Ramblings of a mental patient

I noticed Dead Dreamer updated with a new portfolio. Go check out the Omnicube. I’ve always liked the art here, it appeals to my inner bastard.

I essentially live on my mac. I use it at work and home. The one thing I’ve missed from linux has been how simple it was to lock your screen. Xlock made it really simple to lock your screen on demand. On my mac, I’ve been using the “Lock Screen” on the key chain menu (you can turn it on in “Keychain Access”).

This works reasonably well. Its not much worse than clicking the lock screen icon in X11 and much less annoying than having the screen saver passworded (at home, there’s no point).

I’ve been using Quicksilver more and more. If you don’t know what it is, and you have a mac, you should check it out. Its much more than the simple application launcher it appears to be at first blush. Its a nice way of starting and interacting with programs without taking your hands off the keyboard.

I decided that it’d be nicer to be able to lock the screen from the keyboard, so I wrote a workflow using Automator that uses fast user switching and brings you back to the login screen while your apps remain running. Now locking the screen involves 3 keyboard operations and takes me less than a second. Eminently convenient. If anyone’s interrested the app and workflow can be downloaded here.

I’ve finally gotten around to beginning Steven King’s Dark Tower series. I’ve put it off for years since I hate waiting for books to be written *cough*Robert Jordan*cough*. The fact that he finally finished the series vaguely registered but its taken til now for me to decide to dive in and read. I finished the first book. I’m reserving judgement til after the next two. The first one has potential, but it was fairly short and you could tell it was pretty much all setup. It has promise, and I’ve heard good things about it. I guess I’ll see

Anyone have a copy of “Deep Six” by “Big Black”?

Arthur Schopenhauer’s THE ART OF CONTROVERSY

Nothing like waking up to an email that starts off like:

Jason,
It may sound strange to you, but I need to have forgiveness from you for how atrociously I behaved when we were dating.

I feel that I cannot move forward without knowing that you have somehow come to terms with how horribly I treated you. Call it a 12 step program or whatever…

Guess who? No, not the devil. I just got a drive by from someone I dated 12 years ago. We started dating when I was 15 and had kind of achieved a mutual destruction by the time I was about 20. She lied, she cheated, I caught her and put up with it. I lied, I cheated, the process would continue. We were stupid teenagers, it happens. So I can only say what comes to mind.

[edit] Below is my reply back to her.

I can’t exactly say that I’m happy about what you did back then, but at this point it just seems silly.

Sooner or later you have to either learn from the past or just let it go. So yeah, you have my blessing to go be happy. Because at our age, being tragic is just tiresome. I’ve moved on, so should you.

As expected, Ministry rocked. I’m not sure what I thought of RevCo yet. Certainly the show was fun to watch.

I sort of felt bad that Kat warmed up for the show by listening to old stuff off black box, etc that Al essentially pretends he never wrote. Still, it was good to run into so many people I hadn’t seen in a while.

nine inch nails was fun last night. The highlight was seeing bauhaus. They sounded great.

The NiN light show was kickass, but I couldn’t help but see the cracks and the seams. I hate canned shows. The guitarist was very excited to be there. I had a hard time believing he was actually playing. Especially since… well… one doesn’t dive off the stage and keep playing without missing a beat.

Ulana’s was fun afterwards. I guess the scene is changing. Nobody really rocks it out anymore. Sure, there’s still a few left, but they’re outnumbered by the mundanes of late.

Today Kat & I went to the zoo. The new big habitat is awesome. You feel so close to these huge cats… it rocked. We grabbed lunch there and fed some ducks & geese. The animals were great to see. Watching the keepers in the elephant pen was interesting. There was one elephant sort of playing with a keeper. Animals renew my faith in life.

Tonight is a chilled out movie night with Kat. Tomorrow we’re going to 6 flags and on saturday, the bastard will rest.

Come out sunday to ministry/revco. It’ll be a blast.

Kat and I have grand plans. Saturday is Dracula’s ball.

Wednesday is the NIN/Bauhaus show followed by shampoo. We decided to take thursday/friday off for a long anniversary weekend. There’s talk of the zoo (to see the new cat exhibits) and an amusement park. Saturday will probably be a trip to Ulana’s. Sunday is Ministry/Revolting Cocks.

Anyone going to the shows/clubs? I’m really looking forward to Ministry. They’re always a blast to see at the troc. The NIN show is going to be a big arena show, and I really need to look into the whole ferry thing from philly to NJ since last time getting home sucked.

Programmable Tattoos.

I’m not sure what I think of it yet from an aesthetic point of view, but the neuromancer in me wants one.