for last night, it looks like maybe I got a little of it today. I woke up surprisingly early (given my 3am bedtime), prepared to face whatever is to come.

Sometimes I wonder how mentally stable I really am. I like to think that most of the time, for the most part, I keep myself in reasonably good shape, psychologically speaking. But as someone who has been diagnosed as bipolar, whenever my moods start feeling a little bit wierd, there's always this tiny little ticking sound at the back of my mind that wonders, "Might this be an early sign of what the mental health community refers to as an 'episode'? Or is it just another typical fluxuation in the tide; nothing to get worried about?"

Last night, I shared the joyous news of super cheap yet somehow legal mp3 downloads from Russia with scottgalvin.com. Like me, his initial reaction was utter disbelief, but then he started to get very excited about it when I told him first hand that, yes it worked for real.

There is definitely something to this stuff.

It seems the email server of the client that I'm supposed to reach is refusing mail from my IP. Their little bounce message only directs me to this unhelpful page. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I give up.

I'm surprised this hasn't been getting more press. After doing some reading around to make sure it was actually legit, I couldn't resist the temptation of sub-$1(!!!) downloadable albums of pretty much any mainstream music that's out there. (Oddly, I actually ran across it while trying to track down some info about a slightly less mainstream (but still RIAA-affiliated) artist.)

Everything about it is like a gigantic freaking maze.

Though it was discussed a bit yesterday, it wasn't until this morning that I got the call. A client of a former (and perhaps future) business partner of scottgalvin.com needed help setting up their web application/database servers. For some reason that's almost beyond me now (though still flattering none the less), I was considered a prime candidate for the task of setting up Oracle and getting a client-supplied Java web application to talk to it. (Note that this new project is completely separate and distinct from anything I may have obliquely referenced previously.)

Or... How did this one slip under my radar last month?

These past couple days, I have been grateful for the bit of dabbling I did last year with Java servlets and JSP. Grateful, because the project I've been working on decided it was time for me to get a curve ball, and next thing I know, I'm sitting in front of a nice big pile of web application that not only has servlets and jsp (among other things), but a healthy chunk of files that use the apache struts tag library.

Thus began and concluded yet another of my most suckiest movielog entries ever. The ever silly one liner. Has the inspiration left me?

Aaaaaee! It's a murder mystery!

This is a tricky one to try to summarize, especially by someone like me who studiously tries to avoid giving away anything that might be considered a spoiler. I operate on the theoretical assumptin that anyone who reads my reviews and hasn't seen the movie is like me. For movies where story is the central element, I prefer to go in knowing as little as possible about what happens, and let the film speak for itself, revealing the canvas little by little, trustring that the screenwriter and director have the vision and talent to create a rewarding experience. In the case of this movie, I was not let down.

Fuckin A. 29.5 hours. Make it 30 soon. That's how long it's been since I last slept.

Articles like this one remind me why I became paying subscriber to Salon magazine.

This morning, I went to Denver to meet with scott. We made an aborted attempt to gather information on yet another project relating to the mysterious business dealings of scottgalvin.com. It turned out he had been given some bad information, and the party on the other end had no inkling that we were going to be coming.

Well, my theoretical plan was to go to Hacking Society tonight. I just canceled that plan.

Crap, where did my whole day/night suddenly go? It's nearly 4am, and I haven't gotten a damn thing done! Tiredness is setting in, so in a moment, I'm going to be going back to mom's place to sleep. I was really hoping to get more accomplished today.

I'm not sure what angle I want to use to review this film. It is obviously intended to have a religious impact. At that, it is effective. Though I was raised with the dogma, I do not consider myself a Christian. I knew the story, including most of the smaller details, before ever setting foot in the theatre. The plot contained no surprises. Yet even as a non-believer, I could not help but be swayed almost to tears.

Much of my day today was spent taking care of various odds and ends that inevitably creep up after a server gets moved. And then there was the coding on the unannounced work project. There is still more to do. Much more. But it's gonna totally kick ass when we put it into production. Yep yep yep.

Our server is now in its new home, and pretty much operational. Goodie goodie.