Rescued From A Cult
My plans for blogging this week was to talk about my trip, but I had this dream last night. It was strange and disturbing enough that I had to share it with you…
I was driving around in a very nice SUV with all of the bells and whistles with Jhianna. She was driving, and I was in the passenger seat. While driving around, we were looking for a friend of hers that was missing, but the police would do nothing about it because she had not been missing for more than 48 hours.
We finally saw her friend walk into a weird looking building that was in a shopping mall’s parking lot. Jhianna turned to me and said, “Why is she going into that biker bar? I’m the biker! She doesn’t even like motorcycles.”
I turned back to Jhianna and said, “That’s not a biker bar. That’s a cult hangout for drugs, booze, wild sex, and all sorts of nastiness. It’s not some place you want your friend to be. Go park the car over there, and I’ll get your friend out of there. I know my way around.”
Jhianna looked at me doubtfully, but she had no other choice than to go with me if she wanted her friend of out there. I got out of the SUV, and walked up to the cult headquarters. There was a broom with a black handle hanging out next to the door as I approached. I decided that it would make a good weapon. As I picked up the broom, I could feel power coursing through my arm, and it wasn’t good power. About the time I decided to put the broom back down, the door to the place opened, and a bouncer walked out.
The bouncer was a woman, and she had muscles on top of muscles that flexed and rippled as she looked down on me. She opened her mouth to reveal rows of broken and missing teeth to sputter at me, “What ya doin’ wit’ dat broom? Put it down and git yer ass in da door. Yer lettin’ people git a good look at da place.”
I immediately threw down the broom that vanished with a puff of smoke, and headed inside. The lights were dim, there was a strange smell in the air that reminded me of the cheap incense that my dad used to use to cover the smell of his dope smoking, and there were short tables, small pillows, and throw rugs everywhere. There were no doors, but plenty of archways that were covered with curtains, beads, rugs, furs, and long strands of what I knew was human hair.
I knew that I was in a bad, bad place, so I kept my guard up. I also could sense that I was in the presence of evil, so I called upon God to guard me against any attacks. I actually felt His power flowing into my body to guard me against unexpected attack.
The bouncer turned to face me after leading me into the building, and handed me a scrap of white leather hanging from a long lock of hair, “Here put dis on yer neck. It’ll let people know dat yer one of us.”
As I reached for the leather, my spine started to tingle, so I looked a little closer at it. The power of God that was in me allowed me to see through the layers of leather, and embedded in the middle of the leather were three small, sixes made of silver. I knew that this was the Sign of the Beast, and that I must not take it. I pulled my hand back, squared off against the bouncer, and proclaimed in a steady, powerful voice, “Begone. Demon! Leave this woman, and return to your home at the side of Satan. The power of Christ compels you from this woman.”
The woman’s face contorted in such a way that I was starting to think that it was going to rip in half. I then sensed, but did not see, a demon flee the woman’s body and sink into the ground. The woman started to shrivel and age in front of my eyes. As she shrank, she looked up at me with gratitude in her eyes, “Thank you. Paralak has controlled me for centuries. I’m free now. Save everyone else.” As she finished her sentence, her body fell to dust into a small pile on the floor.
I felt sorry for the woman, but I was glad that I could help. I knew that I had to go through this building and free everyone, including Jhianna’s friend. I started moving from room to room, and I found huddled masses on the pillows smoking some strange substance from a pipe that billowed out purple and yellow smoke that was the same sickly colors of a week old bruise.
The people looked up at me with a combination of fear and hope. As I approached each person, I touched them. Sometimes it was on the shoulder, sometimes on the head, and sometimes it was outstretched fingertips. The touches that I shared with these people were sensual, arousing, and very personal. I knew that by touching them I was exposing myself to the evil that was contained within them, but I had to take that risk in order to have a chance of freeing them.
With each touch, I willed the Power of God into their bodies. After a few moments, the people would cough up a nasty cloud of black smoke that would scream at me before raging away through the walls. The people would instantly become more and more healthy and vibrant. They would look up at me speechless while I pointed at the exit and told them, “Leave now, and start a new life in the name of God. You are free of the Bonds of Evil.”
As I freed the people, I moved through the building looking for Jhianna’s friend. I finally came across two women at the top of a narrow set of stairs. They beckoned me over and told me that the one that I was looking for was being held at the bottom of the stairs. I willed the Power of God into the woman to set them free, and headed down the stairs.
I was starting to get tired. As a conduit for God, I was expending quite a bit of energy. It wasn’t my power setting these people free, but it was coursing through me. Just as a river erodes the banks around it, the flow of power through my body was eroding my energy reserves. I took a deep breath as I reached the bottom of the stairs and readied myself for what I was about to face.
There was a small room at the bottom of the stairs that contained the Jhianna’s friend in the middle of a copper pentagram that had been inlaid in the middle of the room. I didn’t know what purpose the pentagram was going to be used for, but I immediately snuffed the candles around the pentagram to break its power, and moved into it to rescue her. When the candles were snuffed, Jhianna’s friend looked up at me.
This was the first good look that I had gotten of her. She was a small woman with a very slight build. Her features were very fine, beautiful, and precise. There was a beauty in her face that I have rarely seen in real life. The odd thing about her was that her features were very Scandinavian, but her skin was very dark and sultry. I felt an immediate sexual attraction to her, but I didn’t have time for that. I could feel the demon rising up from below in response to my breaking of his circle.
I picked the small woman up in one arm, and ran out of the building. I had already freed everyone from the building, and now I had to escape with the main purpose of my entrance into the building. I managed to run into the parking lot, and found a large, black, Ford SUV bearing down on me. I couldn’t get out of the way, so I threw Jhianna’s friend to the side in an effort to save her. Right before the SUV hit me, I summoned the last of the power that I had and threw my shoulder into the SUV. It worked. The SUV buckled around me, and I managed to step back unhurt. The strange thing was that I didn’t hear crunching metal, shattering glass, or the screeching of tires. It was all totally silent, and I’m not sure why.
The driver of the SUV leaped from the car, and ran around to face me down. I looked up at him, and it was Edward Hermann! However, in my dream, he was the leader of the cult. Maybe this is a Lost Boys flashback from my teenage years, but I’m not sure. All I know is that I faced him down, and yelled at him, “Your cult is destroyed, and you’re next!”
Fear filled his eyes, and he fled. I’m not talking about running away on foot, or driving away. He simply took to the skies without any wings, and quickly became a dark speck in the sky. As he retreated, I wondered if I was going to have to face him again in the future.
I looked around and found Jhianna had loaded her friend into the cargo area of the strange SUV that she had been driving at the start of the dream. I also noticed that my two dogs were jumping into the back of the SUV as well, and there was something powerful about them. They were guarding this poor woman’s soul from being stolen by demons.
I decided that we should clear out of the area, so I jumped into the SUV, and Jhianna started driving away through a gentle rain that seemed to be coming into the area to physically cleanse the area. It was pure, sweet, warm, and loving. I knew that God had sent the rain to finish what I had started.
This is about the time that I woke up to the sound of rain outside my Mom and Step-dad’s house. What a dream. I had a fairly massive headache, and I was tired even though I had slept for a good 10 hours. I’ll be thinking about this one for a while, that’s for sure.
Vacation
I’m heading out of town tomorrow morning, and I’ll be gone for over a week. I’m not sure if I’ll be posting during the week. I may try to post from time-to-time, but no guarantees on the matter. My plans are to leave tomorrow around 9:30ish for Stinnett, TX where my great aunt and uncle live. My other great aunt and uncle live near Houston, TX, and they are going to be in Stinnett for a family get-together. It’s just good timing that I’ll be in town. Both great uncles are my grandfather’s brothers. I see the family in Stinnett every year or two as I pass through, but I’ve not seen the relatives from Houston since my grandfather’s funeral in 2002. It’s been 5 years, which is way too long. I’m really looking forward to seeing them, but I’m only going to be there for Saturday afternoon through Sunday morning. I wish I could stay longer, but that just won’t happen.
I have to get on the road Sunday morning to head from Stinnett to Von Ormy, TX to see my mother and step-father. They just got back off of vacation, so they won’t be able to take any time off while I’m in town, but that’s ok. I’ll still get to visit with them for a few days during the mornings and evenings. Things will be good, and I’m going to enjoy my time with them.
On Wednesday, I’ll be leaving Von Ormy late morning to head to Midland, TX, which is my hometown. While there I’ll be seeing my grandmother, father, step-mother, two little brothers, my nieces, and a a handful of friends. I’m really looking forward to seeing everyone. On Saturday, there is an SCA event that I’m going to be attending. It’s been forever since I’ve done anything in the SCA, and I hope that my skills aren’t too rusty when it comes to fighting. Everyone else has been training, fighting in tournaments, and honing their skills while I’ve been sitting on my ass doing nothing. I’m sure that I’m going to get thumped, but I’m still going to enjoy it.
When Sunday morning rolls around, I’ll be back on the road to head back home. It’s going to be a long day of driving to get back home, but I’ve done it before. I’ll be able to do it again.
I’ll have my laptop with me, so I’ll be doing some writing while I’m on the road. If I don’t post while I’m on vacation, you’ll have a long post from me on May 7th when I return.
Shoveling Snow
I normally beg or bribe my neighbors to dig me out of the snow when it hits. Don’t worry, I plan on getting a snow blower some time this summer, so that I can fend for myself. The problem with this latest snow storm is that my neighbor with the large tractor hauled it off last week. I saw him driving down the road with it on a trailer, so I assume he was taking it in for repairs or something. I’m not sure, but he doesn’t have the tractor right now. My other neighbor with the smaller tractor with a snow blower is out of town right now, so he can’t come to my rescue either.
That means that I’m stuck shoveling snow in order to get Kiara’s car out of the garage in time for her cat show this weekend. My car (through a series of unfortunate decisions) is out of the garage, though. I did an hour of shoveling last night, and I managed to get a 10 foot wide, and 4 foot long channel started through the snow bank. The snow is about 2 feet high. Do the math and you’ll determine that I moved 80 cubic feet of snow in about an hour. That actually sounds kind of impressive. The downside to all of this is that I’m only about a third of the way through the snow bank.
It’s really warm today (current 63 degrees F), so I’m hoping that a good portion of the snow has melted off. Of course, it’s really heavy snow, and when it melts, it just gets heavier. I think it may be about the same amount of work to shovel partially melted snow as it is to shovel fresh snow. The volume of the snow may go down, but the density increases. All-in-all, it’s about the same amount of lifting effort once you’re done.
Maybe my out-of-town-neighbor will return sometime today, see our driveway, and be a nice enough fella to snow blow it before we get home. He’s done this in the past, and I’ve always appreciated it. I’ll appreciate it this time, if it happens.
Here’s to hoping that I don’t have to spend another two hours digging through the snow!
Trapped In The House
I really thought that my days of being trapped in the house were over until at least the end of October or mid-November. Looks likes that’s not the case. I have about 18 inches of snow in my driveway, and about three feet of snow in the road between me and freedom. We’ve been put on the list of roads to be cleared, but since we’re a cul-de-sac, we get the bottom priority. It’s supposed to be really warm the rest of the week, but I doubt that it will be warm enough to melt off the accumulated snow. I can only hope that one of my neighbors with a tractor, or the county gets by to dig us out sometime soon.
I really can’t wait to get to Texas next week while on vacation because I’m pretty sure that it won’t be snowing in April in San Antonio! If it does, I’m going to keep driving south until I reach the equator. I’m tired of this shit!
Nasty Storm
We had a nasty storm roll in last night. I really, really, really, really thought that we were done with this crap. Snow was bad enough that they have shut down the Interstate. I was actually stupid enough to try to get to work this morning, but they had shut down the roads already. I turned around to come home, but I didn’t make it back home. I got about half a mile from the house when I got stuck. Well, not really stuck, but I couldn’t make any more forward progress. I was about to give up when a nice young man came by in a large Jeep, and asked if I was going to make it. I told him that I wasn’t going to, and he offered me a ride home. I managed to get my car pulled over and out of the way, and this young man took me home.
I’ve tried to work from home, but I’ve failed miserably. We’ve had power failures here at the house, and my UPSs are shot. We’ve also had power failures at the office. Basically, if I’m online, then the office isn’t. If the office is online, then I’m not.
I think I’ve pretty resigned myself to doing documentation today, and probably tomorrow. It all depends on when the storm blows over…
SUV/Truck Rental
I’m planning a trip back home to Texas next week, and I wanted to rent an SUV or truck for the trip. The reason I wanted this type of vehicle is that I planned on renting a U-Haul trailer while in Texas to bring back from furniture that my grandmother wants me to have. I called every car rental place that I could think of (6 total) to ask about towing a trailer.
All but one told me that I could not do that. One place told me “not legally.” I found the “not legally” answer to be quite amusing. I’m not going to risk a very large lawsuit or traffic ticket by renting a vehicle and using it in a “not legal” manner.
We’ve been lining up the purchase of a ’93 Chevy Suburban, and I called the guy about it Friday to see if I can get my hands on it early this week. If I do manage to get the vehicle, I still need to get insurance, the title transfered, and tags for the Suburban. I hope to get that done this week, but we’ll see how it goes.
If all of my plans fall through, then I guess the furniture will have to wait until some other time when I can fly down for a long weekend, rent a U-Haul truck, and get the furniture back home.
Slave Mentality
While I was leaving the office yesterday evening, I happened to reach the door to the elevator lobby about 4 steps behind one of the people that clean the office. He was coming from the other direction, and had already opened the door when I rounded to corner to head to the door. I stopped to let him go through the door first since I was obviously behind him, and I motioned to the door with an open palm to indicate to him that he could go ahead of me. He looked down at the floor and mumbled in broken English, “No. You go. You here first.”
I was shocked that someone in this country, and in these times, could so totally defer to another person without one of them obviously holding a higher station in life (such as a military rank, or a CEO of a company, or a Senator/Representative, or the President, or something like that.) I wasn’t even to the door first. He was. I figured that if he opened the door before I came into view that I should at least be polite enough to allow him to go through the door that he opened.
I’m just a software engineer. I’m proud of what I have accomplished, and where I’m at in life, but that does not make be inherently better than the man that empties the trash in my office. There is no reason for them to defer to me in such a way, and I wish that they would look me in the eye, smile, and say (as best they can), “After you.”
Maybe their boss or manager has told them that they are not to fraternize with the people that work in the offices that they clean. I hope that’s not the case as I feel that everyone should treat (and be treated by) everyone as equals. We’re all human, after all.
While thinking about this on the way home from work, I realized that every single person that works for the building is like that. They hardly look at me, let alone make eye contact. They never talk to me even though I greet them first. It really makes me feel sorry for them that they are in a situation where they seem to be afraid of being fired for being nice to the people around them.
There is one exception. I don’t know his name, but I see one of the maintenance workers around all the time, and he’s very friendly and open. He always takes a moment or two to comment on the weather, ask how I’m doing, tell me to have a good weekend, and such like that. Little pleasantries that grease the wheels of human interaction. It’s really nothing special, but I like that kind of interaction with strangers. It’s not probing, in-depth, hard-hitting, or invasive. It’s just being friendly, and we need more of this in the world.
Slavery may be illegal, but the way some employers treat their employees, it is most certainly not dead.
I Know It’s Broken
We have a system here at work that saves data in a combination of a relational database, and some XML files. There are certain characters that SQL does not like, and there are certain characters that XML does not like either. Sure, you can make them like the characters, but you have to jump through some minor hoops for SQL, and some pretty major hoops for XML.
To solve the problem, we have told our users (who are trained, fairly intelligence, and mostly responsible) to never use these certain characters. Well, they’ve been trying to use those characters, and it’s hosing things up. We’ve retrained them over the past week, but they still keep doing.
Now I have one more thing on my plate: Add code to prevent them from submitting data with those characters. I’m getting a list of invalid characters from a manager, so that I can start coding. In the meantime, one my users decided on his own to go ahead and “test” the system by submitting a ton of these invalid characters to the system to see what would break. Yeah. Well…. he broke the system in some pretty hairy (and somewhat major) ways with his “testing” of known broken code.
He asked me to remove the bad data from the database and the XML. I looked at him like he was stupid (which he is proving to be), and he interpreted that as me trying to figure out how to fix the problem. I knew how to fix the problem, but I mainly contemplating how someone could be so fucking stupid.
I guess I need to work on my thousand yard stare some more.
First Ultrasound
We had our first ultrasound today for our baby. We were a bit off on the length of the pregnancy. We thought Kiara was 10 weeks along, when she is really only 8 weeks along. The baby is 20mm is length. That just seems so tiny for something that is going to grow up to be a full-grown adult. The changes are coming (for Kiara, my life, our family, and things in general.) They became more real today when we saw the baby in Kiara. The neatest thing was that you could see the heart beating even though it’s so tiny. That’s just amazing!!! We also heard the heart beat of the baby, and it was just amazing. 
The heart was beating at 162 beats per minute. Kiara thought that was awful fast, but I know from working with small animals that the smaller something is, the faster its heart beats. I don’t know why that happens, but I know that is the general rule (there are exceptions, like most reptiles [which our baby is not one of!])
We’re having another ultrasound in about a month to check for health issues, and then another at the 18-ish week mark to check development. We’re also going to try to find out the sex of the baby at the 18th week, so that we can start negotiating the name. That should prove interesting.
PS: The image is clickable for a larger version.
Tech Dream
This is one of the most vivid dreams that I’ve had in a long time. I know that I can’t do it justice here, but I’m going to try.
I found myself working for a large tech company. Something similar to Agilent where the primary products are computer chips, testing equipment, motherboards, and stuff like that. I was doing some web development for the corporate site, but it was boring stuff. It was just plain HTML and images. No PHP. No Perl. No Ajax. No JavaScript. Nothing like that. No challenge at all.
I had my annual review with my boss, Vicki, and I implored her to let me use more advanced technology on the web site to make it more dynamic, usable, and interesting. She denied my requests, so I was stuck doing plain old HTML. She noticed that I was obviously unhappy with the situation, but I told her that I would continue to do good work for her. Vicki, who oddly enough was a midget, understood, and promised that she would see what she would do to help me out.
A few weeks later (and I’ve never had WEEKS pass in a dream before) another manager by the name of Sarah waddled up to me to talk to me. The reason I say waddled was that she was also a midget, but she had difficulty walking, so she would drop on her butt, split her legs like a gymnast, and waddle along on her ass as she moved along. It was quite strange.
Sarah told me that she thought she had the perfect job for me in her department. She said that she had a father/son pair on her team that were trying to cobble together a web application for another team, but they were having a hard time doing it. She asked me if I would be interested in helping her out on a full-time basis.
Of course, I hopped on this right away. She told me that she had expected my answer, and had already worked things out with Vicki. She lead me to where her team sat, to introduce me to the team. The office space was in the back of the building, and was filled with wire cages, metal shelves, and all sort of junk lying around. It was total chaos, but I was intrigued because the “junk” was all sorts of techno gadgets that I had never seen before.
As she was leading me back to the team, she stopped by this huge stack of books, and told me that I would need to learn some new stuff to work in her department. I told her that it wasn’t a problem. I always enjoy learning new stuff. She told me to grab a copy of each book from the various stacks. There were seven stacks in all, and they all had the Novell symbol on the cover. I’ve never gotten along well with Novell software, so this made me a little nervous. As I picked up each book, I looked at the cover. They were things like Novell Linux 0.9, Novell PHP 2.1, Novell Perl 3.2, Novell HTML 2.02, Novell Photoshop 3.14, Novell JavaScript 1.2, and Novell Apache 1.3.2.
I was flabbergasted at how outdated all of this technology was! I hoped that the numbers were Novell numbers, and not actual version numbers of the software. I started skimming the books (e.g.: Like Johnny-5 in Short Circuit) and I quickly discovered that these were the real version numbers of the software. I was being taken backwards in technology by more than a decade!!! I was dismayed, but I decided to give it the “old college try.”
Sarah lead me to my desk, which was a small metal affair just large enough for my dumb terminal, keyboard, mouse, and my seven heavy books. As soon as I put my books down, I heard a cheer behind me, “He’s here! Yay! He’s going to help us, Dad!”
I turned around to face two men. One was in his mid-fifties, going gray, and had a decent-sized gut that was barely restrained by a thin, brown, leather belt. A photocopy of him, although 30 years younger (and without the gut) stood next to him. They were smiling brightly at me. The younger one turned to the older one and said, “See. I told you that Sarah would come through and get us the best web developer this company has to offer.”
I was a bit surprised at that statement, but I put a smile on my face before stepping forward to introduce myself. Before I could reach the men to shake their hands and learn their names, a phone rang. It was coming from my desk, but I couldn’t recall there being a phone on my desk. I turned back to my desk to discover a small silver and dark blue phone on my desk. It looked very familiar. That’s when I realized that it was the on-call phone from my current (real life current, that is) job! It was ringing, and that meant that I needed to answer it ASAP because I was on call!
That’s when I snapped out of the dream to realize that the phone really was ringing. I managed to fumble for the phone and answer it before it went to voicemail. I had work to do, but somehow, after finishing the work, I managed to remember enough of the dream to write it up.
