jotsheet

damn, Tennis, how long can one trip to the grocery store take? the dude spends a fuggin half hour in the produce section, heh. when we finally get to the checkout, i accidentally drop a half gallon of milk, which busts wide open and gushes all over the floor. beautiful. and it just sat there to be walked through (and was) for a solid 10 minutes before one of the lackeys came to mop it up.

ok, granted, i’m a wuss in the gym — i’ll give you that. especially with bench press, i get pissed off that i don’t push enough weight. since i started working out a few months ago, all i’ve wanted to be able to do is sets with 45’s on a side — it’s pretty standard. i’d tried it before and failed, but i figured i’d try again today and have Tennis spot me. boom! 6 solid reps. i felt like a man in the gym for once. that’s 135, so i could probably max out at 165 or so. that’s fairly legitimate. yahoo.

ever wondered about this whole “underscorebleach” bit? here’s your answer.

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hi there. how ya doin?

has anyone else noticed what a No Talent Ass Clown the singer Pink is? how did she even get a record deal? and her voice… ouch.

for my job in the Office of Education, i’m working in a gorgeous old house called Cairncrest (the “cairn” is for Pitcairn, the “crest” for its location on the crest of a hill). now converted into offices, it was once the home of Harold Pitcairn, a man who died in a “gun accident” (probably suicide) many years ago. many now say the house is haunted. there was also a drowning in the pool, which is now filled in, and another death when Harold’s wife accidentally ran over her friend while she was drunk. so, as you might imagine, stories abound of ghost sightings and strange noises. last night, “Erin” took me and some other guys up into the tower, which overlooks all of Bryn Athyn, and into the freaky wine cellar in the basement. it wasn’t very scary, but that’s to be expected with a bunch of teenagers whooping it up. all i can say is that i wouldn’t want to hang around this place by myself at night.

this “reverse egosurfing” page is a neat idea. you put your long lost friend on a page indexed by search engines and include all the relevant information about where you knew them and connections you had. then you hope for them to come find you. (incidentally, that page was written by the father of a girl whom i hooked up with at age 14.)

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well, since i’ve been working here at the Office of Education for a coupla weeks now, i guess it’s about high time i mention what exactly i’ve been doing. the answer is that i’ve been doing a lot of little things around here — stuff with the Web site, research on the net about various things, and other stuff. but the main thing i’ve been working on is a major sound recordings archival project.

over the past 50 years or so, the New Church has maintained a large library of recordings — mostly sermons and religious classes, but other events as well, including plays, commencement addresses, and other recordings. my task is to design a process to convert this huge volume of material (thousands of cassettes and reel tapes) to digital format. i’m doing this with the idea in mind that volunteers, not professionals, will be doing the conversion. i’m also keeping in mind the possibility that in the forseeable future, the digital archive will be offered online for download in MP3 format or listening in a streaming format. so there’s more to consider than you might realize at first.

a very neat piece of the equipment, the Tascam CC-222, is going to make the cassette -> digital conversion a lot easier. it records directly from cassette to CD-R (and vice versa) with the touch of one button. the CC-222 also has analog inputs for recording, allowing for the output of a reel-to-reel to be directly transferred to CD-R.

anyway, the process goes something like this:

1. record cassette/reel to CD-R
2. rip the audio CD to .WAV
3. optional: clean up the .WAV up in Cool Edit
4. optional: burn the mastered .WAV onto a second CD-R
5. save the .WAV as a high quality MP3 for digital archiving

all of this is done with the database in mind, so that in future online applications, it will be easy to produce an e-commerce/download site. it has sooo much potential, but who knows if the money or manpower will materialize.

anyhow, in other computer news, today i came over to the Sound Recordings Library and found that the password for the Win2k box had been changed. i had no way to log in. i called the Help Desk, but that was a waste of time. i decided to take matters into my own hands and hack into the box via a linux bootdisk, and hot damn was it EASY. i downloaded chntpw, wrote the floppy image to a blank disk, booted, followed the directions, selected “Administrator,” and set a new password. SO easy. yay Microsoft!

the devil (220k) has infiltrated the Sound Recordings Library! ha, playing with Cool Edit is fun.

now i’m all tired and shit

whew. i know i’ve already mentioned the heresy of enjoying soccer on TV, but lemme tell ya, playing it is another beast altogether. that shit is TIRING! plus, the game is like, a mystery to me. i don’t know what to do when. or maybe i just physically suck at it. in any case, i was no superstar in my first competitive soccer game since, oh, age 7.

oh, and speaking of soccer (ar-oooooo!), get your act together, Ben, you lazy sonofabitch. jeez. “on aging bands?” more like “really quite an uneventful day, part 2.”

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hmmm.

not feeling like myself at the moment.

this might explain things.

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people in Bryn Athyn have this odd way of using the word “done.” they don’t seem to use it alongside the word “with.” here’s an example:

megansici: so I gotta give it up
megansici: ttyl

and it’s not a mark of lack of education, either; it’s some sort of regional quirk. even highly educated people say “i’m done school.” doesn’t that sound retarded?

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just had a good conversation with anna marie after getting a good e-mail from her. i feel better about things. i’m glad she called me. it’s hard for her to open up, but i want so much to help her. i know i can’t push it — i can’t fight her battles. but i miss her and i want her to be happy.

oh, and people have been asking me if i am ok. i’m fine. i am just sad and frustrated that i can’t help more. pray for a lonely girl in Taiwan, not me.

don’t forget the two promises, hon.

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again, not much to say. i am out in limbo, trapped in my head, full of worries and doubts. distance, in all its forms. but work is going well. i’ll write more about it sometime later.

look ma, you fund racism with that tuition check.

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