I think I must be kinda tired. I am not sure because I have had some sugar and salt and stuff tonight, and I had a nice hour and a half nap this afternoon around 6. The reason I that I have concluded I must be tired is my inability to put certain words into umm� ya know� a paper. Like, with typing and stuff. There is this one word that I know but cannot seem to bring into my concious mind. It something that means �a lot� or wait� maybe it was kinda like the word hyperbole. I hope that I can come up with it and keep jotting down useless stuff back into that word document I have open right now. I am post this because I needed a change for a minute to free up� wait, I just thought of that word, it�s exageration. I don�t know if that is the proper way to spell that word so� let me check for a sec� ah, it has two �g�s so it should be spelled exaggeration. Yeah, that looks right. Well, my paper is supposed to be about Poetry and Propaganda in World War I. There is a reason that college is not for everyone. I think I�m losing my train of thought. Oh, yeah, defeatism, �The stage at which you realize that this paper is not going to get done tonight and your grade in this worthless class may not be so great.� Coming to terms with academic defeat requires the use of many� um, terms. In conclusion I would like to state that Kyle �The Yellow Dart� Smith may have the right idea.

Nothing that I can write here will accurately represent what I am feeling. I have a lot of things to think about, a lot of priorities that I need to sort out, and some other deep questions that are distracting me from almost everything. Usually I can compartmentalize my life and deal with one problem at a time. Right now I don�t know what to do or say. I have something that I could post about a certain movie, but it would not be a good idea to write anything until I am certain where my opinion stands on it. I should probably leave it at that before I say something stupid and am misunderstood. Do not fear that I will forget about this site, I will return soon.

There was a great deal on 17? Flat Panel monitors last night. My friend who is also my boss discovered and quickly ordered a 17? Samsung LCD monitor last night from CompUSA for only $200. Yeah, pick your jaw up off your desk. It was listed as out of stock on their website, but he called their 800 number and they said they had a couple left. So he ordered right away. Most other websites have been listing these models with the built in TV tuners at over $600. We looked again today and the listing is nowhere to be found.

In an unrelated story� the campus lost power for a little bit around 5:00 this morning and so my alarm clock was reset. Therefore, I missed my first class of the day. I should go and talk to the professor about this; hopefully he�s understanding about it.

If you are a college student you probably know about the viruses that have been running rampant lately and have probably had to put up with some jerk from the IT department at your college who comes in to mess with your computer because you might have a virus. Well, I get to be that jerk. Our campus, along with many others has been forced to shut off internet connections for many people and now we are going through each dorm and checking every 2k or XP computer for the virus and patching those that are vulnerable. Not exactly fun for anyone. I could have more to say about the inherent disorganization that is prevalent in a cuniversity, yet I don�t feel like discussing it any further. The entire endeavor of strengthening security seems ultimately futile because of the students like me who are too clever for their own good. Far too many of these technologically clever students despise authority and the rules that make the entire system work, instead of working with the Powers That Be. Remember kids, if you can�t beat them, join them.

The title of today�s little post is what I just heard from one of my fellow IT helpdesk technicians. Reformatting is usually the easiest solution, and often the most fun way of punishing stupid people that keep on bothering you. Most useful solutions in life seem to consist of scrapping what you have right now and starting over from the beginning.

I regret not informing legions of raving fans of every nuance of my life, from the past few days. I suppose the best place to start would be where I left off. My last post was fun because it involved some research. I ended up needing an editorial for my media writing class on friday, and didn�t feel like writing one so I simply copied my post about file sharing, and modified it slightly. The only problem is that it is a little too long, image that, me being long winded. I realized that blogging is the naturally ultimate form of editorial commentary.

This weekend was busy, friday consisted of watching several movies and, I cannot really remember what else happened. For a few hours on Saturday night and into Sunday morning myself and a few friends stood around the fountain and tossed a frisbee around. Then my roomate and i purchased a 25? TV for a really good price from wal-mart. Our room is now the official movie room for our group of friends.

I really would like to tell you all more about my fun and exciting life, such as the paintball game I played yesterday afternoon, but I am done with work for the evening. So see ya later folks.

The message that I wish to shout to the Music Recording Industry is this, GET REAL! That sound�s good, but the more I think about it I wonder what that term really means. I guess �get real� is just a slang term that roughly translates to �Evaluate your current actions, and compare them with the trends that exist in reality; and try to see things from other people�s perspective.� The debate on internet music sharing has gone on for a long time and there are a great many arguments for and against both sides of the issue. I am generally willing to accept that downloading music from peer to peer networks without paying for it is an infringement of copyright laws. Most of those laws were forced through our congress by the Recording Industry itself, yet at least the core of these laws follows the spirit of copyright laws from the past. These issues are not what I want to focus on. I would simply like to point out that it is too late for the Recording Industry (RIAA) in it�s current state. The general public likes the new technology and want�s to get their music off the internet and be able to burn their songs to CDs and listen on their portable MP3 players. The trend is already too big for the RIAA to put down. The recording industry will either adapt and provide consumers with what they want or they will cease to be the source of music for the general public.

I salute the apple music store for it�s attempt at providing consumers with a reasonable alternative to file swapping programs. There are a few options for buying music to download on the Windows PC but they suffer from the technical inferiority and inconvenience of the Windows Media format. The music industry chose this format because of the Digital Rights Managemet (DRM) features. These songs never really belong to you, they must be played with proprientary software from Microsoft, and check a server everytime you want to listen, move, copy, or burn the song. In certain instances, you buy a subscription for permission to listen to your music. If you ever cancel your account with pressplay you lose all the songs you purchased. I do not wish to use any of these services until I can pay

I have a quick anecdot e to relate to all of you. I was in the Student Union today buying a couple text books that I have delayed in purchaseing for the past week or two, when I walk out of the book store I see a camera-man and some lights. I was intending to go over to that part of the union and purchase a nice steaming hot Mocha from the campus starbucks anyways, so I headed over to see what was up. I realize that the camera man is setting up outside of the starbucks, as I approach a lady that works in the campus PR office tells me that I get to be in a commercial shoot. I knew this lady because I had worked on her computer several times through my job with the campus IT Helpdesk. So apperantly I will appear in a commercial on the Discovery channel in November or December. I have no idea what this commercial is for or why the Discovery channel would be interested in our student union, but hey, it seems pretty cool to me.

That�s my exciting news for today, a potential national TV appearence and chinese food all in one day. Life is good.

This is the good life. I have come so far and done so little in the years that I have been making websites. I started out with designing in MS Word and exporting to HTML. Through a long process of trial and error I eventually learned to code HTML in the raw. The thing about learning something like that on your own is that certain important things slip through the cracks in your knowledge. Now, though, it seems as though some of the fun in web-design has been lost to me. I now use photoshop and dreamweaver to do most of the tough work for designing my sites. True, they look much better than ever in the past, but it still feels almost lazy. Now I am using TypePad for a content management system, and honestly I love it. There are so many great features here that I have missed in the past, now I feel complete.

An interesting note on how this site is sitting. A year ago I was using my personal computer as a server and utilizing a dynamic dns service that redirected sirtimbly.d2g.com to my machine, I then moved to sirtimbly.dhbit.ca, and the old d2g domain points there now. Now, since the downfall of Bluepaw on the dhbit server, that address redirects to sirtimbly.typepad.com. Crazy situations that I get myself into, eh.

Regarding the changes you will see around here, I am now allowing a few other people to be guest authors on this site. That means sometimes a post will appear that is written by one of my friends. The post just below this one is the work of Jonny T. He seems to be making a point of alienating whatever audience I might gather here. Another new feature is the ability to post comments on the rants. Enjoy, but remember that I still have to power to delete anything that gets posted which I deem innapropriate. If you want freedom of speech get your own blog.

There are two photo albums linked over there on the right side. I hope to upload some more of my pictures soon, perhaps even make a sort of portfolio of my digital artwork. The possibilities for the site here are almost limitless.

Moving on to what has been happening with my life lately, I am still a sophomore at UNK and am soooo very close to being a junior that it isn�t even funny. Classes are interesting this year, most of my time is spent on classes in my major. This campus is just small enough that by the time you get into the upper level courses of your major you know just about everyone in your class. I still work at the IT Helpdesk with some good buddies. Life in the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity is good and always interesting. I am still involved wtih Campus Crusade for Christ and enjoy all the work that goes into the weekly meetings.

It�s time for me to sign off and maybe play some games. I promise I will start posting more regularly for your entertainment, or torture, whatever you like to think of this as.

I would like to say hello to the five nerds in their basements who actually read this page. I am Jon, childhood friend and accomplice of Tim. I might be showing up from time to time with some crazy rants, and hopefully correcting the logic of the good Sir Timbly. Well, I have to do some Java programming now, so I better call it quits. This rant thing could be fun.

Back to the scholastic grindstone, coarse and painful though it may be. This means that I have writing classes again, and that I will be producing literary material of dubious quality on a regular basis for professors that will probably regret my decision to attend college in Nebraska.

So in the effort to further my apathetic liberal arts education, I will present you with my short writing assignments when I turn them in, or whenever I think about it. This is the first writing peice for my �Writing for the Media� class, we had about 45 minutes in the lab on friday to write this. It could be about whatever we wanted to write about. She just wanted samples of our writing to guage our grammar level. I chose to write something that sounds really deep and profound but ends up by mocking its own nature.

�

Timothy Bendt

JMC 318

The frustrations of life are complicated and numerous. Each person faces a struggle between their desires and their circumstances. Our struggles often go unnoticed by the outside world. From what little of life and the universe that I have observed, I conclude that the common symptom of human struggle is the efforts that we expend in hiding it from the rest of the world.

Cultural influence and personal life experiences lead us to cover all that is closest to our hearts, our greatest prides, our deepest joys, the most terrifying fear, and the sharpest pain. Suppressing these portions of our true identity hide what we are from the people around us. It is perfectly acceptable, and utterly ignored, that each person around us is presenting a false two-dimensional image of who they are. Sometimes a dose of truth shapes our mask, but often we simply show the world what we want them to see.

For many the greatest fears are that they would be discovered as an imposter in their own life. We maintain the façade of coolness in order to protect ourselves from the pain that comes when our lives are open to another person’s sight. For many men some form of shame drives them to live a life that is opposite to their true nature. Merely from my own observation I believe that many women hide behind a mask of feigned perfection for some reasons that I will likely never understand. As with all things relating to women, my comprehension is about a millimeter thick.

Dimensions are given to another person’s soul. In the English language we refer to a person as deep or shallow. I believe that we are referring to the thickness of a person’s shell. A shallow person allows only the most obvious emotions to show through, and rarely talk about anything beyond light conversation about their favorite sport, or another person’s problems. A deep person is a person that appears to have some concern for the more important aspects of life and emotion.

We all build up a shield around our lives and prevent others from getting close to us. It takes different forms for each, because it attempts to cover a different pain or fear for each one of us. Though I find that writing is an effective way to organize the chaotic thoughts that stream through my consciousness, I still feel like I am maintaining a shield around myself. Writers may open up a vein and pour themselves into their work, but that work is still only as revealing as they wish it to be.

To a certain extent writing is the most impersonal way to communicate some extremely personal concepts. The appearance of deepness in all essays is still mostly a trick of smoke and mirrors that we show the world in a vain attempt to say, “Hey look at me! I am important!�? The greatest pitfall that a writer faces is becoming so self-important that you find your soul’s validation through the words that you put on paper.

Enjoy the fresh air in this new location. I got so sick of not having my blog up and running that I switched over to this site. Who knows if I will stay here. This is what you might call a first post. I will hopefully be transferring all my old posts over and back-dating them. That was one of the great things about this site. Moveable Type seems to be very powerful. Hopefully I will be able to fully express myself in a linguistic as well as artistic manner through this site. I am a very dangerous person when I have a purpose and funds.

As for now, I think I will get back to the coding that will be behind this site. This is what the weekends are for after all.

Some things that I still need to do�

-set up archives of posts from older sites

-set up photo albums

-fine tune the design a great deal

Space exploration is an interesting issue and can be mutch more controversial than is first suspected when beginning to contemplate the issue. It was great when the US was able to make it to the moon this month 32 years ago (I will not debate wether or not we actually went to the moon, its not worth the headache). Unfortunately as soon as the Apollo program ended, our manned exploration of space program became very short sighted. It was great when we got the now aging obese shuttles, but they are limited to orbital operations� we have made a great number of orbital missions each year but the manned space station program is way behind all predictions from several decades ago. Finally the ISS (Space Station Alpha) is forming despite the problems with getting completed modules from the decaying former USSR.

Now on to the controversy: It seems to many people that we should be spending the massive amounts of money that are sunk into NASA on programs back home. They feel that these exploration projects accomplish nothing and are a waste of tax-payer�s dollars. This view does not take into account the future possibilities, once there is an infrastructure in orbit that can provide revenue to companies more business will recognize the uses of space operations. If we could get a base on the moon we would be able to mine minerals for use in orbital construction. It may in fact take a great deal of time for this to come around but the advent of space tourism may assist with this a great deal. I can not elaborate on this any longer to find out more read the book The Kinsman Saga (Millenium) by Ben Bova, also Luis L�Amour has published essays on this subject.

I am sure that many of you were wondering if I was dead. Well, I seem to be very alive. My brain did not explode while trying to comprehend the Matrix Reloaded. That would have made it a little difficult to post any more rants. I have simply been very busy this summer with work and spending lots of time with Becca. My time online has dropped off considerably because of this. Another reason for the tardiness of my tirades is that now there seems to be a few problems involved with a ton of upgrades that have been done to the server I am on. These have been mostly sorted out now, but new bugs tend to crop up when least expected.

I ended up getting a huge number of hours last week when I worked the CMN telethon here in town. 68 hours is a lot since I am only a part-timer at the local TV station. Getting a lot of hours really wears me out but allows me to do fun stuff later, and helps me afford college next year.

I am taking an online course this summer in Physical Science through the local community college. This class is mainly the painful elaboration of the obvious. But I should learn something during the summer, and earn a few credits. I have hopes for a different job later on this year but it is starting to look bleak, so I may have to stick with my current job and add on an internship to make up for it.

I plan on going to valley fair this weekend. That should be sweet. And later in the summer I will be going to Sonshine and will get to listen to some awesome bands. All in all this summer should continue to be fun despite anything. Even the likelihood that I will be working the morning shows for a while yet cannot dampen my spirits.

I expect to revamp the site somewhere around the end of June, just in case I don’t post again between now and then. I don’t really have the free time or energy to wax philosophical all the time.