are here! enjoy.

still working on finishing all the italy ones. no one cares, i know.

As some of you may be aware, I'm trying to grow some vegetables this year. I'm not entirely sure why. All I can tell you is that it seems like an awfully good idea when you're in the hardware store, looking at a rack of seeds and recalling hazy seventh-grade science project memories of ziplock bags filled with eager radish sprouts.

Soon enough, you buy some packets of seeds. Then the little assholes sprout. After one additional trip to the hardware store you realize the margins on your little produce scam are shot to hell, and you're seriously thinking about where in Arlington it would be easiest to hire some migrant day-laborers. Not that your girlfriend isn't helpful, but you can't shake the feeling that some grizzled South Americans would screech less girlishly when faced with cicadas.

It's a slow day at work, so I'm putting some time into a reinstallation of MythTV, the homebrew TiVo replacement and MP3 jukebox software about which I've likely shamelessly bragged to you if you've ever been to my house. Fedora Core 2 is out, MythTV just released a new version, and the old install kept freezing, so why not? Yes, it took about a week to get the old copy working, but sometimes it takes a little technomasochism to prove your geek purity.

Copying over our household's collection of MP3s to the new hard drive got me thinking about file formats. Earlier this year Charles, Jon and I embarked on a major effort to rip our CD collections. We selected 192 kbps MP3; it seemed like a good compromise between fidelity, compatibility and file size (an important consideration for us iPod-coveting 20-somethings). We ended up with about 30 gigs of data and a strong desire to never have to do it again. Now, unfortunately, I'm starting to think we will. All you have to do is listen to an MP3-encoded version of "Like Spinning Plates" on a decent stereo to hear MP3 completely fall apart. It might be time to think about an ultimate, archival solution to the audio codec problem. The good news is that such a solution exists. The bad news is that it's probably going to get buried by corporate interests.

well, today i am officially going to sign up for the marine corps marathon through the charity team of the lombardi cancer center. looking through their registration forms, i see that they charge you an entrance fee of $100 fricking dollars. what, me raising $2,000 through sweat and tears is not enough for you? couldn't you like, waive the whole silly $100 part? but anyway. i digress. i am here to do good, not to bitch excessively. i am bringing this on myself, after all.

and so now that i have a target goal of $2,000 to raise by october 22, 2004, the begging will commence...now. i would be so happy and pleased if everybody who read this blog, be you friend, enemy, anonymous lurker, somebody who found the blog through a search for naked benjamin mackenize/jessica cutler pictures or for random italy tips, could donate $10. i understand that almost everybody i know is excessively poor and paying student loans and rent and nightly beer tabs and what have you. but i do hope you can afford $10. and if you can afford more, i will be extremely grateful. in fact, perhaps i can offer sort of a tiered-compensation thing for bigger donors. a la bush ranger/pioneer crap. yeah, i'll cook you dinner or something if you donate $50. free food poisoning for fifty bucks! lucky you. we'll see about that one.

i do want to remind everyone that i didn't pick the lombardi center randomly; i really do care if you donate money to them, because the center is where my mother received excellent treatment for breast cancer back in 1996-1997. i remember going along with her to her chemo treatments, and the staff there was always incredibly kind to me, a teenager who was scared out of her wits, but who wanted to pretend to sort of be strong and not worried as the oldest kid in the family. the doctors were great; my mother had an oncologist who would call her constantly during treatment and afterwards to check on her status. just, overall...i mean, if you've got to go through something like cancer, the lombardi center is probably a good place to do it. later on, i might have my mother write up an experience of her time there so you can better understand what makes the lombardi center so wonderful.

and no matter if you decide to make a donation or not, maybe you can do me the favor of forwarding this link through email or trackbacking it on your web site. the more people i can beg from, the better! and anyway, if there's one thing we can all agree on, it's that cancer is bad.

so here it is: the paypal button. please, do what you can. $10 really does count.