Ransom Central (whatever that means...)

Environment Variables:
recently ingested:
  • coffee
heavy rotation:

We'll see how long I have the motivation to link so much of the stuff I put up, hm?
Have a Ransom compilation CD?
Want to know what's on it?

8.4.2004 chuckle 11:08 a.m.
Fry's Electronics has season one of Knight Rider on DVD. For $35. Gnerk?
9.24.2003 Checking in 11:53 p.m.
Well, I'm back. I'll be gone again in about twelve hours, but not as far. I went to Ireland for a week a couple of weeks ago, and it was stunning. I took a lot of pictures and intend to have them posted here before too long, but I need to size them and decide how much of the narrative to post/link.
Apart from that, it's time to go say hi to some friends in Eugene and get prepared for school to start again on Monday. Crap, what a mundane post this is. I guess that's the state of things right now. Projects march on, perhaps they'd be even slower if I stopped to document them here, though it might be novel.
Go read Chris' site instead. It's much more fun.
Good god, what do you mean it's not even midnight? *sigh* I think the bastards may be wearing me down...
8.5.2003 In every revolution... 1:12 a.m.
Fuck the RIAA and their file-sharing lawsuits, I'm going sneakernet.
They give away samplers at shows, but won't let people share files. Greed must really do a number on higher brain function. So I'm making compilations of songs I like and handing them out randomly. It would give me more than enough pleasure to cover the 12 cents per blank disk without even adding the pure do-gooder joy of knowing that a ridiculous organization's legal staff would go apoplectic if everybody started doing this.
It's fun, too! If you have mp3s you like, and a CD burner, make yourself a compilation. Then burn a few extra copies and hand them out at random. Just keep a few in your pockets in those cheap paper envelopes. Give them to friends, strangers, acquaintances. I guess the only downside is that as much as the RIAA hates it, compilations are good for the music business, because when that one song rocks, you want to go get the album...
It's worth it.
6.27.2003 You blink and... 1:43 a.m.
What a week it's been. Well, really the last few days have been moderately normal, but a week ago tonight I was in Eugene for the much anticipated wedding of my friends Chris and Becky (You can meet Chris over at his site on the off chance that you don't already know him, which is unlikely if you're looking at my site). I won't try to recount the whole weekend (I laughed, I cried, I felt things for which no HTML tags exist), but it was stellar. The upshot is that I was reminded how many really wonderful people I know, and I got further proof that every now and then a couple of great kids manage to find each other.

Sometimes I just sort of sit here and have a moment where I don't think anything else can affect me for a little while.

Everything else? CS202 Summmer term: An adventure in self-balancing binary search trees. I just started a PC/Mac housecall service with my friend/housemate, Ryan. Hopefully it will become successful enough to make some money without getting to where it takes over my life. There's nothing there right now, but by next Wednesday, we'd better have a site at hollywoodcomputer.com.

I'm working on fuel-injecting my ancient BMW 2002 using the Megasquirt DIY system.

My mountain bike's frame broke (in a non-catastrophic-and-throwing-me-on-the-ground fashion, thankfully) a couple of weeks ago, but apparently Klein's going to replace it under warranty. Yay! This wouldn't be a good time for me to be bike shopping...

I think that's about it for the Ransom trivia just now. If anything of consequence happens, I'll write about it once I stop hyperventilating.

6.7.2002 Well this is silly... 6:50 p.m.
This is ludicrous.

I mean, really, it's been over six months since my last post? I think it's time to admit that until I come up with a better idea, this site isn't going anywhere. I barely have time to think about what I'm doing, let alone keep anyone else informed (again, as if anybody ever was going to read this...).

So there.

Brief status check: School's hectic but good. Car's running okay (got a class win in F Street Prepared, finally, at the last autocross), though the unnerving ping from somewhere in the driveline seems to be getting more frequent... Still don't have a functioning band, though had the beginnings of one briefly. At least I figured some things out about the next attempt.

Still standing, basically.

11.27.2001 An Introduction 11:42 p.m.
Let's see. I'm back in town after visiting family and friends for Thanksgiving.

Today is largely lost to a head cold, though I faintly remember four hours of physics and calculus lectures, and discovering with great disappointment that my last computer science assignment was docked heavily for a disagreement between myself and the grader regarding what the program was to do.

Oh well.

Part of the reason for the existence of this page is my attention-mongering (which makes tons of sense given that NOBODY is reading, I'm fairly certain, or not anybody who I don't speak to more frequently than I update the page. However, I think I'm finally making headway towards returning to the world of music. I've been awful about songwriting for the last, um, year. Which is a contributing factor in my unemployed-guitar-player status. But I've managed to put lyrics together for two new songs in the last couple of weeks, and I'm hoping this is a trend, and not just one song short of a reasonable 7". I should have probably kept my trap shut until I got somewhere, but see three sentences earlier about just how many people will be watching me eat my words if I'm wrong.

Looking back on the weekend, the most exciting part was probably on the way to Eugene, when I killed my car in holiday traffic, in the left hand lane of I-5 (it was creeping at the time, to answer how I managed to kill it in the fast lane). It has some hot-start issues, and twenty of the more nervous minutes of my recent history transpired before I got it fired up and moving again. If anyone from the PR department at Weber Carburetors is among my two readers, I will gladly write a bunch about how you Saved My Life by sending me a new 32/36 DGV, thusly keeping me from repeating the escapades of "Jesse Ransom: Hack Mechanic Playing In Traffic".

11.14.2001 An Introduction 3:10 a.m.
Hm, I knew I wasn't going to be all that prompt about updating this page, but a week? And that's with the exciting newness and all... This doesn't bode well. Aw, heck, I've been out of town...

Specifically, I went to Eugene for the weekend, where I failed to hang out with everyone I wanted to see nearly as much as I wanted to see them. This is the nature of short visits to places where one knows lots of people, but it's always frustrating. I did manage to see my friend's irish/sea-chanty/ bluegrass band play twice, and that ruled. They're a lot of fun. And finish the show with an acapella Negativland cover, so top that.

I've stayed up too late tonight doing nothing terribly productive, but reading a rather funny site with a goth bent, and indulging in an appropriate soundtrack. I'm no goth, but I've some tendencies...

11.7.2001 An Introduction 11:45 p.m.
Well, here we go. I doubt this particular page will become a legitimate weblog, as I'm not inclined to set about making it that trivial to add stuff. Not that firing up BBEdit is much of a process, but I don't think it's worth making the ftp connection just to point out that I've successfully eaten lunch or figured out the meaning of (my) life. Okay, I might post the second, but I'm very much more likely to get caught up on something a great deal lighter.

Like my friend Jason's website, which is one of the reasons I did my own. That and I've been starving for attention since the separation of my last band, Mondale. I'll probably try to put up some mp3s and few pics from the Mondale times soon. I just took down the official site a couple of weeks ago, and immediately wished it was still around to point at.

As I get time to add to this, this "me blabbing about minutiae" chunk will probably not be the main page any longer, but instead I'll have a menu which will link to this as well as pages on other things, things I actually do in the "real" world, such as it is.

PS
Pardon the lousy graphic at the top of the page. It's on my to-do list, believe me.

Hm, links...
Certain People I Know...
include the good people at rackm0unt industries, who are a subset of the diabolical denizens of reallybadidea.com
Jason has a neat site which has some good links for music, art, scooters and other stuff he thinks is cool. Much of which I also think is cool, for what that's worth.
It will get its own part of the site soon, but I have to mention my old BMW 2002, and how much I enjoy racing it. If you're a northwest 2002 kind of person, you might want to check out the yahoo group for such folks. Meetings at Holgate Station here in Portland on alternating Thursdays.

Jesse Ransom is a Portland-based aspiring geek with a musical bent , a fondness for things with wheels and no great gift for speaking in the third person.