High Hopes... or the Division Bell.... it's all Pink Floyd all the time!

Ya know I think my absolute favorite music is the kind of music that just fills a room with complex rythms and seems equally at home front and center as it does in the background.

A good example of this is Pink Floyd (which just happens to be qued up in iTunes right now) another example of this is TOOL... OK most of TOOL's stuff doesn't fall into this catagorey. But when I'm alone (as I often am) and I'm needing something loud to play it's TOOL. Another good one is Led Zepplin. Didn't really get into Led Zepplin until after College but I find it some times is just the thing I need to have on in the back ground when I'm doing something.

Little known secret when I'm working in LINUX I generally have Led Zepplin cranked.

Sure sign you are a geek and the people you are hanging out with are geeks.

So there I was, Phoenix Arizona at Curti's apartment we have just finished a 6 hour game of Axis and Allies (last time it was 12 so we are doing really well this time). We get done playing and it's still really early so we say lets play poker. Then a most odd thing happens we all look at each other and go. "Do you know how to play poker?" Quicker then you can say Quake 3 death match laptop is out and Curtis is on his computer. A quick googling of "Texas hold em rules" turns up the rules for Texas hold (gee imagine that) and one click down a description of the various types of hands you can have. SCORE!

Mind you there were 4 of us and Don used to goto Vegas on a regular basis. Of course he played the Craps tables. Oh and in true Engineer fashion Don and a roommate figured out what bets on the craps table are the best and the amount of money you should be playing with.

No I won't tell you... You have to do the math yourself. And it's alot of math so you had better get cracking.

The power that is...

The power that is the geek at home alone with materials at hand and time...





Yes I know I only hung 2 pictures... however I've lived in my house for damn near 3 years.

Get off my case... it's not like I like to decorate.

Guiness Googles...

Ever look through the bottom of a empty bottle of guiness? No? You really should... it's very intersting to see what is on the other side of bottle of guiness.

Mainly the thing that worries me is the "sprocket" in the said bottle of guiness, has that every fallen out and some one choked on it? I'm mean I'm sure it's been tested by the fine folks who make guiness to make sure that it doesn't come out.

Really what does the sprocket do? I know it's supposed to give guiness that straight from the tap taste however I can't tell a diffrence between guiness from a tap and guiness from a bottle... OK so maybe they did succeed...

Mmmm guiness in a glass... now that is truly heaven on earth. Or at least heaven in a glass.

Why not....

I'm sitting here watching tv with my laptop setup on the coffee table and I'm watching videos on launch during the commercials...


OK now if I can do this today with a crappy internet connection why can't Curtis who has a decent internet connection que up something to watch while his shows are on commercial?

Even better yet why haven't hit the point of on demand Television? I mean above and beyond the on demand movies you can get with "digital cable" seriously. More then a few people that I know just download their television shows they don't even watch Tv anymore... appointment television is not where it is at.

A solid 1mb connection and you can watch a show streaming in real time.. and I know the technology is out there hell real player and apple have it... I should be able to stream a catalog of Battlestar Galactica shows to my TV from Sci-Fi to my TV when I want I shouldn't have to wait until friday at 11 o'clock.

it's not that hard we have the technology we have the infastructure we can do it.

AND NO A PVR/DVR/TIVO WILL NOT DO IT FOR ME!

You know...

You know your a bachelor when....

Hemostats aren't just for stopping massive amounts of bleeding, they also make handy clips to close your tortilla chips with

A Guiness for dinner is perfectly acceptable

A Fat Tire for Desert is also equally acceptable

You house has a strange odor and you think nothing of it.

It's no longer a matter of having enough computers it's now a matter of having to many computers

Not having any mail, phone calls, email, or any type of outside communication is not unusual (ok this may just be a me thing)

Chips, Cookies, Beer, and Water are the 4 major food groups

Appointment television is for squares (ok this is really more of a geek thing then a bachelor thing)

Cleaning the house is a bi-monthly event

Cleaning the bathroom is a bi-weekly event most of the time

You talk to yourself

You have arguments with yourself

And lose

That sinking feeling....

Playing EVE tonight....

Got my ass handed to me... not so much of a fight as this other player just came up on top of me and started pounding my ship.

The only reason I'm writing about this is because it took me two weeks to get the ship set up like I wanted it... and it was blown to pieces in less then 30 seconds.

Back to the drawing board.

Death of a mentor...

In the spiritual not the physically sense of the word...

NO I'm not talking about God either.

Though if you listen to nine inch nails you may have your own thoughts as to whether or not God is dead. But I digress.

I had the task today of cleaning out Adams office at work today. It sucked rather badly for me... Not because there was a lot of stuff to go through or I just didn't want to do it. More it felt like I was taking down the last reminds of the dept that was.

When I came to the hospital 3 and a half years ago now... Adam and Shawn were the ones who took me under their wings and tried to make me feel welcome. Granted they had known me previously but still it was the effort that counted and I was always thankful for that. I think had they not been there I wouldn't have lasted a year at KRMC. Being fresh out of school I knew enough to be dangerous but not enough to be helpfull. Adam workd to rectify that over the course of several months teaching me things not only techinally but socially and politically that I value beyond accord today.

I thought of Adam as not only a coworker but also a friend.

When Adam left KRMC for a new job I took it particularly hard. In retrospect I probally should have seen it coming. I always figured I would leave before Adam would. I didn't think he would leave first. Since Adam left in September I've talked to him a few times. But something changed and I couldn't figure it out until today.

So while cleaning out a office filled with sales materials and half used legal pads full of notes I today realized that I should be thankful for the time I had and make the most out of my experiences from the past in the future.

Adam if you ever happen to read this... Next time I will show you how a real operating system works :)

FOUND IT!

DAMMIT I LOVE GOOGLE!!


http://www.kalsey.com/tools/buttonmaker/

This is what I was babbling about earlier.

I have seen the future... and I'm scared..

So there I was... surfing the internet. Yes I know real exciting. But it's my blog and your the one reading this drivel. Anyway I was over at Wil Wheaton's blog... and I notice these "buttons" and they are links to other sites he blogs for. Now a while back he posted a link to a place on the internet that would generate these buttons for you. I gotta say I'm really happy that I didn't follow the link, I've been seeing them more and more in the ol' blog o'sphere more on blogspot then in livejournal or any other spots. Mainly they seem to be a some sort of cutesy way to affilate yourself with another blog or two.

Ok I will bite says I after getting pissed off at half-life tonight. So I put in "blog stickers" into google and come up with http://www.blogstickers.com/ great... and it's not even what I thought they would be. OH well that is what you get when you are strung out on hershey's choclate, have been playing to many video games, and generally have a very quiet night geeking out.

Yeah don't you feel special...

Firefox I love thee... Let me count the ways...

Since I've moved from Geocities to blogger I've been trying to figure out why the hell my XML feed wasn't working. Well turns out I didn't have the right address marked... DOH! and I'm supposed to be a computer guy... So once I figured out how to get the RSS/XML stuff going I've been all impressed I have my own little RSS feed for this here blog. If you use firefox... and I know you do because IT IS A SUPERIOR BROWSER! Then there should be this orange looking thing in the bottom right corner of your screen. You can "live bookmark" me there.

The real reason why I love firefox though is because firefox is truly the first cross platform application that is pretty much "mass market". I've used a lot of Operating systems I'm very good with Windows (doesn't take a monkey to do that well), versed in Linux (I can actually have a workable Linux in about 30 minutes depending on how much configuring the desktop takes), Mac OS (I've used it enough to know my way around and make it work like I want it I'm by no means a expert). Firefox works the same on all of them. I think the two killer things for me about firefox is the tabbed browsing and the previously mentioned live bookmarks.

Back in 1996 I was the rebel... I used Internet Explorer all of my friends used Netscape 3.x, now adays I'm still the rebel (Linux, firefox, and where I can sneak it in Thunderbird). My entire family is still stuck on internet explorer. I did finally get my parents to Thunderbird. Though I tend to think that is more of a pyric victory then anything else.

I remember the first time I say a actual reference to the internet in a television show. It was the x-files in 1995.. Scully was using a laptop and did a search on something and she used a Unix like command to execute the search on the internet. I remember thinking it was very cool... it was only later that I would figure out in the days before mosaic (the first internet browser) that all you had to navigate the internet was a command line for a Unix machine. BASH!

Validation at last....

Your Famous Blogger Twin is Wil Wheaton

You're a friendly, funny guy (or girl) next door With more than a touch of geekiness

Who's Your Famous Blogger Twin?

Hmmmm....

6. Why does every culture SG-1 encounters speak English?
Practical reasons that come with television production. The time contraints of an hour-long episode mean that it would become a major hinderance to the story each week if SG-1 had to spend the first 10 minutes of each episode learning to communicate with a new species.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Taken from the Stargate SG-1 FAQ... you know that is a answer that actually works for me.

Ubuntu?

Walking through the parking lot at work today I saw a license plate frame at that said and I quote "silly faggot, dicks are for chicks". Ok now I'm a pretty open minded guy but I found this disturbing... Not because it was derogatory or anything like that. Rather I couldn't decide if I was offended or not... And suddenly the P.C. police score another victory. On the other side this particular license plate frame was on a ricer and it was all to hell... No paint, mis matched body panels, no rims.

Anyway I've installed Ubuntu Linux onto my laptop... ya know I like it. It's fast (like LINUX isn't fast) I'm able to do just about everything that I want to do with my laptop and I'm using LINUX. Ubuntu is a free distro that is meant to be regional easily (first LINUX distro in Swahili). I like it because I don't have to screw around with packages. It includes a package manager called synaptics that takes all the pain and misery out of downloading most of the packages for me.

And it's debian based I don't know what that means but it seems like all the good distro's for general purpose use are based off of debian. Of course I've been scoring "Debian Linux" on that stupid what is your operating system personality test for years.

Now I'm trying to decide if I will leave this on my laptop for a while or go back to windows. Dual boot is not a option with the laptop since I only have a 30 gig Hard drive and I likes my games. I have thought about doing the Cedega thing and trying my games on my laptop... But I know SWG and EVE would not work at all.

The one thing that I have always liked about any LINUX/Unix distro is the multiple desktops that you have. I don't understand why Microsoft doesn't make this native in Windows... Then again given the average mental capacity of the average windows user maybe the great Satan is more intelligent then we all thought.

If your still reading at this point you are either really bored, really interested, or trying to figure out what the hell I'm talking about.

If you are just plain confused you now know how most of my family feels 99% of the time when I'm around.

Is it bad that the background on my Windows Mobile 2003 PDA is a LINUX penguin?

Now if only my iPod would work correctly under LINUX... I would be set on the laptop.

Lord of the bath tub ring...

How sad... I'm playing both of my characters in star wars galaxies tonight... and I have my laptop up so I can check the web and look stuff up in game.

I would like to say that is a freak occurence... but it's not.

Silent Bob and the terror that is the google store.

I have seen the end of the world and it looks like this. I thought think geek was bad but this almost takes the cake... and on top of it all google is not supposed be evil.. thats their corporate motto "don't be evil". Well I guess a company has to make a buck somehow.

Current music "A Perfect Circle"

So how was everyone's new years? I for the second year in a row spent my new years under the weather and in bed by 9:30 but of course I felt better the next day... I hate those things that attack and then don't even have the common courtesy to stay for a full 24 hours.

A while back everyone's favorite super gay park ranger stated that he had seen the movie supersize me... as a direct result of that movie A.j. gave up fast food almost totally and started exercising. I saw this movie today. Never before has a movie motivated me to 1. Actually go to the gym on a regular basis. 2. Really look at what I'm eating and actually try to eat healthy. 3. Scare the living daylights out of me. I think my favorite part of the movie was 3 weeks into this guys experiment he visits his doctors. And all the doctors tell him that he needs to stop and stop NOW! Otherwise he will die. That was after just 3 weeks of nothing but McDonald's.. Seriously this guy was in really good shape at the start of the movie and by the end you could see the difference. It was really quite dramatic.

OK I don't know about dramatic but it was enough to motivate me to get off my butt and actually exercise more then I already do.

So as stated before in this very blog type thingy I'm addicted to blogs... I like to read other people's blogs and bring attention to those that I think are interesting or funny. So for the last week or so I have been actively looking for blogs that I thought were funny, interesting, strange, or in any way just not what you expect to find on the internet (granted you can find just about anything on the internet). Well I can tell you after a week of looking most blogs are of the following subjects.


1. Bush is a retard
2. People who think Bush is a retard are retarded
3. What I did today
4. What I did today and why doesn't anyone come here and read my blog
5. People rambling about inane things but it's something to do.

In case you haven't figured it out my blog thingy works into number 5 pretty nicely. Then again like I've always said your the sad sons of bitches reading this drivel I'm just on the one writing it.

Happy new year :)