real estate bubbles

got the latest edition of the new yorker magazine (dated june 6th, 2005) in the mail today and immediately fell inlove with the cover. the title of the cover page is "real estate bubbles" and it depicts new yorkers (including a dog) dreaming up their dream apartments. it is infinitely cute and relevant. as soon as there's a print made for this cover i'm getting it.

breast cancer

finally, there is a purpose to my chess playing (aside from the 'moneybags' that i make) -- worldwinner is running a Compete for Pink program, as a partnership with the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. a percentage of every game that is played goes towards a $100,000 pledge to the Komen Foundation. meaning is good, in world full of moral relativism and mindless machines.

felt was deep throat

finally, america's longest held secret, has been revealED.
mark felt was deep throat in nixon's watergate scandal.
reference: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/31/AR2005053100655.html

intelligent design vs. darwinism

read an interesting article in a recent new yorker magazine on a new theory that tries to debunk darwinism, saying that darwin fails to explaina way the existance of irreducibly complex biological entities such as cells, which rely on all of the subcomponents to operate perfectly and if altered just slightly, the entire structure fails therefore there must be a Designer at work here... not sure if i buy into that just yet... sounds a bit like the teleological argument for the existence of God... not ready to accept it, just yet...

Even Darth Vader cannot get to heaven without Jesus

I saw this sign near one of the churches today. Looks like there is going to be another Star Wars episode - The Salvation of the Siths.

the tyrant wears no clothes

except underwear...

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/05/20/saddam.photos/

MSN Search Engine deleted my files

I can not believe what just happened -- I installed the Microsoft desktop search engine today and was playing around with it, setting various starting points for the indexing. The last marker I set it at was the root of my data directory. For some reason it would only scan about 600 files and then stop (I had about 18000 files there) So i figured maybe I should delete the temp index directories that it created in an effort to get it to start fresh. When I did that the desktop search application crashed and so I tried to start it up several times. Sometimes it would actually stay up for a while and then crash when I would get ot the settings page.

Then I got tired of it and decided to go back to what I was doing before I got mixed up with this crap. Before I know it, my editor pops up a message saying the file I was modifying has been deleted! WTF? I look at my c:/data directory and realize it's fucking gone. Unbelievable.

I have been undeleting my files ever since

:( ... And so to the genius who engineered this piece of shit -- all I have to say is FUCK YOU and FUCK YOU again, for ruining my beautiful afternoon/evening and fucking up my files.

great quote from my favorite existentialist:

Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful. --Albert Camus

down down

Down down, you go
Down down, so low
Down down, till you hit the floor
Keep fallin' down, till you can't get down no more

giant embraces firefox

http://news.com.com/2102-7344_3-5704750.html?tag=st.util.print

pollen

the nyc pollen count is very high, 9.6. who would have thunk it - that in a city where you really have to look hard to find a live tree, that there would be such a high pollen count. oak, mulberry, ash are the allergens contributing the most to my demise, according to the website.

thought he had it all

thought he had it all before they call his bluff
found out that his skin just wasn't thick enough
wanted to go back to how it was before
thought he lost everything
then he lost a whole lot more

a fool's devotion
swallowed up in empty space
the tears of regret
frozen to the side of his face

Joe Heller

Joe Heller

True story, Word of Honor:
Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer
now dead,
and I were at a party given by a billionaire
on Shelter Island.
I said, "Joe, how does it make you feel
to know that our host only yesterday
may have made more money
than your novel 'Catch-22'
has earned in its entire history?"
And Joe said, "I've got something he can never have."
And I said, "What on earth could that be, Joe?"
And Joe said, "The knowledge that I've got enough."
Not bad! Rest in peace!
-- Kurt Vonnegut

crash

one car just smashed into another on my block just now. i opened up the window and pulled up the mosquitto-net to see it. one of the drivers had to be taken out on a stretcher, it's weird to see all this happening from 17-stories high. the accident created a bit of gridlock stretching all the way to queensborough bridge. this is a rare example that shows that having a big car can protect you. the guy who was hit in this accident did not suffer one scratch. he was driving some form of a guzzler. ford explorer or expedition? meanwhile the guy in the stretcher was driving a normal car, which was pretty much totalled.

i am so happy that i no longer own a car. so much tragedy could be avoided if people would give up their cars and joined me on the subway (or bus)

no you don't

...
and just for the record
just so you know
I did not believe
that you could sink so low
...

assessment

...the 10 letter word that co-op owners hate the most. an $0.87/share assessment has been decided upon by the members of the board to help with the renovation of the lobby and the facade of this building. really sucks.. i guess it will improve the overall value of the property but who wants to pay $600 or whatever it's going to be on top of all the existing fees? damn this city is expensive. i need to figure out a way to make more money. any ideas are welcome.

worldwinner chess server

some hacker keeps crashing the worldwinner chess server and i guess worldwinner doesn't have enough staff working on the weekends to restart the server. on one hand that's a damn shame since i make a solid buck on that site playing chess. on the other, it is a liberation from that addiction. if i knew who this hacker was, i would perhaps be grateful to him/her?