Category Archives: Friends

I Managed to Get My Data From My Yahoo Group

This literally has been an on again / off again project of mine.   Years ago a bunch of friends gathered around a Yahoo Group called Marcon Drinkers.   This was our social watering hole.   Now the site has more or less dried up and only still exists for nostalgia reason.   I’ve always wanted to salvage the data out of there and there was never a good solution.

I have now found one.

Thanks to a perl script located here I managed to get all my data out.   Now I can be happy and never have to contemplate the dreaded copy and paste approach for over 4k messages.

Perception is reality

This is a response to Randall’s blog entry on MySpace titled Perception is reality 

Perception is reality, but that statement in and of itself can be deep or petty.   To others around us the perception of who we are is truly their reality.   Whether it be because of things we do while being around them, or the actions we perform.  That does not conclusively make us who we are or the reality of our being.

We can assume like you did that the car crash was meant to happen, but that truly was coincidence, but that does not mean their wasn’t truth in the reality that you saw after the fact.     This is the deepness in that statement that exists.

The shallowness is the stereotypes that people around you see you as.  They do not take the time to see who you truly are so they have a warped or partial reality of who you really.   While we can assume that  this is their loss, you are perceiving and inter-acting with them on the same level.  You are then missing out on them as much as they are missing out on you.

Whether this all truly matters goes back to the core statement, perception is reality.   Does your perception of this truly matter?   Does it alter your reality or make your reality seem less then it truly is?   It is your perception, but are you perceiving every part about it that you should.

These ironically are only statements that each individual can make for themselves.   The depth and need of how far perception needs to alter reality or vice versa is something that only the individual can answer.

Some people drop out of reality and interaction of those around them.   Since we no longer perceive them and they live in an altered mental state which warps their perception, do they truly exist?   Is their reality warped beyond any form of interacting with actual reality?

Unfortunately their is never a true answer to reality because it’s all based on perception.

My Mural

img034.jpg img035.jpg img036.jpg

This was my bedroom wall back in high school – one day the summer before my senior year I started by painting my initials on the wall.  It grew over time.   Friends came over they signed the wall, I painted the names of my closest friends and girlfriends of different eras on the wall.  It was a work of art, and epic time of my life.   It was a living diary that shared information with those who entered and those who embraced it.

Every time someone came over something was added or removed from the wall.  It went so far that even some parents signed it.   It was a moment at time which I lived and breathed inside my mural, it was an extension of myself that I didn’t have for years.

When I moved out to go to college my brother inherited my room.   Out when the mural, lost under paint was the soul that previously breathed into that room.  After my brother, two of my sisters inherited that room.  None of them kept up the mural tradition.   Part of me had hoped my siblings would have taken up the torch, either taking their own wall or painting over the areas I had painted and made it their own.

Now it’s a plain painted wall and the pictures above are all that exists of the soul that lies beneath the current paint.

My blog now is my modern mural.  Granted my friends don’t participate here like they did back then, but the blog I think is more ethereal to them as the wall was all those years ago.   It doesn’t give them a chance to leave their mark the way the tangible wall allowed them to exist.   The picture was take a week or two before I left for college.    I lost myself after that.    Lost was my childhood and the friendships I left behind.  Moving on from the past and onto the next stage of my life.    I am myself and no other.    I have parts of myself that have been painted over and will never again emerge.   Still for those that know, part of myself will always shine through because they know what exists beneath paint.

Poor Man’s Myspace Friend Widget

The downside before anyone gets excited about this is that it was manual labor involved – there is no magic bullet friend widget that I’ve found yet. That being said if you find one please shoot me a comment letting me know where it can be procured from.

Steps involved.

1. Go to your friend page(s) on your profile and highlight all of your friend’s pictures and hit ctrl-c
2. Open up MS Word – or text editor of choice and paste in (ctrl-v) the items you highlighted. All of your friend’s names and pictures should be there.
3. Format the items you have however you like – the html links to their profiles should be preserved.
4. Save the document
5. Upload the document to google documents.
6. Copy and paste the items form google documents into a text widget on your blog
7. Go back and edit the html in the text widget to point to your friend’s picture address instead of the google docs address it will put into your html (optional but helpful)

You now have a widget you can manually edit everytime you get a new friend since you will have the formatting in your widget you won’t have to go through the other steps. The steps are much quicker then the formatting you can do in either google docs or on blogspot so I highly recommend using an offline text editor.

here is what should be in the widget or similar:









I haven’t gotten down to reformatting all the pictures to pull from myspace yet so some still point to the google doc’s address

Poor Man’s Myspace Friend Widget

The downside before anyone gets excited about this is that it was manual labor involved – there is no magic bullet friend widget that I’ve found yet. That being said if you find one please shoot me a comment letting me know where it can be procured from.

Steps involved.

1. Go to your friend page(s) on your profile and highlight all of your friend’s pictures and hit ctrl-c
2. Open up MS Word – or text editor of choice and paste in (ctrl-v) the items you highlighted. All of your friend’s names and pictures should be there.
3. Format the items you have however you like – the html links to their profiles should be preserved.
4. Save the document
5. Upload the document to google documents.
6. Copy and paste the items form google documents into a text widget on your blog
7. Go back and edit the html in the text widget to point to your friend’s picture address instead of the google docs address it will put into your html (optional but helpful)

You now have a widget you can manually edit everytime you get a new friend since you will have the formatting in your widget you won’t have to go through the other steps. The steps are much quicker then the formatting you can do in either google docs or on blogspot so I highly recommend using an offline text editor.

here is what should be in the widget or similar:









I haven’t gotten down to reformatting all the pictures to pull from myspace yet so some still point to the google doc’s address

My Myspace comments archive

Xie has started a blog

I’ve been pestering her for years to start writing and sharing her views online. So I suggest you start reading her stuff here.

Woolybear Parade 2006

This is part of my life notes series

This was my first Woolybear Festival since the year 2000, before I moved to Oregon.  It was an experience and the first time that I ever heard of where the local band festival was on a different weekend then  the Woolybear.

It was entertaining riding on the alumni float and playing away.  I did manage to see an old friend from high school in the crowd.  Ironically my ex-girlfriend was standing next to him trying not to be seen (she wasn’t hiding from me per say but the entire alumni band since I heard she had a falling out a few years previous).

I did manage to yell at a few people that I knew in the crowd for not coming up and joining the band, since they had marched in high school.

All in all it was good to be back and playing.

Alumni Band 2006

This is part of my life notes series

This was my first chance back to march with the alumni band since 2000. I felt honored to march under David Henry – the band director I marched under in High School. I was in his final class before retirement.  It was good to march in the Vermilion High School Marching Band Festival again.

The craziest thing was when we were during the pre-show getting ready to play the Star Spangled Banner with all of the assembled bands, Dick Goddard started singing the Star Spangled Banner himself.   Now we just stood at attention while this was going on and listened through his rendition.   He had sounded drunk or heavily medicated during his performance.  I can’t say that authoritatively though.

At the end of his “singing” Mr. Joseph Price the current band director who was leading his last festival as the band director before retirement started off all the bands playing the star spangled banner.   Out of all the Band Festivals I’ve marched in Vermilion (10 I think in total) this year was the strangest.

Coca-Cola Blak | New Coffee Drink from Coke

Caffiene has long been a very good friend to computer and technology geeks! Now it appears Coca-Cola has developed a new fusion beverage that promises to satisfy both coffee and cola addictions – at the same time !!!

Well I know at least 2 people that are waiting for this. I have to admit that I have some curiousity myself. I can’t wait until they announce a local test that I can get to.

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