Hokey Pokey
You put in your left foot, You put out your left foot,
You put in your left foot, And all about you shake it,
You do the Hokey Pokey, And yourself around you turn,
That's all about what it is!
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I've been keeping this weblog for a month and a week! Looking at the archives... that's a lot of posts!
Thanks for reading!
Politics!!!
That image has NOTHING to do with this entry, of course... but here it is. I just wrote most of this on our
forums, so go sign up and argue with me!
I believe that anyone who displays ANY desire to be in public office should be automatically and permanently disqualified, and we should sentence criminals to serve in positions of power. heh heh.
Seriously though, the idealist in me believes that anarchy is the best "government". Of course, first we'd have to first make sure everyone in this country (the whole world, really) has genuinely accepted God's gift of grace, and is living with His Spirit in their lives, but THEN, we could abolish government forever!
Here's a neat example of anarchy in action. It isn't presented as such; it's the biography of a pencil. But it talks about the complex process of pencils getting made without any "government" as such, no "Pencil Making Constitution" or "Oversight Committee For The Fabrication And Use Of Pencils".
That's what anarchy is; it is not CHAOS, it is just stuff happening without Massive Oversight (The government) (and Massive Oversight can be taken two ways, both equally valid). And there need not be MO. We CAN self-organize. And with less selfishness, greed, hate and so on, WE COULD DO IT!!!
so go... self organize... and stop looking at my desk!
oh man.
A picture of four of us original cyberjocks to cheer me up.
Really bad day at work. Got called lots of names, dealt with difficult girls, one who kept spitting on and hitting my fellow staff, one who would insult me, one (or more) who argued with every statement i made, and one who practically screamed for help and when offered, shoved it down the helper's throat. a very tough day at work. Then when i was supposed to be out, i initiated a house meeting, part of which was a "bash on Juanito" session - my boss and coworkers seemed flabbergasted that they were being so mean to me. So i couldn't get out of there until two hours after my shift had ended.
Oh well. I go to that job because it's a chance for me to SERVE needy people, MINISTER to hurting souls and help bring them some measure of HEALING. It's a chance to show these kids the love of God. Karen had her hands full today too... Houston was naughty, Katrina was needy, and Graham was a lot of both.
In other news, we're trying to find a good used car. We're leaning toward a
Dodge Neon or maybe a
Ford Contour. Just within the past hour i've been more leaning toward a neon again... quality control on contours seems to be an issue. But neons blow their head gaskets....... maybe we should get
something really nice instead... you know... something that will hold its resale.
EMO!!!
Hey!!!!
Okay, Emo was HILARIOUS!!! Karen did such an AWESOME job getting seats right in the front, so we could, like, talk to him and stuff. He didn't sign my copy of
UHF, but he did see it on our table and say "Hey! You brought UHF!" and held it up saying "This is the first movie I was ever in!" :) :) :) :) He said "It's nice to see some Emo-philiacs here!" Here's a weird link to
another page about UHF. You gotta click "OK". something to do with java and frames.
My favorite joke: "I was trying to kill a squirrel in my back yard because he was rabid... I'm pretty sure... and they're fast little suckers, so I'm chasing him back and forth and back and forth all over the yard, and at the last second, he ran up a tree! Well... now my car is totalled....... but the joke's on him: I've got another car."
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I REALLY wanted to get a picture with him and have him autograph my movie but he disappeared... i guess he's not really popular enough to be expected to do signing sessions or anything. and Karen and i couldn't find his bus...
Right, so here's what I'm really wondering about: Light comes in colors. white light is just like white noise, all different wavelenghts pretty much random. but you take light of a specific wavelenght, and it's yellow or blue or green or fushia, depending on the wavelength. and since the speed of light is constant (in a
vacuum) we measure
color by its wavelength, not its frequency, but i imagine there's a way to convert it.
So here's my question (which may be answered on that page, don't have time to read it right now, but it looks really interesting): how come when we look at red light mixed with green light it makes YELLOW LIGHT????? like, listening to the note C and the note E doesn't make us hear the note D!!! It should be analogous, like, the wavelengths are just superimposed on each other, after all. Hearing C and E at the same time makes us hear a harmony! I don't get it. Help me solve this quandry!
Oh. I learned the answer from that page. Oh well. But i ain't giving it away - you gotta find it yourself!
As long as we're talking about color perception,
here's a really really cool link that will tell you how to see infrared! I've been meaning to try this... it sounds super-nifty.
Fun day
We went out to eat with Travis and Brooke - I'm sure Karen will put pictures and a description of the day over on
Karen's site. There'll be funny pictures, so go look! It was awesome to see them again.
Work was annoying - WHY IS DISRESPECT SO COOL??? Dissing somebody gets you props, while politeness and courtesy and manners gets you mocked - or at least that's how it seems sometimes, particularly with the kids at work. Look at 50 Cent and Eminem. They've made their entire careers out of disrespect, rudeness and agression. And it's called "Keeping it real". Like doing anything else would be "Fronting", which is far worse than beign abrasive or hot-tempered or just plain RUDE.
Finally, we're gonna go see
Emo Philips tomorrow.
Anggggg-Greeeeeee
Yes, the following image was built exclusively with GIMP.
Okay, i came home from work ANGRY today. Furious. Pissed off. If you know me, you know that there is practically nothing that makes me angry, but one that does is RACISM. And no... i don't own any guns, and if i did i'd never use them in anger... that was just the best "angry" face i had.
Right... BEFORE i got done with work, i'd had my staff get threatened, spit on, and window cleaner sprayed on them. I had gotten whipped on the neck and arms with a little strap that some staff use to carry their ID badges. I'd been called a White Piece of S---. All okay, because these girls are really messed up and damaged.
So when i LEFT work, i was pretty energized, but most definately not angry. What got me angry follows.
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I stopped at
Speedway gas station to get a
Suzie-Q to give me a nice sugar rush and subsequent insulin flood that should put me to sleep. In fact, i'm finally feeling it now. So, this guy i work with was standing outside the Speedway sipping a cup of coffee. We've talked a few times, and he seems cool, decent, whatever, and he's an African American.
So i waved hi; "Hey Sean", and went inside. I overheard the cashier saying into her phone "Yeah, so could you swing by and just... check on me... check it out..." She took my dollar and gave me my sugar and fat bomb, and was perfectly friendly and cordial.
I went outside and started chatting with Sean, you know, since i'd had a tough night and the kids on his unit have been a little
nuts lately. So we chatted for probably ten minutes, about various things, including the fact that we're both sorta on hard luck in the
car department. Then two cops cars show up. Sean was like "Yeah, here they come. This is why we - well
I don't hate cops, but this is why we hate the cops."
Lemme interrupt myself and describe this guy. He's super clean cut. He's probably a year or two older than me. He was wearing a heather grey NAVY sweatshirt and jeans that fit (
i'd call them tight). He's a clean cut, friendly, handsome guy with a friendly, easy-going manner.
Right, so anyway, he mentioned that they might be here because the cashier lady called them because he was making her nervous. I had heard her on the phone, and knew that that's what it was. I told him about that, and he said that he'd FELT her SUSPICION and NERVOUSNESS, and could feel it by the way she looked at him. Getting angry is something that hardly ever happens to me, so the physiological signals are really a foreign feeling; it's weird when it happens. It did.
Sure enough, the two officers come out and say "Can we talk to you (Sean) over here?" OF COURSE i follow, not only to provide moral support, but to look for an opportunity to make sure the two WHITE cops don't get away with saying anything stupid. Sure enough, they wanted the story, and Sean told it in a most deferential, polite way, while i interject with comments like "Nobody's gonna stand outside a store for fourty five minutes and THEN hold it up!" and "We work together over at Wedgwood CHRISTIAN Services!"
I think the cops totally understood, and were apologetic for bothering him. When Sean's father pulled up to pick him up, the look on his face was terrible to see. Suspicion. Confusion. Disappointment. Fear. His son is standing there with two cops and me (a weird looking WHITE stranger) in the gas station parking lot.
That pain is wrong. WHITE America's pervasive, insidious FEAR of the BLACK MALE is WRONG. For every gangster crack fiend African American youth who robs a liquor store there are thousands of decent, hard working men who are just trying to make a life for themselves and their families in a country that looks at them sideways EVERY TIME they walk down the candy isle. We are ALL made in God's image, and we bear that mark, and that is precious, beautiful, and to be valued beyond any human attribute. When people like us white folk treat any class or group of people - ANYONE - any way but with the highest respect, we deny the value of God's image in them.
Ultimately, that's what infuriates me. People disrespecting God's image.
So, i drove home shaking and gulping my breaths, talked to Karen, jotten down some notes, and called the Speedway store. Me and the lady talked for a while (between customers) and she said that working alone third shift makes her nervous, the fact that a store a few miles away got robbed last night made her nervous, and people hanging around her store makes her nervous. I asked her "Do people make you nervous? Or BLACK MALES???" So she said "My best friend is black." I didn't say anything.
After our long talk, i feel better. I think she listened to me and understood my anger, and she assured me that she treats everyone with plenty of friendliness and respect (I've been helped by her dozens of times, and she is pretty nice). I just urged her to be super-friendly to African Americans and other minorites who enter her store and are most likely already prepared to be eyed with suspicion and even fear. The payoff is when you show random strangers that Whitey CAN be friendly and respectful - you can see it in their eyes. And IT'S A GOOD THING!!!
The GIMP
The GIMP is an open source image manipulator... called GIMP because it's released under the GNU licence, GNU, part of the GNU/Llinux (usually just called Linux) operating system) standing for "Gnu's Not Unix". So, GNU Image Manipulation Program = GIMP. It is really cool. I've been using a program called Jasc Paint Shop Pro, which is powerful and easy to use, and has a nice trial period thing, but this is a lot more powerful, but much harder to use, than PSP.
You gotta install some "libraries" first,
here.
Then you gotta install the program,
here.
Follows are some examples of pictures I modified with this sweet sweet little program.
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This one's made with Paint Shop Pro 8.0. It's much more automatic, and sort of click-and-run.
Here's one made by GIMP. totally an unexpected result.
Here's another one, made to try to look like the PSP one. I think it looks much better.
Here's yet another, more flowing. EVERYTHING is configurable! and of cours there's plenty of presets to try.
Go download that bad boy and WASTE TIME!!!!!!!!!
mmmm... motorcycles...
This one is a Ducati Monster, and it's pretty much EXACTLY the kind of bike i'd drive if i was rich and very confident that i wouldn't die. While researching, i found a very odd new trend: Supermoto, or supermotard or motard... not sure what it really is. Seems like it comes from Europe, where people take very fast dirt bikes (which have insane amounts of horsepower per pound), slap street wheels and tires on them, lower them some, and race (or drive) them. Crazy.
check out
this bike. good example of what they look like.
THANK YOU MOM AND DAD!!! they took karen and I out to dinner tonight - a late birthday celebration. I like eating out.
Music and Other Noises
I meant to mention this in the review of The Secret Window, but Phillip Glass did the music for that film. There were times that i could recognize his style, with which i'm familiar only because of the QATSI movies also for which he did the music. (stupid preposition rule that i LOVE)
So this made me think of how AMAZING the first in the trilogy is, named
KOYAANISQATSI. The film is basically a conceptual piece most easily described as a music video for modern classical music. The movie was made back in... uh... between '75 and '82, with the last of the three, NAGOYQATSI being released in 2002. They are fantastic films, and if you can tolerate that much raw sound-and-image and are okay with being expected to provide your own meaning (or none at all, i suppose) you must see them. My favorite is the first, and my favorite scene of the movie is really about what i want to talk.
In a bit, though. First, presenting you with "other noises" as promised in the title, here's
POWERLABS.
A massive explosion ensued and I was knocked on my back with the recoil, which also left me slightly dizzy and with ringing ears from the muzzle blast. Still stunned by the sheer power of the shot (and amazed that the cannon was not blown to pieces on my hands), I looked at my sister's door only to see that there was light coming in through it.
warning: spoiler for the movie KOYAANISQATSI follows (not a big deal since it has no plot).
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Minutes after the film starts, you see little chunks of ice falling slow-motion through the frame, then a huge fireball dominates the screen, and you realize you're watching a rocket launch. The beauty and power are ... beautiful and powerful, and a few minutes into it, just after the big holder deals let go of the rocket and lift-off commences, the film goes on its way. The final scene of the movie is the rest of the rocket launch. The rocket (which looks to my novice eye to be Soviet) goes for a while, and then explodes in another fireball. The camera tracks the bloom of flame, and fixes on a piece of the debris which comets its way across until it is falling, spinning. At first the wreckage looks just like a shapeless chunk of whatever, but as it descends, it takes shape and starts pirouetting beautifully, remaining TOTALLY CENTERED in the frame, spurting little bits of flame and smoke that couldn't have been planned better. When i watch that scene, i'm just stunned by the skill and luck of the cinematographer (providence of God, really), and the number of improbabilities that had to come together to make such an incredible thing to watch. I don't know how the photographer could have had such a steady hand on the camera as he was freaking out probably peeing his pants at the amazing shot he was getting.
Monday and a movie review
That's my buddy Wildey. He's sort of a self-described crack-head, even though he doesn't do crack. He looks like a redneck stoner, with piercings and tattoos, but he's an AMAZING father to his three (excruciatingly cute) daughters, a devoted husband and Christian. And he's a computer geek all the way. Props to him!!! When Houston was born, he was visiting us in the hospital just when Karen's fairly straight-laced grandparents came, and i think he kind of shocked them, like... they might have thought "Whoah, wrong room!!!"
I got two shoes thrown at me at work today. I had to pick up about a hundred yards of
weave off the floor so it wouldn't get horribly stuck in our
vacuum cleaners. I got to watch a documentary film about Brasil in school.
CAUTION! SPOILER FOLLOWS!!! ---review of The Secret Window starring Johnny Depp and John Turturro---
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So we saw that movie last friday, and were really hoping to enjoy it a lot. We'd seen previews, and Karen was looking forward to seeing Johnny Depp, because he's so cute or something - our two friends Keren and Beth, especially Beth, agree heartily. I've liked John Turturro ever since the movie Four Corners where he plays a messed up thug type kid whose ultimate act of love...
SPOILER yeah... it's pretty intense. That movie also features a young Jodi Foster and a barely post pubescent Tim Robbins. Go rent it! Turturro was also hilarious in Oh Brother Where Art Thou. "Dew not seek the tray-zure!!!"
Right, so anyway... we were expecting a serious, dark psychological thriller. But the beginning credits said that the movie was based on a Steven King novella. Well, Johnny Depp is a pleasure to watch as an eccentric novelist (write what you know, right Steve?) who has a mysterious past and a mysterious visitor. Soon we find out that Depp's character caught his wife and some dude named Ted in bed and didn't handle it well, and the hints of "The One Time" that his character plagerized somebody elses' work are never really satisfyingly concluded. They are concluded, but there are no surprises.
John Turturro does a great intense hick with his asymmetrical face and peircing eyes, and manages to make a necessarily 2D personality great fun to watch. However, we figured out far before the filmmakers intended us to, that John Turturro's menacing Weird Man In Black is actually a creation of Mr. Depp's loopy author, and has "come to life" as a seperate personality who can do the "dirty work" that Depp's gentle, tousled writer cannot do himself. You're supposed to go "oh wow, what a twist", but it's no surprise. One is also sad that all the characters you meet and end up liking get whacked, including the bed-wrinkled shuffler personality that WAS Johnny Depp's character (i wish i could remember his name... sorta). In the final scenes of the movie, Jonny has smooth hair, metallic braces and an ominous obsession with corn on the cob.
Steven King has written "horror comedy" stories before, but i think they just work better in written form.
Perhaps what had messed it up for all of us was that we had just watched Identity, and that movie deals with a similar theme, but really does an amazing job. I was truly surprised at many of that movie's twists, and recommend it far more than this movie.
Sunday - church rocked
A most unconventional person talked at Mars Hill this morning - Shane Claiborne, one of the founders of
The Simple Way. I couldn't find a picture of him or anything, but he's white, skinny, and had semi-dreaded bleached hair wrapped in a bandana, and wore SUPER BAGGY clothes with holes and stains. SWEEET!!!
Their website is under construction, but he talked some about his
trip to Iraq, and a really cool sounding
money drop on Wall Street to celebrate the concept of Jubilee and the "alternate economy" of the Kingdom of God. Awesome stuff. Karen and i feel urged to DO SOMETHING to reflect Jesus' most simple way of life... so anyone want to move in and share all we have??? So hard in this culture!
Ooh, i found some
pictures.
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In other news, check out
this site. The author firmly believes that "reality shifts" are, you know, REALITY, and that our consciousness and reality are inextricable and "on the same plane". She makes mention of quantum physics which DO show that some events and phenomenae depend on our observationa.
WELL, i used to believe in something like that, that our collective consciousness molds and "creates" the universe. When God made us in His image, He gave us the abiltiy/responsibility to observe, and therefore co-create (solidify?) the universe. Adam's first task was to NAME, and thus give identity to the animals! Faith to move mountains, literally... believe enough and the reality of the mountain would change. I talked about this theory, and Karen asked questions like "so if i believed enough that there was a pink elephant in the room, there would be a pink elephant in the room???" to which i'd reply, "sure, if the collective consciousness of enough of the earth's population could be persuaded that it's possible and happened." One day, in a devastatingly brilliant show of logic, Karen deflated my theory beyond repair by asking "So, what do you think the majority of the population of the world would think of your theory?"
D'OH!!! so my theory is either not true, or it IS true, and then makes itself not-true immediately. Oh well, it was nice while it lasted.
My current theory of reality is that God is constantly THINKING about EVERYTHING in His mind, giving it its entire substance and realness. I even like saying God is "singing" reality... then the current string theory (one of the current
Theories Of Everything) is all the more appealing, since strings vibrate. A pitifully inadequate analogy is how my computer "renders" a universe inside its memory and processor. San Fransisco has a form of reality in Midtown Madness which exists only in the stupid, inanimate "mind" of my computer. I seldom mention this analogy for fear that people get the impression that i think God is just a supercomputer or something, like in The Matrix. No! God is an infinite, personal, loving, just, INVOLVED
BEING who knows and loves us.
circus!
Houston woke up late this morning, but the house was still a
disaster when we got downstaris, and the carpet was still damp. It started raining as soon as i finished the steam cleaning... and it's been super-dry for weeks now... oh well. So we went to Mac Donald's, which if you don't have any by where you live, is a place to get cheap food. Houston ate a whole sausage patty and two pancakes, which is weird cause he never eats meat. Then we went to Schuler Books (which, in my opinion, you should pronounce with a rasp like the ch in "Chaim" or "Chuppa") and i bought
Koyaanisqatsi, an amazing film. It's just images and music - like a 1.5 hour music video to modern classical. Much of it has entered pop culture vernacular, and when you see fast-motion clouds you're seeing something that was first seen in that film. Go watch it if you want to see something really amazing and not like any other film ever.
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Then on the way home, we saw skull boats on the Grand, and stopped. Houston enjoyed it.
then, we went to THE CIRCUS!!!!! The
shrine circus, to be exact. I meant to stop and talk to one of the be-fezzed gentlemen that were scattered around like broken parts in a VW-owners garage, but never had time. I think the
have something to do with the circus, but i'm not sure. Yeah, turns out, Shriners are a branch of Freemasons, who are listed here. I only followed a few links from that site, but found some
fascinating,
crazy information. And of course,
silliness.
hmm... wether or not the freemasons really are taking over the world, we still LOVED the circus! Houston gazed in awe-struck silence at everything, and as soon as we got to the parking lot after the show, he started overflowing with excitement. Hopefully he'll remember it!
dang it, still awake
just found this
article that's a pretty clear, Christian perspective on gay marriage. here's a quote:
...the Bible talks about stealing being wrong, but you don’t see Christians out there on the courthouse steps telling Martha Stewart to repent. However, the anti-gay t-shirts, the tracts, the bumper stickers, the radio show calls, and the signs all abound.
this reminded me of a
fairly offensive tract by Chick Publications (we probably have all seen the "This Was Your Life" tract) i found the other day. I also found an
interesting take on Chick Publications. They seeem to me to be like the TelEvangelists of Christian literature - an embarrassment to serious, loving, thoughful Christians everywhere. My mother carries tracts... and has handed them out... but i would rather (and i think she would say the same) TALK to people, and lead by example the Most Excellent Way - to a point where people do ask "Why are you different?" Luckily, it happens often at my job!!!!!!
i like the way Moses looks like Charlton Heston in that tract. hahahahahahahahaha
Steam-Cleaner-Kwon-Do
Our carpet is just over a year old. At times, our dog seems to believe that the carpet is his bathroom, so we've certainly tried to keep the carpet clean, mostly by using a mop, pine-sol, and lots of jumping. If you're curious, ask. For Houston, the entire world is his handkerchief, so the amount of dried... (i wrote the word twice but ... okay... brace yourself) snot ground into something that doesn't get washed as often as my shirts and pants is going to be copious. And food... he'll toss food to the ground where Graham does a okay job (we thought) cleaning it up. And we do vacuum regularly (but not as often as we used to before exhaustion and layers of toys tag-teamed to make the job hideously unattractive). We're not slobs.... What. We're not.
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So, we got a
steam cleaner from Family Fare, and i've been working on that for about three hours now. One would expect a steam cleaner to get a carpet clean in two or three passes, right? especially one that appears mostly clean, and has no ominous darker areas. NOT TRUE. I've been over some spots FIVE TIMES, and the water still comes out like three-day old Wedgwood mop water after staff has been using it (the kids manage to mop the entire house without even clouding the water).
I thought i broke the machine, and went to
RugDoctor's website which troubleshooted me to a probable solution. I just can't make myself stand up. It was an early day... getting up at 6:00 to deal with ungrateful adversarial kids who i'm just doing my best to HELP, then seeing a movie that i expected to love but by which i was vaguely disappointed... dang, i make it sound like a bummer of a day. It wasn't.
I really enjoyed spending time with my family. Houston was overjoyed to see me - it had been over 24 hours since we'd seen each other. It was good to spend time with my honey. She made some DELICIOUS Karen Spaghetti (recipe may come later) and we got to sit together eating that for a few minutes.
Well, i'm gonna try to get the machine to spray again, and go to BED since i'm getting up with Houston later this morning.
Server down... sorry
yeah, my DSL seems to be flaky or something. It keeps failing for no apparent reason. And mostly when i'm at work. My buddy Dave just got DSL that has 600 some kilobits upload speed, but he's paying about fifteen bucks more a month that me... oh well.
I finally took a picture of the car that Jim is letting me borrow. Somebody told me just today "Juanito, that car totally fits you!" I guess so. I must say that i missed driving a broke down beater. The ford Focus is the world's best selling car (
according to Ford's calculations) and so when i drove it i felt pretty anonymous. Anonymity is not something i relish; i like to be NOTICED!!! More of that show-off in me...
"Green day!"
Happy St. Patrick's day! a day for drinkers (of stronger stuff than Faygo Creme Soda) everywhere to enjoy an evening of indulgence. I wonder how many sick calls there will be tomorrow morning? Moore is an Irish surname, you know!
That's me drinking the only pop i've drunk all year. Mark gave it to me when Katrina was born. Thanks Mark!!!
happy
Call me happy because i am! Unreal Tournamet 2004 (or UT2.004x10
3 as eric suggested) just came out today, and it's cheap at Best Buy. Like $29.00 for six CD's of complex programming. And the chance to have a lot of fun gaming. I'll play for a while and try to write that "An Article Saying How Come FPS Games Are Good And Other Stuff Too". The title is a work in progress.
In case anyone cares, Karen told me that when i don't capitalize the first word of sentences, it makes them look like run-on sentences. I don't want that to happen, especially since the Double-Space i always insert between sentences gets obliterated by the HMTL cleanup this program does.
Oh yeah, check out our FORUMS!!! So far we have three members, me, Karen, and Eric, and so far i'm the only one who has posted anything... but PLEASE if you know us and like us, sign up and let's start an e-conversation!!!
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In totally unrelated news, i reinstalled windows XP - using, ironically, a pirated version and CD-Key since I've been through so many upgrades on my computer Windows Activation thinks i'm trying to install the same copy of windows on multiple computers, so i have to call them every time. I have to explain myself and how i really really am abiding by the licence agreement (at least with THIS computer) and get them to let me use my copy of windows... sigh!
Of course, half an hour after i reinstalled i had it thoroughly messed up by installing too many codecs. Now it won't play all my movie files. I'll have to re-re-install.
Karen said "what's a codec?" So here it is; CODEC = COder-DECoder (like MODEM = MOdulator-DEModulater). A codec tells the computer what to do with a video or audio file. the file is just a bunch of numbers unless the CODEC tells the operating system what to do with it. It DECODES the info.
Better Than Soup!
I was sitting here looking for information to finally get my taxes DONE, eating a bowl of
Campbell's Chunky Soup, New England Clam Chowder, and Karen walked in with a plate covered in DELECTABLES!!! I love it when she does stuff like that. They say that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach, and while that's not what it says in the Reader's Digest, i'll take it metaphorically and agree to an extent.
It all depends on what your
love language is, and while mine is NOT "acts of service", it's still pretty nice.
And may Ii say
holy small hard drive, batman!
blanker than Tabula Rasa
right, so last night we were sitting in the office at work discussing relationships and MEN, and since I'm both a MAN, and in a long and successful (if i say so myself) relationship, I had some relevant input into the convo. we talked about the fact that men have a genuine, gut-level FEAR of the intricacies of Relationship. one of the staff's boyfriends had told her recently "I just don't want to deal with you right now". He thinks, like many men, that the Relationship part of his life can be "turned off" like the rest of his life. Playing basketball with his homies doesn't affect the rest of his life. Work doesn't affect the rest of his life. Sports, hobbies, church, family; all areas of his life that can be compartmentalized and sealed off, like bulkheaded sections of a submarine. he was stressed, so he decided the stress (and it IS stress, especially if you're and the relationship are young) of his relationship with his girlfriend was more than he could take.
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Clueless! Jennifer, who is pretty much hilarious (pictured above), said in an animated way "You know they talk about a Blank Slate, well, men are born with, like, a Black Hole!!! You gotta work on them for a while before they even get BLANK!!!" that struck me as pretty funny. funny stuff is funny 'cause it's true, and how true is that?
I've made some enormous mistakes in my relationship, some of which I'm so embarrased about, I will never share them here, that's for sure.
Married men will agree that you better think about your entire life in the context of being married. this "restriction" of "freedom" is probably what turns so many away from commitment, but the rewards of a good, Christ-centered relationships are boundless. the freedoms that come with marriage are more significant than any lost. The
noblest pursuit is
LOVE, and love can be more fully pursued within a marriage than anywhere else. Self-sacrifice, devotion, intimacy... all these things are far more fully expored in a marriage than possible anywhere else. and we haven't even started to talk about KIDS!!!!!!!!
I'm so glad i'm married to karen! I love you, Sweetle!
d'oh! missed church
yeah... Karen, Houston and Katrina left at about 7:10AM to go to Jackie and Eric's house... so I went back to bed. Then, I woke up at 11:30. Church starts at 11:00. I was like, no way! then i was like, Way! then I woke up at 1:00.
rats. I'll listen to a service I missed a few months ago when we were visiting my parents in Kentucky.
Read
this. It's really interesting. A Russian inventor writes a detailed account of his flights and experiments concerning bee nests, bug shells, antigravity and flight!!! it seems that the dude believes what he writes, which means he's either very smart or very stupid.
New Article
it's over to the left there, where it says "IDE cable modification". If you want a clean looking, airflow-friendly computer, and want smaller IDE cables, go look there. Reading the artilcle will aslo make you more popular with cute girls!!!!!!!
Go read the Pravda... it's the russian newspaper to which I linked a few articles down, and it can be pretty funny. Almost National Enquirer-esque. Here's a little quote from one of the artilces:
Only deaf-muted with blindness remain completely unaware of present-day building boom in Moscow.
subjectivity of time part 1
the etruscan shrew, the smallest mammal, has an at-rest
heart rate of around 1,000 beats per minute!!! that's over sixteen beats per second! and the fastest stressed heart rate was 1,511 bpm, which is 25 beats per second! that's 25 hertz, five hertz above the theoretical lowest note a human can hear (although lower notes can be FELT, and if very high-energy, induce the release of epinephrine, although I can't find a link to back me up).
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So, how does this very small animal experience time? might we postulate that heartbeats are subjectively experienced at an equivalent rate across species (and individuals)?
The shrew eats from two to four times its body weight per day. I looked for how much humans eat per, but could only find that Americans eat
thier body weight in SUGAR per year, which totally shocked me. wieght of food consumed can't be a good measure of time since various foods have widely varying caloric value per weight. like... straw vs. french fries and fountain drinks.
how about reaction time? my
reaction time is pretty slow. between 0.2 and 0.3 seconds. I can't catch a falling dollar folded lenghtwise if the dropper is clever enough not to give clues about when he or she is going to drop it. A girl i knew could grab it at or below the head EVERY TIME. most girls I know CAN grab the dollar, including my karen. so does that mean that time passes more rapidly for me?
theories are welcome... ERIC...
My pancake is famous!!!
I got my [H] pancake on the frontpage of my favorite hardware site!!! yaaay!!!!! The site is
[H]ardOCP which stands for Hard Overclocker's Comparison Page and the link to the image is
here. Steve (one of the site's creators) said
I am simply amazed at some of the random [H] sightings you guys send in. Some are funny, some are scary and some, like this one, defy explanation. I give you [H] pancakes.
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so today at Wedgwood we had the "Accolades" celebration. i got called up since I've been there for five years, which is quite a milestone for "contact staff" since burnout is amazingly high. I am also still a plain old Youth Treatment Specialist (not a shift supervisor or higher... at least one home supervisor has less seniority than me) which is unusual for someone who's been there so long.
it was kinda cool... Wedgwood employs some crazy people... one of the bigwigs guys dressed up in ... like... a dress... and sat on the Director's lap!!! shrieks of laugter abounded, let me tell you!!! It's a good place to be employed, but can be a terrible place to work. Lemme ask for prayer for the unit i visited tonight. I called them because somebody was pounding on our door, and it wasn't one of our girls. Pounded doors on locked units are usually pounded from within.
the staff answered with a "....Hi....Uh...." when you're supposed to answer like "Delta, this is Juanito" or "Thank you for calling the Delta Program at Wedgwood, this is Juanito Moore, may I be of service?" or "Grunt" (I've heard all versions of that used, where "juanito" was replaced by the person's name). So I figured that things were not going well. she sounded a touch panicked adn relieved that I was coming over, and when I did, I just saw what hopelessness can do. boys were running around without direction. the door-pounder was still outside of his unit (he's broken the locked door of his unit) kids were swearing, calling each other names, hitting stuff, telling gross jokes... and the home staff was not confronting any of that. It's really tough when you have kids acting DANGEROUS to confront a kid when he says "Hell", but you HAVE TO DO IT. If you don't, they lose respect for you and think they can just do whatever they want, and worse than that, they stop checking their own behavior that much more, and you end up having to deal with more extreme situations.
it's tough, because I expect awesome behavior from these kids. I tell them that they can do amazing things, since they have - without exception - been through things that I can not even imageine. in some cases things that would kill weaker people. and they have survived. I expect total compliance, and make that known, but it's important to show grace, allowing second, third,
fourhundred ninetyeth chance.
on the other hand, it's important (and very difficult) to teach the kids about normal relationships and how certain behaviors have consequences and damage relationships. some of the very-institutionalized kids will call others horrible names and then fifteen minutes when they are not "pissed off" anymore, want to play a card game. they are so used to these soft, super-hyper-ultra-friendly social worker types who often enough brush all injuries under the rug. i've had to tell kids "no, i'm not going to help you draw or take you outside because you just called me terrible names and told me you were going to kick a part of me, and I should kiss a part of you." many kids HATE it when they hear accurate portrayals of their behavior. "THAT WAS IN THE PAST, WHY YOU ALWAYS BRINGING UP THE PAST???" is something I've heard often. "um... that was two hours ago..."
whew.
noises
so last night when it was getting late i was chatting to my friend Katherine (whose name ALSO means Pure, just like "Karen" and "Katrina"). She and her hubby had gone out, leaving their four kids with a sitter, and before they could get to the movies, they got a panickey phone call. There was knocking, but there wasn't anybody at the door, and perhaps more frightening, there was noises like doors opening and slamming! Well, Katherine and James rushed home to make sure everything was okay and console the distraught sitter, and when they confirmed that there were no intruders, stalkers or pranksters, they found that instant messenging programs were running on their computer, and that's where the noises were coming from. Katherine said she had her speakers up loud. they probably laughed out loud.
___more___
So that made me think: there are noises we hear every day that we end up ignoring. The "knock-knock-knock" sound that AIM makes (if you don't DISABLE ALL SOUNDS, like I do) will go unnoticed after a few hours if you got a lotta people getting on and off. Graham, however, isn't as discerning, and barks energetically at pretty much any knocking. A couple days ago houston was eating in his high-chair, and kicking the table cause he was pretty much done. Graham was stationed right there, preparing to gobble up any crumbs, so he was having to avoid swinging feet, but the knocking sound still triggered the whole "somebody is trying to intrude on my territory, so I must bark at them, paw their lap and lick them" circuitry (which is probably inoluntary, like
PTSD).
like, our Kia Rio whilstles when the crosswind is just right. I don't notice, karen does. my keyfinder that Karen gave me for a Christmas gift goes "beepbeepbeepbeep" when it hears a certain pitch. It's supposed to be a whistle, but I can't
whistle very well, so usually when it's gone off it's because somebody talked high. Like Houston squealing, or my fellow staff going "I know!!!" with the whole really high voice tone thing that girls do. I hardly notice anymore, but others do.
In other news, my
coffeepot that Eric gave me (thanks again, buddy) looks JUST LIKE DARTH VADER!!!!! it's a plot to get Discerning Coffee Drinkers everywhere to little-by-little allow the evil Empire to infiltrate their homes!!!!!!!!
pancakes and aliens
- That's a pancake for houston. So much fun.
- The wind was really blowing, and Jim's Festiva was blowing all over the road.
- I don't notice my keyfinder anymore.
___more___
Right, so next time you make pancakes, take a couple spoons of batter and add a teaspoon of sugar to it. This will let it burn really easy so it's much darker than the rest of the pancake. then make your letters on the pan with a spoon or knife, dripping carefully a backwards letter (lemme tell you, a backwards H is pretty tough) and the people who see your creations will think you can work magic!
Houston saw that pancake and said "Ooooh!!! H - Houston!!!!!" and devoured it.
Jim's little Festiva is still working GREAT for me, but it was really windy today on the freeway.
So I was thinking... they should make it more aerodynamically slippery side-to-side... but no, if it has to fit a Full Size Human and allow the human to see out of the window. And, with the other design requirements of be as light and small as possible, they pretty much were stuck with a result that can be blown around like a sheet of foam-core in hurricane season. So what if people didn't see out of their eyes? like... what if you went to Rigel-6 where they have sentient beings who have developed individualized transportation. WHAT WOULD IT LOOK LIKE?
well...... assume that these beings see reflected "light", like... photons. God would create them with eyes high up on the being both to keep (presumably) fragile sight-organs safe and allow a farther field of view. they would have to see out of the vehicle, and they would - presuming they lack presentience or anything - need some kind of protection in the case of collisions. Cars that are longer than they are wide are more efficient since a new sharpened pencil is only ever-so-slightly draggy than a nub of a pencil. Furthermore, we live in a universe created by God who has three Persons, so we have three spatial dimentions. I have a theory that the most stable (before the point of deminishing returns) way an object can be set down in any universe is (number-of-dimentions+1 points in contact with floor) which in our universe is four. And it is weird as crap to think that in a universe with four spatial dimentions, a three-legged stool would fall down unless actively balanced or supported.
Using friction as a way to steer (unlike boats and airplanes which use fluid-dynamics) necessitates that the front wheels steer, at least mostly. just try pushing a shopping cart backwards, let go, and watch it flip around so the steering wheels are in front again. try throwing a paper airplane backwards...
Okay, so we have a raised portion of the vehicle for the being to view out of. we have a mass in front of the passengers to provide some collision protection. we have four points of contact, presumably near the corners, round wheels, front ones steering. Looks pretty much like what we got. Aerodynamically, we'd see cars with different designs and features (like, maybe, THREE headlights!) but they would be quite recognizable as cars.
malware/spyware/trojans...
i'm in reinstalling WinXP on Keren Gort's machine.
___more___
there's a bunch of background tasks that I don't recognize. Apropos.exe, ntvdm.exe, and, like, five others that I end-tasked on already. As keren likes to say "Ree-diculous!!!" One of the tasks had random letter s and numbers for it's task name, like 3oQme.exe and would pop up again with a DIFFERENT name each time I shut it down!!! Her computer might have been hijacked by a
script kiddie. Script kiddies are kids who compete for status among their SUPER-NERD peers by doing DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks against big targets like IBM, Google or the US Military. a DDoS atack brings networks to their knees by basically asking millions of times a second for information from that system, just like sitting at their webiste and hitting "refresh" a thousand times a second. Servers that aren't beefy enough just quit working.
The MSBlast worm was set up to do that to Microsoft.
Script kiddies write programs that trick innocent users into allowing them to use their connections to mount DDoS attacks, and it's very very effective. Crazy stuff. I'm glad
I'm not a geek like that.
i like having days off
I really like having days off. We went to the mall today. I spent a long time writing that math article. I chased houston around this store called "Children's Place"... he went in the dispay case area which made passers by laugh. He squealed gleefully. He said some SUPER CUTE things like "Bye bye ball, bye bye crash, bye bye Uncle Mark", meaning he was thinking about the bowling trip we'd taken.
oh, by the way,
here's the other picture proving again that i'm not racist, just like
these nice people.
read the latest article!!!!!
over to the left, OR, just
follow this link!!! Math fun for the whole family!
Maybe...
Maybe I wasted 607MB of incoming
bandwidth today getting a certain
leaked alpha of a scary
game. i might have played it and might have come to the conclusion that it may very well be a game I never even play, let alone buy a legal copy of - fa sho!
Maybe I spent a long time waxing my dreads too.
___more___
the game is really, really, really scary. There's gross zombies with guts falling out, spooky weird noises, mechanically augmented creatures (one looks like a hunchback bull with robot hindquarters... minus... the... um... what makes a bull a bull. I checked. (maybe)). The lighting is unbelievably good. Dynamic shadows steal the show, with ALL objects casting perfect shadows, even (and very effectively) with multiple sources of light. The zombies stagger toward you, one moment a perfect sillouhette, the next lit gorily from the left, the next from the right.
Something called "displacement mapping" also plays a big role in the fancy graphics. The graphics engine can take a crude, easy to draw object (a cube, for instance) and place a texture on it (say... darker on the edges, darkest on the corners) that tells the video card to "displace" more from the darker areas of the texture and turn the cube into a much more complex shape - a sphere. Displacement mapping works really well, especially on gashes, intestines and robot parts. Blech.
The thing which really turns me off is that the guy you play seems quite off his rocker too. he's the last marine on a zombie and demon infested space station or something, and he might be pretty much insane because of that. Not like
Serious Sam who's a cheerful [dim]wit or even
Gordon Freeman who's a scientist (geek) forced into shooting a bunch of aliens. I happen to believe that demons exist, and prayer in the Name of Jesus is the only efficatious weapon against them. combatting them with hand- shot- and machine-guns speaks to Man's arrogance and trust in technology as his savior. Humph.
sorry... I didn't mean to wax philosophical, I meant to wax my dreads.
and you HAVE to go visit karen's post about Travis. The popups are hilarious.
Little H is TWO!!!
Happy Birthday Houston my Son!!!
What an awesome privilige it has been to be your father. I hope and pray that we've been able so far to teach you how to live as members of God's Kingdom. We love you, and we want you to learn to love us, love Jesus, and love learning about the world He created. We praise God daily for your intelligence, charm, humor and health. Sometimes we're in shock seeing how fast you're growing up, and you thrill us every time you do something new.
Like... "Gross kisses," which started yesterday... gross!!! Houston does "gross kisses" by basically licking my cheek. it's really pretty gross. We had a lot of fun today. We went to church, where Houston got to go to his old room for the last time. The workers said in the card that they'll miss him. After that, we went to Mom and Dad's house, where we ate delicious food, had delicious conversation, engaged in intense (for me) mathematical calculations regarding the probability of any person existing as they are... and had a party for Houston! More detail follows.
For more pictures and a better (or at least more conventional) write-up, go visit my cutie Karen's site. She's much better at scrapbook-type writing than I am.
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first thing this morning, Houston said "Bock-A-Dee" which is Houston-ease for broccoli, so I said "you want BROCCOLI for breakfast????" to which he repeated, Bock-A-Dee, Bock-A-Dee. So i slapped three stems of broc on the stove for steaming (FYI, an inch of rapidly boiling water, a lid, and 13 minutes is all you need for PERFECT broccoli) and served them up, along with a twenty-minutes-of-Disney-commercials-free viewing of The Lion King (I fast-forwarded to the part where Scar is telling Simba about the elephant graveyard).
Karen came downstairs about when Nala confronts Simba about not acting like the king, and started decorating the cake. I was asked to go to the store to get more frosting, so I did.
going to the store allowed me to get some Whole Bean 8 O'Clock Coffee (100% Colombian) I enjoyed my first sip of fantastic coffee from the new hook up that Eric gave me. A bean grinder and a 4 cup coffee maker, both fancy Starbucks Signiature Stainless Series.
Then, we went to church, and enjoyed a sermon on appreciating the states of our lives, be they deserts, or glimpses of the promised land. Then we went to Mom and Dad's house for a party, which was lots of fun. We ate cake, talked, watched some TV, played around, compared the babies, let Houston open presents,
and spent a lot of time in the basement spinning Houston and Kelly on an office chair. The side-splitting hilarity of this can not be captured on film (or
CMOS or
CCD), but here's a shot of him right after he stopped spinning. His eyes were bouncing back and forth crazily!
the only way to laugh as hard as watching a 2-yr-old stagger around dizzily involves a dog, a fresh 9V battery and some peanut butter.
UT2K4
That bunch of letters and numbers stands for Unreal Tournament 2004, or Two Thousand Four, if you will. Although UTTTF is worse than UT2K4...
That image was ripped off from
UnrealTournament.com, which is also the site where you can download the demo. I just spent an hour and a half playing various gametypes, and if you go for FPS games, GO GET THIS ONE!!! I didn't play online, since I'd just end up getting beat horribly by some fidgeting thirteen year old who has no Life Responsibilities (kids, wife, house, job) and my ego would be CRUSHED!!!!!! So i set the bots to novice and used the invincibility cheat... not really...
Lemme tell you... what a cool game! Maybe I'll write a review for Non Players, so they can get the Whole Picture and decide that maybe FPS games are not so bad.
___more___
Houston's birthday is tomorrow, so we're going over to Mom and Dad's house in about ten minutes to be with the family and have a little party. It'll be cute and fun. Eric, my Primary Demographic, will be there. Yo, what up Big E?
Today we went to the Wedgwood Bowling Benefit A Thon, and it was cool. I didn't actually bowl, since you need to raise at least a hundred bucks, and while I don't think i'm too proud to ask for money, I'm definately not organized enough. The last time I did it, I got $20 from Karen's grandparents and $80 from me. Tim (Who I knew only as an aquatinance at the time) paid the whole $100 for himself. I thought it was funny how when we went over by the group who works at Karen's home (Crossroads, male SO unit), only two people wanted to hold Katrina (or Houston, for that matter), but when I went to where my home's group, three of the girls (20's age ladies... not really GIRLS, but i ain't callin' them Women or Females or anything... maybe Chicks. Honeys. Or Dames) were all about holding the little one. I remember getting plenty of attention when I'd go places with my brother Antony when he was a baby and I was 19.
ooh ooh, and i also got another picture PROVING that i'm not racist. I'll post it tomorrow or later today. can't do it now cause my computer just crashed and it's in "safe mode" or something, with sixteen colors. I NEED to reinstall windows!!!!!!!11
Waanmento
I click my cursor into the box labled "Title" and start to type.
This was right after she's said "Okay."
Just seconds before, I'd said "I think I'm gonna post to my site," as Karen went into the other room put her glass in the sink and feed Katrina.
An hour earlier, I'd stepped through the door carrying a bag of ice and good intentions. Karen was glad to hear the blender running, heralding a pitcher full of virgin strawberry daquiri.
___more___
Mere minutes earlier, I'd been jolted by an enormous freeway pothole that mercilessly pounded the tires wrapped around the tiny 12" rims of the
Ford Festiva Jim's letting me borrow. I passed two cars on the shoulder. Both with flats.
Eighteen minutes previous, I'd made three girls scream and fall to the floor. A dame I work with and I had gone to investigate why these two were out of their room wheezing, sobbing and laughing, like broken down accordions in the
hall. We heard the words "there's someone in our room," and
Jennifer was peering - spooked - into their dark room while they crowded behind her. I strode up, fists clenched, promising to beat up anyone in that room, and entered confidently. A flick of my finger switched on the light, and I yelled and abruptly charged the closet door, which was holding up a terry cloth bath robe, and of course concealed no one. The two residents and Jennifer screamed, clutched their hearts, and backpedaled until they were collapsed in three panting heaps of jittery shock. One of the kids broke her sandal trying to run away too fast.
Ninety minutes earlier, I was contemplating yesterday's
damage.
Two hours before that, I was shooting the breeze with
Shana in the office, letting her know that she could probably leave early.
Before that, I'd briefly reminisced over a beat up, ugly
radio that was brought into our program by a kid about four years ago, and remains one of the most reliable CD players on the unit. It's a beauty.
Eighty minutes before that I had needed to use physical management to control a kid who had picked up a school
desk and held it over her head and was approaching one of my fellow staff.
An hour and a half before that, I'd checked my email on the
most pathetic computer ever.
I got to work.
That picture of me and Jennifer proves, by the way, that
I'm not racist. Just in case anyone wondered (rolls eyes). And I find it totally hilarious that people who fix up Ford Festivas talk about putting of "14 inch rims" as though it's outrageous. HILARIOUS!!!! Of course after borrowing Jim's (
Jim Anchower over at TheOnion drives one too)... I'm kinda starting to like them.
how about this weather???
yeah, it's shorts weather. Kinda overcast...
broken clouds, i guess.
here's one of the funniest stories i ever read over at
The Onion. The current issue has lots of swearing. I'm gonna go make another pancake for Houston.
Server Works
This
server has been up for just over four days without a reboot, so i'm happy with it for the moment.
Apache, the webserver software I use, has used up five minutes of CPU time, and is using 33megs of the machine's 256megs of memory.
MySQL is taking up nearly 40megs of memory. All the stuff that makes a webserver work is really strangely obscure (i don't have any idea what MySQL does... what's a "database???") but at the same time fairly simple. I mean, you set it up, and it works! especially the software to make this weblog page work. I just unzipped it, dropped it into a foler that Apache was serving up, and it WORKED!!!
speaking of work... we had Young Life club today, and I enjoyed being Vision Impared Dave - a superhero whose superpower is that he can't see very well. my partner and I (Clumsy Girl, whose superpower is that she's clumsy) get to bumble into each other and the kids, and generally be really foolish. it's a lot of fun, one of the high points of my workweek. i wish the kids would SING LOUDER and ... no, that's it, i wish they'd sing louder. Later this month the "worship leader" group is gonna be busy, so i'll get to lead it again, which will be nice since i can just do all my FAVORITE songs, and do them well. I am very thankful that the peeps who do worship do it, because i can concentrate on skits (and the kids I brought), but i kinda miss it.
Vision Impared Dave was an idea that we'd come up with (Karen came up with it, actually) and we loved it. this was back when Tim was doing YL with us, and when we proposed it to the head leader, she nixed the idea since it might offend people who were actually Vision Impared. Tim was blind in one eye, and he was gonna be Clumsy Boy. HUMPH.
Color!
Houston loves to color. He will usually ask for markers, and scribble/color on his corner, where we've covered the walls and his little table with butcher paper. Not that we're encouraging him to be a butcher understand. He also likes to sit on my lap and tell me what to draw on people's faces. this one of me is a bit more polished since i was wondering how realistic i could make the glasses... but there it is. He said "eyebrows - purple" so that's where those came from, and "glasses!" what color? "B-L-ack" (he pronounces black VERY precisely). And of course i work again today :(. At least four girls told me or other staff that they were really excited for me to start working again, and someone said "wow, nice ego boost, huh Juanito?" Yeah... but 1) my ego is already pretty healthy, and 2) stuff like that doesn't last at Delta. At 8:35PM, five and a half hours after I started, a girl said "Things have been going terrible ever since you got back". Aah well... my ego...
WORKED TODAY.
Click here to see the full picture.
Same old stuff. some kids doing better, some kids doing worse, new kids doing the same crap kids always do.
Same fun co-workers to chat to, which is really the reason I enjoy the job (besides the satisfaction of "making a difference" and being able to SHARE the GOSPEL as part of WORK!!!). I led a "class" today which ended up being me telling the kids
how TV's work and cd's, and then decided to talk next week about Hip-Hop music and the issues facing a girl growing up in a culture that devalues and disrespcts them.
First Day Back To Work
I'll be at work in three hours. I'm kind of looking forward to it, but having so much time off has been so enjoyable. it'll be nice to see all my friends at work and a few of the girls that I get along with too... and of course it's fun in the sense tha you are always being challenged.
So, to keep Houston enternained while Karen's napping, I'm letting him watch The Lion King on my computer while he sits on my lap muching on raisins and Kix. I've been investigating legal options to get my server running without WindowsXP (blech), and have a few options lined up for after I reinstall windows in THIS box and can run a backup server on IT so i can freely mess with the server machine without having any outages. Karen likes to update her
site without me saying "uh, honey, you can't do anything right now..."
that reminds me of one of the other times our computer interests converged for a while, and what happened. Karen started playing Unreal Tournament back in 2000 after it had been out a few months. She got pretty good, and was able to beat Xan (the cyborg) in the single player game. Well, I loved this, since that meant we could play together on the computer. One day Tim Wetzel was over here, and we had our three computers connected to the LAN, and were playing a game of capture the flag on the map Facing Worlds (a classic and very popular CTF map) and I ran up over the rise in the middle of the map and Karen saw me coming and used her sniper rifle to get me in the head.. Well... my players head kind of popped off, and Karen reacted in pure horror, repeating "I shot my husband's head off!!!" She quit out of the game, and has never played a first person shooter type game ever again. Tim and I were both quite distraught that she quit, since it's a lot of fun to play co-ed games on the LAN. Oh well. there is a girl who plays with us at LAN parties, and she is really really good, and wins more regularly than anyone else.
oh yeah...
Here's what I was gonna write about! the snow here is pretty much all gone besides where it's heaped into parking lot Mt. Mckinleys. There, it's gonna be around till may, probably, but nobody's gonna snowboard on that. I can say that this is the most i've been sad that the snow is leaving ever, since this year I discovered
SNOWBOARDING!!! snowboarding rox. I guess it's harder than skiing, but more fun, and you can do crazy jumps and stuff. I only went twice, the first time with
Jim and the second time with Jim and
Eric. It was a lot of fun, and now i'm gonna have to wait until next year, when i'll be a whole year older, and that much more likely to break a hip or fall and not be able to get up.
Well... the weatherpeople say more "wintery weather" may come soon. we'll see. Baby Katrina may have thrush. Poor little one.
Rubber Duckie and browsers
Yesterday i finished the song for the soundtrack of the latest Dangerous Sandwich Film, and while the soundtrack will only be one song, and will be "inspired by the movie" and not really ripped straight from the movie, I'm still hoping to sell if for full price of $19.95, Wherever Fine Music (by Juanito) Is Sold. Download the song over there to the left unless you are planning on not buying the upcoming CD or Cassette! then don't download it cause that would violate the
DMCA and the
RIAA and the
FBI.
so i went to the house of my very good friends (pictured above are richard, me, jamie and dave... Dave wasn't there, but he looks like a weirdo too) and tested out this little site. It works fine. yay!
I was also thinking that everybody in the world should use the browser I use. It's called Firefox, adn it rocks (no, it's not named after that movie). It has tabbed browsing, is faster than Internet Explorer, it stops popups automatically without problem, and is just so cool. I've been using it since it was named Phoenix. Then it changed to Firebird, which totally makes sense since a Phoenix is a Bird that rises out of the ashes, and as we all know, ashes come from Fire (or lit cigarettes, but I don't thing phoenii (phoenae? phoenixen?) rise from ashtrays). But then some other open source project already had that name, so they went with Firefox. I'm wondering if they're gonna stick to this name. So yeah... everybody go download that and use it.
Graham is lying next to me, exhausetd. When i went into the vet to pick him up at about 6:00, i could hear him barking almost right away. I felt bad for the people who worked there, and they certainly showed much gratitude to me for taking him away. Of course when we got outside, he peed for about 45 seconds. Poor dog hadn't had a chance to pee since about 9:00am. I would probably complain too if my bladder was that full. Good dog, good dog. I was gonna write about something else, but it's no good. Check out Homestar for a few laughs. Strongbad's email is a favorite.
Graham goes under the knife
Our dog Graham has a couple growths, and had to go to the vet. He's a smart dog, and seems to know where we're going. We visited the vet a week ago to get the growths looked at, the first time we'd gone to that place since he was neutered five years ago, and he SEEMED to remember it then, since he was sniffing the vents in the car and acted nervous. Today he most certainly remembered the place since he was kind of freaking out and did not want to go in the building. I hope he's okay.
we've often wondered about what dogs really think about, and how they process their world. I'd say vision and hearing are our primary and secondary senses, but for dogs (
and some primitive crustaceans), smell has got to be the primary sense. So when Graham is dreaming, is he dreaming smell? smell and vision? I can't recall sensing any odor in dreams...
Scientists have decided that that little
inch long crustacean is pretty smart compared to what they expected. I found that link at
IPKonfig, a really cool tech site that has more than video card reviews and motherboard information. another AWESOME site for eclectic interests is
ZZZ.
Computer Crash-Entry Lost (digicam to the rescue)
my little brother JJ and me.
Today is my last day off. I have tomorrow off, but that's my usual day off. I've enjoyed this time off enormously, more that I thought I would. I suppose having a new daughter might be part of the enjoyment, spending so much time with the ones I love is another factor, and of course not going into the chaos that is the Delta program was so refreshing. Now i have zero vacation time, so i'm starting from scratch.
Today we went to the doctor for Houston and Katrina. They both are progressing normally. Dr Hofman asked if Houston had a fifty word vocabulary, and Karen and I both said "Oh sure, of course" but only later did we think about how many words he really does know. He knows a word for every letter of the alphabet besides X, Q, and V. Yesterday we looked at a picture of him looking at some letters written on a paper. he was facing the camera, and the paper was facing him (in the picture) and so in the picture, the letters were upside down from our perspective. He still got all the letters right (besides the J to which he is pointing and obscuring the terminal, which he called a T), and what impressed me most was that he got the M right, even though it's upside down and W-Wyatt is one that he knows well.
and of course he knows tons of animals, lots of foods, verbs, nouns, adjectives (I-Icky). BTW, here's another interesting link about typography.
whew. i took a picture of the crashed screen and retyped it. to see what a trial version of OCR software managed to retrieve, go
___more___
ll™'¿ II
energy, more ti ¿ I thought I w th m nt,
\ krre as another factor, and of cours th ch th th cr d
starry from scratcher.
Noustor, twf a Aft' word vocabular nd th CO Utet cture at
¿ kre¿. ¿ knwv a word for ev ry ¿ of th et b StC
r¿:1:irkraJ] looking at some lette ntt
th th th clare,
we kiter reeve upside down from c5 sb ot th tte ( th to ch nb cu the a
tee/= tep://wwwgks.warwick'.uk/ k st cb A /ty / d cf tm rm / ch ca T) at
erne re re wa that he got th ht th th of co knows
tore at ar¿¿, lots of foods, verbs, cd ( ck ) TW Np // • .COfll/f fBfT fl/ BtOAl .frttlll f0 C/4>
ckere¿¿ Ink about ¿poqraphy.¿pf
Yay! GO LOTR!!!
Geek stuff at the (read the rest) link...
those three pictures were from september when my fam was visiting.... fun times. We made Rubber Duckie at the same time, but I still need to reinstall Windows before I can get a smaller version of that for my downloads page.
In other news, the academy awards got over less than an hour ago, and the people who were over here watching with us (with Karen, really) and we were all overjoyed at the showing the Lord of the Rings made. ALL ELEVEN CATEGORIES!!!!! Go them! what a bunch of amazing movies, and what a success for the whole fantasy genre!!! i was stuck in here exerting my power of will over this silly computer making it HEED MY COMMANDS (mostly by feeding it brownies) and finally it works. we'll see how long this install lasts. I'm probably gonna try a few more Linux distros (but i've dumped this version of Xandros permanently) before i settle with a pirated version of windows.
___more___
yeah... i got this working again, but it's using WINDOWS XP instead of linux. Xandros failed again upon reboot, the FIRST reboot I did with this install. I have no idea why, but may have something to do with the ReiserFS file system version my version of Xandros uses. I'm disappointed that I have to use stupid Microsoft, not only because, you know, they are the
Evil Empire, but also because that means i have to use a pirated version, which has always bothered me. finally, Windows is more resource heavy than Linux, so i notice this server being SLOWER, even over my LAN connection.
)
