looks like rain, dear

2001.12.13
Navel Gazing of the Moment
Looking at my old posts, I found some old ".sig" taglines I hadn't thought about for a while. It turns out most of these had made it into my old Palm journal as an appendix: part 1 and part 2. (Some of those were also from my ".plan", the file someone would see when they "finger"ed my account...er, it's not as sick or complicated as it sounds.) What didn't make it there, however, was my ASCII art, generally just a small part of my longer 80-col sigs.

This guy came first. I think in some way he was supposed to represent alien bill, or at least be a similar kind of character:
_/O\_
Later on I had some Happy Holiday Reindeer.
    _|     |_       _|       |_
     \ ___ /          \ ___ /
      \o o/            \o o/     
 ()___/ __>o      ()___/ __>o  
 )      /         )  ,_ <     
 /// >>>>         ///  \\\
'''' ''''        " "    " "
I started with the guy on the left, then switched him to the guy on the right when someone pointed out the original's resemblance to a reindeer/centipede mutant crossbreed. Though overall, the ASCII-art I was most fond of was my selfportrait...
_____
-O\O  Kirk Israel     
( = ) kisrael@jade.tufts.edu 
I thought it was a pretty good likeness, captured my lips and cheeks pretty well.


Link of the Moment
Slashdot had a link to this guy who built a portable Super Nintendo. At first I wasn't all that interested, but I was drawn in my his Comic Book Hero account of its making...a funny, informative read. For instance, it informs me that I'm even farther from being a hardware hacker than I had assumed.


Quote of the Moment
I've had a wonderful time, but this wasn't it.
I once read a biography by one of his sycophants who knew him near the end of his life...the subtext was "this guy was a complete jerk to most everybody around him, but it was ok, because most people would receive an insult from Groucho than a compliment from anybody else." Still, he had some great lines.