Blog – Page 41 – john paganetti

To Do:

Ain’t Gonna Work by Leftover Salmon
[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/los1996-03-16.flac16/los1996-03-16d1t01_64kb.mp3]

So after my first week of class, I’m enjoying things here. I’ve got a three day week, with four classes on Tuesday and Thursday, and only one on Wednesday. That leaves me with a four day weekend again this semester, so I’ve got to remember to do something with it this time around.

I honestly don’t remember what I used my long weekends for last semester, but that probably just means I was hanging out, listening to music or playing games. Not gonna do that again (listen to this ambitious talk). I’m going to use my weekends for productive things.

Buy a bus
Convert the bus
Learn banjo
Get Landshark moving again
Write/film 4D:TVGS
Homework, maybe

That sounds possible, I guess.

Project Chanology

Victory Song by Keller Williams
[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/kw2007-08-11.km184.v2.flac16/kw2007-08-11.flac16/kw2007-08-11d2t02_64kb.mp3]

I’m really really enjoying the recent feud between Anonymous and Scientology. I’ve never really liked either of these groups, and seeing them trying to destroy each other is far more fun than anything playing on TV this year.

In case you haven’t been paying attention, anon has been bugging Scientology for a while now, but this recent spit is about Scientology trying to remove a video of Tom Cruise from the internet. Anon responded to this with DDoS attacks, and that video in the above wired article. What prompted me to make this post is the image that’s shown up recently (today?).

Now that’s just plain fun. I really can’t wait to see what happens.
more press

Instant Gratification

John: I just realized that I don’t get to chat with the rest of your family by proxy anymore
Joe: sometimes i relay quotes from our IMs to other people, on IM or in conversation later
John: but I want instant gratification!
Joe: maybe later

Frustration

Its understandable that sellers think highly of their buses, because of the original price they likely paid for them. But as soon as these buses get on in years, they lose value considerably. The average prices on these things is around $2000. Lately, the average reserve is higher.
I’ve seen dozens of buses […]

I’ve seen dozens of buses on eBay end without sale. So many, any of which I would have gladly bought. Sellers are setting reserve prices higher than they will ever get. This is the main problem I’ve had buying buses so far. 7 auctions have ended in which I was the high bidder, but the reserve price wasn’t met. Its starting to bug me. I just wish sellers could start setting realistic reserve prices so auctions would end with a winner.

Rosebud

New Soul by Yael Naim
[audio:http://neurotoxik.free.fr/mp3/yael%20naim%20-%20yael%20naim%20(2007)/yael%20naim%20-%2003%20-%20new%20soul.mp3]

I got to go sledding yesterday for the first time in years. I don’t know why, but of all the things I do in the winter, I haven’t gone sledding since I went to college. With some friends, we went exploring Wesleyan’s campus for decent hills, staircases, and other things with an incline.

We got a good amount of sledding in, and were cold and wet by the end of it, but the best run of the day for me was my first. Dan and I got there before the others, and ran out to the street so we could sled down there before the plow trucks came. I had wanted to do something similar this last new year’s eve, since they were calling for snow, and I figured most everyone would be off the streets. Unfortunately, it never snowed, and I didn’t get that chance. But sledding headfirst down the middle of a road is every bit as fun as it sounds. Next time, we’ll have to try and find an even steeper hill.

Sidenote, I’ve been listening to Yael Naim all day. Her song is featured in the new Macbook Air commercial, which is what turned me on to her. Give her stuff a listen, its worth it.

INVISIBLE MAN!

/obscure

Triple Feature

Anyone Else But You as done by Michael Cera and Ellen Page
[audio:http://music.hxc-host.com/Juno%20Soundtrack/19-Anyone-Else-But-You.mp3,http://music.hxc-host.com/Juno%20Soundtrack/17-Anyone-Else-But-You.mp3]

Got to see three movies today, which is lucky for a lot of reasons. First, its pretty rare that there are three movies worth seeing in theaters at a given time. Second, Destinta is a good place for theater hopping. Its pretty easy to get around undetected, but even if someone was to notice us, they really don’t care.

First up was Sweeny Todd, which we all had already seen, and enjoyed. Its still good on a second viewing. I’d love to get the soundtrack to that movie.

Speaking of soundtracks, after Sweeny Todd we saw Juno, which also has a really good soundtrack (see above). Juno is an all around good movie, although at times painfully indie (ultra-obscure references, use of the word ‘wizard’ to describe something as cool, and of course: the soundtrack). Juno is worth seeing, so do that.

Lastly, we went to the Bucket List. Also a good movie, with two incredible actors, and an amazing closing line. Didn’t beat Juno, but it is a good movie that you ought to see at some point. That’s kind of a given because Morgan Freeman is in it, but think of this as a confirmation that, yes, it is good.

I like theater hopping on such a big scale, but its kind of draining. I can deal with the sitting for long periods of time, but my eyes were getting tired. I don’t know if I’d be able to do four (I’ve only done three once before). We had planned on seeing four, but Destinta isn’t playing In The Name Of The King.

Anyway, there are good movies out – take advantage of this rare occurrence.

Ugh

The Arrival by Codename
[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/codename2008-01-03.at4040.sbd.flac16/codename2008-01-03.at4040.sbd.d1t01_64kb.mp3]

I feel really crappy. This is a mostly worthless post, and I strongly advise skipping over it. I need to complain somewhere so I can realize how petty my problems are and cut it out. I just reread the whole thing now that I’m done writing it, and you shouldn’t bother. Its a total waste of time. This post is what gives blogs a bad name.

Lets start with Friday. Friday night was good, but after friends left my place, it got less good. I didn’t go to sleep Friday night in an attempt to get myself tired enough to go to sleep a little earlier on Saturday night, so I could wake up for something on Sunday. This is never a good plan, and after trying this many times in the past and knowing full well that it doesn’t work, I did it again. So I got to wonder around Saturday in a weird daze. I’m normally pretty good with not sleeping, but whenever I’m not sleeping, I’m usually doing something. This wasn’t the case on Saturday, and trying to stay awake with no reason to isn’t a very easy thing to do. Hence the daze.

Around noon on Saturday my dad and I went to the RV show in Hartford. The idea was to check out some floor plans of the RVs there, and find some vendors who could hook me up with parts I’ll be needing. The RV show was a really disgusting place. Really. Its in a (the?) convention center in Hartford, which is a massively long, wide, and tall building, which was heated much more than it needed to be. The RVs there were mostly disgusting, including things you should never need. I was thinking about skipping over this RV rant, but I’ve got nothing better to do, so I’ll go with it.

I think – no, I must have a different idea of RVing than the people who make/buy/use them. My idea of an RV is very functional. It has beds, a toilet and shower, a place to make food and eat, and a place to just sit. On wheels. The RV being a base camp for whatever else you would be doing. The RVs at this show could replace a house, which isn’t very surprising because they cost about the same. I know they brought out their biggest and best for the show, but there were RVs with two floors, RVs with TVs larger than any in my house, and all of it was leather. It seems to me if I had one of these RVs, I wouldn’t want to leave it. Which kind of defeats the purpose of it being mobile. I don’t get it.

Back to the RV show. So the place and vehicles are disgusting. There were some sane RVs / campers there that didn’t require a mortgage, but I’m going to forget those and villanize the whole place. So while I’m at it, the people there were…interesting. There were the people who were shopping for their new house, and taking it all very seriously. There were people who were looking for a RV for weekends and such, and of course there were NASCAR people. I don’t quite know how this works, but I guess if you have an RV at a NASCAR event you’re some kind of VIP. And then there were the people who seemed to have absolutely no reason to buy an RV. I’m tired of writing about that, so I’m going to wrap it up by saying that the floorplans were not practical for my purpose (or in my opinion any other…they were just really inefficient with their space.) and there was no one selling parts. Plus they charged us $10 a head to get into the place.

Anyway, we got home from that, and I sat around for a while, and didn’t find anything to do. So eventually I gave up on staying awake for no real reason and went to sleep around 1800. I woke up around 0030, and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I went downstairs to get something to eat and zone out in front of the TV. I got back to sleep around 0500, and woke up for good three hours later. I did more of nothing this morning, and then in a desperate attempt to busy myself, I tried to set up my parent’s mythtv box. After an hour or so of dealing with problems I had already solved a week or so ago when I last touched it, I realized that the hardware just wasn’t going to cooperate, and stopped before I smashed it to bits.

I’m not sure how, but my parents have this amazing ability to cripple computers. I can’t really blame the mythbox on them (it has larger issues), but they’ve rendered any computer the family used completely useless within a year of use. I had always chalked this up to Windows or Dell, since all their previous computers had one or both of those inherent defects. But the iMac I hooked them up with about a year ago is starting to slow down. I’m just puzzled by this, since I’ve had my PowerBook for three years now, and it works as well as the day I got it. I dunno, as long as I don’t have to use it, I don’t think I’ll try and figure it out.

So in conclusion, I feel crappy after spending a weekend doing all sorts of things I didn’t really want to do (and in case you didn’t notice, I didn’t end up going to that thing today I stayed up all night Friday for). Ugh.

Foiled again

So…
There were 4 bus auctions ending today. I bid on one before I went to sleep, and though I was the high bidder, the price hadn’t yet passed the seller’s reserve. When I woke up shortly before the auction ended, I had been outbid by a couple hundred dollars, but the reserve still […]

Next bus: I was outbid, and when the auction ended, the reserve was also not met. The third bus was higher than I wanted to bid, and it ended at about the same price as the second bus, with the reserve not met.

The fourth bus is the only one without a reserve price, but the current high bid is over $3k. So that’s out as well. Desperate, I went to the next bus on my watch list (this is the bus located in CT), which ends in a few days. I bid my max ($2150) and was immediately outbid by the previous high bidder.

So…crap. Turns out January is not a very good time for buying used school buses. Mid-December was incredible, but I wasn’t yet ready to buy, so I held off. Let that be a lesson to you, if you should ever have to buy a school bus, do it mid-December.

Looks like I’ll be waiting a while, and may not get a bus this break (I will get one this semester). Hopefully that’ll work out in the end.

6 Day Week?

Got No Feathers by Keller Williams
[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/kw2007-02-28.flac16/kw2007-02-28d2t09_64kb.mp3]

I’ve been keeping even later (earlier?) hours recently. For quite a long while I was going to sleep around 0600 or 0700, but I usually had been in bed working on my laptop. The last few days, I’ve been out in the garage, actually doing things that people who are awake do. Which somehow makes me stay up later. Yesterday I went to sleep around 1000, and woke up around 1800. I think I’ll be going to sleep later than that today (because of eBay).

Whatever the case, I’m starting to lean towards the 28 hour day (I haven’t actually done the math to see how close or far I am, but I know I’m in the ballpark). I’ve gotta say, I like it. Obviously, there are the problems with not being able to interface with people, since most of them are asleep, but I’m alright with that. I’ll go out and hang out with friends shortly after waking up, and then when they take off around 0200, I’ll just hang around for the rest of the night. Its like a normal day, but in reverse.

So since I realized how close I was getting to the 6 day week, I figured I may as well actually try it. It should be interesting, because even though I usually have no commitments that I need to make, I have one this Sunday. So we shall see how this works out.