@Wudan07

This morning I’ve burnt the hours whittling away at my Settlers of Catan map generator. It’s sort of a silly project, but I have now produced some form of results. A quick drop of the map in to my raytracer (another of my silly projects) and I get this:

But since I like to write code that is re-usable, I used the base Settlers of Catan distribution of resources as a basis for generating bigger maps. So, if one side of the hex map for SoC map is 3, I pumped out a 5 sided map. I can basically generate a map with whatever ratio of goods I want, the dice rolls are there too, but not in the render. The render is just a bunch of spheres, but as you can see, if they are placed apart from each other properly, you get a honeycomb shape.

Anyway, just thought I’d blog some of the extreme geekiness that I am in to. Now to go play some Zelda.

You have to ask yourself, is it more important to get your way, or to always give in?

The truth, like in all things, is somewhere in that hotly contested middle-ground, where we try to match up who we are and how we feel with who we want to be and how we want to feel.

You simply have to see the path ahead, and walk it.

Like the new blog layout?

I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.

In what universe do you and I need to share a moral compass? If we all thought the same and acted the same, what good would it do any of us. Life is for the experiences and the people you chose to share it with. Yes, that is terrifyingly new-age-ish, but if you knew your Wudan history you wouldn’t be shocked by that.

I do not like two-faced assholes at all. They are just about the only group of people I don’t get along with.

That is all.

I’ve decided that the Violent Femmes made some really good music. Today I heard Kiss Off on the radio and I noticed that I was lacking Femmes in my iTunes, so I bought the greatest hits album.

Eventually I’ll get some more Smashing Pumpkins, because they have made some good music as well. It seems like only yesterday they broke up, but now there’s a new album with some good music on there.

Work has been going well, things are good, busy as hell though.

It’s been one year now that Sukie and I have had this house.

Today I celebrated that fine moving day by moving my bosses bosses boss’s office to a bigger office. Oi!

I break a sweat at the drop of a hat these days. It’s really ridiculous.

I used Sysprep to prepare an unattended set up of Windows Xp today. We use Sysprep a lot, but weren’t sure how to get the set up automated. I did it, and now it’s only a matter of minutes from out of the box and on the desktop. I’d really love to get enough time saving measures in place so I can actually complete some of the broader scope projects that have been tasked to me. I almost never talk about work on here, and now you see why. It’s pretty dull to talk about.

So last night Sukie and I had a bit of a row about Monopoly. Basically I wouldn’t deal and she got upset and I got upset and we both got upset about how upset we had made each other. I was employing a strategy I’ve used before where I just buy as much damn stuff as possible. I know you’re saying to yourself, doesn’t everybody do that?, but the strategy falls apart once somebody else has a monopoly. When another player has a monopoly, they probably were more frugal with their purchases and will be able to upgrade their lots, which you will then land on, and since you spent all your money, guess what happens? So you cave and deal. UNLESS – you happen to own at least one property from each group and REFUSE to deal. Then you are like walmart – you may not have the clear ownership of the whole damn board, but you sure as shit own enough to collect the goddamn rent from every Tom Dick and Sally in the game.

So I bought down to nothing, then I mortgaged just so I could buy some more, and was able to unmortgage properties later. It was sweet, I was collecting rent so often I was back in the black and getting paid. Well, that just pissed off the other players, Sukie being one of them.

Really, if I wanted to play like that I could have gone on for another 8 hours or so, IF I was able to stonewall for that long. I had 14 properties at one point! I don’t know how many there are that you can buy off the top of my head, but 14 is ludicrous. I would have eventually made some deals, but Sukie being mad made me feel HORRIBLE for my tactics, and she felt horrible for being mad, and we were just crummy from then on.

And that’s why she’s giving up Monopoly.

Or is she?

What would you call the part of the equation that you can’t see?

I was reflecting on how there are no real freedoms in life, somewhere between saying ‘caraffe’ instead of ‘pot’ and driving home after a very, very exhausting day at work.

I don’t blog very often, and I was thinking about this over the past week; it’s because I am afraid to. I don’t like the notion that people might judge what I have to write, or that my thoughts would be spat upon the Internet like so much filth.

I just don’t care to prove what others think, or that I secretly find my own thoughts so ridiculous that I wouldn’t dare share them with the general populous. The point is that I care a great deal about how I’m perceived by others. At times I’ve been criticized for my actions and my approach to problems, and it’s taken a real toll on how I feel about how I act.

I guess in some circles they’d call that bad self esteem.

I wouldn’t call it that, because I don’t often fall victim to the same dreadful bouts of depression that so many of my kin fall prey to. I don’t allow myself to venture in to that most dark and unpleasant of lands, because I try not to be at conflict with myself. It would be hard for me to describe the process, except that I trimmed away things that did not belong – I stopped listening to the propaganda that I was not right, and I felt more right, and each step away from the hateful slimy things has felt like I am shedding a diseased and rotten shell.

I look around the world today and I see the same conflict that I felt within myself. I see madness – people clutching to their sicknesses and diseases as though the expect the embrace to cure them. I see broken people, shackled to doubt and fear.

This life can be a prison, if you let it be. You see these limitations around yourself, you press against them and then you get used to them. Finally, you need them.

Some days, the way things are makes me so upset. What angers me most is that one day I was full of opportunity and no ambition, and the next I was full of ambition and few opportunities. Still, you must soldier forward. The world didn’t come this far for you to just quit, did it?

Oh boy do I have some news.

I recently left a tragically bad relationship, with my previous employer. I was so reluctant to leave, I’d been there for so long, had so much vacation, and at some masochistic level, I liked the work I was doing. They mentioned that at my job interview, that I sounded like I liked my old job a lot, and why would I want to leave.

You’ll notice I didn’t mention my old workplace a lot on here. That’s because I generally tried to keep my work and myself separate, though it’s strange enough that my old workplace played a large part in my development during these last several years. I’ve learned a lot, some of it actually useful, but in the end, I just wanted to get out.

I was hesitant, but those last two weeks there would have been rough to get through if I wasn’t armed with the knowledge that the last 2 weeks were little more than a layover on my flight to somewhere the hell else. There was the flood, the requests for unknown information that there’s no way I’d have any way to even know, the constant questions and tumbling, stumbling, finding my way through the goddamn mess of issues and problems.

Then there was the constant threat that someone, somewhere was unhappy with how I was doing things. When you deal with problems, bitter attitudes and hurt feelings are a certainty. Frankly, we, my team and I were, were underpaid, for understanding 3 companies systems and being a stop gap on the shortage of bona fide network engineers, and making nothing above what a regular call center technician made. I learned so much and understand too much to have stayed there, I can see that now.

At my new job I’m a lot more active. I’ve shaved off some weight, helping to get the list of things to do cleared up and problems sorted out. My bosses are cool, my coworkers are cool, and it’s a much better environment.

I do somewhat miss my old work, but I’m much better off for having left.

That’s what some people say anyway.  For those of you out of the loop, we just got back from a very long road trip, but what was different from the usual road trip was the list of suspects was longer than our usual treks, which was wise because our destination was more distant than the usual road trip!

At 3:30am on Friday, Sukie, Wudan and ‘The Boy’ hit the road, escorted by an entourage of related Utahns, Frik, CareBear, and that veritable powerhouse of good times (lest I mention Orb Juice?), Theorb77.  It was one for the books, we blazed a trail on that balmy Friday morning to Green River, WY, the Flying J of Hurt Feelings, past Chenney and rocketed on down ye olde I-25 to lovely Thornton, CO, arriving at 1:00pm in the afternoon.

It was remarkably cold, but I suppose that’s just something I should have envisioned.  Friday night found us BBQing it up at Berserks, in what can only be described as a convergence of bloggers and burgers.  Lucas took quite a while to warm up (and I don’t think he was quite himself at that, but Nintendo seemed to captivate his attention) due to his lack of sleep.

It was a lot of fun, as it often is when you’re hanging out with a large crowd of cool people.  It’s always been weird to hang out with people I knew before moving to Utah some years ago, but I think it’s because it’s sometimes hard to realize that these people in that other place went on without you, went to the high school you barely spent a year at and have forged new memories.  What I think I’ve realized is that it’s ok, I’ve also forged on and made some small scratch of happiness from what I’ve been fortunate enough to be handed, as well.

But, I must add, they all turned out to be a lot cooler than anyone from my family :), no disrespect intended.  They all just seem to get along really well and it kind of made me bummed when I realized this fact, that what I liked about the way they operated was that they actually seemed to genuinely like each other.  At junctures like this, I always ask myself, am I too cynical?  Am I a pathetic, cynical son of a bitch?

Maybe that’s a bigger question to be pondered when I am not too exhausted.  As has been mentioned, MJ and Chaemeleon (sp… tired) got married, which was the purpose of the venture.  They wasted no time in obtaining a copy of Goonies from the local Cleanflicks and stole away in to the evening to enjoy the film classic as it was intended:  on one’s wedding night.

On Sunday morning Sukie and I went to visit a fellow reefer (I guess I skipped the part where Sukie bought YET ANOTHER FISH TANK)  and it was very awesome to meet people who are in another club, yet enjoying the same hobby.  Very awesome indeed.

We left today with hopes of returning to Utah, having enjoyed a great weekend that seemed to last forever, and yet was too short (that is to say, it feels like we were able to do a lot, but it was still short).  Unfortunately, two traffic tickets ensued but these were eclipsed by the massive shithole that is Rawlins, Wyoming.

We returned, and everything is right again.  I think I had more fun in Colorado this time than last, but I definitely would like to go back sooner than 2 years from now.

The Dearly Beloved

As it turns out, theorb77 was right, it is a direct parody of The O.C. It was a great show, and I think the spoof is a great tribute. It’s all for the best, it’s over now.

No, really.