I overheard the two 30-ish women in front of me in the cashier lineup talking. One of them remarked that she didn't know who it was or who told her, but someone named their baby "Nevaeh" which is heaven spelled backwards. As a (rage-filled) watcher of MTV Cribs, I knew that this was the singer in sports metal God band P.O.D. who named his baby backwards heaven. I then began to yawn (in my head) and chastize them for having such a routine and dated conversation. Wow, celebrities name their babies weird things. Didn't they get the memo that the world is now reeling about Apple and Coco? And why is no one constantly laughing at Jayson Williams' son "Wizdom"? I mean that shit is hilarious. Oh yeah, fear of being murdered. My housewives continued, "Neveah... That's so beautiful. I'm not sure I'm pronouncing it right though." Well that blew my mind like so much windmills. I had to quickly switch my initial eyerolling to an entirely new brand of wider eyerolling (and in a different direction). That's so beautiful. It's fucking backwards. My (totally superior) mind didn't even touch on the fact that spelling a word backwards clearly implies it's opposite meaning.

My spam count is now at over 300 a day easily.

American Chopper is potentially a great TV show, absolutely marred by the scripted voice overs, scripted interviews and manufactured situations. JUST LET THEM TALK AND EDIT IT. A tasteless family making custom choppers is inherently interesting. The youngest fuckup son put an airbrushed Ween Boognish on the gastank of his custom bike.

I upgraded to 3D Studio Max 6 and during a visit to a tech forum in search of an answer for a problem, I was horrified to see how far out of the loop I am on the new rendering systems. Mental Ray is an entire language of it's own. Shaders, HDRI maps, caustics, final gather, and apparently some of the variables are measured in photons. "Set the global illumination to 10000 photons". Scary.

Speaking of upgrading, the answer to my IE problems turned out to be the dreaded Windows 2000 re-install. My problems wouldn't go away, and I eventually noticed that the problems were rooted not in IE but in Windows Explorer itself. Displaying a drive's contents would sometimes hang for 3 seconds. My re-installs are dreaded because unlike everyone else I can't re-install Windows 2000/XP and this was no exception. I got a BSoD in the same spot, preventing progress in any way, and forcing me to a new C: drive altogether. The first week after a fresh install is brutal. "I'll just burn a CD real quick. Oh, no software installed." It's not like I'm switching to NetBSD like a CRAZY PERSON, but the extra 10 minutes each task takes is annoying as fuck.

I had a weird near-choking experience today. The piece of Peppercorn New Yorker steak was lodged in my throat -- BUT -- below my windpipe. So this meant that not only was I indescribably uncomfortable, but I couldn't continue eating, and taking a sip of Pepsi made me almost puke. I had dinner companions, and I tried to look cool for a while "Oh yeah, just resting for a bit", but soon had to come out with the truth "I think I've gotta go vomit". I paced the washroom for a minute and felt a "pop" in my throat as the food "cleared" the narrow portion and I felt instantly better. This weak ending to the tale is why it ends up buried in the middle of "Junk II".

I also found this, my template of Bethany Massimilla's word balloon. I think I planned on this being a regular feature, but like anything else I got bored and forgot.