disobey.com

Those who have ever read my emails may know, love, or harbor resentment to, my random signatures. Now 81 entries long, I'm always on the lookout for phrases or words that titillate me in as few words as possible: 58 characters is the largest signature length I've saved. Shrinking an idea or emotion down to that many characters or less is a bit like Perl Golf, another game I enjoy.

<dopry> hey Morbus, how's it going... rough evening/morning?
<Morbus> nah, not at all.
<dopry> Ok.. You just seemed to have a chip on the old shoulder...
<Morbus> dopry: nah. not at all.
<Morbus> well, it's quite possible i've had a chip on my shoulder for so long that it's part of the shoulder now.
<eaton> that's an excellent motto.
<Morbus> "my chip has been there so long, it's part of my shoulder now"
<Morbus> no wait.
<Morbus> that's not poetic enough'
<Morbus> my chip has been there so long, it's no longer on, but is.
<Morbus> hrm. needs the word shoulder to associate though.
<eaton> "It's quite possible I've had a chip on my shoulder so long that it's part of the shoulder."
<Morbus> mottos are short and lyrical.
<Morbus> my chip's been there so long, it's no longer on, but is, my shoulder.
<Morbus> hrm.
<Morbus> no, that's not good either.
<Morbus> ooh! i goti t!
<Morbus> "i've no more shoulders, only chips"
<Morbus> now *that's* a good one.

82! 82 signatures! Ah ah ah!

I coulda swore I had posted this before, but from September 20th, 2001. Lines have been combined for readability:

<Morbus> you know, i'm so mad at kelloggs. they have chocolate frosted flakes, right? and they had a box at this market basket in town. so it was the ONLY flipping box. and after i got it home, i discovered why. the damn thing was like three months stale. but i still ate it, and i still loved it. but the stupid store never got them back
<Morbus> so i email kellogs. i'm like "yo bitches, gimme some cocoa"... they email me back and they're like "please talk to your manager". they thought i was some stock boy complaining about not getting a shipment in. i was like "whhhaa?" so then i went to mycereal.com and made my own cereal. it was frosted flakes, cocoa frosted flakes, lucky charms marshmallows, and some chocoloate marshmallows
<Morbus> i called it "indigestos".
<Morbus> i tell ya, it was the best damn cereal ever.
<Mishka> that sounds so gross
<djc> mmmm
<Morbus> no way, man, it was awesome. so flipping good.
<djc> how mcuh?
<Morbus> one serving (which are huuuge) was enough for like three days of sleepliess nights
<Morbus> well, cos i got all the sinful crap, it was like 20 bucks for seven servings.
<Morbus> but worth it man, worth it.
<djc> hhaaha
<mnickel> COOL
<djc> thats great
<Mishka> you americans are weird
<djc> i want my own cereal!
<Morbus> now, it looks like the site's closed. that sucks.
<Morbus> i only got in because i got a secret code.
<Morbus> well, you wanna hear my character for indigestos? see. actually, i wanted to make an all marshmallow cereal. but get this, mycereal.com said my cereal wasn't healthy enough and i had to pick some other shit. laughed my ass off. so anyways, the flippign character would be this pirate, who would go around to toehr cereals stealing thier marshmallows. and there'd be a prize in the cereal.
<djc> haha
<djc> cool
<djc> like a treasure!
<Morbus> the package would say "arrrr! hey kids? getting sick? try this?" and ripping open the pouch would be like a handful of normal cereal to sprinkle on your marshmallows
<djc> hahhahaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
<Morbus> it'd be fuckign awesome
<djc> dude
<mnickel> rotflmao!!!!
<djc> i am laughing my ass off here
<Mishka> oh my .....
<mnickel> dude, you are fricken' hilarious!!
<djc> +1
<djc> thats good stuff
<mnickel> Morbus++

In order to test the stability of an IRC bot written as a Drupal module, I needed to get something useful running relatively soon so that I could watch it over a week of normal usage. As such, the first complete bot.module plugin has landed in Drupal CVS, which simply reports the titles of drupal.org nodes. In a development channel like #drupal, we're constantly mentioning issue URLs for followups, patch testing, sanity replicators, etc.. This module spits the issue title to prevent wasted clicks to a topic you know nothing about. Running live on #drupal as I type.

The heat is oppressive and so is my reading queue.

• Jeremy Zawodny has a six part series (six dumps for the price of one!) on how he lost 50 pounds (of himself) over a year with three simple steps. I've no intention of ever following, or going on, any sort of diet plan (for the same reason I dislike taking medicine -- it seems an admission of dislike with whatever grande scheme I happen to believe in at the moment), but I do find some interest in reading over weight loss tips for people who sit on their ass all day. I've a belly, sure, but I can still see my penis. Good enough, right?
• The Library of Congress: Web Capture: "In 2004, the Library's Office of Strategic Initiatives created a Web Capture team to support the goal of managing and sustaining at-risk digital content. The team is charged with building a Library-wide understanding and technical infrastructure for capturing Web content. The team ... is identifying policy issues, establishing best practices and building tools to collect and preserve Web content." Their primary acquisition tool is the Internet Archive's Heritrix, an open-source, extensible, web-scale, archival-quality web crawler.
• Is the RPG Industry Screwed?: A useful read if I ever get around to finessing a Ghyll book. "Paradoxically, it's never been easier to get an RPG published, but never harder for a new RPG company to support full-time endeavour. The scalability of the new publishing model means that although it is very hard to make money, you are much, much less likely to lose it through an expensive litho print run."
• The 7 (f)laws of the Semantic Web: "When it comes to the Semantic Web, you might call me a disillusioned advocate. I’ve been dipping in and out of the technologies for the last 5 years or so, but am increasingly frustrated by the lack of any visible progress." Some questionable conclusions here, like drawing a negative inference that there are more AJAX books then RDF books. AJAX is graphic/UI whizbangery that has more than enough glitz to harm the web vs. RDF which is much more grounded in information design (and more difficult for someone to just "pick up"). Bonus points for the shoutout to crschmidt (from #swhack).
• BBC Domesday Project: "The BBC Domesday Project was a partnership ... to mark the 900th anniversary of the original Domesday Book, an 11th century census of England. It is frequently cited as an example of digital obsolescence ... In 2002, there were great fears that the discs would become unreadable as computers capable of reading the format had become rare (and drives capable of accessing the discs even rarer)."

In response to my previous entry, cskaterun in #swhack says that I "portrayed teenagers in a not so good way". To which I immediately replied that when I was in school, the girls weren't giving blowjobs in bathrooms, nor was it a nonchalant affair. Hell, they were wearing regular old panties under their skirts, not like the thong-teasing youth of today. Damn my age, damn my age!

And, even if they were giving blowjobs when I was in school, I would never have gotten one -- I have a mortal fear of public bathrooms and it all relates to this traumatic experience I had when I was very young (less than 10, I'd suspect). I was raised as a Jehovah's Witness, so every Sunday we'd head off to church, yadda yadda yadda. Welp, one day I had to take a piss, so off I scampered to the church bathroom, ready to let "a stream of amber urine flow from my dick".

And then the lights went off. Me, being a youngin', opened the stall door and walked out with my pants around my ankles whimpering to "turn the lights back on". And on the lights came at the behest of a "big kid", who proceeded to laugh and point, point and laugh, Mortal Kombat Humiliation, and so on. That was Jehovah's Bathroom Incident #1. The second one occurred at a religious convention in Massachusetts. Since there are a kazillion people there, the bathrooms are uber chaotic and filled with folks. Always nervous about a relapse of the first experience, but "really having to go", I sat down and began my business, only to have the door kicked open by someone else, also apparently "really having to go". He promptly apologized, but I assure you, my bowels flowed faster than I would normally have preferred.

Both of those things combined to ill effect on my impressionable youth, and today I can't use a public bathroom unless it is totally empty. And if it is, my goat reflexes are always on the alert for interlopers, and I've been known to cut short any attempt, or not even begin, if there's too much commotion around. Damn Jehovah's Witnesses scarred me for life!