Just a few random thoughts and news that didn't deserve their own entry all wrapped up into one mess of garbage. For anyone who cares (and you don't) the buzzer went off again not even an hour after I posted that entry this afternoon. It was my grandma's package, and now I have a new sweater. My whole family thinks I don't have enough warm clothes for the winter, so I add the sweater to my collection of 15.

I e-mailed Zazzle Support and asked them how long they will be down (all my links still go to that stupid page) and they said they hope to get it up sometime this weekend. Seems weird that the site takes a week to put up. Are they designing it as we speak? They are quick with the e-mailing though. They actually responded faster than my host did and I e-mailed them questions at the same time. That isn't saying much, my host is notoriously slow even though they claim to work 24/7.

New topic; how I can't spell when I'm designing. How many times do you think I can spell "abstract" wrong? Once or twice? Try three times. First, I spelled it "absract". Then I noticed I was missing the "t" so changed it to "abtsract". I say woops, and changed it to "absrtact". At this point I recognized I was out of it, deleted the whole word and spelled it right.

Lastly, I just got off the phone with El and I was quoted saying, "Yeah, I just took a shower randomly today." Tell that to someone who thinks I have the life.

This morning, around 9:30, I was asleep. I was going to sleep in until 10 this morning, as it was Friday and I have no life. Unfortunately my plans were broken when I heard the doorbell ring. It's not a nice "ding dong" sound but rather a harsh "crap you pants" buzzer. It always instantly wakes me up if I'm asleep and I hate it, because as I pointed out, I have no life and I rarely care about the person at the door.

Flash back to yesterday.

Eight in the morning my buzzer goes off. My grandma had sent me a package for my birthday and I thought that was it. With blurred "just woke up" vision I was scrambling for a shirt and pj bottoms when the buzzer started going crazy. The person was holding it down, then repeatedly pressing it, holding it down, repeatedly pressing it. So it wasn't UPS, because they only ring once and walk off. I thought it was Tony (a neighbor that I was good friends with in college) because that is how he always rings.

I finally get my clothes on (later I noticed I put my shirt on backwards) and I scramble down to the front door. I open the door to find nobody is there. I look left and right out the door, and then I look down. Instead of a person, there is a big blue 1970's style suitcase sitting in front of my door. In this day and age in America people are a little frightened about things like this, but I blow it off when I remember once again that I have no life. I don't think a terrorist delivering a suitcase bomb to my front door would inflict maximum damage. I dismiss it, close the door, and walk back up my stairs. As I get to the top of my stairs, it rings again. What the hell? Was the person hiding in the suitcase? I open the door, and standing there is a scruffy looking guy that looks to be around 18 or 19. The conversation is as follows:

Guy: Oh. Hey, I think I got the wrong door.
Me: Yeah.
Guy: Do I have the wrong place?
Me: Yeah.
Guy: You aren't the one that hired the photographer?
Me: (Thinking) I like chicken, I like liver, meow mix, meow mix, it delivers! (Saying) No.
Guy: OK, (laughs) unless you're the one with the baby.
Me: No.
Guy: I think I have the wrong door.
Me: Action - Closing door. Saying - Yes.

Flashback to this morning. Same crazy buzzer. Same scramble for the clothes, except this time I couldn't get my pants on. As I was rushing down to the door, I couldn't help thinking "If it's that kid I'm going to kick him in the face." As I get to the door; nobody once again. But this time I was lucky as the kid didn't come back. I say perfect, for it is the second time in a row I've been woken up in complete worthlessness.

Maybe I should put a sign up on my door saying, "Don't ring the buzzer, a man without a life lives here. You definitely have the wrong door."

Are you mad at Verizon for their lack of customer service? Do you feel rage when you think about their promises that just turned out to be lies? Do you ever want to poke James Earl Jones right in the eye for what Verizon has done to you? Well so does Garrett, and he has set up a place where all Verizon haters can go and uh... rage against the machine? (Click on any of the Verizon links to go)

I think this is the first time Garrett has put the "Rage" into "Maniacal Rage", although it is very justified in this case. It is usually more of a "Maniacal Sarcasm", but that was before he made the attempt to sign up for

After I posted the latest desktop I ran into a dilemma that I haven't encountered yet. The dilemma being that I didn't want to write anything (at the time) about it here in the blog, but I still want visitors to be able to comment on a particular desktop if they want to. At the same time I'm facing another problem; confusion now and in the future when I write an entry about the desktops. I'm already seeing that anyone besides me will eventually go through the archives and not know which desktop goes with what entry.

I don't necessarily want a photoblog, just a system that assigns comments to the desktops and keeps them centralized inside the pop-up. While I'm thinking about this more, you can leave your comments about the newest desktop (abstract.curves) right here.

Download: 1600x1200 | 1280x1024 | 1152x864 | 1024x768 | 800x600

So Zazzle is now into their 2nd day of "the transition" of their site from "beta" to the "real" site. I want to know why it takes them 2 days to put up a new site. Not even really for my sake, it seems like they are losing a lot of income not having anything up whatsoever.

This morning was not too good for me. I felt so tired, possibly due to the fact I was up until 4AM going through this site. I don't know how popular this website is (I'm oblivious to those kinds of things) but it has a lot of interesting facts that pertain to urban legends, folklore, and famous rumors about practically everything. It's funny to read how ridiculous rumors spread and end up in common knowledge. I was even surprised a few times when a few factoids I thought I knew were wrong or I didn't know at all like:

- The average person

I don't know why I'm so interested in that kind of stuff, but I'm paying for it now.

Well now you can buy a print of the new desktop if you choose to do so. Like the last piece, if you want to own a copy of it the size of a 4th grader you can. The good thing about giving out the desktop is you can see for yourself how crappy Zazzle saves its preview images. They make them with a "low" quality jpg and on their site it looks terrible. (This is only for their site, not the actual print.) Still, it kind of upsets me because if someone who doesn’t visit here is judging on quality they might skip over it.

Download: 1600x1200 | 1280x1024 | 1152x864 | 1024x768 | 800x600

Added the third addition to the particle series. To prevent any confusion from happening, I'll review the series; 1) particle.mass desktop previous to this one 2) also particle.mass, only this one is only

- Minor changes to the particle texture.
- Changes to the radiosity.
- Changed contrast level.

The changes are due to the effect that I was going for, but I like the changes so much they will probably remain in future versions. Inadvertently I cut my rendering time in half by making the changes.

After I put the print version of this one up I might keep on going with my next idea for the series or do something different. I'm leaning towards the change (I will come back later) because I want to prevent the variety of desktops from dropping.

I find it very weird that I have not posted all day. I've just had a very normal birthday I guess, not doing much but working on my next design. I just couldn't let this day slip by without at least writing something. Sitting here I feel sad that I only have a few more minutes left that I can use my excuse of "It's my birthday" whenever I do something like binge drink.

Last night Shawn and El took me out to a local semi-Mexican restaurant and I only had two watered-down margaritas. Sadly it felt very different than last year when I barely made it out of the restaurant. I still don't remember half that night.

It's not like I think my life is getting worse (quite the opposite), but I do feel like the people around me are slowly moving away. Last year for my birthday I had 6 people with me (that count), pushing me to the point of almost vomiting all over the table. Three moved to California in August and Garrett moved last month. Last night I was down to the last 2 of 6. But Shawn is leaving for the city in a few months, and then it will be just El and me. I mean the group will grow again with new people, it's just it hit me how much has changed in the past year of my life.

To maybe create some sort of money from all the time I spend making graphics I finally made a store where you can buy my artwork. Right now I just added the first piece In my new "gallery" of artwork. The canvas versions of the work are really cool. I bought a canvas of another artist I really like a couple of months ago, and I was very worried that it was not going to be worth the money or the canvas was going to be a bumpy thick paper. When I got it I was pleasantly surprised. I don't know what real canvas feels like, but this looks and "feels" like real canvas. It has a cloth feel, relaxed tension but it doesn't fold like paper.

If you buy it in paper it's more like a poster, but if you buy it in canvas it definitely needs to be framed. If you are wondering about what size you should get I'm not surprised; I had a tough time visualizing how big I wanted it. The "small" size is just shy of 2 feet high, and would look good if you have other frames/pictures on the wall. The "medium" size is more of a centerpiece type size if it's framed. It could go on a wall with nothing else and would fill the wall nicely. If you print it on paper, think of normal movie poster size. The "huge" size is exactly what its name implies. I really don't think anyone would ever buy this size, but I wanted people to have the option. Sitting at 4.5 feet high and is roughly 12 square feet total, you would only want this if you had raised ceilings and needed to visually cover a lot of space. If you buy it in canvas, expect to pay a lot more on the frame than what you are paying for the canvas.

I will definitely be making more to add to my gallery.

Download: 1600x1200 | 1280x1024 | 1152x864 | 1024x768 | 800x600

I just added a new desktop a few minutes ago. What is posted now is not what I originally posted because I got ahead of myself. I was playing around with putting a "frame" in it and I liked it, so I did everything and put it up. Then I tested it. Just didn't work, the frame was cool when you saw the whole desktop, but with a taskbar on a real desktop it messed up the alignment. So, if by some crazy chance you downloaded the first version in those frantic 10 minutes, please download the new version. Unless you like the crazy misaligned version, keep it and tell me. I will respond by making fun of you.

Woke up this morning and felt happy because I felt like I had something exciting to do today. Then I realized it was in my dream. Went and made some coffee. Poured a cup. Added creamer and way too much sugar. Sat down lit a cigarette and opened up Drudge; let’s see what's going on in the news today.

We're going to attack Iraq, blah blah blah. Arabs still hate us, blah blah blah. Use a plastic bag if your home gets hit by VX gas, blah blah blah. Put out my cigarette.

There might be water on Mars, blah blah bl... What’s that smell? Eh, oh well.

The water might be under a layer of ice. Cool, I didn't know ice was different from water. What is that smell? Oh crap.

Like Mars, my ashtray has a top layer... of ash; but something was brewing underneath. As the worst-smelling smoke poured out I took a butt and started smashing the pile of ash. This usually works, yet the only result was more stinky smoke coming out. I need to investigate further.

After I start wiping some ash away I start seeing more burning embers coming out. Then the motherload; 3 butts engulfed in flames. I blow; which works on the embers but only makes the larger flames grow.

Smoke is pouring out. I'm thinking about the smoke alarm going off. I'm thinking what they would say; "He seemed smart until he burned his condo down."

So I did the only thing I could; poured my whole cup of coffee into the ashtray.

It had too much sugar in it anyway.

They just released the 2nd X-Man (X2) trailer yesterday. It shows some new footage and the first appearance of some characters like Nightcrawler. Unfortunately, it only strengthened my belief that the sequel is nothing special. Truth be told I didn't think the first one was anything special. Not bad; just good but not exceptional. In fact, now that I think about it, no recent comic adaptations have been or look exceptional except Spider-Man. But even Spider-Man had its small pitfalls; corny dialogue and a bad DVD.

My problem with X-Men (first one) was that it felt so bland. Yes, the effects were cool, characters looked practically perfect, but the action wasn't there. At least action with the intensity of what comic characters should be capable of. It also felt like it was hard for the screenwriters to try and develop every character. Such a variety of characters is perfect for an ongoing comic series but hard for a movie. Maybe that's why Spider-Man and the first Batman are still my favorites. Superman is just too old now; an updated version might be extremely cool.

Maybe X2 will surprise me. I like Nightcrawler, but with what appears to be the same ongoing plot with the movies I'm betting on the opposite.

I almost died by the hands of an icicle today. Thinking they were sort of pretty looking I was out taking pictures of them. One that was maybe 3 feet long, fell from the roof and almost caught me right in the head. Now I don't think they are as pretty as they once were.

Ellie redesigned her site yesterday. I think it’s great; a simple, clean, organized design that presents her journal in a very nice way. I am slightly surprised by what a few people referred to about her design looking like others, mainly

Maybe I’m wrong. It is just really hard for me to see how using a color or a bar across the top of a page makes a real difference to the point of the site in the first place.

Last night I was having a hard time falling asleep. I just kept thinking about different things that were making my brain work and keeping my awake. When you can't fall asleep, do you sit/lie/crunch up in any weird position? I like to smash my head into the pillow, standing on my feet with my ass straight up in the air. Like I'm getting ready to do a head stand - but not. Anyway, I started to think of my birthday that it coming up in the next week, and what I really want for presents. Here are some I came up with:

1) A job - It's the "gotta have" item for people my age.
2)

Can't think of anymore right now, but I can tell you if I only get one of these I'll be a happy 22 year-old man.

So when I woke up this morning I completely forgot there was a crazy winter wonderland outside until I heard the bulldozer backing up. So, sipping my nice warm coffee I went to the window to look at the fools that were outside in the cold. There were 3 guys out there moving tree branches off the parking lot. Then I smiled because my car wasn't parked in that parking lot, I moved it to another spot... right... under.. a tree. Crap.

It has snowed a few times this winter, and they plow our little parking lot every time. But since I never go anywhere, maybe due to the fact I have no life, my spot never gets plowed. Days later my neighbors are walking right up to their cars and driving off while I have to trek 6 inches of ice and snow to get into my car. I'm a reasonably smart guy, so I decided to move my car to a visitors spot. But this spot has a big tree hanging over it. I didn't even think about that last night.

So then I got kind of worried, and decided to take a nice little trip out to my car and check on it. Looking back I don’t think it was the best idea. It's been over an hour since I've been inside and I'm still warming up. But, for your amusement you can check out some pics I took on my 10-minute trek out into the white void.

I hate snow. But my car is safe.

I didn't feel like making another movie desktop, so I decided I would make one for this site instead. Since I sometimes expect people to know what I'm thinking rather than just telling them I should explain my current and future desktop section. I make mostly movie and abstract original desktops, but I'm not against branching out to things like music and TV (hmm... 24...) but I'm just going to go at my own pace. Sometimes I'll put up a movie, sometimes something of my own. If you like them download them and put them on every computer you find, and when someone asks, "Where did you get that amazing god-like desktop" you can tell them about this site and how I am the coolest guy eve...

Or you can just like them and use them.

I want to move back to Seattle. Sure it rains and is cloudy... a lot, but it is a lot better than NJ weather. The summer is way too hot and humid, and the winter is way too cold and snowy. My favorite season while living in New Jersey is autumn; when the weather is most like Seattle. I keep telling El that we are going to move to Vancouver (BC) someday, and I'm hell-bent on getting back to that kind of climate.

Yet, while I dream of more moderate days, I'm faced with the impending blizzard that is just starting to hit. I hate snow. I hate anything "freezing" or "ice" outside of a refrigerator and a glass of water. But this one is going to be great they say; not only is the sky going to dump on me but there will be 40 mph winds that are going to blow over trees. That way the power can go out and I can have no heat.

So, everyone who laughs at me for liking Seattle weather can shut it. So not every day is sunny, but it's a lot better than this.

I hate rendering. I wish that every 3D program in the world (and all software and hardware out there) was fast enough to do real-time rendering. Kind of like every other graphics program I use. It is worse late at night like right now. I have scary flashbacks to college when I was rendering an assignment before it is due at 10AM, and when I started calculating how many frames I had and how I wished I didn't use that one refraction because now I added 45 seconds to every frame.

I'm sitting here working on my next desktop and feeling like that; even though nobody is asking for it tomorrow and its all for fun. But when I'm rendering at 3200 x 2400 I'm asking myself why I had to add depth of field. Now I'm going to have to go watch a movie before I can even see if I made any small mistakes. If I did I get to wait until tomorrow.

Changing the topic, I'm really starting to dislike my next-door neighbor. We are only separated by a thin wall but he insists on disregarding that fact. When Garrett used to live here it was a lot better; there was only maybe two or three nights that he had people over and was loud. Now he's loud every night. Then he's loud at 6:30AM when he wakes up to go to work. I am thinking of moving my bed to Garrett's old room which I really hate because it would only be because of him.

Well after a few quick days I think this site is ready for limited launch. Launch, for those who don't know, is the stupidest term in the world for a website going live. "Live" by the way is only the 2nd stupidest term. But when I say that it's launching, I mean I'm telling Ellie, Garrett, and Shawn that they can link to me now. I'm sure I'll get 2 visitors in the first month.

It is a very stripped down version of what I'll eventually have. But right now I want the weblog and current desktops up. There are hopefully no surprises. I think I've caught all errors and such. If you guys catch anything let me know.

If there was ever a "day" that I would prefer was never created, today would be the day. Not because it makes people without a "Valentine" feel bad, that really doesn't bother me because I lived the first 18 years of my life without one and I didn't feel bad. What bothers me, now that I have a uh.. Valentine (I hate that term) is that it is a judgment day. This is the day you have to show your appreciation for your girlfriend/boyfriend. Not that it's a bad thing; I just hate being required to do something like that. I show my appreciation for Ellie every time I'm with her, and I hope she always feels that even when we're not together. I feel her appreciation constantly.

Last night, on my way to Ellie's apartment, I stopped by the store to get dinner for the both of us. Around 7:30PM in Stop & Shop, at that time of the day, it is almost always empty. Few people do their shopping right after they get off of work. But to my surprise, at least for a moment, it was packed. Guys left and right. I was going to the frozen food section, but if I was going to the greeting card or flowers section I couldn't have got through.

Is that what we really mean to each other? Some roses and a card equals appreciation? Doesn't it seem a little pathetic and fake when it is done in mass production?

When I was in Seattle last time visiting my parents, one night I really missed El. So, with my amazing talent I found a stock photo of a guy with roses and pasted my face on it. It wasn't any special day and it didn't cost me a dime. But it was enough to show her that I really missed her. I do stuff for her all year round. Today, society makes me feel like all those things were worthless unless I do something special for her today.

I know El doesn't expect anything amazing, and we're going to make tonight nice, but we're not going to even go out to dinner because we don't want to face the hordes of lovers that buy into days like these.

Now on every entry there is a graphic representation of the date posted rather than just boring text. I don't know what makes me feel the overwhelming sense of pride of what I just did. I followed the tutorial

Nevertheless, I feel on the inside like I just discovered cold fusion. I love it when you follow tutorials and they actually work the way they were supposed to. Remembering back I realize how many junk tutorials I followed over the years of learning programs and other computer-related items, and so many of them ended in sheer anger because I wasted my time on them.

There is a specific reason I used such a corny title for my first entry; the first entry in its entirety is so corny. It's terribly embarrassing because I haven't had a weblog in so long, and considering what I (hopefully soon) do for a living it is perfectly embarrassing.

So whatever. I didn't start it off by getting right into a "normal" entry, I blatantly pointed out this is the starting point. On a side note, this standard look that MT gives you is great! As hard as it will be to change it AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, it gives this wonderful projection about the author; he/she knows nothing about web design or development.