Sunday, 17 December 2000 12:20am (monday morning)
W
hat a great time we had at Disneyland yesterday. And damn, I am so out of shape that I am still sore. Helen is back home now, Trista is back home now, and cami and I are still here, living out our lives, as Cami says, like an old married couple. As long as it ain't Three's Company, I'm down with that. Now tell me that isn't the best "tourist in front of the castle" shot you've ever seen. I've put up a bunch of pics in the Disneyland Pictures Page.
Yes, I love Disneyland. Especially at night. Especially during the holiday season. I actually haven't been feeling like Christmas was coming up at all, until the snow fell on Main Street while we were there. That was a very cool effect. It was also extremely crowded, almost as crowded as it was last New Year's Eve, but with a much more sedate crowd. The millenial crowd was like... all rowdy and ready to party and stuff. There were actually probably more people on Main Street during the fireworks show last night than there were at new year's (but less people climbing on rocks and jumping over railings), and yet, everyone was so quiet after the fireworks show, as if they were all in awe or something. It was a strangely surreal feeling, seeing that many people packed in shoulder to shoulder, but have it be dead silent. I guess the display was that good.
Anyway, despite the huge crowds and the long lines (it took us about 2 hours to get in the parking garage, get on the tram, buy tickets, and get in the front gate), we still had a blast.
So today after dropping Helen off at the airport, Cami and I went Christmas shopping at Fashion Valley. So far, I've got two presents. Not good, considering how quickly Christmas is coming up! But I'll get things into gear, I promise.
Good luck tomorrow, Cami, on starting your new job!

Monday, 18 December 2000 12:50am (tuesday morning)
I
nfomercials. I love watching informercials. But my true idol is Ron Popeil. He is the pioneer of the informercial. He was the first person to ever sell a product primarily on television. He started the "as seen on TV" revolution. He's so rich now that he is on the board of directors for MGM/Mirage. How rich do you have to be to be able to do that? And all this guy does is sit around and invent stuff that he needs, and then sells them to other people that have the same needs. The first thing he sold on TV was way back in the 70's. It was a hand-powered food processor.
Right now he's selling the Showtime Rotisserie and BBQ. You just "set it and forget it" and it makes prime rib for you at just 18 minutes per pound. Plus it "cuts the fat"! What more do you need? Another reason why I like him a lot is that he is successful even though his company has a really lame name. Ronco. Hi. My name is Bryan, and I am the founder of Bryco. But mainly I like him because I get the feeling that he's making his millions doing exactly what he would have been doing anyway, millions or not. I admire that, and that's where I want to be... making tons of money doing stuff that I would have been doing on my own anyway. That's the best kind of success there is, I think.
So Ben, Cami and I saw What Women Want tonight. It was entertaining, and I liked it. Anyway. I'm sleepy so I should go to sleep.

Tuesday, 19 December 2000 9:50am
O
h yeah, I forgot to mention last night that I re-did the index page to the colors section.
12:45am (wednesday morning)
Went Christmas shopping tonight. Bought a gift certificate from GAP for someone. I'm not really a GAP shopper, in fact, as far as I know, the only GAP clothing I have ever owned were some boxers that my girlfriend in high school gave to me. Those were some really great boxers though. Anyway. While I was in there, I saw this bathrobe. It was long, and it was oh-so-soft... I just had to have it. Plus, it was on sale for $18 off the regular price.
This is the first thing I can ever remember buying for myself at GAP. Not only that, this is the first time I have ever owned a bathrobe. As a matter of fact, when I brought it home and tried it on, that was the first time I can remember ever wearing a bathrobe in my whole life. And what a pleasure I have been missing!
Anyway. Ever since I got this laptop computer, I have been writing these night updates from in bed. It's kind of cool. Cami often writes thing into a real paper journal right before she goes to bed. This is sort of the same thing except she says she does it so she doesn't forget how to write. I should probably try something like that because it seems like the only time I ever put a pen to paper is to sign my name on credit card receipts. My handwriting is getting pretty bad, as if it wasn't bad enough before. Just think, in the future, there will be an entire generation of people who have bad handwriting because they will do their written communication primarily by computer. On the other hand, having worked at CAPE for 5 years, doing nothing but typing for an entire summer, I have developed great typing skills. If I am copying from something that has already been written and am concentrating 100% on just typing, I can type 120 words per minute, or better. So in a lot of ways, I don't like to write on paper because it's so slow and my fingers cannot keep up with my brain. Heh, if I'm copying from something (ie. I don't have to think about what I'm writing), I can even talk on the phone and still type around 60WPM.
Someone else has ordered some more stuff from my wish list. Thank you again, whoever it is. Maybe it's the same person that got me two things... two different people. Anyway, thank you in advanced. Only problem is, my office will be closed next week and that is where all my packages are being sent. I wonder what will happen to them..

Saturday, 23 December 2000 12:30am (sunday morning)
S
o it's been a couple of days since I've updated. There are a couple of reasons for that. First and foremost, I switched web hosts. I moved twentysix.net to dbwired, who coincidentally is also the host of explodingdog. Why did I move? Because my previous host (AWWM) tried to rip me off on riceboypage.com, which was also hosted by them.
If you have ever shopped around for a web host, you know that many web hosts limit the amount of bandwidth you can move with your site. If you go over, you pay extra. You probably also know that most web hosts measure bandwidth in gigabytes. For example, you may be allowed to move up to 10 GB of traffic in one month before incurring additional charges.
One month, riceboypage.com moved something like 12 gigabytes. Problem is, unbeknownst to me, my limit was 10 gigaBITS, not gigaBYTES. How misleading is that? I mean, since just about every web host out there is selling gigaBYTES of bandwidth, to sell gigaBITS is just ludicrous and misleading because just about anyone would assume that you are selling gigaBYTES. Anyway. They wanted me to stay on their host. They would have upgraded me to their 12 gigaBYTE plan, for an additional $200 a month. $200?? Every month? WTF is that?
Anyway. There is no reason for me to pay $200 a month for 12 gigabytes of bandwidth. I was supposed to have moved riceboypage.com to overboost's (free) server a long time ago, but due to some circumstances, it never happened. Well after this happened, we rushed it. So overboost has been hosting riceboypage for a while now. But I couldn't talk any trash about AWWM because I was still using them for twentysix.net -- but now I'm not.
I'd like everyone to know that under AWWM's UNIX operating system plan, I had 100 megs of disk space, 10 gigaBITS of bandwidth, and cgi/perl access for $25 a month. DBWIRED is selling me 200 megs of disk space, 10gigaBYTES of bandwidth, cgi/perl, SSL, and PHP under their linux plan for not $200, but $20. Yes, I am getting more features for less money, not to mention the fact that my bandwidth limit is 10 gigaBYTES and not gigaBITS. And oh yeah, DBWIRED's customer service blows AWWM away too. If you write them an email during their business hours, chances are, you will hear back within a few minutes. Plus, they assign a specific person to be responsible for your account. If your email address is down, they will actually attempt to phone you to help you out. AWWM has never once in 3 years answered an email of mine sent to their generic support email address. They do, however, have a live chat type customer support thing, and that was alright, but they wouldn't ever call you. Bottom line is, I'm happy to be liberated from their no service having, misleading bandwidth number giving, overpriced ripoff $200 account selling bastards.
I'm staying at my parent's place for Christmas right now. I went to Disneyland again tonight, but this time with my tripod. I basically went to take pictures, and that's it. I'm thinking about opening a new section on my Disneyland pictures page, with non-trip-specific pictures. Just cool pictures of disneyland. Also, as inspired by Trista, I think I might also open a new section of my site called "things that remind me of being a kid". Last week when we were at disneyland, Trista stopped at the Star Trader's floating astronaut Mickey neon mural thingy, and said "this reminds me of being kid". I went back there today and took a couple pictures of it. This particular one was taken with the shutter open for four seconds. The Asto-Orbiter picture I took was actually with an 8 second shutter. Clicking on either will take you to a larger version and stuff.
Well, I ain't got much else to say right now and I'm sleepy so I guess I'll just go to sleep now.