OK, so it's been a long while since I last posted. A really long time.

Why?

Blame money and uncooperative equipment. Last May, the power supply on my old LCD panel gave up the ghost. After six years of service in multiple environments and surviving numerous power spikes that killed several surge suppressor, it was entitled to the final shutdown. However that left me with a dead monitor. It's an external brick so no big deal, I can replace it, right? Yah right, famous last words. Since the power supply died, my supply of cash has tanked thanks to several medical emergencies (including my cat's unscheduled visits to the vet), equipment failure and just general bad luck. I have been stuck using the local library's PCs, however until recently they were running Windows 2000 and Internet Explorer 5. Yikes! They have since updated to XP and IE 8 which makes things more tolerable.

Anyway, got to run, my time is ticking away. Hopefully I will return before the summer however don't count on it.

This last week has been quite interesting for strange or weird occurrences. They ranged from "Whoa, small world", to "WTF?I", to "just what are you doing?".

On Sunday, I took a trip downstairs to take the week's collection of recyclable trash to the bins. The big bag o' plastic, the collection of wine bottles, cans and sauce jars, the paper and the bag of food scraps. They are all collected and hauled away. So as I am walking down the sidewalk after dropping the food wastes into the organics bin, I notice a wine bottle on the curb. No big deal eh? However as I got closer I noticed something was much stranger than that first impression. The wine bottle was full yet sitting there uncorked. Next the wine bottle was a mirror (looks it was from a woman's compact), a very small bottle of cologne or perfume (open), five or six cigarettes all lined up neatly and one single red rose. I had just stumbled across an Italian "love charm". Ya, someone was looking for love and their target likely lived in the building where this charm was located.

Then while at the questura I ran into one of the waitresses from the Chinese restaurant across the street from my apartment. It appeared that she was escorting a group of Chinese though the paperwork process.

Finally, my cat. I had taken off my T-shirt and tossed on the floor to act as a bath mat. My cat came wandering through the bathroom as I as soaking. She reached my shirt then proceeded to lay on it. Then she started sniffing and kicking at just like cats do when they are getting high on catnip. WTF? It was like she was getting high off of my stinky T-shirt.

OK, time to spill my spleen a bit (aka ranting). Today I had to goto the questura (State Police station) to pick up my permesso di soggiorno (the Italian version of a "Green Card" so I can stay another year). Every year it seems the procedures change (I think they post all the possible changes on a cork board then throw darts). However what doesn't change is the wait. Get there at o'dark thirty, wait in line for an hour to get a number, then wait several more hours for your number to be called. Even to pick up paperwork that is already completed. The last couple of years, I have had no issues picking up my permit. However this year, I got the grumpy old bastard. I get to the window and he decides that my number "is not correct" thus he was not going to give my permit. WTF?! I was not the only one he pulled this stunt on. Now you have a room full of migrants whose Italian is OK to poor to nonexistent who need answers yet this cop's response is to speak faster and louder as though that would make himself understood by the frustrated room.

So I basically wasted an entire day just to get yelled at by some asshole of a cop who really should not be dealing with foreigners in the first place. Then again, that may have been the problem. Or he was just being a typical Italian bureaucrat.

Of course after that experience, I was (and still) in an evil mood. The local panhandlers took one look at me and beat a very hasty retreat. However I managed to make it home without pounding someone. How? Simple, kittens. Yes, kittens, or in this case, one kitten. A girl got on the bus holding a box. Inside that box was a six week old kitten on his/her way to a new home. The girl was proud of her new addition to her household and the little fuzzball managed to cheer up a bit.

Epilogue: The next morning I got up at 5:30 and left the house at 6:00 so I can be in line by 7:00 to get a good low number. I took my PSP (loaded with Lumines) and a nice thick tome, "MI6" (all about the last fifty years of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service) to keep me occupied. At around 9:00, my number was called. I wend to the window, gave my receipt and my old permesso to the cop at the window (not the same cop as the day before). He looked at my receipt, grunted then proceed to go get my new permesso. Five minutes later I was walking out the exit with my new permosso in hand. What a difference. Now why couldn't have I got the same treatment the day before. Oh so typical Italy.

Sometimes I wonder why it takes me so damn long to discover stuff. Normally I tend to be on top of new sites and such thanks to Twitter and the various forums I haunt. However occasionally things fall through the cracks. Such as the case with Jamendo.com

Previously I was a listener of Last.FM. However after Last.FM decided to shut out non-US/UK/German listners unless they coughed up some money, I uninstalled Last.FM's "Scrobbler" and I have not been back since. I can understand the issue with copyright laws, licenses fees, etc (as much as my basic legal education allows, I am no lawyer nor do I pretend to be one). However my supply of euros is pretty limited and after the bills/rent is paid and groceries are purchased, I generally have nothing leftover for entertainment purposes. So I have been generally without new music for a while other than Nine Inch Nails latests releases. Sure I could Bittorrent some stuff, however I generally prefer to be on the "good" side of the laws (even though the RIAA/IPFI tend to piss me off). However I had been hearing about a site called Jamendo and even have a plug-in in my little used Rhythmbox player (Linux audio player). However I had never ventured there until someone sent me a link to a trance group called Nexus. Trance is one of my favorite genres among others so I was quite happy to find a free (and legal!) music download.

-- More later, got to run!

Oh man, it's annoying when one has to run while in the middle of saying something. So now that my interruption is past, let's get back on topic. So I was yapping about Jamendo. As I continue with exploring the site, I am liking more. Sure none of the artists are household names, however for me that is not a big deal as much of what I like will not be found on the big labels. It's not "white bread enough" for them, can't be homogenized and packaged up in a neat package. That is just fine by me. Another thing I like about Jamendo is the music is released under one several Creative Commons liceneses. This gives me, the listener, the ability to share tracks with others and depending on the license, to build upon those tracks. Music is downloadable in high quality mp3 and ogg formats. Artist can get donataions or sell physical copies of their music.

For me, Jamendo is a great resource that I would encourage everyone to check out. I am not getting paid to say that nor do I have any connections with Jamendo, I just think it's a great service for artists and their fans.

http://www.jamendo.com

Let's face it: I am a forgetful (and at times, scatterbrained) blogger. Nothing is gonna change there. It seems that I always have several projects in various stages of done (any were from "thinking about starting" to "just a few more bits until it's finished"). This journal is just one of them. Still, I manage to post at least once a month which is better than my previous attempts. However things seem to be settling down and I am getting a predictable routine going (for once). Anyway, what have I been up to lately?

- Join the WoWInterface staff. It's a lot of fun but it keeps me busy with dealing the trolls, approving mods and yapping with authors and my fellow WoWI staff members.

- Got a job! Yup, I got a job with a local school teaching English. It's not much right now, one day a week however the key part is I am getting my foot in the door. It can be very difficult to get work in Italy if you are a non EU type (like I am), however once you find that crack, that is all you need.

- Built a new Firefox start page. Yah, I know "big deal". Still I am quite happy as my start page is my first foray into using JavaScript. I started with a pre-built template that I downloaded from DeviantArt. Using that as a base, I have started tinkering with the layout. The result is kinda of a "Zune-ish" kind of layout. I am quite pleased with the results this far and I plan to play with this some more.

- Continuing to master Linux. Too bad my system is so old as I would like to play with some of the effects that Compiz offers. However my GFX drivers are not up to scratch so I am a bit limited. Still, I have managed to do some neat things with Gnome-Panel and Compiz.

Anyway, that is for this post, more coming as I have some ideas (if I ever remember to actually get them out of my skull and into some kinda electronic form).

Holy guacamole, it's been a least a month since I last posted. My how time flies when one gets busy. Yup, the last month has been a fairly busy one for me. What have I been up to?

- I have managed to pick a couple of freelance teaching jobs. They don't pay much, however it helps the ol' bottom line.

- Then I have been preparing to build a new PC. Plenty of research though now I am in the waiting phase (waiting for the check that will pay for this adventure)

- In addition, I have been getting my ideas together for my blog. Thus far it's mostly Linux related stuff, however it will be something that I can point people who ask me questions about. The biggest pain is writing in "Layman" as opposed to my usual language of "Geek".

- I have also started preparations for a rebrand of the WoW guild of which I have been a long time member of. I created most of the original graphics for the guild's website however they are getting a bit old and stale plus my skills have gotten better since I created those graphic over three years ago.

- What else? Oh yes, I am looking into starting a WoW AddOn, HandyNotes_Quest. Whether this actually gets off the ground remains to be seen however think this is doable.

Anyway that is it for this quick post!