August 2003 Archives

The other day, I swung by an off-campus bookstore to sell a book I'd ordered on Half.com for a class that I'm taking this summer, only to realize that it wasn't required for my section. The book was brand new, still in plastic, and cost around $48, including shipping. This was a decent savings over the bookstore's price—$55, before taxes.

Although the book was unused and in plastic, the off-campus bookstore was only willing to pay $16. Needless to say, I was peeved. I knew that the on-campus price would be no better, so I resolved to sell the book online.

Even though I'm embarassingly geeky, I'm something of a Luddite. I remember it took me months to make the switch from Netscape Navigator 3 to Navigator 4, even after 4 had been on my computer for a while. It was the same story for switching from Navigator to Internet Explorer, and Internet Explorer to Mozilla (and recently, Mozilla to Firebird).

In much the same way, I took several months to get my own email address, in spite of my friends' repeated urgings. I was also reluctant to download a AOL Instant Messenger, and was quite skeptical about Napster (yeah, I was around in the days when you found mp3s by web browsing...old school). So although I've heard nothing but good things, it took me a long time to buy books from Half.com, and now, to sell books.

I don't know what took me so long: the process of putting something on sale was simple. In fact, the hardest part was shipping—figuring out how to mail books using Media Mail or Priority Mail. And boy did I ship.

I put some old books on sale on Saturday. It's early Wednesday morning now, and I've made sales on every day in between: one each on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. The system at Half.com is great, simply because overhead is so low: buyers and sellers don't have many of the concerns conventional bookstores have to deal with, which translates into lower prices at which to buy your books, and higher prices for selling them back. It's a win-win situation for students like myself, and it leaves me wondering how traditional textbook retailers will compete.

Me being the studious guy that I am, I was on campus this morning at 7:50 to finish up the 40 pages or so of reading I needed done for my Organizational Communication midterm. Which happened to be today. Studious indeed.

It was uncharacteristically cool this morning, so I read on the CoffeeHouse's second-floor patio, diligently highlighting key passages, including one I labeled "Worst. Sentence. Ever." It was the opening sentence of a conclusion:

"The evidence adduced in our study ineluctably raises a disquieting question..."

Ugh. It reminded me of the magniloquent Architect dialogue in The Matrix: Reloaded. Haha. I just used "magniloquent" in a sentence. An odd thought just occured to me: my Organizational Communication professor looks a lot like the Architect from The Matrix: Reloaded.

I swung by the UCD Bookstore around 8:30 to pick up scantrons for the test, noticing Candace from MTV's infamous Sorority Life now models a school sweatshirt for bookstore promotional stuff.

Random tangent: A couple months ago (in May, I think), I was part of a panel of students who were interviewed by a class of 5th graders visiting the campus. They were free to ask us questions about campus life, classes, and what it takes to get into college. What question did we get?

"Do you know Jordan from Sorority Life?"

"No." (For the record, I think I've seen Jordan twice...prior to that, I was wondering if the pledges were just imported to Davis for the show.)

"Do you know any of the sorority sisters?"

"Erm..."

Fantastic.

Anyways, while leaving the store, I saw Nathan's friend Deb. I was opening my mouth to say hi as I passed her—

"I like your site." she smiled.

The "Hi!" kinda came out "Hwuh...?" and I stopped in my tracks.

"TheThousand.net? I'm a friend of Nathan's."

And me being the incredibly tactful person that I am, I said "I know, it's just kinda weird."

What I meant was that, as I've stated before, it's always kind of weird when people I know in real life look at my site. It always makes me self-conscious, and I wonder if I put anything truly regrettable up. Then I remember that I make a point of not putting up my deepest personal secrets like a teenage girl who really, really misses her crush Adam. And I was resting assured in this fact when I realized that Deb took it differently.

"No, I just followed the link from his site. I'm not stalking you or anything." She looked embarassed.

I told her I understood and that it was "just weird," before saying bye and leaving. Tactful exit there, too. Deb, if you're reading this, I'm flattered, and you totally rock. Thanks for the compliment. :)

Now this is an interesting concept: you, yes you, can win prizes just by following links on my site, via Blogstakes, a new blog-based sweepstakes. All you have to do is visit the two current contest pages, one for a Clip-N-Seal prize pack, the other for a free one-year subscription to BrowserCam.

"Oh, nifty," you say. "How selfless and generous of—wait a second, Aliotsy, you get something too if we enter, don't you?"

Erm...yeah. But you go on ahead and enter, okay? Okay.

It feels odd and a little embarassing that the CD I'm most interested in acquiring at the moment is entitled True Love Waits. I can already hear some people snickering. Nonetheless, I was sold even before knowing the album existed. Why?

Because several months ago, I nearly stopped my car in the middle of the road while listening to a live Christopher O'Riley cover of Radiohead's Fake Plastic Trees.

I managed to find a recording of the performance, and listening to it even now still sends chills down my spine. The song alludes to the deterioration of London's Canary Wharf—evidently, Radiohead's Thom Yorke broke down in tears after recording the acoustic version—and O'Riley's version perfectly captures that disquieting emotion, even rivalling Yorke's melancholy original.

So, although O'Riley often annoys me on his show From the Top, I'm nonetheless excited about True Love Waits, which he devotes to classical piano covers of Radiohead songs, including Fake Plastic Trees.

Holy cow.

Shane Seminole Mielke never fails to amaze me with his combination of bold visuals and fluid interactivity.

If you wanna read about sushi instead of web design, just skip the next few paragraphs.

I don't have much in terms of assignments at work, so I've been busy working on a long-term project that I've given myself—cleaning up the reams of poorly written, Dreamweaver-generated code that currently makes up a large portion of the site. Personally, I'd like to scrap the entire site and start from a nice XHTML and CSS2-based layout, but till I get that cleared from someone in charge of that sort of thing, I've been busy toying around with stripping out font tags (some of which are unnecessarily nested two or three deep) and converting to CSS. I've been having fun implementing CSS image rollovers that combine older techniques with the Fahrner image replacement method that's been generating so much hoopla as of late. I'm concerned about the accessibility issues, and Phark's simple yet effective workaround unfortunately won't work. Why?

Netscape Navigator 4. *shudder* yup.

Our audience is mostly students and educators, so 5% of our traffic still browses with NN4.* A straight application of the FIR actually shows up in Navigator 4...sort of. It has the image rollover show up, as well as the spanned text over it. Ugh. I used centricle's ever useful css filters to fix that problem (in Navigator, it displays the text that's hidden by the span), but I'm wondering if it will also work for accessibility issue...basically, I have to filter out the padding rule. I've actually been having fun doing this stuff, so I'm looking forward to trying it out tomorrow.

Mmmmmmm...uuuuuuuh. Sushi coma.

Went back to the much vaunted Fuji's today for some more all-you-can-eat sushi goodness. Party was double the size of the last Fuji's group, including a much braver Laura...admirably so. Final count came out to 14 plates. I probably would have had more, but I took up Justin's challenge to eat a chunk of wasabi, and that unsettled my stomach somewhat, though it was fun...Justin himself also took down wasabi like a big...green-paste-eating...thing.

Oh man...my mental functions are slowing down...this is starting to feel like a severe sushi coma. It's probably not a good thing that I have to blink every now and then to keep the monitor in focus as I type. Especially with my next class starting in about half an hour.

Tried oysters for the first time...and discovered I'm not much of an oyster fan. Didn't really taste it going down—it just kinda slid down my throat—and I think that's a good thing. All in all, not a bad day, though I think I've met my sushi quota for the next six months.

TheThousand.net turned two on Sunday. Even though I'm now legally allowed to celebrate with champagne and cake, I chose not to.

Actually, I completely forgot about the birthday until right now. Let me go see if there's anything in the kitchen I can celebrate with...

Sherry Cooking Wine. Erm, no.

Anchovies. Eh...

Ah...mocha jello. Much thanks to you, person who gave me mocha jello. Mmmm.

Funny that I should title this entry the "Quarterly Report," since I've never actually done any such report before. Why the odd financial statement name? Because I just re-discovered this site's BlogShares, and frankly, the activity as late is not looking good. See for yourself.

Now, I really couldn't care less about the current market value of this site: I just try to make the best site possible, keeping it updated without having it take priority over school and work. Any further involvement in BlogShares would likely tempt me to commit "financial improprieties," Enron-style.

But someone please tell me, what the heck happened that caused that recent drop in my share price? Is it because I'm barely maintaining this site while I concentrate on school? I got an A- and an A+ in my first two summer session classes—coincidence? I think not. And as long as the grades are looking like that, this low-maintenance thing is what I'm gonna do. *Aliotsy cringes as traders scream "Sell! Sell! Sell!"*

In other site-related news, I'm toying with ideas for a (insert collective "here we go again") redesign. Not any time soon—I'm juggling a ton of freelance work right now—but there's all sorts of stuff I want to implement. I've been doing a lot of CSS-based layouts lately, and can get a fairly decent, cross-browser compatible site up and running in a fraction of the time it used to take me. I've also been fiddling around with Photoshop a lot, and just want to make a CSS-based design that's graphically appealing. And gel buttons. I like gel buttons.

As much as I dislike spam, occasionally you get something that's just...odd. Take, for example, the following email my buddy Iman got:

Dimensional Warp Generator Needed oiqykopqolwsuta

Hello,

I'm a time traveler stuck here in 2003. Upon arriving here my dimensional
warp generator stopped working. I trusted a company here by the name of LLC
Lasers to repair my Generation 3 52 4350A watch unit, and they fled on me. I
am going to need a new DWG unit, prefereably the rechargeable AMD wrist
watch model with the GRC79 induction motor, four I80200 warp stabilizers,
512GB of SRAM and the menu driven GUI with front panel XID display.

I will take whatever model you have in stock, as long as its received
certification for being safe on carbon based life forms.

In terms of payment:
I dont have any Galactic Credits left. Payment can be made in platinum gold
or 2003 currency upon safe delivery of unit.

Please transport unit in either a brown paper bag or box to below
coordinates on Monday July 28th at (exactly 3:00pm) Eastern Standard Time on
the dot. A few minutes prior will be ok, but it cannot be after. If you miss
this timeframe please email me.

Latitude N 42.48018 & Longitude W 071.15503 and the Elevation is 96.
WARNING: DO NOT ATTEMPT TO TRANSPORT ITEM BY REGULAR MEANS OF TELEPORTATION.
THEY ARE MONITORING AND WILL REDIRECT THE SIGNAL!!
I DO NOT CARE HOW YOU HAVE TO GET IT HERE, JUST DO IT IN A WAY THAT NO
SPYING EYES WILL POSSIBLY BE ABLE TO REDIRECT THE TRANSFERENCE. IT IS VERY
IMPORTANT THAT YOU BE ABLE TO MONITOR THE TRANSFER.

Although those coordinates are a secure guarded area, these channels through
email are never secure. Unfortunately it is the only form of communication I
have right now.

After unit has been sent please email me at: info@federalfundingprogram.com
with payment instructions. Do not reply directly back to this email.

Thank You

Man, that had me cracking up. Figured I'd take this time to point out that although I haven't been updating the journal much, I've been pretty prolific with with Linkathon as of late...I'm really liking the new Google Toolbar with BlogThis! built into it.