Since we're on the topic of popular web services
Hotmail can kiss my ass.

I have a Hotmail account that I use for signing up for stuff that I don't want to use my regular email address for, which is definitely a good thing to do, because I get about 10 - 15 junk emails per day in my Hotmail account. About a month and a half ago, Hotmail made it much easier to block certain email addresses, while at the same time, 'vastly improving' their junk email protection filters. Since it was much easier to block addresses, I started blocking the email address of every junk email I got, but never utilized the filter protection.

Well, about 2 days ago, I was logged into my account, and I blocked some of the emails I got. The only problem is, Hotmail informed me you can only have 250 email addresses on your block list, and I had filled my list. They recommended I start using the junk mail filter. So I begrudgingly decided to give it a try, and initially put it on the lowest setting. Well that didn't work, I got 12 emails yesterday in my regular inbox, and 0 in my junk email box. So I decided to put it on the highest setting. And so I checked it tonight. Get this, I had 20 emails in my regular inbox, all junk, and 1 in my junk mail box. 1! The kicker of it is... I decided to look at the 'junk' email and see who it was from: it was from Hotmail!! Can you believe that? I then decided to test the service myself, and I sent myself an email from my hotmail account. That email also ended up in my junk email box, even though it was from the same account that received it! In the meantime, I received 2 more junk emails in my regular inbox. What the hell.

Geocities can kiss my ass.
Apparently, my other site decided to get popular recently so they decided to temporarily close it down.
And that's not even the account I use to house all of my skins and stuff. Friggin' fascists.
Anyone know of a free web service that won't axe my site if people actually visit it?
I don't get it.. it's not like the site is full of animations, pictures, and other data-intensive crap.
Heh, I guess I could open up a fourth account...

Update: Looks like the site works again, so you won't be able to see the dumb temp page they had up on my site. Basically, it said "Sorry, this site is temporarily unavailable!" Of course, it isn't listed anywhere how much bandwidth I have allotted to me, so I don't what changes I should make to prevent it from happening again. I guess I took enough bandwidth to have my site down for eight hours instead of the one hour penalty they say they would do. How queer.

Happy birthday, Jerome's mom
Jerome's not sure why he's talking in the third person right now.

Number 71
There's some guy in baseball who has been hitting lots of home runs. Enough to break some other guy's record, in fact. Go figure.
I wonder if Jake knows about this, heh.

Posts by me are going to very small in numbers for a few days.
Just a heads up.

Hey, it's time for dinner! Mmmm...

Funny!
So I was just minding my own business, ringing up some middle aged guy's supplies. He has his son with him, who couldn't have been more than 10 or 11. At each register, there's this little black container where people can donate to the WTC relief effort. The container has a picture of an American flag on it and has some text above and below it stating something like... well, you probably already have an idea what it says.

The 10-year-old saw the container, and told his dad that his class convinced "everyone" in his class to bring in American flags. Then, they mailed them all to the White House.

"Good for you," the father says.
"They probably burned all of the flags, though," said the son.
"Why do you say that?"
"Because they're all Republicans."

I had to smile at that point. That was too cool.

Also, some paranoid lady was telling me that all of these "donate to the WTC relief effort" things that essentially every company in the area is doing was a scam. The money was going to line the pockets of one of the higher-ups. It sickened her. And I was like, "You're an idiot. Go home." Actually, I just pretty much smiled and nodded until she finally shut the hell up and left the store.

I like it when I go to bed at night...
...and I try to convince myself to go to bed fairly early that night since I have stuff to do the following morning. The only thing is, I don't really have any time-consuming things to do the following morning. So my body is like, "What the hell are you trying to prove? Stay up a little longer." And then I try to convince myself that I'll pay for it in the morning. The only problem is, I really won't, since the things I need to do can be done in the upcoming days instead of the following morning.

So the following morning comes and I want to get up at a certain time. That time comes, and instead of getting up, I end up sleeping for another hour or two. Then I get up just in time for me to do my normal everyday things before heading off for "work," but not for any of the other crap that I wanted to get done.

The moral of this story? Uh... the body has a mind of its own.

Yeah, this story sucks. It sounded a lot better before I decided to post it.

My Own Music List
In a follow up to an article originally posted by Jerome, in light of the recent tragedy, I have made my own list of songs that should not be played for any reason. This is just a list I threw together, so its not as complete as it could be, but feel free to add your own songs by clicking on the comments button below.
A few songs that Puffy stole
Abba - Dancing Queen
Aerosmith - Anything off Just Push Play
Any song by Creed
Any Spanish language song by Christina Aguilera
Anything after The Jefferson Airplane became Jefferson Starship and then Starship
Aqua - Barbie Girl
Beatles - Yellow Submarine
Carl Douglas - Kung Fu Fighting
Cher - Believe
Chumba Wumba - Tub Thumping
Dave Matthews Band - Crash Into Me, Satellite
Dishwallah - Counting Blue Cars
Elton John - Tiny Dancer
Four Seasons - December 1963 (Oh What A Night)
Guns N Roses - Paradise City
Jane's Addiction - Jane Says, Been Caught Stealing
Jim Croce - Time In A Bottle
Led Zeppelin - Stairway to Heaven
Lenny Kravitz - American Woman
Mariah Carey - Anything written by Mariah, instead of someone else
Michael Jackson - Black or White, Remember the Time, Scream
NIN - Closer
Nirvana - Heart Shaped Box
No Doubt - Spiderwebs
Pearl Jam - Spin The Black Circle, Daughter, Betterman
Pink Floyd - Money
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Give It Away
REM - Bang and Blame, Nightswimming, Man On The Moon, Crush With Eyeliner
Sheryl Crow - Sweet Child Of Mine
Simon and Garfunkel - The Sound of Silence
Smashmouth - Then The Morning Comes
Stone Temple Pilots - Sour Girl, Interstate Love Song
Styx - Mr. Roboto
The Cure - Friday I'm in Love
The Who - I'm A Boy
Third Eye Blind - Graduate
Violent Femmes - Blister In The Sun
Wang Chung - Everybody Wang Chung Tonight
Weezer - Buddy Holly
(Note in many cases, I really like other songs by an artist, just not these particular songs)

Links from Shacknews
I haven't really been citing my sources as of late. It's probably because they usually come from one of three places: Shacknews or a similar gaming site, Metafilter, or I find it on my own in some twisted way. Well, to get myself back in the habit, here's a bunch of links I stole shamelessly from Shacknews:

* In case you happen to hate Osama Bin Laden for some reason, you may want to kick his ass if you have Unreal Tournament, Quake 3: Arena, or even The Sims.

* Hey remember that Bridge Builder game from about six months ago? Well, I guess there's some sort of sequel to it now called Pontifex. Hooray.

* And finally, no, your company does not have to accommodate for your sexual dysfunction. Sorry, Jon. ;)

Pimphats.com
Here's your link. Go check it out. There's some hats in there that totally scream "Winner!"

I think I may have to use the pic of the "black slick" guy for something one of these days. That guy reeks of awesomeness.

On a related note, if I still had my old flash intro that Mike made me back in the day, I'd link to it right about now. I'm sure it's somewhere on my hard drive, though.

Hey, beautifulgarbage hit the shelves today.
Not that anyone cares besides me, heh.

Since Staples decided to give me the day off tomorrow (which, oddly enough, means I have a three-day break from working really hard... or hardly working?), I may have to make a trip to Strawberries or something after I clean my car and do an oil change and stuff. Woo.

Quizzes are fun.
There's a quiz on boston.com today about dates in U.S. history. I haven't taken it yet, but uh... I'm assuming I'll do pretty well.

You can try that Miss America quiz located a few posts down if you haven't already.

How to make millions
Open up a business -- perhaps like a bar setting -- that deals in the trafficing and promotion of "illegal" substances.
Make sure only a handful of people find out about it. It will explode like Project Mayhem on its own anyway.
Give your "buyers" and "users" the feeling that taking your substance will knock them on their ass.
Save expenses by using oxygen as your "illegal substance" instead of, say, crack cocaine or heroin.
Sit back and relax.

More Taliban news... kinda.
You know, I have one simple request, and that is to have sharks with freakin' laser beams attached to their heads. Now evidently my cycloptic colleague informs me that that can't be done.

Hey, a Terrorist play! First, a Bengali kid was getting beat for speaking out agaisnt Osama, and now some teacher in El Salvador got her students to dress up and re-enact the WTC disaster? Freaky stuff.

We may not have sharks with lasers to combat terrorism, but someday, we may have laser beams of lead! Some US goverment sectors are interested in this Aussie technology for sniper rifles. That could be cool, but do snipers really need the ability to fire a million bullets a minute? One or two shots should be more than enough.

Or perhaps we should use a new type of molotov cocktail. Emphasis on the word "cock." :P I heard it could pack quite the "punch," too.

Further update! (sorry about all the posts by me)
But Mike has taken a good look at the site, and has now declared it to be funny and he likes it. I swear, no coercion was necesary on my part. Unfortunately, I lost the IM conversation that would have been my proof of this. But that's ok, because in the conversation, he stated he was suing me becuase I posted our previous conversation without his consent.

Update!
They added 2 U2 shows at Madison Square Garden, and I got some decent seats on saturday the 27th at $85 each, almost $100 when you figure ticketmaster charges. Email me if you are interested in going (2 tickets remaining and Jerome has first dibs on one of them).

Pirates!
From the Boston Globe, these are the Taliban's ambassadors to Pakistan:

They look like pirates! Rrrrr Matey! I bet Afghanistan took that guy's eye out becuase he poked his boyfriend's eye out with his dick. You know how it is over there, eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth code of laws. These guys are still living in the time of Hammurabi's Code.

Here are some other stories relating to the terrorist attacks:
Someone actually has a tattoo, not only of another person, but of Osama Bin Laden.
Did you know that Afghanistan is the world's largest producer of Opium and Heroin? And now that will only increase. Talk about poppies.
And finally, a pretty good article with some perspective from the inside of Afghanistan from a former citizen.

In unrelated news:
Now you can go to a LAN party, and look like even more of a dork than usual, with this accessory from Alienware. You'll be the coolest cat in town carrying a huge Martian Red, or Nova Yellow computer on your back. I wonder where you fit the monitor?
I was not able to get U2 tickets because there just isn't a good enough system to buy tickets. I was on Ticketmaster's site for almost an hour, and it was 'too busy' the whole time, even though I kept hitting refresh... although its obvious some people were getting through, becuase after all that waiting, and broadening my search as wide as possible, I got a message that they were unable to fulfill my request.

Why Bother?
So yesterday I went to see Weezer at Jones Beach Ampitheatre in Wantagh, NY, out on the island (freakin' island traffic!). My sister came down to see the show, and her and my mom and my dog stayed over my place last night. Also my friend Niru from work, and her friend, Mike sat with us. Overall, I'd say the concert was great. 7 thumbs up.

Here's the rundown: The show 'started' at 5, which is good becuase it was a cold day in an outdoor ampitheater. After getting slightly lost in island traffic, my sister and I got there at about 5:20 or so, and went right in. The first band had not started yet, so it was all good. We were disappointed to see that our seats, although dead center, were pretty high up, in fact, the last row in our section, even though we got them at internet presale. It was kinda cold, but that's ok. One awesome thing that happened was I saw a guy who I knew from high school. I saw him way the hell down here in Yankee country. What was even more amazing is that he said 'hi' to me and made me follow him. He took me to a place where I found one of my best friends in the whole world, Dan. Dan lives in Virginia with his girlfriend, and drove 7 hours to see Weezer, and even though he KNEW I was going to be at the show, neglected to call me and tell me that he was going to be there also. But he did have his friend, that guy from high school, on the lookout for me. So it was all cool as I got to hang out with him and his girlfriend and my sister. And we met up later after the show.

We were expecting the opening bands to be The Start, and Cold, and we were hoping that Weezer would get onstage at about 7:30 at the latest. The Start got on about 5:45, and played about 8 songs, one of which was a decent version of 'Breed' by Nirvana.

After they were done playing, a medley of 80's songs filled the place while their techs disassembled their equipment, and the techs for the next band assembled their equipment. So we were sitting and waiting for Cold mostly so they would hurry through their set and Weezer would come on, sitting and waiting sitting and waiting. It was GETTING COLD, so I guess we weren't waiting that hard for Cold.

So at this point its getting dark and my friend Niru shows up, and we give her the bad news that we still have to wait through another band before Weezer starts. Since Niru and Mike were hungry, they decided to go get some food. While they were gone some guy in the crowd started a wave, which was neat in the smallish (~15,000 seat) theatre. The only problem is, Weezer came on about 7:15 and played 2 and a half songs before they got back. So I felt bad, because they were expecting Cold to come on first! (We later found out that Cold was sick of being taunted and told they suck by Weezer fans, and quit the tour.) Here is the set list that Weezer played (courtesy of Weezer.com): Island In The Sun, In The Garage, Crab, Knock Down Drag Out, So Low (new!), Photograph, Tired of Sex (the only song they Played off Pinkerton, which is unfortunate, because it is my favorite of their albums), My Name is Jonas (my sister's favorite), Do You Want Me To Stay (also new), Smile, Your Room, Undone, Don't Let Go, Say It Ain't So, Glorious Day, Hash Pipe during this song, there was a tremendous amount of smoke let off by smoke machines, and the wind and neat blue lights made it look very eerie and very cool, and the final song of the regular set, Only In Dreams, which was a totally awesome rendition and a five minute jam, also with cool smoke and lights and wind. After a five minute encore break, they came back out and played Buddy Holly, and during the song, the famous flying =W= came down from the ceiling and the crowd went nuts, and finally they closed the show with Surf Wax America. Weezer has stopped playing most songs from Pinkerton becuase as Rivers Cuomo has said '[that album] is sick and diseased' even though me and a good portion of my Weezer liking friends like that one the best. Its weird, cuz when I saw Weezer in March in Albany, they played a LOT of songs from Pinkerton. Even though they didn't play my 6 most favoritest songs by them (Why Bother, The World Has Turned and Left Me Here, The Good Life, No One Else, Across The Sea, and Pink Triangle and it doesn't help that 4 of those are from Pinkerton), I still had an absolutely great time becuase I like most of their other songs, and can sing along, which always adds to the concert experience.

After the show, I met up with Dan, and the guy from high school, and Dan's girlfriend, and some others, and we laughed and joked and hugged and stuff, and I showed off my new car, and everybody loved it. I had a great night.

Today is 'National Making Fun of Former Roommates Day'
So we're celebrating accordingly by posting this ignorant conversation. Heck he doesn't read this site anyways. Not that I don't love him. I just thought he was silly. He thought I was silly probably.

Me: do you ever read jerome's website?
Mike: nope
Me: he made me an admin
Mike: i don't even turn on my computer anymore
Mike: let alone to read jerome's website
Me: haha, how are you talking to me now then?
Mike: at home
Mike: i mean
Me: ah
Mike: so what does being admin mean?
Me: oh.... I write content too
Mike: excuse me if i find this amusing....
Me: I am like the co-writer
Me: effectively doubling the content
Mike: co-writer of what?? it's jerome's website! hehehe
Mike: i guess i just don't understand...
Mike: what's the url?
Mike: is this a page that is for the bennifit of his friends or something?
Me: err... sorry, got a phone call. http://www.geocities.com/jeromesplace
Me: I think its sort of along the line of what we originially intended to do with thesevoices
Mike: cool
Mike: except who wants to read jeromes personal webpage?
Mike: (i still don't understand)
Me: a lot of people read it
Me: its a weblog
Me: so, he puts up thoughts, links, etc.
Mike: ah
Mike: that's neat
Mike: i guess....
Mike: so other people want to read his thoughts???
Me: check it out if you ever get a chance
Me: its high comedy
Mike: i did
Me: its not just his thoughts anymore, its mine too
Me: and I think he may be looking to add more authors
Mike: so is this a news site?
Me: sort of
Mike: i've just never heard of such a thing
Me: you've never heard of a weblog?
Mike: are there other sites like this?
Mike: nope
Mike: is it like a diary?
Me: there has been weblogs since the invention of the web
Me: yeah, sort of
Mike: that other people can read?
Me: yeah
Mike: why?
Me: errr, I read it becuase Jerome is a funny bastard
Mike: well, that may be so but who wants to read a daily cronicle of his life?
Me: a lot of people read it. its something to do. spend minutes there
Mike: i mean, don't get me wrong, jerome is funny and it's a neat idea but i just don't get it...
Me: dude, its been up for like a year.... where have you been all this time>
Mike: i don't see why people would want to read that
Mike: jerome's page has been just that... a personal homepage... not a bulentenboard
Mike: he had some garbage shit... some stuff on online games, etc
Mike: the servey...
Mike: but that's it
Me: its not a bulletin board... only he posts to it (until yesterday)
Mike: well then it hasn't changed
Me: the archives of the site in its current format go back to 1//
Mike: and it's still just a personal home page
Mike: which is why i don't understand why people want to read it
Me: if you read it, you'll understand. sometimes its a different prespective on the news. sometimes its some odd stories and links to read. sometimes there is pictures from vacations. lots of stuff.
Mike: but i don't want to read jerome's perspective on the news
Mike: ok... i'll read it though
Mike: gotta go...
Me: you don't have to if you don;t want to. I was just asking if you do read it
Me: later