25 September, 2005

Wh00t.

Well, apparently that little update to the look of subgenius.com was up to snuff. It went up before it was even finished, actually. After an updated version was sent, everything got updated and all is well. Quite the debacle to begin with, but well worth it.

So go now, already!

It's shiny and new!

19 September, 2005

Oops, I Did It Again

SubSite
Become an Ordained Minister NOW...
It's hard ot believe that it's been this long, but it has.

In the fall of 2003, after having lost my job, i sat down and banged out a new set of index pages for subgenius.com. It took a few weeks of plugging away at it, and several attempts at different "looks" and whatnot, but it finally got done.

A few months after that, (maybe six, but i wasn't counting) it ended up on the web, as the new look of subsite.

Well, i got bored again and redid the whole damned thing. The version i'd done back in '03 was not my best work. Actually, it was a "quicky" version that eventually went up. It took me several tries to get anything done with the damned thing, and when i fianlly established what needed to go where, and how much of it needed to change to present a complete index, etc, etc...

I was about to move!

See, i was just about to move to new jersey and had to show something for all those weeks of frustration, so i threw something together that i wasn't totally happy with. But it worked. It replaced several multicoloured, hard to read, mysteriously laid-out pages with a group that all looked the same, and that linked to all the stuff that was most commonly checked up on by regular visitors to the site.

But now, i've managed to sort out all the things that i'd wanted to do, and actually do them right! It took a total of 25 months from start to finish, but i finally got things sorted out to my own satisfaction.

Now i'm just hoping that it meets with the approval of the Rev. Ivan Stang. It's usually his responsibility to update and maintain the thing, so if it turns out that it's not to his liking, it's back to square one.

Here's hoping!

12 September, 2005

Oh yeah, and the Cabal has a new site...

The Taphouse Cabal
It all began one evening over many beverages in a bar called the Taphouse Grill. Three patrons enjoying their beer, decided to form a super-seekrit society whose aim it would appear, was to experience and celebrate all the effects of drunkeness. Taking for themselves the secret latin motto "Bibere, Pervertere, Caedere" which they were certain meant something, these intrepid explorers then went on to spread their message of whatever it was far and wide. Born of too much Drink, the Taphouse Cabal meandered it's way through the flotsam and jetsam that is the IntraWeb, settling at last on an IRC network protocol that encourages, amongst other things, freethought, black humor, white Russians, good beer, and bad jokes.

I should probably mention the website we got running for the Taphouse Cabal. Now on to patching up SubSite.

17 August, 2005

Will They Ever Learn?

Who The Hell Is THIS!?

Registrant Name: Scott Brower
Registrant Organization: Oceanic, Inc.
Registrant Address1: 611 W. Horatio St.
Registrant Address2: #23
Registrant City: Tampa
Registrant State/Province: FL
Registrant Postal Code: 33606
Registrant Country: United States
Registrant Phone Number: +1.8138560301
Domain Registration Date: Sun Jul 31 07:03:19 GMT 2005

You gotta wonder why people keep doing things like this. It's been a year and a bit since I really had anyone to pick on for doing it, so I guess it's not all that bad. It gives me something to do for a while. Picking on people who insist on pulling stunts like this is almost a hobby of mine, now. I'll post a few clips and things from other "incidents" of the same type in the next few days.

You may also wonder how I find out about things like this. Well, in this case, it was fairly simple. Allow me to paste from an edited log of an IRC channel I frequent.


[01:34] * Joins: DaRev (SubSITEJav@THC-FF633774.tampabay.res.rr.com)
[01:35] * scalpod tips hat
[01:35] (scalpod) mornin' rev
[01:35] (darev) Que pasta?
[01:35] (scalpod) Tierra del fuego!
[01:36] (darev) If it aint fuego it aint worth the match.
[01:38] (darev) Free SubGenius.us email addresses for the first 10 that ask.
[01:38] * vertigo asks
[01:39] * scalpod axes - being 'ebonicized' and all...
[01:39] (scalpod) sorry about the mess there...
[01:41] * vertigo retracts the request

So, yeah... The guy wanders into a chatroom from a link on www.subgenius.com (a site that offers "@subgenius.com" e-mail addresses for sale) and offers free e-mail addresses to a very similar domain. That's a bit stupid, don't you think?

I'll give details about how my fight to rid the internet of jerkoffs like this is going over the next few days/weeks. I guess it kinda depends on how long it takes to shut the guy up.

It should also be noted that what I do and what I say aren't indicative of the policies/opinions of The SubGenius Foundation Inc. They are in no way responsible for my actions. They own the domain www.subgenius.com, not me. I'm just a guy that gets a bit pissy when someone tries to use the work of others to make his own site a bit more popular.

16 August, 2005

Fun With Feces

Man charged over bizarre conduct

BY MELANIE BENNETT

Staff Writer

An Atlanta man was arrested Thursday afternoon after he smeared feces on himself and walked around a department store in Columbus, police said.

Antoine Williams, 26, of 438 Vine St. NW, was charged with disorderly conduct after the incident at Macy's in Peachtree Mall, said Columbus Police Lt. Richard Gaines.

Okay, so some guy decides to do something like this, and he isn't crazy. So why did he do it? Perhaps we'll see a follow up story in which it all turns out to be a prank of some kind. Probably not, as we never get a chance to see why this happens.

All the cool stuff that you read about and ask "Why in the hell would anyone do that?" end up disappearing into some bottomless void. I don't know why, but I'm going to speculate. I figure that for every story like this there's a reporter that had to report it originally. Some poor guy had to call up the police department and ask for the details, snoop around the store and bug the employees for eyewitness accounts, etc. etc. Then he had to type up the whole mess and have it put out for publication. Check spelling and grammar, have editor check same, have ten other people check it.... All the while everyone who reads the damned thing ends up scratching their heads and asking that poor reporter guy for the same details they're currently reading. This must annoy said reporter to no end.

So anyways, assuming he even does a follow up on the story, he's probably not willing to have those same people bug him about it all day the next time, so he just reports back that it's not newsworthy anymore, the interesting thing was that it happened at all, not why.

Another theory I'm working on is that the whole process slows down the workplace because everyone's talking about the story and there's no current hurry on news because this kind of thing usually happens (or gets into the paper) on slow news days. You wouldn't have the whole office talking about some guy covered in poo if the WTC was falling down.

So we never get to hear what the guy's whole story was.

But rejoice, dear friends, because sometimes there's a silver lining to the shitcloud (to quote TrailerPark Boys' Mr Lehey). In this particular article, the give the guy's full address in the second paragraph.

So you can send him a congratulatory bouquet of flowers or something. Maybe a basket of bran muffins, if you're the type to make the best of a shitty situation. He may even write you back, or show up at your house bearing a gift of his own.

What a great way to meet interesting people!

15 August, 2005

Gotta start somewhere!

So I've got another little chunk of free internet to blog on now. I'm pretty sure it'll go the same way as my livejournal account, and end up abandoned along the side of the information superhighway.

Until it does, though, it'll be an ongoing commentary on the same type of things that most people my age blog about. Looking for a job, relationships, money, that party I went to, etc. etc....

I suppose I'll probably throw in some cool stuff, I'm going to comb through a few "news sources" a few times a day and throw up some opinions on what's going on in the world. Some of the stories will suck, but that's because my sources suck.

I can see it now; I'm gonna drag stupid arguments from alt.slack in here and you'll be reading too much of what comes in over the RSS feeds I've gathered up into Thunderbird. But it'll be something, and the best I can hope for is that at least someone's complaining, because that tells me that someone's reading.

And "Bob" help the poor bastards who write into the feedback section of my local paper, I've been dying for a place to tear apart their daily pissing and moaning. This will be that place.

My goals aren't lofty, they're hardly even goals, but feel free to watch as I fail miserably!