Hello. It is I again, if that’s not at all surprising. Since I shouldn’t have even been up this late, you’re getting a short banal piece today. Also, since I found out leaving the camera connected to the computer will actually drain the batteries (good thing they’re rechargeables), you’re going to have to settle for a hand-drawn pic today.

In the spirit of amusing spam messages, I got this sent to my email a couple of weeks ago:

Quote of the Day!
either as man, or wolf, or bat, or in some other way.
from the face, merely making a deep gash above the forehead.

Um, what? Turns out both lines are from Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and not even in chronological order. I suppose it might be considered Halloween-y for the season, but it just comes off as creepy. Which may have been the point, but since the email told me I just won a $250 gift card to Outback Steakhouse, I would have figured you wouldn’t want to scare potential customers (read: suckers) off.

Haiku!

Chili Con Queso
Guacamole, Sour Cream
Salsa, Beans: Dip Wrap!

I just want to point out how disappointing it is not to be able to take the fotergrafs today, since I can’t even include a picture of my cat again (and I’ll be damned if I’m going to waste any more time drawing right now). However, I did find I pretty spiffy no-frills camera today, and it’s cheap enough (and payday enough, and on Amazon enough) to splurge on. Anyway…

I’m tired, leave me alone,
–me.

P.S., bonus unpixellated pixelly picture!

P.P.S., I didn’t even play any SimCity 2000 today, what is wrong with me?!

Hello. If you’re wondering, I, Marq Edward Gould of Cole Harbour, a suburb of Halifax Regional Municipality, Nova Scotia, murdered the body of PDR, of the nation Patrick D Ryall, then proceeded to eat his soul and take over his website. Events may not have happened in exactly that order. The idea that he is travelling in New York is a ruse, and you all have been duped.^[1] Also, condiments for souls are not an easy thing to find.

Yeah, right. As if I would admit that on the Internet. No one can prove a damn thing!

In coming up with ideas for Website Takeover 2.0, I had a pretty good list of things I wanted to talk about that fell into two categories: the technological ones, and the pretty banal ones. Although I thought of flipping between the two for the week I own this site, I’m going to do another technologeek one today. I just wanted to make sure I got in everything I wanted to talk about before I had to hand this sucker back.

Yesterday I mentioned that I’m surrounded by the slowly aging corpses of computers, cameras, and personal information managers (LifeDrive, yo!). My desktop has been so ridiculously slow this past year, it takes multiple hours just to do things in any program more complex than Notepad. That might be a bit of an exaggeration, but when multiple programs are running at the same time, it’s a friggin’ disaster. So much time wasted.

This past year I’ve also been trying to update Pat’s website, both behind the scenes with a much-needed WordPress update, and a brand-spankin’-new updated design. Between working nights, trying to keep this apartment clean, that darn cat, and the aforementioned entropy, it’s been taking ages. Like, a year. Or more. Egads.

However, progress of late has taken a turn for the better, with one of the major hurdles finally being achieved (that being, the transfer of all of this website’s content from one database to another so that WordPress can do its thang), and now progress on a new design is coming along (here’s the current snapshot). With old technology slowing me down, though, I needed a solution to speed things up for me, so I fired up an old USB drive I had (half a gig bought in 2005 for $50, price reduced–isn’t irony sweet?) and loaded it with portable applications, a few from here and a few from here. With a few essential programs that I figure I would need wherever I may be (DOSBox was installed for educational purposes only!), I now have a portable workstation at my disposal.

Now I can tap into my wife’s laptop’s computational power without having to install anything, and off I go programming. My desktop coupled with cordless headphones becomes a viable solution for listening to music while working (if it’s the only thing running, WinAmp does a fine job). I’ve even taken my portable workstation into work and plugged into the computers there, but it’s a bit risky. I don’t use anything that requires passwords, for one. I may not leave any files behind, but I’d be delusional to think that I’m completely invisible. (For the record, the stuff I drew at work is still on that one computer. If anybody knows I mess around with them, they’re certainly not letting on.) I have actually managed to solve a couple of programming problems while at work, so the benefits are certainly outweighing any concerns I may have.

I think… I think that’s all I got to say about that. These posts are taking a ridiculously long amount of time to make. I hope they’re worth it.

¡Buenos Día de los Muertos a usted!
–me.

[1] “you all have been” gets 83.4 million hits on Google, while “you have all been” gets 34.8 million hits. “This is the [thing] you have all been waiting for” sounds better to me than the other way around (probably because “you have” is usually contracted as “you’ve”), yet it seems people are using “This is the [thing] you all have been waiting for” with equal aplomb. Call me baffled.

P.S., today is my wife’s birthday. I DID NOT FORGET! Time to bake a cake.

Hello everybody! It’s me, Marq, and I guess it’s that time again to take over Pat’s website. Of course, the last time I did it was over three years ago, and I don’t even live with the guy anymore, but I’m sure it’ll be fun, for both you the (three) readers of this online buffoonery, and hopefully for me as well. I must once again point out the fact that it has been quite some time since I did any real “blogging” (guh, I dislike that word), but I’m TOTALLY going to give it a go for my totally rad ex-roommate.

(By the way, I did not mean to have an all-caps “totally” in there, but I was all-caps-ing in another program and failed to remove the Caps Lock before typing here again. But I like it, so it’s staying.)

Let’s see: that photograph there, it was taken today, something else I have totally been not doing in amounts that probably add up in year lengths. It was taken with an Olympus D-250 Zoom, a 2.0 megapixel camera from nine years ago. Manipulating images such as that and the super spiffy banner up there has taken place on a seven-year-old Cisnet packaged computer, a device that is quickly becoming slower due to years of defragging neglect. And I was totally listening to music on the Palm LifeDrive Mobile Manager, my favourite electronic brick that was discontinued three months after purchasing it in October 2006. (Of course, that last one was a complete and utter lie: I was listening to music off my desktop the whole time. I just like bringing up my LifeDrive.)

I guess my point is: I’s kinda poor, kinda like Pat, and I’m not so up-to-date with the whole technology as some people are. Except I must also point out the hundred dollar cordless headphones in that pixellated picture that you may or may not be able to make out. Let me tell you, those were an essential buy if there ever was one.

Last time I took over this website, I had the luxury of time (which I totally squandered). This time, though, not so much. I think I have a week…? I’m not exactly sure when Pat’s coming back. He’s probably home in time for next week’s comics update, since there isn’t any additional future-dated stuff going on in the WordPress. Anyway, I guess I plan on writing something new for each day that I can–something that Pat’s been pretty good at doing lately as well. I’m going to keep that trend going. (*crosses fingers*)

Totally seriously,
–me.

P.S., I will be unable to comment on the arrival of any small animals in the (old) apartment this time around. I have my own obnoxious critter running around. I also hope I don’t forget anybody’s birthday this time around…

P.P.S., after researching titles for posts, I started typing this up and accidentally left SimCity 2000 running in the background. It’s currently 1975 and everybody’s left town. Taxes must have been too high. I’m seriously in the red now.

Hey! I’m in New York, but I’ve used technology to update my website for me so I don’t miss the comics update. It’s Halloween, but these comics have nothing to do with that.

SecGov Robots:

So that ends this little epilogue with the beekeepers. I intend to get back to that little plotline in the future, but we’ve an unrelated story starting next week.

Phone Guys:

So thus begins the second batch of Phone Guys comics. Personally I think that this batch has about five percent fewer nonsensical pointless strips than last year’s did. If we keep up that trend we could one day get it down to only eighty-five percent pointlessness!

Okay, I’m sure I’ve mentioned it somewhere on here, but I’m too tired to be bothered checking so I’ll just say it anew: From the 30th of this month until the 6th of the next, PDR is going to be in the New York, New York, the city so nice, they named it!

I’m similarly confident that I’ve mentioned before: I’m broke. I haven’t so much got money as I have credit cards. And after this trip, even those will be maxed out. So that’s not good. When I get back, I won’t even have room to go further into debt.

So why am I taking the trip? Well it’s a gift, so it isn’t a stupid thing to do. So how did I make it a stupid thing to do? Well, since I wasn’t paying for the trip, I decided that I’d go longer than usual (a full week) and then I’m paying for more hotel and thus I’ve driven up my price. You see?

One downside to this trip that already occurred: I did not manage to get tickets to the Daily Show or Colbert. They were both off the table before the trip was even booked. I never had a chance. But then, out of nowhere, I found out that Conan O’Brien just happened to be doing shows in New York the very week I’m going to be there! Hot dang, I thought as I went to their website to get me some tickets. Except apparently they do this thing where you put your name on the list and you may or may not be given the tickets. Like a lottery. Anyway, I did not get tickets. So there goes that. My several ideas for free entertainment didn’t work out. I’ve got some spending money, but I’m still gonna be on the lookout for cheapness next week.

Nonetheless I look forward to being back in the city where probably I should live. When I get back I plan on doing some real work on getting myself back into financial non-ruin. My goal is that in half a year I should be in a state where I can call myself not poor. So lets see how that works out.

Anyway, I’m not one of those people with good technology, so probably I’m not gonna be posting much next week. Oh well. I’m sure all of you can survive without me guiding you through the Internet for that brief amount of time. If anything important happens, like if I get to pet a dog, I’ll let you know when I get back.