Ayuh
Topic: Daily Info

Anyway.

I'll have my name in a scientific paper. Sweet, huh? Indeed. And all the software works. And I've just got a few more things to do, and I can go work on something else. I can finally put this file_server business behind me for a few months. It'll be great.

And I sit here, with a weeks worth of beard and mustache on my face, and I'm wondering if I should shave it back to just the chin or not. I dunno. It is awfully itchy, which may make me shave it off tomorrow.

I think I'll just keep cranking on some software and a bit on the book/booklet. Anyone got a better title for me, something other than "The Computer Evangelist"? I'm fully open to suggestions.

I fucking hate Shakopee
Topic: Rant && Daily Info

Another reason for me to hate Shakopee with a flaming passion: a petty $28 fine for snow-lane parking after 2am. I dunno about you, but I see no snow, no forecast of snow, no satellite images of indicating weather that would cause snow, the fact that this piss-ant town couldn't afford to pay snow-plows the over-time at night, and the fact that it'll cost them more than $28 to process this. Fuckers. Fuck them and their petty bureaucratic games. Fuck them and their stupid pretend order and peace. Fuck them and their pretensions. Fuck them and their Republicanism. Fuck them and their illusion of safety.

I wish I had never had to learn anything about this town, that I had never known it. That would make me happy. Failing that, leaving here as soon as I can will make me happier than anything.

I fucking hate Shakopee. Almost as much as I hate Texas.

A fix
Topic: Update

Sorry, twas a bit of glitch when I made the PDF last night such that the table of contents didn't get put in (forgot to run the generator twice). I fixed it and the link is still the same.

The Collection
Topic: Daily Info

Alright, I've gone through all the stuff from the last year and compiled what I consider to be my best stuff. Some of that shit was painful to dig through, and I really could've stopped going back after August.

Anyway, I've made it available as a PDF, I'll make a plain-text one later if someone asks.

If this entry goes off the main page, there will be a link in the left-hand column.

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.