Sephy’s Platzish

I’ve been, let’s call it, “tagged” to do this. So, without further ado here it is

Ten (mostly interesting) things about me

1. I’ve marched on the two major football stadiums in this state (Lambeau Field in Green Bay and Camp Randall in Madison [that was when it was still Astroturf and I almost took a nosedive in the endzone there]). The trip to Lambeau was on the Sunday that the Lewinski report came out from Congress and I remember it being passed around the coach being read by half of the band. After the game, a camera came into the bus while we were all changing; that was not appreciated.
2. A roll of pictures that I took is either rolling around the country inside a loungecar on a train or has been tossed out. It fell in somewhere west of Pittsburgh while we were on the way to Washington for my school’s band to participate in the Inaugural Parade for President Bush (I would have marched in the parade, but the directors and I agreed that it probably was for the best that I did not as there was no way to “get out” of the parade as it was under such tight security).
3. On said trip to Washington, I got warned by a guard in the US Senate for writing down the name of the Senator who was speaking at the time - Paul Wellstone of Minnesota. Ironically, the pen I used to write the name was the same one that was given to everyone in my group as the result of having a lunch in one of the office buildings; I still have it - it’s a pen for the pro basketball team that one of our Senators owns.
4. I once went to a dance. I appeared on time (as it would be bad to be late to a social function as I had always thought); nobody was there and people got on my case for being on time. By the end of the night I was still alone and one of my so-called “friends” had gotten me pissed off because they wouldn’t talk to me.
5. My first year in college was spent in a dorm room with four other people - all of whom (if I’m remembering correctly) had a root in the room at one point or another in the year. Most of the time I’d have to sleep on the couch in the “main” room of the suite.
6. On the first day that I was up at college, my computer broke down. While I didn’t lose any data (fortunately), I ended up spending $45 on a new power supply that didn’t fix the problem. It wasn’t until over New Year’s that the problem was diagnosed to be a faulty Floppy Drive - that diagnosis was done at a computer shop down here; the one up in Minnesota said they’d do the analysis if I exchanged the new power supply for it.
7. I once ventured around the city of Saint Paul, MN in February wearing socks and sandals on my feet (I was using the bus, but had to wait a while to catch one). Just to clarify, I was fully clothed with a winter jacket on as well.
8. I’ve been banned from a chatroom for disagreeing with the owner’s philosophy. It was a political chatroom. Most of the people there (I believe) disagreed with me anyway, but the didn’t support my banning. And it wasn’t just a user has been banned from this room type ban - it was a server ban. So, I decided to open a new room on a different server that I knew wouldn’t ban me (it was a public server) and invited the people who were my main supporters to be part of it.
9. In that chatroom, a person posted a link to a page where a guy played around with a (as the author put it) “dumb Nigerian con-artist”. It was my first touch of baiting; I got hooked into it reading about how someone actually got money from them. I will say that I have never attempted to do that, but I did try to get funny pictures of them. Baiting for cash is something that I will never condone or do, and you shouldn’t do it either.
10. I used to hand-publish a blog on my ISP account; it was based on a blog that I had seen here which has now been taken down in place of single posts. In fact, I had made it so that it looked almost exactly like the page did. I probably still have the files for it as I am a packrat who hates getting rid of anything (I still have emails, on a CD, from 2000 and 2001; unfortunately I don’t think I still have any of the SMH/The Age AM Alerts that I used to receive in the late ’90s).

If you’re a new visitor to the site, I hope you keep coming back. I do my best to write something everyday, but I do miss a day or two at times.

One last tidbit - I wasn’t wanting to do it, but when I started to write the last ones, more good memories came back to me and I replaced the original number one which was that I’d never been on a date.

Others who’ve done it - I’m Not Craig, Tom Gara, Aly, Watershedd, Mrs Batville

One of the things about going back to “standard” time is the sunset being earlier (though the scene would have happened at the same time just the clocks say it’s an hour later during Daylight Saving). In fact, I thought I had set the camera back the one hour but apparently I didn’t. Either way, this was taken just after 5 pm today looking toward the west-northwest. This has not been altered, except for some cropping and resizing. Enjoy!

Well, another day went by without a post. For me, blogging doesn’t come as easily as it does for others, but I am making an effort to write more often than I have been writing. I know that I had mentioned the plethora of photos that I have on my computer, and I really should take some time to go through them again and get some choice shots to post.

However, I am a very lazy person - or so it would seem. I always get started on one thing, but end up doing about a hundred other things and never finishing the original task that I had set out to do in the first place. This post is a great example of that. I had started to write it before I went to bed, but I got really tired and decided to go to sleep.

So, anyway, I had some random thoughts; first off, while at the local home store, there was a woman who was walking through the Christmas display (the first aisle with the outdoor figurines; they also have some aisles with indoor displays and a full range of artifical, pre-decorated trees) and said out loud to her (I would assume) husband “This is all their Christmas CRAP.” — and that was the way she said it, even going so far as popping the P in crap. I would have liked to go up to her and say, “Yeah, it’s their christmas section; it’s a big money-maker for them. If you’re looking for something else, why not ask one of their employees?” Another sign of the times is that the Danish Butter Cookies are out for sale again; sure you can get them any time of the year provided you know where to look, but it’s only at Christmastime when they’re omnipresent.

Next; while watching TV last night, there was an ad for a racing collectible auction site, and the person who was pictured as participating in their auctions appeared to be wearing a replica shirt from the Toll/HSV Dealer Team (it was a black shirt and I swear that there was a Holden logo on the right side of the shirt). I went to said website and didn’t (shockingly) find any Holden memorabilia for sale there.

Lastly, in the time since I mentioned Firefox’s new search behavior, there have been some new threads about the problem on the Mozillazine forums.

Web Search
<CTRL>-K works different in 2.0

Well, this is the weekend where people in most parts of the Northern Hemisphere have a 25-hour day to offset the 23-hour day that was had in the Spring. For some reason, there’s always this awareness of the “new” time in the next week or day when doing things - for example, observing that the meal that you eat at 6.00 PM on the Saturday before the change would in fact, if it were served at the exact same time 24 hours later, would be at 5.00 PM on the Sunday. Interestingly, there are people in government who seem to think that it will serve us well to have a further month of “adjusted” time - i.e. making it 8 months on Daylight Saving, 4 months off.

I don’t see the point, especially when you consider that at the very beginning and end of the period the sun will be coming up at sometime around 8 AM or later. Though on the other end of it, now we have sunrise at 6.30 AM or so, but sunset will now come at around 4.30 PM and it will be dark by 6.00 PM.

Interestingly, this is the same weekend that some parts of the Southern Hemisphere go onto Daylight Saving (in particular the states in Australia that choose to partake in the fun {though Tasmania changed a couple of weeks ago already}). It’s a double-edged sword - in one way, it’s better with my being in standard time because one of my favourite radio shows, This Sporting Life now runs from 9 PM - 12 AM instead of the summer timeslot of 11 PM - 2 AM; but it makes connecting with people down under nearly impossible during the week as it’s usually midnight there when I get up at 7 AM my time.

I guess it’s just something you get used to. At least until it changes again in March.

A while back, I mentioned a box of DVDs that I got. Taking a hard look at what’s in there, I don’t think I’d watch half of these movies. For example - Agent Cody Banks (1 and 2), Spy kids (1 and 3d), The Fly II, Boa, Mimic 2, The Adventures of Pluto Nash. Seriously, how many copies of that movie were sold? 100 maybe? How about “John Boorman’s The Emerald Forest”? What a DVD this one is. The special features are as follows - Original Theatrical Trailer. Oh, and French & Spanish subtitles.

I have to say that the most exciting features are on “The Never Ending Story II” - Interactive Menus! Theatrical Trailer! Scene Access! and the ever exciting Portugues track!

For the most part, I am so glad I didn’t have to pay for these videos - I mean, who’s going to pay for “Don Juan DiMarco”? or “The Craft”?

I should mention that there are maybe one or two movies that I’d watch - Short Circuit is one. I really don’t know if there are others. Some of them have commentary tracks, so that could be interesting viewing.