Eric, i can somewhat relate to your blog situation. there have been many a time where i considered shutting my site down just because it became a real eyesore.

the solution? for me, it's redesigning every once in a while. i think my site has gone throught at least ten complete redesigns since its birth in 98 and i'm still at it, seeing as how i recently [as of a few hours ago] revamped my site yet again.

i agree with Dan on his suggestion. see what you can come up with by using basic HTML/CSS. after all, less is more...more or less
posted by ivan at 1:48 AM

Eric, your blog looks fine. personally, the appearance of one's blog/xanga/livejournal/whatever has close to no impact on whether or not i read it. yeah, so thats just one person's opinion but hey, youll have at least one disappointed fan if you shut down.

one suggestion you can try is to see how far you can push the limits of html. i mean, any trained fool can glitz up a website with java or flash, right? if youre up to it, give it a try.

going to sleep, gotta get up for work tomorrow.
posted by yodaslap at 1:13 AM

(630) chut bot bot say som yut bot.

lets keep the laughter at a minimum here, shall we?
posted by yodaslap at 6:24 PM

Duh Dan what's your new cell phone # fool.
posted by Larry at 11:34 AM

Darth Animaul

posted by yodaslap at 4:43 PM

Master Kermit....

posted by asiliat at 3:22 PM

watched tupac resurrection over the weekend. i liked it a lot, especially how tupac narrates pretty much the entire movie thanks to clever editing of his old interviews. i guess theres not much else i could really say about it without possibly boring everyone, other than id highly recommend it to any and all fans of his music.
posted by yodaslap at 10:13 AM

ok i finally reached the conclusion that i live in the wrong time zone. for a few weeks now ive been reasonably consistent with getting around 8 hours of 'sleep' every week night. however, because im never able to sleep all the way thru any given night without waking up, i get up every morning feeling like crap without fail. last night i either forgot to set the alarm or accidentally hit the off switch in my sleep (before the alarm went off) and ended up sleeping in exactly one hour. i also happened to have stayed up about 3 hours later than usual, but because of that one extra accidental hour i feel super refreshed and alert.

at least now ill be rested for my uneventful weekend. yippee.
posted by yodaslap at 12:59 PM

i... hate... stupid... customers!!

MORONS!
posted by yodaslap at 12:34 PM

duh Lawrence, you normally go 3 weeks at a time without posting anyway. boooooooo.

i have super mario 10 on my phone? didnt know that. the best game is mini golf. play alone, against up to 3 AI opponents, or with other friends with t610's.

well yeah, we're not allowed to go over the speed limit or roll stop signs either. plus when i get a bluetooth headset, nobody will be the wiser.
posted by yodaslap at 5:23 PM

Welcome to the 21st century dude. Pretty soon tho, you'll probably not be allowed to operate a cell phone while driving. :D


posted by asiliat at 4:55 PM

Duh, I just passed my qualifying exams. If you were wondering why I haven't posted for like 3 weeks, it would be from the studying. Studying = booooo.

I can play snake on my phone. Sure beats your phone's Super Mario 10!
posted by Larry at 3:39 PM

mine's free after rebate, so id consider that decently cheap :D

i can hardly contain myself. while ive experienced some of the cons of having a cell phone already, the benefits of being mobile have already been overwhelming. im sure my standards are badly skewed by now, but having a cell phone makes life so much more... efficient. one shining example occured about an hour ago, when a phonecall came in from the orthopaedics place i was serviced at. unbeknownst to me, there was a somewhat sizeable balance that my dumb insurance did not cover. argh. too groggy to think straight at the moment, i eventually got up, washed up, and headed out the door with the parting thoughts eh, ill just take care of it when i get home. about 2 minutes into my drive, i realized wait a tic, i have a phone now! ah yes, the bill was paid for and everything straightened out before i was even halfway to work.

ok, might sound lame to the rest of you but im just getting caught up here, ok??
posted by yodaslap at 9:44 AM

nice. Was thinking of picking up the little brother, Sony Ericcson 226, b/c it's cheaper. But ultimately decided I didn't need a new phone.
posted by asiliat at 3:32 PM

after almost 2 years of living in the stone age, i am officially back on the grid again.


posted by yodaslap at 10:43 AM

Well now I'm not so sure. As you probably know, my parents are in HK now and may extend (at least my mom) for another week. If so, I may not come home. I'll let you know soon as I find out.

I might be at home at the very beginning of January, but probably leaving on the 2nd or 3rd DUH.
posted by Larry at 1:08 PM

tentatively, i plan to go to chicago 01/02/04-01/07/04. please let me know if it works for all you chicagoans.
posted by jylo at 11:34 PM

btw Lawrence do you know which day(s) youll be in town, and if youll be busy or not?
posted by yodaslap at 10:06 AM

boooooooo

btw nice bowling pic, Eric. your camera did a pretty good job metering what i would guess to be odd lighting conditions.

just got back from st louis earlier today. didnt do a whole lot, but it was fun and relaxing, which was much needed. had to get up freakishly early for church today (well, technically yesterday but who specifies anymore anyway??) so im pretty tired. just got conned into stopping by a friend's place so here i am, still up. boy am i gonna pay for this tomorrow (ok ok, today, argh!)...
posted by yodaslap at 1:26 AM

I'll be home for the break, but only a couple days I think. I haven't seen the Matrix yet and probably won't. I think the first will be less ruined for me if I skip this one. Even if it's a good action flick, the original was much deeper than that. The mythology was made boring already in Reloaded. Maybe I'll wait for the DVD.
posted by Larry at 11:39 PM

i agree with the rest of youse. revolutions sucked. you can read a haphazardly written, scatterbrained review on my blog.
posted by ivan at 6:03 PM

Justin: while its not an official "rule" or anything, its highly unlikely i can take a monday off in its entirety. its our busiest day and Andy probably wont be ready to take on everything by himself just yet, let alone on a monday. would half a day work? whats your plan in either scenario?
posted by yodaslap at 9:45 AM

copy/pasted my personal blog:

---

general consensus: matrix 3 sucked

movie started up, and i braced myself for it to go bad at some point. i waited. and waited. and waited some more. then the credits began rolling. did i miss something here? did all those ppl who gave it bad reviews walk into the texas chainsaw massacre showing instead (no i havent seen it, but i cant imagine it being that good)? ok ok, so im more easily entertained than most, but really, whats not to like? ok, so the rest of the matrix story COULD have been better, ill give you that much. the first installment was nothing anyone has seen before, and it blew everyone away. or maybe that was the mistake, they outdid themselves from the start. maybe they kinda felt like this:

I'm so sick and tired of bein' admired
That I wish that I would just die or get fired
And dropped from my label let's stop with the fables
I'm not gonna be able to top on "My Name is... "


-eminem, the way i am

all in all, "revolutions" has my thumbs up. peace.

posted by yodaslap at 11:43 PM

i haven't even seen the second movie in the matrix trilogy... is it worth seeing that one? i guess i've never much been a huge fan of the movie myself--probably why i never made it a point to see the 2nd one. and plus, i hate watching movies in the theatre by myself. that's one thing i don't think i could ever bring myself to do. i know it's probably my fear of regressing to that maladjusted loserly teenager i was years ago. God knows i haven't strayed far from there anyway.

dan, do you think you could get 01/05/04 off? i'm really considering picking up work on 01/02. it's always nice to have a little extra cash especially if i'm going on "vacation" anywhere. let me know. if you really can't, then i'll come down on new year's day.

lawrence, will you be in madison over the whole break?

eric, meant to write this earlier (with the other post) but forgot when i posted it. if you really want to use comments within your <style></style> tags, you should probably delimit them with /* */. the use of <!-- --> was only meant for hiding stuff in old browsers (pre-html 3.2) according to CSS specifications.
posted by jylo at 9:49 PM

I don't see how you can like the movie. It went from an amazing concept to cliche before you knew it. "The Matrix" is what was cool, Zion was not.

End of story.
posted by asiliat at 5:38 PM

still have yet to see it. a few of us made the sacrifice of not watching it opening night to get tickets for the imax showing on thursday (opening night tix sold out AS we were trying to buy them). ive already heard tons of bad reviews, but knowing myself ill probably love it just the same.

heading down to st louis this weekend to visit a friend, other than that not too much going on. hopefully itll be somewhat restful, as sleep is much needed. funny thing tho, last night (tuesday) i went to bed at 11:40 and woke up exhausted. lesson learned: im staying up latre tonight.

not a very exciting post, sorry.
posted by yodaslap at 12:25 AM

Saw Matrix Revolutions tonight. Work was nice enough to treat us, all 150 of us.

You will have to formulate your own answers after watching it. As for I, I will have to give it a thumbs down.

Don't look for any real insights.
posted by asiliat at 10:40 PM

went to an NBA game last night for the first time in my life. inevitibly, i sat in the nosebleed section, and i didnt have suitable cameras (nor angle) to get anything good. posted up some small fuzzy images on my site if you wanna take a look.

yodaslap.losir.com
posted by yodaslap at 10:56 AM

Justin: ee equals emcee squared.

Eric: yeah i doubt we'll be able to help out with construction. even if logistics allowed, id only be able to work on weekends. yeah i thought thru the "living with friends" bit already, but it shouldnt be too bad since these will be separate independent units with our own front entrance, etc. at most we'll be sharing walls and i guess park our cars in the same general vicinity. they know i need my hermit time, so it should be fine. but yeah, this could very well not happen (either for me or at all) so i still might end up buying a regular run-of-the-mill loft. *yawn* oh yeah, and to save on costs, we're gonna try to sell off the 4th unit and split the money. sounds nice on paper, but itll be a long difficult journey ahead, if it even begins at all.
posted by yodaslap at 6:09 PM

eric, try taking out the comment line in your style tag before .posts and then try loading it again in firebird. it seems your page doesn't appear correctly on Safari (running in MacOS 10.3) either. without the comment line, things look much better.
posted by jylo at 4:21 PM

sounds "pricy". However, if you guys can get together and help out during teh actual construction process, that will be able to save you some $. I don't knwo if that's as easy as say: building a basement (relatively speaking of course). But my Dad did a pretty good job of the basement room....Actually I'm talking out of my bum, I have no idea if that's even possible (help out w/ construction.) Duh!

Anyway, it sounds exciting. However I must warn you, living with friends isn't as fun as one thinks. :)
posted by asiliat at 12:37 PM

first "serious" idea: buy an old mostly-abandoned building with a couple of friends, tear down the inside, and rebuild the inside into 4 duplex lofts. ok ok, reality check: we havent bought it yet, but we've already gotten a construction guy (whom one of my friends know thru a previous connection) to take a look. chances of actually ending up buying it seem ok for now, nothing set in stone. here's the building...



one of my biggest obstacles is actually to find a time to call a loan officer. the store i work at only has one phoneline, and working at a small asian business, etc, id rather not tie up the phone for more than, say, 2 minutes. another possibility is make a mad dash home during lunch hour (about a 13 minute drive each way) but that would only give me about half an hour on the phone, which i suppose sounds like enough but i have no idea how long these things take. oh yeah, and id have to eat while on the phone.

or i could just get a cell phone like the rest of this continent's working population...
posted by yodaslap at 11:42 AM