Current mood:	?
Current music:	Voxtrot - The Start of Something

Do you listen to computer on your music?
Well, I've been blogging on livejournal for over three months now. I think it's about time that this journal finally get a proper name. I hate naming things though. A name is such an important and permanent thing. A name is commitment. I don't like naming things. I've put it off for three months, but I was always embarassed with the title of the journal being "beastmario," so I knew I had to pull my pants up and decide on one. I've been referring to this journal as "The LJ" since its inception. I thought it was a hip and easy way to refer to the journal. It never really caught on. I'm pretty much the only person who calls it the LJ out loud. Well, now it is the official title of the jounal. It simply made the most sense to me. Why not formally call it what I have been calling it for months? So, no more of that beastmario nonsense. If you've bookmarked this page in the past, you should do yourself a favor and re-bookmark it so the new name will show up. Either way, now that we have a title, don't you feel better?

Regardless of whether or not that was rhetorical, it will make no difference in the least in the comments box. Here's a little hint for everybody who reads blogs, the writer typically likes feedback. Everyone has a blog nowadays, so I think the sentiment can be understood. I'm not asking for you to participate though. I will not guilt trip my readers into leaving forced comments. I understand it is my role as an entertainer, because this blog IS for your entertainment, to provide you with content. It is a severely one-sided "give and take" relationship. I give you content, and you take it. This is how entertainment works. In return, the entertainer gets to do what he (hopefully) enjoys. For my daily readers, I'm sure this site has simply become a stop on your daily list of internet websites. You read each day's post and then move on to your next destination. I'm more akin to a newspaper than a living community of readers. I would imagine that, like the majority of the information you digest each day, the daily contents of this page affect you relatively little. It's simply a fun distraction at best, and as such, it makes a relatively small impact on you. You've probably forgotten yesterday's entry already. You can't be expected to share your input on something that doesn't affect you, and I understand that. What I want to do is give you somewhere you can go each day and find something new that (hopefully) interests you to read. Above all else, I hope you enjoy this site. If you do, nothing else matters. It reminds me of playing shows when I was younger and in a band. Kids would be sitting around and watching us, and I was absolutely cool with that. I never wanted to be a band that told the crowd to get up and stand or to move around. If the crowd could enjoy the music from the ground, then let them sit. So I will not ask for participation from you. As long as you enjoy what is going on here, I'm happy. The only reason I bring it up is I wonder how I am doing. The audience for this journal continues to grow, and feedback only helps me improve the content I am delivering to you. If I draw a comic and get some positive feedback, I'll know that people like comics. If I rant and people share their feelings on the subject, you can bet your life that there will be more rants. On the flipside, if I post pictures of dogs and people all hate it... well I'll still probably do it. I guess that was a bad example. I'll always run this blog however I want to, but it feels like I'm still stabbing around in the dark with it. It is an experiment where I will never see the results. It makes it very hard to tell what is and what isn't working sometimes.

For example, this week I did not recieve any entries for the user created challenge. I'm don't know if that's a sign that this week was simply too challenging or that you simply aren't interested in participating. So I'm making this week's user created challenge ridiculously easy, but immensly rewarding. I want everybody to send a letter to somebody else. It can say anything and be to anybody, but send a letter the old fashioned way. It'll feel good, or at least keep you fresh on where the commas go in an address. So write somebody you know a letter and send it the old fashioned way to them. Regardless of what it says, I'm sure they'll be thrilled to get it. Also, let me know if you like or dislike the idea of the weekly challenge. If only three people are going to participate each week, it kind of defeats the purpose of what I was going for with it. If you couldn't care less either way, then move on to the next paragraph.

So I did finally get the podcast up and running earlier today. I posted the link on yesterday's entry, but I'll throw it up again right here: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=DYAS287L
Please forgive me for the site that I choose to upload it on. It's a horrible site, but it was the only place I could find to host a 40 mb file for download. The site is pretty self-explanatory though, so I don't think you'll have any trouble actually downloading the file. I had a bit of trouble with the audio for the music being louder than the audio for the talking, but other than that I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. If the podcasting seems to be something you like, I'll keep doing it in the coming weeks, and maybe even get it on itunes to make the download process easier for all of you. I'm getting ahead of myself though. First you should check out this week's episode. It has some great music and an interesting interview with the creator of Fort Cosmo. I'd like to thank Neil for humoring me with the interview. Anybody who wants to be spoonfed some great music can check out Neil's (usually) good picks over at http://fortcosmo.blogspot.com

In other news, I apologize for the short entry last night. I was annoyed by the hosting site and from my hours on the phone with HP customer service earlier in the day. My touchpad on my laptop hasn't worked for over a month now. I had called HP back in July and we did a hour or so of troubleshooting with it. They decided the only thing to do, other than send it in, was to perform a pc recovery (basically reinstalling the os). This would wipe out my entire hard drive. I wasn't ready for that a month ago. Once I got my mp3 player, I was able to back-up most of my files and I gave them a call back. The first technican I got was on top of everything and had me start the recovery. The recovery would take 45 minutes to complete, so once he got me started, he told me that he would call back when it was finished. He did call back after the recovery failed to bring my touchpad back to life and told me that it was a hardware problem and I would have to send in my computer to be fixed. However, because he called me, he was unable to transfer my call to the correct location, so he told me to call back. So I called back and got another technician. Now the first problem with this technician was that his accent was so thick that I had to ask him to repeat everything he said at least once. After I explained to him everything we had done, and he had read the case file with all of the same information on there, I asked if he would transfer me to where I could get information to send my laptop in. Instead, he makes me go through the entire troubleshooting process again. So after wasting another half an hour of my time, he tells me to put the computer into safe mode (rebooting while holding F8). For whateve reason, whenever I tried this the computer emitted loud, piercing beeps at me until I let go of F8 and let it reboot normally. He had me do this five fucking times in a row, regardless of the result being the exact same each time. After the third time, I started holding the reciever up to the speakers for a length of time so he could hear the beeps. The guy thought that I was just being an idiot and trying to get HP take my laptop and fix it for free. He did not trust me on anything that I said. Instead of transferring me to the department that I wanted, he decided instead to tranfer me to his "senior technician." I was on hold for over two hours until they hung up on me. I was starting to get a bit frustrated. Thankfully the third technician I talked to when I called back was helpful and understanding. I explained it to him and he connected me to the department right away. So I'm going to be without my latop for this week and it probably won't be back until AFTER I leave for drumapalooza, which means I'll be without a computer for my two weeks of band camp. Hooray.

I think you can see why I was a bit drained yesterday. I'll be able to keep the lj running over the next week by using my old computer, but I don't know what's going to happen when I'm gone.

I don't even use the fucking touchpad. I just what that kind of functionality available to me in case I change my mind.

I finished my book today, but maybe I'll talk about that tomorrow. This entry is already getting long enough. Two things before I go though.

1. On Tuesday night, some friends and I are going to the waterpark in Apple Valley at 5 p.m. Everybody who reads this journal is invited. Even if tonight is your first entry, you are invited. On top of that, you can bring whoever you want to with you. Cost is $4 after 5 p.m. and the pool closes at 8. I hope to see many of you there.

Come on, you know you want to. What have you got to lose (besides four dollars)?

2. While not exactly what I had in mind for the contest, Curt DID send in pictures of extremely overweight people. I suppose this makes him the winner. Admittedly, these pictures are pretty awesome and I would have ended up posting them anyway. I think this is a good way to leave you for the night:





:o: