Intraspective.

Yesterday, on Tuesday, Hunter moved out. He's probably sleeping somewhere in Salina, KS right about now on his way out to Denver.

Coming home tonight was really tough.

See, what most folks don't realize is that, May 23rd, is 14 years to the day of when we met.

We met on the Friday night of Bear Pride in 1997. Crammed into the Hotel Intercontinental with its crappy elevators which could only carry three bears at a time. And the balcony that could only handle a few hundred of the 1500+ people in attendance.

And so, my life came full circle 14 years later when he and I parted ways permanently.

So tonight, wandering through the house and seeing an entire decade of our shared life missing, I cried. What else can you do in a situation like that...?

It's hard to explain how bad it made me feel because I'm the one who stayed. Survivor's Guilt, or whatever version this is, is pretty darn sadistic.

So yeah, here I am at 2AM trying to figure out myself.

I try to avoid cycles because my life seems to always end up right back in them... even when I try to avoid them.

I tried to find a way to get away from the house for the weekend, but each possibility has problems, some financial, some social, some time. So instead, I'll feel the brunt of the emotions this weekend head on. Not the way I wanted to, but probably the way I should...

I've marked this post as "no comment" because it doesn't really need any. I'm not wanting sympathy. The choice was mine. And I'll be fine in time. But in the short term, I'm feeling completely emotional and in a dozen ways when I rarely have one. I had hoped putting it out there would make me feel a little better... Sadly it really hasn't.

My weekend in Chicago was absolutely amazing. I wasn't sure what it would be like going up. Was having some drama before going up which spilled into the first night. Had some interesting news about JP and I happen after the first night. And then got some major percussive therapy. And a tour.

I can sum up my feelings in two words:

WANT MORE!

'nuff said!

I've said it before but this time it is different.

I've been running Gaystlouis.com for 13 years now. In that time, I've seen the community organize and splinter a dozen times.

The recent changes in town has given me pause. I spent some time last night when I was unable to sleep thinking about my part in the community.

I have spent thousands of hours over the years running the website and have only a lot of debt to show for it. Few people know me but yet those people who enjoy tooting their own horns have far more recognition.

But this time... This time I have a distraction. In the past I wanted to leave but had nothing to fill it's place. I now do.

There is a new man in my life and I plan to focus on him so we're "solid" (*giggle*) and then we'll go from there.

As such, the website will close. If I gets serious monetary offer for the website, I'll sell the domain name off. But otherwise, this is the last week.

It is time for Tony to stop trying to guide and help foster a community and losing himself.

It is time for Tony to focus on his new relationship and let the community figure itself out.

In closing, So long and thanks for all the fish!

A few folks are pushing today's "Record Store Day" event and part of me wants to bitchslap every single person.

Why?

Because I can almost guarantee that not a single one of those friends will actually by a RECORD. It'll be CDs. Tons of them.

I have a few hundred records, actual vinyl things, are sitting behind me right now.

When I was a child, I *LOVED* snow days. Not because I could go out, but because I could play "DJ" and play 45s non-stop. I don't remember "talking" about the records, but truthfully, I was a kid so I probably was doing my best to impersonate the radio folks. But I'd play all the old 60s/70s records over and over and over.

Then in my later grade school years, I discovered Top 40 radio. And I was hooked. NEW music. Not the old ancient singles I'd been playing.

And so in high school, once I had a job, I started expanding my singles collection. At first, slowly, but once I found 12" singles, it exploded.

And ever since then... I've held onto them. They represent my DJ period (where I got paid), but they also represent a time when I had no cares in the world.

I've been meaning to rip them all for years. Hell, 9 years ago, I spent nearly a grand on a top-of-the-line turntable (Numark TTX) which could output in DIGITAL format (SPDIF Coax) just to make sure I could get the pristine quality.

At first, I didn't have the disk space to keep them uncompressed, and I was unwilling to get started because I didn't want to lose data.
Then, I didn't get started because I didn't have the computer setup to handle massive amounts of data migration.

I no longer have an excuse, other than I'm lazy.

But I have a reason to get rid of it all now and go completely digital.

So, I find it ironic that on Record Store Day... I'm resolving to get rid of mine as quickly as I can.

Sorry guys. I love my record store here. Enough that they'll probably get my vinyl as a donation, or in exchange for others. But I'm moving on.

In a few years I'll have a really awesome DJ turntable for sale if anyone wants. ;)

I've decided that in addition to my usual job hunting, I'm going to expand my search... to Wichita.

Pick up your jaw and hear me out.

I met a really great guy who lives in Wichita. And for the first time in a while, I'm excited about the future... but I spend every moment of the day hating my current present. I hate my job. I hate the lack of close friends. I hate the lack of community (most of the time). I hate all the baggage associated with me here in town. The *ONLY* positive for me now has been the house.

And the other day... I posed myself this question: If I had to choose between the house, or him, which would I choose?

... so, I've decided to apply to jobs in Wichita as well as here. I spent most of the week working on the best resume EVER. I swear the angels wept, the storms went away, and the sun shown. I've been working on a killer cover letter as well. (How many people can say they've worked in a Nuclear Plant, in a national monument, a school, a hospital, a CEO training facility... and still be able to adapt and excel at each?)

But in order to do this... I had to start preparing.

Here's why.

I have strange luck. It might be karma. It might be my charm. Who knows... But regardless, when I put my mind to some hair-brained scheme like this... I succeed. It is never in the way I expect, but it almost always happens. As such, this scares me... because I normally am very analytical on things, and for once, I'm not. I *NEVER* go with my heart... In fact, the last time I did without questioning myself was in a hotel in Chicago when I chased down Hunter. And truth be told... we had 5 amazing years, then 5 great years and finally 3 good ones. I still think it was a smart move then... and I think following my heart would be good this time too.

As part of preparing, I broke the idea to a few others. First my brother and sister, my mother, and then to Hunter. My brother and his wife assumed I wasn't hypothetically talking and were already wanting details of when. (See, I never just THINK about things.) My mother didn't put up the fight I was expecting... she actually suggested it might be a good idea. And she made a good argument, which caught me off guard. And although I owe no explanation to Hunter at this point as we are going our separate ways, I wanted him to be aware that it was a possibility. I didn't really get much of a reaction about moving. But as my moving would obviously force him out of the house, I figured it'd be good to warn him.

In one sense, I'd be devastated to lose my presence here in St. Louis. At the same time, I've spent too many times in my past wondering "what if" and haven't just done what I wanted without overanalyzing it.

So there it is...

And keep in mind. He may decide that coming to St. Louis may work out better. The job market there may suck worse than here. But I'll never know unless I give it a shot. A serious one.

...

And so now half my friends' list is going... WTF? Who are you and where is the over-thinking Tony we know?

Na-Nu Na-Nu

I've been a fan of Podcasts since I was listening to Adam Curry's back in 2005. It was one way to keep track of my tech heroes from the old Tech TV with "Revenge of These Green Saviors" which later became This Week in Tech (or TWiT).

But Thursday was the first time I'd been ON one.



Three topics I thought I'd touch on, in my own way.

First: IRC A/S/L versus Cam requests now.
Back in the IRC days, you knew the die-hard visitors would NEVER ask "a/s/l?" (Age, Stats, Location)

Over in #bearcave, we were a community of friends and so we were there to chat and talk. Sure, there'd be cruising, but that would be done, mostly in private.

But when someone would come in and demand an ASL Check, the conversation was destroyed.

To give it an analogy...

Imagine a bar named #bearcave. Folks are mingling, talking, and the doors open and someone takes one step in and DEMANDS to know everyone's details. (Think Drill Sergeant demanding roll.) Once it's cute. But then a minute later. There's another. And another... And another...

I truly believe AOL and the web was the death of IRC. People didn't have to foster a relationship online because ASL got enough attention.

Which brings me to the next topic we talked on...

Second: Bearbook
I've been a fan of Bearbook. Why? Because all the whiny bitches who don't want to pay a whopping $3 for a membership aren't there. As a result, it's a community. People talk, mingle, exchange pics, etc.

That's WHY the fee is there. To set a barrier of entry. It's an insanely cheap barrier though, but something that the immediate-gratification folks (the ones who'd chant ASL) would refuse to pay "on principle". (Bullshit. You'll willingly pay for those xtube credits or for that run package every year or that new cockring...)

So, I'm all for a paywall on Bearbook. I don't think I've heard anyone who hates bearbook and doesn't think it's worth it.

I don't participate in the "pimping" of the website. You won't find my code on any websites or posted anywhere, simply because I'll pay for it directly.

Let's contrast that to 411.

A year ago, I paid for Bear411 for the first time. I knew all the online campaigns against it, but I used the service and so decided to pay for it. Plain and simple. And for a year, I heard friends whine about all the weird changes Greg was making to every free feature. And I just shook my head. But the complaining got louder and louder and friends started leaving...

On Monday, my membership ran out. And in one week, I've gotten hit by FOUR different peeves. Restrictions to seeing profiles, restrictions to seeing who looked at you (and this one seems random), the friend limit and the dreaded VIP Login screen... at 9AM on a Saturday. WTF?

Sure having those features would be nice, but if this is the bullshit my friends have been whining about for a year, I can see why they are all migrating to other websites. I'm all for paying for services, but it's just not worth the $78/year. $50, sure. But $10/month (on the monthly plan) is fucking insane for the limited feature set when so many other options are available.

Something I've proposed for the next episode is a discussion about the migration away from cruising websites and the move towards cruising APPS (Scruff, Growlr, etc.) which is where I think the ASLers are moving. (THANK GOD!)

Third: BEAR Magazine
One topic that was also brought up was BEAR Magazine's publisher's "State of the BEAR" address last year when he declared that Bears were not obese.

We talked about how it was probably a marketing ploy. And I agree, I think it was.

But I brought up this... BEAR has always been this way. This is why American Bear and American Grizzly appeared. And while it was around, BEAR tended to try to straddle all different interests. But once the American mags closed up, BEAR went back to being about muscular hairy men for their definition of bear.

And that's fine. It's his magazine. But when I asked if anyone had bought an issue in the past year, only one person chimed in.

So I ask you... when was the last time you bought an actual bear-focused magazine?

Conclusion
We have reached an era now where all this information is at our fingertips.

Do we as a bear "community" want to tolerate the ASLers of our current era, or do we want to continue to have our community as WE want it?

BEAR magazine performed an ASL move by DEMANDING that they will choose who is a bear. Bear411 performs an ASL move by DEMANDING we pay, or else, for every little service (with a $15 "new profile" charge too!). And our community still has ASLers as anyone who has a video on Xtube will agree with... lots of messages demanding to "show this" or "do this" and yet their profile doesn't have a single photo or video uploaded.

Personally, I'm enjoying my conversations over on Bearbook. I enjoy the naked pics, but more the conversations with the people behind those posts. I'll still use my 411 account, and I may still renew, more from a desire to pay for my usage of something... less from a need to see profiles. Over on Xtube, I ignore those comments from folks with no pics. And if I don't know you, I'm not about to get on cam with you. Just like I'm not about to send you naked pics over IM simply because you asked. But... it's all still on my terms and my choices.

For those wondering what all was going on with the viruses I was talking about... Here's the details from McAfee.

The first one I submitted back in January (can't remember exactly) turned out to be: FakeAlert-SecurityTool.w!CB50826709CD (That's a mouthful!) This one took two days for McAfee to update its anti-virus/spyware defs to remove it.

Then the one on this past Monday turned out to be: FakeAlert-SecurityTool.ao (a variant of one from December.) This one they "knew" about but they hadn't pushed out the latest defs yet which could remove it.

Then finally, the one on Wednesday, turned out to be: Generic FakeAlert!nk!2E381386C4FF And this one, they updated their defs after two days.

My work is getting slammed with FakeAlert's because we are running IE7, unpatched Flash 10.0, old Acrobat versions from 3.0 through X.0 (few patched), and McAfee on minimal scanning settings (on WRITES only, not reads, and it does not do any scanning otherwise). The *ONLY* saving grace is that most users are users only, not Power Users or Administrators.

Why is our setup this way? Because "management" feels that the machines run too slow otherwise. The users can't be allowed to "feel" the machines are slower, even for security.

So in their infinite wisdom, I spent four to five hours two days a week now, delousing machines because someone did a Bing search on 'How to tie a scarf' and caught a bug.

And folks wonder why I bitch about my work...

Here I am, I worked my ass off, got an MCITP:EA, and I'm babysitting web browsers. *cries* Not eligible for a raise and yet there's a half dozen programmers making DOUBLE my salary. *cries more*

I think I need a new title... "Anti-Trojan Man" is what came to mind, but that has other connotations. :p

Regardless, yesterday I got to spend some deep quality time with another Trojan.

This one, like my previous encounter, was again VM-aware. Try to run in a VM environment and it'll give a pop-up that says "software installed" but there is none. Though it didn't auto-delete itself.

But boot the same thing on a machine without net access and POOF, machine is infected.

So, what's interesting is that this one was undetectable by McAfee. Even 24-hours later and their virus submission system still has not updated on any progress.

This makes it the second 0-day Trojan I've tracked down and submitted. And one 1-day as well.

Again, having access to SysInternals helped immensely. But I'm also getting better on tracking down the culprit.

The problem this time was a user who searched on bing for "how to tie scarves" and went to a third party site running a CMS which appears to another third party site's advertising engine and it was the source.

Why this user is surfing for scarf tying techniques at work, who knows. Thankfully it was a woman who caught the spyware, otherwise it would be an awkward conversation.

So once McAfee can recognize these new beasties, I'll followup here.

I plan on booting up a VirtualPC box and see if it too is detected as a virtual environment by this nasty.

At work, I've become the go-to person for recovering from viruses (virii?) and so today, I got to practice some.

Had McAfee up to date with the latest definitions, installed Malwarebytes with the latest definitions, neither could find whatever it was.

Watched as the user logged in and the virus/trojan took over the system.

The user doesn't have admin rights, so how something got installed is interesting, but under the local administrator account, whatever it was, was not active.

So clearly it was just a process at this point.

Went back up to my desk and remoted to his machine, logged in, let the trojan take over... It blocked all Task Manager access, so I ran SysInternals' PSEXEC and found the process in question, remotely killed it off, using PSKILL, and then I could bring up Regedit to find what called that process...

It was a "Run Once" setting for the Local User (neat trick since the User shouldn't have rights to change the "Run Once" setting as himself), so removed it from there.

Then it gets more fun.

Located the EXE in question, copied it off to a thumb drive, then mounted said thumb drive in a virtual machine (VMware Workstation). Then tried to run said EXE... and it deleted itself. No abnormal processes in memory.

OH REALLY???

So went back, made another copy, reverted the VM back but gave it net access this time (fixed IP, no domain access), ran the EXE... deleted itself again. No remaining processes in memory.

This is getting interesting...

So went to a physical machine, yanked the network cable, ran the EXE. Nothing. It deleted the file again, but this time, the process was still running in memory. Gave it network access and... nothing. The process apparently had already tried to get out and was just sitting there.

That's odd. So then killed the process off, then logged back out and in (to guaranteed I cleared the process out), left the network connected (fixed IP, no domain access) and launched the EXE again. BOOM! Instant trojan.

Then I submitted the EXE to McAfee. Within a minute I got an email back... the definitions coming out later that day would fix it. (Trojan.SafeAlert.ao) Downloaded the SuperDat manually onto user's machine and ran a scan. Sure enough, it found it this time.

So... the end result?

The trojan noticed it was in a VM environment and killed itself to prevent forensics from taking place. Sneaky little bastards!

So much for VM's being "undetectable". Can't wait for the first widespread hypervisor virus to hit. :( Sorry Ours.

The year was 2005. It was a difficult year.

A few years before, I'd gotten laid off and had accepted a job at Ameren, the local electric power company, on their help desk. The job was not ideal and it was *sigh* a help desk position, but it paid fairly decent even if I was a contractor. Not as much as I'd made at the job that had laid me off, but enough that I was comfortable again. I wasn't playing credit card roulette. It was good considering the IT market had still not recovered, especially here in St. Louis. (It still has not.) But I kept the job because it was a job.

One of the things it was doing was making us jump through hoops. Management had decided that it was smart to outsource the help desk at the Callaway Nuclear Power Plant. However, due to union contracts, the only people that could work out there were contractors... like me.

So several times, I had to drive out to the Callaway Nuclear Power Plant, train on their facility, their systems, and learn the departments. Beyond that, there was the threat of a drug test at any time. The test itself wasn't the problem. The problem is that, due to contract negotiations again, you had a four hour window to get tested. If you did not, you were fired. They could only call you when you were on the job. Simple enough.

However... for us, that meant, we had four hours to stop everything, jump in a car, drive for two and a half hours, arrive, pee in a cup, wait 5 minutes for results, and then drive back for two hours. (Heaven forbid you were on your lunch break or there was a highway accident.) Fortunately, in hind sight, I was never called, but two of my coworkers were.

One of the other developments from the job was that soon we were going to be a 24-hour help desk... again due to contract negotiations. (It's a nuclear power plant. They don't have business hours.) And so, the contractors had to be spread over the entire work week. There were only six of us to start with. That meant that two of us had to switch to nights. And you *HAD* to stay for your shift. There was no excuse. Sick, flu, intestinal bleeding... didn't matter.

So, one of the ways I had started to combat this stress was to overeat. More overindulgence, but still too many calories. I was however countering this gym visits and was actually losing a little bit of weight.

One of my other enjoyments was the Yahoo! Unlimited music service. I *HATE* Yahoo!. I felt they were/are a sellout... BUT... $60/year for unlimited music downloads. Yeah, couldn't beat that. I had one of the few supported MP3 players. A Rio Carbon Pearl. It was a 6GB Hard Drive MP3 player, but it supported the PlaysForSure DRM that Yahoo used.

So I enjoyed loading up new music from various artists... and one of them that caused a lot of joy in me was The Beloved's "X" album. I have always loved "Sweet Harmony" from The Beloved and this album was an upbeat dancy set of tunes. In particular, one song "For Your Love" was particularly great and it repeated frequently on my MP3 player.

I was entering the week of transition from day shift to night shift. I had to work four days in the AM shift, off for two days, then my night shift service started. 12 hour days. 6PM to 6AM... doing help desk. By myself. So it was already a stressful week.

I was trying to stay upbeat. Even trying to stay involved with my family. My grandfather had his 75th(?) birthday party and Hunter and I had both attended. Towards the end, Hunter was complaining that he didn't feel so well, so we headed back home, I didn't mind the excuse. He came home, slept for a bit, felt better and things went fine... Until Sunday night.

Most of Sunday he'd slept as he still wasn't feeling great. I didn't have a choice. I was already needing to prepare for the shift switch and even then, I was up to two Tylenol PMs, a Benadryl and a Sominex to get to sleep. (Yes Tylenol PM is just a Benadryl with a Tylenol, but taking three PMs was too much... *rolls eyes at myself*)

So Sunday night, I'm dragging ass, drowsy beyond my normal self, and Hunter asks me if his leg looked swollen.

I hate questions like that. "Does this make my ass look fat?" There's never a good answer. If I say yes, then he turns into a hypochondriac. If I say no, then he disagrees and turns into a hypochondriac without moral support. So I did a quick look and honestly didn't see any difference between his legs. But he was concerned. I told him that if they felt that bad, to go to the hospital but that I couldn't drive him because I had to get my ass to bed for work.

An hour later, he woke me up to tell me that he was going into the hospital. Fucking hypochondriacs. I fell back asleep within minutes.

In the morning, I discovered he wasn't there, but didn't have much more details. I overslept and was late for work. (Contractor, remember?) If I remember, he texted me on his Nokia cell phone, saying that he had been admitted, but with my candy bar Sony-Ericsson phone, I couldn't respond very well, especially in the hidden corner of the building I was located in.

I later learned that he did have some sort of infection and he was at the hospital still. So after work, I swung over to visit him. I even remember swinging by somewhere and grabbing some flowers to try and cheer him up.

Doctors spent the next few days trying to figure out what was going on... and each day his leg got worse and worse. The swelling turned into a massive infection and they were giving him lots and lots of antibiotics and nothing helped.

During these days, I was spending my days getting yelled at by union workers who felt we were scabs and were cussing us out by day, then fighting traffic in highway 40, to get to the hospital where I felt helpless to help him.

See, I felt guilty. I felt guilty because I had blown off his concern over his leg. I felt guilty because our relationship had already fallen apart at that point. His days were spent hating his job. My days were spent hating my job. We'd get home, go out for dinner, bitch endlessly about our jobs and then whine because we were overweight. Our weekends were mostly sitting around, watching TV, going to the bar, but that was about it. We were the "old married couple". I'm sure my testosterone level was shot by then and I was at my heaviest (then). And I'd felt trapped. I couldn't survive without his help share of the bills, yet that's what we basically were, was roommates. The chemistry had fizzled. We were missing cues from the other and our timing wasn't working. We weren't working.

And so I felt guilty... Guilty that at least once a week, I wondered what life would be like without him in my life anymore. And here he was, in the hospital with an unknown infection spreading through him, one that could very well make that happen. It wasn't the way I would've ever have wished on anyone and yet... ironically the high potential that I going to be alone.

So... imagine that stress on top of everything else.

When I'd go and visit him though, I couldn't let any of that out. I knew he was scared as well. But, he didn't need to have the extra stress, especially now. So normally when I'd get back to my car. I'd spend a good 5 minutes crying. Knowing there was nothing I could do, but feeling helpless at the same time.

One particularly tough day, I decided to finally leave there and head home. I had stopped crying, but that was superficial. The emotions were still swelled up inside. I started the car, flipped the MP3 player on, giving it the minute to spin up the hard drive before it started, and proceeded to leave the parking lot. And then... "For Your Love" came on.

It took about 10 seconds and the waterworks started. I temporarily lost sight and narrowly missed sideswiping a car in the parking lot. I pulled over into a spot and spent another 10 minutes crying.

I swore at that moment, to God, to myself, to anyone listening, that if he made it through, that I'd work to repair our relationship. I'd stop trying to "fix" him. That I'd stop ignoring his paranoia. That I would support him in every way I could for as long as I could. I'd keep taking suck-ass jobs to make sure the house was paid for. I'd give up anything I could to fix what I'd done wrong...

A few days later, doctors finally figured out what the infection was. I was still trying to be strong. I tried. The fear switched from him dying, to him losing a leg. And later it was changed to that he just had to have major surgery on it but otherwise he was okay. Still he had been through a lot. As had I.

He spent months in therapy. I spent months working the night shift and then I'd come home and take care of him during the day. Slowly he was able to function more and more on his own. But the constant day/night stress had caused my weight to balloon up nearly forty pounds in a two month period. The gym membership faded. And I solely became a source of income... at least until I discovered that WE were about to be outsourced... Amusingly enough, that brought some peace. At least until I was unemployed again in a horrid IT market and had to take ANOTHER Help Desk job just to pay the bills. And the cycle started again.

Looking back, all I can say is... I tried. I spent years feeling guilty for many many things. I've probably been borderline depressive over that guilt for just as long. I'm still trying to provide him with help, but recovery is a long road... especially when a lot of the game is mental. For him... and for me.

In grade school, my Catholic upbringing was a little schizophrenic. On one hand, the old testament would read "Eye for an Eye", while the new testament would chime on about "turn the other cheek".

So, growing up, these two sides would routinely conflict. The old testament was the word of God. While the new is the word of Jesus. Catholicism preaches that they are one in the same, but both Jewish and Islamic faiths put more respect on the old testament.

But what it really brings about is... guilt.

There's guilt about everything. And in Catholicism, this is all fixed by going to confession and "all is forgiven"... or is it?

When you see the Pope arguing that homosexuality is a cardinal sin, which confession can't forgive, it leaves on wondering where they lay.

See, one is taught that last rites, all one has to do is agree to "accept" Christianity and poof, all sins are forgiven and the person goes to heaven. They could've been a murderer about to be electrocuted... and yet they are Saved.

But have sex with someone of the same gender? Nope. No saving possible. Do not pass go.

And so, when I went into High School, being a Jesuit high school (same general line of thinking, just poorer than Catholic school... well, not much poorer really, all my classmates had more money than my family could dream of)...

But the fear of being gay was all the same.

You can't be found out, or you are doomed forever. And that is what is taught. (But therein is the trick, because per the Commandments, even THINKING about the act is the same as the act so by even thinking about doing it, you've done it. Damn. Screwed.)

So, any chance you get to prove you aren't gay, the kids do it.

I intentionally avoided the topics.

I happened to be flirtatious and handsome enough to have a few girls interested in me throughout high school. I wanted to be friends. They wanted more. Sometimes much more.

But in my school days, I remember lots of homophobia around me. One friend of mine had the nickname of "Flamer". I honestly didn't know what it meant. (I naively assumed it was a nickname from his track activities.) It wasn't until one day I repeated the line said hundreds of times before and he stopped me and told me what it really meant. I was crushed. Here I was, the one who actually WAS having gay thoughts and I had been repeated what was a slur for years. I apologize and refused to call him that again. (10 years later at the class reunion, guess what, the same assholes were calling him the same thing. I did not.)

And I posted earlier about my almost outing an acquaintance in college. Something that again, I was horrified that I almost made his life miserable.

So... with that mindset... I think I subconsciously set about trying to fix the wrongs.

I spent years working on Gaystlouis.com... and I couldn't really say WHY. I just felt like I had to do it, because no one else would.

In the 12 years I've run the website, I've probably invested $15,000 between hosting, software, and other expenses. Not including the hundreds of hours each year, some years more and some less.

I'd get burned out and walk away... only to find later that I was right back doing it for the same unexplainable reasons.

About a year and a half ago, I had a realization. I was broke. My income could not meet the expenditures.

And a frantic amount of work went into finding ways to make the difference. I pleaded on the website for donations. Six months of begging brought in $100. The cost of one month of hosting for the website.

I spent hundreds over the years on other people. I've sent computers (used, but still full machines) to folks whose computer had broken down. I sent gifts to friends (kilts, playtoys, leather, books, etc.) and now found myself with inability to do any of that.

And I felt guilty.

That was the clincher. I felt GUILTY to not be able to throw away money that I no longer had on other people. (And that I never really had to begin with.)

And another conflict formed. Here I am, years as an atheist, years as an out gay man, and I found that I was fighting GUILT again.

I *ALWAYS* sucked at fighting guilt. I learned to avoid guilt by being upfront and forward. Hard to guilt someone when there's nothing secret. Yet... I was able to guilt myself easily.

And so, for years, the guilt overrode my own personal survival opting instead for the survival of others.

But in this realization, I did a deep sigh, and started the process for digging myself out of debt. Because I was still employed and made a good salary, the only option I had was credit counseling. So I went into credit counseling with $45,000 owed on the house and nearly another $45,000 in credit card debts.

I had to dig myself out of debt. I had to focus on myself.

The guilt was still there. The nagging that I wasn't giving everything I could to others. And it still caused me to make bad decisions. A lot of people owed me money and I didn't challenge any of it. I simply found that walking away was the best answer at that time.

I joked that I should get some bit of Karma, but I don't believe in Karma just as I don't believe in an almighty of whatever form. We are what we are and it is up to us to fix our own shit. There's no deity that will dispense solutions when times get tough. So in truth, the jokes were hollow and only resonated my own deafening isolation to myself.

My iPhone would go through the calendar each day and I'd note the friends who had their birthday and how I wanted to send them X that I'd seen that they'd really love. Yet when my own birthday rolled around, I couldn't afford to do anything for myself. I think I ended up buying a few used video games. I'd get the emails of "why didn't you come to Y event?" and when I explained I didn't have the funds, I'd get shrugged off.

And shortly after that... I had a mental breakdown.

I couldn't do both anymore. I couldn't be there for others *AND* try to fix my own debt and weight and other issues.

And so I slowly worked to clean up the various loose ends in my life.

Hunter got the biggest brunt of the changes. And I feel guilty every day for making the decision I did. Yet there is no way it could go otherwise and for me to move forward.

And unfortunately a lot of friends have approached me that I seem distant. And it isn't that. It's just that I can't be the same person I was before.

I'm intentionally unraveling the future I've spent years creating. I no longer see my future. And I can't right now. As such, I can't have any of the luxuries I once had until I can overcome the damage already done to my life. As a result, it may seem like I'm retreating to some, but I'm just not overexerting like I used to be.

A trip to Texas sounds like fun. I have a dozen online friends I want to see. Yet the money spent on that is nearly six months savings. Which is more important? Building a buffer in my savings account, or a week of merriment?

A better example: My car was damaged in late December, yet here at the end of January, it is still broken. I have full coverage *BUT* I have to pay the deductible. And I can't spare $500 to have my own car fixed! I spend nearly $800/month to credit counseling and nearly $1,300 in house bills. What little is left usually goes to food at work. Hell, I haven't been able to go out to the bar because I can't spare the $20 I'd spend.

And with each decision I DENY, I find more guilt. And this is doubly hard when others are involved, especially if they try to make me feel guilty... And so I grow numb.

And this is why I am now alone. Because I must be. Because there's no answer anyone can give me, as I do have the answer. It will just take time. And in the end, I will be a different person. I must be.

I've spent years denying the troubles. I've spent years exacerbating the issue. I can afford to spend a few years trying to undo the problems.

It'll just be a few lonely years.

I need to post this somewhere else, but I'm rather proud of myself.

See... I have about 160GB of music files (LEGAL I may add!) and they've been built up mostly over the last decade.

But I've switched computers a few times, so in the process I had to migrate my entire library a few times.

This last time was from my server to my Mac because my Mac for whatever reason (fixed now) couldn't see the network.

So I had two copies of music everywhere.

Well... lately my non-server hard drive which contained the music has started randomly locking up.

But the thought of migrating some 84,000 songs manually one-by-one fixing the location data was a PAIN IN THE ASS and not work moving. (I'll go buy another drive, migrate the data and make it the same.)

I did some online research, but all of them basically called for iTunes managing your library, and I don't want this. I spent 10 years on these files, and I do not want iTunes mangling them... And there were hacks, but all of them were for the PC version of iTunes. Go figure.

So after a deep sign and doing the one-by-one for about 14 songs, I realized that I was just moving paths.

file://localhost/Volumes/MUSICBACKUP
to
file://localhost/Volumes/Music/Music

Hmmm... There should be an elegant solution here.

I paused for a minute and the light bulb above my head lit up.

Open Terminal Window.
cd /Volumes
ln -s Music/Music MUSICBACKUP
Close Terminal Window.

Even before I could get back to iTunes, my network connection slowed to a crawl.

Apparently iTunes was extremely happy with this. And poof. All my music is now using the server's drive.

*happy dance*

I *HEART* Unix Shells...

On the downside, iTunes is now trying to be helpful and "fixing" the artwork for many of my albums. *grumble* But at least it works!

Was thinking of some more amusements of my life. For tonight's post, I'm going to skip right over High School for the moment, and share a few memories of college.

Four things tonight.

1) My friends and I were HUGE fans of Babylon 5 and X-Files. And in Des Moines, both aired on Friday nights, one right after the other. X-Files aired first at 8PM while Babylon 5 aired at 9PM. We took over the big screen TV in the "Rathskeller" at Drake. We would drive everyone away with the creepy X-Files and then we'd cheer with the Babylon 5 episodes. The area officially closed at 8PM, but since several of us worked there, we were tolerated until 10 at which point we were driven out every Friday.

This only happened the first season of B5. By the second season we were watching in one of our rooms, or even geekier... on a conference call between rooms WHILE watching the show.

We would have bags and bags of popcorn, pizza, burgers, etc. I remember having a blast with everyone while we'd be trying to figure out where the hell JMS was going with the series. And we were completely torn when Sheridan came on. And when Kosh revealed himself. OH MY GOD.

There's not a lot of really warm and fuzzy memories from college but that's my big one. Definitely. I remember them very fondly.

2) Saturday nights were a different story. I would go into work, in the same place, at Noon, and I would finish at about 9pm. I'd get two 30 minute "lunches" which I'd push together for an hour dinner. I was very adept at my position, which in short was stock-boy for the snacks, soda machines and bottled water, as well as cleaning up the trays and dining room area.

Many a time I felt complete anger when students would make a mess of the place and I had to clean up after them. I didn't even get a tip. Fuckers.

But every day I'd have to bring up 60 cases of water. Me? I'd bring it up all on one cart from the storage locker which was a floor down. So I had to push the entire thing up a 30 degree ramp, every day. And then besides unload and unbox the cases, I'd also do the loading. And that was just for the last four hours of my shift. (The first four were a breeze in comparison.)

So when folks wonder why I have such thick legs, I point to that. Those suckers were heavy, but I was bound and determined. Only once did I have to bail on a cart full.

3) After I would get back on a Saturday night, I'd smell of grease and sweat. My white T-shirt would be drenched and stained. And while we were given aprons, I always was covered in crap.

So when I'd get back to my room (starting my Junior year), I'd close my door, turn on the stereo, turn it to 4 (out of 10) and literally be shaking the windows off. Usually I would go right for "Fixed" by Nine Inch Nails. (I didn't like Broken in comparison.) "Wish" and "Gave Up" would usually get played on the stereo. My speakers were about 14 feet apart and I would stand at the focal point when the bass kicked in on both. Even though I was only standing six inches from my door, I could not hear someone pounding on it.

My neighbors hated me the first few times. And I explained to them that I had ONE time each week when this would happen. It would only last two songs, but they'd have to deal. And that if they wanted, I'd be MORE than happy to piss them off more often.

And when I was done, I'd grab my shower stuff and get all the gunk off me.

This album is still my frustration album... and I'll still go down and put it onto the stereo. Though now that I own a home, it'll get to maybe 4.5 on the stereo. But I still love the feeling as the bass hits me.

4) On the topic of pissing off the neighbors. When it was nice outside, all the kids on my floor would crank their stereo and open their doors. Their puny little stereos were no match for mine. I was cranking 100 watts per channel (not RMS, but full-on) from a tubed Marantz receiver my Aunt didn't want paired with two KLH speakers with 18" woofers and two Realistic Subwoofers with a hacker-cred plastic floral trash-can enclosures (using duct tape to provide a place for the speaker to rest so there was venting around it).

If the neighbors were particularly annoying, I'd drop in my secret weapon. One which was guaranteed to close every door on the floor within a minute.

Buster Poindexter singing "Under The Sea".

My friend Penny always laughed when she'd walk across campus and be a building away and she'd STILL hear that. She knew instantly that "it was on..."

This is intentionally a vague post. To say much more will be taken wrong by some, seen as egotistical by others, and cryptic to still others.

But I think I finally figured it out...

I figured out why so many people think I'm Dominant.

And wow. It's an interesting eye-opener for myself. Part self-compliment, part self-embarrassment, part inspiration and goal.

Regardless the "2011 is MY year" is EXACTLY the road I should be going down.

Go me!

I can't seem to find a voice tonight.

Everything I write either comes out as emo (a whole post I wrote called "I want..." complaining about the little things I want, like a working shower) or come out as bitchy (a whole post I wrote called "Perspective..." complaining about the depressive whiners out there without a grip on reality).

And I think what I'll settle with is this:

The last decade sucked.

In 2000, I was still in a good relationship. The house was still in good condition. I had a good job. I had good friends. I looked good. I enjoyed life. I had dreams... And in the last 10 years, all that got fucked up.

In 2010, I ended a relationship. The house is in poor shape. I have a suck-ass job. I have no friends locally. I'm horribly obese. I hate life. I have no more dreams, save one. And I'm looking over the last 10 years wondering what the fuck happened.

If I had a time machine, I'd go back and slap the shit out of myself in 2000 when I'd get depressed that I didn't get to leave work at 5:00pm instead of 5:02pm from what would've been a dream job. I'd go back and point out the areas of the house which would later bleed me dry so I could catch it before it got too bad. I'd go back and point out the troubles in the relationship THEN so we both wouldn't be hurting a decade later. I go back and put myself on a diet by merely being in my own presence feeling that gravitational pull.

But I can't.

Instead, my dream is that I'll wake up, and it's 2000, and I get to live the decade over. Better. And maybe not fuck it up as badly.

I won't get my dream.

Maybe my dream should be that in 2021, I won't look back and feel like this decade was as fucked up as the previous one. I guess I'm the one who has to make that happen.... Yay. Go me.

Ever had one of those minor annoyances that once you fixed suddenly made life so much easier?

For years, I'm been whining that my Server 2000 system has been unable to talk to my Mac. I knew Macs had troubles with the old security tech of 2000, but never really though much of it.

Well, with the recent move of our main computers from XP to Windows 7, the issue has shown up again. And now I had multiple computers that couldn't talk to the server.

This was causing me to have to figure out how to replace the server with a new server running Server 2008, for just file sharing. (Needs to be a Windows server as my RAID cards have very spotty linux support. And a Server 2008 license is cheaper than two new RAID cards.)

Today I got pissed off at it and searched the net and found the two steps I needed to make to both my server and then to subsequent machines.

And with that... My Mac now has no problems accessing the server.

Egads. That took WAY too long for me to resolve. On the plus side, I can save a little bit of money for a server upgrade for now.

(Yes, I geeked out. I'm sorry, there's no way to de-geek what I said.)

Technet actually pulled the answer for me: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/w7itpronetworking/thread/c196c366-bf95-4bdf-8832-62ea2e9bf0ae
The third response is the correct one with instructions.

Today was one of those days.

Went to the local LGBT Center and took time out to start installing the PCs that I donated to them. Not bad machines. P4 2.8Ghz, 2G, 80G HD. Better than the 1Ghz, 512M monstrosities they had.

Anyway, while I was inside, someone sideswiped my car. :(

So... no good deed gone unpunished. *sigh*

Got a call into the insurance company already.

I'm kind of looking forward to the end of the year.

I've decided that next year is MY year.

For years, really, for decades, I've spent all my time helping other people out. Financially, emotionally, spiritually, voluntarily, etc. To the point now where I struggle to keep up with my own bills. My own house is a mess. My own emotional state is drained. Etc.

2011 will be the year to rebuild myself.

Over the past few months, I've started making changes. Some of which are major life changes. Some of which are minor personal decisions. But all of which will affect my future.

It isn't that I'm ignoring anyone or find anyone less important, but I've decided that for this year... *I* am the most important person to myself.

I want one year to focus on myself. To find myself. To rebuild myself. And *THEN* I'll see what the future holds.

If things work, the future will be very different than I can even imagine right now.

Been meaning to ask Tekzilla a question recently, so today I was able to figure out the question.

I know they need enough space for an answer without too much editing, so I had to give as much detail as possible and I think I succeeded.

"@tekzilla On SSDs: Replacing Bigfoot 5.25 drive on W2K3 Srvr. Which better: SSD or IDE->CF converter? Speed & cap not issues."

Now to elaborate for those non-techs who have no clue what any of that means.

I'm replacing a "Bigfoot" drive in my server. It is a 5.25" 3200rpm (2400?) drive which only has 2.5G of space. The server is currently Windows 2000, but I plan to upgrade to a Windows 2003 server soon.

So I'm asking which is better, spending money on a quality SSD drive or should I just get a cheap IDE interface to CompactFlash converter? Should I spend $150 on a 32G or 64G SSD drive, or spend $50 on a cheap 32G CompactFlash card and $10 on an adapter.

And speed and capacity aren't an issue for me, as my current drive is neither. :P And if I can survive on a Bigfoot drive, ANYTHING is an improvement. I think it'd boot faster from floppy honestly. ;)

Anyone out there have any thoughts?

I tried using an IDE->SD adapter, but the motherboard didn't like it as it wasn't bootable. But since CF cards are technically just IDE, that shouldn't be an issue... Or would it?

I'm finally caught up on my social media...

Yeah!

Apologies to everyone who is wondering why I'm responding to three week old posts on LJ. I finally got to it...

And I should be cleaning my desk. :P

We're walking down a halfway in highschool, Life is the jock walking down the hall while I carry the dozen textbooks I need for class... when life decides to give a "gentle" shove and the books fly everywhere.

That's been the last few weeks.

I won't go into specifics, but here's the keywords: Weight, Stress, Pagers, Death & Taxes.

So I'm trying to find ways to reorganize my life.

And one that'll appear shortly is that I'm going to create a bunch of blogs. One for tech work, one for hacking, one for nostalgia, one for myself, one for gear, one for the bears and one to replace gaystlouis.

One of the goals is to move segments of life into discrete containers, instead of one big jumble like it has been.

An advantage of this is that I can do use some of my ongoing projects for this. For example, the nostalgia stuff typically is involved with my retro-C64-ness. I have no real place to post about the geeky CBM-serial-to-PC-Parallel adapter I use, at least that isn't overrun with gay rants, gear pics, and general venting about work. And as a result, I don't tend to progress on those projects. "I'll get to it when I have more time..." is my ongoing mantra...

So the reorg'll take me a while, but it'll get started shortly.

I'm back to the position where I need to migrate Gaystlouis.com and frankly, I'm just going to start over. While I'd love to keep the site the way it is, it just doesn't work. The forums are useless now and get about two posts a month besides myself. No one uses the calendar. They still just email their events and then whine when I haven't gotten it posted by the end of an hour. So I've got a massive server to manage what? :P Time to rebuild.

And I hope to still post here from time to time. More to update friends than to post anything mind blowing. The days of LJ's prominence has pretty much faded. Twitter and Facebook, albeit limited, have stolen most of the users, and while I'd prefer to not be sharing gear pics or personal exploit stories with my FB friends (including my mother and Hunter's mom), some people don't seem to mind. *shrug* To each their own.

But I'm not lost... I'm still just trying to collect the books that the asshole "Life" caused. It'll take me a few more weeks I suspect.

Read two articles today.

Apple has sued HTC for infringing on 20 patents. Most of these patents are focusing on the Android OS, but rather than Apple go after Google for making the OS, they are instead going after the handset makers, HTC being the largest of the Android phones.

Another article pointed out that Apple has been pressuring music studios to not publish deals over on Amazon. Because Amazon's 8 percent market share has been growing and clearly threatens the 69 percent stake that iTunes has in the online music purchase category....

For these reason, I'm seriously considering my next phone to *NOT* be an iPhone.

Why? Because I am *still* waiting for tethering to be an option with the iPhone. I'm probably going to go buy a non-contract USB drive from Cricket Wireless at $40/month. (Yes, I can hack the iPhone, but the iPhone has tethering built in. It works. AT&T just hasn't allowed it on.)

So... when the contract comes due in August... I may bolt.

At the moment, the HTC phones are VERY slick. The Droid by Motorola is nice. And while they don't have the ease of use of my iPhone (with the apps, etc.) I can't help but wonder if Apple has decided to stop innovating and just push everyone out of the market.

Look back at CES. Lots and lots of tablet announcements. A week later, Apple has announced theirs and poof, all the tablets shown are vanishing. A few will still come out, but not much until after the iPad hits.

Apple is the new Microsoft. Apple is using FUD and the threat of lawsuits to keep innovations down now.

So... I'm not happy about Apple.

It went from enabling new technologies, like Google is doing, to fighting over what is "theirs".

I suspect Google giving away the software for the Android probably is making them a hard target. (Sure, we'll give you a percentage of our profits. How much of that $0 would you like?)

But today, I realized that while I love my iPhone... it isn't enough anymore. I need to have my tethering that has been promised for over a year. I need to have better battery life. I need a lot of functionality which I can't have on a stock phone.

I hate to say it, but... I'm souring over Apple.

Yesterday, I had a lazy Sunday. I made a (horrid) breakfast (burnt the potatoes) and then we hit the gym for an hour. Then I decided to catchup on Livejournal and Facebook.

Never made it to Facebook.

Apparently I hadn't logged into LJ for at least three weeks. :(

But in an interesting twist, my history went back almost two full weeks so I was able to catch up. Sorry for those folks who got a deluge of comments as I caught up.

I do find it interesting to see the places folks have gone. Some have moved to their own Wordpress setups. Some have moved to Blogger. Some have moved over to Facebook. Others to Twitter. And some even have left LJ and then come back.

Personally, I think all the different sites have different functions, which is why I still am here on LJ. The problem is, being so stressed at work lately, I have had little positive to post about. And nothing is worse than a journal bitching about your job every day. (While great for the personal soul, it comes off wrong IMHO.) So I've instead opted to not post, which of course, has kept me away from reading.

Long story short, I'm going to try and stay on top of my LJ reading within the week. Reading 900+ messages takes way too long (over 4 hours). Facebook I can skim through, considering most of the messages are fluff (come see my Farm!) and easily removed with an "Hide this application" double click.

So, apologies to everyone who received a bunch of comments from me yesterday.

For those people paranoid about privacy on Facebook...

I'm starting to agree!

Recently, I told my iPhone to go ahead and sync up my contacts. I had a bunch of obscure contacts where I had, for example, "Brian" and an email address only.

Imagine my shock today when I found a baby pic of my DAD online on his entry. My *DAD* has a facebook page? WTF?

So I went scrolling and the aforementioned "Brian" had not only grabbed a current pic of him, but also made a link to his Facebook profile. I didn't even have a last name!

I checked his profile and it is definitely him (and I immediately recognize the last name) but... his profile is completely private.

*WHERE* did Apple/Facebook sync this information from?

This is frightening.

And note... This isn't just ONE contact. I have dozens that are like this. And while not every one is right, probably 90% of them are. WTF!?!?

I've been reading the posts here and my response is... Meh.

Fact is, folks on the BML for years have been arguing over who is and who isn't a bear. Just as even more people debate about what being "gay" means. (Liza fan? Madonna fan? What about Metallica and Stones?)

Truth is... porn is dying a very fast death.

If you thought the music industry couldn't see the signs... porn can't either.

Digital distribution of porn is not only the way porn will come, but just like Blogs have become the new frontier for news, so will amateur porn. Most people already prefer to hop over to xtube.com than run down to the local adult bookstore to see a film.

And furthermore, magazines are even closer to the grave. It is not possible in this economy to make a profitable business of a magazine...

UNLESS you segregate and build a niche audience.

And that's what they are doing here. Trying to find an audience for their publications.

You can't compete if you cover everything. So instead they are becoming specialized.

What I *DO* dislike though is that they are deemed themselves the "authority" and pointing fingers at other publishers. And that... is wrong.

If they switched their magazine to MuscleBear, I doubt anyone would bat an eye. But because they refuse to change names, but are changing their focus, they are creating controversy.

And this is what they do to build up a subscriber base.

They will lose some subscribers, but probably not many. They will however gain a lot of subscribers who are now curious about the new focus.

And all the while, websites and Xtube will generate a billion times more traffic than they will.

They just want the last few drops from the stone while they can.

So yeah... Meh. They're doomed regardless. It's only a matter of time.

The good feeling from the funeral ended when I got home though...

Here in St. Louis, the local archdiocese was caught donating $10,000 to the anti-gay marriage amendment in Maine.

And as such, it is getting a lot of press (as religious tax-exempt organizations aren't supposed to get involved in political issues, particularly ones 10+ states away) and I had an email from a husband and wife who decided that gay people are doomed, the devil is punishing society for us and that gay marriage will never happen.

Normally, I'd ignore those emails... but after having just come from a funeral of a loved one, I decided to respond.

Not in an angry way, but in a very methodical and honest way about why we don't give a crap what they think and why they shouldn't be judging us in the first place.

I posted it all up at Gaystlouis.com if anyone is curious. I get these emails about once every other week, but I suspect they'll pick up soon enough with the protests taking place every Sunday.

The past few days have been very distracting.

One of my mind-numbing tasks this past weekend was creating a whole new front page for Gaystlouis.com focusing on HIV & AIDS newsfeeds instead of my usual local-based news.

And so I was all set a few days in advance.

And then I forgot to enable it this morning. *faceplant*

I was running late for work. Been trying to keep everyone there happy since I am getting to take two days off to go up to Chicago on Wed & Thurs for the funeral that I completely spaced it.

If anyone is interested: http://gaystlouis.com/aids.php

Just spreading the word: Marc/Bootglove's Funeral Service - 7PM Dec 2nd. RSVP and other information at: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=186899511722

Thanks to mcfires for setting up the Facebook page for us all. He is collecting pictures of Marc for a display. See the webpage for more details.

Please pass this information to others whom he or I may not know. (But be sure to point them to the webpage which has address information and any updates.)

I've avoided making a post because I couldn't really add anything to what was posted already.

But it is time.

Yesterday, Marc (aka bootglove) passed away.

At work, I don't have access to LJ, so I received a phone call from xanaducub who had read mcfires's post. He texted me first with "Call me." and unfortunately, right then, I knew there was only two things he'd be calling about. Either how to fix a macro in Office, or with bad news about Marc. I had hoped it was the first. It wasn't.

My work for the day was wrapping up so I didn't really have a chance to deal with the news while I was at work. I know I cried a bit. Remembering the good times, the bad times, and wishing there'd been more times in general. But trying to get things shut down and get out of there. I shipped off a note to both of my bosses telling them that whenever services are held, I'm going to be there. Driving for 8 hours to see him seems minor now, yet I wish I'd done it more.

You see, Marc was one of two people that I would call Sir "full time". For a period of time, I enjoyed being his boy, granted fairly remotely. I took a trip up to visit him, he took a trip down to visit me, I'd see him at Hibearnation, and that's how it went. A few years back, I stopped being his boy. Looking back, it was the right thing to do, but I regret how I did it. I think we'd patched things over over the past year and I was looking forward to seeing him again this HBN. I can still laugh that he was convinced I'd found another Sir, and I couldn't convince him otherwise.

He was one of the "Superfriends" here on LJ. Folks who know the extreme upsides and downsides of my life. My failures and triumphs. And he was supportive through it all.

When he received the diagnosis about his liver and he told me, I didn't think much of it. Keep in mind, my partner had a flesh-eating bacterium, and Marc had been in an out of the hospital times before, so it didn't worry me. Looking back, I can see it greatly worried him. I wish I'd noticed it then.

During HBN, when news of his hospitalization got to me, I again shrugged it off. It seemed inline with what had happened before. He'd be out within a few days and everything would be fine. But he didn't.

As a result, he was away from chatting and everything from him became second hand. I didn't call because I didn't want to be a burden by calling when he was asleep or whatever. I wish I had. I always assumed I had another shot to talk to him. You know what they say about assumptions...

Anyway, once I got home yesterday, I went through my pictures folders. Sadly, I didn't have a lot of him for a few years. I also couldn't find any of he and I. I know they exist. I know of one in particular of me at the bar in a collar and leash with him. He was proud of me that night, I was self conscious but went along. I wish I'd gotten copies of that picture, or had taken my camera then. (The one I had taken wasn't working properly.)

I found pictures he'd sent me when we first started talking 10 years ago. Somewhere I have a canceled plane ticket when I was to go up and visit him and Steve, which happened to be about the same time they broke up. He and I talked a lot... not enough.

Anyway, now I'm rambling. Among all those pictures, I did find one picture he posted on his LJ and I de/colorized for him to make it artsy which I know he liked, so I'm posting it here.



He will be deeply missed, probably by more people than he even realizes. I was telling friends here in St. Louis about his passing, folks I assumed didn't know him, and they commented that they knew him every year from HBN, and that they knew others who knew him, and so forth and so on.

Goodbye Sir. There's so much to say... and there was so much we didn't need to say. You are missed. And you will never be forgotten.

This weekend I'll dig out the boots you gave me, the gloves you gave me, the Harley shirt you gave me, and toss on my camo pants and leather vest and have a toast to you, Sir!

Thank you.

I started writing a long LONG dissertation about my current Gaystlouis.com website... and then deleted it all.

So, let me instead start with a question and then a statement and then a clarification.

What can I do to make the website better?

Note: The Guide and Personals modules cost money. I can't afford it yet. But they are planned for.

I ask because very soon... my website is about to get a *LOT* of pressure to get the community involved and connected. I can't give details without going into the whole background of why I know this will happen, but in short, I'm about to inherit a shit-storm whether I want it or not. Ask Hunter, I'm good at predicting these and I can already see the iceberg approaching.

So I want to prepare... NOW.

I'm marking all of the comments as hidden. Tell me if you want them public or not. Likewise, feel free to email me: webmaster@gaystlouis.com or contact me however you want (see the Contact page for the multiple ways).

I just need feedback unlike I've ever needed it before.

A couple other notes:

• The logo was chosen because it can be resized, reprinted, and used in various ways easily and yet was unique.


• Also, the advertising does not bring in enough for me to keep it, so I am considering dumping it entirely. I'd like SOMETHING for advertising events, but details are very flexible.


• Lastly, the Calendar, Gallery and eventually Guide and Personals, all use phpBB3's (Forums) users' database for authenticating users so switching to other modules is possible, but they either need to tie into phpBB3 or vice versa, I need to be able to tie all these modules into them.

Just once... I'd like things to go my way.

It feels like I'm the support for everyone else. Just once I'd like feel like I'm breaking even.

(Note: I deleted the previous post. Was far too wordy.)

I know I have a fair amount of non-iTunes using folks on my friends' list, but for those who are using it, I have a question.

Is your random really random?

In my case, not at all. For example, my "Workout" playlist has 260 songs, but very commonly I'll have five Prodigy songs in a row. Or four Shamen songs.

Going through my current list right now, I have two sets of two Info Society songs back to back, two Prodigy songs back to back, two Green Day.

I know that purely statistically speaking, this is common, but I've found that in larger lists, the number of repeats gets even worse. The other day I had five Shamen songs in a row on my iPod... in "Shuffle" mode.

My iPhone tends to love doing back to back Info Society songs. My iPod Shuffle seems to *love* Green Day and Good Charlotte marathons.

Anyone else noticed this with their devices?

It isn't that I mind, but it seems like a flawed algorithm somewhere when there's five or six songs in a row from the same artist.

I've also noticed it can be the same album as well. The "Brother Bear" soundtrack tends to be consecutive frequently as well. I like the soundtrack but after the third rendition of Tina Turner's song, I'm ready to chuck the damn device.

I admit, I despise Myspace to this day. Though I do have an account... I think. I haven't logged in for months.

But Facebook has been fairly decent to me.

Until today.

I decided to try and bring Gaystlouis.com onto Facebook. Wow. That was far more complicated than it should've been!

First, their website walks you through how to do it, but things like "Webmaster" are not allowed in email addresses. So I ended up having to create a new User Account to register the website's page. And then, I can't use Webmaster in the "Full Name", it needs to be a full name. Even initials aren't enough. The problem is that there's then two of me out there if I list my full name. :P

So after a bit of searching, there's a much simpler way to set it up from within my current FB account, so I did that.

But... now I'm not sure of what to do with it.

I created it as just another vector for people to reach me. But it doesn't seem to work that way...

Anyone out there supporting an org on Facebook?

I won't spend too much time on this, but would love to figure it out. Just for me own curiosity.

Tuesday I caught something.

It's now Saturday and I'm STILL coughing up a storm.

It fits the pattern of my normal cold/flu's where I spend the first two days actually sick, and the next week trying desperately to prevent whatever from lodging into my lungs and giving me walking pneumonia. :(

But as a result, it's derailed by pattern of trying to workout. (As it's really hard to do 10 miles on the bike when you can barely breathe.) I did sneak in some exercise bike time on Thursday night, but Friday morning I could feel it.

I called in on Wednesday and Thursday and actually went in for about four hours on Friday, but I was getting overwhelmed (from work and from the cough) so I came home early.

Last night (Friday night/Saturday morning), I was unable to sleep well as I spent a good deal of it coughing.

I want this thing to be gone. :(

Here I am with the sports photos again.

This time, I like the phrasing that SI uses "tries to escape the grip"... *snicker*

Rolando McClain of Alabama

Just converting some more video and found an old Episode of "NextStep" from 1996.

In it, they interview Scott Adams, but also they talk about how media density is getting too high and how we'll be running out of hard drive space capacity soon and will need to switch to Magneto Optical discs to store data.

How wrong could we be...

I have a few Mo's around here and my god were they slow.

But there was talk also about how "lasers" were going to be able to record in three dimensions on surfaces (sort of true), but then they diverged into discussing a Holographic storage system, which has never worked right. :P

Just amazing to see how tech has changed so much in 13 years that they were completely wrong in their future predictions.

Nothing changed... except the expectations.

Woke up a few hours early this morning and couldn't get back to bed, so decided to do a little music surfing...

And I came across this: Information Society - 300bps N, 8, I (Terminal Mode Or Ascii Download)

For those unaware, this is a 300bps hidden track (well, not really hidden as it IS on the liner notes) that gives a text story when played into an acoustic modem.

Really? Amazon is selling this?

It's just like this track: The Benzedrine Monks of Santo Domonica - The Monks' Vow of Silence (Album Version)

1:12 seconds of... nothing. At least it's only priced at $0.69.

This message brought to you by the makers of Shock Doctor Athletic Supporters and Protection.

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Tonight I flipped on the DVR only to be greeted by one word TV shows:

-Heroes
-House
-Psych
-Eureka
-Fringe
-Bones

So... five nouns and one exclamation.

Weird.

And people say that there's no new ideas. *snicker*

One of my projects for a while has been converting some adult videos over from VHS to computer files.

I got a bit of a shock yesterday.

I started consolidating all of it onto one drive (in an attempt to actually make backups) and so far, what I've converted is just under 400GB.

I probably still have another 400GB of tapes here and I suspect I have at least that many more tapes to convert from yet another new source.

And that's not even the "regular" (non-adult) movies I've recorded via our Replay DVR which are another terabyte by themselves.

I know I'm on the bleeding edge of going all-digital, but still... two terabytes of video? Eeesh...

I really hope iTunes can handle that much. ;)

(Side note: Semagic apparently doesn't know the word "terabyte" and suggested instead "gigabytes"... um. Off by a few powers of ten.)

Got a few more pics for folks.

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I mentioned over on Facebook about some CCCP that I was listening to, and decided to look through some of my old music that I'd converted years ago (which I need to redo) and came across:

Duran Duran - Fame (Yes, the Bowie one.)
The Knuckleheads - Havin' a Party
Anything KLF...
Soul City Orchestra - It's Jurassic (Yes, a dance Jurassic Park theme)
Hi-Power - Cult of Snap (which later became know as just Snap!)
Real Life - Send Me An Angel (the original one from 87)
Depeche Mode - Strangelove (Midi-Mix) (yes, as in MIDI... I love it!)
Frankie Goes To Hollywood - Rage Hard/Suffragette City
The Weather Girls - Dear Santa (Bring Me A Man This Christmas)
Pood, Bhud N Pflug - Duelling Techno
TeeVee Toons - Jane, Get Me Off This Crazy Thing (yes, the Jetsons)
Clockdiva - The Hacker / The Connection Machine (later used by the Prodigy as the "Intro" to "Music for the Jilted Generation")
12 Gauge - The Hustle
Julie Brown - Girl Fight Tonight (Extended)
Josie Cotton - Johnny Are You Queer?
Billy Ocean - European Queen (not Caribbean)
Ultimix - 1993 Flashback Medley
Utah Saints - Something Good
Andy Summers - 2010 (think a dance version of the 2010 theme)
Betty Boo - Doin' The Do

Yes, I have some bizarre musical tastes. ;)

(Added: Just found the Tammy Wynette & KLF's "Justified and Ancient". *giddy*)

Figured I'd throw out my experience upgrading to Snow Leopard.

I have a Mac Mini (1.83Ghz Core Duo, not the Core 2) which I've upgraded to 2 Gigs of memory booted off of an external USB 1Gig Western Digital hard drive.

Frankly, the upgrade took nearly 75 minutes, but was painless...

Upon reboot, Mail reconfigured itself. iTunes reset everything. And it just seems to, well, work... Slower.

It's not a fast machine to start with, but sadly, Snow Leopard shows the age of this system moreso.

I didn't expect to really gain much with this upgrade. I was hoping for some slightly new features. (I despise how Notes are now built into Mail.)

For $29, I am not too worried about the upgrade.

But it worked perfectly fine on my main Mac.

All my other Macs are G4-based and thus will never step beyond (plain) Leopard.

Was surfing around the CNN website yesterday and saw this:

Photo Show: Tim Mantoani - Mark McGwire

Oh... I *LOVE* this picture of McGwire.

The smirk on his face. The piercing eyes. The impression from the compression shorts. The bulge on his... arms.

It's true...

I Miss Mark!

I wrote about how I was going through my old cassettes.

For years I'd held onto the cassettes as they represented my teenage years (mostly) and there was lots of music on there that I had nowhere else. However, over the past few years, I doubted that there was anything important on them, but because I'm thorough, I wanted to check...

Wow. I didn't believe it, but I really didn't have a lot of these songs.

I've been using Midomi on my iPhone to keep a list of all the missing songs. Why? Because it's convenient and most of the tapes aren't labeled.

So here's a list of songs from today alone that I didn't have anywhere... and these are just from four or five tapes.

• Pray - MC Hammer


• Pour Some Sugar On Me - Def Leppard


• Nobody's Fool - Kenny Loggins


• Staying Together - Debbie Gibson


• Simply Irresistible - Robert Palmer


• Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car - Billy Ocean


• 1999 - Prince</i>
  
• Only In My Dreams - Debbie Gibson


• The Future's So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades - Timbuk 3


• The Heart of Rock and Roll - Huey Lewis & The News


• Say It Isn't So - Hall & Oates


• Infatuation - Rod Stewart


• Shake It Up - The Cars


• Magic - The Cars


• Tall Cool One - Robert Plant

Yet somehow, I have "Turtle Power" (Partners in Kryme), "Kokomo" (Beach Boys), "Me So Horny" (2 Live Crew) and "Nightmare on My Street" (DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince) in my collection. WTF?

Almost every one of those songs I have the 12" version of, but I don't have them on ANY of my CDs. (And for the record, my MP3 collection is around 160G at this point. That's something like 24,000 songs.)

It's like my CD collection has a big hole from the 80s where I have every other song.

I'm resisting the urge to buy anything until I get to the end and can compile an album list (as it may be cheaper to hit the record store and buy them en masse)... (hopefully when I have money).

(Addendum: I don't feel so bad now. I did NOT have "A Fly Girl" by the Boogie Boys in my collection... *snicker*)

I'm slowly getting rid of all the old media in the house.

The video tapes are almost all gone.

The home-burnt DVDs have almost all been converted.

So I started up on my old cassettes. The first six tapes I pulled, I found seven songs I needed to track down, and two full tapes I had to save.

I'm actually a little more afraid of going through these tapes than I was the videotapes. Far more of my old memories here.

But this song just reminded me that, well, not all the memories are that good. ;)

Correction
I just found some old Commodore 64 "covers". In particular "You Might Think" by the Cars in SIDPlayer format. Followed by "Ghostbusters" by Ray Parker, Jr.

Yeah... a lot of memories I should forget.

Happy Birthday to mynchyld, first and foremost. Hope you have a good day today!

But I also received a very interesting spam message this morning. (Behind the cut.)

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In short, the spammers are trying to find new ways to spam. And I admit, this method is a bit of an interesting puzzle.

How can you protect against puzzles? Human nature is the "decode" these things instantly upon seeing them.

Years ago, there was a study done and it was determined that road signs work well because driving adults are taught to read all street signs. And so on the highway, we naturally read EVERY sign. We may not remember them, but because we've been trained to not ignore signs when driving, we do not. (Think about that the next time you read a bumper sticker... can you remember the color of the car? Or the model? Or just the text you read?)

I don't know a good way to stop this type of spam, but I do believe that email, in its current form, is doomed.

It is destined to become like Usenet, where people avoid it BECAUSE of the spam. And I believe that's why places like Twitter and Facebook have such a following. For the most part, you can communicate on there without the spam (unless you count the billions of "play my game" messages.) Consequently, this is why MySpace is dying. They have been unable/unwilling to combat the spam-bots.

What are your thoughts?

Today has been a down day for me.

Normally everyone has upward and downward feelings, but today, it was entirely downward.

I won't go into specifics, both to protect the innocent and guilty, but also because it isn't necessary. It just turns into more words that clutter the point of the message as I ramble on.

Simply put, right now, I'm feeling really vulnerable on multiple fronts. And I am wishing I had a thicker skin to handle these things.

I realize to get the thicker skin, I need to start looking out for my best interests, which sadly conflict with my interests for others.

But maybe I need to change... obviously my old ways aren't working for me.