Have you ever had one of those days that just worked out really well? They tend to bunch up on the lower-left of the bell curve of fate. But when one comes along, what a wonderful thing. Unfortunately, I can't currently talk about what I'm doing beyond the fact that it's a project with The Dead Gentlemen. I'm not anything close to a crucial member or anything either. I just get to tag along for a small portion of the ride. Additionally, the store cogs are turning smoothly without much input and the machine is humming. Work is going well also, and I solved a problem today that I've been putting off for nearly four months. So that was nice too. Lastly, my business cards for the store came. I have business cards! For a business that I co-own!

I almost want to make a little Japanese/Korean cat face because I feel like a wee girl!

>^__^<  -スゴイ！！

I checked my unapproved comment log today and found I had over 200 unapproved messages. Of those, ONE was valid. So I decided to take a few minuts to implement some anti-spam measures. We'll see how well they work.

Because I like to be angry I guess.

 As a man gets older he becomes more aware of mortality. Not just his own, though that is the specter working the rudder. The mortality of the world around him occupies much of his daily thought. The profoundness of a noun coupled with a being verb that is the opposite of being. People, places, and things which had made up the objects in a person’s reality serve as mile markers of personal mortality as they cease to be. A dog passes, a store closes, a show is cancelled. “What is” suddenly becoming “what isn’t.” Significant to trivial, these small ticks on the clock remind us that permanence is an abstract used to describe something in a finite timeline. A timeline of perhaps seventy to one hundred years should we avoid fast moving busses and foods conceived by carnival folk. Permanence begins to tatter when challenged by generational time. A span of only a few hundred years holds very few examples of permanence. A building here, an heirloom there. Expand that to anthropological time and permanence is an attribute which can be attached to only a handful of items. The Pyramids and the bits of miscellany within. The occasional pot or tablet. Stretch the timeline to a geological scale and nearly all things tangible in a human scope lose permanence. The stars and the landscape are busy telling their stories, caring nothing of navigational charts or brass sextants. Only the very very small holds onto any sort of permanence. Expand farther still and protons begin to decay. The bonds that hold the smallest structures together give way to entropy and the nearly non-existent concept of permanence disintegrates with the last sigh of a dying universe. We don’t comprehend anything on this scale of time. The concept of even a decade is hard to keep in our minds. We shrink it down into a more consumable chunk. An extension of the ‘Now’. We key off of a handful of events and the rest is fabricated as needed. We are very much creatures of the ‘Now’. Now is where we are comfortable. Now is what we have evolved to navigate. The little ticks on the clock – the ones that you hear when your favorite baseball player retires or when the first rated R movie you saw shows up as a 20^th anniversary DVD near the checkout of a grocery store – these little ticks give us a glimpse of the decay of permanence on a timescale larger than we comprehend. They remind us that there is a finite number of days, hours, minutes, and seconds in which our consciousness will operate. The louder the tick, the more we are forced out of the ‘Now’. The more permanence loses its own meaning. The easier it becomes to imagine the sound our own casket will make as it bumps its way down eons of strata. A psychological barrier we keep to prevent ourselves from going limp with futility is stressed as we realize that we will one day be forgotten. When viewed from the vantage point of geological time, our entire species will, at best, be an epoch marker on a study aid for another race. There will be no Jonathan Westons. No Susan Lafayettes. No Guro Takagawas. There will just be a blip on a chart – if we’re lucky – somewhere between a planetary cold snap and, most likely, a large gamma burst. At a geological scale, those pondering our little slice of existence will not be human. Whether or not they are descended from what we are now, they will be no more human than a human is a Devonian leviathan.  But for most of us, it won’t take more than a few years. The memory will fade on the scale of a decade. It will be gone completely within a century.

 I loved my grandmother Gertrude dearly. I developed my first few years of memories with her as a major character in my life. She was deeply important to me. In the ‘Now’, the neurons holding together what is left of my grandmother fire about as frequently as the people around me die. When I die the last record of who she was as a person – the last firsthand account of her existence – will be gone. My children never knew her. Nor did I know her mother. I don’t even know my great grandmother’s name. She is very nearly gone. She will die with my mother. I could look up a few details if I wanted to spend the time, but it wouldn’t tell me anything about who she actually was. That is the price of being human. The price of being aware of our own mortality. Sentience is a bitch. So why do we carry on? Why do we continue when, as the curtains close on this giant physics experiment, nothing any of us has done will matter? Because we live in the ‘Now’? Because we’re programmed to carry on? Yes, but also because we hold on fast to the chance that one day someone will rise from the ranks and find a cure to the futility of existence. Until then, we do what we can to keep our minds from spinning out of control. We attend funerals and weep into tissues. We promise we’ll never forget and promptly file memories away under special occasions. We pull them out like a dusty box of photographs on Christmas or Mother’s Day. We swish them around in our heads until we feel we’ve satisfied our promise, then we throw them back into the closet until the next trigger fires in our cerebral spaghetti and the process is repeated. Fidelity is lost in the retelling, sometimes for the better. Our memories yellow and gain a warm glow. We celebrate the dead to celebrate ourselves. We remind ourselves through our rituals and ceremonies that we are still here. We aren’t mourning the body in the box, we are mourning our own inevitable bow out. When our ‘Now’ ceases and we become nothing more than a ‘Then’ to a few close people. Finally we aren’t anything at all.

That old joke about the guy who ends up on the wrong side of physics while playing see-saw with a barrel of bricks? Well, I'm feeling his pain. On Friday night I went to my cousin's house to enjoy an evening with some old friends in from Denver. As newly converted priests of the holy order of Dead Gentlemen, Dennis and I began proselytizing the virtues The Gamers: Dorkness Rising. After a bit of prodding and a lot of vodka, our friend Joe agreed to watch it. As is ritual now, the room was readied. Darkened and arranged with the care of a blood rite. We began the film and bowed our heads in appreciation. There were quite a few more bodies (one) in the room than at a customary viewing, so I gave up my traditional spot on the couch and stood to the side. After a few minutes, I scanned the room to find a comfortable spot to sit for the remainder of the film. In the corner of the TV room at my cousin's house is an ever-present stack of blankets. Tradition held that under this pile of downy sirens was stored a pillow. Not just a pillow, but a sort of giant human-sized dog bed. Concave and welcoming. A demi-womb of plaid flannel and faux lamb skin. I took my position in front of this monolith of comfort and threw myself back. What I didn't know is that my cousin had, in cleaning and preparing for the arrival of our friends, moved an old footlocker to the spot the pillow normally occupied. I hit my back about two degrees off tap dead center from my spine. A gnarled hand of distress grew from that single point of contact on my back and squeezed at my insides. My breath sputtered out of me and a galaxy of newborn stars sprayed across my vision. My sympathetic nervous system went into protective overdrive and I was involuntarily in a fetal position with my legs twitching within a second of making contact. It was unpleasant.

The next two days of the weekend were uncomfortable to say the least. Riding in a car or sitting back on my hair sent waves of pain through my torso. Sleeping was constantly interrupted by spasms. So I decided to stay home today so I could ice and heat my back as needed. After putting in my time virtually, I started dinner since Erin was waking up. Standing felt better than sitting, so it was practically a vacation. We ate and I put the dishes in the sink. I should have rinsed them and put them in the dishwasher right away, but bending kind of sucks so I figured it could wait. I came out of the computer room and found Linux on the counter, standing inside the cooking pan, eating the remainder of the ground turkey left in it. Now, he's on a strict diet. So I go to shoo him away and put the pan in the sink. I grab the pan and twist to yell at the cat which starts a spasm. Involuntarily, my left leg kicks up and when it comes down it's twisted in a most awkward way. My knee sends a signal to my brain something akin to 'help, I'm on fire and am also filled with angry ants. Those ants are carrying glass to a nest made entirely of barbed wire and gasoline.' So here I am with a spastic back, a throbbing knee wrapped in an ace bandage, and a sense of dread that the barrel is about to descend again.

Corporations are now unlimited in the amount of money they can use to get the candidates they want elected into office. If you don't think this will severely impact our world, you are wrong. You are dead wrong. Welcome to the future of America. The singularity of corporate interest, church, and state.

This was 9th grade math reading in 1997 -

This is News Corp. sponsored math reading in 2011 -

When I paid off all my credit cards, I still had some money left over. So I figured I'd pick up a second video card to SLI for PhysX support in games like Batman and... well... Batman. The card arived and I was excited to get it hooked up. That's when I realized I had an 850W power supply to drive two 280GTX OCs, four 1TB Western Digital Black drives, 12GB of memory, and a Pentium Core i7 Extreme. It was rated sustained load, not peak, so that was good...but my sustained load is somewhere around 1050W with 1300W peak. That's no good. I started looking around for a new power supply in the 1200W range. Everything is either very expensive or very crappy at that wattage. The two I narrowed down to were the ThermalTake modular 1200W ($300) and the PC Power & Cooling Turbo-Cool 1200ESA ($560!!). I don't want to shell out more money on power supplies if they die, and they do die often if they are store brand. So...what is a kid to do? I don't have the cash for either right now, but I don't want to risk running my system on 850W. I guess I could take the second card out. Nah. That won't happen.

So I headed down to Fry's and picked up a 500W ThermalTake with a dedicated 12v rail for PCIe. I jumpered the ATX and POWER_OK pins and ran the PCIe connectors through the water cooling slot on my case. It's a little McGhetto but it works!

Pin 8 jumpered to a +/-5vDC, pin 16 jumpered to ground.

PCIe power ran through the watercooling grommet on the back of the case.

Connected to the card and humming along...

I've made my first Threadless submission. I'm hoping it gets approved, but who knows?

The description:

Intel surrounding the Rebel attack was brought to the attention of Vader and his puppet master, Palpatine, months before the Jedi extremists began their suicide mission against the military and economic hub of the Empire. Knowing that media pressure for inclusiveness and the fading need for war were feeding a growth in sympathizers for the Rebellion in many systems, it was decided an attack would be just the thing to light the fires of patriotism across the Empire. A blank check would be written by the Senate to rebuild, funneling untold billions into the pockets of military contractors, many in which Palpatine has controlling interest. Wake up people! Don't be herded like lowly Nerf!

I'm putting the finishing touches on my final project - a dungeon navigation game in C++ using console output. I feel dirty. On the bright side, I've learned a lot. Enough to really pique my interest. At Fry's on Sunday Erin and I saw a game development kit from Parallax for $200. It basically allows you to program NES style games using C, BASIC, or a proprietary language. I'm considering picking it up. Anyone have any experience with it?

It felt like I had been falling forever.  My head throbbed from the tumble and pin pricks of light darted about at the edges of my vision.  I had blacked out when the ground angrily refused to give way to my forehead and only dreamily remembered the sky coming in bursts at my feet.  I slowly argued my protesting body upright and began to assess my whereabouts.  Nothing was familiar - though it seldom is when crossing back from the half-dreaming fog of a concussion.  Someone had been with me, I thought.  But I couldn’t trust it.  No, she had been with me.  Certainty solidified as I swam back to a semblance of awareness.

I looked to my right, tracing upturned clumps of sod that marked my descent down a small hill. The light of mid-day was nearly unbearable, even as my hand shielded my dilated eyes. There were two trails etched in the tussled grass and mud. They both began a few feet from a small stone well perched atop the rise. One ended at my feet, the other – much lighter and more difficult to make out - about two dozen paces behind me. From there it went cold. I glanced at the cracking crust of earth on my pant leg. It had been exposed for a few minutes, as best I could tell. I must have passed out when I came to rest. Where was she? It suddenly struck me that in my panicked search for my companion, I never stopped to properly remember who it was I was looking for.

Nothing was coming. Not who she was. Not who  I was. I could feel it, just out of reach – but like a rainbow in a fine mist, it eluded me. Sit down and think this out, Jack. Jack…that’s who I was, right? I tried it on again to see if it fit. Good day, Jack. Yes. Yes, that was it. OK. And my friend J… Janet? No, that wasn’t it. Jennifer, then? No. Ji…ll? Jill. Oh God…Jill. The memories started coming together like quicksilver on a table. Her mother was ill. I was to help her bring water from the well. She didn’t need my help, but I offered and she welcomed the company. It was the most recent of my ongoing-yet-futile gestures of endearment. I loved her. I loved her with such force that it tore me from sleep nightly. I had loved her since we were five years old and had kept it no secret. This amused her.

She delighted in telling me that I would never have her hand, then would immediately skip away and beckon me follow. And I would. And she would smile and tell me I was a weak boy, unable to accept his fate in favor of his dreams. Every time she said those words, “Jack, you shall never have my hand,” my heart would become a stone and drop into the torrent of humors quivering in my belly. And as quickly as it had, it would become a feather on the wind as she shot an enigmatic smile and a rosy cheek from behind her soft brown curls. On my upcoming birthday – my nineteenth – I was to ask her, no – not ask – I was to tell her that she was to be my wife. In the dark of introspection, in the cavernous and vast landscape of all futures played out in fancy, one light shone brightly enough to show me my true path.

She would, of course, say yes and tell me that was all she’d ever wanted to hear. The game we’d started nearly three score seasons ago would be over and we would be happy. I smiled as this scenario played out in my mind’s eye. A play that had been performed at least ten times a day since as long as I could remember, the actors never tiring. The feelings welling in my chest gave more urgency to my goal. I had to remember.

We had left her mother’s bedside and popped into the shed for a water pail. A beam of light cut through the dusty air and lit on her shoulder and I could feel my heart behind my tongue, pushing out what little banter we shared in clumsy bursts. We circled the stone walkway onto the path, she a few light steps ahead of me. It was a full morning’s walk to the well and back and I relished the opportunity to spend time with my fair Jill. She hummed, and whistled, turned and smiled. Every time she did I could feel myself pulled toward her, as if by a golden thread.

She had stopped along the way to pick a small bouquet of wildflowers. I sat and admired the delicate nature of my desire, my one other. She braided the flowers into a garland and gingerly placed it upon her head. She was magnificent. She radiated a beauty I had never truly seen before. I knew it was a sign that I was to be her husband. I knew at that moment that I could love no other as I loved her, nor could any mortal being feel as I was feeling. A sea of turbulent happiness beneath the still waters of civility. What a day my birthday was to be!

The sun had not yet shortened our shadows to anything recognizable. Jill spun in her summer dress and did my best to walk as I should walk, not skip as my feet were enticing me to do.

The memory wavered at this point. A ripple and a sense of dread. I glanced again at the well on the hilltop, then to the sky. The sun was now almost directly overhead. That couldn’t be all that had happened. Where was the rest of the time? Think Jack!

My hand found my temples in a reflexory manner. A sharp pain sounded through my skull as I rubbed and caused me to recoil. My scalp was bleeding onto my brow and my hand came back into focus tinted red. I took a deep breath and pressed my memories forward.

We reached the base of the hill. I had taken the pale to allow Jill the unencumbered motion which spoke her delight in our company.

“Jack, come next to me,” she had stopped in the middle of the trail and was speaking to me over her right shoulder. Her eyes were soft and welcoming. I couldn’t help but succumb to the will of my legs and skipped over to where she stood. “Jack, you are my oldest and dearest friend. You and I have shared a lifetime – well, what we can call a lifetime in our youth – and you know me as no other person in this world.” I swallowed hard and could feel my palms moisten. She broke from the path and walked to the glade where I now stood. All the while speaking of what I meant to her. I had wanted to wait until my birthday. Until we were charged with snuffing the lanterns after my family had retired to the study and my uncle Joseph began spinning yarns for the young ones. It seemed fate had decided that was not soon enough!

“Jack. Because of all of you have been, and all you will be to me in my life, I wanted you to be the first to know. I am engaged!” As the memory came I could hear myself scream to hide that hideous word. I could hear myself say aloud along with the specter of myself in remembrance “to whom?”

“Petey Piper from Crooksend. He asked me last week before he and his father took their harvest to market. Isn’t it wonderful Jack? Isn’t it wonder…” my internal vision went black. I couldn’t bring the images back, no matter how hard I tried. My chest was heaving with loss and with anger. I began pacing wildly, each step sending a shockwave of pain from jaw to crown. I glanced back to the spot where the second trail had ended. The sharp realization stuck in my ribs and I felt nauseated. The trail didn’t end there. That’s where it began. I walked over to the starting point. Small droplets of blood were still visible, complimented by the green of the summer grass. I slowly put one foot toward the hilltop, my mind burning and protesting, screaming to stop. A second step came, then a third, then more followed in a quickening procession. I began to claw at the earth with my hands to pull myself up the slope with a madness, a fervor. I reached the small stone well. Its shingled roof cast a perfect shadow around its edges. To the left, a cracked pale sat upended, a brown tar staining the rim. I vomited. My mind would still not show me a thing. The vapors of images – ghosts in candlelight – would flit about but would never take form. I placed my hand on the edge of the well and I looked in.

The black eye of the void stared back. A small white strip of cloth hung from one jagged stone about ten feet down. And no more. No other sign of her. No sound nor story remained. Jill was gone.

I sat for a moment on the cobbled stone, feeling my legs stutter beneath me. I looked toward the swath cut into the hillside and knew they’d done this before. I pushed my face into my hands and I cried. Deep, shaking sobs you would expect from someone who’d lost his world. And worse, at his own hand. I cried until I had no tears. I sat up and, with what composure I could muster, took a long look at the countryside. A long look and a deep breath. And then I was tumbling after.