As luck would have it I did wind up with a nice migraine last night. Took half a percocet and went to bed. It’s lingering today, I’m about to take another half. I don’t know how well I will be able to proof and edit my work with percocet on the brain, but probably better than with a migraine.

The new commercials for “Law and Order” have Chevy Chase guest starring and spoofing the whole Mel Gibson DUI incident. I do not and have never watched “Law and Order.” I just have no desire. My friend Laura likes it, but as she points out between regular TV stations and TBS/TNT you can watch “Law and Order” every day all day if you wanted to. She’s right! Back to the topic at hand. Chevy Chase is spoofing Mel Gibson in “The most talked about Law and Order episode ever” according to the commercials. Is it my imagination or is every episode of “Law and Order” the “most shocking” “most talked about” or “most riveting” episode ever? They need better commercials.

Dustin

I have to meet with my adviser on Wednesday and give him the chapters I’ve been working on for feedback. This coming weekend I have to turn those chapters into a paper to present at a conference next Saturday. I will be SO happy when this conference is finally over with.

I’m so stressed out right now, and my head has been hurting all day. I don’t have a migraine yet, but it could come on soon if I’m not careful. I’m going to do my best to just stop working at 9pm. I’m going to tune into “Heroes” and the season finale of “Weeds.” If I can keep from coming back to my PC after that then great! I must be strong.

After “Weeds” I’m either going to put a movie in or maybe I’ll watch Monsterfest on AMC. By the way if you have Comcast cable, tomorrow FearNet launches. It’s the first horror network! I don’t know yet how it works though. Online at Fearnet.com you can watch streaming movies for free. I believe the cable channel works like an on-demand network and you have to pay for the movies.

Dustin

PS I just found out, FearNet is FREE! At least for right now, I don’t know if they intend to change that.

It must be Murphy’s Law that computer issues all seem to happen at once.

I picked up a new USB cable for the iPod, now I just have to find time to take a trip to the Apple store and replace the battery. While at Best Buy I checked out the laptops. They seem to either come in very BIG sizes or very small sizes. I decided that while I did like the HPs a lot, I would try and see how much longer my current laptop would last or maybe I’d wipe the HD and start fresh soon.

Fast forward a few hours later. I tried to install something on my laptop . . . . . it took a half hour! At this point wiping the HD probably isn’t going to help as I’m pretty sure it’s the HD that is faulty. I’ll probably be putting in an email to Dell this week and see about what can be done. I will not be calling them if I can help it 🙂 I’m also going to start shopping around for a new laptop just in case. I need to go look at the Sony Vaio’s a bit closer.

Meanwhile I was trying to update the desktop a bit and clean old programs off it, carash! Fun fun fun! I did recover it though, but it seems it will need some upgrades as well. Actually I know it does in order to run Windows Vista. Fortunately upgrading a desktop is a whole lot cheaper than a laptop, which aren’t upgrade friendly at all. Fortunately the desk top also runs fine as is, so those can just wait. I don’t actually use the desktop anymore, my BF uses it. He says it is running slow, but he hasn’t tried my laptop 🙂

Dustin

This is from the American Family ASSociation . . .

(AgapePress) – Many American scientists are excited that “Lucy,” an allegedly 3.2-million-year-old skeleton, will be coming to the United States next year. Creationists, however, are predicting that Lucy’s tour will be much more about promoting the theory of evolution than about expanding real scientific knowledge.

Um, do they realize what morons they look like for making this statement? They make the claim that scientists don’t want to expand real scientific knowledge in the same paragraph in which they cast doubt on the age of Lucy. In all my years in anthropology I have never heard anyone claims Lucy wasn’t as old as she’s been dated to be. Then again we are probably talking about people who still think the world is only 6000 years old.

Dustin

Half of everyone who was supposed to come out tonight bailed, leaving only myself, Jen and Nick. My taxi unfortunately decided to bail and not show up as well, leaving me without a way to get into the city. Jen offered to come get me, but she lives so far away I said forget it, so she and Nick are headed out where they are to do something.

I will be spending the night working on the soap page and writing my dissertation.

I’m not exactly happy, I could have used a good night out.

Dustin

The past two days I have been so drained. By midnight I am ready to fall asleep and have almost done so both nights on the couch. Midnight is way to early for me to be going to bed, I’m usually up working till at least 2am.

Both nights I tried to listen to my body and go to bed early, only to toss and turn in bed until about 2-3am. I hate that! Now I’ve woken up today and feel like the cold I’ve been fighting off for two weeks is about to win the war. Grrr!

To make matters worse tonight was supposed to be the fun night out! We’ll see what happens, half the gang is still undecided at this point. All we know is where we are meeting up for dinner and drinks. We are taking it from there. I am just hoping I won’t start zonking out around midnight.

In other lovely news I woke up to find Nikko had discovered my iPod! The little shit! He tore apart the case it was in and the USB cable. The iPod still works, but it has a few teeth marks on it. I have to go out at some point to get a new USB cable. The battery is also dead, which means a trip to the Apple store to make them “run their tests and determine if the battery meets their standards.” It doesn’t last more than 2 hours, put a new battery in please.

I’ve decided while I’m out getting a new USB cable from Best Buy or Circuit City that I’ll browse the laptops and see which non-Dell brands catch my eye.

Dustin

Remeber this when you vote on November 7th!
Stolen from Raging Rainbows

Dustin

This last week my laptop has suddenly gone to hell. Actually it’s slowly been going to hell for awhile now. However it’s only a year and a half old! Right now I think it’s probably running worse than my 4 year old laptop, and that is not good. It literally takes about 10 minutes to be come usable after turning it on. Last night I tried to uninstall every single program I absolutely did not need to see if that helped, nope! Either the hard drive is going or I need to wipe it and start over. I HATE to wipe laptops clean, I’m afraid I will forget to back something up. However at this point my frustration keeps reaching the boiling point. It’s at the point now that my songs in itunes stutter if I minimize itunes to do other things. Grrrr! Online clips like on YouTube do the same thing. I fear the wipe out is coming soon, and if that doesn’t fix the problem the I will 1) be really angry I wasted a day wiping and reinstalling everything and 2) will have to contact Dell about getting the issue resolved. I was originally planning on getting a new laptop sometime next year that would run Windows Vista (this one won’t), now I’m thinking I might have to get one sooner if I can’t get these issues resolved. This laptop has had a few more issues than just this, so if I have to get a new one I might try something other than Dell this time around.

In happier news, everything seems to be coming together for a fun night out Saturday. Unfortunately now it seems the rain is going to be moving in that night 🙁

Dustin

I feel a bit bad that I have only been blogging every other day or two, and that I haven’t been able to leave comments on everyone else’s blog. Dissertating sucks! Anyways I thought I’d spread the music around 🙂 This video has been making the rounds of lots of blogs lately. I have to say I LOVE it!

The band is Valeze and they are from New York. It appears they don’t have a label yes. You can download tons of their songs from the web at FreeIndie.com & FreeIndie.com Site #2. They are also on MySpace.com.

If you enjoy this video check their other stuff out. They have a No Doubt meets Blondie meets The Clash with a bit of Garbage thrown in about them.

Dustin

I’m about to get political 🙂

New Jersey’s highest court opened the door Wednesday to making the state the second in the nation to allow gay marriage, ruling that lawmakers must offer same-sex couples either marriage or something like it, such as civil unions.

In a ruling that fell short of what either side wanted or most feared, the state Supreme Court declared 4-3 that gay couples are entitled to the same rights as heterosexual ones. The justices gave lawmakers 180 days to rewrite the laws.

The ruling is similar to the 1999 high-court ruling in Vermont that led the state to create civil unions, which confer all of the rights and benefits available to married couples under state law.

“Although we cannot find that a fundamental right to same-sex marriage exists in this state, the unequal dispensation of rights and benefits to committed same-sex partners can no longer be tolerated under our state Constitution,” Justice Barry T. Albin wrote for the four-member majority.

The court said the Legislature “must either amend the marriage statutes to include same-sex couples or create a parallel statutory structure” that gives gays all the privileges and obligations married couples have.

The three dissenters argued that the majority did not go far enough. They demanded full marriage for gays.

Source: AP

I’m sure everyone has heard about today’s ruling. At this point the NJ legislature has 180 days to figure out what to do. They basically have three options as far as I can tell:

1) Give gays and lesbians full marriage rights and call it marriage.

2) Give gays and lesbians full marriage rights and call it marriage, but pass a law limiting marriage in NJ to NJ residents.

3) Give gays and lesbians full marriage rights, but call it civil unions.

Call me pessimistic but I find it hard that they will grant #1 because NJ has no law making it illegal for out of staters to be married here. Thus it could create a problem for other states, even if they have a DOMA like law on the books. They sure as hell won’t pass #2 as NJ can’t give up the draw of Atlantic City and “Las Vegas” style weddings. Therefore we’ll probably end up with #3, civil unions.

You know what? If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck just call it a duck! I find it ridiculous to make a separate but equal marriage for gays and call it civil unions. Honestly what is the point? To try and appease the religious right? Pffft! If civil unions carry the same rights and privileges as marriage than every excuse for banning gays from marrying still hold true for giving them civil unions. Far too many times I’ve heard someone say “I’m against gay marriage because it opens the door to things like polygamy or marrying children. However I do support civil unions.” What a circular argument, as if the person didn’t even consider polygamists or pedophiles would argue for civil unions. The only reason I can fathom for saying one supports civil unions but not gay marriage is religion. I thought we had freedom of religion in this country? Several religions support gay marriage you know!

I think Wanda Sykes said it best in her last HBO special “If you don’t believe in same-sex marriage then don’t marry someone of the same sex!”

Dustin