Blog of Billy

Three pounds of red meat, a couple of beers, an animated stripper/super-heroine, and a nap. God bless America. The only bit of Americana that I didn't get to partake in was a trip out fishing. Luckily, this weekend marks the 7th annual Okie Noodling Tournament down at Bob's Pig Shop in Pauls Valley. I might just have to find me a pickup and mosey on down there, take advantage of Oklahoma being one of only 5 states to specifically legalize such a high-brow pastime. Keep in mind that noodling is not "fishing" in the classic "rod, reel, tackle, etc" sense. No, this tournament will be for those with a bit more personal interest in catfish. Imagine that a certain rouge cou wades out into a river, trying to find animal holes in the riverbed. Imagine further that once one is found, the "angler" sticks her/his hand into the hole, hoping and praying that there's not a snapping turtle or snake or anything deadly down there, and simply a catfish who may find the hand tasty. Then the fisherfolk (overwhelmingly masculine, but as the Girls Gone Grabblin' video would have us know, there is representation of the feminine as well) grabs the catfish or whatever else may have been in the hole and hauls it to the surface, claiming it as a catch, minus whatever skin and digits may still be in the water. I know B. Moyer would be interested, and with recent events in his life, there's not much more of his finger to lose.

Congratulations to mama on her first tattoo. It's been an Okie kind of week.

Cat-napping on the porch swing.

I'm back to running a few times a week. After my vegetarian episode, I had actually gained a few pounds, and lost some muscle tone. Apparently I was supposed to eat protein during that phase? I'm also waking up early, and being at work by 7 a.m. It's like the start of a whole new healthy adult Billy. I'm really scared.

A recent trip to Othello's in Norman reminded me that there need to be more good Italian restaurants, and fewer mediocre ones.

Why do they advertise the Lucerne on facebook? Is it to make me want one even more? Am I not the only college student who dreams of "precisely what the critics are raving about"?

Probably the biggest change in the last couple of weeks is the replacement of my old N400 with a shiny black A900. Ole' Flippy was starting to have problems with her power cord that kept her from staying awake for more than a couple of hours. Surprisingly, that's the first thing that annoyed me about the A900. The rundown:

Goodness

• Still in color
• The mini-screen is growing on me
• Crazy-fast and lots of memory for J2ME. I have a little sky chart and Opera for Pete's sake.
• Better access to previous calls. One-touch for recent missed, incoming, and outgoing.
• An alarm clock with a snooze!
• I can jump to phonebook entries from my recent calls list.
• SMS text messaging. No more stupid website thing.
• MP3 playing. It's not really nice, but it's enough to keep me from buying an iPod Mini.
• Camera. We'll see how much use it gets.
• Bluetooth. We'll see how much use it gets. Probably more than the camera.
• Even more little web things than I could hope for.

Unfortunateness

• The worst part is the power cord. It's giant and sticks out the side. When it's plugged into the car charger, there is no way to hold it to your head comfortably. there's also no way to set it down flat on its back without bending the little plastic cover piece. It's really annoying.
• The second worst is the lack of any useful punctuation in the T9Word method of typing. They actually took out things like the question mark in the revisions between the N400 and the new one.
• Still no info on the duration of a call
• It's a full-on flip phone. I gave up on the thin sliders once the guy at the Sprint Store told me that there would be no such new ones in the near future.

Al McAffrey seems to be a pretty good guy. He's running for State House in D88. He's also openly gay. I got the opportunity to shake his hand and such while marching with him in the pride parade, something I haven't gotten to do in 5 years or so. It was a lot of energetic fun. I like his politics, but whatever joker did the website doesn't seem to know much about browsers. Either way, if you're in that district, and vote, you should give him a look.

Absence of reference in this blog should not be taken as a slight.

Would I could afford to buy my love a fine gown,
Made of gold and silk Arabian thread.
But I am dead and gone and laying in a church ground.

First off, all those who are pleased by the local music scene, and those who find ear-filling rock to be a good way to spend some time, give a listen to Fist of Five.

I'm done at the Worx. The guy I was replacing has come back, and now there's nothing to do but bill for my time.

After reading a bit at a friend's suggestion, I've come to the conclusion that net neutrality is a genuinely good thing. The argument for it is that it is antithetical to both the spirit and practice of the Internet to try and create a "higher tier" of netizens. I can still remember a speech I got from Clayton Liabraaten at an old OKCPCUG meeting. He pointed out that the real power of the Internet is that it is the great equalizer. Your bits are treated exactly as well as anyone else's bits. That's part of the power, and how such lowly sites as the Drudge Report and the old Google can compete with the likes of The New York Times and Microsoft. I think this has been an incredibly powerful and useful model that is the base for all the wonderful things the Internet has given us. Stripping out that base prevents new forms of powerful equality (blogs? webcasts?) and gets us dangerously close to the "short haul-long haul" problems of the last century. The arguments against it are basically two-fold. First, there's the claim that this will slow down development of certain broadband services, like VoIP and broadband video. Not only is this not true (proper use of QoS and faster compression mechanisms make both eminently useable even now), but there's something that kind of hurts my little Communist/Christian heart about starting the "forget the rest of the world, I want nice things for me" mantra already. The rest of the (reasonable) arguments I've seen are all in the generic vein of government regulation bad. Even if you think the free market is a good idea, keep in mind that cable companies are a monopoly, so there are no market forces at work if they start to do sketchy things. In Oklahoma, I can't get cable Internet access from Comcast if I get mad at Cox, and companies acting on their own generally can't be trusted. Besides, if Barak Obama agrees, I can't be too far from correct.

I found my black rimmed sunglasses. Yay!

It's always hard to disappoint, especially when the disappointee is someone who you honestly do care for. Luckily, the nights always get better.

Don't ask me how I know.

I hear the plaintive cries of the people. You may proceed to fulfill the deep-seated urge to proclaim my hotness.

I had one of my rather entertaining bizarre dreams this weekend. It started out trying to get my brother (who, in the dream, is 7) into a Chuck E. Cheese's brand restaurant / video game parlor. I and someone else (I think Madeline) were told by the bouncer that unless we accompanied a child under 5, we could not come in. Luckily, there was a loophole in that if we were only coming in to do laundry, we could. I dashed out to my car and grabbed some bags of dirty clothes, and in we went. After what seemed like 15 minutes of driving around in the golf cart through the chapel in the back of Chuck E. Cheese, we went out to the video game area to see a bunch of college kids. It was nearing closing time, so we all decided to go to a party in a nearby apartment complex. There was festivity, and music, and adult beverages, and the like. Patrick and I swooned the ladies, and I met some guy who claims to have graduated from Memorial in 2002. At 4:15, people decided to settle in, and Patrick and I decided to go for some mini-golf. We ran through the elderlys' apartments, and finally came to the sunken pit where the mini-golf course was. It was ringed with railroad ties acting as a retaining wall, and still pitch black from the hour. We hopped in, and found the putters immediately. Off in the corner was a bucket of balls, and I went to go grab one. Before I stuck my hand in, I realized that there was a copperhead in the bucket. I started freaking out. I realized that everywhere I looked, there were writhing snakes. There was a waterfall to one side of the mini-golf course, and I realized that one of the boulders that made it up was actually a snake's head when it opened its jaws and snapped at the air. Patrick and I jumped out of the pit and onto the retaining wall. There he had a trio of newborn black kittens curled up in a ball. I heard him say the words "Don't forget the panic." Somehow, I knew that he was referring to a collection of kittens as a "panic." Immediately after, one fell into the pit, and I saw three snakes slithering toward its helpless little form. That's when I woke up, with a quickened pulse and disquieted sense of reality.

I found out only this weekend at the yearly McDowell family reunion that my grandfather's pickup line that worked on his latest (and by all indications most stable) wife was "Can I buy you a cup of coffee?" Some things never change.

I cannot eat the last package of a certain flavor of Pez until all the other flavors are down to their last package as well. This goes along with a psychosis I've had ever since dinner was two-portion-controlled during my childhood. It's probably the only way that 5 kids could be fed for so many years, but that doesn't stop me from keeping the stale Cinnamon Toasters in the bottom of the bag until even I can't take it and have to throw them away.

There is a faster way to find out

With Patrick back in town from Santa Fe, (along with Mom and her Harley) and sporting a new bodily accoutrement from a combination of the efforts of a New Mexican artiste de tatouage and the I'm-sure-it-looks-fantastic work of Mme. Tamara de Limpicka, I've found myself going up to the local billiards parlor with him and CB and reviving my game. Back a few months ago, I found myself in search of an impulse buy with some spare money I found in a paycheck. Academy ended up with my labor-value in its coffers, but for now I'm able to walk in to places 100% guaranteed that I will have a straight cue, and in a rather striking case, if I do say so myself. The personal cue seems to have only helped my game; I was up almost 40 dollars-American on the boy before an unfortunate break in a double-or-nothing game by my partner set everything back to even. I ended the evening up but a single dollar, and a cheerful smirk. Truth be told, though, all I really need for entertainment is someone to hang out with me and watch Firefly.

Also an aficionado of the old slate, I've spent today reading the blog of Cornelius Bear. Humorous and high-brow. I love it.

Geeky clothing? Never!

My other bit of news is that I accidently found myself in a second job. It seems that the young gent that the Worx got to fill in for me there at the end has taken ill, and needs a bit of surgery. So, for the next two weeks, I'm back in the website game, as an outside consultant. We'll see how well that goes, though I do enjoy walking into a place already knowing where everything is, and how their technology is set up. It's kind of nostalgic that way.

Take me out to the black.
Tell 'em I ain't coming back.