if you Wordpress, which you probably don't, and you're looking to try out a new theme that's a little bit different (but really, when you get down to it - or even if you don't, looks like it was designed in 1999 by an inept retard with a brand new AOL account), which you probably aren't (looking for a new theme, that is), then you might possibly be interested (though you probably still aren't)...

otherwise, move along. nothing interesting to see here.

latest version of Big Urgent Wish. a little tweaked: post metadata cleaned up (that section where the comments link is, or other data related to the post), related posts moved to sidebar, bizarre phrases moved to header, lots of other small improvements made. index page's code theoretically validates, at least last i checked (XHTML 1.0 strict + CSS level 3 spec), though other pages certainly need improving, especially with regard to input tags.

please, if you see something unpleasant (i already know about the terrible quality of the content itself), let me know. thanks!

i hope to have a public version soon, when i get time to validate other pages and sterilize it of my terrible stink.

some notes:

1. no, i'm too tired to link to anything else just now. just take my word for everything that i tell you. i am a liar. <-- (a lie?)


2. and yes, i realize that i don't have fans who follow every move i make, or even real-life friends who read my stupid blog. i'm just sayin' that it's updated, should anyone want to see it. this is merely an update; the most interesting possible thing i could think of to tell you about how i've been spending my rapidly-shrinking free time.


3. sorry if i seem a little sour, but it's slowly sinking in that i've spent literally countless hours doing something entirely useless, without any value to anyone whatsoever, for no reason at all. if i should go down in history as anything, it will be as the most miserable fool with the most ridiculously unmerited perseverance. my entry will read: "wasted untold hundreds of weeks foolishly believing that his work was ever going to matter to anyone other than himself." when this is done, i will bow my head finally, and let the soul drain from my body forever, submitting myself to mindless corporate zombie slavedom until the end of my days, which will hopefully come sooner rather than later, should a nonexistent god suddenly decide to deliver mercy upon the rest of humanity.

It's the oldest catch-22 in history: Experience necessary. How do people with experience obtain that experience? Presumably, every human starts life as infants, with little or no experience within the field in which they will eventually earn their keep. So why is it that every interview always ends with a polite summation of my lack of experience?

It's hard for me to articulate the fact that I can do absolutely anything thrown at me, other than by awkwardly blurting out "I can do absolutely anything thrown at me!" while a horrified interviewer looks on, aghast. But my lack of experience equates roughly to lack of proof.

Joseph Heller explained the Catch-22:
If you're insane, then you can't request to be reassigned from flight combat, because it would prove that you're sane. If you request to be reassigned from flight combat, then you're not insane, because only a sane, rational person would make such a request. Therefore, you can never leave.

Ergo, if you do not have experience, then you cannot gain experience. If you have experience, then you must have started with experience.

The thing is, I am experienced. But, because on previous projects I was the designer, the information architect, the developer, and the entire MIS department, all by myself, I therefore cannot prove that I can work as a specialist in one area, working from specs from another specialist in one of those other areas.

What I cannot deal with is the fact that I am stuck forever as a lackey at low-rent jobs that I hate with all of my passion because I am a lackey at low-rent jobs, even though I am 1000% smarter than 90% of the other people around me and am capable of doing so much more - but am relegated to mopping up other people's messes for the rest of my fucking life.

When I pulled into the apartment parking lot after my miserable interview, Lou Reed's "Perfect Day" came on.

You're going to reap just what you sow.

I am overqualified, but underexperienced. I am, therefore, a failure.

Let's say you have a web portfolio of some web sites that you built.

And let's say you've found a few errors that you didn't catch in 2002.

Maybe even throw in a little obsolete code, which wasn't actually obsolete at the time.

...Is is ethical to clean it up? Is it ethical to present something that, for all intents and purposes, looks and functions almost exactly the same as it did back then, yet has been tweaked to fix small errors?

In other words: is it okay for me to fix my mistakes?

here's the tag cloud for my site.

got my old site fully working locally! my last data dump was in March of '04, so i don't have the last few blog entries, but who cares? i have my entire old website out of mothballs!

i just need to copy it and tweak it for the new blog system, add in some of the tweaks i did for the (sadly, now defunct) VAT magazine website, do other things i've had my mind on, and test the hell out of it (since i don't have hosting yet, i'll need to make sure it runs with register_globals either on or off, and on either PHP4.x or PHP5).

i think i'm going to go for another redesign, while i'm at it. that way, i can finally include some of those kooky sci-fi skins from the old Mars STS project (a barebones content management system i wrote, which featured a theme switcher, loads of translucent backgrounds, and best of all, automatic file detection, which let you upload the file and forget it - no more making links on every page!).

this is going to take time i simply don't have, though. i will probably have to puke out something quick just to put stuff on for a time while i revamp the site engine yet a-damn-gain.

this time, i promise it will look cool as shit and have better content. i'll probably also post public bookmarks via XML (and run a linkchecker this time, cronjobs willing), so if you have the Firefox extension you can sync, see and surf the best of the 'net right along with me.