Yeah, it sucks, I know. Deal with it. If you want me to friend you, just leave a comment with your username. I just went friends only to make sure certain people don't read the horrendous things I write about them. XD  

Not all entries are private. The shit I don't care about airing publicly will be posted for everyone.

Banner by orlandogirl in twistedcuteness.

You know why I love technology? Right now, I'm on my MacBook, in a train, hurtling down the tracks and...updating LJ. How fucking much does it rock that in this day and age I can actually use the internet anywhere and everywhere I want? Well...within the confines of Verizon's network.

Still, I've responded to the email accumulated while commuting home, finished up the proposal we're writing to the board for approval to build an off-site disaster recovery location, commented on several LJ posts, and written this.

How did I live before Verizon BroadbandAccess? Well...the tinny, automated voice on the overhead speaker tells me I have 90 seconds to log off and pack up before I'm in Riverside. Gotta run...

As a man, I have to admit that I’ve suffered from penis envy. It’s a fact of life, every man wishes he were bigger. If he says he doesn’t, he’s a liar. Or, he’s so big that he’s actually failed to have sex (literally couldn’t fit) or been turned down (“holy shit, you’re not putting that monster in me”). That, friends, is what I’m posting about today.

It might be well known, but I’ll say it anyway: I’ve seen a lot of cocks. Big ones, small ones, thick ones, thin ones, all sorts of cocks. I can tell you there are two distinct types of cocks: showers and growers. A shower has most of its size while flaccid, and does not increase more than 10-50% in size when it gets hard (so a 6 inch shower would be 4.5-5 inches when soft). A grower has little or no size when soft, growing into the full length of 75-500% of its size (yes, I’ve seen a guy just over an inch grow to 6.5 inches before). There is also the mythical shower AND grower, but that’s usually reserved for men in the double digits (sans the rare 9 or 8 who sprouts from nowhere).

While I don’t have a link or issue handy to quote, there was an issue of Men’s Health magazine in 2000 that listed an AMA study that found the average cock size as just over 5 inches. I believe in a moment of weakness I looked that study up and saw the mean number was 5.125, but MH has to be vague so as not to insult those readers 5 inches and less. In general, I believe the study. My dataset is skewed (I’m a size queen and picked ‘em big) but those that didn’t exactly rock my boat were numerous and in the 4-5 inch range. Plus, while a man will lie about his cock size, even to a perfect stranger, his doctor won’t.

Sorry if you think this is leading to a confession of my size, it’s not. Suffice it to say I’ve never had complaints (except my own neuroses telling me anything under 10 is tiny), but I am a little smug the average condom is a little bit of a tight fit, but I certainly don’t need to hunt online for the “Super Robusto XXXL Magnums” either. It’s more a philosophic tirade on the male obsession with size and how, just a little bit, I’ve gotten over it. It’s also because I haven’t posted anything raunchy for a while and I felt like it.

Life sucks for guys with huge cocks. Seriously, imagine going through life and not fitting over and over. Spending 20 minutes trying to stretch a woman (or, god forbid, a guy’s ass) out enough to fit inside? Besides, all the good stuff on both sexes is right near the surface, not buried 11 inches inside. You know what is buried 11 inches inside a woman (actually, more like 8-9 inches)? Her cervix. Yeah, I don’t have one and I just cringed. Jesus, ouch!

Don’t confuse girth with length. Yeah, it’s nice to be long, you can get into certain positions and do things you can’t do when even in the 4-7 inch range, but do you know what you can do when 4-7 inches? Actually have sex! Yeah, you know, laying there with your special friend and pounding into each other with wild abandon. Having to stop yourself from going the last 2-3-4 inches into her makes for boring and unsatisfying sex. Gay sex, though, is generally unimpeded by obstacles for almost 2 feet, but still...I don’t want to think what lives past the third sphincter. Ew. However, a really thick one that’s only 6 inches can completely blow your mind. Can’t work on more than hearsay for vaginal penetration on something over 6 inches in circumference, but I hear it’s usually an insanely powerful orgasm. For anal penetration, I often find it never misses the good spots. Yeah, every thrust a winner, which is nice because anal sex can really hurt and the only reason to do it is for the prostate stimulation.

I’ve taken both big and small, thick and thin and, well, I’d have to say about 6.5 to 7 inches long and about 5 inches around is perfect for me. thenicole and I have had this discussion before on AIM and, well, I find any longer and I can’t walk the next day and any thicker I risk ripping myself irreparably. I also don’t like imagining splitting my lip trying to wrap my mouth around a reject for monstersofcock.com, either. Nor do I want to actually be told no by someone because I’m too big. Having heard about that happening over the past few days...yeah, I’m pretty happy right where I am. Besides, if I ever feel tiny, I can just go find a date in Chinatown again. xD

Oh, and you know there’ll be a follow-up as to more of the inside details that’s f-lcoked, right?

I would say it is the proximity to the city of Chicago. It's nice to wake up in the morning and only have a 20 minute train ride into the city. Granted, it takes 30 minutes to wait for the bus to take me to my office, but it's still nice to be able to be right in the heart of the loop in 20 or under.

Riverside is also quite quaint, and a lovely place to live. While I look forward to moving to the city later this year, I will truly miss Riverside and it's small, home town feeling.

Okay, so it pretty much hit the fan this week, didn’t it? Well, as some people know, I designed the new website and implemented the forums for the group. When I did it, I built-in some features that require Microsoft-based hosting (i.e., I used ASP and ASP.NET to design some scripts). I used ASP to build a previously viewed anime database and a links database for the club, as well as adding a dynamic FAQ interface to keep formatting on the FAQ entries organized and consistent, something that was lacking in the existing site. Because the existing site was pure HTML and hosted in an environment that doesn’t support ASP, I offered to freely host the site on my server and allow users to connect there. All I asked was a logo at the bottom recognizing that I designed the site and that my company was doing the hosting.

When the site was complete, I gave a little training tutorial on how to add the existing content to the site, edit information, and took feedback on some of the elements. While it was, in general, negative feedback, I was at least thanked and we moved forward. Mostly it was a big change and I don’t blame Jen the bit of negativity arising from the differences between the old way and the new way. Change is hard, and I’m used to these technologies and styles of design and programming and it takes a little time to catch on.

A few months went by, we were running and I was working on little things here and there and we were going along fine. The site was running well and people were liking the new design and the watched anime database. And we were good.

And time went on without many hiccups. We had a few outages in my company’s datacenter (usually power related as we grew into our power supplies and ended up expanding faster than I could adequately purchase UPS coverage). But, it was still over 99.5% uptime and we would get things back up quickly when they went down. I would respond to the email, put up with the demanding bitchy questioning if things would get rocky, and the nagging references to Jen needing “reliable hosting.” Internally, I asked myself “who says something like that when they’re getting the stuff for free?” Granted, it’s a question that needs to be asked, but you do it politely, make sure someone can handle things. A decent person, and a decent friend doesn’t condescend and question the know-how and delivery of a company running the web presence of hundreds of clients from a Tier-1 datacenter. But, I knew Jen is usually a blunt and direct person, so I let it go.

I’m not now, nor will I ever claim I am a perfect person. I’m forgetful, I can be rude, and I’m kind of a dick. Sometimes I will say something and forget about it 5 minutes later. Other times I can recite the most obscure and random shit verbatim and without warning (like my encyclopedic knowledge of “Pinky and The Brain”). But if you poke me enough times or manage to get me to realize I’ve forgotten, I put it in my To Do list in Microsoft Outlook and it gets done. I also tend to let work dominate my life, so I can become absorbed in some obscure PHP or ASP coding for a client and lose an entire week of free time. However, you need to actually remind me, not just sit there and stew over it.

Random tip to you, my internet audience reading this post: I always acknowledge receipt of an email asking me to do something. Either I’ll respond saying “I’m on it” or “I can’t do that” or even asking for clarification on a topic, but if the item is marked as read in my Inbox, that means I’ve taken action to follow up on it immediately. Bottom line: you didn’t get a response, I didn’t get the email. Don’t count on anything coming from an email I haven’t acknowledged.

On the topic of follow up...I have a cell phone. Two, actually, and they’re pretty much always on me. While I can’t always call people back on personal business if work needs me, I do return calls; always have, always will. There are only two groups of people I don’t call back: my parents and deadbeat customers. If you’re neither one of those, then I will call you back.

So, we come to the most recent drama that led to me leaving JAPC. As those close to the issue know, Jen occasionally gets information on the members of the group and compiles it into a list for herself, even if just to prove that the members of the group are real people. A justified precaution, considering a good number of these people get access to the home addresses of people whom host events. She had a form created by Bravenet on the old site that she used and approached me about converting it ASP and storing the results in a database for organizational needs. I agreed and was optimistic on the timeline for completion. I was terribly over optimistic, it seems.

While I enjoyed my previous job, and while the company was doing a very good business, we had financed a lot of business expansions through debt and the time came for the banks to get their due. As such, most of our cash flow was going to have to be reassigned to paying off that debt and I would need to take a significant pay cut in exchange for owning a chunk of the company. In the interim, I needed to find a “day job” to cover my living expenses (yeah, I did say significant pay cut, didn’t I?). Bada bing, bada boom, I called some people in my rolodex and pulled a job out of my ass. It fell through, but he found me a job at a sister company and, lo and behold, I now have a day job in the city.

At the outset of this process, I set the expectation with Jen, David, and Patrick that I would not be changing anything with the hosting of the JAPC site. My old employer is still very beholden to me (several core servers are my property and I’m the only human on Earth who knows how some of those systems operate) and they will still host all my sites and my email. I guess what I didn’t make clear, or what wasn’t understood (although it should be common sense to anybody), was that I would not be was that I would no longer be constantly available to jump at the drop of a hat and fix everything anymore, due to my current job taking priority. I was now 2nd man on that list, only stepping in when my old boss was not available for fixes. I remember joking how my pager was going away, but...I guess I didn’t tell the joke loud enough, or something. Anyway, while I’m still involved and still working at RCG, keeping the new job that is actually paying my bills is priority number one. Friends would stop to take that into consideration before making snotty comments about "adjusting to the real world" and making constant, selfish demands.

Some people may not have noticed because it only affected people on certain networks, but around the 23rd of March the JAPC site was unavailable. Cogent was having a major network-wide Denial of Service attack and it was causing huge issues for many sites online. While it’s not necessarily a lie to say the internet as a whole is self-healing...it takes time and is not usually very accurate when healing. Routes only change if a connection is completely dead, not if a DoS attack is making even 99% of the traffic drop...that little bit makes the routers of the world think it’s still okay to route traffic over Cogent’s crippled network. So, from the perspective of many people’s PCs (mainly AT&T DSL and other Cogent customers) the site was “down” and I got a snotty email telling me the site was down. As soon as services were fully restored on the Cogent network, I got that email and responded with an explanation. It was demanded of me to call next time so Jen could let people know what was going on.

Oh hell no. First off, this is something I do free on my own time and on systems I have to maintain for others. Second, would you really want me to drop everything I’m doing during an outage and call you? Honestly? You can’t, oh I don’t know, call me? Ask me what’s wrong? Hell, I have $4000/month dedicated servers at Rackspace and when we go down (as we often do there, they’re horrible) I have to call them to get an idea of what’s up. There is the friendship thing, and I would gladly call you...after things are fixed. Instead, I get snotty emails saying things are down and then demanding follow ups asking me to stop work to take care of personal things. Back in the day, Jen and David were polite about issues, usually pointing out problems before the monitoring system even told me something was wrong. They even showed me a problem I didn’t know was there and it caused me to completely change the way I monitor hosting clients so I have a much higher level of granularity on what is and is not up and running at any given minute. What happened to those times? Where are the polite calls between friends?

So, things had changed. I got the new job, was a little more distant, but who cares? We weren’t having any showings, there were no planned events, and I would think that with me handling the website, maybe the other mods might be able to take some of the brunt of Jen’s whining. Guess not, since when we all went silent, somehow it was Patrick and I who get asked if we’re dead.

Then, last week, one of the managed switches in our core died. Completely dead, by the way, like it wouldn’t power up at all. So I had the hosting provider swap it out. Meanwhile, it was investor’s day at my new job and I had to lead around a group of puppy-like children who, by providence of having at least $14 to spare in their pocket for at least 1 stock in our company, get one day a year to be treated like gods on earth in our Chicago office. So, when the snotty email came through about hosting reliability (still under 30 minutes of total downtime in 2008) I knew that Jen would stew and bitch if it weren’t taken care of immediately. That mean either risk the job while I sat down to write a detailed response, or give the three main talking points to a friend who sometimes acts as an assistant to help ease my workload and have him reply. Frankly, my job pays too well and I enjoy eating and sleeping in my nice comfy bed far too much to risk my job, so I had my assistant respond quickly until I had time for a personal response. That’s when the world exploded.

First, David was incredibly rude to my assistant and snotty in his responses, claiming that my assistant was cold and condescending when he was being polite and trying to extend the courtesy of formality to them because I said they were my friends. Then, Jen piped in with admonitions of being pissed. Meanwhile, all the mods were being cc’ed on all the shit flying back and forth, and I do apologize to them for that. But it came down to the fact I had no time at the moment, in the middle of three major migrations of IT infrastructure inside the company, investor’s day, and two upcoming business trips right on top of each other. Would they really prefer I took 2 weeks to reply myself in-depth or have a 90% answer right away?

Then I come home to find a whole shit storm, Jen accusing me of betraying her (what?), her complaining of not feeling in control of her own site, and (despite several requests on my part) no apology for the rude treatment of my assistant. And, oh look, Jen’s pulling the “oh, woe is me, I’m being persecuted, please love and affirm me. Do it. Affirm me. NOW!” shit, yet again. What did I do? I stood up to you being rude and taking advantage of someone trying to help you. Yeah, no sweetie, I don’t think so; you don’t get to play the victim when no one is victimizing you, sorry.

There was also a lot of bitching because I “never return calls”. Well, when my assistant says “he’ll be home after 9” and I’m leaving for work at 6...yeah, I tend to pass out when I walk through the door to my apartment. Besides, I know how early some people go to bed and would not assume to wake someone by calling so late. So, yeah, calling while I’m at work or sleeping will generally send you right to voicemail. Before this, though...when have I ever missed a call? When I was driving and couldn’t get the phone in time...yeah, understandably. When I was asleep...again, yeah. But voicemails got returned or an email sent. Don’t try to change history because it doesn’t serve your tale of woe and victimization.

So, I zipped up a backup of the site and gave it to her. Contrary to her claims publicly, the membership database is not lost; I gave it to her and even went out of my way to make the backups as easy to restore as possible. My assistant even when out of his way to explain how to restore the data, even after his rude treatment by Jen and David. She has it, don’t know why she feels the need to claim it was lost. And, yeah, I’m not a part of JAPC now. If it means no longer dealing with her, I’m quite all right with that.

Meanwhile, the self-pity wank continues. She stands up and says no one can knock her down or break her spirit...my only question is, “Who was trying?” I sure as hell wasn’t, and I certainly didn’t. All I see is a grown woman playing at the victim so people will pity her...again. I guess I just got sick of playing into her games.

As for now, I don’t have any issues with other members of JAPC. Jen’s on my shit list, and I don’t appreciate David’s rudeness to my assistant (but an “I’m sorry” would fix things there). Otherwise, I don’t see any reason why I can’t still be friends with the other members. If you have any questions, feel free to call me or email me. I won’t post that info in an unlocked post, but feel free to IM me (AIM: mrjjman03) or email my LJ email address (kujo_hikaru@livejournal.com). Thanks!

Didn't post after I voted on Tuesday (I was still sick, but A. made me drag my ass out of bed and go to the poll), but I wanted to post on the topic. For the record, I voted in the primary as a Republican, and I voted for McCain.

A lot of people don't like the thought of a gay Republican. Well, I am one. The biggest question is always, "How can you be gay, AND a Republican? Isn't that hypocritical?" No, it's not. Ask a woman if her vagina dictates her vote, or a black man if he votes on his race. If they do, they're stupid. We aren't defined by one issue or one aspect of our life, but by the sum of who we are. I just happen to be a fiscal conservative who believes in a small government with low taxes and a protectionist foreign policy (i.e., help America first, then give what's left to our allies, and fuck our enemies in their ear). Just because I'm socially liberal doesn't mean I have to change parties, that's just part of me that isn't well represented in a 2-party system.

So, despite agreeing with the social stances of the Democratic party, I vote based off of what's most important (see issues above) and end up voting Republican. I'm also not an idiot, and despite having a candidate who fits me perfectly, I vote for the one who fits "well" but not 100%...that actually has a chance of winning. This year, I was a Fred Thompson supporter...until his strong conservative background dug too far into my socially liberal views. Then, it was Ron Paul's constitutional conservatism, which I greatly supported...until it was obvious that he would never win. So, rather than waste a vote on the man I supported...I voted for the closest one that had a chance to win: John McCain.

John is a good man. Despite his proclivity to come off as whining "is it my turn, yet?" in the last few elections, he is a great guy. Fiscally and legislatively conservative, he supports reform to the corrupt system in Washington while still being an insider who can get the job done. That seems to be the buzzword this election: change. He's the only candidate who has pushed change...and succeeded in the past. He's the only candidate who knows the "Who's Who" of Washington and can pull their strings like an effective president should. He's the man I want to see in the White House.

My party had three candidates going into Super Tuesday who were viable: John, Mitt, and Mike. Romney is a douche. Don't tell me you can look at him without your douche-meter going through the roof...the man is sleazy (coincidentally, John Edwards has the same problem). Huckabee...he's a douche, but he's also a dick about it. His snake oil isn't hiding the racism, sexism, and homophobia at all (the man practically said women should be forced to stay in the kitchens and he actually DID say AIDS patients should be put in camps). Yeah...you can see why I picked McCain, right?

The other side had three as well: Hillary, Obama, and Edwards. Already talked on Edwards above...total douche. He's raided billions from companies and given it to the "wronged" of America (keeping 45% for himself, of course) and is one of the reasons healthcare is so damn expensive. Yes, he was a tort lawyer. He's the reason there are no OB/GYNs left in Illinois...the reason why malpractice insurance is so high...hell, he's probably contributed 15-30% of the cost of your damn auto insurance, and people still want to vote for him? Gah!

Hillary doesn't even need a statement, she's that bad. You know...murders, corruption, the whole works. Bill wasn't bad, but she'd ruin America.

Obama is the "outsider" candidate who can (apparently/supposedly/probably not) make change happen. Problem is, though, you can't really make it work in Washington as an outsider. There are at least 51 senators and 218 representatives that a president needs to have in his pocket to be successful in office, and going in to the White House without them just opens the door for congress (or more frighteningly, their party leadership) to control the White House.

I think a lot of people forget about the 6 years Obama spent as a State Senator from Hyde Park here in Illinois. He spent that time as a lackey to the black caucus leaders and how tightly he held onto Mike Madigan's apron strings from his bully pulpit in the Illinois House. He's 1000 times better than Hillary, but I can't stand for a man who spent 6 years as a follower among leaders and then 3 years as a freshman senator from a state known for it's powerful leaders in Washington (if he hadn't given the keynote at the 2004 DNC convention, he'd still be in Durbin's shadow and not quite living up to Fitzgerald's tenacity for protecting the people of Illinois). They call that leadership? Giving one speech? Puh and leeze!

I've read both of Mr. Obama's books: Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope. Both great reads full of some great anecdotes and the latter full of some amazing ideas for America...but neither are proof that he can get it done. If he were able to work for 20 years in the senate to accomplish these things, then I'd vote for him in a heartbeat, no matter what party he chooses (hell, if he can accomplish half what he says in Audacity). But I have no faith in the man, and after 8 years of having the fact that I misplaced my faith being beaten into me on a daily basis...I need a president I can have faith in, one I can choose to believe in again.

It's funny, but I want the person who embodies the "president" we all imagined as a child, the always faithful rock of a president we all trusted and respected without question. Seems like more and more that we're finding less and less to believe in nowadays. Maybe it's the increasing cynicism as I grow older...maybe we're running out of things that are worthy of our faith...but God dammit, I want something to believe in again. Why does the political process need to make us all loathe the people in power? Why can't the good guy, the honest woman, the kindly old coot with more wisdom than all of us combined be our president? Why did Washington have to stomp on my rose colored glasses?

And where the fuck is my flying car? I was promised a flying car!

P.S., thanks for making me vote, A. ... I appreciate the kick in the ass and the reminder of why I need to fulfill my civic duty.

*dies*

YouTube Link

Have you checked out whopperfreakout.com? I swear to God, these people are twisted, absolutely twisted. This is probably something I would have come up with had I worked for the advertising company. Completely and totally sadistic. 10 out of 10.

I've been catching up on the "To Read" pile on my bookshelf, and I just finished re-reading "The Good Earth" by Pearl S. Buck. It is a book I highly recommend to anyone with an interest in pre-revolutionary China and I suggest not reading my comments below the cut unless you already read the book, or don't intend to read it.

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