@Wudan07

Ahem…


You’re GI Joe with the Kung Fu Grip!! You’re
strong, tough, and know how to kick some ass.
Don’t forget though, no matter how manly you
think you are, you’re still just a doll. God
Bless America.

What childhood toy from the 80s are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

I can see tomorrow

I can see the world to come

I can see tomorrow

Hear the pandemonium

This lyric, by Killing Joke, was written, most assuredly, after (or perhaps during) a visit to Walmart.

Go visit one. You’ll understand, that America, though seemingly detached from an imagined hell-on-earth, is not really that far off. I ponder these things as I scoot my little basket of items among the isles, trying to get through the masses scrambling to save a goddamn nickel on whatever the Gods of Walmart deem to be the deal of the week.

I can see the world to come – the almighty buck has all of us by the balls in a not-so-tenuous death-grip.

Of course, those who do well in this game are obvious masochists – they don’t have the integrity to say ‘no’ and certainly don’t have the self-respect required.

There is a rare slice of existence between being a slave to money and unhappiness – I’ll call this rare land of plenty, “Happiness”, and I think this is where I have set my sails for and what I keep my sights set on.

Other things may directly or indirectly seek to inhibit my journey – most assuredly, I imagine happiness isn’t the same for everybody, and so we’re crossing paths all the time, like a bunch of fools, bungling in an ocean of …

Pandemonium?

When I find myself slipping from my path, and drifting in to unhappiness, it is inevitable (and has been proven so) that something will shake me, and rouse my spirits again, and I charge back towards my goal, with my vigor renewed and determination doubled!

Someday, I might actually tell you what I’m after. This vague concept will have to do for now.

Well, ok, a lot of stuff has happened since my last post, and I didn’t even think to blog about it … imagine that?

Well, I wrote a paper proposing a method of compensating software developers for beating deadlines and exceeding expectations, I actually had a few software developers read over it, and it sounded pretty good, they all said it was good. I wish I knew some project managers who watch over devs, so I could have them take a spin at it.

Really, it was a lot of smoke and mirrors – I wrote it in two days time, I am familiar with the subject and I already knew what sources to cite. I think it really wasn’t good, and I got a B on it. I got B’s on a lotta my stuff, actually, and a B in the class over-all.

I really didn’t go to class, I learned that I didn’t like the instructor much, which is going to be a problem, because he teaches a lot of classes. I’ll just finish my associates and be on to something else, soon enough.

I am on the Dean’s List this semester – I got 3.5’s or above for two consecutive terms – yipee! They sent me the whole list – about 12 people or so, and I’m one of them! I really liked it, though I don’t think I’ll make the cut this term – Accounting I is really rough stuff, though I understand it, I’m not putting in the work to REAAAAALLY understand it.

Well, programming-wise, I’ve picked up my Jedi Academy mod again and started whittling away, hacking at bits of code like some kind of daemon.

Well, I would. I just don’t think I can work in my current space. I’m planning drastic changes… and I need a bookshelf, too!

Well, stay tuned!

I’ve always hated updates for the sake of updates.

Yesterday I did something stupid. I accidentally guilt-tripped my brother and his wife in to hanging out with me and my wife. Circumstances aside, I really was trying to tell them that they didn’t have to come over, and that they had better attend to more important matters, namely, the long drive to Logan at 11pm (or whenever they finally left.)

I feel bad mostly because they really are cool people, which is the main reason that I like to hang out with them.

In other news, both of my parents are 1 year older, their birthdays are just 2 days apart. My brother, his wife, my other brother, and I all went to see HellBoy last weekend. I felt as though it were a hollow movie – clearly not complete in any sense of the word.

I guess in a way, it was like Star Wars – so much movement in the movie, but so little that moved me – even in the original trilogy, there is just a ton of backstory that doesn’t get told. Somehow, in Star Wars, this adds depth for me, but in HellBoy, this made the movie feel dumbed down – like the film-maker didn’t really get the comic, and so, cut out the details that he didn’t understand. It seems to me that the gargantuan tentacled beasts were, in fact, based on the famed ancient diety, Cthulu, who is actually part of a pantheon of demi-gods. Supposedly Cthulu sleeps in a sunken city in the Pacific, and not in a magic-crystal light-years away.

And why not go straight to Cthulu for your plot? There’s enough depth and backstory that fans with a passing knowledge of the darker arts would understand, I’d say. There’s certainly no copyright to be held on the mythos, so … feh.

The good part about HellBoy was HellBoy. Everything else was slightly lackluster, and I kept wanting to see Will Wheaton as that John Myers. Well, that, and, I think HellBoy asked him how the hell he got in to that department, and I kept expecting Myers to say something like, “You’re not the only one that’s special!” and follow up that statement with something like, oh say … stopping time or something cool.

Selma Blair was interesting, but not interesting enough – why the hell did Rasputin visit her, are they somehow related? What’s the deal there …?

Too many unexplained and inconvenient plot devices, grrrr.

Let’s not forget that Sukie told me not to go, and I went anyway.

While mining the Internet for whatever it is I mine for, I came across this little gem by ee cummings:

Humanity i love you

because you would rather black the boots of

sucess than enquire whose soul dangles from his

watch-chain which would be embarassing for both

parties and because you

unflinchingly applaud all

songs containing the words country home and

mother when sung at the old howard

Humanity i love you because

when you’re hard up you pawn your

intelligence to buy a drink and when

you’re flush your pride keeps

you from the pawn shop and

because you are continually commitings

nuisances but more

especially in your own house

Humanity i love you because you

are perpetually putting the secret of

lifer in your pants and forgetting

it’s there and sitting down

on it

and because you are

always making poems in the lap

of death Humanity

i hate you

Moreover, I quite enjoy the first part, “because you would rather black the boots of / sucess than enquire whose soul dangles from his / watch-chain which would be embarassing for both / parties” – Essentially, we admire success, and, in doing so, condone all the misdeeds that lead to success.

Finding out who you are and what that means, is the only real success.

A long, thought-provoking post has shown up on AntigoneHG‘s blog this morning, which can basically be summed up as:

You know the saying that we’re limited by our fears. Well, couldn’t the same be said of our desires? Or is it a glass half empty/half full type of thing, like our perception is either limited by our fears or by our desires?”

Wouldn’t you know it, I was driving to pick up my son from daycare the other day and I wondered how much of what we do is actually conscious selection, and how much is natural biological response?

She mentions that theorb77, who happens to be my brother, hasn’t changed much in the last 5 years – I guess that might be true, I haven’t been around him that much over the past 5 years, but he’s probably my closest relative.

I guess you could say he hasn’t changed much – not that it’s a bad thing. He is a pretty mature guy, prone to bits of well-thought-out stuff. He’s bright, funny, and has a way of handling things.

I can see in his responses to AntigoneHG’s posts that he’s defending the ‘safe’ way of doing things, which is pretty much how I do things as well, most of the time.

The world is full of danger, it really is. This fear of danger, it’s a natural biological response – isn’t it? I don’t play in traffic, attempt to flirt with women that are way out of my league, or tell people what I really feel and think – I am a closely guarded person, and I know that this is a bad thing.

Let’s take the innevitable activities on May 1. Sukie demanded that we either bungie-jump or skydive. I am afraid of heights. I mean, I can look down, but my body knows I’m not supposed to be up so high, and I better get down. This is how my ancestors must have insured the survival of the bloodline – by not doing anything remotely dangerous, procreating, and passing these survival techniques on to their offspring.

Countless generations of survival, and there’s just nothing I can do about being afraid. This truly is a demon-haunted world.

School is dragging. I spent a lot more time just hanging out and goofing off this weekend than I should have.

Sukie, theorb77, AntigoneHG, Kristi, Daxero Absolut and I all finished up a round of SpyCraft on Saturday evening. It was fun, it got really hectic at points, right about when it became apparent we were all on separate missions. The three CIA operatives, Sukie, Kristi, and AntigoneHG let me know (by accident … or by Kristi) what their objective was, and, luckily enough, mine played quite well in line with theirs. It turns out that if I had kept going the way I had been (and had I not been concerned with the gun pointed at Sukie’s head) that my skills and intuition could have completed all the objectives ahead of schedule.

It turns out, Dax really did have an objective, but he wasn’t being very task oriented. I guess that’s ok, he was playing a character who likes to order vodka but not drink it.

I, on the other hand, play a character who is somewhere between James Bond and MacGuyver (sp) – a real slick, witty, SOB.

theorb77 was the GM – and he did a fabulous job at it.

Oh, and should I mention the GTA:VC jumping contest held earlier between Dax, theorb77 and myself? I beleive I was the top jumper, jumping an inferno a whopping 2 flips and 647 degrees of rotation! We also invented a ‘Hot Potatoe’ elimination style game – the first one to jump picks a car and we all jump it off of the legendary parking garage until it blows up – the person who jumped it when it blew up is eliminated, and the remaining people take turns jumping a new car until it blows up. We had determined that the best car to jump is the inferno (while a motorbike can take several jumps), and the worst car (ie, blows up on the first jump) is the Sentinel. I actually jumped a sentinel and it did not blow up, but it blew up on the next jump. It is a cursed vehicle 🙁

What It’s Like – EverLast

Mary got pregnant from a kid named Tom that said he was in love

He said, “Don’t worry about a thing, baby doll

I’m the man you’ve been dreaming of.”

But 3 months later he say he won’t date her or return her calls

And she swear, “God damn, if I find that man I’m cuttin’ off his balls.”

And then she heads for the clinic and

she gets some static walking through the door

They call her a killer, and they call her a sinner

and they call her a whore

God forbid you ever had to walk a mile in her shoes

’cause then you really might know what it’s like to have to choose

What geek are you?

Ah, the weekend passed, uneventful. Amy and I went out on Friday, to dinner and a movie. She ‘wisked’ me away, as she called it at the time. Really, we’re both stressed out and unmotivated. We did actually clean up the living room, which was becoming quite a junky mess.

I even did some of those dishes, which were becoming quite the nuissance to the olefactory senses – well … if my poor nose wasn’t already feeling beat up by the constant bombardment of mother nature’s pollens.

Tell me this – if industrial pollution is so bad, how come mother nature is the one who’s making my nose feel like there’s a claustrophobic wolverine inside of it?

Beleive you me, that mofo wants out, and he lets me know every damn morning.

Well, aside from the fact that I’m unmotivated, I can certainly see reason to be – this week is the midterm. Let’s ponder this – I go to a school that is on an accelerated schedule – I get 5 or 6 semesters a year … which means that I’ll experience 3x the number of midterms that normal students get … sound fun?

I saw the whole list of degrees offered by my institution, I must say it’s a rather short list. Of these, I have nearly completed my AS in Business Administration.

Since I do plan on getting my Masters in some field or another, I’ve decided I better shop around for a new institution, since I heard somewheres that most Masters programs prefer you to have gotten your Associates and your Bachelors degrees from 2 separate institutions.

Plus, I had decided to Minor in Computer Programming, often called Computer Information Systems. Since my field of choice is Video Games, this goal seems a bit misplaced – most colleges do not teach you to make games, and the ones that do probably wouldn’t give you the education you’d want to continue onwards to a Masters program.

So, what will I be? I’m actually thinking about Engineering, since video game programming and my math skills seem more related to Engineering than any other academic field. Oh well 🙂