- news from 1999...
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12M/25D/99Y: NASDAQ 4000. Amazing. Merry Christmas. I already
got all I wanted as far as gifts go, and it came in the form of a woman.
I'm off to Sweden in a few days, too, so things will be even more hectic
with Y2K, packing, eating, unwrapping, watching the market finish off an
amazing year with low-volume craziness. Let's wish for a terrible
Christmas for Mr. John Rocker, shall we?
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12M/11D/99Y: I just realized that I've been a dot com longer than almost all the companies
you hear about today, having obtained this domain in '96. Where's MY screamer IPO?
Good article
on Internet Initiative Japan at TheStreet.com. It's my favorite stock right now.
I just wish I knew a few months ago what I know now. Longs: Ditech, Accrue, Internet
Initiative Japan, E*Trade, Proxicom, TenFold, ECCS.
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12M/09D/99Y: ClearStation
is my new favorite site. The Charles Barkley show continues -- this time
he's injured and has to retire. Kind of sad, but hey, he talked too much.
Two new Soapboxes: one on the state of piracy
and one on the state of myself. Woohoo, I
go home tomorrow!! Three finals today almost killed me.
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11M/29D/99Y: The Cowboys delightfully surprise. :)
Back from Turkey Holiday and have another two weeks or so
of skewl left before Christmas. Soapbox
detailing the recent episode with our complex's night watchman, who crumbled
under the pressure of two roommates who were RIGHT.
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11M/23D/99Y: Soapbox
on Microsoft's bad date with the government. Have a nice
Thanksgiving, everyone, and don't get your hopes up too much
watching the Cowboys blow another football game, on Turkey
Day.
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11M/17D/99Y: Being John Malkovich is a fucking
excellent movie; a pleasant surprise for a movie-watching
excursion. Interesting things: the first Christian
action shooter game (heh), Disney must halt using that
ultra-annoying go.com
logo, and nopiracy.com
is busy teaching kids that laws, no matter how irrelevant,
impractical, and outdated they are, are still enforceable.
I'm very happy to see the Quake 3 Arena demo test still
manages to carry on the Quake atmosphere and style. I NUB it!
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11M/13D/99Y: The market rebounded after some heavy
selling early in the morning... Extremely strong, and Qualcomm
stock is going nuts. There's much money to be made going
long on Naz stocks right now. :P Shaq got in
a fight
with Charles Barkley. Would someone tell me why everyone
thinks Barkley is so good? Iverson and Shaq are right about
him -- he's a loser.
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11M/08D/99Y: Finally closed out my EBAY short once it
gave me the opportunity, and now I am entering longs in
undervalued stocks tomorrow. Will the bull
keep running day in and day out, or does this
post have current sentiment right? Is Microsoft invincible? It was
barely dented on Wall Street today.
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11M/04D/99Y: Amazon.com Soapbox, and
just in time, too. I see
the Rangers did exactly the opposite of what Raphael Palmeiro
asked for -- they traded Juan Gonzalez in order to pick up some
useless players from the Tigers. What boneheads! :P And what's
worse, Pistol Petey got injured again...but at least Agassi took
his place at #1.
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11M/01D/99Y: Hope you all had a good Halloween. Is this the
part where I chime in about how dumb Halloween is? I think I'll
leave that to other cookie-cutter sites and just enjoy the festivities
on my own. New Soapbox, entitled "Roots and
Reintegration". Now I SERIOUSLY have more time to write...
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10M/29D/99Y: "Gay panic" is such a pathetic defense. What's
more sad? Using psychological distress as an excuse for a terrible
crime, or lying that you were molested as a child just to argue
your innocence? If these guys were trying to assert their manhood,
maybe they should step up and take responsibility for the fact
that they KILLED someone.
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10M/28D/99Y: Is it just me, or do a lot of articles these
days contain "Dutch tulip mania" and "South Sea bubble"? Salon has
a
good article about how the dot-com generation is ruining
San Francisco. In my line of work, I'm surrounded by pretentious,
spoiled, bull market kiddies who throw their overvalued salaries
at net stocks and get even more money back. Arguably, I'm
one of them. At least I'm concerned, and do my research. At
least I despise the whole culture already. I disconnected myself
from it years ago. Bill
Fleckenstein, militant bear, had something funny to say: "The red-hot
index was none other than the bank stock index, up about 6 percent
in the early going, which was about where it closed. Maybe all of
these financial stocks should merge and we'll have one company.
We can call it the Intergalactic, Integrated Financial Supermarket."
One of his big things is how all this "new era" talk is just
complacency and blindness encountered just before crashes in years
long past. I don't know, but maybe it's just smart to be dumb right now.
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10M/27D/99Y: Fight Club proves how amazing Brad Pitt and
David Fincher are together. Few movies I've seen have so much
attitude. I loved it. In other news, I stopped working to concentrate on school. I've been
smiling all day.
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10M/21D/99Y: Excuse me, but WHY did we ever trade Rafael
Palmeiro away in the first place?? THANK you for saying what
fans have been saying for years. "Telling
each individual man to 'Suck it up' is not particularly helpful,
to say the least." Yeah! People never stop to think about what's
been happening to the male psyche.
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10M/18D/99Y: Friday's Harsh Realm was actually an improvement
and, dare I say it, fun to watch. Wow. Now, if only the Red Sox and
Mets could stage momentous comebacks and make the World Series at
least mildly interesting...
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10M/14D/99Y: Correlation
between Dow in 1929 and in 1999. This
article states, "The most bearish analysts point to similarities
between today's environment and the 1929 and 1987 pre-crash periods,
and note that in both of those years, stocks crashed exactly 55 days
after the Dow hit a peak. This year, as in 1987, the 55th day after
the peak would be Oct. 19 -- next Tuesday." It qualifies this
by saying, "Many analysts note that interest rates were far higher
in 1987. Moreover, the reasons for the market's crash in that
year ... had much to do with portfolio managers' computerized
selling that snowballed." Apple crushed earnings estimates today.
While people may see this as positive, Apple already warned a few
weeks ago or so that it wouldn't meet earlier estimates, so estimates
were revised downwards. Will short-term memory prolong complacency? Apple,
yet another victim to plunging breadth. The moment of truth is
coming...will the bulls manage to defend their ground?
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10M/13D/99Y: Yes, it IS
October. Did
you forget? Uh oh.
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10M/12D/99Y: It's 6AM. Here's a bitchy review of
Harsh Realm, Chris
Carter's latest, á la the reviewers attacked
in September 26th's 'Box.
Need another reason why the Internet is so cool? It lets you
get programs like Virtual
TurnTable, which is da shit! Mix songs (even in MP3 format)
together seamlessly and without blips, slow/speed up tempo,
fade in/out, anything you need to put together a DJ mix. My
roommate actually used this program to DJ a party, and he brought
the house down... One of the best programs to come out in a LONG
time. Also cool is this
normalization plugin for WinAmp (AND Virtual TurnTable, since it
can use WinAmp plugins). It will normalize the volume of all
your tracks, for tracks that were encoded at too high or too low
a volume. Also, you don't need to worry about adjusting
the volume while you're busy DJ'ing. I love the 'Net. I want
to have its baby. (to borrow from AmeriTrade's latest commercial)
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10M/10D/99Y: New 'Box, sure to
garner e-mails from people who don't give a shit and rarely
communicate except for those rare times when they're worried
they're the ones being referred to. Funny stuff... What's with
the Rangers? They play like little girls whenever they meet up
with the Yanks. Perhaps you've read this: Unplugged!
The Biggest Hack in History. There's something scary about
this list and
I think it's how many votes there are total...
She always makes me happy.
Perhaps some first impressions on Harsh Realm soon.
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10M/08D/99Y: CNBC.com
has a nice audio feed of the popular financial channel... Work
is overrunning my life right now, leaving no time for
anything fairly worthwhile. Sorry. Soapboxes are forthcoming...
Scottie was traded by the Rockets and the big bald loser Barkley,
and the Rangers are folding completely against the Yankees. Sad,
sad, sad.
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10M/03D/99Y: I was skeptical going in, since people
were saying it was "very good", but American Beauty was an
amazing film. I was pleasantly surprised, and quite satisfied
after seeing it. Spacey refines his role as ultimate badass
of Hollywood. Oh, and by the way, at benturner.com, we're
wishing for a Christmas of love, baby, yeah! That's all
I want under my tree.
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10M/01D/99Y: I am SO glad September is over with.
The final day of the month tried its best to kill me. No
dice, though, Chumpy.
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09M/28D/99Y: Now all the market analysts are
bearish. Ugh. Changing with the wind! At least I
was right about the Sept. 10th update. Two Soapboxes
have been posted: one on clichéd
reviews, the other on bandwidth.
Some cool sites: The Hunger
Site, offering donated food for each daily click you submit;
yugop.com, an awesome
Flash site currently making its rounds through the
web designer community (ooh, look, they move and flash!);
32-bit URLs,
an oldie but goodie. Don't forget that you can also
reach benturner.com at http://3484428550/.
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09M/21D/99Y: Aww, poor
Time Warner! One day, these digital monopolies will
be crushed, and I will rejoice. I've been collecting
ideas for Soapboxes -- just need to find time to write
them. Apple is getting thrashed in after hours trading
after posting an earnings
warning. 3dfx got thrashed for an inside quote
saying their next product won't come out for the Christmas
season. And where's Intel's new .18 micron 64-bit chips?
Come on guys, release stuff ON TIME. Check it out!
$5000 Swiss
banking accounts! I like the second to last paragraph,
stating the SEC will block online trading using these
accounts. Damn! ;)
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09M/11D/99Y: YAHOO! Andre Agassi and Todd Martin
reach the finals of the US Open, and Serena Williams
beats Martina Hingis in straight sets to win the
championship!! My predictions were wrong, but this is
even better! What a great year for tennis! Let's hear
Hingis's retort now.
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09M/10D/99Y: If I know anything about the market
at all, the market will reverse next week. Now it will
continue to break new highs, making me look like a fool.
At any rate, the 200th Soapbox
has been posted.
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09M/09D/99Y: Didn't want to post the latest
Soapbox yet, but since it's late and I can't write one
tonight, I'll just throw up this one, which is just a
short afterword written by Ray Bradbury for
Fahrenheit 451. The reason I wanted to wait
to post the 'Boxes was because the next Soapbox will be my
200th!! Woohoo! That's 200 weeks of blood, sweat, and tears.
It makes me sniffly to think about it. Check out this
Star
Wars theory. And what's up with Chris Carter's new show,
Harsh Realm? Can it possibly fill Millennium's shoes?
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09M/03D/99Y: I predicted that the US Open would
have no surprises, with Davenport and Sampras looking
strong going into the tournament. But then Pete gets
injured! That bites. Now some hack is going to win.
I don't know if Rafter or Agassi can seize the opportunity.
This
article has been going around today -- possible link between
Microsoft and the NSA, for crypto purposes?
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08M/31D/99Y: As usual for this time of the year, I've
dropped off the face of the earth, much to the chagrin of my
Soapbox. My senior year started last
week and Southwestern Bell has once again bungled up the phone
line installations. Combine that with gaming, working, clubbing,
and trading, and this is one little neglected site. Sorry.
Fun stuff: the iBrator,
Old Man Murray's Asheron's
Call beta testing log.
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08M/15D/99Y: This
article on the Internet Auditing Project demands your attention.
Of particular interest are both the IDDN idea proposal and the
description of one of the hacking attempts they received in
the process of their work. Very fucking cool. I spooge.
Rest.
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08M/14D/99Y: RHAT was EXCEEDINGLY strong, posting
three big up days. I suppose it helps if there's a lot
of fresh money (from computer geeks) and also an upswinging
market. I wish I had the guts to buy $30 ago! New Soapbox
on what games I'd like to
see. Funny stuff: mullet
categorization. Summer's almost over, and I'm happy
with what I've accomplished! Well, okay, that's not
ENTIRELY true...
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08M/08D/99Y: My father, Frederick Turner, has a bunch
of new books coming out soon. Hadean Eclogues (a
collection of poems, many of which I've read and enjoyed --
it's like a blend between modern everyday life and the near
untouchable styles of poets like Wordsworth and P. Shelley)
and Biopoetics: Evolutionary Explorations in the
Arts are both already out, via
Amazon.com (he's listed
as "Frederick Turner"). I can't link to the search results
there because Amazon.com doesn't allow it. Pretty dumb of
them, huh?
Coming soon: Shakespeare's Twenty-First Century Economics: The Morality
of Love and Money as well as The Iron Blue Vault (a
collection of poems by Attila Jozsef translated with the help
of his colleague Zsuzsanna Ozsvath). Fred's so p1mp, is he
not? ;) I also need to update Fred's web site.
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08M/07D/99Y: Soapbox
on governments versus the Internet and crypto. I've almost
finished Mary Freeman's site (just a couple more things to add),
so go
visit it and write her to say hello!
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07M/30D/99Y: Week July 18th's Soapbox
reports Ben Turner's (NYSE: FUQD) thoughts on Red Hat's upcoming IPO and how the
stock market and open source advocates are hitting it off just SO well!
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07M/26D/99Y: 'Box
for the week of July 25th. Got a Xentor TNT2 Ultra and have been
tweaking it to make sure it won't overheat or anything. I set up
dual monitors. First major test of it is tomorrow. I had problems
at first, but discovered the "Init video" setting in the BIOS, allowing
me to specify AGP as my primary video slot. For anyone wishing
to try out multiple monitors in Windows, read
this page on
some technical issues of multiple monitors. It answered some of
the questions I wasn't able to find anywhere else on the 'Net.
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07M/22D/99Y: Soapbox
for the week of July 11th. Running a little behind; bear with me.
Watch Steve
Jobs's Apple keynote speech -- Jobs is always worth watching.
Where's the QuickTime version of the footage?
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07M/15D/99Y: What I am listening to: Atari Teenage
Riot's 60 Second Wipeout, 187's When Worlds Collide. What I am
playing: Hidden & Dangerous, Kingpin. What I am reading:
Contrary Investing by Band, On the Genealogy of Morals by Nietzsche
(STILL). What I am working on: summer courses, Mary Freeman's
The Muse, The Official Austin Powers Collector's Club. Women I am
loving: Anna. Yes, that's right.
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07M/10D/99Y: Got my 19" monitor today. UPS was kind enough to
leave it out on the doorstep in the heat so anyone could've stolen it
had they been so fortunate. Monitor had no problems being detected
and all I had to do was get the small driver file off Hitachi's site
to get the newest driver and I was in business. This monitor is truly
a joy to have! Running full-screen video on it is amazing. If you buy
a monitor, I would STRONGLY recommend you get at least a 19"... Link
of the day is the CAP
Alert review of South Park, done by a site that reviews movies for
content that is dangerous to kids and blasphemous to God. When you're
done laughing, go to the table of contents and read their other movie
reviews. Hands-down, it's one of the funniest things I've read in awhile.
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07M/08D/99Y: I have this
to say in this week's Soapbox. You know, just when I plug David Brin,
he goes all pissy and seeks to milk Star Wars for exposure: see what
he wrote
for Salon.com (yes, I know it's an old link, but I didn't get around
to posting it until now). Is Brin just an unfunny, stuck-up version of
Weird Al, looking to catch the next wave? I ordered a 19" Hitachi 751
monitor. Ooh, baby... It's gonna be shweet! And I'm vying for a dual
monitor setup, too. Finally, this hilarious link courtesy of Cameron
Barrett: old people
suck.
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06M/27D/99Y: Hmm, I'd best not get behind on Soapboxes again...
A new one posted, "On Relationships
with Women". Ooh...steamy, sexy, intriguing! I'd still rather
you read the Soapbox on my bid
to make it onto next season's "The Real World" though. :p The
Trader's Toolbox
has tons of useful links for learning more about the market...
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06M/23D/99Y: Where am I? I'm working. Getting plenty of
projects to work on, which keeps me busy. And right now, I need
that focus to keep from being distracted. The Phantom Menace is
now #24 on the
inflation-adjusted
top 100 grossing movies list. Amazing, given the short time it's
been out, and considering most of the movies at the top of the list
have been re-released in theatres. I've still only seen it once.
Review Finder was invaluable
for helping me find reviews on scanners. Use it!
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06M/19D/99Y: San Antonio Spurs looking for the sweep,
Dallas Stars trying to close the series out tonight, Texas Rangers
in first place, Wimbledon starts Monday. Whee! I finally got
a scanner, a dirt-cheap USB Microtek C6 from Buycomp.com. Works great
so far, for $85. And BuyComp.com has a distribution center near here
so even UPS ground shipments arrive overnight. Cool... ;) Realization:
it's scary having everyone you know, from parents to friends to
employers, all reading your site. I guess I shouldn't say anything
bad about anyone now. ;) Uh, not that I was going to...
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06M/14D/99Y: Got my ass in gear and wrote the
'Box for May 23rd. It
expresses my thoughts on David Brin's The Transparent
Society. (didn't I start reading that six months ago or something?)
Anyway... If you'd like to see me on "The Real World" (I'm trying
to drum up interest, and no one cares :P), visit the Soapbox link
below and then e-mail me with your thoughts! Final link:
Japanese
game title generator. "Super Panty Kitten Ramen"! Heh.
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06M/10D/99Y: Soapbox for the week of June 6th: I want to be
on "The Real World"! Don't hate me. Here's a compilation of
movie video clips,
for those who are interested in cramming their hard drives with
poor-quality movie footage. :P NewGrounds.com
has some fun Flash movies... (I like the opening riff)
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06M/09D/99Y: Heh, just a sports update... The French Open
this year was stellar: Steffi Graf beat bratty Hingis, Agassi completed
a career Grand Slam (he's won on every surface...talk about an all-surface
player), and the bulked-up Williams sisters beat bratty Hingis and looker
Kournikova to win the women's doubles. Yay! I can't ask for better results
than that! And seeing Hingis make a fool of herself...thank you. Graf's
the true champ. I don't like the Spurs much, but I guess they'll
win it all... I want the Pacers to beat the Knicks, even if the Knicks
deserve it more this year. My picks
at the beginning of the year weren't far off from the results: I picked
Utah and Indiana, with favorites on the 76'ers, Knicks, and Lakers (with
some reservations). Utah didn't win, AGAIN! Aww, too bad!
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06M/07D/99Y: I apologize for the lack of updates. Been
juggling hundreds of things in the air! I've almost gotten up enough
energy to answer the 100 or so e-mails I have now... Do you use
WinAmp?
I think it's great that the 20-year-old author just made $80 million or
whatever it was when AOL bought up his company, NullSoft. ShoutCast and
WinAmp are both great products...I particularly like the variety of
skins and plugins you can easily modify and change. One of the most
bitchin' sites I've seen in awhile is this Matrix
gear page. It has details about where to find the boots, sunglasses,
and other attire worn by everyone's favorite freedom fighters in The Matrix.
If you ask me, it was dumb for the Matrix folks NOT to release more
memorabilia and clothing to go along with the movie premiere.
Austin Powers, however,
is not making the same mistake... ;)
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05M/31D/99Y: May 30th Soapbox regarding
a summer, 1999 update. Where's
George? is a cool site, letting you track your dollar bills across
the country (as long as a lot of people contribute to it).
Desktops
are cool, if done by designers. I never see my desktop, so I don't
think about what it looks like too much... Both URLs pulled off
CamWorld, which always has
interesting links to visit. Don't bother getting that
Beastie Boys WMA (Microsoft
file format) music track. Blah, and the big music companies
think they can push THAT format on us? I had to upgrade Media Player,
install a new codec, and register my damn key just to play the song! Not
to mention it crashed me a couple times. I will most certainly encode
it to MP3 if anyone wants it...
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05M/25D/99Y: The critics were dead wrong about Phantom Menace,
in my opinion. Or perhaps they've become too jaded to enjoy it.
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05M/24D/99Y: Soapbox for
the week of May 2, "The Online Melting Pot". AustinPowers.com finally has a
redesign. "An evil redesign?" "No, maybe like a more complete version
of the promotional site." "An evil promotional site?" "YOU ALWAYS DO
THAT!" Seth Green is the coolest... What else? Oh, yes, I'd like
to thank @Home for the wonderful job they did screwing me over with
tech support. At least there's this: 3:26AM CDT NSDQ100 JUN99
2130.00 +800.
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05M/22D/99Y: Alright, the Matrox G400 MAX looks amazing.
Check out the AGN
review and the Sharky
Extreme review. Two independent sources, both giving absolutely stellar ratings. Dual
monitor support, 360MHz RAMDAC, bumpmapping (check out those Expendable screenshots!!),
Direct3D performance that slaughters other cards. Only setback in my mind is the
OpenGL performance. This baby has so much power on the chip, though, that its OpenGL
scores SHOULD (if Matrox can just fix this one tiny thing, pleeeease)
be up there with the other cards with a full OpenGL ICD, making it easily the best
card available. This could be the card that is the clear winner in every way. I'm
drooling. Photoshop is, too. Dual Head monitor support...ooh... Just the video card
I'm looking for. Or at least, that's what these reviews lead me to believe.
And you have to read those things with a grain of salt. Sigh...
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05M/21D/99Y: Well hey. I'm back home in Dallas. Semester's
over now. And guess what? I'm on a cable connection. I am no longer a
digital bandwidth virgin. It's delightful. I read
this little rant
about how vital good spelling and grammar is to the health of our society.
I never bought this argument, even though I make note of people who make
few errors in their writing, simply because it's a bit sensationalist.
Weeping for the future because of kids who make spelling mistakes?
Come on...it's sad when a teacher of all people has no faith in students
as a whole.
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05M/17D/99Y: Soapbox for the week of
May 16th. When it comes to violence, The Onion knows
what's
up.
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05M/17D/99Y: People, get a virus scanner. And update regularly.
Got the happy99.exe virus? Here's instructions to
remove it.
New Soapbox on the new 'threat' to
entertainment. Finally, if you have a virus scanner like
AVP, disable scanning for packed
files and archives. I just found out that this was causing Q3Test to
load maps slowly and also caused Netscape Navigator to load up Java
applets verrrrrrry slowly. But now my system runs great. Miami Heat
and Sacramento Kings, how could you guys lose? :( At least Iverson
advanced to the next round, and Barkley was eliminated. Hahahaha.
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05M/16D/99Y: No new Soapboxes for the moment... Swamped
with stuff. Added another 128MB of RAM -- highly recommended
if you're doing intensive work in apps like Photoshop. Anand
points this out. Q3Test makes me want to go out and get a Hercules
Dynamite TNT2 Ultra, just to run at high texture detail. Unsure
about my timetable right now... I have e-mail that's getting
older and older, and have Soapboxes that are piling up once again.
Sorry. "Here, have a cookie. I guarantee you, by the time you
finish it, you'll feel right as rain."
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05M/09D/99Y: Okay, I'm back. Soapbox for the 9th, detailing
my upcoming summer. The
music collection has been updated,
as has the resume. Other links:
a pro-Linux Flash movie and a
Neal Stephenson interview.
This time tomorrow, will we be playing Q3Test on Win32? The world waits...
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04M/27D/99Y: Soapbox for the 25th, on the
reaction to the Littleton massacre. AOL shareholders, be
happy!
Here's the movie poster for James Bond:
The World is Not
Enough. I've said it before and I'll say it again. This is the
year for cool movies.
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04M/26D/99Y: Please pardon the lack of updates. End of school
semester coming up, got a design project to wrap up, and I have a ton of
fresh e-mail following the whole 'Trenchcoat Media' mess. Fresh content
to come shortly.
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04M/23D/99Y: Proving that any schmuck can get into the newspaper
for saying anything, here is an
article from the Dallas Morning News quoting me on the incident
regarding my PESH pages. To those people who say that they can understand
how people can go on a shooting rampage at a school if they've been picked
on day after day by other people, I don't really know how to respond. I guess
I'd have to say, yeah, bullying can cause you to go on murderous, sadistic
rages...if you're INSANE. In other news, my Quake 2 clan won our opening
match in another CTF tournament. Our clan, of course, is NOT full of
psychotic killer mutants, but actually mostly married, financially successful
men, one of which even just had a new child with his wife. I'm the youngest
person in my clan, actually. Sorry to break the stereotypes.
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04M/21D/99Y: If you're weird, you will find this cartoon site,
Pokey the Penguin,
immensely funny. If you're not, you won't. Don't ask me to explain this --
I don't understand it either...LOL.
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04M/20D/99Y: Here's what happened, and I shit you not. Do
you know about that Colorado
school shooting? The shooters were purportedly part of a gang called
the Trenchcoat Mafia. Well, on my "PESH site: why?"
page, I have a reference to the "Trenchcoat Gang Mafia", which was a group
of geeky, skanky AD&D players at my high school who wore
trenchcoats (even in 100 degree Dallas weather) to school. Completely
unrelated! But get this: reporters from the NY Times, Time Magazine,
and the San Francisco Examiner e-mailed me asking for any details! Plus
4656 hits this evening to the page in question, plus 30-40 e-mails from
curious individuals. Insane The Soapbox for
this week is my write-up of the events here at benturner.com regarding
the Trenchcoat Gang Mafia. It's a bizarre tale unravelling during a
time of the utmost gravity. I did not ask for this.
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04M/17D/99Y: Soapbox
for the week of March 28th. I am busy. In the meantime, read
this ridiculous
article about piracy. Ah, but it's only half the picture...
I for one am looking forward to a possible NASDAQ run-up next week.
Buy low and watch 'em fly!
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04M/11D/99Y: Finally saw the Matrix. Unfuckingbelievable!
Badass martial arts, story, acting, references, special effects,
the works. Plus the Star Wars trailer. Are the movies awesome
right now or not? The Matrix was intelligent, and I appreciate
that from an action movie. Shades of T2, the supreme movie, anyone?
Soundtrack is cool, but has old singles on it...nothing for me to
scalp. :/ More Soapboxes coming soon. Recovering from a slew of
exams, projects, work, and my first week of trading.
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04M/04D/99Y: Soapbox
for the week of March 21st.
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04M/02D/99Y: Soapbox
for the week of April 4th, a little early. The topic? Dating and
the idiocy of it all. Know who Jamie Zawinski is? He's one
of the main guys who helped start Netscape and, later, the
Mozilla Project. He says in his
"resignation
and postmortem" that he's quitting Mozilla. Granted,
this was posted the night before April Fool's, so there
is a slim possibility it is fake, but it's still worth reading.
He's one of the good guys.
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03M/31D/99Y: Am I the only one who's already tired of
reading about how Linux should be used by anyone and everyone? (Neal Stephenson
barely
avoided falling into this trap) Sure, Win9x is buggy
as Hell, but people like me still use it because we can get
whatever we want for it. Besides, most people I know, young
and old, haven't even bought the software they use. About the
only thing they "bought" was what came with their computers.
Needless to say, Linux WILL change OS's and software, but let's
be realistic here...it's about as useful (right now) to most
users as the Mac is to gamers (right now). Let's see some
software.
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03M/28D/99Y: Venus Williams vs. Serena Williams in the
Lipton women's tennis finals...excellent! And Anna Kournikova,
the other young tennis phenom, said she was much better than
the Williams sisters in an interview a long time ago...hah.
Something nice to think about, considering the anti-American
sentiment growing because of the Kosovo situation... My
opinion? Let Europe take care of it, since that's what they
want. Sheesh. "Protesters tossed stones and eggs at the
building, burned American flags and lit fires in the streets.
The crowd shouted 'Clinton, fascist murderer' and 'Down with
imperialism' as they gave Nazi-style salutes."
Feel
the love!
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03M/26D/99Y: Soapbox for the week of March the 14th,
calling for consumer education using
the Internet.
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03M/23D/99Y: Apologies for lack of updates. Who ever said both
translating Herodotus and reading about mutual funds wasn't interesting?
They are at least both quite time-consuming. By the way, you DO
know the Kingpin demo (110MB) is out, right? No, not bowling;
profanity, brutal violence, and see-through shirts worn by hookers.
Tasteless, but also a solid game, FPS-style. And
that's what we lurrve...
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03M/16D/99Y: Soapbox for the week of February 28th, regarding
something nice for me to think about.
Recommended listening: NIN: "Terrible Lies", Lauryn Hill: "Doo Wop",
Guns 'n' Roses: "November Rain", Portishead: "Only You", Hooverphonic:
"Shake the Disease".
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03M/14D/99Y: You know, with the Matrix, Austin Powers 2, Star Wars: Phantom
Menace, and Eyes Wide Shut, this will be one kickass year for movies. Especially considering
the fact that it'll all end with some killer year 2000 parties. On Spring Break
this week, by the way! A week of relaxation.
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03M/11D/99Y: The second Star Wars trailer
is out. (that site should be slow for a week or two) There's also a South Park
parody of the first trailer available.
Must it be so long until May?
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03M/09D/99Y: Remember, kiddies: when the Y2K bug hits, it'll be
the Apple advocates laughing. You know, instead of offering support
or sympathy. They want the Mac to be
the most popular and
user-friendly computer on the market, yet they insult Apple's
potential customers and make them feel unwanted. Just shoot yourselves
in the feet, Glammy Boys. Such poor spokesmen for an otherwise improving system.
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03M/06D/99Y: Soapbox about knowledge
vs. opinion, and stupid e-mail I get. This so-called "Rapture" sounds
promising -- perhaps I'll have some time away from humans for once.
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03M/05D/99Y: Added Go!zilla to the recommended
software area. Okay okay, I know it's an old program... Recommended
listening: Cold Krush Cuts w/ DJ Krush & Coldcut & DJ Food, Sneaker
Pimps' "Becoming Remixed", and Meat Beat Manifesto's "Actual Sounds + Voices".
This site has
some good Win9x tweaking tips, particularly in its vcache and .vxd fixes.
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03M/01D/99Y: An alpha version of the Quake 3 Arena test hit the
'Net last night. First impressions? I like it. I feel like I have
better movement and control. The players are larger and the weapons
(albeit ugly at this point) feel nice to cycle through and use. id
is definitely taking advantage of the freedom this multiplayer-only
game gives them... Let's hope for more and more good news. In other
Quake news, my clan, Nobody's Children, won our
first-round playoff match in ShrubFest. Whoo!
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02M/28D/99Y: Feb. 21st Soapbox, "Web
Design, Stagnation of". If you're in a relationship, ENJOY EVERY
FUCKING MOMENT OF IT, FOR TOMORROW IT COULD BE OVER. Don't think it
can't happen to you. No one up there is looking out for you.
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02M/26D/99Y: Menander said, "hon hoi theoi philousin,
apothnaiskei neos." He whom the gods love dies a young man.
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02M/24D/99Y: It's funny how people often write to me only
to share their good news. Why do they think I care? Beats me.
Another thing I dislike: cute proverbs. Yes, they're cute, and
yes, they're proverbs, but they're proverbs because we've heard them
too many times already. Stop it. A random quote: "Heaven was
theorized in order to create a higher, more enlightened self-interest."
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02M/24D/99Y: "Heaven was theorized in order to create
a higher, more enlightened self-interest."
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02M/23D/99Y: January 10th
Soapbox. I'm virtually caught
up with the Soapboxes now. At least that's something...
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02M/22D/99Y: Soapbox for week of
January 31st, '99. Not really
in the mood for much else right now.
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02M/15D/99Y: This week's Soapbox discusses the
return of the National Basketball Association.
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02M/14D/99Y: For those of you who enjoy it, enjoy it, and
for those of you who hate it, hate it. Here at benturner.com, we
love it, and we love Anna, so that
front page is for you, sweetheart.
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02M/12D/99Y: What will the 100 Senators do now? Actual work?
Maybe the conservatives will join up with all the people who like
to moan about how materialistic Valentine's Day has become -- that
would be even MORE annoying than the whole Clinton thing. "How can
you spend just one day treating someone special...when there are
starving children in Africa?" Augh, I think my head's going to explode!
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02M/11D/99Y: I wrote up a quick Soapbox for the week of January
24th, a bitchfest regarding high
bandwidth connections like DSL and cable and how they're not as
accessible as everyone makes them out to be. Chiefly using anecdotal
evidence, this 'Box is sufficiently objective, I promise...
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02M/08D/99Y: Whoo, did you see it? The X-Files does still indeed
rock. But Millennium rocks harder. Tidbit for the day:
Slashdot.org's discussion of
a consulting firm's report on possible Y2K problems on the MacOS -- turns
out the complications could only exist if the author of a program wrote
shoddy code. But people jumped all over this one! In light of Apple's
HAL commercial during the Superbowl, someone mentioned in a thread that
each letter in HAL (of 2001 fame) is one less than that of IBM. Maybe
this is common knowledge to fans of the movie, I don't know. Remember
when IBM was the big boss and Microsoft was just a fledgling?
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02M/07D/99Y: 'Box for December
27th, which means I can finally close the door on my Soapboxes for 1998.
It details my experiences with a one-car accident. Did you know Lycos
has a fast MP3 search engine? Why
must basketball be so fun to watch? Urge...to resist watching...fading...
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02M/06D/99Y: New 10GB HDD. Yay! Next week's 'Box is, well,
de vita morteque, about life and death, and
the sacrifices one must make to come to a greater understanding
about his world and himself. I left this out earlier -- just wanted to give
a front page thank you to all those who have produced Robin Hood web sites
out there on the Web -- there's now tons of RH info online, thanks to you guys!
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02M/03D/99Y: School + work equal <=4 hours of sleep every night.
Music-on-demand? Good luck, you fucking record label leeches. Just protecting
the artists from MP3s are you? Riiiight. They're already being screwed -- by you.
MP3s give artists the wealth of mindshare. And, as the computer industry has
shown, that's crucial.
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02M/02D/99Y: It's Groundhog's Day. I can legally drink now.
But seeing as how I never do, it's kind of an anticlimax.
Next year I'll probably be allowed to eat fish or something
equally unexciting. Marilyn Manson is decent sometimes, but
his site, marilynmanson.net,
is definitely worth seeing and hearing. Eye candy. If you're
from one of these sorts of web design companies that field
high-paying artistic clients, hey, hire me...would ya?
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02M/01D/99Y: I spent all weekend working on redesigning
the Robin Hood section of my site,
which has long been left untended. Tell me if you see any
problems with it. I have a lot of thoughts on the Superbowl,
including impressions of yet another alienating Apple commercial,
the NFL's cruel commercials, and more. Haven't decided if they're
worth sharing, or how to share them yet. Thanks to Adam for
lending me a keyboard after I...did something stupid with my
old one. (keyboards are like cats...) You should always keep
a spare mouse and keyboard around, kids. Final note to the
Quake clanmates: do you feel bad after rooting for Atlanta and
Minnesota so heavily? Heh heh heh...
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01M/29D/99Y: There's a rockin' N64 emulator out there
that I managed to take a gander at... Mario 64 and Zelda 64
at 800x600 using Glide is beautiful, and the games are ported
true to the originals. Very, very nice. Poor support, though.
And not much of a possibility for improvement of the emulator
itself, because of legal concerns. Still cool!
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01M/27D/99Y: "Spring
'99 Semester" is the Soapbox for January 17th, 1999.
Webmast.com's new design
is mine. Do you like it?
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01M/27D/99Y: Sorry about no new Soapboxes. Got assigned to
a project and was hit by a mountain of Greek homework. And now I'm
four weeks behind again. I'm eager to write a lot, and to redesign
my aging site, but I seriously have no time. Wish I got paid to
work on this. :P Added some programs to my fave
software section, including Ulead Utilities, TimeTrax, Web Washer,
FlashFXP, Waterfall, Thief: The Dark Project, Catz, and Half-Life.
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01M/26D/99Y: If you disagree with the U.S. & English
military strikes on Iraq, please keep in mind that the diplomacy
efforts have not fared very well, and that you should present
alternatives instead of just criticizing U.S. action. While I don't
like the fact that innocent people are dying, I also appreciate the
difficulties which are involved in the diplomatic efforts. I read a
good post yesterday, one that I need to pay more heed to myself, which
said that if you're going to get up on your Soapbox and speak your mind,
you better contribute a better solution or else you're just wasting
everyone's time. By no means an original comment, but I think this
should be kept in mind.
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01M/26D/99Y: I received this
e-mail in response to my letter of displeasure sent to
the Archie Comics folks. See earlier news
for the story. I'm happy that Veronica got to keep her domain, and
that the guy at Archie Comics took the time to send an e-mail to
me. In other news, Lance Arthur,
a man I respect not only for his designs, but also for his writing abilities,
wrote a kickass article on A List Apart,
exclaiming that personal sites should be where web designers take risks
and show off the newest technologies, since they won't be allowed
to on clients' sites. (and this is, unfortunately, the way it is)
Hell, Lance couldn't have said it any better! And as for A List Apart 2,
its design is the first by Jeffrey Zeldman that I've really liked...
It even uses my new favorite color, yellow-orange. ;)
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01M/25D/99Y: System Shock 2's coming out soon, and it'll
have cooperative LAN play...will be fun to try it on this snesty
new network. New site-wide navigation panel added -- please notify
me of any inconsistencies.
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01M/23D/99Y: Good news; my roommate, the ever-enigmatic
ChinaManDan, got our local network hooked up, finally. After
rewiring a straight-through twisted pair cable into a crossover
cable, we were happily DM'ing in Quake 2 with 7ms pings. School?
Oh yes, right... That's for a Soapbox soon to come.
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01M/22D/99Y: Too...hot...in apartment...cannot...work...
"But it'll be fixed tomorrow!" I've decided to upload
absolutely all the crazy stuff I've downloaded over the
'Net in the last few years to my FTP server at some point.
Stay tuned -- some of it's hilarious, some of it's stupid,
some of it's vulgar. Collected from various sources, so
you probably haven't seen most of it. (or maybe you have,
since some of it is old and has made its rounds by now)
Meek, slow Internet peasants!
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01M/21D/99Y: Veronica of
Veronica.org gets
to keep her domain name. Yay! Her father and she were
pressured by the guy behind the Archie Comics site to
give up the name. Later, he reconsidered (after a lot
of angry e-mail and deliberation between the two parties,
I'm sure). Also, Lyrics.ch,
one of the most useful sites to me because of its database
of music lyrics that can be searched through, was just
raided by the Swiss cops. Go read about it by going to their
site. Let's hope they return soon. Show your support!
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01M/20D/99Y: December 20th's
Soapbox, written
late. It's just a few words on how information and
humans have tipped the balance both of our sanity and
of nature. Just when you thought things couldn't
get worse, this happens.
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01M/18D/99Y: In a catchup Soapbox for the week of
October the 4th, Catherine
Intoinette has her own problems to deal with, even if
she is on her way to prosperity and financial security.
That's all for today. Semester starts Tuesday.
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01M/16D/99Y: Is it just my imagination, or did
News.com's actual content
start to suck immediately after their latest redesign? Or maybe
it's just that their external links are so bad because other
news sites haven't been posting anything good... Oh well, at
least there's still SlashDot.
News.com DID have
this
story, though, about yet another company claiming a domain
is infringing on its trademark. Read the article and show
your support for the individuals being attacked. How soon
until BenTurner.com is given a cease-and-desist by scores of
other angry Ben Turners? I apologize for that one, guys,
and if there were a better way to categorize my domain, I would
use it. I would be happy to post links to other Ben Turners' sites,
to avoid any confusion and lost hits. Maybe even share the domain!
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01M/14D/99Y: Decided to stay up really late so I could
get another Soapbox off my belt. For the week of
November the 8th, "Translating
and the Meaning of Words". I think languages are important
to learn, and this explains why. I suppose it says nothing new,
particularly if you dig languages yourself and you read a lot of
novels on the subject, and commentaries on them, but I wanted to
throw some thoughts out there for the Hell of it. Enjoy.
Installed my network card with only one hitch that I hope won't
come back once I re-enable that serial port for my drawing pad
at school. :P It's gonna be cool, a two-computer network with
massive bandwidth potential, both connected to the 'Net via
modems. Sigh sigh sigh.
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01M/12D/99Y: Viewed this on my dad's G3 laptop.
He just got a cable modem. Bastard. Such as it is, networking
my computer with his for cable access is unlikely. Sigh.
I fixed the signature at the bottom, by the way. Actually,
I fixed it a long time ago, but I forgot to upload it. So
that poor job of making the background black is now corrected.
You know, that laptop has damn good resolution...I saw some
details in graphics that I never noticed before...and I made
them. :P
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01M/12D/99Y: Okay, Digiweb fixed the domain. They
didn't offer a free month of credit, though. Oh well.
Sorry about the downtime today. Remember,
http://www.digiweb.com/~infinity/
works in those situations. Other tips on the
Find Ben page, which looks
fugly, now that I think about it. I wrote a review of
Thief: The Dark Project for the December 13 Soapbox.
BuyComp sent me two 3Com 10/100 EtherLink XL cards
and I only ordered one. Dumbasses. RMA forms, whee!
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01M/11D/99Y: Yes, my domain isn't working
right now, and I've asked my ISP to fix it... Here's
for the best. Thanks, Mithrandir, for alerting me.
I usually don't do this, but Jon Katz wrote a rallying
article on MP3s
and the music industry. Given my
interest in the effects MP3s will have on the multi-billion
dollar music industry (I wrote about MP3s in
February of last year),
I'm glad to see it's finally coming down to crunch time
for the distributors. Open your eyes, fools...
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01M/10D/99Y: Christmas is officially over for
me, now that Anna has gone back home. :( Time to
be productive again. The theme for this year's
Soapboxes is re-evaluation,
so that is the topic of my latest essay.
I am now catching up with e-mail, the site, and
everything else.
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01M/06D/99Y: Thanks for the correction on the
date, "certified". :) Anna's leaving soon...terrible...
Gotta make sure we don't waste these last few days.
Did you hear some of the NBA players answer questions
about whether b-ball fans would come back to the game?
Those fucking pompous assholes...I'm proud of the
players who stepped up and told the star players how
spoiled they are. The players don't care about fans,
but that's understandable. We just don't have to like
it. Needless to say, I'm still going to watch.
Lessee...Steve Jobs did the smart thing and redistributed
some of his attention into the computer gaming market
-- it's about fucking time. I don't like
Mac evangelists
all that much, but I do love the high quality and
innovation of Mac software and hardware (G3 is killer,
Adobe and Macromedia products rule), and if they can
give us some creative games (please?) to play, I'm
all for it. But wanting the Mac to be the best
gaming platform, Mr. Jobs? Not anytime soon. But
everyone wins if Apple tries. Looks like it's the Mac
users' day in the sun now. Enjoy it.
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01M/02D/99Y: After finishing Thief, with Anna,
I must say that that game (by Looking Glass, makers of
such excellent games as System Shock and Ultima Underworld)
is easily as good as Half-Life, but in different ways.
It's about fucking time someone made a good thieving game,
and if I could show you the Thief movie available on the
Eidos demo CD, I certainly would. Best damn movie I've
seen in awhile. More on Thief later. ;) For those who
find electromigration and shit like that as the best reasons
to pay $200-$300 more for a P2 processor over a Celeron,
my C266 overclocked to 448MHz is running at 33 degrees
Celsius, while the P133 overclocked to 150MHz in the living
room is at 44 degrees Celsius. Granted, the Celeron has
more fans in the case, but still...same architecture as a P2,
on-die cache, better cooling. A P2 is actually less safe.
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