Archive for September, 2003

Stalkers

Monday, September 29th, 2003

Attn: To Whom It May Concern
Re: Ineligible Candidates

It has come to my attention that I appeal to everyone’s eyes. Fair enough. However, two particular types of people should avoid hitting on me.

  1. Fisher College Girls

    Living on the west side of Emerson’s Campus on the Common, walking six miles a day is not uncommon. I pass Fisher College along the journey on every trip. One day, I was walking along and two Fisher College girls were walking behind me. One of them tripped randomly and the other girl made fun of her for tripping over nothing. She teased her of “gazing at the cute guy” in front of them (i.e. me). Over hearing their conversation, I turned around, grinned, and kept walking. One of the girls, Gabby, ran up to me and started conversing. It was mostly safe talk. We hit the intersection and went our separate ways. Jump a few nights later. I am walking back to my dorm and Gabby is sitting on the Fisher College stoop smoking. She calls me up, tells me her sob story of being continually shot down by Emerson guys, asks for my phone number, and pressures me into spending time with her. I said I didn’t have a local phone number, which is true. I just conveniently did not mention that I have a cell phone with a Virginia area code. With a light case of emphysema, I retreated to my dorm hoping to never encounter Gabby again. Jump forward to Sunday. I run into her walking across Boston Common. She hollers, of course, and insists on giving me her phone number so that I can take her on a date on Friday. HELLO?! Take the hint! I’m not interested!

  2. ~40 Year Old Pedophiles (even though I am almost 20…)

    I am walking through Boston Common to my History of Media Arts 1 class and a man approaches me. He tells me that he has seen me walking with Sean and that he is a good friend of Sean. I thought it quite funny that a man of his age would be a good friend of Sean, but Mark Lamb is practically another uncle to me and he is in his 40s. So I talk to him through the Common, nothing more than safe talk. As we split off, he said that he should take me out for dinner sometime. I shot him a look and quickly walked off. Fast forward to tonight. We passed as I walked to obtain coffee. He commented that I look nice (I was dressed for my Emerson Independent Video interview) and insisted that we "hang out" sometime. Yikes! No. Go away.

    Upon return from my interview, I asked Sean about this man. His eyes grew and was like, “Stay away from him. He always approaches Emerson guys and I finally had coffee with him once just to get him to stop bugging me. He thinks we’re best friends or something.”

    Stop your cheer sex. I am not your object of lust.

Warmest regards,
Happily Single

Link

Saturday, September 27th, 2003

Orisinal.com – Windy Days
A most visually beautiful Flash game

InternetWeek.com: Java On The Desktop: An Idea Whose Time Has Come And Gone
I have only one piece of advice for Scott: If you really want an alternative to Windows, buy a Mac. It runs Unix just fine, has a great and stable graphical desktop environment that for the most part is Redmond-free, and isn’t infected every 10 minutes when some kid in eastern Europe figures out the latest vulnerability in RPC.

CCIA: Microsoft Monopoly Represents National Security Risk, Say Internet Security Experts
Rodger likens today’s situation, in which Windows dominates the vast majority of desktops, to conditions faced by farmers during the Irish potato famine and by American cotton growers devastated by the boll weevil. In both cases, he said, farmers were ravaged by a blight that would have been far less severe had they had a greater variety of strains in cultivation.

Slashdot: Author of Paper Critical of Microsoft is Fired
@stake said that ‘The values an opinions of the report are not in line with @stake’s views’ and that Geer’s participation was ‘not sanctioned.’ Microsoft, who has worked closely with @stake in the past, denied that it was involved in @stake’s decision to fire Dan.

Droppin the Funck

Thursday, September 25th, 2003

I just returned from the first official Evvy Awards general meeting. Wow.

The faculty advisor, Pete, initially turned me off. I now think that he is a genius. He should work in Admissions. He is abrasive, but he is passionate and he knows his stuff. Even more impressive was his commanding use of "f*ck" ELEVEN times in a one-hour meeting. His portrayal of Emerson College in relation to the media industry and his examples of student placements into power positions electrified the minds of everyone in the room. I am so psyched about the opportunities available within my immediate reach.

Also, I decided to narrow my organizational involvement. The Evvy Awards and Emerson Independent Video are my primary concentrations, with part-time participation as a photographer for The Berkeley Beacon. I am offering my visual design talent to WERS FM, but am withdrawing from any maintenance duties. Emerson’s yearbook failed to impress me and I feel that my efforts are better off elsewhere. Freshmen Class Council and Good News Fellowship require minimal effort and offer much social interaction, so they stay on the iCal.

Mighty Boy

Thursday, September 25th, 2003

Kevin at the Emerson College Fitness Center is my health hero. He designed a training routine for me based upon my past physical activity (running for the most part) and gym experience (none). I am officially two work-outs into my more chiseled future and I feel great. My imagination may be playing tricks on me, but I swear that I can already see a difference. Between the endorphins and getting my first A in college (Honors Seminar 1 response essay, no less), this Friday is just awesome!

Automedon and the Horses of Achilles

Wednesday, September 24th, 2003

The Emerson College love spreads thick over Boston. Emerson students have free admission to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Other students are charged $13.

This finding comes as my second assignment in Honors Seminar 1 involved choosing a painting at the Boston Museum of Fine Art, criticising a criticism of the painting in regard to essays read in class, and presenting my findings. I chose Henri Regnault’s Automedon with the Horses of Achilles. The artist was unfamiliar to me and the painting’s sheer size (over 100 square feet) enamored me. While the painting was actually done as an educational piece and was based upon Homer’s Iliad, I could not help but think of how often I have felt stripped of almost everything by storms of life while struggling with two competing issues that pull me in opposite directions.

Half a Month

Wednesday, September 24th, 2003

I love college. I love Boston. I love sleep.

As I gradually lose the freshman quality of complete uncertainty and assimulate into the college campus vibe, the transformation from an outsider to the epicenter is worth noting. And thus, I apologize for not updating in over two weeks. A recap:

Despite having three graded assignments, I am still A-less in Beantown. I have taken refuge in my my comfort food (peanut butter) more than once and yes, I am genuinely upset about this.

Emerson College was hailed as an organizational school by several upperclassmen during Orientation Week. I might just scream if I hear one more person say, “The opportunities to excel at Emerson are plentiful. You will find that your experience is only equal to what you put into it.” Buying into this truth, I stopped at any and every booth at the organizational fair. Notable: Freshmen Class Council, Emerson’s yearbook, The Berkeley Beacon, The Evvy Awards, WERS FM, Good News Fellowship, and The Newman Club.

I hope to meet people through organizations. The past two weekends have been quite lonely. Many people are drinking or having sex and that just is not my thing. All but two members of Good News Fellowship are female and I do not like the feeling I get of being one of the few available and cute male bodies being vied for. All New Media majors apparently live in the Little Building. The few I have encountered are generally not people that I want to chill with. I feel quite positive that close-friend-worthy people will appear in time.

Cambridge Vineyard is officially my church away from home. This Sunday’s service reminded me so much of Blue Ridge Community Church, which I miss dearly!

So all this is my exhilerating life. I wish an anspirin would make the jackhammering outside my building stop.

VeriBadSign

Sunday, September 21st, 2003

BetaNews: VeriSign Redirects Unused Domains
In a surprise move that has left network administrators fuming, VeriSign has added a wildcard DNS record to all .com and .net domains – redirecting all nonexistent Web addresses, as well as those without valid DNS entries, to a VeriSign search page.

C|Net’s News.com.com: VeriSign redirects error pages
Criticism is quickly growing over VeriSign’s surprise decision to take control of all unassigned .com and .net domain names, a move that has wreaked havoc on many e-mail utilities and antispam filters.

Slash Dot: Resolving Everything: VeriSign Adds Wildcards
What that means in plain English is that most mis-typed domain names that would formerly have resulted in a helpful error message now results in a VeriSign advertising opportunity.

Wired News: ISC to Cut Off Site Finder
VeriSign’s controversial "typo-squatting" Site Finder service is about to be bypassed by an emergency software patch to many of the Internet’s backbone computers.

MacCentral: Verisign sued over Site Finder

Internet Architecture Board’s Response

ICANN: Advisory Concerning VeriSign’s Deployment of DNS Wildcard Service

Slash Dot: VeriSign Responds To ICANN’s SiteFinder Advisory
It’s a very terse response, and frankly, I’d have expected more from them.

Link

Saturday, September 20th, 2003

St. Petersburg Times: Schools will give kids new Windows on the world
There is no sense in letting kids get accustomed to easier-to-use, more reliable machines that are less prone to viruses when they will have to grow up and survive in the modern workplace.

New York Times: Your Message Here, in a Flash

EFF Analysis of "Patriot II," Provisions of the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003 that Impact the Internet and Surveillance

Why Space? Top Ten Reasons
Or rather, NASA’s top ten justified excuses to spend billions of dollars losing Mars exploring robots

MediaSavvy: Michael Powell’s insane lies

Wired News: Sour Grapes over Mile Labeling
What? You mean that bovine steroids allowed by the US government are bad for small business, in addition to being harmful to children? Too bad none of the presidential candidates are for increasing regulation on the one industry (food) that can kill you daily.

MediaSavvy: The Telcos are Beginnning Their PR Campaign for a Metered Internet
Europeans have a "socialist" desire to make heavy (presumably rich) users subsidize light (presumably poor) users . Of course, per-bit pricing will limit the communication options of the poor, defeat creative applications of the net, and result in higher charges for everyone. But you can bet that the access monopolies will appeal to our sense of fairness when they’re selling this dangerous nonsense.

MacCentral: Jobs gets richer — and looks good, too

Something Awful: Parodied iPod Ad

Quote

Wednesday, September 10th, 2003

Apparently, the mirror is working. Era, complementing me on my appearance today and simultaneously mocking the importance I placed on having an adequate mirror

Class of 2007

Wednesday, September 10th, 2003

Emerson College’s Berkeley Beacon reported these facts about the Class of 2007.

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