Excuse the blasphemic Simpson's referernce if it offends you, but I am just about at my wit's end.

I'm still up in Green River WYO visitting my family, and I am just about ready to slit my freaking throat. My sunva-beyotching hell, this place is awful. First of all, my family... well... to put it lightly... is a bunch of hicks. Even the most "normal" who have advanced degrees in things are massive hillbillies. It makes it very hard to function.

Second of all, this town! MY HELL THIS TOWN! Look up the population sometime, but the place is flipping small. And everyone knows everyone else! I cant stand all the overly friendly smalltown corn-munching idiots that this town festers with like they were flies on a carcas. Everywhere we go, whether my parents have ever been there before or not PEOPLE KNOW THEM. I cant stand going into a store and everyone knows my parents, and, by extension, me. Give me the sweet anonymity of a cold-hearted big city any day over this gushy, mushy, garbage.

Third of all, the cable TV is atrocious. 2/3rds of the stations are right-wing controlled faux-news channels. Fox News, MSNBC, you name it. No BBC World News... No Democracy Now... Hell, even the Daily Show is on at midnight for crying out loud. These redneck imbeciles cant even be exposed to the truth even if they wanted to somehow concern themselves with something beyond the local county fair and rodeo. Hells freaking bells, they are even taking this "Terror Alert" shit as something more than a political ploy to subvert the recent democratic convention! Mother of pearl! They even think that terrorists from some far away land would be interested in striking this dick-ville!

To top it all off, my mother is trying to set me up with every Daisy May and Molly Mudwallop who's been divorced recently in the surounding 3 counties!

And I'm having to face this garbage alone because my damned ex left me alone to face it. Before, I always had her to keep my sanity, but MAN... now that I'm solo I sure as freaking hell wanna get outta here.

Well, the wedding went alright. And, as soon as I can distance myself from this shit I will be able to calm down enough to write something better about it. I'll be home tomorrow... Expect something more upbeat then..

Oh, and excuse any spelling mistakes or typos in this entry. I am typing this from the ergonimically trendy split keyboard hunk of shit connected to my brother's machine as I try to save it from over 2000 items of spyware, adware, and viri. Yes, that's right, their safe-computing practises are somewhat akin to walking butt-nekkid through the sex-offender wing of your local penitentiary with your ass cheeks taped apart and a sign on your back saying "Call me Debbie".

2004 Aug 30 (Mon), 18:38 Somebody shoot me..

Okay, so my life hasnt calmed down any. Since I've been back from my trip, I have spent nearly every waking moments (except for a scant few playing games to relax) moving, cleaning, and moving some more. My new appartment ain't all that bad, and it does actuallu fit all my stuff (or, most of my stuff... or enough to matter ;-) The only real problem is the swamp cooler and the fact that we are in the middle of the monsoon months in Tucson.

But I have been busy, so if you are waiting for me to email you, respond to your email, or whatever, give me more time. How much time? Oh frell... I don't know.

Well, we have a buyer for the home... But we had a buyer before I left on my trip, so that isn't new. What is new is that our Realtor may or may not be a complete idiot. Papers filed funny, signed funny, done funny, etc. Two weeks ago the house was supposed to close... then one week ago... now this week by Tues (tomorrow).

Why Tuesday you ask? Simple, it's the 31st. If the house doesnt close then, we lose another $800 bucks. Fuck me with a flaming weasel.

Sorry... I'm just pissed... angry... and at my wits end. I cant take much more of this before I flip out and run through the streets nekkid and blasting people with a shotgun. I mean, not to beat a dead horse with another dead horse, but... over the last 6 months I have had two family deaths, a wife divorce me (via email), lost a job (okay, I only assume I lost it because I havent taught in 9 months now), a marriage, a move (or two) and was most likely kidnapped and anally probed by deranged aliens. Add to this the fact that I've been averagingt around 3 hours sleep per night for the last two weeks (due to the moving and the incessant sobbing followed by moments of pure unadulterated rage) and you can see how I am very near complete and utter destruction.

Oh, and know what else? Well, I was working my ass off to move out of my house because my Realtor and the buyers wanted me to. The day I get my bed moved into my appartment (and was planning on living there) my Realtor calls me and tells me I cant leave my house because AZ is a homestead state and if I move then the sale cant go through. Fuck me with a flaming weasel that's being fucked with a frozen turnip. Heheheheh... Gee there Mr. Realtor... think you coulda thunked of that before you and your buyer cronies spent three weeks harrassing me to get me out of my house?!!!! You sick sons of bitches!

So, I've been sleeping on the floor of my home and showering in my appartment. I need to have my home be my primary residence... I just can't move stuff back into it because as soon as it closes I need to get the fuck out of it.

I am sorry if my sudden angry ranting vulgarity offends you... But then again, no I'm not. If you can't see the horrendous stress I am under and cannot understand the reasons for me being so vile then you can go to hell you unsympathetic bastard.

2004 Aug 31 (Tue), 14:49 Goodbye X-Chat

Unless you have been living under a rock (or sleeping in a vacant house, like I have) you probably have heard of the whole X-Chat fiasco. Well, the bottom line is this: Zed is free to make a binary shareware version of X-Chat if he wants to, it is well within his rights. But he has to release the source-code to that version as well because a) he uses gettext code and b) he uses GPL code from many many many developers inside of X-Chat. The only way he can get out of having to release the source-code is if he got permission from all of these peoples... which aint gonna happen.

Now I personally have no problem with him trying to earn money from his labors on the Win32 side... that's not what the issue is. The issue is (and, only a few people on Slashdot actually get this) he cannot release binary-only modifications without also releasing the source doe. He doesn't have to release a non-shareware version pre-compiled for Windows... he just has to make the source-code freely obtainable (or, rather, for no more than the cost of buying the shareware version, i.e., he can't charge additional money for the code). Hell, he can even make the source-code harder to get (put it in CVS, just like Pykota... Hell, mimic what they are doing with Pykota, that's what he's going after, right?!)

So, because of this whole thing, I must bid farwell to my beloved X-Chat that has served me well these many years. Granted, someone will undoubtedly fork it, but this whole thing has left a bad taste in my mouth so I'll switch to another client whose author understands the GPL a bit more.

Freshmeat has a large number of alternatives. I'll try GAIM a bit (I used to use it, but it didnt do IRC so I stopped using it... it does IRC now but MAN those are some annoying sounds... and can I turn off the damned smileys?!). I may also try Ayttm (which, if you'll recall, is a fork from Everybuddy which had similar issues way back when).

2004 Aug 31 (Tue), 15:36 Gaim Asshole

Okay, so Gaim is now out of the question. I had two very simple questions that weren't answered in the FAQ or Documentation on their website (one was turning off smileys, which apparently is a problem with the version I have from Debian) so I went to #gaim on irc.freenode.net and asked the questions.

They were simple questions, answered easily. But certain assholes in the IRC decided to make a federal case about it. Read the bold. As you can see, they changed the IRC topic to account for a new made up policy.

They then proceeded to call me slow....

Hmmm, I dunno, I have a few free-software projects and some other things that indicate otherwise.

The point is, there is no need to be such assholes when people come seeking help. Especially when they did RTFM and were asking nothing too outlandish.