bytex64.net/blog

Illinois has great signage, marking out Route 66 pretty clearly for the entirety of its journey through the state. A little ways down the road I stopped at a Dixie Diner to drain my bladder, fill my stomach and gas tank, and absorb a little bit of what Route 66 used to be. A patty melt with fries and a root beer (billed as an iced tea) set me back nearly $9, so it's not cheap, but the melt was good, and the fries were supernaturally crispy, a trait I enjoyed down to the last ketchup-dredged one. And you get to overhear truckers talk about trucking, old people talk about hijacking a Japanese aircraft in WWII, and the waitress calls you "hon" and "sweetheart." It's also the only place I've ever heard any one order "sweet tea," a southern-ism for pre-sweetened iced tea.

Refueled, I got back on the road. Three hours of driving took me through small towns, big towns, some lined with tributes to the glory of old. At some point, I missed a turn, went through a shithole town, and wound up on a meandering wooded backroad called "Possum Hollow." In the dead of night, "Dueling Banjos" starts playing inside my head. I retraced my path and was rather thankful when I found 66 again.

All in all, Route 66 wasn't really as cool as I thought it would be. The more I traveled it, the more I realized that the road I was traveling wasn't the original road, no matter how closely it followed the original path. I can't ever go back to the way it was. That left me sort of disillusioned, and cemented my new plan of taking I-70 straight to Colorado.

I got as far as Edwardsville before I lost my way again, and decided to find a hotel for the night. I'm currently holed up at the Super 8 Motel in Troy, which is pretty close to St. Louis. I'm currently eating ramen out of the ice bucket (for advanced ramen eaters, only!), and I'm going to shower and sleep. 'night everyone.

Nothing.

It's not that I'm trying to forget what happened, but I think the best thing to do is to live today like any other day. I'm living today to show that I'm not afraid. That I will not be cowed into submission by either terrorists or our own government. That life goes on.

So what did I do today? I went to Mike's place to pick up my charger and some other things I'd forgotten. I relaxed for a bit, watched Sunday's Family Guy, and Mike cooked me lunch (Fishsticks and boxed rice, mmm...). Mike left for work, and I left to go find the Tires Plus to get my tire patched. (FYI: Punctures in the tread up to 1/4" in diameter can be patched. Make sure that the facility you take the tire to takes the tire off the rim to inspect it. Punctures in the sidewal cannot be repaired.) Tires Plus was backed up with work and probably would not get the tire done that day, so I wandered around the local mall, Barnes and Noble, Best Buy, and such. I tried to get in touch with Dillon, but failed, so I went back to Mike's place.

At Best Buy, I played some demos for Nintendo DS. Tetris Push is a multiplayer tetris where you and your opponent drop pieces on opposite sides of a well, and you push your opponent down (and likewise your opponent pushes you up) by clearing multiple rows at once. Magnetica is Bubble Bobble on rails. No, really, that's what it is. Colored balls follow a track, and you must shoot colored balls at the balls on this track to make them disappear. If the track fills up, you lose. I bought, on impulse, Ridge Racer DS. It is a pretty faithful translation from what I'm guessing is an original Playstation game, and age has not helped what was not really a great racer to begin with. It's not easy to play with great multiplayer like Mario Kart. It's not realistic like the Gran Turismo series. The interface is archaic, there are awful bugs, there are only several variations on three tracks in the entire game. The game is out and out horrible by today's standards. Why do I like it, then?

It's freaking fun. It's arcade racing at its purest, just you and a field of cars you have to pass before three laps is up. The cars don't behave realistically, the AI is all but nonexistent, but damn if I don't have fun playing it. Oh, the soundtrack is pretty good, I have to give it that. I may have mentioned Namco's talented music masters, Aya and Mega, before. They've done some tracks for Beatmania IIDX, as well as a lot of classic Namco games, and tracks from Technic Beat.

Figures the one day I stay, Mike has to work late. I'm tired, I'm going to get some food and go to bed.

Next stop was Portillo's, an establishment oft-talked about by people from Chicagoland, but something I'd never experienced. James ate there on the day I arrived in Dekalb (I'd already eaten), so I sort of knew it was by Wal-Mart. Another 20 minutes of wandering, and I found it. I have to say, I had an Italian Beef sandwich, and it completely lived up to my expectations.

There must have been some gas price war going on in Dekalb, because at one point I saw a line of cars lined up for getting gas at a station that was curiously missing any indication of the price on its billboard. Next to it was another gas station with the same missing signage. On my way to Portillo's, gas at a Road Ranger nearby was $2.55/gal. On my way back to fill up, the price had dropped to $2.53. By the way, the Camry is getting 37MPG since leaving Gifford, which goes in my book under Pretty Damned Good.

WNUA 95.5 is a pure hell of smooth jazz.

I took IL-38 to I-39 south, hoping to intersect with historic Rt.66 in Bloomington-Normal. On the way, I called Chrissy to let her know I was still alive, and talked to Mike a bit. I'd left my phone charger in Urbana. D'oh. Also, along I-39 near the rest area, there is a windmill farm. I didn't know whe had those in Illinois.

Arriving in Normal, I wandered the main street of the twin cities for a bit before finding the ISU student union (called the Bone Student Center) and commandeering one of their computers for internet access. I was hoping to find a coffee shop a few blocks away, but it turned out to be closed Sundays. I walked around the campus area some more, trying to find wifi in some of the dorms, and eventually getting hungry and going to the local Potbelly's (which, I might add, had very friendly staff). To my surprise, there was wifi, probably from a nearby apartment. I decided to get a hotel in Peoria, and meet Mike at his place in the morning to get my charger.

Returning to my car, I noticed my right front tire was a bit... deflated. I'd run over a bit of glass. "No problem," I thought, "I'll empty the trunk and get the spare." The spare wasn't inflated. #*(&@. I walked to the nearest gas station, a Circle K a block away, and got a bottle of temporary flat fix so I could get close enough to the air pump to fill the spare. (It did occur to me later that I could have eliminated the temporary flat fix step and just rolled the spare to the Circle K. Double #*(&@) Spare inflated, and changed, I traveled to the Kings Inn in Peoria.

The Kings Inn is... extremely adequate. For $50/night, you get a room. The room has a mini-fridge, a TV, a phone, two double beds, bathroom, and the requisite bible and phone book in the desk. And free wifi. I can't complain.

And with that, goodnight.

After breakfast/lunch, we walked around the downtown area, and wound up at an honest-to-goodness arcade. Not a few arcade machine stuffed in one end of a bowling alley or student union, but an establishment containing nothing but arcade machines, and classics at that. Championship Sprint, Galaga, Missile Command, Mrs. Pac Man, Burgertime, and tokens were 5 for a dollar. One interesting item was "Atomic Punk," which was apparently a part of the Bomberman series. Nothing was on when we walked in, and apparently we were the first patrons of the day, since soon after our entrance, all the machines flickered to life, as though we were in some sort of 80's movie.

Walking back, we checked out a couple of garage sales, where James picked up a electronics version of a tackle box and a few books. We checked out an odds and ends store, which had lots of junk. I was accused of shoplifting, and emptied my pockets to reveal my keys, wallet, moleskine notebook, digital camera, and cellphone. I was sort of insulted, but it was balanced out by my sheer enjoyment at making other people look stupid.

We stopped by the house for a bit, I took a shower, and then we went back to downtown to check out "Snare Computer" (they don't sell drums!). We arrived to find a "be back in a bit" sign, so we went to the coffee shop half a block away, known simply as "The House." They have live local acts, food, coffee, and beer. I got a $4 Fat Tire amber ale, a beer made in Fort Collins, CO, and found to my surprise that what seemed like an expensive beer actually got me a gigantic one pint six ounce bottle. That's like two beers, so I was a little muddled by the time we returned to Snare Computer.

On the one side, Snare Computer is a small computer shop. On the other, it's filling the niche that Radio Shack used to. They package and sell new and surplus electronics, including scary big blue capacitors labled "57000 MFD."

Dinner was at a really nice Thai place called "Thai Pavillion." I had the "Pad Prik Khing" and a Thai iced tea, and it was excellent. After dinner, I've just been relaxing and trying desperately to get a working PHP and Apache setup on megabyte, my cobbled-together Alpha machine sitting at Erickson's place while I'm away. I'm tired, so g'night everyone.

So for those I didn't tell (and that's apparently a lot of you), I'm taking a road trip, visiting a number of places due west, and generally meandering towards Seattle. I left on Thursday, but didn't have time to explain things 'till now.

I've been having a great time so far. I went up to Chicago to visit Jen, and found absolutely no parking. She came down from her apartment to help me out, but she didn't know the place well enough to find parking either, so I wound up paying $10 at the Children's Hospital just to go play ITG at the Depaul student union. The volume was turned way down, and I was too tired to do much more than fail on my second song. We found a burrito place (which you must never go to...), I got some eats, and we headed back to Jen's apartment, found a close parking spot, ate, and went to sleep.

Today, after eating breakfast at a local diner that actually knew how to cook scrambled eggs, Jen and I went to GameStop by Woodfield Mall. I played DDR Supernova (yep, the timing is off), Metal Slug 5, and three games of Initial D (twice in the motion cage version). Somehow, I exhausted my supply of points on my card exactly. Not one point left.

Then we went just down the road to Mitsuwa, a Japanese grocery store/eatery/bookstore/liquor store/etc. Jen and I had some takoyaki topped with shredded something that MOVED UNDER ITS OWN POWER. This stuff was seriously writhing in a way that caused Jen and I to recoil in horror. See for yourself. It was still pretty tasty, though. After Mitsuwa, we returned to Woodfield Mall, where I played in the Lego Store. We met up with Marcin and ate at California Pizza Kitchen, which was pretty good.

After a lengthy and scenic travel to Dekalb, I'm currently hanging out with James. And since I'm dead tired, I'm going to bed. 'night everyone.

There's always the girl when you're younger, the girl that broke your balls. She's beautiful, tempestuous, and you're completely batshit crazy for her. But eventually, you break up when you find her making out with some other guy in the bathroom of your favorite bar. Let's face it, she's freaking crazy. Then you find a nice stable, reliable girl, and that's the girl you wind up marrying.

The Toyota Camry is the nice, stable girl. As much as I enjoy the automobile equivalent of Jessica Alba in a catsuit/pix/jessica_alba_catsuit.jpg
, right now I need a car that will get me to point B without breaking down or using a gallon of gas every fifteen miles. The Camry is a very reliable and efficient machine, and I can flog the shit out of it without worrying if it'll leave me stranded on the side of the road. It does have some other interesting features, though.

Have you seen a gray Toyota Camry? I'm betting you have, but it didn't even register beyond the electrical impulses in your optic nerve. The car is so plain, and in such a neutral color that nobody notices it. While driving without license plates to the DMV, I passed no less than four cop cars, and none of them paid any heed to the illegal state my car was in. The car is practically invisible, leading to its other nickname, "The Gray Ghost."

Chrissy came back today. She woke me up sometime before 8am. "Hey, I'm back!" I raised my head to look, and she says, "You didn't feel like cleaning up, did you?" In my bleary-eyed state, I went straight for the attack.

"I did your fucking dishes." I then gave her a little shrug that said, "It's more than you ever did." My head returns to the pillow.

I'm a fucking stone cold bastard when you wake me up early, so don't even try it.

The mechanism basically adds a "rel" tag to the HTML anchor element, like so:

<a href="http://bytex64.net/" rel="friend met">bytex64</a>

This particular tag indicates that the owner of http://bytex64.net/ is a friend of mine that I have met. The thing to notice here is that there's really no XHTML involved. The anchor tag was part of the original HTML spec, and rel has existed since at least HTML 3.2 (that's 1997, folks). The content they describe is simply a list of words. The friends part I understand, but extra attributes on links doesn't really create a network. It should really be called "HTML Friend Descriptor" or "HTML Friend Markup," but I guess those descriptions don't have the "X-factor."

And, of course, there is the absurdity of what it describes. Do I really want to broadcast to the world that this link describes a friend who I've met, and also have a crush on? Does anyone really care? It's certainly geekier than something like myspace or facebook, but is it really any better?

Furrfu.