Tony’s Journal

Is Chris as irritating as an ass full of sand? Not right this moment, because he is not here, but he sure is as dumb as the rocks that the sand was made from. The boy has been on the Wolf Web for 18 months now, has nearly 3000 posts on it, and is still too stupid to realize that you don’t upload pictures that don’t already look dumb, lest some stranger steal and edit them for their own amusement.

Damned fool.

Anyway, I am off to Clemson University in a couple hours, and am coming back tomorrow evening. I am somewhat happy about going, I guess, and it will be interesting to go and see how they use laptops at CU. We’ll also get to see Death Valley, which I am sure will be cool.

The cocktail party this weekend was lots of fun, no doubt. No one got sick, everyone seemed to have a good time, and people were generous with donations. The flea market produced some records for us; I got Van Halen, CSNY, and, yes, some more Herb Alpert and the T.J.B. Ah, yes, and Bo yesterday. Add to that a lot of time spent with Cynthia, and that makes it a hell of a good weekend. I am sad that it had to end.

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To Darryl’s for lunch, and a nice discussion of shirts. No one understands why the task for making a new ITECS logo was given only to Gary & Jason. Jason made an Eos logo that looks really good and an ITECS logo that doesn’t look so hot. Admittedly, ITECS is not an acronym or organization very conducive to logos, but the problem is that the only logo offered on a shirt will be that ITECS logo. Of course, none of us are going to buy one of those, at least probably not. The idea was, I think, to make it so that we had some standard way of identifying our department, even if it is not worn every day. We are expected to buy the shirts. Problem is, we don’t want to buy them. I guess it could be worse, but that logo is not something we would want to wear, so it is kind of ineffective.

I have made an unofficial ITECS shirt. Dig it. Now see, that’s something I’d wear.

I have that “Ain’t No Woman Like the One-Eyed Goth” song in my head. Time for some Cars, that’ll heal it.

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So my camera is messed up again, same way it was in January. I am going to send it back in, and I am going to cry. The gentleman on the line was very nice. I’ve talked with him at least 5 times since I bought the camera. There are two silver linings to this event:

1) He gave me their FedEx account number, so I don’t have to pay to ship it back.

2) He says that every time a camera is sent in for repair, an additional 6 months is added onto the warranty period. I bought it in January 2002. 1 year warranty included. Will have been sent in 3 times = 18 months. Additional 2 years they gave me because they screwed up my camera and wanted me to send it back after they shipped it to me. And 3 months for registering the camera online. That means my camera is covered under warranty until. . . October 2006. That is a damned long time. If I have to keep sending it back every 2 months, I will eventually beat the camera to death with a bat and send it in for replacement.

It rains today. I like it. Leazar sounds like a waterfall when it is raining.

My lady is picking me up from work and we will be travelling to Sweet Tomatoes for a scrumptious leafy meal. And she’s paying! Hot damn!

I am making headway with the records. . . Ripped The Cars and Herb Alpert and the T.J.B – Going Places to mp3 last night. Also ripped America – History (Greatest Hits), but they still need to be selected, trimmed, noise-reduced, normalized, and converted to mp3.

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And. . . AND! I just realized that MY FUCKING CAMERA has more DEAD PIXELS in THE EXACT SAME PLACE THEY WERE BEFORE IT WAS

“REPAIRED”

THE FIRST TIME!

GOD DMANASNFAPIGNGEPAIH

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Cynthia’s leaving in less than a month. So are Justin, Rosemary, John.

Cherry can’t come to the party. Rosemary probably can’t come to the party. That leaves 3 couples and Justin.

One of Cynthia’s friends from Meredith was beaten to death by her boyfriend.

Bishop has still not paid me the $600 he owes me.

Rosemary’s sister Claire is in the hospital.

I can’t figure out PHP + MySQL + Apache configuration.

BTW, this is a rare private entry, and only a select few were given access to this, so keep it under your hat.

I AM DEPRESSED AS FUCK.

I’ll add more later.

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I’ve got “James Brown’s Celebrity Hot Tub Party” stuck in my head.
Too hot in the hot tub! Burn myself! Make it cooler! Good God!

This promises to be an interesting day.

It was raining on the way to work this morning, only slightly, and I liked it. Now it’s pouring, and I like that, too.

Last night: went to the grocery with Dayo and Mandy. Dayo tried to sever my foot by slamming his loaded cart into the back of my ankle. On the way out, I could swear that We came home and were surprised to find that our house was neither on fire nor smelled like a Jason Askew cooking experience; Christy apparently did not ruin the dinner he cooked. I had a BBQ Pizza that I made, and damns, it was good. Meanwhile we watched something about Sorority Girls on MTV; it was really not a good show, but for some reason we kept watching it. After a bit of the next program, which must have been called “World’s Most Horrifying Lesions Caused By Venomous Beasts,” I went upstairs — but not before learning that FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DO NOT PICK UP A DUCK-BILLED PLATYPUS.

I went upstairs and did some more record ripping. In addition to the previously ripped Chicago IX and Best of the Doobies, I have now got the entirety of Led Zeppelin IV ripped, though “The Battle of Evermore” has some skips in it. In addition, I have ripped the first seven tracks of Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass – Going Places.

Hung up my new hummingbird feeder last night, but I am doubting that it will be visited anytime soon, what with the torrential rain and all. It looks nice. If I was a hummingbird, I’d be all up in it.

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I wanted something vinyl, but I couldn’t find any vinyl pants, so I went with vinyl music.

Yesterday Billy and I went to the Emporio del Flea and picked up a bunch of vinyl. I got 11 records, Billy 5, and mine cost $35 total. Not too shabby. I stupided myself out of $5 because of my unthinking honesty, but who cares. I picked up some seriously good stuff. See?

• Led Zeppelin – IV
• Sugarhill Gang – Rapper’s Delight (single)
• Chicago – IX (Greatest Hits)
• A-Ha – Take On Me (single)
• America – History (Greatest Hits)
• Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack
• R.E.M. – Green
• The Cars – The Cars
• Foreigner – 4
• Jim Croce – Photographs and Memories
• one more that I can’t remember

So it was quite a bargain. I have now ripped two albums to mp3: Chicago IX and the Best of the Doobies. It involves recording to WAV, trimming, click/pop reduction, and normalizing, and then converting to mp3, so it takes a while, but it’ll be cool if I do all my records. I hope Dayo loans us his record player for a while.

I went to Big Lots and Wal*Mart with Mandy today and bought some stuff for next weekend. I better start inviting people.

I’m actually feeling pretty good for a Sunday. Usually I am depressed. Must be the doobies.

Make that a capital D.

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What’s sad? Losing an arm.

What’s sadder? Def Leppard playing at the Fayetteville Wal*Mart!
I KID YOU NOT.

July 31, 2002: a date that will make us laugh at them.

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SAT Verbal: Analogy Practice

ANTHONY R. BAUMANN : CHRISTOPHER J. MULLER :: ?

a) Spam : Treet
b) Triscuit : Weav-It
c) Fresh Squeezed Florida Orange Juice : Tang
d) Cane Sugar : Sweet ‘N’ Low
e) all of the above

(Flip your monitor over and then stand on your head to read the answer.)

Answer: e) all of the above

Explanation: Accept no imitation; I am the Genuine Article.

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Yeah, so my mood is not actually “chipper,” I was just remembering how much I like Fargo.

This song I am listening to. . . the same guys who brought us “It Takes Two.” Those two songs were their only hits back in the day, and I have just realized that they both use the same “wooo!. . .yeah!” background sample. Me = Poirot.

Last night: Bojangles, ice cream sundaes and then a beer at Mitch’s. Oh well, at least I’ll die happy, unless my dying wish is to be able to see my feet.

If you think that Wachovia, being a very large bank, would have a good or reliable web site, you would be wrong. (Tony waits patiently to see a $5 charge on my next statement for insulting the bank)

So I don’t think we are going to try to visit Melissa in Tennessee next weekend. Is it worth it to make Cynthia drive 6 hours each way to the middle of nowhere to visit someone who may or may not be there? No. It is not. Melissa will be back to the Raleigh Supermetropolis in a couple weeks; we can wait and so can she. Her fabulous prizs that we bought her will be okay till then too.

You know where I want to go? The N.C. Zoo. It seems to be pretty cool, judging by its web site. Other people seem to like it too. The part that is not so cool is that it costs $10.00 to get in. Well, $9 with a coupon. I guess that’s not too bad. The only problem I would have with it is that it would be hot as hell to go this time of year. It’s 500 acres of sun. Oh hell, I still want to go anyway. We could maybe go next weekend, or wait till the fall. I’d like to go soon, personally.

Mandy and I stayed up until 3:30 am, at which point we got tired of discussing how late it was and we both went to sleep.

Now for installing a T23. I ain’t afraid of no Ghost!

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