Just a Quick Memo

Hey all -

Just a quick note to all my loyal readers - thanks for sticking with me and helping me out. I've traveled out to Cooper City, Florida, where they actually have some power and internet connections. It's about an hour's travel from my house. Many thanks to Debbie (Matthew, Joel, and Michael's mother) for housing me and hunting me down an internet connection. The Blip server was in horrible shape, and I had to do some overdue maintainence. What I've done should tide it over until next Tuesday, at which point I can do the open heart surgery it needs to the machine.

With regards to the donations of time and information - your help has been invaluable in keeping me alive, as well as all the other denizens of 12th street in Pompano Beach. I want to send out special thanks to Smokehouse, Darrell, Matthew, Joel, Traci, my dad, and everyone else who called with their warm wishes and good information.

My plan, as of now, is to take a month in Texas to get my life straightened out, and figure out what we're doing with Blip. The main thing is to get the VC situation straightened out, as well as get the server operational long term, again.

Then, of course, we've got to address the long term stability of AACS. AACS took a major hit during the storm. Our South-facing doors were blown wide open during the storm, and we may have taken up to $35,000 worth of property damage (and that's purely in lost equipment). We've yet to fully assess the extent of the damage. Luckily, our data is secure, and our employees are safe, so we can rebuild.

I've got a lot of ... interesting ... stories and pictures to share with you next week, so stay tuned for that. In the mean time, Matthew, Art, and Darrell will keep you updated through this blog while I'm incommunicado. As always, the best way to get a hold of me is to leave me a voice mail (the number is on the side of the page here). As for my email, it's pretty much out of my reach right now, as my spam filters are the only thing that make it readable, and I can't apply them through my web-based email readers.

Until we speak again, be well, and thanks again.

/rizzn

Mark STILL alive. Film at 11.

I just got a call from our favorite displaced Floridian. (That's Mark Hopkins, for those of you in Rio Linda.) It would seem that he is chugging right along. He's doing a lot of walking and eating from street barbecues, but he's okay.

He tried to get me to apply for FEMA disaster assistance, but somehow I didn't feel right about that. I've given up on AACS ever paying me the $1742.00 they owe me. I'm sure they are out of business now, anyway. Clown shoes.

Much to Mark's anger and dismay, it would seem that no one in San Francisco reads the newspaper. He's gotten calls from his PR rep and his venture capitalist, both of whom want to know why he's missing appointments, or hasnt turned whatever in. I find this very disturbing. Perhaps the people of San Francisco are too busy planning gay pride parades, putting up rainbow flags, and reading the style section to notice that south Florida is a hellhole right now. Aside from that, Mark's mother hasn't even called him. That's worse than disturbing in my view. That's evil.

Mark tells me the newspaper says the wealthy neighborhoods of Miami will be getting their power restored first. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I suppose the best we can hope for is that it will trigger some "trickle down" economics, or something.

Mark was able to get some money out of his paypal account, so the plan now is for him to buy some gasoline, head to the airport, and shoot off to Texas. He plans on staying there for about a month. Acoording to him, that seems to be the plan for a lot of folks, as he says half his street has moved out of state.

A big thank you to everone who has helped out.

More as it happens.

Mark Lives

I just got a call from Mark. Apparently, south Florida is indeed a wasteland, as he was calling me from the only working pay phone he could find. He does have a little money and food for a couple days, but donations are still appreciated. Right now, he needs to find a working gas station in the Pompano Beach area, so if anybody can help out with that, please drop me a line at smokehouse@rantradio.com ASAP!

"I'll Huff and I'll Puff and I'll...

...blow your power out!", threatened hurricane Wilma. 6 millionish people without electricity and, Mark, is one of them while, Wilma, laughs her evil hurricane kackle. It's the worst powere outage in Florida's history.

Mark says his power could be out for up to a month or more. He has no food or money. He begs of you to donate what you can via paypal to mark@aacsnet.com

If he can manage to get some gas, he may try to get back to Texas for a bit.

That's all the news thats fit to print.

I 4M 571LL H4x0r 31337

Okay, so I’m having a weird life right now.  I’m all off my game, and, well, I don’t know how to explain it.  I think what it is right now is I’m editing this old book of mine that has a lot of emotional and mental ties to my past, and it’s putting me in a really funky headspace.  On top of that, the rest of my life is in a wacky state of flux, too, so I’m just off-kilter in general. None the less, I’m a trooper, and I’m still going to some blog posts for you peoples here.

Spill the beans already!
On the topic of the book, I recently found out (last night) that there is a new real-life chapter to the character’s lives the book is based on. I guess, I’ll go ahead and spill the beans on the book here, so I can try to figure out how I’m going to tackle this last chapter.  The book is based off the journal I kept during the nine month period of time where my engagement to my ex-fiance was dissolving.  It starts out all eloquent, heart-broken, and full of wistful love, and ends up as the writings of a mysogenistic, bent, and spurned author. I’m not sure how I’m eventually going to pitch it, but it’s definately an interesting read.

Well, as to the extra chapter, I was just informed that my ex-fiance got married a couple weeks ago to a fellow who she and I used to hang out with.  This guy was good friends with the guy who broke up our marriage, both of whom were in highschool at the time.  I was under the impression that she had changed, and spun off all her old bad associations, but apparently not.  Not sure what to think about all of that now.  I mean, I’m completely over all of that, but editing through the book as I am right now, like I said, puts me in a weird headspace, so it’s affecting me none-the-less.

A Podcast that Explains a Lot
Smokehouse is uploading a podcast we did last night on my feed. We talked about the upcoming Hurricane Wilma, old leftover topics from Hurricane Katrina, Tom Delay stupidity, my vacation, and a bunch of other rediculous stuff (including my fiasco at work this week).

It’s long, but I think it maintains interest all the way through. If you’ve got an hour to kill, check it out.  You should be subscribed to my feed anyways.  This may be the return of some more regular podcasts from me, anyways.

Excited about the Fellowship Of The Corpse
The adventure to revive Caligh’is returns tomorrow night at iRP.  I haven’t posted another chapter up here yet mostly because not enough story advancement has occurred yet, but there should be enough story advancement by the end of tonight, so look for another exciting chapter in the Fellowship of the Corpse series.

To quickly summarize where the story is at currently, the adventurers who ended up on the Fellowship ended up being Doidialdi, Lutherous, Rizzn, and Marigold.  We spent a fair amount of time last week stocking up for the trip at the market, and then headed north, following Pendleton’s (the horse) lead.  We reached a forrested area, and made camp for the night.  Rizzn stood watch, and after a couple hours we were attacked by a couple bandits on one horse.  We killed one  of the bandits, but he was scooped up by the horseman, and they fled the scene.  At the moment, Rizzn is mounting up to give chase.

Stick around this week, I’ll try to transcribe some of the logs into story form for the next installment.

Hacking the On Time Payment Protection System
A friend of mine from Tyler called me up, and said a friend of his had bought a car from a loan shark who was protecting the car with a payment protection system called ON TIME. I did a little quick research on the device and found that it’s an ‘embedded system’ that may or may not run on TinyOS. The way it works is that if you don’t enter your payment code into the system at the given intervals, it will prevent your car from starting properly.  The code is usually a six digit number preceded by a 1 (1–######).

It allegedly has a tamper protection system built in as well. From what the fellow was telling me, the device only had two wires leading out, that traced back to the starter, which presumably disables that functionality if it deems it so.

My advice (purely unqualified) was if he were to try to defeat the system, he should strip back the wires carefully, to see if they expose copper or more wires inside.  If they simply expose more wires, then give up, because they probably lead back to the computer, and we’d have to reverse engineer the box itself.  If the two wires stripped back only expose copper, then my advice would be to bridge them so as to short circuit the box itself, which theoretically would allow the car to start normally.

The next part is important.  If the car starts normally, you should take the box (which is attached, by adhesive, to the steering column), detach it, and take it to the nearest lake, and pitch it in, reason being is it contains a GPS device, which they will use to come tow your car when you stop making payments.

This advice is not meant to show anyone how they can steal a car, just simply what I told this guy on the phone today.  I do not endorse stealing, nor do I endorse getting out of your bills.

I am curious to see if this all works, because if so, if that is all it takes to defeat the security on the device, then ON TIME PPS is a rip off.

Liz Taylor Deadpool Update
According to the IMDb, Hollywood legend Elizabeth Taylor has expressed her wishes at having her ashes scattered in Wales, England, the home of the biggest love of her life Richard Burton.

Taylor is reportedly seriously ill following a string of health problems. Last month it was revealed that the 73 year old actress is now sleeping up to 14 hours a day and hasn't left her Californian Bel Air home for weeks.

A source close to the actress recently said that she had almost given up on life, felt asthough she has nothing left to live for and dreamnt of being reunited with her former husband.

Despite being married seven times, Taylor has revealed she wants her remains strewn at Cardiff's Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama to be close to Richard's theatre there.

She’s definately moved to the top of my list. Get ready to send your funeral flowers.

/rizzn

Music on the Turntables Currently: DJ Rizzn - Basket Case (Kool Kannon Remix)

Just a Quick Note

Things are super crazy with work right now. I'm in a form of 'Final Jeopardy' with my partners at work, and we're shooting for all the marbles. It's a real pickle of a situation. More details if I get resolution tomorrow.

In other words, I'm real, real, real stressed out right now. I may be a bit slow responding to emails and phone calls.

/rizzn

Music on the Turntables Currently: Optimus Rhyme - Incogni2

Studies show that Rizznites are 65% More Accurately Informed than Slime Mold

Newest Order of Kate and Adam Shirts
I just recieved notification that the latest shipment of Kate Moss and Adam Curry tshirts are shipping.  If you live inside the continental US, you can expect your shirts within the next 3–6 days.

The Colbert Report
Joel said today:

Studies have shown consistently that people that only get their news from the John Stewart are 30% more accuratley informed than people who only get their news from FOX.  Of course, Slime mold growing in my shower is better informed than people who only get their news from FOX.

I think that it is pretty important to include that people who watch Fox News Channel about as accurately informed as viewers from MSNBC, CNN, CNBC, CBS News, or any other mainstream news source.  I remember reviewing a study that Joel is probably quoting here that the only media consumer differences occur when you look at people who consume a multitude of different types of media.  Those that consume blogs and MSM or those that consume public radio and print, etc, are all better informed than those that get their news from one type of primary source.

RE: Technorati Buzz Index
This Times Select business is ruining my life.  Ever since the New York Times has decided to charge for online access to editorials, the Technorati buzz index has been jammed up with keyword searches for John Tierney, Paul Krugman, and whatever other idjits that they have over there spewing swill.  A million cheapsake NYTimes readers are clogging up Technorati with searches so they can find their precious editorial drivel for free somewhere.

What’s the moral of the story?  Clearly, liberals are interested in hearing what their favorite fact-spinners have to say, but they don’t think the words are actually worth paying real money for.

I’m Going to be Published
I just got word back from a few different publishers on a book manuscript I’ve been sending out for the last few months.  I’ve gotten a few yeses, a bunch of turn-downs, and several no replies, and a couple return to senders.  The upside is that I have a few yeses to compare and evaluate to see which one is going to do the most marketing of the book.  More on this as it develops… once I sign a deal with someone, I’ll tell you guys a bit more about it, but just to tease you a little bit: it’s an auto-biography focusing on a nine-month period of my life from several years ago.  I envision it being a coffee table book, but most publishers don’t want to handle those.  We’ll see.

Miscellaneous Stuff
Clusterflux Anomaly are putting out a new episode soon.  Go check it out once it’s updated, it’s supposed to be a special episode.

Kate Moss turns down Doherty visit. In our continuing coverage of this blasted Kate Moss story, Gawker today paints a picture of what will end up being the final nail in the coffin to the US ecomonmy as a result of Kate’s decision.

My Basket Case remix is getting rave reviews from all who listen to it.  Go download it.

That’s more or less all I got today.

/rizzn