Cloister Maximus III | Journal

On snake oil, psychedelic gems, and sports hernias

Stephen J. Kozik — 2008-07-13T20:06:00+00:00

I recently picked up a fantastic record on 185 gram virgin vinyl while walking about downtown on a lunch break. I read about it on a post listing the top 25 psychedelic records of all time, and somebody had it ranked number 2. That is a bold ranking, but the record holds up. It's by a virtually unknown group of college students in 1968 called "The United States of America" and it is witty, beautiful, and pretty cutting edge ala fifty foot hose. Some home-brew tone oscillators are used very tastefully. I recommend picking it up if you can, although I couldn't find it online. I'm not sure if it's #2 on the all time psychedelic list (as I'd put Saucer Full of Secrets in the 2 slot, after Peppers at #1), but it is really good.

On the house front, I've been trying without much luck at getting some iron stains off of my driveway and sidewalk after a mishap with loose Ironite that I put on my lawn. I had tried everything I could buy at the store and none of it worked. Finally, I broke down and ordered this stuff called Singerman Laboratories Rust Stain Remover for Concrete online. I figured it was pure snake oil, but after trying everything else I figured I'd give it a shot. You know what? The stuff worked. I'm not sure what kind of evil stuff is in it, but it almost looks like it transmogrifies the iron into some green goo that washes away with water. It's like a philosophers stone for iron stains. Scary.

My body seems to be breaking down from softball already in July. I typically don't feel the injuries until about September, but the right side of my body is already pretty banged up. So far I have a sprained wrist, elbow impingement, slightly pulled groin, and my bottom right foot smarts like the dickens. On the upside, my usual injuries (stiff neck, shin splints) aren't with me this year. Yippee.

Some changes are coming down the pipe here soon. I've had some plans in the works to add titles to all of the journal posts for easier sorting (for example, when was I talking about a bar-b-que that went awry--april 3, 2003 or april 5th?). I plan to see that to fruition, as well as re-vamp the content areas to allow better tagging and bigger photos/videos. I'm not certain I'll have this done any time soon, but it is in the works.

-Sir Cloister Maximus III, Esq.

Vacation Time

Stephen J. Kozik — 2008-05-03T20:06:00+00:00

I'm on vacation for the first time in about a year. Last year I made my typical pilgrimage back to St. Louis to check out a ball-game, eat a Steak n' Shake burger, and visit the family. This year I'm keeping it low key and cheep by just staying home. Part of that is due to the fact that what I really want out of a vacation is simply not to work. Compared to Centerpointe, my brain is working at 100% 12 hours out of the day now at Babcock and Jenkins, requiring me to just have a little bit of down time to recharge and clear the noggin.

I've been doing this by kicking back and not doing much of anything. Just sitting outside, reading a book, doing a touch of painting, housework, and watching baseball. So far this is much better than how I had anticipated starting my vacation—by having a wisdom tooth extracted. About two weeks ago I came down with a gum infection around my lower wisdom tooth (Pericoronitis), and after the antibiotics had cleared up the infection I was scheduled to have the tooth removed to prevent future infection. However, on the day before the scheduled appointment I got a voicemail telling me the dentist's father wound up in a coma, delaying my appointment. It's good and bad. Good in that I wasn't looking forward to that and think that I may be able to just have the gum tissue removed instead of the whole tooth (much less invasive). Bad in that now I'm out of vacation time, and the doctor is only in Monday-Thursday—preventing me from scheduling something on a Friday so I have the weekend to recover. As it stands, I'm seeing a specialist on Monday to see if they can perform the simple gum tissue removal on a Friday some time that I can take off work again.

-Sir Cloister Maximus III, Esq.

Microsoft's Zune is not very good

Stephen J. Kozik — 2008-03-30T20:06:00+00:00

It seems that getting around to updating the journal is a pretty big chore these days. There isn't much motivation for me to write new posts, except for the calendar in the sidebar that is tied to the last post. Between working up to 70 hours a week and all the housekeeping things I try to do, there just is no time.

So I guess some of the funnier things as of late that have happened to me are getting a gift Zune from a client. The player itself isn't half bad, but the software that Microsoft expects you to use with it is about the worst piece of garbage I've ever had the misfortune of using. It really is quite terrible.

We also have a puppy now--a 9 week old golden retriever named Seamus. I'm not a fan of dogs in general, but I'm doing what I can to be a good owner.

-Sir Cloister Maximus III, Esq.

2007 Year in Review

Stephen J. Kozik — 2007-12-24T20:06:00+00:00

2007 Year in Review. Christmas Eve potluck. Laurelhurst. Erased CIA tapes. Covert album. Lockjaw. PS2. Vinyl mania. Writers strike. Riding the MAX to work, Charlie Mcalister. Hit for the cycle. Death of Evel Knievel. Akron Family. Midlake. Paul visits. Lawn-care extreme. Beavers vs Redbirds. Ankiel. Play Clean. Company Softball. Apple TV and 1 TB drives. Grilling. Inside the SSO. Rove and Rumsfeld bid fair-well. Mariners game. Back to work at bnj. Fantasy baseball. Josh Hancock 32. Ping-pong. Why do they race, they race for taste. Saint Charles bachelor Party, Saint Louis trip III. Clean and fix up house. First house purchase. Carpet fiasco. Final TMTR record. Digitize and organize.

Dusting off the Journal

Stephen J. Kozik — 2007-12-19T20:06:00+00:00

I know, I know.

A big update is coming soon. I obviously have a good reason for neglecting the website. Two actually. Number one being the new/old job back at Babcock and Jenkins which leaves me with little free time unlike my former Centerpointe gig, number two being that nobody reads this thing (as they shouldn't).

However, I have a bunch of new photos, music, videos, etc to upload that I plan on doing during my holiday break. Stay tuned.

(Booyaka record in '08? Anything is possible.)

-Sir Cloister Maximus III, Esq.

The Minimum Wage Scam

Stephen J. Kozik — 2007-06-04T20:06:00+00:00

When the Democrats took control of the house and senate, they passed a long overdue raise to the federal minimum wage. It had been stuck at an insulting hourly rate since the Republicans took control back in the 90's. I was initially elated by this, since I can appreciate how ridiculously hard it is to pay the rent and bills when making next to nothing. However, I've now realized that the upper 1% isn't going to let the lot of us 99% get away with improving the quality of life.

What has become clear to me now is that things aren't so simple. Instead of just maning-up and paying employees a wage the treats them more like humans rather than down-trodden serfs, they've cut into the ever shrinking middle class. By raising prices to compensate for the minimum wage increase, the excessive salaries and stockmarktet incomes of the elite are protected while the middle class foots the bill. The stockholders and CEO's of the Walmarts, fast food chains, and other abusers of unskilled labor will make sure that their share of the pie (all 90% of it) doesn't shrink at the expense of those that only had a sliver to begin with. It's like a fat kid stealing the lunch from a kid living in the country in the middle of a famine. What a bunch of douche-bags.

My case in point has been the gradual increase in prices at one of my frequented lunch hot spots (Wendy's). If you haven't been paying attention, prices have gone up by 10 cents nearly every month since the minimum wage bill was passed. It's been a slow trickle (as so the consumers wouldn't notice it), but all in all the cost of a "combo meal" has risen by about 15% in the past few months. I don't know about you, but I haven't noticed inflation kicking up that much lately. Also, my salary certainly hasn't gone up by 15% (or any percent) in the last few months.

The last time the prices were raised, I joked with the employees there about the rise in prices asking, "So, you all got raises, right?"

"Nobody around here got a raise man."

I wonder where my extra buck fifty is going.

-Sir Cloister Maximus III, Esq.

Back from the STL

Stephen J. Kozik — 2007-05-16T20:06:00+00:00

If I can ever get caught up on everything I have on my new mini todo list, I might be able to get into a grove of updating the journal on a regular basis again. It's unfortunate that I've become so lazy about keeping it up to date considering I wanted to avoid the trap of starting it off strong, then failing to update it for years and ultimately forgetting about it all together.

Just getting back from my yearly trip to Saint Louis, I feel melancholy about the whole affair. That city is truly decaying around itself like a rotten apple. In the midst of two Cardinals games (they won one against the Astros—Hurray!) and other steak n' shake burger goals, I was driving around Saint Charles and getting creeped out. Some of the city is reminding me a little of Newark these days. That is not a good thing. It's one thing to have suffocating economic conditions, but when you start throwing trash out on your yard and the streets, you've obviously lost all self respect for yourself and the place you live.

Speaking of losing hope, I did, in fact, play my last show ever last Saturday. Jake commented that those that were there would be the folks who might attend my funeral—a real 'see who your friends really are' sort of situation. So to them I say Huzzah! To those that couldn't be bothered, I submit to them the Gas Face(TM) (or in the parlance of EPMD, the Bozak(R) if you will).

Pictures from the trip to Missouri up in the photo gallery for those curious. Time to plan for a house warming cookout.

-Sir Cloister Maximus III, Esq.

The Weekends are Gone but the Pop Tommorow Comp is here

Stephen J. Kozik — 2007-04-13T20:06:00+00:00

I obviously have been neglecting the old journal for a while, but I've had good reason. No later than a week from my last entry back in January, we found a house that had what we were looking for, made an offer, and got the house. However, that explanation is incredibly lacking in details on how much work all of that was. The work continues, of course, as making repairs, decorating, and getting things to a generally livable state are going to take a while. As some of my home owning friends have said, "Weekends will no longer exist. You live to work on your house, and you can kiss having fun goodbye". It may not be that extreme, but it sure feels like it at the moment.

I will be sneaking away from installing toilets and pulling ragweed for a bit in the beginning of May as I make my yearly trek back to St. Louis to catch a baseball game, ride some roller coasters, and eat some Steak n' Shake. Right after I get back I'll be rocking out acoustic style over at the Hawthorne Theater to celebrate the release of the POP TOMORROW! comp that comes out soon featuring a tune from yours truly.

Once things settle down a little more I plan on taking some photos of the place and placing them in the gallery. I also have some plans to do a little work on the site and get some new business cards printed up. I found a pretty cheap place to get them done and make it worthwhile.

-Sir Cloister Maximus III, Esq.

House Shopping and Nintendo Power

Stephen J. Kozik — 2007-01-22T20:06:00+00:00

Jen and I went out this Sunday to look at some open houses and cruise some neighborhoods around the area to see how much houses are going for. Most of what we saw was pretty overpriced, or flawed in some way. The last house we looked at was a bit out of our price range (the asking price was 350k), but man oh man was it sweet. Forty-foot ceilings, four bedrooms, 3 baths, nice neighborhood down the street. I can't really describe why it was so neat, but suffice it to say it was a dream house. Too bad it is a dream-house that I can' afford. We were supposed to see someone at the bank about the home loan on Saturday but it didn't wind up happening. I know it will take at least six months or more to do this house thing, but I feel under the gun to get it finished as quickly as possible since the whole process seems like a pain.

Today while poking around on Usenet I accidently discovered that some total stud posted about 50 old issues of Nintendo Power from 1988-1991. I just love it when I find things like this since it's so weird, but yet completely cool. I mean, it's obviously not the sort of thing you can buy anywhere outside of an overpriced vintage comic book shop where trading insults with the Simpsons-esque owner seems like a necessity. There is nothing like seeing the original fold-out strategy guide and map for Kid Icarus again. Seeing as how I just picked up that cart from Ebay a few months ago, it should come in handy.

Tonight before bowling I'm apparently going to a home buying class at PCC. I can only assume it will be as un-awesome as it sounds.

-Sir Cloister Maximus III, Esq.

Checking off 2007 Goals at Breakneck Speed

Stephen J. Kozik — 2007-01-12T20:06:00+00:00

Two weeks into 2007 and I'm already checking things off my 2007 Goals calendar in iCal at breakneck speed. So far I've recorded my acoustic record (titled Amnesty), ripped my un-ripped cd's to mp3 format, backed up my aging cd-r's full of classic jflc-esque material, digitized all my VHS tapes full of commercials, and even located a second commodore 64 to use at work as a dumb term. At this rate I'll have all my goals accomplished in a month and can glide the rest of the year.

One of the goals that I'm sure will not be accomplished any time soon is number seven on the list—buy a house. It's certainly ambitious, and may not even be accomplished, but I'm going to try this year. I'll just have to go into debt for the rest of my life and give up my ability to purchase things on a whim, sticking to a strict budget from here on out.

Considering some of the cheapest houses selling around Portland are going for 300 grand, it really makes me think I chose the wrong profession. I obviously should have been a financial adviser or some sort of asshole that screws people out of money to make a living. Then maybe I could afford a starter home. As it turns out, this whole 'work with computers' thing you heard would be the wave of the future and make you rich when you were a kid in the 80s turned out to be a bunch of lies. I may as well be flipping burgers for all intensive purposes. At least I didn't go into extreme debt trying to get a degree to do this. I know a lot of folks that aren't as lucky.

Outside of that, I've also gotten around to updating the code that drives the music section of the site to display multiple records. Since I have to make database entries for each album, and it isn't simple matter of uploading some mp3's, I only have about 10 records online so far. More will follow shortly. Until then, I highly recommend downloading Wussyboy's Transoceanic. It will change your life.

-Sir Cloister Maximus III, Esq.

2006 Year in Review

Stephen J. Kozik — 2006-12-21T20:06:00+00:00

2006 Year in Review. Commodore VT100 term. Portland Blackout. PSP homebrew madness. Barrios birthday party. Sunglasses. Rumsfeld fired. Brother and Calvert thanksgiving. New hardrive. Mazda 3 and no more walking. Democrats take control of House and Senate*. Katherine Harris, George Alan, Rick Santorum's children cry and we smile. Hosfard season two. Fungo EP recorded. Thresholds. Cardinals win World Series. Yadier wins NLCS on homerun. Wainright as the greatest closer ever. Playoff beard pays dividends. Hit homerun as Belliard ties NLDS game 4. Family visits. Rooftop show. Gary Bennet. Worlds greatest teachers. ACME hangout. Mount Saint Helens and Bigfoot. Minor Thirds record. Vaccination update. Extra Innings entertainment. Excommunicator CD released and reviewed. Ask a ninja. Lose faith loosing streak. St. Louis trip number two. Walking. Gameday. New Busch Stadium. Belagios. Six Flags. Circleofthunder dies. Pujols' Easter Sunday miracle. Beachouse party. Birthday parties. Holgate party. Recording at Bens. UNICEF. OPB. Bowling and Softball websites. Stuck in a Rut. Puppet Show. Train rides. Beavers forth of July. Northwest Classic Gamers Expo. Retrobits interview. Romantic beach new years eve.

*Pending Tim Johnson's fate.

An Alternate Universe where Everything is Awesome

Stephen J. Kozik — 2006-12-13T20:06:00+00:00

So much has happened since I've last posted. The St. Louis Cardinals won the World Series. The Democrats took back the House and Senate. I bought a new car. I moved my site to a new domain and gave it a facelift. It's like another time and place, or a mirror universe where everything is totally awesome.

The move to a new domain (stephenkozik.com) as well as a new hosting provider allows me to do all kinds of things—namely upload way more stuff to the new server since I'm no longer constrained by the tiny 100 meg limit that was enforced from my old host WazooWeb. Now that I have all this space, I can let my ego run wild without consequence. I've started out by uploading videos in flash format ala Youtube!/Gootube!, and following that up with the transfer of mp3's of nearly everything I've ever recorded. The mp3's will all be online once I get a chance to revamp some of the code on the server to allow for multiple albums (right now it is limited to only one), but I assure you some of the worst music you have ever heard in your life will be available for download shortly. Why not? I have over 50 gigs to fill.

For those of you trying to reach me and find my old circleofthunder.com email address no longer works, you may email me at the same address, but replace circleofthunder.com with stephenkozik.com. I will write a proper eulogy to circleofthunder.com later on when I have some spare time. Right now I have much to attend to—such as preparing my 2006 year in review post.

-Sir Cloister Maximus III, Esq.

Chicks Dig the Long Ball

Stephen J. Kozik — 2006-08-28T20:06:00+00:00

Nearly on cue, as soon as I begin to openly complain about my lack of home-runs while playing softball this year, I finally hit one the following week. What I couldn't have predicted was how hard I hit my first round tripper—I certainly caught the left fielder by surprise. I might have to give credit to Sean, who noted that I was undercutting the ball during batting practice. Explaining that I might not be keeping my head level during the follow through, I adjusted and started smacking the crap out of the ball. With any luck, I may have discovered something that serves me well from here on out. And I thought it was my batting stance causing me problems-—Oh how wrong I was.

So now that I can check off "hit a home-run" from my yearly to-do list, I'll move on to the next task of writing some new songs. Since Jen is on vacation and I have all fear of annoying anyone out of the way I've been penning some tunes down. One is my first song about baseball. The home team doesn't win. It's not a very upbeat tune.

-Sir Cloister "Bennett!" Maximus, Esq.

Writting to Write

Stephen J. Kozik — 2006-08-23T20:06:00+00:00

This nearly feels like an update for the sake of making an update, although I'm sure I have plenty of thoughts worthy of penning down (so to speak). I'll get into these funks once and a while where I won't make a journal entry for months at a time, and then suddenly I'll get really bored at work and make one practically every day for a few weeks. I'm not saying daily updates are on the way, I'm simply recognizing my slack over the past few months that has prevented me from the occasional written observations.

Observe this, oh hungry internet audience—the 2006 Cardinals aren't a very good baseball team. Sure, they might make it to the post-season—even the Padres managed that last year. Any hopes of seeing them win rings, however, have about as much of a chance as me sitting on a statue of Jerry Seinfeld made entirely of Fusilli pasta. A million to one shot doc, a million to one shot.

The band is out and about playing shows again which feels pretty good. There was a real good one last week on top of a parking garage in downtown Portland last week. In fact, I'd venture to say it was the best show I've ever played. Mellow rocking out in front of 300 people while looking down into PGE park from above is going to be a 2006 highlight for sure. I felt like Slash in the GNR video where Axl gets married and Slash goes out into the middle of the desert during the ceremony to play a wicked solo while the wind blows at his back like a mighty sail in the ocean. It was that radical. To balance that out though, our show at the Acme the night before stunk. We played bad, and it was late, and I was overly intoxicated, and most everybody had left the club. Pretty lame, but it's all karma, and the chi balanced itself out the next day. We have another one tomorrow at The Know, and friday I'll play acoustically at the old Red and Black off of division. I wonder what moldy oldies I'll bust out with my strings cut free of concerns that the band won't know the songs.

I'm still chasing the elusive first home-run of the season in softball. The best XBH I've managed this year has been a double (although I've hit about 15 of them so far) and I have a feeling my best chance will be the day an unsteady hand plays left field when I hit it out there. I've been hitting the ball to the fence, but mostly it's been caught by a fielder that doesn't play me as shallow as they did last year. We're in late August and I'm running out of time to smack a dinger before the rain begins to fall and we shut it down for the year. To add injury to insult, I've sustained more injuries this year too. Last week I jammed the fingers on my right hand so bad I couldn't even bowl the next day and I'm still recovering.

Some reviews of the record are out. Mostly positive stuff. That's nice. Too bad nobody in Portland gives a damn, really.

-Sir Cloister Maximus III, Esq.

Hot as Hell

Stephen J. Kozik — 2006-06-26T20:06:00+00:00

It's a good thing the science on global warming isn't in yet as I sure wouldn't want to do anything to curtail the current 100+ degrees of sweltering heat outside. And this is Oregon—I can only imagine what kind of horseshit weather will be rocking places like St. Louis this year. My oh my, I do believe I've got a case of the vapors.

Despite the heat I took the field of glory yesterday and learned a terrible lesson about playing short stop—I suck at it. After looking like an ass-clown on 4 ground-balls hit directly at me, I opted to move to right field where the only balls coming my way would be in the air. It's a good thing I switched because as soon as I did I went 4 for 4 with the bat. Funny how playing good defense helps you hit the ball with some level of confidence.

It's more than I can say about my beloved Cardinals who got their asses handed to them by the American League this week posting an 0 for 6 against two teams that have a collective 80 percent chance of playing in the world series this year. I hope for the sake of the birds they don't make it. Somebody representing the National League will look like fucking fools against the opposition this year.

This heat has gotten me into a do-nothing funk. My list of accomplishments for the weekend were attending a party, hitting a softball, reading 40 pages of a book, and taking about 8 naps. I'm sure I spent more time on the naps than the previously mentioned activities.

The record is out. I Hope somebody buys it.

-Sir Cloister Maximus III, Esq

(AKA General Baby Champagne)

Flying Back from Seattle on a Buddy Holly Plane

Stephen J. Kozik — 2006-06-06T20:06:00+00:00

I'm on a plane on my way to Seattle at the moment and I have a terrible seat at the very back of the plane right next to the engines. It's so incredibly loud I have my iPod on full blast and can barely make out lyrics. Lucky for me I only have about 50 more minutes before we land.

So, after my trip from St. Louis I have a few things checked off my "things to do in 2006" list. I saw two Cardinals games at Busch Stadium III, went to Six Flags and rode mad roller-coasters, ate a Steak 'n Shake burger, had coffee at Bob Evans, and visited the family. I don't have very high goals set for myself this year evidently.

The baseball games were fun, although the one on monday was a real heartbreaker. All of the things I wanted to see happened as Yadier Molina picked up his first homerun of the year and future left fielder Chris Duncan hit a monster shot to right center. Unfortunately all the joy was lost as Izzy melted down and threw a 3-2 meatball down central that Ken Griffey Jr. popped into the bleachers for a 3 run game winning home run against the birds. It's the kind of loss that makes grown men cry. And I was there.

There were quite a few snags I ran into during my trip that made it less that what I hopped it would be. One of those snags caused me to be on this flight to Seattle as American Airlines had a problem getting my originally booked flight out of St. Louis to depart. This wasn't the first American Airlines blunder as my flight to St. Louis on Saturday was a good 40 minutes late causing me to get to the airport after the Enterprise rental office closed forcing me to have Keith give me a ride to the airport. All of that coupled with missing keys, mo-dot traffic issues, and the loss of the superstar baseball player I came all the way from Portland to see caused the whole trip to be a bit of a downer all in all.

Time to fire up MAME and get a few games of Gyruss in before the plane lands.

-Sir Cloister Maximus III, Esq.

Back to St. Louis to see Busch Stadium 3.0

Stephen J. Kozik — 2006-05-30T20:06:00+00:00

In a mere four days I'll be on a big old jet plane headed back to the place of my birth, St. Louis for a weekend (and more) of family, baseball, and possibly roller-coasters. I'm especially excited to see a Cardinals game in the new Busch Stadium 3.0 as it should be quite a treat. Although they are right field bleachers, I'm brining my glove anyway in case Pujols decides he needs a few more RBI's and belts one to the opposite field.

During the in-between days while I wait for my vacation to start, I've been keeping myself pre-occupied with writing a 40-Column VT100 compatible term from scratch in 6510 assembly for my Commodore 64. I'm pretty surprised nobody has written one before (Although there are a few 80-Column terms such as Novaterm) but I'm almost glad there aren't since it give me an opportunity to take on a fairly challenging programming task to keep the old grey matter logic circuits firing in synchronicity. I feel that programming is a use-it or lose-it skill and sitting around all day reading Cardinals blogs makes my skill level drop to the point where I forget how to write code.

Decoding VT100 escape codes in assembly is hard, but not as hard as getting a simple base hit in a clutch situation: Bottom of the 9th, 2 out, bases loaded, defensive gap between first and second. I'm up to bat. I hold it down on the knob. I dig in. The pitch is outside. I swing and hit the ball hard—right into the first baseman's glove. Now I know what Juan Encarnacion must feel like. It's not good.

-Sir Cloister Maximus III, Esq.

Biking Home

Stephen J. Kozik — 2006-05-12T20:06:00+00:00

My legs are still in pain from yesterday's bike ride home, but I'm pretty confident that the pain will go away by the end of the weekend and I'll be recharged and able to bike 3 out of 5 days next week. With any luck I can get rid of the need for a car and get to work and back without throwing any more cash Haliburton's way. Sure, it doesn't make much difference, but it makes me feel better none the less.

The turn towards muscle based transportation isn't just a principle based decision, however. The mighty 1990 Honda CRX is going to the graveyard as last week's attempt to pass inspection failed miserably, and I don't have the patience to try to fix all the things that are wrong with it. 220k miles is a pretty good run, and if I was a gear-head I'm sure I could have gotten another 75k out of it. Alas, with being so close to work, it's not worth the effort nor the cash. Plus, I could bear to drop a few LB's from my frame as I've started to look suspiciously like Senior Cardgage since I quit smoking 2 years ago and turned to sweets instead. Not that I'm in a danger of being fat, but I certainly don't have six pack abs. More like a one pack.

The good news of this week is that the Mouse that Roared Excommunicator CD's are finished! I picked up about 50 retail, 25 promo from the label office and am giddy as a schoolgirl over them. Looks like we'll hit that June 13th date no problem, although we won't have any reviews out for the street date since I doubt one month is enough lead time for anyone. Such a shame. We will however, have a few fancy ads in some pubs in time for the release date. Now, selling them on the other-hand...that might take some work.

Brad Lidge sure is lights out this year. Ever since NLCS game 5, there's been nobody home.

-Sir Cloister Maximus III, Esq.

I Have Discovered the Lost Ark!

Stephen J. Kozik — 2006-05-08T20:06:00+00:00

After 23 years, the impossible has happened. As of yesterday at 3:32 PM I have finally, once and for all, found the Ark of the Lost Covenant. What seemed like an impossible task has now become quite possible. I'm speaking, of course, about Raiders of the Lost Ark, the Atari 2600 game that came out in 1982 and was known as one of the more vexing and hard to beat games of the Atari age. Thanks to the Internet FAQ I found, and the cartridge along with manual I purchased from Ebay last week, I finally dug up the ark after avoiding the Valley of Poison. And the ending? The lamest in video game history. After all the hard work you put into finding the Black Market, bribing the raving lunatic with gold, and finding the correct mesa from the map-room, your reward is the title screen with a blocky representation of the ark at the top. If I had spent more time in my youth and had achieved this lofty goal, I surely would have thrown my joystick at the television if I had won. Lame.

Speaking of throwing things, after nearly throwing out my arm again during an infuriating Cardinals vs. Astros' game I watched last week I am now Zen. I can calmly watch baseball games without throwing socks at the TV or punching the wall because that damned Berkman and cheap ass Minute Maid park makes me so damn mad. I realized I was getting too emotionally involved, and now I am Zen. Serenity now. And the baseball gods have rewarded my tranquility my allowing the birds to sweep the Marlins and let the Astros be swept by the Colorado Rockies. Now that is some tasty justice.

The lack of softball or bowling last week has put me in a position of suspended animation as I patiently await things to unfold this week. And if that doesn't work out, I'll be heading to St. Louis in a few weeks for a little mini vacation. I've earned it.

Where are my damn CDs at, stupid pressing plant?

-Sir Cloister Maximus III, Esq.

Bowling and Softball Websites Launch

Stephen J. Kozik — 2006-04-24T20:06:00+00:00

Spring has officially sprung as the first softball game of the year took place yesterday. It was a pretty short game that only lasted 2 innings (although they were long innings with each team batting around the order twice per inning) but it was a good start for the year. So far it seems that my light exercise and stretching has paid off big time as I feel almost no pain or stiffness the morning after. I was hitting the ball with serious authority during batting practice but tensed up too much at the plate and didn't put a good swing on the ball during my 4 ABs, grounding out and hitting a line drive right to the short stop in the two outs I made. The only hits I got were weak grounders that somehow I got to 1st safely on. The arm seems stronger and without the pain I had during the end of last year and it feels pretty good to wing the ball to another fielder. Oh the joy.

The bowling website is done now and has proper stat data in it along with the softball site now that official recorded games have been played for both. I seem to find bugs here and there and make adjustments and tweaks when I have a good idea, but for the most part it's a done deal. All my freelance work is finished, and I'm sitting pretty at the moment as I can take a relaxing break and try to enjoy the fruits of my labor. Along with a nifty little raise at work I'm ready to enjoy the summer. Big time.

I have a dentist appointment at 2 PM today. I'm getting ready for the typical lectures on how I don't floss enough and maybe should see a specialist about my gums. Bleh.

-Sir Cloister Maximus III, Esq.

Working on the Sports Websites

Stephen J. Kozik — 2006-04-12T20:06:00+00:00

The softball website is pretty much finished now—and linked to from the landing page of circleofthunder. There will be some tweaks here and there in time along with real statistical data, but it's pretty much a done deal. I also had a great idea to take the same code and tweak it to make a sister site to keep track of bowling stats for my Monday night bowling crew. It shouldn't take much effort to get that up and running in a week or so. I'm not so much interested in calculating my sad 105 bowling average—but I am interested in keeping track of our by game themes. There have been some real good ones in the past, such as what your porno name would be (mine is Lady Victoria, incidentally).

Right now I'm running an application called Corripio that automatically finds album artwork for your iTunes library and enters it into your ID3 tags. It seems to be working well so far, although I don't understand what sort of crazy order it's using as it's hopping from Van Halen to Alan Parsons like either of those are alphabetically or stylistically next to one another. I've been looking for something like this for a while and thanks a Wired Blogs I found it. The only downside is it looks like it might take 3 days to complete it's process since I have about 100 gigs of jams to catalog.

Word on the streets is that this Easter Sunday will be game one of the 2006 Hosford softball season. Now, if it can only stay dry enough for us to play.

-Sir Cloister Maximus III, Esq.

Softball Stats!

Stephen J. Kozik — 2006-04-06T20:06:00+00:00

I've been working a lot lately on my softball stats website in preparation for the coming softball season that should be right around the corner. The general idea is that to make the game even more fun, I'll let everybody (who wants to participate in this) write down their stats for the day (at bats, hits, extra base hits, rbi's) along with recording the box score for each game. From there, I'll enter it into this sql database I've created and have a dynamic website where you can see all that statistical data aggregated into digestible information. As an extra bonus I've built in a poll, news, photo galleries, and a primitive message board. I'm sure I could have used a pre-boxed solution for the message boards but I really wanted to write one by hand to get a good learning experience. It won't be as robust as most of the slick boards out there, but it will have an added benefit of security through obscurity. I always see hits in my logs from bots trying to use exploits to cookie cutter message boards to oW3n sites. This will make things a little harder for them hopefully.

So now that I have the code-base 90% finished and the front end ready to be cut to HTML tonight, all I need to do now is populate it with stats. The outlook isn't very good for those stats to be birthed this weekend since there are ominous rain-clouds in my weather widget. I am so ready to play but it doesn't look like Portland's weather wants to cooperate.

In addition to curtailing my potential monster hitting display on Sunday, it will most likely rain out (or make very unpleasant) the Beavers game I have tickets for this Saturday. It's like the rain wants to ruin my entire weekend. At least Baseball is on the tube now that the season's started—and the cards are playing the cubs. Classic.

I still need to take care of some work that I've been avoiding. That and those pesky 2005 taxes. Guess I can take comfort in knowing that my money goes to blowing somebody's brains out so El Presidente can feel smug and righteous in the lord.

-Sir Cloister Maximus III, Esq.

Softball spring training and the Portland Beavers

Stephen J. Kozik — 2006-03-23T20:06:00+00:00

I'm looking at my weather widget right now and cursing the fact that the happy clear sky sun icon for thursday has miraculously turned into a sad grey rain cloud icon overnight. What this means is that my great plans to take advantage of the 65+F temperature listed for today will most likely be a bust. I've been waiting for a while for the perfect day to walk home from work and get some exercise, but it looks like it isn't to be. I had an opportunity Monday, but unfortunately I was feeling lazy and took a pass. Maybe next week will bear fruit.

I did, however, take advantage of the freakishly sunny and nice day Sunday and got some softball work in at the old Hosfard field. I was somewhat surprised that nobody else decided to show up and see if maybe there was a game or something, but it was all for the best as I was able to get a lot of work done with my swing and getting my arm used to throwing a ball again. My hope is that with that in combination with some walking I'll be able to get my muscles nice and stretched out so the first game of the year doesn't end with me soaking in a tub for 3 days unable to walk because I over did it. Also, with any luck, I'll have a leg up and be a better player this year since I got in a little practice before I make a fool of myself in front of others. April is just around the corner, and I'll be ready this year for sure.

I continue to be able to check things off of my todo list for 2006 as I purchased a set of tickets to a Beavers game in a few weeks. They are right behind the visitors dugout so I'll be in yelling distance of the players. If only Kerry Robinson still played for them—man oh man what a time I'd have.

-Sir Cloister Maximus III, Esq.

Random Mouse that Roared Thoughts

Stephen J. Kozik — 2006-03-16T20:06:00+00:00

My Hogan's Alley NES cart finally arrived today, and with any luck I'll be cleaning up that digital town with my trusty six-gun when I get home. Clearly I'll be on the same level as Michael J. Fox in Back to the Future II—except I don't plan on getting into any drag races with Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers over being called "chicken".

It looks like once again this year I'll be heading back to St. Louis for a few days as I was lucky enough to get tickets to a Cardinals game at the new Busch Stadium. Sure, they're bleacher seats...to a Reds game.. on a weekday...in right field...but still, from what I understand I was lucky to even get those seats since most games were standing room only after a mere 3 hours of tickets going on sale. So June 3rd through the 6th I'll be back in hot ass Missouri and try to see everybody I know and take in the whole midwest thing. June should be a pretty busy month all in all considering that's when Excommunicator is scheduled to be released and will obviously require some sort of CD release show. I'm working on getting some folks to eat fire and present a flea circus. Seriously.

Speaking of the Mouse that Roared, the band minus Chris and plus Ross Beach rocked a 3 song set lasting less than ten minutes at a going away party for the Holgate house we used to practice at back in the day. All things considered it was pretty successful for being the most by-the-seat-of-the-pants thing we've done (having Ross sit in behind the drum kit without even HEARING any of the songs we were going to play) and Piuma playing on a borrowed Moog that he had about 10 seconds to figure out. I can honestly say it was the best show we've ever played without Calvert. Looking at the Minmae tour schedule for the next couple of months I think we should be prepared for that to happen again though.

-Sir Cloister Maximus III, Esq.

Grapefruit Leauge Watchin'

Stephen J. Kozik — 2006-03-03T20:06:00+00:00

Baseball is back in the form of spring training and grapefruit league games. I haven't had the chance to listen in yet since yesterdays tragic exhibition game against the Mets wasn't covered for whatever reason, but I think that tonight's game will be on MLB's gameday audio stream. It's timing conflicts with SG1, but maybe I'll just wait for the 8PM airing of SG1 and listen to the game—unless there aren't any regular starters by 5PM, then I don't really care.

Now that I've pretty much recovered from whatever wacky pulled muscles I sustained last weekend (presumably during the long day of standing and walking around Ikea) it's time to buckle down and get ready to get back in shape. I guess throwing the work "back" in that sentence isn't entirely forthcoming since I've probably never been "in shape" in the first place, but I digress. I plan on doing something to make myself a bit more athletic and prepared for softball when it starts in a month. This will be my breakout year—I can feel it.

-Sir Cloister Maximus III, Esq.

Classic Gammers Conference in Seattle

Stephen J. Kozik — 2006-02-27T20:06:00+00:00

This weekend I traveled up north to check out the Classic Gammers Conference in Seattle. I went with some friends of Jen and a supply of cash that afforded me the ability to pick up some NES carts I've been looking for. I still can't seem to find Hogan's Ally so I'm going to have to buy it from Ebay I guess. No big deal really. The con was a bit smaller than I was hoping it would be, but it was packed to the gills will a lot of neat stuff. I got to play with a Vectrex machine and obtain a splitting headache and nausea from the Virtual Gameboy they had on display. I took some pictures that I will upload soon, but I need to clear some space on the server first.

Excommunicator is pretty much a wrap now. The only change that could happen to it is the possible dismissal of the troubling third track. It will be somewhat of a shame if I have to drop it since it's sort of a load bearing song for the record in terms of lyrics (it sets the table for all the ghost stuff really) but it's a song that was unfortunately written in a way that my voice sounds very unflattering on, so it might have to take one for the team. It would be the third song that was written and recorded for the record but just couldn't make the cut. Pity.

Now that the record is pretty much out of the way I can concentrate on a bunch of stuff I've been putting off. Things like exercising in preparation for spring softball, as well as finishing some freelance work and doing my taxes. Then, and only then, can I take it easy.

-Sir Cloister Maximus III, Esq.

Interviewed on Retrobits for the NTSC Demo Scene

Stephen J. Kozik — 2006-02-14T20:06:00+00:00

Someone that runs a Cardinals blog that I routinely read posted a complete clip of the top of the 9th inning from the 2005 NLCS Game 5. It was fun to re-watch the monstrous moon shot off Lidge again, but it just sparked my jonesing for baseball to start. I think I need some sort of countdown clock for the 2006 season. Maybe that's out of control.

Besides my continuous mixing of the soon to be released Mouse that Roared offering, I spent a portion of Sunday doing a sort of off the cuff interview for one of my favorite podcast's (besides the amazingly funny Ricky Gervais show) Retrobits. The interview revolved around my young geek experiences hacking 6510 assembly code under the effeminate handle "the daisyfarmer". As a bonus for throwing in my two cents about the NTSC demo scene I finally acquired copies of the XL/XE transformer software that will let my Atari 130XE run XL games like Miner 2049er. And isn't that what life is all about really?

It is, of course, the holiday of love and the wife reminds me that 10 years ago today I first alerted her of my romantic intentions. While it's a noteworthy anniversary, it also makes me say, "Ten Years?". That's a long time for sure.

-Sir Cloister Maximus III, esq.

Waiting for Baseball and Hosting the Family

Stephen J. Kozik — 2006-02-09T20:06:00+00:00

It's unseasonably warm and dry today, and apparently for the next 5 days according to my dashboard weather widget. It's normally accurate so I have no reason to doubt it now I suppose. It's certainly a welcome change from the normal chilly and wet that goes on in February around these parts--but I can't help but feel like it's teasing my body into thinking that warm weather, iPod assisted walks home, and baseball is just around the corner (which they are not). So in a way, I'd almost rather just have the wet and cold so I don't pine so heavily for April.

The main tracking and most overdubs for Excommunicator are done and it's currently being reduced to stereo Mix A. Although it's certainly head and shoulders above the past Mouse that Roared offerings, there are some weakness exposed by my increasing microscopic inspection over the project. Nothing major mind you, just the realization that we could have maybe laid down some tighter takes and I could have gotten the bass guitar to have a bit more low end gunk if we had more than 3 days to record it. So really I'm just thinking that maybe you can't really make a record in 3 days as I've come to believe. Not, at least, an album with any sort of complex overdubs.

My mom and my youngest brother are coming for a visit in a few weeks to check out schools and get a little Pacific Northwest tourism in. It's going to be strange having more than 2 Kozik's in Oregon. Will the fabric of time/space be destroyed in the process? It's hard to say at this point. I've taken a few days off of work and offered to donate my good car so they can get around. Even if I'm not hanging out with them the whole time it will be nice to have a few days off of work just to sort of kick back and relax since I've been so ridiculously busy lately with the record and all. Then there is always the freelance project I need to finish... and 2005 taxes. Damn

Anything is better than having a stone though. If I knew what a customary gift for having ones gall bladder removed was, I would get it for Jake. That stuff is for sucks.

-Sir Cloister Maximus III, Esq.

Preparing to Record Excommunicator

Stephen J. Kozik — 2006-02-01T20:06:00+00:00

Only two more days until we start recording the new Mouse that Roared offering "Excommunicator", a twelve song CD about ghosts, leading a useless a non-contributive life, and essentially being ignored by your peers and heroes. This has absolutely nothing to do with my own life, obviously.

Of course, the album won't be completely coherent ala Dark Side of the Moon or Operation Mind Crime (shivers) since there are a few older songs in the tracking that were written originally as part of my aborted song cycle about finding true love and letting your true love ruin your life. However, it might be at least as unified as say, Band on The Run or Red Rose Speedway, and to be in the musical company of a former Beatle and Knight of Britannia isn't bad at all I guess. One could do worse, like be in the company of Queensryche or Rush.

There is a lot to be excited about when it comes to this weekend of course. Since this will be the first time recording with this particular lineup and will be actually pressed to a real honest to goodness CD, It really feels like the first Mouse that Roared release ever. With a bit of luck I'll look back at all the crappy cd-r's I've put out over the past 6 years under that moniker as mere demos--or perhaps as just some strange form of homework done to bone up on song-writing techniques. Excommunicator will be like, my thesis or some horseshit. Now I'm making this seem retarded.

So pack up the bags and get ready to go. Let's make a record.

-Sir Cloister Maximus III, Esq.

Way to Go, Neocons

Stephen J. Kozik — 2006-01-26T20:06:00+00:00

The reports coming in from NPR this morning are that Hamas has the majority of the vote in the Palestinian Elections. Normally, middle eastern politics bore me to tears with the whole "We'll bomb you, you bomb us, our hats are blue and yours are red" religious bullshit that goes on, but for some reason this struck a chord with me.

What the neo-cons have done here in attempt to spread democracy in an unstable middle eastern region by invading Iraq, is the equivalent of hitting a hornets nest with a baseball bat. You don't kill any hornets, you just piss them off like you wouldn't believe.

This imperial movement has had an obvious radicalizing effect on the already quasi-nutty inhabitants of the area. With Mr. "The Holocaust is a Jewish Myth" running Iran while developing nuclear capacity (something that would never have been tolerated if the US didn't already have all of it's troops spread between Iraq and Afghanistan), growing insurgency, and Sharon (who is a mass murder, but one who might have been the most sane in Israeli politics lately) being out for the count, you can guarantee some balls out war on the horizon. One, that of course, the US will feel the need to get involved in and cause even more death, destruction, and turmoil. Fuck.

I guess I can't even move to Canada anymore. Why is the world becoming MORE insane and conservative? Maybe evolution is bullshit. We sure as fuck don't seem to be evolving as a species.

-Sir "Political Pundit" Cloister Maximus III, Esq.

New Features and Working on Excommunicator

Stephen J. Kozik — 2006-01-22T20:06:00+00:00

Some big changes are coming down the pipe for Circleofthunder as I work on a whole new content management system and consider giving it the yearly facelift that it normally receives in January. Some of the things that will change will be purely superficial, but one of the key things I really want to do is update the markup to be xhtml. The current state of the HTML for the site is totally 1998. That has to change.

Besides the website update, February will be pretty busy with the the recording and pressing of the next Mouse that Roared offering. This is the album that has been in the works for almost two years now and will be the first full band effort since the Mount Saint Helens EP way back in 2003. It's also going to be the first album with Chris Piuma from the Minor Thirds tickling the ivories, as well as the first record pressed to cd at an actual plant. Funny how a stable financial situation and a lack of modesty makes things turn around. Needless to say, it should be quite the event.

So while I wait for the end of January, I try and wrap up all the little things here and there that I need to do. Things like the Stuck-in-a-Rut project, preparing my computers and gear for the big recording event, making preparations for all the things that come with that. If I'm lucky I'll get some spare time and hit the batting cages sometime soon.

-Sit Cloister Maximus III, Esq.

2005 Year in Review

Stephen J. Kozik — 2005-12-31T20:06:00+00:00

2005 Year in Review. Low poll Bush. Sore neck and right arm. Divinci school mudball. Loveharder. 6 day vacation of laziness. Stuck in a Rut. Avian flu scare. Old shows on DVD. Larry Walker retires. Alito nominaton. Toni Iommi Halloween party. Carpenter wins Cy Young. Retro computers arive. Pakistan quake. White Sox win world series. Harriet Miers. Big Lebowski party. Cardinals make it to NLCS. Albert wins MVP, ruins Brad Lidge's career. Aunt Inge visits. Rove. Libby. Abramoff. Delay. Ken Tomlinson. Podcasts. Dermatology. CRX Troubles. Bowling at Interstate. Q-Link Reloaded. John Roberts is handsome. Practice in Bens basement. Fillibuster fight! Testement Party. Katrina. Shellac at Berbatis. Hosfard near cycle. 30 Years old. Smashed Guitar at ACME. HDTV all-star game. 4th at the Beach. New Glasses. Civic. First Homerun. Jackson buys innocence. Imeldas Shoes. Trip to St. Louis. Morris complete game win against Red Sox at Bush Stadium. Love Harder. Cruise boat. Fight for survival at Wired Cafe. RSS Feeds. NPR Streams in. Psychodelic Tea Party. Switch to Mac. Keith bails on p-town. Enterprise.com. Pepboys. New job at Centerpointe. Netflix. Redesign of COT. Terminator X Dragon Fly New Years Eve.

No Big Deals for the St. Louis Cardinals

Stephen J. Kozik — 2005-12-12T20:06:00+00:00

Times like these make me think of the first verse to the Kinks song Low Budget:

Cheap is small and not too steep
But best of all cheap is cheap
Circumstance has forced my hand
To be a cut price person in a low budget land
Times are hard but we�ll all survive
I just got to learn to economize

I am, of course, referring the Dewitt's propensity to tying Walt Joketty's hands on issues of budget in hopes that He'll pull off more miracle deals ala last years Eckstien and Grud signings. While Walt has been a miracle worker in the past, you have to wonder when the luck will run out and this whole Cardinals discount philosophy will come and bite the team in the ass. Let's see, a guy (Grud) turns a record number of double plays in club history and you can't afford to pay him the meager (in mlb terms) 2 million a year he wants? That's just dumb.

So the birds loose Reggie Sanders, Mark Grudzielanek, Matt Morris, Abe Nunez, John Mabery, Julian Tavarez. Meanwhile Larry Walker and Cal Eldred retire, Al Reyes is out for the year. What has been done to plug the holes? We trade Ray King for two Rockies bench players and sign a Mendoza line reliever. Yikes.

I know it was similar last year with the late year deals after Renteria left, but I'm hungry for just ONE big deal. Something that says, "Don't worry, it will work out".

I keep putting off working on a freelance project that I really need to get done just so I can move on to some fun little project I want to work on during the weekends. Stuff like a new COT, and a softball tracking system for next year. Who wants to work though?

-Sir Cloister Maximus III, Esq.

Last Game of the Season

Stephen J. Kozik — 2005-12-05T20:06:00+00:00

Yesterday obviously marked the last day for softball this year as only 5 people showed and we had to settle for batting practice. As I lament about the passage of the 2005 season, it is also good news to my various pulled muscles that winter is here and I can begin to rest up. I am also pleased with some major upgrades to my skill-sets this year after I added the long ball (4 home-runs this year), better OBP (The last month has seen a .500 clip), and improved fielding (fly balls CAN be caught). I even nearly hit for the cycle in a game that I hit my 2nd triple of the season. I can only assume that next year I'll be an acceptable player if I can only do something to improve my throwing arm. We'll see in April I guess. That Tommy John surgery HAS to pay off.

Now that winter is here, what sport can replace the void that softball has left? Bowling has come back on as we've moved our games to Monday nights at Powel Bowl, but that is a streaky sport that is on/off all year anyway. I'm trying to think of something indoors to escape the rain and cold. If only Portland had a place to play Demolition Ball at. Maybe I'll just have to settle for the sport of rock n' roll. Or hunting the ultimate prey. Humans.

Since I had my little sabbatical last week and had the opportunity to write some new songs, I now have enough material for a whole new album with the mouse that roared. If all goes well I can teach the crew the new jams and we can record it sometime in the next month or so. That could be a fun winter project for sure. I think this is going to be the record I finally enter my Johnny Thunders phase and hire a sax player—and somebody that plays the squeezebox.

I need to buy a suit. But just for the sake of irony. That would be punk rock, right?

-Sir Cloister Maximus III, Esq.

Cortisone Necks, Hotstove, Halloween Parties and Retrocomputers

Stephen J. Kozik — 2005-11-07T20:06:00+00:00

This may have been the biggest lapse in blog entries ever. I mean, does anybody even read this thing? I guess it doesn't really matter since this is supposed to be a time capsule that I can look back to 10-15 years in the future and say, Oh yah! I remember when Larry Walker played for the Cardinals..man that dude's neck was fucked up.

Speaking of fucked up necks, I have one. It sure isn't as bad as Larry Legend's (No 8 cortisone shots here) but it does get pretty stiff on the two days after softball. This coupled with may nagging shoulder soreness ala Jimmy Baseball makes me pretty much worthless on Monday and Tuesdays. The end of the "season" is getting close (mid-December) so I'll just play through the injuries and let myself heal up over the winter. Mudball is pretty exciting, actually. You get to slide in the mud and even if you don't make it to second safely, you look like a real stud doing it. Take that, nerdy and slightly effeminate outward appearance!

The hotstove is on now that the Birds bowed out in the NLCS and the Astro's got oW3n3D in the Dub-S. There is a lot of talk about getting another class A starting pitcher. Forget that noise, pitching didn't let us down this year—if anything it was the one highlight in the NLCS, sans Albert's choo-choo-train jack in game 5. What STL needs is a stud in Right to replace Larry. What will it take to get Giles in a red uniform for 2006? If it's under 11M we should pay it. I'm not saying we should sign the guy for more than 3 years since he's not a young buck anymore, but that sexy OBP in front of Albert could be the thing to give those guys their rings next year. That and keeping Rolen from breaking any bones next year. Hee Seop Choi, you son of a bitch!

The Mouse that Roared played a last minute Halloween party last Saturday. We played with varying degrees of excellence to outright slop that embarrassed me. We opened up with Black Sabbath's "Black Sabbath" and I was dressed as Tony Iommi but didn't quite get those Hammer-on's down quite like he could. Then some jackass puked on my car. I can't say I had a good feeling about the night on the drive home. What kind of dickhead pukes on a car? Can't you turn your head slightly to the right?

My classic computer/console collection is nearly completed. Amiga 500, Vic-20, TI-99/4A, C64, Sega Master System, Nintendo NES have all arrived in my latest ebay marathon. I still want to acquire an Atari 130XE and possibly an Apple IIe if I can find one for cheap. My office is getting a little crowded. I need to develop some type of shelving system to minimize the space all this stuff takes up.

Emulators are for punks. Real geeks use hardware.

And I am a real geek.. that much is certain.

-Sir Cloister Maximus III, Esq.

Luck of the Redbird

Stephen J. Kozik — 2005-08-15T20:06:00+00:00

I had to make decision on Sunday whether or not to wear my lucky Cardinals t-shirt. On one hand, wearing this shirt the cards have won 8 for 8. On the other hand, I don't want to wear it in a sketchy game and give it bad juju. Well, the Cardinals lost a see-saw of a game to the Cubs (who don't even have a winning record, but seem to play like it's game 7 whenever the Cardinals come to town), but that day at softball I got my first Home-run of the year, so I guess the good luck juice has a way of flowing one way or another.

I'm also a total sellout now that I have an iPod. I'm only a few steps away from buying a house in the suburbs driving my SUV on the way to Starbucks. Way to go, old guy.

-Sir Cloister Maximus III, Esq.

Getting the Band Back Together

Stephen J. Kozik — 2005-05-23T20:06:00+00:00

I've been getting lax about posting to the journal as of late, and it certainly isn't for lack of things to write about. I've finally purchased a new car (Civic LX Coupe), gotten the ball rolling with Mouse that Roared shows (Next one is May 30th, Monday, at the Acme in SE), almost finished up my latest freelance job (www.imeldashoes.com) and booked a flight back to St. Louis (June 4th-7th). Here are some thoughts I've had as of late in no particular order.

The Cardinals. First, let me say that it's pretty much a lock that the cards will be the NL Central champs again this year. Not so much because they are a great ball-club (they are), but because everybody in the NL Central... uh... stinks. When the Brewers are in second place and 7 games back from the birds, then the division is in some sorry shape. I've been subscribed to MLB.tv and MLB.radio so I've been catching every game. I'm not concerned with Roland on the DL since Mabery, Sanders, and Nuneiz all seem to be able to take up his slack without any problem. It isn't like Rolland's been a particularly hot bat or living up to his Gold Glove standards lately, so I'm not worried. The only complaint I have about the birds this year is this—Stop using Roger Cendeno! Roger has always choked in clutch situations and is continuing to strike out and hit pop-flys at nearly every at bat he's had. I'm sure he's a great guy, but I don't want to seem him at the plate with 2 out and bases loaded anymore. You hear me LaRussa?

I'm hoping I can get everybody I know to come out to the first Mouse that Roared (full band) show of the year the coming Monday. I've had a couple of solo shows this year, but I can't wait to take the full band out for a night on the town. Since I've fallen in love with electric guitar and don't play much acoustic anymore, I've really tuned myself more to a band situation than just playing by myself. Julia hooked me up over at the Acme in Southeast. I had a chance to check it out this Saturday for a Minmae show at it seemed really sweet. One dollar domestic beers, free admittance, easy parking, big space, and foot traffic. Shit, that's everything I could ask for in a club. And S. Brooks claims the monitors are perfect and audible so it should be a pleasant experience.

I'm all geared up and ready to visit back to STL in the beginning of next month. It's been about 3-4 years since I've been in the midwest, so I'll have a lot of catching up to do for sure. I plan on trying to get a hold of as many people as I can, and roll around town with the digital camera and take some snapshots of some old stomping grounds like my old house in St. Charles and stuff like that. I can almost taste that Stake n' Shake burger now. Holy crap.

-Sir Cloister Maximus III, Esq.

Softball is Here Again

Stephen J. Kozik — 2005-04-24T20:06:00+00:00

Finally, I get to play the first game of softball this year after waiting for nearly two months during inhospitable weather. Not that today was perfect, but the rain was light enough that it was at least possible to play. Although I'm pretty sore in a couple of places, it seems that walking home from work and doing some stretching should prevent me from totally blowing out my quads like I did last year. I fell face down in the mud, couldn't get a base hit, and jammed my thumb on a double play at second, but the pain and dirt is all part of the fun of baseball. With any luck it will be clear skies next week and maybe I can hit a line drive into a gap and beat out a throw to first next week.

One thing that has been annoying me lately is this new trend I am seeing where people who post to web based built-in boards and have cookie cutter blog pages seem to be stealing photos from circle of thunder. What I mean by stealing is that instead of using google search, finding a photo from my photo gallery and downloading it, they just outright link to it, so MY web-server has to serve up the image to to their shitty forum. I know some web-servers have a way to block outside links to images but I can't seem to find it inside wazooweb's control panel. For the time being I've been renaming these linked files and serving their dumb asses up with a cold and unsympathetic 404. However, if it keeps up I'll start replacing those images with giant tubgirl photos. If that doesn't discourage this phpbb linking, I don't know what will.

It looks like Tiger was accidently shipped out a week early from some software stores, so now pirated copies of the gold master are spreading like liquid hell on the net. I've queued up a copy on usenet out of curiosity. I doubt I'll install it any time soon since I was burned by upgrading to 10.3.9 last week when it broke my copy of pithelmet. It's best to wait for all the bugs to get worked out and everybody update their software. Damn those new widget things look cool though. I'm such a sucker for Konfabulator type apps.

I got a new scanner for cheap down at the depot while shopping for dvd-r's and spent a portion of the weekend scanning in some old photos that were previously only living in the analog domain. It is one of my goals to digitally archive everything I have this year and store it on some dvds placed in a vacuum sealed safety deposit box. I'm a step closer today.

Sir Cloister Maximus III, Esq.

Fight for Survival at the Wired Cafe

Stephen J. Kozik — 2005-04-18T20:06:00+00:00

Blogging after work like my name was Captain Kirk.

So Saturday turned out to be a pretty fun night down at the Wired Cafe in SE with my Battle for Survival show working out on all accounts. Ross played some new nifty songs that seemed less political and more exploratory. People showed up and hung around to watch all the music. The sound was spot on and for once I could actually hear myself very well which always helps in the singing department, so I felt good about my set. The Nest became even creeper and more interesting than usual with renditions of his new water suite. Brooks brought a sax player with him in an ever on-going quest to up the ante; and let me tell you sir—that was one magical performance. I'm happy that the Mulvinator captured it all on Sony(TM) MiniDisc(R). If it turns out as good as I remember it maybe I'll make some dubs and pass it around.

I finally got a gig of ram for my mini, so now my Mac is happy and I can finally have Photoshop and iTunes open at the same time. In the process of upgrading some software (10.3.9) I found a need little app that Panic makes called Stattoo. It's pretty much like the konfabulator esq. widgets that will be part of Tiger, but a little more trimmed down and connected to other Panic stuff (such as Audion). This was all helpful, of course, since I had to work all weekend on Imelda and Louie's shoes website. Nothing like putting the 40 hours in at the jobby job then coming home and working some more. Sigh. Oh well, my new 2006 silver VW Jetta will appreciate it I'm sure.

Is it ever going to stop raining on Sunday's? I'm dying to start playing softball again.

-Sir Cloister Maximus III, Esq.

Baseball Season Begins

Stephen J. Kozik — 2005-04-03T20:06:00+00:00

Baseball season is upon us once again. This tuesday will be the Cards opening game against the now de-clawed Houston Astros. The cards, of course, have been picked this year to win the NL Central — although it should be noted that last year the Cubs were picked, so I suppose it doesn't mean much. Is this the year that Pujols wins the MVP? Anybody that has seen him during spring training will know that this really should be his year. I'm still trying to figure out how to watch the games since I'm subjected to FSN NW and can only watch Mariners games on the tube. I wish that the closest team in my area was at least a National League team so I could catch the occasional Cards game on the tube. I guess I'll have to subscribe to MLB TV or something. If only I wasn't currently paying off my taxes for 2004 and saving for a car.

Today is apparently Daylight Savings day, so I loose an hour on the clock. This is never the fun time change, but at least it will still be light out around 6PM, and once the rain finishes it's cycle we can start playing Softball out at Irving park on Sundays again. The official opener happened 3 weeks ago but I missed it and it's rained every week since. I also haven't been able to do any of my other routine things like have band practice or bowl since something has been preventing that from happening in a while as well.

At least last week provided a good reason to not have practice—The Oxes were playing portland for the first time in 4 years. The show was amazing, but I have to give a big thumbs down to the solid state. What kind of a club charges 8 bucks and doesn't even have a godamn sound system? And to add insult to injury, the space is so small it felt like seeing a show at the blackbird again, and not in a good way. It was so crowded I got trapped in the back of the room after I used the bathroom. It certainly wasn't as fun as the show they did at the Satiricon back in 2002 (One of the first shows I saw in Portland, BTW). Anyway, I'm not too sweet on many PDX clubs these days since they all have serious flaws that make it aggravating to see shows at.

Man oh man do I need to upgrade the ram in my Mac Mini.. 256 Megs just ain't cutting it.

-Sir Cloister Maximus III, Esq.

My new Shiny Mac Mini

Stephen J. Kozik — 2005-03-27T20:06:00+00:00

Goodbye windows, hello Mac OS X.

I've always sort of wanted to switch to a mac, but have been held back by both financial considerations and too much invested in legacy hardware. There were two things that recently happened that pushed me over the edge and forced me to take action.

The first of those are the introduction of the new mac mini's — those marvels of Apple engineering at a price that I finally said, "Yah, I can afford one of those". The real key to it all working out is how it seems that Apple read my mind. Every time I would look at buying a mac (besides the old iMac in my kitchen that Jen used) it was always the same thing; I don't need ram, big hard-rives, built in displays, or mice because I already HAVE all of those things. Why would I want to over pay for things I already have? I always just wished I could by an iMac sans display and features — just a bare bones mac. Well, the mac mini's are about as close as you can get to that. For 500 bucks you could hardly do better, and of course it works with all my old hardware that I used on my windows box. Oh the bliss.

The second was my new job. You see, in the past my employers would always give me very old out of date hardware and refuse to upgrade my software. However, at my new job I actually got a G4 with some juice in it and experienced OSX in a working environment for the first time (At my last I job I was STILL using OS9). The kicker is that I was also supplied with some state of the art horseshit P4 4 Ghz blah blah blah PC that I use side by side with my mac for reading MS Office docs and browser testing — and my old dual 800 mhz G4 SMOKED it. I mean, when you compare them side by side like that it becomes painfully obvious that macs are more than superior. It's just unreal. I used to have the philosophy of "Oh, well, windows may be as ugly as sin, but at least it's utilitarian." Now that's I've had the pleasure of working with a real operating system that wasn't just flung together by a 100 monkeys randomly typing I see that's not the case. Windows isn't utilitarian. It's just shit. I'd come home to my windows box and just hate it so much. The long pauses, the freezups, the random resets, the buggy software that leaked memory and caused my swap disk to balloon to over 2 gigs.

So that was it. Jen and I marched down to the Apple store and picked up two minis. One for me, one for her. I have to say, besides the somewhat inadequate memory on these things (stock 256M), this little 5" x 5" cube is performing as smoothly as my old Athlon 2000+ system. I mean, CPU speed is junk science... no really. It's all ram and disk performance. What are you doing that really requires 2 ghz of speed? Even Photoshop and Illustrator never make my CPU peak over 40%. Once ram prices come down a little I plan on getting a stick of 1G and making this mac mini into a mac biggie. With my 300GB usb 2.0 drive I'm rocking' and a rollin'. The only PC dependency I have is my old Layla 8 in 10 out HD recording system (PCI bridge. d'oh) and the DVD-R drive. That could obviously be replaced with Firewire versions, but I'm in no hurry. As long as I don't have to deal with windows 90% of the time I'm happy.

Now, If I could only find an MP3 player I like. iTunes is far too bloated for my tastes, and all the lightweight players (Audion, Macamp) seem a little... uuh.. unstable. Nobody's perfect I suppose.

-Sir Cloister Maximus III, Esq.

Buying a new Guitar Amp—Let's go VOX.

Stephen J. Kozik — 2005-03-06T20:06:00+00:00

I keep telling myself the reason that I'm working every day, even the weekends, is because a new shiny car is in my immediate future. To tell the truth, I'm not sure that's enough. I want toys. Lots of useless, non-practical, self-gratification oriented toys. Lucky for me I fulfilled part of that order earlier this week when I went and finally purchased a new solid state amp from the g-center in Tigard. It was a coin toss between the Fender, Kustom, and Vox. The Fender and Vox were both 30 watts with a 10" speaker, and g-center didn't carry the Kustom I was looking at so it was narrowed down. I walked out with the Vox.

It's incredibly un-nerving to try out an amp in that place with the Zeppelin bass solos, nu-metal drum masturbation and too friendly but somewhat condescending salesmen surrounding you. First I was given a fender strat that even the cocky g-center employee couldn't tune, and then when I had a guitar that was in-tune I didn't really feel like I could crank up the amp because, you know, I didn't want to be one of "those guys" that need to annoy the shit out of you with crappy guitar playing while you're just in to pick up a pack of cheap strings and picks. Regardless, from what I could tell at the store the Vox seemed more sturdy and had less tin sound than the Fender I tried out. Plus Vox amps just look cool. It feels very British.

I'm almost finished putting together the next Mouse that Roared offering titled "Laws of Physics" that will be put out on Barrios' new label "Love Harder". What a great fucking name for a label. My love is hard. Hard as a rock. I've ditched the plans for that pretentious song-cycle and am just going to release most of the songs from the cycle sans-story and in raw form without the help of the band. Granted, most of the songs were done with assistance from Calvert and Casey, but not playing their instruments. I figure I'll just start working on all new stuff with the band and we'll record something band-like mid year sometime. Since we have a new practice space by the "Fat Cobra" in North Portland, that is possible now.

Looking for something to do this week? On Friday at the White Eagle I'll be there drinking Hammerheads and watching Xila's second show, and finally get to see Nick's band the Draft play.

-Sir Cloister Maximus III, Esq.

A Practice Place for The Mouse that Roared

Stephen J. Kozik — 2005-02-27T20:06:00+00:00

It seems that I have just about recovered from the cold that I've had for the past five days. I think it might have been a week version of the one that I had last year since the symptoms and the order that they manifested themselves in were similar. I suppose it's good to have gotten it out of the way since everybody at my work has the bug. It was ... inescapable.

It looks like Casey has secured TMTR a place to practice finally, so that is some exciting news. I have been feeling the need to get things moving again since I have a batch of new tunes and would like to set up some shows here pretty soon. It would also be a bonus to be able to record them with the band, and now that we have a place to play that seems at least possible.

Other items of interest include the new RSS feed I've added to the old blog since I'm all about that now. I also have been getting some new goodies now that I have a little spreading around cash again and dumped Verizon in favor of T-Mobile for my cell provider. I have no brand loyalty whatsoever. Whoever has it for the cheapest amount gets my business. It's all the same junk as far as I'm concerned.

Is baseball season here yet?

-Sir Cloister Maximus III, Esq.

Netflix is Bliss

Stephen J. Kozik — 2005-02-08T20:06:00+00:00

"Don't worry, that wasn't a real person. That was a stunt double" - Leather face, Summer School.

Today I got my first shipment from Netflix — 5 episodes of the HBO soft core porn/thriller "The Hitchhiker", Testament (The nuclear holocaust movie I had mixed up with the Day After), and Summer School. So far I gotta say I'm pretty impressed with the 'flix action. The discs were shipped in 1-day, and the no-hassle self-mailing envelopes are pure genius. I don't think I'll have much of a problem getting my $17.95 a month out of them since as soon as I get the discs in the mail I'll just copy them to the hardrive (Thanks DeCSS!) and mail them right back for my next batch of goodies. That, of course, means that Friday or Saturday I should be getting 3 DVD's full of The Twilight Zone: 80's (The ones Wes Carven directed) in the mail. Bad ass.

Besides being inspired to sample the Hitchhiker theme song and make a leet Booyaka cut, I start work in cubicle land tomorrow. Lucky for me I found a place that will let me pretty much pick up where I left off last year minus vindictive creative directors and just so happens to also be a few blocks from my place. Well, maybe more than a few blocks but I could theoretically skateboard there if I was in a jam. Anything that prevents me from having to drive on 26 is considered a good thing. So I'll throw in the towel on the freelance lifestyle again in the favor of Dental Plans and stable paychecks that afford me a new car. I'm such a godamned sellout.

If all goes according to plan, I'll be recording the new Mouse that Roared LP this weekend over at the Kelly Haus with my boys from the Minmae Research Institute of Punk Fucking Rock. I've only been working on this whole song cycle for like 6 months. I'm totally excited to finally be able to record it the way I want it to be. My sweet drum machine and juno versions are nice and all, but I'm about the rock now... and wank solos.

-Sir Cloister Maximus III, Esq.

Internet Outtage and a Ross Beach Party

Stephen J. Kozik — 2005-01-30T20:06:00+00:00

Well, I suppose I missed my window in being able to call Comcast today to find out that the story is with my net connect that seems to cycle on and off every 15 minutes for the past 4 days. I called them yesterday and they claimed they were aware of a problem in my hood (Beaverton) and it was being worked on. They also told me that it would be fixed in a few hours. Either they haven't fixed it yet or maybe something is wonky on my end — like my modem on the verge of dying or something. See, I can almost buy that there is a problem with my modem since Ivan has decided it's a good place to warm himself and has been perching on top of it last week. Maybe some stray cat hair has gotten into the housing in caused chaos. Any way you slice it, I'm having a hard time doing anything since my connect seems to drop out every 10 minutes.

So what do you do with no net connect and time to kill? Go hang out over a Ross's crib during his second house party. That's what I did at least. Although there weren't rouge fireworks and stolen DJ equipment from KPSU that triggered a freestyle battle between Big Money Brooks(TM) and Booyaka(TM) it was still a good time.

Nothing else much doing lately. I've had a chance to complete my "Rubble" collection with the 6 discs I was missing as well as get in on a good psych/pop flood on a.b.s.m.1960s. Somebody also had posted the Faces box set the came out last year that is totally rocking my world right now.

One other thing I suppose is that I believe the bowling crew has found our new home to bowl at over in Interstate Bowl since the untimely demise of Grand Central Bowl and it's dollar a game Mondays. Interstate doesn't have dollar games but they are still pretty cheap (2.25), the lanes are good, it's not crowded, and drinks are cheap cheap cheap. Now I just need to buy some bowling shoes off of ebay so I can stop renting them every week.

-Sir Cloister Maximus

Cash for Comps

Stephen J. Kozik — 2005-01-23T20:06:00+00:00

I spent pretty much all of my weekend working on comps for a pitch I have to make next Monday. The comps are turning out pretty good but I'm feeling pretty spent — almost like I'm wasting my time and that there really is something that I'd either rather be doing or something that I SHOULD be doing. I'm not sure what that something is for either option.

Perhaps it's partially because it's been a while since some cold hard cash has come my way. I have what seems like an infinite amount of gigs, but none of them seem to want to start. That equals some bad news as it will most likely all come in at once and swamp me beyond belief. What's a fella to do?

I guess I'm just bored. Sure would be nice to not live on the ass end of town so I could visit peeps without driving for 40 minutes. But cash would help.

-Sir Cloister Maximus III, Esq.

New Circle of Thunder and the Y2K5 Bug

Stephen J. Kozik — 2005-01-17T20:06:00+00:00

As you can see, my earlier idea of re-vamping circleofthunder.com has come to fruition and things are all nice and simple — or at least as much as they can be with the amount of content on this site. Since this is a new design, there are bound to be tricky things here and there that need to be ironed out. Of course, if you see a glaring browser bug let me know and I'll try to fix it.

Speaking of bugs, I can't seem to locate the one that is causing the journal's calendar to think that it's 2004 still. Piuma calls it a "Y2K5" incompatibility. At least no planes crashed or nuclear ICBM's launched from their silos. But with four more years of "fuck countries that don't believe in Jesus" politics, we may yet see that event.

2004 New Years Party and a Hardrive Meltdown

Stephen J. Kozik — 2005-01-09T20:06:00+00:00

So this is 2005 I suppose. So far I'm not very impressed. The year started off on the right foot I suppose. Calvert, Julia, Sean, Reyna and myself all went down to a ham party where the guest of honor was a glazed ham covered in Pineapples. The hosts of the party had obviously intended it to be kitschy (they were all vegetarians), however Calvert and I called their bluff and ate of the sacred pig and washed it down with Bridgeport and PBR. We also walked across the street to another party where there were projections of dragonflies hovering mid-air to the backdrop of Public Enemy beats. Needless to say, we spent the last few seconds of 2004 at that party.

As enjoyable as January 1st was, the year began it's typical kicking of the nuts. My 100 gig HD that holds all my mp3's up and died so I had to reluctantly replace it. Lucky for me I was able to recover my jams from the old drive before it was too far gone thanks to a nice freeware app I found online. This is the first Maxtor that's ever grinded to crap on me like this. I've had like 4 Western Digital drives eat themselves but this was the first problem I had with a Maxtor. I hope my other 100 gig will be OK (It's the same model). Knock on wood.

Over the past two days I've completed my Tetris port that I've wanted to do for a while. The game is in the design work section of my site and the source code to it is over in the downloads section. Enjoy.

Sir Cloister Maximus III, Esq.

Sorting a Warez Collection

Stephen J. Kozik — 2004-12-31T20:06:00+00:00

I have about 30 minutes before I have to drive Jen to the airport and I have some time to kill (It's 3AM) so what a better time to make a journal entry. I have so many little personal projects that I'd like to start on, but as always I'm having a hard time figure out what I want to start on first.

I'd like to start work on a new Circle of Thunder and give the old girl her yearly facelift. I'm thinking that 2005 should be the year of ultra-minimalist. No flash, no fancy javascript, just a nice plain white page filled with sans-serif info with tiny red highlights. I've reached that point in every designers life when there's only so much BANG you can put into things and get real tired of super busy designs. Whatever. I think my work should provide the area of interest and the access to the work should be as simple and non-interfering as possible. So the site re-vamp is one option, although I did add a couple new portfolio items from this year's best in show (although I was a bit short of stuff I liked a lot so some weaker entries slipped through the cracks).

The other thing I've been thinking about is starting a fun project like a game or maybe some sort of database driven app like a movie/TV show sorting db. As far as games I have had and idea for a Zelda-ish translation of some old 80's cartoon like He-Man or Voltron. However, recently I started thinking about maybe doing a pure Tetris clone that get's as close to the feel of the NES version of Tetris (since that is clearly the most superior Tetris port). Who knows? Any one of those would be fun and give me a warm fuzzy that I did something kind of cool in the year 2005.

Of course, there are always non-computer adventures I could embark on. Like painting. I've been thinking about busting out that empty canvas I have in my closet and seeing if I have any linseed oil left.

My painting of "The Last Breakfeast of Christ" will become a reality yet damnit.

Oh, happy New Year, you pukes.

-Sir Cloister Maximus III, Esq.

100

Stephen J. Kozik — 2004-12-16T20:06:00+00:00

100 journal entries. Shouldn't a mass of balloons, glitter, and confetti drop from the ceiling like at the end of Dirty Dancing when Kevin Bacon says "Let's Dance!" in defiance of John Lithgow's belief that dancing will bring the apocalypse?

Anyway, wish it was a more interesting entry being 100 and all. Recorded some Prof K tracks that should be making the rounds. Finished up the demos for the new TMTR experience. Christmas... bah humbug!

-Sir Cloister Maximus III, Esq.

What's in a Name?

Stephen J. Kozik — 2004-12-05T20:06:00+00:00

William Shakespeare and Rodney Dangerfeild both posed the question, "What's in a Name?". The answer is pure stress, at least when it comes to dealing with Network Solutions. For the past three years I've let circleofthunder.com be renewed by the most expensive domain register out of pure laziness. What Verisgn banked on, the laziness of mankind, is what I paid in full.

This year I was determined to be different so I went and found a register that was 5 times cheaper. Everything looked like it would be smooth sailing when my 6 wasted hours began. See, Network Solutions likes to make it harder than filing a tax return to transfer a domain away from them.

First there was the wasted time trying to recover a password that even my credit card, social security number, and email address couldn't seem to get out of the level one service people. After I got very lucky and found my password in a piece of mail (not email) I received from them about four years ago, the real fun began. There is a little thing called REGISTAR-LOCK that is meant to keep people from hijacking your site — the problem is that it also keeps you from legitimately transferring your own site as well. This wouldn't be a problem if the netsol control panel would actually let you turn it on or off. Another call to tech support seemed to fix the problem—but wait—it takes 24 hours for that change to show up.

So after all that wasted time, my domain is still in Network Solutions un capable hands. We'll see in a day or so if circleofthunder.com winds up going off the map or if it actually gets transferred and continues on for 2005.

Besides filling my days hunting down 1981 bootlegs of Joe Jackson concerts I've been doing the yearly re-install thing. It's always good to not only do a little spring cleaning to get the system running tip-top and orphaned DLL free, but also try out some new software and see if there are any applications that can outperform what I'm currently using. This years new goodies award goes to: Fillezilla (Server and Client), Outlook 2k3, Winamp 5, Trillian Pro, Blender, Putty, TMPEnc Xpress, and Newsleecher. The "Still hanging in there" award goes to: Grabit, Ultraedit, Sysrest, AdAware, and Virtualdub. It seems my timing on getting things back in order couldn't have been better since my Pepboys Kiosk project kicked up into high gear out of nowhere.

Red states and my own personal "Crazy Joe Devola" can of course, meet me at the Satyricon with a broken Corona long neck shoved in their face.

www.fuckthesouth.com

Waiting on Destiny

Stephen J. Kozik — 2004-10-14T20:06:00+00:00

Cottelston, Cottelston, Cottelston, Pie,
A fly can't bird, but a bird can fly.
Ask me a riddle and I reply:
"Cottelston, Cottelston, Cottelston, Pie."

Great words spoken by the master taoist, Winnie-the-Pooh. That old Pooh bear's words have to have some centering force on me as some stressful and exciting times are ahead. Only 2 1/2 weeks until the thief is evicted, or riots in the street begin. Only 2 1/2 weeks until I know if the baseball team I've banked on as being the ones to take the crown, truly are world champions. Now I'm starting to feel Eeyore here. Oh worry is me!

The redbirds took game one in the NLCS against the 'Stros today. That was a good start since I'm terribly worried about the crazy ability that the astro's seem to have as the ONLY team in the NL that had a winning record against them. A good strong start was needed to give the cards the momentum they need to take this sucker to the slug fest against, I'm sorry to say to soxs fans, will most likely be the Yanks. I really do wish the Redsox could get the magic fairy juice that could give them an edge over baseballs most overpayed and over medicated team, but I'm not seeing it. Stupid Jeeter! Stupid A-rod! Your all stupid heads.

Word on the streets is that Disjecta is closing. Not that I go to shows much anymore, or have even played there in a year but it's a downer to see it going. It seems like every club in town I have some sort of sentimental value attached to goes the way of Homo Erectus. If only the Blackbird was alive again. The bird may have sucked for big popular touring shows (with the crowding and the smoke and whatnot), but for small shows it was great. Cheap drinks, nice mood, great sound. It was also the first club I went to when I moved to p-town 3 years ago, so I'm extra sappy to it.

I need to go to the mall to pick up a STL cap to support the team. Damn malls. Wish there was one next door so I didn't have to drive down 217. What a mess.

Sir Cloister Maximus III, Esq.

The Sick

Stephen J. Kozik — 2004-10-12T20:06:00+00:00

As I stumble over "the cold" that has struck so many loved ones in the past few weeks and has finally hit me, I re-examine the important things in life. Things like:

* Finally identifying the Simpsons home state by extrapolating the blurred initials in the mail that Homer receives from Mr. Burns in "Blood Feud" (Springfield, IL on the top, Springfield, RI on the bottom.. Make up your mind Groening).

* Coming the conclusion that life without the Daily Show is no life at all.

* Pseudoephedrine is the Shiznial!

* To doubt my genius is to doubt your own!

If you have to question me, then sir, I question you. You will all perish in flames!

Meow Meow, this Thursday. Be there. I'll be all indie-rock-headcolded-out

-Sir Cloister Maximus III, Esq.

Fate's Fickle Hand

Stephen J. Kozik — 2004-10-05T20:06:00+00:00

If things had gone peculiar in my life, a small event changed, I could easily be working as a short order cook for Denny's trying in vein to support my fat wife with 2 year old kid and another one in the oven. Instead, I have the glamorous fortune to photoshop fucked up looking people in front of mountains and devise new ways to "convey the core message of the brand while remaining on target with collected demographics".

The St. Louis Cardinals won the first game in the National League Division Series in a near blowout over the LA Dodgers today. Walker himself hit two out of the park as a sort of "Hi, I'm new here" to the roaring St. Louis crowd and Busch stadium. If this team doesn't take it all the way I'll be ALMOST as angry as I would be if say, a certain rich spoiled prince and his evil bond-villain like master were to be re-elected. I have faith though. As Rod Stewart once parroted, Faith of the heart.

I need to locate a Betamax player. I have this betamax tape of Not Necessarily the News that needs to be converted to watchable form in a BAD way.

Today's snigglet is "Halliburtoned"

-Sir Cloister Maximus III, Esq.

Usenet is Pure Radical

Stephen J. Kozik — 2004-09-22T20:06:00+00:00

"America needs the wisdom of Herman's Head now more than ever."

- Comic Book Guy, The Simpsons

So last week I finally gave in and got a Usenet account again. It has been about 4 months since I canceled my Giganews account to save a little cash (20 a month) and because Usenet was becoming pretty predictable and boring with all the reality show postings and little "vintage tv" postings (the stuff I live for). This time around I went with usenetserver.com, who offers UNLIMITED Usenet access for 15 bucks a month and has decent retention and speed. Although Giganews' retention and speed was top notch and better than anybody else, that 20 gig a month download limit seemed a bit daunting at times. Particularly when something good would hit the net and I'd use all my credits up in a hurry. Now with my new provider, a week into it, I've mooched 30 gigs so far. I hope comcast doesn't send me one of their abuse letters. As soon as I get caught up from the last months posts I'll taper it off a bit and try to keep my monthly down bandwidth under 100 gigs.

I also recently purchased a DVD-+r burner, and boy is it sweet. I had to buy a new DVD player too since my old Mintek doesn't seem to like DVD-R's too much, but the new player was only 40 bucks, and that's a pocket change in the world of consumer electronics. It wasn't specifically just because of the dvd-r playing situation, but also because the Mintek's been kind of flaking out lately. SVCD's have gobledy-gook all over them and sometimes commercial DVD's hiccup, so it's because my office room SVCD player for when I'm burning CD's (and DVD..Tee Hee!)

The Cardinals are the National League Central Division champs (with 2 weeks of regular season play left, 15 games up over the Cubs in second), and I've been living off of that elite MLB TV stream that the Professor hooked me up with. Man, the play offs are going to be exciting as all hell. This is the team I'll put all of my hopes and dreams into. It hasn't been since 1982 that the St. Louis Cardinals have had such a good shot at the World Series. The Odds are in their favor. The question is, can Scott Roland come off the DL, nobody else get injured, and their luck remain favorable?

Finished up with two work projects, one lame, and one quasi interesting. I have a so-so one left in the mix. Recorded Minmae for the 10th time this weekend, and am starting to do some mixes. Stuff sounds pretty good. I've really hit a barrier on the kinds of recordings I can make without buying some new gear. I mean, it's a good barrier, but it's still a barrier. Kind of makes the whole recording process seem a little bit boring and unchallenging when you know what to expect and know the limitations of your gear so well. At least I got some good games of Tetris in.

What's up with America? Why is Bush still high up in the polls? Don't people watch the news?

(5 Hermans Head episodes were posted to alt.binaries.multimedia yesterday. I nearly wet myself)

-Sir Cloister Maximus III, Esq.

Pretty Vacant

Stephen J. Kozik — 2004-08-31T20:06:00+00:00

It's funny how when Jen goes on vacation for her yearly mecca to Jersey to visit her family, it's sort of like I go on vacation too. I tend to let things get lax, stop working very hard, and devote much more time to the pursuit of my rock and electronics fetish(s).

On the rock front, I recorded 7 new songs in a burst of fury using direct-in guitar, bass, drum machine, and occasional acoustic guitar. The end product sounds much less home brew as it would seem from the description and much more 80s pop. You see, even when I do things somewhat half assed (like recording without amps and real drums), I'm still in the mind set that others may hear it and think it should sound as professional as possible (whatever that means). Casey came over and put some nice backup vocals on some cuts and it's really my latest Lindsey Buckingham obsessions come to fruition. It may not make it's way into the domain of the Mouse that Roared and stay in the domain of the Cloister Maximus 3, but we'll see. Perhaps the songs will sound a little less mac-ian once I stop playing the muted guitar parts and using that big nasty gated-reverb snare on everything.

On the electronics front, I've gotten my reel to reel into alignment, and cleaned the heads up pretty well. Now that it is working I've turned my attention to trying to get this crazy old Powerbook up and running that I picked up for a paltry $3 at the meth-lab goodwill. My big problem is finding an adequate power source to run the thing since those old powerbooks take a slightly irregular power signature (7.5V at 2 Amps). I'll tell you, that 7.5 volts is a hard beast to feed. Every power supply I can find is outputting either 12,9, or 5 volts. 7.5 is a little odd. And to further complicate matters, the closest power supply in terms of voltage I have (6V) only is cranking out 300mA. I wish those universal variable PSU's that radio shack sells didn't cost 50x what I paid for this crappy old powerbook. Damn, I want to play Maelstrom real bad. Maybe I'll just fire up my old 128k Mac classic for my fix.

-Sir Cloister Maximus III, Esq.

Alien Versus Terrible Movie Making

Stephen J. Kozik — 2004-08-15T20:06:00+00:00

DISCLAIMER: I'm a hopeless Alien and Predator fan boy with extensive knowledge of both universes and have even read some (gulp) fanfic in the past.

Let me first get this out of the way; AVP is better than Alien 4, but worse than Predator 2.

All of the negative reviews that are out there about AVP are both right and wrong at the same time. Sure, AVP is not Citizen Kane or Casablanca. Hell, AVP isn't even the Terminator. What AVP is however is a fine extension of the dark horse comics and novelizations that depict that fan boy universe where Aliens and Predators not only co-exist, but also kick each others asses.

First let's talk about the bad things (that make this worse than Predator 2):

1) The Facehugger to Chestburster to Full Grown drone time is completely fucked.

To say that the time it takes a facehugger to land on one of those poor dumb humans to the time a drone runs around is short is the understatement of the year. By the movie's account, it took a total of 10 minutes (I'm not joking — the nerdy "anthropologist" looks at his watch and declares ten minutes have passed) for a facehugger to land on a chicks face, knock her out, put an alien embryo in her chest, have the alien bust out of her chest, and become a full grown alien drone ready to kick ass. Now, my complaint may seem a little fan boyish for sure (Dude! It's alien cannon that it take 4 days for an alien embryo to mature!), but we're also talking common sense here. I don't give a shit how "alien" something is, nothing can go from embryo to 7 foot tall acid for blood armor platted killing machine in 10 minutes. Not without, say, some really big ass steaks to chow on. It's painfully obvious this was a lazy ass plot device to get some aliens running around messing up the party without the movie dragging a bit, but damn. Throw me a bone here Paul Anderson.

2) Dumbest Queen Alien of the franchise

You'll never see a more inept Queen Alien, I stake money on it. Not only is she unable to defeat an unarmed, unprepared female human who I guess is a mountain climber or something, but she also tries to kill a predator with a alien baby inside of it.. Something that we've seen before in the Alien 3 — Aliens don't kill you if you have an alien inside you, because, like, that would be dumb. Alien's want more aliens running around to perpetuate the species. First rule of survival. Damn.

3) Worst "surprise" ending since Species.

I mean, dude. DUDE! I don't want to spoil the way awesome surprise but holy shit is this bad. Paul Anderson had me for a second where I thought he'd try to be all class and bring both franchises full circle by showing that the predator with a chestburster inside brought on board was in face the same "alien" and ship the crew of the Nostromo finds in Alien 1. But no. It had to be completely retarded. The chestburster comes out of the predator... to show it has a predator fucking face. Jesus Christ, my describing it doesn't even sound as dumb as it was.

Some of the good things (that make this better than Alien 4):

1) The Alien drones (except when their are 100 of them in a flashback and when the free the queen) look pretty bad ass.

I'm amazed that there was restraint to make the alien drones (I guess) real puppets/models/whatever. I mean, if they were CGI, they sure didn't look it. If the technology has come that CGI can look real to me, this is the first time I've seen it. But I suspect for the battle scenes they used rubber suits or something, because CGI looks.. well... lame. So kudos to them, because the aliens in Alien 4 looks way fucking fake. These guys don't (hurray!)

2) True to the comics and books:

I've seen a lot of moaning from people about the friendship between the human and the predator. Let me tell you, if you've read the comics and books, this makes sense. See Predators, even though they are REALLY good at killing humans, need love too. They have a honor system. You know, kind of like Klingons. Except they don't drink bloodwine and sing songs to praise Kay-less. I better shut up now.

3) Plot wasn't TOTALLY bad:

For all of it's lamness and predictability, at least it was much more engaging than Alien 4. I mean, Rippley does it with a bunch of aliens in that movie. How much fucking sense did that make? At least there are no Predator/Hot chick makeout scene in AVP. They just kill some aliens together and burn each others faces with acid blood. Damnit.

All in all, if you go into this movie with low expectations, an understanding of the established Alien Vs. Predator universe, buy cheap candy and hide it in your underpants, and hit the rush hour show to save some bucks, this movie ain't all bad. At least, if your a total nerd like me.

Still would have loved to see Arnold and Bill Paxton in it....

-Sir Cloister "I CAN MAKE IT!" Maximus III, Esq.

Officially Oregon

Stephen J. Kozik — 2004-08-04T20:06:00+00:00

Where oh where did all of the good design work go? It seems that as of late the only thing I have to show for my countless projects is a smattering of perl code and cleverly constructed MySQL databases. Every time I start to get excited about doing some actual nice design, somebody who thinks they know what looks good steps in and tells me to turn their web site to shit. I mean, I wouldn't bitch about it if it weren't for the fact that the last 6 design projects (and by all signs written in the sky, the next 6 on my plate) all involve no design and all instruction from someone that wouldn't know aesthetic if it bonked them on the head. I provide, while perhaps not stunning, handsome and clean designs with a hint of cleverness and get back somebody's grandmas ideas on color theory. Maybe I'm just too self centered and worried about the ability to add something new to my portfolio that I didn't think looked like crap to see that the rent is being paid and I should shut up and be happy. But I digress....It sure would be nice to be a part of that didn't make me feel like my design knowhow wasn't wasting away under a cloud of thongs, #ff0000 red's, pink text on lime green backgrounds, and inappropriate use of flash. World, I'm really sorry about all the crap that's been leaving my photoshop "export for web" button lately. Truly I am.

Back to lighthearted quips on my daily routine.

I am an official Oregonian as of today; I now have an Oregon drivers license. It was pretty sketchy there for a bit during the "knowledge test" when I had gotten 5 wrong as sweat dripped from my fingers and smeared the touch screen with a smattering of excreted caffeine and adrenaline, but I made it out alive with a B- 82% score (Or, in DMV terms, a D). Those damn trick questions and questions involving feet (40/60/100 feet? Who gives a fuck man! If you can see a fucking car, that should be good enough. No need to get all Tycho Brahe about the location of the next vehicle to your immediate right). Then, after the close call at the testing facilities they almost didn't give me a license due to my lack of an apartment number on my voter's registration card. Those picky bastards. In the end, and $58 later, I have proof of Oregon citizenship and can shred my Missouri license (A bit of a misnomer: they confiscate your old license at the Oregon DMV to deny your clever plans for dual citizenship).

All in all an average day. I picked up two VHS tapes from the Methhead goodwill down the street. One that had an old Gallagher special from 1984, another with "The Wiz" staring Fred Savage and Christian Slater. That Gallagher and his watermelons, I'll tell you. Now THAT's prop comedy (Carrot top, you fucking poser). I also watched Vice Versa (also staring Fred Savage and Judge Reinhold) because I picked it up on the last goodwill run and forgot about it. Touching 80's comedy.

This Saturday, at Mississippi Pizza around 8'ish we throw down with Ross and his beautiful hellpets. Grab some pie, a pitcher of PBR, and let the good times roll. I'll be dressed up as the gay spaceman (part of our new Village people concept that Barrios concocted over pizza and beer last Sunday).

-Sir Cloister Maximus III, Esq.

Not Recording, Per Se

Stephen J. Kozik — 2004-08-01T20:06:00+00:00

Funk upon a time in the days of the Funkapus, the concept of specially-designed Afronauts capable of funkatizing galaxies was first laid on man-child, but was later repossessed and placed among the secrets of the pyramids until a more positive attitude towards this most sacred phenomenon, clone funk, could be acquired. There in these terrestrial projects it would wait, along with its coinhabitants of kings and pharoahs, like sleeping beauties with a kiss, that would release them to multiply in the image of the chosen one: Dr Funkenstein.

And funk is its own reward.

I spent most of the week working on Anne's Per Se record, and Cloister Maximizing it as well — you know, the typical treatments of brass sections, mellotron, theremin, etc. I gotta say, it's pretty impressive all around. There are some tempo issues that pretty much stem from beginning with acoustic guitar and building percussion on top of that, but they may be things that only I would really notice since I had to shift drum takes around to accommodate the flow of each song. The recording sounds slick and tight though. I'm pleased.

Today I helped Barrios move into his new place off Belmont down by Prof K and the Post-Step-House. It was pretty easy and we all were treated to Pizza and Beer, so it was a swell deal. His new place is also across the street from a Methadone clinic, so that's pretty elite I suppose.

-Sir Cloister Maximus III, Esq.