Sure, Why Not?

You know when a year has the same calendar as another year?

I was born on a Friday, so whenever my birthday lands on a Friday, that year’s calendar matches up (or mostly matches up if a leap year) to the 1983 calendar.

Hey! My birthday was a Friday this year! So 2011 and 1983 match up!

This year also has the same calendar as 2005.

So, today, December 28, 2011, is a Wednesday, just like December 28, 2005 was.

I feel like that date rings a bell…

I feel like the days leading up, once Christmas was out of the way anyway, I was putting something together and fixing it up.

And on this day, six years ago, it went live…

Of course! You’re looking at it!

HAPPY 6TH ANNIVERSARY, EIGHT MINE FORTRESS!!!!

Five years old today!

Yup, I have a five-year-old. Sometimes cranky. Sometimes ranty. Sometimes sweet. Sometimes thoughtful. Sometimes bored. Sometimes sad. Sometimes joyous. Sometimes excited.

Always colorful. Always awesome. Always full of whatever info or influence I happen to provide. Poor thing! Hehe.

Maybe I don’t give as much attention as I once did, but always there when needed, still there all these years. On to the sixth.

HAPPY 5TH ANNIVERSARY, EIGHT MINE FORTRESS!!!!

Five years ago today, I wrote a NYRA Tale called A NYRA Christmas Carol. Funny thing about this, and any of the NYRA Tales, is that it serves as a mild commentary on whatever’s happening in the NYRA community at the time of writing. Christmas time approached in 2005, the year that was the forums’ heyday, and since NYRA Tales were all the rage back then anyway (though I’m so self-absorbed I’ve so far only reposted my own on here), so I felt it appropriate to cram yet another parody of the Charles Dickens classic into existence, featuring our own NYRA members. And since everyone was mad at me back then for being the tyrannical moderator I am, I went ahead and cast myself as Scrooge, despite the fact that I’m easily the most Christmas-loving NYRAnian!

It was Christmas Eve, and well-known mean moderator Katrina wandered through the snow-covered streets to the familiar building. Outside the door hung a sign: Moncure and Miller.

“Ah, Kathleen Miller,” she sighed. “Gone seven weeks today.” She knocked the snow off the sign and entered the building.

I made Kathleen my “Marley” seeing as she wanted tighter control over the forums than even I did. About a month before this was first posted, she finally said “screw it” and left the forums pretty much, not quite seven weeks though.
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On this fourth day of Christmas, I guess I’ve got these four calling birds from some secret admirer. *shrug*

They won’t shut up. Chatting away on their cell phones, even while they’re driving. I try to talk to one of them, yet they keep yakking away on the phone. So rude.

Even when I invite them to dinner, they take their places at the dining table, yet they keep talking and talking on their phones, while I’m just sitting there awkwardly, as if in another world. Lame.

Eventually, the four calling birds went away, still running their mouths to the unknown being on the other end of their calls. Oh, well. Best of luck to them.

Happy 4th Anniversary, Eight Mine Fortress!!!

Year, that is!

Today we wish a Happy 3rd Birthday to… Eight Mine Fortress!

Moving along like before, despite a rather sparse year of entries on here and even sparser on new content for the other sections. More than half of this year’s entries are this month alone!

Here’s to year four!

Another year has gone by. Today, on this 4th Day of Christmas, the Fortress is two years old!

This is the 257th entry in Sure, Why Not?, by a wide margin the most often updated section (and what many believe to be the only thing on this site). The other sections I update whenever I feel like it. So they aren’t a whole lot different from poor, all-but-forgotten Science Village. Oh, well.

Time for a third year! Yay Fortress!

Another Christmas has come upon us! Joy to the world!

I tell you, was a gorgeous Christmas Day here. Sunny and clear and quiet outside. Better than last year when it was raining. Made me think of the Emerson, Lake, and Palmer song “I Believe in Father Christmas”. First line goes: You said there’d be snow at Christmas, you said there’d be peace on earth, but instead it just kept on raining, a veil of tears for the virgin birth.

But, yeah, that was last year. This year, was a nice day. True, snow would have been way better, but not a bad day still.

Just one little issue. Grandma got sick about five days ago and hasn’t been well since. And after this morning she fell down after getting out of bed, and was too weak to pick herself back up and was on the floor for THREE HOURS, something was really wrong. Don’t know yet. Also been running a fever.

Could be something. Could be nothing. This afternoon, my dad and aunt and the rest of us decided it was time she went to the hospital. Dad, aunt, sister, and cousins took grandma to the hospital, and I stayed home to keep track of things here, plus I’m the only one who has work tomorrow and can’t do the late night if it came to that.

Interesting thing, though. I still feel like this was a good Christmas. If you’d told me before that we’d have something like this happen on Christmas Day, I’d shudder at the thought, feel like that would ruin it for sure. But it doesn’t feel ruined. Nor do I feel like this happening today made this any worse in particular. Magic of Christmas right there, I guess. Christmas still came all the same despite some adversity. I feel like a Who!

And, like the last two years, here’s my Christmas videos!

UN: xmas
PW: tree

Yeah, I know, it’s the same as last year even though I had said it was temporary. Whatever.

4-7-07: Upgrade complete!!! Everything looks fine! Of course, let me know if you see something that is screwy that I might not have caught. Yay!!!

Just a heads up. I’m going to have to upgrade this stupid thing. So if you come by in the next couple of days and everything looks weird, then I’ve started but haven’t finished yet.

Another heads up, and this pisses me off. I discovered the theme I chose for this thing isn’t supported in the current versions! Which means things will be looking a bit different. Probably. I’ll try to see if my current theme will work anyway, but if it has problems, I’ll just find another one. I’ve seen some promising ones, so no trouble there. Nothing exactly like this one, though. Even though I’ve torn apart this one’s stylesheet so much it’s hard to remember what it even looked like originally!

So that’s the deal. Probably won’t irritate you as much as it does me. Upgrading will hopefully cut down the ever increasing volume of comment spam. Seriously, you should see the disgusting crap in these spam comments! But you don’t. Because it all goes into moderation and I delete it before it ever even thinks about occupying publicly visible pixels.

We’ll see how it goes.

Look to your right. See there’s a link up top of the sidebar that wasn’t there before. I just spent two hours putting together a long ass alphabetical list of every entry of Sure, Why Not? to date. That way it’ll be a little easier to navigate rather than trying to remember what month something was from or what category. It’s all right there. Ah, the memories.

And now, for an annual, champagne-soaked edition of…

YOU SUCK!

So today is New Year’s Eve. It is the night people around the world watch the clock and when it strikes midnight, they cheer, get drunk, and try to sing Auld Lang Syne. Well, except for some people. People who irritate me to no end. So who sucks today? People who don’t stay up until midnight tonight.

And they get all cocky about it. “Oh, I didn’t want to do that. I was tired. I don’t need to do that. I’m better than you.” Whatever, loser.

So stay up tonight and watch the clock strike twelve. I command you!

On another note, I did it! I have made an entry every day of December now, as I promised. Thank God for Christmas. It has lots of stuff worth an entry. If I were trying to do this in like September or something, it would be much harder. Now I’m worried I won’t have much to rant about next December. Shouldn’t worry, though. There’s always something.

Oh, and go, Detroit Lions, for humiliating the Dallas Cowboys at home today.

Now for a celebratory session of…

Here’s to You!

So I raise my glass and say, “Here’s to you, Eight Mine Fortress!”

That’s right, folks. Today the Fortress is one year old! Began with Sure, Why Not? entry This Is Eight Mine Fortress, Miscellaneous short story Crisis in the Pool, NYRA Tales song parody 88 Lines about 44 NYRA Forums Members, and Goodies Reposted list Top 10 List: Computer. And from there it went. Crowd pleasing. Pissing off self-righteous idiots. Opening Eights. Raising my glass in a toast to stuff that is awesome. Calling out stuff that sucks for how much it sucks. Sacred decrees. Chasing buses. All kinds of good shit.

So hang on tight. You’re in for another year.

Not sure what to say, so I shot a video of me rambling in front of the tree.

Took forever to upload, but whatever.

http://www.eightminefortress.com/xmasvideo

It’s password protected so bots don’t download them and run out my bandwidth. They are huge files. You’ll need Quicktime to see them.

UN: xmas
PW: tree

This will only be valid for about a week, too.

And, yeah, there are two videos. For also included is the NEVER BEFORE SEEN video from last year’s Christmas!

But that’s my present to you. So rather than just reading my ramblings, you can see and hear my ramblings in my horrible voice. Enjoy!

What did I do today? Got off work early because of the holiday. Sweet. Where did I go? Home? Nah. Not yet. There was something else I wanted to do first. Rode a couple of buses to a small Mediterranean food store on Randolph Road called Asadur’s Market.

I was in the store ten years ago today, on December 22, 1996. During that visit something special happened, a special event I cherish to this day, even if rather trivial at a glance. But I don’t care. It matters to me.
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Lights please! *holds blanket*

And there were in the same country shepherds, keeping watch over their flock by night.
And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.
And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.
For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.
And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,
Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

Luke 2:8-14

And that’s what Christmas is all about. Why thank you, Saint Luke.

Although, last year, I have my own say in what Christmas is about. Newest addition to Eight Mine Fortress section Lore Galore!

The Story of Christmas

Enjoy!

Well, I’m a bit late. It’s been Christmastime for over a week now. I just waited until now to say anything because, meh, felt like it. Started around noon on Thanksgiving to be exact, specifically when Santa Claus shows up in the Macy’s Parade. At that point, I put on my traditional Christmas pin. It’s of Santa Claus climbing a giant candy cane. It’s cool.

So Merry Christmas.

Okay, you’ll be hearing that from me a lot more than this. Because I’m not one of these gay ranting sites that for some reason shuts down in December.:cute:

On the other hand, I shall post something here every single day of December! My little compensation for you. You need it. Your life sucks.

But better late than really damn early like my rant from five months ago.

Anyway, I’ll post something on this site every day in December. If I can’t come up with something for here, I’ve got some shit to post in the other sections, which have gone somewhat ignored since last spring, except for Croatan 2006 in Miscellaneous, which rocks balls. But even so, there’s a LOT of shit about Christmas time that’s worth rants. And not the same old crap you hear everywhere else.

So that is my present to you. Because I’m just cool like that.

Science Village!!!!

Guess what’s back? Back again. SciVille’s back. Tell a friend. Guess what’s back? Guess what’s back? Guess what’s back? Guess what’s back?….

Enough ripping off Eminem for now.

After 11 months of nothing happening, Science Village has returned with the eighth issue, “Oh, My Gourd!” It’s great if you like exploding pumpkins and pissed off botanists.

Plus a Column with a bit of career advice, as well as a spooky new Crazy Lab Shenanigans!

And the ninth issue shouldn’t be too far off. Hell, I’ve already started working on it.

Yay for SciVille!!!!

Scroll down a ways and look to your right. Um, make sure you scroll back up here afterwards. Hehe.

Yup. Under the admin links and crap, I’ve added a Random Entries spot. Differs from the “Recent Entries” thing I’ve bitched about before seeing as these are for entries that aren’t right here on the main page anymore. A downside to this blog format is that there are so many awesome rants and pieces I wrote back in the day that fall out of sight. You people forget about them like the disrespectful maggots you are. But now they’re right there. A randomly generated list of some good old entries. The nostalgia!

Remember these? Oh, Pet Store! That was a good one. Don’t forget I’m American!, the little bit about politically correct terms. How can you pass up Behind Every Bag of Chips or Christian War? This is some good shit!

So, yeah, take this as a friendly reminder that there’s lots of good shit to read around here. I’m not reminding you for my own benefit. I remind you for your own. It’s good stuff. You should be so privileged. Now get reading!

Was just thinking about a search phrase that hit the Fortress back in April.

“saying sure why not rude?”

You know, I can picture it now. Some insecure piss poor excuse for a parent asked her kid a question, to which he answered “Sure, why not?” Then he was no doubt punished for being “rude”.
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Okay, this site has been up for four days shy of six months, and I only just bothered to see how it looks in Firefox. Normally the sort of thing I would check right away, but, I don’t know, hadn’t gotten to it. But after a few remarks from people, I realized I should probably check to see what they’re bitching about.
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For the first couple of months or so, the single most common search phrase to hit here was “MySpace is stupid”. Hehehe. This month so far, it has fallen to third, behind second place search phrase “Samurai Sudoku”. Obviously, those both hit previous entries MySpace Is Stupid, But Give It a Break and Samurai Sudoku, respectively. Not sure how helpful I was to either of those, whatever “MySpace is stupid” is trying to find anyway. Although I suppose my message in that entry is one I rather like people seeing and thinking about. Isn’t that why anyone writes anything?
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