Something That Happened.

Dear friends, if you've got BitTorrent and are looking for some entertaining videos to download, I can point you in the right direction. Don't waste your time downloading Star Wars; it's probably a great movie so I'd advise watching that one on the big screen (unless you're as poor as me or your ass is in jail). My advice is to browse on over to Prodigem.com and download Berkeley Laptop Thief. This short video is an entertaining glimpse inside a Berkeley classroom on an untypical day; a professor of genetics finds his laptop stolen and delivers a dramatic lecture intended to provoke the thief into returning the computer. Once you've enjoyed the video a few times, I'd recommend reading about what happened next or checking out some folks's comments on the matter.

Smile and you just may feel happy; have you heard that
one before? In a recent recording, a podcaster
familiar to many reminds us of that simple technique,
waxing philosophical on the ancient question
(unanswered by too many). I agree with that Dave; his
method is sound. Yet how does one fix the smile that's
pulled downward by weak and dying cells? They say it's
less work to smile than to frown; the loss of strength
makes any work painful, any work at all. A price is
paid for a gesture.

The world is still backwards in my neighborhood. Wish I could report more, but I'm too tired. Thanks for sticking around; I'll return to regular programming soon. In the meantime, have you heard Lance yet?

It is a surreal experience, witnessing this process, a
dying at home. I feel at times uncertain of my role,
that I don't belong here, somehow trespassing,
violating what is perhaps the most private of
experiences, that final time together. Yet I am
requested here, and perhaps needed. He's otherwise
alone as she struggles upstream, and it is often
horrifying: the oxygen tank and its tubes, the mixture
of awareness and confusion in her face, attempting to
live while gradually moving toward those inevitable
stages of acceptance and loss of breath.

Thanks for putting up with my poetry, posted remotely from a cell phone. You may find short posts like that here on Something That Happened from time to time. (You may also find the capitalization of the phrase something that happened changing from time to time as well. Why? I dunno; I guess I'm just nutty in that way. Hey, this is my experimentation, alright? Of course you never know when your feedback is going to change that.)

Grand, a bridge as roof for those who call the sidewalk "floor", the street "den". Downtown live people, without Internet.

They tried to get into our home today; we could hear them trying the doorknob. I guess you could say it's a good thing for them they didn't get that door open...

While searching for information on Amazon.com, I stumbled upon this very funny short film, The Smartest Person Who Ever Lived.

There's a question that has not been asked but deserves an answer anyway. To the hypothetical question, "Why do you read so much?", I answer, "Because I don't want to look back on my life, perhaps my one life, and say Goddamn I watched alot of television."

An update on the current situation, and light chat about a coffee shop in Eagle Rock, California (my hometown).

Dying is a part of everyone's life - it's perhaps the most central event that binds us all together - and you can accept it and call it natural and put a positive spin on it if you must, but it can also be an ugly, mechanical and unnatural-seeming process, especially when it takes place in a hospital, tied to machines.

Perhaps more rotten, however, is the toll the process can take on loved ones. For example, the man who has difficulty letting go of the guilt of being human, of needing rest during the dying process, of needing breaks to eat, of needing to take care of himself. The man who neglects taking his own medicine, who senses himself losing his mind from lack of sleep, who risks his health and life because he feels guilty about leaving his wife's bedside for a moment.

I may be noticeably absent for awhile. (Though usually when a blogger or someone else with a dynamically-updated website says they'll be absent, they begin posting stories or updating their content more than ever.) Something has come up, one of life's inevitable horrors. This horror was not unexpected, however, though the timing was unclear. It's also possible there will be some type of recovery. It's possible, and time will only tell.

This has nothing to do with my mother, by the way, whose condition is unrelated to the event of which I am speaking. Mom is still miserably tucked away in a nursing home. Hopefully I'll be able to change that soon, now that she's spent two years officially disabled and will finally qualify to receive Medicare.

My best advice for anyone out there without medical insurance: have a hellot* of money; either that or move to Canada.

Hellot is a word I made up, a blend of helluva (hell of a) + lot.

Somebody edited a Wikipedia entry on inventor Nikola Tesla to state that he "had the biggest schlong out of all of his brothers". At least he's finally getting recognition for something...

Along with his other assets, Tesla was a brilliant inventor, providing us with the ideas - if not the patents - for radio, alternating current (AC), and that lightning machine you see in old horror movies, the Tesla coil. Unfortunately, he wasn't a very shrewd businessman, which is one reason we don't know his name as well as Edison, Marconi, or Franklin. Hopefully future textbooks will change that.

Good morning (I say to myself now and to anyone reading this in the future). I'm glad I'm subscribed to my podcast feed, otherwise I'd be missing all those Something that Happened podcasts that aren't listed here on the site yet (and may never be)...

If you're unfamiliar with podcasting, make sure to visit my site audioblogs.info, where I introduce you to podcasting and explain how it works. Also, don't be shy about contacting me if you have any questions about how to subscribe and listen to podcasts, et cetera.

My girlfriend was riding the bus today and couldn't help noticing the little person sitting near her wearing a shirt which carried the website address for Rent-A-Midget. Now that's using size to advantage!

Since first hearing about Infinity Radio adopting an all-podcast format for it's San Francisco radio station KYOU (at 1550 AM), I've been considering submitting my podcast(s) for inclusion in its broadcast (which is called Open Source Radio). I mean, who wouldn't want to hear their voice on the radio, even if it is AM? Even Dave Winer's podcast was broadcast on the station; but but Dave's situation is different, as he didn't submit his podcast and was somehow able to secure the rights to his podcast, while other podbroadcasters may be in for a headache of legal trouble.

I work hard on my podcasts - the good ones, that is - and I spend a great deal of time both on pre-and-post-production, too. It's a full-time job if you want to do it well - that is, if you want to put out quality podcasts. I'm not saying I have the best quality sound; I've certainly got a lot to learn in that respect. I'll also be the first to admit that my content sometimes begs much to be desired, which is why I don't always offer my audioblog posts as podcasts. (I don't believe everyone wants to hear every last thing I have to say.) Yet once in awhile I really hit my stride with a recording, and it's usually after I've put in a ton of effort. I'd have a real problem submitting my work to an entity (such as Infinity Radio) not knowing whether I'd be able to use my own work however I please in the future.

Until Infinity Radio makes it absolutely clear that podcasters will retain the full rights to their works, and that those works will not be used by Infinity in any respect beyond broadcast on KYOU without my own exclusive permission, I won't be submitting my work to the radio conglomerate. Not my work, mind you, but perhaps I'll submit a podcast I didn't put too much time or labor into - and under a pseudonym, of course.

Time. It's precious, and I hate when it's wasted. Right now I'm pissed because I spent the entire day trying to get my computer up and running again after rebooting it yesterday to see if I could get an audio editing program called Audacity to become usable again. It seems Audacity (or my computer, or whatever the freakin' problem was) decided to begin acting flaky right as I was in the middle of project; now I can't even get the computer running again. Fuckin' eMachines. I've had problems with this computer since I purchased it just over a year ago.

Do I seem angry? Damn straight I'm angry! After dealing with this nonsense all day, I decide to save some time (and maybe a little money) by ordering a pizza using an Entertainment.com discount coupon. The coupon didn't print out correctly on my computer, so now I have to contact Entertainment.com's customer service department to recover that coupon (which you can only print out once). I'm not blaming anyone else for that; it's my own damn fault I decided to try printing that coupon on this broken computer. I'm simply frustrated and upset that this entire day has a been wasted.

So what does cognitive behavioral therapy tell you to do? Readjust your perspective. In other words, look at this event in a positive light rather than as a day wasted. I was about to type a long rejection of that concept, based on the lack of value I see in spending a day in front of a computer learning absolutely nothing. Yet I just realized that I have learned something: never buy a freakin' eMachines again! All kidding (perhaps) aside, I've probably gained some insights into the formatting options available to me in Xandros' distribution of Linux. I've also learned not to try printing a document unless you've absolutely made sure you have that Flash application installed when the website is telling you do so...

Whoa. Oprah is pretty heavy today. Not in the physical sense; today's episode of Oprah is heavy, "The Day I Found Out My Husband was a Child Molester". Frightening stuff. A far cry from the frivolity of "The Wildest Dreams Bus", which just aired yesterday. I guess they figured they should tickle our tummies with something from the nurturing end of the spectrum before delivering an uppercut with this nightmare of an episode.

Nightmare or not, everyone should watch this episode. If you weren't able to watch it you can always order a tape of the show from Oprah.com or download someone's TiVo recording of it online using BitTorrent. (If you opt for the latter, wait a few hours from now and then search for it online using your favorite search engine.)

Yes, I'll admit, I watch Oprah from time to time. What can I say? I'm my mother's son.

ONEsite offers one year of free website hosting; the package also includes a top-level domain, an email address, and a blog. After the year is up, ONEsite will determine whether your site qualifies as a personal site or a business, at which point you will have to pony up thirty-five dollars a year if it's the latter. Still, that's not bad.

If you're a student or an educator (or even a faculty member at a school, I would guess) with a .edu email address, ONEsite will up the ante to five years of free hosting. Okay, now I see a failing business model here...you may be better off going with an established web hosting provider, one that's likelier to be around in a couple of years.

It all depends on what you're looking for, really. If you're an individual who wants to share your nasty habits with the world through a website, or if you have a small home-based business selling beads and you don't already have a website, ONEsite may be the way for you to go. If you're an Internet business selling software services or something like that and your business depends on having a highly reliable website, then you should already know what to do and you don't need me to spell it out for you.

Monday's perspective is a bit more...gray...than Saturday's view from my front porch. It's amazing how the camera's eye understands little of the world's color when there's not much light for it to take in. As gray as the day is, I see a bit more color than this particular image would indicate - perhaps I accidentally had the camera set to take grey-scale images or something!

Dad lightened up the day, however, by offering his horseracing tips during a SkypeOut Internet phone call I recorded. [3.7 MB MP3 stream or download]

I woke up with a terrible headache last night, absolutely horrible. I can't remember the last time I've had a headache this bad, or if I've even had one this bad before. Perhaps it was the result of that codeine pill I took last night, or the huge quantity of sugar I consumed while preparing my chocolate chip cookie bars for mom. (Those cookies that I've been munching on all day today, knowing that they're intended for mom.)

This headache frightened me. It's difficult to describe the sensation that took hold of me last night, a keen combination of pain and panic. Stroke gripped my imagination, a thought particularly poignant in light of mom's ailment (and its possible stroke-inducement).

Perhaps this explains my silliness with the pizzaman. [.7MB MP3 stream or download]

Eavesdrop on my being playful with my girlfriend.

That image of a palm tree is this morning's perspective while standing just outside my front door. There's quite a bit I can complain about this shoebox I call home, but I can't really complain about the view, now, can I?

So before I get out and enjoy the day (yeah, right, like I ever get out anymore), let me inform you about another perspective. I've finally completed Session 03 of Tempo of the Down, that space exporation-themed downtempo podcast of mine. (If you have your iPodder/podcatching application ready, here's Tempo's podcast feed.)

Forthcoming will be an extended version of Tempo including a new RSS feed to add to the existing one. Not certain what RSS is? Here's a simple explanation of RSS feeds. Once you understand what those are, come back here and subscribe to Something that Happened's RSS feed, too.

Ridiculous arguments and poor behavior.

The Ben Walker I "SkypeStalked" yesterday may or may not be the same fellow that is behind the Theory of Everything radio program, but no matter; whichever Ben Walker this is, he contacted me yesterday to let me know that even though he didn't have a microphone, he still found our "conversation" interesting, LOL.

Today I expect to be working on Tempo of the Down, but I may have time to make one to two Skype calls. Who knows, maybe that next call will be to you...that is, if I had your Skype address...

An audio post about Michael W. Geoghegan's Disneyland podcast and people lining up in my town to see Star Wars.

I fired up the Skype Internet phone service today and produced two podcasts:

• "SkypeStalking Ben Walker" [6.7MB MP3 stream or download]


• "Cinco de Mayo SkypeOut" [2.4MB MP3 stream or download]

Neither of these is recordings are anything to write home about; they're basically me playing with Skype and its SkypeOut feature. Still, I had fun recording, and perhaps my pleasure can be transferred to you through them.

Worth mentioning, however, are the artists mentioned/used in these recordings. The music heard in the background of "Cinco de Mayo SkypeOut" is by Mambotur; the song is called "Pachecho (Nortec Collective Verbo Mix)", and I found it on the Pacheco Remixes EP. The artist I refer to but do not mention the name of in "SkypeStalking Ben Walker" will hopefully be named in the near future. I want to check with the fellow first to make certain he wants to be known; I also need to see how he's going to make his short film available so I can refer you to it.

You may think it is unkind to refer to someone as "the drunk", yet I mean that in the kindest possible way you can imagine. You see, years ago I attended an AA meeting at which the speaker bluntly referred to himself as a drunk, unapologetically and without "prettyin' up" his alcoholism. He referred to it in the present tense and offered as explanation something to the effect of I'm not going to be calling it what it ain't - I'm a drunk and I'll always be a drunk and there's no shittin' around about it, though hopefully I won't have another alcoholic drink again in my lifetime.

I don't remember if he explained it like this, but it always seemed to me that by referring to himself as a drunk (rather than as a former drunk or an alcoholic), the man was reminding himself not to bullshit himself. In other words, once a drunk always a drunk - so don't even try kiddin' yourself that you can handle that one tiny little glass of gin & tonic or that one can of lite beer.

Ah, yes - a new story finally surfaces from the drunk, who might be helping me stay sober with his podcast. (Certainly he's keeping me entertained.)

Reading Anand Lal Shimpi's nice long article about Tiger, the new Mac OS turned me on to an Instant Messaging app I hadn't yet heard of, Adium X.

See? It's good to read, folks. Of course, you already knew that, else you wouldn't be here.

So did you hear "Dream Job (Part 2)" yet?

Sunday morning at the coffee shop, the caffeine kicks in and I'm blabbing about words. Yes, words; in particular, the origin of words and the role of dictionary definitions in the construction of language. Well, sort of - I don't get too deep since I only have five minutes of recording time. (Thank goodness for that, huh?)