odd coincidence

So I'm finallly getting around to starting on my fourth K book, and I writing this lovely part where K and his new mercenary friends are in Peru stealing some information from a drug-lord in Peru. In picturing the scene I pictured this lovely villa that you may remember from a movie called Bedazzled. While I'm writing this scene, I pop on the tv and, lo and behold, Bedazzled is on tv. That's just freaky.

The no Wii blues poem.

T'was the day after Christmas and I'm sad to say,
I got no Wii on this past Christmas day.
My parents, you see, had tried very hard,
But the stores had sold out, both near here and far.
My sister's fiance, both noble and true,
Gave the Wii Zelda game and a book sudoku
To his soon to be kin already impressed
Enough to have given a Nintendo DS.
So there on the table my Wii game does rest
unopened, unused, and lonely at best.
I've gone to some stores and looked here and there
But, so shocking to say, no Wii's anywhere.
Never you fear, the Wii will be mine!
Desperation demands I end with this rhyme.


That's my poem for the year. Maybe the decade. I guess we'll just have to see.

A typical X-mas

While I'm sure many other people in this country are busy enjoying the season with their families, spending time spreading xmas joy or whatever, I am spreading xmas evil. Well, spreading it mostly to me, but I'm definitely spreading it. I am watching the Most Horrible Christmas Ever. I assume most of you know what that is, but for those of you who don't, it's the Invader Zim xmas special. There are so many things fucked up about this particular show it's not even funny, but they pulled out all the stops for this episode.

Zim, the alien, creates a AI Santa suit in an effort to take over the world. His theme song is, "Bow down, bow down, before the power of Santa, or be crushed, be crushed, by his jolly Boots of Doom." Though Zim makes progress, eventually he loses control of the santa suit which goes insane and starts destroying things, people, and places. It's fantastic.

Here's hoping everyone has a truly nice 25th of December for whatever reason they have a good day.

Book watch:

I have gotten the final edit back from fbo and I'm already nearly finished with all the edits. I have about three big questions for fbo, and after that I have but to get a print out made and that print out will be off to the hands of the publisher who needs a novel! And then I'm sure more edits and stuff, but that's goddamn progress right there. Most of the latest changes were little ones, forgotten d's, incorrect case, that sort of thing. Since I had to move chapters around there were a few details I needed to alter so that I could have my continuity be right, but those were the biggest changes. There's one change I can't bring myself to make. It breaks actual time line continuity with the real world, but I just don't care. I like the line I get to keep in the book, so in my world George R. R. Martin writes a lot faster than he does in reality. So there.

More info as I have it, but that's the biggest book news I've had in a while. I'm going to be dropping by the bookstore later today most likely, and possibly asking fbo those questions if he has the time. If not, I'm just going to say hi, eat their food, and laugh at the people battling Cthuluu. After the insanity that is this weekend, I will be making sure this book thing gets done and printed asap. Ball's in my court; time to take it and run with it.

An interesting site and questions of timing...

Single ol' me, I found myself interested in a site posted on Digg.com, that being OkCupid.com, a free online dating site. Curious and poor, I signed up and started poking around. I gotta tell you, it's one hell of a time sink. The basis of the site is that you answer questions from a database of currently nearly 3k question, and give a weight on how your "ideal match" would answer the question ranging from irrelevant to mandatory. Then the site compares the questions you've both answered and creates matches based on that. Obviously, like eHarmony, honesty rather than answering questions the way you think people want you to answer them, works much better for making matches with people, but you knew that.

It's odd. In most social scenarios, online or otherwise, I don't normally stick out much. On this site I'm commenting on whatever seems interesting, blogging stuff, chatting with my commentors. Who know why exactly I'm so much more casual about chatting, but hey? I ain't complaining.

As for the timing, life is doing what it normally does. Even though I'm just getting used to this new site for dating, I'm going to be meeting someone new next week. I won't call it a date, as I'm not certain what it is exactly, but I am meeting a nice girl who is a friend of a friend to play Go, so there are certain similarities you could point out there. I just thought the timing was entertaining that I'd start meeting people online just in time to meet someone in person. This is the way life normally works for me, so I'm not surprised, but I am amused.

Kung Fu Test: Passed... with little details I need to share

I still hate tests, don't get me wrong, but tonight was a surprisingly enjoyable test, in large part due to my sneaky and very amusing sifu. See, I had a plan... That plan was: half-ass my way to glory. Not for the whole test, just for the section of the test that I a) suck at and b) freaking despise. The test was broken into these sections: Endurance (the one I hate because I just don't get to class enough to have a realy good endurance), techniques, open hand form, sword techniques, sword form, sparring.

As I hate endurance, I did the minimum requirement on just about everything (especialy frog leaps... ugh). As such, at the end of the endurance section I was tired, but not nearly as tired as normal. For techniques, my sneaky instructor had me go first so I could remind the other guys which techniques we were doing, and I rocked them out. Open hand forms, I rocked hard. Sword techs I rocked excepting one move. Sword form, I was pleased with my performance, though my shoes stuck on the mat a bit and I did a little stumbling. Finally sparring: two split lips and one leg I can hardly walk on later, I did just fine. "I saw aggression I didn't know you had" was the comment from my non-sneaky (so far) sifu.

So where does the sneaky come in? Well, here's a little back story. As I have something of an honesty policy, a couple days before the test I informed my sneaky sifu that I intended to go for minimums in the endurance so that I could perform better in the other parts of the test. I was expecting a "you probably shouldn't do that" comment but I was happy to get a "you do what you need to do cuz I'm just happy you're testing" comment instead.

After the test I chatted with both sifus some and mentioned to my sneaky instructor that my plan of half-assery worked well. He told me that with the rest of my test it was a pretty sure bet that I'd pass. I said that was my intention. Then he gave me a truly devious little smile and told me, "And just to be sure, I lied to you about the minimums on the endurance section." After retrieving my jaw from the floor I couldn't help but laugh and I'm still laughing about it now. It's both irritating and very flattering that my instructor would go to such lengths to make sure I did well, and it's not even that irritating, since I am still laughing about it.

Honestly, that my sifu felt I was worth a little skulldudgery is very flattering. Apparaently he really values my input in the school, so I'll probably try just that much harder now. Regardless, test over, me happy, so there. Sifu, you're one in a million.

The saga of my front door.

I was opening my front door the other day when the door knob came off in my hand. I stood there and stared at the little bastrard for a minute or two before the most eloquent and perfect statement came to mind: "Son of a..."

As not having a front door nob on the inside was clearly unacceptablee I tried to figure out how to reattch the thing and be done with it. The knob, you see, was held on by a single screw. That's simple enough, I thought; loosen screw, put back in place, tighten screw and be done with it. Well, that would have worked if it had not been for one tiny little detail. The previous owners had stripped the screw so badly that I could not even begin to loosen it. After trying rather hard to get the bastard out, I realized that I was screwed (ha!).

Despite my best efforts, the knob was done for. As this happened shortly before I had to be somewhere, I left after figuring out how to actually close and lock my door. I put up with the situation for a couple of days before I had the opportunity to snag my father and head to the Home Despot. Now, my door was made in the 1940's or so. Finding an appropriate replacement was... difficult. But, using the face place I had wisely brought along, we found a reasonable match (even though I would have to install it upside down) and made off with it.

The first problem became obvious when I realized that the two plates on my door where actually two different sizes. Then, when trying to get the bloody lock mechanism out of the door, I discovered that the previous owners had painted the fucker in place. So after fighting with that thing for a while, I managed to get it out. I compared it to the one I'd just bought and found that the new locking mechanism was less than half the size of the original. Grr.

Thus began the great jury rigging race of the day. I ventured into my basement, seeking some scrap wood so that I could actually screw the new mechanism into place, and found something appropriate. I got my hacksaw (the only saw I own), and got to work, eventually cutting the piece I needed. Or didn't need, as it turned out, as the piece was slightly too large. Off to look for more scraps!

The next piece I found was too small, but it was something I could fenagle into place with a little effort, a few nails, and several curses. Lo and behold, I actually managed to screw the new mechanism into place as well as get the knob and the lock to actually line up appropriately, if upside down. Next came screwing the faceplates on. The one side was difficult, but managable. It's slightly crooked, but good the hell enough. On to the front plate!

The plate didn't quite line up right on the front side, so it looks stupid, but I can live with that. The bottom screws go in just fine, but the top? Well, guess what. There's no way to actually screw them into anything. Son of a bitch. I haven't quite done anything about that, but I figure I'll just glue a couple screws in there, and none who haven't read my blog will be the wiser.

Last, but certainly not least, I put the door knob in place. I tighten it so that it sits firmly in place and, god dammit, the fucker won't turn. So, after losening the thing as much as I can stand, I have a loose door knob. It work, the lock actually works (from the inside only), so I really don't have that much to bitch about. But I'll be damned if it was easy to get from broken door to functional door.

Home ownership: everything it's cracked up to be. It may be worth it in the long run, but sometimes it's hard to see the big picture when you're busy fixing something and cursing your head off.

Evil xmas lights

In case you missed this last time it was a craze, scary lights!

Happy Hannukwanzadanmas!

Kung Fu seminar goodness

I am mighty tired today, and I blame my long (but fun) weekend of Kung Fu seminars. The theory was three two hour seminars per day, though theory and reality did not quite mix this weekend. Regardless, on Saturday I learned Mantis basics and the Wu Tan Chui form (which I hopefully spelled correctly). Saturday was the more physically challenging day, as Wu Tan Chui is a very energetic form with lots of jump spin kicks, fast moves, and intricate mantis strikes. The form itself is actually quite fun, but I'm not sure I'll ever get the one jump uppercut in the middle of it quite right. The tiny Master Sun was an energetic old man whose english was so broken I understood nearly seven of the words he spoke for the day: "Dis a good", "Dis a maybe" and "Dis a not so good". He was amazingly fast and agile and somehow capable of making really entertaining jokes even with his tenuous grasp of English.

Sunday was a totally different ball of wax. Initially we did a southern White Crane form the name of which I can't remember for the life of me, but I think it translated into "The Three Stratigists". Oddly enough, this Kung Fu form was closer to my style of Karate than it was to the Kung Fu I study at that school. Rather than being big and fast, this style is very small and not all that fast and much more interested in internal style power generation. Far be it from me to suggest that it was anything but effective as I wouldn't want to get hit by anybody who studies this style exclusively. It was nice to take a seminar that my Karate training gave me a distinct advantage for once too.

Lastly we learned something I've always wanted to learn: fan! That's right, fan. It may sound like a truly ridiculous idea to think of a fan as a weapon, but having studied the thing for around two hours I have to say that it's remarkably more effective than I would have previously given it credit for. It's also rather fun to play with as you get to make a lot of noise, whip this fan around in entertaining directions, and at one point you throw the fan up into the air only to snatch it out of air and end up in a very cool stance. I think the fan, while by far the hardest thing I did all weekend, was the most fun to learn in the end. I'll be practicing all three of the forms I learned this weekend fairly incessantly till I feel I have an appropriate grasp of them, but I'll try just a little harder with the fan. Fun, cool, and makes a lot of noise? Winner.

In conclusion, I hurt. I hurt a lot. I didn't even get hit at all this weekend. Hopefully this will be a nice prep for my stupid test that I don't want to take so that I'll survive the experience without considering suicide or quitting.

The Dvorak experiment is over

That's right, I gave up. I looked back at how long I'd been working on this and decided that I couldn't stand typing that slow anymore. So long as I don't think about what keys are where, I'm already back up to my normal typing speed. Maybe a little slower as I have occasionally forgotten that I put the "T" key back on the other side of the keyboard, but my muscle memory is much stronger than my knew memories of where the keys are, so that's cool.

I'm not saying that I don't believe Dvorak isn't the better designed keyboard, far from it. I'm saying that in a world where getting away from qwerty keyboards is impossible that I also need to be able to type quickly in, Dvorak isn't working for me. I've been typing for like a decade so getting rid of years of experience in exchange for something new is just not feasible. If I were unemployed for a while I might give Dvorak another go, but since I cannot escape qwerty at the moment I'm just going to keep 90 wpm as my weapon of typing choice. Who knows, maybe after all that practice, I'm going to see a speed boost in my typing even though I wasn't practicing with the same keyboard layout. Seems like I'm typing a little faster, but I could just be so happy to not be typing at 40 wpm that everything seems like a hundred miles an hour.

Anyway, I still get geek cred for trying, and I did become a competent dvorak typist. But competent has never been enough before, so why start with competency now? Back to getting things done very quickly. I don't know how, but someday I will reach my goal of typing at the speed of human speech. 140 wpm might seem like a crazy impossible goal, but I'll be damned if I'm not going to give it a shot!

eep

You know how we all remember Mary Poppins as a lovable wonderful woman? I present to you this never before seen original trailer for the movie:

Scary Mary

Classic.

My brain hurts

Though I am rather used to having battles in my head, I am not used to this. The qwerty layout in my head is actively fighting with the dvorak layout in my head and is making improvement in my dvorak speed very difficult. Literally, when I start trying to type fast wherein I stop consciously thinking about each individual keystroke, my fingers instinctually revert to qwerty and things get all garbled. I have been at this for over a month now, and my patience is dwindling. Though I like the layout, I am having such a hard time forgetting qwerty that I am begining to wonder if it is possible for me ever to regain my old speed. Though I hate the idea of giving up, I hate the idea of typing half as fast even more.

I'll stick it out a bit longer. It's possible there's some block that I am just about to break through that will get me to the speeds I require, but I am not holding my breath.

Dear god! I don't normally do this...

But how could even I deny this cuteness? And bad grammar?

I stole this from John Scalzi's blog.

Ahh... The stink of clean.

My major accomplishment for the weekend was cleaning my house on a massive scale. I think my house is now cleaner than it has been possibly since I moved in. Honestly I found some of the scariest dust monsters I've ever seen in there. I really should clean more often, but I'm lazy and a little dust doesn't bother me that much. I do feel good about all that cleaning though. There is something very satisfying about working like that with such a goal in mind and achieving that goal. I mean my job has lots of satisfaction when I get some obscure way of doing things to work, but the simple "I did this" feeling I get from manual labor is somehow just as satisfying if not more so. I should go help build another barn.

One thing I found while cleaning was photographic evidence of a better time in my life. I found some pictures of some occasion, presumably my birthday party, and it was an artifact of a past life. In this picture I looked happy, all my friends, even the ones who are missing from my life now, were there, and they all looked happy too. It was a bittersweet discovery, of course(except for the picture of my sister's cat which I was actually happy to find). So what'd I do with the photos? What I did with everything else I didn't want to think about from back then: throw them the fuck out(excepting, of course, the cat photo). I don't like photos in the first place, so it was hardly a stretch to glance at something that was mildly depressing and then throw it away without a worry. If finding those pictures tells me anything, it is this: I need new photos from my life now that I am happier. That way when I throw them out I won't even ponder the whole unhappy past thing.

Ahh politics...

Newt Gingrich seems to think that because terrorists are using free speech against us, we should abolish free speech. Oh just the terrorist's free speech, not yours or mine. Clearly Newt is only after the bad guys. Oh, and he also suggested a new Geneva Convention: "We should propose a Geneva convention for fighting terrorism, which makes very clear that those who would fight outside the rules of law, those who would use weapons of mass destruction, and those who would target civilians are in fact subject to a totally different set of rules, that allow us, to protect civilization by defeating barbarism."

What a fucking asshole. I could spew out a hate filled diatribe in response to that utter affront to the very basis of our Constitution, but Keith Olberman puts it far better than I could: "Well, Mr. Gingrich, what is more 'massively destructive' than trying to get us to give you our freedom? And what is someone seeking to hamstring the First Amendment doing, if not 'fighting outside the rules of law'? And what is the suppression of knowledge and freedom, if not 'barbarism'?"

At what point did some of the leading minds in the Republican party get the idea that Fascism is so much better for our country than Democracy? This is beyond scary. Radicals on either side of our shitty two party system are bad enough, but now they feel safe enough to say utterly evil things like this without any fear of patriots standing up and saying "Fuck that and fuck you you evil asshole"? Ben Franklin likely would have said, "Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor liberty to purchase power." He's a bit more eloquent than I, and still dead on the money a couple hundred years later.

The divisiveness of our political system has got to stop. It is because of this divide, because the only options we have are two parties that are merely opposing extremes, that good sense and a moderate view of the world is now a practical impossibility in this country. By fear and lies our political leaders assure us that by voting for a third party we are wasting our vote. The time for believing that nonsense is over. You, and I mean you, have to start voting not with a party but with your good sense. If you have a third choice and you know both your usual options are the same old assholes, take the third choice. You are not wasting your vote; continuing to put the same assholes with different hats on back into office is wasting your vote. Unless we can increase the moderate base of this country we are doomed to the extremism that grips us now.

I should stop reading the news... It angries up the blood.

Funny exerpt from a John Scalzi book (The Android's Dream)

"One of the great unwritten chapters of retail intelligence programming featured a 'personal shopper' program that all-to-accurately modeled the shoppers' desires and outputted purchase ideas based on what shoppers really wanted as opposed to what they wanted known that they wanted. This resulted in one overcompensatingly masculine test user receiving suggestions for an anal plug and a tribute art book for classic homoerotic artist Tom of Finland, while a female test user in the throes of a nasty divorce received suggestions for a small handgun, a portable bandsaw, and several gallons of an industrial solvent used to reduce organic matter to an easily drainable slurry. After history's first recorded instance of a focus group riot, the personal shopper was extensively rewritten."

40 WPM is an odd accomplishment to return to a second time

Dvorak keyboarding is still a difficult endeavor, but I have reached my current speed of about 40 WPM once again. This is less than halfway to my goal of at least returning to my old typing speeds, but it's definitely progress, so I am not giving up yet. I've found a great typing speed drilling site and making sure I practice there a couple times a day has been a great boon to my speed. I am still not sure if I am going to make this a permanent change to my typing, but if nothing else I have proved myself even more a geek than ever before, so that's a plus in my book.

I wasn't always a particularly fast typer. In fact, I really didn't start to learn to type quickly until the summer after my freshman year of college. During my freshman year AIM was just starting to become really popular and I was chatting every night. My frustration with typing slow was mitigated by learning by trial and error to type faster. But my sad tale of typing does not end there!

That summer, I worked at a local ISP in their tech support department, quickly and surely becoming bitter and irritable. The plus of that horrible job was that I had a ton of free time. Honestly I squandered an embarrassingly large amount of time scouring the Internet for news of Diablo II, but some of that time I spent finding all the free typing tutors available on the Internet at the time. I then used those typing tutors for upwards of four hours a day. When I got back to the dorms and a 24/7 Internet connection, I was typing at 80 WPM. Sadly I don't have the slack ass work schedule now I once had, so I can't drill that much. Do not fret! As things seem to be going well, I will either have an enviably fast typing speed again soon with Dvorak or I'll give up in disgust and get back to qwerty speeds a bigger geek for having tried. I'm fine with either option, and I suppose that tells you what a sad man I have become. More geek than man really.

Speaking of geek, I realize that I am also one of the geekiest martial arts people I know, and that is just limiting myself to said arts. I know more odd bs about the marltial arts than just about anyone, including most of my instructors, because they're all bright enough to practice rather than waste valuable workout time reading the dozens of different creation stories for the multitudes of martial arts out there. I wonder if there is anything I do that hasn't been influenced by my natural geekness?