Rose-Colored Rants

Volume One:
  In Which Tuxy Raves at Things in General

Date: June 1, 2004

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Well, welcome to the new section of the Senshi
no Eisei - Rose-Colored Rants. No, it's not an
Utena reference, nor is it a Tuxedo Kamen reference.
This reference is strictly "Rocky Horror Picture
Show -" you know, "rose tint my world, keep me safe
from my trouble and pain" and all that bullcrap?
Yeah, I thought so.

Anyways, this is just an introductory rant to
see if I've got what it takes to get this new
section started and keep it going. In the near
future, you can expect diatribes on the following:

- Why Windows is a Piece of Crap
- Why Internet Explorer Should Burn
- People Who Use Broadband (And don't have Firewalls)
- Microsoft and how they Break Standards
- Spam
- Spyware
- The Bastards at CoolWebSearch
- Sleep and its Many Uses
- Web Sites that Suck
- The Sweet Bliss of Caffeine Addiction
- The Benefits of Linux over Windows
- Why NTFS is a Bad Filesystem
- Why 4Kids Needs to be Drawn and Quartered
- Why PuniPuni Poemi Broke my Mind's "What the _FUCK_" Meter
- Why the Republican Party Sucks
- Why the Democratic Party Sucks
- Why Existence in General Sucks
- Why Fanfiction.net _REALLY_ Sucks
- And Much, Much More that No One Really Gives a Damn About

However, as this is supposed to be a rant, rather than
an introduction piece, I'll shut up about that stuff and 
move on to more interesting stuff - namely why I am what I
am; a Bastard Operator from Hell a la Simon Travaglia.

It's quite simple, really. Ever since I was five, I
showed an unhealthy interest in computers. From the first
machine I ever used - an Apple II - to the beautiful homebrewed
server I have sitting in my room - Omi - I can't get enough
of them. I literally ate, slept, and breathed machinery.

Oh, it wasn't just computers in my youth. It was electronics
and machinery. I muddled around with gears and whatnot when I
wanted to, and playing with motors was indeed fun, but my calling
was to silicon and lines of code.

But it was eight years until I got a computer - a 33MHz Performa
467 that ran Mac OS 7.5. I drooled. It was my bread and butter
until I got to high school and played with Windows, which I
eventually learned better than the Mac OS (since my Mac was
constantly the subject of experiments left and right). Once I
played with Windows 95 and 98, I didn't go back to the Mac OS
for a while. I learned a bit about them.

That's when I got into the writing scene. I suppose I have my
queen-bitch-of-the-universe geography teacher for that - I
was in her class, and I determined that despite it being marked
as G/T (gifted/talented), I could sleep through it and still
ace it. She took her class to a Win98 computer lab once a
week, and when we went, I took the time to look around on the
school's Internet connection.

And what d'ya know? When I got home every day, there was the
Sailormoon dub on Cartoon Network to turn me into an anime
zombie (even if it was dubbed). One day, I started wondering
if people had done fiction about Sailormoon, and I used
Altavista (back when it was good) to look around...

And lo and behold, I found Shinji's Vault of Anime MSTings.

And damn, I was off and running.

Summer of 1999 was when I first MSTed. After that, it was
about two years before I started writing serious fanfiction,
and then I started more humorous stuff. This July is my 
fifth anniversary, and on the 17th, I'm announcing a big-ass
contest. Yeah, it's got a prize - a good one, if you're into
subtitled anime. Not a box or anything, but you'll see.

So here's the base of Rose-Colored Rants. Deal with it.

- J.R. Chiles II, "Tuxedo Jack"
June 3rd, 2004