Daniel E. Renfer’s Blog

I hope the fourth translation of my writings really looses sight of what I was getting at in the first place

Our trouble-shooting process would go so much easier if you wouldn’t lie to me

Garfield is so much better, when he makes no sense

Go to Google, type in “Waffles” hit “I’m Feeling Lucky”

I don’t understand it, I just pass it along.

(x-posted to )

From Go-Quiz.com

(stolen from )

ABC has plans to bring England’s Wife Swap to American television. While the premise of this show calls for two women to swap families and take over the others familial duties, this does not include sleeping with the other’s husband.

How do you think this will affect societies view of polyamorists, swingers, and others with open sexual lifestyles? Or do you think this will even make it to American television? (Especially in our current “Moral Right” climate that’s been sweeping through our media)

(cross posted to )

I want this!

The worst part about playing an MMORPG for the first time, is the incredible amount of time it takes for that first update to complete.

Files remaining: 4017/9226

I can only hope that I am given the totally incompetant negotiator, that allows me to negotiate for more hostages

I woke up feeling groggy. I was rather suprised at myself for not allowing myself to sleep a little bit longer, when I obviously knew that I needed it. I couldn’t sleep at all the night before. I always hate those nights. It was worse because I had Amanda sleeping so peacefully right beside me. I ended going through all 4 hours of Six Feet Under that I had on VOD.

I love that show. I’d have got to say that that is one of the few shows that has actually brought me to tears before. I first heard about it from Jyl. I downloaded a bunch of episodes and watched them one after another. When I was almost to the end of the pilot episode, my mom called me. She was concerned about me. Kali and I had just broken up, and as a result, she got our car. (I now have that car once again… but the last time I drove it told me that it was overheating.) So I didn’t have a car. She called me up and told me that she was comming by, and that she had found me a car. This was July 13 2002.

Anyways… I woke up before Amanda. I messed around on the computer for a little bit. Candice IMmed me, but I wasn’t quite awake, (nor was I for much of the day) so I wasn’t being very talkative. I have been going over the same old posts from a year ago over and over again. I could probably recite to you everything that has happenend in the month of May last year. (Ahh… but it will be sweet when I’m done)

Amanda woke up. We procrastinated getting up getting dressed and leaving to do our things. We needed to go up to Meijer’s to get some things. I had just gotten my new T-shirt that say “Jesus: King of the Jews V.S. Godzilla: King of the Monsters” that I got off ebay. The problem is… It’s black, and it was extremly hot out. We got our stuff, then came back home. I searched through the mountanous piles of clothing I have laying around my room, but I could not find the one tank top that I own.

We took my old Long John Silver’s T-Shirt that I have. It used to be a pretty good shirt, but I deemed it to be a “disposable” shirt, so I would wear it when I used to work at Durcon. Granted, there is not nearly as much black melted tar on it as some of my other shirts, but you can still see traces. (’better on my shirt then in my lungs’ I always say.) We took that old shirt and cut off the sleeves. This was nice, because now I have a shirt that can show off my tattoo.

We had to go to Amanda’s Grandma’s house. I drove. We got in her house, and it was so increadibly much hotter than outside. I sat down on her couch, stared at the news, (which I could only quite hear,) and basically just zoned out. Amanda and her grandma were chatting up a storm, I didn’t hear any of it. I felt like a zombie. I explored some of the options of my phone. I sent myself an email.

Next, we went to her grandpa’s house. He was out in the garage when we pulled up. He’s got this sweet little screen door insert into his garage with a little door and everything. He’s also got one of those really big fans. We went inside, talked a little bit, and then he started giving her stuff. First it was some little various figurines, (what she originally came over for) and then there was the jar of honey, (which he said was a little comby) and she grabbed some pans, and he tried to give us a mixer, but we couldn’t figure out which beaters went with it, if any. (The bread hook attachment was fun to play with.)

He gave her some of his homemade Irish Creme, but she decided she was going to give it to Kali. It was in a big bottle, so he had her dump out the bottle of plum wine that was almost empty. It was kinda a cool bottle. I kinda wished I could have had it for our almost-collection. We packed up all the shit we had gotten from him, put into the backseat next to the big box of stuff she got from her grandma, that I forgot to mention. Then we left.

Next we went over to her mom’s house. She had made plans earlier in the day to come over at some point in the course of the day, but when it came down to it, we had no idea why we were going over there. The best we can figure, she wanted to show her the book from the Mary Kay thing she is throwing at our place on the 20th. (I’m sure if anyone out there want’s to come, she‘ll welcome you… more free stuff for her) We went over there, she got all of her mail. Her dad had gotten fired. I don’t know what he’s planning on doing, or the exact specifics. Then we left.

We called up Kali, and went over there. We had that bottle of Irish Creme to give her before it went bad. She only had a little bit of time before she had to go to work. They messed up everybody’s schedules to acomidate one person’s scheduling needs. She has been addicted to Final Fantasy XI lately. I’ve been thinking that I want to play it but I don’t really know. When we were living together, I would find a game that I liked. I would play it for two days. She would see it. For the next five months, I would see nothing but that game. I would never play it again. I don’t know if I would actually keep with it, now that I don’t live with her anymore?

Kali left for work. We called up Christin. They didn’t want any company because they were already in bed. It was by now 9:00. I had planned on being there much earlier. I was hoping that I would be able to go over there before Cindel went to bed, so that I could see her. I guess it’s a good thing that we didn’t go over there, the rest of my story would be different from here on out, had we gone over there. (but I guess those are the choices you make every second. Every choice opens new posibilities.)

We tried going over to Ryan’s. He wasn’t there. I asked his dad where he was, and he said Julie Moskal’s house. We drove around for a little bit, tried calling some people, and then finally decided to give it a try anyway. There were so many people over there. At first I felt really uncomfortable. Most of these people I hadn’t seen in a really long time. I was over there almost every day a year ago, but when I moved out here, I stopped going over there. That, and I never quite felt at home in that group. I felt welcome, but never quite at home.

I opted to not introduce Amanda to people. I figure it saved me the chance that I’d run over people that I didn’t know their names. Amanda and I eventually split. I figured that way, she‘d have the opportunity to socalize on her own. She went off and took up a seat in the circle, and stayed there most the night. I, on the other hand wandered around.

I talked to Tim about The Phage. They are having some shows comming up. I’ll have to get the exact details later. It pisses me off so much that I don’t have my site up and running yet. There is such a need for an easy way for musicians to track and record their upcomming shows in a place where their fans can find out about it.

Kristin came up to me out of the blue and asked me how old Hitler would be, were he alive today. I found it funny that she might think that I would know a fact like that. Alas, I didn’t. Nor did the people around me. We were emptying our minds, throwing out dates, trying to figure out when he was born. (In the meantime, Kristin looked it up on the internet.)

I got into a philisophical discussion with Kattie and Mike Clark. I started talking to them about why I feel the the United States goverment should devide itself off into smaller groups. This country would operate a whole lot better, if the whole country didn’t have to agree on an issue before they can act. If this country was devided into smaller, localized groups, then we wouldn’t have any problems reaching desisions on topics such as abortion, marijuana, gay marriages, polygamy, prayer in school, gun control, censorship, you name it. If the north and the south and the west and South Carolina and the corner of 35th and Vine, all have to agree (or at least reach a quarum) before any law can be passed, then no laws will be passed. I’ll bet you anything Michigan wouldn’t be in Iraq right now, were we to have a say in it.

We were all talking really good, and then we all kinda just drifted off in seperate directions. I went over to check on Amanda, then drifted back around, in front of the garage, talked to Trevor for a second, and then wound up talking to Kattie and Mike about philisophical matters again. “Watch. We’ll drift apart and wind back together again.” Mike said. We drifted apart, and each were in close proximity again, but never quite ended up talking like that again.

Amanda said that she was ready to go, so we began to make our goodbye rounds. We got stuck talking to Joe for a little bit, and I was trying to give my email address to Tim, but didn’t have a pen. I hope he remembers it. (I haven’t received anything as of yet) Also, at some point in the night I had to explain my tattoo do Danny. How exactly do you try to explain what a religion is about when the main focus of that religion is to confuse? What rules are good rules to tell someone, “Do this if you want to be a good discordian“? Now what rules do you cite if you believe that rules follow the Heisenberg Uncertanty Principle, they change when you look at them?

Next, we went up to 7-11. I pulled over into the last parking space on the left hand side. I did this conciously, thinking that I might be here a while, I don’t want to obstruct the flow of comerce. A second or two later, a van pulls up to my left. I think to myself, “grr. I don’t think that’s really a parking space. That guy is going to get arrested.” Dave was there. I instantly froze. For some strange reason, all the times when I would try my hardest to avoid him flashed into my mind. I considered whether I should go in or not. For the longest time, right after we broke up, I would wait until he had left, before I would go in, and stay up there the rest of the night. I don’t really feel like trying to go through hoops trying to avoid him anymore, but for a second there that popped back in my head.

Okay… This sucks. There’s this kid… I kno w his name. I want to say carl or craig, but … Jeremy!

Jeremy was up there. It has been a while since I’ve seen him. He looks a little bigger now, plus he’s older, he shaved his head, and got a big piercing in his ear. I was looking at him, because I was noticing all of these differences, and he did that whole “What?” thing. You know, the one where they get really self concious of you, and now that they‘ve gotten your attention like that, and you know they‘re standing over there freaking out wondering what the fuck is up with you, and you just have no choice but to keep looking at them, and you don’t really have anything to say because you were just looking and hadn’t formulated a thought just yet, and the uncomfortableness in the room just keeps growing and growing for about a good 12 seconds or so, until you go and grab a pop. And then there is one more minor incident.

So we buy my pop, and Amanda’s coffee. Dave leaves. I talk to Jeremy a bit, removing the whole thing 45 seconds ago. And then I look out the window, and see a whole bunch of cars. They’re blocking the parking lot, and our car. I walk outside, and see that these non-descript cars actually belong to the police. They were all in plainclothes with “Police” vests on. They were dragging the guy from the van with his hands behind his head, and other officers were searching his van. I turn around and walk back inside. A few seconds later, two more actual police cars show up.

I walk out a short while later. Everything is gone. The van is gone. But there is a car there that wasn’t there before. It didn’t look like a cop car. It didn’t even look like that cool undercover one that the Garden City PD has. I walked around it, slowly. I was afraid of what type of alarm system it might have. It was meticulously clean inside. This wasn’t a 7-11 customer’s car. (the place was empty, save for us loiterers and employees) It didn’t even have a goverment plate. There was no indication that it was being used by the cops. (It was later revealed that there was a CB radio hidden away.) And to think, all this manpower coming to bear on a guy that parks outside of the lines, and partially obstructs the entrance to the alleyway. I was telling people, “You wait, latter on tonight, two cops will pull up, one will get out, and drive this car away.”

I was standing outside smoking, when Jeremy’s two friend’s Tim and Craig. (I’m almost sure that was his name.) They came up to me and asked me if I was a musician. They were perpetuating the stereotype that every long haired, bearded white guy standing out front of a 7-11 smoking a cigarette in a pair of jean shorts and a tank top showing off a tattoo is automatically a musician. (granted, it’s not a very common stereotype, but it exists. It’s an epidemic I tell you!) I am not a musician, but I am at the very least a resessive co-dominant. So I sat out there and talked to Craig about music while Tim went into the store. We both thought we knew Tim from somewhere, but neither of us could quite place it. They left with Jeremy, and we took off shortly thereafter.

We went back home, watched tv out in the living room with Ben. He had came home from work, sick, earlier in the day. We put in “Enemy at the Gate”. Amanda went out on the back porch, fell asleep, I grabbed my pillow and blanket to lay on the couch, but couldn’t get comfortable on that couch, so I went to bed. Amanda came to bed shortly thereafter. I tried putting the pilot episode of Jake 2.0 in, but was having trouble getting it to play, amanda was out before I had it started, and I never saw the end.

Okay, I just ate a hot dog. It was good. I think I might be still a little hungry, so I’ll probably go make another one in a second here. I love microwaved hot dogs. I love just putting a hot dog in the microwave and cook a hot dog for a minute.

Amanda gave me some time to write a live journal post, but I’m having a hard time concentrating. I just got home from work not too long ago. My stomach is growling… Okay, second hot dog. Much better.

One of Amanda’s ex-sorta-boyfriends and his want to come wife out tonight. I just got through trying to set that straight with her. We wanted to go do something and have our big romantic 5th month anneversary and all that, but I don’t think we will end up doing all that much. We are both almost broke. I get paid on Friday, but that doesn’t really help my plight tonight.

I’ve been spending so much of my time trying to convert my live journal posts lately. I came up with a special tag (<def Id=”">word</def>) system to mark up a reference to a keyword. (This is part of the code for my website.) Now I managed to get an XML copy of all of my posts that I had to go through and edit. Basically, this is what I’ve been doing. I read through a post and position my cursor in front of every keyword. Then, I hit Ctrl+V to drop the opening tag in front of each word. While I do this, I do some minor formatting. (There was a time when I was opposed to using the ‘Enter’ key.) Then, once I’ve gotten about as far as I feel like going in that particular sesion, and then I scroll back up to the top, or rather I usually hit the “Pretty-Print Xml” button. (God, I love XmlSpy) This will bring me to the first paragraph that has a floating open tag. (the first error) I then, loaded with a fresh copy of “&lt;/def&gt;” in my clipboard, proceed to scan my text again, and find all those keywords I’ve previously marked.

So now I have every reference of a name, a pronoun, or basically any other word that could possibly be something to have an entry about. I switch to “Grid” view, load up my Index page, and I start filling in attributes. So I now have an entire month’s posts, I’ve fixed any well formedness errors. (You have no idea how much I hate the crap that Quizilla gives to people for inclusion) Every entry node contains “p, div class=”quiz”, or lj-cut. And all the rest is the cleanest, closest to XHTML: strict as I felt like going, and I have this huge list of def tags, with empty Id attributes. I find a tag on this list, try to figure out what I was refering to, when I said “him”, switch to my master list, look that person up, find their Id, switch back to Visual Studio, enter that number in, collapse the tree.

I would continue this until every reference was properly marked up, with proper link information. I’ve been using Live Journal since Feb 2003. I don’t really write as much as I used to, but there was a time in my life when I had made a goal for myself to write as much as I could for any given day. I’m really glad I did that. Because of it, I have all of this information at my disposal, but also, it’s going to take me a really long time to convert everything. When I’m done, it will be sweet. Write a simple template to display the information with links intact, and throw it up on the site. Hell, I can even choose to do statistical analyses on that data. (graph the instances of references to Christin over time) This is true nirvana for an obsessive-compulsve data addict like me.

Okay, enough of stuff about my site. I’ve been writing about technical issues a lot lately. It’s mostly because that’s what I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. Whenever you spend a lot of time thinking or doing something, that takes up a lot of your thoughts. You ever have one of those nights where you spend almost all of your time doing nothing but having sex. You know, one of those days where you just never really leave the bedroom. You might not actually be having sex the whole time, but it’s basically the topic of the evening. How do you say what you did to someone? You want to think of what to tell them. (possibly shooting for a 2-3 thousand word mark) But the only things you can think to say, probably are not the most appropriate. (”Well, there was this position, and then we did this, and then that… I’m still recovering from that. And then this, then she did that, then we fell asleep”) But really, what else are you going to talk about when someone asks “So, what did you do last night?”

Ben keeps fucking bothering me. I have my own website. He’s got his own site. Let him deal with his own site, because the longer I have to think about it. The more ideas I’m going to come up with. like so… I’m never going to get this written. There are so many distractions right now. I had to make some coffee for amanda a few seconds ago. It should be almost done soon.

Amanda’s friend should be here soon. I’ve met him before, but I can’t quite remember his name right now. I assume, that depending on how major a force he becomes in my life, may get an entry. (Rick Gronczewski) I just asked Amanda for that. I have to try to learn people’s last names. I always feel wierd when I ask someone who knows someone, that person’s last name, and they respond “Why” Amanda is getting nervous because they are not here yet. When they get here, we have to go up to Meijer’s to meet them, then we’ll come back here.

I’m going to stop writing, so I can fill in the tags for this post, (hey, it helps, and then post it.)

Which occurs more? A straight person wishing that the person that they lust over wasn’t gay, or a gay person wishing that the person that they lust over wasn’t straight?

This is my 300th entry

Okay, In the past few days, I’ve spent more time editing past journal entries then making new ones. So I guess it’s time to write a new one.

I am currently sitting in my room. It’s a little cold in here, but that is because I had left the window open last night. There was a severe thunderstorm warning at about 3:00 am this morning. I was watching Family Guy when they showed the warning. We switched to the Weather Channel (for some reason, Amanda knows which channel that is) to see if it was going to hit us. Alas, it was just a little bit too far south.

I love a good thunderstorm. I always have. I love the feel in the air when it’s just about to rain. I love the lightning. I love watching a good storm from the top of a parking structure.

So, Amanda didn’t have to work last night. We thought for a while there that she was going to have to, but they called her up and told her that they didn’t need her. Were she to have worked, I probably would have gone over to Christin’s last night and spent the night, but since she didn’t work, we wanted to go out and do something, and Christin would have gone to bed before us, leaving us with little else to do other than sleep. (well, there is Christin’s suggestion on how to help Amanda sleep. I never did help her)

We ended up going to downtown Ann Arbor to go rollerblading. I made her get her skates from her parents’ house last week so we could start going skating. I used to love skating, but it’s going to take me a bit of time to get back into the hang of it. I need a new pair of skates. I still have James’ old skates. He had left them at Ken and Christin’s house like almost 2 years ago. They told him that if he never came and picked them up, they were going to throw them out. He never came. I took them. Later, when he found out, he tried to get me to pay him some money for them. I understand that he should be compensated for them, but on the other hand, had I not taken them, they’d be in a landfill by now.

Is it just me, or does anyone else thing it would be cool to go down to the landfill, and turn off all of the methane vents? I want to see it fill up with methane. I want to see it fill up to the breaking point. I want to be standing there, watching a mountain of garbage, as it explodes. I want to see how far the garbage would fly. Bring a camera, I don’t think many people have footage of garbage exploding.

The other day we were watching some TV show, and the cut to a shot of this building (an exterior shot) and they held it there for a few seconds. Ken later said, “They blew that building up” It makes sense. I was for some reason expecting the end of the building to collapse. I don’t know what the men and women of Law and Order would have done then, but I think it would have been funny. I love stock footage.

We had a team meating yesterday at work. We had to meet with John, he’s the guy in charge of rolling out the new CQE metrics. He’s an okay guy, but he smiles way too much. My main problem with the way we are doing it now, is it seems like we’ve gone from High School back to Elementary school. We’ve gone from grading all the calls on a percentile scale to an A-B-C scale. (or in my opinion, it might as well be Triangle-Circle-Square) They view it like this, if you screw up, if it’s a really shitty call, that’s a C. If it’s exceptional, if you went “Above and beyond” then that is an A. All other’s are B’s. Okay, I can deal with that, but don’t expect, for instance in order to get to Level 3 (which is the next level for me) I would need to have 2 A calls out of 3 for the month. That’s total bull shit. I asked him after the meeting, what percentage of the calls reviewed turned out to be A’s. 13%. Out of all of the calls that were reviewed, only 13% met their expectations of an A level. They’re going to hold off on counting this stat for another month, untill it is properly calibrated, but in my opinion, it’s a handy way to demote everybody.

So, we were in the meeting, and Tim was running his mouth. He always has a lot to say in situations like this. I had a few things to say, but almost everybody else felt the same way as I, so they took care of what I had to say. Tim made some joke about Denson, and he asked him to stay after the meeting. A few minutes later, he said “goodbye” as he walked out the door. I hope he comes back. I really wonder what he said to him. He didn’t take any of his stuff, so I don’t think he was fired/quit. I’ll have to ask Ben later on today if he saw him.

Okay, Amanda is awake now, so I should get going. We have a lot of stuff to do today.

No one would care about the tower of Piza if it was done right.

Refresh your friends list and reply to the 3rd entry from the top with the phrase “In the Butt.” No matter what the content of the original entry. Then repost these instructions in your own LJ. (stolen from )

Which is worse? To be thrown into a pit where you must then fight for your life, or to be rescued from this fate, taken to a shelter, and then euthanized?