There is a haunted house tonight that my fraternity is putting on. My dorm room is one of the rooms involved, watch the wonderful sight of little kids scared out of their minds tonight between 7:00 and 10:00 Central Time on my webcam. I am not sure how good the images will be because we have it dark in here with a strobe light and the most frightening part about our room is the sound effects. Anyways, this should still be fun. Check it out.

Update: The Haunted House was a complete success, sorry if you tried to look at the webcam and didn�t see anything, my computer was the source of the sound effects but prooved to be a bit of a problem when it rebooted mysteriously twice during the night. Did I just spell proved with 2 o�s back there� well I am really dang tired right now and my head is killing me from all the noise and screaming and the incessant flashing of the blasted strobe light. Now I just realized that my car is not in the parking lot outside, I droe it to class this afternoon and for some reason I forgot about it after class and walked back to the house with a buddy. Now it�s almost tommorow and I dont want to get a parking ticket so I am goign to see if I can get a ride over there to pick up my car. I think it is past time for me to leave this post and try to relax a little. The fact that I need to be working on a paper right now is not helping matters any.

This sequel to the critically acclaimed blockbuster Action-Comedy-Suspense-Tragedy-Drama-Buddy-Film both smashes and incinerates all the expectations of the audience. The loveable misfit hero in Tunafish Part Dues (TPD) presents us with a affable facade while slowly revealing the poignant internal monologue that drives the plot straight through the wall, in fact this plot is all the way outside, no wait it�s already around the corner and heading for the interstate. You had better hurry if you�re going to catch that plot, you gots to have some wheels.

Another thing that we all gots to have is ‘ups’. I am not referring to the United Parcel Service which is also know as �UPS�, but I am referring to what one possesses when they can achieve great vertical altitude from a position at rest on the horizontal plane that is perpendicular to the nearest axis of the earth. UPS on the other hand are the people that bring the various goodies that I order from e-bay to my door. Perhaps the belt and snickers bar that was delivered was part of this evil plan, my mother was the one that shipped said items to me, yet I have to wonder if perhaps there is something more to this whole set of coincidence and contrived circumstances that form the greater part of my daily life.

This has been a test of the emergency boredom system, in the case of actual insanity this post would have been accompanied with a picture of me frothing at the mouth while curled up under the coffee table. Now I know that anyone who has read this far is so committed to reading the rantage that I randomly distribute via this site, that they do not shy from the apparent insanity that can plague even the best of us. Fear not my faithful minions I have not lost my mind yet, there is a long distance between bored ravings and truly insane ravings, and hopefully you will never be forced to endure the latter. If you fear the former as well, then I suggest you quit reading right now. Well, you should have quit reading immediately after you read the title banner on this page actually.

Generally speaking, the insane rantings that I tend to produce have their origins in the parts of my mind that are usually most active. This part of my mind jumps around from idea to idea constantly churning the juices in my brain. At least I assume their are juices in there, I mean, I guess I cant really hear anything sloshing around in there. Maybe it�s more of a slush, or a gel. Perhaps the stuff in my head is closer to the consistency of a Wendy�s Frosty. Mmmm frostys.

All that talk about the contents of my cranium have made me a little hungry, perhaps it is time to go to Taco Bell and dig into some quesadillas. While I eat my Taco Bell you must call me Raoul! The Latino Fury! Remember to roll those r�s. Rrrroll yourrrrr arrrrrres. It�s fun isn�t it, I�m sorry but I guess that little culture and language lesson is about the extent of the interactivity my web site can manage. If you are almost as bored as I am (Trust me no one is my peer in boredom at this moment), then I suggest you visit Aaron and Katie in their new digital abode.

Perhaps some time I will detail for you the exact nature and extent of my geekyness. I do not have to tell you just how insane I can be, you are able to read that for yourself every time I post; but the nature of my geekhood may not be precisely apparent to those that are not �in the know� on such things. Just what am I �in the know� on, well I don’t really�. know. I think that the word �know� is a word that quickly devolves into a meaningless sound represented by various consonants and verbs with each iteration of said word in a document. I think you all know (Dang! There it is again, little bugger keeps sneaking up on me) what I am talking about.

Have I ever told you what I find very fun, trying to bite my ear. That little guy is quick. I can’t tell you how many times I have tried to sneak up on him, but he is always able to escape my teeth, or as I like to call them “the Humanoid Mandibles of DOOM!�?

At twelve o�clock ante meridiem today, a group of young adults began the Week of Rice. Of this fellowship I am a member; in fact, you can call me Ricerite Number 3. We can eat nothing but rice until Saturday comes. I don�t even particularly like the food; in fact, I don�t recall that I�ve ever really liked it. However, I eat it anyway�breakfast, lunch, and dinner (or breakfast, dinner, and supper, as I like to call them, but perhaps that�s just my midwestern heritage).

Our puroses are four-fold. I hope I can remember the purposes and not look like more of a fool here.

Purpose 1: Experience World Hunger

Purpose 2: Build discipline

Purpose 3: Some spiritual growth, community, or something

Purpose 4: What kind of wuss would I be if I couldn�t eat only rice for a week?

You may be thinking that Purpose 1 is a little weird, I mean, we�re still eating. Some places, though, rice is all they have to eat. And I have a feeling that if rice is all I can eat, I will end the day feeling a little hungry.

I don�t really know how it started, I think that my neighbor and a female friend of his thought to do it, and then my neighbor tried to talk me into it. I was kind of afraid to at first. I know, it sounds stupid, but just think of what could happen without some of your essential nutrients? That may sound overly nutritionalistic, but I�m talking mainly about fiber here. It�s not wise to be without that.

That night as I lay down to sleep, only the first three purposes existed. Then purpose four came to me, and I became a Ricerite.

To say we can only eat rice is a tad deceiving. Spices and seasonings are allowed to flavor the rice. We can drink pretty much whatever we want�so juice, milk, and pop (more midwest talk) are allowed. Malts, however, are forbidden because they have too much substance. These rules are a little shaky, but when you have just twenty or so people freely willing to abide by them for five days, there�s not much to worry about.

The Council of Ricea has also declared that Rice Krispies are cosubstantial with Rice itself, being merely puffed rice with minimal additives, and are permissible for consumption for breakfast or in the absence of regular rice. I fought hard in the Council for this allowance, in case that our rice should run out, rice for breakfast felt a little weird, or some among us were just too weak of will to eat rice only. However, purists among the Ricerites plan to eat regular rice at all meals, as Rice Krispies are too commonplace for us and seem a deterrant to accomplishing Purpose 1. Purpose 4 is also commonly cited among them. I too, am a purist, but wish to allow for weakness that may occur in myself or others.

By now any reader is thinking that I�m crazy. Well, I guess you could say I am. Not only have I only eaten rice today, I�ve also been part of one of those assassin games where you get someone�s name and then have to shoot them with a water gun, and then you get the name of who that person was supposed to shoot, and so on. And I�ve been reading Catcher in the Rye and philosophic essays on suicide. This combination of things sounds kind of scary, and my picture here looks kind of scary, too. I�m not really a killer, in fact my assassin got me before I could get my target. Besides, all that reading is for classes I�m taking. No, I�m not in some terrorist training camp, although I did have to read an essay on terrorism last week.

I think I should stop now.

Here are a few of the high points from the past several days. Something you should all know is that iTunes is available for the PC. You should all download this program, it is an excellent mp3 player/jukebox program, plus you get access to the iTunes Music Store something which has replaced free p2p programs for me. Sure, it�s tough to beat free, but I like being able to browse the music and get the song I want the right way the first time and very quickly, something that kazzaa etc. cannot offer. I am so seriously in love with iTunes that the artistic portion of my personality has begun to surface and is trying to tell the rational part of my mind that we need a G5, but I cannot afford one of those, or even an iPod. Oh how I want an iPod. Then again, a fat wad of cash totaling $399 would be nice too, and it�s roughly the same size. After this length of time on the p2p bandwagon it feels strange to pay for downloading media, it�s refreshing really, though remember that 99 cents multiplies pretty quickly.

I enjoyed my fall break immensely, sat around at home and just read while eating lots of homemade food. I�m back to school, already halfway through the semester. Tomorrow is Friday, yet I might just go to class anyways.

The little business venture that I am a part of is starting to take form, our site is up and running, take a look, especially if you are interested in hosting or design services.

It seems that a couple of the people that have author priveleges around here have peeked up and blessed us with their thoughts. Sometimes you get some enlightening and impressive prose, while other times you get examples of personal geekyness. If there is one person who can explain geekyness it�s Jonny T, he can explain it, while I simply typify the geekyness that we both share.

Does it seem strange that guys who don�t drink can almost win a beer goggle relay race? Several friends, along with myself were involved in just such an incident. It may have been really suspicious if we had won the competition, I mean we didn�t really have a chance to practice. Yes, the activities that I get involved in out in this little Lady-Beetle-free zone I like to call Kearney, Nebraska are a little on the strange side. I would also like to take this moment to point out that my sentence structures become more complex and comma laden as the night progresses. This phenomenon could likely be expressed as a mathematical function.

I may want to go to sleep before the visualizations in iTunes draw me in like a mosquito to the unearthly blue glow that seems so soft and soothingly beautiful, then just as you draw close to the mesmerizing aura that hangs from a cord on someone�s front porch it�s ZAAP! PFZZTT!!! Surely, barbaric contraptions such as this are beyond the pale.

By the title of this post it would appear that I would first address my status as a bum. I will not. I would first like to say that I�m sorry if I offended five people in their basements who read this site. That was rather insensitive of me. I mean, I read this site, but I don�t live in a basement, nor do I usually view this site from one. In any case, I meant for those comments to make fun of Sir Timbly and not people who view this site in their basements.

Back to my bumness (bummity? bummessence?), I should be writing a paper about Peter Abelard and Héloïse, but obviously am not. Hey, that reminds me of something I could talk about. . .

Have you ever noticed how some of those religious guys in the middle ages are really aloof? And they knew they were that way, and they thought that it was good. That kind of annoys me. I hope I never end up like them. Although I don�t desire to be a philosopher either. But if I did, I wouldn�t want to be like Jerome and Peter Alebard, with their �Oh, I am so pious and smart!� That�s the jive I got from them anyway. Hey if you feel differently, feel free to say something; there is the comment feature on this site. I could be missing something important and be totally wrong about these medieval guys.

No, I really didn�t have anything signficant to say. But I guess rants don�t have to be significant. Actually, the way Webster�s defines �rant�, it sounds like it�s supposed to be verbal. So this wouldn�t really be a rant at all.

Hopefully I will develop coherence one of these days.

Well, the wonderful Sir Timbly has bestowed on me some of the power of his web site. Although I must admit a warning from Lord of the Rings, about people not liking to share power is flashing through my head right now. So maybe I and the couple others who are being allowed to post should be afraid Not having anything in particular to rant about life or the universe right now (besides that the Asian Lady Beetles which are plaguing Iowa State are driving me crazy!) I decided to post a short story I recently wrote for my creative writing class. It’s a little odd, but then again most fiction is (refer back to Tim’s 4/24 Post.) So here it is:

Lidderdale

At approximately 122 degrees longitude and 42 degrees latitude there sits a town. From space it’s simply a particle of green continent halfway between the two poles. From an airplane its green corn rippling in the wind underneath cotton white clouds. In a car it’s a flat expanse, with roads, little hills, a convenience store, and a motel with fluorescent lights drawing travelers in like a bug lantern, occasionally snatching up a town’s person.

The stories of this town are non-existent. No one cares who gets their eggs scrambled or over easy at the diner. No one cares if Mr. Johnson wins the tractor pull or if Mrs. Zener’s ring was stolen. Our story is a cross between two places no one has been- a little town and the dark places of one girl’s mind.

So this is how it happened.

One night when the air was just starting to smell like fall and the leaves were crunching under feet a brown-haired, brown eyed girl sat up in bed. She heard the crickets outside. Her muscles started to tense, her breaths came quicker. Then she remembered what the doctors told her. She started to calm herself down, thinking of the week she once spent up in Virginia. Her parents had helped her to walk through the little beach town. T-shirt vendors, fish restaurants, and Virginia Beach towels had lined the street. They led her to the ocean’s edge, encouraged her to dip her feet in. She was scared a jelly fish may be washed onto the shore only to sting her. They took her to lie down on the sand, she was scared a seagull might land on her thinking her hat was a fish. In frustration her parents took her back home. It was the best week of her life. She started to relax as she thought of the crashing ocean waves. The roar filled her head, blocking out her fears.

Then the spider came.

The spider had come from Sydney she guessed. It was 25 mm long so it must have been the male. It was such a shiny black she thought she could see her reflection in it. It wasn’t moving, but she could see the tenseness in its muscles. It was ready to fall softly down on the pillow beside her head. The details were becoming clearer now as her eyes remained steady on the creature. It had a dark purplish abdomen with little red hairs lining its stomach. It was the Sydney Funnel-Web Spider, one of the world’s most deadly spiders. She shut her eyes, but the image remained. She could feel its eight little legs gently stretching out to touch her head, each one helping to shift its body across her hair. Breathing became labored as she tried to inhale enough air. She breathed deeper, not able to slow the irregular breaths she took. She tried to hear the ocean waves, but her breathing echoed too loudly through her head. Then she saw the spiders fangs and it bite her.

Outside the world was still. Time was normal. Inside, seconds took hours and hours took seconds. All her fears were stepping stones to this moment. Nausea overtook her. Sweat beaded on her forehead. She tried to cough but couldn’t get enough air. She was paralyzed. The ocean was far away; all that was left was her and the little creature weighing exactly one gram.

So what of Lidderdale?

The air smelled like fall. The corn looked like water slowly moving along from the vantage of a night time flight.

This is a quick and pointless update. I studied for a couple hours tonight and did some other stuff after work. The test I am studying for is Computer Organization Systems, and here are the list of some acronyms we should know:

MOS

SSI

MSI

LSI

VLSI

ALU

SRAM

DRAM

ROM

PROM

EPROM

EEPROM

LRU

FIFO

TLB

EAT

It never ends. I also have a test tommorow in my Computers and Design class, I�m not worried about it though.

The web-hosting business venture begins to pick up steam as we launched our domain today at level1media.com. The logo took a couple hours to throw together, we are hoping to talk to our first potential customer this weekend. By we I mean not me, Jason. There are a lot of local people that could benefit from a decent hosting service like ours, I am really anxious to get our site up and running.

Tests tommorow, maybe I�ll spoil myself and get a lot of sleep tonight. It never happens though.

I am sitting in the helpdesk cruising some of my favorite websites trying to choke down a really bad mocha. We have 2 little shops on campus that sell starbucks coffee, apperantly they are not actual starbucks, yet they �Proudly Brew Starbucks Coffee.� Let me assure you that this really bad mocha is not the normal fare from these places, I�m usually happy feeding my caffeine addiction here, besides, these places are the only places to get coffee around here, and I can use my meal plan with them. On the other hand we have�. different fingers.

Some friends and I are looking at starting up a small web-hosting business. Any of you who know the tech business are saying, �Good luck, you�re gonna need it.� Yet this particular business idea requires very little for investment capital, yet it may require a significant amount of time and energy. The three of us have significant technical knowledge and experience with tech-support, and there is already a list of likely customers we may be able to abscond with from another small business. It�s the design and update portion of this business venture that will require the vast majority of my time. And my time is pretty well stretched thin already. I do have enough time to get everything done, but it is far too easy to just sit down and watch a movie for a couple hours instead, or play Counter Strike in my few breaks in the day. Yesterday offered me little, or no free time. I spent about 5 hours in the Mass Comm Department�s computer lab working on various video projects. I have quite a laundry list of things to take care of today, one of them being laundry, but the to-do list also includes updates for my fraternity web-site, art homework, returning a camera I have checked out, getting a new Debit Card, and oddly enough, I plan on studying sometime before tommorrow.

There should be a new post coming from the lovely and beautiful Becca towards the end of the week, I know I am looking forward to it. And friday I will be returning home for fall break, I will really appreciate this 4 day weekend. And I guess I may just wait to have my laundry done at home. If I can fit it in my car anywaysl.

This particular rant did not have much in the way of entertainment or opinion, it was mostly just an update on my life, but now it is at an end. The rant, not my life. This mocha is now cold and disgusting, time for me to fly away.

It�s a rainy day and I�m sitting inside listening to some Dave Matthews, and being unimaginative. I sit in front of the computer for hours on end each day doing a great many different things. I do a little homework now and again, I play games, and I surf the web. I dont watch television anymore, it�s not that I have any moral conviction to never watch television, I just don�t ever feel like it, and I don�t miss it. It�s strange really, as a kid I watched TV several hours a day, pretty much the same in high-school until I was a senior. I am a pretty busy person and was very busy as a senior, although not really with school, I had already moved on from high school by that point and was just finsihing out a couple simple classes in order to graduate. My 2 jobs kept me pretty busy, along with the courses I was taking at the local community college. Both of my jobs that year were in TV broadcasting, I was a PA(Production Assistant) at a local news station, and ran the control room for broadcasting our city council meetings once a week. All of this kinda kept me from ever watching TV at home, this became a sort of habit. Now that I am at college, I am very busy most days and Television has simply been pushed out as the lowest thing on my priority list. I get most of my information of the web, and most of my entertainment there as well.

I could be ranting a great deal about television media and how it compares to the internet as a medium, but there are some other things pressing on my mind right now that are sucking most of my creative juices. The possibilities of entrepenurial business are looming on the horizon right now. It may not be true that all the good ideas are taken, but all the good names are definately taken.

My boss just shocked me with an old laptop battery, it really tickled� well not really. He is always a little grumpy when he comes down off the high he gets when wrapping a rubber band around his head. There are two cruddy old laptops sitting here to be worked on that are similar to a laptop I was ashamed to use 5 years ago. Except for the presence of their �spacious� 1.3 gig Hard Drives my little old iPAQ has more power and memory. Well, since I seem to be geeking out in this post I might as well continue on this track. I am amazed at how cheaply I could put together a pretty decent second system. On a budget of around $250 I could have a motherboard, CPU, HDD, RAM, and CDRW plus a few other essentials and throw them together with some extra parts I have lying around back home. Viola! Instant Counterstrike server! This is the point that reality starts to set in, it is best for reality to sink into the equation sometime before you whip out the credit card. $250 is a little less than a month�s pay for me, that $250 could go to several things that should have a little higher priority, I will list them in chronological order for what I am sure is our mutual entertainment. First, the Five Iron Frenzy Concert in Lincoln on Noveber 20th will be totally awesome, then there is the likelihood that I will want to go to DCC this winter, then the possibility of going to New York for spring break this year has been spotted on the horizon of possibility. Oh, and lets not forget that I need to do an internship somewhere this summer, a minor detail to me right now, but one that seems to be weighing heavily on my parents minds.

All these things are looming over me right now, but actually matter very little in the way my day progresses. I keep myself blissfully ignorant of the monetary pressures that ruin so many people lives. I like to think that I can keep letting money troubles roll off of me, as a college student, money is only a big issue every 5 months when tuition and fees come due along with books and various other costs that seem to slide in there unexpectedly. Of course, I could spend all my money like my roomate does, on eBay buying �Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey� books, and searching out N64 games to fill those slow times around 2am.

I didn�t really have anything to say today but, you see I never really have anything pertinent to say around here, topics range wildly but hit on a lot of computer nerd subjects. I would say that this blog is a commentary on the world in general from the perspective of my own particular subculture. That still seems a little pretentious, but well, the guys here are playing with my new favorite toy, IP Relay, and it is very entertaining. I will talk to you all later, try not to be too stressed out.

Where should I begin? How about I start with the odd fact that it is actually quite warm in my room right now? This is unusual because of the relatively cool temperatures we have been experiencing in the Midwest lately. Fall is my favorite time of year and when there is a chill on the air, the leaves are turning yellow and orange, and there is that certain aroma that wafts in from the woods and pastures at this time of year. I had thought that summer had passed on silently and we were safely into jeans and hooded sweatshirt weather, apparently I was mistaken. Summer has lashed out with one last gasp of hot air this weekend, yet I hate to sound as if I am complaining. The sun is shining outside and the sky is a shade of cerulean that is so vibrant it almost hurts, this color is exquisitely contrasted by the golden leaves that yet cling to branches that scrabble to reach the sky like the fingers of a dying man grasping at warmth when he knows then end is near. Where am I? Sitting in my room at my computer glancing down to see in Sysmetrix that the temperature is 79f, my first thought after that is to look at my computer case and check what the temperatures are there� CPU at 110f and the graphics card at 130f. Not great, but whatever, I seem to enjoy sitting by this little blast furnace.

There is an issue of little importance, and great interest to me which I wish to discuss. (It�s funny that I say discuss when all I am really doing is standing on my soapbox and letting loose with what I want to say, I don�t really care what you have to say about these topics despite the presence of a comments system.) Back to the matter at hand� pop. Or, as some of those who live in the nether reaches of this world call it, soda. Hopefully you all realize that there are two major brands that have been duking it out in the arena of commercialism for nigh on a century. Coke and Pepsi are huge, they probably play a huge role in keeping our economy going, competition breeds better products, so on and so forth. Some people say that they can tell the differences between different brands of pop just from taste, I’ve heard that in some cases that people cannot tell the difference in a blind fold test. I submit that when you purchase and drink a soft-drink you are not buying a taste, you are buying an image. Coke is the classic; it is the pop that seems to be as American as apple pie and hotdogs. Pepsi has the image of being cool, cutting edge and even extreme. Aiming for a youth market that is active has proven very successful for Pepsi, just as Coca-Cola has been very successful with the older demographic. The balance of power between Coke and Pepsi holds, with little or no gain on either side, even with the introduction of new products such as vanilla coke and vanilla Pepsi. Honestly I can�t say that I prefer one over the other, I am not a cola person. I am a Mountain Dew guy. Oddly enough I think that Mountain Dew holds a certain market dominance over the coke branded Mello Yello, especially in my demographic. (18-21 unmarried male in college with some expendable income) Surely I enjoy the taste of Mountain Dew a great deal, yet I hold no illusion that I am doing nothing more than buying the image that has been sold to me through commercials and advertising of all sorts. Mountain Dew is for extreme people who need extreme caffeine in order to keep going in an active lifestyle, this idea is what has been fed to me for many years, and now I am hooked. It worked, I love mountain dew and buy a lot of it, so do many other guys I know, congratulations Pepsi you win.

Speaking of addictions I am on my GUI modding kick again. This time I am customizing the look of windows with help from Aston and deviantArt. The combinations of skinnable software changes from time to time yet the goal remains the same� ulitmate efficiency combined with unparalleled style. Or maybe I just like being different. With that sadness out of the way I think I will wander around the halls aimlessly for a few minutes. I�m not sure what I intended to accomplish with today�s post, and I doubt you took anything useful from this little session, yet I can imagine that I have served some purpose in enlightening a dim mind somewhere, or befuddling an enlightened mind out there that was caught off guard by my incomprehensible rantings. Remember to always enjoy these Crazy Rants at �TimblyWeb�. We always have that same original flavor, and it has a brand new taste every month.

Where I�m at the weekends really start on Thursday evening, so that would be a good place to start, which is coincidentally where I left off last. I was working on that paper for Brit Lit last Thursday night, and i had a page or two done, not much, but I am quite the procrastinator. Shortly after I wrote that last post, I went to copy the document onto my iPAQ so I could work on it Friday wherever I happened to be. I ended up accidentally deleting the only copy of my paper. I knew I was hosed and decided to call it a night around 3:30 AM. I woke up and went into work at 8:30, told my supervisor what had happened, and she graciously allowed me to take work off for the morning and go work on my paper. I had a little over 2 hours and nothing to start with. I wrote a seven page paper about Poetry and Propaganda in World War I in that short of time. The only question is what kind of grade I got on it.

After turning in my paper I packed up and headed out for the weekend. I had to get a hair-cut and buy a few things, such as some roses for Becca. After that I was on the road for Ames, IA and Iowa State University, the current residence of my girlfriend. Approximately 6 hours later I arrived in Ames and proceeded to have a great weekend with Becca, lots of activities such as a dance as well as plenty of quality time. It�s impossible to even realize how much I missed her throughout last month until she opened that door and I saw her there. Long distance relationships are not the best way to go, but it�s well worth it.

A short six hours back to Kearney, and I was ready for another excitingly tedious week of school. I slept in late Monday morning because my alarm was set for PM instead of AM, no worries though everything worked out fine. I have just now returned from the main campus area, having been there since 9:30 this morning, and I will probably go back later tonight to work in the Mass Comm lab.

Right now I have a few unexpected free hours which I will use in the most productive way possible, watch a movie. I have an itch to see the Metropolis Anime again, it�s been a while. That�s the update on life, the universe and everything as it stands now. This is your resident geek boy signing off.