Kung Fu-ool's Comments

The Kung Fool has moved

2008-07-28T10:45:00.002-04:00

Blogger, Opera, and my patience don't get along, so here's a new blog that's precisely like this one, just in a slightly different place.

http://kung-f00l.blogspot.com/

My Internet presence is going away

2008-03-26T10:06:00.002-04:00

Soon, as in April 30th, my company is going to shut off my ability to use any form of third party emailing. That means Gmail, Yahoo, whatever, gone. Going to work will be like being in a black hole where the only way I can talk to anyone is via txt message or by using my phone for email and IM. This is all being done in the name of "security", though what precisely we're being secured against I am not sure. The argument made by our corporate overlords is that third party mail systems invite viruses, trojans, worms, and whatnot into our workplace. This is nonsense.

Yes, if people are stupid enough to open unsafe attachments at work via third party mail systems, we will get hit by viruses. However, as our work provided email addresses will still work, most of those stupid people will probably FORWARD THEIR UNSAFE EMAIL TO THEIR GODDAMN WORK MAIL ACCOUNTS. Then, rather than having the added safety of third party email systems, which more often than not have impressive spam, virus, and worm detection and protection systems, they'll be opening those emails directly via Microsoft Office, THE MOST VULNERABLE MAIL SYSTEM KNOWN TO MODERN MAN.

This borders on the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard of come from corporate, but there are so many painfully stupid decisions made by the retards upstairs, it's really hard to say this is the most ridiculous. Suffice it to say, it'll be a little more unlikely for me to respond to your emails during normal work hours after April, and I'm goddamn pissed about it.

I Am Legend alternate ending

2008-03-26T10:01:00.003-04:00

For those of you who saw I Am Legend and thought everything was brilliant save the last twenty minutes, here is an alternate ending to the movie. I'm not gonna spoil anything save to say that this ending is FAR superior to the original ending as it actually resolves much of the details unresolved by the theatrical release ending and finished what was obviously started earlier in the movie. Amazing.

The Lunesta trial: Day Two: Epic fail!

2008-03-20T08:32:00.002-04:00

Fuck this. I don't want to eat, I'm tired, I have a headache, my post nasal drip is out of control, and I spent at least a couple of hours this morning, awake, rolling around trying unsuccessfully to try to get back to sleep. And this is day two! Imagine the fun I'd have tomorrow as the sleep deprivation starts to kick in. I'm still, technically, getting enough sleep to be considered "fine" by most people's standards. Well, fuck that, fuck this, back on the the hardcore drugs for a while. It's time to call the psychiatrist and say, "I know we normally wait much longer between meetings, but I gots a problem here." And to call my drug company and bitch at them directly until they actually answer my questions. Lots of fun on the phone for me. Whee.

The Lunesta Trial: Day One

2008-03-19T08:26:00.002-04:00

Due to the cost of Seroquel going up by 500% this year, I am forced to look to new options to see if I can't cut back my costs to some vaguely reasonable level. This is my story.

Day One: The old familiar feelings are back. Light sleep, marked by frequent awakenings and long periods of time waiting to fall back asleep; irritating burps; a large increase in my post nasal drip... Yeah, this is looking swell so far. I'm not sure I'll make it a week on this stuff. I'll give it at least another day, but my hopes aren't exactly high that this is going to be a very fun week. This don't work, I talk to my psychiatrist to see if he's got other cheap suggestions. If not, I may just be plain old fucked.

In honor of Easter

2008-03-18T17:25:00.001-04:00

Evil Easter Bunny.

MUHAHAHAHAHAHA!

A random person in NYC said:

2008-02-26T17:39:00.000-05:00

"You know what? I think all them zombies are racist mothafuckahs. You notice they always eat the brotha first? What are we, covered in mothafuckin' chocolate? Do I look like a fondue fountain? That's some bullshit."

Overheard in NYC

One very odd complaint about the new phone

2008-02-26T16:10:00.000-05:00

Once in a while, if I shut off the phone while it's vibrating, it sustains that vibration until I turn the phone back on again. Just now I decided to see how long the little bugger would go if I ignored it, and it was still going after a fifteen seconds. Maybe the next time I'm trying to kill the battery on it I'll try to trick it into going into über vibrate again! That's me, turning weird quirks into upsides!

Ugh. Whatever happened to the depressed cynical me? Damn these silver linings!

Religiosity

2008-02-26T15:56:00.000-05:00

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/02/25/us/0226-nat-webRELIGION.jpg

Personally, I don't think a survey of 35,000 people is nearly large enough to really show the statistically accurate trends of modern religions, but this is from the NY Times, so it's sorta telling. Kinda. Makes me wonder if the majority of their polling wasn't done in so-called blue states really.

bad news for me

2008-02-21T11:37:00.002-05:00

Got my first "no" response from the publisher yesterday. My short story has been declined for their anthology. However, it wasn't just some "story bad, fuck off" mail I got, it was a personalized letter that included some suggestions on how to gussy up future submissions if they are to be considered. That implies that he wants me to submit again, which is an upside. I still haven't talked to FBO yet, but I'm sure he'll have words of wisdom for me. And possibly other publishers to submit the story to... See? Upsides. :)

Last.fm

2008-02-20T16:39:00.004-05:00

Pandora Internet Radio is the greatest Internet radio station ever. I love it. Of course, it's been blocked at work.

Motherfuckers. Or, somewhat more entertaining to say: Monkey feathers!

I had been looking around, but more or less gave up and just listened to di.fm for months. Though Techno is great, and I do like some of their other stations, I really missed having punk, hardcore, and other assorted unspeakable metals to listen to at work.

Enter Last.fm! They recently made it possible, through the advertising method, to make all of the songs in their very impressive library available to listen to! Now, Last.fm vs. Pandora comes out Pandora winning on most levels. However, since I can listen to Last.fm at work, it's currently the work winner.

Much like Pandora, you give last.fm a band and it starts to pick out other bands it thinks you'll like. The music picks are usually good choices, only missing once in a while. The only advantages that I see Pandora having is that you don't need to download things to set up stations and that Pandora seems to have a lot more obscure and indie music whereas Last.fm concentrates more on popular music. However, listen at work, yadda yadda.

So if you wanna listen to bands that are like Tool, Bad Religion, or Dethklok for the truly strange (like me), try out Last.fm! I bet it works with popular music too, but I don't know what music is popular, so you'll have to try that one for yourself.

the title says it all

2008-02-20T13:57:00.001-05:00

The Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 Massacre

"A perspective on the pledge" by someone other than me

2008-02-19T09:08:00.002-05:00

The Atheist Ethicist is one of my favorite bloggers. Sometimes what he writes is very heavy on the philosophy side, which even I can't always slog through, but lately he's been writing a very telling series called "Perspective on the Pledge". The base idea is to consider the words "under god" in the pledge and why they should be removed, but rather than putting it in terms of theist vs. atheist, he puts it in terms of race. As an amateur writer I enjoy things like the style of his characters and whatnot, but the important part is how he makes his point on why the words "one white nation" in the pledge is just plain wrong. I've compiled as much as I could find of this story below. Why it starts with episode three I'm not entirely sure, and if you look carefully, it also has two part sevens, but hey! It's good reading.

Perspective on the Pledge: Part Three

Perspective on the Pledge: Part Four

Perspective on the Pledge: Part Five

Perspective on the Pledge: Part Six

Perspective on the Pledge: Part Seven

Perspective on the Pledge: Part Eight

my current favorite lolcat

2008-02-16T19:17:00.001-05:00

Click here.

little bit a juxtaposition

2008-02-15T08:53:00.002-05:00

Obama's music video.

McCain's music video.

Hopefully it's obvious to you that one is for real and one is fake.

it's like karma or something

2008-02-04T09:27:00.001-05:00

I won the blocks football pool for the Superbowl, much to the amusement and irritation of my fellow coworkers. I didn't even watch the game. I was busy doing everything in my power to make my next D&D character as bad-ass (and confusing) as possible, which took all damn night, when I got the call explaining that, not only was the game on, but also that I was inline to win the pool. Very strange. One nice part is that I played the absolute minimum bet, so my payout for the game was rather damn good. However, the best part was that this payout will offset my recent vehicular woes rather nicely, allowing me a little more leeway for the month. Strange luck or karma, I'll take what I can get. Go... one second... Giants? Yes, they won. Go Giants!

I never thought I'd ever have to say that.

Short Story update

2008-01-31T15:40:00.000-05:00

Got an email from the publisher that basically said that he had received so many submissions of sufficient quality, that it he had not been able to read all the submissions yet and apologized for any inconvenience. Which might just mean that he's already read mine and it's being considered. I'm going to look at this optimistically and hope mine is one of the high quality ones he mentioned. That way, even if my story isn't ultimately included in the anthology, he already thinks of my writing as high quality, which gives my novel an even better chance than before. This could be very good news for me. :)

Ron Paul: the Mother Fucking MAN

2008-01-31T15:09:00.000-05:00

Listen to Ron Paul make more sense than anyone else talking these days:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbHUjMFzr-c&eurl.

Why the fuck are we even listening to those other Republicans talk anymore? Ron Paul is the only one who gets that the economy is failing, Iraq is a mistake, and that we need to actually make a smaller government to have the changes in government that we want to happen really happen. He may be half crazy, but still, Ron Paul 2008 would be the best thing that could happen to this country.

movies I'm not going to spoil

2008-01-28T17:03:00.001-05:00

Cloverfield and No Country for Old Men.

Monsters first. I liked Cloverfield. It was more or less exactly what I was expecting, which is good on the one hand and bad on another. My biggest complaint about the movie is that the trailers they showed on TV gave away far too much about the movie. Far, far too much. If you haven't paid much attention to the trailers, or missed them entirely, go see the movie. You'll probably enjoy it a bit more than I did since you won't be watching waiting for the next scene from the trailer you haven't seen yet. But still, all in all, it was a good movie.

Also, everything they said about motion sickness, probably true. If the Blair Witch Project made you woozy, this will be far worse.

Now for the quiet movie. I think the biggest thing I took away from No Country was that it was a remarkably quiet movie. There really isn't a lot of dialogue at all. This, however, does not detract from the movie. The only thing that can detract from a movie that forces you to carefully listen to everything that's going on is the other people in the theater with you who think you can't hear them talking incessantly who you strangle and leave for dead in a bathroom. Now the end of the movie, I felt, was lacking something. I'm not sure what, but the end could have had something more. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoyed the movie. There were bits that were bloody awesome, and the everpresent feel of the movie, the quiet and intensity created thereof, was well worth a slightly lacking end. I definitely understand why it would be nominated for best picture. I imagine it's got about a snowball's chance in hell of winning, but I totally get why it's up there.

In conclusion: if you don't have motion sickness, go see Cloverfield. It's harder to suggest people go see No Country, as it is very Cohen brothers to an extreme, but if you like the Cohen brothers, it's worth a shot.

The only question now is, what movie do I go see next? Rambo? Maybe...

anonymous strikes first

2008-01-22T16:08:00.001-05:00

You may not be familiar with religiousfreedomwatch.org, but it certainly sounds like a group interested in protecting constitutionally guaranteed religious freedoms, right? Wrong. The site is a thinly veiled attempt by the Cult of Scientology to pretend they care about all religions, when in fact it is a site devoted, apparently, to bitching about and slandering the enemies of Scientology. Why do I say apparently? Read on.

My post yesterday about the anonymous group interested in destroying Scientology was more than just an idle threat on YouTube. The Cult of Scientology posted a $5000 reward (a likely broken link to that reward) in response to that video. The reaction from anonymous was simple: DOS the site. DOS mean Denial of Service and simply floods the target site with so much traffic that it brings the webserver housing the site to its knees. Everything I was able to learn about "religiousfreedomwatch" was through Google's cache and Digg comments because anonymous has already struck a blow to Scientology by wiping this web-site off the Internet.

Maybe I'm getting a little dramatic about it, but if anonymous continues this attack using the tactics they espouse in that first video, the Cult of Scientology is doomed. I, for one, won't miss them.

more Scientology cult stuff

2008-01-22T09:28:00.000-05:00

After posting that creepy anti-Scientology video ("we are anonymous. we are legion."), I decided I should check out a recent BBC report on Scientology from the show Panorama, called "Scientology and Me". You can find it here or on YouTube, and I highly suggest you watch it. Now, I knew before I saw this video that Scientology is a cult, is creepy, and is theoretically dangerous, but now, after watching their tactics as reported by that show, I understand where that first video is coming from. I get why an anonymous group would feel the need to get down and dirty enough to take on the so-called Church of Scientology. The Cult of Scientology needs to be destroyed.

Now I have neither the time nor the inclination to go try to infiltrate the Cult of Scientology in an attempt to bring it down from the inside. I, also, wouldn't be very good at pretending I wasn't disgusted or just entertained by their ludicrous actions, so they'd probably see right through me anyway. But I will do my part, however small, in fighting this underhanded and evil cult, by spreading the information I have seen and read. Here is more information on the Cult of Scientolgy.

Watch, read, and listen. Then tell someone else. I am not anonymous, nor am I legion, but I am behind their cause. I hope you are too. Let's bring this ridiculous, immoral, and evil Cult to its knees.

Scientology

2008-01-21T14:53:00.001-05:00

Is this the end of Scientology? If nothing else, it is a creepy video.

Rock Band

2008-01-14T09:38:00.000-05:00

I have purchased Rock Band. Lacking friends to play it with, I've played some tutorials, songs and what not, and gotten a feel for the game. That feel? Depressing. Rock band is not designed for the single player, it is designed for the multiple players. Which means I need friends to play with, rather than the depressing playing alone wacking on drums with no one to make snide comments to.

Guitar Hero III is very much a single player game; it's difficult, rewards hard work, and gives nearly inacessible goals to reach for. In short, it's a challenging and fun game. Rock Band, on the other hand, is a multiplayer game aimed, not at gamers, but at everyone. Therefore it's not very hard. Case and point, I picked up the guitar controler (which is cheap and crappy compared to the GH III controller), put the difficulty on Expert on a song I wasn't very familiar with, and got a 98% on the song. That's just lame. Drumming is harder, yes, as is singing (which is more fun than instruments alone IMO, but still depressing), but still they don't encourage one to play more. The just make me wish I had other people plyaing, even just one other person.

So what's the subtle undertone hidden in this blog post? Heh... I should think that obvious. I need band mates!

wacky spinning lady

2008-01-09T17:23:00.000-05:00

Here's the wacky spinning lady.

If you don't feel like listening to the girl explaining things, here's the deal. When you first look at the lady spinning, she will clearly be spinning in one direction. However, and I have managed this several times so I'm not completely nuts, you can actually change the direction in which she is spinning. Say what? Seriously, try it and help convince me I haven't lost my mind. I found the only way to get her to spin in the other direction that being counter-clockwise, was to stare at the reflection of her foot and start to convince my brain I was seeing the opposite. I've seen her spinning left and right. Can you mangage the same feat?

Fuck, this is creepy.

Bwahaha!

2008-01-02T09:14:00.000-05:00

Any comic like this is likely to get a laugh out of me. Does it make you laugh too or do you just recoil in horror? :)

AVP-R

2007-12-31T10:25:00.000-05:00

Shocking. Absolutely shocking. They got it right. After the original Alien vs Predator movie, I had to wonder if they could ever take either franchise and bring them back from the deep grave that their shitty movie had dug. It was so bad that even when the red (R rated) preview for AVP Requiem came out, I still had doubts. Though everything I read said that this new movie was basically an apology for the last one, I had to wonder unfavorably about this new upcoming movie. When I went to see the movie, I was skeptical but hopeful.

The hour and a half blood-bath that followed left me giggling. So many horrible things happened to people who both did and did not deserve the ungodly deaths they received were so worth the wait. There was no cheesy predator/human team up, the aliens didn't not use everyone (and I mean everyone) to their advantage, and everyone we wanted to survive most definitely had a low percentage chance of living to the end of the movie. People were killed by all sides and were often just caught in the crossfire of the battling races. No quarter was offered or received. The over all human survivor ratio for the entire movie must have been 5000 to 1. They even got the sound effects effects right by ignoring the more recent movies and going straight to Predator and Aliens for the noises we all expected. It was glorious.

Now don't go thinking this movie is a cinematic masterpiece, because it most assuredly is not. However, if you liked the Predator movies, liked Aliens (and possibly Alien), and you like me enjoy a story wherein people drop like flies in ways that make chills go up your spine, then this movie is definitely a very run ride.

I hate Christmas

2007-12-25T23:25:00.000-05:00

I don't feel like being a maudlin idiot here, so I'll keep this brief. I hate Christmas. Not for what Christmas is, but for what it once was. I hate the memories this fucking season dredges up. I hide from them, I see my friends, I see my family, I do everything I can. But alone I can't ignore them. I remember a time when I was happy, when Christmas filled me with that sappy annoying joy that everyone is supposed to feel. Sometimes I feel I'll never get that back and that is what I hate. I am tired of feeling alone. I know I have my friends; I've regained dearly missed friendships, made new ones, even rekindled slightly tarnished friendships. I have more friends now than I have ever had in my life. But I'm still lonely, and when I'm alone, like the end of this fucking holiday night, I can't escape my own head.

Merry Christmas to me.

Don't mind me, I'm sure I'll be back to normal, as normal as I ever am anyway, soon as this holiday shit goes away. But if you see me, and you think of it, I wouldn't turn down a hug.

why I love being a computer programmer

2007-12-24T11:19:00.000-05:00

Finding comments like this makes my day:


/*****************************************************************************
 You are entering the forbidden zone!!! This is the driver assignment logic.
 God help you if you must change something down here!!!!
 hahahahahahaha   ahahahhahahaha    hahahahhaha    sorry.
*****************************************************************************/

The testing constant...

2007-12-19T09:17:00.000-05:00

Being punched in the face.

Yes, that's right, every single Kung Fu test that I can remember has involved me being punched in the face. This time arount it wasn't quite as dramatic as the large black eye I ended up with, but my buddy the Afro Samurai punched me in the mouth and split my lip, so the tradition continues.

This test was the test I had been dreading taking for months. Rather than the normal very challenging test, this was the normal challenging test plus a marathon of doing almost every other form I knew. That's a whole lot of work. However, I'm fairly certain I passed and more than that did well on the test. I even got told that one of my forms was just shy of perfect, which was quite the honor.

This is not to say that I wasn't exhausted very quickly, which I was. Part of the problem was my thinking that the test was closer to 6 than to 6:30, so when I showed up a little before 6 I had some time to kill, and all I could think of to do was prepare for the test. There went some of my carefully horded energy. Of course a lot of energy was wasted all day as I sat and dreaded this fucking test.

Honestly, the test didn't turn out so bad. Bits I was expecting to be much harder, turned out to be easier since I really did train for this test hard. Not as much as I would have liked, but still enough to survive everything up to the sparring and everything. I find out if I passed... I dunno, sometime. If I went to the graduation thingy on Friday I would find out then, but I already have other Xmas-y plans so I can't make that. So whenever it is the new semester starts, I guess I'll find out if I got a new sash or whatever.

I will miss my red sash though. Blue is nice, but it'll never be as badass as the red sash on the black uniform.

Holeeee shit.

2007-12-18T11:15:00.001-05:00

THIS IS AWESOME!. A well choreographed fight scene for some kind of tournament or something. I dunno. It's just bad ass.

How many five year olds could I take in a fight?

2007-12-14T09:34:00.000-05:00

Are you up to the challenge?

The Left Eye of Nathargo

2007-12-13T15:42:00.002-05:00

Partially Clips is quickly becoming one of my favorite comics...

Here's one example.

Possibly the funniest single comic I have ever read.

2007-12-12T14:36:00.003-05:00

ROFL. Seriously, I laughed so hard I cried and gave myself the hiccups.

Moisture farmers?!?

2007-12-12T10:52:00.000-05:00

This would be the first step down that path...

We have a winner!

2007-12-12T09:18:00.000-05:00

The LG XV6800. That's right I already bought a new phone. I think out loud (so to speak, or not) on this blog, and normally when I post it helps me work through whatever issues I'm having so that I can take ACTION and do something. So I got me a new phone! It fits almost every single need I want with only a few issues. I thought an issue was when the phone was off that the alarms failed to actually alarm, but that was only because I had plugged my new phone into the computer. Doing that apparently turns off the alarms because, in theory, the alarms are appearing on my computer instead, so the phone itself need not make noise. That I can forgive. After figuring that out, I tested and confirmed that the alarms are fine.

The only actual issue that I have is that rather than having a simple desktop program that this thing can interface and synch with, it only interfaces with Outlook. I don't have Outlook. Now I have to go get Outlook. Through totally legitimate and legal means. Ahem. Which is a pain in the ass, as I really don't like Outlook, but since I can just (in theory) replace Outlook Express with plain old Outlook on my PC it shouldn't be much of a problem. The actual nice thing about this is that the phone likes to just jam whatever is on the phone into Outlook and any discrepencies are handled on the PC rather than on the phone. That's at least easier than the way Palm does it, so even though I hate Outlook, I at least get some perks.

New phone? Awesome. Synching with Outlook? Annoying but bearable for the perks I do get out of it. Rawk.

V is the man! ... sorta

2007-12-12T09:07:00.000-05:00

Violent Acres is one of the best blogs around due to blog posts like this one. I love V.

Nerd sniping

2007-12-12T09:06:00.000-05:00

I love XKCD. Comics like THIS make it the best nerd humor I've seen.

I need a new pda phone.

2007-12-11T10:48:00.000-05:00

I need a new phone. I need a new Palm. You'd think that combining those two expensive gagets into some kind of über gadget would be simple enough, right? I certainly did. But let's look at my options.

The Apple iPhone. Sleek, stylish, powerful. It is literally a small hand held computer, boasting the functionality of OSX and a host of neat features. It's also an iPod. Problems: I don't like Apple all that much, it's really pricey, I really don't want an iPod, it doesn't have the type of scheduling capabilities I woud like making it not so good for a pda, and who can forget that it's on AT&T. That last part is a particularly big nail in the coffin for this phone. Bottom line: I hate Apple, AT&T's service blows, and it cost a lot for me to not get all the features I want.

Verizon's Voyager, the iPhone kiler. I got to play around with this bad boy, and it boasts many of the same features that make the iPhone tempting, plus several others, improves text messaging and a clamshell keyboard that actually fits my fingers. Problems: it tries too hard to be just like the iPhone rather than trying to improve upon what the iPhone is, it's still incapable of the PDA scheduling I need it for, and it's pricy, though significantly less expensive than the iPhone. Bottom line: insufficient for what I need, even if the keyboard is actually big enough.

The Palm Treo 700wx. This is an actual PDA phone. It has all the functionality of a palm, a keyboard, and is better than the iPhone for what I need. Problems: The keyboard was designed for people no older than ten as my thumbs tend to hit six to eight keys at once no matter how careful I am, again pricy as in as bad as the freaking iPhone. Bottom line: this phone is damn close, but as I can't type on the damn thing and don't feel like dropping that much coin for something that isn't as cool as an iPhone, it's too damn bad.

The LG XV6800. From what I can tell, this phone is damn close to what I want. We get a bad-ass looking phone, a flip out keyboard that is actually large enough for captain Large Thumbs here, and a fully functional Windows Mobile mini computer that should meet my pda needs. Problems: money, as always, is an issue, other people report that Verizon locks some of the best features of this phone so that they cannot be used, and it's a god-damned Windows machine. Bottom line: This may be my next phone, but I'm going to go need to talk to Verizon sales people to make sure that it will do all my pda stuff and, more importantly, be able to absorb my palm into whatever software it is it uses for scheduling and what not.

Now that you see what I've been looking at, do any of you have any suggestions for phones I've neglected? If you're thinking of suggesting a T-Mobile, Cingular(AT&T), or Sprint phone, don't bother. Why? No service, crappy service, and buggy service. In my time with Verizon I can count the times I've lost calls for no apparent reason on one hand. Sprint dropped my calls like daily, and I ain't heard nothing good about T-Mobile, and I know AT&Crappy service sucks.

If you were thinking maybe the Helio phone, you definitely get points.

"under God" gotta go

2007-12-07T09:29:00.000-05:00

"I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God." George H. W. Bush

Should the two words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance be removed? Yes. Hands down, no questions asked, no debate necessary, yes. Why? Because the implication of that line is that to be a patriot you must believe in god. For those of you that don't know, the words "under God" were not even part of the original Pledge and were added in 1954 by President Eisenhower after he was pressured to add the line by a Catholic group called the Knights of Columbus. If you find this hard to believe, read the Wiki.

Now I could bitch and moan all I like about my opinion of how athiests are certainly capable of being patriots and how we are guaranteed religious freedoms by the Constitution, but I found a story on the Atheist Ethicist site that explains the same situation but from the perspective of race. I found the argument both fair and very compelling, so I share it here in the hopes that more people, religious people specifically, will come to realize that the Pledge should be restored to its former state so that we truly can be one nation, indivisble, with liberty and justice for all. You can read the story for yourself here: More Perspective on the Pledge.

This post may be unpopular, but, as a near atheist, I feel the need to share.

Internet Dating [/fail]

2007-11-30T10:44:00.000-05:00

As some of you may know, I've been trying Internet dating for a while now. By trying I mean almost not doing anything at all since anyone I'm interested in seems to live over 100 miles away, but trying is better than doing absolutely nothing. Honestly, I've been trying to find dates through any means necessary, and I'm not doing terribly for finding potential dates. I'm just having some bad luck finding actual dates. My story today, rather than a one night "oops boyfriend" story, is a bit more long-winded. I assure you, I'm happy to talk about it.

A few weeks ago, I got a message from a young lady on OkCupid wherein she expressed that she was impressed that I would use the word "deign" in my profile. I was happy that she not only knew what the word meant, but liked that I would use it. People who read, which she does, appreciate words, and it's very nice to tell a writer that you appreciate the words he chooses to use. I sent an email back saying whatever it was I said, and we slowly spoke more, emailing back and forth, until I breached the subject of meeting in person. She commented that "Internet friends tend to drop off the face of the earth", which I took as reluctance to meet me in person for whatever reason, but she assured me she was interested in meeting me.

Last weekend I went a bit past Villanova to meet her in a nice public place. We met and had a nice two and a half hour conversation. I thought it went rather well; I found her attractive, funny, interesting, and most of all intelligent. Compared to other meetings of people from the Internet, everything seemed to be good. When we parted ways it seemed a sure thing to me that our friendship would continue and possibly move on to something more. Though I did not immediately contact her, I did contact her after a couple of days (those are the rules after all) asking her to use my personal email address in the future as OkCupid was strange thanks to my work filters now blocking half the content on the site. A couple days of no contact whatsoever later I asked her if this was what she meant by Internet friends dropping off the face of the earth. I have heard nothing from her in any way, shape, or form since they day I met her in person.

Part of me wants to get irritated, bothered, or whatever, because whatever her reasoning may be behind simply disappearing, it is rude to just stop talking to someone with no explanation, even if they are only an Internet friend. However I am just taking this all with a shrug. The way I see it, Internet dating is a strange beast and, as my sister so gently put it, it's a good date if they don't weigh 400 pounds and don't Tazer you.

Who (other than her, obviously) really knows why I am now someone not to be contacted or responded to? Death in the family, her dog died, she got called into military service... Whatever the excuse, I don't think it's worth the effort to care. I met her once, and though I thought she was cool, getting worked up over someone I met once just feels stupid. We'll just toss her into the ever growing pile of Steve's dating failures (figuratively speaking you sicko) and move on with my life.

Me posting a rap video?

2007-11-26T15:55:00.000-05:00

I know, this is rather out of character for me, but this video will, within the first minute, blow your mind. Not be cause it's a amazing or all that good, more because it's a rap about a normal person. Just the juxtaposition of this song to any popular rap song is worth the amusement. Anyway, enjoy the normalcy!

Everyday Normal Guy.

Arg!

2007-11-02T13:46:00.001-04:00

I am waiting for a phone call, one that is rather important and will dramatically affect the quality of my life when I get it. I know that I'm supposed to get this call today, but I am not sure when. All I know is that I've gotten more phone calls and texts than I can remember ever happening in recent history. And now I have to work. Man this is annoying.

The heroes of the Longest Morning

2007-11-02T09:57:00.000-04:00

You hear a lot about the war these days. Lots of politics, lots of "get our troops out" rhetoric, and lots of everything in between. Sometimes we forget that there are brave soldiers fighting for a just cause. In this time of varied feelings about the war, it's rare to hear stories about heroes.

The Longest Morning is a story of a four man sniper team known as Reaper who stood against forty al Qaeda intent on kidnapping and publicly murdering those soldiers. The story makes no assertions about the rightness or wrongness of the war, it only details the amazing tale of the bravery and honor of the Reaper sniper team in the face of insurmountable odds. Support the war or not, these soldiers are heroes and deserve to be treated as such. I only hope people can realize that.

Sweet pen spinning lord in heaven!

2007-10-31T15:45:00.000-04:00

Check this shit out!

Man, I wish I was even remotely that good.

This is what passes for phishing these days?

2007-10-31T14:16:00.001-04:00

Got an email at work warning us to be wary of an email scam going on. Here's the actual scam itself:

Dear _______________

A complaint has been filled against you and the company you are affiliated to by Mr. George Hanson and sent to Federal Trade Comission by fax,in witch he's claiming that he has been cheated by you and your company in paying a greater ammount of money than the one appearing on the invoice you gave him for using your services.

The complaint states he contacted your company on MON,22 OCT 2007, trying to solve this situation without interference from any Governmental Institution , but your company refused to take action.

On WED,24 OCT 2007, the complaint was sent by fax to Federal Trade Commission and we forwarded it to Internal Revenue Service and Better Business Bureau.

Complaint was filled against :
Name : ________________
Company : ________________
If you feel that this message has been sent to you in error or if you have any questions regarding the next steps of this process, please download! the original complaint by clicking the link below :
[link removed]

Please take knowledge of the complaint's content and complete the form at the bottom of forward it to
[link removed]

Bruce Jameson
Complaint Officer
Federal Trade Commission,Fraud Department

Since when the fuck did the FTC deal with personal complaints like this? Ever? If they did, wouldn't they file complaints against people instead of fill them? Also, I would hope they could tell that witch, even near Halloween, is simply wrong to use in this context. Now I know I have some problems with comma usage, but shouldn't there be more commas? Not to mention the entire first sentence is one of the longest run-on sentences I've seen in a while. Then there's the end where they're all like "you should click on these links no matter what!" What BS is that? Please! If you fall for phishing from a source so blatantly false, you almost deserve it. I know the goverment isn't always all that good at what they do, but their emails at least are vaguely gramatially correct and don't appear from shady sources saying that the FTC is taking action against you personally and you totally need to click on these third party links. Sheesh.

Math Nerd love song

2007-10-30T10:08:00.000-04:00

Love songs don't get much nerdier than this. It's a good song in terms of humor and, in a sad nerdy kind of way, a touching song. :)

the difference of sleep

2007-10-23T10:21:00.000-04:00

I had a great weekend on the one hand. Party a a friend's house, good drinks, great people, good time had all around. Great game night the next day, fantastic session, just fun for everyone all night. Can't say I didn't have a good time. But, as with all good things, there were certain downsides, which add up to a sad but amusing story.

So at the party I met up with an old friend and we shared his bottle of scotch. Once upon a time, this was a very normal situation for me and would be a welcomed evening's drink. However, as I really do not drink very much these days, drinking so much scotch was probably ill advised. As a result I did not take my sleep aid, as mixing generous quantities of scotch and anti-psychotic medication is not considered wise, so I did not get a good night of sleep.

So, the next day, hung over and unhappy, I woke early, ate little, and generally felt horrible until the game. After getting into the game, I had a great time, as mentioned, but had almost no food and little to drink, not helping me. All I really needed was a good night's sleep. So, after the game, I went home, took my drugs, and went to bed hoping for a good seven hours of sleep. When I woke and struggled to get back to sleep for several hours, I wondered what could possibly be wrong. It felt as if I hadn't taken my drugs at all. In the morning, I checked my drugs and found that rather than actually taking my sleep drugs, I had popped a multi-vitamin instead. Woops.

As a result, Monday was a day of living hell. No sleep for two days, permanent nausea, no food, and general wishing that I was dead. Work proved too much for me, and I ended up at home, trying and failing to eat, and wishing I was dead some more. I started passing out at 7 and took the right drugs (even double checked to be sure) and went to bed.

Now I feel fine. Not 100%, but compared to yesterday, I feel fantastic. The moral of the story: Don't mix the larger, slightly orange pills for the smaller, white pills that actually make you sleep. Got it.

LOLZ

2007-10-23T09:27:00.001-04:00

Much like when Stephen Colbert said "I only got married to rub it in gay people's faces", here is an unattributed link to a very funny "anti" gay marriage list.

Why athiests are angry, and rightly so.

2007-10-18T11:00:00.000-04:00

Why Greta, an atheist, is angry, the abridged version.

Now I don't consider myself an atheist; really what I believe defies simple description. However, I usually find myself siding with atheists in any sort of argument, especially when it comes to the patriotism of an atheist coming into question. I don't expect you all to read Greta's whole spiel, but I'll quote a few of my favorite comments from her:

I'm angry that according to a recent Gallup poll, only 45 percent of Americans would vote for an atheist for President.

I'm angry that atheist soldiers -- in the U.S. armed forces -- have had prayer ceremonies pressured on them and atheist meetings broken up by Christian superior officers, in direct violation of the First Amendment. I'm angry that evangelical Christian groups are being given exclusive access to proselytize on military bases -- again in the U.S. armed forces, again in direct violation of the First Amendment. I'm angry that atheist soldiers who are complaining about this are being harassed and are even getting death threats from Christian soldiers and superior officers -- yet again, in the U.S. armed forces. And I'm angry that Christians still say smug, sanctimonious things like, "there are no atheists in foxholes." You know why you're not seeing atheists in foxholes? Because believers are threatening to shoot them if they come out.

I'm angry that the 41st President of the United States, George Herbert Walker Bush, said of atheists, in my lifetime, "No, I don't know that atheists should be regarded as citizens, nor should they be regarded as patriotic. This is one nation under God." My President. No, I didn't vote for him, but he was still my President, and he still said that my lack of religious belief meant that I shouldn't be regarded as a citizen.

I'm angry that women are having septic abortions -- or are being forced to have unwanted children who they resent and mistreat -- because religious organizations have gotten laws passed making abortion illegal or inaccessible.

I'm especially angry that so many believers treat prayer as a cosmic shopping list when it comes to health and illness. I'm angry that this belief leads to the revolting conclusion that God deliberately makes people sick so they’ll pray to him to get better. And I'm angry that they foist this belief on sick and dying children -- in essence teaching them that, if they don't get better, it's their fault. That they didn't pray hard enough, or they didn't pray right, or God just doesn't love them enough.

I'm angry -- enraged -- at the priests who molest children and tell them it's God's will. I'm enraged at the Catholic Church that consciously, deliberately, repeatedly, for years, acted to protect priests who molested children, and consciously and deliberately acted to keep it a secret, placing the Church's reputation as a higher priority than, for fuck's sake, children not being molested. And I'm enraged that the Church is now trying to argue, in court, that protecting child-molesting priests from prosecution, and shuffling those priests from diocese to diocese so they can molest kids in a whole new community that doesn't yet suspect them, is a Constitutionally protected form of free religious expression.

I get angry when religious believers base their entire philosophy of life on what is, at best, a hunch; when they ignore or reject or rationalize any evidence that contradicts that hunch or calls it into question... and then accuse atheists of being close-minded and ignoring the obvious truth.

I get angry when believers say that they can know the truth -- the greatest truth of all about the nature of the universe, namely the source of all existence -- simply by sitting quietly and listening to their heart... and then accuse atheists of being arrogant. (This isn't just arrogant towards atheists and naturalists, either. It's arrogant towards people of other religions who have sat just as quietly, listened to their hearts with just as much sincerity, and come to completely opposite conclusions about God and the soul and the universe.)

But perhaps most of all, I get angry -- sputteringly, inarticulately, pulse-racingly angry -- when believers chide atheists for being so angry. "Why do you have to be so angry all the time?" "All that anger is so off-putting." "If atheism is so great, then why are so many of you so angry?"

That's really just the tip of the iceberg, but I think it gets the point across. Athiests are angry because there's so much wrong in the world that can be solely blamed on the kind of religious people who frighten me. They're in the majority, and if they had their way, they would have me and all other people who don't agree with their view of the world at best deported, and at worst killed. Science and reason are taking a back seat to religious fanatcism and it seems like there's nothing we can do to change that. That's why athiests are angry, and that's why I'm scared.

I turn again to Bad Religion for the most succinct statement on the world today:

Welcome to the new Dark Ages.

Portal! Finally!

2007-10-11T15:59:00.000-04:00

With the release of Valve Software's Orange Box, I am finally in possession of Portal, a wickedly clever game designed by the same people who brought Half Life into the world. In case you somehow don't know what I'm talking about, Portal is a first person shooter wherein there is no actual shooting. Indeed, Portal is a FPS puzzle game, and I have to say a masterfully crafted one at that. To boot, it's addictively entertaining and very funny at times.

The game starts with you waking up from some form of hibernation with no idea who you are, where you are, or wtf is going on. Your only companion is a female computer voice who instructs you to enter the glowing portal that appears on the wall in your chamber. Eventually you receive what I've been waiting for I think at least a year to play with: the Aperture Science Foundation Hand Held Portal Device. Shoot portal one, shoot portal two, walk through from point A to point B. You'd think this would get old, but, trust me, not even a little. Holy crap it's cool. And the game they built around it, though admittedly shorter than I had hoped, is excellently crafted and involving. And, at the end, your reward is a cake. Seriously.

The downside is that I beat the game in a single sitting, and stayed up WAY too late to do so. But, considering my skill for logic puzzles, it's not that surprising. And I had a damn fun time beating it, and I imagine I'll have a damn fine time doing it again! Possibly tonight...

Nah. I also have Half Life 2: Episode Two to play, and I've been waiting forever for that one too. Hee hee hee.. I wonder how Ep2 and Portal will intertwine. Even if it's not now that they combine, it's clear that the Portal Device is destined for Gordon Freeman's hands eventually. Now that will be something to look forward to!

Man I'm a geek.

My job is not lost

2007-09-28T15:34:00.000-04:00

Contrary to popular belief here a couple days ago, most of our jobs were secure. Most importantly, my job is secure, and I am on one of the teams least likely to lose anyone for any reason for at the bare minimum a year. My stress levels have decreased significantly.

One big downside is that the boss that I was so fond of got axed. He was funny, fun, sarcastic, and very good at what he did. I'm not happy that he's gone, not even slightly. Thankfully, the man replacing him is a very nice and, in my experience, very good manager. He'll have one hell of a pair of shoes to fill, but I think he's up to the task. He's already taken my side over a certain very annoying business person, and snickered when I mentioned how I was being nice, so he's starting on the right path.

Though my job is reasonably secure, I don't know how much more I can stand of this company. Theoretically a lot of training and new technologies are going to be appearing soon, so I'm going to get as much experience as I can stand to get before seeking new employment. Who knows, maybe this job will actually become one I want to keep and that specter of unemployment will disappear? More likely, I'll be looking for a new job in six months to a year, but this time I'll be looking on my terms while I still have a job. Looking for a job without desperation but out of interest is going to be a new and interesting experience for me. Thankfully I don't have to worry about that for a while. Yay!

A test of self control.

2007-09-25T13:25:00.001-04:00

I now own Halo 3, yet I am still at work. The most highly hyped game of modern history, one I desperately want to play, and I am still at work. I'm even going to Tai Chi tonight and sticking around for the stretching class before going home and popping in the game. I was going to bring the game and leave it on my desk so I could look at it and occasionally fondle the box, maybe glance through the manual a little, but I decided against that. It's torture enough to sit here waiting. I almost wonder if when I reveal I have Halo 3 but I'm going to take class tonight anyway all the sudden I'll find myself at home with all the guys at the Fu school raptly watching as I blow away elites. That would be rather surreal.

Anyway, I am going to get back to work and see how fast I can make the next few hours go by...

Halo on Discovery?

2007-09-25T09:20:00.001-04:00

Check this shit out!

I should never let my sister touch my computer

2007-09-18T13:14:00.000-04:00

I had my sister, her husband, and my father for a good old-fasioned dinner the other night. I did so because my sister gave me the following choice: none. Anyway, I got some steaks, potatoes, broccoli, and made my favorite dinner: steak with potatoes and broccoli with ice cream for desert. Mmm... As excellent guests, both my sister and her husband and my father brought me beer. The crowing choice here was my father's Heineken Draft Keg (boy do I wish I got paid to plug their shit) that was only 50% foam. Moving on, we killed the keg, mostly after my father left, and my sister decided to "improve" on my computer's background. So she drew me a very strange looking girl thing in garrish colors as my background. Displeased with that, she then drew Picasso's words nightmare with boobies. When that failed to do the trick, she finally opted to draw a happy sun, on a blue sky, with dicks falling from the air, "homo" sky art, and a gay rainbow, and I think you know what I mean when you say gay rainbow.

The moral of today's story: never let my sister get drunk and start drawing on my computer.

Sim Lung Style

2007-09-18T13:08:00.001-04:00

I know that I am lax in posting this so late, but I must share an amazing style I've found on the Internet, YouTube specificially, that being the dynamic and powerful Sim Lung Style as taught by the Sum Lung Kung Fu Master.

Goodah!

Entertainment is found in unexpected places

2007-09-14T01:05:00.001-04:00

Went out to the dreaded Philly (technically only alongside it rather than actually in it) to see a Flogging Molly / Dropkick Murphy's show. Great show, lots of fun; I really should go to more concerts like that, even if I am now an old man all growns up with work and shit like that to think about. I had a lot of fun, but that is not my purpose in writing here. No, I must share the experience of the "wait, what?" moment we shared with one of the security guys.

So we found the venue and the handy parking place right next to it and after a tiny bit of confusion we parked and generally loitered by our car. A nice security guy came up and told us that we needed to be out of the parking lot by 7. It was 6:55. We looked at him like he had three heads and when he noticed he assumed a rather confused look. We informed him we'd just shown up to go see the concert next door and that leaving by 7 sorta defeated the purpose of parking here, which confused him further until he said, "Oh shit, wait, lemme rephrase that." See we were supposed to walk out of the parking lot and into the venue by 7, not drive off the lot. Minor confusion there, but we all shared a good laugh after figuring out just how badly we were misunderstanding each other.

It was worth it just to see the realization spread across everyone's faces as we all grinned at how dumb we felt.

So I met this girl...

2007-09-09T23:30:00.000-04:00

So I'm out Friday night with some friends at our usual haunt and we are joined by some of their friend plus one person I'd never met before. She was very pretty and that only changed when she smiled at me, at which point I upgraded her to beautiful. Initially she sat as far from me as was possible, so I didn't learn anything of her, even her name.

Later in the evening, as my friend and one of the newcomers began to talk and spent the entire time trying to one up one another, the very pretty young lady saw an opportunity to flee their discussion and came over to sit next to me. We talked about any number of things, but really bonded about the most important of skills: baked goods. She bragged about her brownies, cookies, and cheesecake, and I bragged about my brownies and pies in response. T'was like a match made in the pastry section of ACME or something.

The more we talked the more I liked her. She was smart, much smarter than I, funny, very entertaining. I got the distinct impression that she was enjoying my company nearly as much as I was enjoying hers. Eventually the party wandered over to her roof, and we stayed late into the night. Though I did not talk to her exclusively, we hit if off quite well.

When my departure time came we talked a bit alone, she made sure I had her phone number, we made a date to cook something, and before I left, we kissed. It was a lovely end to an ego boosting night.

Having seen Swingers, I know the rules, and did not call her the next day. I called her on Sunday to see if she'd like to get some lunch, but got VM, so I just left her a quick VM and thought nothing more of it, spending my time instead playing Crackdown and preparing myself for the night's D&D destruction.

During the game, I got a call and, lo and behold, it was her. I scampered outside, excited, to talk to her for a while. My character was stuck in a force cage, so it wasn't like I was going to be doing anything for a long time. I said hi, hoping to hear about when we might be doing our cooking date. Instead I found out that, in fact, that other guy she'd been avoiding all night was actually her boyfriend and she'd neglected to mention that. Oops.

All things considered, nothing really bad happened; it was just a kiss, and I've only met her once. But she is smart, funny, beautiful, and confident. I could be depressed, or irritated, or some other negative emotion about this. But really? I feel great. A beautiful girl thought I was that interesting in one shot? This means to me: the therapy is working, the drugs are working, and I'm not broken anymore.

I finally really feel like I'm not broken anymore.

That fucking rules.

Something I missed...

2007-09-05T15:39:00.000-04:00

John Cleese did the eulogy for his friend Graham Chapman. I doubt you'll be surprised, but he ended up being very funny.

Watch it here.

Was the black eye worth it?

2007-08-30T09:20:00.000-04:00

I think I minded my black eye much less than other people minded it really. It was only annoying when it was all swollen and I had to ice it into submission. It never really hurt all that much. Well, except when my sister's dog went in for a closer look and clubbed her face into my eye. That hurt. Otherwise I was fine.

The question that normally followed "what the fuck is up with your eye?", following my explanation of Kung Fu test was, "did you pass the test?". Yes. Yes I did. Not only did I pass the test, apparently I had the highest score in the entire school. I neither noticed this or really would have cared about it, but a couple of other students made mention of it, so I thought that was cool. I now have a red belt. That's either really cool (as I like red) or prophetic implying that I'll be bleeding a lot with this belt. Blood's not so bad, though I do prefer it when it's not my own. Oh well, I learn snake now, and as far as I'm concerned that's worth a little blood.

Fun with user defined dictionaries

2007-08-29T10:40:00.000-04:00

Well, I've more or less finished with all my work on books one and two of my modern fantasy series. Both are about as ready for publishing as they're gonna be, so I am going to leave them alone and not so much as look at them until I hear something more about publishing them. Since a fairly vital part of my fourth book is an interview with an old boss of mine, who is failing to get back to me quickly, I can't do any more planning or outlining of that book. As such, I've turned back to my high fantasy book, and actually made serious progress in it.

For some reason, I hadn't been able to get past one point in the book for something like six months. I'd keep trying, write three sentences, hate them, and give up for a while. I did that several times before I figured out a way to actually write that chapter. And now, even though I did something interesting in the chapter, I still don't like the chapter. So I decided to say fuck it, rammed some crappy shit on the end of the chapter and moved on to the next one. That chapter is already turning out to be much more interesting, so good for me, I made it past the stupid writers block!

One of the things that's annoyed me about dealing with OpenOffice is that sometimes their dictionary is missing things or just bloody wrong. This is in a very tiny percentage of cases, but it can be annoying. The other irritant is that writing high fantasy means coming up with names that are definitely either new or just not something you'd ever see in any dictionary anywhere. Why is this fun? Because on of the neat things about OO.org is that you can create user defined dictionaries, thus putting all your new words in a named dictionary. I named mine ThoseWhoHuntDictionaries. I am easily amused. :)

I got a shiner

2007-08-21T23:14:00.000-04:00

Kung Fu Test this evening. Not my favorite thing ever, but I got through it. The only really interesting part about it is that when the sparring section of my test came up, I got me a nice shiner. Yeah, real nice shiner. Don't you worry, I got him back. Boy did I get him back. And I didn't leave marks. :)

Anyway, I got beat up and stuff, so I'm probably gonna use this as a lovely excuse to not go to work for a day. Been using cold packs to try to keep the swelling down and that's as much of a joy as you can imagine.

If you're gonna do something...

2007-08-21T09:41:00.001-04:00

If you're going to ask someone to marry you, there are better and worse ways. This way is better.

More book news

2007-08-20T14:27:00.000-04:00

Here's an interesting piece of news: my personal editor, that being my favorite bookstore owner in the world, is not only my personal editor, but also appears to be becoming an editor for the publisher I am currently wooing with my writing. That's very good for me in that FBO is already doing everything he can to pimp me out to this publisher. Actually working for the guy in an official fashion can only help me.

On top of that, there's some thinking that perhaps my book will be the first of an illustrated novel. Not like every page, but having say an illustrated new chapter page. I personally see that as being potentially awesome so long as the artist is someone that I enjoy his stuff. Some artist whom I don't really connect with wouldn't exactly sit well with me. Hell, I could just comission my sister to draw some shit. It's not really her thing, but at least I could work with her to get things going. Who knows what some anonymous artist who don't know me who I don't know would do if I didn't already know and like his work?

Anyway, the actual book news is that all the Jerry Bruckhiemering has been completed, printed, and turned over for editing along with my third book. Lots is getting done in the realm of editing and stuff, some of that being my first novel, so hopefully I get the ok from FBO about the new stuff soon! It's months yet before I'll hear about my short story, but I have an upcoming interview with my old boss' boss' boss for my fourth book, so between that and a tiny bit of writers block in my high fantasy book, I've got lots to work on. Good thing I'm really busy at work. Ha!

book update

2007-08-13T10:27:00.001-04:00

Book update and short story update! I have met my hopefully soon to be publisher at a book signing at my favorite bookstore. I met him and one of my favorite authors to boot, so it was kinda cool. My total lack of ability to shmooze was something of a problem, but I did give the short story to the guy and after just glancing at it he said "this is just what I was looking for", which I took to be a good sign. Hopefully I will have more good signs or even good news soon!

The book is being worked on. I am putting in my Jerry Bruckheimer Style changes, and while they are actually fun to write, they are forcing me to very carefully parse everything else I wrote to find all the places where I have to adjust things to keep to continuity. I also had to cut like a thousands words here and there, but I think, in the end, it will all be worth it. The publisher guy sounded, dare I say, somewhat excited to read my book after I get my changes done, so I'm definitely going to try to get those completed this week and into the right hands.

After working this long and ahrd for what might have been nothing but fun for myself it is, I have to admit, both fascinating and nerve-wracking. It both fills me with a nervous dread, and an excitement that this might actually go somewhere interesting! I've always said if I make as much as $50 off the first book I'd be happy, but at this rate I might make almost eight times that amount off the short story alone. I can't help but think that's cool.

So I'm excited. I doubt anyone will blame me.

Dragonforce + Guitar Hero = Hilarity

2007-08-06T09:22:00.002-04:00

Just watch this video to see what I'm talking about. HILARITY!

Color me shocked. I think that's yellow.

2007-08-03T14:04:00.000-04:00

So everyone seems to like my short story. I really wasn't expecting that, but hey, I'll take what I can get. Even FBO said that nothing needed to change in the story other than my atrocious grammar and spastic comma use. I basically just have to polish the mistakes my editors were kind enough to point out and then it's ready to submit! Which is apparantly next weekend. There's gonna be a signing and, on top of getting some books signed, I also intend to meet my hopefully soon to be publisher and get some points of some kind. I may even get to submit my story right then and there. Should be an interesting weekend!

Don Hertzfeldt is a sick fuck

2007-08-02T14:06:00.000-04:00

You may know of him, but I suggest you Google him or check out his videos on YouTube anyway. If you like this it's worth it: REJECTED

I have to Jerry Bruckheimer up my first book

2007-07-27T14:28:00.000-04:00

In case you weren't aware that to Jerry Bruckheimer something is actually a verb, allow me to explain: to Jerry Bruckheimer something is to fill it with action, explosions, etc. I came up with this verb after watching National Treasure, a fun not good movie with lots of action and unnecessary explosions Knowing that, we can move on.

I went to my favorite bookstore today, got a few books, and spoke with my editor about what he thinks I might want to do with my books (he's mostly done editing the second one). The first thing he told me was that the second book was better (so far) than the first and that I should consider merging the two books into one. A little discussion and we decided that maybe that book would be too long. The second book, you see, is better paced and more action packed than the first one. It's definitely the superior book so far and FBO thinks that I won't get much of a readership with the first book for the second book to shine.

So in talking about it, I asked FBO if he thought that action was missing from the first book. He said yes, so I suggested a couple of scenes that could turn from short and somewhat boring (if funny by my standards) chapters into more interesting chapters. Mostly they become more interesting by adding explosions or fight scenes. When I suggested to FBO that I should Jerry Bruckheimer up the first book he laughed and said that was a great idea. Now I have to look through the first book and find places to make things blow up more, help foreshadow things, have characters try to kill each other more often, that sort of thing.

Honestly, I've always known that my first book was weak compared to the two I wrote after it. I've made so many changes to that first book that it's kind of annoying to do it again, but this is what happens when you cut your teeth on a book that has potential that you can't do well enough on immediately. Irritating, yes, that I have to go change my stupid book yet again, but on the plus side, I've already thought of two somewhat interesting scenes that could become FAR more violent and therefore fascinating. :) Jerry Bruckheimering up my book shouldn't be too hard, and it could be a great deal of fun. I certainly hope so.

Dragon Dancing

2007-07-25T13:29:00.001-04:00

About a month ago I started working on that short story that I intended to submit to my hopeful publisher. Well, I have finished the first draft and sent it out to some suckers... I mean good friends who are kind enough to look at my first draft and tell me how much it sucks. Not really. So far so good on the responses on the short story, which is frankly surprising since I suck so much at writing short stories. My strength in writing, I like to think, is my characters and their dialogue. Short stories don't have nearly enough time to really let anyone get to know the main character in any meaningful way and too much dialogue cuts into the space I am able to write so there's not enough of that.

Still, if the feedback so far has been "you don't suck" then I guess all that time spent writing novels came in handy somewhere. I've heard from some places that a good way to get your name known in the writing world is to write a bunch of short stories before trying to do any novels. That, obviously, won't exactly work for me having already done the novels, but I think that if I've cut my teeth on novels, perhaps coming back to short stories will make them easier for me.

I'm not letting my ego get out of control here and make me think I'm going to be some kind of short story genius now, but I think that planning a ten or twenty page story is slightly easier to me since I've planned books up to nearly 350 pages written and planned one book far longer than that. Ten or twenty pages is a chapter really, so considering how much experience I have in chapters, like fifty or more, then perhaps that is what is giving me the ability to do short stories a tid bit easier.

Anyway, my plan is to try to come up with some short stories and start submitting them to magazines and such (for money if at all possible). There are some short story contests I have been examining as well. I will, of course, pass all this past my favorite bookstore owner ever to make sure I'm not doing something silly, but I imagine he'll tell me, "yes, do that", so I'm not too worried that I'm wasting my time looking around.

I vaugely wonder if my chances for getting shit published isn't somehow weakened by the fact that I am in no way an English major, minor, or even, you know, really something I'm all that good at. Computer Scientists aren't normally known for thier English skills. Then again, most CS people haven't written three books for fun, so I might just be weird. Who knows?

Back to work.

The perils of DrivingUniversity.com

2007-07-23T09:36:00.000-04:00

As I desperately miss my damn Defensive Driving discount and I really hate going to the def driver courses that basically involve me sitting around bored out of my mind for three or four hours while vaguely paying attention the stupid class, I emailed my insurance agent to see if any of these fancy schmancy new online classes were an acceptable replacement to the stupid class. My agent sent me a list of several choices and I went with one that looked the best designed and started the course.

As you can probably tell from the title of this little rant I picked DrivingUniversity.com, a very blue website, but one that at least looks somewhat technologically reasonable. The little tag line "Made by drivers for drivers" probably should have thrown up warning signs for me, but I plowed ahead.

One of the major reasons I wanted to take this course online was because I hate how long and boring the in class classes are. I thought that taking the course online should let me work at my own pace, that being fast, and according to the website "You can take the course at your own pace. The course is broken up into sessions and the time to take the course will vary from one person to another." As soon as I've finished the first page and ready to roar on, I notice a little timer at the bottom of the page. "That's odd," I thought, "I wouldn't think people would have to finish the page before the timer ran out. Good thing I read fast." Onwards! I click forward.

When the page reloaded, I noted quickly that it was the same fucking page, there was a lovely warning box at the top of the page telling me that the website required that I spend another 45 seconds on the page. That's right, there is a minimum amount of time I'm supposed to spend on each page because that's how long it's supposed to take me to read the page. By trying to speed up the irritating process of these stupid def driver classes, I've actually slowed back down. My hopes that this ridiculous limit of speed on this page would only be bad on the first few pages was totally dashed. I spent a minimum and a maximum of 20 seconds and well over a minute respectively of wasted time on each page.

But that's not the only punishment I receive for wanting to go fast. I'd really like to just, you know, get this stupid class over with since it's like the fifth or sixth time I've taken one of these annoying classes and I KNOW THE GODDAMN ANSWERS BY HEART. Clearly I've gotten the concept of driving defensively by now. But no! No no no. Aside from being punished for reading quickly, part of the online test is paying close enough attention to pick out details that have nothing to do with driving, such as the odd fact that honey is used in the production of golf balls and anti-freeze. Yeah, that's right, I have to pay attention to these little details, write them down, and use them to answer random quizzes that have absolutely nothing to do with driving. The best part? Sometimes the answers appear AFTER the quizzes. Oh goody.

The other details of the class layout are: read a bunch of shit, take some bullshit tests, read some ridiculous stories and answer questions about them, then play a puzzle game, repeat ad nauseum. We're up to the stories. The stories were clearly written by people who think that the people who are taking def driver courses are six years old. If the Wheel of Morality appeared in one of those stories it would not have surprised me. Reading these condescending stories made me want to punch people, and the propagandist nature of the stories was so blatant it almost made me want to become a communist. And were the final questions on these stories actually about driving? No, just stupid little details in the story that are easily forgotten. Fortunately I was wise enough to copy/paste the entire story into wordpad so I could check my answers. And, yes, if you finished their little quiz too quickly, you had to sit and wait for the website to decide you'd been done their test long enough.

Lastly, the puzzles. These were crossword puzzles in a manner of speaking, excepting that most of your time spent was waiting for their timer to run down before you input your answer. God forbid you spell an answer wrong, or you are forced to wait out the ENTIRE timer AGAIN while you spelled your answer correctly. No points for getting 95% of the letters of your answer correct.

In the end this course that I could supposedly take at my own pace, ended up taking me nearly four hours to complete, and I'd guess that nearly half that time was me waiting for timers to finish counting down. Maybe more. But no matter, the test was over, all I wanted was my stupid certificate which the website said I could print right there.

Except that, no, no I couldn't actually have the certificate. The link to the certificate is broken. My only way to get the fucking certificate is to have it faxed to me. Were any of the locations they suggested even remotely convenient to me? Of course not. Having wasted hours being punished for being able to read quickly, I sent a surprisingly polite message requesting that my certificate be faxed to my agent's office. I figured that since this company already alerts my agent upon completion of the online class, faxing the certificate to them as well wouldn't be asking much. Once again, I was wrong. Due to a mandate by the DE DMV, faxing a certificate to the very company they will be alerting so that I can have the discount is illegal. To get my certificate I have to show my ID, which certainly isn't possible at my agent's office WHERE THEY FUCKING KNOW WHO I AM.

All in all, I have to say that the online defensive driving course I took was almost as frustrating if not more so than taking the goddamn classes in person. The idea that I might not have to go anywhere was, of course, completely dashed when I had to find a place for them to fax me my goddamn certificate so I could go pick it up. When it comes time to take the course again, I may have to go take the fucking class in person because there at least I can totally ignore the class and play my DS. Should you take an online defensive driving course? I suppose that really depends on how much of a masochist you are. Or if you happen to read very slowly and live right next to a Fedex/Kinko's or UPS Store location. Otherwise I'd suggest suffering through the stupid class in person.

Hahahahaha!

2007-07-20T09:26:00.000-04:00

Wizards that could kick Harry Potter's ass.

Though Harry Dresden didn't make the list, I think the wizards that did are worth the comedy value.

An unexpected shift in reality

2007-07-20T09:00:00.000-04:00

As many people do, I have my resume online at Dice.com. This has resulted in almost no useful job offers, but up until today they've always been similar. The people sending me offers obviously never actually even so much as glanced at my resume or online information on Dice, and sent me jobs that asked for things like "senior software engineer", "ten years experience in SQLServer2k", and often times asked for years of experience in thing I hadn't even heard of. I've been used to getting these offers that there was no way I could possibly fill their expectations for some time now.

Today, however, marks the first day that I was sent an offer that I was actually considerably overqualified for. Where they wanted 2 years experience I have like four or five, and the knowledge bits that would be a "plus" I had experience in most of them. I don't know if this sudden change actually means something, but maybe it won't be as hard to find a job next time I'm looking. Hopefully that won't be soon, but if it is, I feel slightly more confident now that I know there are jobs that I am actually overqualified for.

meetings

2007-07-19T17:14:00.001-04:00

Today I had a nearly 2 hour meeting that I needed to be in about five minutes of. It was the kind of meeting that, had it actually meant anything to me, I might have somehow vaguely not wanted to kill myself, but since it meant less than nothing to me, I really seriously was considering how many papercuts it would take to reach my jugular or carotid so I could fucking die instead of sit in the meeting anymore. The real turning point was when I realized that my boss has just walked out of the meeting at some point and then I just wanted to kill other people too.

I've had kind of a frustrating week in many ways, so my urge to kill isn't exactly hard to get off the ground right now anyway. EVENTUALLY, though, I will actually finish my stupid short story and start getting people to read it and tell me how horrible I am at writing short stories. Then I'll probably start feeling better. Why? I have no idea. That's just kind of how I work.

Bwahaha!

2007-07-17T09:25:00.000-04:00

This is the greatest Digg link I've seen in a while: Tell Girls to Shut Up Its Good for Them

Christian Bale = Badass

2007-07-13T11:46:00.000-04:00

Why Christian Bale is a complete badass. An eloquent article that exemplifies everything badass about the man. Rock.

Best "your mom" joke ever

2007-07-12T16:25:00.001-04:00

http://www.xkcd.com/c116.html

Workplace sensitivity training

2007-07-11T09:29:00.000-04:00

Yeah, that's right, I got to spend two hours yesterday learning some things about being more sensitive to others in the workplace and how I am a lout. Some group of professional actors does skits to get their points across with an obvious realization that what they do is annoying, so if they're gonna do it, they damn well better make it funny. Though it was surprisingly amusing, here are some of my notes from yesterday:

Actors in "real life" situations = Choose your own adventure: office harassment.
Manager George meets secretary Marie. Should George
- A. Smile and nod.
- B. Shake hands.
- C. Compliment Marie's ass.
- D. Suggest that a trip to the closet might result in a promotion.
Stereotype vs. Reality: Rumble in the Manger's head.
If Marie wants to be listened to in a male centric world, she should bring a megaphone.
To be a man one must have a penis.
In answer to the question of what to do when the VP of Sales "suggests" that you consider the nephew of the VP of Marketing over a qualified candidate, one should quietly murder the VP of Sales to avoid the problem. This has the added bonus of a potential promotion.
People who curse a lot at work are considered to be louts. I'm fucking screwed.

Though I hate to admit it, I did almost enjoy the training. It didn't hurt that both of the actresses were kinda hot. And it did kill two hours I'd have had to have killed on my own anyway, so there were plusses. Gotta find that silver lining!

My vacation plus geek

2007-07-10T09:29:00.000-04:00

For those of you who don't know, I am recently returned from my vacation to MD for my father and sister's birthday week thing. They were both children of 7/7, so I was supposed to take some of the week off and ended up taking almost the entire week off. As the old knight said at the end of Last Crusade, I chose wisely. As I do have some odd streaks of sunburn here and there, I didn't necessarily pick the right sunscreen every day, but taking that time was nicely relaxing, so it was well worth some vacation days.

Sailing, of course, I managed to get in for a day. Floating around in the water generally doing nothing was accompilshed. Tossing my brother in law off a pier and attempting the same with his brother, also got done. There was enough beer pong to fill a standard kitchen trashcan. I played my new DS games, both of which were engaging and fun (FFIII and Puzzle Quest if you must know). I practiced Kung Fu and Taiji every single day. I got to eat a small fortune worth of crabs, which was delicious and smash happy as well. We watched movies new and old of which the only one really worth mentioning was Pixar's Cars and I have to admit that for all my resistance to wanting to go see the movie (my whole racing aversion of late) the movie was quite good. Got lots done. Not much writing, but that's ok.

Mostly, though, I got ping pong done. I am back on my game. I started out shaky, losing every game to anyone, mom, brother in law, father, who I might play, and by the end I was winning more than losing. I love ping pong. The problem is finding a way to play it without the drive to MD. We do have a table here at work, oddly enough, but it is constantly in use and there doesn't appear to be any way to schedule time on the table.

If not for that whole "may not have a job come December" thing dangling precariously over my head a la the Sword of Damocles, I would just buy a damn table and find a nice place to put it. Outdoor tables appear to be 2-3X the cost of an indoor table, so either cramming it in my basement or in my parents house would seem to be my only option. I suppose I could always replace my kitchen table with the pong table, but my kitchen is ill sized for ping pong. Guh. Someday...

Now the geek. If you don't like Dungeons and Dragons, I suggest you stop reading now.

I got myself into the GM's chair for the first time in a long time at my game on Sunday. I ran an encounter that, in my opinion, went quite well save for the combat. The basic idea was that my fellow pirates were approached by some well geared other pirates who stole one of our crew. Then they had to go get little Billy the squid (seriously) back. All in all I wanted to have some entertaining traps, annoying special skills, and naval combat, and I think I succeeded on those counts. Not so much on the on ship combat, since I really wasn't ready for half the crew to immediately storm into the area where they were supposed to be sneak attacked and SEE their damn attackers before the sneak attacks could come. Or for half the crew to just hop down into the ship instead of walking across the trap laden decks. That could have been done better. Aside from that, I was entertained and I hope I entertained everyone.

Ok, I'm done geeking out. I'm going to publish this before the über storm hits and wipes out our power and our backup generators. Whee!

This needs a bigger audience:

2007-07-10T09:26:00.000-04:00

http://skippyslist.com/?page_id=3

Hilarity. READ!

this is ridiculous

2007-06-28T23:03:00.000-04:00

I came down here, way past my bed-time, feeling maudlin and depressed and attempted to bare my soul on my blog. That didn't happen. Sad part is I was getting all emotional because of a particularly good yet depressing episode of Scrubs. Yes, TV has led me to this. Anyway, the outpouring of emotion that has, thus far, not happened, has given way to a much stronger power: irritation. So fuck this, I'm going back to bed. But before I go...

I deleted some posts. Tonight was the realization that leaving those posts alone wasn't helping anyone, least of all me. It's rather egotistical of me to think that this will actually help either me or she who the posts involved, but the important part is that they're gone. It's not much, but it's something, and maybe, maybe, I'll finally be able to let go.

publisher!

2007-06-26T22:03:00.000-04:00

Fantasist Enterprises is the publisher that is currently considering (or is at least in possession of) my first book. I just recently found that out so I poked around. While poking I found this: Paper Blossoms, Sharpened Steel. Something about coming up with a story in ancient Asia sounded like fun. I came up with an idea within about five minutes, and then had a brilliant thought: is this actually a good idea? Is it somehow unkosher to have two things submitted to a publisher? FBO said resoundingly "DO IT!" So now I'm studying up on Dragon Style Kung Fu, Ng Mui, and the Henan Shaolin Temple. More than that I won't say for now. But the possibility of more my stuff being published couldn't hurt, right? Damn straight.

Book info!

2007-06-15T13:26:00.000-04:00

First and foremost I'd like to report that my manuscript for my first book is in the hands of he who may become my new publisher! The best bookstore owner ever handed off the goods at some point recently, and now it's just waiting to see what the publisher guy says about my book. If he hates it, at least I finally got it all the way to a publisher. If he likes it, well, then my life should get much more interesting for a while. I will, of course, update here as I get more information.

Second and aftermost, the FBO has expressed an interest in moving onto my second book which means it's time for me to give my second book the resounding edit it deserves. I'm going to be bringing my second book up to manuscript quality levels and getting it printed and bound for the editing process and I'm going to be doing this soon!

Seems that getting my new laptop was very well timed! He he... Like I really needed more reasons to like my new favorite toy. :)

Fuck Bud Light.

2007-06-15T11:21:00.001-04:00

But damn is this funny.

New laptop!

2007-06-13T20:57:00.000-04:00

It ain't exactly been a long wait, but I have my laptop in my happy little hands! And boy is it a shit-ton prettier to look at than my last one. Not to mention lighter, better keyboard, better layout for just about everything, and a really sweet light design (very nice blue). The only downside this laptop has compared to the last one is that I had to spend money to get this one. But I'm still viewing this thing as a step up in just about every way possible.

Of course being the picky bastard that I am, the first thing I did after running through all the install BS was to start deleting shit off this thing I really didn't want or need (eg. AOL crap). And as a believer in open source technology over shit I actually paid for (and didn't really want), I downloaded Firefox (I'm actually typing this in Firefox!) and am already downloading OpenOffice for all my writing needs. Though I do have Office on this machine, which I may use from time to time, I've grown to like OO Writer much better than Word, so I had to have it.

Once all that stuff is completed and I've given my computer a nice reboot to take all those other setting that I changed, I'm going to go find a few heavy duty flash games and test out just how fast this computer runs. Who knows? It may become my new gaming rig. And with the badass wide screen that I have, I think those games just might look super pretty.

I am a very happy boy right now. I know that's rare, but dammit! New toy! GLEE!

Giving in to temptation...

2007-06-11T09:06:00.000-04:00

I have given in to temptation. Yes, I find it slightly troublesome that I'm getting something with the word "Gateway" on it, but considering that this laptop is actually going to be able to out perform my desktop and has everything I have been looking for in a laptop, I am hopeful that this little bugger will do everything I need it to do. Because I'll actually have a laptop that I don't have to coax into working correctly, unlike my current one, I will probably start writing again, and that's a very good thing. If all goes well setting up my new writing platform, it will be time to bite the bullet and start seeing if I can't track down those people I really need to interview before really getting into my next Jay and K book.

Considering that I may be looking for a new job again come winter, I have contemplated that perhaps buying the laptop was not the wisest of plans. I could rationalize my way out of this, but frankly sometimes you just gotta go buy yourself something you really want because, dammit, you want a toy. What's the point of having money if you never get to use it on anything you really actually want?

Part of why I dropped a small ton of coin on my sister and her husband's wedding gift (bad ass TV) is that I remember what it's like to start out like that and getting tired of feeling poor all the time. Living carefully, cautiously spending every dollar, meticulously following your budget; all of this gets old. Doing all this and seeing your friends who have stuff you want can evoke more jealousy than one might want to admit. So in getting them a really cool TV, I am attempting to offset that feeling that I was so familiar with for them so that they can really just try to enjoy the whole married thing for a while till they're comfortable enough financially to buy nice things for themselves. It may not work, but a big brother's gotta dote on someone.

Now, I wasn't exactly jealous of anyone when I bought me my laptop. More I was annoyed that my current POS laptop was broken and that it frustrated me so much that my writing took a back burner. But I have also not spent money on much of anything but my home for a long time, so it was bloody well time to get me something more impressive than a new video game. This new toy should keep me amused and happy for a long time, and should hopefully get me back on writing again. That will be a very good thing.

More on drugs

2007-06-06T09:05:00.000-04:00

Well, it's official: I am upgrading my drugs. Lately, as I've slowly been getting rid of the Wellbutrin/Buproprion, I've felt a bit down, under the weather, depressed really. It makes a certain kind of sense that as I'm removing the anti-depressant from my system that I would feel a bit more depressed, right? That's what I suspected, but I also wondered if my decrease in that particular drug would also affect the other two (Lorazepam and Seroquel).

For the past couple of months I've been having trouble sleeping again. Not much trouble, mind you, but enough that I wondered if I should be increasing my Seroquel again. The past two weeks were particularly bad for my sleep for any number of reasons, and last night I decided it was time to take a dose and a half to see what effect, if any, it would have on my sleep. I went to sleep late while still getting up at the normal time and felt more refreshed this morning than I've felt in probably months. Yeah, it's long past time to upgrade my Seroquel.

Lorazepam on the other hand, I am not entirely sure about. I seems like it's logical to increase that as my Wellbutrin decreases to account for the difference of drugs in my system. But drugs don't necessarily work the way we might expect them too something with which I am all too familiar. I will be talking to Herr psychiatrist about this, and probably increasing the drugs just to be safe, but I will keep an open mind when I talk to the guy. There's no question that I won't leave without a bigger Seroquel perscription, but maybe the Lorazepam I can leave alone. We'll just have to see.

Kung Fu test: Passed. Duh.

2007-05-03T11:00:00.000-04:00

I am now the proud wearer of a green sash. Finally. The test was, as suspected, very hard for me in the endurance range and otherwise fairly simple. I can interpret my forms easily enough, and even though I messed up my form in one place consistently across doing the damn thing twice (totally psyched myself out to do so of course), but the rest of my form was good enough to make up for it. My fan form I rocked out even with the throwing of the fan to myself in the middle, so all that practice obviously worked. Now the hard part is remembering where I'm supposed to be in the line, that being farther to the left. It's a little weird to be standing on the other side of the room, but I'm sure I'll get over that.

Our new curriculum includes "Small Tiger 32 Step Continuous Fist" or Small Tiger for short, and a thus far unnamed staff form. I don't have a staff yet, but I'll be starting up with that next week. I"m pretty good with staves in general, so hopefully the form will be big and challenging. My only complaint about the weapons forms so far is that they're awfully short, so I'm hoping the staff form is a far cry from the rest of them. Likely not a realistic hope, but a man can dream, no? Regardless, I am enjoying Small Tiger so far, and I've only learned a single section, so I have high hopes for more Tiger goodness. :)

In case you're wondering, my stance on testing has not changed: I still hate testing and I still think testing is little more than an annoyance, but at least I'm going through with them anyway now. And it's four months before I even have to think about testing again! Huzzah.

I can be a real prick sometimes

2007-05-01T16:42:00.000-04:00

What makes me a prick this time is not so much what I did, but that I so thoroughly enjoyed what I did. At work there's this guy who seems to know what he's doing, but is either constantly super busy or lazy, so he tends to half-ass a lot of the work he's supposed to be doing for us as high priority. This has ground on just about everyone's nerves quite a bit, and while he's gotten shit for it, I've never had the pleasure. So I found some things that were missing between our work system and a sheet he sent us. He then replied that he couldn't find what I was talking about (meaning he didn't look very hard). After making sure with my manager I wasn't being too much of a dickhead, I happily (I was literally giggling half the time I was doing this) sent back a document with a screen shot from the sheet he sent us and a screen shot from the system that had the missing bit pointed out with a GIGANTIC RED ARROW that there's no way he didn't notice. As a way of example, this is essentially what he saw:


           Minor detail one
-------> Minor detail two

Honestly what I did was actually helpful in that it did point out what he was missing and it started a useful dialogue that found other errors as well, but taking such pleasure at getting to use such a very sarcastic response while disguising it with good intentions was just too much fun for me. Originally I was going to use mspaint to half-assedly draw in red circles which does have a certain flair of its own, but the giant red arrow feature in SnagIt was way better. The giant red arrows really just made my day. Yay sarcasm!

Legal Absinthe?!?

2007-05-01T13:39:00.000-04:00

Meet Lucid. This drink, with a wicked cool bottle if you ask me, will be ostensibly authentic absinthe and totally legal in the states. I've always carefully hoarded my absinthe, never really being sure when I would spend the time and effort to get another bottle. If I can just go buy some at the damn liquor store, I'll be a very happy man. I see absinthe parties in my future...

my sister got hitched

2007-04-24T09:19:00.000-04:00

That's right, my wee sister is now a married woman. This is a good thing in my mind, as the young man she married was an excellent choice of man so far as I can tell. It's also a good thing because it means I'm done having to deal with all this wedding crap. I wasn't even getting married and I got sucked into so much random drama even I was starting to wonder who was getting married. Anyway, that's all over, and oh the stories to tell!

The bachelor party in Atlantic City was fun, and while I will keep a majority of the details away from the public eye, I will report that I, in typical me style, managed to carefully set out my drugs, get everything I'd need for the weekend together, and then promptly leave without any of my drugs. This did not interfere with my Friday, wherein I did have a better time than I was anticipating having with a group of guys I did not know well for fun and profit (read: I lost money gambling). However, being without any of my drugs, I then did not sleep at all. Not one wink. So I was wide awake on Saturday when we started out the second day's festivities. All things considered, I felt fairly good, and we had another fun day. I managed to be awake for over 40 straight hours before blissfully falling asleep for about ten minutes before the night's drama began. All in all, I slept for maybe four hours that night. I have been happier, I assure you. I still think I'm recovering from that.

Fast Forward to the next week on Thursday when I went to see Blue Man Group! A great time was had by most, and two distinct sets of my friends actually got along! Good for me. I woke up late on Friday, but just in time for the pre-wedding rehersal luncheon/bruncheon that, had I not gone to, my sister might have killed me. Then, somewhat later, we made it to the church (hiss!) and rehearsed as best we could. There were some minor glitches, some mistakes here and there, but we left that church confident, nay certain, that we would fuck everything up the next day. At least we got a fantastic dinner before the next day's horrors were upon us.

The wedding at last. Thankfully we managed not only not to fuck anything up at all, but we even all looked good while we muddled through the half remembered instructions of a confused priest. Wedding over! Now, after many pictures, we piled into some limos and drank the champain (champagne) that was there, thus starting our evening in the right direction.

Our arrival at the reception hall was marked by being hurriedly escorted up a back stairway to a private room wherein we got to eat our own special food and drink free drinks whilst we waited for the guests and our entrance music. We certainly did not help my new brother-in-law's (BIL) sister get her hands on drinks, nor did I find myself impressed with her ability to knock back the burbon I was drinking. Moving right along, we all walked in to our entrance music, and though there were minor glitches here and there, everything went well. Sistero's maid of honor gave a nice speech and BIL's best man had a wonderful toast, and everything generally went well.

I think the thing that marked the night of this particular wedding was the total and complete lack of drama. Everything that could have gone badly didn't! People no one was expecting to get along got along great, families members expected to be annoying turned out to be having fun and thus sharing fun all around. All in all it was a great reception. I got drunk and danced for hours! I don't dance nearly enough, so I got in quite a lot of dancing while I could. One entertaining detail was when I was off to dance with my wedding party dance partner, that being the far too hot to be 20 sister of the groom, her father told me to "watch it buddy" on my way to the dance floor. I gave him a big wink before our dance began.

Following being kicked out of the reception hall, most of the younger people and, for some odd reason, the parents of the groom and my father, found the bar and kept drinking till they kicked us out of there. The bridesmaids were drinking long island iced teas, which turned out to be a bad idea in the long run, while I stuck to burbon.

Now I will tell the story of the best cockblock I have seen in many years. My partner in the wedding party and I had fun regardless of the too youngitude and too sorta now relateditude. Certiain people had given me some japes about the sister and me, but I ignored them as no, god no, no. When the flowers and garter hurling scenarios happened, luck would have it that the younger brother and sister of m BIL caught both thrown items of wedding luck which is slightly creep considering where that garter is supposed to end up. So younger bother handed off the garter to a willing friend of all involved. When we ended up in the bar, much later, said willing friend was busy talking to she who I suppose is my sister in law (SIL) which did not sit well with BIL whatsoever. When the two in question left the bar BIL and the best man stormed after them.

Our sister seeking friend was, it turns out, well known for cockblocking his way through college. Every one of the grooms college friends who had joined us that evening confirmed this particular phenomenon. So when he and SIL went off to the bathroom because SIL had been drinking a bit too heavily, BIL said, and I quote, "No fucking way. Anyone but him."

When BIL kicked in the door of the ladies bathroom he found his sister puking her guts out, her hair being held back by the aforementioned friend. Said friend's hair holding duties were replaced by the maid of honor and he was dragged out of the bathroom by the best man, and even though he did manage to sleep in the same room as SIL, all of the other bridesmaids were in there too at the behest of the groom, thus cockblocking to what really is a bit of an extreme. The important detail is that the cockblock worked like a charm. I shall remember it fondly forever. :)

There was some drama the next day what with my sister's passport going missing mere hours before needing to get on a plane to go on the honeymoon, but in the end all worked out. It was a good weekend and hopefully has been a good week for my newly married sister and BIL. Next week they will both live a block away from me and I will see what chores I can con them into doing for me. :)

I hate phones

2007-04-06T08:55:00.000-04:00

The title is fairly self explanatory, but as I am not one to make a point without then expounding upon that point at great length, I'ma talk more now. Phones have long been my nemesis. I was never happy with phones, not since I was young. I only spoke on them when I had to and then only for brief and terse converations. This has not improved. My goal for any phone call is to make sure it is as short as humanly possible, and currently my average phone call length is well under a minute per. That's far too long in my book, but there's only so much one can do when someone who likes to chat on phones calls and there's no polite way to tell them to fuck off.

There are many factors that led to me disliking phones, not the least of which being my painfully long lived career in phone tech support. Working as a phone support technician was probably a mistake, since I didn't like phones even before I started that job. Not that I was bad at my job, mind you. I was actually reasonably good at what I did, not only by being technologically knowledgeable, but also because of my thick skin when it came to angry callers. I had exactly one incident where I lost my temper with a client, and while that was a rather spectacularly inflamatory incident it was still the only one of its kind and my boss really didn't give me any shit for it, which was nice of him.

The problem with phone support (other than the assholes) is keeping up with the calls at one moment while desperately staving off boredom at the next. Of course, when you're like me and you spend most every second of your boredom dreading the next time the goddamn phone rings, that makes your day long and your hatred for phones grow. So those four years spent manning phones really didn't do much for me other than make me bitter and even more short tempered.

In case you're wondering, I revile phones as much now as ever. I vastly prefer text messages, emails, and the like to do my communicating. So if you call me and wonder why I seem so hurried or even impolite, it's not because I don't like you (well, probably anyway), it's because I don't want to be on the phone. Best way to use a phone with me? Use the phone to set up impromptu in person meetings; use email or texts for everything else. Yeah, I know it's weird, but it's just one of the many things that make me a very singular man.

on nail biting and weird techniques

2007-04-03T13:30:00.000-04:00

I bite my nails. I don't like it, but nail biting has been a fact of my life for a very long time. At times I have been a light nail biter, only biting them when they grew past a certain length. At other times I have been an utterly obsessed nail biter, often biting till they bled. Right now I'm somewhere in the middle as I haven't bled for my nails in some time, but really it's a nasty habit and it really has to stop. I have tried to stop it by wearing band aids on the most damaged fingers, and that seems to stop the biting for the most part, but while wearing the band aid I pick at it constantly.

The working theory is that I bite my nails because I have a constant need to feel a texture with my fingers. Biting my nails grinds my fingers against my teeth, thus texture. My therapist came up with the idea that if my fingers were constantly feeling some other texture that it might lessen my interest in the nail biting. Thus my keyboard is now topped with braille keybord stickers. Now, I don't think I'm going to be learning braille out of this, but that each of the keys I touch has a slightly different texture to it seems to affect my interest in biting my nails. It hasn't wiped it out entirely, but I find myself with my fingers on my keyboard more often than being chewed upon.

It's difficult, for some, to admit that they cannot control every aspect of their lives. I am not exactly happy that I can't just stop biting my nails, but clearly I cannot simply decide to stop and I'm not too proud to admit that. It's much like being depressed; one cannot just simply stop being depressed at a whim so I would hope a depressed person would not let their pride stand in the way of getting help.

On the one hand it's kind of sad that I need to take such odd steps to try to retrain my brain, but on the other hand, I'm getting to experience some very strange things all in the efforts of gaining more control and normalcy in my own head. It may be weird, but it does lead to a very singular set of life experiences that few are like to match. Gotta take what you can get, no?

the end of an epoc

2007-03-21T11:02:00.000-04:00

The D&D campaign I've been playing in for several months now is finally coming to a close. Here's a short recap: The evil necromancer Larlac's soul was stolen hundreds of years ago his last action was to raise my party with the instructions to retrieve his soul and restore him to his former glory. Hilary ensues.

I played a Neutral Evil (that is sociopathic) Dread Necromancer. My real goal in this campaign was to get every person in the game to comment that I was just absolutely the most evil person in the party. I definitely succeeded. The biggest evil compliment came in the game this past Sunday when I was compared favorably to a god of death because of the evil and horrors I had wrought. I've killed hundreds of innocent people for personal evil gains, suggested using the torture of the living to get holy knights to abandon their lovely safe position and try to stop me, made dark pacts with demonic forces for fun and profit, used my own party members to my own advantage repeatedly, tricked people into getting themselves killed using only my skills of manipulation, desecrated holy lands and churches, defiled the corpses of holy monks, and assisted in the deaths of no less than fifty angelic creatures. I've been busy.

Now that this campaign is nearly over, we're making plans for a new campaign with all new characters in an entirely different light. I'm going from Neutral Evil, arguably the most evil alignment in the game, to Chaotic Good, something much more like what I am like in real life. I am changing from a hideous creature birthed by rage and spite to an easy-going, good humored (and living) guy who is only slightly morally ambivalent. I look forward to confusing the crap out of my fellow players with my fresh and friendly new attitude.

See what you people are missing by not playing RPGs?

I realize this post may be a repeat for some of you, but I liked it so much, I thought it needed a bigger audience. Besides, I don't post here enough.

Windows part II

2007-03-20T09:03:00.000-04:00

There were some glitches here and there but everything is back to normal. In fact things may even be more normal now than they were before.

My windows are in. I'm not 100% happy with how I made it down this path, but the important details, the windows, are completed. Now the novelty of opening and closing my windows has become something of an obsession, as this is the first time, ever, I've been able to open most of them. So I've been wandering around my house, actually opening my shades enough to open my windows, marvel at them being open, then closing them again. They also have this neat feature wherein you can swing the windows out from the wall so you can clean the outside of the windows while still inside your house, and that rules. But really, just opening and closing my windows over and over has provided me with far too much amusement.

Last night, when the searing of meat provided smoke, rather than just turn on my weak anti-smoke blowy thing, I opened some windows! It got rid of the smoke! Huzzah! Also, when I turned my heat past 50 degrees, the heater went on once in three hours! Huzzah! Any annoyance I felt yesterday has pretty much disolved under the sheer amusement value of me opening and closing windows and realizing that my heating bill is going to plummet. When it's cold again. I mean, I know my heating bill is going to go down now that it's almost nearly officially spring, I'm not that much of an idiot. Stop looking at me like that.

Anyway, to bring something of a point to this rambling post: I like windows that open and then close. I'm not sure I'll like watching my savings decrease by 2/3, but I'll get over it. 'Tis a wise investment in the long run.

Window goes up... Window goes down!

Have you heard of Pandora?

2007-03-14T11:14:00.000-04:00

I'm sure most of you have heard the myth of Pandora's box (and if you haven't, shame on you). However, I'm pretty sure most of you have not heard of the Music Genome Project. The MGP is an attempt by a buncha artists to create an algorithm that can be given a song or band to start from that will then start picking new music for you to listen to based on a set number of parameters. You give the algorithm feedback, and it starts to learn what your musical tastes are. With enough time, the algorithm should, in theory, always provide you with music you like without just sticking to the same bands all the time.

I've made several stations, and frankly, when you consider just how smegging picky I am when it comes to music, it's bloody amazing to see this thing work. I've rarely gotten more than three songs in a row I didn't like, and there are times when I don't have to skip a song or have anything to complain about for hours. Swapping your personalized stations to go with your mood couldn't be easier. It's like radio, except you don't have to listen to hours of crap to maybe hear the three songs you really want to hear.

So where's the smegging link? Linky: http://www.pandora.com/

Go! Play! Listen! ROCK!

300

2007-03-12T15:32:00.000-04:00

I went to see 300 because I was looking forward to wanton violence, blood, and gore, and I got all three in spades. I did not go to the 300 expecting to see a good movie, merely a beautiful and violent one. Instead, on top of the beauty and blood, I saw a powerful story of the heroes of Thermopylae, how three hundred men defied an empire. Beautifully shot, excellently acted, and a story told in an fantastic style left me wanting to say one thing:

THIS IS SPARTA!

Yay windows!

2007-03-12T14:44:00.000-04:00

For those of you paying attention, I don't normally use proper names of just about anything while I'm blathering on here. The way I see it, I really just don't want to truly publicly air anything here with names intact. That level of anonymity just lets me feel a tiny smidgen better about blogging out in the wilds of the Internet. However, I have come across a situation where I cannot hold in the name because, frankly, I'm so bloody impressed.

Castle Windows, the company installing my windows, every single one in the house all at once in an estimated 6 hours, fucking rules. Aside from being cheaper than anywhere else I looked at windows by quite a bit, and from having a far better work guarantee than any other company I looked at, they're installing my windows a good month ahead of schedule. I was worried that the timing might give me a problem with my sister's wedding in April. Instead, my windows are being installed this weekend! Unbe-smegging-lievable!

Castle Windows rules. I'm guessing I'll have even more nice things to say this coming weekend. Granted this will temper my Friday night plans a bit, but who cares? I'll be able to open and close my smegging windows for the first time since I moved into the house! That's fantastic! Cooling bill/heating bill go down, the noise reduction goes up, and I can have a house with a cross breeze if I am so inclined! It'll be a good day.

So think Castle Windows for all your windows needs! Small jobs, large jobs, it matters not! Castle Windows is your friendly window company. Plug plug plug plug plug! :)

must... resist... urge... to strangle... asshole...

2007-03-08T13:39:00.000-05:00

I try not to talk about my job overmuch here, as this is a glaringly public place that I don't find to be an appropriate place to complain, but this particular matter has me growling, so I gotta vent somewhere. I have to deal with this utter asshole here at work. If any of you have seen Red Dwarf, he very much reminds me of Arnold J. Rimmer BSC, because he's a snively, simpering, obsequious, little weasel of a man, with all the charactaristics of a New York city sewer rat without any of the good qualities. His job is to administer a few servers with a few projects running on them. This is a job that a monkey could do. If someone says "deploy this" you click a few times and you're done; if someone asks that something be restarted it's only two clicks if you have the web app open. I can't emphasize how easy this job is enough.

No, what's my personal problem with this man? He, a glorified monkey, treats me as if I am some kind of personal bother to him when I ask him to do his job. Any time I request something from him directly, he gives me the run around or flat out tells me no. Never mind that I am well within my rights to ask these things of him and that I am more than capable of keeping my job and doing his at the same time; he really seems to think of me as little more than a buzzing bug on his shoulder that wants nothing more to do with than to brush me away. That pisses me off.

What pisses me off more, however, is that the very instant someone slightly higher on the totem pole is involved, the little bastard suddenly snaps into action and treats me and my request as if it were handed down by the gods. I could email the same request ten times in a week and never see action on it, but CC my boss? Wow, my head almost spins with how quickly the jackass responds. I HATE that. Just thinking about it has me grinding my teeth. That kind of lying, manipulative bullshit really make me want to punch the little shit right in his stupid face. Yes, his face is stupid, shut up.

On the plus side, it looks like my boss has had enough of the little shit and is currently explaining to the asshole's boss the situation. Knowing my company, this could mean nothing, but knowing my boss, it could mean something might actually come of this. So long as when I tell this little shit to do something he fucking does it, I don't care what happens. But if I have to sit there telling him the same thing over and over while he flatly ignores or refuses my requests, I may just have to kill him. Course, if I did kill him, I don't think anyone would mind really. He's not what you'd call popular round these parts. Oh what a tempting thought...

Urge to kill... fading...

writer's block of a sort

2007-03-01T11:31:00.000-05:00

I have writer's block. I don't mean that I don't have ideas for writing my book, I mean that I'm so desperate for thinking of something to blog about I'm actually blogging about my inability to come up with a topic to blog about. Now that's just really stretching for something to write about, but I'm gonna go with it as I'm out of other ideas and I really feel like I need to write something.

Sometimes it feels as though I am allowed a limited number of words to use competently at any given time and that if I've successfully written a large portion of my book, say a chapter or two, my ability to come up with anything else to say seems to dry up. Saying that out loud (or typing it out loud, whatever) makes me think I am crazy(er). Rationally there's no limit to the number of words I can use competently, but rationality cannot always run my life. We humans are prone to superstitious behaviors and other irrational thinking; it is a part of our very nature. It's why people in general tend to believe in ghosts, spirits, and gods. So for some reason, after writing a lot of something I then have a hard time writing anything else.

So then, you might ask, why am I trying so hard to come up with something to write about as I am here? Because supersitious nonsense isn't allowed to run my life, and the easiest way to break a superstition is to break it. I'm allowed more words to write than my nutball brain seems to believe, and the more I type here the more I prove that. Excepting, of course, that if there really is a limit, I am fast approaching the end of that limit with this very blog post. Or perhaps that my limit increases with time away from the original plot and I am busily respending all my word allowance in a futile attempt to convince myself that I don't have a word allowance. Never underestimate your brain's ability to undermine everything you want to do with ridiculous crap like this.

I don't really believe that I'm limited in what I can say in a certain period of time any more that I believe that in wearing my red socks I will do better in Wii Bowling because I got that 204 that one time I was wearing my red socks. (note: I don't own red socks) Sometimes I think I just need to jumpstart my writing by just writing something, anything, good or bad, just to get my fingers moving and my mind rolling. Theoretically that's what my other blog was supposed to be, a nice sandbox in which to write whatever to keep me moving along, but in the end my urge to keep to continuity was too strong to overcome. Start a third blog that's an actual sandbox? Hmm... No. I can hardly post enough to two to be remotely interesting.

In conclusion, I like spoons. And writing. Both are an outlet of something. What I'm not entirely sure, but hey, if it works, it works, and it works, so I'll let it work at whatever work it is it works at. Clearly coherency isn't high on that list of what it works on.

I'm back!

2007-02-24T00:59:00.000-05:00

I already miss Boston.

Granted, coming home and finding out that my whole raise scenario worked out in a way that is almost perfect was a nice boost, but not having two of my best friends at arm's reach just plain sucks.

Therefore my plan for the rest of the weekend is to figure out a matter transporter before D&D Sunday. ;)