For my first election I thought I’d be voting Claypool for president until just this moment, when I discovered the Party Party with David Crosby and Graham Nash running for a “Joint Presidency,” meaning that they will share the predential responsibility as well as the Vice President’s duties.

But what will they do for you?

Recently, David Crosby told an assembled crowd that, if elected, one of their first acts would be the cleaning out of Area 51 to address the illegal alien issue.? Other campaign promises include free money, and a night in the Lincoln Bedroom to anyone who antes up $200,000. The renamed ?Social Insecurity? and ?Medicareless? agencies will be overhauled, and the candidates are researching fixing the electronic voting machine situation. ?Remember,? they say, ?it?s not the people who vote that change things, it?s the people that count the votes that change things.?

Check it out at CrosbyNash2004.com.

After two months of non-stop hassle, transcripts, money, and about a thousand emails, I finally got the one I’ve been waiting for from Stacey, the head of the College of Engineering at Cal Poly:

Hi Brian. I called the Admissions Office and they said they would
readmit you today. You should be hearing from them soon. Stacey

It’s not exactly a red carpet, but I’ll take it.

I know it’s not healthy to be hostile, but I am coming to the point where I want to do bodily harm to my screen-saver.

On a normal computer with the Windows operating system, when the screen-saver is needed it appears immediately, in a flash of necessity, an apparition that can be missed if you blink a little too hard.

However, I am a stubborn technology snob, and so I run Linux. Early in the days when Linux was first created, they decided they wanted to save the screen, just as the Windows and Mac counterparts did. However, due to copyrights, they wouldn’t be able to save the screen with the flying toasters and simulated aquariums that were the symbol of cutting edge technology at the time, which meant that the Linux screen-saver would be inherently inferior.

This would not be tolerated.

Great Programmers met and decided that instead of simply appearing unannounced as it’s windows counterpart did, the great Linux screen-saver would fade out, gradually acclimating the user to the fact that he hasn’t added a single word to his term paper in the past ten minutes. This would be all well and good if they’d added a feature that let any user (or at least me…) interrupt the fade to black so that he may use the damn computer. On Linux, while fading to black nothing else is allowed to happen, no matter how much I move my mouse or slam my keyboard against the monitor, the screen-saver remains unresponsive in it’s few transitory seconds as if to say, “Can’t you see I’m fading to black? Either enjoy the show or get out of my sight. True art is always under appreciated in it’s own time.”

When I was at the city of Avalon on Catalina Island, I saw a church sign that was amusing, but alas, I didn’t have my camera with me and so I had no way to share it with the world. However, thanks to the “wonders of modern technology”(tm), a team of scientists was able to re-create the image from the residual memory still drifting throughout my cerebrum:

I just got back from a quick one day trip to check out what will hopefully be the shared apartment of former dormie Joel and myself come September 1st. The pictures that inspired the trip can be seen in full here. The one feature that made me realize this apartment was to be my future home can only be appreciated when seen:

Besides the pink sink, the rent is cheap enough that I can have my own room, and it’s within walking distance to campus. Now I just need to sit back and hope that nothing goes wrong with our rental applications.

As to whether Joel and I will be good apartment-mates only time will tell, but I think this is a good beginning:

Me: Are you interested in getting broadband internet? I can do without cable and phones (assuming my cell phone will work fine), but internet I’d like to have.
Joel: I’d die without the internet
Joel: does that work for you?

***

I just realized today that the houseboat trip I’d been planning on going on with my Uncle & Aunt has a conflict and I’m pretty bummed out about it. I could have planned around it if I’d been paying attention a week ago, but I was too focused on my Vegas trip at the time and now it’s too late to get this Saturday off. I’m getting this uneasy feeling that I’m becoming the “unreliable” relative. You know the one I’m talking about; The one who is always supposed to arrive at a certain time but “you know how he is.”

I need to get my act together.

I’d been to Las Vegas before, but this was my first as a legal piece of meat, and in the eyes of business owners, I metamorphosed from a lowly bug that’s been ruining the shrubs and is generally bad for business, into a magical funnel that takes in large volumes of alcohol and turns it into currency. The last time I made an appearance in I was in high school, and I was nothing more than a liability to the Casinos, a walking infraction waiting to happen, so the whole gaming world wrote me off as the plague the Old Testament forgot to include, leaving me to wonder what the big deal is. But now, NOW I was the target market, and all of a sudden the city made sense to me, I was like Neo seeing the fabric of the matrix for the first time. The rooms are cheap so you will come and gamble, the food is cheap so you will play Keno, and the drinks are free to increase the house’s advantage at blackjack and to keep you playing slots when you should just walk away with your $6 of winnings at the nickel slots. When they say “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas,” they’re referring your ATM withdrawals.

***

We got 50% off tickets to The Star Trek Experience at the Hilton through Tix4Tonight, which exceeded my expectations, but the best part about about the experience is Quark’s Bar And Restaurant, where I got to drink one of these, a Borg Sphere, which includes five ounces of liquor (Midori?) and dry ice for a bubbly, swampy effect. It was by far the most visually interesting drink I’ve ever seen, alcoholic or otherwise. Here’s Lauren with the remains of the collective:

***

Question: Are there thousands of street walkers intermingling with normal casino-goers or is there something about Vegas that makes your average woman believe that vinyl is way attractive and chain link is an acceptable material for a shirt to be made out of.

Little Girl: But which cookie will you eat first?
Cookie Monster: Me thinks you have misconception of the cookie eating process.

Some background:

1. Staples, the office supply superstore, was selling a Konica Minolta laser printer for $179 with an $80 mail in rebate
2. Fry’s had an add for the same laser printer for $79.
3. Staples matches prices with competitors ads. Actually, they don’t only match prices, they beat prices, they’ll subtract 110% of the difference in prices between Staples’ price and any advertisement you bring in.
4. Staples matches the price before the mail in rebate.

So I figured, if everybody follows their corporate policy, I should be able to walk in to any Staples, show them the Fry’s ad for the $79 printer, and walk out of Staples with that printer for what ends up being $69, since they match 110% of the difference ($179 minus $79 equals $100, 110% of 100 is $110).

Now, I really didn’t expect anybody to actually follow corporate policy as that might set a rather unwieldy precedent for corporations everywhere. But dammit, I was going to try.

Lauren and I walked into a Staples we’d never been into before with the Fry’s ad in hand, we picked up one of the printers up, and asked for a price match, ready for a good fight, having never tried such a thing before. An unexpected hitch in my plan was that a Fry’s in our area had to have it in stock. So we ended up calling 5 different Fry’s, talking to 12 absolutely clueless Fry’s employees, and receiving about 142 evil glares from the Staples employee who was watching Lauren and I make our calls before we finally found a Fry’s with one in stock. The employee sighed and rang us up for $69.99, which came out to $75.76 after tax.

However, we still had a mail in rebate that was valid. A mail in rebate valued at $80. Now, to be honest, I didn’t expect anything back, I figured either there was some loophole or they’d see how much we paid for it and just ignore us. Either way, it didn’t hurt to send in the form.

I sit here with a check for $80 from Staples in my hand. That’s $4.24 and a laser printer of pure profit. Considering gas prices, I probably broke even after driving there and back, but I still figure it’s a pretty good deal. And yes, the laser printer is awesome, unbelievably fast, and I’d recommend it to anybody who needs four bucks.

My Grandma and Grandpa sent me a Birthday card that I feel is worth sharing with all of you. This wouldn’t be so funny if it wasn’t my Grandma and Grandpa that had sent it:

Isn’t that awesome? Also, Yesterday marked the one year anniversary of this blog. Does anybody remember this post? No? Well that’s probably because I hadn’t told anybody about my blog at that point, but at least it’s there for posterity.