Toluu

Zed's So Fucking Awesome

Yes, that's a left handed guitar. No, I'm not left handed.

2008-11-13November 13

Well, DHH seems to be caught in a lie in his latest blog post on Rails myths so I feel I should correct it. An outright lie that Mongrel caused his 400 restarts/day problem. However, David must have forgotten that I have a full log of the chat where he admitted it, so let’s get into some nice clean truth for a change.

Normally I wouldn’t give a shit. Ruby on Rails is so far from my world right now that I don’t even really care. I play guitar and write with maybe some coding to pay the bills and that’s about it.

However, I get really sick and tired of the passive aggressive people who run things over at the Rails/Ruby Revolutionary Faction. They have to project this image of being nice, but at the same time are competitive jerks who try to destroy their enemies. That’s why they constantly pick on little guys like Giles, Obie, and myself, but never in a direct way. It’s always with little turns of the phrase, or rumors, or power plays behind closed doors.

The insults are always minor things you’d be crazy to get mad about, but they still get under your skin. It took a year of being called an idiot by the same people who used my wares constantly before I finally gave up.

Now It’s Mongrel

DHH is right, in this part of his post tha

2008-11-11November 11

I’m quickly coming to the end of my first semester in music school and am considering taking a consulting gig for the two month break we have. Not really sure what’s available these days, as I actually haven’t touched a computer for the entire semester.

First off, I learned a ton so far and have improved my technique so much, but I’m still way behind in what I need to know for the next semester. I’ll be spending any spare time I have studying guitar, piano, and voice so I can roll into the next semester ready to go.

That means at least 3 hours a week of private lessons and about four hours a day of practice, which isn’t hard. These days I get up at 6am to practice anyway so I’ll just continue that.

Now I have a choice: I can continue living poor for the next two months and just do nothing but music, or I can try to get a job to make the rest of the year easier.

In order to figure out this dilemma, I’m curious if anyone has offers for a two month gig. If there’s something good then I’ll do a job. If not, then I’ll continue to study.

If you have a job you think I might find interesting, then contact me. If you have a job that’s totally mindless and pays alright with flexible hours, then definitely contact me.

Here’s to being a starving artist!

2008-10-30October 30

In this world there are these weird little dickheads who think that they have some kind of magical powers manipulating others to do their bidding. They spend their days making people around them dance like marionettes in a sick little play that only they find funny. The sad truth about manipulators is their machinations are only powerful and effective in their own mind.

If you read my previous blog post about Matthew Kaufman it may have sounded like Matt was in trouble. He was threatened and thrown out of his apartment by some big evil bad man. Matt promptly disappeared and potentially could have been hurt. He was a ghost who simply left a bizarre panic ridden voice mail for me.

At the time I debated even doing anything. This Matt character could need help, or he could just be a manipulator trying to use me as some kind of blunt weapon against his enemy. This is why I took my time trying to help the guy. I had the feeling he was playing a game, but after debating it and gathering the evidence I decided to try and help.

You see, if I did nothing, there was a chance that Matthew could have been dead. If he had died and I could have helped him then I would have hated myself.

Today however, someone who read my blog post finally got access to his twitter feeds and sent me this tweet from him:

All that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about. :

2008-10-28October 28

UPDATE: Read my follow-up post to this where I explain Matt is alright.

I was checking my voice mail Monday and clearing out anything I’d missed when I heard a strange message from some random guy I’d never met. I’m hoping it’s nothing, but read this story, and if you know the people involved, then please let me know what you know.

In the voice mail Matt sounds very distraught. He rambles on, forgets what he was saying, misses important details, and seems to be completely confused. I think I could hear him walking outside somewhere. He says that he knows me from using Mongrel, and that he thinks I might be able to help him tell people what’s going on.

Then he says that he’s been forced out of his apartment on 31st by one Michael Brauser and that he’s received death threats. I’m not clear on whether Matt claims the threats were from Michael Brauser or not, and in no way am I accusing Michael Brauser of any wrongdoing. I’m simply trying to figure out what might have happened and make sure Matt’s alright.

Even when Matt mentions Michael he loses track of his topic, and forgets where Michael works. He then rambles some more, and hangs up after apologizing for rambling.

Right away this seems odd since I don’t know this guy at all, and I don’t give out my phone number. How he got it I’m not sure, but I start doing some digging.

2008-10-05October 5

Taking a break from more and more guitar practice I decided to weigh in on the current banking “crisis”.

In case you’ve missed it, people with lots of money are trying to scare people without money. They are claiming nothing short of societal collapse and that if Americans don’t give the rich who screwed everything up close to 850 billion dollars then we’re going to have another Great Depression!

Now, I can’t predict the future, and I don’t know if there’s going to be bad things happening. I’ll wager most likely someone’s screwed, but probably only the major banks that fucked everything up for us in the first place. I do not enjoy the thought of bailing these asswipes out without something in return. I also despise the fact that they’re trying to convince “Main Street” that it will prevent another depression.

However, I have an idea that may make this a fair trade.

I’ll Trade Your Golden Parachute For Some Surgery

Just in case everyone forgot what capitalism is all about, it’s about trade by contract. It is not about fucking corporations. It’s about me giving you money, which binds you into a contract to give me a service. Any time I don’t get something in return (even a single penny) it’s called an