I'm kinda surprised I haven't talked about it before, but I'm a contestant on SURVIVORblog.

Ten webloggers, one weblog. Ten weeks, and every week one blogger gets voted off the island blog.

Hoorah! I always wanted to have someplace to rant and drubble drivel without clogging up my own site! Check it out!

Kudos to Ernie for making the whole shebang happen.

outwit, outlast, outwrite

I'm all for innovation (except "MS-Innovation"), and Flash 5 has a lot of it. One thing I found interesting/questionable/evil is this feature which allows an arbitrarily small ad banner or bug expand into an arbitrarily large specification sheet or entire catalog when the page it's on is printed.

I'd like to take this chance to officially be the first to coin the term "bannerspam". They actually call this feature "WYPINWYS" (What You Print Is Not What You See). They say it like it's a good thing.

On the other hand, their freedom to innovate also includes revolutionary "familiar tabbed docking panels." Familiar, you say? Familiar enough for Adobe to sue for patent infringement, not because they invented tabbed menus, but because they have a patent on being able to 'detach and recombine' tabbed menus.

It's funny that you can get a patent for a ui process, but you can't own a domain name.

Spending the day jetting to my first classes of the semester, negotiating for temporary bandwidth from campus servers to mirror AOLiza for a few weeks, working on a client project, and somewhere in there I have to find time to eat.

Web traffic has taken a huge spike the past few days. It's like I'm this week's Mahir.

Working on a client project before the semester starts (tomorrow!).

There are a couple more storis coming next week regarding AOLiza, and if I (miraculously) have the chance, I'll put in a voting mechanism, so people can rate the chats. Then new users can take a look at the best chats first (what, you don't read all 30+?).

I just posted conversations fourteen through thirtyone to AOLiza.

Have at it!

AOLiza's larger than life.

School starts Monday, and despite my earlier solliloquy on being a re-entry student, I'm actually really psyched. I'm registered in all my classes but one, and I should be able to get in to it anyhow. Grad School application deadlines are only a few months away, and the way everything happens so fast I'm sure they'll sneak up on me quickly.

Anyhow, I'm about to venture into the mass that is Berkeley and try to buy my textbooks.

Actually, on that subject, do people sell textbooks back for the money, because they don't have room for them in their home, or because they don't have room for them in their head, moving out last semesters knowledge to make room for this semester? Personally, I acknowledge that a good deal of what I learn in a class doesn't stay in the forefront of my mind after the class is over. I can't bear to sell a textbook back because when I do finally need to access that knowledge, the textbook is the key to remembering it.

That, and it just seems inhuman to sell a book back at a 50% loss so the bookstore can turn around and sell it again at a 50% gain.

or, I suppose, the UK...

Someone's playing bagpipes outside my window. It makes it pretty difficult to concentrate. Don't they know that bagpipes are best heard from one hill away?

I mean, it's not as if he can't see the sign...

Now that my TiVo records everything I like, I'm not really tied to network schedules or thier primetime hours (which happen to by my prime-time productivity hours, unlike the first thing in the morning, which is when I elect to watch Babylon 5).

The only problem (aside from when the cable goes out, as it has been for the past several days, argh! And come to think of it, my severe abuse of parenthetical remarks (really.)) is when there's more than one thing I want to see. Then I have to bring the VCR in to play. Sometimes though, there's just too much, even for that.

Like planets that only align once every 28 years, there's just too much TV that I need to see this particular Sunday night, and this from someone who's pretty much weaned himself off from shows I 'need' to see.

First off, there's the Daria Movie. That's right, the two-hour season opener which looks to be only the second ever 'serious' Daria (the season finale being the first). Time: 7-9pm, Place: MTV.

Next, there's Witchblade. Though it looks like a rip off of both Mercedes Lackey's Oathbound series and a questionable episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I'm curious how well they can spin Matrix-era special effects, a policewoman and a big mythic gauntlet into an actual series. Call it a fetish. Time: 8pm-10pm (and 10pm-12pm. Gotta love TNT), Place: TNT.

Finally there's the La Femme Nikita Series Finale. That's it. No more. Unless they make a rumored made-for-cable movie based on the series... which was based on a movie... Time: Two episodes, first from 8-9pm, second from 10-11pm. I guess it's so hot we need an hour intermission. Place: USA.

Then of course, throw in the old standbys of Simpsons and X-Files (reruns. skippem!) and there's just too much fun. Stay up late, shed a tear for the close of a great show, and wake up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for the first day of classes on Monday!

oboyoboy, it's time to go textbook price shopping. efollet, bigwords, ecampus, varsitybooks, and bn, here I come! (I'd do the links, but I'm lazy.)