slackv

Moving....

2006-05-03T10:38:00.000-04:00

To go with my theme of moving myself, pooks, and my job, my blog is moving to my web server.

blah,
Slackv

But I liked the Super Mario Brother's Movie...

2006-04-25T10:49:00.000-04:00

Ahh the Super Mario Brothers Movie, it was a great way to turn off your brain and enjoy a movie starring Dennis Hopper as a bad guy. There's a big discussion going on over on Slashdot as to why game movies stink. I liked that SMB movie, it was light and simple. Same for the first Mortal Combat movie. It's the story that drives a good movie, not the game that's behind the idea for the movie.

On that note, I've been working with The Movies last night. I want to get cranking on some ideas I've had. The biggest thing (litterally) I found out is that you can do plastic surgery on your actors to give them big boobs. I did a little working with a "girls-trapped-in-woods-trying-to-escape-evil" movie, but i didn't bother to coordinate the characters so everyone changes roles in every scene. My favorite part was where the girl in the demon outfit headbutted the other girl who had died in an earlier scene. Then there was a knife fight and a body gets dumped in the basement (my second favorite scene). I also figured out how to use the hotel bedroom for steamy love scenes W00T!

So I'm at work and cranking through some stuff, but I thought I'd take a break and blog for a little bit. Hopefully soon I'll have a movie to show off!!

--Slackv

27 Hours....

2006-04-24T08:57:00.000-04:00

It took about 27 hours for us to get Pooks moved out. I had my parents help out, they were movers a long time ago and so I needed their input about where to put stuff and just what to do in general. It was a long haul that took two trips. It rained in the middle of the first unloading. By the time we got to her place the second time it was late (7:30 or 8pm) and so we decided to call it a night and finish unloading in the morning. I slept there and tossed & turned all night. I had weird dreams and kept waking up with my legs just hurting & my mouth dry. We eventually got up at 7am and go started unloading the second load. It took us about two hours to unload it. Even though I had tossed & turned, the sleep was really needed. I was much more productive in the morning than I had been the previous evening. It's a weird feeling to just not have any energy, like all of you strength is gone and you just want to sit and not do anything.

It was all worth it though, after moving every thing in we took the truck back and went to my place and tried to nap for a while. It was Sunday so we went for a late lunch at Sonny's BBQ and talked with the waitress'es who were complaining about ppl just letting their kids throw food everywhere. We talked about doing shopping or things, but just went back to my place to rest for a while. We were both still really tired, but not sleepy. I started cleaning to get ready for my impending move, while Pooks relaxed and read a book.

Yeah, I'm going to have to move too. My apartment complex has decided to go condo and so I either have to buy in or move on. I've got until June 1'st to decide. Pooks is at her new place for the next year, and I want to move a little closer to work. The afternoon commute can take from 30 mins to an hour, so moving closer would be really nice. We'll see how it turns out though.

I'm using the cat cam as a device to let me check on my animals too. Since the condo's are taking over, they are replace the windows in my building this week. Hopefully they'll be done soon. I've had to shut my kitties up in the bathrooms and it's just annoying in general to have my life disrupted by the work going on.

--slackv

Edit:: I tried to post this yesterday but blogger was bombing out for everyone, so it's getting posted a day late.

Good Weekend, need to sleep to recover!

2006-04-18T09:06:00.000-04:00

I had a great weekend. I hung out with Pooks and cleaned my apartment. That was pretty much all day Saturday. Cleaning & vaccumming and turning mattresses. It was exhausting but fun. Easter Sunday we went to church and then over to my parents house. We spent the rest of the afternoon there before we went over to her parents house and had dinner. We had fun with them and Then I had to go home b/c I was so tired. I got home started some laundry and crashed on the couch. I forced my self to stay up long enough to finish the laundry.

I have been still really tired for the past two days. So I'm taking Friday off. Just as a personal day so I can relax a little. I don't have anything planned (yet) but I think I may spend a few hours playing in the pool.

I'm still trying to finish projects for Dad & others, but being so worn out hasn't helped. I am planning to start doing some walking in the evenings to try to get some energy back (and maybe lose a little weight). I think that would help.

Oh YES!!!

2006-04-14T13:41:00.000-04:00

Now I know what to do with the Cats once they shuffle off this mortal coil...

http://pet.memoryglass.com/

--slackv

It's Back....

2006-04-14T11:00:00.000-04:00

The CatCam Yes, I have gotten tons (Ok, five) requests/questions about the CatCam and so I've made a special effort In between time with Pooks and M. to get it working. M. was really happy about it. We had a really special time last night, Pooks wrote about it in her blog.

In other news, Slashdot Now has a book marks system. Here are mine Nothing fancy or extensive yet. I found out Google has a bookmarks tool as well, http://www.google.com/bookmarks/ I think I'll stick with the Slashdot one for now.

Well it's a light day at work today, not much going on at all. Hopefully it stays this way all day long.

--slackv

It's been a long week for it to only be a Wednesday.

2006-04-12T07:55:00.000-04:00

Spent a lot of time yesterday just feeling drained, I was up too late. I can tell I'm more productive now, but each day becomes a new project. So while i'm getting stuff done... it's creating more stuff to do. I know I work like that a lot, jumping from project to project. It doesn't help me get the first project finished though.

Went to Pooks' for dinner last night, then took her & her daughter to starbucks. Her daughter accidentally walked into a parking sign. It really nailed her good. As we stood there and comforted her a guy in a truck backed into a parked car trying to get around another truck illeaglly parked. The guy in the truck drove off to find another space and the girl who happened to be sitting in her car got out & was shocked & surprised. She didn't know what to do and initially said whatever, but came back later to find the guy. I feel bad b/c I know she needed some comfort too, and like the three people from the story, I passed by the other side. I can sometimes tell when I'm doing it b/c I get a little twinge that I should be doing this or that and I ignore it for whatever reason. "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." (Edmund Burke) Not that this was a super big deal, people's cars get bumped all the time, but I am pretty sure I could have made a small difference and didn't.

--slackv

A new look and another sore weekend...

2006-04-09T09:03:00.000-04:00

I spent some time this Sunday morning fixing up my blog before church. I've been itching to change it for a while, but in fixing some links I went ahead and changed my template as well. Nothing special, just something a little different.

Pooks and I went to church yesterday to help do some clean-up and gardening before Easter. Just some work to make it look pretty. I kept thinking about making paths straight and the rough places plain for the coming of the King. It was funny in my head. We had a good time working with the people there, it was a small crew. We did get fussed at by the choir, someone had brought in doughnuts for the workers and so had the choir and me and pooks got into the choir doughnuts by accident, we didn't know they we two separate pools of doughnuts. So one of the choir people came over and informed us politely to stay out of their doughnuts, they were for the choir only. We were like sorry and let the other workers know what happened. We all laughed at the mindlessness of somepeople. Although later one of the other women helping with the cleaning helped with getting the choir out by ringing the huge church bell and drowning them out. lol too funny.

We had a great time and met some really good people. I enjoy that kind of thing a lot. It's good to be working for making things better. After lunch with the work crew we went back home and napped for most of the afternoon. Pooks got the call about her house selling which is awesome!!! We headed out to Idzeeboo's for a party, but didn't stay long, it was raining and we didn't want to get stuck down the dirt road. I was also pretty tired & worn out from the mornings work. It made me a little grumpy & off kilter, but the party was fun. I got to meet some new people.

off to church now though.

Quick update (again)...

2006-04-07T14:27:00.000-04:00

Been a bit off for the past few days... I've just been extra tired and run-down. Not sure why. It seems to come in waves, I don't know if it's just left over from the time change or what. I'm hoping for a restful weekend though. I've got a party to get too and I'm helping with a church clean-up on Saturday so it should be a good time.

I have managed to get a bunch done on the server, I'm still working on the picture gallery and other things, trying to get them running again. I've accidentally turned off the catcam :-( So It's on my list of things to fix too. I'm working on a side project as well. Trying to learn Python and scan rss feeds. It's something my brain has hooked around that I "want" to do and so I'm pushing ahead with it. I think it will be useful in the long run.

Not much more in WoW news, half of level 14 was spent running messages between Stormwind, LakeShire, WestFall and a run up to Loch Modan. I think that explains the dream I had where I was running and running and running....

Sore Weekend...

2006-04-03T15:27:00.000-04:00

Yeah I found out again that I'm getting older. I spent time working on Pooks'
yard Saturday and Sunday. I got really dirty both days (espcially Sunday) I'm
ended up with a slight sunburn and some really sore muscles. But the outside of
the house looks very good. The inside looks good too, but all of my work was on
the outside of the house :-) I think I inherited a decent slant at gardening
from my parents and grand parents. Some of my happy memories are working in the
garden at my house in G'ville. Pulling weeds, and moving flower beds, making
a compost heap, and watching the cats jump around chasing bugs. They loved
being in the garden when I was in ther

The house is on the market as of today and it looks very nice.

I had a great dinner with Pooks, Maggie and Eve last night. Eve was able to
help me out with some stuff and I really appreciate her. She is a great sister
and I love her very much. We had a great time watching TV and talking about
family things. Maggie played with the cats, making them chase the laser pointer
everywhere. I introduced her & Eve to "Robot Chicken" from Adult Swim on the
cartoon network. They were both shocked and laughing. I also got to watch the
new Dr. Who's. Those are just awesome. If you get a chance to see them, you're in
for a real treat.

I also wasted a ton of time playing WoW. It lead to a WoW dream where I had to
run to work. I spent hours running up San Jose Blvd, which was nicely grassed,
to get to the tavern at work. It was cool but weird. I'll have to put a more
detailed description on the dream library.

Just a quick update...

2006-03-30T15:56:00.000-05:00

Working a little late tonight, kinda hot, kinda tired... I didn't sleep well last night, I would fall asleep for a while and then wake up. I was up at 3:48 but thought it was 6:30 and was wondering why my alarm wasn't going off.

I got in way late to work this morning. It was good though b/c Pooks needed me to grab some stuff from the store. I got an email from my ex-wife, the first one in a long time. I email her back. I also let Pooks know about it. We talked about it.

I've been having fun playing WoW a Lot recently (ok, just some playing, it was down all tuesday, Wed I was helping Pooks and Monday I only got in a little bit.) It's been fun and kinda interesting, I'm trying to stick with a single character and get them to level 60. I'm also finding out that I spend a lot of time just hunting for the gathering stuff (herbs in my priest characters case).

It's been a long day at work even though I've only been here for a short while. Lot's of clean-up before a co-worker of mine leaves. It's stressful and tiring.

--slackv

Dead chicken in the road....

2006-03-27T12:26:00.000-05:00

Dead chicken in the road....

At least that's the way our webservers have been feeling lately. The joker.com DNS servers have been going through a DDOS attack and so have been very difficult to get to, and since they host our DNS it subsequently makes our DNS servers very hard to get too as well. Just another fun day in the life of a system administrator. It made the front page of Slashdot over the weekend too.

Because of this I've been working with my server setups to get my dns's setup in multiple locations. It's been an interesting process b/c one of my hosts is a gentoo linux box and the other one is a CentOS box. Of course, CentOS is getting slashdot'ed because of another article on the City of Tuttle, OK and one of their IT Managers showing just how much he does NOT know about computers. It's just sad.

So I'm working fixing DNS servers and working with a slightly weird IMAP/Squirrelmail problem (Just how many messages are in my inbox??) It's fun to work on these things, but they can be a pain.

I would much rather spend my time playing WoW, but they've been having server problems all week(year?) I've been having serious lag issues for the past few days. It's the first time I've actually been on in a few weeks. I think I'm cycling up on my I-just-want-to-sit-and-home-and-play-WoW-in-my-skivvies phase that I go through occasionally. I like those weekends, I'll sit at home and play for hours on end, working with people online to acheive quests and making friends that way. It turns out I'm a "good" player, since I actually try to work towards the team goals and don't try to ninja items. I think I like the qoal/reward scheme. Easily visible goals and immediate rewards (and intermediate rewards) suck me into the game, I crave positive feedback :-). I also like that you can solo easily too. I'm only partially interested in being in groups to do stuff. I enjoy meeting people and working on the quests with them but it's not my primary interest in any game. I know the D&D online is completely group based, the same thing with Guild Wars, but if I can't go it alone, then I'm not really interested. I like exploring in WoW. Climbing virtual mountains just for the view, exploring the coast to find a shipwreck (which happened last night) or running from an Elite that just happened to be wandering through the woods. Note to Everyone: In the Silver Pine Forest watchout for the "Son of Arugal" He kills everything below level 27 like he is crushing ants. Do yourself a favor and just run.

In other news, spent time going to church and cleaning Pooks' house and not cleaning my own house. It's time to take the trash out and clean the cat litter. Sigh, not as exciting as mountain climbing or running from the Son of Arugal. I've gotta finish getting my teeth taken care of, I spent a lot of time just resting on Saturday b/c they hurt. Two root canals and surgically removing my wisdom teeth just are not high on my list of things I really like, but seriously need to do.

On the way into work this morning there was a dead rooster beside the road. He didn't make it to the other side. Of course, what is a rooster doing in the middle of Jacksonville anyway?

--slackv

What have we been fighting for all this time... a Prayer Request.

2006-03-20T21:32:00.000-05:00

Keep Abdul Rahman in your prayers. He is a 41 year old Afghani man who was arrested for being Christian.

Here's a link to the orginal BBC article

The penalty for not recanting and becoming islamic again is death under the Shar'ri law of Afghanistan. The trial judge is quoted as saying, "We will invite him again because the religion of Islam is one of tolerance. We will ask him if he has changed his mind. If so we will forgive him." It doesn't sound very tolerant based on the very fact he was arrested for Worshiping the True God in the first place.

It's strange but I recognize the cross printing on the cover of the Bible he was carrying. It's from the Living Bible. A bible translation that uses simple language to convey the message. I don't know if that is really a Living Bible translation, but I am sure Mr. Rahman feels alone and abused. Please lift him up in your prayers and that's God's will be done in all things.

--slackv

Ouch

2006-03-20T09:24:00.000-05:00

Well damn. I missed church again this week. It's ok though b/c I'm pretty sure that I was doing some kind of christian duty. I helped my girl friend clean up her yard to sell her house. We started around 9:30am and finished sometime after dark. I'm sunburned and sore and tired. She had some holly bushes that had been cut down, but the stumps were still in the ground. After trying to dig them up somewhat I said screw it let's pull 'em out. After a while that's what we did. Shanks came over and was helping. We attached a rope to the bumper of his truck and pulled the stumps out of the ground. It was cool and only took like 2 minutes a stump compared to the thirty minutes a stump it was taking trying to dig them out.

After a long time of planting and raking and moving flagstones around we wer done. We had pizza at Pooks' parents house and her dad laughed at my using tape to fix my glasses. I was dead tired but drove home safely and had to do laundry. Ugh.

Two cool things, I saw "Howl's Moving Castle" on Saturday. It's a great story about a young girl that gets turned into an old woman. She then gets into the Wizard Howl's Castle, which walks around on legs driven by the fire demon Calcifer. It is a very good movie with a story that rolls along very well. I've noticed that some Miyazaki films (Miyazaki is the director) tend to slow down in the middle, but this one maintained it's pace very well. I highly recommend it as a good family film.

The other cool toy I got this weekend was a Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. It is a very cool hand held computer that uses either an 802.11b wireless connection or a bluetooth connection through a cell phone to connect to the internet. So I was surfing the web a nd listening to internet radio and updating newsfeeds while laying down on my couch. It was very cool. It comes with a little sketch pad and text editor. It runs linux as it's back end, so I've gotten an xterm for it. Next I want to get ssh for it so I can do maintanence on my servers from whereever I get a connection. It is a very cool device and something I've been wanting for a while. When we sent to lunch on sunday we hit Bono's BBQ and it turns out that it was a wireless hotspot so I got to show off the websurfing capabilities of it over lunch. Of course, the CatCam shows up just fine.

Weird Dream & the CatCam...

2006-03-16T07:22:00.000-05:00

The CatCam is a success. Well successful is that it takes pictures of my cats. I pointed it out towards the hallway though so I get better pictures, and of course put a bowl of food close by the attract passing kitties. It's been a fun project to get working and setup. It was kinda my way to get back into working on my home comupters and to get back into enjoying them. Lol, webcams are a gateway computing device... :-)

Last night getting home I began work fixing some of my other sites & somethings for dad too. The dreamlibrary.org site is back up. (Please go a type in some dreams people!) Luckily enough though I had one last night (which has been entered there in full detail) about a woman I met in a bookstore. We were going to hook up but she said she didn't believe in God like I did so we agreed on our difference and just settled for friends (I might have invited her out for coffeee too, but it's fuzzy). I say it was weird b/c I've never seen that woman before and so I wonder if she represents someone/something in life. Either a precursor or a warning of something. I've had dreams before and then been in those places later in life and seen the same events, so I wonder if it's something to come or just a random dream.

Well off to work I go...

The CatCam....

2006-03-14T23:54:00.000-05:00

With Pooks moving out of her house I have agreed to watch her cats for her. They are now all at least getting used to being in the same room together with much less hissing. Pooks' daughter has also been missing her kitties. Seeing that they wanted to check on their kitties and me wanting to get a new toy, I've setup a webcam (under linux) that puts the images on my webserver.

The Cat Cam...

I've got a super long USB extension cable on the way and then I'll put the camera in the hallway. That should be a little more exciting in terms of activity.

I had a really difficult time getting the web cam setup under linux. I started with a dirt cheap one I got online and it turned out to not be a well supported chipset, but during my trying to figure that one out I found out that my PS2 EyeToy (best PS2 Accessory Ever!) was a mostly supported webcam under linux. After recompiling some kernel drivers I got it working and it's running like a champ now.

That's pretty much how I spent my evening tonight.

Back from a short break....

2006-03-12T10:58:00.000-05:00

It's been a long while since the last post. I've helped Pooks move with the great assistance of Shanks. We moved everything into the garage while the rest of the house is getting redone. It was a lot of work, we were all dead tired by the time it was over. Other than that, work has been exciting they're moving me into the GIS programming area and that's going OK so far. Translating CSH into perl sucks and then some of the commands were wrong so it made it difficult to get the programs working right and it all involved about 50 commits to CVS to get everything working right.

I'm behind on a bunch of my personal computer projects too. I come home and don't feel much like "working" on my computers/websites b/c I just want to veg out. So I'll watch tv or play video games to relax. That said I do want to get the dream site up again I've been having some doozies lately.

I went to the dentist the other day. The Dental assistant got all freaked out, "I can't beleive you're not in pain all the time!" Anyway I go back again this week. Once I get my scanner back into my computer room I'll hook it up and scan in my x-rays so everyone can see them. :-D That'll be very cool. Makes me wish I had an x-ray of my head. I'd use that as my blog photo, how cool would that be.

--slackv

Marvelous Things...

2006-03-02T13:44:00.000-05:00

a song by Eisley an emo-ish girl group that I listen to occasionally. Just a thought that kinda struck me, I was thinking about the IT hiring process and how it seems that at my workplace at least, they seem to have a hard time finding really good people. People who know what they are doing and don't have emotional problems... having been in the hiring process before though it can be difficult though.

I'm moving into a new area of my job doing GIS (geographic information systems, essentially mapping & cartography) programming. They have a real need for someone with a scientific background to work on some of the problems they are running into. I'm looking forward to the new challenges I'm gonna be facing with it. I also may get to move to a cubical that looks out over the river! W00T!

More WoW, of course, I really enjoy it. Probably b/c it has an easy to use interface and low & acheivable goals. Kill 5 wolves and 8 bears, then 9 orcs, then 18 gnolls, then 60 trolls... ok I made the last one up but it seems to progress that way. I always seem to run out of money though, I keep my professions up about as much as my actual class skills so that's one reason for it.

I'm gonna get some new cats tonight, Pooks is in the middle of house cleaning and selling and so she's gotta store them someplace else, someplace like my house. So I'm in for a couple of weeks of hissing & spitting... maybe longer though some cats just never seem to get along.

I'm thinking of getting a webcam for my linux box. It's getting close to spring time and I want something to watch the pool for me. :-) I'll let everyone know when I've got the link up.

Not much to say today....

2006-02-26T10:02:00.000-05:00

Just a note to make sure everyone knows I'm still alive.

I'm on a new wow server, actually three, the past few times I've tried to connect the previous server's been full so I just start up a character on the new one. I'm trying to do PvP servers (Player vs. Player for those who don't know what PvP is) I also got invited to a guild which was pretty cool. I'm also happy that this newest server is on the east coast so it's time matches my time.

I missed church this morning. Mainly just by dawdling and screwing around. I feel torn b/c I want too but at the same time I don't feel like it. I don't know how to reconcile it.

I spent time doing spring cleaning yesterday, took out bags of trash and boxes and watered plants and just cleaned in general. I think I"m gonna give shawn a bunch of my old computer stuff if he wants it. It's nothing I really want or can really work with either. I know he's in touch to get it all in the right places where it may be needed.

Long weekend and Server Problems

2006-02-21T10:08:00.000-05:00

Spent most of the weekend fighting off a cold and trying to rest. I saw Pooks' daughters guard group do a performance and it was really good. I got a chance to go see Take 5 play at Cheers in OP. I even got to dance a little. It was fun. After a short time there, it was time to go home. I played a lot of WoW this weekend, mainly late at night when I was not cleaning or talking with atlantic.net trying to get my server up.

I spent some time via email with them. I'm getting ext3 errors when ever it tries to do stuff with places in the /usr directory... things like scp which means that updates to it are broken for now. It just plain sucks. Dad can't update his blog until it's fixed and now I can't ssh in anymore. It's frustrating.

I've got a guy from Spain looking at my KJV translation project and givignme some suggestions on it. I can't work on that either until the server is fixed up. I haven't had a chance to touch the SuSE boxes either, but those are going to need some dedicated time put into them.

--slackv

Happy Late Valentines Day...

2006-02-15T22:26:00.000-05:00

I'm sure Saint Valentine was pretty cool. I hear he was executed for not worshipping a Roman Emporer, I could be mistaken though :-). Pooks and I had dinner and her house and relaxed in front of the tv with her daughter. We had a really good evening cooking steaks on the grill and looking at old pictures. She got me a really awesome coffee and the Broadway version of the Godspell songs on CD. I'm really excited about that & pleased. She is getting something nice from me too, but keep checking her blog, I'm sure she'll mention it when it gets here :-).

I've been working steadily at work stuff and with my new sun box. It's been a lot of fun to play with and try to get things working on it. I think I need to take a slightly different tack with it though... I'll write more about that on the technical side over on my slashdot journal.

On the work front Pat and I have been told we need to be at work by 8:45am for a 9am meeting, but not many other people know about the meeting, so we're not sure why we're supposed to be there. We're both wondering, but not quite worried about it.

I'm way behind on my projects list, but I'm not worring about it tonight. I read some, watched "Lost" and did some laundry. Now I'm going play some games, look for Fiendhammer on Skywall... or White Kitten in Guild Wars or Reallya Girl in D&Donline (LOL I'm waiting to get hit on so I can accuse someone of offending my delicate sensabilities) HHAHAHAHA

One day

2006-02-13T12:25:00.000-05:00

One day I'll learn to post regularly and everything.

Basic recap of the past few days, Pooks and I have been talking relationship stuff pretty seriously, just clarifing things for each other, Party at Jenn's on Saturday, great fun with the family, Eve gave me a Monty Python Cow-tapult. We had a great time and I ate way too much. I got to spend some time playing Guild Wars. I had fun grinding through the story with ppl.

I had to turn on hte heat for the first time last night. It was good to not have cold toes.

I'm job hunting again. I think it's time to move on.

I haven't been able to really touch my sun box recently. It kinda sucks but hopefully between loads of laundry I'll be able to get to it tonight. I've been reading like a mad-man recently too. I just started the Dragonlance Chronicles again. I last read them when I was in highschool. It's good mind candy. $2.50 apiece at a used book store. Pooks and I had a good time wandering around there on Saturday afternoon. We have a long term idea of opening our own. Don't know if we'll ever be able to do it, but it's a very fun idea.

Back home & mostly rested up...

2006-02-07T22:37:00.000-05:00

I thought it was going to be a lot of work, but I'd be able to work easily through the crowds for the homeless Super Bowl Party... over 200 people later, and me being put in charge of the snack area and standing for over 8 hours later, it was a HEll of a Lot of Work! But Totally worth it!

This is the sixth year First United Methodist in Gainesville has been feeding and throwing a Super Bowl Party for the homeless. I thought we did OK last year with around 100 people showing up. This year the last official count I heard was 185, there were still more people coming in as I was leaving. It was intense. Because I had worked the snack area every time before now, I got volunteered to run it with the youth.... OK, but I haven't seen any of the youth for about two years and only three the I really knew were there, the other 15 didn't know me at all. We bonded by doing the wave. Before we opened we did a wave down the snack line with them in their serving places and me running in front of the tables banging two spoons together and shouting WAAAAAVEEEEE!!! Becky laughed her head off and and someone mentioned that it was good I didn't have much dignity... :-)

I can't accurrately describe what it was like feeding 200 people. I have done it before in the hot grimy Circle of Love Soup Kitchen in the heart of Springfield Jacksonville. The people were down trodden and despairing and hated being there and took it out in their attitude and actions on those trying to serve them. This was similar, but there was a hope and an excitement that wasn't there in Springfield. Randy the head of the event said it best when he said that the party 'normalizes' them. It helps them feel like they were less outside of society looking in, but part of the extravaganza that is the super bowl. Everyone cheered at the touch downs, fumbles and plays. The FedEx commercial got the biggest laugh. I was surprised by one of the college volunteers asking what we did about the people that were so drunk they could barely stand. He wanted to know how we could help them... I didn't know how to respond b/c It hadn't occured to me that there was an extra mile we could go... I think that just the one mile we did travel was enough for me (I'm not all That compassionate).

Although I think I see that each of us sees an extra mile where we can go. I've always gotten along well with kids (It's mainly so that I can act my age (32 going on 15) around them) I saw two women with toddlers carrying or pushing strollers through the crowds... It was weird, I've never seen them come in with children so young. There was one young man (maybe 13 or so) who came back to the snack table about six times. He was overwieght, but I could tell he was getting food for his mom too. That was weird b/c I wanted to try to help him out but I had no idea how too. I could tell that at the beginning he was scared, but he got more into things as the evening went on.

I got asked a question, If a fight breaks out what do we do? It was one of the college age youth volunteers. He said I got guns I can break it up. I told him no, your first priority is to protect the youth. I think guys key in on that kind of thing, being the hero and protector of the innocent. For a crappy version look to "Catcher in the Rye". Men like to be heros, I told him the scary part of being on the other side of the table is that there are very likely people with HIV and AIDS in the crowd and if a fight breaks out we have to protect the youth and ourselves.

Oh, we served popcorn, oranges, chex-mix, cheese poofs, pretzels, veggies, chicken nuggets w/ bbq sauce or ranch, chili, nachos & nacho cheese, salsa, and hot peppers... that was the appetizer selection and everyone went away well fed.

The Gainesville Sun ran an article about it in Monday's paper too.

--Donald

Quilt and Dog in my lap...

2006-02-05T08:41:00.000-05:00

I'm sitting on a couch in G'ville with a quilt and dog in my lap. The dog's alseep and I'm up about to get ready for church. I came down to G'ville to help feed the homeless for the superbowl. We project the game up on the wall and give everyone a chance to see it. It's a good thing. This year, I'm more low key about it, just going and serving and not doing all the normal highly involved stuff I do. Which is ok, there are ppl who do that stuff anyway. I'm looking forward to it, even though I know it's a pain to pull off.

I have been staying with some friends down here and just relaxing with them. We had a really lazy saturday, just reading and watching tv and talking. I got the updates on all that has been going on. Some good, some bad, just like most ppl's lives. I'm kinda here in stealth mode too, I really didn't let ppl know I was coming down this weekend. I am enjoying the feeling of getting away for a little bit. It has felt good to relax a little.

IN others news, ebay can be like crack. Just gotta bid a little higher and I'll win my rusty nail. You can keep bidding until you're both the winner and loser. So I'm off it, but I still have to wait for my last few bids to finish up.

I haven't had time to play guild wars in a long time :-( too much other stuff going on. The same for the Movies game. That kinda sucks too.

I did get some RAM for my new sunblade system. I hope to get linux on it soon, I hate that I haven't been able to really touch it this week. I feel like I have a lot of catching up to do on my "fun" stuff. I have gotten someone who wants me to make an announcement list for the KJV Bible translation I've been doing, which is a good idea. And he gave me another good idea about reformating the lines so that they are more easily readable by other computer programs.

Well I'm off to shower and shave and get presentable for church. I'll be back on Monday hopefulle, Monday morning I'm driving back from Gainesville and straight into work. I'm not really looking forward to that.

Oy! Sorry for the long wait between writings

2006-01-28T08:39:00.000-05:00

I feel like I've been out of touch recently, just a little off of my center in terms of my personality. It feels like there hasn't been enough time to do some of the things I've needed to do recently.

I did get my sun blade 100 in from ebay and also my two hard drive caddies! I am very excited about them. The sun blade came without RAM, but that's OK I thought I have tons of PC133 RAM lying around, I know some of mine will work with it. I've also got Solaris express and Gentoo linux ready to go, so I was ready the night it got here. I told Pooks I wasn't coming over, my new GF I mean hardware was here. Long story short, while my RAM is PC133, it's not ECC PC133 darn my cheap RAM! So back to ebay I went and have ordered some.

My actual goal with it is to get linux on it and possibly try to get OpenSuse ported to it. We'll see though.

I got an email from one of my old best friends from G'ville this week. I gave him the four paragraph update of the past year of life, that was kinda interesting, being in a funk made it... not hard, but hard to be positive about things.

I posted a new dream over on the dream library It is set in Narnia, but not really. Iknow that the real Narnia would be much better than that.

--slackv

I found my thrill.... on ebay hill....

2006-01-23T05:44:00.000-05:00

It's been an ebay weekend. I'm getting a Sun Blade 100 workstation and a removable hard drive caddy. I've got bids in on another hard drive caddy and a 5-bay IDE hard drive cage for ATA drives. Once I combine that with a 3ware 7500 series RAID controlled I'll be in business!! W00t! I'm sticking with ATA b/c I already have a few of the same size drives to use with it. So I've been having fun spending money on ebay.

I spent most of the weekend hanging out with Pooks, she's working on a free-lance project and so she did that and I alternated between fixing stuff up around the house, working on my computers, and reading "King Solomon's Mines" by H. Rider Haggard. If you can read any book get this one. It's considered a great adventure story by almost everyone. Follow up with "Allan Quartermain" and then "She". Although "She" is considered the best of them all. What ever you do though, DO NOT SEE THE MOVIE! The movie is a big stinking pile of crap that has almost nothing to do with the book. It sucks in a bad way. While the character is close in the movie "League of Extrodinary Gentlemen", that movie wasn't the best I've seen either.

Anyway, we had a good weekend and enjoyed spending time together. I had to work on Saturday some and met Idzeeboo there. Having to make up work kinda sucks but is often the only time I can get things done with so many interruptions during the week.

Ice Cold Milk...

2006-01-16T23:04:00.000-05:00

I never really took this litterally until tonight. My fridge is set to low and so my milk has chunks of ice in it. It still goes well with my celebratory bowl of cereal.

It's been a good day all around and quite a week to go with it. I've spent time working with the RRD trying to get accurate network traffic counts from a solaris box. It's been interesting to say the least. That was Saturday, I stayed up late that night playing Guild Wars. I skipped church Sunday and Pooks came over, we napped and cleaned and re-arranged the living room. It was a lot of fun and we enjoyed spending time together.

Monday(today) I went over to Mom & Dad's and Dad and I spent a lot of time working on various computer things. It was a lot of fun b/c I actually got to put my computer knowledge to good use. Not that what I do now isn't useful, I just prefer knowing that I'm helping people in a more direct manner. I got Dad a present too. A Dupont Explosives estate pipe. It was apparently an advertising thing for Dupont Explosives (at the time). We had a good time wroking on everything. I got Dad setup with a photo gallery too.

When I got home I had a great surprise waiting for me. My new Dell 2001FP was waiting for my by the door. So now I have a 20" LCD monitor hooked up to my linux boxes. It's very nice and I'm typing this now on my KDE Desktop with Firefox open. It makes me very happy! :-)

In my own computer work, I've taken my primes machine and turned it into a media center in my living room. So I've gotta get it up again, I need new hardware to use my other box is just dying (I think part of the Northbridge is broken, various built-in things on the motherboard have died), luckily I can still use the PC itself. newegg.com is my usual shopping destination. I've gotta get back to work on the KJV translation. My Dream Library site is up, but not getting much traffic.

I've also got a script to re-organize the mirrors for yum updates. I got sick of my Fedora Core updates coming down from non-US sources (yum takes the list and randomizes it internally before trying to get files). I've got two schemes to get the files, one good, one bad but better ;-)

On a final note, I've applied for a job with Google. I'm sure I can do what the job listing was for, I have performed many of those same duties in the past. I'm worried about even getting an interview for the job. I'm worried about moving to Atlanta, although I always wanted to live there and I wouldn't really mind it at all. I know that my customer service skills would probably be more than adequate for what they want. We'll see, I am sure they get thousands of applicants for any job opening they have.

SSSSHHHHHH...........

2006-01-10T09:17:00.000-05:00

Don't tell anyone, but driving into work this morning I realized I was listening and singing along to Celine Dione. Scary...

Weekend with the Kids...

2006-01-08T12:45:00.000-05:00

Pooks and I watched the kids of some friends of ours. It was fun but tiring. The computer room still isn't completely finished. I've got the computers up again though. It looks nice except I need to move some stuff around to make room for the giant bean-bag chair. I haven't really been able to get anything done though which kinda sucks. I've been planning to head down to G'ville next weekend, but that kinda depends on money and what not.

I'm thinking of trying to use the movies software to do news reports. I've just gotta get some time sit down and do it. It should be fun. I am adding more stuff to my amazon.com wishlist while I'm stuck at work today. I am having to make up so time so I'm here. I usually don't mind working weekends b/c I can get more done, but today I just don't feel like working very hard.

Old Friends and re-arranging things

2006-01-08T12:44:00.000-05:00

Old Friends and re-arranging things

I got a chance to talk with Becky and Brooke last night online. We
chatted about different stuff. I'm gonna head down to G'ville in a
couple of weeks to see Becky and some old friends of mine too. I'm
looking forward to it and hope to get a chance to visit some. It was
somewhat weird talking with them b/c it had been awhile since I had
talked with either of them. I guess old feelings are resurfacing and
working themselves out. Feels strange.

While I was talking with them I began to rearrange my computer room.
I have wanted too for a while now and I'm not really going to have any
time this weekend so I'm trying to do it last night and tonight. I've
gotten the computers moved but all the networking is still down. I
will be sticking two monitors on my desktop, one for my linux machines
and one for my windows box. I hope that will help me be a little more

It's been a long weekend

2006-01-03T01:47:00.000-05:00

I think Pooks & I tried to do too much this weekend. She had freelance work to do I just had my usual stuff. I got almost none of the things I wanted to do done. All the things I did instead were fun though.

I registered another domain. I went to a family party. Pooks and I sat on her parents back porch and looked out over the river watching the waves go by and talking about our deep worries and feelings. I did some job hunting. I also tried to do a lot of life planning too. Since it's the new year it's time to make a lot of these kinds of plans, not resolutions, but goals of where I would like to be at this time next year.

We bought a late Christmas present too. I hope Pooks wraps it. I'm playing catch up on some bills in the post-Christmas season.

I've got a firewall project I'm working on (a different one than the last one). I'll post more details on it later though.

Blogging in the new year...

2006-01-01T00:36:00.000-05:00

It's a new year and I got two phone calls to celebrate it, My older sister called to wish me well and an old young friend from G'ville called to wish me well too. That was very cool and unexpected. I brought in the new year by taking food over to J&P's and hanging out in the hot tub and relaxing. I've spent a long day helping Pooks clean up around the house. I took her home around 10:30 and then I went home. I was kinda "up" and not wanting to sleep so I grabbed a cigar and a Bible ("The Message" translation) and I read my Bible & smoked a Diamond Crown into the new year. It was fun to watch the little kids come out at midnight with their parents and everyone and their brother was lighting off fireworks. It was very very cool.

Python just came up to keep me company while I writ this.

Tonight while we hung out, we talked about things we wanted to do over the next year. Hopes, dreams desires, life changes. I have been thinking more about going back to school and that's one of my goals for this year, but I'm also thinking about applying for another job. While the two things aren't mutualy exclusive, starting a new job would really hinder going back to school again. I am thinking of something in IS or IT. Mainly just getting a Masters Degree. I'll let the girls tell you about their things in their blogs. Well I'm off to bed now, the cats are getting ancy and I'm pretty tired.

--slackv

Is it time to go Home yet?

2005-12-26T15:44:00.000-05:00

Wow, it's been a seriously busy Christmas holiday. My family and Pooks' family and getting gifts and worring about family problems and trying to make plans and worrying about budgets and money and trying to survive the holiday's. Just a little bit of post-Christmas let-down. Just a feeling of slight depression that it's all over, I'm back home again, and life goes on. I suppose all normal life feels a bit-down trodden after the heady joys of Christmas. I took an extra day off of work b/c even though today was a holiday, I wanted more. More relaxation, more feeling less-tired, more feeling like I was Home. I suppose that last one is the hardest to come by.

When I worked with the youth at my old church, some Sunday's I was the first one there. It felt weird to be hanging out waiting for the rest of the group to get there. I always wondered if there was something missing from my life that was in theirs that made them late. Some wonderful something that made them want to stay where they were and enjoy, something that me missing out on it, gave me time to be where I needed to be. It's a weird feeling. Maybe it's family or a full house, or maybe they were just losers that needed a watch. :-)

A lot of presents this year, some will require some "filtering". Top two are a set of silicon bake-ware from Pooks and the FLCL DVD from Patti. The bakeware is flexible which is very cool for cakes and things. I have wanted a set for a while but kept delaying it b/c it wasn't something I needed. So Pooks got it for me just b/c I was excitedly showing it to her in the store. I had no idea that she'd gotten it for me. The DVD is actually a boot-leg of a three DVD set, but since it's complete I am not worried about it at all! I just finished watching it (and working on laundry) and it was just as awesome as when I first saw it. I guess it's a coming of age story like only the japanese would think of (Space Pirates, Older Women, Arson, Robots and cats).

Well I'm gonna charge up my ipod and go for a walk soon. Later...

--slackv

Christmas shopping....

2005-12-20T05:16:00.000-05:00

I spent aroudn $160 today and only $20 was for a Christmas gift. Some how I don't think things are working out like they should. :-) Oh well, this afternoon my target is Circuit City and the tech-paradise it is. I've got my shopping list and am ready to go!!!

Pooks is having family issues. Gah, the ones that suck too.

I haven't made any movies recently, haven't had much time to though either. I've still got a couple of ideas I need to put into motion. I think I know now why writers read so much, and why producers watch other ppl's movies, you "see" other ideas and see new possibilities not thought of before. So I have seen some things I'd like to try and work with and have had some ideas... I just need to get them down and start working on them. :-)

Rainy Day of Shopping

2005-12-18T00:48:00.000-05:00

It's the Saturday before Christmas weekend and I went out around 11am. It has been raining semi-hard all morning long. Traffic is backed up everywhere and I pass two major accidents (turned over truck on San Jose Blvd) on the way to Big Lots. I like to buy cables there b/c I can get then really cheap and sometimes they'll have anime in the cheap DVD bin. Today I just picked up power strips and a copy of the game "Serious Sam". "Serious Sam" has the shark gun. Pull the trigger and a shark pops out of the ground to eat ppl. How cool is that? :-D

On another note I've realized I've been looking to the past a little too much lately. Ok maybe for a while now, So I'm looking forward to the things that may come, making goals and and plans for what I want to do and where I want to be. Stuff like that. I'll post some more about it later, but I'm just working on that basics now.

Christmas can be expensive and I'm trying to make sure I don't over extend myself. I do enjoy spending money like a mad-man though.

the long awaited Narnia post... :-)

2005-12-13T07:39:00.000-05:00

I took a little bit before posting this b/c I wanted to see what other ppl thought about the movie. It's just one of my things, helps me clarify some of my thinking.

The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe is an awesome film. I would recommend this movie to anyone. It is a story by C.S. Lewis about four children who go through a wardrobe (a big freestanding closet) and end up in the magical land of Narnia. In Narnia, the White Witch has encased the land in 100 years of winter. Always winter and never Christmas. If you've read the books, you know that plot, and I won't give too much away for those who haven't. It does follow the book very well, much better than any of the Harry Potter ones too. Of course C.S.Lewis says a lot in 200 pages, while JKR takes 900 pages. I'm happy to read a book that is fun too read with out killing a weekend doing it. :-)

Anyway back to the movie, The effects were superb. The centaurs looked 'right'. Noble, feirce, bad-ass. Weta Digital, the guys that did the effects for the Lord of the Rings, did the make-up and effects in Narnia as well. So the battle sequence was very well done, I was impressed b/c the Narnians actually fought like they knew what they were doing. Hmmm... It's a good idea to let the enemy charge in and then have griphons drop rocks on their heads. Even with two huge army's attacking each other, they kept it "family friendly" by having almost no blood or gore. I think that was mainly to keep the PG rating. I would have like to see it a bit more bloody, but that's just me (and maybe some zombies too.) :-)

On the White Witch's side of things, the orcs and goblins and hobgoblins and minotaurs are all creepy in just the right ways. They didn't look fake and they moved howled and screamed in the ways that would frighten children. I read a couple of reviews that included the comments of kids who'd seen the movie and the general consensous was that they were scared and delighted with the creatures. The White Witch kinda stole the show in a way. She was scary without being physically ugly, she was coniving without being sleezy, she oozed a loathing for almost everything, I have never seen a character played so well. Most Hollywood villians have something comical about them, as if the writers/directors couldn't accept the malevolance of a really evil person. She wasn't like that, she was icey cold covering a burning hatred for all things living. She also fought like she meant it. In all the fight scenes she definately looked like she was trying to kill the other person, not just dancing through the steps of the fight.

Aslan as her oposite didn't need the same acting. I did find out they did full mapping of movements to the entire body of the lion. So when Aslan talked, roared or ran everything moved in the right ways. It is very hard to compare the two characters because the motivations are so different, Aslan acting out of love for the people and land of Narnia, the witch acting out of malice. So in his part Aslan (voiced by Liam Neison, (Star Wars Ep 1 Jedi-master woot woot)) was the support and hope of the Narnians, and it came through well. The things he did always turned out for the best even when the why's behind things happening weren't obvious to the characters. I think one thing that was in the books that didn't come through in the movies was the sense of continment and peace that the characters felt when they were with Aslan. Maybe it's just to easy to see the witch's side of things (might makes right) sometimes... although Aslan does bite her face off. :-D

I was a little worried about the movie would murder the story of TLTWaTW. I've seen Disney kill some good stories put out some real garbage. Here though, they didn't. It's hard to miss the message that Aslan died for what Edmund did and that the sacrfice was so important it was ingrained in the heart of the Narnian world. It only takes a little religous education (called miserable for most modern children in several reviews I've read) to see the symbolism of Aslan as Christ dying for the sins of the world. I read in several reviews to where some reviewers' parents didn't want them reading the Narnia books because of the religous allegory, luckily most of them had read the books anyway. I think the movie did a great job of translating the book, message and all, to the big screen. In it's opening weekend it brought in $67 million dollars.

Disney is already in the works for "Prince Caspian" the next book in the series. Disney learned how to do guerilla marketing from "The Passion of the Christ", and so gave out free early showings to pastors to get them pulling in church members. Locally, my church rented a theatre to present the movie to the congregation for only $5 a seat, a deal since most movies are around $9 now. They did it the day before the movie opened to everyone. Many other churches did the same thing, Disney was happy b/c it brought people back to the movie theatre that don't usually go at all. (Seeing a lot of the crap that's out there usually, I can't blame them.)

I recommend the movie to anyone. The message is there, but it doesn't beat you over the head. It is a great adventure story, the boys will love the action & fighting and the girls will love the girly stuff. It is literature in a way that Harry Potter never can be. Anyone who has read the books will enjoy it, as well as those who haven't read them.

--slackv

No News Day....

2005-12-09T07:51:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was just a normal day. I finished a big project at work. I went to Jenn & Pat's for dinner, we hung out and talked & Jennifer fell asleep sitting up. I went home, watched a couple of movies other ppl had made like I did, and went to bed after trying to call Pooks a little after 10pm. I slept.

No New Movies today... :-(

2005-12-08T10:06:00.000-05:00

I had to spend my evening yesterday at work and also just cleaning. I got out late after working on a big project that I'm trying to finish. Then I got home (had to stop by the store too) and cleaned. It turns out spend three days working on movies doesn't make for a clean house. I did spend a little time just learning how to do some things and practicing. Hopefully my films will just get better.

Pooks and I are going to see "The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe" this weekend with her parents. I am really looking forward to it. Reading Roger Eberts review of it makes me look forward to it even more.

Another movie up...

2005-12-07T11:41:00.000-05:00

Hi All, I've got another movie up on on my movie page. It's just a short music-video thing of a guy escaping a burning building. I actually like it better in terms of look than my last feature. :-) It's called "Journey to the Flipside", no real reason, it's just a generic title. I still haven't gotten costuming down yet, but I now can do car effects too. I like that feature. I am working on just playing with the sets now. I've got a couple of short movie ideas, but nothing super long yet.

I took Pooks out to dinner last night. We'd had a long talk night before last and it was really upsetting to her. So We talked yesterday and smoothed things out. One of our strong points is that we're good communicators.

AM had to go into the hospital today so I'm keeping her & Idzeeboo in my prayers. Another co-worker of mine is in the hospital too.

I've gotta go home and clean tonight, three days of movies makes for a dirty apartment. Also, LOST comes on tonight. If you haven't been watching it you're missing out. It's very good. It's a TV show on ABC about the survivors of a plane crash on an isolated island. Although, things take a turn for the worse when weird things start happening to the survivors. It's already into season two so to catch up get the DVD box set of season one. hmmm.... I should add that to my amazon wish list for Christmas...

Not Quite an Epic yet....

2005-12-06T02:23:00.000-05:00

I did a little spoof movie to show Pooks the software and how it worked and I laughed myself silly with what I came up with. Pooks just thinks I'm crazy...

Red Aliens Among Us2. Notice my bad lighting, stock audio, and interesting costuming. The subtitles are all mine. :-D

I'll keep a movies page up as I make some more interesting ones. http://www.rdex.net/movies/.

In the Movies last night...

2005-12-05T07:25:00.000-05:00

A long but good weekend. I'm failing in my goal to keep my blogs upto date at least once every two days. Oh well, Look over on Dad's blog about the new computer I gave him. I'm gonna cut & paste the technical details over to my slashdot journal. Also spent a lot of time running around in OP. Had lunch with Pooks' sister. Ate way too much on Saturday. It's all kinda running together. I was in work Sunday morning. Sucked, I missed church too :-(

Got a new game yesterday that is pretty cool. It's called "The Movies" In it you are the owner of a movie studio trying to get blockbusters out. You place buildings in your studio lot and assign actors to act, script writers to write, janitors and builders to clean & build sets, scientists to find new movie tech, directors and movie crew to do filming. You first have the script writers make a script in one of five genre's, action, horror, sci-fi, romance and comedy. Once the script is done you assign actors to the parts (where parts is a loose term, explination in a sec) and then assign a director and begin shooting. Once the movie is in production you can do pretty much anything with it in a basic or freeform editor. Changing shots, adding extras, changing what happens, adding your own background music, adding your own voices for dialog. I found out about this game on slashdot and saw it in Target on Sunday and decided to get it.

I don't think ppl really want to talk about it, but will these virtual actors come to replace real ones. Essentailly I am making a movie, with about 50 different possible sets, about 400 different costumes, and 200 different actions. I can easily see some expansions for more sets and costumes coming out in the future. The movies you make in the game can be saved to be played by other ppl on other computers, so even a short film can be made & distributed with ease.

I hope to make a real one soon, just coming up with the idea is kinda hard actually. I want the idea to fit within the constraints of the program to give it the best delivery. Also in this case making it fit with in the sets in difficult too. Anyway you should see a major motion picture from me soon. :-)

Ouch & living room snow....

2005-12-02T23:40:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I noticed a slight pain on the left side of my chest.

Today It hurt like crap.

Talking with Jennifer, and she said it's most likely a pulled chest muscle. Turns out over-extending myself to pick up a heavy Christmas tree is a bad thing. My first casualty of the season. :-) It hurts to breath deep, so I am feel like I am constantly out of breath. ugh.

Work's been more stressfull the past few days with some things happening and also my co-worker Pat is out.

I've gotten in a bunch of my stuff from ebay. One thing I ordered, a scsi-enclosure, I purchased "as-is", meaning I was getting an enclosure of some kind. So I got it, pulled it out of the box, and yes it was a scsi enclosure with a "Property of General Motors" sticker on the side and a data tape in the tape drive that was still attached. Unfortunately the tape is broken... I wanted to see what was on it. I'm going to use the enclosure to get the old mac's that Pooks gave me working. Although it looks like I definately need an ADB keyboard and mouse though.

I've gotten some other stuff too for Dad. I'll give him a call about it tomorrow.

With all these boxes that have come in the cats are having a grand time playing in the boxes and with spilt packing peanuts. So the floor is starting to look like Christmas, but I still need a tree. :-)

Still alive....

2005-11-29T07:05:00.000-05:00

Sorry I haven't posted in a while, I've just been really busy. We're ramping up a new internet presence at work and I'm getting to setup the internals of some of the proxying pieces, throw in a holiday and you've got the makings of fun!

Anyway, Thanksgiving was good I spent time on Thursday with Pooks and had dinner with her family. I got together with mine at other times throughout the weekend. It was fun.

I found out that my video card in my windows pc was over heating and causing the PC to freeze. It was caused by a huge clump of cat hair blocking the air intake grill. Great. I don't think there was any permenant damage. I moved the PC up off of the floor and on top of my desk to help avoid the problem in the future (hopefully).

There's a weird security thing going on at work today.

I haven't had time to work on the Bible project any this week. Things have been a little hectic. I've also been playing WoW more too. Yeah, I had stopped playing for a while, but I stopped liking Diablo2 a while ago and it's just no fun to go back too. There is a certain 'fun' element to being attacked by random ppl and trying to work in groups to get things accomplished. Most ppl are ok, even the 13 yro's lol. I had a fun time several months ago playing with a group of guys and it turned out I was the oldest one. The kids (13, 14, &15) were good players who were there to have fun. We only found out b/c one kid's mom told him he had to go to bed. lol, I usually have to tell myself to go to bed. Some guy lead a dragon to the CrossRoads last week. I had never seen a dragon in the game before. Once he lead it there everyone helped to kill it. It was very cool to see.

Dad's computer is having problems too. Two of the fans are dying on it. I am not sure if replacing them or the whole machine (AMD 1GHZ & 256MB RAM) is the way to go. I'm leaning towards the second option. But then I have to pay rent too this week. :-(

See everyone later, I'm going to make some food.

Scared by the wind...

2005-11-22T00:12:00.000-05:00

It's been a long night got home sick and passed out on the couch for a while. Up late working on a weird bible translation project. I'm cranking away on that kinda in a haze b/c I'm still tired and my head hurts when the wind blows through my open window (I opened them all tonight b/c it's clear and cold and nice out) and creates a screeching howl that scares the crap out of me.

I spent time cursing JEA b/c I kept losing power and the lights were flickering during the time I was trying to upload my work on the bible translation.

--slackv

Is my stream blocking my updates?

2005-11-15T22:06:00.000-05:00

I'm downloading update to my newest linux box while I"m streaming audio over the same switch from one of my local servers. I got SuSE Linux 9 ES to install on my broken machine. If it's working is it still broken? It's up for now though. No PS/2 ports though and I'm worried about it just being old in general... at least 6 years old by now. We will see how it does.

I spent some time yesterday thinking about stuff I'd passed by. Not really regrets but thinking of the path not taken. Jobs I passed up, women I've known, places I've lived, friends I'd not talked too in a long time. It put me in a somewhat melancholy mood. I have lived and worked in several places and I've been feeling the urge to move on. I know that part of me doesn't like the idea of being back in Jacksonville. It is b/c I am worried about not getting enough experiences in other places. Like a kid that leaves his neighborhood to make it someplace else but comes back. I don't really like the crowds, I definitely prefer a small town atmosphere... but I'm here now. I know I've been able to help out everyone in my family by being here, so that is a comforting to know. I know Dad would have had many more problems in getting the website and the blog together. So I know it's been a good thing.

Getting started in some craft stuff for Christmas. Homemade gifts are going to be the way to go this year. Cheap and fun to make. I want to try doing scented candles. Last year I tried to do gel candles but only really got one done. All the others bombed bad. It was messy. I look forward to trying it again in a slightly different fashion though.

I am back to working on a program(in Perl) to translate the KJV bible into modern English. I'm doing it with a computer program b/c my English is bad enough. It's mainly converting the "thee"'s and "thou's" to "you" and "your's", I"m also trying to get most of the stuff the ends in "eth"; sitteth, doeth, goeth, driveth... Doing it in a program will allow anyone to generate their own too. I'll post source code and results on my website soon too. Part of my motivation for this is that most current modern translations are copyrighted and can't be freely disseminated anywhere. Hopefully this will be. On a cool note, it takes less than one second (0.897secs to be precise) to 'process' the entire bible on my AMD 64 computer. :-)

I'm gonna meet S. tomorrow for lunch. It should be pretty cool we haven't gotten together in a long time.

I'm headed to bed now though, good night everyone.

Just the News...

2005-11-13T09:40:00.000-05:00

I spent most of the weekend with Pooks and we had a great time running around doing errands and stuff. I met her mom and her sister too. They both seem really nice and we had a good time talking with them. Her mom asked me questions about various things to get an idea for the things I liked or didn't like. They run a little framing shop south of Jacksonville and we met there. It was a nice place and I got to see a lot of her mothers artwork. I saw a couple of little copper lanterns around on the floor as decorations and began to think of ways to have lantern lights inside the living room. Why have direct light at all? :-) I also remembered that there's one at mom & dad's that they are using as a bird feeder that I wanted to snag. I mean borrow. :-)

I also got a streaming audio server setup at my house this weekend. I thought about how best to use it and I'd kinda like to do a news service like thing. I think that would be really neat. We'll see though. It's easy for me to come up with these ideas a little harder to implement though. I got the primes web page back up at least though. It's been slightly fun working with my older/retired boxes to get the web pages working again. I think I've got an idea on how to fix my broken box as well to bring it up to a working point. I'm excited about that.

That's all for now. I've gotta get to work to make up some time. I'll write again later.

A nightmare and a nightmare...

2005-11-09T13:51:00.000-05:00

The first nightmare was my home webserver and database server dying on me. I'm gonna have to wait until payday to replace it. That's ok, though I'm gonna work on some of the database internals for it on another machine so that once it's up I can just move stuff over. I put more detail over on my slashdot journal( http://slashdot.org/~dcowart/journal/ ) So I'm updating sql by hand for now though.

The second nightmare happened when I dreamed about something where I couldn't breath. I dreamt that I'd been attacked and kicked in the throat. ( www.dreamlibrary.org ) I think I just got dried out and couldn't breath anymore. I got up immediately though and went in to type in my dream. I wanted to get away from my bed b/c it had "become unsafe". It's a weird feeling, but I just felt I needed to get out of the room.

Back with more later.

Cutting Some Fat... ugh! (and still sick)

2005-11-07T22:23:00.000-05:00

Talking with Pooks about money stuff today. It's gotten to a point where I'm not saving as much as I should (like none) and need to get below my lifestyle curve. I've been doing OK, but running over budget and so I'm looking at what things I can cut out. Cable is down to super basic, WoW account is going bye bye, I'm working on cleaning up some of my other financial stuff too. It kinda sucks b/c it feels weird to have to worry about those things, but I let myself get to this point by not paying attention like I should have. Now, don't think I'm broke or starving, I'm not. I am just working to make sure that everything gets paid off ASAP. That means that a lot of the things I take for granted (eating out is probably my biggest one) I need to think about not doing. Pooks is going through a lot of the same stuff now and we're helping each other out. It's really frustrating for both of us. I know we'll come through it, but it doesn't make it any easier.

I'm still sick and Pooks is coming down with it too. It's a sinus thing that's not easy to handle. My nose really hurts. I'm going to bed soon.

Birthday Toys....

2005-11-05T22:04:00.000-05:00

It was Josh's birthday today and b/c I got paid I went toy hunting this morning. You can not beat toy hunting for a 9 year old. I got to look at everything and think ooo would I want that to play with. Or is that something that he would get a kick out of. I found something and I though oh yeah this is pretty cool and then I looked next to it and found it... the perfect gift.

I want the Lego Ferrari for Christmas now too. Looking at the Lego website, they have a $100 dollar one too that's even cooler!! If that is even possible!! :-) I had fun shopping. It's fun looking around at toys. I made a quick stop to pick up some manga for all the boys. It's easy reading and I know they would enjoy it. Hopefully it's nothing to strange for them.

Well I'm off to bed. It's been a long weekend already and I'm still somewhat fighting off a cold. I took Friday off of work b/c it was really bad then. I'm gonna head in tomorrow and hopefully get some more work done.

By Not going to Blizzcon....

2005-10-30T21:32:00.000-05:00

By not going to Blizzcon, I think I;
missed
a
few
things.

But Maybe not all that much.
(Although I do like the Tauren(Bull) costume.)

Long and wonderful weekend....

2005-10-30T18:35:00.000-05:00

Friday ended with Pooks and I in serious discussions about stuff. A little worrisome and a lot exhausting. It was very emotional for us and after it I felt really really tired & worn out. It wasn't an arguement or anything but just getting down into those deep places of ourselves to learn more about each other. Both of us are introverts and so being inward looking we are used to searching within ourselves for answers to the "why's" of why we do things. turning this onto each other we seek understanding of what each other is thinking. It's weird but that's one of the ways we tend to learn more about each other.

So Saturday morning Pooks came over and we picked up from where we left off and soon resolved everything. We care for each other very much and are totally relaxed in each other's company. It's a wonderful feeling. We spent the day together, alternating between watching Firefly DVD's and working on things. Later that night I cooked a roast for her and made a small coffee cake for dessert.

We talked about some more about other things and came up with some new things to think about. For those of you that are wondering, yes we do spend time doing other things than just sitting around watching tv and talking. She left late that night and we went to bed.

I got up on time for church at 8:30 and got there at 10:30 to realize that DayLight Savings time was over and so it was really 9:30. Darn it. So I went to a bible study with one of the minister which was pretty good & enjoyable. It was cool b/c right at the end of the study he pulled out a tobacco pouch filled his pipe and started smoking right there in the room. It was very cool. Also some of the Sunday school members complain when he called it the "Civil War", when it should have been, "The War Between the States", and of course someone from the back called out that it was the "War of Northern Aggression".

I helped Jenn & Pat move some crap out of their storage unit. Since it was Sunday I tried to be christian and cheerful but since they only called me and Eve at the last minute and Eve didn't show up until the truck was 98% packed, I bitched about it a lot.

Late Updates:

Pooks and I have our first "official" date on Friday. WooHoo! It's part of my getting introduced to her family. I am looking forward to it.

Bought Halloween candy for us. I think 12 bags should be enough. Of Course I have to check it all for quality. Oh Yeah!!

I was thinking of canceling my WoW account but I might keep it. I've been thinking about playing around with it some more.

Dreams up, work going on strong...

2005-10-28T09:27:00.000-04:00

It's been a hectic week both personally and at work. Lots of work trying to bring one of our mirror servers online and trying to get other stuff straightened out. Pooks finalized her divorce and I am happy about that. We were both worried about it, but it went smoothly. I have been trying to give her the support she needs through all of it.

Patti got the Car on Tuesday. It was a long adventure getting it to her, but it's all settled now and she's enjoying her new wheels. I only regret not getting her fake spinners for the wheels.

The Dream library site is going along well. It's up to 6 users and around 30 posts so far. Pretty good for about a week's time. Of course I keep checking google to see if I make it in the search results too. It's just a spastic thing but it one of those, "I know I made it when..." markers.

Back to work for now. I have two projects to work on today that I hope to get done with at least one of them.

--slackv

Good Weekend, now the hurricane is here...

2005-10-24T06:32:00.000-04:00

Movies, sisters, sick cats, and time with Pooks pretty much describes my weekend. Pooks and I went to see "Serenity". It was a really good movie. I'm sorry it's leaving the theatres soon though, it really didn't do well at the box office so it's getting cut down by a lot. The next movie I want to see is the Doom movie. It looks like an action film with very low qualities, but that's ok b/c it has gratuitous violence and gore. What could be better? :-)

I arranged to meet Eve & Patti Tuesday to get the car to Patti. That should be good I know she'll enjoy it. I've got to get a laptop to Mom on Wednesday. Both of these things have been a long time in coming so I'm glad to get them out of the way.

I spent time Friday and Saturday night working on my www.dreamlibrary.org website. I think the idea is good. But I'm worried about execution. I started keeping a dream journal a while ago. But then I though keeping one online would be good. Then I though being able to see other people's would be even better. So I setup an online forum for people to read and discuss their dreams. I'm mainly concerned with getting them down though. Interpretation is possible, but save it for the discussion forum. :-) So I'm looking forward to seeing how it progresses and what comes of it.

Pooks and I went to church Sunday morning. I really enjoyed going with her and she met a lot of people there that she knew. It was cool b/c I wanted her to be comfortable there and since she knew a lot of the people already it helped her to be relaxed. The service was really good again. I've only been to one other church where I enjoyed the services so much (a Conservative Presbyterian church in NC). We spent some time afterward talking about things and dealing with some stuff. It really helped us.

CC is still feeling ill. I thought she was getting better but it doesn't look like it. I'm taking her to the vet this afternoon. :-( The other two are just fine though. Python has gone into heat though. ugh. I'm counting the days to get her fixed! Nov. 17th is her big day. I didn't know you had to wait until it was over but apparently you do. It has been suggested that a q-tip would do the job but I am not doing that!! It is a little too gross for me.

Hurricane Wilma is here. They should have a year where they name all the hurricanes after cartoon characters. That would be funny. Fred & Barney killed 11 people this year. :-) Ok, so I shouldn't make light of ppl getting swept away in horrible storms. I'm still waiting for the Inigo Montoya hurricane. "My Name is Inigo Montoya, You killed my father, Prepare to get blown away!"

--slackv

Been doing well and I hate Captain Keys...

2005-10-20T07:23:00.000-04:00

So there's a hurricane coming. I found that out yesterday. My car is still down for the count. I am gonna try to get it fixed this evening.

Pooks and I had lunch with Dad yesterday. I had to get something from him and so we went over and ate lunch there. We talked about a lot of things and had a good time. We met mom on the way out. She was happy that she had gotten fitted for hearing aides that morning. It will be really cool for her to get them. She really has a hard time hearing.

I've gone back to playing Halo for a while on the harder setting. I forgot how much I disliked Captain Keys. The jerk keeps getting captured or crashing space ships and so a lot of the game is driven by rescuing him. It's a great game though. It probably has the best story behind the game of any I've ever played. It brings back good memories of playing with Bill, one of my old roommates, and seeing the guilty spark (a game character) saying, "I've got a bad feeling about this". You can't shoot the guilty spark no matter how hard you try. And while he's not evil, he is doing his job trying to destroy the solar system. Flood are still just as creepy and I still curse like a maniac as they come jumping out from everywhere. There still is an element of fear b/c I know they are coming and I know they are going to do a lot of damage before I kill them. It's a game where I'll still jump around when I hear them attacking me.

Still thinking about switching jobs...

Still need to clean the computer room more. I like how it is setup now though. I think I want a comfy reading chair in here now though. That would make it a little more office like and I think a better area just to sit and read.

--slackv

Good Weekend, so far Monday not so good...

2005-10-17T08:59:00.000-04:00

Spent most of the weekend cleaning things up. Just had a little to much stuff floating around. Met Pooks' daughter M this weekend too. That was cool, we hung out and played with the cats. She's got computer one of the two computer round up I've been doing. I've got a few more things to do on the second one before it's ready for mom. I'm gonna try and get it finished tonight.

I'm going through and shutting off some things to try to reduce my standard of living. It's weird but my mind fights against it like I'm loosing something valuable. I know it's not I've lived without these things before but it's like I'm giving up something really important. I know they aren't though. I'm not behind on anything (except cable which I just forgot to pay but thought I had, doh!!), but I wonder where it goes sometimes. Oh Well, I'm sure I'll survive. :-)

Today though (Monday) the car trouble starts. The car barely turned over this morning, so I knew I was having battery issues. But it finally turned over and I started into work, on the way I noticed that my acclerometer and the RPM gauge were both dead. So there's something more wrong than just a dying battery... Once I got to work I opened the hood and the tube going from the air filter to the top of the engine is broken right around the engine piece. Crap. So I'm gonna duck tape that until I can get it into the shop to have it all looked at tomorrow...

That's all for now...
--slackv

Just some quick notes....

2005-10-14T11:40:00.000-04:00

The cats have won against another roll of toilet paper. It's shredded underneath the kitchen table.

I started a technical journal over on slashdot. It's http://slashdot.org/~dcowart/journal/ That should help me keep things a little less technical here. Or I may just copy and paste what I write there down here too. Don't know yet...

Pooks is so awesome! We are having a great time getting to know each other and spending time together. We listen to each other about our worries and fears but instantly try to comfort each other. It's a wonderful feeling.

I put together a computer for mom and one for Pooks' daughter. Just need to get them to their new owners soon. Also did some work in my computer room yesterday. I might do some more cleaning in there tonight. I feel the urge to purge... junk from my computer room, or at least just get it off of the floor.

I think I want to do some work on the prime number database too. I've gotta get it cranking again so I can start filling the database even more.

slackv

Sending Messages....

2005-10-13T05:38:00.000-04:00

After our great weekend work has been a little rough so far this week. Pooks is trying to re-arrange her schedule so she can get her daughter after school next week but they are giving her trouble about it. I've just been having an interesting time with the last few bits of the cluster setup. We are almost done with the system administration part of it though. I've written a small application for testing the cluster and the MPI libraries (Message Passing Interface) behind it.

MPI is a set of libraries that give a standard way for nodes on a cluster to send data between each other. It makes cluster programming a little easier b/c you don't have worry about the details of how they communicate, you can focus on What gets communicated. I wrote a program yesterday to find the factorials of all the numbers between 1 and 200000 this way. It is actually a very bad program in that in that I just had each node do the same thing, not really what you want in a real world situation. I'm working on the next part of that today, having the master node assign each rank a number to work on and then having the node return the number to the master. Still a pretty simple project but the goal is to expand it to do two simple series expansions, 'e' the base of the natural logarithm and 'pi' the ratio of the circumfrance of a cirle to it's radius. Both of those would make decent cluster tests. 'e' directly depends on factorials so the stuff I'm doing now is my base for getting that working. I'm worried about the GMP libries that I also use though, I'm not sure they are safe for using in this kind of work. We'll see though.

Cats 5, Toilet-Paper 0 Perl and Python are working as a team to shred tolilet paper rolls. Or actually Python likes to unroll then from the wall and then play around in the unrolled TP. Perl likes to drag the roll in the hallway and shredd it to little bits as if it was a very small wildabeast and she was a lionness. Cats can be crazy sometimes.

Pooks and I have both been talking about leaving. She's worried about finances b/c they pay really well hear. I have been too really. Also just getting started again at a new place. I've hung on for a while but am more thinking of moving on now. I think getting some more experience with the cluster will help me in the long run. It seems that a lot of the jobs in town aren't really the things I'd like to do. One of the things I don't like about where I'm at now is that it seems like a lot of the problems that we have could have been solved by a little for-thought, but no one is trying that or if someone does things just get pushed aside. It's disconcerting and leads to a lot of 'emergencies' that should have been solved a year ago.

Well, I'm gonna go get ready for work now...

--slackv

Sunday Fun and Monday Holiday!

2005-10-10T20:31:00.000-04:00

I was going to go to church Sunday morning, but met Pooks for breakfast instead. Not to worry though, we went to the 6pm contemporary service. More about that in a second though, We talked for a while, she asked me about the strange feeling I had the day before and we talked aobu that for a while. It was good to see her for a while and talk. She had to go run errands and her daughter wanted time with her so I cleaned and did Laundry at home.

We went to the 6pm Contemporary Service at All Saints Episcopal. I had never been to that service before so I was interested in what it would be like. Pooks didn't like wearing the name tags. I've seen it before at other churches and so it wasn't a big deal for me. The service was pretty much a standard Book of Common Prayer based service just with different music and some thing left out. The service was OK, nothing stupendous or moving. One of the band guys kept fiddling with things during the sermon and making noise, culminating with a very loud feedback POP, before leaving stuff alone and sitting down. The music was mostly good, out of four songs I knew two already. But the other two I think were a little too much for both the band and the congregation. I had an issue with the closing blessing where said that God was comforting, "like a mother." I read that and was like, "Hey, It's God the Father, Look at the Lord's Prayer we just read 15 minutes ago." Dogma aside, It was a decent service, but It's probably not one I'd really go back too unless I missed in the mornings again. It was good to go with Pooks though. I really enjoyed talking with her about the service after the fact.

Pooks picked up on the calling message of the sermon and asked me my thinking of going into seminary. I noticed it too. I don't think the calling or desire has gone away any. I need to pray about it alot more.

Monday being a holiday Pooks and spent some alone time together this morning. Just relaxing and enjoying each other's company. We then got oil changes for our cars. And went over to AM's house. We had a blast and had a lot of fun. AM was thrilled to see me holding the 1-month old of their neighbor's. I'm sure either her or idzeeboo will post that picture up soon. I put together their anarondack chair with the help of her boys. There was only a limited about of fighting over the cord-less drill. Well, OK, there was a lot of fighting over the cord-less drill. I somewhat kept the boys busy, and Pooks kept AM company. It was a good night there. We came home and I'm going to bed soon and Pooks has gone to get her daughter. We had a great day together.

--slackv

Two down...

2005-10-09T01:28:00.000-04:00

I finished Harry Potter Books 3 and 4 today. Just finished 4 ten minutes ago, in fact. I saw "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" on the Disney Channel last night and decided to read the rest of them... After these two though I think I'm done with reading them for now. I hit books-a-million this afternoon and have a lot of other stuff to read too...

I was struck by something odd this evening, driving up the road to get some McD's and I got to think about consulting and then certifications and linux certifications and then my ex-wife getting some online certifications and how mad and frustrated she had been that they didn't seem to mean anything when she tried to reference them and I got flustered and upset thinking about it. It was really strange to get upset like that over something I hadn't thought of in years. I wonder if talking with Pooks so much has stirred up some left-over emotional stuff within me. I have been suspecting something like that today b/c I know have felt somewhat emotionally rocky today. It's been a weird feeling and I kinda wonder if that is one of the reasons I buried myself in books.

I'll be going to church tomorrow morning then visiting AM at home tomorrow afternoon. She seems to be recovering well from her surgery but just needs a little company to take the edge off of the cabin fever.

Python has taken to wondering around the house wailing... ::sigh:: time to get her fixed... First Eve's cat, now mine... Perl really doesn't like Python with all the noise she is making now too.

I've got a car to get to G'ville and two computers that need finishing up.

bed-time for me though.
--slackv

Party At the end of a long day....

2005-10-02T01:37:00.000-04:00

Today we celebrated Patricia's birhtday with a very haphazzardly planned birthday party. Part of the problem was that me & Eve got volunteered as planners and we've both been really busy. Also Eve's cat Hazel was really sick and so she's been really worried about her kitty.

Pooks was a great support to me today and we did a lot of running around and getting things done. We took Hazel to the vet this morning and after several shots and a blood test Hazel was a really unhappy kitty. The test results should be in on Monday.

Lots of running around after that and we finally got home and watched "Time Bandits", which I had never seen before. It was really good. The premise was good and the time bandits themselves were believable. I really liked the end, "Mom! Dad! Don't touch it! It's Evil!! " At the end you wonder if things were part of the kids imagination b/c you see the toys arragned on his floor matching the events that took place in the movie. I could see that as a step towards the jumps back in time in "12 Monkeys" also directed by Terri Gilliam. A very cool movie.

After that we had a good time cooking together. She worked on the key lime pie while I made my war cake. We had a great time talking and working together. It was cool in that we worked together really well together. She made a merange topping for the key lime pie and so I helped her top it by shaping it into the mesa from "Close Encounters of the Third Kind". I grabbed a little alien from my toy collection and put it on top so it was an alien merange. I'm so glad Pooks thinks I'm funny and not crazy.

So We picked up Mrs. White and went over to Mom & Dad's. Patricia & Gregg were already there but Patti was asleep. She's been really stressed over every thing recently so passing out for a while was probably a good thing. The party was fun and Pooks got to finally meet the whole family and some long time family friends. We had a good time and got to relax and talk with everyone. Pooks & I were albe to get Patti a putt-putt car for her to get around in and hopefully replace the beast lincoln towncar she's got now. The new one should get a lot betteer gas milage and give her a chance to save up some more money instead of putting it all into gas. I also gave her a bag of cat food so that she could feed her fuzzy babies. Randy & Dad & Mrs. White all talked books and things they've read. Eve & Patti and Jennifer tried to figure out who pulled who around by the hair and did the most damgage. I talked with Pooks and Gregg and stuff and Mom kept slapping my hand when I would start to pull on the lampshade or pick up the things they had around and start playing with them. We all had a real blast. It was good to see everyone again and give them a chance to meet Pooks too.

Dropped off Mrs. White and then Home again and dropped off Pooks after some snuggle time. I grabbed some tacobell on the way home and caught up on .Hack and Zatch Bell when I got home. I started this post last night but by 1:30am I was too sleepy to finish it.

Weird dreams last night too. I don't quite remember them though...

Sick Cats, People and Posting into the Future

2005-09-30T09:38:00.000-04:00

I realized a couple of days ago that I could change the date of my blog posts into the future. Yup as far as 2006 it appears. That got me to thinking about where I would be in the future. Of course the obvious thing that popped into my head was that I would be fighting for my family against the invasion of molemen from beneath the earth's surface. It would be a tough battle in the caves but I am sure that I would win in the end. That would be cool if I could post that for 2019. I'll be 46 by then and that sounds like a good age to be fighting off molemen from beneath the earth's surface.

I am waiting for a present to come in for one of my annoying co-workers. It was his birthday yesterday and so I felt I should get him something. It'll be cool when it comes it. Of course I bought me something for his birthday too. :-)

AM (of Idzeeboo & AM fame) had some surgery Tues. Keep her in your prayers, she's still in a lot of pain. The surgery should help her though with a lot of the other pain she's been in.

Hazel Cowart (Eve's cat) is really really sick. She's vomiting and can't seem to hold anything down. Eve took her to the vet on Tues but since the medicine isn't working I'll be taking her in tomorrow to see what else can be done. Eve was crying on the phone about it last night. I hope her kitty gets better. Hazel was the kitten that Shawn rescued for me to give to Eve a while ago.

Pooks and Me got a good review on Ideeboo's blog Which is pretty cool. We're both doing good and really happy. Our biggest problem is that neither of us wants to hurt the other so we'll hold off on things we shouldn't at times. Also, we'll tend to put things off just b/c we'd rather spend time with each other. That makes getting out of the car in the mornings annoying b/c I'd much rather hang out and talk with her than go into work. She's going to dinner with her parents tonight, I'm probably going to stay home and clean up.

Speaking of work, the cluster is doing well except that thanks to some budgeting mis-haps they can't pay for part of it. DOH!!!! Anyone have a coupon we can use? It's only $250K maybe they'll give us a discount. For a cluster today I'll gladly pay you Tuesday.

On a more positive note about that though, I've been setting up a lot of scripts and programs to make the maintenance of it a lot more useful and flexible. I am really enjoying working with it. I showed my annoying co-worker how to write a factorial program that wasn't bound by the 64bit architecture of the CPU's. It took 2.8 seconds to calculate the factorial of 30,000. That's 30000*29999*29998*29997*29996*.... That's a big number. We're still fighting with storage issues though. I also setup a local mailing list for it.

Hmm... It looks like a nice day outside. I think I'd much rather be at home sleeping now. Or maybe I just need to go find some coffee...

--slackv

well that just sucks...

2005-09-26T11:02:00.000-04:00

I just spent a long ass time typing up a pretty good post about the past few days and blogger has eaten it. Crap.

Now with Chewy Linux Clusters....

2005-09-21T07:12:00.000-04:00

Woot Woot! Got out linux cluster in at work and began setup on it yesterday. We had some issues setting up the stonith, the fail-over and the PXE boot off of the failover node, but finally got it working a little after lunch. It was a really long day, we ended up finishing around 5:30. I was dead tired b/c I was kinda stressed about it so I was up late Mon night and then in early Tues morning. On the cool note though we are getting 32GFlops. That's 32 Billion operations every second. Not in Top 500 territory but very damn cool. :-) I was fried by yesterday night so got home had to force myself to stay awake until 10pm but then crashed hard until 5:30AM when I got up this morning.

Today we'll be testing the fail-over again and going over some system admin stuff too. The Technician that Penguin sent out is a really cool guy who is very easy to work with. That's a very welcome thing for me. Bunky-the-wonderboy from downstairs is trying to get other depts to buy more processing nodes for the cluster. We'll see though.

Great Weekend...

2005-09-18T22:07:00.000-04:00

Saturday was a day spent with Pooks. We talked and worked around the house and talked more. She helped me in rearranging my computer room. I used my new shelving to put a TV & tivo on so I can have CNN or other news going while I work on the computer. Well, ok, maybe cartoons too. Later on we went out to eat and then went shopping at Target. There we met Byran and his wife passing through the store. We chatted for a while and watched his daughter play around. We window shopped for a while talking about stuff we liked and didn't and then headed home. She left after a while and I stayed up finishing most of my cleaning.

Church Sunday was good. The sermon was on Jonah's anger at God changing his mind about destroying the Ninevites. How sometimes we get angry at God when the ppl we think deserve to get blown away aren't. A really good sermon, also they did a blessing for a mission group they are sending to Mississippi. Most of the congregation came out for it, that was really cool to see. I think I like this church. After church was napping and cleaning and laundry. A good dinner with Pooks and then more cleaning. Talked with Patti and Jennifer caught up with them. Pooks spent most of the day working on a newspaper project. I'm behind on a calendar project for her, hopefully I'll have more time to work on it tomorrow.

At work the big cluster start up project begins Tuesday. It's gonna mean a several days of some long hours. It should be ok though. I'll have to go in a little earlier than usual though so I can't car-pool with Pooks. :-(

Oh well Laundry's done and it's late.

--slackv

Word verification and veggie tales...

2005-09-14T23:32:00.000-04:00

Based on singing the Hairbrush song to Pooks this afternoon I grabbed a bunch of veggie tales songs to let her listen to tomorrow morning on the way into work... :-D

I got one to many blog spam comments today so I turned on word verification for comments. I hope none of my regular readers mind. For you comment spammers go die.

--slackv

123083033 is prime...

2005-09-14T22:36:00.000-04:00

That's the largest prime number my prime number finding system has found. It's not the 4 million digit monster that mersenne.org has found, but it's cool for what I'm doing. I'm running another routine tonight to generate more numbers and save them to a file. I do database updates from the file as a separate process. It makes things go a little faster that way. Once I get to a point where it takes longer to find it a number is prime than it takes it to write it to the database, then I'll have it do direct I/O again. For now though it's a two step process.

I got a new shelving thing for my computer room closet. I wanted to get all the junk off of the floor and somewhat organized. I see now that I've got eight partially functional computers sitting there. I culled out a few last weekend. I see at least three other ones that can go too. Although one can go to Patti so she can use it for ebay fodder. One other one is mom's that I need to finish fixing. One I really hate to see go but it's gone bad. I've noticed that old PIII systems seem to have a problem where they just shut off for no real reason... although I think it might be buggy ACPI implementations in the BIOS's... I seem to remember something like that from 2000...

I really like my wire shelving, Python tried to help put it together by biting it. CC just looked at me like I was going crazy and Perl stayed away until it was finished and then chased Python around it. I think I need to move this large table out of here now though. It was really usefull when I had two 21" monitors on my desktop. Now with the flat panel though I don't really need it. I think I'm heading into a 'toss all the crap' mode and seeing things I don't need and can get rid of. On a positive note though, I found some replacement shoelaces for my Sketchers. They came with an extra set that I had forgotten about. This is good b/c Python has eaten through the ones that are on them now.

Talked a lot with Pooks today. She's worried about various things and I comforted her as best I could. It helped. We are very comfortable with each other and make each other feel good. I feel like I can tell her anything about myself. She is a wonderful woman who deserves the best I can give her. We've been car-pooling to work the past two weeks and it's been great.

Well, I'm tired and kinda beat so I'm headed to bed a little early tonight.
--Slackv

Up With Blogging!!!

2005-09-13T22:04:00.000-04:00

Since Idzeeboo's jones'ing for some blogging I've been thinking of things...

Saturday I helped Shawn move. His old apt. had a leak right over the bed in the master bedroom and after not getting any results from the "fixes" to it, He had the apt. company give him a new apt. So I helped him move from a 2nd floor place to another 2nd floor place. We filled my van with a seat out of it for two trips and a couple of cars. Melisha (his new wife) fixed me an egg sandwich for helping them out. They're really a great couple. I've gotta see if we can do a double date thing with them and Pooks & I.

Sunday was time spent with Pooks. She brought me starbucks in the morning and I was all happy (and still am). We chatted and watched TV. CC (the cat) took a liking to her hair and started chewing on it. At one point CC had a huge bundle of it and was trying to pull it out. Crazy cat.

That afternoon we picked up a really nice dining room table from Jenn & Pat. They finally sold their house and couldn't really take it with them so they gave it too me. It's really nice. Python has started making leaps-of-faith from it to the couch 6ft. away. It's a really awesome sight to see an eight inch long cat jump six feet.

At work, our new linux cluster came in. It's really cool looking I can't wait until we've got it ready to be hooked up. My annoying co-worker is all poo-pooey about it... he's getting harder to work with. I've also been assigned a large amount of work for the Engineering Dept. It's more programming work. They're hoping that I'll move down there to become a full time programming/systems analyst person. From what I'm seeing though it's not what I really want to do. What's worse is I feel like I'm getting farther behind of the work that I'd like to be doing and should be doing...

On the home front, I've gotten my primes database updating again. It's too slow though from some reason, I think it's the locking mechanism of the Postgresql database. I think I'm gonna remove some of my transactional statements from my inputs. Or maybe just space them out more. I want to get my bookmarks site idea rolling and I've got work for Pooks to finish. A dream site and two other ideas that I'm just not sure how to do yet. There's just not enough time for all the things I want to do. :-( Especially after working with computers all day, some days I just don't want to touch them again.

Oh well, I do enjoy working with them a lot. It's a great hobby, and keeps me off the streets.

--slackv

Been too busy to blog!!!

2005-09-06T14:52:00.000-04:00

Whew, It's been an active weekend! Pooks & I watched the kids of our friends Idzeeboo & AM and we had a blast with them. We took them swimming and cut Pooks' lawn. She was happy about that and I had fun seeing them want to "do it myself" and having to provide the assistence they needed but still giving them the ownership of doing it themselves. It was a lot of fun for all of us.

The funniest part was when we were all swimming on the second day and the kids wanted to rough house with us. I said to leave us alone for a while we just wanted to enjoy each others company and then one of them piped up, "Yeah, leave 'em alone, it's their mating season!" We both died laughing. It was too funny.

I spent most of Monday holed up watching tv and relaxing. The most interesting thing was watching a show called "./Hack:Legend of the Twilight Bracelet" In it something is happening to create modified monsters in an online gaming world and the monsters are killing the players in real life. The AI oversee-er of "The World" has given two of the players (a brother sister team) special characters to help them kill the modified monsters and to fix the world. The CC Corporation that runs the games servers is sending out hunting parties trying to quell players who are using modified characters believing they are the cause of the problems. The show is interesting to me b/c it explores some of the issues with online gaming in an indirect way. Who 'owns' characters, the virtual affecting the real world, and other ideas that are just barely touched on.

I was playing World of Warcraft for several hours yesterday and someone around 7pm said there was going to be a large Raid against the town of CrossRoads. I happened to be in the area when the attack started two hours later. I just got to the north side of the town to see the end of the battle. The attackers had been repelled and the ground was littered with virtual corpses (50 to 100). As ppl began resurecting in waves they began to run off. A General of the Alliance, sat atop his charger looking over the battle grounds and while my character couldn't understand him, I believe he was coordinating the attack. It was interesting b/c I had been thinking the same thing a couple of days before. I know the SCA has a big battle once a year where everyone comes together and has a huge war. I was thinking the same thing could happen in WoW... and it did and looking at the town of Hillsbrad (another area in the game) it does. There the ground is also littered with corpses from both sides.

It's an interesting thing to see this side of a game. In WoW there is no room for peace. I don't know if that's bad or good, but it's just not in the game at all. There are two side, the Alliance and the Horde, from some reports the alliance easily outnumbers the horde characters 2 to 1. Over at the Daedelus project, the horde players tend to be more risk takes and tend to push the envelope. I don't think I'm a risk taker, but I do like climbing to the highest mountains I can in the game, and looking down on everything from way up. So I'm wondering if there's any way to bring peace to a virtual world where every thing is geared towards killing the other guy.

hehehe, I just thought of the "War Games" reference, "The only way to win is not to play." LOL.

--slackv

Interesting Challenge...

2005-09-02T11:01:00.000-04:00

I work with a lot of GIS data from various sources. With Hurricane Katrina coming through we've been trying to get a lot of data (of various qualities) from NOAA off of some of their internal servers. It's been problematic b/c everyone's trying to get the same data and it's coming in very sporaticly. I've spent the past two days getting this data through various means and I've almost gotten all of it. It's amazing to see the line of debris where the waters reached all along the various shorelines.

On another note, went over to Pooks' to have dinner last night, Quesadillias Very Yummy! We talked and relaxed together and I helped in the kitchen a little. We talked about improvements she wanted around the house and stuff. It was fun to talk and make plans for things.

Remember to keep the ppl still stuck in New Orleans in your prayers. It's a horrible situation there now. I know God's hand is in it somewhere, but I'm just not sure where and maybe it's not for me to see.

--slackv

I think I blogged more when I didn't have a girlfriend...

2005-08-30T22:25:00.000-04:00

...but that means I do have one now! W00T W00T!!!

So breaking out the basic poetry skills and making her heart melt are the things I'm into these days. She's wonderful and a lot of the things I've wanted and hoped for in someone. Things are going really well between us and we both are loving each others company. We've actually been late getting back from lunch a couple of times b/c we were having more fun just sitting and talking and lost track of time.

J&P are in the process of selling their house and that's looking up b/c they're almost at the last step of the process. Of course now they need to find a new one which is the next big step in the process.

some work stuff going on but not much... actually I'll fill everyone in on that later when I know more.

--Slackv

Some days are RUN days...

2005-08-24T21:22:00.000-04:00

run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run....

that was monday,

tuesday was 'like what?'

Today has been a weird kinda floating in and out of being focused on the ppl around me. I think I"m fighting off some kind of cold or something but I don't know. I got home this afternoon and slept from about 6:30pm until 8pm. I hate really long naps like that b/c they screw up my sleeping later in the night, but I'm still pretty beat. All I had to eat was a salad and a pizza today.

I read a passage from "The Screwtape Letters" about how to introduce gluttony in men. Pretty much just pushing on our pride and our vanity, yes men are proud and vain ask most women, you can get it so that a man will have to have things 'just right' or it really throws him off. The one place that makes a good steak doesn't make it right, the wife can't roll the toothpaste up from the bottom, etc. Picking on the illusions of control that we have and making it so that when we don't get things 'just right' we're all bent out of shape over the things we had no control over anyway. I'm that way with some things right now. I need to learn to be patient and let the things happen that need to. I'm just not patient sometimes...

--slackv

Listening over the wall...

2005-08-23T07:49:00.000-04:00

To an interesting discussion of college degrees and if they are worth it or not. I'm thinking hard about going back, because I know it was very useful for me and I know that they are very important in the long run. If you can get one they are probably one of the most useful things to get. It has opened a lot of doors for me that otherwise would have been closed.

I finished fixing up my Daily Devotional site again. It's still got a little work I want to do with it, but www.rdex.net/devotions.php is useable. I want to work on the dreamlibrary site next, then podcasting stuff probably. Lots of work not a whole lot of time. Also, none of this (yet) is bringing in any money, so I'm thinking about that too. :-/

Talked with Pooks online last night, we're having a great time talking with each other and spending time together when we can. I'm very much enjoying it and I'm sure she is too. We had lunch out yesterday and talked about plans for things and other stuff. It feels good to have someone who is excited about that as much as I am.

Well I should be working now, but blogging sounded more fun. Blogger has added a couple of new features that are pretty cool. SFTP for posting, word verification for comments, and a MS Word toolbar add-in, pretty neat stuff. I think I want to fix up my IP attackers blog some. I think I can present that information a little better.

--slackv

sleepy...

2005-08-22T09:12:00.000-04:00

Didn't sleep extremely well last night so I'm kinda groggy this morning. Yesterday's coffee is keeping me going though. Saturday spent time with Pooks watching a movie and just talking. It was really nice. The movie was, "Kung-Fu Hustle" and if you think it sounds a little off you're right. It was a great slap-stick kind of comedy about Kung-Fu masters living in a slum and fighting off gangs. Very funny with lots of action and very over the top special effects. It was great. Pooks enjoyed it too, which means that she's a keeper if she really likes the weird movies I like. I'm gonna have to get Shoalin Soccer for her next. It's KungFu soccer, what could be better? ;-)

Stayed over and Idzeeboo & AM's house Sat. night. Watched Goldmember with them also very funny. Idzee & I stayed up late talking about life stuff. It's the kind of stuff you need to talk about occasionally.

Sunday, worked on Web stuff and missed a project deadline. That sucked. Went ahead and began work on other personal web projects that I've wanted to get running but haven't had time. Also began playing Doom3 on the xbox. Awesome and very scary. The AI in the game is also really good. The monsters pop-out shoot me and then duck for cover. I've gotta hunt them and try to get better at figuring out what they're doing. I got really good at cowering behind doors and shooting them as they came around the corner. Pooks got into a fender-bender, she wasn't hurt badly, which is really good, but I am still worried about her. She said she was fine though and seems to be OK still this morning which is good.

--slackv

Rats! Missed Everyone....

2005-08-18T22:21:00.000-04:00

Spent a while tonight helping Dad with his Lulu storefront (subliminal message: buy his books). We were both too tired to really do a lot, but we got the storefront finished. Sorry I was so grumpy Dad.

When I got home I was hit with two things, one, I'd forgotten to feed the cats so they were all milling around waiting for me to get back and, two, something in the garbage stunk up the livingroom. I don't know what it was but it was aweful. Something smells like burning Mrs. Crabapple. ooooooo.... There is a mostly full moon out tonight so I think that may be why they've been freaking out a little. I saw it and thought it would be a really nice night to go for a swim in the pool.... so maybe I'm a little moon-mad too. :-P

All day though I'd forgotten and left myself signed in to IM and Skype, so I came home to a bunch of windows open. I missed talking with Pooks :-( She was hanging out with her daughter. OGF#1, needed advice on how to handle something with her son. Girl from Lima, (GfL?) asked if I wanted to do video chatting. And I think Idzeeboo was on too. I think I closed that window a little too fast. I'm sorry I missed everyone. Next time I'll actually try to be at my computer when I'm signed into things.

And now Jenn & Pat have hit on a television show called dating on demand, so they're watching tv and trying to find me a woman...

--slackv

Sorry for the delay...

2005-08-18T02:16:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the long time between posts to all my avid readers.

Let's see, Friday was uneventful. Saturday I talked with Pooks and we resolved a bunch of things. So we're back together again with all of the good and bad that it brings. I am hopeful things will work out for us for the long run. I think they will. We're open with each other and are both worried about how each other feels. She really likes the way I treat her and she deserves it.

Other than that it's been work, work, work. The fun work has been the work on the prime number server. I've optimized the way it grabs random prime numbers. It's much much faster than it was before. http://primes.fumc-gnv.org/ I'm using the url from my old church since they changed domains and didn't want to keep this one. I figure it's a much better use of the domain. I'm doing some real paying work on the side as a contractor for an Australian developer. Cool stuff and good work. I'm probably going to finish that job tonight. Regular work has been strange recently. One of my co-workers is really depressed after just having surgery and doesn't know why.

uGH... ONE of the problems of trying to blog while at work is that you keep getting interrupted with work crap. So I had to wait, and work and work and screw around, and work and screw around some more, make some calls, have alone time with Pooks and work until the end of the day when I went home and worked more, napped, worked, laundry, work work work, bed...

Then all three cats decided I needed company and so climbed into bed with me. It's only a problem b/c Python attacks CC who grows and hisses constantly and Perl is offended by the both of them and will attack either of them if they get too close and so I was trying to sleep while three cats pounced and fought with each other for pretty much an entire hour.

Getting sick of it I got up and had a snack and of course I can still hear them chasing each other up and down the hall. I don't know where they've gotten all this energy from all of a sudden.

Talked with my older sister Jenn some the other day. She's been really concerned about me since I broke down on her last weekend. She's worried I'm making a mistake and that I need to find someone else. She thinks I'm not getting the best thing for me b/c I deserve all of someone, not just splitting time with someone else. It was a hard thing to talk about with her for a lot of reasons. I worry that she might be right, I think I'm right though and that's not the case. I can't prove it though b/c everything is still in a high state of flux now. So nothing can be decided or known quite yet, especially not now at 2 in the morning. I know things will turn out all right. I'm not worried about that. And I know things won't be 'perfect' b/c that's the way the world is, but I know that they can be better for both of us. I lean on that and on God's grace to guide us both through things.

I know I should be rushing to work....

2005-08-11T08:02:00.000-04:00

But I decided to upload some more funny pics while I was screwing around. Fun Pics, of Girls, Guns, and Unix Jokes and the occasional over-used cat picture.

--Slackv

I once met a girl from Lima....

2005-08-10T19:43:00.000-04:00

In a very odd incident today, a bilingual secretary from Lima, Peru Instant Messaged me. She apparently was at work searching through the ppl online (using Skype), found me, and so sent me a message. Very weird, anyway we talked for a while and I helped her learn the difference between the uses of "wet" and "humid" in coloquial english. I tried the search thing while talking with her and yeah I could find ppl all over the world. No real reason why she picked me, but it was neat anyway.

In other news, and old buddy from college IM'ed me. He's in Colorado. He's had a rough time of things since college. He just now getting back on his feet.

I'm gonna try to call some old college buddies tonight to see how everyone's doing...

A day off...

2005-08-10T10:51:00.000-04:00

With all the stuff that's been happening recently I decided to take a day off. I don't know what I'm going to get done today, probably not much, but we'll see. I was thinking of taking Monday off, but I thought that was a bad idea ofr several reasons and I'm glad I didn't b/c I was able to take idzeeboo home when he got sick. So today worked out great for it.

Of course staying home from work meant staying up late playing video games. I was up late playing World of Warcraft, where I'm an undead warlock that can summon deamons, cast spells and knit a nice sweater. Yeah, one of secondary skills is tailoring so I'm a bad-ass tailor that can make shirts, pants, gloves, handbags and dresses. I usually sell the stuff after I make it b/c I really don't have a lot of use for it. I'm also turning into a decent fisherman in the game. Yes, I can sit for a couple of hours fishing in a virtual world catching virtual fish... that I can virtually cook too, I'm a level 25 cook as well. I don't have enough recipes though I'm going around now just killing wolves for wolf meat so I can practice and get better at cooking to be a better cook. Screw rescuing the princess, I'm gonna make a lasagne with steamed clams!

I did get with a group of guys last night to try to storm this village to get some book. I died 5 or 6 times in like 40 minutes. It wasn't fun. And they'ed resurrect me while a dog-head monster was still chewing on me and I'd immediately have to fight it off. Our theme for the night was "RUN FOR IT!!!" We tried and failed several times before ppl started to say screw it and left. Part of the problem was that we didn't have anyone to be a tank for us and so I kinda figured we'd be hard pressed. In fact our tanks were my big blue minion and a rogue.

OH well, At least I've got my knitting to fall back on. :-)

Got Movies?

2005-08-09T12:19:00.000-04:00

My set of the Director's Series of videos and short films by Micheal Gondry, Chris Cunningham, and Spike Jonze came in the mail this morning! W00T! I'm gonna spend my evening programming and watching some awesome music videos. "All is Full of Love"-- Bjork, "Windowlicker"-AphexTwin, "Come to Daddy"--AphexTwin, "Everlong"--Foo Fighters, "Weapon of Choice"--Fat Boy Slim, and lots of others, I'll post reviews and ideas as they come out of my head. :-)

Feeling better but still sucks...

2005-08-08T19:58:00.000-04:00

Lots of thinking the passt couple of days. I've been trying to work through my feelings for Pks. and trying to understand where a lot of them are coming from. I talked with OGF#1 for a while on Sunday afternoon, she said I really had a problem dating. That I tend to jump into things way to far ahead of where I need to be. Which is pretty true. Looking back over the past year, I think that yeah, I jump into relationships at the romatic love part of things. Somehow that's where my mind is about relationships and naturally gravitates there.

Anyway, I'm trying to be a friend to Pks. and give her the support she needs. She's going through a difficult time and I went through the same thing. It hurts and it's frustrating. I need to give things time and let them work out. It sucks though b/c I get impatient.

Shawn & Melisha said I need to learn to be patient and that I kept trying to force things. That I needed to let God work things out in his time. I said he needed to hurry up. I said I was getting tired of swimming. We all laughed. Of course I also had to give Melisha the update of my love life upto this point b/c she kept stopping and asking, Who's D? Who's T? Who's H? Who's Pks? Who's B? Shawn hadn't been keeping her up-to-date on anything in my going's on's. We had a great time talking they are a great couple. It was also the first time I'd spent any real time with Melisha. She's an awesome counterpart to Shawn. I hope that my next marriage is to someone who complements me so wonderfully.

Today wasn't the greatest day ever....

2005-08-07T00:03:00.000-04:00

a long time ago a friend told me I needed to protect my heart. I didn't then know quite what she meant by that, but I thought I did. This week I had been seeing a lady who had recently separated from her husband. To say I really liked her, is an understatement. We went out Friday night and had a blast. It was wonderful to hold her close and enjoy her company. Saturday morning we got together and talked, and she was torn, feeling that she really needed to give her husband the chance to work on their marriage or there was me. One of the things I really love about her character is that she is very compassionate. She's worried about him b/c it's in her nature to worry about ppl. That was one of the things I really liked about her. So we talked and I said that if she felt she needed to give him that chance then that was what she needed to do. I don't want her worrying about both him and me. We talked more and she left...

Several text messages later we were talking on the phone. I really let loose with what I was feeling and the dreams I built up that were no longer in the future. I realize that I'd let myself fall in LUV (with script Letters and cherubs) b/c of all the things I liked so much about her. I really opened up a place in my heart for her. The hardest part for me was realizing that I'd wanted to give her a key to my place, that it wasn't needed, that she wouldn't be over again and that it was like shutting a door instead of opening it. I told her not to worry and that I'd be ok.... and I will be.

I moped around and ate a pizza, talked with my sisters, napped for a little bit, long enough to roll over on my glasses and bend the crap out of them. Showered, picked up some dog food for one sister and some cigars for me and then off to dinner with my sisters.

I gave a synopsis of things since last Fri to sister #2 (Who asked if I'd set a new record for date then break-up time), and then again to sister #4, and then my older sister walked up, sat down, looked at me, and asked "What's wrong?" I broke down and couldn't really talk. We went outside to a patio area and talked for a while. It really helped to talk about it. I didn't realize how upset I really was about it. I know I'll be ok, and I do want her to be happy. And while I don't want her marriage broken up when It could be saved, I selfishly want her with me. I really hope things turn out the best possible way for her so she is happy for many years to come.

Got a new little friend today....

2005-08-04T07:33:00.000-04:00

This morning while shaving and looking in the mirror I noticed a little white hair mixed in the rest of them on top on my head. I laughed because most of these gray/white hairs that have pop'ed up before now are wiry and can't be combed straight. They are aberations caused by stress and my body getting overworked about something. This one though looked like my normal hairs, just white. He apparently moved in overnight when I wasn't looking and has settled in to be there a while. So I laughed and combed him in with the rest of them before moving on with my day.

I had fun talking with Patti last night on AIM. I used her student info to order some software cheap. Considering the regular price is $949 and the academic price I paid was $254 (with overnight shipping) I think it was the thing to do. We also talked about this weekend and hanging out with the crew. I've got some other things in process for this weekend too. I might have to work, I know I'm going to do some side work for Pooks. There's also some other things I'd like to do but might not get too. Of course I need to clean... again...

--slackv

Put on your scuba gear we're going deep...

2005-08-02T23:16:00.000-04:00

I watched a movie tonight called "AppleSeed". It is an anime about the future where, humans and geneticly engineered humans (called Bioroids) are trying to live together. But b/c the bioroids are much better and faster than the normal humans, the humans put limitations on them. The bioroids have limited emotions, no anger or fear and they can not kill each other. They also can not feel love. The bioroids have a short life span and must constantly be regenerated or they will die of old age within 24hrs. They can not sexually reproduce, they are grown in a lab, but come to maturity in normal families. In the end some bioroids were trying wipe out the humans and humans were trying wipe out the bioroids and some bioroids and humans were in the middle trying to prevent the two sides from killing everyone out. At one point in the movie a bioroid, Hitomi, says to Deunu, a human, that she envy's humans for being able to feel love. Deunu was in love with a man whose body had been destroyed but was kept alive in a mechanical shell.

I've seen other variations on this story. The most famous is probably the movie "Blade Runner". In it Harrison Ford plays a detective, Lt. Dekard, hunting down a group of geneticly engineered humans called Replicants. They have the emotions of children and only live to be 4yrs old before dying. The replicants in Blade Runner are fighting to come home b/c they hope their maker will be able to give them life... a longer life, a life that will not be lost, "like tears in the rain". Lt. Dekard comes into contact with a new replicant, Racheal, who was given implanted memories to make it seem like it had a life, to make it believe that it had lived longer than a few months. There is a part in the movie where Lt. Dekard forces himself on Racheal, it's not pretty but with it comes the understanding the neither of them knows what love is. They can feel the passion and clumsily and childishly act on it, but the love isn't there yet, although it does grow. In one version of the movie (there are actually three out there) Lt. Dekard and Racheal fly away into the mountains b/c she is hunted as a replicant. They flee seeking a new life together but she might not live for four years.

I like the beach. Small shift in tone there, but I like the beach. The smell of the salt air, the sound of the ocean, the seagulls crying in the wind. It's one of those things that I remember from my childhood that's a "good place" for me. It's a place where I have good memories of times with my family and of playing in the surf. It's a place where I want to take my family when I have one. It's one of those things where I can show someone the place and it won't have the same meaning to them, but I want to show them anyway b/c it's special to me. Of course maybe I'm putting too much emphasis on a place. Beaches errode, dunes blow away and the surf dies down, but it's still a place I'd love to share with someone special.

That's all, back up to the top. Up, up, up! Breath normally, we're safe and outside of slackv's emotional land again.

--slackv

I need a Monday to recover from my weekend...

2005-07-31T21:26:00.000-04:00

Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. That's my back complaining to me on early monday moning. It's early Monday b/c I didn't sleep well so I came into work extremely early. Now I'm ready to go home again. Everything starts back on Friday night....

Idzeeboo's band, Take Five was playing at Cheers, sounded good. They were testing out new equipment for sound. I stayed until a little after midnight when I went for coffee with a friend. We chatted and talked until around 2:30am. I was dead tired driving home but felt really good after our talk. A lot of things were cleared up and it made us both feel better.

H0me to bed and up by 10:30am. Shower and shave and got ready for the wedding. It started at 1pm so I left early figuring it would give me time to socialize before hand. I hopped in my car and started on the Interstate north. AFter a few miles everything kinda ground downn to a pretty much halt. The clock slowly crept past 1pm while I was sitting in traffic. Finally I got to an exit where I kinda knew my way around. I drove around detours and ended up back on the interstate but past the problem... some government agency had decided to use this weekend to shutdown 5 of 6 lanes of traffic on the North bound side of I95. Suxors. I made it to the wedding just before 2pmn and they had only just finished seating the guests and done the mother's intro.... I'm glad I was late.

The wedding was awesome. Shawn looked handsome and Melisha looked gorgeous in her gown. They are both Pentecostal and so the wedding was very lively with a lot of audience participation. The minister kept things moving and gave a running color commentary the entire time. I had a blast. The cutest thing they had that I hadn't seen before was a cute little girl with a silver bell. She came up the center isle ringing the bell and yelling, as loud as a four year old can yell, "The Bride is Coming! The Bride is Coming!" It was really a nice touch that I'd never seen before. I want that in my wedding. The wedding ended successfully, Shawn was all smiles and Melisha was crying and I was all crying too... ok yeah I get all choked up at weddings, what can I say, I'm a sensative guy. :-)

The reception was 2hrs after the end of the wedding so I trucked to mom & dad's and picked up my digital camera. We talked about a lot of things while waiting for the reception. Mostly concerning relationship stuff and moving the pool. Dad was trying to move the pool but he said could take care of it. (more on that later)

The reception was a blast and now equipped with a camera I got pictures of the Happy Couple and one of me and Shawn. They had a gorgeous cake and tons of food. One of the cool things about Shawn and Melisha is that they made a commitment to each other to be celibate until marriage. So in their minds anything that could lead to foreplay was foreplay, so the barely hugged, didn't really touch and never kissed until the first one at the alter. The second one was during their first dance. Everyone knew about their commitment and was really proud of them for it and so when they started to kiss deep soulful moving kisses everyone was cheering and hollering and clapping and carrying on like it was the biggest thing in the world. It was amazing and beautiful. I cheered like a madman with everyone else.

A couple of strange things at the wedding too. A few ppl there knew me from work... so when the mother of the bride walked up and said, "You must be The Donald". I was like "Ummm... Yes" I don't know how she knew it, or the five other ppl I've never met either knew it, but I was, "The Donald" and everyone had heard all about me... hmmm.....

The other thing I saw a girl I knew from work and I came over to here to say Hi, and she saw me as I sat down and said, "Shawn told me to read your blog, b/c I was going to start one and so I just started reading.... and I read everything..." and then she give me this look like she knows my ass is going straight to Hell for something I wrote in my blog.... oops...

I had a good time at the reception but I was kind of uncomfortable b/c I really didn't know anyone there. I used my camera as a good way to hide in plain sight. No one cares when you're carrying around a camera taking pictures. I wish I'd managed to get someone to go along with me. My one alternate I just couldn't ask b/c it would have been too uncomfortable for her. The other one didn't get my message until and hour after the reception had started... sigh...

Home after the wedding, got naked and fell right asleep, it was only 9:30pm but I crashed hard. The emotional relationship rollercoaster was getting to me and it had just been a long day.

I went to church in the morning. I knew it was time to go back b/c i was having to much crap pile up on me and I needed something in my life that kept my mine above it all. Plus I haven't been in 3 months so I was kinda pissed at myself for chickening out for several weekends in a row. It was a fairly conservative but active Episcopal Church. I enjoyed the service and the people seemed really friendly. I didn't stay for post-church foodage b/c dad needed help with the pool.

He had called in the morning saying that he'd been wrong yesterday and he still needed help moving a lot of dirt. I didn't call him until after I'd had my starbucks and so after church i ran home changed and came back out to dad&moms and shoveled dirt for three hours... so today I'm like ow ow ow ow.... :-) Between my back and worring about the people I care for I didn't sleep well at all last night... so this morning I'm feeling pretty crunchy... I need another weekend to recover :-)

More coming soon....

2005-07-31T12:27:00.000-04:00

I hate to say it but a long post is coming soon. I've gotta run and help dad move mud for now though.

Off to the Wedding!

2005-07-30T12:09:00.000-04:00

Shawn and Melisha are getting married and I'm gonna be there! I'm very happy for them and am totally going to enjoy the service and the reception!

Fri. night was also Idzeeboo's band playing at Cheers in OP. I went and had a blast and had a good talk with a friend over coffee afterwards. It helped us both.

I don't know about you....

2005-07-28T11:31:00.000-04:00

But I'm really ready for lunch!

Long night...

2005-07-27T08:20:00.000-04:00

Talked with B. last night for a long time. She was down about work, it's turned into a crappy job for her. We also talked about relationship stuff. We're talking about getting together for a weekend sometime in the future. We'll see how things go from there.

I got to see R. this morning. That was pretty cool. I didn't realize that she worked at the starbucks on the way to work. We chatted a little, she was upset b/c no-one let her know that Patti was coming into town this past weekend. But I told her about Patti coming back up soon and so maybe she'll do the beach thing with us. J. had said before that I should date her, but I don't know about that. It'd be weird b/c she's like 8 yrs younger than me and I remember her when she was 4. I'm getting weird flashbacks of the movie I saw on PBS, the "Picture of Dorian Gray". This guy never ages, but his portrait does, and he ends up marrying his grand-neice or something like that. Yeah I'm gonna try and get these images out of my head now. :-)

I had a triple venti mocha at starbucks that i purchased from R. I needed it b/c I wanted to take some ibuprophen. I woke up with bad back pain this morning and my back seemed to be doing this weird twitching thing it's never done before. It might be b/c i'm trying to learn to keep good posture at work by sitting up straight and not hunching over. My Ex-wife used to do that and said she had a computer hump from huntching over so much... i don't want that so, upright i try to sit.

--slackv

On a pretty funny note, Check out StarWars Part 3 From English to Chinese and back to English.... http://americaninlebanon.blogspot.com/2005/07/backstroke-of-west.html

In New Blog News....

2005-07-26T08:51:00.000-04:00

My two younger sisters have blogs now too...

Eve's is at: http://eveyq.blogspot.com/

and

Patti's is at: http://www.holerabbit.blogspot.com/

Mom doesn't want one. I can't blame her too much. :-)

They just don't fit....

2005-07-26T08:20:00.000-04:00

Ever have one of those days where the clothes you are wearing are like too tight or too baggy or just feel strange. I'm having one of those days. Ick. I think part of it is the hot, sticky weather. It makes my skin feel funny and makes any clothing just icky with the humidity.

crawly bugs crawling over me

I've been doing it wrong for a while....

2005-07-25T08:52:00.000-04:00

http://pixelscribbles.com/journal/2005/07/sushi-snobs.html

I'm feeling much better today than yesterday too. P. found that out first hand when I told I couldn't be her friend anymore since she was a commie mac user. Don't worry everyone, I'd still be her friend if she were a commie... don't know about the mac user part though. ;-)

Saturday crash and burn and slow recovery Sunday...

2005-07-24T14:01:00.000-04:00

It's been a longer than usual week. I haven't blogged about a bunch of it b/c of some of the parties involved. Anyway by the end of the week I was running on empty I just wanted to go home and keel over for the weekend. I've been spending time trying to help a couple of ppl with some personal issues... and I'm involved in both cases so that's been stressful and somewhat troublesome. Shawn's wedding is coming up this weekend and I'm excited for him but being single and going to a wedding is slightly annoying. At work this week the other guy I work with has been out so I've been handling a bunch of work. It's been very active which has been good, but accentuates the fact that in my eyes we probably need one more Unix Admin. And some ppl that have annoyed idzeebo b/c they're lazy and don't have enough to day, and they were at it again stirring the pot causing trouble where none existed. Just a long week.

So on Saturday I got to help Dad with his web and book stuff from 8am to 2pm and by the end of it I was grumpy and tired and sick of computers. Somedays I just don't want to touch them. So I wasn't to pleasent by the time i left. Went home had lunch and napped and played video games (mindless) talked with some ppl and then fell asleep for 4 hours. I just crashed and I needed it. I got up and had dinner and i was up for a while before crashing again. I had several bad dreams and I forced myself awake and played games some more not wanting to sleep and having had too much sleep. So this morning I was awake but not very active. I didn't get to spend much time with patricia. She's gotten into ebay selling to make money on the side so I'm gonna let her sell a bunch of my computer stuff b/c I don't want it anymore and it's junk. I know it'll help her get through college too.

Anyway I'm at work now but about to leave, having to make up time. I talked with B. again today and invited her to Shawn's wedding but she's not going to make it. On a good note, B1(a different B entirely) and Patricia will be coming up again on the 6th, so I'm thinking of doing a last weekend before school trip out the the beach with them. It would be fun and I haven't been to the beach much at all this year.

--slackv.
Listening to "Could you be Loved" by Bob Marley,

From Pookie....

2005-07-21T09:56:00.000-04:00

I got this via email and decided to post it here. I'm skipping the whole forwarding it to millions of my friends part though, not that I don't have millions of friends, or just a whole bunch, or maybe three.... :-)

1. What is your occupation? Linux/Unix Admin

2. What are you listening to right now? 80's music from the iPod

3. What was the last thing you ate? Sausage Egg & Cheese McMuffin

4. Do you wish on stars? Of course, although I think I hit a planet occasionally

5. If you were a crayon, what color would you be? midnight blue

6. How is the weather right now? >Hot & muggy

7. Last person you spoke to on the phone? Dad

8. How old are you today? 32

9. Favorite drink? Sweet Tea

10. Favorite sport to watch? Football, although I don't really watch it.

11. Have you ever dyed your hair? Nope

12. Do you wear contacts? Nope, I prefer my glasses.

13. Pets? 3 cats, 2 adult and 1 kitten

14. Favorite months? November - March

15. What inspires you? Family, Friends, movies, God, nagging guilt about whatever

16. What is the last movie you watched? Star Wars Ep 3

17. Favorite day of the year? Easter or Christmas

18. What do you do to vent anger? I internalize it into a little ball :-) not really, i try to talk things out before I get angry.

19. What was your favorite toy as a child? A funky rubber monster guy with suction cups all over (still have him), Lincoln Logs, Lego's later on... still have the lego's too

20. Fall or spring? Spring

21. Hugs or kisses? Kisses

22. Cherry or blueberry? Cherry

23. Do you want your friends to mail you back? Doesn't really apply since it's on a blog...

24. Who is most likely to respond? Don't know.

25. Who is least likely to respond?

26. When was the last time you cried? No Comment

27. What is on the floor in your closet? A couple of shirts, ties, a suitcase, and lots of cat hair.

28. Who is the friend you've had the longest?

29. What did you do last night? Worked on Dad's website, book and computer, talked with B briefly, and slept.

30. Favorite smell? the salty breeze coming off the ocean on a bright sunny day.

31. What are you afraid of? Lots of stupid childish fears, but really standing before God at the end of time and having not done something he needed me too.

32. Plain, cheese, or spicy hamburgers? Hmmm... Spicy, how though? I make mine with worcheshire sauce so they are tangy but not spicy...

33. Favorite Car? One that goes and has AC

34. Favorite dog breed? English Mastiff, but have cats.

35. Number of keys on your key ring? I actually have three rings of keys joined together and each has two keys on it.

36. How many years at your current job? 1.5

37. Favorite day of the week? Friday

38. How many states have you lived in? 1 if measuring for longer than a year, 3 if for several months

39. How many cities\Towns have you lived in? 4 G'ville FL, Jax FL, Los Alamos NM, Raleigh NC.

That's it my Yo's! (Listening to Humpty Dance, Do the Humpty Hump!)

Prime numbers, Headaches & updates for Dad.

2005-07-21T08:35:00.000-04:00

Prime number site is up. Yes it's kinda slow to pull a prime out of the database. The SQL Select statement is ok, but it uses a random offset each time and so it makes it harder for the DB itself to do optimization. So now, right when you need it you can get a random prime number. :-)

It's morning again and I've got a headache... I think I need some coffee. I was kinda dizzy again this morning and I forgot my cellphone at home, but I'm not worried about it b/c I didn't actually talk with anyone on it yesterday. There was a lady that I used to work with that always told me I should get one, have a low usage plan and then get a high-usage plan once I got a girlfriend. B/c then I would be talking with her on the phone all the time. It hasn't quite happened that way. I've got the high-usage phone and have had it for a while, but not the girlfriend.

I spent last night working on Dad's computer and web site. I tried to upgrade his RAM but I didn't have the right kind handy. That sucked. But we updated his blog with lots of cool stuff, new footers for posts, and changed the link colors. It was cool b/c I was able to get a better idea of things to do with CSS that I hadn't seen before. Like I didn't know you could use it to specify the hover-over color of a hyperlink. That's cool. I wonder if there's a way to make it randomly change.... :-)

Ahh have my coffee now, feeling better too. I think I should clean my coffee cup though, usually I just wipe it out every once in a while with a paper towel. That gets most of the goop out, but it hasn't been properly washed in several months. Some people claim that that makes the coffee taste better though. :-)

Imagine an Infinite number of cats Mr. Mao...

2005-07-19T09:15:00.000-04:00

I usually don't post to many links to things, but I thought this one was cool and close to my heart as a cat lover. :-) http://www.infinitecat.com/

And!!! My domain registrar, (the place where you get domains like www.imurmomma.com or www.whoseyourdaddy.com) www.joker.com is now selling ".cn" top level domains. The .cn is the country code for China! www.ImMaosLittleRedFriend.cn is coming soon to an Internet near you!

something about friends...

2005-07-19T08:29:00.000-04:00

I was talking with someone a couple of days ago and I got to thinking about friends. If we've come around to the same place over and over again and then we tell our friends about it each time, can they really give advice or will it just be the same thing as last time, and if you didn't listen the first time, will you listen now? Of course I wasn't being the friend b/c I was letting my mind wander...

Got a meeting this morning.

I'm extremely tired even though I went to bed at 11pm... well that's when I started but I was down by 11:30 and back up by 12:15 and finally back to bed by 1230 and asleep by 1245. Of course it would help If i bothered to drink the coffee I'd brought from home. I got some decaf while at the store last night, it was great to be able to drink coffee in the evening and not worry about being up until all hours...

Today I'm probably gonna end up in the server room for a large part of the day. I finally got the prime number database server put together last night while talk with ppl around the world. :-) Tonight I'll actually get to turn it on and make sure it's all working. W00T!

Oh and I got pissed this morning about something stupid. I'd setup web space and purchased a domain for my last church and got them all setup to use it. Then ppl let it slide and internal politics caused them to start using something else. That really ticked me off b/c of all the work that I'd put into the system. I nicely setup a redirect so the old web address went to the new one instead. Anyway, I got an email this morning saying that they were switching email over to the new names. That was the thing that ticked me off. I'd spent a long time getting it working for them the old way before it was just ignored. I considered redirecting the old webaddress to a p0rn site... but figured it probably wasn't the nicest thing to do... I was just letting my pride get the better of me. I still own the webspace and the old domain name so I just get to come up with something to use them for. :-D

Crap.

2005-07-17T20:27:00.000-04:00

I just washed my wallet and pretty much killed most of the things inside it.

I finished HP book 6. Good.

I'm really tired and would love a backrub from a nice woman right now.

I'm still doing laundry.

About to go shopping...

2005-07-16T10:56:00.000-04:00

Not much to report for today so far, shawn canceled swimming b/c he had to go take care of wedding stuff. I lounged around in the pool a little while talking with him on the phone. It felt very Hollywood, to be lounging in the pool while talking with him on the phone. Eve's Library is opening today so she's really happy and very busy. I was hoping to go but I'm gonna end up being busy with getting ready for the party. Yeah, we're having a unified birthday party b/c we had several birthdays in a row. We're just all celebrating them together. B. couldn't make it this time which is sad b/c I was really hoping to introduce her to everyone. Dad said no gifts, but I ignored him. :-) Although, I don't think these will count as gifts... ;-) I'm getting stuff to do shrimp kabobs. Mmmmm, I think they'll be really tasty.

I love throwing parties. I can't wait until I've got my own back yard to host them in. So anyway I've gotta run to the store to pick up tons of junk for the party and maybe even the new Harry Potter book.

I think after the party I want to finish setting up my fileserver. I've got my database of the first few million prime numbers there and I need to get it back online so I can keep writing my clients to keep updating it... and if that's not the geekiest thing I've said on this blog yet I don't know what is. :-)

The first thing I remember....

2005-07-15T11:53:00.000-04:00

I know what my first memory is. Or Maybe it's just the first memory I can remember. There's plenty of stuff I'd like to forget.

We drove down a long rode in Dress-up clothes b/c we were going to a funeral. The road went up and down through many long valleys. North Central Florida has those from where the land was underwater at some point in time. I remember getting to the church and seeing a group of three black guys working on the old clay water pipes of the church. I thought it was fascinating and I wanted to play with those guys b/c they were doing something cool. They were playing in the mud, They were fixing something, and, most cool of all, they showed me that underneath the ground were pipes that did things. I didn't get to stay and play with the workmen. I faintly remember the worn leathered face of the lady who had died, Dad said once it was Great Aunt Somebody. After we left I looked at where the workmen had been and there was a patch of mud where they had fixed the pipes and covered them back up again. I knew that underneath the mud, that would later dry up to dirt and cover over with grass, were the pipes carrying water to people and that there workmen to fix them when they broke.

--slackv

ps. Two ppl forgot my birthday yesterday.

Someone's A year Older today...

2005-07-14T06:24:00.000-04:00

As always, I was an early riser at 6:43am. My hair will still stick up in the middle like that too. 31 was kind of a weird year, hopefully 32 will be a little less strange.

--slackv