Psst.

If you hadn't noticed, I'm in the middle of writing a 2-day-1-season "One Day at TechTV" marathon. I'm making no bones about it: I'm bored. I have no life, and I'm blowing out 2002 with a massive writing session to take my mind off of both.

TELL YOUR FRIENDS. Tell everyone, if they like to see a man at the end of his rope writing comedy about TechTV -- then they'll enjoy the next 36 hours or so. If they like really bad jokes about really strange subjects, they'll probably enjoy it too -- so spread the word.

I've been inspired by a Gnome, hence the name of the season, and I'm making up this entire season off the top of my head as I write. Be afraid ... be VERY afraid ...

And have a @#$#ing great New Year's.

k9

RAR

I'm still sick. I must be sick, I'm watching "Power Rangers Animal Force" on ABC Family. It looks like the standard variation of power rangers except these people have animals on their helmets. I'm still trying to figure out why one has a giraffe for a robot but it's a big shark on his helmet. Oh well. The only other power ranger related news I have is that the girl who played "Areola" in the movie "Not another teen movie" was a power ranger in the series "Power Rangers Lost Galaxy." Not that I've seen it, I just looked it up on IMDB.com the other day when I was bored.

Ugg. I never really understood the whole power rangers fascination anyway. The show was always the same. Kids fight giant monster while learning a lesson about life. I know they were doing different settings for it ... and wait. My mind is blown, there's something called "Power Rangers Ninja Storm" coming in February where it looks like it's 3 power rangers fighting 2 other rangers. I'm so confused. I really am. More confused as to WHY I have this damn thing on. I'm really starting to scare myself.

Was up late night tormenting Stef again. I was watching Bravo's "Larry Sanders Show" marathon at the same time. I loved that show. It was so weird. Last night they were doing the final season and the final show. In the final show they brought back a lot of the people who had left the show and that was odd, especially seeing the one girl who left the show because Garry Shandling (who starred as Larry Sanders) broke off their relationship and she promptly sued the show forever (memory vague on it), and the whole controversy drug on forever.

Speaking of controversy: Cloning. Some obscure group claims they cloned some woman. Everyone is up in arms about it. There's "moral and ethical" reasons at hand. I don't care any more. If people want to clone themselves they can. Let them. Clones are babies. It's not like you can snap your fingers and have a fully formed army of darkness who are identical to you in every way. It just isn't happening. While I wonder what I could do with an army of perfectly cloned Moopies (the world shall be mine!), I have to put aside the dream because it would be a good many years until any of those clones would be able to help take over the world. Besides, if they were all like her, they'd all be hopelessly addicted to Kirby and would never get anything done. EVER.

Damn that Kirby.

k9

Ugg

Sick as a dog on a Friday morning. I have to go out and get my haircut today. I'm just going to get it trimmed. I had grand designs on what I wanted to do with it but now I'm confused because everyone and their sister has a different opinion of what I should do with my hair. I so feel like shaving it all off again. I'm tired of being bitched at or confused by other opinions. If you want to give me hair advice, and no offense by this, show me pictures of hair styles you like. Don't give me concepts of "well you should do x and y and z" because I'm sick and I'm tired and I'm really not up for this right now.

Our Christmas company was rescheduled to last night so I ended up digging out the driveway. We have a driveway that can park 3 cars side to side width wise, it's made up of gravel and it goes from the street to the back of the house. I did about half of it. 10 inches of snow and ice and let's just say, when I was done I sure as heck was feeling it. I'm also sick because in times of great stress (like college bowl season), I can screw up my stomach by eating the wrong things. In this case it was a thing of popcorn at the movies last week. I knew better but I was hungry and, as usual, I didn't think of the sharp stomach pains I'd suffer because I don't get sick until 5 or 6 days later (I'm so allergic to popcorn that it's not funny). I love life. The one you get so go an have a ball.

Hats off to the Call for Help crew for their marathon. The Gnome was pretty good. Though there were too many celebrity callers and not enough real ones. Also, no offense to anyone, but Cat adds nothing to the show and has to go. Her annoyance factor was 11. She's there because the Gnome and the producer seem to have a thing for her, not because of her technical abilities (wasn't the TechTV joke of the year her inability to do anything technical -- including run a spellcheck?). I don't know how anyone survived her for 18 hours, but I could only take her in small doses. Paired with Morgan and you get an extremely intelligent young woman (Morgan) reduced to snorting and acting like a small child because Cat is "like so cool, you know."

Someone should give Morgan her own show. She's the scariest geek on the whole network. Honest to god. If she improves her delivery, wears more fashionable clothing and gets rid of the "deer caught in the headlights" look, she could rule the world of geeks. Honest. I'd rather tune into "Morgan's World of Geekiness" than "Up late with Leo" (ugg, "Call for Help" at night!), that's for sure.

Now I'm off to die.

k9

SCARED

Cat from Call for Help in her bathrobe.

I'm so scared that I'm willingly going to go out and shovel the 10 inches of snow.

That's a great way to kill 18 hours of painful tv viewing.

That is all.

k9

The Day After Xmas ...

The day after Xmas and I'm looking outside, tons of shovelling, and dammit, I can't hide ...

It snowed for most of the day yesterday then the winds kicked up and it drifted everywhere. I shoveled the front walk last night so it wouldn't be so bad, but it looks like it blew anyway and I'll be out there for a while digging the cars out. I really don't want to move right now.

You know how everyone dreams of a "white Christmas?"

I have to think they're all on freaking drugs, man.

Snow is bad. Shoveling is bad. The world is bad and I didn't win the @#$#@ powerball lotto.

Bastards.

Things are so bad that CNN has pretty much anyone they can find on the air this morning. We're talking their cheesy plastic haired doctor along with the 8th string backup co-hostess. It'd be like Regis & Kelly featuring Leo Laporte & a bag lady. It's baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad. Scary.

So now I'm being harassed by animals who want out or food or something. I'm taking my allergy pills then I'm going to out into the snow and make a dark and evil fortress to all the women in my life.

Have a great day.

k9

Christmas Morning

Before I start, Merry Xmas to all and hope everyone is safe ...

It's Christmas morning and I'm watching it snow. We're supposed to get up to a foot today and the way that it's coming down, I believe it. We haven't had a "white Christmas" in quite a long time and today's concern is keeping my mom from walking on the front walk (currently covered in six inches of snow), and finding time to dig us out before I have to work tonight.

I'm watching the rest of "Lord of the Rings" on DVD. I didn't get the collector's edition yet. I'm sure I'll get it some time just to hear the director's commentary, since I'm a sucker for director's commentaries. I appreciate the movie more now that I can watch it at my own pace. I know, I was called a wimp for not making it through the 2nd movie without having to go to the bathroom, but dang it, these are a lot of movies and they just go too long for one setting.

I also appreciate it more after watching the 2nd movie. The 2nd movie was more relaxed and less alien than the first. Plus one of the distractions I faced in the first was that the guy who went bad and tried to kill Frodo for the ring (then redeemed himself in the end) was the spitting image of the father on the FOX comedy "Grounded for Life" so part of the movie in the theatre was spoiled going "hey, where's that hot wife of his from the TV series -- yowza!" Well, not really, but it was kinda of distracting (much like Annikin Skywalker and his whining were dead ringers for Harry Osbourne and his whining in Spider-Man).

I guess I never was much of a Tolkin fan. Sure I play online "fantasy" role playing games and I've always played D&D games, but I'm not really big into it. I can't tell you all the names and I can't tell you all the background of all of these characters because I just never found them interesting enough to read the books.

I can see that a lot of people are. I tried to research some plot points that were bugging me and found that these works have been researched and cataloged almost as much as the bible has. To me, that's carrying things a bit to far, but hey, that's me. I'm easily distracted and I have the attention span of a newt.

Two big tidbits of news:

Well, as you read above, I went to see "The Two Towers" this weekend. So I hooked up with Evil James. I also almost killed his father:

Briefly. His dad needs a walker to get around. We went to pick up his dad and his sister in my station wagon. His dad got in the back seat. We get to the theatre and I drop them off in the fire lane but his dad gets his foot stuck behind my seat. I have the emergency break on and I move my seat forward so he can get his foot out and the car lurches forward half a foot and catches his other foot with the tire. He was okay, but Evil James has pledged to beat up my father at an undisclosed time and location.

The other big news is that I broke my toe. No, not the same one I killed last year (which I rekilled in Canada). This time it's the middle toe on my left foot. I have no clue how I did it. I'm limping around in pain. At the same time Laura's convinced that I'm like the bad guy in "Unbreakable," and I have brittle bone disease or something. I don't. I'm just a dumbass. I probably dropped a piece of wood on it the other day when I was hauling wood.

The only other news I have is that I've been alternating time between Grand Theft Auto 3 and The Sims Unleashed lately. I feel like a hypocrite for buying GTA 3 back on my vacation, but I was at a pretty low point and felt I had lost everything in my life and said "what the hell" and bought it. I had said a lot of things about the game without actually playing it and probably should have thought about it more before saying them.

I hadn't really played it until recently. After playing it, I take back some of the horrible things I've said about it. Yes, you can do horrible and awful things with it and it's a game that is NOT for children, however, it's not a required part of the game. The game is open ended enough that you can do it without a lot of the horrible things with it, but it's your choice.

Me? I tend to play 15-20 minutes at a time and I'm on a quest to find all the hidden packages. Sometimes I load up my MP3s and just drive around trying to do the unique jumps. Playing it old school "Dukes of Hazard" style. It's just bite sized enough to keep me without me losing focus, and in the end, while it's still a horrible game at times -- it's mainly for what you *can* do with it then what you're required to do.

Wrapping up here with the news that more strips are coming soon. I just have to make it through the 2 weeks of college football bowl games. Someone help me. Please.

Have a safe and happy Xmas,

k9

Friday Morning

I had a weird dream that I was one of the contestants on "Survivor." We started off as 16 contestants who had just arrived out in the jungle somewhere and it was decided that to spice things up there would be an immediate cut of one person based on a drawing of lots type contest. The contest consisted of closing our eyes and picking out two different colored dog biscuits from the bag presented to us. You needed to select two that not only matched each other, but matched the colors they were looking for to stay in the game. Yes, it sounds complex and since we were all blind folded with a time limit making things worse it sort of hampered the ability to find the proper dog biscuits, that's why six of us didn't finish in time. Instead of some sort of way to sort us all out, they decided that all six must go -- after a 3 hour wait because the contest was found to have the wrong amount of odd colored dog biscuits. I remember telling two of the younger guys there to fill their pockets with dog biscuits because they'd get to the point in the competition that they'd have to eat those as a way to survive. God only knows if they listened to me as suddenly me and five other people were on planes back to the states.

So we all got pissed off. We decided to sue and suddenly I had a blonde on my arm (one of the other competitors), we were talking about making millions because of the botched competition. She was a weird composite of all the women in my life. It was very weird. Each and every one was represented in a way and I couldn't be happier to have this girl seemingly in love with me and to lead the Survivor revolt. I so want to know if we won the case ... but I woke up when the garbage men came early and were banging our garbage cans around.

It is a miserable day. We went from 30 degrees to 50 degrees over night and the snow we were going to get has turned into a drizzle. My dish is out and I have another sinus headache. It's dark. Like if it were 4 am. I almost need to turn on a light in this room to see anything. It hasn't been this way for a storm like this in ages, so I'm wondering what is up. Of course my parents were dumb enough to let one of the cats out. He was waiting at the back door when I got up. Another (Thrashie) is staring at me as I type because she wants milk and her shot. Well, one of the two anyway. I have to work in 30 minutes and I so don't want to move. I want to climb back into bed and finish that dream.

k9

Thursday's a little early

I just realized that I've been walking around for the past 15 minutes or so with my watch on backwards. I didn't notice, probably wouldn't have noticed, except for the fact that 9:03 was coming up a backwards 3:09 and I knew I didn't sleep in that late.

It's a hellish time of year. December starts with Focal Point Reviews. These are self evaluations that the company forces us to spend november-december doing. In them we're supposed to tell the company three key things we've done this year, what we need improvement on, while groveling for more money. Maybe a $.25 or .50 cent raise come March. It's torture sheer torture and this year ta-da we had the layoff scare right at the end of it.

I would have been so pissed if I had spent the entire month of november beating myself up over this stupid review only to get laid off come december.

The job is safe and so is my hughes powered AOL. They killed their DSL service instead. The only problem with the dish now is that they're throttling back earlier. So if you download more than 400 megs at a time, suddenly your dl speeds will be worse than dialup. Rat bastards.

Right now my mind is totally gone anyway; did I mention bowl season? We're two games into them and my brain is so gone. Chats, message boards, staying up late to change polls to vote for the next god awful game ... last night's game was so bad a matchup that the winning team's QB played the entire thing with a broken leg and the mobility of Leo on a three day Arby's binge and the other team's defense still couldn't sack him.

If I offend anyone in this time, I don't mean to, my brain has been severely lapsed since the middle of November and I'm really not myself. I can't think. I can barely do strips. I really need some time off to myself to figure out life right now. But I can't take it because I have 30+ bowls in the next week and a half. Life is joy and life is hell. I did manage to get today and Saturday off. So I may or may not go see the Two Towers. I haven't decided yet and haven't heard anything from friends who had planned to go.

Anyway, this hellish day continues as I climb into the car and try to get to the allergy doctor. Maybe, just maybe, followed by a wal-mart visit. God only knows.

Have a great day,

k9

A little later ...

Couldn't go to the doctor because the car doors were frozen shut. Once I pried them open I turned the key in the ignition and got both an engine and an oil light and the car wouldn't start. Joy.

Images.google.com came through and blocked all images from this site at noon or so eastern today. Go Google. I'm sure folks who really want my images will find ways around my efforts to cut down on bandwidth use; but let's face it, the average person won't. It's not like I minded sharing pictures (and still will share all you want if you e-mail me); I just really resented the bills I got for being forced to host them for use on someone else's site. So I listened to Evil James' (and others') good advice for once and did what I had to do for the sake of the site.

Now I'm sitting here with the worst headache I've had in a while. Life is joy. Life is joy.

Peace.

k9

Decisions Decisions

Late last night I made the call to block right clicking on all of my pages and to remove us from the images.google.com server. According to the instructions on the site, it will take a couple of days to be removed from their server. I made this decision because we were again getting hammered by people who were linking just to an image and not coming to this site. Bandwith fees may not mean much to you, and I don't mind paying them in most cases, but there's a difference in having to pay it if they're coming to my site to actually read the strips and having to pay because they're coming to the site to see a picture of Les Nessman.

I want as many of you to come to the site to read my strips. I want you to tell all your friends. I want all of your friends to come and have a great time here. I don't mind paying bandwidth for you being here as long as you're reading and enjoying the site. I do mind, however, if you're forcing me to host images and the bandwidth fees for images you can host yourself. I've said time after time after time that you can steal my images or take them or whatever -- if you host them yourself.

I've gone over our recent hits and they're not going to pages. For example, yesterday we had 700+ hits from dvdtalk.com and not one of them went to a htm or html page. They all came from an image (which I'm trying to track down and kill as we speak) that someone linked to their message boards. What people don't understand is that if you link to a URL on a message board, every time that thread is viewed it produces a hit on this site and eats up bandwidth. When it's a little site (like someone's blog and Les Nessman the other week), it's not much bandwidth, but when it's a major site (like the Ogre at Fark.com last month), it eats up bandwidth big time and I end up paying for it.

I'm sure by delisting us from images.google.com will cost us a lot of users; but let's face it -- they weren't coming here to enjoy the site anyway. They weren't sticking around and don't care about the site. So I'm begging you, if you like the site -- tell your friends about it. Link us. Send the link to Aunt Hellen if she'll find it funny. Tell Uncle Joe I did a doctor who strip about Adric that he'll laugh at (he'll be the only one! ). Visit the site daily and enjoy my stuff if you want to; and if you want images, well ...

Image policy from now on: E-mail me. Jamesknine@reallycoolsite.org. Tell me what you want. I'll send them to you. If you're a techtv person and want screen shots of yourself for a personal site e-mail me and I'll send you a CD with everything I have of you. I don't care how you use the pictures. I don't want to know what you're gonna use them for. I don't even care if you link back to us. All I care about, in my cold little heart, is that I don't have to host the bandwith. I gots bills to pay and it's christmastime. So have a heart.

With that, I'm off to the doctor. Have a swell day.

k9

Monday Monday

As the title implies, it's monday morning. I'm half awake. For some reason I had a dream that it was 1985 and I was back in Jr. High. In the dream I had gone away a year and come back to find the Jr. High was now this futuristic school that was sponsered by Starbucks. I don't even think Starbucks was around back then but anyway; the kids were the same and they were tormenting the same people (namely all my friends), and I had a tour of the school. No idea what it means.

I used to be obsessed with going back to Seattle, or even Kent, Washington, where I spent a good part of my childhood. My sister is still obsessed. Every couple of years she moves out there, stays a year or two, moves back to the east coast because it's too damn expensive out there, then bitches and complains until she moves back out there. Rinse and repeat. Right now she's out there with the family again. I don't know how long it's going to last.

I gave up the dream years ago. Number one, when we were there Microsoft hadn't taken over the area. It was nice. Houses were reasonable. Now, with all the Millionaires, the tiny house we used to have is worth five times the price and there'd be no way in hell I could afford it on my budget. I was the only kid addicted to coffee. Now everyone is. Bastards. They stole my bit.

Now I'm off to work and I have a headache. Grr.

k9

Uh, my head ...

I tried sleeping in this morning but I had a long an involved dream that I kept trying to take a shower only to have the phone ring, or someone come to the door, or someone needing to shower first. The dream extended from something like 5:43 am (since I keep waking up to see the time) all the way until I got up at 8:20 am. I never did get a shower in the dream and I so want to know who all these people were that just had to take showers in my bathroom. Now I have a headache.

Today I'm doing the dreaded recycling run. I say it's dreaded because I hate doing it. My folks tend to stuff all their recycling into plastic bags without washing them out and I end up getting covered in soda each and every frigging time I go there. I hate it. I seriously do. In September I bought them big old garbage cans to use for the recycling. Well that worked for a while, until they filled up and my mom hasn't had time to leave me the station wagon to do a recycling run, so they're back to bags. I SO don't want to know what's waiting outside for me today. I really really really want to play sick and go back to bed, but that will only make things worse.

Doing site statistics again. Someone keeps coming to the site using the terms "Sumi Das Naked." Now I don't know about you, and while Sumi is a beautiful woman, putting that search term in not once but twice to find this site is kind of odd. I mean we're all allowed our own perversions, but my god, at least bookmark us the first time -- and if anyone of you uses "Leo Laporte Naked" to get to this site I'll send a shrink over ASAP. I'll charge it to Martin Sargent since he's most in need of psychiatry and probably can get us all a discount deal.

Rumor has it that they're going to be shutting down the AOL support for the one way direcpc dish that I bought a few years back. I'm sitting here figuring out how I'm going to afford $99 a month to upgrade to the two way service. One thing you all should realize is that broadband is a blessing and a curse. It's great when you're actually in a zone that can get dsl or cable modems (and don't you EVERY bitch about it -- at least you can get it), but when you're like me and you're waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too far out in a backwoods area to get either and you rely on yet another dish attached to the roof for your broadband, well you make prayers to the gods of AOL not to shut down the service. They've already decided not to support us with 8.0 so ... lol I'm sure our days are numbered. Good old AOL. Way to put the screws to the customers who need you the most.

You know, I'm so far out that no local theatre is carrying the new Star Trek movie. They're carrying the Ring and the new J-LO movie (both are equally as horrifying), but no rigging Star Trek. I'd have to drive an hour and change to State College through an ice storm to go see it. Then somehow make it back in time for my night shift. I just don't think that's going to happen. So I'm going to be depressed and bitchy tonight. You've been warned.

My allergies are bad today. Last year our 20+ year old artificial tree snapped in half the week before Xmas. So this year I bought my mom a real tree. Of course she didn't WANT a tree this year. She thought it was way to early to put one up. So it's standing in our living room with lights on it but no ornaments. It's just not Christmas like this. Kills the feeling. I think I'm going to sneak downstairs and get the ornaments out and put them on the tree today. I have no clue what I'm doing (males were excluded from our family's putting up the tree sessions due to incompetence factors), but dammit, for 30 years we put the damn thing up the day after Thanksgiving and it's just not Christmas without it.

Oh, to continue that original thought before I went off on a tangent, we had to move the tree and I discovered that I'm allergic to it. God, it's been the week from hell.

So I'm already grumpy as I write this. The hellish week continues.

k9

Well ...

Official word is that my group isn't among those getting laid off this go-round. In the future, who knows? But at least I'm going to sleep tonight knowing that I have a job and will have a job at Christmas. Unless something drastically changes. I'm sort of melancholy about the whole thing. It's the third batch of layoffs in a couple of years and it's a scary time for everyone.

I'm gonna relax for a while.

k9

Nerves

Got a baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad (note to the confused: spellcheckers are very strange things. Daaaaay?) case of jitters tonight. I have an access card to use with my work account. It went dead around 9 PM or so. Thankfully I had another one from another account waiting for me, but the timing was just awful. None of my bosses know about any layoffs so I'm probably fretting over nothing but ... damn. We've dodged the bullet a couple of times now. Since we're remote staffers (work from home), it's hard to figure out how we fit into the company. So layoffs are always a huge gamble since we work for a spin-off company and "not the real thing."

God this sucks. I'm not sure if I'm sleeping tonight. I'm going over every scenario of what to do if I do get laid off. I'm sure it's nothing and it'll pass but I'm just worried right now. There's nothing more stressful than something that's out of your hands. Since it is out of your hands you have to sit back and wait. That's horrid and it's on my mind too much right now.

Brittany sent me this file to commemorate the 200th strip. A big thank you to her for that. See guestbook for her comments, btw, you can sign that thing if you really want to. It's lonely. On that note, I've gone insane. I had a hellish week and this one isn't any better than the one that just finished.

Take care all and cross your fingers for me.

k9

... and onwards

A week or so later and our site visits are down. I think folks got the point about linking to the pictures. I just want to make something clear: I love having you all here. I want you to tell all of your friends about the site and to come and visit the site. However, what I rant about is the usage costs not from people visiting the site, but from the cost of people visiting one picture on the site over and over and over. Last week when someone linked us from Fark.com in a 24 hour period we had the numbers of visitors that we normally have in a week. They weren't visiting the stories, or strip or blog or poems, they were just going to one picture because someone put it in his post at fark and they gave the server a hit anytime they viewed his thread.

Like I said last week, I don't mind you stealing my pictures. In fact -- please do. You have my permission. Steal away. Take them and put them on your sites. If you need more, ask. I have half a million pictures of techtv related things. I filled an entire DVD with them -- if you want them, take them. I really don't care. It's the making me host them and not getting anything back for it part that really pissed me off. So if you want to link to my pictures (and have me host them), please link back to us and encourage people to visit the site. That way I get something back. I know it doesn't sound like a big deal, but it is.

At work. Hell week over, well hopefully (as long as I get through tomorrow without being laid off ...), and I'll be back tonight with either new strips or a new blog.

k9

Not a Very Happy Camper

By now you've all probably seen the disclaimer I've had to add at the bottom of every one of my strips. I might as well explain it before people get the wrong idea. So I'll make it as simple as possible here:

I pay for bandwidth usage.

I have something like 60megs worth of images online.

People like to use my images.

Instead of hosting them on their own sites they simply use the url to an image off of my site and present them as their own.

I get charged for the bandwidth they use since the images are hosted on my site.

They hardly ever link back to me in exchange for it or credit this site in any way.

My server statistics software sucks and only gives me partial urls (for example, it'll tell me that fark.com's forums are linking me but not where or what is being linked).

A recent example of this came when someone on fark.com linked us in the comments section. It took 2 hours of searching to find the post and what they were linking to then to take the image down.

I don't have the time or resources to track down every one of these links.

I'm also not made of money to pay all the bandwidth costs. Believe it or not, I make zip off this site. I do it for the love of TechTV and for the fact that I have no freaking life. I want one, but if I keep having to pay bandwidth fees, I'm not going to have one anytime soon.

So I'm asking nicely: If you want to use the pictures from this site please steal them. Put them on your own server. I don't even care if you give me a link back.

If you don't want to (or can't) do that, please provide a link to http://www.reallycoolsite.org when you use the picture. So I at least get something back for the bandwidth fees.

Thanks,

k9