At the time, a movie was being released by the name of Titan A.E.  You might remember it, although it was not very memorable.  Somehow some friends and I stumbled on the website promoting the film.  The promotion was cute for the time; sign up and either create a space ship or join someone else’s.

There was talk of the ship with the largest crew (most registered users) being given some sort of “prize” but I can’t imagine that actually came to pass in any meaningful form.  So, The Tang Avenger…  It has been so long, I really don’t recall if we created the ship from scratch or if we just joined the most crazily named ship we could find.  But once onboard, we decided to be the best.

At the time I was fiddling with Visual Basic 6.  Through some very kludgey hacks, I found a way to automate registration on the Flash-based site.  The problem was that the emails used to signup had to be valid or they would bounce and the registration would not count.  However, my friends and I had a domain with which we could parcel out email addresses at will.  After creating thousands of phony accounts, we plugged the list into the code I had written and let her rip.

It took days.  Weeks even.  The Flash site was so slow that it could take over two minutes to register an account and sometimes the browser would lockup and foil the automated code.  But as time passed, The Tang Avenger rocketed to the top!

The website had a private forum for each ship.  The theme of The Tang Avenger was that we were space pirates; some pretty funny dialogue was tossed around.  The best part was that some people from other competitor ships would create accounts on The Tang Avenger so they could come onto our ship and accuse us of cheating.  Which I guess we were.  But we never revealed how we did it or even that we were doing anything.  We just called em land lubbers and told em to walk the plank.

Good times.  So when I thought of The Tang Avenger today, I wondered if anyone was talking about it out there one the interweb.  And lo and behold some were!  I have no idea who these people are, and they don’t know me.  Very bizarre; a bit of a legacy.

Oh, and perhaps more amusing is that the domain we used to signup on The Tang Avenger with is now marked as a “Spam Email Url” by my employer’s web filter!

string s = null;

int i = Convert.ToInt32(s);

What is the value of i?  Zero.  WHAT?

GIVE ME A DAMN EXCEPTION. 

1280 x 1024

I have created a webpage for him; check it out here.

private void SetAccountHistoryTabActive(string acctId) {
// Use FindControl() !!!
foreach (Control control in Page.Controls) {
if (control is HtmlForm) {
foreach (Control control2 in control.Controls) {
if (control2 is AjaxControlToolkit.TabContainer) {
foreach (Control control3 in control2.Controls) {
if (control3 is AjaxControlToolkit.TabPanel && control3.ID == “Actions”) {
foreach (Control control4 in control3.Controls[0].Controls) {
if (control4 is AjaxControlToolkit.TabContainer) {
((AjaxControlToolkit.TabContainer)control4).ActiveTabIndex = 2;
foreach (Control control5 in control4.Controls) {
if (control5.ID == “ActionsAccountHistory”) {
foreach (Control control6 in control5.Controls[0].Controls[1].Controls[0].Controls) {
if (control6.ID == “AccountHistoryControl”) {
foreach (Control control7 in control6.Controls) {
if (control7.ID == “acctId”) {
string test = control7.ID;
((TextBox)control7).Text = acctId;
}
}
}
}
}
}
}
}
}
}
}
}
}
} // end of Controls loop
}

FWIW I replaced it with a line of javascript.

UPDATE:  this person got fired

9/28/98
(Metallica) One (StarCraft Mix)
Let’s just face it – Metallica kicks ass. Last night I found a .WAV ripper for StarCraft. I also happened to listen to “One”. I decided to make a nifty mix of the two. What do you think?

Wow, has it really been so long? Nearly ten years ago, *I* created the mix above one night using CoolEdit while attending A&M.

I figured I should post this to set the record straight once and for all when I discovered this (a music video made using it!) and this (folks claiming they created it) and even this (NIN War Remix? Nope, sorry). Props to darkangelx66 on the video; very nicely sync’ed — and talk about a genre crosser!

(EDIT:  Sadly the video for the first link was removed, but I found some links to the track in lots of other places (this one seems be pretty true to the original quality and includes my original id3 tag) plus 2 youtube posts with bland videos.)

Back then I hosted “Tarod’s Grove” on the campus resnet. Just a stupid share drive with text files and my share of interesting binary data. MP3s were just starting to reveal themselves, and I tried to jump into the music critiquing business. I would post an “MP3 of the Day” along with a text file explaining my choice and the reason I liked it. It was silly, but it was fun I suppose. Looking back, it was far easier to work with that than fancy websites. Although directing visitors was a lost cause of ‘!’ characters trying to sort files so they’d see it first and (maybe) read it.

The text at the start of this post is direct from my “MP3 of the Day” back then.

If you are looking for proof that I really did what I’m claiming credit for, I don’t have much to offer. I don’t have the original WAV anymore (too bad; though I think I used a 128kbps version of “One” anyway) and I’m not sure how else to prove it. The original had an id3 tag stating my nick (Tarod) and my ICQ #, so… there’s that. Oh, and maybe a few folks out there have the “original” version. The original was a bit empty towards the end, so the next day I added the “zerg symphony” (as I called it) to give it a bit more life and removed the original. Heck, I don’t even have the original msyelf, anymore.  If anyone does let me know; I would love to get it again.

Funny thing is, all I did was share the song on the LAN.  I never put it on Napster, but it ended up there pretty quickly. I guess it was just good enough to get around; that makes me happy. Thanks to my fans, even though I just mixed stuff together that other people really created so what talent do I really have?

Props to Metallica for kicking ass and Starcraft for ruining my GPA.

I SEE YOU HAVE AN APPETITE FOR DESTRUCTION

Many things have changed, and many things have happened.  Before getting into that, I need to resolve a question circling my head.

Should I be blogging?  I am not attempting to start a community-wide discussion like those who pretentiously ask about ”the future of blogging” (or “the future of social interaction” for those that think far more in vagaries).

The reason I began this blog was somewhat out of boredom but also out of a desire to keep track of my life (and my thoughts).  I have a notoriously bad memory for some things.

I just can’t be sure blogging has any gain versus a standard journal.  In fact, I fear it has drawbacks.  Probably the answer to this is as with anything.  It is appropriate when it is appropriate.

So I will only post things up here that not only are appropriate/safe to be printed in public, but also require an audience to have any real benefit.

Basically, I will be more

• secure
• censored
• entertaining

and less

• personal
• musing
• documentary-esque

Should I go back and review old posts and possibly take them down?  Maybe.  I’ll probably just leave them up though.  I am worried about revealing too much about myself, and also worried about my ideas getting stolen.  Probably too late for existing posts due to all the internet archival services out there.

So there’s my plan on how things are gonna go….

starting…..
NOW
wait i screwed that up.
…wait for it…. wait for it….. NOW

There were these heroes, which looked like normal human folks. One of them was even my boss from work. I had an immediate feeling of power from them; infinite or near enough so that I could not see a difference. That’s not true in the end, though. I knew they were just really powerful. I guess during the dream they induced god-worship feelings. Maybe not, maybe I am just thinking that now in retrospect.

At one point in the dream, when one of the heroes was my boss, I had the feeling of a Magic: The Gathering card that had power and toughness (both) of 308. Which is just silly powerful; no such card exists. He was the creature on the card. For some reason the card appeared in my mind visually. Or maybe my boss handed it to me. It had a picture of him on it, but he looked way more like a yeti. After I saw the card, my boss jumped off the building and ran down the street. It should be noted that we were on the 2nd or 3rd flooer, and that he was running at a speed that was impossible. If it hadn’t scared and amazed me so, I would have laughed. It just was so ludicrous of a speed for his build.

Midget nazis would always show up after the heroes. Their heads were also disproportionate to their bodies, like dwarfs. But their torsos were normal sized, so they were more like midgets with big heads. They would always be smoking cigarettes. One time (at the final hero/midget confrontation, in fact), I picked up the cigarette one of them tossed aside as they showed up. I then tossed it out the window. I was cowering at the time, with some others of my … race? people? I call them midget nazis because they were dressed like it was the 1920s or something, like they were at a fancy ball. They also seemed to be malicious — they smoked very casually but with angry, stressed faces. During the dream I always felt like that malice was directed at me and the others, that the heros were saving us. In the end, I felt the opposite. That they were trying to save us, but always arrived too late, after the heroes were already “protecting” us. The midget nazis never said anything, ever. They would show up and look at us huddling in the corner, sitting scared and then look at the heroes as a snooty person might look at lesser people.

I mentioned the final hero midget confrontation earlier. The real sequence was something like this: I came through some strange door-like system. Something like an airlock, but more “normal” looking. There was a scan to “clear” entries through the doors (or whatever airlock type mechanisms watched over the buildings. A successful scan at first looked one way. After the heroes killed the last midgets (at least, that’s the impression I got from the dream), the scan was different. More friendly seeming, whereas initially it seemed like the detection system was going a bit haywire, as if it were not configured for the case it was handling, like “error, scan result not found”. Red, ominous holographic image instead of the final green, pleasant one. I don’t know how to explain; I guess it was like the way a movie might show a clearance check — far more showy, less substance.

Anyway, I never remember going through the scan, just watching it scanning others from afar. But I suppose I must have gone through it before the dream “began”. The first thing I really remember is watching the scan results with apprehension. I don’t recall who was being scanned, but I think it was the midgets. I remember running then, in the scared way where you trip over everything and double guess your path. Then two of the midgets came. Always at a dead end, always with at least one other person like me, the midgets would come upon us. They were never violent, just ominous. During this first interaction, they seemed disinterested by us and left. We were still terrified of them despite their lack of interest.

Later we met the heroes. I only remember Brian (my boss) at this part, but I think more were there. He talked to us, in the vague way that occurs in dreams. Even stranger since I get the feeling he didn’t quite speak our language. At least not natively. As I said before, he ended up scampering off, I think on some sort of errand. I also had the feeling that when he left, some other heroes had come and were watching over us.

At some point later, we were with the heroes in this building (Brian never returned as far as I remember). The building was like something out of Half-Life 2, torn apart by explosives and “skeletal”. Just enough left to walk and hide. Suddenly we knew the midgets were coming, and there they were. The midgets looked at us in the way they do, and at the heroes. One of the midgets tossed aside her cigarette, which landed near me. I picked it up and looked at it, curious what it was like. It seemed strange, like it wasn’t really lit. I threw it out the window. The midgets eventually left, with casual disgust. They simply walked back down the stairs they had come up to find us.

The building became more warm, more friendly. More like a house. This might have been an effect of the heroes, because they strode forward in the absence of the midgets, suddenly very paternal. They talked amongst each other happily, as if they had just succeeded in some day long campaign that had been a somewhat tense situation. It was like a group of police officers might be after a risky (but not too risky) raid, chatty and conversationally discussing events as a review. Still serious about the situation, but with a definite undertone of relief and levity.

That’s when I noticed it, as they gathered near the stairs, walking down them with no second thought about “us”. On the wall, mounted like a hunter might, a white goat’s head with horns. It had vicious teeth on it, too. Very satanist looking. In a way, the goat’s head reminded me of the Magic card from before; somewhat looked like the yeti. The horns were twisted and knobby, very much like a ram’s horns, not a goat’s. Maybe it was a ram, but it was more evil looking, like a goat’s, so I think it was.

I’ve already hinted at this, but… At the end, I got the feeling that the heroes’ act was all a farce for our sake, to fool us. As well as a feeling that my dream was during the final stages of the sham, when the last pieces were being put into place. We were the final folks to witness the salvation they gave us, the last folks to see the “spooky” midget nazis being eliminated by our benefactors. Looking back I realize we misjudged the little people with giant heads. At least, I think so. Maybe the goat’s head just scared me.

So what is the meaning of it? Note that when I speak of my dream I say things like “always”, as if the dream had events occurring often. The dream was actually short, with an impression that it was actually long (subsisting mostly of memories of previous interactions?). Basically the illusion of a lengthy ordeal to make me understand that these were not isolated events. Was the goat’s head one of the heroes that had been killed by the midgets? Is that why the heroes were fighting the midgets? Revenge or self preservation? Or were the heroes fighting to defend us? Or to fool us into thinking they were the good guys, when really they were the evil ones? I really have no clue on this one.