Category Archives: Personal

The world is so different from different people’s points of view. Lets look at Black Friday. I’ll go into detail of my efforts later, but I want to focus on my observance. I’ve done “the Black Friday” thing for 3 years now. This year seemed extremely quiet compared to years past. The lines at the retailers last year seemed to overshadow this year by quite a bit. Even in the large retail outlets, I was in and out in under 10 minutes.

It makes you wonder in a period of quiet and serenity, what kind of freaks and monsters lined up outside of a Wal-Mart in Valley Stream NY and literally killed an employee, and for what? a TV? a computer? What is worth more than someone’s life inside a Wal-Mart? Or any store for that matter. And Wal-Mart knows of the chaos that can ensue.. I know! I worked there for a year. Why haven’t they jumped on the bandwagon and organized themselves. Nobody was trampled at Best Buy when I lined up last year. I didn’t see anybody trampled at Circuit City this year either!

Little did I know that there was such horror and terror happening just outside of my peaceful bubble.. Sharing stories with complete strangers of varying race, religion, background and interests. Offering others beside me to step forward before I too make my entrance. Excuse me.. Please.. Thank you.. I really think that the world is a great place, though the Riftrou make it appear to be a cruel sad place.. You know.. The ones who “Ruin It For The Rest Of Us”

Not much to post about lately. I’ve been fighting off a nasty cold/cough. I think it started last week (or early in the week) so I’ve been taking a lot of Vitamin C, Zinc and Tylenol cold. It’s weird how it’ll affect me, seem to go away, then come right back. And I can’t shake this cough… I may actually have to see a doctor on this one. A shame, I’ve managed to stay away from the doctor for probably 5 to 10 years or so. Maybe more, with one exception when I needed a physical 4 or 5 years ago.

So it’s 2 days (1 day, 2 nights) until Halloween, and i have some fun times ahead of me.

I decided to go all out this Halloween with my decorations. Some people like to carve pumpkins, some build scarecrows, but in my true geeky spirit, I invested in Hallowindow. Hallowindow is a set of animations created by Mark Gervais. Mark created a collection of animation loops that can be projected into a window for full-frame viewing from outside.

I picked up a 42″ x 10′ roll of Vellum (a type of tracing paper) and hung it covering my entire livingroom window. Because Hallowindow was produced for a 4:3 screen, and my window has a 16:9 aspect ratio, I had to hang some black curtains on either side. I took my projector down from my ceiling and hooked it to a VCR and projected backwards at the window. It worked great. The Vellum, being slightly translucent made a great rear-projection screen. After purchasing a new DVD player to replace a broken one, and a lamp timer, I have been projecting halloween scenes every evening from 6:00 PM until 2:00 AM.

Tomorrow is work’s annual Halloween costume contest. I’ve won just about every costume contest held. Previous costumes included a Spaceball, Medieval Warrior, Pac-Man, Voltron and even a Motorola SBV-5100 cable modem (I do work for the local cable/internet/phone provider after all!), Unless they find this blog, I’ll surprise everyone tomorrow as the purple-grape Fruit-of-the-Loom guy 🙂 I blew up 60 (or so) purple balloons, secured them to an over sized purple sweatshirt, and have matching sweatpants to wear in to work. It should be hysterical.

This part is a message to all the trick-or-treaters in my area. I’ve been living in my co-op for about 2 years now, and I haven’t had ANY trick-or-treaters yet. Mostly because I don’t get home until really late at night. I decided I may take some personal time tomorrow and try to get back home just before sundown. IF anyone does come to my home, I have full-size candy bars for the first bunch of people! If you’re THE first and don’t have too many people with you, You just may get a bunch of candy bars… I still remember the look on the face of the first trick-or-treater to come to our home when I lived with Carmine and Vince in Hicksville. We poured half a tub of candy into his bag, took pictures with him and frankly, I’m surprised we didn’t have confetti and balloons fall from the ceiling!

Finally, What to do on Friday night? A bunch of people are heading into the city to see Rocky Horror. I wanted to go but other friends of mine cant make it. And, after buying the computer (which should be delivered tomorrow!!!) and last-minute Halloween supplies, I don’t think I have any money to go. What to do… Hmmm