RSS Feeds: Done With Categorization
I just finished categorizing all of my past posts that had already existed. I know that some of the older posts (but not all of them) showed up in my RSS reader, but I’m really not sure why. I’m sorry if you use an RSS reader for my blog. I didn’t mean to flood your RSS reader.
Things should return to normal now….
PS: I may sneak an extra post in here and there during this month since I’ve got so many things going on right now.
wahine
Random word list:
flavanilin
night-prowling
forepad
trasy
wahine
Word chosen: wahine
Definition: (in Hawaii and Polynesia) a girl or young woman.
Free association word list:
hula skirt
luau
food
roast pig
pineapple
fruit
fruit cake
breaking a tooth
dentist
oral surgery
implants
bone graft
not fun
expensive
broke
paycheck
income
401k
retirement
old age
endless vacation
RV
road trips
travel
good times
summer vacation
Word chosen: Road Trips
Writing:
When I was a kid I spent most summers with my paternal grandparents. There were some exceptions, but not many. During these summer vacations, my grandparents and I would pile into the RV of the year*. Our destination was always Colorado. I’m not sure why.
We’d trundle across New Mexico heading for different parts of Colorado. We’d head to Colorado Springs, Durango, Pueblo, and various scenic parts of the state. The trip there would invariably take a full week. We’d stop at every little cafe, historical marker, scenic outlook, and tourist trap. Every. Single. Year. It got to the point where I would know what historical marker we were at without even getting out to look at it.
Thinking back on it, I’m sure that my grandfather was just looking for a chance to get out and stretch his legs. He had to sit in the driver’s seat the entire time while I was free to romp and play in the back of the RV. I’d spend most of the time reading books, or coming up with some great** D&D adventure.
After creeping across New Mexico, we’d finally reach our destination. We’d spend about a week there. I always had a blast hiking, fishing, rafting, walking the small towns, and just hanging out with my grandparents. It’s one of the more innocent times of my life, and I really miss it quite a bit. I can sometimes recapture those moments in memories, but they’re distant and fading.
Maybe with the coming of my son in less than three weeks, I’ll be able to re-experience those wonderful times through his eyes. Everyone seems to want to live vicariously through their single friends that come home with a different hottie every night, but those dreams are behind me. I no longer envy those friends, but I don’t find them pathetic either. They are what they are.
I now look forward to the days where I can recapture a little innocence, wonderment, and excitement at “the new stuff” (even if it’s old to me) through the life of my son. Most people ask me if I’m nervous, anxious, scared, or frightened at the prospect of having a child. I do have a little of that, but it is background noise compared to the things that I’m looking forward to with excitement, eagerness, and longing.
* – My grandfather always seemed to find something newer and better every spring, and he would trade in the old RV for a new one.
** – The word “great” is relative. I’m very sure that my first hundred attempts at creating a D&D adventure were anything other than “great” by any standard. They seemed great to me though. I was always known as the guy that could use the widest variety of creatures in a single dungeon. Of course, there was no logical explanation for the zoo-like collection of critters, but my players didn’t care because even the “wild dogs” that were roaming a 10×10 room on the 4th level of the dungeon came with at least 2,000 GP worth of treasure. Yeah. I know. Pathetic. Don’t scoff. I was in elementary school, ok?
Officiumocopiaphilia
I don’t know what it is about office supplies, but when I walk by them in the store I have the urge to buy some. It’s an addiction, I swear. I’m not entirely sure what’s wrong with me. I have plenty of paper, pens, paper clips, rubber bands, mechanical pencils, pencil lead, erasers, post-it notes, batteries, blank CDs, staples, and all of the other cruft that you find in the office.
Heck, when I start a new job, one of the things that I look forward to most is stocking up my desk with office supplies. It’s a great feeling. It’s like shopping for all new stuff without spending a dime. At a past job, I remember that they gave me a small plastic trash can that was brand new. Then they walked me to this fairly large room with TONS of office supplies in it. The lady told me that she needed to run talk to someone real quick, and she would be back in a few minutes. She told me to help myself to what I needed to do my job. Heheh.. Her mistake. I must have filled, compress, and refilled that trash can twice with stuff. I made sure to leave at least one of each thing in the supply room for other people, but I had at least a two year supply of office supplies in that trash can. Muahahaha… (and the job almost lasted that long too!)
Most kids would look forward to school for the new clothes. Many of the kids in my schools would only get new clothes at the start of school, maybe Christmas, and on the rare birthday. The clothes were a treat for them. Not me. I loved my clothes. I rarely went in on the latest fashions no matter how hard my grandmother would tell me, “But they are all wearing it!” I always asked her who “they” were. She never had an answer for me, so she dropped it. I suppose that if I had friends in school, she could have used them as an example, but that wasn’t the case.
I also looked forward to school for the new stuff: school supplies!!!
Yep. I made sure that every pen, pencil, scrap of notebook paper, spiral notebook, backpack, and other supplies would vanish about two weeks before school started. I never threw it out (unless it was truly ready to go) since I loathed to throw out any office supply. I would stash it away somewhere until we went shopping for school supplies. I would load up on all sorts of goodies. I’m pretty sure I peed a few drops each time my grandmother told me that it was time to go shopping for school supplies.
One of the main schwag items at OSCON was pens. I picked them up all over the place, but never more than one of each kind. I gave a few away, but I still have 10 of them left. Sounds like a small haul, but I’m happy to have each one even though I may never use any of them.
I wondered if there’s a named disorder out there that I have? I did a Google search for “office supply fetish” and found over 2 million links. Some good stuff in there, but no diagnosis yet. I did find Office Freaks that looks like a cool site.
After using this English to Latin translator for a short bit, I finally came up with: officiumocopiaphilia. Yep. I have officiumocopiaphilia. I’m a officiumocopiaphile. I am officiumocopiaphilic.
Try dropping that word on your doctor (or better yet, psychiatrist!) next time you see them.
Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!
It started snowing here a little Saturday night, and turned into a pretty good snow storm by the time Sunday morning rolled around. Kiara had gone into town early Sunday morning, and I stayed at home in dismay over the weather. I decided that it was time to put the snow blower together. I cracked open the box, drug it out from the box, and grabbed the manual. There were two fairly thick manuals in the bag, and I was worried that it would be Spring thaw before I would have it together. I was in luck. One book was how to take the engine apart, and most of the other one was maintenance and repair. The assembly instructions were about 2 1/2 pages long (with some diagrams), and the entire assembly time was about five minutes.
It took me another 10 to adjust the skid plates to a higher setting, so that I could do the gravel road without sucking up gravel, mud, and pebbles. It took me this long because I discovered that I didn’t have a set of standard sized sockets. I had metric, but not standard. I did have a full set of standard sized wrenches, though, so that got me through. My next tool purchase will be a set of Craftsman standard sockets from Sears. I just gotta get by there to make that purchase.
We had two gas cans at home (a 1 gallon and a 5 gallon) but both were empty. I called Kiara and asked her to buy a two gallon or five gallon tank and put at least two gallons of gas in it. She managed to get close to home shortly after noon. The turn-off on our road is a slight up hill ascent, and it was icy. The problem is that after the turn, you don’t have enough momentum to carry you over the icy hill. Kiara got stuck there, so I threw on my coat, and walked down the road to meet her. I met her about halfway, and carried the gas can the rest of the way.
I got the snow blower gassed up, and then showed Kiara how to operate it. The next step was to clear off our 2200 sq. ft. driveway of the 4-24 inches of snow that had gathered or drifted in the driveway. I wasn’t looking forward to the effort, but within a minute or two of doing it, I was having fun! Yep. Me. Having fun in snow. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
The snow blower has 6 forward gears, and 2 reverse gears. In anything higher than 3rd gear, the blower will actually pop a wheelie if you gas it hard. Sweet! I managed to clear the entire driveway (and a little extra around the Suburban) in 24 minutes. Not 23 minutes. Not 25 minutes. Yes. I timed it. I had to know for sure. That’s a vast improvement over the 6+ hours it took me last winter to dig out a single car width path in the snow.
The afternoon brought warmer weather, and sunlight. We waited until just before the sun went down to go get Kiara’s car from the bottom of the hill. We hopped in the Suburban, and I kicked in the four wheel drive. I drove down to her car, and waited to see if she could make it. She managed to get to the house, and I followed along. I kept a good distance between us, and on the way back to the house, I made sure to drive through the deepest parts of the snow that were on the road to see how the suburban would handle it. I manged to make it through some two foot deep drifts and the Suburban didn’t even flinch at it. Very nice!
I think that we’re finally prepared for the snow this year. So long as we don’t get another blizzard following another blizzard following another blizzard (x7), we should be in good shape. It’s nice to know that we’ll be able to make out of the snow in inclement conditions, but I’m still not going to beg for massive amounts of snow. I like a challenge, but not one that could potentially trap me in my house for days on end.
Season Premiers, Part 1
It’s season premier time! Here are my thoughts on the shows that I watched last night.
Just finished watching Chuck. It was a pretty good show. Neat premise, decent actors, good action, and funny comedy. The pilot was a good one, and I’ll continue to watch it for at least a few more episodes to make sure that it’s worthwhile. Jayne from Firefly/Serenity is in the series! I totally didn’t recognize him until near the end of the episode. I think it’ll be fun to see what kind of NSA agent he plays. Yes, the hot CIA agent is fun to look at, so that doesn’t hurt things. I just wish I knew why here eye-teeth were so friggin’ huge. Every time she smiles, it scares me a little inside. I can get over that though. The one big gaff was that Chuck left Stanford five years ago, and he was talking about his old friend Bryce. While talking about Bryce he mentioned that he remembered working with Bryce to write Zork on a TRS-80 while at Stanford. Ummm… Guys? Nice flashback to the past for us computer geeks (reference to Zork AND TRS-80 in the same sentence is nice), but your target audience for that reference (computer geeks) all know that Zork was written on the PDP-10 in the late 70′s. Yes, it did run on the TRS-80, but this was over two decades ago… not five years. Anyway, that one minor bit aside, the rest of the show was wonderful. I can’t wait for next week to hit.
After Chuck came The Big Bang Theory. This promised to be a funny show for the geeks in the world. This is why I watched it. Apparently Chuck Lorre thinks that smart people are horribly retarded when it comes to social interaction. I take offense to this stereotype because it is rarely true once they get out of high school. The really large words that were thrown around were really distracting because it is equally as rare for even the most intelligent people to talk like that in a social situation. I know that characters are supposed to be exaggerated to really be interesting in fiction, but it can’t be a constant thing or it really gets annoying. There were some good lines in the show, and the best line of the show was in response to, “What do you guys do for fun around here?” The line was, “Today we tried masturbating for money.” Worst line was about the Sun’s position relative to the stars at the time of birth determining personality. It’s actually the position of the Earth relative to the stars as we perceive them that has spawned astrology…. Duh. If you’re going to make a show about smart people, then smart people are going to want to watch. Don’t make stupid mistakes like that. Overall, I’m thinking that this show is going to be a waste of time and energy, but we’ll see how it goes… I’ll leave it on the DVR for now, but no promises that it’ll last more than a week or two.
After that was Two and a Half Men. I came into this show with high hopes as it was a tried and true veteran of comedy. The hilarious lines came one after another. Each performer lived up to even the harshest critic’s expectations. If anyone says anything bad about the season opener of Two and a Half Men, then I have a few theories about them:
- They are horribly stupid.
- They are part of Al Qaeda.
- They are part of Focus on the Family.
- Chuck Lorre did something horrible to them as a child.
- #2 and #3.
- They are Denise Richards, and they still hate Charlie Sheen.
- They hate to laugh because they feel that enjoyment is a mortal sin.
- #1 and #6.
After this, I caught the last half of Journeyman because it was on. I had no intention of watching it, but I had nothing else that I felt motivated to start working on at this late hour. It was pretty good, but I wish I had caught it at the start of the show. I’m not a big fan of time travel shows because of the horrible paradox holes that most writers manage to blow into the plot. I try to ignore them, but most of them jump out and slap you in the face. As I said, I didn’t catch the first half, but the second half was put together reasonably well. I’m not sure I’ll DVR it. I’ll probably just stumble across it when I have time.
The best show of the night (that I watched) was by far Two and a Half Men. I fully expected this. I’m going to continue to give Chuck my time, but Big Bang Theory only has one more shot to get over the “first show jitters” before I remove the timer from my DVR.
Don’t expect updates on these shows the night after they come out. Life is pretty busy for me, and there may be some lag between the time they air, and the time that I watch them.
PS: If I vanish from the face of the Earth within the next week, check the CIA’s secret European prison system. I just mentioned CIA, NSA, astrology, Al Qaeda, Focus on the Family, and Denise Richards all in the same post. I’m pretty sure some high powered government computer somewhere is digging through my blog as you read this flagging me for vaporization in the near future. What? Yeah. I’m reading 1984 right now. Why do you ask?
High School Memories
I got this from Jhianna who got it from someone else. Looked like fun to answer, so here it is….
1. Who was your best friend?
My freshman year was Curtis. His dad got transferred to somewhere in Oklahoma. I really miss Curtis. I wish I could track him down someday. My sophomore year, I was pretty much in self-exile and avoided as many people as I could. My junior year, it was very, very few people that I could deal with (or that could deal with me.) However, Katie and Heather were there for me through it all. They cared for me like no one had ever cared for me before. If it wasn’t for their love, I’m not sure I would have survived. My senior year, I finally came out of my shell (actually, Heather broke me out of it during the summer between Jr. and Sr. years.) I had so many friends (and we were all outcasts together) that I really can’t pin one of them as a “best” friend, but J.J. ended up being my best friend for several years until the lure of drug abuse sucked him back in. I had to cut ties with him, and that was a very painful thing to do.
2. What sports did you play?
I played tennis until just before my freshman year, and I was pretty good at it. I was as good as the guys that were rich enough to have their own private coaches. I often wonder where I would have gone with that had I had the proper training, and not had my arm mangled in a car wreck right before my freshman year. During the rest of high school, I skateboarded, but there was no “team” or anything like that.
3. What kind of car did you drive?
For most of my high school days, I drove a ’67 Chevy step-side, short bed truck with a rotted wooden bed, off-road tires, and a top speed of 57 miles an hour if I was going downhill. Part way through my senior year, it died a horrible death (transmission), and it was replaced with an ’81 Chevy Citation that lasted me through the rest of high school.
4. It’s Friday night, where were you?
Usually at home doing homework, programming on my computer, reading a book, or planning the next day’s gaming session at Bases Loaded. We’d play Warhammer 40k, AD&D, Paranoia, Champions, or Battletech all day on Saturday. To arrange this, I had to work 5 AM to 10 AM at Albertsons on Saturdays, so I was usually in bed pretty early.
5. Were you a party animal?
Nope. In my senior year, I would go to Larry’s apartment or house, and hang out where there was drinking and the occasional drug use. I would drink a beer or two, but not touch the drugs. I didn’t like most of the people there, and I didn’t want to lose control of my senses around them.
6. Were you considered a flirt?
Hah! Not at all. I’ve never learned the art of flirting. It’s just not in my DNA to be able to woo women in any form. I’m still not sure why Kiara chose to shack up with me. I was too embarrassed to even TALK to girls, let alone flirt with them.
7. Were you in band, orchestra, or choir?
I tried orchestra (violin) for a few years in elementary school, and I was smart enough back then to realize that I had no talent at all for anything musical. I never tried again, but I do tinker on my guitar at home from time-to-time. I’m not any good, and I don’t think that I ever will be. Maybe someday I’ll actually be able to play a whole song.
8. Were you a nerd?
I wasn’t a nerd. I was the nerd of the school. No one was more nerdy than I was. Chess team, Academic Decathlon, Physics club, French club, journalism (which was actually kind of a cool kid thing), yearbook, electronics club. Oddly enough, there was no computer club. It was founded a year or three after I graduated, but I would have been the uber-leader of the computer club had it been around.
9. Did you get suspended/expelled?
Nope. Got sent to the principal’s office once for walking out on a class 10 minutes early because the teacher was being a total bitch. I even called her a bitch to her face. My only punishment was to sit in the office after school for 10 minutes to make up for the missed time. I showed up on time, and the principal (who we called “Coach J” for some reason) made me sit there a whole three minutes before he told me to go home.
10. Can you sing the fight song?
Nope. They did that at the prep pep rallies. I didn’t go to those. Until my senior year, we were allowed to skip them and go to the library instead. I did that. My senior year they banished that practice for some reason unknown to me. That’s when I started leaving the campus instead of going to them. I could have gotten in trouble, but any punishment would be better than sitting with the preps and listening to them talk good about themselves.
11. Who was your favorite teacher?
I had quite a few good ones. Here’s the list:
- Mr. Vetter — Freshman — United States History — Chess Coach
- Mrs. Setzer — Sophomore and Junior — French — Her and her daughter (Katie, see above) really helped me through my dark times on a personal level. She could have sent me to the counselor, but she showed me love and kindness herself. She cared. I knew she cared. I didn’t want to disappoint her, and that is one for the reasons that I didn’t take my life my junior year of school.
- Mr. Landrum — Junior and Senior — Computer Science — This man taught me more than I can ever categorize about how to think logically, how to program, and how to be a GOOD programmer. I would not be doing what I’m doing now without him. I would not be nearly as good at it today as I am without him. Last time I went home, I tracked him down and we had a nice meal together (my treat) to talk about random things. Sure, it was mostly computers, but we talked about school, and teaching, and all sorts of stuff. It was one of the best hours that I had while I was in Texas.
- Mr. Franks — Senior — Economics and Academic Decathlon Coach — Mr. Franks was one of my few teachers that, by default, treated everyone as an adult. We had responsibilities, and we had to meet them. Because of the respect that he showed me up front, I always gave him my best effort. He earned my respect by showing me respect, and doing anything less would be a huge sign of disrespect. He was also very open and friendly. He’s the kind of teacher that I would love to become.
- Mrs. Armstrong — Junior — English — Again, this was the darkest days of my life, and we always did free-associative, creative writing during the first 10 minutes of class. This gave me the bug for creative writing. It also gave me an outlet for my darkest thoughts, and that helped a bit. It also meant that she sent me to the guidance counselor at least once a week for fears that I may hurt myself. She was right. At the time, I resented the fact that she was right and was “intruding” on my life. Looking back, I’m glad she did what she did.
12. School mascot?
Bulldog. English Bulldog if I remember correctly.
13. Did you go to prom?
Hahahahahahahaahhaa…. Fuck no. Not at all. I had no desire to go. No one had a desire to go with me. Most people had a desire to make sure that I didn’t go. That’s probably a good thing. If I had shown up, I would have brought eggs.
14. If you could go back and do it over, would you?
no. No. NO. NO I can think of pretty much any kind of action in the world that I would rather do than suffer through that crap again.
15. What do you remember most about graduation?
I remember getting my diploma, walking halfway across stage, and the crowd applauding… then I remember hearing my mom screaming her head off. There were about 8,000 people in the stands, and I could hear her over everything else. Then I whipped off my cap, and headbanged for a few moments until I heard the principal clear his throat. I knew that was my cue to move on.
16. Where were you on senior skip day?
I was out with John SomethingOrTheOther, and Eric in John’s brand new Mustang 5.0. Yeah. He almost killed us approximately 9.7 times during that day. I’m not sure where we went, but we made a point to be anywhere else but school. One thing that I do remember is that I made it back to school for my computer science class with Mr. Landrum. Yeah. I know. I’m a nerd. I’ve accepted it, now you need to.
17. Did you have a job your senior year?
Not my senior year. I worked from my freshman year right until the start of my senior year. My grandfather wanted me to relax, enjoy my last year of high school, and improve my grades. I did all of that, and the first step was walking away from Albertsons.
18. Where did you go most often for lunch?
Freshman year was on its own campus, and it was a closed campus. My sophomore year, I wanted to be away from everyone else, so I walked (open campus by this time) about four miles (one way) to a 7-11 to buy a nuked burritto and a Big Gulp that I would eat on the way back. There was a 7-11 about 5 blocks from the high school, but that’s where everyone else went, and I wanted to avoid them. I remember a guy that tried to befriend me (I’m really not sure why,) and to get rid of him, I walked faster on the day he wanted to go to lunch with me in order to leave him behind. It worked. My junior year, I had a vehicle, so I would drive as fast as I could to Burger King, eat as fast as I could, and get out as fast as I could. I was usually leaving about the time all the rest of the high school kids were arriving. I timed it perfectly. I’d then drive to a park and sit and read. My senior year, my friends and I would go to the youth center across the street for cheap food. On Wednesdays, we’d pile 10 people into my Chevy Citation and drive to Little Ceasar’s. They’d always ask for a name for the order and all 10 of us would yell out our names. It would confuse the poor people, so Vince started giving “Sid” as the name. When they would ask for a last initial, we’d always give “V.” I still use that sometimes.
19. Have you gained weight since then?
Oh yeah. I was 120 lbs. when I graduated high school. At the end of last year, I was up to 245 lbs. I’m down to 205 now. I never thought I would near 200. Ever.
20. What did you do after graduation?
I tried college, but that didn’t work. I had no motivation. No reason. I should have stuck with it, but I was 18, and wanted to live life, not sit in class. I ended up living life on my own by delivering pizzas. Yeah. I should have sucked it up and stayed in school. Ah well….
21. When did you graduate?
1991
22. Who was your Senior prom date?
Hahahahahahahahahaa…..
23. Are you going / did you go to your 10 year reunion?
I’ve already missed it. I didn’t even get an invite. Stuck up bastards. They’re probably afraid that I’m going to bring eggs. If I don’t get an invite to the 20 year reunion, I’m crashing the party.
24. Who was your home room teacher?
No such critter in my high school.
25. Who will repost this after you?
Don’t know. Probably no one.
Happy Birthday To Me
Happy Birthday To Me.
Happy Birthday To Me.
Happy Birthday Dear Beosig.
Happy Birthday To Me!
Yep. I’ve made it around the sun for the 34th time. Somehow it’s not that much different from the last several times I’ve done it. Of course, that’s all going to change in November with the arrival of the baby. Then I get to start counting someone else’s years that are more important than my own.
I opened my email this morning, and I had 5 birthday messages from people that I’ve bought stuff from in the past that had my email address and birthday on file. I think it’s kind of cool. I got emails from a local RPG/game store, Steve Jackson Games, VanDyke Software, RPGNet, and Borders. Very neat. I like the Borders one because they’re giving me 15% off of a book for my birthday, but the Steve Jackson Games one was especially neat. I’ve received it the past 3 or 4 years, but it still tickles me to read it. It goes:
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
The Illuminati are watching
Everything that you do
Fnord!
I just get a good giggle out of that every year that I see it.
Time to get back to work, so I can grow older while sitting at my desk typing away. Could be worse, eh?
Pain In The Neck
Since shortly after lunch yesterday, I’ve been having pain on the left side of my neck. It’s steadily gotten worse, but I can still move my head around. I don’t have as much range of motion as I normally do, so it’s bothersome. I wish that I could figure out what I did to it, so that I can avoid doing it again.
I’ve made some ergonomic changes to my work environment to see if that will help. I just got a notebook riser here at work to raise the level of my laptop screen to eye level. I’ve also taken my arm rests and lowered them, so that I’m not resting my elbows on them anymore. I had them set a little too high, and it was jamming my shoulders up. I had to have them that high to get them to slide over the top of my desk to get to a comfortable place to reach my keyboard. I’ve lowered them to the point where they’ll slide under my desk now.
Maybe these changes will help alleviate the pain that I’ve been feeling. Maybe not. We’ll see in a day or three.
Best Graphics In The World
I’m going to get on my mud soapbox again just a short period of time. I hope you don’t mind. Today’s User Friendly comic really struck a cord with me, and reminded me of better times… The times when people actually had to read, pay attention, and concentrate on what they were doing while playing a game in order to merely survive. To excel in the games, you had to think about what you were reading, and how it might affect you. There were even tiny hints as to what things (that were usually not readily visible) needed to be pulled, pushed, turned, twisted, poked, or looked at. It was an amazing time of gaming.
Sure, World of Warcraft has pretty good graphics, but they just can’t compare to something like this:
Something Wicked The cave reeks of old, decaying bodies. The smell of fresh blood also mixes, and any who enter are almost immediately overcome with a strong desire to vomit. The strange writings are all over the walls and ceiling and even parts of the floor, but there have been so many messages written over the tops of others, nothing is discernable any longer. The only way out is south, to somewhat fresher air. [ Exits: Unknown! ] Some strange deformity of a man cackles, and draws on the wall.
$ look man
Drool dribbles out of his mouth, and there is definitely an insanity in his eyes - deep and forever insane. He looks around, but doesn't see anything but the dreams constantly in his head. He grabs his knife, cuts his finger again, and as the blood oozes out, writes his messages. This poor remnant of a man has no worthwhile reason to live.
This is just one example of a wonderful creation done by Syra D’Hornan on my mud. I could probably find and post even more wonderful creations, but I don’t have the time to track more down. There is a great and simple elegance in the written word, and I fear that we are rapidly losing the appreciation of such a thing.
I’m no different. If I need to research something, I hit the Internet. In the past, I would go to the library and spend hours there. At one point, I wanted to know more about feudal Japanese society, the Huns, Celtic warriors, and all sorts of ancient cultures for a world that I was creating for D&D. I spent every day at the library (except Sunday because it was closed) for close to two weeks doing research. It was one of the most enlightening times of my life.
Sure, modern technology lets me get to the heart of the matter faster, and maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe it’s a bad thing. Knowledge is no longer hard earned. It is practically given to a person, and this gives them little appreciation for the difficulties that it took to accumulate that knowledge.
Ok. I’m getting off track, but I think I’ve pretty much said what I wanted to say. I’ll pack it in before I ramble even more than I already have. I could on and on and on about this topic. I’ll stop here before I bore you even more than I already have.
Long Time, No Blog
It’s been over a week since my last entry. I just fell out of the habit of doing it with so much going on in my life right now. Here’s a quick summation of what’s been going on with me.
Work has kept me horribly busy with the looming deadline of a large project. It’s current line count is 13,069 of PHP and SQL. Most of it is really complex, so don’t let the small number of lines fool you. It’s been lots of hard work. Even though it’s kept me really busy, and challenged me, I’ve enjoyed all of it. If you know me, then you know that those are two things that I enjoy most. I hate it when I’m bored because of lack of work, or lack of challenge.
School has also kept me really busy. I’m in week 7 of 8 for my operating systems and object oriented analysis and design (OOAD) classes. Final projects and final papers are coming due in the next handful of days. I’ve been really busy with both classes. I’m almost done with my final paper for my operating systems class. It is about the internal workings of Linux, and has to be 8 to 12 pages in length. I’ve written 7 1/2 pages so far, and I have about 3-4 more pages worth of material to cover. It’s due on Sunday, and I hope to get a good chunk of it done tonight and tomorrow night, so I’m not trying to cram the final pages in at the last moment. My OOAD class is almost done. I’m done with everything I need to do for the class other than compile the final paper. The final paper is a collection of all writings, diagrams, and other goodies that I’ve done so far in the class. I just have to take all of my diagrams, export them to images, open up Word, and start importing pictures. Should be cake. I gotta wait for feedback from my instructor on the last assignment before I can start. I hope to have that by Sunday, so I can start compiling away. I actually may start sooner than that, and leave the last few pages for his feedback. We’ll see how time allows me to go.
I’ve also been busy reading. I polished off the last of Academ’s Fury Sunday, and I’ve been steadily working my way through Cursor’s Fury during the week. I’m about 3/4 of the way through the book, and it’s a great book. I can’t wait to see how it ends up, and that will start the long wait until December when the next book in the series comes out.
I’ve also be looking into starting back up with some martial arts. I’ve looked at a few places, and called a few of them for pricing, attitude, class schedules, etc. The place that I finally settled on is a Brazilian Jiu Jistu place that a friend of mine works out at and teaches there on occasion. The price is reasonable, and two of the four class times that they offer fit into my schedule fairly well. I’m going to head there Saturday to check them out to see what things are like before I commit to anything that is long-term.
I also upgraded my work laptop from Ubuntu 6.10 to 7.04 over the weekend via their automated on-line application. It was slick. I started it Friday as soon as I got home from work. I went to see Rise of the Silver Surfer Friday night, and when I got home the downloads were done, and the install was started. It was prompting me about overwriting a changed config file, so I had to answer a few of those before going to bed. When I got up Saturday, it was asking more questions. I decided to baby-sit it while working on my Linux final paper. I got some good work done on the paper while answering the randomly-timed questions on the upgrade. After the upgrade was done Saturday around Noon, it rebooted. The system came up clean, and I only had to tweak a few scripts and config files that I had changed. That only took about 20 minutes, and a reboot. After that, everything was working swimmingly well. I’m happy with the upgrade process. Good stuff.
I’m thinking about maybe rebuilding my server with Ubuntu Server Edition to see how things go with that. That’s lots of work and such. I’m not sure I want to suffer the day or two of downtime to do something to a server that is working fine. I’m currently downloading the ISO right now for it, and I’m going to test it on my personal laptop to see how things go. It might be worth the up-front trouble in order to make upgrades easier in the future.
That’s how my past week has gone. Just par for the course. Maybe I’ll start posting again with more regularity. We’ll see….
