Sunday, February 18, 2007, 09:44 PM
This was a pretty good weekend. On Friday, I jogged 1.5 miles. On Saturday, I did 9.0 miles worth of exercise (6.4 mile walk and 2.6 mile stairmaster) for 1302 calories. And today, I did 8.2 miles (3.1 mile jog, 2.9 mile stairmaster, and 2.2 mile walk) for 1150 calories. Too cool!
I am only THREE pounds away from my goal (180 pounds). 18 months ago, I weighed 221 pounds. A 38 pound loss in 18 months isn’t too shabby!
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( 3 / 1267 )Saturday, February 17, 2007, 05:12 PM - Random Thoughts
My opinion on the Bush presidency is this: he lied every time he opened his mouth. I read in MSNBC this week that the Bush advisors were bemoaning the president?s apparent ?credibility gap? -- a newfangled euphemism that means ?nobody believes anything he says?. And then I thought to myself, ?why SHOULD anybody believe anything he says??
We?re in our 4th year in Iraq. It?s a war he lied to Congress about in order to get authorisation for the war. Bush said Saddham had nuclear (?nuk?u?larr?) technology -- Saddham didn?t. Bush said that Saddham had weapons of mass destruction -- he didn?t. He said that Iraq had fully re-armed -- it hadn?t. Bush said that the global community was behind us in this endeavour -- it wasn?t. Bush declared ?Mission Accomplished? six months into the war -- nothing was accomplished. Bush said that the Iraqi people would welcome us as liberators -- they greeted us as an Infidel occupation army. Bush said that the war would ?pay for itself? due to increased Iraqi oil exports -- energy prices doubled because of this war.
Bush lied about the extent to which favoured contractors like Halliburton would defraud the taxpayers (for projects in Iraq and New Orleans).
Bush lied to the American people when he said that gay couples wanted to ?destroy the traditional American Family?. Gay couples just want equal protection under the law and equal access to the services their taxes pay for.
Bush lied when he said that Homeland Security would make America safer. All it did was create a branch of Secret Police that operate outside the bounds of the Constitution.
Bush lied when he said that the huge tax cuts for the nation?s millionaires would somehow benefit the middle class. In reality, the gap between rich and poor grew wider under Bush?s watch than under any other president.
But if I took the time to list all of Bush?s lies, it would fill an entire book. The legacy of George W. Bush is this: Because he lied, thousands died.
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( 3 / 1285 )Thursday, February 8, 2007, 06:29 PM
I had a really awful nightmare last night. In this dream, I was given the task of training a new employee who was a hateful, annoying jerk. He was obnoxious, rude, and tried to start trouble at every turn. He didn't seem particularly trainable either.
Well, I wasn't the only one who hated him. Apparently EVERYONE in the office hated him.
I went on my lunch break and came back half an hour later. When I returned, the new recruit was missing. It wasn't until later that I discovered that he had been brutally murdered by one of the other employees. He had been hacked to pieces and ground up in the shredder.
I was the one who found the remnants. It was just ghastly. The shredder bag was full of blood and gristle. The shredder blades were sticky with blood and had bits of skin and hair sticking out. I didn't want to see what I was seeing. I tried to NOT see what I was seeing. And yet, this gruesome spectacle was before me.
I didn't know what to do. I woke up before I could do some constructive action (like call the police).
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( 3 / 1236 )Sunday, February 4, 2007, 12:29 PM
I've come to the conclusion that I don't actually own any computers that are Vista-capable. This really pisses me off because none of my computers are all that OLD, and yet Bill Gates is trying to do a "forced obsolesence" on the four computers we own.
Vista wants:
1024 MB RAM
128 MB Video
1000 Mhz processor
40 Gb free HD space
1024x768 screen.
DVD drive
My Tablet PC:
It misses on RAM, HD space, and since it is a TabletPC, it has an unusual screen resolution (480x800 portrait). No DVD.
Doug's Laptop:
Misses on video (64 Mb)
My desktop:
Misses on HD space
Doug's desktop:
Misses on RAM and Video. No DVD.
So, I COULD put Vista on one computer if I bought a new hard drive. But WAIT! My desktop's motherboard only has an IDE interface, and all the new hard drives are Serial-ATA. That means I'd have to also buy a new motherboard and new memory modules. For all that trouble, I might as well buy a new computer.
Why are the system requirements of Vista SO DAMNED HIGH? If it's such an "efficient, elegant" operating system, then shouldn't it be able to run just fine on existing computers?
More likely than not, I think Microsoft just threw a great big bone to the computer manufacturers so that the majority of the population will be forced to buy new computers.
Personally, I'm not going to do that. I like my TabletPC just fine. And I don't use my desktop computer often enough to justify its replacement.
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( 3 / 1288 )Saturday, February 3, 2007, 08:52 PM
This has been a truely tough week. I didn't have any time for blogging because my work situation has made me feel really exhausted.
Last Friday, one of the case agents quit suddenly because she got diagnosed with a fast-spreading cancer. She ran the FTR department for over a decade. She was the only one who knew the arcane system of tracking active files (which involved NINE filing cabinets of STUFF). She's also too sick to train her replacement.
So... I and two other investigators have been trying to reverse-engineer her system and get the department running again. But this has been in addition to all of our normal core duties. And we've been training new recruits for Central Booking at the same time. The long and short of it is that we've been trying cram 12 hours worth of work into an 8 hour workday.
What has made it difficult is the sheer hatefulness exhibited by some of the other case agents. They take turns decrying our supposed incompetence and then say we're acting like grave robbers for trying to take over the dying agent's work. Well, maybe we ARE incompetent -- since we're trying to do a job we weren't trained to do. But we're not grave robbers. The work HAS to be done. And I haven't noticed any of the other case agents volunteering to lend us their expertise.
I have come home exhausted and depressed every day. I've been going in early and coming home late. And it's just ghastly that a person I really like and respect is going to be dead soon.
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( 3 / 1236 )Tuesday, January 23, 2007, 06:36 AM
I had an odd dream that involved a box that shouldn't have been opened. Somehow, there was a very old box that was tightly sealed. It contained a malevolent intelligence of some sort. Unfortunately, I clumsily ran into the box and the bottom seal dropped off. When it did, a cold blue light shown from underneath.
The entity that lived in the box did not escape, but it could now see out. And if the blue light hit anyone, they would be influenced by the entity's own evil desires and thus be compelled to carry out its wishes.
I tried to put the seal back on, but it wouldn't snap back on. I also didn't want to be near the box, since I didn't want its light to turn me into a slave to evil.
I had the power to drop inbetween realities, so I fell from that room into another scene.
Here was an antique store. It was closed since it was after-hours. I felt the box trying to come for me. A blue light shown down from the ceiling all of the sudden. I hid underneath a desk. I think the box entity knew I was nearby and it was frustrated that it could not see me. After a few minutes, it gave up.
I dropped out of that reality.
It was a beach, in late autumn. It was sunny, breezy, but a bit chilly. The beach was of the volcanic variety since the strip of sand was very narrow and a mountain slope began almost immediately past the strip.
I sensed the box entity nearby. At the far end of the beach, an amorphous blob floated towards me. It had rays of blue light coming from it. I did not want to confront it. I dropped through another reality.
This one was a realm of magic, not science. I found an elderly teacher who said, "I can teach you how to see. I can teach you how to use your mind."
I do not think the box entity could come here, since I did not sense its pursuit. And I had a hope, for the first time, that the old man would show me how to defeat the evil entity and to put the seal back on the box.
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( 3 / 1222 )Saturday, January 20, 2007, 08:43 PM
My sister's ex-husband is a pretty bogus dude. He was always into drugs and got my sister involved in meth for a few years. Her first son was born with horrible defects that required over a dozen surgeries to correct. Sure, it was my sister's fault for starting drugs, but it was his fault for offering them.
Then he was drug-free for a year or two when he went through a "Jesus" phase. But all he did was throw out all his Dungeons & Dragons books and all of his Magic The Gathering cards. Yeah.
Well... He got busted yesterday trafficking 300 pounds of marijuana. Geeez! I'm trying to imagine how BIG that actually is. After all, a bale of hay weighs about 30 pounds or so. Pot probably weighs the same as hay since they're both plant products.
I hope he goes to jail for 50 years.
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( 3 / 1110 )Monday, January 15, 2007, 10:08 AM
About fifteen years ago, I started writing a roleplaying game in my spare time. To anyone familiar with Dungeons & Dragons, the concept is similar, except that my game is a post-apocaleptic setting rather than a midieval setting. It took ten years to write, and comprises four volumes (Rules for Players, Book of Spiritual Powers, Creatures, and Game Master's Notes). All told, it's about a thousand pages of material.
I got into writing it because at the time, the ruleset for Dungeons & Dragons was limited, inflexible, and not always logical. For example, why does a fighting monk have such formidible hand-to-hand combat capabilities, yet have only a d4 Hit Die when regular fighters have a d10? Why do wizards need to tote around a heavy spell book with them? You'd think they'd just *know* their spells after reciting them dozens of times. Why can Paladins (holy warriors) only be human? Can't a dwarf or an elf feel religious fervor?
And so I began writing. The first nine years, I wrote the thousand pages of STUFF. The tenth year, my friend Matt Hannum proofread, edited, and offered some really good suggestions. That product became "World of Gaianar: Second Edition".
This weekend, Doug, me, and three friends got to play my game. It was a real blast. We played for a full SEVEN hours and yet time really flew!
The players created characters that were running a local detective agency in the small town of Wayland's March. Since the town is growing faster than the local government can increase the infrastructure, the Sheriff's department often contracts outside help to solve crimes. So the party managed to beat up some highway robbers and retrieve a missing 11-year-old boy.
It was a lot of fun!
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( 3 / 1149 )Tuesday, January 9, 2007, 07:11 PM
I had a very depressing dream last night that the government had developed an illegal biological weapon that was released (either accidentally or on purpose) into the general populace. Those infected by the disease became psychotic and violent. They would turn on loved ones and tear them to pieces. The disease could be transmitted through a bite or a scratch. Thus anyone injured by the infected would also become infected.
If there was a cure, the government did not release it.
Those infected eventually died -- usually after three or four days of wreaking havok.
I remember the end-stage of the burnout of civilization. I was on the tenth floor of a ruined skyscraper when the last of the raging lunatics came for me. I held them off with the chair leg from a stool. But the two attackers were basically worn out by the time they found me. They made a few half-hearted attempts to bite me and then collapsed to the ground.
I looked outside through a window. Huge swaths of the city had simply burned. The sky was dark with suspended ash and soot. It was midday but it was dark as dusk. Plumes of smoke from a few remaining fires still drifted aimlessly into the sky. But there were no cars moving in the street and the only visible people were withered, unmoving corpses.
It occured to me that there must be other survivors, but I had no idea of where to even begin to look.
The electricity had failed. And even though the end of civilization had just happened, I was amazed at how old and worn-out everything looked. It was like the city had been abandoned for thirty years. Perhaps the city had a soul and that soul had departed, leaving a dry, pale, brittle skeleton of itself behind.
I remember looking through the wreckage. But I didn't really know what I was looking for. I think I wanted to find clothes that weren't falling apart. My own clothes had suddenly become thin and threadbare. By the time I woke up, everything in the city was just a forgotten, tattered ruin.
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( 3.1 / 1154 )Sunday, January 7, 2007, 01:37 PM
My partner's sister is probably the most worthless individual I have ever had the displeasure of meeting. She is one of the few people I've met that has ZERO redeeming features. She actually has not one single virtue! Try as I might, I cannot think of a single good thing to say about her -- not one. It's absolutely amazing!
I just find it hard to believe that Doug and this monster are related by blood. They really don't have anything in common.
Doug is kind, tolerant, funny, hard working, interesting, knowledgeable, creative, adaptable, kind, giving, happy, sober (with respect to drugs and alcohol), empathic, and occaisionally spiritual.
Doug's useless sister is greedy, spiteful, foul-mouthed, hateful, unforgiving, prejudiced, bigoted, lazy, spendthrift, self-centered, godless, untruthful, untrustworthy, violent, materialistic, uncreative, humorless, and generally unpleasant.
Doug's sister is also a cocaine addict who refuses to get any sort of drug counseling or detox. She snorted her way through $20,000 in under three months (from an inheritence.) She endangers Doug's mother by sending drug dealers to the house to collect on her drug debts. She's bled her mother dry, financially.
Doug's sister relies on the lamest excuses for not working. She says she has dislexia and depression, and says she "can"t work" because of these disabilities. She's not so disabled that she can't blow a few hundred dollars a day on cocaine.
I have ZERO sympathy for her. I know firsthand that these disabilities can be overcome. I, too, have dislexia and depression. I also have a dissociative disorder. But I go to work EVERY DAY. In fact, I've only missed four days of work in sixteen years, and have been unemployed a total of 72 hours in those same sixteen years.
I cannot abide by his sister's presence. She knows that she and I have the same disabilities but I've done things in my life and she's been nothing but a useless leech. She's cursed at me, made fun of me, called me "f***ing faggot", and has even struck me a few times. After the last time she hit me (three years ago) I have refused to visit Doug's family because I don't want to be attacked by her.
I wish her drug dealer would kill her or, failing that, I wish she would overdose. She's a useless, soulless, spiritually bankrupt piece of human debris.
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