I’m a Mastermind

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At the recommendation of Jaime, I just took The Spark‘s personality test — and according to them, I’m an S.I.A.T. Mastermind (Submissive Introvert Abstract Thinker). Pretty nifty, huh? Here’s what that means: according to them…

Like just 9% of the population you are a MASTERMIND (SIAT). You can be silent and withdrawn, but behind your reserved exterior lies an active mind that allows you to analyze situations and come up with creative, unexpected solutions. Normal people call this “scheming.” Don’t learn German.

Anyway, your sense of style and originality are your strengths, and people will respect your judgment once they get to know you. If you learn to be a little more personable, you could be a great leader — you’ve definitely got the “vision” thing down. Just make sure all the plotting you do behind those eyes of yours is healthy.

Famous masterminds in television: Dr. Claw, The Scarecrow and Mrs. King, Montgomery Burns.

Those of you who know me at all can make your own judgements as to how accurate they are — as for me, I’m pretty amused.

Fairbanks bound

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Well, I went and got a wild hair up my butt and decided to head up to Fairbanks for a weekend to goof off, visit my brother, and meet up with some friends. Should be fun…so, in about a month (the weekend of May 18th – 20th), I’ll be heading north for some playtime…woohoo!

Stolen van!

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My parents had their van stolen Wednesday night. If anyone who sees this could keep their eyes open, and, if you’re lucky enough to see it, give a call to the police, it would be greatly appreciated.

At the time of the theft, the van was a teal (bluish green) 2000 Mazda MPV LX with the licence HAK 342. It could be anywhere — abandoned on a street or road, in a used car lot, in a parking lot, etc. Licence plates can be switched, of course. Important — if anyone sees it, they should not do anything but call the police.

Thanks for any help you can be — because of the backlog of cases, APD may not be able to get to this for 1-2 weeks.

About my tattoo

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My tattooThis actually came about from an e-mail I was writing tonight, and I thought it was a bit too good to lose into the great bit bucket in the sky.

The meaning behind it…well, it’s kind of my life view. I’ve always liked the concept of the yin-yang — that in life there is always light and dark, good and bad, and they’re intertwined and essential to each other, you can’t have one without the other, and if you did, then it would render it meaningless without the other as a comparison.

My tattooBut when I found the design with the smileys integrated into it, it really struck a chord with me, in that much of my outlook on life is that no matter what happens to me, good or bad, there will always be something to balance it, and when things do get bad, one, they’ll get better at some point, and two, there is always something to laugh at or smile about in whatever’s going on in order to help me make it through it. I’ve seen lots of people get amazingly depressed over some stuff that, while it may seem mindblowing at first, always has some benefit to it. I guess it’s kind of related to two overused sayings — “For every cloud there is a silver lining”, and Nietzche’s (sp?) “What does not kill me makes me stronger”, but it’s not really either of those through and through…just something that means a lot to me.

I wasn’t really down…

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Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Okay, for any of you who might be interested, here’s the deal. I run my own webserver here at home, and my ‘net connection is provided through GCI‘s cable modem service. Technically, this is a dynamic IP service — my IP address (the four-part number that is the true address of a computer on the ‘net) isn’t permanently assigned to me, and can change every time I establish a new ‘net connection. However, as cable modem service has very little downtime, my ‘dynamic’ IP is almost static — if I don’t have any downtime, then the IP doesn’t change.

It’s because of the dynamic nature of my IP address that I haven’t yet gone for a better web address — i.e., something along the lines of www.djwudi.com or some such — registering for one of those generally requires having a permanent, dedicated IP. Instead, I go through the services provided by www.dyndns.org. This free service allows me to have my djwudi.dyndns.org address, and all I have to do is put the current IP of my webserver into their database.

Occasionally, however, my IP will change — which is what happened today. I’m not sure why my IP suddenly reset today, there was no actual downtime that I’m aware of, and I would have expected it to change when my cable modem was actually disconnected a week ago, but it didn’t. In any case, as soon as I saw that things weren’t working I put the new IP into the database, but it took a few hours for it to propagate through the system. However, between the time I started typing this and now, it’s made it through, so all should be good from here on out…at least, until the next time GCI decides to kick my IP.

By the way…

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…when did “Arrow” 102.1 switch over to 102.1 “The Buzz”? I just noticed this while riding around with Erica the other night in her new car, and was really surprised. Hadn’t tuned into 102.1 for ages — it, along with 100.5 the Fox, was one of the two bastions of old buttrock in Alaska — so I’m pretty clueless as to when the did the switchover.

What I really don’t get about it is why they did what they did, format wise. They went from being one of two “classic rock” (old buttrock) stations in town (Arrow 102.1 and 100.5 the Fox) to being one of three “modern rock” (new buttrock) stations in town (87.7 the End, 102.1 the Buzz, and 106.5 K-Whale) — basically traded in their old library of tunes that have been overplayed for 30 years for a new library of tunes that are just starting to get overplayed, and from competing with one other station to competing with two. I don’t get it.

But then, this is Alaska, and the music scene up here is really easy to compartmentalize. For grins and giggles, I’ll do just that — the following does not take into account people (like myself) who constantly bounce from station to station, and therefore don’t fit a definite demographic. Nor does it take into account the two underground scenes in Anchorage at the moment — the punk and the rave crowds — neither of which have a station focused on them, and have to grab the occasional show on 88.1 KRUA or pirate station to hear what they want on the radio.

Just hazarding a rough guess, I’d put Alaska’s listeners between 20 and 40 years old (at least in the roughly Anchorage/Valley area) at about 45% buttrock (87.7, 100.5, 102.1, 106.5), 30% country (104.1, 107.5), and the last 25% a blend of what’s left (87.7, 92.9, 96.3, 101.3, 103.1).

Under 20, things shift a bit…I’d put it at around 60% hip-hop/pop (92.9, 101.3), 20% new-buttrock (87.7, 102.1), with the remaining 20% everything else (87.7, 96.3, 100.5, 103.1, 104.1, 107.5).

Them’s my guesses, at least.

Reunions…ugh

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Hmm…don’t really have a topic at the moment. I’m just sitting at work, waiting for the headset to beep in my ear, and killing time until the end of the day. Of course, the end of the day today isn’t going to be for quite a while — while I normally get off work at 4pm, I’ve got training today that’ll keep me here until 8pm. Not entirely bad, training helps and I get paid overtime for it…just means I’ve got a while before I make it home.

Of course, I’m not sure why I should be in some sort of rush to get home. One roommate works out on a rig for one of the oil companies with a 2-on/1-off rotation that he’s in the middle of right now, so he won’t be home; the other roommate works evening hours that often stretch into the late night, so I hardly see him either. Lately I get more companionship from my two pet ferrets than I do from any of the people I live with or am friends with, it seems like. Not to make it sound like it’s their fault — I’ve got a pretty busy work schedule myself — it just gets a bit grating sometimes.

I’m looking forward more and more to getting out of here and getting down to Seattle lately. Seems like every time I turn around I’ve got more reasons to leave, and less to stay. This town just gets under my skin more and more often lately — it all seems much to small, and none of it seems to fit me anymore. I can’t say whether or not Seattle will be any better, but it’s a place to start, and if I decide that it’s not the place to be, then at least it’ll be a lot easier to get someplace else from there than it is from up here.

Okay, here’s something scary, which more than likely contributes to my slightly off-kilter frame of mind. In just about two weeks, I hit my 28th birthday, and just a couple months after that, the Bartlett High School Class of ’91 has its 10-year anniversary here in town. I’m really not sure what I think of this…some days I think it would be entertaining to hit, others there’s nothing I want to do more than to stay as far away from it as possible. I wasn’t exactly overly involved in my high school years — more of a social cockroach than anything else — and, while I’ve gone through a lot of changes over the intervening years, it often makes me wonder if I really want to meet up with these people again. Some of these people I’d been going to school with since elementary school days, and yet for so much of the time it seemed to me that I didn’t exist for them — we’d be in the same classes, know the same people, but unless there was some really compelling reason to notice me, most of them very rarely did. Even today, after years of dj’ing and being something of a public figure and losing a lot of my shyness through that, I’m still a bit overly reticent when meeting people. If I’m not in the spotlight, as I am when dj’ing, then I’ll usually hang back, keep my mouth shut, and not draw attention to myself — a hangover from the days when it seemed like it was better for me not to intrude on the lives of these people that I was forced to spend seven hours out of every day with.

So is this something I really want to do — after 10 years, see these people again? I’m really not sure. Admittedly, I’m hardly the same person I was then, and, most likely, few of them are either, but it’s still a strong enough reminder of how little I liked myself, my surroundings, or my environment back then that it gives me a serious pause. Hmm…well, I guess I’ll find out as it gets closer.

In any case, this is probably more than enough of my self-indulgent, slightly morose babble. Back to the phones….

Redesign in progress

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In case you hadn’t already noticed by the dramatic change in the look of the site, I’m in the process of redesigning. No real reason, other than that I thought it was time for a change — I do this every so often.

Rather than do the whole site in the background and then replace it in one swell foop, I decided to just replace the pages as I get them set. As I’m typing this, the main page is the only one that’s finished so far…the rest will follow eventually. All this really means is that at the moment, the site will look pretty goofy as the pages switch between different appearances, but eventually it’ll all gell. In the meantime…well, WYSIWYG.