Back
Topic: Daily Info

Alright, back from YIG. As I think of it, I'm going to talk to Nancy and get a Program Specialist job for next year. Being an RA is fun and all, but I'd like to move on up.

Oh yeah, I'm going to dig through this thing and make a collection of some of my better material and place it special as plain-text and a PDF. Should be just a few days.

Later-o.

hard-booted
Topic: Daily Info

Sorry 'bout that folks, kinda went off the deep-end there for a few days. I think I've re-centered myself with the 14 hours of sleep I got, and I feel quite refreshed and normalized. In fact, as I write this, I'm dog tired from being up so late (I know, strange indeed).

Got my Chai and Yerba Mate (two kinds of tea) and the Dublin Dr. Pepper (made with bona fide cane sugar, no fake sugars in sight) today. The Chai is very good, nice and mellow (I ordered the vanilla flavor). I'll have to try out the Mate tomorrow, after I grok how to brew it up and store it. Yup, all good stuff.

See you all on the flip-side.

A train-wreck
Topic: Rambling

From dehumanization to arms production,
For the benefit of the nation or its destruction

Power, power, the law of the land,
Those living for death will die by their own hand,
Life's no ordeal if you come to terms,
Reject the system dictating the norms
Annihilation, A Perfect Circle

Should I expose you to the bizarre workings of my mind as it slowly moves out of control from lack of sleep? Guess, what, I'm gonna do so anyways, because I feel like it. If this frightens you, this is your fair warning.

I see a world without movie stars, without pop stars, without the business men, without the politicians. A world where that way of life has been burned to the ground.

Their system seized by their system, destroyed from the inside-out like a cancer. No bureaucrat spared, all shaken from their high ivory perches. All crash down, and the higher they are, the farther they fall.

Crushed under, science taken back by the scientists. The pure saved from the profanity of greedy men. Forward we all shall go, and scatter like seeds, moving beyond this simple cradle. We shall see the shift and change. We will have gone out and beyond. And in time this place can become a distant memory, possibly even lost in the sands of time with long past empires.

Shattered bonds of slavery, all forms, from the contracts to the chains. All people free, all people released. Bowing to no other human. All equal, no servants, no serfs, no slaves.

A freedom to all, none shall be denied, even the former rein-holders shall be included. No more enmity, no more cycles, the pattern shall stop. Always forward shall be our movement, no nostalgia for the past.

Nostalgia is stifling, nostalgia is restricting, nostalgia is resistance to change, nostalgia is the past viewed through rose-colored glasses.Nostalgia covers the gross misdeeds and wrongs that have since been removed. Nostalgia is a deceiver and is worth nothing. To look at the past, one must see all, the beautiful and the beastly. The joy and the hate. The light and the dark. The warm hearth and the cold grave. The duality must be observed.

And now I bring this to a close. I am struggling to keep my eyes open, and my brain is slowing down. Until another time.

No more bigotry
Topic: Rambling && Rant

Don't fret precious I'm here, step away from the window
Go back to sleep
Safe from pain and truth and choice and other poison devils,
See, they don't give a fuck about you, like I do.
Counting Bodies Like Sheep To The Rhythm Of The War Drums, A Perfect Circle

Ayuh, still the same universe it was last year. Not even really going to bother to make resolutions. I have goals and plans already, why do I have to magically make them around the turn of the year?

It's completely an arbitrary time. Doesn't matter, never has, and never will.

The computers didn't go ka-poof in 2000. Why? Because it was being fixed a whole decade before the media got wind of it. Yup. Plans and goals and a little bit of late-foresight (after the problem was created but in enough time to fix it).

The Earth is still whipping around the sun at an average of 29.783 km/s, it still comes in at 5.9736?10^24 kg, and the sun is still prodigiously burring 4.26 million tons (tons are force, by the way) of fuel every second. All this has been going on just peachily for the last 4-5 billion years or so, and it'll go on for another 5 billion years.

Kind of humbling, isn't it? Makes you feel tiny and small. And maybe just a bit precious. So far, we are the only species to actively think about these things. Lonely, definitely, but something we should take in stride with a bit of humility.

We live such a short time here, so let's all just make the best of it, okay? Stop killing each-other over the god-question (see George Carlin) perhaps? Concentrate on helping those in need (if you don't know by now, what rock have you been under?)? Maybe dropping the bigotry? I dunno, I don't think it's too much to ask.

It's that stupid bigotry (all sides are equally guilty of it). When someone says someone else is Arabic, what do you think of? Robes and such? I think of a guy who works on my floor who wears scruffy jeans and t-shirts, but maybe I'm an odd-ball. Caught you off-guard on that one. How about someone who is from India? I know I think about a TA I had that like to wear Polo shirts with jeans and was one damn fine programmer. How about French, German, Chinese, Japanese and so forth? I don't know about you, but the images I get are all from people I have met, people who aren't much different than myself, and they certainly aren't the stereotypes.

I dunno. I can't fix our human problems. I can only fix my own and proffer advice to others. If you want me to fix some software, almost any software, that I can do.

Endings and such
Topic: Daily Info

What have I become?
My sweetest friend
Everyone I know
Goes away in the end
You could have it all
My empire of dirt
Hurt, Trent Reznor

For the ending Peter Jackson made for Return of the King, I must say it is the most heart-wrenching I have seen since The Green Mile.

I'll admit it, I cried twice. Once for the summation of the theme of "The Small and Lowly are Mighty" after Aragorn's coronation on Minas Tirith (you all know it happens, the book's have been out since the 1950's, I just won't tell you what Jackson did, have to see it yourself). And then again, when they all stand in the Gray Havens and say their good-byes (just as heart-wrenching to read it, I always had the most trouble with the first five chapters and then the last two chapters).

Well done, Mr. Jackson, well done.

Which leaves me with finishing off the Dune series and then ... well, then I dunno, I have a few books to read (Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, I want to go over the 9/11 commission report once again that and a huge book on C#), and book of my own to write on my philosophy regarding computers (a sort of introduction for people, to give them knowledge, which gives them power, and start freeing them from some of the dumber ideas that have surrounded computers since the 1980's (and hopefully starting to wrest computer's back from the same kind of business ass-hats that believed there was only a market in the world for a few computers)). Hopefully I can get that done in-between YIG and some work at school and before school resumes on the 18th.

Eeesh, I just can't stop setting these huge hurdles.

I'll probably never be able to slow down, I'll just keep running, plowing ahead like some blind locomotive.

{Sigh}

Dark Tower
Topic: Daily Info

So I finished the Dark Tower last night.

'Twas good. Heart-wrenching the way a good long group of books should be, and he avoids the saccharine-sweet-Hollywood ending. A lot of good characters go to the clearing, and the way they go is very appropriate. Felt like the end of the LOTR. And there is a nifty little twist to it, something that'll catch you out of the blue.

A good book indeed. Thanks, Mr. King.

I fucking hate Texas
Topic: Rambling

I know I should try and go to bed, but insomnia is funny that way. So instead, I'll tell you of a little thought I had as I walked out of the bathroom about two hours ago.

Simply, I really do not know my family. That is, I am disconnected from them. As I think of it, I always have been disconnected from them. My brother may feel slightly more connected, but I do not. I have spent most of my life separated from them by more miles than a man could comfortably walk in a day.

Remember, I have not lived in Mankato/Blue Earth since I was around 18 months old. That was nearly 20 years ago. My older cousins are distant from me in age, 12 years and more, hell, I have cousins almost old enough to be a grandfathers.

But I was never there, growing up. I did not really know my family: they were names and faces, nothing more. The only one I ever really knew was my mother's mother. And she has gone on ... to somewhere better than this crappy little world with its hateful people who would not offer a hand to a single mother and her child, nor give care to the sick. But anyways, I don't know them. My only cousin of my age is better connected with them (although I think the girl's head is full of fools thoughts, hopefully she'll wake up and shake the damn thoughts out before she winds up with a kid before she ever finishes school), she knows them like they know each other.

The only other part of my family separated like mine is my Uncle Larry's branch o' the family tree. Larry lives out by that big wide ocean, although the ocean is not really warm where he lives. If I remember correctly, his son lives in Oklahoma (Kansas maybe?) and his daughter lives near him in Washington. I have the feeling they feel disconnected as well.

I have always been an outsider, though those that know me would say otherwise, I think. James has had few friends in some strange lands. And so has his brother, since the move to that fuck wad land of Texas. If I never see that state again in my life, it'll be too soon. I don't care the cost: it cost my brother his time and his friends, most important at his age at the time.

Texas ... a fucking waste of time then, and a waste of time ever more. I hate it. I blame that place and the businesses there for disconnecting me from my family. I am very happy that I get along with my immediate family so well, but I wish I could do the same with the other family.

My father's brother had died last year in February. And honestly, there was so much I didn't know about him. For me, he was always my Dad's oldest brother and a happy face behind a beard. Some things, I did know, but there are some things I wish I knew more.

I hope you get the gist of what I'm saying here. Though I may be only 10 feet from where my parents sleep, I may as well be the only man for a hundred miles for how I feel.

Fucking Texas. I don't care what anyone else thinks of that place, or my derision of it. For me, it is forever the breaker, the divider, the wedge, the place of wasted time, the place of disjoint friends, the cause of loneliness.

I really do think it's because of Texas, and this nice little gulag they call Shakopee, that I feel so remote from people that have most of the same blood as that which runs in my veins.

Good night. Except Texas. Texas can really on it's own luck, and it shall never have any of mine again.

Frohe Weihnachten
Topic: Daily Info

A Merry Christmas to you all /

Or a good yule /

Or whatever you shall do on this holiday.

I think the most important thing is to find your friends and family, and be with them more than you should be concerned with a gift from the here and now.

I shall come back after some massive coding and family gathering.

Steel
Topic: Daily Info

Well, thus far, I have done really well after a hell of a semester. I have two B- and A with one grade yet to come in. This proves it: I am made of steel.

I have come through the crucible intact.

No more finals
Topic: Daily Info

Well, I almost didn't make my last final today. I woke up at one by accident, but luckily I made it to the final only 15 minutes late. Let's just say I'm setting two alarms during finals week from now on.

Ayah.

I'll have a little bit of opinon on Christmas tomorrow sometime.