Current News of the Strange Society by Dangerously Psycho: 4-2-98 3:20pm Central I managed to find the time to make the following changes on my Tripod server. The HTML code of ST.htm was massively sloppy. I viewed it and felt ashamed that such a coded document could exist. Needless to say, I fixed it up, although not completely as of yet. I added HEIGHT and WIDTH attributes to the images on the links page so it will load faster. It irritated me that the Mental Ward animation I made sometimes completed itself before the user could even see it. Time to split this text file in half. Notepad can't handle it's size... 4-2-98 8am Central For a half-hour Terrence and Phillip episode, last night's South Park didn't seem all that entertaining. But what can you do? Spring break begins tomorrow, so I hope to be able to get some decent work done. Changes probably won't occur until a week from Monday however. Until then, I invite everyone to take it easy. If the world would just join together for one spring break... the travel industry would need to expand drastically. Whatever. I hope What get his sites back up again soon. It's getting pretty lonely being the only one promoting myself. (?) I think I need to get more sleep... 4-1-98 8am Central Great news for the ST! Images, our school's art and literary publication, is not only printing ALL of the stories, but also changing the name this year from "Images" to "The ST Tome" or something to that nature. This is significant, but shadowed by the even better news of my election to world dictator. What an honor! Oh, and April Fools everybody. On a serious note, however, we have a band concert tonight. That's all for now. 3-31-98 8:10am Central It's formal dress-up day here at NiWeHi, so I have on an entire Tuxedo Mask ensemble. I may be one of the probably one dozen students dressed up today, but hell. It's an excuse to dress up as Tuxedo Mask! Who wouldn't? Um, don't answer that... As I said before, things will be very busy, so I apologize if no significant chnges are made here until April thirteenth or so. I will still try to update the news, however, so if anything important occurs it will appear here. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go rescue the Sailor Scouts... 3-30-98 3:16 pm Central Sure, just as I link to the ST Glossary, What goes and changes his AOL account name. I don't even know if his pages still exist now. Wonderful :{ Anyway, the only changes I made concern Mr. DeHelizat and his Email change. Things will probably go slowly for the next two weeks as spring break begins this Friday. Oh, yeah. 22-hour Monty Python marathon this past weekend. Ministry of Silly Walks all the way. Oh, yeah. 3-27-98 8:27am Central OK, so I worked on the site anyway. Since no one know when What will finish updating his page, I changed the link to his page such that it now refers to the ST Glossary. I also have a link to the rotating ST animation alongside the Under Construction one on Strangesite. If you haven't seen it before, check it out. I'm quite proud of my work, after all. 3-27-98 7:50am Central I finished changing the ad banners. Now, unfortunatly, Tripod Strangesite has begun to show the pop-up windows indefinately again. Why can't they just attribute one to the page with the largest size? I'm sure no one would mind if the 39K society9.htm had an ad pop up onscreen. I'm going to be busy elsewhere for a while, so I may not be able to make any more changes until after the weekend. I'll add an entry here if otherwise. Before I go, however, I think I'll add an entry or two to the ST log. 3-26-98 8am Central Wow! Chicago area weather is beautiful today! This could mean only one thing for the ST... FRISBEE! Anywho, I finally decided to take the initiative to submit Strangesite (actually, the index.htm file which links to both) to a number of search engines after receiving an "Excellent" rating from the Web Site Garage. In a month or so, Strangesite should be found by various web searches. It's about time. Today I plan to alter the remaining navigational consoles in FC and possibly add to the ST log. I also may place a temporary link to my Mental Ward patient bedroom, now a part of the MW gallery. Talk again later. 3-25-98 11:10am Central I have returned from a successful state WYSE competition, NiWeHi having taken first place. And there is much rejoicing. I have no news for Strangesite as of yet, but I'll probably have something to report later on today when I actually have the opportunity to work on the site. I submitted my patient bedroom in the Mental Ward guestbook (along with a sort of plague or something) on Monday, but I don't think the Lord of Lemurs has noticed it yet. They're preparing for their move to a personalized URL and things are going to be in shambles until it occurs. I urge all new visitors to sign our guestbook. Talk to you again soon. 3-23-98 8:12am Central I won't be around tomorrow as I'll be downstate competing on our WYSE team (if that means anything to anyone) so the page will not be updated at all on that day. In the meantime, I only have minor tweakings to make anyway. As it is, Strangesite has evolved pretty far in the few months of its existence so far, and there isn't much else I can do before implementing JAVA and CGI nuances. Yech, I'm using some pretty "cutesie" vocabulary today. Remind me not to write anything important until at least tomorrow. 3-20-98 2:45pm Central I just made a slight correction to Society2.htm. The text wasn't italicizing when it was supposed to. This error was noted as I was printing each story to submit to Images, just as I do every year. This year, however, I'm submitting the HTML versions, unedited. In the past I've removed such items as the words "whore" and "Koch's daughter," but this is my last year at NiWeHi, and Images is getting THE REAL THING. laughter! {!-- HTML editor's joke} I think I'll put a reference to the anti-pop-up procedure right on the main page, but not right now. I've got to get a few other things done elsewhere. Have a great weekend, ST fans! 3-20-98 8:10am Central Depending on how you access the Tripod page, the pop-up windows can actually be avoided! Try entering the URL from the last message and select the Tripod link. So long as you don't reload or reaccess a page you've already been to (except by hitting "back") you may manage to view Strangesite without a single advertisement intrusion! And there was much rejoicing. 3-19-98 8:21am Central I now have index.html pages on each server, so all you have to do is type "members.tripod.com/~DPsycho" to access a page linking to both servers. 3-19-98 7:50am Central Here's an intresting note -- as of this morning, Tripod offers 5 Megs as opposed to the original 2. It's about time they realized that other services were offering far more space. Now if they'd only lose the pop-up windows and switch to banners that users could at least relocate within the page... I actually found the time to update the ST log yesterday. I wish I could do it more often, but oh well. (Song cue!) Time to get to work. Honor the Strange Society! 3-18-98 8:20am Central Here's what I've accomplished today: The links on Fortune City's Strangesite have been corrected. The links pages on each server have been updated. The index.html page on Fortune City has been updated and now redirects visitors to Stmain.html. I also altered the FC banner on this page to see if FC will put a new one up. If not, I believe I can manage to reduce the amount of space the banners take up. I don't mind FC promoting itself on my pages, but the banner it uses is too large and distracting, especially if you're only attempting to read the stories and the huge, blue graphic is grabbing attention on the otherwise chiefly B&W page. (If worse comes to worse, I do have control over the banner's color.) In case anyone's still confused, Krymson Lady is Amy using her AOL account. She only had access to it over spring break, so don't e-mail her there. (For those who don't know Amy, she has made an appearance in Close Encounters of the Strange Kind as Amura Kimi, patron goddess of relationship problem appeals or something.) I'll try to get a lot more done soon, so keep checking back. 3-18-98 7:45am Central Well, I have an early start this morning, so let's see what I can do with it... 3-17-98 2:51pm Central I hope not to make a habit of updating this file so late every day. I have a new counter up, courtesy of the Link Exchange. It functions on both the Tripod and Fortune City Servers and I was able to implement it beginning at the current number of visitors. And there was much rejoicing. On the topic of counters, the Mental Ward has finally surpassed us, thanks to the huge mess which occurred yesterday. Everything is back to normal. Well, average anyway. Fortune City has now put banners on all of my pages, the stories included. I'll have to see to moving them or something. 3-16-98 2:20pm Central The Mental Ward is undergoing a serious crisis of ownership. I've set my character absent from the area until further notice. (It looks like the problem will be resolved soon, however. I apologize again for my inconsistancies in when I have a chance to update the site. My Fortune City space is falling behind on the updates, and it bothers me. I'll try to mend it all soon. One of my first priorities, however, is getting a counter up (and at the correct digits) which can be equally accessed by both servers. More updates to come. 3-13-98 8:05am Central A few things have come to my attention and will be remedied soon. For one, I probably won't be making any additions to the ST log, especially now that my schedule is different and I only have half the time to do this kind of thing each morning that I'd had before, and I was struggling to get it done each day even then. I'll be moving the ST log further down on Strangesite and will no longer refer to it as being "daily." Tripod's counter, as nice as it looks, just isn't cutting it for a page which spans two servers mirrored. I will be obtaining a third-party counter and implement it once I have incremented it manually to match the existing counter. I never liked my Guestbook, but the one from that free guestbook world place really isn't that great either. I don't plan to try then one at Geocities, either, due to the problems of letter-dropping and messed-up programming tags the Mental Ward has experienced. Such features as the FAQ's and the Dude translation Guide should be accessible directly from the Strangesite main page. I originally designed this space such that Strangesite would keep the separate homepages (mine and What's) separate, but I should just be directing my full attention toward the entire project. Finally, I've realized that no matter how hard you try, you can't mentally will black ink to change to raw umber. So many months I've wasted! What am I going to do with all these black pens with burnt sienna ink now? 3-11-98 8:37am Central Finally, after days of crummy problems due to extreme weather, I'm able to log on and update Strangesite again. I was feeling deprived... Many changes are being made at the Mental Ward. I designed images for the Quiet Room and patient bedrooms. The Meat Locker has been added the the links page after I was introduced to it by the Lord of Lemurs. The first one I saw was about a dead clown, and after that I was hooked. 3-6-98 8:07am Central The Strange Society Homepage on Tripod, the one with direct links to the stories, is now listed in the writer's block Pod, along with nearly a thousand other homepages containing stories and the like. Is this a big step for the ST? No, but I figured it should be there. I've been a tad ill as of late. I know because I'm having really vivid and strange dreams which keep me from relaxing throughout sleep. All I can say now is TGIF. Maybe I can get some rest at last. 3-5-98 8am Central All is well for the ST. 3-4-98 8:37am Central I just finished fixing up all of the story pages on my Fortune City server, including adding the navigational left and right buttons to the pages where they'd been neglected. Most of the links on my pages will refer to the pages on Fortune City instead of Tripod starting in the very near future. DOWN WITH POP-UP WINDOWS FOREVER! I'd prefer banners I could relocate myself any day. GOD is home from VanderCook for the rest of the week, so we'll be seeing him a lot around here. Everyone agrees that the latest ST release is a success, given a few adjustments in dialogue. I can now set my sights toward cooler effects using HTML to present our ST media. I may even initiate my own pop-up window of the rotating ST graphic I made for What's page. More important plans include ST Mad-libs, Hypertext links and graphics within a second set of pages of the stories, and further information on who we are as NiWeHi students. I'm also planning to update the FAQ's soon. Once this is all implemented, an image map will be an inevitable implementation for Strangesite. Um... somebody was a little too abusive to Aaron Marshall in our guestbook. Let's try and keep things a bit less harsh in the future. For a good time, watch snowman.avi on my FC server. Honor the Strange Society! 3-3-98 8:40am Central The Strange Society goes to the Mall has been completed and uploaded as societ11. I'm sorry it took so long; I started creation of it last November, which is why the story takes place in mid December. Please read the latest of the ST adventures. In other news, Fortune City has suspended user uploads until further notice. Due to this, I am uncertain when the new story will be added there. This puts a damper on my plan I was preparing to propose concerning a near-complete move to the Fortune City server effective March 16. I prefer Fortune City due to the absense of pop-up windows and the insane amount of available free space (10MB!), but Tripod has easier access and more successful eiditing options, which is why I maintain these daily logs here. My final deision will appear here soon, but I suspect I will continue to use both servers for purposes not including mirroring the pages. Also, I will not ammend the Daily ST log today as I have just released a story. I may change its format from a daily log to a story I will update on a random basis with no adherence to real time. That is, two days after writing about Wednesday I will write about Thursday, or I may do to days at once. Again, I'll report my decision here once know for myself. 2-26-98 8am Central As could be expected, I received a lot of random stuff from the ST for my birthday yesterday, including What's Confusion Pack #7. Here are a few of my favorite ST gifts: 5 - A Keychain of STUFF, Sicko 4 - Replica of the original Pin the Cat card, What 3 - Authentic Oswego H.S. sign, Annoying 2 - Sailor Moon soundbook, What 1 - Talking Pikachu Pocket Monster toy, What Of course, my most practical gift is the flatbed color scanner my parents gave me. I'm having trouble getting the drivers to work properly, however... Anyway, tomorrow begins a 4-day weekend, so I haven't the least of an idea when I'll update this site again, Tuesday the third being the latest, so until then, honor the Strange Society. 2-25-98 8am Central Today I'm tking the day off from working on these pages for my birthday. Also to celebrate, I am going to publicly torture Anonymous for editing the tripod Strangesite without my permission. 2-24-98 7:50am Central Last night I created AnNoYiNg'S nIgHtMaRe and this morning I perfect it. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Anywho, please heed the warning before initiating it... 2-23-98 8:55am Central My space at Fortune City is finally up-to-date. Currently, it is functioning as a mirror to this server but without pop-up windows. (And there was much rejoicing.) Now I'll just have to make sure to circumvent the navigational banners they're planting on the individual pages... A link to Fortune City's Strangesite mirror will now be available on this one. 2-23-98 8am Central While What DeHelizat's page is under reconstruction, the subpages within his server directory are apparently still accessible. This includes the ST glossary and multimedia zone. His AOL member name is Valkyrie83 for those who wish to access his server. Apparently, once his page is up again the format will have been changed. It will now be called What's Page of Confusion, or something to that nature. No one knows as of yet when Sicko is actually going to get a page up of his own. Anonymous's homepages are coming along nicely, however. Oh, nasty! There may be no greater honor than to have a synonomous birthday and premiere date of a new episode of South Park. Well, actually I could think of quite a few greater honors. Even some which don't involve the cartoon at all. Hmm... 2-20-98 7:53am Central Kick*ss. We get our picture up, and suddenly everyone starts signing the guestbook again! Have a great weekend, everyone. 2-19-98 8:20am Central They came early! (Oh, nasty!) The ST professional photo has arrived, and already I've uploaded a scan of it to my Fortune City server. The image appears at the bottom of Strangesite along with a link to a page explaining everything we crammed into it. (The photographer was quite nice, by the way, and really didn't mind the time we took setting it up to our satisfaction.) Take a good look at the pic, and then click on it to find out exactly wudditiz we decided to include, both obvious and, well, subtile... The daily ST log is going exceptionally well. While I don't have the time to produce full stories on a regular basis, I can ammend the log to keep everyone satisfied until the next story is ready. 2-18-98 7:50am Central Here's the scoop: * Today: NW Field trips for music performance * A week from today: Psycho's birthday! * Two weeks from today: Prospective arrival of the professional ST photos This is all for now. 2-17-98 7:50am Central Not much is going on here, but on the Mental Ward homepage revisions have been made to tone down the insulting of Charles Nadolsky, not that things are getting any better in there in those respects. I guess you'd have to see it to understand. As for the ST, the only momentous occasion has been the celebration of Sam Kyte's birthday. Sam, Drum Boy's cat who is mentioned in Society 8, is now an actual 22 years of age. That's pretty darned amazing for a cat. Long (and painlessly) live Sam! 2-16-98 8am Central I'm still tired after Saturday's turnabout dance. Then again, maybe I couldn't sleep last night because of all the Hershey's Kisses Vic gave me that I ate while watching TV. Either way, I'm zonked this morning. In ST news, Skye Valentine (aka Anonymous the Paranoic, Choir Boy, LOL, etc.) has begun work on his Tripod site and also has signed on for 10M of space with Fortune City, following numerous unsuccessful attempts to secure a plot which actually allows him in with his password. Something screwy is going on there, but Fortune City did add another server and speed has been increased significantly, so it will only be a matter of time before I have things up-and-running in my space there. Today's the day. I'm going to begin DP's Log of Operation Destruction (not to be known as the DLOD) on this server. I'll have a link to it from Strangesite within 15 minutes of posting this message. DP's Log, unlike this file, will document ST occurences within the universe of the stories as opposed to ours. If you don't get it, just view the file and I'm sure you'll notice the difference. Have a nice day. 2-13-98 2:40pm Central It seems that Anonymous the Paranoic, through his Skye Knight Valentine personality, is creating his own page on Tripod. I'm uncertain as of yet of the future contents for his site, but Strangesite will probably host a link to it in the near future, depending upon how long it takes for development. In other news, have a happy St. Valentine's Day, everyone! Any holiday with the initials 'ST' by themselves can be second only to Groundhog Day by our view. 2-13-98 8am Central Ooh, it's Friday the thirteenth, isn't it? I don't know about the supersticious element here, but having to go to school Friday after a day off messes with your head. Oh, nasty. I now have The Strange Society Complete Waste of Time up as its own page. You can find the link to fun.htm on my ST page, or you can simply change the URL onscreen now. I'm putting a lot more thought into creating separate copies of the story pages with hypertext links to related multimedia with individual words, but the server space required would force me to implement this idea in Fortune City only. As far as I know, their server is still monstrously slow and irritating. Another idea, since I have been having trouble as of late finding pertinent information to include in these daily updates, is to make a separate text file which lists daily updates by Dangerously Psycho WITHIN the stories. For example, an entry may begin with a reflection on how we were chased by a sickle-wielding pom-pon squad this morning, again. Get it? Maybe I'll start it next week. So I finally have a chance to sit down and work on book two of the Bane World Saga when within a fifteen-minute timespan, What comes to the door, three people call to talk to me, and Sicko and Jester drive by. I... really didn't get to work on it much. Don't f*** with WENDY TESTABURGER! Um, never mind. 2-11-98 8:30am Central Not much to report as of right now. I'm thinking of a few more things to implement on this server, including a pecial feature dedicated to Annoying. As for Fortune City, I'm still waiting for traffic and server lock-ups to subside before opening the content as an official mirror to Strangesite. The next update here will be Friday. 2-9-98 7:30am Central You know, there're few things on a band trip so shocking as to get back to the hotel you checked out of that morning (the hotel where you left the ST symbol on the window to your room with masking tape) so Mr. Koch can return the cart he borrowed to move percussion equipment and to have him come back onto the bus and question loudly, "Who was in room 119?" We all breathed a little easier when it was only that our neighboring room left some contact lens cases there. We, of course, had been in room 121. My busy week is finally done, so I'll be able to get more done for the sites now, hopefully. I have a small list of additions to make here, and as for Fortune City, I don't see how I can complete things there as long as the success rate of uploading is only about 10%. Anonymous has escaped the Mental Ward guestbook and is now back in our own. Our WYSE team took first place. Honor the Strange Society. 2-6-98 8am Central Well, it's finally Friday, but the week is far from over. I'm competing for our school's WYSE team today and immediately afterward I'm leaving for an overnight jazz band trip. Once again, we'll have a STrange room (hotel room of four ST members) of Psycho, Drum Boy, Jester and Undecided. This, of course, means that we're going to make an ST symbol out of tape and put it up on our room's backwards window for all to see from the outside. Just another one of those games we play... In fact, there's another page I've been meaning to implement. One which describes a few of the activities we take part in as the ST, including Ultimate Frisbee and the anual Strange Days celebration. I'll have to put it in the planning section. Have a great weekend, everyone. This site definitely won't get another update until Monday the ninth. Honor the Strange Society! 2-5-98 8am Centeral The ST photo was a success! All ten of us made it, and we were able to convince the photographer to move back far enough to fit in all the extras we brought too. Our only concern is this... Dude's has never made it to the yearbook. We took a photo with Dude. Is the film condemned to be messed up? (Psycho knocks on wood) Yes, all ten members of the ST, including the elusive Dude and the graduated GOD. It was a great moment for the ST. We even took the time to set up an Email account for the wandering technician which has now been added to Strangesite. He wants to keep in touch with us, so who are we to say no? The pictures should get back to us in 4-6 weeks, and I'll inform you all the moment we have them. Meanwhile, my week is becoming even more busy, so I'm still uncertain when the next story will appear here, but I'll continue to amend this text file every weekday. Anyway, keep visiting Strangesite, apocalyptic fans. 2-4-98 8:20am Central Fortune City update: Accessablity has been improved significantly, so I'll have this entire site mirrored in the near future. More to come... 2-4-98 8am Central Today's the day for the professional ST photo! We're all ready, and curious as to exactly how much of the stuff we brought will be able to fit in the picture. I couldn't get ahold of Dude yesterday, so we'll just have to wait and see if he does, in fact, show up in time. GOD should still arrive as planned. Check back here for further updates. As for the Internet public, we don't know how long it will take for the pictures to get back to us, but I can assure you that it will be scanned in and uploaded ASAP, probably with a separate diagram explaining all the extra objects we'll have strewn about. Until then, if you want to see a picture of us, either access the ST Glossary from What's pages or follow the link from the FAQ page on mine. Today is a Wednesday. Wednesdays are either very good or very bad. There has never been a Wednesday which was neutral... 2-3-98 3pm Central For those of you who read the entire FAQ page and took note: Yes, today is my aniversary. The ST photo will be taken tomorrow as planned. We've organized for a lot of ST related "trinkets" to be strewn about the scene. It should be interesting, to say the least... I'm supposed to call Dude in less than an hour to make sure everything's settled with him. There's nothing more to report as of this moment. No word yet on my possible relocation to Fortune City either. 2-3-98 7:15am Central After a long, thorough conversation with Drum Boy's cat Sam, I have determined that she was hungry. As to whether or not she would like to be in the ST photo is yet unknown. Groundhog Day 2-2-98 8am Central Professional photo update: GOD will will joining us from VanderCook, and I talked to Dude for a half an hour yesterday, and he'll be joining us as well. And there was much rejoicing...! I finally have the animated construction image done. Kick*ss! I also made an animated GIF to link to the Mental Ward site, but haven't tested it out yet. More to come. Oh, nasty! 1-30-98 3pm Central Professional photo update: it has been scheduled for Wednesday the fourth, not Groundhog Day as previously speculated. Although this may make it more difficult for GOD to get here from VanderCook, it gives us more time to contact Dude about it. Sicko said he'd handle the kidnap-I mean, contacting of GOD. Anonymous, having escaped our guestbook, is currently trapped within the Mental Ward's. I have a date tonight and am eager to leave. Have a nice weekend, everybody! 1-30-98 8am Central Next week is going to be busy, so right now I'm working on putting up changes which are highly noticeable but don't take up too much of my time to create. For instance, the new image at the top of the page replaces the previous heading (which looked awkward on different browsers as it was) is a significant, kick-*ss addition. I also developed a new MIDI composition. It is currently titled "Nobody's Song" and is available in the multimedia section of my ST homepage. (I'll also get it to What for his page.) I'm also going to add some things to the FAQ page within the next hour. In case you're confused about what is going on in the guestbook, I'll explain briefly now. Nose-monsters are creatures of the Mental Ward stories by the Lord of Lemurs. His site is accessable through my links page. We've all been signing his guestbook quite often, and he sort of shared the chaos with Strangesite. Sorry if it's distracting, but I find it to be rather fun. 1-29-98 8am Central My next effort, aside from our professional photo which is scheduled for Groundhog Day, is probably going to be the inclusion of Bane World Saga, Book I with these pages. I have also been researching CGI script in order to create a Web version of a game the ST developed during our Indianapolis trip, ST Madlibs using the stories. We had a few good laughs with it, and if I create a web version, I believe it will bring about huge success and possibly a broader scope of visitors to Strangesite in general. I have not been updating my Forune City site in order to keep this one current instead. When it's ready (and when Fortune City increases its server speed) I'll be certain to let you all know. Keep refering to this page for the latest updates. 1-28-98 8am Central Following an effort to take a professional photo of the entire ST, the members have undergone efforts to try and locate the student who was the inspiration for the character "Dude" freshman year. To our knowledge, he has never been photographed and has rarely been seen the past three years. We have obtained his phone number and will continue to try and rediscover the wandering technician. The next Strange Story, tentatively named "The Strange Society Goes to the Mall" has been put on hold until further notice so I can finish my relocation of servers. Currently, my home in Fortune City is in the Roswell district on Prophecy Place. Links will be available when the transition is complete. The Tripod address will still hold Strangesite and whatever else is added to it, while my Fortune City account will be host to my ST pages as DPsycho. The revised stories are already there, but the links and graphics aren't completely revised as of yet. 1-27-98 I'm just about finished uploading and fixing everything at my new location in Fortune City. When it's ready, I'll change the links here and begin a massive expansion of my site. Keep checking this page for updates.