I loled

(11:01:57 PM) bobbie;;: hii
(11:02:06 PM) (st) Jake: hello
(11:02:19 PM) bobbie;;: whatsup
(11:02:33 PM) (st) Jake: Very little. You?
(11:03:05 PM) bobbie;;: nothing just hurt my hand bad
(11:03:38 PM) (st) Jake: That’s because god hates you for your racist ways.
(11:03:56 PM) bobbie;;: im not racist
(11:04:23 PM) (st) Jake: Racist
(11:04:42 PM) bobbie;;: no im not ive dated black guys
(11:04:44 PM) (st) Jake: You want the white dude to win
(11:04:54 PM) bobbie;;: yeah soo
(11:05:12 PM) (st) Jake: You just like stereotypically large wangs
(11:06:34 PM) bobbie;;: hah okay. but i only dont like oboma cuz hes going to take care of his 57 states before he takes care of us. and hes for obortion(sp?)
(11:07:21 PM) (st) Jake: Abortion? Abortion is exactly why I like him
(11:07:45 PM) bobbie;;: hah yeah thats why i dont like him
(11:07:56 PM) (st) Jake: Racist
(11:08:02 PM) bobbie;;: no im not
(11:08:09 PM) (st) Jake: haha
(11:08:20 PM) bobbie;;: ha.
(11:09:05 PM) (st) Jake: 57 states, eh?
(11:09:50 PM) bobbie;;: yeah where hes from has 57 states and hes going to take care of them then take care of us.
(11:10:34 PM) (st) Jake: Now, I’m no american, but aren’t there 50 states?
(11:11:04 PM) bobbie;;: i think theres 52?hell if i no. i guess i shhould no.
(11:11:22 PM) (st) Jake: Get out of america, you drunk
(11:12:40 PM) bobbie;;: theres 50
(11:13:10 PM) bobbie;;: i ask my dad and he got mad at me

 

Asbestos Bridges: The Road To The Apocalypse (And the hitch hikers thereof)

Good evening ladies and gentlemen! It’s time for the first in the series! This is a story that I’ve always loved. It’s probably the most epic of all the Asbestos Bridges that that will eventually make their way here.

This misadventure was originally posted on my blogspot blog, Burn the bridge behind you, on September 10, 2006. That was back in the day. I was 17, and I was completely innocent – uncorrupted by the liquor and women that would eventually come to bring me a much more complicated array of joy. No, this was when I got all of my joy from simple things like giving my friends Viking names and spinning epic tales like this out of a scenario that, now, probably wouldn’t even be mentioned in response to a “How was your day?”. There will be more examples of this type of writing in later Bridges, specifically a (admittedly kind of lame) recount of an evening of loitering and playing hack.

This story is my favorite because it really was a good time. It’s certainly not a literary masterpiece (nor is anything I have ever written or ever will), but I throughly enjoy this every time I read it. I hope you’ll enjoy it too. Here it is, unedited, in its entirety. Exactly the way it was the night I wrote it.

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The Road To The Apocalypse (And the hitch hikers thereof)

The road to the apocalypse is long and harsh… Especially when you’re hitchin’…

This night was a night unlike any other. Instead of loitering in front of the drug store, or around the school, we decided that this night would be something special. Lets start at the beginning:

It started innocently enough, I was down to my Nan’s place for a semi-family barbecue. After I left there, I started walking out the harbour looking for some amusement. When I got in front of Curty’s place, I ran into Curty, Jordan, Tim-be, Nikki, and Patty. They were heading to Curty’s to consume pizza and pepsi. I’d already eaten, so I joined them for something to do.

We loitered at Curty’s for a bit, then we went on our merry way. We started to walk. During this trip, we got to talking and decided to head out to Patty’s to get his camcorder and record skateboarding and the like. We also discovered that Nikki had no way to get home and would likely have to hitch hike. Being the gentlemen that we are, we decided that we would accompany her, to make sure she gets home allright. We started walking and met up with Alyssa. She too was onboard. It was settled: The 7 of us were hitching from St. Lawrence to Lawn, in the dark and fog. We headed to the drug store so people could smoke and so we could get necessary last minute supplies, like pepsi and a frisbee.

After people smoked, and we tossed the 60 cent frisbee around a bit, we were off. We split up into the following groups:

Back Team: Curtis The Red and Jake The Mighty
Middle Team: Tim-be The Destroyer and Jordan The Dismal
Front Team: Nikki The Short, Patty The Cube, and Alyssa The Fierce

The Back Team stayed back furthest, the Front Team was the furthest forward, and the middle team was in the middle. At some point, Nikki, Patty and Alyssa stopped because they’re women, so they were passed by the Middle Team.

As Tim-be and Jordan walk away, I yell: “This misadventure writes itself!”.

Within about an hour, Curty and I were picked up by some guy. A few minutes later, this same guy picks up Nikki, Patty, and Alyssa. Thats right, Curty in the front seat, me, Alyssa, Nikki, and Patty in the back. — Looking back at it, that was actually pretty comfortable compared to the ride home. (Keep reading.) — We drove by Tim-be and Jordan and laughed.

So this guy took us right to the gas station in Lawn. Patty, Curty and I started walking towards the school so they could skate and I could film them. Nikki and Alyssa headed back to the place where Nikki was staying so she could change her shoes (Who the hell wears heels when hitch hiking anyway?). We didn’t see them for a nice while… Damn women.

So the fellas that have arrived go towards the school without our female counterparts. There are some people loitering on the swings in the park, but it is otherwise vacant – more or less ideal for skating. Curty and Patty zoom around for a bit, I get a little footage of them ollieing down the 5-set, then, in the distance, we hear familiar voices. Curty whistles to see if it was them, and indeed it was. Tim-be and Jordan have arrived! We exchange our travel stories; we tell them about the 5 of us getting picked up by one car; they tell us that they got picked up by an old lady in a shitty car. Everyone starts skating, I do a little recording.

Soon after, Curty leads us on a journey to find the Holy Grail: a fabled kicker, supposedly near some church. The ladies still haven’t returned, but we still left. On the way, we decided to go to the gas station (the same one we were dropped off at) for much needed supplies – obviously, I had already drank 3/4 of the pepsi I bought at the drug store hours earlier.

At this gas station, we make the startling discovery that the pepsis there are 70 cents a can! A full 5 cents cheaper than home! Bastards!

We continue toward the general church area. I express my dislike for crosses that are too large to invert. Patty states that he would like to nail me to a cross, and poke me with a lance, probably because I am ≥ Jesus. We ask some kids where this kicker would be, and they have no idea what a ‘kicker’ is. We explain what we mean, and they say that it’s gone. Alas. So the skaters start skatin’ on a shitty basketball court, and I start on the pepsi. After a while, we head back to the school. On the way, Patty and I discuss how the only good thing to come out of Lawn is the road to St. Lawrence and 70 cent Pepsi. Alyssa and Nikki are still AWOL.

After a nice while Nikki and Alyssa finally show up. About damn time. At some point Nikki kicked a Gatorade cap, which led to me taking the hack out of my pocket, and the formation of a surprisingly decent hack circle consisting of myself, Patty, Jordan, Nikki, Timmy, and Curty. Alyssa still refused to play.

Now is where the story really kicks into gear.

Timmy had to be home by 11. So, at around 10 we started to mosey. An hour is plenty of time to hitch hike home (label that as “obvious foreshadowing”). We say goodbye to Nikki, and form disfunctional teams. Me and Curty again, Tim-be and Jordan again, and Alyssa and Patty both went off alone, for some reason. Alyssa was furthest in front, I believe, then Patty, then Tim-be and Jordan, then Curtis and myself. Curty and I waited so we could be in the far back (read: the first seen, and first picked up), but we had little luck. After a while, we determined that Alyssa would likely be picked up first, because she’s alone and has boobs; then it would likely be us, then either Tim-be and Jordan or Patty. We were wrong, but more on that later.

By about 10:30, we started loosing hope, and we started to pick up our walking pace. We walked, chatting and cursing the few cars that passed us by. We were sure that one of those bastards that passed us by had picked up the others (only a quarter true). By about 11 we realized that we were pretty much fucked. The others realized this as well. Also, it was a foggy and fucking warm night. Fortunately, I had pepsi, which I shared with Curty. Jordan ended up drinking from a fucking stagnant ditch, and Alyssa pulled down her sweater (apparently. I wasn’t there, so I’m just going from eye witness testimony.).

During me and Curty’s conversations, I determined that Tim-be, Jordan, myself, and Curty are, in fact, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Tim-be is Death, Jordan is Famine, I am Pestilence, and Curty is War. We’re a Cataclysm End. So anyways, all of us are hot, tired, pissed off and wet from the fog. And we have a god damn long walk home. Curty and I are taunting random dieties, and the others are cursing a lot. 11:30 quickly rolls around, and we wonder if Tim-be managed to get picked up and get home before curfew. We both doubt it, and we were right.

Turns out Patty, that bastard, managed to get himself picked up. He will burn for this. Alyssa, Tim-be and Jordan were now traveling together, as the Front Team. At some point, they notice a police car pass, heading towards Lawn. They were pissed because it didn’t stop, even though it was heading in the opposite direction. They passed by us as well, but we weren’t paying attention to cars that weren’t going our way.

At about 5 to midnight, a wonderful thing happened. I guess taunting those long-forgotten gods paid off. The police cars looped around, and picked Curty and I up. We kindly thanked them and hopped into the surprisingly small back seat. Minutes of conversation later, and we see Jordan, Tim-be and Alyssa. We pull over and pick them up as well. – Think about that: at first, it was just Curty, his skateboard, and me, and it was uncomfortable then! Now we have 3 more and 2 more boards piling in on top of us! SWEET JESUS! I’m not even going to point out the fact that having 5 people in the back of one car is quite illegal. Curty, me, Jordan and Timmy were sitting, and Alyssa was sitting across Jordan and Tim-be’s laps. It was quite the sight, to say the least.

We’re let out at the gas station at ~12:05. Most of us still have about a half our left before we have to be home! And Tim-be’s just fucked anyway. We start wandering towards Tim-be’s pop’s, so he can get his bike, and the others can leave their skateboards there. On the way, we drank my last Lawn-Pepsi, and made a short recording on Patty’s camera (which I still had), highlighting the ride home. We contemplated walking out to Patty’s house and giving it back but decided against it because it was the middle of the god damn night. Tim-be left because he was late enough as it is; Curty left as well. Jordan, Alyssa, and I still had time to kill, so we sat down on the side of the road in front of the post office and watched the footage we’ve collected during tonight’s (mis)adventure. We then walked home together.

The moral of this story? Hitch hiking can make anything fun – even a trip to Lawn.

Next stop: Finland!

 

Asbestos Bridges: Intro

Good evening ladies and gentlemen of the internets! I’ve been meaning to get back into the blogging, but I have absolutely no inspiration. In an attempt to remedy this, I’ve been grave digging through my old, abandoned blogs, and I discovered that a lot of the tales that were spun back then were truly pure gold, and I had a lot of fun writing them. I decided that if I’m going to keep this blog – infrequent posts or not – I want those epic stories to be in it. So I’m going to start a nostalgic series where I will repost and comment on my favorite posted pieces of the past.

I will call this series: Asbestos Bridges.

Now, I’m quite aware that that seems to be completely random and arbitrary, so allow me to explain the significance. This is in reference to the title of my most recently burried blog, “Burn the bridge behind you”, and the fact that I can’t bring myself to let these stories go. Burn them behind me, I may, but they keep standing, and I keep coming back.

I hope you all enjoy the stories to come (and by ‘you all’, I obviosly mean myself and myself alone, because no one follows this shit.).

 

Flock: A Sort-of Review, Poorly Written Without Enough Experience With It

Intersession beard overdue conclusion: It went great. I had a massive beard at the end of intersession, which I promptly shaved into friendly mutton chops, because they’re badass. If I updated this sooner, I would have probably had an interesting anecdote about beard growing, but now I have nothing, so fuck you. I have no obligation to entertain, because no one reads this.

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Yeah, so, I haven’t posted anything in a long time because I am: a. lazy, and b. unmotivated. I have a list of potential blog post topics in my Google notebook, but I have to say that most of those will never see the light of day.

But I have something now. A spontaneous post, ’cause those are always the best.

I read about Flock a while ago, but never really looked into it for whatever reason (probably because I already have Firefox, Epiphany, Konqueror and Opera installed, and I don’t need more browsers). But today I was at work and read about it again on Digg or Lifehacker or something, and I thought I’d give it a go. After all, I do use a lot of social / media / Web 2.0-type services. Seemed like the way to go.

I really do like it. It has a lot of potential. It was slow as balls, but it’s very attractive and integrates most of the online services I use into the browser. For example, there’s a sidebar that has all my Facebook friends in it, and I can share things with them with a simple drag and drop. I also like how I can post to my blog instantly through the browser (which I’m doing now, and is the only reason that I’m posting this). There are probably a lot more cool things, but I haven’t discovered them yet because I wanted to play with this.

One thing I don’t understand: Why is last.fm not there? It seems like it should be. It must be as popular as the other things, and it would be kind of cool to be able to listen to recommended music from the media bar.

It’s in version 1.2.4 right now, plus I’m running it under linux. It was probably developed mainly for Windows and Mac. Plus, my computer has 512 MB of RAM. Maybe it’s not slow at all under windows on a modern PC with 2GB of RAM. If Flock could lose some weight without losing functionality, or if I got a better PC, I would certainly use Flock. But right now, it looks like I’ll probably go back to good ol’ Firefox once I’m done playing with it.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

 

Lack of common sense among pirates on the internets? What are the chances?!

Intersession beard update: It’s been 33 days since I decided to go clean-shaven and start my intersession beard project, and I now look like a mountain man. I also convinced my buddy Eric to join me in the beard growing. It’s been an epic month of brutality, and there is still 2 weeks left.

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Now, I have a rant for you. I’ve been torrenting a lot of music lately and it’s so hard not to notice the lack of etiquette:

Forgive my straying from gentlemanness, but you know what I fucking hate? When you download an album or 15, and the track information is inconsistant. You open the directory in your media player, and some files don’t have an artist, some don’t have an album, some don’t have track numbers, and some don’t have anything at all. It’s a pain in the ass.

It’s also a pain in the ass when they have shitty file names and generally poor organization. Albums should be organized in their own folders titled “(YEAR) ALBUM” or “YEAR – ALBUM” or “YEAR – ARTIST – ALBUM” or something like that. My point being that year should go first, so that people who don’t bother with music libraries and just keep all their music in one playlist can drag on drop and everything will line up chronologically. Also for this purpose, files within said folders should be titled “TRACK# – ARTIST – TITLE” with the track numbers being 2 digits, ie 01. If the album is a 2 disk or box set, each disk should be organized in their own folder, titled “Disc #”, or the tracks should have 3 digit track numbers (ie, third track on disk 2 is track 203).

Chances are, if you’re going to upload a torrent, you’re doing it to benefit the community. To benefit the comunity better, make sure the files have the right track information and consistent file names.

Am I the only one who thinks this is common sense?

 

Intersession beard

Today I made a *major life decision. I decided to grow an intersession beard.

What is an intersession beard? Well, at school I have to do a 6 week long term called a “Technical Intersession”. During this 6 weeks, I will not shave. The resulting facial hair growth will be known as an “intersession beard”. Intersession starts and shaving stops tomorrow. The intersession beard is a spin off of the exam-based anti-shaving epic – but it’s EVEN MORE EPIC!

Why am I doing this? Why the hell not? I enjoy growing beards. I don’t enjoy shaving. Seems pretty win-win.

How is this done? Well, I’m undecided as to whether or not I will shave before I start this. I currently have a combination of friendly muttonchops and a chin strip, and I think it will probably look pretty foolish if I have longer beard in some areas. I may shave tonight, or tomorrow, or I may trim the longer parts when the shorter part gets longer. I will not shave any more after this shave or trimming.

Expected result:

I will post periodic updates on the beard. I will include pictures if a camera becomes available (may end up using the webcam on dad’s laptop).

*Not actually major. At all.

 

Fedora: Great OS, or the Greatest OS?

I’ve been using Fedora 8 almost exclusively for the last while, and I have to say, it’s quite fantastic. I used Fedora Core 6 a lot, and I loved it, but Fedora 8 was even more kickass. Fedora 9 comes out in 6 days, which should be that much more awesome. I’m pretty stoked.

I’m going to use this post to talk about a few of the programs that I’ve been using on Fedora, and why they’re better than whatever you’re using. (These apps are by no means Fedora-specific.)

yum – Yellowdog Updater Modified: Yum is the package manager that Fedora uses, similar to Debian’s apt. This is incredibly convenient, because (most of the time) it will download and install an application and all of its dependencies. Without it you would have to download and install it all yourself, which would be a giant ass-pain. The alternatives are apt, which is pretty much the same, or installing/compiling the source yourself or installing the RPMs yourself, which is a pain in the ass. Or Windows which is a pain in the ass caused by a large amount of forced buttsecks from Microsoft.

Banshee Music Player: Banshee is a kickass audio player for linux. It didn’t come with Fedora, but it was easily yumable. It supports internet radio, which I love, and comes pre-programed with 22 internet radio stations. It supports podcasting (which I don’t really bother with, but is still nice) and it has a recommendation plugin that uses Last.fm to recommend similar bands. It’s very snazzy. Has more features than are necessary, but not to the point where it would be at all annoying. It’s my favorite.

Rhythmbox is also awesome, but not as much. The internet radio stations that come with it aren’t nearly as good, and it doesn’t playback as well. xmms and Audacious are ok if your computer is too slow, or if you’re a minimalist. For other OS’s: iTunes is gay because it won’t let you use it to make biological weapons. Windows Media Player is the worse media player ever. WinAmp is good if you use Windows.

Tomboy: Tomboy is a simple note taking tool and it is probably the most convenient, simple tool ever. By default there is a link to it on the top of the screen. It opens a drop down menu where you can choose to create a note, or open a note that you written. When you create a note you don’t need to save it or anything, it does it automatically. You can easily write down something quickly so you don’t forget. It’s great. If I think of something that I need to do later, I open up my “goals for today” note and type it in. If I come up with a good topic for a future blog post, I quickly put it into my “Blog” note. It’s fantastic.

There is nothing as good as this. It’s pretty much perfect. I suppose you could use a text editor and save it to the desktop, but that’s really shitty. I used to do that in Windows, and it’s gay as FUCK.

Games:
Here are a few of the linux games that I yummed and throughly enjoyed:

Blob Wars: Metal Blob Solid: A kickass platformer. You’re a little yellow blob, with a red headband who runs around trying to rescue other blobs from the evil green blobs and flying robot things. It’s very kickass.

Frozen Bubble: Frozen Bubble is an attractive, Bust-a-Move style game where you shoot colored balls at other colored balls. Monkey Bubble is a similar game, with less penguin and more monkey.

GnomeFallingBlocks: It’s motherfucking Tetris motherfucker! Motherfucking classic.

FooBillard: A pool game with great graphics and physics.

Neverball and Neverputt: In Neverball you rotate the table with the mouse or keyboard to collect coins and try not to lose the ball. This game is pretty difficult, and kind of disorientating sometimes, but it’s still quite full. Neverputt is miniputt that uses the same physics.

 

P.B. <3 L.W.

 

Google Reader is awesome.

Ok. Time to un-abandon this blog! I haven’t written anything here in a while. My last entry was during finals for first term, and now it is after finals for second term. So yeah, gotta get back at it.

I’ve been playing around with a few new things that I really like, so now I have some topics for future entries.

The first: The awesomeness of Google Reader.

Now, I’ve always loved the idea behind RSS: Websites come to you. You subscribe, you’re notified when there’s an update. In fact, if it’s a good feed, you don’t even need to go to the website. It’s friggin’ sweet! But I haven’t been using it because I wasn’t aware of any good RSS readers. I tried using Thunderbird a year or more ago, but… It wasn’t good. Getting the updates felt like receiving POP3 emails, which is a god damn pain in the ass.

I abandoned RSS… Until now.

A couple weeks ago I heard Google Reader mentioned somewhere (The Lab with Leo Laporte, perhaps?), so I decided to look into it. I’m pretty confidant that Google is pure evil, and are trying to take over the entire internet, but hey, I really don’t think that would be bad. Pretty much everything Google gets into ends up being better than the competition. In my opinion, it’s the best search engine, webmail, map thing, online doc and spreadsheet thing (sorry for being so technical), etc. Google video isn’t as good as youtube, but Google owns youtube too!

But I digress.

I started playing around with Google Reader, and I instantly loved it. It was fantastic. I immediately subscribed to all my favorite webcomics and blogs and whatever other sites I used that had feeds, and now I use it everyday. I’ve only been using it for a week or two and I already find it difficult to imagine life without it. It’s awesome. It saves so much time. Instead of surfing through Modblog, xkcd, Mr. Viking, and whatever else hoping for an update, I can just keep Google Reader open and do something else (like write a blog entry that no one will read (although they would if they subscribed to the RSS Feed!)). I no longer need to remember what updates when. Google Reader does the work for me.

I also like that I can share my favorite items. In fact, what gave me the idea for this post was that Google Reader said they have a quick and easy way to post a clip of your shared items to your blog, and I wanted to try it out.

Snazzy. Too bad wordpress won’t fucking post it.

Picking it up again, I noticed that RSS has really taken off in the last year or so. I was amazed. Damn near all the websites I use have feeds (Except Maddox and Toothpaste for Dinner. Fascists.).

 

2 down, 2 to go.

I’m done half my finals! Chemistry was Thursday and it was brutal because Gary was a cunt and we never seen half of that shit before. Physics was today, which wasn’t bad. It was 20 multiple choice, 10 true or false, and 7 of 10 problems. Which was good because for some reason I was expecting it to just be 10 questions with no choice. I’d say this will probably bring up my average.

I have 2 exams left: Electrotech on Wednesday, and Math on Friday. Then I’m done for Xmas!

Well, today was my first day in public with my new septum piercing. Some of my friends already saw it, and their reaction was 100% positive, so that’s great. Most of my buddies at school seemed to like it, or just not care. Leonard and Jason were the only people who joked about it. Jason said I’m trying to get away from the “Jesus” thing. I laughed. He also said that I should get pierced through my hands. I stopped laughing. Keith suggested that I run a chain from my septum to my nipple, and I just may! Clive loved it. He’s pretty much the only other pierced dude in town, so he’s cool.

I’m really bored, and I don’t feel like starting to study Electrotech yet.

It’s exam week, so I haven’t shaved in about 2 weeks. The excess hair keeps luck and knowledge from escaping through my face. I’m a hairy bastard now, plus I have an mystical stone that’s full of studying-related incantations, so I better do well.

Someone entertain me.