Life should have a fast-forward button.

Seriously, someone get on that.

Not a huge amount to report right now. Things are changing for me, but slowly. I'm in the opening stages of writing a new, much better chapter of my life, but it's taking time. I'm looking for work, getting ready for a move, and cutting back on school to accommodate. Reconnecting with the love of my life has changed everything; I have a new purpose now, and something phenomenal to look forward to. Even now while things are still in flux I'm happier than I can ever remember being.

For now I'm just plugging along in my client-side JavaScript and basic networking courses and trying to find a job. Filling the gaps by spending every possible minute with Jen and practicing bass when I can't be with her. She's tuned me into some amazing bands I might not have found otherwise, like The Radio Dept, The Libertines, Damien Rice, and Yeah Yeah Yeahs. My secondary hard drive is rapidly filling up with new music and videos.

I'm also still trying to help with FABA! in the limited ways I'm able. I'll be designing a flier for the resurrected FABA! Bash soon, and have finally gotten hold of a copy of Photoshop 7 to help with that. I realized not long ago that there's only so much I can do with Paint.NET and GIMP, and I think I've hit that ceiling. Simple things like the transform tools I took for granted just don't seem to exist in those apps, and I'm tired of jumping through hoops to do shit that Photoshop makes easy. Now I just need Illustrator and Dreamweaver...

The internet owns me.

Bah, these kids and their techno-whatever.

So I was finally peer-pressured into setting up my own half-assed blip in the MySpace continuum. "Everybody has one," they said, so like a good doggie, I obeyed. It's been a decent time-waster, if nothing else. And sorting through the spam friend requests is pretty entertaining. I mean it was, until the sixth one in two days, after which I started filtering them.

I'm in a weird head-space about school this semester. The only course I'm taking that I have even the slightest interest in is the client-side JavaScript programming class, and it only meets once a week. The networking course would be interesting if it weren't so frustrating that it's three hours long and taught by a total dingbat. I just want to get down to the really fun, challenging stuff, but for now I'm slogging through the requirements. Meanwhile, Real Life is hammering on my door, I'm busy trying to find a job that will fit with my schedule, and school is suddenly more of a burden than an opportunity.

Whatever. I started looking into the recent news about Mozilla hiring some guys from something called Humanized, and found a beautiful bit of programming they've written called Enso. I installed Enso Launcher this afternoon and I'm already addicted to it. If you meet the minimum recommended nerd requirements, be sure to check it out.

Speaking of which, apparently I don't meet the requirements for xkcd. I mean, I get it. But I don't think it's funny. I think it's one of those things where you're supposed to love it if you have the dork-cred, because you can water-cooler how cool it is with your fellow techies. But honestly, do we really need an unfunny, stick-figure, hardcore-geek version of Penny Arcade? Anyone up for that? Thought not.

Killing time.

Best post ever.

I'm in wait mode lately. Waiting for the semester to start Monday, waiting for some personal things to resolve themselves (which has been a lot harder). Waiting for xmas to finally end. All the decorations are back in storage, but there's still a big damn tree in the living room and pine needles everywhere. I'd been distracting myself by going out every day, but lately I've just been holed up with my computer and my bass. Ran out Friday to get some things done, relaxed for a while over a latte at MO's Edge. After hitting up the last three, I finally missed an open-mic at Newby's this week. I'll probably go next Tuesday after my late networking class, just for the distraction.

I'm loving this Deftones B-Sides record I bought the other day. Favorite track by far is "The Chauffeur," a Duran Duran cover, of all things. The DVD is little more than a collection of their videos through the self-titled album, but the brief interstitial material is interesting and well done. It could probably have been released on its own.

Picked out the basslines to a few more Radiohead and Weezer songs. Again: bored. Hell, I'm bored out of my mind just writing this, don't tell me you're still reading. Go do something more productive, like emptying the lint trap on the dryer, or, I dunno, staring at your phone until it rings. Just pretend this post wasn't written. That's what I'm doing.

Pointless post.

Bored? So am I. Here's something to read.

Spent some xmas gift-card goodness on, among other things, a giant, decent-if-not-great pair of over-ear headphones. They have a switch that lowers the bass; I don't know who that's for. Half the point of buying a good set of cans is to get some appreciable bass, no?

Couple days later I went by Cat's expressly to blow some cash, and found myself holding two records called B-Sides & Rarities, one by Cake and one by Deftones. Although I do have a man-crush on Cake's music, and despite the fact that the Deftones record cost twice as much, that's the one I bought. I'll get the Cake LP eventually, until then I'm satisfied. Deftones is just a brilliant fucking band, and this is a great set (CD, DVD, booklet/mini-photo album). Almost picked up a Damien Rice album while I was there, but I think Jen may already have it. Need to check her library.

Quick Steam update. Valve's landed another major developer in Rockstar Games. The entire Rockstar catalog is live, check it out if you're a PC snob like me. GTA San Andreas is one of my all-time favorite PC games, console-origins be damned. When and if some more disposable cash comes my way I'd like to finally get around to checking out the Max Payne series.

Oh, I thought this was funny. So there's a drug store in Raleigh I go to sometimes. There's an older black lady who works the register in the evenings, and she used to bust my ass about my ID before I got my new license. I get it, I look way younger than my 31 years, and my old ID was nine years old, beat up, and the picture didn't really look like me anymore. But she would go all out, looking for a second opinion on it, asking for secondary ID, the whole deal. Just for a damn pack of smokes. This happened at least a half-dozen times. At a certain point you'd think she would fucking remember me, but no.

Anyway I went in there tonight. I'm really not a douchebag, but I was definitely wearing a douchebag's uniform: baggy jeans, a black knit cap with a big skull printed on it, and a bright orange t-shirt that says 'Show me your Titties' (don't ask). Guess who was working the register. I walked up dressed like a dick, and she was clearly already unhappy with me, and proceeded to buy nothing but beer, cigarettes, and condoms. I don't know why, but there was something liberating about being, superficially, a complete and utter asshole for once. That's so not who I am, but I think I could grow to like at least pretending to be one every now and then.

Netscape is dead.

The world shrugs and moves on.

I meant to bring this up a few days ago, but I've been too busy doing things that matter. AOL has officially pulled the plug on the resurrected Netscape project. This would have been a huge story several years ago, but come on. Those of us who keep up with this sort of thing are not even remotely surprised, and those who don't have no idea why this would ever have been newsworthy. Netscape 6 was a mess, and is really only noteworthy for how sad it made those of us who remember when Netscape far outclassed Internet Explorer, and for ultimately leading to the creation of Phoenix, the browser that would become Firefox. Subsequent versions failed for various reasons, several outside of the Netscape team's control, but the bottom line is that this browser has been irrelevant for years.

The resurrected versions published recently by AOL were rebranded editions Firefox 1.x, loaded down with entirely unnecessary features (which is exactly what doomed Netscape Communicator in the first place) and an ungodly UI that made early versions of Opera look friendly. Even relaunching it as a slimmer, less cluttered version with the old, once beloved Navigator name didn't work, as it was still essentially Firefox with a few extensions and a big, fat pile of links to Netscape and AOL-hosted sites. Basically, no one other than nostalgics cared, and it turns out that's not a very profitable business model.

Phrases like, "end of an era," are showing up in articles about this news, but the truth is the Netscape era ended long ago. Don't get me wrong, I loved Netscape, and I continued to use it for some time after the rest of the world had moved on. But the name "Netscape" is a mirage; its spiritual successors are Firefox and Seamonkey, not the marketing tactic that name became.