June 15, 2005

Favicon???

Anyone seeing the favicon up in the address bar? Should be the head of my little red monkey, but I don't think it's showing up and I'm too tired to go searching out all of my cache files to clear them all and then back track the issue if that's not it.

Posted by Red Monkey at 5:13 PM | Comments (1) | Blog | Stumble

June 12, 2005

Yeah, yeah, yeah - D&D, blogs, video games, rock-n-roll

So my buddy Andy posted that his therapist thinks his blog is dangerous for him because he doesn't "have appropriate emotional boundaries" and he talks too much. Err, wait, and because he talks about things that should "be processed internally." My response?

Bollocks!

First of all, I've seen nothing in his blog that was actually so personal that I wished he hadn't shared it. On the other hand, back in the day, I remember running across an early version of a blog written by someone else I went to high school with. Bobby, I'll call this other guy. Well, Bobby wrote many posts about all the women he wished that he'd boinked. And then about all the reasons these women turned him down, because it sure didn't have anything to do with his personality, it all had to do with their character flaws. (Of course I am ranting about this from memory and Bobby could have been whining about other things, too.)
So, I do recall Bobby ranting about things that I really wished he'd left inside his brain or perhaps shared only with his therapist. I mean, he shared things with the internets that were just ewwww.
Of course, the internets are, for the most part, free speech central and I have no gripe with that at all. But, there were some things that I wished he'd kept to himself. Or at least enabled comments so that others could point out where he was being a gigantic ass and where he had good points.

One of the people commenting on my friend Andy's site pointed out that most therapists seem to think that journalling is a good way to process through information/feelings/ideas. And all of these posts from Andy and his minions friends simply flashed me back to high school and the loads of ultra-conservative christians who decided that D&D type games were evil and were going to cause children to go insane. You know, the same types of people who have decided that violent movies, that video games, that rock-n-roll, that Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis, that /insert hobby here/ is going to cause children to go ballistic and kill people, have wild sex, do drugs, /insert parents' greatest fear here/ just from being exposed to said bad influence. The internets are bad, chat rooms are bad, email is bad, the web is bad.

WHATEVER!

Look folks, it's really simple. Anything in this life can be abused. We can abuse food, each other, games, hobbies, sex, blogs, life the universe and everything. But assuming that blogs (or D&D or food or whatever) is inherently bad and going to cause others irreparable harm is just stupidity.

Now maybe his therapist was talking about a particular post and a specific concern. Fine. But maybe this is just another case of folks who don't understand something condemning what they don't understand. It seems to me that someone with a blog and a therapist is already looking at any potential problems with abusing whatever activity/substance.

My concern is far more about this general trend across the generations . . . why is it that the older generation (or those who associate with the older generation) are always so sure that something a little different from how they grew up is "obviously" Not a Good Thing??? Why must we get so inflexible as we get older?

*sigh*

Posted by Red Monkey at 9:50 AM | Comments (1) | Blog | Stumble

June 2, 2005

Bowling for Soup - and Tejas

So right now I live in the great northern wastelands. Yeah, I know, a lot of you people like it up north, you seem to enjoy having four seasons and some people even like snow. But I'm from Texas originally and that's where my heart is to be sure.

Where in Texas, you ask? Well, I was born in Amarillo, then we moved to Houston, another place in Houston, Albuquerque, Oklahoma City, Carmel (just outside Indianapolis) and then we moved to Austin. Then I started kindergarten. When I was in third grade we moved to Arlington (between Dallas and Fort Worth).

No, my dad was not in the military. He was a trouble-shooter for National Sherdata and later for Ross Perot's EDS.

Living up here are a lot of folks with Texas license plates. I don't know why. I don't know how they can live here and keep their Texas plates. I had to trade mine in for a crummy Indiana plate. Anyhow, people ask me when they find out that I'm from Texas: Why are all Texans obsessed with their state? It's just a state, for crying out loud.

Well, it's because Texas is its own frickin' country, dude. We have every geographical environment in one state. And everything is pretty much bigger in Texas. Even the crappy studio apartments are bigger and cheaper than they are up here in the frozen northlands. All good points. The most important point, of course, is we have the best Mexican food in the U.S. And we have South Padre. And Austin and San Antonio. Houston? That armpit can fall into the Gulf for all I care. Ewwww. (My apologies to any Houston-lovers, but that place gave me the creeps and made my allergies and asthma go through the roof. Too humid for me - but the pine trees are amazingly beautiful.)

So, why bring all this up right now? Well, I just got the Bowling for Soup CD called A Hangover You Don't Deserve . It beyond rocks and since the guys are from Tejas, I am, of course, even more enthralled with the CD. They sound just a little bit like the Refreshments and I've listened to the CD at work for the last three days, only switching it out for the Drop Kick Murphys CD once or twice. So one of the songs is called "Ohio (Come Back to Texas)" and it makes me wanna get back to Texas SO BAD. But my current favorite song is "My Hometown" . It is the most happy fuck-you song I've ever heard. Here's an example of the lyrics:

This song goes out to my good friends,
Especially the ones I had before the Grammy nominations in 2003
And all the girls from back in high school,
Who actually spoke to me,
Even though I was a fat kid and a marching band geek.

I hope this song finds you well.
And I hope that you're doin' fuckin' swell.
I hope that you're back up if you've ever been down.
And I hope that you got the fuck out of our hometown.

Now, considering the home town is Witchita Falls, I find this hilarious. Witchita Falls is almost as whacked a place as Waco. And the come back to Texas song talks about Denton County - which is where my sister lives - which really cracks me up since Denton is pretty po-dunk (but has a decent enough music scene thanks to North Texas).

So, I want to send a shout out to all the kids I went to school with:
I hope this blog finds you well.
And I hope that you're doin' fuckin' swell.
I hope that you're back up if you've ever been down.
And I hope that you got the fuck out of our hometown.

Well, except that Arlington, no matter how crappy we thought it was at the time, is not nearly as bad as Indiana . . . so hopefully I'll get back there soon and see all the folks who stuck around the Metroplex.

Meanwhile, listen to Bowling for Soup - you'll love 'em.

Posted by Red Monkey at 6:19 PM | Comments (1) | Blog | Stumble

May 30, 2005

Ahhhh, Learning New Computer Things

So, I hopped onto the internets back in 1993 or so. Played a character named Vanyel on a MUD called MUDdog. Loved it-interactive D&D gaming with folks ages and ages away from me. Yes, I'm a major geek, it's okay, you don't have to pretend you weren't thinking it. I don't mind.

Anyhow, I learned email on a VAX Pine system and all I can say about that is the first time I saw Eudora, I was beyond ecstatic. In 1996, I thought I would put some of my first-year composition syllabus on that new-fangled web thing -- students can't lose a syllabus if they can get to it from any computer. I was easily one of the first in the department to do it and I loved it. My students seemed to like it and as the years went on, I realized I was simply a computer geek. I'd taught myself HTML (probably back at v.1) and was a little disdainful of WYSIWYG website builders. HTML wasn't hard and the code was a bit cleaner if you did it yourself - at least most of the time.

I got on the newsgroups, particularly rec.toys.misc and then watched as people I "chatted" with electronically built up the Raving Toy Maniac site. Infoseek was the best search engine at the time . . . and of course, the web never stays still. Like a spider's web, it's re-built frequently, creating new patterns of information, new people to meet, new HTML tags to learn and so on.

My web coding skills eroded a bit with the explosion of Dreamweaver 3.x onto our campus as I finally was building sites too complicated to do absolutely all of the code by hand. I had someone tell me that you "have to know Calculus to learn how to code in real programming languages," so I thought that java and javascript would be out of my league. I bluffed my way through CSS, using it only to define fontstyles and sizes. I blew off blogging at first as a craze that would pass.

I know, I know. But you gotta understand that the first person I knew who blogged was an ex-boyfriend from high school who used it as a really personal diary. In which I showed up once or twice. It was embarassing. It's one thing to share your thoughts with the world, it's another completely to talk about your high school flings in amazing technicolored details! And, it didn't help the matter when the second person I knew who blogged was a colleague that regularly didn't understand how the web worked. I don't understand the paradox of how this man could possibly work a blog - no matter how user-friendly Blogger or TypePad or any of the other ready-hosting sites are. We're talking about a man who regularly felt the entire internets should be in black and white and all buttons should be text and he also often couldn't even FIND a button on a page even when it was plainly marked!

But I digress. (Have I mentioned that red monkey?)

So, recently I discovered the incredibly real website of a favorite actor, Wil Wheaton. Now, yes, I used to read newsgroups. Yes, I know of the existence of the various die.die.die newsgroups that hated his Start Trek:tNG character. And I didn't care then or now. I think Wil is an awesome actor. I absolutely adore the story, "The Body" and the movie version, Stand by Me. Wil as Gordie was incredible. They could have picked a better adult actor for him to grow into, but that's a quibble. I actually watched ST:tNG for Wesley, Data and Geordie. Picard was certainly an improvement over William Fucking Shatner, but Wes was my favorite. The character had LOTS of potential and the writers just freakin' wasted it. I stopped watching when Wil left the show.

So, Wil has an incredible blog. And the more I read of his blog, the more I began to see the real potential of this genre of websites. As a writer, this is right up my alley. As a computer geek, this should be right up my alley.

So, since I no longer teach and have my own webspace instead of the university free webspace, I decided to stretch everything and get blogging. CGI doesn't scare me nearly as much as it did a few weeks ago. I am still having some issues trying to figure out CSS and how these Moveable Type templates work, but I'm getting there.

I may not be stretching the minds of Notre Dame freshmen any more, but I am stretching mine again. It's a nice feeling.

Anyhow, I'm sure there will be more template changes and some tweaks here and there as I learn more just how all of this works. If you've got comments on the design and readability issues, let me know. I won't guarantee that I'll get around to it any time soon, but I will at least look into it.

And now, I've got to get back to Season Five of Buffy and "Listening to Fear." And working on turning a Fisher Price Little People train engine into the Purdue Boilermaker train engine as a gift.

Posted by Red Monkey at 3:58 PM | Comments (0) | Blog | Stumble

May 28, 2005

Make New Friends, but Keep the Old

So, I've just spent the last couple of hours logging into Classmates.com and Reunion.com to see if I could find any of the folks I really miss from school. Of course, I did find some of the kids I wanted to find, but sadly, the ones I both have lost contact with and really want to see aren't logged into these services. So, I thought I'd post something here about them. These are the folks from Lamar High School in Arlington, Texas, that I'd love to find again.

Jill Stewart, aka Stewie, although I think I was the only one who really called her that. I met Jill in 3rd grade, when I had just moved to Arlington. At the time I moved, I was just about to have my ninth birthday. My mom decided I could have "one little friend" to my house. I guess she didn't want a "horde of little monsters" over to the house. Unfortunately, I picked the wrong kid to have over. Jill, I'd like to apologize to you for that and lots of obliviousness I had over the next couple of years. You were a good friend and I wasn't much of one in return.
Last seen: Arlington

Annette Simonini: dude, when you hit Butler Elementary, you hit it like a bullet. We needed the shaking up. You, Eddie and Tony were a welcome addition to the neighborhood. You seemed to be the most self-aware of all of our little group in elementary school . . . though Stewie ran a very close second. I missed you when I got kind of exiled from the group and was so glad to re-connect at least a little bit in college. I can't ever tell you how much I appreciated your helping me move out of the house, particularly when my dad got going . . . you know what I mean.
Last seen: California?
UPDATE 7/2/2005
Found!! Yep, Google strikes again. See July 3, 2005.

Shannon Heizer: We met up in what, fifth grade? sixth? You and Suzy Gruchow were just what I needed when I needed it. Remember when Suzanne used to talk to "Alfie" in Ms. Bailey's sixth grade class? Miss you guys.
Last seen: Baylor University

Kate MacDonald: damn, I caught up with you in 1994 before you moved to Alaska and then lost you again. Dude, we've got lots of little details to catch up on and I no longer need help with my Latin homework. (And I know you're relieved about that!) I've realized over the last ten years that you really taught me an incredible amount. I never had anyone be so patient with me and help me learn. I've no idea how to thank you for that.
Last seen: Alaska

Brenda Heath: what can I say? A part of me will always regret the way I handled so many different things. I caught up with Brian a few years ago. He's in California, was in the military and is married with kids now. Last I heard from you, you were in Round Rock, I think. Contact me? I have lots to tell you and lots to apologize for.
Last seen: Round Rock, Texas

Kyungah Kim (Janet Kim): oh, my illustrious locker partner, dude, I can't tell you how much I want to re-connect with you. We shared so much and I know you put up with a lot from me. But . . . I know things didn't go as you wanted them to go after high school. But you blocked me out. I couldn't find you; I couldn't seem to get through. And then I couldn't find you at all. I was so worried about you and you just couldn't seem to see that so many people were worried about you and wanting to help however we could. Last I heard, you'd re-discovered an interest in Korea. There are so many things that I wish we could talk about.
Last seen: Arlington??

Ed Garner: dude, you think any of us realized the grand plans we dreamed up during lunch in Mrs. McNew's room? I heard that you'd been in the military and worked with tanks . . . but that's about all I know. I miss you.
Last seen: army??

Dan Fitzgerald? I think it was Fitzgerald. You moved to the Middle East before your senior year. I gave you a silly little spy "kit" that I made. I miss your brash ideas and confidence. Our lunch group wasn't the same without you. I still talk about us "taking over the world." :)
Last seen: Saudi Arabia

There are others of you that I'd love to reconnect with, but I'll get around to more of you later. Somehow, I knew even back in high school that I would miss you all. I even have some of the silly little notes that we'd write to each other between classes.

And all I can think of now is a quote from, of all people, my buddy, Stephen King: I never had any friends like I did when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?

All right, MORE than enough of the overly apologetic and maudlin remembrances. I promise not to do this again for a while.

Posted by Red Monkey at 9:02 PM | Comments (1) | Blog | Stumble

May 25, 2005

Blah

I'm working on getting the templates and the CSS straightened out here. Things are a mess now, but I swear I'll get it cleaned up soon. If for no other reason than you can't read the description and somehow I think Red Monkey ought to have some red in the design. Maybe.

And a logo. Gotta have a logo. Not to mention links to my friend Andy's blog - he's a great writer. And, of course, to the king of bloggers - Wil Wheaton. Of course, the poor li'l dude's got frickin' mono right now and probably won't be doing much besides sleeping in the foreseeable future.

Meanwhile, you want to read something interesting? Check out my SuperChemoGirl story.

Posted by Red Monkey at 12:07 PM | Comments (1) | Blog | Stumble