Saturday, July 26, 2003

Yeah, I'm back

Rudy's cover is teh best!

How about "reject functionality"?

I got back @6:00 AM and spent my day sleeping, eating, looking at my precious mess, and going to 3rd Planet. I picked up a copy of Dragon magazine. Why did I do it? Every time I buy an issue, I think it's going to be something it's not, and I'm bummed. Example: this week the cover read "Special Update #1 of 3" and "Warrior Classes: Barbarians Monks etc etc" So I assumed that it would give rules for updating version 3 characters to version 3.5. Heh heh, no. This 3.5 bullshit is bullshit. Fuck buying 3 more books, I'm not gonna do it.

I got an email from Denis yesterday and I thought I'd pass this on:

"From now on monks will be called minks and will be worn around the necks of fellow players. They will confer a +1 to armor class and a +5 reaction while going to the opera."

My room is a shithole.

Fuck.
this might be it

28 dayz latar

Just saw it! Late shows fucking suck. Doesnt matter how good a movie is, I dont think anyone should watch a flick that starts after 10. Ughh. Otherwise, thought the movie was pretty cool. Some STUPID FUCKING KID kept talking the WHOLE FUCKING MOVIE sitting right behind me. That fucken sucked- otherwise, eh. HULK SMALSH! Ya, the zombies were fuckin sick- i liked em. Movie was cool, but the 2nd half (SPOILERS!!!! ***********the part in the compound***********) was kinda burnt in my eyes. There was also a ALTERNATE ENDING after the credits- without giving away too much, its pretty much opposite of the regular ending (ie, bad ending.) Ya- wasnt really worth sitting thru the credits for. So, overall, kinda liked it!

elrick- i setup some friends with a blog site, and i was wondering how u got the cool avatars to work- whats thescreat code? thx palz

-poor little hilk, want sleep

Friday, July 25, 2003

Its No Good

Rad Depeche Mode song from like a few years ago- was going through some gross old cds of mine at my folks house today and ran into this song- its a keeper!

I was testing out that "blog this" thingy earlier, and all it did was make a dumb post under my name that said BLOGGER. omg, how cool. Well, hope good weekends r had by all. Peace in the middle east.

Shmeldoor
Nervous

I think finally the free Internet jig is up at my house.... I'm nervous. My modem won't reset fully and I'm scared to reset it back to factory defaults.... It may just be time to pay the piper that is Adelphia. Bleeechh!

Thursday, July 24, 2003

Leave it to Enron

I was supposed to call Enron today actually, but instead slept after a tiring night and tiring day of work. But sure enough, the man takes it on his own shoulders to do a shitload of gruntwork before I can even bat an eye. Excellent! I mean, if you have the document all set in order, you can send it to me as a .doc and I can set it up with the template and .pdf, change the pictures and fonts and the like.

Call me at work tomorrow, Enron. I'll be back in Beaver-ly Hills finishing up a wireless install, so I might not get the call cause the reception sucks, but give me ring anyhoo. This time I'll not blow you off for sweet, sweet sleep.

Here's my cover:

... but did the consumption of poop occur?

Ok, this probably sounds really boring, BUT here's a really cool article about Kraftwerk from the Guardian HERE.

Perhaps realising that driving very slowly up and down the streets of Düsseldorf's red light district while staring out of the car window is liable to attract the attentions of the polizei, Dirk suggests we continue our quest on foot.

Its really funny. I guess Kraftwerk is really really impossible to ever meet or interview, but this guy gives it a try- funny schtuffin.

Here's another cover (photoshop is fun and eyyy, eatin poop is probably pretty gross. ugkh!)

Lay down the Law

I am starting to do the grunt work. I have all the pages combined into one massive uber document. Document size depends on a great deal of variables, but @ typical 8 1/2 x 11 form, the document is somewhere in the range of 200 to 250 pages. Of course fonts spacing and all that will vary the size. I am cooking on a algorithm to reverse all the text right now. I think PERL may be the way to go. We will have to see. Lemme get back to you on that later.

"Your workin' late tonight"
"I can't I have therapy!"
i like drinking pee, nananananananana, na na na

(Sung to Iron Man)

A book! My goodness. If we can keep the cost about or below $20, I will buy one. We can use supar-saver shipping so that the shipping will be a flat cost of $5.

I like the "greastest" title the best. I don't care what the layout looks like. I think the avatars should be there but I don't care what they look like. I think our current avatars are the best ones and Eric's is the greastest of all.

I think the cover should be just one image, maybe a simple one. It doesn't have to even have us in it. Maybe cartoon drawings or something? If there are too many pictures it'll look a little too much like a yearbook page, I think.

I'm willing to put in some time with editing and so forth, text-related slave labor is my speciality.

I don't know where Myke is either.

So far this week I've lazed on the beach at Waikiki, snorkeled amongst foot-length tropical fish at Hanauma Bay, gone on a hike that took me through a pine forest and up above magnificent green ridges, and I don't even remember what else. Monday I will be testing DVDs and worrying about my hours again. Hooray!

PS Most of my arm hair has turned blonde.
Eject Functionality: Where is Motorbyke?

What are we going to do with the Reviews section? Are we dumping that portion of the Action Team posts? Elrich, are you just directly taking the files from the Website by going into each archieved week, or are you access it on the server and getting @ the HTML file directly? Give me an answer and I will take a look at the Sctuffen tonight.

"Print it all in reverse, that make it go in the right order"
mockup cover

i did a quick mockup of what the cover could look like. think itd be cool to use the old photos (plus the cover can be full-color, so we should take advantage.)

http://cafebeats.com/images/cover1.jpg

or click HERE

Eject Functionality

Actually, I think this is a far superior title so far. It's funny, and it can mean a lot of things with regard to the Action Team. I don't know what it is, but I think we need to figure that out. Also, the perfect binding is not available just yet, and no one has set a firm date as to when it will be, so that might throw a bit of a wrench in our monkey. I don't want a spiral bound book. Update:

- Output to .PDF correctly, figured out the margins, etc.
- Enron: I think it would be great if you took a few weeks and reversed the entries and stick them in a Word doc, then send em my way for final layouts with the proper headers, footers, etc. That would be a HUGE help.


Rockin.

Wednesday, July 23, 2003

theactionteam.org: The Greastest Chronicles, Vol. I

Dropped the text size to 8pts which saved us 4 pages, so we are down to 9 pages, so close to shaving 1/3. This seems like a lot of work, but hopefully once I do it once, it will just get easier each time. The thing is the images NEED to have a border, which the HTML does for them on the web page, but now we need to create new images with borders and then cut and replace the old ones throughout the document. Also need to make the dpi on the images better than 72... will look crappy once printed. Change avatars anyonw? I know I want a new one for the book.

So, we need to discuss what to do with this thing. Here are my ideas for theactionteam.org: The Greastest Chronicles, Vol. I:

- We need a title, my working title is stated above, also ideas: Be Like Punt, Eject Functionality...
- I figure the "chapters" will be broken down into months.
- An introduction presenting the material and our (my) reason for wanting to do it. (posterity, something to do, a nice art piece, historical artifact, etc.), thank you's, inspirations, etc.
- No spell checks, just the raw material, only editing for content of address', phone numbers, etc.
- Appendices: Jon's stories, Action Team Bio's (real/fake), photos w/ captions (real/fake), list of links, selections from "the action team reviews" blog, etc.


Thats all I can think of right now.
1/3 off sounds good

what do you mean by "keeping the layout the same?" I'd like avatars to still be there, and maybe use a similar font, but other than that, I cant say I'd freak out if it was somehow laidout more effiecently. Try making the font size 8 and print it out- it really isnt that small.
The Data

The data is infact HTML, so it sounds hecka/hella hard to parse that, but I say have at it! And as far as editing, I agree, no editing, but perhaps layout editing, etc. Actually, as an art book, an 8.5 x 11 would be cool with the amount of text we have, we could mix text and images to make soemthing cool... BUT, the inside of these books are only B&W so nothing too cool I guess... bummer...

ALSO

I just did the first week using the 7.5 x 9.25 and tried to keep the layout the same as the way it reads on the webpage, and it took 13 pages! And those were some pretty crappy small-ass posts, this being the case, and every week being 13 pages we are looking at a our book costing roughly $30 bucks. I'm okay with this seeing as we are not going to sell these to anyone else, we don't need to keep costs down. So, how important is keeping the integrity of the webpage layout? if we say to hell with that, we can probably shave 1/3 of the cost off. These are SUPER rough numbers but are probably close.
Comments?

I dont know.. It might actually be kind of cool to have the invention of the brain child kind of cool in the book. Almost a documentary of the process. I suggest no editing be done. But again we should discuss it as a group.

Jones-E-Nose
Text, Text, Text, and when in doubt Text again.

I am not sure about the layout. I suppose we need to find out about how much text we have. I dont think we will need a 8.5x11. That seems like an overkill on size. Lets stay away from that format unless necessary. When you mean reversing, you mean we have to change from newest first to oldest first right? I bet we could put a parsing script together for that. Save a lot of grunt work, but I would have to see the raw data first. It may not work if the data does not have a clear delimiter we can use.

Dick Bone
i wont buy it right now because i have NO money. but, later, ya i would. do it! (and we'd have to leave out these posts actually discussing it- thats just tacky.)
Wow

Well, Enron your help will be MUCH appriciated seeing as we are fucked with the layout.... You know how easy it is to read the most recent post on the website because the most recent post stays on top, yeah, well that is the case with the archives too, which means that we are going to have to REVERSE EVERY POST before we publish it in book format...

Any other takers for aid?

Also, we need to agree on a format, as a kneejerk reaction, I would prefer to stay away from 8.5 x 11, only because. I'm leaning more toward the 7.5 x 9.25 format, it just feels cooler.
Sounds cool.

The real question is, about how many pages have we generated so far? I wouldnt have the foggiest. Eric if you point me to the files I could put together a portion of the text in parallel with you, thereby reducing the shit work load. I would be up for buying a copy though. TheActionTeam.org: a chronicle of crass brilliance.

In other news, never try and give a winXP OS drive a different drive letter. It doesn't work. I mean it is readable, but it won't boot (Login files wont load). Actually there is a hack I found for the registry, but it was created for 2000. I was not willing to jack thigs up just to find out that it only works on 2000. ANyway, conversion to new drive succeeded, old piece of shit is out of there. Good news is that the old IBM drive is still under warranty.

Dick Hertz
Terrific

You know what I just don't have much of anymore? Time and motivation. Time and motivation that is not realated to work, that is. I have lots of time for work, overtime infact, and I have time to read boks that apply to work, and that apply to my profesional future, but when that is all over, I have time for weddings and woman, and then when that is over, I have time for cleaning. I guess what I don't have time and motivation for is for fun things. Hobby fun things. Which brings me to my next dilemma: do i publish the Action Team archives as a book on the CafePress site?

I think it would be a really great idea. Something about a tangible evidence and record of our past year (we are closing in on our anniversary!) together on the blog would be wonderful to have, and if you have spent any time reading any of the archives, a kick in the pants to read too. The world as seen though
all our eyes. War, marriage, unemployment, employment, death, theft, and travel have been experienced by the Action Team this year and a record would be great. I am willing to do all the shit work involved if everyone is at least willing to buy a copy of the book.

I would like to add appendices that include anything written (Jon), or otherwise that can see itself in print (favorite websites, etc), and as far as I can tell from the CafePress site, the cost will be anywhere from $0.03 - $0.06 per page with a $5.00 - $7.00 one time printing fee, per book. There are two sets of prices listed so I don't know which to follow.

Ideas? I should get cracking on this if I am to make the one year anniversary and get this book in print on time!

Tuesday, July 22, 2003

this weekend it is

the only weekend I know I can't go for sure is the weekend of Aug 8, 9, and 10th. Otherwise, all weekends are free for me (unless I get a job, LOL.) :(


Added: maybe i cant even afford to go. so, whenever u guys decide i'll see if i have the fundage.
Update...

The weekend of the 1,2, and 3 of August does not work for me. Pick any other weekend. If you could give me a heads up fairly soon I would be greatful. My father is going to try and make a trip up some time in August, but I told him to hold off on setting up a weekend until I get a word from the fellas.

Batman Theride
omfg hax

dudes, i just got rollercoaster tycoon 2 for my comp, and it now has a few official parks, and one of them is Magic Mountain! Its sooooo cool. Dude, Jael, u gotta check it out! I swear its got all the rides (including super X) and its cool to actually get a good look at the designs of the rides (although Im sure they had to tweak em quite a bit.) Pretty fuckin cool. $0.00 cheap!

Lemme get back to ya...

I know that some family is coming up soon and that would be bunk if you guys showed up the same weekend. I will find out tonight when they are coming and blog you all back.

Deez Nutz-a-Cleeze
If other people have 20 hours free for the drive, I'm game!

that got a big fuckin LOL from me just now. omg. ya, i'll go. lets rent a geo metro or somethin.

So Charles Dickens walks into a bar, and says "I'll have a martini!" And the bartender says, "Olive or twist?"

-P. Oorington
Mi Casa est Open

I am down to hang out any weekend, if there isn't anything I have to do! So bring it on suckas. The weekend of 2nd and 3rd looks good to me so far.

call a monday off! i will too.

jael

trip to sf

So, when do people want to go up and visit San Francisco/Fremont? (Assuming everybody doesn't hate me because I'm a big jerk now.) How about the weekend of the 2nd-3rd? Jael and Enronington, will you be around that weekend?

If other people have 20 hours free for the drive, I'm game!
Damn! rudies eating Costanzas bird... Ouch! Would you like Ketchup or Hot sauce with that?
Yeah, you eat whatever George Costanza tells you. EAT IT, BITCH!
i had kfc the other day for the 1st time in like a year. ya man, birds fuckin rule...
Winged Migration

I saw this movie yesterday... very very good documentary about migratory birds. Yeah, it's a documentary about birds. GO SEE IT! It's full of amazing images of birds in all kinds of different locales around the world and really makes you look at birds in a different way. It's well worth seeing on the big screen, unlike most of the crap out there. I'd venture to say it's better than League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, even.

I saw Pirates of the Caribbean and that was OK too, but it's no beautiful bird movie.

Monday, July 21, 2003

SF 2 MM 'N Back

I sort of wish I had gone, but on the other hand... fuck getting home at 5am! I would have had another hour drive home from your joint, got a shower and then would get ready for work and great! Off to work I would go. Arrgggg.... I remember leaving SF at 3am. D'oh! got to LA @ 7:30, got an hour sleep went to work. Worst day of work ever! Ill never do that again if I can help it. That sucks that your buds didnt share the driving. I would have been kicking ass and taking names. "Get up asshole, your drivin' now!" when I get that tired, I want my MTV.

La-roque: Yeah I saw League too. Umm... it was a cheap thrill (if you can call 9.50 cheap...), but definately lacked character. COuld have been done a lot better. Stupid sub in the Venice Canals. LAME!. Like it has a draft of 5 feet. Tom Sawyer? WTF? Like we Americans could not relate to a movie with only Limey literary characters! On the other hand I saw 28 Days later. It was pretty good actually. What was wierd though is it looked like the movie was shot with super crappy digital camera at times (Especially in London). Washed out colors, compression relics, and the classic JPEG 'halos', shallow depths of field. Maybe that was the intended effect... Yeah like you said, plot is minimal. But for what it was, it definately had a creppy feel and took a little more serious of a route in comparison to the more comical style of traditional Zombie movies.

Off to bed, I am soooooo tired.

Baked Alaska
Request

Glad you're feeling better Elrawk! Um, PLEASE FINISH YOUR BB GAME WITH JAEL OH GOD PLEASE! Dude, I want to play him so bad but I can't till you guys finish some game that Jael said you already lost. And when its time to go, its time to go. Be it wave or deaththeride.
Remember Me?

Yeah, so I am still here. I have been out of commission again due to work, weather, wedding, and wbronchitits. So here is a brief stream of what has been happening with me:

I got sick and it ended up being bronchitis and now I am better but I didn't fee like doing anything when I had it and I missed 2 days of work and it looks like I am getting a promotion at work that is linked to the companies performance but since there are only three of us so far I have no where to be promoted to and I also saw LoEG and it was the worst movie evar because it had no heart and no soul and the only likeness to the comics is that there are some of the same characters my name only not be behavior so overall it suckd and also Ryan and Heather and Leslie and I drank on saturday night and Ryan got really drunk and felt like was going to die and will never drink vodka again and his eyes still hurt and I have also been reading a lot of business/self-help books lately so maybe you will see a change in my life as I plan and set goals for my professional and personal success and I hope that Hawaii was cool I would like to go there sometime and I think we should play D&D when you get back Jon and also some Blood Bowl with Rudy and Johnny now that I feel better and I think the Cafepress books are cool and I don't like roller coasters because I fear dying on them and would much rather fear dying on a large wave rather than a twisted pile of man made steel.

Bye bye for now.
Chester the Molester and the 5 hour drive home

I am dead beat. I am physically sitting here in front of my computer at work, not really comprehending anything nor motivated to do work. The X THE RIDE sounded pretty cool, unfortunately, I opted out of going because I had to catch some zzz's before the 5 hour drive home. After hearing about how great the ride was I wished I had monday off so I didn't have to drive home in such a rush. Ugh. The drive was perhaps the biggest downer of the night. Right when we hit the car, 2 of the 4 people fell asleep and seriously, that was pretty lame of them. Only the person in shotty stayed up with me the entire ride keeping me company. It wasn't that bad until about 4am. Then I switched off with someone else. Relatively uneventful ride back, thank god!

I couldn't help myself staring at the bare flesh that was on display at MM. The temperature was relatively hot throughout the day and so girls were wearing stuff you'd see at the beach. Then there were some fine pieces of finished goods. Some perhaps contraband, and some perhaps not. It's hard to differentiate between the two sometimes, you know?

Shit is fucking expensive there. All I have to say is, the entrance fee cost us 22.50. But the food and drinks (only) that we got there cost us nearly 40 dollars, a stretch of 200%. Also there were rides that you had to pay for too, but they were lame rides, and we avoided them.

I'll have to agree with Rudy, these cohorts of mine are a bit flaky. Plans seem to change at will with them (does that sound familiar?) I think we weren't far from that in high school. And I totally agree with you, rudy, you should be more assertive! in fact I was counting on it. I honestly needed Ahmed to stick with the original plans and help me drive home. I didn't expect that you would agree to give him a ride. But I could tell it was grinding at you which you really shouldn't let it bother you. I don't think it was intentional. But I was happy that ahmed changed his mind, and I had an extra person in the car to drive.

As for the rides, rollercoasters are fun, but definitely not my cup of tea. I don't think I'll be back for another few years.

Jael
Poor Johnny and How Amazing X is

Just got back from Magic Mountain. Poor Jael and his pals have to ride back to up North right now. OMG. Dude Jael, hope the trip goes safe and FUCK, you're a trooper! I met Jael and 5 of his friends at MM this morning at 10 am and left the park just past midnight (the park "closes" at 10pm, but since we were in line for a ride, we were able to stay till we rode it.) Lines were TOTALLY not too bad. Most of the day, the longest we ever waited for a ride was about 25 minutes, but it was usually more like 15. Towards the afternoon, some of the newer rides had long lines, so we waited in one line for an hour (ouch) and then the last line of the night for 2 FRIGGIN HOURS! It was for the ride X.

X is the GREATEST fucking ride EVER. Swear to god. Its very hard to describe, and there's definately an element of surprise that I wouldn't want to spoil for someone whos never been on it, but FUCKING SHIT- oh my god, it was worth the 2 hour wait. It would have been worth it to get in line, ride it, get back in line, ride it again, get back in line again, ride it ride it ride it , all day long. Jeebus. Next best ride was Goliath (which we got on 3 times) but it SO pales in comparisson to X: THE RIDE.

Fuck, that place is expensive as shit though. I can't even IMAGINE how fucked Disneyland must be nowadays. One "sorta" cool thing, although its also kind of lame, is that you can buy your soda or lemonade in a "Sports Collector's Cup" for $6.99 . (Its like on of those maybe 24ounce sport cups with the those bendy straws.) THEN, the rest of the day, its 99 cents to refill it with soda ($2.00 w/ lemonade.) You basically have to get that fucking cup, otherwise youre paying $2.50+ for a small drink everytime. Its just a random example, but wow. And then all the food is $7+ - pretty nuts.

so fucking tired- it was SO much fun (the no-lines-till-the-end scenario made the amusement park VERY tolerable.) When my cash ran out around 4-5pm, I started getting really tired. And then Jael's friends were like "Hey Rude-A-Rino. Can u give our friend a ride to Westwood??? OK? COOL DUDE YAR!" And I agreed even though I didnt want to, and it just grinded at me, ugh, but in the end since we were at the park till midnight, that dude decided to go home with Jael instead. Sorry about that Jah-Knee. I need to be more assertive about that shit. BUT, the way the asked was kind of obnoxious and forceful: "YA dude! ITS CLOSE, RIGHT? NO PROBLEM, RIGHT?? YA? CLOSE TO YOU! TOGA TOGA TOGA!" Ugh, I hate that shit.

But, fuckin awesome seeing you dude!

We MUST visit Jael soon!!! You get through your monday alright, chester!

-uugh

Sunday, July 20, 2003

Me Talk Pretty One Day

I've been reading a book of essays by David Sedaris to pass the time and he is one funny mutha. He wrote "Naked" and a couple of other books, this is the first one I've read. Most of the essays make me laugh out loud. I think all of you guys would appreciate him. Example: One of the essays is about the various pets that passed through his family. When he's a kid, his mom has a beloved cat who gets feline leukemia and she has it put to sleep. She asks her kids for some understanding. Instead, they send her postcards advertising "New Miracle Cure for Feline Leukemia" and prank phone calls from Cat Fancy magazine asking if she can bring her cat in for a cover shoot. Years later David has to have his own cat put to sleep. His mom sympathizes and mails him a consoling letter and check to cover the vet bill, but in the "Memo" part of the check writes, "Pet Burning."

I just got back from the island of Hawai'i (the big island). As amazing as Oahu is, the big island is even more outstanding in terms of gorgeous scenery. You land on an airstrip that is amongst sharp, tumbled lava rocks. Much of the coast is new land, formed from lava from recent eruptions. We camped at the Kilaeua Volcano Park and that was incredible--the camping was only OK, but we hiked through a crater about a mile wide, gray desolate lava with strange folded shapes and jagged rock, a few vents still steaming, surrounded on all sides by amazing green rainforest.

Down by the coast you can see current lava flows. Unfortunately the lava is easiest to see at night and our schedule didn't allow us to go at night. But we saw a part of the highway where, 3 months ago, the lava flowed down and ate it up. We hiked over smooth, eerily iridescent rock with "Speed Limit 15" signs still sticking up here and there. At the end of the hike there was a 15-foot section of road which the lava had missed; flowers and grass were growing on the side of it.

The scenery on the big island is varied and spectacular. Mammoth cliffs, desert, long lava landscapes, towns and gas stations that still have 50s-era Coke and Pepsi signs. It's drier on the big island (on Oahu it's quite hot and humid all the time), and one of the mountains is high enough that it even gets snow (this I didn't see, maybe I'll come again in winter sometime).

Oahu is gorgeous too. After a while you start running out of words to describe everything and just start going "wow." It's more settled, but there are still lots of wild spaces.

Anyway, I'm here for a few more days then I'm coming home... hey Aeryk, check your email, there's a plot afoot to do some D&D next Sunday.