.99 cents a song isn't a bad deal... right? How about .01/MB? 3-5 cents per song... that's a pretty good deal. Tim (and Morgan) have shown me the light: allofmp3.com Let the music flow.

Any sexy ladies like to join me for Bathtub Party Day on Sunday, December 5th?

Okay, blogger frustrates me when I hit backpsace and it erases my post comepletely. (Well, I guess technically it's my browsers fault). In any case, here is the short version of what would have been an awesome post. Incidently a post which would have gotten me in trouble. With that in mind, the subject is relationships and marriage. Don't read this if you're in either.

It seems to me that everyone is very interested in planning my life for me. No less than 5 people have as much as told me (or simply HAVE told me) that I am going to find the woman of my dreams and get married if I were to join the Peace Corps. Incidently all these people are married. Why is it that the path that they chose is the path that is the best for me? I'm sure they are just being nice, you know saying "hey Lyle, I'm sure there is SOMEONE out there for you... you'll just have to go the ends of the earth to find her, because no doubt she is being hidden away in a cave because of her extreme ugliness, but I'm sure you two will get along fine because love is more than skin deep and your children I'm sure will have the correct number of fingers and toes with a factor of error of only 3-7 digits (ha, pun)". Suffice to say, I'm not too happy with any of these people. Maybe your life path is the best one, but it's nieve to say that marriage is going to be everlasting happiness. The current divorce rate is 49%. To me that says I have a 50% chance of being kicked in the groin. I'm not a betting man, so my heart is with my beanbag: not getting kicked. The optimist would say "Hey, that's 51% chance that you'll make it! The glass is half full man!". The jaded Lyle says "that's a 49% chance she'll turn out to be a psycho hose-beast and end up with half your property". Okay, back up a little bit. I'm assuming you already know what I'm thinking because of my deleted post... so far this summary isn't working out.

Let's just say this. I'm VERY jaded when it comes to relationships. In my limited experience, they are just silly. First, they take up a huge amount of time. This includes actual time spent with the significant other, phone calls to said other and emotional hoop-dee-haw that goes along with it. Secondly, they take a huge amount of money. I hear you whining already: "b-b-b-but, you can go d-d-d-d-Dutch!" Yeah, yeah you stuttering bastard, but guess what until we go Dutch on a packet of Ramen or a $.99 pack of pasta at Trader Joes, whatever we end up eating isn't going to be comparable to my common diet and thus quite a bit more expensive. In addition movies now cost me twice as much. Thirdly, I fucking HATE flowers (sorry, I said a swear!) Yes, that's right. All of your visions of me dancing around in a field of flowers are ruined! Flowers suck. Why? First, they stink. Flowers don't smell good. The only things that smell good I can eat. There are only a couple of flowers that I would eat (pumpkin flowers and sour grass) so most flowers are a waste of scent that could be better put to use in delicious steaks, pesto and guacamole. Second, they are useless. You pick a flower and it dies. Lots of women think that somehow you actually care if they keeep the dead, rotting flower carcasses around. So they'll hang them up to dry... thorw them away, please! I don't keep turds as a reminder of a special meal I ate, so don't keep the carcasses of plants around unless you're making potpurri (which incidently also stinks). Thirdly, flowers are the sex parts of plants. Think about that next time you deeply inhale that bouquet he gets you! Yeah, you're gettin' a nostril full of wang! So yes, flowers suck. Fourthly (back to the original ordered list now) I see a lot of weak people in relationships because they don't know who they are. "Oh ho", I hear you say, "Lyle is afraid to be in a relationship because he feels that it would make him lose his sense of identity". Congratulations Freud, you'll also soon discover that girls have penis envy and you're stuck in the anal stage of development. There is some truth to that, I'll admit. The only relationship of merit I've been in completely stole me away from myself... and it took me a long time to get it all figured out again. I don't want to fall into that again. I don't want to enter into a union and come out transfigured into one flesh. I like my flesh where it is, and I like yours where it is. Hmm, I had a lot more to say... mostly about freedom. But I'm really tired now... it's 1:30. So you'll have to excuse some of my jadedness.

Holy Moly, it's been almost a week since I've posted. This is usually the part where I say "oh, nothing has really happend." This is probably also the part where you stop reading. Better read this bitches! Events happened! First, I finished my Peace Corps. application! That's huge news, I just have to get one more letter of reccomendation filled out (the party perfers snail mail... and I have to admit I'm poor with stamps and such) and I'll be well into the process of becoming a luddite for 2 years. Well, that's not entirely accurate. I've applied to work in their IT field which could mean anything from setting up computer labs in any number of countries, to spending time in one area running a lab and doing computer education. It all depends. Secondly, (and this may be a premature announcement) I may be leading a team of students in an Internet2 research project. I don't want to say exactly what we'll be researching yet until I have a better grasp on the project myself. This isn't me being secretive or bull-headed. I'd be happy to tell you on a person to person basis, and as soon as I get the final approval for the funding I'll post my proposal. It will be really sweet though if it works out. Thirdly, I got approached to do a job for 6-7 banks in Texas. I don't know all the details yet, but it involves some sort of VoIP network. Again, pending the finality of this project, I'll keep you up to date. I'm hoping it will involve a little bit of travel to the Lone Star state... but we'll see. I don't want to get my hopes up too high. Forgive my lack of paragraphization, and good night.

Beej's Guide to Network Programming is an EXCELLENT resource for the new network programmer. As some of you may know, I've been beating my head against the wall for the last three days trying to find the solution to a certain problem. While this guide didn't include the exact solution, the author to this guide did. Out of desperation, I emailed him and not only was his response quick, he was very helpful... and after only a short exchange my problem fixed. Beej is officially the man. I may never meet him, or even know anything at all about him... yet he helped me out without any thought of reward. Yay for people like him! (and for everyone else that tried to help me of course too). Yay for people who are nice! Yay! (While my program still isn't finished, it's much more "on the way" than it was this time yesterday)

For the grievous offense of calling me by my fake name Sean-Paul Rees and Myles Bostwick are hereby formally sentenced to being punched the next time I see them. Anyone else may also punch them at their own discretion as to duration, count and strength of punches. That is all.

UPDATE:

Sean may not have to be punched. The jury is still out.

My name is Lyle, not Kyle. This never used to bother me, but it's been a growing point of contention... I'm not sure exactly why, but I think it's mostly because you don't even have to say it half the time you call me it. Okay, that's vague. I'm particularly referring to email. When I email you and sign "-Lyle", that isn't my cutsey way of saying decrement the first letter of my name by 1 character. What's more, when I send email to you where the reply address is lyle or lkozloff... it's pretty clear my first name starts with an L. If you forget my name to my face, that's forgivable. I don't generally wear giant L's to remind people, but could we be a little bit more observant with the emails??? C'mon!

PS: If you try and be hillarious by calling me Kyle and I know you know my real name, I'll punch you!

Not my president

Shut up damnit. It hasn't even been a week and I'm tired of listening to people complain about the results of the election. I know this is going to flag me as a horrible rebulican bastard who voted for Bush (which isn't the case at all, I voted libertarian if you must know), but that's fine. You can think what you want, in my EE lab they all think I'm a flaming liberal. I figure if you all think I'm an extremist then I'll be able to sneak behind the scenes of all the parties and take over! Seriously though, shut up about the election. If he's not your president, move to another country. Like it or not... he is THE president. The system is set up in such a way that we all got to express our opinion; he won. End of story, there isn't anything to discuss. Shut up!!

It may be old news to some of you, but Garden State is an awesome movie. I just got back from seeing it. Man, it was really good. I have to think about it a bit more before I say more than that, but if you haven't seen it: go.