"Amish girls are incredibly sexual. You've never had a handjob until you've had one from a girl who works a butter churn all day."

t shirt hell does, that's who. sign up for their newsletter. it's funny.

whistler is now a stop on the tour! from drum n bass arena:

DATE: Tuesday 16th March 2004
EVENT: WORLD OF DRUM & BASS
VENUE: Whistler
LINE UP: Grooverider, DJ SS, Twisted Individual, Killa Kela & MC Trip, DJ Skeletrik & Guests
CAPACITY: 400

w00t.

-mike.

my cousin darren's wife just had twins, hannah and emily. he's a little overwhelmed at the moment.

darren is one year older than me (i think he's 27 anyways). i can't even imagine having a girlfriend let alone 2 kids and a wife. of course, i can't even remember his wife's name. whoops.

-mike.

cut off the internet connection at my work (vlink / xploremedia) with absolutely no warning and a bullshit reason? keep me from surfing the net and listening to streaming music while i'm trying to program? no EMAIL!?!?!

don't ever cut off a geek's internet connection. they get mad.

then they get even.

[ also, check out the edit to my earlier log post here -- looks like the store will be fine ]

[ some background info ]

presently, there are 2 options for high-speed access in function:

1) cable (provided by whooshnet/whistler cable)
2) T1 or greater from Telus / Radiant / (handful of other providers)

(i think there's also some high-speed wireless / satellite providers at similar prices / speeds to the T1's but don't quote me on that one)

so if a store / warehouse / service provider / tech company / etc wants a high-speed connection in function, they either shell out $80/month to whooshnet for a flaky cable connection that goes down all the time, has horrible tech support and hits retardedly high prices when you suck down over 5 Gb of data in a month or they give a T1 provider $1500/month (roughly). telus won't give DSL in function, only T1's.

vlink / xploremedia share an office and an internet connection. they couldn't really afford a T1 line. the internet connection has always been under xploremedia's name since whooshnet wouldn't provide a conection to vlink (bad blood between vlink & whooshnet since vlink snagged the wireless provider contract for whistler village and whooshnet got fuck-all).

[ end background info ]

this friday, our internet connection suddenly died. no surprise, seems to happen a lot (did i mention that whooshnet sucks?). someone phones whooshnet, no one answers -- it's just after 5pm on friday and they go to minimal tech support on the weekends, to my knowledge. when i leave that night, still no connection.

sunday, i head down to the office to hear that whooshnet got back in touch with xploremedia -- "we've cut your connection because you are associated with vlink and we refuse to provide them with service and we now refuse to provide you with service". excellent. hans (head of xplore) is PISSED. keith is pretty annoyed as well but vlink is moving down to vancouver within a month or two and our tech's can do their work over dial-up. and i'm pretty sure the municipality is none too happy about this -- vlink provides tech support for the vlink-rmow joint venture, yodel -- when whistler cable cut off the connection, they're now fucking w/ the muni (albeit indirectly).

so how do you get even? you steal all of whooshnet's business. starting with function junction (you are respectful and leave vlink's areas alone).

you grab a T1 or some other high-capacity line into function junction. you put a couple of antennas on your roof. you put some antennas on the roofs of other buildings to rebroadcast signals. then you blast a wi-fi signal blanketing all of function junction. finally, sell accounts on a sliding scale (barely use this connection? $40-$60 a month. heavy downloader? gonna pay a little more, prolly $80 or a little more a month.) to those businesses i've talked to over the past two days who can barely wait to say "fuck you" to whooshnet.

at 30 accounts, the business is mildly profitable. i already know of at least 15 businesses that will jump ship. and that's only in the cul-de-sac where vlink is located. there's over 200 other businesses down in function, most of which already pay for an overpriced high-speed connection that they probably don't use all that much and half the time it doesn't work all that well.

so, we're starting a wireless isp. already getting some quotes back for some pretty sweet connections, we can get all the equipment at cost (thanks vlink) and it's gonna be no-risk for me (besides any time i invest). plus, it'll be some pretty cool technology and equipment to play with. my network admin skillz are a little rusty but this should get them back up to ninja levels.

if anyone has any suggestions, send 'em my way. i've been delving pretty deep into the tech end already but any help is appreciated. for now, we're just an internet access provider -- we won't be offering email or web-hosting (maybe later).

-mike.

lindsay filled out the application for our new business license (or licence? i never know.) the other day. it just came back REJECTED today. what the FUCK? turns out that our building is no longer zoned for retail. of course, our realtor and our landlord both said it is. HOLY FUCK.

this is gonna be soooo much hassle. there's no way they're going to push through a re-zoning that quick in whistler and getting our start-up costs back from our landlord is gonna be great fun. moving again? gee, sure hope so.

why can't they just do it right the first time? i'm so over this.

** EDIT **

i read through the local bylaws the other day and there just might be a way out of this that requires no money and no moving.

warehouses and showrooms are both legally zoned for the top floor of our building. we could turn our store into a listening booth / warehouse for our goods. our storefront would be our website. we'll have a computer on premises that could customers could enter their orders through. then we "ship" them their records, collect the Cash On Delivery and everything works out peachy.

so ... we could stay in the same place and we wouldn't have to fork out any more cash. i just need to code up a website in the couple of days so we can show proof of our new business plan to the muni when we apply for a new business licence. i've been meaning to actually put some sort of website up at dirtybeats.ca but i've been too busy. guess this'll get me moving. i figure a simple php / mysql site that emails us when someone marks that they want to purchase records / t-shirts / etc (in case someone who's not actually in the store -- i'm sure there will be roughly 2 of those per year). simple tables to store the data -- i can generate the inventory records by reading from the database our POS sytem uses. no need for online payments since we'll be offering COD / cash / bank draft / certified cheque only.

i sure hope this works.

-mike.

** thanks to robin at black ohm tattoos for a (hopefully) really good idea. go there, get tattooed. **

1. open record store
2. sell some records

and we actually hit #3 at the end of our first month. HELL YEAH.

-mike.

yay for crazy new years parties.

highlights ...

• broadcasting the dj sets over 105.5 fm pirate radio
• mat the alien, jungle souldier and kori k playing some absolutely amazing music at the uli's party
• wicked food
• super hot waitresses at uli's
• tons of new years pashes from girls i've never met before
• somehow ending up at the afterparty in function. always interesting when all of a sudden you're in a completely different building, 10 minute car ride away from the last party and the last thing you remember is talking w/ a friend at the front door of the previous building, saying "how the hell are we gonna get there?"
• watching milton completely trainwreck a mix when he was too wasted to even see the mixer anymore
• having some hottie come up to me at the end of the afterparty, basically stick her tongue down my throat for a couple of minutes then say "i've wanted to do that for over a year now" and then walk off with her friends
• rye and ginger at 9:30am. yum.

and that wraps up another year. and no new years resolutions from this kid. all i do is break them anyways.

-mike.