About Me
Steven Li, Steven Lee, Stephen Lee, Jet Li, Steven, Steve, Chu, Donald, liebchen, kid, I’ve been called a variety of things over the last sixteen years. Born on January 20, I’m used to being older than people in my class, which is one of the only advantages I have against them considering that I’m shorter than average and often act like a shy Asian boy.

You’d best be good at relating to me or starting up conversation when we meet, because I’m sure as hell not going to try. I’m the epitome of a socially lazy person; I like having conversation and socializing, but a constant need to understand what the other person is feeling and how my decisions will affect them usually renders my speech slow and boring.

There are exceptions: when I’ve known someone for a while, I understand their mind better, and my reaction time improves. When I connect with someone regarding something, I know that they’ll understand what I say, which removes that worry and improves reaction time. When I’m online, the slow typers of the world have made it socially accepted not to be offended if replies take more than ten seconds to be sent, which makes reaction time irrelvant.

Obviously, the last choice is the one that I prefer, and as such I spend most of my time on the computer. I can be found with the AIM alias SarcasticSteven, though alternatively you can email me at SarcasticEccentric[a-t]Gmail[dot]com. I’m always up for a conversation, doubly so if it’s about something I’m interested in. This includes but is not limited to anime and manga (even shoujo is fine by me), programming (dabbled in Java, Python, Netlogo and Scheme), video games, roleplaying games, and CTY. You can easily shut me off by talking about clothes, things that are more likely to hurt a relationship than strengthen it (politics, religion, news events), and in general not listening or respecting what I say.

So watch your mouth, and my sarcasm won’t bite back too hard. When you talk to me, just remember two things.

• If you say something funny, I’m probably going to add it to my collection of crazy conversations. Consider it an honor, but one that can be voided if you tell me to do so. The collection has since fallen into decay, but one of these days I’ll get off my ass and stock it. You’ve been warned.
• Deep down inside, I’m a prude, moral, kind person. In a strange twist, I enjoy acting the complete opposite. This means that sometimes during our conversations I may be sexually explicit, immoral, sadistic and cruel. It’s all dreadfully fun, but remember that it’s all superficial. I will never act upon the questionable activities I describe to you, so don’t order a special jacket for me.

About the Site (history)
The Domain of Steven came out of the womb of Xanga. However, it resented its Asian heritage and community, and in order to have a host that let it more easily customize its code, it moved to Blogspot. However, this proved to be too hard a task for poor poor Steven, and so he joined the Deadjournal community to seek solace with the many friends he had there. This was its abode for quite some time, eventually mating and having a child, which it sold to Freewebs for a Yodel and a quick grope.

It eventually grew discontent, however, and started looking for new real estate. There were rumors of a house being constructed at Zer0host, but the foundation collapsed and smashed into the five kegs of vodka that was being used to keep the construction workers in good shape. One of the shards of glass impaled a construction worker smoking a cigarette, which dropped and lit the nicely-formed pool of alcohol. The following forest fire greatly devalued the property, considering tree ash wasn’t in style that year, and was abandoned following the immolation of all the construction workers.

It then considered refurbishing its hold home at Blogspot, and quickly went on a trip to survey the site. However, because the tortured hamsters that were left there to die had mutated into elephant-sized behemoths, it didn’t get a warm welcome and had to leave as quickly as it came.

It overestimated its running ability and underestimated the elehamsters, and the following scene became the inspiration for Monty Python’s Black Knight skit. As the limbless being was used in a game of Hot Potato, a demon called Lifelesspeople made it a Faustian deal, offering 500 megs of webspace and 20 gigs of bandwidth along with a bagful of MySQL databases, email accounts, FTP accounts, Cpanel access and various PHP and Perl scripts. All this was in exchange for a piece of its soul. It was very hesitant about giving up its soul, so instead it gave away a portion of its life; it agreed that instead of spending time doing good deeds and torturing hamsters (Lifelesspeople liked furry rodents), it would post on its forums fifty-five times in an effort to waste away its life on meaningless forums.

With the luck of Lifelesspeople on its side, it married the temptress called Movable Type. It enjoyed the nonstop raunchy sex, but it eventually found a number of things missing from its wife, and had an affair with WordPress, eventually stabbing its wife after a night of steamy sex and marrying its mistress soon after.

Unbeknownst to them but knownst to us, the deal with Lifelesspeople was constantly changing. Something to do with the erasable ink that made up the terms of the agreement, and the little clause at the end stating, “I own you.” Bad news for illiterate Steven. Radical changes took place over time regarding the deal, where the amount of webspace and bandwidth fluctuated and the amount of sacrifices changed. Instead of a set number of posts, each post would be given a certain number of points based on how long it was, and there was a point quota each month. Not a problem for Steven, considering he had Internet access at his workplace, essentially giving him eight hours of forum browsing every day. As that access was cut short when the summer ended, the deal changed again, requiring only a fourth of the points for a fourth of the space. Score. The deal eventually changed to a bit more than a fourth of the points, but now half the space originally given (that’s twice the previous amount, if you haven’t been keeping track), though bandwidth was still smaller. Not like we got many visitors anyway.

Even though a lot less soul was sucked away because of the deal, the real estate was still bland. Perhaps living on the 99th floor of a building was chic at one time, but as Steven and his wife WordPress didn’t appreciate the suicide potential, they started looking for a new home. Even though prime real estate was being doled out for less than Steven paid for his lunch every day, the hassle of insecurity involved in trading with sewer rats in an orbiting space station in the path of a meteor the size of Texas made him unwilling to take the step. However, to promote more soul donations, any points earned past the quota set by Lifelesspeople would be turned into a “special” kind of point. It couldn’t be used for next month’s quota, but it was accepted as a kind of currency. Initially spurred on by the mastermind himself, domains would be auctioned off once in a while. After being woefully outbid the first few auctions, Steven got himself into an auction after all the power players had been placated with their own domains. He cast down a powerful bid, so much of an increase on the previous bid that nobody else dared to outbid him. It didn’t hurt that he had slit a few throats and right before bidding, deafened everyone but the auctioneer. Steven then walked up past the confused faces and claimed his prize. Scotty beamed up his house once the paperwork was signed, giving him rights to AlliterationAbound boulevard, in the city of .com. It’s only after a year passes that Steven will have to fight the local hamster gang for control of his turf.

About This Site (current state)
This site is being powered by WordPress, hosted by Lifelesspeople, has a photo gallery called Coppermine, and is enhanced by a multitude of plugins, hacks, and stylesheets.

• This site uses the Human Condition stylesheet, created by Ian Main, which is made for the default WordPress template.
• Content with show/hide javascript for “more”: This alters the inherent “more” feature to not only allow the original type of viewing the rest, but expanding the post on the same page. I did this in Movable Type, but the same problem occurs: I’m unable to make multiple cuts of this type.
• Hide/Cut Post Text: This is the alternative to the previous plugin. It’s a variation of the “more” feature, and though it doesn’t have the same javascript expansion effect (you travel to a new page with this one), it allows for multiple cuts in different places, not necessarily at the end of the post. It also allows me to rename the cut links, and more some odd reason I can make text visible in the index entry or the expanded entry and not the other, or neither.
• Dunstan’s Time of Day: Instead of displaying a time, this plugin displays a message like “early afternoon”, “late at night”, or “the wee hours”. Amusing.
• Witty Text: This displays a random line from a specified text file. After much arduous work, I managed to gather select quotes from all the CTY Canon songs, totaling 132 lines altogether, so there’ll be fresh nostalgia every time you visit. Note that you don’t have to refresh the page; it’s a php script that’ll display a new quote even if you just go forward and backwards.
• Get Custom Field Values: You’re able to create custom fields and values with each post, but it initially wasn’t visible on the post. I honestly don’t know how you were supposed to make it visible, but its intention was to have an updatable field other than the ones given. This plugin allows you to display those fields in your posts, with a good degree of customizability to boot. I’ve configured it so that there are three custom fields for each post: mood, listening to, and comment replies. They were things I was dearly missing, and it only took a small amount of effort to get it running. I’ve since removed the “mood” custom field.
• Nice Titles: This converts all “title” attributes to “nicetitle” attributes, which displays the full text and link over a semi-transparent .png file. I didn’t like that Firefox wouldn’t display the whole text, and it’s a nice bonus that it puts it in such an aesthetically pleasing format with a visible link at the bottom (for those who don’t like their status bar). This was implemented to ease reading my replies to comments on my entries.
• Acronym Replacer: This lets you mouseover predefined acronyms so that you know what the fuck I’m talking about. Some might be obvious, like AOL, but others like CAD or RTS (yes, even among gamers) are less widely known.

A few notes about the entries that you’ll see here:

• I have detailed the method I use to handle replies to comments I receive, if you’re interested in finding out.
• I encourage comments, even if it’s just to say hi. If you’re just going to say hi, though, I’ll ask that you don’t comment on an emotional post. I look forward to every comment, and a comment on an emotional post gets me exceptionally anxious, so to let me down is to wound me. Ouchie.
• Unless something bizarre sends hundreds of commenters my way, I’ll respond to each one in the order received. *cue waiting music* Check the bottom of each post (main page or individual) once I’ve gotten around to replying.
• Because this is a journal that anyone can read doesn’t mean it’s a journal everyone will be able to understand. When I talk about a touchy matter regarding specific people, I’ll be highly ungrammatical in my use of pronouns, frequent the thesaurus, make obscure references that promote the use of Google, and in general be as shady as possible. This method of being cryptic is not only fun to devise, but almost ensures that unless you already know or I want you to know, you’re not going to know. Just remember: the harder it is to figure out, the greater the pleasure once you solve it. This journal rewards those who are perceptive, patient, and thorough. I trust that once you figure something out, you’ll tell me. It makes me oh so happy to know that my puzzles gave someone enjoyment.