fine whine

I'm getting better with hand-tuned CSS. My site hadn't really seen a makeover since I got rid of the wood grain buttons back in 1998. The blogs are modern technology, of course, but several directories aren't. Choosing which ones to update is not a simple process — I have created many directories that nobody ever sees, like the elusive /mbd, the "official home" of a text adventure game I never completed. Anyway, I went after the site's changelog first and it came out pretty decent, and then I tinkered with /songs to match the more updated directories. Songs was somewhat of a special beast, as I hadn't thrown any new material in since 1998 and its main purpose for existence was to make money off of CDNOW linkage.

Then CDNOW went the way of all the tiny dotcom stores (i.e. merged with Amazon) and my links were likely useless. Also I stopped writing about the songs I liked. After all, though I may like a song I don't need to write an essay about every single one. So in its new incarnation, Songs that rock, it is primarily a list of the songs that I like more than the others, without justification or excuses. Someday I'll link them to Amazon, but I suspect nobody will ever buy anything through my links. After all, I haven't either.

Also, I added a couple of those 80x15 images that litter the blogosphere, down there in the bottom left.

First of all, let me get this out of the way. This link is for shareblogging. So the other day I carried a 19" monitor half a mile in the sweltering heat wearing jeans and a 100% polyester polo shirt. Literally half a mile. And when I finally picked it back up (I drove the last quarter mile to my place) I weighed it — 48 pounds. But it works, and my arms aren't sore anymore. It's better than all of my others, even displaying the grey Apple OS X loading screen.

The odd thing is that this is the second 19" monitor I've dumpster dove. Dumpster dived? Got from an alleyway.

I've written about coincidences before. More than likely I will do it again. Anyway, some strange happenings have been, er, happening in a much more virtual context. So they don't really matter as much, and they're more likely more coincidental.

Anyway, I run a links blog, ketchup. As far as I know, nobody visits it. Sure, I get hits but I'm rather convinced that most of them are robots, or crackers trawling for a vulnerable server. Why, I wonder, do the crackers not go after the robots? So I periodically post links. There are more than sixty links listed, all culled from random surfing and other sources. One such source is BoingBoing. It's a great site, run by a great bunch of people, linking to wonderful and interesting places to go and things to see. I bookmark a great many of them.

So I was a little surprised to find a link to Michael Menkin's site about aliens and children. On Ketchup I had linked to its sister site, wherein Menkin explains the methods and necessity of procuring a thought-screen helmet. And so soon! But it's a big web out there — some would call it worldwide — and such things can happen by chance.

I was surprised a day later to find a link to TokyoFlash, another site I'd linked on Ketchup. The writeup was only two down from Menkin's. Could it have been coincidence again? I know it's not malice or something sinister, since BoingBoing had two other sources for the same links. I doubt it's malfeasance in any form, but I have to say it's strange. Eerie even. But I'm not mad. In a way, it's kinda cool.

I was a copy editor in high school and college, and now at work I have to find problems with both computer drawings and manufactured garments. Evidently I have an eye for detail. I can't really help it, but I notice a lot of little things. Anyway, so tonight I'm watching Die hard 2 and just around the 1:20:10 mark somebody turns on broadcast channel 3 in the skies over Washington D.C. and the screen shows a classic episode of the Simpsons, the one with the whole family hooked up to electroshock chairs and ultimately zapping each other. Now I'm no TV trivia buff, but to my knowledge the Big Three had monopolized all the low numbers, at least in the TV markets I'd lived. Of course a simple web search turned up WTTW, Fox channel 5 for Washington D.C.

So much for the low numbers theory. However, I still have to wonder if WTTW's been around since 1990 on channel 5, or if the Fox affiliate was in fact channel three thirteen years ago, a channel unassigned now. Do I care? No. But I have to admit that I looked this much up.

So in the last week I've watched both versions of Insomnia, Chris Nolan's and the superior original by Erik Skjoldbj�rg. So it is only slightly ironic that I can't sleep right now, right?

When I'm tired I often get songs, spoken phrases or jingles stuck in my head. Right now I'm tormented by the end of the commercial for Galoob's Bouncing Babies, a toy long forgotten (not that I ever had or wanted one) but the freak chorus sings on and on in my head as I wash the dishes. I can't sleep, so might as well clean while my brain runs on and on...

I'm not much of a worrier, even late at sleepless nights. Instead, I ponder mainly random things, usually vocally. Dictating to myself, I blather on and on as though I'm supposed to be taking these down, a long-overdue email here, a resume's coverletter there and the occasional blog entry. Like this. I tried leaving my Palm under my pillow to scrawl this stuff down without getting up, but I was killing batteries too quickly with the backlight and I'm somewhat faster typing than "writing" with Graffiti. So type I do.

Sometimes my thoughts aren't statements but questions, the depth falling far short of the great thinkers. I wonder if everyone thinks in complete sentences, if anyone else plays secretary to himself when staring at a dark ceiling. I wonder if maybe I should tell my wife that the brown animal we see in a nearby loading dock is almost definitely not an otter but probably a woodchuck.

I wonder if it's okay to not know for sure the easy visual differences between an otter and a woodchuck. Is that the sort of thing people should know? When we were walking in the downpour of a couple days ago, we passed by a middle-aged couple futilely avoiding the rain after dinner at a restaurant, and the woman asked the man (who looked reasonably intelligent, despite his date), "Which do you think comes first, the thunder or the lightning?" This is a grown woman, mind you, asking a question most of us get out of the way well before puberty. I wonder if I'm in any position to judge such a question, as I cannot tell the difference between a woodchuck and an otter. Or is it something else? Most of the woodland creatures I conjure up in my mind come courtesy of cartoons, and those representations are notoriously flawed.

Who loses sleep over this sort of thing anyway?

I know somebody out there can help me with this, a simple request. I'm looking to buy a watch... it's called the Matrix and it's made by Hong Kong-based Latitude Ltd. Here is their product information page for it. TokyoFlash was selling them but sold out, likely mere days before I discovered the site. Here is their page for it. You have to admit it's a pretty cool looking watch.

Anyway, I searched and scoured the internet looking for information about this watch, and managed to piece this together: Latitude only sells them to wholesalers, but have done business with wholesalers in the US, Japan and Germany. What I'd like to know is, who are these wholesalers and where can I get this watch? Any information not immediately found on Google is welcome, and particularly specific information about buying one. Ideally someone would find it online, since I'm pretty stuck here in Ohio. As such a Japan B&M seller's not helpful unless somebody's willing to pick one up for me for a modest gratuity.

Please reply with comments to this thread, and thank you.