William S. Burroughs died yesterday in Lawrence, KS from a coronary. He was 83, and Shelly's boyfriend. He made a great contribution to the world of literature, and indeed, had a big part in making the world the way that it is today.

My first thought when I saw the obit was of Shelly. She appeared to worship him; she will be devastated. This, on top of having her puppy die last week.

I spent an inordinate amount of time last night on a re-design for this page. The current entry looks like it has been tacked on... which is exactly what happened. And so... I got the perfect page design, I really like it. Looks great in MSIE! Well, heck, let's try it in Netscrape! Whoops! Where is it? Only pieces of it show up, and they're not even the pretty pieces, either! O'well, back to the 'ol drawing board...

Which bring up a different subject altogether... why is the proper contraction for "old" 'ol instead of ol' or is it right either way? Or maybe wrong either way?

Anyway, my new design will eventually have the current entry on the right side of the page and all the other stuff on the left. And it will look good in MSIE and NS at any screen resolution. Those are my plans, anyway...

This is the beginning of my critique week, though... so I will wait until that's over, anyway.

I got up way too early today after a crummy nights' sleep. Nightmares again, waking Karen up with my mumbling/suppressed screaming. I only have a vague memory of what was going on... but it's not easy to wake Karen up. This is like the third night this week that has happened. Something in my subconscious mind wants me to do something, or is trying to tell me something. There should be a more direct way of communicating with the subconscious, without using drugs... or even an effective way using drugs to do that?

There are now 190 journals on Open Pages. I was overwhelmed when it got to be 60, I remember.

I occasionally go to the big list and check some of the new ones out. And then I notice some of the older ones that I haven't read for a while. I have a tendency to only read journals regularly when they are on Often (natch) or if they have notify lists; I miss reading some of the others, but, like I said, the big list is overwhelming and I don't go there often.

Speaking of notify lists, I have reinstituted mine; if you want to get on it, just email me with "subscribe nilknarf" somewhere in the message or subject line. It's run by hand, so it doesn't matter where. And while you're at it, say something nice to me too. Or, if you really feel that way, you can say something nasty, but in that case you probably don't really want to be on my list anyway...

Karen and I are in the market for a vehicle. We are going to get rid of the Saab and the van and get... something. I would kinda like to get a used luxury car, something like a '91 or 92 caddy or lincoln.

Or maybe an extended-cab pickup. This will be Karen's vehicle, after all, and she can have what she wants, with certain financial restrictions. Like, it can't cost more than we get for the other two vehicles... we can't afford another payment. Nor can we afford upkeep on three vehicles. Actually, there are a myriad of things that we can't afford...

That reminds me of an old dirty gross joke... did you know that it was possible for two to live as cheaply as one? One eats the baby, the other eats the afterbirth...

Man, do I ever feel good about myself! I made the complete set of WIN95 backup discs... something that I had been meaning to do since November of '96 when I bought the Compaq. In fact, I feel so good... that I am going to clean my desk off and do some re-arranging that I had been meaning to do since... November of '96!

Well, I did it... cleaned off the desk, took some stuff to the basement, even threw some stuff away. I re-arranged the computer equipment... the CPU is now on the floor, where it was supposed to be all along, and most of the wires are out of sight.

I also spent quite a bit of time with my IBM Voicetype system. I kinda gave up on it, but I've got it working pretty well now. The main problem is that I can't run the fan when I'm using it... or have the TV on in the other room or have anything else around that makes noise. Which makes it kinda a pain in the ass, but fun nonetheless.

Tyler and I are going to take his truck in tomorrow and see if a mechanic can get it running better. We've done all that we can with it, I think. I just hope that it's nothing major that requires money. Tuesday we get the window replaced. Right now, I can't afford to get him a CD player, but I would if I could... he has a $500.00 deductible on his truck, even for comprehensive... which is pretty silly, since in most cases a $0 deductible is not very much more expensive. Ah, well, live and learn... experience is expensive, though.