accidents and coincidences

So I got in a car accident yesterday. It was totally my fault, and I should have been more careful. Fortunately, neither of us was hurt. I ran into the back of a pickup truck going about 10 mph (maybe 15). The pickup’s bumper was higher than mine, and basically tore through the headlights and hood of my poor little Geo like they were made of paper mache. I posted some pictures on flickr.

Also yesterday, I heard about this Zombie Pub Crawl vlog entry posted over at mnstories filmed by my friend jeremy, and after watching it realized that I also knew one of the organizers. So as if that’s not coincidence enough, guess who I ran into at lunch today? That’s right, small world.

blog TODO reprise

OK, so i did things a little back-ass-wards, and ended up totally fucking up the MT instance on my free hosting account (where all my friend’s blogs are hosted). So if you’re one of those friends, and you can’t post to your blog, i really appologize. I’m going to be re-creating your blogs from scratch in a new location (with a new upgraded MT), and then asking you to switch to the new login. Basically, what i think happned was that the old instance of MT just has too many spam comments on it for the MT upgrade script to handle it. I did a little searching on this problem, but not too extensively. I’m sure other people have encountered it if that is indeed the case. (My comments.db file is 204MB large, if that gives you any idea of how many comments. I believe Elia’s blog has like 30,000 spam comments on it. That’s some fucked up shit right there.)

I wanted to add another item to my blog TODO… it’s really quite a bit more than one item… but I’d really like to sign up for various APIs and start integrating the various sites and services that i use regularly into my blog. This would include my flickr photos, various last.fm (audioscrobbler) information, and possibly boardgamegeek.com information of some kind. (I’m just not very good about updating that site really.)

[Update: I also saw a post on the flickr blog today that led me to QOOP, that prints bound books of your flickr photos… that seems like such a cool idea…Makes me want to take (and post) more photos.]

blog TODO

In order of priority:

1) Install lilina RSS aggregator. (Just discovered this today via delobius… it’s the reason for this post! I think I might also consider contributing to the project by adding a feature to “delete cache before XXX date”.)

2) upgrade MT…

3) upgrade the super-crusty 2.66 MT on various friends’ blogs. (should be able to do this immediately following #2.)

4) somehow call more attention to the mindblurbs, as they are more frequently updated than the main blog. (this may have to wait till after #5.)

5) Full conversion to a blosxom variant. (I’m hoping the options are better now than they were 6 months ago, the last time I checked around for a good package with the features I wanted. I’d prefer to have comment support out of the box, please, and i’d rather it were written in php than perl too, but that’s a secondary requirement.)

I have no idea when i’ll get around to doing any of these. obviously that last one is going to take some actual time, and what a scarce commodity that’s become lately…

discovered poetry

So I’m taking care of Dr. Bombay’s cats while he’s in europe for two weeks. Today I happened to glance on his dresser, and discovered a DVD that I had loaned to him a few weeks ago. The DVD is part of a set, and the set isn’t even mine, so I’d been meaning to ask him for it back before he left. Anyway, I grab the DVD on my way out the door, but underneath it is a stack of small papers, maybe one fourth of eight and a half by eleven sheets. One of the papers sticks to the dvd, falling to the floor.

I bent down to pick it up and was surprised to discover printed on it in a very small font these poems… The strange thing was that I could swear I’ve read them before.

[update: They were jason’s friend charlie’s poems. Fucking amazing stuff, some of it. I really liked what I read while sifting through, trying to find some identifying text.]

circus skills harangue

OK, so the preface to this entry is that I somehow have a myspace fanclub. I don’t know how this happened, other than that I think it’s really more of a fanclub for my brother Dan, (the people who started it are all friends of his) but they don’t want to admit that, so they’re diverting their attentions to me.

Anyway, they’ve asked me some questions about when I started to juggle and such, so here was my response:

I started juggling when I got the klutz book of juggling from my uncle when I was probably like 12. I learned to juggle three balls at that point, but no more. It wasn’t until 10th grade, (1992–I would have been 16) when I met someone else who juggled that I started to “get into it”. I think it was shortly thereafter that I taught my brother Dan to juggle. He and I were very competitive at first, but he learned things much faster. I did learn to juggle clubs before he did, but I think he was working on 5 balls at the time, and wasn’t interested in clubs.

So I’ve been juggling for 13 years, or maybe 17 if you count when I first learned.

And yes, I can unicycle too. I’m working toward level 5, and only have to get my wheel walk solid before I can probably pass it. My sister and I are competing to see who can pass their next level first… I have to get to level 5; she has to get to 9.

I can also juggle while standing on a slackrope, and like to work on various slackrope skills like turning around, standing perpendicular to the rope and walking while rocking from side to side.

Right now I’m also taking an aerial acrobatics class from xelias studio here in Minneapolis. (http://watchhumansfly.com/).

Also, after watching the new cirque du soleil show Corteo, I really want to learn German wheel. I have this whole cirque-like routine worked out in my head where I balance inside a huge ring suspended in the air… do a little juggling, maybe some trapeeze type tricks, and then the ring is lowered to the ground, released from the rope, and I roll around in it like a spinning coin. We’ll see if I ever even get as far as the first suspended part…

one month till nanowrimo

I have only one month to plan for nanowrimo. I’m thinking a galactic space odyssey, but I have no idea what will make due for plot, or even characters at this point.

Last year I’d thought I wanted to try my hand at humor, and maybe that would be fun too… maybe I could do both. I really have no idea yet… I’m starting to compile a list in the back of my brain for possibilities.

Tonight was going to be me all alone and sitting around… playing video games and reading the novel that I’ve been carrying around for over a month without reading. (It’s good so far, but slow.)

But I’d forgotten about plans to watch more eppisodes of Lost, the only TV show I’ve been even remotely interested in lately, and furthermore, Laura is over packing boxes for next weekend’s impending move. (I’m planning on being out of town, maybe camping in the badlands.)

This month is so booked it’s fucking crazy. Every saturday has a party (but this next one), and the last weekend I’ll actually be in Chicago (just finalized plans last night) to see my friends Brian and Lana perform at Six Flags Great America. I guess we are also going to see The Midnight Circus while we’re there.