Category: General

Uh… so you may have noticed a slight change in the website 😉 Ok, so you might of thought you entered the wrong site for a minute there. But look closer. My name is still here, the posts are still here. (uh.. we’ll get to that in a minute) and the site is generally cooler now. What’s changed? Everything. If you read my site at all, you would know i’ve been working on a redesign for a long time now. I worked on a new site design in .asp for a good year. I created a custom content management system from scratch. I could log into the site via the browser, say i want to add a new item and type up what i wanted and pow! it was put on the site. I could then later go back and edit the item like i wanted. It would store every post in separate text files and store them in a database. I did all that. Really. But that’s as far as i got. Plan was to make it searchable. Make the old news available easily. You could put in a date and see the news from that date. You would get email updates when i posted something. It would handle RSS feeds. You could comment on posts. It would even incorporate the photo galleries. Somehow. That’s where i got stuck. I could never decide how to work files such as my pictures and my music. But, alas, i searched for another option.

Since my site was running on a Windows 2003 server, i looked for .asp or .net content management systems. I looked at dotnetnuke, .text and even tried them out. I installed them on my test server. The installation was a horrible process. I never got any of them to work. I didn’t try too hard though, I shouldn’t of had to. So, i decided to look at .php systems. And found plenty. I decided on wordpress and read the docs about it’s 5 minute installation. So, i gave it a try and damn if they were’nt right. 5 minutes and my site was going strong. A year’s worth of coding (part time mind you) was resolved in about 5 minutes. But, there were problems. wordpress relys on certian ways to bring you the archives, individual posts and things of that sort, which are basically incompatible with windows servers. they require a valid .htaccess file to redirect pages for the techies of you. Only apache supports this. So, i even broke down and almost hired someone from guru to make a vbscript 404 page to simulate this .htaccess page. I decided not to do it. I broke down and moved the server to a linux based one with apache. After some data manipulating, the 5 minute install, and various other modifications, i had the site running with wordpress on linux while not losing the few news posts i already put in. Then i customized the site with my own css. I already had a great design from the custom .asp code i had written so i used css to customize wordpress to duplicate that. So, this is in no way a standard wordpress installation anymore. I then decided to get a photogallery where i could upload my pictures and things for the masses to see. I decided on coppermine and have now (by the time you read this) uploaded all my convention pictures to it. It looks very sweet.

“Con reports” have been moved to the picture gallery. Click on pictures on the left hand side there. Even existing visitors may want to check out the nekocon 2001 gallery as it has never been fully offered before. I started work on on a complete con report with pictures, but i didnt get far. Only to page 3. Now, you can view all the pictures from the trip! I also included pics from the ferry ride to the convention across the James River, and our short trip to the beach where we proceeded to write “U Suck Bin Laden” in the sand and point in his general direction. These nekocon 2001 pictures were taken with a regular 35mm camera, and when i had them processed i had them made onto cd’s as well. So, the quality of them aren’t as good as the other’s and they also have a date stamp on top.

Some of the pictures have been renamed. A lot of the url’s have been changed. But, I made a custom 404 page that will help most people find the new place for what they’re looking for. Not everything’s on the site yet. The archive doesnt go all the way back to the site’s beginning, but it will eventually.

The site isn’t dead yet. In fact, a huge update has just been made to include new Animazement 2004 pictures taken by both myself and my friend *P*Grass. Check them out under the con reports link on the left hand side.

Happy Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and almost Valentines Day, the silence is broken. But, what you don’t know is I’ve been furiously working on a new web site. The official launch party is at pretzelboy’s house January 24th, so I suppose it’s time I introduce to you…. TADA! www.whootah.com!

It amazes me to see how people find my site. All web site operators usually find odd entries in their logs as to how people get to them. The interesting things to me are how i’m listed in search engines. Not only that, but the fact that someone actually searched for whatever in the first place. Things like “guy pissing stories” from msn.com for which my site is currently ranked #242.

Yes, i have arrived safely back home. and yes, i’m working on the pictures right now!! give me a while. it will take some time to upload anyway, all the pics are about 15 meg even after cutting the size down!!

Ok, the work is done! it’s 11:00 pm and i’ve started the upload process. modem sucks, so it may not be until after midnight until it’s all there!!! but please check out http://www.radialmonster.com/works/cons/nekocon2003 or you can click on the con reports link on the left hand side there and select nekocon 2003 as well! Send me some love!! radial@mindspring.com

I haven’t forgotten about you. i’ve wrestled for the past few weeks about how to continue this page. this just wont fit. that just wont do. i criticize this work here that you may consider insignificant to the point i didn’t want to post things i wanted to post because it wouldn’t fit after the previous entries. I wanted to post about my REM concert i went to. About the Down By Avalon concert i went to. About the new friends i’ve made. About trials and tribulations, my house’ pour sanitation. i’d rather sleep than clean recently, although i did make some progress earlier today. about the upcoming trip to Nekocon in Virginia Beach this coming weekend. I wanted my next post to be a big bang. like announcing a new video or other kind of work on this site. but alas there is none works in progress, they will appear in due time this should be the turnover point. i’ll think of something next.

For the past few days, i’ve turned the site into a memorial page for my late good friend Marty Williams. In case you didnt know, marty had been battling Hodgkin’s disease for a good 6 or so years now. I received a phone call at work tuesday oct 7 at about 9:30 that i needed to come back to the hospital. So that i did, called who i could call, went to pick up my mom and scott and got to the hospital shortly thereafter. We come in and sit down in the already crowded room. and wait. and talked and said prayers and all sorts of things. and this woman who comes in, a black middle aged nurse leans over above marty and breaks out in prayer. o heavenly father we love you, o heavenly father, we love marty, o heavenly father take marty to a good place, o heavenly father we love you heavenly father, o heavenly father we pray for marty. for like 5 minutes. about everyone in the room is crying and i felt chills down my whole body during this procession. she slows down, and eventually quits, leaves the room and marty is still there hanging on. eventually, we all hold hands, about 25 of us, and we all say something to marty. i said something to the effect of There’s a lot of people in this room, and there’s a whole lot more people thats not here thats thinking of you and praying and rooting for you. me, scott, john and lisa took a lunch break together. and we had a good old time, as much as we could i guess. we came back to the room and sat there for a while. it was getting late, and we decided to leave the room save for a few people at a time. so that we did, i went downstairs with a bunch of people, and we sit there for a few minutes. Then Chasity comes running out the door, almost falling over and she tells us Marty has passed on. Official time was 7:55 pm. so we all go back into the room and see marty there, motionless. and we have a seat. and we sit there and talk for like 30 minutes. and it was almost comforting. even though we’re 3 feet from a dead person, he’s not suffering anymore and thats comforting to know. we gather up his things in the room and sneak them out to the car. i can officially say i’ve kissed a dead person now. i hope it doenst go much farther than that. Thanks for all the people who’ve stuck around marty, and thanks to all the friends i already had and have gained from this experience.

at 26 years old, i shouldn’t have to call up my friend and say it’s time to go. be ready in 5 minutes cuz we got to be in the hospital as soon as possible. and he gets ready without question. at 26 years old, my friend shouldn’t have to have surgery to put a feed tube directly in his stomach. he should be conscious, able to move his fingers. able to look at me and say he’ll be alright and tell me about the nurse he cares so much for. at 22 years old, she shouldn’t get a lesson in what it’s like for someone our age to lie on their death bed. i shouldn’t have to go thursday night after his most recent surgery and wait around till 11:00 pm to see him and he still hasn’t recovered yet so we never get to say hi. Go back friday and stay till 12:30 am with Scott and see Marty getting better and horsing around in the best way he can which includes a raised eyebrow and the occasional smile. and sunday to be awoken by his mom crying and saying if i have any last words to say to Marty, i need to go now. So i call scott and say its time to go and we go immediately. arrive at about 1:00 pm and enter the room of about 15 people gathered around him already in prayer. all these people i dont know, all these people marty doesn’t even know. pastors and deacons and aunts and great nephews and what not. and people saying aloud it’s time for god to take you, you’re going on a better place. we will all meet you again there. and watching his whole body raise as he takes a very short breath in and immediately lets it out. then lie still for a few seconds. then another quick breath in and out and laying still. through time, the whole process repeats, only each time a little bit slower. people come and people go. hold his hand because they are afraid to hug him and mess up his tubes. because his arms are just laying on the bed motionless, hands and fingers extended. and to see Chasity, the nurse that marty cares so much for by his side as well. he smiles at her voice and when she leans in to speak with him he raises his arms to hold her hand which she quickly accepts. for everyone to leave the room and leave scott, chasity and myself in there alone with him and without the grownups there, we tell all sorts of secrets and jokes and things and i think we eventually got another smile or two out of him before it was all done. I shouldn’t of had to leave that night, expecting to receive a phone call in the morning that he had moved on. instead i received a phone call that he’s in a coma. and it wouldn’t be until lunch time when he would awaken. Still, when we went to see him tonight, his progress had not improved, yet it had not worsen. i’m not sure if he made any smiles and remarks to me tonight. he slept mostly. i shouldn’t have to beg a certain someone special to visit him with me so they can meet before it’s all over. and i shouldn’t have to be here at 1:00 am writing about one of my best friends.

i’ve posted 3 new
poems for june since my last update.

My writing is hard
to understand, i know.  i am a member of a writers group, thanks Bev! and i
submitted a poem the other day. same one i put here the other day.  last
night.  no one understood it it seems, so i decided to write about it, and
while at it introduce myself and writing style to the group.  i think it
may be a good read for you, so i’ll post it here too.  enjoy:

Ok, let me do some introduction stuff then. Perhaps I should never have pointed
out my confusion on the technicality of breasts, breast’s or breasts’ because
that set the notion that I was trying to be technical, or am a technical writer.
But, I particularly wanted that word to be correct because it would change it’s
meaning depending on where the ‘ was. I actually rarely use punctuation in
poetry. My punctuation is a line break, or a rhyme scheme breakdown, if there is
a rhyme scheme. Or a word or phrase that would catch you off guard. It pauses to
make you think for a second about what you just read in some way.
I have always been told my writing was confusing, cryptic even, and I’m not
quite sure how to take that. i’m not a technical writer. I have written some
technical things before with funky rhyme schemes, lines per stanza, things like
that. but it’s not my normal. I attempt to write to convey a particular feeling,
emotion or idea. I consider my poetry a riddle, and if you are successful in
reading it, you would ideally have the exact feeling, image, idea so forth I had
when writing it. however, as you guys have pointed out, my portrayals hardly
come off as obvious. But then I think that’s a good thing.
I write just before I go to bed. I’m already half asleep. If I have an idea or
feeling I want to express, I break out my notebook and pencil and begin writing.
It take about 5 – 10 minutes. Rarely any longer. I write the entire thing, and
within the first 2 or 3 lines, I know if I like it good enough to continue it or
just stop while I’m ahead. I cant say that I sit down and already know what I’m
going to write, or have it planned in any way. I just write. Free association I
think is what you call it. and once I reach a line where I can sum it all up in
some way, or throw a kicker into the entire poem, and I suddenly have the
feeling ‘that’s it!’ then I simply stop. Date it, fall asleep and that’s the way
it stays unless I see something just plain wrong or something. If I were to
change it later, then I’ve changed the meaning of the poem, I’ve ruined my
attempt to make the reader feel the exact feelings I had when writing it.
This being said, let me do a self explanation of my poem:

this sweet caress
of eyelash possess

– the idea I want to portray here is the same as the phrase ‘apple of my eye’ i
think is the best way to describe this set of lines. An admiration for someone.

cat like pounce
of your breasts’ every ounce

– according to Bennett and Monte’s descriptions, breasts’ is correct here. There
are 2 of course, and they possess pounce. How’s that? 😉 what I mean is not
‘nice, big, round’ ones, but the way little firm ones sorta jiggle when walking.
As far as rhythm or syllables, I’m from the south. Here, we (or I anyway)
pronounce breasts’ not like breast ess eees, but as breas (as in that’s a silent
ts’) ehe

these walls are oiled
with your buttercup lotion

– imagine a nice smelling lady (via lotion for instance) walking down a hallway.
As time (days, weeks) goes by, the walls absorb her scent. Now that you mention
it, it could be considered rather nasty. But it was not my intention at all to
portray that feeling. You’re right. oiled doesn’t rhyme up. I did think briefly
of that as I was writing it. I had a rhyme scheme going. but at that point, I
didn’t know what to rhyme with oiled, and I felt no matter what I chose to rhyme
with it, it wouldn’t have portrayed the image I wanted to in these 2 lines. But
that’s been a trend lately, to start a nice rhyming scheme, then have it all
fall apart, or even into just a prose piece at the end!

catch that motion
appease my emotions

– the (n)motion of her walking down a hallway with her pouncing and the like is
appealing. A trick to my writing: I don’t even know the real meaning of
‘appease’, it just crept in there and sounded good, so its there.

held tightly at night
until morning light

– this lovely image, if not the lady herself, laying in bed beside me. able to
hold and touch all night until morning.

a quick vanish upon awaken
my heart with you have taken

– this is the ‘kicker’ I was mentioning about. Here, the idea is that this lady
is wonderful, but in reality, she actually only exists in my dreams. You’re
right, the wording is old school. Would comma’s have made it better? My heart,
with you, have taken? Doesn’t look right though. Yea it’s outta place. But it
portrayed the feeling I wanted, and it rhymed.

6-17-03

– uhh this is the date I wrote it 😉

trust me, I’m not downplaying your critiques, and I greatly, greatly appreciate
them. but I also wanted to explain my writing ‘style’ to you guys too so maybe
you can see where I’m trying to come from and where I’m trying to take the
reader. All this being said, yes technically, my poems are a nightmare. Maybe I
could better describe my poetry as ‘inside jokes’ 😉

Wednesday, June 18, 2003 – 11:13 pm – just a quick note
to note i have noted some new poetry here.  send me a note and let
me know what you think