ad astra!

Do you say pop or soda? Some people even call all forms of soft drinks “coke“.

I always thought “pop” was strictly a Michigan phenomenon, but it appears to be a midwest/plains idiom. Brad’s friend Mike, who is from Georgia, says that if you walk into a restaurant and ask for Coke™ they will ask you, “What kind of Coke do you want?” Sprite, Pepsi, Coke, Diet, etc. Which makes a roundabout sort of sense since Coke was invented there.

Resolve the controversy at popvssoda.com. (Thanks, Josh!)

Oh yeah, and if anyone was wondering why the standard paper size in the United States is 8½ by 11 inches, here’s why:

“Back in the late 1600’s, the Dutch invented the two-sheet mold. The average maximum stretch of an experienced vatman’s arms was 44″. Many molds at that time were around 17″ front to back because the laid lines and watermarks had to run from left to right. Sounds big?…well to maximize the efficiency of paper making, a sheet this big was made, and then quartered, forming four 8.5″ x 11″ pieces.”

The Dutch are behind everything.

Brad is here this weekend. It shall be filled with Xbox, beer, and for me, some work.

Yesterday Josh was complaining about his love life. He was all down and talking about how “the summer is 1/4 over” and he hasn’t gotten a boyfriend yet or even laid or anything. All this talk of summer being 1/4 over was just ridiculous-sounding to me, so I told him he needed to get out in the sunshine. I took him to lunch and we ate at UniverCity Commons or someplace like that on the Kalamazoo Mall. We were going to go to Boogie’s Cafe but they gave us too much attitude at the counter and didn’t have any hamburger so we left. Then I went to Athena Bookstore because I didn’t realize it was still there. I think it’s the last independent bookstore in the city. I didn’t expect them to have anything on my summer reading list, but they had Nickel & Dimed. I was uncertain if I should buy it or not (there’s lots of cheap used copies avaible but I decided to participate in my local economy. I got a 10% student discount, too.

That got me thinking about how local economies have been impacted with the sale of goods on the internet. There was a gay & lesbian bookstore in Grand Rapids that closed down eventually because of Barnes & Noble moving in and Internet sales. It makes me wonder what our economy will look like once more than 70% of America has Internet access.

One more thing: I’ve always wanted a Zen Garden.

Patrick came over tonight and dyed his hair blonde. I would’ve taken pictures but the bateries in my camera died and it wasn’t liking the regular AAs I tried, for some f*ing reason. But there charging and I will fill tomorrow with pictures. Patrick’s hair looks pretty cool. I hope he had a good time tonight, because all we really did was his hair and watch Joe play Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes on Gamecube. Since I’m not that great at video games, I always judge a game’s quality by how well it entertains the other people in the room. This game (along with MGS2) does a great job of entertaining you if you’re stuck watching the game. It has a lot of cinematics, in fact if the plot weren’t so good I would be complaining that it has too much, but in fact the plot is actually interesting enough that I didn’t mind watching all the movies. Wait, I don’t really have to say how great a game this is since it was for the longest time the game for Playstation. It’s just that I never really saw anyone play it and we were playing it on Gamecube for the first time. Joe got through most of disc one (since Gamecube uses 3″ DVDs it ships on two discs, don’t ask me why nintendo decided on that retarded little format) until he died and everyone left. It’s really a good game to watch.

Other good games to watch: James Bond: Everything and Nothing, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and of course Goldeneye. I wasted days of my life watching really stoned people play multiplayer Goldeneye on nintendo 64. It was very entertaining.

That’s about it. I have tomorrow off as well, so I’m not sure what I’ll be doing. I should probably try and get through more of Dune. I will abandon Dune if it doesn’t really catch my attention, however. I’ve seen both movies so I know the plot, I was more interested in what wasn’t in the movies and the writing style. We’ll see.

Patrick still has my copy of Eastern Standard Tribe which is ok, I left it at his place and he thought I was letting him borrow it. Truth was I was only 1/2way through and just forgot it. But I’ve been reading a little bit of the PDF file I downloaded but I still like the book form best. The book (or the PDF) is so astoundingly good I can’t wait for the future described in it to come, even if it is sort of bleak.

What was really cool (well, cool for Corey Doctorow) was that Patrick said he could see parts of himself in Art (the main character) and I think that’s a really good compliment to the author; it means Corey’s created a person someone else can relate to, and that takes that character off the written page and into the reader’s mind as something beyond just the text on the page. It means Corey’s lies are so good, he’s fooled Patrick (and yes, me) into thinking of his character as a real person. Of course I hold Corey in high regard and think is writing is fantastic, otherwise I wouldn’t have shelled out the $24 for his book.

I wish I could find some really good gay-themed science fiction. It’s hard to find really good gay fiction as it is, at least anything that’s touched me as much as Like People in History or A Home At The End Of The World which are two books up there in my all-time top ten.

Which brings us to another topic. A Home At The End Of The World had been made into a film and I hope it doesn’t suck. It’s supposed to be release in July. I’ve been in love with Michael Cunningham since I read Flesh and Blood in high school and I always pray that anything they turn into a movie based on his work is absolutely the best it can possibly ever be. The Hours was such a suprisingly literate and rich experience of a film I sometimes find it hard to believe that another one of his books-turned-movie will be as good. I trust him enough that this will also be an excellent, if not better, adaptation of a marvellous book. The hope is, of course, that more people will pick up his books once they’ve seen the movie. Home is such a powerful novel (I read it for the fifth time back in September) that it’d be great if the movie is just as powerful.

That’s really all. The sound of crickets has been replaced by the sound of birds. Time to get some sleep.

Yesterday Kyle IMed me wanting to hang out, so we decided we’d get some dinner & watch a movie. Jay called him and invited us out to Stevensville, so Kyle and Joe and I all went out to Stevensville and hung out with Jay. It was nice since I hadn’t seen Jay since we all moved. We went to Pizza Hut and then back home (Jay has to be home by 9pm since he’s on probation) and played Boggle and then watched Confessions of a Dangerous Mind which is about Chuck Barris, creater of “The Dating Game” and “The Gong Show” among others and how he was supposedly a CIA agent undercover. It was sort of interesting but kind of slow. I’m not sure if I believe the story as it’s a little far fetched; supposedly he would go as a “chapperone” with the dates from “The Dating Game” and they would go to places like Helsinki or West Berlin where he had to do his missions. Seems kind of fishy, I’d like to find out if “The Dating Game” ever sent couples to such “exotic” locales, especially during the Cold War. Then we went to bed & slept until noon, went to Sophie’s in Benton Harbor for breakfast, then basically Joe and Kyle and I drove back here.

I needed to do laundry really badly, so I went through my change cup and discovered I had $17.50 in quarters. I think I had every state that’s been issued.

That’s all. Had a fun 2 day trip to Stevensville/Benton Harbor/St Joseph. Next time I hope we can go to the beach or something. Brad is coming for a visit on Saturday. If I didn’t have to work with Sunday it’d be cool, but he’ll have to find something to do for 9 hours. Maybe he’ll beat Metal Gear Solid 2 in just one day, too.

If I ever get so sad and lonely that I’m posing for pictures with my dog will someone please come shoot me?

I’ll be using it for image hosting for this blog and KineticMemory. I don’t intend to move this blog off blogspot since I paid the $12 way back to get the ad off the top. Too bad they don’t offer that anymore. Since I had to pay for this webspace you might see some Google ads pop up here and there. Click them! Even if you close the window right away. It’s just nice to do.

Also, the look of that page is probably what this blog will end up looking like eventually, once I get the gumption to recode the template.

www.paulpellerito.com

Pictures from Marty’s Party last night are here.

Check out my Morality! 78% liberal, 22% conservative

For the record, “Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim” is the new book by humorist David Sedaris. My guess is it won’t have much to do with clothing for your family.

Got the memory installed today. I didn’t have the right size screwdriver so I bought a set of precision screwdrivers while I was at Meijer for my interview with Jason. He’s on vacation all next week, then we will know who the team is for the Rockford store. So I get to be in limbo until after labor day. But I think I got it, and I think it’ll be an exciting experience to set up a brand new store. If I didn’t get it, I still have no idea what I’m going to do.

Marty is having a party tonight. I’m going to get bombed. Send me an AIM for details if anyone wants to go.

I finally got my memory today. It took a week and two days for them to ship it; it must’ve been out of stock or something. I also got my voter registration card for Kalamazoo County, which is kind of useless as I’m moving again in August but I guess there are school elections in June. Maybe I’ll find out who is running and vote. And I picked up some transparent duct tape. Maybe I’ll make a messenger bag.

Check out KineticMemory, our new photoblog.

Today was the first day in the history of our country where, in a single state of the union, gay men and lesbians were fully and equally recognized by the law. Massachusetts began allowing same-sex marriages at 12:01amEDT on May 17th.

What can I say? When I was first coming out 8 years ago there was very little in the way of encouragement that I could lead a happy life with a partner. Ellen and Rosie hadn’t come out, there was no Fab Five. Every now and then there would be lesbians on Donahue or a news story about AIDS and gay people, but not many positive things. I used to try and imagine a time when growing up gay and living as a gay person would be as normal and everyday as being heterosexual. Today the world has come a little bit closer to that.

I feel a little bit better, too, knowing that there’s somewhere I could go and live and not be a second-class citizen. My mom would be overjoyed. Massachusetts stands out as an example for equality and fairness that could eventually include our entire nation.

Please join me in celebrating and congratulating all the gay and lesbian people who are getting married today.

There’s a catch, of course. The Mass. state legislature passed a constitutional amendment that will go to public referendum in 2006. The best thing anyone can do to change public sentiment about gay marriage is to come out. It’s much harder to condone discrimination when you think about a friend, coworker, or relative that would be effected by writing inequality into a state constitution or the US constitution.

Mis-placed title tag ruins it all
I was using Ecto to blog. I stopped when I had to pay for it, because I wasn’t sure it was worth the $17. I guess it is, except whenever I gave a post a title it put little <title> tags around it. This is NOT good HTML as there should only ever be one title tag on a page. It’s confused the heck out of all the spiders as to what the title of this blog is. So now I’ve got to go and edit all the posts with title tags in them.

For the record:
<title>thoughts to fill an empty room</title>

Summer Reading
I’ve suspended the “Read” section for the summer and in it’s place put up my modest summer reading list.

I’m about halfway through Eastern Standard Tribe and I’m loving it. It’s near-future-sci-fi geekiness makes me so happy. It’s written by Cory Doctorow, the illustrious co-editor or BoingBoing, my favourite directory of wonderful things. I started out reading it by downloading it but as I’m still addicted to the tangible world I went to Barnes & Noble and bought the actual book. This also means that Cory gets some money for his work, and it’s so damned good he really does deserve some. Hopefully with my book purchase he can buy himself some prawn potato crisps.

As I need to get back into the academic writing swing, I’m going to write some sort of paper on Eastern Standard Tribe. That’ll be posted here once it’s done.

Ilnness and Uncertainty

So I was feeling sucky all week. I couldn’t really figure out why, except for my outrageous sleep schedule. I went one day without sleep. Wednesday night I had a little fever of 100, took some tylenol and it went away and I had Patrick and Joe over to play monopoly. Thursday night I hung out with Jim, even though I had a fever. I slept almost all day Friday, and when I took my temperature it was 100.5. So I spent most of Friday in bed with body aches and fever. It was like having the flu but without the nasal symptoms. I woke up today around 1 and my fever is gone but I still feel kind of crappy. I don’t know what it was. I haven’t seen Patrick since Wednesday and I kind of miss him. Maybe we can watch a movie or something tonight. I work tomorrow 9:30-6. I don’t know if it’s with Barb but I hope so, because then I can bring in the iPod.

I have to interview with Jason for the new Rockford store. I’m feeling pretty nervous about it. I don’t usually get nervous about stuff, but so much of the future is focused on getting a position in Grand Rapids that this is pretty much the most important thing going right now. I told Barb I was putting in for a position and she sent an email to Jason:

From: Barbara Deibert
To: Jason Beauch
Date: Thursday – May 13, 2004 4:10 AM
Subject: Paul Pellerito

Hi Jason. I work most of my hours on nights or weekends at 196 and float one or two days of the week. George has only had me scheduled at your store in Plainwell a couple of days since you took over and turned a rough running store into a dream. I hope you receive the pharmacist of the year award. Being a hospital pharmacists at Borgess for 20 years did not prepare me for some of our Meijer store pharmacies. Plainwell was really known to us pharmacists as Plain Hell. However that changed when you arrived. Brenda made a very wise choice for the new Rockford store and congratulations. The staffing of the Rockford store is reason for my long e-mail. Paul Pellerito is moving back to the Grand Rapids area and is very interested in a position at your new store. Paul has been very valuable to both Greg and I. Paul has always been an excellent teacher which I personally find extremely important for our staffs. Paul is able to adjust the information he is sharing with a pharmacist or technician regardless of their skill level. Both Greg and I have managed in our years of practice and if I where to take on a teamleader position I would hire Paul and have him work as our level 4 technician. Paul was raised in the GR area and understands the elevated level of professional behavior expected in these conservative areas. Paul is very happy at Meijer’s and works at rapid pace which will challenge you to keep him busy! Greg and I wish you well in your new endeavor. Thank you for making Plainwell a better place to work and a much more professional work environment. Sincerely Barb Deibert

That was a nice surprise to get in my email the other day. It’s nice to get some recognition for the work that I do. I don’t know if I will get a position in Rockford or not. It will probably depend a lot on politics. I don’t know what kind of favor I have with the higher-ups. I never even talk to my boss. The last important email I sent him (about my moving to Grand Rapids) he deleted. I’m pretty sure he hates me. As far as the all-powerful area coordinator Brenda goes, she’s said she likes me in the past, but I have no idea if she’d put in a good word for me with Jason or not. As far as I’ve been able to find out there are no other positions in GR.

I also have to find out when the store opens. Hopefully it is not Lake Bash weekend. If it is, I will probably not be able to go to the Lake Bash, which will be awful. I will also have to figure out exactly how many hours I’m going to work. I will need to make enough money to pay rent and eat but not so many hours that I can’t go to school.

If I don’t get a position in Rockford then I’m going to take educational leave. I won’t have health insurance or a steady income, but I will be able to do more with school. I don’t know where I’d live, but it’d have to be cheap. I guess I’ll know by the first week of June.

It’s nice to have school set; now if I can get the work thing covered I’ll start looking for a place to live again.

I decided to upgrade the memory in my iBook. It came with 256, which is enough for surfing the web but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to top it out. Apple sells a 512mb module for $200. I called Apple and asked if it would violate my warranty if I installed memory or bought memory not from Apple and they said it was fine but they didn’t recommend getting memory not from Apple.

So I did some research. Crucial sells a PC2100 DDR226 SO-DIMM for $116. I’ve always bought any memory I ever needed from Crucial and have never had a problem with it. Crucial even claims [top 10 reasons to buy crucial—look at "reputation"] that they make memory for Apple. So I opened up the iBook tonight and looked at the memory chip in there. You can clearly see the Micron Technologies logo right on the chip. Crucial is a division of Micron; that is to say that Crucial memory is Micron memory. Apple obviously wants to make the $84 off me. SCAM!

I ordered the Crucial chip. It should be here in a few days. A word to anyone wanting to upgrade their Mac: buy your memory from Crucial.com and save yourself some cash. I would recommend Crucial memory to anyone for any computer, anyway.

Ok. I converted the template to CSS (no more table tags! no more font tags!) and I’m working on ironing out all the wrinkles. The geeks out there can post a comment if they catch anything weird. The Blogger tags were rendering funky but I think I got most of it worked out.