Computer Hell

I picked up a 180GB harddrive friday night at CompUSA's six-hour anniversary sale for about $100 after rebate. Good deal, eh? Well, the rest of the weekend was spent ( trying to get it up and running... )

Now I have two working systems, and I've just got to wait for the KVM switch to come in to use both. I suppose I could use VNC to access the other one, but I'm not sure how well it runs headless. I'll eventually get all the stuff on the other computer on to the big drive, and try to install linux and get the bronzearchives going there and off of the University of Florida network.

Like I mentioned, I went to Newnan Saturday night, and watched Blue Crush and One Hour Photo. Actually, I didn't really watch Blue Crush; I was far too absorbed in a card game--Runa and I played Spades against Amy and batnandu. That game stresses me out. At some point whenever I sit down to play Spades, I start shaking. Happens every time. It's maddening.

But hanging out in Newnan is such the good time.

For those of you who care, ( 10 things that turn me on meme )

If you don't care, don't click on the link.

A Thought Train to Memory Lane

Not a few minutes ago, I was thinking about the phrase "Keeping up with the Joneses," when I happened upon a memory lost somewhere between college and grad school.

In high school, I used to go by James Hsiao Jones. Quite an unusual moniker for a Chinese-American teenager, huh?

See, in my junior year, the Miami Herald's Sunday Magazine, Tropic, held a Bad Poetry Contest. All of my fellow students in our various English classes got together and started brainstorming bad verse.

They would come up with such gems as:

"Oedipus"
Mommy! Mommy!

and

Whish.
Wash.
Whish.
Wash.

The clothes are done.

I took a couple of sheets of notebook paper and threw together a good ten to fifteen poems, short in length (you know the Reader's Digest motto: "Brevity is Wit"), but long in worth. I took my inspiration from the quiet moments of my life--my classes, my peers, my family. Sadly, I can only remember one of them now. I wrote my name at the top-right-hand corner of the pages the way I signed all my assignments: "Hsiao, James." Someone else would compile them into a single shipment of entries to the Herald.

Weeks later, Tropic would present their choices for the best worst poetry submitted. I believe the winner was

Lather.
Rinse.
Repeat.

(With special props to the other submitter who suggested, "Lather / Rinse / Repeat if necessary"). I would get an Abominable Mention for my work "Life (A Student's View)"--Tropic renamed this piece from my original title, "Calculus":

I'm dying.
I'm dying.
I'm dead.

In their editorial fervor, however, someone apparently couldn't read my generally-readable handwriting and attributed the poem to "Hsaio Jones."

...

...

Uh-Huh. The name would stick.


Sometime in my senior year, my creative writing teacher would mark an assignment of mine.

"More bad poetry"