Tonight I wrote down my URL for this chick at Rich O's. We'd been talking about writing and somebody had told her that I have a 'blog.

Even though I told her that everything except some entries in the ramblings and the peril categories is boring and stupid, I'm now feeling a little bit of pressure to write something halfway decent.

That way it will at least look like I'm still capable of a coherent thought every now and then.

The problem is, I've got nothing. So I'll just write about my day, such as it was.

After I washed my car Koko and I went over to Polly's for lunch.

After that I went down to my cousin Mike's new house to check it out. Not exactly a castle, but it's not like he needs anything special. It's certainly got to be better than living with his parents has been these past few months.

After my late afternoon nap I stopped to see VigilanteGirl. Now it looks like she won't be changing jobs. I have mixed emotions about this. I mean I'm glad that I'll still be able to see her on a regular basis, but I know I should feel bad because I know she was looking forward to making more money and having her weekends off. This is just another example of me being a selfish bastard I guess.

This one chick at the Gas'N'Stuff gave me shit about being in there three times today. I have no idea what that was all about. For one thing, I was only in there twice. For another thing, it's a fucking convenience store. You're supposed to go there when it's convenient for you, not when it's convenient for the people working there. For another thing, it's none of her fucking business how many times I go in there. So now I'm afraid that I may have another person to avoid at that store. The first one I don't think works there anymore.

I got to Rich O's and for a few minutes I was literally the only customer there. In the bar proper I mean I think there were a couple of people out in the front room. I talked briefly with NotGeorge on the phone and basically told him to hurry up if he was coming because it looked like the place would be closing soon.

Let's see, I took it easy on the beer tonight. All I had were some Smithwick's and some Guinnesses (Guinni?). Spent some time talking with NotGeorge, ClownGirl, Bubbles, DisgustingMakeoutCouple, and the aforementioned chick.

At one point everyone else had gone and I found myself talking with AforementionedGirl about my 'blog and how 99% of it is crap, and 99% of the semi-good stuff is about you know who and how fucked up I am and/or was about her. I ended up writing my URL down for some reason.

I'm going to stop writing this entry now. I've got an idea for a new entry though. Maybe tomorrow I'll write about signals if I can figure out a way to keep it fairly generic.

Drove my Monte Carlo to work the other day and birds used it for shit target practice.

So this morning, instead of taking it to the brushless car wash like I usually do, I decided to really baby the thing and do a complete hand washing.

So now it's completely clean - no bugs, dirt, or bird shit - but it looks like crap because of all the water spots left on it.

This is what I get for having a black car, but I thought the water softener I bought last year was supposed to reduce or eliminate the water spots.

Guess not. Once it gets dark the car will look great though.

(update: While the car was parked at my cousin Mike's new house birds used it as a toilet again.)

Friday night at Rich O's was fairly crowded, but I guess it wasn't too bad because I actually got to park in the main parking lost - first time that's happened on a Friday in months.

I ended up sitting on the throne and having a pretty tame night.

My first beer was this:

La Rulles Triple

(draft) A fairly standard tasting tripel. Perhaps a little more citrus than I'd prefer, but very drinkable.

There were some PBDs that I sort of know sitting around me, and ExBartender and CoffeeDude were around as well. I stayed pretty quiet.

One of the PBDs was drinking a Chouffe Bok, and, based on his recommendation, that's what I had next.

Chouffe Bok 6666

(draft 2002 vintage) A nice reddish-brown. Had a fruit component that wasn't the apples I'm used to from Belgians. I'm going to call the flavor a mix of cherries and beets. Not too bad, but not worth a second glass.

RealTrainGirl and MisunderstoodGirl came in. They'd got new call phones with cameras in them but it looks like we cannot send pictures between us. I guess Sprint and Verizon are not playing well together. I text-messaged a couple of people to have them try to send a picture to my phone but none of the people I tried have camera phones. Oh well.

Any of you faithful readers out there want to try go head and contact me via e-mail or the message form at the side of the page. I'll respond with my cell phone number.

(update: A few people have managed to send pictures to my cell phone. None of them have been with Verizon though.)

Just put in a new function to display random 'blog entries.

It's not (right now anyway) available on my home page, but if you go to any of the 'blog pages that list the monthly archive links, right above them is a new link labelled random.

This link will, duh, display a random entry from the appropriate 'blog.

Here's a link to a random entry in the main 'blog just so you see what I mean.

We had this work thing today at Louisville's Fourth Street Live. Specifically at the Lucky Strike bowling lanes and the poolhall Felt.

I suppose that, as these offsite meetings go, this one was okay. I can always think of about a zillion real things I could be working on instead of attending these day-long meetings.

During the lunch break several people grabbed a pool table and started playing 8-ball amongst themselves. I got my own table and started banking balls in. Even with the crappy house cue, the dismal lighting, the large stains on the cloth consisting of I don't want to know what, and the fact that the entire table leaned heavily to one side, I found that it's surprisingly difficult to miss a bank shot on an eight foot table.

Most of the people that know me at work know that I'm a pool player, and that I'm a pretty good one. I'm not sure that they grasp just how good compared to them, or that if there was any money in it at all for a player at my level I'd hang up my keyboard and make my living doing something I love instead of something I merely enjoy.

I heard some people talking today, making little comments about how I was playing by myself and wondering if everyone was just too scared to play me. These comments were all made jokingly and everybody got a good laugh out of it, including me. But nobody came over to my table.

If all they're wanting is a chance to win, then they did well to stay away. If winning is what's most important to them, they shouldn't get within ten feet of me and a pool table.

I understand the desire to win. I've seen it often enough, felt it often enough. I just never let it take away from the simple enjoyment of playing. Those times when I found myself outmatched and I lost, I still enjoyed every minute of it. Those times when I knew going in that I wasn't likely to win - I still played. To avoid the competition because of a fear of losing - what's the fun in that?

Maybe part of the reason for my ability to enjoy myself is that I've generally been pretty good at whatever I do. Better than average I guess you could say.

Darts. Horseshoes. Shooting baskets. Bowling.

Bowling was the team-building portion of the offsite meeting. We split up into teams and bowled all these crazy frames; opposite handed, granny style, backwards granny style, blindfolded, etc.

Those were the odd-numbered frames. The even-numbered frames were real bowling.

Back when I was in the Air Force, we'd take a Friday off each month and just go bowl together. We always had a lot of fun, even without all of the goofy-assed odd-numbered frame restrictions. I wish we'd done that today. Just bowled.

So I scored a 91. My even-numbered frames probably made up 75 of those points. My odd-numbered frames were fairly useless. If I'm figuring things correctly I'd have bowled a 165 or so if the whole game had been normal bowling. I used to average about 185 in my Air Force days, but I'd certainly take a 165 considering how I've bowled about 10 games in the last 13 years.

I mentioned a while back that this Lucky Strike place has Smithwick's on tap. I had two, and they were delicious. Everybody else was using their drink tickets to get drinks made with our company's products, but I paid for my own beer. People told me that I should use my drink tickets - nobody would care - but I would care so I bought my own beers.

Just wanted to write something today. This is a pretty boring entry I guess.

Oh yeah I stopped at Rich O's on the way home and had a Spezial Rauchbier. Tried to text-message RealTrainGirl to see if she was stopping by but got no answer.

So not the best of days for me.

It shows up nearly every day after work. I sit at Rich O's and have myself a beer. My thoughts start to wander.

They always head in the same direction, during those times when I'm halfway between my work life and my home life. When I've let my mind relax for the first time all day. My thoughts start to wander and before I know it this gorilla is right there next to me again.

The last few weeks have been better though. It hasn't seemed quite so obnoxious. I don't know if I've become more accustomed to its presence or if I've just gotten better at ignoring it. Hardly noticed it at all while I was in Las Vegas. That was a great relief.

Today was a bad day. It kept waving my phone in my face, urging me to do that which I cannot do.

Must. Not. Do.

It's standing behind me now, tapping me on the shoulder, grunting in my ear. Tonight all it wants is attention. I can acknowledge it and perhaps pet it a little, just let it know that I haven't forgotten about it. I can handle nights like this.

It's those times, like this evening after work, times when simple attention is not enough - those times are tough. The toughest was that night a few weeks ago when I tried to kill it. In a moment of total desperation I used my secret weapon and tried to completely destroy this pitiful thing that meant no harm to me at all, this wretched manifestation of my own emotions.

I tried to destroy it, but it turned out to be stronger, much stronger, than I'd feared. It heard the words that were supposed to kill it and instead they just bounced off. My most powerful weapon, my most potent poison, had no effect on it whatsoever.

It's stronger than I'd thought, but it's not stronger than me. I may not be able to get rid of it, or even placate it completely, but I will not give in.

I will not give in.

After work yesterday they had NABC Stumble Bus on tap. I'd never tried it before so I gave it a go:

NABC Stumble Bus

(draft) Looked and smelled fantastic - good enough that I pushed past my initial dislike of the taste to give it a fair shot. Eventually the bitterness wore me out, and I ended up giving about half the pint away. I can understand the appeal of this beer, it just doesn't happen to appeal to me.

This morning I finally got fed up with the rapidly deteriorating performance on the server where my site was hosted.

So I called my hosting company and asked them if they had any solution for me other than my switching companies.

They offered to move my domain to another server, away from from whichever domain(s) were hogging the system resources on the current server. This is the sort of response I was hoping for. See below for the type of response I was not hoping for.

Well, that process has begun.

I've had all of my files copied over, and I've requested that the DNS entries for barenada.com be changed to point to the new server.

Still waiting for the DNS changes to propogate around - it could take a few days - but for now I've been testing my relocated site using the IP address.

Everything seems to be working except the functions to send me private messages and ask me private questions. I do not, on this new server, have permissions to run the /bin/mail command as I did on the old server.

Called tech support. The guy was less than helpful. Tried to tell him that their preferred method of opening a trouble ticket (I send an e-mail) has never, does not now, and I expect never will work for me, so would he please just open the ticket himself.

The guy was still less than helpful, continuing to parrot his standard send an e-mail advice, so I told him I'd call back tomorrow when I'd be more likely to get some actual help.

So, for tonight at least, any message or questions you send me will not be immediately forwarded to me. I'll have to watch my server logs manually for them. So don't expect the rapid responses you may have become accustomed to.

(update: About a half-hour after I hung up on the less-than-helpful guy I got an e-mail from the nice girl that helped me this afternoon. She's looking into the permissions issue for me. I guess the guy I talked to at least passed word of my problem along. Even if he said something like "Hey, listen to this asshole's problem" that's still being helpful and I appreciate it.)

(update: Well it seems that my streaming movies will not work until the DNS gets propogated around. So if you got here via the error page I left on the old server the streaming movies still will not work for you. The WMV formatted movies should be fine. Once the DNS gets around everything should work correctly.)

(update: The permissions problem with the message/question forms has been fixed. Yay! The issue with the streaming movies will still take up to a few days to correct itself. Boo!)

This morning, already looking forward to getting off work, I started thinking about the beer I would drink this evening.

I was thinking about the NABC Blonde Abbeys I'd had Saturday, and the Mad Bitch I'd had Friday, and I decided that I wanted something smoky. But not too smoky. Just enough to take the edge off the sweetness still lingering on my palate.

The beer I was thinking about was a Spezial Rauchbier. I got to wondering when Rich O's would have it on tap again.

Many boring hours at work passed, and I walked into Rich O's a little after 5:00 to see, lo and behold, that Spezial Rauchbier was on tap.

Needless to say, this is what I had. Two of them actually. It's kind of neat to imagine that I was able to make a certain beer appear just by thinking about it. Tomorrow I plan to think about beautiful brunettes in glasses.

And winning lottery numbers! Must not forget!

When I first arrived I sat on the sofa and listened to a couple of very hot, very young, girls practicing for a Spanish exam. I was pretty surprised that I actually remembered most of the words that they were practicing, and I was even able to help tutor them a little. Pretty good after twenty-three years. Even better considering how CalienteRoja was posing and contorting herself on the loveseat - quite distracting.

After I'd been there for a few minutes, RealTrainGirl and MisunderstoodGirl came in. That's why I had two beers instead of my usual one. We just talked for a while about not much in particular.

I stopped and talked to VigilanteGirl on the way home. She's leaving her job I guess, so that sucks for me, but she'll make more money and she'll have her nights off, so she should be a lot more relaxed.

This thing took over four hours to render for some reason: