Despite me taking its pages down (maybe accidentally?) 5 years ago, some dude asked me about ASN1 Parserator, a thing I wrote like 15 years ago, stopped using 12 years ago, and have nearly completely forgotten about. Last time anyone asked me about it was 2013.

At present, Google pulls up nothing about this little tool I wrote. So I don't know where this dude learned of it from. Must still be mentioned in some company's notes somewhere.

But he asked nicely, and I found it, so I put it back up. Woo.

I've created some silly projects over the past few years, but never tried to make them easy to find. So here they are.

I'll probably write some more-detailed posts about these in the future, but for now I'll just dump links.

• Wizard's Castle - I ported an old BASIC game to Ruby

• Transformers IDW comic timeline - A visualization of 10+ years of comics

• Marvel 2099 comic timeline - The future was then

• Dr. Who (classic) visual index - neeerrrrrrrd

I should post stuff here more often. How about I run down my comic book purchases from Nov 25 to Dec 9? Let's dork it up in here.

Nov 25

Aquaman #46 (DC) - I'm about to drop this title. One of the best New 52 launches settled down, becoming merely pretty good toward the end of Geoff Johns' inaugural run and through Jeff Parker's tenure, but Cullen Bunn's story since #41 has me losing interest with every issue. We're 6 installments into a weird alternate-universe Atlantis storyline and I just don't care.

The Fuse #16 (Image) - One of my favorite books on the shelf right now is this police procedural that takes place in a city on a shitty space station orbiting Earth. Rather than focusing on a single case, this current storyline centers on the station's annual "Perihelion" celebration and the precinct's struggle to keep general order and juggle several high-profile events (including a high-end cat burglar, a mob-hit-turned-hospital-standoff, and a serial killer). This is the best arc yet.

Guardians of the Galaxy #2 (Marvel) - It's good. Not great, but good.

Silver Surfer #15 (Marvel) - Mike Allred's novel take on Silver Surfer concludes as Surfer and Dawn create a universe. This book has been pretty weird, but a still-accessible kinda weird. I guess the next issue will be a new relaunch at #1, but that's cosmetic, because the creative team will not change.

Venom Space Knight #1 (Marvel) - This was a surprise. I didn't really know what to expect, but I got a painted space action story that knew how to move. Robbie Thompson and Ariel Olivetti are kicking off a new title right.

Dec 1

Barrier #1 (Panel Syndicate) - Bryan K. Vaughn's new release on his pay-what-you-want digital site. Starts off as a pretty interesting border drama with main characters on each side of the divide, right up until the last page where... whaaaaaaat.

Dec 2

Cyborg #5 (DC) - Ugh, will this boring storyline just end already? Writer David Walker scored a lot of points with his fantastic Shaft miniseries, but he is just not hitting it here, and this alternate-dimension Borg noise needs to stop ASAP. The next arc needs to get away from this crap and do something more grounded, else I'm done.

Midnighter #7 (DC) - This book is pretty great. Maybe it shouldn't be, as the main character is just a technologically-enhanced combat machine vigilante who doesn't ever actually seem to be in danger, but writer Steve Orlando has written a character who is fun to read and tries to have a personal life in between missions. In this issue, Midnighter faces an actual threat. I should have seen this twist coming, but for some reason I didn't.

Nova #2 (Marvel) - I should probably be past reading about a 14-year-old superhero, but I like Marvel's cosmic stuff and I've been into Nova since the 2007 Abnett/Lanning-written series about the previous guy. Sam's just got his long-lost dad back (also a Nova), and they're falling into a tag-team groove... until a monster-fight incident reveals that Sam's dad might not be totally normal anymore. I'm thinking I might be able to start reading this series with my son in another year or so.

Replica #1 (AfterShock) - Checked this out on a recommendation from the comic shop guy (thanks, Kirk!). Trevor Carter is a under-resourced cop on a grimy intergalactic hub, and I'm a sucker for grimy space stuff (see The Fuse above). It starts with him wishing his precinct had more capable cops, and ends with him having a bunch of clones. I'm in.

Dec 9

Constantine, The Hellblazer #7 (DC) - After the previous botch that was the New 52 Contantine title finally and rightfully got terminated, DC appears to have lightened up on the editorial reins and allowed writers Ming Doyle & James Tynion IV to write the non-superhero-tainted book that the character deserves. And it's been pretty darn good so far. Riley Rossmo's art also helps, a much-welcome departure from the DC superhero house-style that seems to have been previously enforced. It's not the Vertigo book that we all wish DC hadn't killed in 2013, but it's almost worthy of the name. And hey! This issue has Swamp Thing!

Guardians of the Galaxy #3 (Marvel) - See earlier comment about issue #2.

I collect NES games. Here's a continuously-updated list of what I have.

Games that are crossed out are games that I got rid of.

"5-screw" means it's an early NES release, before they switched to the 3-security-screw cartridge style.

• 1943
• Adv of Lolo 1
• Adv of Lolo 2
• Adv of Lolo 3
• Back to the Future
• Bad Dudes
• Bad Street Brawler
• Barker Bill's Trick Shooting
• Baseball (5-screw)
• Bigfoot
• Blades of Steel
• Bomberman
• Breakthru (5-screw)
• Bump 'n' Jump
• Burgertime
• Castlequest
• Castlevania (5-screw)
• Castlevania 2 (gave away)
• Castlevania 3
• Chip & Dale's Rescue Rangers
• Clash at Demonhead
• Cobra Triangle
• Codename: Viper
• Commando (5-screw)
• Contra
• Crystalis
• Cybernoid
• Darkman
• Defender 2
• Deadly Towers
• Deja Vu
• Demon Sword
• Dick Tracy
• Disney's Adventures in the Magic Kingdom
• Donkey Kong Classics
• Double Dragon
• Double Dragon 2
• Double Dribble
• Dr. Mario
• Dragon Power
• Duck Hunt (5-screw)
• Duck Hunt (3-screw)
• Dungeon Magic
• Elevator Action (5-screw)
• Excitebike
• Faxanadu
• Final Fantasy
• Fire 'n Ice
• Flying Warriors
• Gargoyle's Quest 2
• Gauntlet
• Ghosts 'n Goblins
• GI Joe
• GI Joe 2
• Golf (5-screw)
• Golgo 13
• Goonies 2
• Gradius
• Gremlins 2
• Guerilla War
• Gyruss
• Hogan's Alley (5-screw)
• Ice Climber (5-screw)
• Jaws
• Jeopardy!
• Karate Champ
• Karnov
• Kid Icarus
• Kings of the Beach
• Kirby's Adventure
• Knight Rider
• Laser Invasion
• Legendary Wings
• Litte Nemo the Dream Master (gave away)
• Mach Rider
• Mafat Conspiracy
• Mario Bros (5-screw)
• Mega Man
• Mega Man 2
• Mega Man 3
• Mega Man 4
• Mega Man 5
• Mega Man 6
• Metal Gear
• Metroid (old label)
• Metroid (new label)
• Mighty Bomb Jack
• Mighty Final Fight
• Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!
• Milon's Secret Castle
• Mission: Impossible
• Monster Truck Rally
• Mystery Quest
• Operation Wolf
• Paperboy
• Phantom Fighter
• Pipe Dream
• Platoon
• Popeye
• Predator
• Punisher
• Q*bert
• RC Pro Am
• Rad Racer 2
• Rainbow Islands
• Rambo
• River City Ransom
• Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
• RoboCop
• RoboWarrior
• Rocket Ranger
• Rolling Thunder
• Rygar (2 copies?)
• Shooting Range
• Skate or Die
• Snake's Revenge (aka Metal Gear 2)
• Soccer (5-screw)
• Solstice
• Sqoon (5-screw)
• Star Trek 25th Anniversary
• Stealth ATF
• Super Dodge Ball
• Super Mario Bros
• Super Mario Bros/Duck Hunt
• Super Team Games
• Superspike V-Ball
• Swamp Thing
• Swords & Serpents
• Tag Team Wrestling
• Target Renegade
• Tennis (5-screw)
• Thrilla's Surfari
• Thundercade
• Tiger-Heli
• Time Lord
• Top Gun
• Track & Field 2
• Urban Champion (5-screw)
• Vice Project Doom
• Volleyball (5-screw)
• Winter Games
• Wrath of the Black Manta
• Wrecking Crew (5-screw)
• Zoda's Revenge (StarTropics 2)

Hack carts - these are not legit games, but hacks or translations or unreleased prototype ROMs that someone put on a cart. (These are often referred to as "reproductions", but that's a misnomer.)

• Zelda Outlands (remix hack)
• Adventure Island 4 (translated Japan-only release)
• HeroQuest (unreleased prototype)

GrantB.net lives again.

It's all custom built, this time with Ruby on Rails. I've been part of a few big Rails projects at work, and I thought it'd be fun to build something to my own specs instead of a client's.

The page design is not quite where I want it. It's basically there, but there are a half-dozen or so things that aren't right, plus I'm sure it looks like a mess on mobile. But, sometimes you just have to pull the trigger and go live, or else you never will (a lesson one of my clients really needs to figure out).

Other web-dev-dorkery notes:

• Supports writing posts in Markdown via the Redcarpet gem. I've grown to love Markdown.
• No Javascript right now. Javascript can do some really neat stuff now, especially with AngularJS, but I haven't gotten that fancy here yet.
• No Bootstrap. It's nice, but I just felt like doing things the hard way. I've got plans for a future project, where I will use Bootstrap.
• I really like the style on my admin interface, but only I can see it. Hm.

The next high priority is making automated backups. Got burned by this once; not going to happen again.

What in the what?
https://www.shortpacked.com/comic/osama

Star 13 (aka *13) is now live on MySpace! http://myspace.com/star13musicdefunct.

This is the new project from Jeff Scheel, frontman of the new-defunct industrial rock band Gravity Kills, a band which I was a pretty big fan of.

The official website, which is still just a placeholder, is here:
http://star13music.comdefunct.
Jeff says it should be live real soon.

You can hear the new track, a cover of David Bowie's I'm Afraid of Americans at MySpace in radio edit form, and purchase the studio track at iTunes or Snocap.

(Did you catch when I posted the demo of this track a few months ago?)

So one April afternoon I find this in my inbox from the guy who hosts this site:

Happen to have a backup of your website?

And my site was down. Dammit.

On the bright side, I did have backups. Unfortunately, they are from January 2006. Doh!

Thanks to Google and Yahoo caches (which I now love), I was able to recover all textual blog content. All of my photos are safe (the originals are stored on my laptop), but a few other not-really-important images are lost.

My Perl blog code that I wrote and deployed last September, however, is gone. I'm kinda pissed about that, but I should have known better than to not back it up.

Perl cgi sucks anyway. I've been wanting to re-do it in PHP, so now I'm doing it. Hopefully I can bang it out pretty fast.

This is certainly a surprise to many, but not a shock to all. Me and Kathy got married last Friday, February 15 in front of a judge downtown.

This date has nothing to do with Valentine's day. It is, in fact, the 11th anniversary of the day that I initially asked her out. This happened in 1997, after the Metallica concert at Van Andel arena in Grand Rapids. We were attempting to round up our group of friends in preparation for the drive home, and I found myself with her in the middle of the crowd, and I went for it. (It's important to note that this concert was during Metallica's Load tour, when they still had credibility and respect and didn't have to hire a therapist to help them work together.)

So why the stealth marriage? We've been dating for 11 years, and living together for almost 7; we were practically married already. Every time we started talking about a ceremony, we got hung up on details that neither of us really care about. We don't have the time or the interest to plan something big. We figured 11 years was a good milestone; let's just do it and not put it off any longer. My mom still wants us to have a party of some sort, and I guess me and Kathy will consider it.

The picture that the judge took of us isn't very good, so here's a picture of us afterward as we wait to eat at our favorite restaurant.

Hooray!

At the moment, if you use IE, you will see a banner on this page that notifies you that I'm well aware that this page looks like crap to you. Yesterday, it basically said "Screw you, IE users!" Until now, I guess I was holding a hard lineI used to have a rant page about how Internet Explorer sucks. It is lost to time. that if Microsoft won't support the web standards that every other browser supports, screw them and the people using their crap browser.

But I'm job hunting. For computer jobs. And I might be applying for some web-related jobs. So you might reason that I probably shouldn't be telling IE users to suck it on my home page.

This week, I'm going to try to fix the IE display. It'll be a little tough, for one because I don't have a machine that runs Windows and thus I can't test the page conveniently. It's also tough because the IE rendering engine has, since IE 3 or 4, mis-implemented key parts of CSS. Yes, even in the brand spanking new IE 7. It's something the web standards community has been complaining to Microsoft about for a long time.

So anyway, by next week hopefully this page will look okay in IE. It might not look the same in IE as it does in other browsers, but it won't look like it was designed by a chimpanzee who gave up halfway through.

Of course, if you use Opera or Firefox, you shouldn't notice any change at all.

WizardWorld Chicago 2007 was in August this year, and again I took pictures of all the crazy costumes. And now, 4 months later, I'm finally putting them up!

As an aside, I've been playing with the Python Imaging Library, which is a really handy way to edit images once you figure it out. I wrote a couple scripts that will resize, make thumbnails, and copywrite-stamp the images really quickly. I'll post the scripts soon, after I've had a chance to clean them up a bit.

Anyway, back to the pics. Unfortunately, I went on Friday, not Saturday, which is much busier and probably had many more costumes to snap. But hey, I got what I got.

I only got one celebrity, Michael Madsen, who you might have seen in Kill Bill 1 & 2. There were other celebs, but for some reason or another, I didn't get them.

I think there was a Fett family reunion nearby or something, because damn were a lot of Mandalorian Armor costumes. As usual, the Star Wars contingent was well represented and of a high quality that implies too much money was spent. But then again, that's what makes the pictures not suck.

The other highlights for me were Dr. Weird (Aqua Teen Hunger Force) and Wario. Those are bold choices gentlemen, and you've executed well.

Anyway, enough exposition. Here's the pics:

Micheal Madsen	Micheal Madsen
Jawa and Boba Fett	Jawa has glowing eyes	Smile everybody!
Some Mandalorian	Which one do I shoot?	Darth Maul and Jango Fett
Obi-Wan's cousin?	X-Men's Storm and White Queen	Video game soldiers
Dr. Wierd. Hats off to this guy, seriously.	Wario. Nice work, man.	Venom
The fittest amateur Superman I've ever seen.	A pretty good Robin	???
a T-shirt that grabbed my eye	Some booth babes.

A GrantB.net exclusive! (I think)

Jeff Scheel, lead singer of somewhat-defunct industrial rock band Gravity Kills, has a new project coming up soon, to be dubbed Star13Long dead: star13music.com. And I have a demo!

It's a cover of David Bowie's I'm Afraid of Americans (from Earthling, one of my favorite albums).

This is (in his words) "only a very rough demo". Jeff says that it is not finished. A final version will "go to radio in about 2 months".

Download this track here!

Now that I have an unsolicited abundance of free time, I'm finally diving into the social networking thing. Check those links on the left to see my profiles on MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

MySpace deserves special mention. (Any web programmers reading this?) Have you looked at the source for those pages? It's a nightmare! It's like Tom's accidentally successful garage project. The ability to create a theme looks to be not by design, but rather only possible because browsers are really tolerant towards erroneous usage of CSS. The most impressive aspect of MySpace is that News Corp paid so much for it.

Also note the new links for my sub-pages. I expect I'll be steadily adding more to that as time goes on.

Last week, Motorola announced their latest round of layoffs, and I turned out to be an unwitting participant. If you take a look at the market, Motorola's share priceOriginal url: http://finance.google.com/finance?q=mot has dropped $3 since the news of my layoff broke; the long-term effects of my layoff on the company are still hazy. No doubt Motorola will feel the effects of my absence for months (perhaps years) to come.

I was already starting to look around, and expected to leave (or at least switch departments) within the next 6-12 months. Frankly, I was getting a little bored by the work which was not often that satisfying. Embedded software is just not all that exciting. For my next trick, I'd like to move into applications (or at least something object-oriented). If you know of anything cool in downtown Chicago or the north suburbs, I'm all ears.

But if you're gonna leave a job, being laid off is definitely the way to go. Sure, it sucks when you're first notified, but since I was already looking to leave, I got over it quickly. The severance is pretty good, and I'm enjoying the free time.

(A special shout-out to my DVD player, which decided to break a few days ago. I finally have all the time in the world to watch the DVDs I've acquired in the past few months, and then you crap out. Have fun in the dumpster, asshole.)

In other news, didn't that black-on-green color scheme from the last update suck? I was going for kind of an old-school green-screen computer terminal look, but I sure failed. This black/white/blue scheme I just hacked up looks surprisingly good, though.

As you can see, I've given the site a change of clothes. I just thought it was time for something new. (And you thought my colors sucked before.)

In addition, I've just installed new back-end code. Glad to finally be done with it. You shouldn't notice a difference, but it'll be easier for me to maintain, expecially if/when I add some more features.

Next post: Wizard World 2007 pics. Whenever I get around it to it (hopefully within 2 weeks).

Luckily, it got caught quick and I'm not out anything.

Somebody cloned my damn credit card and started using on Wednesday. Thanks to Discover for catching it so quickly; they called me within 6 hours. I guess their NASA supercomputers realized that I would never buy (and have never bought) gas and McDonald's in the post-lunch-hour afternoon of a workday in the middle of the week.

I've got no idea how my info got loose, but Discover's cool about it. I'm not liable, and they're expressing me a new card.

Now I just need to know which merchant has crap security.

The House of Blues Chicago just sent me a mail with this subject line:

Due to overwhelming demand, second HANSON show added!

Uh... what?

The title of this post is a bitter way of expressing that I actually kinda liked the new Transformers movie. I'm shocked, really. I went to it expecting to be pissed off at how badly it was botched. I expected so little of it (aside from solid robot violence) that I think I wanted it to suck. But it didn't.

Was it perfect? No. It was about as good as your average summer blockbuster: enjoyable, but with a merely-adequate plot with fairly ignorable plot holes between the completely awesome effects. For us old nerds, the Autobot characters were surprisingly true to the original personalities (though the Decepticons... not so much).

I did cringe at the 6th-grade level humor at some points. Did Bumblebee really need to "pee" auto-fluid on a dude? Did we need the lame slapstick of the Autobots accidentally breaking stuff while hiding in a suburban backyard? And then there's Frenzy (the small boombox robot)... Mr. Bay, didn't you learn anything from JarJar?

Those quibbles aside, I guess I'd actually recommend checking it out.

More importantly, is Michael Bay still a tool? Yes. From this Wired article:

But other alterations were simply Bay's prerogative. Optimus Prime now boasts bright orange cholo flames and — much to fans' horror — lips. "I'm the director. I make my own decisions. I like to paint the house green, even when everyone says it's got to be white."

I don't understand why that quote and the following quote are so far apart in the same story:

"At best, it will be a fun summer movie with explosions," one 35-year-old Transformers devotee conjectured at a recent WonderCon. "But it seems like guys in Hollywood... Unless they're really reined in, they have to pee all over something to make it theirs, like big cats."

So, hopefully another director will take the reins for the sequel and fix Prime's paint job. The leader of the Autobots is not a f***ing gangbanger.

Today I found "Deduction"Original url was http://www.freewebs.com/drussell/Download.htm#Deduction, an elegantly simple implementation of Clue (or Cluedo, as it's known outside North America). Good interface and solid AI. Bravo, Mr. Russell.

I've always loved Clue. Unfortunately, when you're older than 12, it's not so easy to find 2 or more other players.

A couple years ago I started coding my own version of Clue, in Java. I fell away from it for awhile, and then some other projects convinced me that Java is a pain. So there you go.

Now if only someone would do Clue Master Detective.

( Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 )

I know you're in suspense, but don't worry: my dumbass cat is totally okay. A month after this debacle and he's back to 100%, though I doubt he learned anything from it.

He was certainly trying to re-injure himself. He spent the next two weeks trying to pull his staples out. The big plastic cone-collar took care of that. See the pictures below (taken Feb 11).

Would have posted these pictures sooner, but we've been pretty busy in the past month. You see, we bought a condo.

( Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 )

6-8 inches was slightly inaccurate. Behold, the snip of textile removed from Pedro's small intestine:

This damn thing is 23 inches long.

Not surprisingly, it smells pretty bad.

( Part 1 / Part 2 )

6-8 inches. The surgeon pulled out 6-8 inches of balled-up shoelace from Pedro's intestine.

He's still out cold, but should be fine. And hopefully smarter.

My productivity this afternoon has been somewhere around 20%. I should have just gone home.

(Part 1 is here)

They shaved my cat's belly and gave him an ultrasound ($300 cha-ching!). There's definitely some shoelace in there. The choice was: (1) go under the knife (cha-ching! cha-ching! cha-ching!), or (2) wait a bit to see if he'll pass it.

The chances of him passing it without it causing further damage or inflammation? Very very slim.

So the little fool's going under the knife this afternoon.

From start to finish, this little episode will cost about the same as the last 4 repairs on my Grand Prix combined. In no way did that make me hesitate, but, man. A shoelace!

Technically, it wasn't a shoelace. It was a waist-tie that went to one of Kathy's sweaters. She didn't want it, so it became a cat toy, because cats like dangly things. But for all intents and purposes, it looks like a long athletic shoelace, albeit without those plastic things on the end.

And some time yesterday, it became a cat snack. I've previously mentioned my cat Pedro's sharp intellect, so clearly it was a well-reasoned and logical decision to eat something that's more than a foot-and-a-half long and not food.

Thus we were greeted with much regurgitated cat food on our carpet upon entering the apartment. And a crusty foot-and-a-half long regurgitated shoelace. Unfortunately, we're pretty sure that the shoelace was longer than that, and our suspicions are emboldened by the fact that he's not hungry and can't keep much water down.

Late night animal emergency room x-rays ($285 cha-ching!) mostly show that a shoelace is not really detectable by x-rays. It might be in there, but the vet didn't see strong evidence of it. Pedro still spit up water at 5am, which makes me think it's in there and blocking the passage.

Worst case? Kitty surgery (cha-ching!) to take that thing out. Hopefully it won't come to that.

Fool.

And it's orange. Technically, it's "Blaze Orange Metallic." Among other options were "Storm Silver Metallic," "Lunar Mist Metallic," and "Milano Red." My personal favorite, however, based on dumb meaningless adjectives alone, was "Nighthawk Black Pearl".

Nighthawk Black Pearl. Nighthawk.

Right.

Anyway, orange wasn't our first choice. If we wanted to wait a month or more, we could have had silver or red. Anything else and we probably wouldn't have gotten it until March or later. And my good ol' Grand Prix just wasn't going to last that long. When we saw the color Friday evening, Kathy didn't like it. But the next day in the sunlight, she one-eightied. And we bought it.

What I'm talking about is our brand-new 2007 Honda FitOriginal url was http://automobiles.honda.com/models/model_overview.asp?ModelName=Fit. It's a new model here in the States, but it's been around overseas for a while (in Europe they call it the "Jazz"). According to the dealers we talked to, Honda's not producing them to meet demand and dealers usually can't keep one on the lot for more than a few days. (I'm pretty sure that wasn't simply a line to make us buy sooner.)

Here's a picture of our new baby:

(Check out how I totally obscured the plate number. Now when you see an orange Fit you totally won't know if it's ours or if it's someone else's orange Fit.)

Here's some more photosOriginal url was http://automobiles.honda.com/shopping/landing.aspx?GroupName=fit&ef_id=1097:3:15ee0e060cc2fef036b6456d242e4937_453840720:A1UzX0NIYX0AADYv8GgAAAAI:20070123045720 of a model just like ours.

It's a subcompact, and it handles great. It's got pickup when you need it. The fuel economy rocks. It's way roomier than it has any right to be. Reviews have been very positiveOriginal url was http://www.caranddriver.com/bestcars/12062/2007-honda-fit.html.

The only downside is that now I drive like a pansy. I've never had a brand new car before. As I type, it has 88 miles on it. All but like .75 miles were put on it by me and Kathy. If it gets a dent or scratch I'm going to pout like a second-grader.

Best of all, the trunk doesn't leak, it doesn't have two coolant leaks, the radio's backlight is not burned out, the rear speakers don't sound staticky, there's no transmission fluid leak, and the driver door always unlocks from the outside. You served me well, Grand Prix, but it was time to let you go. For $500 trade-in.

Cult film star Bruce Campbell is now pitching Old Spice. Which could have been terrible if the commercial wasn't bizarrely hilarious, playing into the smug mock confidence that is one of his trademarks.

When I found this I mentioned it to a co-worker of mine. The guy has an Attack of the Killer Tomatoes movie poster in his cube, so he must like corny cinema, and I figured it's a sure thing that he's seen Army of Darkness and the like. He responded, "who?". Bah.

I told him to check out Army of Darkness. Notably, it's directed by Sam Raimi, Bruce's hometown friend and director of the Spider-Man movies. Bruce has cameos in all the Spider-Man flicks, and it's rumored he may play the villian Mysterio in the 4th movie.

If you like movie-related memoirs (or generally entertaining books), you'll probably like Bruce's book If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor It's about him growing up in Michigan and breaking into the industry with his group of friends (which includes Sam Raimi). If nothing else, you'll learn that Gene Hackman is a dick.

Here's an interesting article about troops in Iraq improvising with non-standard equipmentOriginal url was http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16079446/.

Mostly it focuses on using Silly String to detect tripwires, but there's some other examples mentioned in the middle.

This has nothing to do with me, of course. I just thought it was cool.

I've been in the UK for two weeks and counting. I was supposed to go home yesterday, but I'm still here.

I work for a major US mobile phone maker (guess!), and I'm in the UK doing field testing of a phone that we're going to release soon for a service provider here. I'll have to be light on details because I don't think either company would appreciate me dishing dirt, and I generally like my job (the past few days aside).

Basically, someone messed up. They put a software "fix" into the phone that broke a fundamental feature. We found this out on Friday afternoon. On Friday we were to release a final candidate software build. Instead of packing to fly home, I was instead waiting for the guys back home to send me a build with the "fix" removed.

(times are approximate and quotes are embellished)
• 6:30pm - They've sent a build. We've loaded the phone. We hit the road so we can go to the testing area, which is out in the middle of nowhere because that's the only place where the coverage is crap enough to cause the issue we need to test.
• 7:00pm - I get a call.

  "Hey Grant, that build we gave you? We built it wrong. Can you download another one? We'll have it ready in an hour."

  "What? Dude, we're 45 minutes from the office. If we go back we're not going out again."

  "Is there anywhere you can download it?"

  "What, like an internet cafe or something? I don't know, I don't live here."

  At this point our driver from Manpower says, "We're not far from my house. We can stop by and you can try to use my wireless connection..."
• 7:45pm - We've been hanging at the driver's house where he lives with his mom and her two (racing-rescued) greyhounds. It smells like dog but she's quite nice and the dogs are very well-behaved and friendly. More importantly, the driver's wireless is hella fast. The build from Chicago is ready and I get it and load the phones.
• 8:00pm - We hit the road. Again.
• 8:30pm - Where the hell are we? We're not lost, but it's like a freaking jungle here. This is British BFE. We're driving down a kinda-paved one-lane road that looks like we're in a tunnel made from tree trunks and leaves. If I wasn't pissed off and tired, it'd be kinda cool. Most importantly, 3G coverage sucks here (and no where else, apparently), so we can test the thing that got broke.
• 10:00pm - Done. After a bunch of driving back and forth and making calls, Chicago is satisfied that it works as well as it did before whoever idiots broke it.
• 11:00pm - Back at the office. Time to send emails!

So generally, that sucked. It's Saturday morning and I'm not on a plane. I'm back in the office. They will send another build, the "official-release-for-real-this-time" build, and we will drive back out to British BFE to test the same crap again. What they didn't tell us yesterday was that the build won't ready until Chicago morning-time, which is afternoon here. So what do I do until then? I guess you're looking at it.

A reader asks:

... how come you don’t have any pictures of you and your fiancé on YOUR website? I think the only one of your family that I have seen was a cat.

So how's this blast from the past? The pic below would have been probably Spring 2000. This is the first and last time I've ever been seriously hammered. It's my cousin's fault really. And Kathy's.

The story goes... One day Kathy mentions to my cousin Josh that she's never seen me drunk. Josh, ever the opportunist, asks if she wants him to make that happen. The reasoning behind this (and I'm not sure this isn't a story Josh came up with later to cover Kathy) is that my dad could be jerky when he got drunk and she wanted to know if I had the same tendency. So he had me and another friend of ours do shots against each other.

So how am I when I'm drunk? The answer was: really lame. I pretty much spent the evening self-administering sobriety tests to see how drunk I was. You know, touching my nose with outstretched hands, seeing if I could walk across the room without stumbling, etc. Eventually I passed out, of course.

Not a recent photo.

I remember resting on Kathy's lap for a minute. I was later told that this minute lasted more than an hour.

I can definitely understand wanting to maintain a good buzz, but I completely don't understand the appeal of drinking more than that. "Oh, you mean you black out and then you feel like hell the next day? Sounds great, sign me up!"

This stumper is inspired by a guy at work. I haven't actually met him, but I pass his workstation sometimes on my way to the lab.

Context: You have been hired as a contractor for a major consumer electronics firm in some kind of software support position. It is a temporary assignment, but presumably you'd like to impress people so if the department gets an opening, you'd be under consideration and could score some kind of full-time job. There is no official dress code, but most people conform to a dress-casual style.

The Question: What do you wear to work?

1. A dress shirt and some "nice" jeans
2. A sweater and some slacks
3. A suit and tie
4. A well-worn black t-shirt with a large Magic: The Gathering logo surrounded with swords and flames, worn multiple times per week

Stumped? Here's a hint: you also have significant b.o.

A couple weekends ago I went to Wizard World ChicagoOriginal url was http://www.wizarduniverse.com/conventions/chicago.cfm. I've never been to a comic convention before, but I figured why not? Though I am a comic book reader, I didn't really care about any of the guests (mostly comic creators, wrestlers, and B-list or has-been actors), but what else was I doing on a Saturday morning? So I made the trek out to the Donald E. Stephens Convention CenterOriginal url was http://www.rosemont.com/meeting/meet_desc.shtml.

And I have to say, it was fun. Lots of dealers, lots of stuff, lots of people in good and not-so-good costume. I was happy to find that the mythical phenomenon of fanboy-BO was not true at all; in fact, I did not catch a single whiff of body funk the whole day. (I hear that it's in full effect at another con, however.) I walked out of there with a backpack full of books and comics bought all on the cheap, though I guess the discount is greatly lessened when I factor in the ticket and parking costs.

I don't have any cool stories, so I'll just move on to the most interesting part: pictures of people in costumes! Yes, if you want to see elves, Imperial Stormtroopers, and out-of-shape Ghostbusters all under one roof, you need to go to a comic convention.

You know you want to see more.

The voters didn't choose you. You lost.

(File this story under: turbo-nerd.)

Even though it doesn't come out until July 4, 2007, and shooting has barely started, I think it's still a solid bet that the Transformers live-action movieDead: transformerslive.com is gonna suck. Let's look at the evidence:

• It's being directed by that ass-clown Michael Bay.
• All of the screenwriters (Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci, John Rogers) have a proven track record of pumping out nothing but shit. Need examples? How about Catwoman? Need more? Mission: Impossible 3, The Island, The Core, The Legend Of Zorro.

Seriously, if you're looking to produce a massive big-budget would-be blockbuster that audiences will totally ignore, these are your guys! You know what's crazier? Steven Spielberg himself is an executive producer, so it's a plausible assumption that he had to greenlight these guys. That would mean he actually thinks these imbeciles are good choices!

Unfortunately, no matter how bad they botch this up, the movie will still make a crapload of money and these guys will think they totally did a rockin' good job. And if the effects are as good as these European car ads, my money will no doubt be contributing to that undesirable conclusion.

As evidenced by the fact that I even care about all this, you've no doubt figured out that I'm a fan of the old Transformers cartoon. (The 80s one, I mean, none of the more recent anime-influenced junk.) I'm avid enough to have the DVDs and some toys and some comic books, but not quite lame enough to put the Autobots decalOriginal url was http://www.oldglory.com/lp/product/~tcategory_id=OG_TYPE_1200/~product_id=017751CTDE on my car (though did I consider it some years ago). So I really want this movie to rock. I want to see giant transforming robots fighting with each other and I want the story to be slightly better than the half-hour cartoons that were mainly produced with the intent to sell (awesome) toys.

But at least one good detail has emerged. Friday at the San Diego Comic-Con it was announced that Peter Cullen, the original voice of Optimus Prime, will reprise his roleOriginal url was http://filmforce.ign.com/articles/720/720477p1.html for this film. The fact that this was even in question for the past 6+ months shows that the creative staff doesn't know what they're developing. Not casting this guy as Prime would be like shooting a Gettysburg movie and casting Justin Timberlake as Abraham Lincoln beacuse it'll be a dynamic revisioning of the character that will appeal better to the target 18-32 demographic. In other words, dork blasphemy. (Unfortuately, we'd probably still buy tickets even then. But we'd be cursing as we did so.)

Postscript: While "researching" this post, I found something that is awesome to an unholy degree. Behold, a 40 foot statue of Optimus PrimeOriginal url was http://www.karateparty.org/content/view/387/37/ has been erected in the southern China province of Yunnan. I'm... wow. Wow.

Hot on the heels of my Electric Six post, here's another:

Do you want to see a crazy internet video featuring the president? What if it is set to Electric Six's "Gay Bar"? Yes, of course you do.

Crazy internet video featuring Bush, Blair, and "Gay Bar".

Me and Kathy saw the Electric Six last week (7/6) at the House of Blues. I think they've gotten even better since the last show we saw.

Technically, the show was for The Psychedelic Furs, with the Six merely in the opening slot. This was emphasized by how unimpressed the crowd was by the Six. Clearly, Psychedelic Furs fans suck. Which reminds me:

Open letter to fat asswipe Psychedelic Furs fan who was up front near the stage:

Dear asswipe,

Yeah, you, the big guy in the tan/brown horizontally striped Banana Republic polo shirt. You're an asshole. If you don't care about the opening band, why didn't you let the short blond girl E6 fan behind you get in front of you? I witnessed her ask you nicely, and I also witnessed you curtly rebuff her. What the hell. She would have let you have your precious spot back when the Furs came on; she probably didn't know who the Furs even are. (Hell, I don't.)

Why do you need to be so close to the stage anyway? Seriously, it's not like anything would impede your vision. You're huge! You've gotta be near 30 -- aren't you past the age where it's totally awesome that you touched the lead singer's hand when he reached into the crowd?

And how can you stand motionless during an entire set by the opening band? Really, I don't think you even tapped your foot. Normal humans usually have a reaction to rhythm, even if they don't necessarily like the music. You were a rock. You are also a tool. And tell the skinny guy next to you, who also rebuffed the blond girl, that he sucks too.

You're an ass,
Grant Birchmeier

So E6 played a great set, but the Furs fans didn't seem to care much. Some of them looked like they were getting into it, but not enough. Unfortunately, E6's set was running long, and the club cut them off before they could start their last track, which kinda sucked. No "Dance Commander" for us. And hey House of Blues guys, if I wanted to stand around an extra half-hour, I'd come earlier. If your web site says the show starts at 8:30, don't start it at 9.

We were comparatively young compared to the rest of the crowd. I don't expect that anymore, but I guess it makes sense when the headliner was on the Pretty in Pink soundtrack. I can't say how the Furs sounded, or even give an opinion on them in general, because I'm pretty sure I've never heard them. This was a Thursday night, and we had to work the next morning, so screw 'em. We left.

The Electric Six have a kinda bar rock sound on their first album, Fire. If you could personify lyrics, this album would be a skeezy guy at a singles bar who thinks he's Mr. Smooth. The lyrics are irreverent, and some might dismiss them as novelty, which I understand but would disagree with. Recurring themes are dancing and fire.

The second album, Señor Smoke, is marginally more serious and shows some musical growth. It includes a cover of Queen's "Radio Ga Ga" that sounds pretty good, and the video is quite over the top, to say the least. Dancing is still a prevalent theme, though fire is not.

The upcoming third album, Switzerland should be a marked departure from the previous two in that none of the song titles will contain the word "dance". I'm eagerly awaiting it.

There are a significant number of American fruit loops who are trying to hasten the end times. Yeah, you're like, "So? Crazy cults." No, these are straight-up fundamentalist Christians. And there's lots of them.

Stay with me here, I find this kind of hilarious.

For thousands of years, prophets have predicted the end of the world. Today, various religious groups, using the latest technology, are trying to hasten it.

Their endgame is to speed the promised arrival of a messiah.

For some Christians this means laying the groundwork for Armageddon.

With that goal in mind, mega-church pastors recently met in Inglewood to polish strategies for using global communications and aircraft to transport missionaries to fulfill the Great Commission: to make every person on Earth aware of Jesus' message. Doing so, they believe, will bring about the end, perhaps within two decades.

This collective stupidity is so significant that these retards are affecting foreign policy:

"I'm grateful for all the wonderful Christian angels wanting to help us," Solomon [spokesman for Jerusalem's Temple Institute] added, acknowledging the political support from "Christians who are now Israel's best lobbyists in the United States."

Intrigued? Read the story:
'End Times' Religious Groups Want Apocalypse Soon

What is it that makes these nutjobs think they need to see Revelations performed first-hand? Are they worried that they'll miss the show? Is the Virgin Mary potato chipOriginal url was http://www.sptimes.com/2005/06/08/Neighborhoodtimes/An_image_of_Jesus__Al.shtml not strong enough evidence of God's love? Are they seeking an affirmation of faith that only the emergence of the Antichrist can provide?

Does a redneck cattle-farmer in Mississippi believe that God's ready to hang it up any day now, if only some yahoo would hurry up and breed some red cows already? In fact, that's exactly true! "Something deep in my heart says God wants me to be a blessing to Israel," Lott said in a telephone interview. Good luck with that, chief.

I kinda like the Jewish/Isreali reaction, which is basically, "Yeah, you're crazy, and you think we're hellbound, but we'll take your help and money anyway." Which is exactly the correct response, I think.

Jerk.

My cat Pedro is smart, but only when he's a dick. He recently discovered how to start the vacuum. See, we have one of those RoombasOriginal url was http://store.irobot.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2172860. You know, the robot vacuum? Right. Until recently we just let it sit on the floor in the charging dock. It's under a chair, it's out of the way, it's always charged.

If you clicked on the link, you saw our Roomba model. It's really easy to use. You just push that "Clean" button on top and it starts going. It's so easy, even a cat could do it. A devious, bastard, asshole cat. At 3am. So easy that he can do it again 15 minutes after you turn it off and redock it. (That's a mistake I only made once.) So easy that he'll still remember how the next afternoon.

"Aren't cats usually afraid of vacuums?" you ask. I thought so too. No. Pedro is broken.

Last night me and Kathy caught Thank You For Smoking. You've probably seen the previews already; yes, it is that funny. Hilarious, and the story is solid from start to finish. You should check it out.

I saw this bumper-sticker Sunday on the back of a pick-up I was stuck behind:

It's God's job to forgive Bin Ladin...
It's our job to arrange the meeting!
          -United States Marine Corps

I think I saw Jesus say something like that in the New Testament somewhere. I think it was in the Gospel of Luke.

And Jesus spaketh: "Whosoever is thine enemy, you shall put thine bullets in his head with great glee, and know that it pleases my dad."

I had an unexpectedly good time at the Little Brown Jug in Fruitport on Saturday. Now, I always thought the Little Brown Jug was a dungy little bar, but then again, I'd never actually been in there. It's actually pretty nice in there! And I saw a few pretty sweet mullets.

So why was I at LBJ? To see my friends' band OutletTheir site was "OutletMuskegon.com", of course. They're pretty much a cover band, but they sounded pretty good. And their hard version of Cream's "The White Room" was pretty sweet. Wish I'd brought earplugs, though. My ears were ringing all the next day. (Here's Outlet's MySpace pageTheir MySpace was http://myspace.com/whatsyouroutlet.)

This was followed by late breakfast at the RendezvousCan't remember what this link was: http://www.michigan.org/travel/detail.asp?m=&p=G16262, Grand Haven's premier late night hotspot for chain-smoking rebel high schoolers and the young adults they become. In other words, the perfect place for a bunch of old high school friends to sober up and visit without screaming over speakers. When I entered I was stumbling a bit, but when I left I was walking just fine. Of course, by then it was almost 5am.

Frankly, that was one of the most fun nights I've had in quite a while.

I turned 27 yesterday. 27 feels like the age where that you realize that, if you tried to pick up college chicks, instead of seeming like a horny college guy, you might seem like a skeezy out-of-place older guy. At 26, you're still possibly legitimate in that setting. 27? No. That time is over for you.

Pitchshifter has a clip of a new song up! And it's good!

I guess this doesn't necessarily mean they'll get back together beyond their 5-show UK tour, but one can only hope. At the very least I hope that EP will get to the states somehow.

I saw The Matador like 2 or 3 weeks ago. Pierce Brosnan is a hitman who strikes up a friendship with salesman Greg Kinnear while they're both on business in Mexico. I thought it slowed down just a bit in the middle, but the ending makes up for it.

Hopefully you can still catch it. Wish I'd mentioned this when it was newly released.

I like seeing Brosnan in non-Bond roles. Seen The Tailor of Panama? He's good there, too. That character is like the skeezy other side of the Bond coin.

Most web page makers know that Internet Explorer is a pain in the butt. IE hasn't been updated in a long time, and its support for CSS2 is not very good. Every other major browser such as Opera (my personal preference), Firefox, and KHTML-based Safari (Mac) and Konquerer (Linux/KDE) has better support for standards than IE. Of course, none are perfect, but all are better than IE.

Here's a ridiculous list of IE bugsArticle is gone: http://www.positioniseverything.net/explorer.html that some internet ninja has compiled, to back me up. I'm not just hatin'.

I'm not gonna cater to one buggy outdated browser, so instead I found a neat featureArticle is gone: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/workshop/author/dhtml/overview/ccomment_ovw.asp (found via this pageLong gone: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/bobosola/index.htm) in IE that makes it easy for me to put in HTML that only IE users will see without me resorting to server-side tricks. If you're using IE, you're seeing it right now. The rest of you can look at the page source or something.

As you can see, I did some redesign. I dub this layout "Nuclear Sunburn". Two people have already told me it's too orange or too yellow. That means success!

I'm still tweaking the colors.

Yesterday I was poking through my server logs and found that some kid on Myspace was using one of my images as his background image.

For those not in the know, MyspaceRIP is a big web blog service where millions of high schoolers can share their love of ugly web pages and leave pointless comments for each other. Also some goodIt was Electric Six's Myspace page bandsIt was The October's Myspace page* use it to communicate with fans.

So anyway, people with sites should know that it's a little chancey to link images that are hosted elsewhere. The host can change or remove the image at any time. Or perhaps a clever host might change the image to something obscene or embarrassing. For instance, this kid on MyspaceHis MySpace was http://www.myspace.com/dominican____guitarist found the image that he originally linked (my image) replaced with something far scarierThis link was just the same kid's page again.. (Beware the Frans Ferdinand!)

If he's noticed by now, then my fun is probably spoiled and you won't see my havoc.

At first I was going to change it to some balls or something, but I figured that was probably too crass. And I'm 26, so that really shouldn't be so funny anymore (even though it is). Regardless, this is much funnier.

Saw this in the New York Times today:

RULES COULD ALLOW GUANTÁNAMO EXECUTIONS The Army has issued new regulations for carrying out military executions that could allow the death penalty to be administered at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where more than 500 foreign terrorism suspects are being held. The regulations, issued last week, give the secretary of the Army authority to designate locations for military executions, replacing old rules that required them to take place at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. That could open the way for executions of detainees at Guantánamo, although none of the 10 prisoners there who have been charged with war crimes are facing capital punishment. A law signed by President Bush in December bars federal courts from hearing habeas corpus petitions from Guantánamo detainees challenging their confinement. Eugene Fidell, a Washington specialist in military law, said the Bush administration might have feared that bringing detainees to the United States for execution would allow them to challenge their sentences in federal court once they were no longer at Guantánamo. DAVID S. CLOUD (NYT)

I heard on the radio this morning that Richard Dean Anderson is 56 years old today. Fifty-six.

I wonder if MacGyver would have seemed less cool to me 15 years ago had I known that he was older than my mom.

I was bored while waiting for a compile to finish at work the other day, so I decided to see what sites are located at variations of my name. (Yeah, as I said, I was bored.)

First up, I tried "grant" with various extensions.

• Grant.com is nothing to anyone without a login, so that's a dead end.
• Grant.org - index of links to a few sites, such as "E.J. Grant Antiques", and some people who may or may not have the last name "Grant".
• Grant.net is a squatter.
• Grant.tv - Whoa-ho! Adult links! Actually a squatter also.

Next, "grantb". Not many hits for this one.

• http://grantb.org/Nothing there anymore Grantb.org looks like it was set up by some guy to use a file-post. If you want kite-flying links or home movies that feature a woman washing a dog, this is the place to go. A WHOIS lookup says the owner is "Brett Grant". "Brett Grant"="grantb"? What the hell? Is that the best you could come up with?
• Grantb.com is for sale for only 490 Euros! I would have taken this name for this site but it was at the time owned by "Grant Brookfield" (if I remember correctly), an Aussie who only used it as an email domain. I might pay 20 bucks for it, but 490 Euros? Good luck with that.

Lastly, "birchmeier". Not much here either.

• Birchmeier.com - Is this my heritage?

  Birchmeier is a Swiss company with a proud tradition which extends back 130 years. The company specialises in the manufacture and marketing of spraying and foaming equipment for garden, industrial and cleaning/hygiene applications. High-quality products and a rigorous customer focus are the basis of our ever-growing number of satisfied customers in over 40 countries around the world. Find out more about our company and our products on this website. Thank you for your interest!

• Birchmeier.net - uh? The automated translation is "The web page of the family Birchmeier is view at present in preparation favor you later once again past." I'll have to check back later once again past.

  2024 update: Now it's a woman's recipe site, with a pretty slick design!

This page may temporarily look like hell throughout the week (and perhaps the next). I'm working on some formatting details...

On the other hand, even when the formatting is "fixed" it might still look like hell. I'm a programmer, not a graphic designer!

I noted this article awhile ago, but just didn't get around to posting it here until now.

Scientific American: Mapping Households Reveals Immigrants Are "Us" Not "Them"

The gist is that traditional stats have a limited view of what counts as an immigrant household, such as whether the head-of-household is an immigrant. This count is no good because it would exclude a household where a US-citizen head of household marries an immigrant. Go ahead and read it, it's not long.

So, check out the map graphic and the caption. The bottom map includes households with kids and grandkids of immigrants and suddenly the whole country looks more diverse.

Except the Deep South. Yeah, I know, stereotypically, these are the redneck states, insert your joke here. But seriously, that cluster has the only dark blue states on that map. Alaska has a higher percentage of immigrants (though most of its population is in big cities so maybe that makes sense). But what about North Dakota? Montana? There's nothing there! Why would immigrants go there?! The Deep South has agriculture, and population centers. Why is the immigrant percentage so low? Does this support the notion that the South is not friendly to outsiders?

It's a FujiFilm FinePix A345. Nothing fancy, I'm no photographer. I just wanted something cheap and adequate. And it works great with Linux.

The black and white cat is Pedro. His specialty is waking me up at 5am (6am DST, no joke). He's "my" cat. The other one, Honey, is "Kathy's" cat. I'm sure that you've now learned more about my cats than you wanted to.

I rented Kung Fu Hustle on Saturday. What I expected was a wacky CGI-enhanced Kung Fu parody. What I got was perhaps one of the best movies I've ever seen that also happens to be a CGI-enhanced Kung Fu comedy. Kathy agrees.

The storyline is epic yet absurd, and the atmosphere is surprisingly bizarre and surreal but not pretentious. The CGI is well used (and perhaps is more acceptable because it's a comedy). I only wish I'd seen it in the theatre. I have a feeling that it should properly be seen on the big screen.

Fantastic concert, that was.

First opener was The OctoberDead link: theoctober.com. Sounded good. They also covered Simple Minds' "Don't You (Forget About Me)", and damn, sounded just like Simple Minds. I picked up their disc; I haven't listened yet, but only because Kathy loves it and hasn't given it back.

Second opener was LaPush. They also sounded good. Have the CD, haven't listened to it yet. Kathy says it's pretty good.

Next up, Tobi Kai and the StraysDead link: tobikai.com. They're edgy. I know this because Tobi looked skanky and said "fuck" a lot. And the band members wore faux Boy Scout uniforms with Troop designation 666. If you like cock rock you might like them. I sure didn't. Couldn't wait until they finished.

And then Gravity Kills came out and rocked like they never stopped touring. Great set, though I was hoping they'd throw out something new. Instead, it could have been the same playlist from the last tour. But they rocked it, and it was hella fun. And they might do it again next year.

In the meantime, Gravity Kills are planning on putting rarities and other stuff on their redesigned sitegravitykills.com is long dead. There may be a DVD available. And Jeff the lead singer is working on a new project, Star-13star13music.com is long dead.

I'm totally geeked. Gravity Kills, my favorite band until they broke up in Jan '03, are playing a reunion show on Oct 28. Sure, it's in St. Louis, but now that I live in Chicago that's only like a 5-hour drive. And I'll have to take a day off from work. Totally worth it.

See, I was a hardcore fan of these guys. How hardcore? In college I made this fansite (and I'm not ashamed today), which led to meeting the band. At one show I hung out with the band on their tour bus for like 2 hours. Good guys, they are. Damn, that was like 6 years ago.

My job hasn't sent me out-of-town in almost a year. But now they're talking about sending some of us out again. Timing, huh? I think I'm safe, but I need to nail this date down at work to be sure. No work-travel for Grant.

Anyway, I have live mp3s of the band, if you want to hear what's got me buzzing. Industrial-rock-pop, I guess you could say they are. Lots of samples and guitars, but no heavy-metal screaming. Check 'em out.

I'm changing everything. Coding a new backend. In Perl, no less.

Now you can watch the slow plodding progression of my work on this site.

• This web design sucks. Still. And it probably doesn't show up right in your browser.
• I'm working on a backend. Yes, I'm rolling a new CMS. And this page will be redesigned, obviously.
• The 40 Year Old Virgin was pretty funny. I recommend it.
• Broken Flowers was really slow. And the ending was abrupt, to say the least. I like Bill Murray, but I can't really recommend this one.
• Why am I bothering to explain what's going on? No one's visiting this page anyway.
• I'm really gonna put those comics on eBay sometime. Any day now. Really.
• Opera is totally free (as in gratis) now. No ad banners anymore. It is better than whatever web browser you're using right now. You should give it a shot.

I'm beginning the process of selling a bunch of my old crap on eBay. First, I'm starting with some old White Wolf RPG books, but soon I'll move on to a bunch of my old comic books. Interested? Here's my current eBay auctionsThis was once a link to my eBay seller profile., and here's the stuff that I eventually want to get rid ofI used to have a page "grantb.net/ebay".

In other news, I'm still working on this page layout. The problem is, the only browser that shows my page right is Opera! I don't know why I bother with standards. Microsoft is the worst offender, actually. They weren't even improving IE until Firefox started gaining share. I'll finish this rant another day.