election day aggravation

well…   it’s official…  Utah politics sucks my ass. I can’t believe that that many people are willing to throw away the rights of other people based on the sole fact that thier (the other people) way of life makes them (the stupid ones) uncomfortable.

election day was yesterday and on the ballot was a constitutional amendment (#3) that changed the definition of marraige to being the union of a man and a woman. it also took away the rights of any other such union. here is the actual text of that ammendment:

(1) Marriage consists only of the legal union between a man and a woman.
(2) No other domestic union, however denominated, may be recognized as a marriage or given the same or substantially equivalent legal effect.

now, the first part in itself is severly fucked up. why?  because. who are we to say that two people who aren’t a man and woman can’t get married?  why does it make you so uncomfortable?  and why do you think that by taking away thier rights it’s going to make you feel better about yourself?  i mean, while we’re at it, why don’t we take away women’s rights, and the rights of blacks, too?  what makes a gay marraige so threataning?  is it the fact that some book says it’s a sin and therefore it must be true?  or is it something to do with the safety of children?  because lord knows that gay people can’t love a child the way straight people can *end sarcasm*.
the second part of this little two line atrosity is even worse. look at it closely. it takes away the rights of common law marraiges, for ALL PEOPLE, not just same sex couples, who now, by law, can’t get married, visit each other in the hospital, make desicions in times of emergency, and determine what is best for the person with whom they’ve shared their whole life and love with because a single sentence that just got added to the utah constitution says so. how fucked up is that?
and don’t even get me started on the damn presidential election. i mean, if i hear one more person say they hate bush, AND THEN NOT VOTE FOR KERRY?!!  wtf?  i hear it all over the place… that bush is stupid and bush is lame, and bush sucks at this and bush sucks at that…  blah blah blah…  well, you just had your chance to fix it and what did you do?  sat on your ass and moaned about it. i voted. but only two of the things i voted for passed because the rest of the people in this closed-minded, bigoted state can’t see past thier own narrow feelings.

*end venting*

sorry about that, i’m just so frustrated, and it’s not just utah, like 12 states passed similar amendments. i mean, seriously.

— insert huge topic change here —

so…  i got engaged a little while ago, kinda excited, kinda nervous, kinda swamped with school, work, and now planning for a wedding (ok, not really ‘planning’, but saying ‘okay, sure’ to ideas my fiance throws out).  it’s not like i’m super stressed right now, but there are times when i’m not quite sure where to start and it gets to me a little bit.

also just got back from disneyland where my niece had her fourth birthday, got to hang out with my sister, and my niece for a day while at California Adventure, which is way cool. Tower of Terror is awesome, i recommend it to anybody, except for you wussies out there.

i’m also working on the new corporate intranet and public site for EGI, which is pretty dang huge for a guy who only designs websites as a hobby. the site uses ColdFusion, which is a server side script not unlike php and perl. although it does have its pros and cons. pro is its simplicity, theres no distinguising between the code and the html while coding, the code merely consists of specific html ‘tags’ (for instance <cfif> </cfif>), but because of it’s simplicity, it’s also a little harder to do complex things without a superfluous amount of code.

i also designed a site for a friend of mine (soon to be brother-in-law through two marriages) at www.photmillard.com.  i really like the way the site turned out for him, i’m actually quite proud of it. it’s simple, but the backend is custom coded in php to select a different random picture from each of the various photo albums and display it as a rollover on the main page every time it is refreshed. i also re-skinned the photo album that he uses (the same php script as mine), and created all new graphics, edited css, and code.

anywho…   it’s been a while, sorry to keep everybody in the dark about what’s going on, but i been busy.
plur, lates

p.s.- you may also notice (if you frequent my blog) that the look (and script) has changed, i was forced to do this by some weinie that kept comment spamming my blog. why do people feel they have to be dickheads?  what happened to respect?

bachelor party

so my friend josh is getting married soon. what better reason to have a bachelor party?  {crickets chirping}

that was a good joke, come on…

anywho, so for the bachelor party, we decided to go to cali and vegas.

we left at like 11 at night mountain time on thurs for the looooong drive to anaheim and got there at about 9 in the morning pacific time. so do the math, it was long. we had stopped at buffalo bills for about an hour or so and ate and threw down some cash, but not much.

after we got to anahiem, we tried to check into the motel we were staying at, but couldn’t. they wouldn’t let us. it was too early. so we decided we’d check out the new downtown disney shopping center in disneyland. it was pretty cool, they had a lego store that hadn’t opened yet, so were peeking through the windows at all the cool lego stuff, and while we’re looking through the windows, we noticed people walking around inside…  how long had we been looking through the window?  so we go inside, check it out, get bored and leave. we walked around the place for a bit, then decided it was gettin boring and went to disneyland.

holy crap!  i’ve never been to disneyland that i can remember, and it was pretty fricking dope!

first off, in tommorrowland, there is this huge stone ball sculpture that is like 10 ft in diameter and apparently wieghs in at about 85,000 lbs.  we went inside of the innoventions display theater thing that was there, and spent about one and a half to two hours inside playing around with all of the cool stuff. a couple of us even tried out some of the new segway personal transporters, which are, by themselves, worth the trip. after hangin out in the innoventions theater, we went back outside to play with the huge moving stone ball that was in the courtyard (that’s the word i was trying to think of), we spent about a half an hour just playing with (and like) a bunch of kids and this huge ball in water. it was pretty smooth.

we finally decided we should go on some rides, so we headed over to star tours and got a fastpass ticket, then went to the matterhorn and rode it, after the matterhorn, we went back and saw star tours, which is pretty cool (the matterhorn is dope, as well), then we went over to “honey, i shrunk the audience” which was pretty amazing considering it was only a 3-d show. i seriously ducked when the little flying thing came at my head, as did the rest of the audience, because everybody screamed and then started laughing.

after that, we went back to the motel, checked in, and took a much needed four hour nap. we went back to disneyland, went on a few more rides (indiana jones, haunted mansion, splash mountain, and some others), and then headed back home and played some texas hold-em, of which i won once and lost once.

the next day we went to magic mountain, and got rained out, which really sucked because i really wanted to go on some of those rides. i’d never been there before, but the rides looked cool as hell, although if you ever get a chance to go on the batman ride in the rain, i highly recommend it, it was awesome. so we left magic mountain just as the rain stopped (shitty, huh?) and headed over to claimjumper restaurant where josh got a psuedo “clappy lap dance”.  (and no, kati, it wasnt a real lap dance, ask josh about it)

after that we headed back to the motel and hung out in the hot tub and got shitty the rest of the night with some canucks.

we left at like 10-11 in the morning for vegas, got there at around 2 and started to gamble a bit.

we met this crazy “ms. georgia” who pretty much followed us around for the remainder of the day, but it was cool, because she was. we went to the star trek experience, saw a couple of shows, and then proceeded to the reason we came to vegas… quark’s bar.

they have a drink at quark’s bar called the warp core breach. if you’ve never seen one of these, it’s described by one reviewer as “a shot in a fishbowl”.  it’s huge. to say the least. its basically every kind of rum that bacardi makes (including 151), served in a fishbowl with dry ice as a garnish.

between five of us…  we had four.   ’nuff said.

i don’t remember much about the rest of the evening, except something about a klingon saying “wassup, player?” to cpt. kirk, and a fat, greasy mexican man hitting on him, exclaiming “i heard rumors about you cpt. kirk, fifty dollars for everything”.  so… it turned out to be an interesting evening…

{insert “what happens in vegas, stays in vegas” saying here. because, well, i dont remember enough to tell you}

naw, i’m just kiddin, i wasn’t that drunk, but we were having way more fun than if we had been sober.

so then we all went back to the hotel, and CRASHED!  three days of fun had finally caught up with us.
and that’s it, save for the long drive home.

hope it was as much fun reading as it was… doing.

plur, lates.  {} <– you know what this is.

stupid computer crashes

i know i havent posted on my blog in a really long time, but i’m kinda bummed/pissed at computers and websites right now, namely, mine.

i guess there was a pretty major hardware failure at the datacenter that host the machine that hosts the website you’re looking at right now. it wiped out eveything that was posted on the blog and the forum after april 5th.

this really sucks, because i had just written a hugely long post about meeting my real dad for the first time on the 7th.  (i didn’t meet him on the 7th, i wrote about it on the 7th)

so anyway… to breifly recap that last post…  (and for those of you who didn’t know, recap is short for recapitulate… just some interesting information for ya)

so, we had a pretty good party at my house on the 3rd, which went pretty well (didn’t get a lot of pictures though, sorry) threw down my new track, had some drinks, etc. pretty normal party. then on sun, the day after the party, we (my girl and i) went to one of my new aunt’s and uncle’s house to hang out and have a bbq, cuz it was my aunt’s birthday on the 4th. as i walk into the backyard and get introduced, an older woman stands up and says, “so you’re my grandson”…  yeah, that floored me for about 10 minutes.

she was acting just like any other grandmother would, hugging me, kissing my cheek, etc. except that i have never met this woman in my life, and it was a little wierd. so we have lunch/dinner (amazingly good ribs), and i go inside to chill for a bit, cuz i had just met a new grandmother, new cousin, new aunt, and was feeling a little awkward. after hangin out inside for a half hour or so, i walk back outside, and just as i did, a man i’ve only seen in pictures walks around the corner of the house…

{insert dead silence with intermittent pounding heart beats here}

i try and play it off like i didnt see him, and sit down on the bench outside. as i’m lookin over to get a better look, i make eye contact with him, because he was staring right at me. it was too late, i couldn’t play it off anymore, i had to do something. so i stand up to walk over to him and everybody who was in the backyard, knowing the situation, stops talking and watches me walk over…  no pressure.

so… what do you say in a situation like that?  “hi, i’m benjam”? i mean, he already knows who i am, i know who he is, what do you say?

so i walked over, all eyes burning a hole in my back, and say “hi, nice to meet you, wierd and unexpected, but nice” and sit down next to him. we kinda have an uncomfortable silence for a bit, which was even more so, because the whole party was having it with us, and then my mom breaks it by asking him a question…  thanks, mom.

so we make small talk for a little bit and then it’s time for us to leave, cuz i don’t think i could have handled meeting anymore new relatives. so we leave.

and thats about all that was in that post. it was a little longer and maybe a little more in depth, but you get the idea, it still kinda sucks that it was lost.

but anywho…  ya’ll have fun, and don’t crash your comp reading this.

plur, l8

wow

i’m so frickin excited for my party comin up this weekend !!  i don’t think i’ve been this excited for a party in a long time. the only thing holding me back is the fact that i’m prolly failing a couple of my classes in school.

i just can’t wrap my brain around particle physics, and my thermodynamics teacher is whacked in the head, i swear. i even went to a study group for particle physics and still don’t understand it. it sucks. and it’s kinda lame because if it were really “particle physics” instead of “really weird math”, i’d probably understand it. but as it’s the latter, i don’t. and the teacher throws up these really odd looking equations on the board and then proclaims that “obviously, this must be true”, and i’m thinking, “who is this obvious to, besides you? i don’t even understand what you wrote down.”

stupid math notations.

but it’s all good, cuz this saturday night, i’m throwin down some phatty tracks at my house, chillin with some good friends, and monitoring my drinking, because i’d like to stay awake for this one.  =)

anywho, had to post cuz it’s been a while.

latah,
PLUR

it’s done!!

i got done putting the finishing touches on my new and improved website layout last night, made a few new pics for the walls section, and uploaded them today. take a look around at the new site and enjoy!

i really like the cleanliness of the whole layout, its very easy on the eyes, no part is too contrasted, and they all blend very smoothly. if you’re using mozilla or firefox as your browser, you also get an added bonus, if you’ll look in the blog (which you are right now), you’ll notice that as you move the screen up and down, the background doesn’t move, not even inside the light parts. makes for a really interesting effect. i kinda like it. oh well, enough about me, lets talk about you.

leave comments if you wish, or sign the guestbook and let me know what you think.

plur, lahter.

new look coming soon

so i decided that it was about time to revamp the site, take out stuff that wasn’t needed, and redo the over all look of the place. i got the main page done, you cant see it yet, but i’ve heard from a couple of people that it’s pretty cool…

so i was sittin in class today and everybody started handing papers forward to the teacher…  i guess there was homework due today that i thought was due tomorrow. damnit.    oh well.

we got our tests back today, got a 94, which was very unexpected…
sorry for the rambling, i’m not quite all there right now…   don’t know why, just kinda off today.

blah blah blah    nevermind.

stupid roomate

me and my girl had been lookin for a new roommate for quite a while, since about new years, but no luck. so she started to get a little desperate and this guy shows up with this hella pitiful sob story about how he has to be out of his current place in two days.

he seemed cool enough, to her, i never met him before he moved in. so he gets moved in in like 8 hrs, all his crap in the garage and all over the basement. i finally meet him, and he’s kinda wierd, not good wierd either, kinda creepy and shady. for example, the first or second night that he was there, i was coming out of my room heading for the kitchen and he’s walkin past me with his hands behind his back, so i get a little curious as to what he feels he has to hide from me, because he’s 36 (which in itself is kinda odd, living with people 10 yrs younger).  i talked with my girl about it, and she said that she found a brown bag next to the couch, so i figured he just feels like he has to hide his booze from me and think nothing more of it. but then the next day, my girl asks me how much jack was in a bottle we had in the cupboard, and i told her i didn’t know, but she says there was only like an inch left in the bottom, and i’m pretty sure the bottle was half full when last i saw it, but i can’t say for sure, so we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.

the next day. while straightening up my room, i notice my piggy-bank is gone. i may have misplaced it, but my first thought was that the new roomate (joel the creepy fucker) stole it.

it stays missing, i never find it, and later that week, we talk with our other roomates, and come to find out, he’s been stealing change from them as well. i guess they came home from a nice valentine’s weekend away to find their change jar, which is rather fat, and hence holds a lot of money, was missing about three inches worth of change, about $60. but the worst part is, it was hidden in their closet, so that means the fucker was going through our stuff!  after i heard that, i decided right then and there that he was out, i don’t give a shit about the lease, if he’s stealing from us, he’s either out of the house, or i’m beatin his ass.

my girl calls her dad (the landlord) and gets his permission to kick him out of the house, so joel calls her, and she tells him that he has three days to get out, he asks why, she tells him, and all he cares about is getting the rest of his rent back, he doesnt even try to deny it.

so he’s gone, moved all his stuff out in one day. but before he left, he stuffed our garbage cans FULL of his shit, which may not even be his shit the way he was going on around the house.

but i gave him a little going away present… while he was gone one night, after the incident, i cracked open his coffee maker and disconnected the heater, so it will only make cold coffee.  =)

so today, we’re gettin ready for a little party, and we noticed that there was a bottle of sprite that was in the same cupboard as the jack, that is now empty. fucker.

anywho, long story short, make sure you check references of new roommates, now matter how desperate you are or how nice they seem…  and keep a screwdriver and a coffee (dis)repair book handy in case things go sour.

plur l8

OMFH

that’s Oh My Fucking HELL!! for those of you not in the know.

i am so sick of the company that my domain is registered through right now it’s not even funny. they have pretty much killed my site for the past three weeks and it is still dead. (i’m writing this through a more direct path that my hosting provides in situations like these)

my current registration period was going to expire, and my hosting company started offering domain registration services that they didn’t offer when i got the webspace, so i wanted to switch over to them to make everything easier. so i pay for the domain service through them about two weeks before it was to expire, and they tried to switch it but it didn’t work, so they tried again, but the second try was too late and my name (iohelix.com) was now being held ransom (ok, not really, but that’s what it seems like).  come to find out that there was a registrar-lock placed on my domain that nobody told me about, and i can’t remove it until i renew my subscription through my current company, so i finally give in and pay them what i need to to get it working…

still waiting…

its been a week now and i still have no control over my domain. the customer service they are providing is horrible, they have NO customer service on the weekends (?!?), no phone numbers that work, and the customer service they do provide is either wrong, or ambiguous (“don’t worry, we are getting in contact with department concerns”)  WTF???

anyway, they finally figured out that somewhere along the line, the order got lost and they are currently working on it, but that’s what they’ve been saying this whole time, so we’ll see…  anyway, just to let you all know, if your domain is registered through HostDime, Fariert, or any of their affiliate companies (except eNom, who is the actual registrar that HostDime is a reseller for), get out now!

just venting…
>(  l8

more to come when my service is finally back up…

school and dumb buses

so school started again, that break was either not long enough or too long, i’m not sure which, but it definitely wasn’t time to go back to school. as much as i love school, it’s still poopy to have to wake up that early just to fall back asleep in class. or have there not even be a class, which was the case yesterday. i woke my ass up at 7:30 to get to my class at 9:10, but then, after i got there, i sat there for like 20 minutes out in the hall, waiting for somebody, anybody, but nobody showed up, no teacher, no students, nobody. stupid first day labs.

my next class was at 2:00, so i went to work, then back to school for an hour, yep, that’s it, 1 hour. went home and sat around, or rather drove around, hunting down some money so i could buy me and my girl a couple of iPod’s (which are dope as hell by the way), then i had to go back to school at 7:15 for a night class, which is going to suck, but at least the class will be worth going to.

so i got home from that class, loaded some songs onto my iPod for today (gotta love firewire, 800 songs in about 5-10 min), then went to bed, but couldn’t sleep, and after i finally got to sleep, the dumb dog woke me up at like 6:00 this morning, and i never got back to sleep… so i got up around 8:30 and headed off to school with my girl, she had to go to work before school so she dropped me off and i waited for the shuttle… saw one, but it was the wrong one, going the other way, too far away to catch, then another one, and another… still waiting for mine…  40 minutes later, as my class was starting, i called my girl and had her take me to school. stupid shuttle.

so now that i’m finally warm again, i’m chillin.   ;)

but school’s lookin good, the iPod kicks ass, and i have a girl that loves me enough to leave work just to take me too school.

plur, l8

oooo…. my head

drinking is bad. no more drinking. especially not martini’s, they beat you up and don’t even ask for your name.

so yeah… the party was fun, what little bit i remember. and the rest is forever saved as digital photos of my drunk ass huggin the toilet. i didn’t take them, obviously, but my good friends did. i’m sure i’ll post them in an anti-drinking section of the photos page sometime soon, but for now, you’ll hafta be happy that i finally got the render i was working on for 6 days into the office to upload. it’s in the photos section under art -> other and it looks pretty good, but you’ll hafta let me know what you think. if you happen to live in the salt lake area, or are familiar with the wasatch front, then the mountains should look very familiar to you, and you may even be able to pick out the various canyons that line the range.

anywho… gonna go back and continue catching up on sleep that was lost, or gained, i don’t remember, from new years…

hope yours was fun!

plur, blegh.