Watching and listening to Nasa TV with _Lasar and solios during the landing was great fun, and as any shared experience, much better for the company. Thanks guys. I also had The Science Channel on in the background, since they were yammering about Full Live Coverage all weekend. Nasa TV offered a raw, live feed from mission control, with a few interviews with certain key personnel. The Science Channel's "coverage" didn't focus much on mission control at all, which was disappointing. Lots of filler about other Mars missions, mostly focusing on Pathfinder, Spirit and Oppurtunity, and interviews with key project members. It wasn't terrible, but not nearly as interesting as the raw stuff.

I wish I had the words to say how fucking incredible this is to me. Space exploration is... well, words. Lots of words. We've got wee little vehicles crawling around on another freaking planet. RIGHT NOW. The men and women involved in this and all the other projects, and those that gave their lives for the advancement of spaceflight, deserve the utmost respect and honor. They are furthering the bounds of humanity, extending our frontiers and just generally doing awesome stuff. I wanted to be you when I grew up. Hell I still do.

Following is the log from our IRCing while watching/listening to the landing coverage:

[00.06.35] < xeno> i've got a Rant written
[00.06.40] < solios> :O
[00.06.42] < xeno> up here *points at skull*
[00.06.45] < solios> OH GAWD
[00.06.49] < xeno> about celebrity... things
[00.06.52] < solios> don't keep it there you'll lose it.
[00.07.21] < xeno> like those fuckass gossip rags and the oscars and Britney/Kevin etc
[00.07.33] < solios> :o
[00.07.38] < solios> the shit at the checkout.
[00.07.42] < solios> The Stupid.
[00.07.46] * solios hateseses it.
[00.07.56] < xeno> we know more about these people than we do about our neighbours, you can't avoid hearing about them, i have enough of my own problems, they have millions and they're whining, etc
[00.08.05] < solios> yes.
[00.08.06] < xeno> should it go on LoC?
[00.08.07] < solios> people--
[00.08.11] < solios> yes.
[00.08.26] < xeno> i mean, it's going EVERYWHERE, but i was wondering if it should *also* go on LoC
[00.08.50] < xeno> when it's Done, it's going to every blogspace i have
[00.09.14] < solios> yes.
[00.09.31] < xeno> yahoo360, DA, LoC, gamesplat, lj, my wow server's forum, um... a couple of other places
[00.10.04] < xeno> i am So Fucking Sick of this bullshit
[00.10.10] < solios> \o/
[00.10.37] < xeno> at work, in the smoke shack, on the goddamned picnic tables, we have Star, Sun, Globe, motherfucking Entertainment Weekly, and People
[00.10.47] < xeno> and i don't mean Old Issues
[00.10.55] < xeno> people bring this shit in, brand fucking new
[00.10.58] < xeno> AND DEVOUR IT.
[00.11.09] < xeno> the butt can was on fire thursday night
[00.11.17] < xeno> we sit it Outside when that happens
[00.11.25] < xeno> so it doesn't burn down the shack, because that would suck
[00.11.48] < xeno> i rolled up People and used it to beat down the flames
[00.12.01] < xeno> and you'd have thought i'd crucified Christ again
[00.12.41] < solios> O_o
[00.12.44] < solios> yes, well.
[00.12.48] < xeno> i have given Orders to my little clique (oh yes, it's high school, with less drugs) to bring in para-magazines
[00.12.49] < solios> there's a quote, somewhere.
[00.12.52] < solios> goes a bit like this:
[00.12.57] < solios> smart people talk about ideas.
[00.13.00] < solios> normal people talk about things.
[00.13.04] < solios> little people talk about other people.
[00.13.12] < xeno> ...
[00.13.14] < xeno> ass.
[00.13.16] < xeno> HOLE.

1. Breaking into the Taurus during the rise of the last full moon of summer. Priceless.

2. Taurusing with Xeno to the drums of Lud. Awesome.

3. Canned Air War. Glorious.

4. Final Fantasy Advent Children. Totally fucking sweet.

Total cost? Less than half of #loccon '04.

Sweet.

...it cannot be disguised that the prime effect of knowledge in the universe in which we are shipwrecked is a feeling of despair and disgust, often developing into an energetic desire to escape reality altogether... This escape, since from Truth, can only be into Illusion, the sublime comfort and refuge... There is the usual human poverty of its possible varieties.... there are all the drugs... There is religion, of course, and music... these are the major euphorias. But the queerest and oldest is the sidepath of Magic... At its deepest, this Magic is concerned with the creative powers of the Will; at lowest it is but a barbarous rationalism, the first of all our attempts to force the heavens to be reasonable.

You are an inspiration to me.
You are my inspiration of how not to be.
You are my inspiration to achieve a better way of life.

22:13 <@ejp> <stewpid_bitch> haha creepy experience with the ouija board tonight
22:13 <@ejp> I hate stupid chicks
22:17 < solios> weejees are stewpid.
22:17 <@ejp> yes
22:17 < solios> they guage susceptibility, nothing more.
22:19 <@ejp> solios: and if the person believes, like this penis pouch does, it removes the mental barriers.
22:19 < solios> ejp: yes and no.
22:19 < solios> ejp: there's "believe" and theres" want to believe".
22:20 < solios> someobdy who Wants To Believe sees what they're looking for / fear / want to see / etc.
22:20 < solios> regardless, weejee for extra-meat comms is gay ay best.
22:20 < solios> at, even.
22:21 < solios> (anything extra-meat has a funny tendency to communicate with STRONG VISUALS and/or IMPRESSIONS, anyway. The only reason we have language is to convey concepts to each other and theo nly rason we have an alphabet is to handle the conyance when we're off doing other things)
22:21 <@ejp> Cthulhu is lecturing about quantum wave functions and psionic abilities. it rules a lot.
22:21 < solios> hm.
22:22 < solios> I'm assuming you're talking about how they relate to each other with regards to the concept of Will as a Physical (re: quantum) Force.
22:23 <@ejp> yes

10:58 <xeno> I WAS HAPPY WHEN I WAS, LIKE, 5.
11:00 <solios> life started to suck around puberty.
11:04 <xeno> [13.58.16] <xeno> I WAS HAPPY WHEN I WAS, LIKE, 5.
11:04 <solios> :|
11:04 <solios> being an adult sucks.
11:04 <solios> bills and health and job and routines.
11:04 <xeno> sure does.
11:05 <xeno> RESPONSIBILITY--
11:05 <solios> and the shit thing about routines is that your brain goes FUCK I'VE SEEN THIS MOVIE BEFORE and IGNORES IT.
11:05 <xeno> i liked it when i knew EXACTLY what every day would bring
11:05 <solios> so you lose WEEKS. AND MONTHS. AND YEARS.
11:05 <solios> uh.
11:05 <xeno> wake up, board bus, sit in school, eat lunch, RECESS, sit in school some more, go home, play outside, eat supper, go to bed
11:05 <solios> you know exactly what every day will bring NOW.
11:05 <xeno> REPEAT
11:05 <solios> the difference is you don't LIKE IT.
11:05 <solios> see?
11:05 <xeno> heh
11:05 <xeno> POINT.

Well, no. There was, however, a flood. Xeno took pictures.

Pittsburgh suburbs and surroundings got shat on, but urbania seems to have missed out. Minus a mudslide on 18th street that shut it down between Josephine and Brownsville, which made life annoying for people who aren't me.

21:53 < xeno> so ed and I were eating in the kitchen
21:53 < xeno> and Clarence comes in
21:53 < xeno> with a bottle
21:53 < xeno> a BROWN bottle
21:53 < xeno> < xeno> What's that?
21:54 < xeno> < clarence> It's shark fin oil
21:54 < xeno> * clarence continues on, in Clarencian, explaining its uses.
21:54 < xeno> < ed> what's in it?
21:54 < xeno> < clarence> well, shark fin and...
21:54 < solios> O_o
21:54 < xeno> * clarence looks at ingredients list
21:54 < xeno> < clarence> ...
21:54 < xeno> * clarence sets bottle on table and leaves the room
21:55 < solios> Clarence++
21:55 < xeno> * xeno reaches for bottle
21:55 < xeno> < ed> DON'T TOUCH IT OMFG
21:55 < xeno> afaik, it's still sitting there
21:55 < xeno> it was a week later
21:55 * solios falls over.
21:55 < xeno> so it probably still is
21:55 < solios> :D
21:55 < solios> Clarence++
21:55 < xeno> Clarence++
21:55 < solios> fagbot: clarence?
21:55 < fagbot> Hee-hee! I HAVE A FLYING MACHINE!

I came home tonight at four in the morning. A girl who's been trying to fuck me for a very long time was hanging out with my roommate. She tried again a few minutes after I got situated. Encounters like this remind me of why drinking is Bad- If I'd been unproductive tonight, I might have said "yes," or otherwise lacked the cognitive grace to turn her down, repel the attack, and keep my room- and my sanity- to myself.

She's been here two nights this week. Two nights this week, I've sealed myself in my room and not left it until it was time to shower and so forth for work the next day. Easy way of avoiding psychotic amounts of stress I shouldn't have to deal with, especially in my own house.

She'll be here tomorrow, too. I'm not looking forward to it.

Spent the night working on texture mapping the Daedalus for ATC, as opposed to fulfilling a previously arranged obligation. Unplugged one of the phones. One is on my desk, with the ringer turned off. The other one is on my coworkers desk with the ringer on. I remembered to plug his back in when I left work a few hours ago: no rude surprises for him.

The first five days of May 2004 were spent in North Central with Xeno. We took some pictures.

I've omitted the really incriminating things, such as a picture of xeno taking a piss, the Buttorff drafts, a good chunk of the moon shots (all of which came out like ass), and a few other things that were duped. I forgot I was doing an iPhoto export from the main library instead of the sub-albums, and consequently dropped out a lot of ASS- these would be the blurry chunks of whatever with names like 000_0009.JPG.

The camera used was a Kodak EasyShare DX4330, which comes with 32 megs of internal memory and allegedly pulls 3.1 megapixels. Allegedly in the sense that the results look fine at low rez and look like Quicktake images at actual size. We weren't going for quality, really- more reference and humor than anything else. Technically, the flash was fairly irritating and the thing chewed through three vanilla sets of batteries in two days- we replaced the Duracells (two dollars for four!) with some Energizer lithium cells (ten bux for four!) at Xeno's old place, and they lasted the through the tour of the inside, the trip to my parent's house, the tour of the grounds, and back- no complaints. The vanilla batteries lasted roughly a card and a half before conking out.

My powerbook rode along for the safari, running in OS X in sleep mode for the majority of the journey. We used iPhoto to interface with the Kodak (no drivers required) and to pull down the pictures whenever the camera filled up. This turned out to be both a bit awkward and amazingly convenient, as we hit the powerbook to offload images several times over the two days of shooting. The second day load stops were in the Bob Bryan's parking lot, Xeno's old driveway, and twice at my parents, with the final offload at Xeno's house. Surprising bit of convenience, minus the fact that my primary powerbook battery managed to somehow completely discharge between Bryan's and Xeno's old place- a distance of less than a mile and a timeframe of approximately 30 minutes. Powerbook lithium batteries typically last between two and five hours, depending on useage- this being the exception.

The Evidence Log covers two days and a good chunk of North Central- Lock Haven, Jersey Shore, the Lycoming Mall, a good stretch of highway, Liberty and surroundings. There'd be a LOT more photos if we'd had the time to get them- another two or three days, more batteries, more camera memory, etceteras. The Log was assembled using a stock iPhoto export and some tweaking through Dreamweaver to de-gay it as much as possible. It is as complete as it's going to get for web presentation- we're saving the excluded photos for later useage, which may or may not include photoshop, blackmail, or filler.

This time tomorrow I should be back in the City.

21:50 < solios> o_O
21:50 < solios> oh, sweet.
21:50 < solios> I have clean underwear under my desk.
21:51 < Xenothaulus> ...
21:51 < Xenothaulus> Was that from the water?
21:51 < Xenothaulus> Because if so, they probably aren't yours.
21:52 < solios> No, they're mine.
21:52 < solios> Mom sent them.

This began as an attempt for me to figure out how Ornix and xeno met and knew about each other. As I progressed, the writing became more and more difficult, until finally I was completely and thoroughly stuck and did not know why. I eventually figured it out though: Ornix and xeno are the same person, xeno being the new and improved version, I guess you could say.

Or better, say that Ornix is c. '96 and xeno is c. '00 and onward.

Anyway, here it is.

===

Originally submitted here. Putting it in output, as suggested, confused me at first. But now that I think about it a bit, it fits, in a surreal way.

[ solios] Blog that shit.
[ solios] ....
[ solios] Blog that shit in Output. Stick it under the "read more" fold and add whatever explanation you'd like.
[ solios] unless you don't want to.
* solios wanders off.

===

Talk to her.
Tell her you love her.
Now.
Before it's too late.

Do what you always said you'd do.
Live like you always wanted to.
Now.
Before it's too late.

That pretty pony runs fast and runs hard
and God's a mean old son of a bitch.

Catch that pony.
Rein that fucker in.
Now.
Before it's too late.

Too late.

===

Tooling around in Yahoo! chatrooms last night, I found one about hauntings and paranormal ish. Having pretty much all your experience are belong to us about said topic, I decided to join. Then this happened.

I believe it exemplifies the typical reaction we receive and, indeed expect, from the sheep.