Why is the sea of troubles never ending?

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.--Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.

-- The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Act III, Scene I, William Shakespeare.

Hmm, different problems, (surely different ends), but still.. a "sea of troubles" without an end in sight.

Who builds these things !?

Well, I finally had it with the sound popping in/out so I decided to crack open my case, yank and reinsert the card. Sure enough it was loose.


I blew the dust off the Audigy 4's board and set it aside when I noticed the air-duct like thing sucking air in and across the mother board was dusty.


I finally removed the masking tape that whoever assembled the bloody thing used to keep the line going from the PSU to the SATA drive used to glue the cable between the duct and the CPU's heat sink (_don't_ ask). I pulled off the ducting and looked at the fan blades, never been dusted.


Tried to unplug the fan so I could set it aside for cleaning but it proved, shall we say less then worth it. Blew out as much dust as I could from the venting and the CPU's heatsink. Which on the air-ward side was starting to look like cobwebs :\

The fan is mounted in the duct which is 'hung' on the side of the case... If it wasn't for the handle to pull it out, it would fall out if I put the case on it's port side. If the thing didn't get seated properly, it would be resting ontop of the hard drive mounting.. Honestly I don't know what people are thinking these days.


Still had more dust in the air-vents for the fan and I couldn't see to hang the duct right. So I noticed these few clips sticking out of the front-side. Pushed the in and pulled off the front plastic panel ('face') of the computer case.


Holy guacamole !!!!


It was so bad I fetched a face mask to keep the dust away from my nose and mouth, to bad I didn't have a pair of goggles to boot. Cleaned the entire computer throughly and hung the fan/duct. Using the air-vents to line up the placement. And then put the panel back on. I thought about popping the bezel setting with the card reader and inserting an old floppy drive because the case design would keep the dust from seeping inside.. But to insert the FDD I would have to remove my PSU and the CPU's heatsink which is not really worth bothering with lol. Managed to get the case put back together and wiped off the monitor, keyboard, and rat for good measure (y).


Computer cases are fairly simple but I'll never understand some of the things I've seen in pre-built computers... Who the hell puts tape less then half an inch over a heat sink which is there to help cool a really hot CPU, and it is like the BFG 9000 of heat sinks compared to Vectra's Katmai P3 500 lol.


Really I think if I ever had the opportunity to build my own case, I would do it. With the right tools and materials one could actually pull it off, might not look sexy but it sure as heck can't be any worse then the this Gateways case !!


Hmm, one of these days I really need to clean out the keyboard of my laptop but I'm not really interested in taking it apart right now. I wonder why, stripping down a computer always gives me strange ideas >_>

Managed to get done with work in half the time today, I don't mind getting home early !

Haven't managed tog et much coding done today though... Hopefully tonight, tomorrow, and the weekend :\


Took sometime to relax, fired up Halo: CE and finished off the game on Heoric. Came in at what was left of Captain Keys as the shoot out was about to start. Not very hard, just move down the ramp to trip the area-triggers on the flood goons and back pedal off the dais and use the pillar at either corner for cover while doing some hit'n'fade and sharp shooting work.

Blew away the flood 2 or 3 at a time with my Assault Rifle and Shotgun then reloaded on my (very low) supply of grenades and ammunition from the corpses. Since several previous attempts told me there would be a covenant attack squad full of elites and grunts including fual rod guns. I stock pillied weapons near the corner, (ab)using the weapon swap to prep my fall back point. I setup a plasma rifle and pistol in the strong corner and left my assault rifle and a plasma pistol on the opposite side from the covenant door. Then loaded off my shotty and picked up a needler for some long-range work.


I figured, if I couldn't take out the attack squad when I went for the door -- lobbing grenades into there midst while letting rip at survivors with a needle gun. I'd do a fall-back by suppressive shotgun fire to the pillar, fall back point (FB) one. If I got boxed out of there, I'd fling the empty needler, frag out and rush to the assault rifle over by FB two, a last stand and run for ye life moment.


Brains over brawn ;-)


So I went over to the door, tripped the auto-open and chucked in a few grenades as the grunts threw back, blew most of them up. Then applied needler fire to deal with the living critters and put some more grenades in. Took it easy and fetched full supplies hehe


Halo I think is very much a game where you need to learn when to stand and fight from a distance and when to kick down the door and storm the enemy position, if you want to survive. After 15+ years of gaming and thousands of hours in the shoot house with my teammates training room clearing in RvS & SWAT, it comes a bit easier tome then it used to.


After that, made it off the ship (while dodging endless streams of plasma grenades) and down to the pillar of autumn. Fighting through armies of Covenant and Flood, even going toe to toe with Hunters (up close and shotty). Blew the ships reactor and high tailed it out... Halo's ending really is a bit anti-climactic compared to the pump up to get through the end game lol.

Game felt much shorter and much easier this time around 0.o


One thing I like about Halo is the Elites are almost the Master Chiefs equal, on legendary if your not paying attention a single blue elite can kill you. Heroic, well is not that challenging imho but it gets the job done for R&R. I find the best way of dealing with Elites is to use the range advantage -- and hit there shields with accuracy. The 12.7mm pistol and covenant plasma rifle work best, but the needler also works great in open ground. And you can always use your own movements and grenade tosses to control the AI's movement patterns, Halos AI ain't that bad for the Elites (although the rest suck) but they don't do long range work well and like any half realistically intelligent creature of an AI, they know RUN FOR COVER. Which makes grenades great for flushing out elites and forcing them to move towards ground more favorable for you to pick them off.


I also like going "up close and personal" in situations where I can use mobility to close and avoid more hits while finishing them off. During the control room missions I did that a lot, blast'em with the pistol then close in with the plasma rifle and rifle butt any slugs that got to close.


Halo is far from one of my 'preferred' styles of game but the single player makes good relaxing. Multilayer, I avoid though. Whenever I play Halo online I usually get owned for actually trying to capture the flag. Or I spend the round shooting the heck out of the other team like a crazed one-man-army and screaming at my stupid teammates for having the tactical ability of a slug, for camping our base instead of taking advantage of the perfect time to launch an attack !!!


Modern siege warfare favors the attacker in the long run.


Hmm, code time soon !

Oh... Fell asleep after dinner, woke uo around 2200 local and went to bed, just got up about 0100 local. Dang I needed that !!! I slept like a stone. I think an atom bomb could've gone off and I don't think I would've noticed :\


Ended up dreaming about being knee deep in World War II with a Thompson and a captured Lee Enfield, bit odd but.. Whatever. To being stuck in a bad bat man movie, to being stuck on a space station, to being in the middle of a F.E.A.R. part III about to happen, when I decided enough of this crud time to wake up >_>


That's one thing that's kind of strange, I usually know that I'm dreaming when I dream, maybe because my dreams are almost always crazy. And when they are not, usually startle me in different ways...


I've basically been working since Saturday night straight, breaking to go to work, the bathroom, sleep, and eat lol. Haven't had much time for the usual forums lately ... so may as well take a moment to catch up now.


The advantage of all of this? It might be a bit of working oneself into the ground... But it's getting things done in a week rather then by next year lol. And if I get done early... I get to relax on the weekend hehe.

Ahh... Almost got everything done for the week.

I need to finish some adjustments to the test bed module and one library module to match changes made tonight and get things that are working back ported to the main. The test bed module will be a cakewalk to adjust, probably will have that done tonight.


I'm itching to move onto my next primary objective... But it will have to wait for another day :-(


With a wee bit of luck I should have all of my web matters done before Thursday, so I can kick back in TG#3 and PG#1 for a little R&R before moving onto 'off duty' week No.2 -> working on the SOP Rewrites.


You know, that is one good part about making like a workaholic with piled up stuff -- if you get done early, you get to do something else for awhile xD


/*
 * head hits keyboard, begins to snore loudly
 */

Days work and chuckles

Today has been a very productive day, probably because everyone else was either not home or sound asleep most of the day !^_^!


I've tested some major work on the site ACLs that's just been begging for doing, all looks good in the sandbox. So all I should have to do is get it transitioned to the production system and volla... We'll be ready to rock'it and roll. Then I can finish a few other modules that need work and get to work on the 'special project' hehe. Oh baby is this gonna be good when it gets deployed.


I've managed to get some rest at least, caught the end pf Aliens which is one of my favorite movies (y). A refreshing change, Robon Hood: Men in Tights started after it. That's a funny movie but not one I've seen on often this past decade.


I'm rather glad the special edition of Aliens has mostly become the normal cut on cable. I remember the first time I saw it, I was extremely pissed off at the hack job they had us all watching for years! I can understand having to trim things down, yeah. But there is some point where the time saved ain't quite as good as what your losing in the process :\


Robin, haha I haven't seen it from start to finish in ages. Like most movies related to Mel Brooks, it can't keep a straight face for more then 2 minutes ^_^.

The castle repo man, the rabbi (Brooks) with the drunk mule, the moron of a sheriff of Rottingham, the cook "Latrine" whose family changed the name from "Shithouse" lol The huge little john who starts drowning in a tiny puddle after a ridicules fight with Robin over the bridges toll ("it's the principal of it"), who would build a bridge over a puddle in the first place? Robin Hood losing the archery contest, "Whhat!? I'm not supposed to lose! ... checks script ... Wait, I get another shot !!!" rofl. And King Richard renaming all the toilets in the kingdom "Johns" after his brother, for defiling himself. And making him part of the tour after throwing Prince John in the tower of London 0.o


And not to forget the ending during the fight with Rottingham, the key that Robin inherited goes flying and lands right in Maid Marians chastity belt and he's like, "I knew it was the key to the greatest treasure in all the land!" and ir just keepa rolling from there lol, Down to the end scene with the wedding night after the credits.

[Rottingham slices off Robin's necklace, sending his key flying. The key falls into the lock of Marian's chastity belt]

Robin Hood: It is the key to the greatest treasure in all the land!

Maid Marian: This means you've always been my one true love because it's just the right size!

Sheriff of Rottingham: It's not the size that counts... It's how you use it!

[Robin and Marians wedding night]
Robin Hood: Umm... You're not going to believe this
Maid Marian: What?
Robin Hood: It won't open
Main Marian: WHAT !?
Robin Hood: Wait I have an idea, call a locksmith !!!
[voice echos outside] Call a locksmith

/* rolls on the floor laughing */

Writer's Block: For the Day Off...

If you've got Monday off, how are you spending it, and with whom?

Live Journals Writer's Block

With my computers, working on PHP, SQL, designing and testing libraries, website systems, and various pages.


I'd rather be... uhh, well thinking about that ain't gonna get this done any easier ^_^



It would be a good time though hehe.

Oy...


Was to tired to get back to work on the website last night. Went straight to bed but willow wouldn't let me sleep, as usual.

My original plan was to lay down for a few and theng et back to work, so much for that idea +S


I've gotten most of the coding end done, just need to setup the test case for the database, proof the changes and get it scripted and transfered after hours.


Now if my sound would stop shorting out... The F'ing wintel machine is the only PC here that has problems with damn near everything :\. I've changed headphones to the best pair I have left, and it's still screwing up so that means it's not the headphones >_>

Norton to the rescue? Wow it actually did something useful

Hmm, for the first time in my life I'm actually glad that my Mom runs Norton on her PC.


She got an e-mail from the bank warning about repeating login failures on the account and that it was going to be suspended for T time unless she updated the account. I think that would have my heads anti-fraud warning bell ringing on it's own right but hey, I'm paranoid at heart >_>


The message had a dead give away (for me) that someone might be trying to fake it, you probably would have to be familiar with building such things or just a heavy web surfer to spot that one though. When she clicked it it redirected her to a fake page to login which Norton shouted FRAUD before harm could be done.


The address was an obvious fake once you see the real URL, but how many causal users even look at that I wonder? So maybe despite it's annoyance to people like me and those that just want to get stuff done, useful for watching over the uneducated.


She's currently going through a spell of FUD over security but I'm familiar enough with the possibilities and they ain't that bad thanks to Norton. The next best thing to actually educating users -- babysit with resource hogs :\


Now if only it could do something about her (greater then mine) paranoia, so I could get back to rewriting code lol.


Oh wells.

overstocked and under budget, yippie ki-ay!

Executed the clothes shopping raid today, took longer then planned :-( but I got everything that I wanted (according to plan), got more of it, and while my original budget was $150 I spent a little more then $120 xD

*does the victory dance*

4 jeans, 14 briefs, 8 pocketed T-Shirts, and I hate socks enough to start with that the ones i have can stay lol.

Ripped apart the closet, unscrupulously chucking everything that I ain't gonna wear, don't want, or can't fit in anymore. 7 bags are piled up +S, for donation or trashing it's outgoing and good riddens !!!!


Also got some Trident gum which is worth while IMHO. Glad that the clothes shopping is over and done with... Next phase is to have an oder placed for that Sennheiser headset -- it'll be nice to be able to talka gain on TeamSpeak.


Since I was under budget I split the remainder and gave part of it to Ma to add to the LORD's money, and refused to take no for an answer. My Grandmother always used to keep a $100 tucked away in a clip in case of emegency. And she always would end up giving it to my mom whenever things were bad, it's her goal to someday replace it. It's been over a decade since my Grandmother passed on but I'm not sure if she's ever totally replaced it, every time it's gotten close we've always had a financial kidney-punch :\. With luck in a month or two it should be at the mark.


The LORD's been good to me, much better then I deserve... Despite what issues I have with my life, it's the closest I'm likely to get to tithing with the money I have.


I've also posted my 'two weeks off' on [SAS]. I figure one week to concentrate on the website, one week to concentrate on the SOP rewrites.


There is really nothing of great importance to get done with the website, anything important is already taken care of :-).The stuff I need to get done, is more the sort of it's better that it gets done but it won't kill anyone if it don't get done, assuming someone remembers why it works as it does in 20 years lol. I could swear... Wiz and I are probably the greatest two morons at this stuff when compared to our predecessors (professional) educations at it. But at least we are trying to make things better, not leave a pile of kludges behind for the next poor sap.


Wiz's great thing was securing the website, thanks to him it's locked up tighter then a ticks ass after an all you can eat special. For me the big thing, really is leaving it better then how I found it... I'm self educated but I'm still a programmer, and I'm a lover for engineering and designing things at heart. Some of the things I see make my head hurt, it works but it's like... If your going to do it, do it right for Pete's sake.


One thing that I really like about my duties as Warrant Officer Class 1 on the team. Is although I'm more busy then I was as an RSM + Associate Webmaster, as WO1+Webmaster I'm able to work on things that people don't see. I like that, most of the things I do, no one will ever get to see or know about and if they did, I'd probably have fsck'd it up anyhow. I like being able to work in the background, take care of the unseen ins and outs of keeping the clocks running. But I know, when I'm done... Whoever becomes webmaster after me (I'm not immortal) will hopefully have a well done and easy to maintain website. None of the things Wiz faced when he wound up in the boots, and none of the cruft I've got to deal with along with the rest of the Admin Team.


Operation Excalibur will never be what I originally dreamed it to be, but by George it is gonna be completed !


With the SOP rewrites, a lot of it is done.. But it needs to get the finalization work done,hammer it home so GCHQ can review it, hopefully approve it without shouting, and the SNCOs can train the NCOs to train the Trps/Rcts and life can continue. The SOP rewrites have been like my careers work in [SAS], I've tinkered with it since I was a humble LCpl... Tried to make a strong effort at it as an SSM when I was now officially allowed to help out with it. And eventually found myself as the only asshole able to oversee it and being RSM, responsible for it getting done.


It's my goal to do my best to give my team the best set of SOPs that us guys can create... If I was the only writer the SOP Rewrites would've been done a year ago but with Rasa's help these are going to be even better. It's great that when one of us gets to far out of whack, the other knows how to deal with it lol.


Being the coder of the lot, I'm doing every thing I can to leave the SOPs in a state where it won't become what my generation grew up with. Stale, out dated, insufficient, and nearly impossible to modify... However good they are that's how I feel the old SOPs have scaled with the years. That's what I fight to prevent happening again, you could say I find it comforting to know that half the clan could be hit by a shooting star and our groups tactical heritage will continue on to the younger generations.

And why do I feel so damn old, I'm only going to be 20 in June !!!

Writer's Block: Lame jobs

What's the worst job you've ever had?

Live Journals Writer's Block

The

worst

job I have ever had...


Without a single doubt that is definitely one of our old clients. We used to work there every Thursday, boss one of the kind it don't matter if the worlds coming to end your still wanted to come kind of jobs. Also the kind if the phone rings in the morning, you pray it means you don't have to show up !!!


The mother had energy problems so she never cleaned anything, with that house who wouldn't have energy problems (no offense meant). The youngest daughter ADHD, although it's classified as an attention span disorder... The way that kid was, I called her HDD -- Hyper Destructive Disorder, I never noticed an signs of ADHD, just that she practically demolished the place lol. The elder daughter was going to and from collage and planning a wedding... So she was in the boat, trash it but don't leave it better then it was found 8=)


To top it off, they had like 6 dogs and two floors. Oh my word was that house a nightmare...

Every week there would be garbage piled everywhere, leftover food, dishes, snacks, homework, dog wastes, clothes, everything plus infinity composited into one massive mess and us two stooges (workin' cheap) had to pick it all up, no one in the house ever lifted a bloody finger :\ (can you say taken advantage of). Just bending over half way would get my nose running and sneezing from proximity to the hardwood floor, what was _left_ of it that is. With my allergies I usually travel 'fully loaded' with a paper towel in each pocket but it wasn't enough for over there.


I don't mean no disrespect and have nothing against them (nice family) but, holy guacamole ! If they ever tried to sell that house, no one on earth would buy the place. The family would have to burn the house down, fumigate the ashes, then drop a tactical nuke on the vacant lot before rebuilding... It really was that bad man, like if you had to sit on the floor to do something, you'd want to disinfect your ass on the way out kind of nasty.


Needless to say, when the client couldn't afford us any longer...

when I heard we were being let go

,

IT WAS THE HAPPIEST DAY OF MY LIFE THUS FAR !!!!

I've had to do lots of crap over the years but there are only two jobs that I've ever regretted having to do. To me work is work, that's it -- you get your fat ass out of bed and go to work, even if... You'd rather be anyplace but >_>. That was the dirtiest, most stressful, most exhausting job I've ever had to live with and I'm glad it's gone.


This reminds me of a scene in Wild Hogs when Martin Lawrence (a plumber) comments about wearing condoms on his shoes:

Tim Allen: Did you ever wake up one morning and wonder what happened to your life?

[John Travolta nods his head]

Tim Allen: You know, I thought my life would be an adventure. All of a sudden, I'm a suburban dentist.

Martin Lawrence: Look, Doug, I feel your pain, man. I mean I swore I would never return to a job where I had to where condoms on my shoes.

John Travolta: You're still at The Firm?

Martin Lawrence: Yea. I get yelled at by an ungrateful wife. I swear the whole thing has made me...

Tim Allen: ...a wimp.

Martin Lawrence: I was gonna say miserable.

Martin Lawrence: [pause] What? You think I'm a wimp?

Tim Allen: No, I thought you were gonna say wimp, so I'd thought I'd say it for you.

John Travolta: You're a wimp, Bobby. I'll say it. I mean you're afraid of women. It's kinda embarrassing.

William Macy: I'm afraid of women.

John Travolta: You're afraid to talk to women. Bobby's afraid they'll kill him in his sleep.

[Tim Allen and John Travolta laugh]

William Macy: Wow... now I'm really afraid of women.

Wild Hogs is a good movie (y), I liked the end scene though hehe... When they're riding and Macy ends up on the wrong side of the road, and he's like, "Yeah!" he had finally made it without crashing into something. And his friends are there, and then they look ahead, and oh shit! And crash while he's driving off chuckling. You could say that the Code Monkey had the last laugh xD

Breathin' in and out.

*sigh*


Life's really been quite a lot of just keep putting one foot in front of the other lately.

Most of my time spent workin' all day or slavin' over some project, and my nights login' for something more.


I'm currently sitting on about $300... My grandfather sent me money for my birthday early. I was a bit worried that he might've sent it because he could've thought he might not be here come June... But my aunt says he's doing pretty well now. To be honest, I'd rather have my Grandfather then the money.

All I've ever really wanted from him for my birthday is a birthday card, never have gotten one though... But as my mom says it's just not his way of doing things :\.


For me it's largely just another day, but I don't say that aloud because my father would say the same thing lol. I know I'm going to get stuck buying clothes and the sad thing is I agree, I need to lol. Most of my clothes are getting to be like rags between the holes, rips, and clorox stains between home and work wear & tear. You could say I'm a lot like my father, when I like my clothes I wear those and not much else, and I wear them until they fall apart. I remember my mother telling me that when he died, he held up a pair of his jeans and could see light shining through them, they were so thin ! And yes my shoes are usually splitting apart by the time I'll agree to buying new ones :-P


I've alloted a budget of $150 which is enough to replace everything I essentially wear and enough of it to last. Very hard for me to do it... Although I've never had a problem with spending inordinate amounts of money, I'm a very well thought out person when it comes to spending money, because I never have any to spend lol.

I know the value of a buck, and when they are rare you learn to spend it wisely 'cause if you don't, ya ain't gonna get another chance. If I ever had a real sum of money I think I would invest it, grow it so it could be used for some thing worth while someday. Hell, if you could save even $1 everyday, you could have over $3,600 in 10 years. in just over 40 years you'd have like $15,000. I'm not a big fan of spending money on myself, so it's probably good to be single atm.. Other wise I probably would be doubly broke lol.


I also utterly hate shopping, at least when oogling computer parts isn't involved that is >_<. I know exactly whats on the target list, and the raid will be conducted with brutal military efficiency ! Anyone planning on doing any 'one more thing' ing is gonna wind up in the dust rail hehe. Getting me to go shopping _willingly_ is a feat of it's own, let along to get me to waste time at it ^_^. One thing I do know, since 75-80% of my wardrobe isn't used, if I'm paying -> I'm chucking everything I don't want (give away, donate, or trash), along with the throwing out the 'rags' that I'm stuck doing away with hehe.


I'm also getting a new headset one way or the other... Don't know if I'll be able to order it off the web but I've got a nice pair of Sennheisen lined up with a mic. Last time I had to open Ghost a slot in PG#1, I needed to ask Big12 to come on TS to tell Ghost when the slot was opened for him... Because his laptop can't handle XFire and I can't talk over TeamSpeak with a Mic, and texting over TS doesn't help when the other parties full screen in Rvs lol.


I need to save a bit for school and I'm not sure how that is going to work out..., But having the funds stored will be helpful for it. Although I'd rather like to upgrade my laptops memory while I can it's not important.


512MB of PC2700 ain't terribly fast but it gets the job done. For $300 I could get a barebones kit and scrape together some parts from another PC and get a 5th machine running in this house but I don't really need another computer, for the cost of some PC2100 DDR and a Wireless card I could get a junked PC I've got here running anyway.



I once set aside a $100 to do some thing I've always wanted, make a donation to my clan... But family managed to bleed me dry before I could. Things are going well with [SAS] in that regard because of our members, one reason I've always wanted to donate is because I know whose asses the bills come out of at the end of the day. Because of my family, even if I did managed to succeed in it I wouldn't trust the USPS as much as Random to get it to the right place and that'd be my only option :|


So I guess that's out, I don't really care much for spending money on myself, aside from more computers that is >_> but as much as I really would like to take most of the $300 I've got and just

SAVE IT

for the future. I know if I don't spend it, I'll eventually spend it on my family eventually when they run short lol.


It don't 'pay' to be a nice guy you could say but, I'm who and what I am.

Oy vey

Well now I've bloody well seen it all.


test script locally -- works perfectly fine

test script on web server -- dies with syntax error.

One that everyone who checks the script seems to agree along with the interpreters syntax checking as well, that the script is perfectly valid.


Well, at least I know the bloody thing _works_ when it works lol.


The scripts a major improvement over the existing one but far from important... Just one of those leave it better for the next generation kinda rewrites (y).

Dune or not Dune? I'm not crazy !!!

Ok, this one really had me worried for a few moments lol.


Tonight we watched Dune on cable, missed like the first 15 minutes or so. The onlu thing is it was strange, not the Dune I remember. And I know that movie like the back of my hand! Sheese I can recite dialogs for korns sake.

First of all the narrations during the film were done by a female voice, I'd presume the emperors daughter (Princess Irulan) or one of Pauls offspring in the post film covered part of Dune. I remember it being that distinctive male voice narrating throughout, same guy that did the prologue telling the how in the universe did we get here story.


Second when they introduced the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen there was a scene where he rips the heart plug out of some guy in white cloths and kills him -- which I can not ever remember seeing before!


Third the scene when the Shadout Mapes brings the Fremen knife to the Lady Jessica was not there.


Forth the 'torture' scene when Feyd Rautha is cuttong off Duke Leto's air supply he think-says "I wish it was Paul Atreides".


Fith when they crash in the forbidden regions I don't remember Paul _ever_ placing a thumper, I only remember one placed by the Fremen which was the second thumper in the scene. I also don't remember Paul ever talking about the moving without a rhythm in order to keep from attracting the worms. Which was some thing that was very strongly noted in the book I might add.

Sixth the knife fight with the guy Paul is forced to duel after they fall in with the Fremen was gone.


Seventh the battle scenes when it shows them halting spice production on Arrakis was cut short.


Eighth the cable info said it was 140 minutes, running 2340-2400 local time but Dune is like a 3-hour movie (180min) without the commercials and roughly four hours with commercials.


I checked the VHS tape we have and proved that I'm not going crackers. The voice of the narrator was male throughout the entire VHS tape, the heart-plug part of the Barons intro was not in it. Feyd doesn't think that when torturing the Duke but instead picks on Yueh. And the first thumper was never, ever shown plus the attack on the spice mining was much longer. And both knife scenes mentioned before were in the VHS we have taped. The one that was on TV was most deffo a different cut then the one we've been watching for, like as long as I can remember us watching Dune lol.


I glad my memories are correct because if not, it would mean my head would have been seriously f***ed up. There is nothing to ensure my memories of things are never corrupt but I generally know how well I remember things and how poorly too. My memory is NOT photographic but especially when it comes to movies it is damn good at things. I can remember almost everything about films I've seen many times and even then my minds context-sensitive memory often has trigger-events about parts of films I don't know as well.


That's just the way my head works, when something sticks it sticks for a long time -- it's like a sponge.


I remember when I completed my Recruit Tryout in [SAS] I told Cpl Wiz that if necessary I could give them an accounting of the mission. I still remember most of my first Troopers Tryout to boot. Even when I play these days and we occasionally have those "What did we miss moments?" at the end of a mission: I'm usually the one to speak up, "We forgot that room in such and such area by the whatever".



When I go through the level of a game I generally form a mental image of it. When doing room clearing my mind links together every room and notes if it was cleared and how much. It's a lot like a Binary Search Tree but operated upon at the mental level.


I've got a really good sense of direction at least among my family... My brains good at a few things lol.

Them are fightin' results.

Someone asked me about my connection today so I ran a speed test. The results were a horrendous 200~220Kbps down/310~320Kbps up -- which is ridicules for an ADSL line, that is Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line which generally means (and in the past extremely so! with my ISP) much higher download rates then upload rates.



After closing all other internet aware applications (Pidgin, XFire, WMP plugin) and closing the several webpage tabs (GMail, Forums) I waited several minutes and reran the speed test:








This is crap, especially when you consider that for the strictly internet connection their going rate in this area is supposed to be $45/mo for more download then that and the upload rate compares to there top speed $65/mo service.


I pulled the plug on the modem and gave it half a minute before plugging the power back in. Ran a ping on the ISP's mail server to check when it came back online then ran another speed test. I usually ping google but I hate why use a decent services bandwidth when I can hit the mail.MyISP.net instead?









The results are now much better but still less then what they are supposed according to the 'minimal acceptable' download and upload rates they should be being paid to deliver. Going to have to have Ma float through the statement and look up exactly what we are paying for because this sure ain't it.




I also nearly died laughing when poking around there website and noting that part of there help-system and there 'connection optimizer' are Internet Explorer specific although the same website says that this ISP officially supports Windows NT, Mac OSX, IE5.5+, FF2+, Safari, and Netscape Communicator 4.x + which is an old dinosaur !!!



I don't know what is worse, an ISP that can't keep a stable connection (for the past several years), an ISP that can't even keep there standards straight, or an ISP that collects higher bills then quality services rendered.



Why do I have a strange urge to lubricate my modem?

Adding MySQL to my OpenBSD machine

My best friend while doing all of this was the MySQL Reference Manual :-).

The hard part was the fact that this and every thing else I want setup should have been done like 6 or 7 hours ago... But that's my family for ya....

Phase I: Install and Configure the MySQL database service:

My desktop has WAMP installed and a mother load of development tools, my PC-BSD
laptop has the most complete development environment I have access to, and is
where I do all of my real work ^_^.

In order to make some progress in a few bits of playful testing and work that I
do need to tinker with, I've elected to setup things on Vectra to avoid the more
transient nature of the Windows machine here...

This is the notes I've compiled during the process. Managing to sleep off the
headache and get this done before everyone else wakes up... Grr. The machines an
OpenBSD 4.3-Release system working off an old Pentium 3 500Mhz with 384MB of RAM
-- far from ideal for running MySQL but with just me to play with it, it's no
problemo.

ssh2v
 ...
su - root
Password:

pkg_add -iv mysql-server
less /usr/local/share/doc/mysql/README.OpenBSD # refer to the instructions
given

vi /etc/login.conf
 ... # let the login class for _mysql and rebuild the login database
cap_mkdb /etc/login.conf
/usr/local/bin/mysql_install_db
 ... # initialize the database files
vi /etc/rc.mysql
 ...  # quick script to launch mysql properly, listing 2A
vi /etc/rc.local
 ...  # start it during resource configuration, listing 2B
/etc/rc.mysql
/usr/local/bin/mysql_secure_installation
 ...  # secure the installation := -u root -p (pw=V1p3l2)
mysqladmin -u root -p status
 ...
mysql -u root -p -h localhost # set up our databases using the mysql client
Enter password: 
Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 18
Server version: 5.0.51a-log OpenBSD port: mysql-server-5.0.51a

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the buffer.

mysql> CREATE USER trowa IDENTIFIED BY '*********';                   
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.03 sec)

mysql> CREATE DATABASE SpidersWeb
    -> ;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.01 sec)

mysql> SHOW DATABASES;
+--------------------+
| Database           |
+--------------------+
| information_schema | 
| SpidersWeb         | 
| mysql              | 
+--------------------+
3 rows in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> GRANT ALTER, ALTER ROUTINE, CREATE, CREATE ROUTINE, DELETE, DROP,
    -> EXECUTE, INDEX, INSERT, LOCK TABLES, SELECT, CREATE VIEW, SHOW VIEW,
    -> UPDATE ON SpidersWeb.* TO 'trowa'@'%';
Query OK, 0 rows affected 
mysql> exit
Bye

That basically allows the database user to do just about everything to the
specified database from anywhere. I considered restricting access further but am
not in the mood to screw with changing it later should it become necessary (and
I hate setting up replacement routers, which happens every now and then).

Since every thing in the mysql client ends up in ~/.mysql_history, including the
password used in the CREATE USER statement. I am also rather glad that OpenBSD
keeps everyones nose out of /root by default, I plan on shredding the file:

rm -P /root/.mysql_history

for safety.

Phase II: Verify it works!

To make sure every thing works out properly enough (considering the current
local time!). I opened another urxvt on my laptop and connected to the server
machine.

Terry@dixie$ mysql -h vectra -u trowa -p SpidersWeb                        5:44
Enter password: 
Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 22
Server version: 5.0.51a-log OpenBSD port: mysql-server-5.0.51a

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the buffer.

mysql> SHOW TABLES
    -> ;
Empty set (0.01 sec)

mysql> exit
Bye
Terry@dixie$                                                               5:45

Various notes

I found the kern.maxfiles sysctl and standard issue /etc/my.cnf file suitable
for my needs (for now). So no need to screw with them tonight, later on I need
to work on setting up httpd and things... Already 0600Z and work is early
tomorrow so no time to sor that out

Rather then muck about, in case I need to stop and start mysqld I moved the
startup from /etc/rc.local to calling a shell script to run it properly. That
way OpenBSD should allow mysqld sufficant file handles and I can control things
via /etc/my.cnf if I wish to lower it.

Listing 1: /etc/login.conf

#
# This class is used when running MySQL from /etc/rc.local
# XXX: It will *N_O_T* be used when starting/stopping mysqld manually!!
#
_mysql:\
        :ignorenologin:\
        :datasize=infinity:\
        :maxproc=infinity:\
        :openfiles=3580:\       # I've set this to sysctl::kern.maxfiles
        :stacksize-cur=8M:\
        :localcipher=blowfish,8:\
        :tc=daemon:

Listing 2A: /etc/rc.mysql

#!/bin/sh
#
# A simple script to launch mysqld with the proper login privledges
#

su -c _mysql root -c '/usr/local/bin/mysqld_safe >/dev/null 2>&1 &'
echo -n ' mysql

Listing 2B: edits to /etc/rc.local

# launch the MySQL database server
if [ -x /usr/local/bin/mysqld_safe -a -x /etc/rc.mysql ]; then
        /etc/rc.mysql
fi

headache form hell with love from family.

Considering the headache and the number of times I've fucked sshd_config, the size of my splitting headache, and the hell that this house is -- It looks like getting any _real_ work done is going to have to wait until next weekend.


Oh wait, the fuckers will screw me over then too


So it will have to wait to the weekend after that

Oh wait, the fuckers will screw me over then too


So it will have to wait to the weekend after that


Oh wait, the fuckers will screw me over then too


So it will have to wait to the weekend after that



Some times I wish I could just _legally_ bind and gag people for a few hours, it really would make life so much fuckin' easier.

Fixing last nights screwups

Well this is what happens when your working around 0400 local time :\


After last nights double upgrades my system wouldn't except my login over ssh citing an invalid password (when it was correct!). Plus it was refus8ing connections on the port I have sshd listing to but accepting on the default port 22, even though I merged my sshd_config with the new one.


Hooked up a monitor and keyboard to the server and even root was being rejected. I know I forgot to run /dev/MAKEDEV before rebooting the kernel but if that had any problems either init, rc, or getty would be dying from problems setting up TTYs and mounting disks!


Booted off the install floppy I had left over from the 4.0 upgrade and dropped to shell. Since I had to did a rude shutdown when I realized what was up, I had to force the mounts before I could go to work. Then I change rooted into the servers file system to get to fixing the login problem.

mount -f /dev/wd0a /mnt
mount -f /dev/wd0g /mnt/usr
chroot -u root /mnt sh

I knew I forgot to make the new device nodes so I did that and took a look at /etc/group and /etc/passwd before touching any thing else.

/dev/MAKEDEV all
TERM=vt220 vi /etc/group
   ...

I had to set TERM for nvi because with an empty $TERM after the chroot operation, vi couldn't handle the situation :\

checked out the group file and noted my custom user groups were missing, changed files :e /etc/passwd and noted that my user account was also missing!


Made a fix of this:

group add -g 7778 nfsusers
adduser
    ...

Added the nfsusers group for the file shares and recreated my personal user before mounting /home. That gave me enough that I could reboot, strip monitor and keyboard, and SSH into it from the desktop to finish poking around.

On login my shell prompt was 'Terry@noname-$ ' and I know my ksh prompts are 'username@hostname-$ ' which means my systems hostname settings were nuked.


Lo and behold, it hit my like a bus.



During last nights upgrade I remembered specifically that I did remove etc42.tgz in /usr/obj/4.2 before using a for loop to extract all of the file sets. But I could not remember doing the same with etc43.tgz in /usr/obj/4.3 when I installed the last file sets :\


Sure enough I looked in both directories and last nights log and bingo that is what happened! I ended up extracting the default configuration files for OpenBSD 4.3 after my upgrade.



I didn't take a backup of /etc before hand because I knew it wouldn't be harmed, assuming I didn't fsck things up. And of course any thing irreplaceable is backed up in like 4 or 5 places any way.


It looks like the only major losses in /etc were exports which I rewrote simply. I copied the %ProgramFiles%\etc\group file to the server as /etc/group.old and used vimdiff to merge my other custom groups in before moving on.


rc.local was overwritten but that's no loss because everything I had in there was commented out and there depends got pkg_delete'd last night ;-)

I repaired /etc/hosts, checking my changes against the hosts file on my desktop, (%WinDir%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts). Each of my machines defines a couple of 'quick' items in hosts. Then fixed /etc/myname with my machines proper name.


the settings in /etc/ntpd.conf were overwritten but unused for ages, the patch operations also left me my original file as /etc/ntpd.conf.orig hehe and I cleaned the rest out

cp /etc/ntpd.conf.orig /etc/ntpd.conf.ORIG
rm /etc/*.orig

Then set to fixing ssh_config and sshd_config

cd /etc/ssh && vim .

This really is what I get for doing things so late at night +S

Upgrading OpenBSD -- so darn easy!

Tonight I finally got around to upgrading my OpenBSD machine, Vectra functions as my file server among other things hehe. The 4.2 upgrade screwed around with the expat library making it depend on xbase42.tgz which is the X Windows System, normally not needed unless one is running a graphical desktop environment.

The system runs headless with no monitor, keyboard, or mouse and functions as a file server. So I have no need what so ever to run a GUI, using a command prompt over SSH is actually my preferred way of working on the box any way. because it means I don't need a monitor, keyboard, or mouse to work on Vectra and because SSH is not as heavy on the network as using VNC/X Forwarding and crap. Now that 4.3 was released May 1st and fixed the libexpat thing I can update

I took the machine from OpenBSD 4.1 to 4.2 to 4.3. I could probably have saved time by not dealing with any of the *42.tgz files besides etc42.tgz but I did it any way. I've also learned the hardway to back up /root first hehe (see end of post notes). OpenBSD is one of the most easy to install, upgrade, use, and maintain operating systems I have ever used.

Here is my general log of things, and yes I do use the shells command grouping and flow-control constructs when I feel like it :-P. Most of the configuration file changes in 4.2/4.3 were never modified by me so I could install most of them over the old ones

EDIT:, be sure to remove BOTH etc*.tgz before using any the for loops to install files!!! or end up in my sleepy boat. Updating the files in /dev before rebooting is also not a bad idea.

su - root
Password:
cd /usr/obj
mkdir {4.2,4.3} && cd 4.2
cat ~/.profile          # look up my mirrors address
ftp ftp.usa.openbsd.org
        ...             # login as anonymous
ftp> cd /pub/OpenBSD/4.2/i386
        ...             # fetch files for OpenBSD 4.2
ftp> get base42.tgz
        ...
ftp> get etc42.tgz
        ...
ftp> get comp42.tgz
        ...
ftp> get misc42.tgz
        ...
ftp> get man42.tgz
        ...
ftp> get games42.tgz
        ...
ftp> lcd ../4.3
        ...     # change directories
ftp> cd /pub/OpenBSD/4.3/i386
        ...             # fetch files for OpenBSD 4.3
ftp> get bsd
        ...
ftp> get bsd.rd
        ...
ftp> get base43.tgz
        ...
ftp> get etc43.tgz
        ...
ftp> get comp43.tgz
        ...
ftp> get misc43.tgz
        ...
ftp> get man43.tgz
        ...
ftp> get games43.tgz
        ...
ftp> close
221 Goodbye.
ftp> bye        # return to my shell, pwd := /usr/obj/4.2
ftp>  http://openbsd.org/faq/upgrade42.patch      # fetch patch file for /etc
tar -xzphf etc42.tgz
cd etc          # pwd := /usr/obj/4.2/etc
# install the etc42 files as directed by the upgrade notes
cp magic man.conf netstart rc rc.conf rpc services /etc
cp mtree/* /etc/mtree/
cp mail/helpfile mail/localhost.cf mail/submit.cf /etc/mail
cp mail/sendmail.cf /etc/mail
cp etc/bgpd.conf /etc/                                                      
cp etc/mail/spamd.conf /etc/mail/                                            
cp etc/ospfd.conf /etc/                                                      
# test the patch
cd ..           # pwd:= /usr/obj/4.2 again
(cd /; patch -C -p0) < ./upgrade42.patch        # test patch
(cd /; patch -p0) < ./upgrade42.patch           # apply patch
        ...    
# my /etc/ntpd.conf is customized and fails to patch clean
# remove the left over notes, _AFTER_ reviewing them !
(cd /etc; for i in `ls /etc/|grep rej`; do rm $i; done)
vimdiff etc/ssh/sshd_config /etc/ssh/sshd_config
        ...    
# manually merge the new sshd_config with mine
                # this puts both files in a verticle split, new on the left,
                # old on the right. Merge changes in with the :diffput command
cd ../4.3              
# pwd := /usr/obj/4.3
ftp>  http://openbsd.org/faq/upgrade43.patch      # fetch patch file for /etc
# install the etc43 files as directed by the upgrade notes
tar -xzphf etc43.tgz
cp moduli netstart ospf6d.conf rc rc.conf relayd.conf security snmpd.conf /etc
cp mtree/* /etc/mtree/
cp mail/README /etc/mail
cp ../var/named/etc/root.hint /var/named/etc
cp etc/ttys /etc/ttys                                                        
(cd /; patch -C -p0) < ./upgrade43.patch        # test patch
(cd /; patch -p0) < ./upgrade43.patch           # apply patch
        ...
# remove the left over notes, _AFTER_ reviewing them !
(cd /etc; for i in `ls /etc/|grep rej`; do rm $i; done)
# remove uneeded files, as directed in 4.3 upgrade
notes
rm /etc/hoststated.conf /var/named/standard/root.hint
# add the new users and groups in 4.3:
useradd -u90 -g=uid -c"OSPF6 Daemon" -d/var/empty -s/sbin/nologin _ospf6d
useradd -u91 -g=uid -c"SNMP Daemon" -d/var/empty -s/sbin/nologin _snmpd
newaliases      
        ...    
# update mail aliases
mtree -qdef /etc/mtree/4.4BSD.dist -p / -u                                  
        ...    
# create new directories as needed
# change permissions as instructed by the 4.3 upgrade notes
chown root:operator /etc/chio.conf                                          
chmod 644 /etc/chio.conf                                                    
# install the new kernel as directed, pwd := /usr/obj/4.3
ln /bsd /bsd.41                                                              
cp bsd /bsd.41
mv /bsd.41 /bsd                                                              
shutdown -r now         # reboot into the new kernel so we can begin
extracting
                        # upgrade files safely.
# wait for the machine to come back up, and ssh back to it
ping vectra
ssh2v                   # an alias that expands to ssh'ing me into vectra
        ...
su - root
Password:
# install all of the 4.2 upgrade files
(cd /usr/obj/4.2/; for ark in `ls | grep .tgz`; do tar -C / -xzphf $ark; done
# install all of the 4.3 upgrade files
(cd /usr/obj/4.3/; for ark in `ls | grep .tgz`; do tar -C / -xzphf $ark; done

Since there are a lot of printing related packages from back when I screwed with setting up a Lexmark WinJet with cups awhile back and the Samba system which is no longer used... Since oddly integrating Windows and BSD clients forced me into NFS shares :\ I've opted to delete all of the packages installed on the server and reinstall the only ones I actually give a flying rats rear end about

pkg_delete -cxi -F dependencies /var/db/pkg/*
pkg_add -vi bzip2 lzma

Sadly it seems that /root/profile for some odd reason was overwritten by one of the upgrade files, which really sucks... Because I didn't stop to think -- the tarballs for upgrade are the same as a fresh install which has to create roots default home directory!!!

I had set up roots ~/.profile to set PKG_PATH dynamically based on the current architecture and release level. So I redirected the output of 'set' to a file to retain the values and rewrote my file by hand and changed ~/.profile to source a separate ~/.kshrc before rebooting the system

set > /tmp/root.profile
vim -o ~/.profile -o ~/.kshrc
shutdown -r now

GRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!

It seems, any time I even think about trying to get some thing done...

These @%@!%!'ers find someway of dropping a hydrogen bomb on it :\


What the hell do I have to do in order to get work done when I'm home from work? Hog tie people to a chair and ducktape there mouths lol.


<joke>Hey... That's not a bad idea</joke>

Another pointless day almost done...


We started work today at our new clients, just as I expected it's more stressful then it is hard work... Gotta love being driving batty but at least the clients are not the ones causing it >_>


Spent some time in PG#1 and in TG#3 and cruised the usual forums, sent over a dozen spam-reports on forums.pcbsd.org :\

Knee deep in flood, shells, and bullets.

Managed to fight through the flood running gun battle levels all the way to Cortana popping up to save the universe >_>


Perhaps it's just me but I think it was actually harder playing it the first time way back when, rather then playing through on Heroic of late :\


Or maybe it's because I concentrated more on wiping out the flood then just keeping in Master Chief in one piece lol.



If my ISP could keep the (snip) connection working things would be much easier... Made it to 455MB on the last ISO Kriss Moore posted for PC-BSD 7Alpha before it the aDSL finally died.


Why pay for service that works like crap?


I want to get it setup for some testing, the PC-BSD install on my test machine uses a partition that I've reserved largely for testing Linux/BSD alpha/beta/release candidates any way so it's no loss. Later on I also would like to 'play' with an idea that needs a fresh FreeBSD-7 install... ;-)

*sigh* another unfulfilling day almost gone.

I'd rather like to hit some code... But I'm to fscking tired tonight. Looks like I'll have to make do with a few rounds of kpat (KPatience) instead :\

Killin' headaches, uhhh aliens...

A little Halo to curve the days annoyances...


Continued off from "If I had a super weapon" on Heroic mode but still found the mission a bit sticky. Almost beat it, using my pistol with a mag & a half to clear the front way and plasma pistol shots to take down the Banshees. Making it to the end of the bridge only to meet a pair of Hunters that gave me a Fuel-Rod kiss off lol.


So... enough of that crud, I dogged it back past the checkpoint into the area I had cleared last time -- lots of dead Covenant and a pair of hunters guarding supplies. Ran in there between the hunters, grabbing more grenades, a full stash of pistol magazines, and a health pack ;-).


Ran back out of there dodging between Hunters trying to pancake me but got out without a scratch. That was fun, to bad I didn't get to slap one on the way out >_>


With the piutol fully loaded, sniped out the Elites on the bridge and kept them from getting into the Banshees. Triggering the hunters to emerge, I dashed back and climbed in, oh man... Dive bombing Hunters and Grunts with a Banshees plasma guns xD


Finished them off and made it to the objective, unlocked the door and gave the Golden sword wielding Elite a plasma missile on the way through ;-)


Fighting towards the flood, I actually found a nice trick. The looks quid like floods are dangerous in groups, perfect time for the assault rifle but... The pistol and the shotgun is a bit more useful against the larger floods then shotgun and assault rifle. So what I started to do to conserve pistol ammo, was dancing between flood and when the little critters jump to try infecting the Master Chief, pistol whip'em in mid air. It has to be timed right or they will hit the shields or miss, but it's fun to time it right and whack'em with the pistol instead of shooting them all.


Left off on The Library, the best part of the game but the start off is a bit rough. Swarms of flood all over and my shotgun traded out for a pistol grr... But I generally find once you manage to get decent weapons. The levels like the most stress-reliving one in the game.


Running, jumping, shooting, and fending off swarm after swarm of zombie like and well armed enemies during one of the most prolonged running gun battles in video-gaming lol.


Just slide into it and relax, good way to clear the brains thoughts for a little while hehe.

More then meets the eye

I finally gotten a chance to watch Transformers and it was freaking awesome !


When I had first heard that they were making a life action movie of it, I thought the amount of CGI they would need would ruin it totally. But I was quite pleased to see the awesome job that showed through the trailers. And interestingly, Michael Bay was one of those involved. With the exception of Perl Harbor which bored the ever loving crap out of me, I've enjoyed most of the films that hes directed.


Transformers is arguably one of the best movies I've seen in a _long_ time. It's gotta be like the best movie since T2. And people that know me well, would know that is indeed high praise from me!


Because for me, T2 is just that kind of definitive movie... The kind that, if I had to select one movie to describe my generation. I would probably reach for Terminator 2: Judgment Day.


Transformers really was done well, not purely authentic to the originals but close enough hehe. I remember talking with a friend, and were some what amazed that between me and her, that we could still remember most of the crud we watched when we were knee high lol.

*sigh*


work'ward bound again but at least I finished my Perl script...

sad news

Some sad news this morning :-(


We just heard from one of our old clients that one of her dogs passed away. He was a lovable little duffel-bag of a Chihuahua, if he knew you he loved otherwise run for cover!!!

I remember the first day that we worked over there, he barked for three hours and then slept through the rest of the time we were there lol. After having worked over a year there... Before we left, Ma would give the little guy a kiss on the cheek and he always wanted us to pet him when we worked down stairs. And this is a dog, that once took a bite out of an A/C Repair Mans trousers and kept hanging on till he left!!!


R.I.P. Booger, it was a joy.

Thoughts as Night Falls

I am starving... Even on a full stomach, it is as if I have eaten nothing.
There is no place for me here, the thought repeats in my mind continuously.
This place is so far from everything I seek...


I am mocked for doing nothing, yet I did nothing because to do anything
would have betrayed me into their hands, a mere target under those guns.


So I fortify these castle walls with Titanium and Cortosis.
Hiding myself deep within, appearing emotionless to the storms that rage outside.
Because I can't afford to show the effects from the stabs 'n jabs at my core...
So I build the walls stronger, so that nothing may show through them.
Less the beasts sense a sign of weakness and strike deeper.


Forced to look as if carved from stone, despite the churning underneath...
I'm made of flesh and bone not of iron and concrete.
My heart dies, bit by bit, day by day but surely it wastes away in this place.


Why must I hide myself from those who I love?
Because of creatures that strike so hard, in search of blood...
And upon that sign, would redouble their efforts tenfold,
If I appear phased in the slightest by their efforts.


This is not who I am... But it is apart of survival, in this hellish place.
I yearn to be safe, where my soul has no tolls set upon its freedom.
There is no place for me here, it burns my mind into cinders.
The road behind me is ever so clearer then the path before my feet.
I know the soul can endure long after the heart has since stopped to function.


As my mind drifts to another frame of thought... Another time, another creature.
My memories are both strong and vivid, like an image
irreparably seared into the minds eye.
I cannot forget, the things I once felt.


That specter of the past, that light that shined before the darkness fell again.
Illusion or reality, love or hate, water or fire, it was something strong.
I recall those times with a bitter-sweet taste, because for a brief moment,
Where perhaps I was the most alive, even if only for a few moments.


Before the storms came, and the end came, my heart going with it.
Nothing was left, nothing survived those rending waves...
Washed up along the shores: to begin again.


I wonder, will I ever find the things I seek?
Will I ever be free of this place, and the chains that it forges before me...
To bind me forever in the path of its gnashing teeth.
Far from my passionate goals, from my very self..


And what of the future to be?
I'm ever so damn far from reaching that peaceful place I need to reach.
Man was not made for this form of existence, this empty place.
To sit in darkness, forced from the light.
Like a caged animal, rent before the wolfs.


Let the past be past, ends to be ended.
My soul must become free of this madness, my heart cured of it's poisons.
Those memories of what once was, left behind and forgotten.
Because this place, and those recollections combined are much to strong to bear.


What will there be left of me when I am free?


Tonight, I think if I was to be placed in th'ight situation,
I think I'd say fuck it and hit the vodka.
And not look upward again for a fortnight...

But as always... I am ever the sober one, sober as a codfish in water.


Mon May 12 04:43:53 UTC 2008

One comforting thought, the Defense Language Institute classifies German as a Category II language for how hard it is for an English speaker to learn. The common Spanish and French fitting into Category I, Russian, Greek, and Hewbrew into Category III, and the mind boggling Chinese and Japanese into the topper, are Category IV languages.


That makes me feel a bit better... lol.


I've heard that a lot of people never reach native fluency in a language, I doubt I'll ever do so either but I would settle for knowing as much as an elementary school student. I'm generally able to read German well enough as long as I've got access to a dictionary but not so good at composition.


I'd like to fit some time for study into each day, even if it's not a great amount of time.. It's better then nothing. I've been looking at adding reading to my daily routine, don't know how well it will go. I figure, the more I read the more chance I should hopefully have of getting a 'feel' for it.


When I was learning to read English, I rmemeber I had to write out every word I couldn't read, 3 times plus a sentence out of it. Needless to say, I didn't like that part of school ^_^. It's a good idea though but I'm not about to try likewise in German, while I arguably care more about getting spelling and grammar right in German then in English. If I did some thing like that, my hand writing would get even *worse*.


As it stands, writing English by hand (the conventional pen/pencil on paper method) is an atrocious combination of printing letters and cursive letters. Plus because not only am I accustomed to writing as fast as I can think, which results in many 'lazy pauses' as my mind backtracks to where my hand left off. My way of writing tends to reflect my minds way of thinking, speaking habbits, and preferences on 'style' much more so then the formal 'laws of English' allow -- I'm a person, not a cyborgnetic English Teacher ^_^


I could just imagine... 20 or 30 laters, writing in Gerglish? (What ever you want to call a mixture of German and English words, writing, and pronunciations) To top it all off, haha that would put the final nail in my hand writings coffin.

My chuckle of the day

Malone: Why are you carrying the gun?

Ness: I'm a treasury officer.

Malone: Oh, okay. Just keep in mind what we talked about, huh?

[Malone walks away]
Ness: Hey, wait a minute! What the hell kind of police work do they teach in this city, huh? You just turned your back on an armed man.

Malone: You're a treasury officer.

Ness: How do you know that? I just told you that.

Malone: Who would claim to be that who was not? Hmm?

He's got a point ^_^



When they were first introducing Ness in the beginning, I was like "Treasury deparment!? Where tha". So I find this scene even more appropriate then some people would xD

sehr müde

I don't know if there is a word for some where between about to pass out and being unable to sleep, but if there is it fits me like a glove :\

Being a jerk

So, I was sitting here working on a class file -- defining an interface that's got over a 100 methods to write. And Ma was complaining that I hadn't set my clock after this mornings power outage (about 7 hours previously). So, to shut her up I set the clock and carried on coding.

But since the only time source I've got handy is my laptop and the cable box is on the other side of a cloths rack. I used the laptop, which just so happens to be set to Universal Time Coordinated (UTC/Zulu time). That is what I set the clock for, and a few minutes ago she comes in to ask some thing and I tell her to look at the clock. Now she wants to rip the clock off the wall because I refused to set it to local time xD.


It's my damn clock, if I've got to be forced to set the bloody thing, who says I can't put it on STANDARD TIME !?

How brilliant is Raven Shield ?


aDSL connection fails, first I notice it is when my messages stop showing.

XFire splits a message that I've been disconnected from the system


30 seconds go by before the 'connection failed' message in Raven Shield.


And the entire time, the network stats in game are showing all outbound traffic and no more inbound traffick.


BUT -- through the entire bloody thing, the 'packet loss' is 0, that is so darn funny it is sickening ^_^

R&R, Day Two...

Been playing still more halo to kill time, I still think it feels to much like a console game in the controls and the vehicle steering system really portrays it imho... But gets the job done, at least it's some thing to do :\

Almost managed to get a round of SWAT4 in but supper was ready to soon :-(.


At least, if nothing else for the day... I've gotten a few pages more done of the book and a a slight issue resolves on the website . So the days not a total wash out, I guess.

Hmm, I'm rather getting interested in giving some thign 'odd' a go.


Installing FreeBSD 7 on the test machine, then converting it into a fully functional PC-BSD system.

It's doable, just takes time and effort, and well, I like to tinker with programs from time to time ^_^.



Yes, I'm that bored trying to pass time between /actually/ being able to work lol.


I need a vacation...

Getting closer to the flood, I remember when I first got Halo one of my friends was asking me if I had gotten that far yet, and I was like "The Flood, what the hecks that?". He didn't want to spoil ot for me so when I finally got to it, I was shouting "MORE AMMO!". Best part of the game hehe.


Despite best efforts, my family has still mustered enough to give me a good sized headache... So switching from *actually* trying to learn some thing, to killing time, now I'm hopping to make some progress for the day.... It's like when ever I dare some try and get any thing done. They either find a way to circumvent it, or cause actions to bring others into deraiing it.


!@#$%^ %!(%*Y^!(%^!'s must have radar.


I start, they start; I stop they stop -- intentionally or coincidentally this is getting on my frigging nerves.

R&R, Day One

Been playing a lot of halo latly, on Heroic it's actually not that much harder then I remember playing it on normal when I first got the game lol. The legendary mode is good stuff but I set it this way so I could relax rather then concentrate on the game.

Still no good at pushing the thought stuck in my head out the other side though...


Oddly, I've been catching the end of movies lately :\


Cought the end of Broken Arrow which is a nice action flick. I can't help but laugh towards the end, when John Travolta is arming the Nuke on the train and he's like "F'em if they can't take a joke". I would consider a broken arrow and thieves a foot to steal nuclear weapons horrific but the movies well done -- I at least enjoy it lol. Besides Face/off I think it's the only movie I've seen directed by John Woo.


Also saw the end of Rebecca, a good classic. Funny how she almost had the last laugh, almost but not quite but she still played them all the fool. The husband killed her thinking she was having another mans child, lover boy thought she was, and in the end she was dying of cancer instead. But told him that, knowing he'd kill her after so much playing around. The witch planned for him to end up in jail for the murder, knowing she was dying any way so why not cheat him one last time?


Managed to drop into Code Name: The Cleaner only 30min into it. I remember catching it one night and felt my interest gaining with the laugher ^_^. It's hiliarous towards the end when it all clicks into place and the guys like "I knew it, I'm a spy" but he's really just a janitor having a twist of fate, "He's right, we're going to die!" but they still survive lol.



It's rare that I watch a lot of TV these days, I mostly gave up on it because when ever there was some thing decent on. I usually spent more time doing every thing else around here but watching the movie.... So I count myself lucky when I do get to watch any thing. I love movies, almost as much as a good book but hey few things beat books hehe.Most films that are derived from books, I usually find fall short of the book. The Lord of The Rings being one of the few exceptions, but generally few stand up to the original :\. One thing that I think movies really do best, is offer the ability to tell the story visually just as much as verbally, which can be a bit tougher through text.

2 days off

Planning on enjoying this weekend off, posted my off duty message on SAS and hitting the 'net.



I'd like to get a few things done that needs testing before deployment, I'd love to work on my book a bit, and rest the rest of the time lol.


The question is how much time will I get to actually do any thing.... (family factor).

Well, one nice thing I actually got to work on a small XHTML and CSS template today, in between AFK spikes 8=)

What else I can actually get done before I'm stuck heading back into work otoh, is... doubtful.

Writer's Block: Personality Trait = Trouble

What personality trait has gotten you in the most trouble?

Live Journals Writer's Block

Well, I dunno what I'd call it maybe either being overly technical or just knowing how to be a jerk.


Generally, I'm the kind of guy who enjoys technical things -- even in language. One of my favorite things to do is making points about ambiguity, explicitness, and implicitness in speech. In a programming language, there are things that are implicit and things that are explicit. For example, in ANSI C

auto int foo = 1;  /* foo is explicitly of type int(eger) with auto(matic0 storage allocation */
bar = 1;           /* bar is implicitly of type int(eger) with auto(matic) storage allocation */

I believe in the last ISO standard (C99) that they removed that rule from the language standard. But I dunno of any one on earth who would ever write a compiler that didn't default variables to int's other then me of course (my personality :-P). The auto specifier is also an implicit meaning when omited, one which is so implicit that I've seen it only a few times any where in C programs and rightly so.

In Perl, there are often default variables such as $_ that are used implicitly when no explicit resource is specified for an operation, not knowing this you might think perl was bloodly physic when reading Perl scripts!


English on the other hand, is not like that -- there are very few defined rules in the same spirit.


When I actually pay close attention to whats being said (fairly often if my minds unoccupied), I'll often 'abuse' this lack of understanding in peoples English. There are subtle issues where what you say, is not what you meant and there is no defined way for any one to know, other then to know enough in-context about the conversation or the targets of it, to know what the freaking heck you are referring to,


Me, well I often make it a goal to point this out just to piss people off.



This means I have fun but it also ain't good -- my family doesn't like it hahaha. You could say, they are the kind to say things that are openly ambiguous and dislike it when I force the disambiguation by not doing what they *expected* me to do, because I did *exactly* what they *told* me to do instead xD.


Yeah, so I'm a jerk... I have some bones with "Gentleman" written on them but I never said it stopped me from having a good sense of humour about life !(^_^)!



Some times people will ask me a question, and because of how it's worded I'll give them an answer to a different question or a question of my own in return instead of replying to what they expected me to anwser. You could say, it's a sort of "you get an answer for what you asked me about, not what you meant to ask even if I know what that really was" kind of thinking on my part. I usually reserve it for people who I know should know better though hehe.


I generally don't pick on people who don't don't know English perfectly (the language sucks any way), but I do tend to give people that were born speaking it a good twist every now and then lol.

Dails efforts...

Finally a productive day... Because every one else but me slept through most of the afternoon ^_^

I finished adding a summary mode to my script, later I want to put in user agent exclusions among other things; so it can be tuned to more automated traffic hehe.


I also managed to install Ubuntu 8.04 on SAL1600 today, I'm very happy to say that the boot time is a heck of a lot better then 6.06 was when I inertially tested the distribution. The installer is more complex then PC-BSDs but still quite simple, last time I needed to use an 'alternate' install CD with a hacked debian installer in order to get GRUB in Ubuntu's / rather then screwing with GAG. This time, I only had to scratch my head enough to choose the 'advanced' button before commiting to the format & install -- and select the location to install GRUB to hehe ;-)


Got done in about a half hour, counting setting up a few packages (nVidia drivers, g++, JDK, zsh, etc) and I can finish the rest later. I'm not very partial to Ubuntu although I do greatly like the human theme for Gnome they use. While both FreeBSD 6.x and Linux 2.6.x are fully able to support my desktops hardware: FreeBSD works perfectly out of the box other then sound, which is just a driver away. Most Linux distro on the other hand, need me to screw with things. Debian Sarge for example tried to convice me I had no hard drive controller or network interface, for which NetBSD agreed and Slackware concurred about the NIC ^_^.


I want to test CrossOver Games to see if I could get Rvs or SWAT4:TSS working in it... There is a trial for PC-BSD but the Linux version is supposed to work better and is officially supported. I've heard that WINE has improved greatly on FreeBSD (and PC-BSD 1.5.x includes patches to aid it afaik). Even with the gripes of WINE working much better on Linux then FreeBSD, I only tested it on FreeBSD two years ago and threw it out as useless for even light duty gaming.


I'd really prefer to be running Slackware or Gentoo if I had to run a GNU/Linux distro off my desktop... But I don't have time to muck about just for testing this thing, hence the Ubuntu installation lol. I expect it will fail horribly and I'm not expecting much more then being able to get RvS installed but I'll give it a go. And to be frank, with how poorly done Rvs and SWAT4 are from a software perspective... I'm really supprised people can run then on Vista, hell we have to side-step problems the games have with modern graphics cards (and SWAT4:TSS ain't that fucking old!)


To be honest, I think I would have to create my own "Linux From Scratch" system to ever truly be happy with a Linux distro, that or just install OpenBSD instead and be perfectly happy hehe xD. But, in terms of having to run a specific OS, I'd be much more happy with GNU/Linux then I am with Windows XP. The only reason I've never removed WinXP from my desktop is I need one game box, you could say... If I wasn't in [SAS] then I would be totally and 100% free of Windows for the rest of my days. But I love my team to damn much to leave, even if it means having to keep one working copy of Windows around.


The thing that really pisses me off, I can run FreeBSD and Linux on my desktop and it is rock solid for all I need it to do (y). Running Windows XP on the same machine, I only *wish* I could say the same hahaha. Between the nVidia drivers, Direct X 9, and Creative Labs + Raven Shield not playing nicely together it loves to get blue screens of death under XP.


At least when a machine has problems with running BSD or Linux, you generally get what you paid for but when Windows has problems, it blows because you got charged by every bastard along the way and his dog too!